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Conspiracy theories - Rupert Sheldrake

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

A fringe theorist, Craig Weiler (talk · contribs), has posted a conspiracy theory about the Rupert Sheldrake article on his blog . This has attracted the article subject themselves and some adherents who have joined the discussion. The editor Tumbleman (talk · contribs), who is mentioned as being supportive in the blog, had a message on his page about how he was trolling which he has since removed, and has helped stoke this incident. Some attention on the article talk page from admins would be helpful to stop the conspiracy-mongering, trolling etc would be welcome. Note that this topic area is under discretionary sanctions. IRWolfie- (talk) 15:24, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

See the talk page, Misplaced Pages:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Fringe_squared:_fringe_theories_about_Wikipedia.27s_treatment_of_fringe_theories and Misplaced Pages:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Fringe_theorists_on_the_Rupert_Sheldrake for more context, IRWolfie- (talk) 15:27, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Not much of a conspiracy theory - it's actually based on the editors behaviors and agenda on the page. I think the reason editors are assuming that vzaak and others are apart of the GSM is because they appear to be editing with the exact same agenda as the GSM. It appears to many to be that the skeptical POV is more important than the NPOV, and that's a reasonable concern. Plus, clearly all the editors in question co-ordinate together like can be evidenced here. That the fact that the GSM is on wikipedia is of course not a conspiracy, they are quite open about it. So it's a reasonable association.

The GSM is not the problem with this editor, and this editor has no ideological agenda. what is the problem is when editors appear to edit a page, wiki lawyer WP policy to support a Skeptical POV above all else, avoid reaching consensus, avoid direct questions, bully and intimidate editors, and most importantly, absolutely fail to deliver verifiable sources based on facts and use personal opinions as reasoned arguments on a BLP. As for conspiracy theories, I would check this talk discussion and references to myself as a 'troll with a social media experiment who fosters global disturbance as his goal' as a good candidate for a proper debunking. Always a good policy to be skeptical about our own ridiculous ideas just as much as we are skeptical about anyone else's. Work reasonably here guys, I just want facts and reasoned arguments - if your not GSM, none of you seem to be contributing to the spirit of WP on that page regardless and if you are GSM, you're really making them look bad. The Tumbleman (talk) 15:59, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

A careful review of all edits, including mine, to this article over the past month is in order. The level of incivility and unwillingness to collaborate is dreadful. Absolutism in championing WP:FRINGE over any application of WP:BLP. Absolutism in championing WP:BLP over any application WP:FRINGE. Denial that WP:FRINGE applies at all. There's bad behavior all around, although careful review will reveal that some have been worse actors than others. The Craig Weller stuff is just a sideshow. There's worse stuff here, predating the Weiller blogpost. A freeze may be in order, because things are degenerating. David in DC (talk) 16:31, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

One thing at a time. Tumbleman's complaint seems to be that a group of editors are editing the Rupert Sheldrake article in violation of WP:NPOV. Will you (or anyone) give diffs that show examples of these edits? - LuckyLouie (talk) 16:33, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

One thing at time. OK. That'll take some work, and multiple edits. To avoid edit conflicts, I'll be working piecemeal, over a bit of time. Let's start with the erroneous claim that Tumbleman has deleted the statements Wolfie complains of. Wolfie is wrong. I'm the one who berated Tumbleman about them. To see the whole exchange, see here, here, here and here. David in DC (talk) 18:47, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but those appear to be diffs of Talk and User page discussion. Are there diffs that show edits to the article itself that violate policy (WP:NPOV or other policies)? - LuckyLouie (talk) 19:00, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Now some diffs from a group of editors working from the POV that BLP is far less important than WP:FRINGE when dealing with a living person they view as a fringe theorist. Here are some admirably honest expression of this POV from the talk page. After a rest from this truly dispiriting review,, I'll put up some diffs from the article. But in truth, after reading these declarations, most any set of revert/re-reverts you see in the article history will suffice: , , , , , , , , , , , , , An attempt to start anew, , , , , , , , , .

As it happens, the most recent edits to the article are a microcosm of the sorts of edits in question. They clear elevate FRINGE over BLP. David in DC (talk) 20:22, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

You are of the opinion that well sourced criticism should not be included often in BLPs, very good, but don't expect many others to agree with removing well sourced criticisms of fringe views just because it is a BLP, IRWolfie- (talk) 22:40, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I am of the opinion that well-sourced criticism of fringe theories should be included in articles about fringe theories, without regard to WP:BLP. I am also of the opinion that well-sourced criticism of fringe theories should be handled with regard to WP:BLP (and WP:UNDUE and WP:NPOV) in articles about living people. WP:FRINGE is not license to turn a BLP into an WP:ATTACK piece. There is a difference between the way good wikipedia editors handle fringe theories and the way they handle fringe theorists. It requires keener, more nuanced editorial judgment and good-faith collaboration. It is not a good area in which to apply binary, black/white, toggle-switch judgment. Living people are special. They are different. The editing of articles about them is rarely enhanced by the zealotry.

Mind-reading is psuedo-science. So any sentence that starts with "You are of the opinion..." is suspect. Doubly so when what follows is inaccurate. Triply so when the two parties have engaged in this conversation before. "You are of the opinion that well sourced criticism should not be included often in BLPs...." is false. Whether the mis-statement is intentional or negligent, I cannot know. Assuming good faith, it's negligent. Please take special care to avoid such negligence in characterizing my arguments in the future. Assumptions are, eventually, rebuttable. David in DC (talk) 02:17, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, maybe they know what your opinions are via mind reading??? EEng (talk) 03:18, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I know what his opinions are because he keeps telling everyone them. When someone says "in my view" one expects what they say is in fact in their view. "At some point, and in my view the Null article as I first found it had reached and exceeded that point, the "piling on" of sourced derogatory information turns a BLP into an WP:ATTACK piece." Misplaced Pages:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard/Archive185#Further_discussion_on_the_Gary_Null_talkpage. IRWolfie- (talk) 07:56, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Humorless people are so very tiresome. EEng (talk) 11:02, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

"You are of the opinion that well sourced criticism should not be included often in BLPs..." is not an accurate restatement of the prior statement you've now provided. I'll try one last time and then give up on explaining. In a BLP, the sourced derogatory information should be carefully calibrated, so as not to turn a biography into an indictment. This does not mean it should be left out often. Rather, it means it should be included judiciously, with BLP in mind. BLP and FRINGE are in tension on biographies of living fringe theorists. There is more leeway to pile up the derogatory sourced info on a page about fringe theories than on one about living FRINGE theorists.David in DC (talk) 12:09, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

OK, so this is a Talk Page dispute rather than any policy violations to the article itself, and in any case, Talk page discussion is not subject to WP:NPOV. From what I see, there is a large amount of disruption, personal attacks, accusations of conspiracy, WP:MEAT, and some baiting that is ongoing. - LuckyLouie (talk) 20:19, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

No. Please re-read the sentence introducing the diffs and the edit summary for introduction of the diffs.David in DC (talk) 20:22, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

OK, back to diffs in answer to Louie's request for diffs showing "...that a group of editors are editing the Rupert Sheldrake article in violation of WP:NPOV." The POV here is a disregard for WP:BLP or elevation of WP:FRINGE over WP:BLP not in line with policy: , , , (conscientious editer reverting POV edit, , , , and where edit protection was added, for darned good reason. After protection, the behaviour gets a bit better, but the see-sawing continues and the talk page starts really exposing the POV in question. I AM NOT opposed to WP:FRINGE. But the overwhelming sense that one gets reading through these diffs, and the talk page ones, is that a lot of skeptics are treating fringe theorists as if they are beneath the protection WP:BLP should be affording them. This POV is detrimental to the project we all hold dear. David in DC (talk) 02:48, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Nothing in my edits which you have shown are BLP violations and I dislike the inference that they are. IRWolfie- (talk) 10:23, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Calling me a "Fringe Theorist" is completely over the top. This isn't some vague conspiracy. The Guerrilla Skepticism Organization is quite real. They have a website: Guerrilla Skepticism. They have a training/recruiting video. In the video they lay out their tactics and provide examples of sites that they've targeted. They claim to have 90 editors working in 17 languages. They are doing this in direct violation of Misplaced Pages policy.

They have the support of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, (here) a national organization, and JREF, also a national organization. (here). As far as Sheldrake's bio, there is clear evidence of a skeptical attack on his page. I have these sources in my blog post on the subject. It would be amazing if they DIDN'T target Sheldrake's bio.Craig Weiler (talk) 18:36, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

@David in DC, you suggest that Absolutism in championing WP:BLP over any application WP:FRINGE. Denial that WP:FRINGE applies at all as a problem on the board that needs review. Indeed it does. This isn't a fair review of the arguments and perhaps a little misleading to someone who has to read this for ANI.

My specific argument, which actually is more of a question which the title of my Sheldrake's talk sections clearly shows, was proper sourcing and references to support a WP:FRINGE/PS application in a way that harms a NPOV on a BLP. Editors were sourcing opinions and original research to justify editing the page to a skeptical POV, which to this editor not only appears as a clear violation of WP:NOT, it's also just sloppy referencing. I asked this numerous times in TALK directly to a few editors. It was never addressed, the question was either avoided or reasoned discussion for a rational consensus was. All this editor got in return was having his user page under scrutiny, having editors post my IP address and personal information about me, calling me a troll because of some link they have from 2005, etc etc in some sort of bizarre wikilawyered ad hom to my questions. I could have brought this into ANI weeks ago, however I choose to make my case in talk using sourced references and reasoned arguments, to build a new consensus. I have not even edited the page yet!

When my questions were addressed with a reference, the references were poorly sourced, showed evidence of OR to this editor, personal interpretations, etc etc. Honestly to me it looked like a team of editors with an agenda stacked a 'house of cards' case to support the viewpoint they wanted on the page and when reasonably challenged, they resorted to what you are reading right now, this is the third attempt to get me banned from the page and to this editor it just looks like this is the last resort they have to maintain using horrible sourcing to support their POV.

The talk section in exchange with this editor clearly reflects this and I invite ANI to review talk sections 'Request for a new consensus', 'SHeldrake is a parapsychologist, references?', 'is WP:FRINGE being applied unnecessarily to Sheldrake's page?' and 'new edit'. Or any other section. I made a very sincere commitment to make this page better under the guidelines and spirit of WP, so I trust my integrity with my work here so far.

IRWolfie-, I think it's fair to say that this case you are making here is not a real problem and is serving more like a strawman or a ruse to avoid a new consensus. What IS a real problem is there is NOT a rational consensus amongst editors regarding sourcing and reasoned arguments. I still don't see how this action will help build consensus on the page. That's what we are supposed to do to make the page better. I think a review of the edits is in order as well. (I personally have not made any edits to the page, except one minor one more than 30 days ago that I also retracted because I was mistaken about the source. But more in order is a review of the behaviors on the talk page.

Also, it's absolutely fair to say that working with David in DC on this issue on the board is workable, I do think his intentions as an editor are genuine and I hold him exempt from the behaviors on the board. There is no reason why he and I cannot find or build a rational consensus together.

So, we can try this again? If I am such the problem that this crowd is claiming, wouldnt it be more in the spirit of consensus and WP to actually engage in reasoned arguments with an editor with a genuine concern of violations of BLP and WP at large? I think your case will be better made for ANI if you simply respond to my reasoned and good spirited questioning instead of trying to get me banned off the page for something you don't understand that happened in 2005 just looks like I am getting WP:HOUNDED and I welcome a review but prefer a consensus. The Tumbleman (talk) 18:47, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

A certain group of editors, has taken objection to WP:FRINGE applying to the article and want a less critical explanation, which the sources don't support. Barney the barney barney (talk) 19:55, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Barney the barney barney It's true Barney that your sources do not support what I have challenged, that is the problem, your sources are not even supporting what you're challenging either. I think it's more productive to explain with some consistency on the talk page instead of wasting some WP admin's time to support some ideological edit war. The Tumbleman (talk) 20:06, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

@IRWolfie-: (1) "Fringe theorist" is a pejorative term, and I don't think you should be calling a fellow editor one, in contravention of WP:CIVIL. (2) You also appear to have retrieved personal information, allegedly from his own blog, in contravention of WP:PRIVACY --Iantresman (talk) 21:55, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Ian, Craig has commented about his blog himself. Where are you going with that? IRWolfie- (talk) 22:12, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

"Fringe theorist" is an insult, but I've taken so much abuse by skeptics over the years that it hardly matters to me anymore. IRWolfie is right about my blog. I've mentioned it myself. It's fair game.Craig Weiler (talk) 23:39, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I stand corrected regarding the blog, with apologies to IRWolfie- --Iantresman (talk) 09:37, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

@LuckyLouie I am not sure your role here, but you appear to take a reasonable concern. YES there is a violation of NPOV on the lead section of the page. The reason the TALK section is relevant to the NPOV on the page is because there is commentary like this below is being used to support editing decisions with horrible sourcing: Quote below -

I think we need to find a way to fit the sentence "Sheldrakes ideas are regarded as batshit insane by most scientists" into the lede somewhere. All the scientists I know believe this. --Roxy the dog (quack quack) 15:14, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Is that acceptable around here? Is it consensus building to have a page controlled by 4 or 5 editors who share a bias and a agenda to promote a skeptical POV over a NPOV? And then to provide no appropriate sourcing or bully other editors off the page? Does that foster consensus? ever? This is not REDDIT, right? The people who participate in reasoned arguments with commentary like this are the ones that want to get me banned from the page and refuse to engage me because I am 'trolling'. oh the irony is not lost on me either. The Tumbleman (talk) 06:39, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

My "role" is merely as an editor. I have been around here a while and have in the past seen a number of episodes very similar to this one occur at articles dealing with fringe topics. Prolonged talk page strife accompanied by huge walls of text containing radically differing interpretations of policy, strident accusations of bias and censorship, and massive incivility and insults peppered with repeated declarations of personal neutrality. This is usually followed by a period of frantic editing of the article from all sides, resulting in a very ugly POV quilt of tortured sentences and awkwardly constructed sections featuring the mainstream view rebutted by fringe view rebutted by mainstream view, etc. Several people get dragged to AN/I and perhaps one or two highly emotional arbitrations ensue. Editors on both sides of the conflict are sanctioned, a few people quit or get banned, and everyone's left exhausted and drained. The article remains ugly and unreadable for some period of time, be it months, or even years. Eventually new editors without any old scores to settle come along and work quietly together to straighten out the mess. So forgive me for not joining the party. LuckyLouie (talk) 00:23, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

All the scientist you know, are not most scientists, and your tone is inappropriate for an encyclopaedia. It is not disputed that Sheldrake has received criticisms. --Iantresman (talk) 09:41, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Could I ask that if User:Iantresman wants to comment on a post I made on the Sheldrake Talk Page (which he has every right to do), he should do it there, rather than in the middle of somebody else's post here. Isn't it bad form to split a comment in two halves that way? --Roxy the dog (quack quack) 12:11, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I didn't realise that your comment in bold, was a quote. My apologies for posting in the middle Tumbleman's post. --Iantresman (talk) 14:20, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

No problem Iantresman - I just wanted to make it clear that I did not post that on this page, and that it is here out of context --Roxy the dog (quack quack) 16:43, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Confirming that Roxy the dog did NOT post this quote here, he posted it on the TALK page on Sheldrake. I just fixed the placement of Iantresman's comment and moved it under mine for clarity. However, this quote DOES have context here because I am addressing the clear bias of editors on the page whom are making editorial decisions, changes, and refusing to engage in a rational consensus. I am showing that my reactions and work as a WP editor on this page are not based on some crazy conspiracy theory or some need to let the world know my dog knows when I am coming home, but to confront a very serious problem happening on the page that is based on editors decisions and behaviors and putting WP in a conflict of interest on a BLP. Real Problem. Reasonable Concern. The Tumbleman (talk) 17:19, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

A suggestion

I've had a look through the talk page and a brief look through the history. There seems to be a few things here. Firstly, I think calls to topic ban User:Tumbleman over on WP:FTN are jumping the gun. It's my impression from the talk page that though some editors might be motivated by the blog posts put out by Sheldrake supporters, we should give them a fair hearing on BLP-related claims. The way to do that is to have some uninvolved editors from outside the circle of people who care about psi to have a look. There has been a bit of back and forth on the lede today on the article.

Now, the problem I'm seeing is the accusations and counter-accusations regarding membership in Guerilla Skeptics. I've known User:Sgerbic for a while and covered the forming of the Guerilla Skeptics for The Signpost back when I wrote for it. They do some good work, and they are a lot less scary than their rather combative name suggests. On the Sheldrake talk page, there are accusations flying back and forth of people being members of the Guerilla Skeptics or not and lots of huff and puff about this. This is unhelpful, and I think further speculation on Misplaced Pages talk pages as to whether or not people are part of Guerilla Skeptics is unhelpful. Play the ball not the man, as the saying goes.

My suggestion is this: an uninvolved admin goes through the talk page and hatnotes or removes personal attacks and sniping about who is or isn't a Sheldrake supporter or a Guerilla Skeptic. Give people a few days to carry on discussing and if things continue to be unproductive, then we can try fully protecting the article and trying a more formal approach to dealing with the suggested changes that people want to make: some kind of mini-RfC. —Tom Morris (talk) 11:43, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Hey Tom Morris, thanks for giving this a review. Just a few things for clarification

1.) I am not interested in promoting Sheldrakes theories, I am not a proponent of PSI. I am personally fascinated by Sheldrake philosophically, especially the history of the controversy, but that's because I love philosophy, not psychic pets. So I am truly agnostic when it comes to his research. I'm only promoting agnosticism :) Thanks for removing me from the 'fringe' claim - that would be really weird to apply that to me. Words like FRINGE and PSEUDOSCIENCE are being used as 'weasel words' on the page in a way that is really out of step with a purely NPOV.

2.)I am active on the page to promote a NPOV. Collective editing and building consensus is a big part of my life (I work in media and technology and am developing consensus based platforms). That's the only view I am interested in in this debate.

3.)I'm not sure I share you viewpoint regarding GSM, or at least 'GSM' type editing. Maybe I misunderstand you but are you suggesting that the Skeptical Point of View is primary OVER a Neutral Point of View? Because that is the problem I am encountering in the talk section, that skeptical opinions are being used to support violations of BLP in a way to demean a living person. <<<<< That - that's what irks me regardless of who it is, it turns WP into some kind of grudge and vendetta machine and that is quite harmful to any collective editing platform but more importantly an actual person. None of their edits seem interested in NPOV, they all seem interested in editing the page from the POV of making sheldrake look like a flake because that literally is what skeptics think of him. Is that what we are here to do? No GROUPTHINK on Misplaced Pages, please. if consensus is not rational, it's not consensus, it's groupthink.The Tumbleman (talk) 14:30, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Tom Morris, No one has been accused of being a member of the Guerrilla Skeptics. I have stated this explicitly on the talk page. The Tumbleman asked Vzaak and Barney whether they were members, but did not accuse them. There are no accusations and counter accusations. I don't know where you're getting that from but it is a complete misrepresentation of the discussion and I ask that you retract it.

I'm not sure why you think it's ok to have an ideologically motivated organization running amok on Misplaced Pages, but this is very harmful to Misplaced Pages's credibility.Craig Weiler (talk) 14:42, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Craig on your blog post you wrote regarding the Guerrilla Skeptics "Since June, they have gone on the attack to seriously change Rupert’s Bio." It's true you have not directly accused anyone of being part of the Guerrilla Skeptics group on Misplaced Pages but you have made it clear in your posts that you believe a Guerrilla skeptic group are "attacking" Sheldrake's Misplaced Pages article. I have called you out on this twice, but you still list no names of these editors or any evidence. As I wrote already you are confused on this issue. The owner of the Guerrilla skeptics is Sgerbic (talk · contribs) but she appears to be currently inactive on Misplaced Pages, you keep saying she is breaking Misplaced Pages policies but she isn't. Misplaced Pages does not promote pseudoscience Craig, you seem to fail to understand this. Please check the edit history of the Sheldrake article and you would find that Sgerbic has not edited the article at all. You have spread disinformation about this user and her group, and really you should apologize (you have mislead Sheldrake himself with your conspiracy theory and disinformation).

BTW you also say above "No one has been accused of being a member of the Guerrilla Skeptics" but this isn't true because the user Tumbleman (talk · contribs) has accused myself and many other users on the Sheldrake talk page as being members (none of us are) but he continues to throw around those accusations (easy to find evidence of that). You have also been posting on forums stirring this issue up and asking other paranormal believers to help you edit the Sheldrake article and promoting conspiracy theories that Misplaced Pages is run by "materialists" , and on this forum here you talk about setting up some kind of petition against Misplaced Pages . Do you think your behavior is acceptable Craig? It seems you have a long history of stirring up trouble on the internet and trolling . I believe you only joined Misplaced Pages to stir up trouble, nothing you have said is productive or has anything to do with improving the Sheldrake article. Dan skeptic (talk) 15:10, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

So what? Dan skeptic I admit that I have been public about being *suspicious* that specific editors are working the agenda of the GSM and their leader SGerbic, but on their talk pages because they are co-ordinating on their talk pages about how to deal with the 'tumbleman' problem. Dan Skeptic's agenda is the same agenda as GSM, who cares if he is a card carrying member or not? I refer to the position of GSM editors on the page because it's the actual agenda of these editors on the page, voiced in their own words. Sorry, blame GSM for branding the style and creating the copy cats, not me. I am concerned that an ideological group, or individual, has an outside agenda other than make the page better and more neutral. I am questioning the actual agenda of those editors based on their behaviors on the page, not some ideology i have or they have. I WANT the skeptical POV on the page too, it's necessary. It just can't become the mainstream view of WP and dominate everything else. We can't have four or five of these editors on any page and control it and avoid consensus, it's going to destroy WP eventually. If this is the direction WP is going in, I'm out.

Maybe an admin or Tom Morris or SGerbic can clarify WP guidelines to me. It seems that any editor, or group, that has a direct agenda to make sure the Skeptical POV is represented on Misplaced Pages as their modus operandi is a violation of WP:NOT and is a conflict of interest with a NPOV. This is ok with WP? really? The Tumbleman (talk) 16:04, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

My point is very simple: if there are people who are acting problematically, it doesn't matter whether they are affiliated with the Guerilla Skeptics. If there are particular editors with issues, let's discuss those. If appropriate, blocks or topic bans etc. can be doled out. If there aren't behavioural problems, speculation as to whether or not users are affiliated with some group of editors—or speculation about their motives—is unhelpful and serves only to distract editors from trying to find consensus on the talk page. My suggestion was simply that: we clear the behavioural back-and-forth off the talk page and invite wider participation from the Misplaced Pages community on the content changes. —Tom Morris (talk) 16:57, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Tumbleman you have admitted you have no problem with some skeptical sources on the article (this is good) but then you want to make it "neutral" by adding fringe sources as well to giving Sheldrake a "fair unbiased" hearing. This doesn't work because the majority of sources criticize Sheldrake's ideas as pseudoscience, it is not possible for an entirely "neutral" balance when it comes to fringe and pseudoscience topics because the scientific community reject them. I have not come across a single scientific reference that has supported Sheldrake's work, only parapsychologists and fringe proponents do. It's dangerous to be promoting pseudoscience, and it has no place on Misplaced Pages which receives millions of views everyday. I'm no expert on all of Misplaced Pages policies (so do feel free to have a go at me If I have got it wrong) and am rather new here myself but what I do know is that Misplaced Pages does not support pseudoscience (that is 100% clear and something that "psychics" like Craig Weiler seem to constantly ignore). There is over-whelming reliable sources that have criticized Sheldrake's psychic ideas as pseudoscience and there is no reason they should be ignored, removed from the article or toned-down. The idea of a "balance" when 99% of the scientific references criticize Sheldrake's views as pseudoscience is indeed quite mad. There's no scientific evidence psychic powers exist and there's no reason why pseudoscience should be supported on Misplaced Pages. Weiler talks about SGerbic breaking Misplaced Pages policies but he's wrong it's himself breaking policies by inserting pseudoscience on Misplaced Pages and stirring up conspiracy theories. I personally don't want to get involved in debating this issue anymore. I will look into other articles and stay away from the Sheldrake one. Good luck with your editing and the outcome of all this. Dan skeptic (talk) 17:14, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Dan skeptic, I think some of the confusion is that this article is a biography, not an article elaborating his theories (which should have their own article, if they are notable). A BLP discusses their early life, education, early career, later career, major contributions to their field, possibly a list of their publications. If some of the subject's work is controversial, that can be noted. But a BLP is not the appropriate place to have a debate about science vs. pseudoscience.

It is, above all, a biography not an article about an idea, practice or theory. As far as I see it WP:FRINGE is only relevant when there is a discussion about the reception of Sheldrake's work (was it well-received, not well-received, what criticism did it face, etc.). This is a small section of a BLP. A BLP is mostly about the life and contributions of the person its about. So, I think WP:BLP and WP:NPOV hold sway here with WP:FRINGE only applying to a section devoted to criticism of his work.

This is not an unusual case. There are also sorts of controversial figures (justly or unfairly) on Misplaced Pages and BLP and NPOV applies to controversial journalists, scientists, bloggers, scholars, radio hosts, war criminals, celebrities, criminals, etc. It's only incidental that Sheldrake happens to work in an area that is judged by some to be "fringe". He should be treated fairly even if some Editors object to his ideas. Liz 02:26, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

This is the best explanation of this concept I've yet read. Skeptics, please read what Liz wrote. She's right. Thank you, Liz. David in DC (talk) 04:56, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

When an idea only has one significant proponent often it is not independently notable and it is placed in the biography. So no I disagree that Biographies don't cover theories, they clearly do, and the Sheldrake article clearly covers much about his "Morphic Resonance". Treating a viewpoint fairly means putting it into context with respect to the mainstream, and assigning weight via WP:NPOV etc. It means that we don't write Hagiographies. All biographies cover peoples work, and so does Sheldrakes. What the article does is put his views into context. There are no BLP violations in that article, and it can not be a BLP violation to say an idea is rejected or discredited if the sources do. I see no discernible efforts by anyone to put BLP violations into the article about Sheldrake, IRWolfie- (talk) 08:46, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

That's not how I read it at the moment. I agree that biographies can include a person's theories, and I agree that we must put those views into context. The WP:BLP problems I see with the current edit are (1) Neither of the two references provided support the pejorative and contentious epithet "fringe scientist". contrary to WP:BLP (b) Sheldrake has been denied his PH.D doctorate in biochemstry, whereas his doctorate is clearly acknowledged on the University of Cambridge website as recent as last year. I have no problems with the appropriate part of his biography noting that some consider his theories pseudoscience, wrong (or however they are described by reliable sources) and that they consider his field of research to be in parapsychology. --Iantresman (talk) 15:42, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

That's nuts, that he is not credited with the Ph.D. he earned. Education is a basic part of biographies, even critical ones. Liz 20:45, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

If you look at the article the PhD clearly is mentioned and it was also when Ian wrote his comment: . IRWolfie- (talk) 10:26, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

@Tom Morris - here you and I have perfect agreement. The Tumbleman (talk) 17:36, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

@Dan skeptic I suggest using fringe sources, really? Can you cite an example where I do this? Please go to my sandbox, look at my edit, and HELP me identify a fringe source because if there is one in there, I want it out too. Also, what is a 'fringe' source anyway? can you define it rationally here to the community so we understand what you mean?

As to sheldrake being a pseudoscientist. Well there are about two or three opinions that he is in the sources on the page that feel very passionately that he is. THOSE ARE OPINIONS, they are not facts. It is important to the page that we SHOW those opinions, YES, but not as fACTS. For it to be a fact, we have to have a source that is from a scientific journal that shows a scientific consensus, through the process of science, that MR is pseudoscience. There is no 'closure' on MR being pseudoscience. I am not seeing that reference. I DO see academic journals however talking about how sheldrake's ideas are treated by *some* scientists and question the issue of bias in those attacks. But there is also a sourced opinion of a prominent mainstream scientist who does not think it is pseudoscience. Actually there is a BOOK written by a prominent scientist in discussion with 12 other scientists about sheldrakes ideas. Some of them think MR is quite valid, some do not. . Berlin: Fischer Scherz. ISBN 9783502191698.] How can we as wiki editors tell the difference? We should NOT EVEN TRY. We should not take sides. I believe very strongly in editing without bias, neutrality, and common sense. I ask that you join me in reaching a rational consensus. If my POV does not maintain consistency with your or any other editors rebuttals, then I will be the first to admit it. However if my argument maintains consistency, is based on common sense, is in the spirit of WP guidelines, then yes I expect a rational consensus to be based around rationality, logical consistency, a NPOV, and common sense. That seems like a reasonable approach, yes? The Tumbleman (talk) 17:36, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I couldn't have said it better myself. As I recently mentioned on talk:sheldrake, it is worth comparing the tone of contentious articles between Misplaced Pages and encyclopaedias such as the Encyclopedia Britannica, and articles on parapsychology and ESP. The difference is dramatic. Even the Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience (publ. 2000), has a more encyclopedic tone, even in its article on Sheldrake. --Iantresman (talk) 17:57, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

That's not surprising. Misplaced Pages allows anyone with an Internet connection to use this website to promote their pet pseudoscientific belief (per Rule #10). Britannica doesn't. Our articles on obscure fringe science (and fringe figures) are generally written as a tug-of-war between True Believers and determined skeptics. That polarization tends to drive away the sorts of people who would write good encyclopedic prose. MastCell  18:07, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages has always sided with the "determined skeptics", which is as bad as "True Believers" pushing only their view. The idea of an article "promoting" any viewpoint is a abhorrent to many editors. --Iantresman (talk) 18:27, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Now, now. I think you're exaggerating. The True Believers catch a break every now and then. After all, you were unbanned. MastCell  21:04, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

As an atheist with a scientific background I find your label pejorative, and inappropriate per WP:CIVIL. --Iantresman (talk) 09:49, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

"Iantresman, in his editing philosophy, favors challenges to standard knowledge, which he sometimes terms "dogma" , his personal website, a site devoted to scientific anomalies" WP:ARB/PS, IRWolfie- (talk) 10:59, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

(1) I disagree with that description, and it is not supported by the sources (I'm interested in murder mysteries, but that doesn't mean I condone them) (2) Regardless of what I may or may not believe, does not mean that editors are absolved from being civil, per WP:IUC (3) Mentioning website I create on behalf of other people contravenes WP:PRIVACY and using it "as an ad hominem means of dismissing or discrediting their view" contravenes WP:WIAPA. --Iantresman (talk) 14:23, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Are you accusing ArbCom (who I quoted) of invading your privacy? IRWolfie- (talk) 21:19, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

is this issue being addressed?

(talk) I apologize if I am posting this in the wrong area. I was hoping this would open the page up to the wiki community. The edit warring is getting worse. editors with a clear bias are making changes with no clear consensus, edit war if their changes are reverted, and this isn't getting anywhere. it's just turning into this side vs that side edit war. I have never seen anything like this. I'm not sure the right steps to get this attention, please advise if you can. thanks for your work on the page. The Tumbleman (talk) 02:47, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

The Tumbleman, please understand, it's unlikely that uninvolved Admins are going to want to wade through the vast amount of debate on this Talk Page. You might get a better response if you

1. Provide diffs on problems edits that you see (that is, not just name names but point out instances of problems)

2. State what actions you would like an uninvolved Admin to take

Admins, like Editors are volunteers who have demands on their time. If you can fairly summarize what a) what the problem is and b) what solution you want, it's more likely that they will pay attention to your request for assistance. Liz 02:30, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Tumbleman does a good job of acting the neutral onlooker but be aware that he has just been blocked for a week due to sock puppetry on the Sheldrake page, IRWolfie- (talk) 21:58, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Craig Weiler

Craig Weiler (talk · contribs) publishing more conspiracy theories and advertising/encouraging people to get involved in the Sheldrake article on his blog and forums is this not against Misplaced Pages rules? WP:MEAT? Dan skeptic (talk) 02:35, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree, I think trying to stoke further controversy off wiki as he is doing is only causing further issues and compounding the difficult to getting consensus by encouraging WP:MEAT puppetry (particularly when his claims involve conspiracy theories). I note that the article is under discretionary sanctions through WP:ARB/PS. IRWolfie- (talk) 11:11, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

I believe that this is the paragraph from my blog post that you're referring to:

"This means that Misplaced Pages is aware that a skeptical organization is editing their site against their rules, but have taken no action against them. They haven’t even bothered to ban the organizer. If that’s the case then the only solution would be to have a similarly secretive organization in opposition to them. Then two opposing ideologue groups would be battling for all of the alternative pages on Misplaced Pages. Wouldn’t that be lovely? I don’t think so, personally. It has happened in other areas of Misplaced Pages and the results aren’t pretty. No one wants Misplaced Pages to be the place where objectivity goes to die. Yet what is the alternative?"

This is a rhetorical question demonstrating the problem of having an organization of ideologues on Misplaced Pages. It invites opposition from other ideologues which creates an ideologue war which is harmful to Misplaced Pages. It is a call for Misplaced Pages to do something about their ideologue skeptic problem. (There is a difference between a skeptic and an ideologue skeptic.) I am not inviting other editors into the fray. Frankly the talk page is quite chaotic enough thank you very much.Craig Weiler (talk) 16:14, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, this seems pretty thin grounds for complaint. I can't help speculating this might be part of a campaign by certain editors on the Sheldrake article to try to ban people who disagree with them on whatever grounds they can cook up. Who will be next? 149.241.210.195 (talk) 20:15, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

149.241.210.195 They've somehow managed to get for a week for sockpuppetry. It's completely bogus. He doesn't need a sockpuppet. The way we're being attacked is incredibly bad behavior.

They won't come to a consensus on anything. I started a section to deal with just one citation that I thought needed to be removed. That's why they're trying to ban me. The section I created is filled with opinion, but not one comment from them has actually addressed the points I made.Craig Weiler (talk) 02:54, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

He got blocked because he was creating multiple accounts: Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet_investigations/Tumbleman and pretending they were different people. The people who make the judgements look at the technical details (WP:CHECKUSER). The citation you are trying to remove does not need to be removed and is perfectly relevant as is self evident from looking at it. IRWolfie- (talk) 09:26, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Craig, you have invited your "psychic" buddies to join Misplaced Pages and delete skeptical sources, as seen here , one of these users says he is going to join Misplaced Pages and delete skeptical sources on purpose. Your friend from that link (who has just turned up on the Sheldrake article inserting pseudoscience) ECCarb (talk · contribs) has now been deleting skeptical references on the John Lorber article, which he said he was going to do on that forum post. You are encouraging pseudoscience promoters to join Misplaced Pages Craig and start deleting sources, this is not acceptable behavior. This is clearly against Misplaced Pages rules. You talk about harming Misplaced Pages but it is yourself doing this and from your track record of it's seems you have no interest in stopping. Dan skeptic (talk) 13:30, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Dan skepticOn my blog I am talking about what is happening on the Rupert Sheldrake Biography page. What other people choose to do after they read those articles is their own business. I am not actively soliciting people to participate. If this person has gone over to a different Misplaced Pages page, then I can hardly be accused bringing people in to support me on the Sheldrake article. I also don't control who reads my blog and as you've just demonstrated it is read by skeptics and proponents alike. My blog could just as easily attract more skeptics to the page.

OMG!!! YOU'RE QUOTING RATIONAL WIKI!!!! ROFL, LMAO!!! (Ir)RationalWiki is not a credible source of information and one only has to refer to my "biography" there to see that. They accuse me of trolling. -Using my real name!- How hilarious is that?Craig Weiler (talk) 15:08, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Ongoing harassment of administrator by editor

• Thewolfchild (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Toddst1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Summary. Twc and Todd had an acrimonious dispute on an article talk page. Since that time, Twc has been harassing Todd by refactoring Todd's talk page, not staying away from Todd's talk page, and by refactoring comments on Twc's own talk page.

Disclosure. Todd asked me to look into this. To my knowledge, I've never had any contact with Twc before this.

Details. The dispute began on September 20 on the talk page of Intellectual disability and revolved around the term "mental retardation". Todd noted that the term was politically incorrect but that it was still widely used. Twc jumped in on October 2 and rather than focus on whether the term is still used and supported by reliable sources went off on a soapbox about how the word "retarded" is offensive, particularly to the disabled community. Twc equated the word "retarded" to the word "nigger".

Todd tried to bring the discussion back to what the article should say per reliable sources, and said that Twc's WP:ADVOCACY was irrelevant to Misplaced Pages. Twc criticized Todd for not being civil (Todd asked if Twc was "incapable of reading the OP", which is, in my view, mildly uncivil and unnecessary, although provoked). There was also a fight over Twc's allusion to Michelle Bachmann (he called her ignorant for apparently using the word). Todd told Twc that it was a violation of WP:BLP for Twc to say that. (My view: not a major violation of BLP - stronger argument is it was irrelevant and evinced continued soapboxing by Twc.) Todd left a template warning on Twc's talk page regarding Bachmann. Twc complained about it on the Intellectual disability talk page and called it administrative abuse. Twc then left a warning on Todd's talk page about Todd's comments at the article talk page.

Skipping over some of the intervening details, Twc then left another warning on Todd's talk page (same idea - first one had been removed by Todd). Todd removed it, and Twc escalated the warnings here. Todd replaced the warnings with a new section entitled "thewolfchildish behavior" (not a great idea, in my view) here. Todd concluded his new section by telling Twc to stay off his talk page unless he was notifying him of an ANI discussion. Twc ignored Todd's directive here, promptly removed by Todd. Twc then changed the section header to "thewolfchild behavior" here. @EatsShootsAndLeaves: reverted here. Twc reverted back here, claiming that Todd's word choice was a personal attack. Todd then changed the header to "thewolfchild's inappropriate behavior" here. Twc removed the word "inappropriate" here. Todd restored the word and again told Twc to stay off his talk page here. There was then a battle with ESAL having the last word.

It was after this (same day, though) that I got involved and left this comment on Twc's talk page. After Twc responded (not helpfully in my view, but you can read it in the history), @Writ Keeper: commented, essentially telling Twc to leave Todd's talk page alone (here). Twc removed WK's comment (no problem with that) but also changed my section header from "Toddst1" to "Abusive Admin" (here). That pissed me off, and I changed it back and told Twc not to do it again here. Twc then removed the section (what was left of it) from their talk page and pasted it on mine here with a parting shot, "The hypocrisy is starting to give me nausea anyway." There were a few side discussions as well with other users. You can see it in Twc's contribution history, but I'm leaving them out as this is probably already too much detail.

Proposal. Twc's behavior is wrong on two fronts. From an article standpoint, it's never a good idea for our world views to interfere with our ability to edit Misplaced Pages neutrally. Also, expressing our personal views on article talk pages is unhelpful at best. From a pure conduct standpoint, Twc's notion that they can attack other editors, admin or not, just because they don't like what they're saying is disruptive. Twc has been blocked a few times in the past for harassment, although it's been over a year. Apparently, they haven't learned. Although they appear to have stopped posting to Todd's talk page, I don't sense that they have learned anything from this experience, which does not bode well for future disruption. I leave it to others to decide whether sanctions are warranted and, if so, what they should be.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:48, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• So I guess what you're asking for is an independent analysis of who's being a bigger dick to the other? OK. I've looked at the whole conversation at the article talk page, Toddst1's talk page, and TWC's talk page, and I'd say it's 65% Thewolfchild's fault, and 35% Toddst1's. Maybe 60-40 or 70-30, it's hard to be precise.

I'd be inclined to say that since it is not overwhelmingly one person's fault, and since the section of the article talk page in question has been archived so it isn't disrupting other editors any more, and since either one could stop this by not reacting to the other anymore, that we should stay out of it until they both get bored and move on. But I don't imagine that will get much traction. --Floquenbeam (talk) 19:56, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate the independent analysis, @Floquenbeam: and I don't disagree (as you can see from my self-interpolation) that Todd has not behaved perfectly. I didn't relish taking this to ANI because these kinds of disputes, no matter how much mud is slung, generally come off sounding petty. And I wouldn't have brought it here if it hadn't been for the sly shot Twc took in changing my section header on their talk page. Before that, I was going to leave it up to Todd to take whatever action he deemed appropriate, including none, given that, as you say, Twc was no longer editing Todd's talk page (finally) and the discussion at the article talk page had been shut down. But, right or wrong, the section header change, after everything else, altered my thinking and led to my opening this thread.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:29, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• Comment - I see it differently from Floquenbeam. In reviewing twc's recent edits, my first thought was that his account had been hijacked. This is the third time twc has been at ANI (previously here and here), and the last time he escalated the situation until he was indeffed for gross incivility and for maintaining an obnoxious WikiWarrior mentality. Given that background does it make any sense at all to return to this behavior with a vengeance and to furthermore make repeated self-destructive requests from multiple (1, 2, 3, etc.) editors and administrators in the last few days to please please bring him back to ANI? If this isn't a hijacked account, this kind of action demonstrates a remarkable lack of WP:CLUE. And the more you scrutinize his edits, the deeper the rabbit hole goes.
  I've been skimming through twc's talk page for the last few minutes and I have to say I'm inclined to agree with Bbb23 that it really doesn't look like anything has changed at all since the last indef block. Nearly every single interaction twc has had with other editors seems to result in a massive epic-length battle. This isn't an editor who is interested in collaborating. This is an editor who is interested in getting his own way all of the time and at any cost. Rhetoric and advocacy for one's positions is one thing, but the level of acrimony twc brings to the project is distinctly unhelpful. Toddst1's use of the term "thewolfchildish" isn't model behavior, but it appears he had good cause to be frustrated and honestly I find the term apt given twc's childish punning of previous foe User:Nick Thorne's username into "a prick" on twc's talkpage record of past battles. These heavily edited, propaganda-spun summaries of twc's phyrric bridge-burning "victories" that he hangs as badges on his talk page under "old news" make for pretty outrageous reading for anyone who believes in collaborative consensus-building. That this "Nick Thorne - prick" equivalence comes simultaneously with twc's claims that Toddst1 has breached WP:CIVIL with his "wolfchildish" term is just the height of hypocrisy - something that twc has ironically claimed nauseates him. If this was just a single incident then I'd recommend a slap on the wrist, but this is his third appearance at ANI for the exact same behavior and he's only been here for a little over a year. A review of his interaction with other editors throughout his career here demonstrates fairly clearly that this is pattern behavior. I do see a single example of him reaching out to another editor he previously had conflicts with, and they seem to have put the conflict behind them so I'd like to hear her thoughts on the matter. Are there any redeeming qualities to this editor that have been overlooked here? -Thibbs (talk) 20:24, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

It's unfortunate you have taken the point of view you have, as there is a great deal of needless negativity in your summary of what you think I'm all about. I will try to address a few points, in the hope that you can try to take a more neutral approach to your evaluation. Yes, I was open to anyone opening an ANI on this issue. I was at my wit's end trying to deal with this on my own. I simply wanted the abuse of my username, and these empty accusations to stop. A major part of the problem here is incivility. I don't think that calling me (or Toddst1) a "dick", or continuing to refer to me as "a child", or "childish", is going to help solve any civility issues. You are right about the subject header I used, on the list of comments, by Nick Thorne, that I have. As with most of the headers, I simply employ a tongue-in-cheek type of pun. That's what I was attempting to do here - equate the stinging sensation of when you are pricked by a thorn, to the 'stinging' comments he had made. I had no intention of trying to imply Nick is a "pr*ck". We all know that would not last very long, and would be subject to sanctions. Whether you choose to accept my thanks or not, I will tank you just the same for pointing it out. Quite simply, I missed it. Whether you choose to accept it or not, I did. That was not my intent, and as such, I have changed it. Should Nick choose to contact me regarding it, I would certainly offer my apologies. As for the rest of the threads I have 'archived', there is no malicious reasoning behind that at all, despite your suspicions. They are not "heavily edited, propaganda-spun summaries of phyrric bridge-burning "victories" that hang as badges". They are, for the most part, simply 'copy & pasted' from other talk pages, as is. I simply keep them for review. I do realize that from time to time, I do become engaged in content disputes, that in some cases, are lengthy. After my last block, I though it would be a good idea to keep a copy of some of these, so that I can review what works and what doesn't. They are somewhat of a learning tool, and I didn't realize there was a policy forbidding this. If there is, I will remove them. If there isn't, I don't see why they would need to be so heavily and prominently focused on here, on an ANI about something else entirely. I don't see how they are disruptive to the project. And, if I am using them for improvement, how is that a bad thing? (I wonder... if I did not have those threads for you to so easily access, would you hold the same harsh opinions?) While I realize that at ANI, just about everything is open to scrutiny, that also leads to problems sometimes as well, as the issue at hand came become so diluted, that it is not always properly addressed (though there are some limits on just how much digging off topic is appropriate) Since everything is looked at, that includes everyone. I hope that you won't use the perceived misdeeds of one user, to gloss over the actual misdeeds of another. Unfortunately, I already see that occurring, but I hope it won't continue. I thought these ANI's were supposed to be neutral, I hoping this one will be - thewolfchild 07:30, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure I'm being neutral here. I've never interacted with either of you to my knowledge and my intent in examining both of your edits was to see whether this incident was a one-time thing or whether either or both of you have intractable editing problems. The first thing I noticed is that whereas Toddst1 has a clean block log, you have previously been indefinitely blocked for incivility and battlegrounding. My next step was to review your talk page which you had altered considerably from its original form. By reformatting and recondensing these comments under tongue-in-cheek headers you've greatly obscured the record of back-and-forths and of course you've removed numerous comments that you apparently didn't think appropriate to archive. So I went back through a few of the article talk page discussions. I first examined your discussions at the aircraft carrier articles. What I saw was a textbook example of caustic battleground behavior. I then examined your battle over Christine Aguilera and again found it to showcase the way of the warrior rather than a collaboration-oriented consensus-seeking discussion. The same behavior is evident at the "Justin Timberlake", "The Avengers (2012 film)", and "Clausewitz" squabbles among others. The pattern behavior is quite evident. So in trying to determine the background of this current issue I see two editors who have both obnoxiously templated each other. One seems to have lost his cool, and the other seems to be an unrepentant WikiWarrior. I was particularly struck by the hypocrisy of the fact that this "thewolfchildish behavior" term appeared to be the crux of your battle when less than a week ago you had titled the summary of a dispute between you and User:Nick Thorne "Botany 101: Beware of thorns, you might get a prick" - arguably a more offensive bastardization of another editor's username. I accept your thanks in pointing this out to you, but I feel your explanation rings falsely. From my perspective the whole argument between you and Toddst1 is just another example of your longstanding battleground mentality - something which must end whether through your own resolve or by another indefinite block. Toddst1's "crimes," which amount to a tongue-in-cheek type of pun on your name and calling a member of congress an idiot, are completely trivial compared to the lengthy and rancorous battles that you engage yourself in wherever you edit. Anyway that's what it looks like to an uninvolved outsider. -Thibbs (talk) 11:45, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't particularly find you being all that neutral. You have not only been quite heavy with your criticism, but completely one-sided. And above all, I do not appreciate being called a liar. You raised an issue about my archiving discussions on my talk page, that I don't even think is an issue. You have cited, again, the subject heading involving Nick Thorne, without mentioning the actions I have since taken to correct it. Despite that, you depict it as "arguably a more offensive bastardization of another editor's username". - "Arguably" indeed. If you can't see the difference, then I am at a loss on how to further address this with you, so I won't. You complain about my "cherry-picking" certain quotes, but you yourself are now guilty of that, right here, right now. You mention discussions such as "Avengers" and "Clausewitz", yet they are from a year and a half ago (and prior my last block), and you throw them out here as if they are obvious examples of wrong-doing, solely on my part, when they are not. You mentioned a "battle at Christina Aguilera"... it was actually a discussion at the BLP Project talk page, and it involved the BLP's of many actors and entertainers, Aguilera and Timberlake, included among them. You failed to notice that as lengthy as it was, it involved one other person, an admin, and we didn't result to personal attacks, nor did he post false warnings on my talk page and threaten to abuse his admin tools. I don't see you condemning him for remaining in the discussion as long as I did, nor do I see you mentioning the multiple users that supported my position in that debate. It's relatively easy to go thru any user's contribs, pick and choose a handful of edits that suit your need, and then call it a "pattern". But your opinion of me as an "unrepentant wiki-warrior", is one that I will be taking with a grain of salt. I will say however, that as much as I disagree with you, I am not completely dismissing all of your comments. I will take them under advisement, and in the future, try and avoid any actions on my part that may actually validate your concerns. I thank you again for your contributions here, and hope that you will now give others an opportunity it to contribute. - thewolfchild 23:14, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I can understand why you would have a difficult time evaluating the neutrality of my observations given that you are heavily invested in one side of the dispute and given that I am finding that side more at fault than the other side. Obviously I have no motivation to be non-neutral except as warranted by the facts of the case, though, so I will be taking your implicit accusation of bias with a grain of salt myself. You are quite right that it takes more than one editor to battle and that the battlegrounds mentioned above involve other editors. But there is one common element that runs through all of these battles, and that element is User:Thewolfchild. I haven't mentioned the admins you were doing battle with because they only took part in individual battles whereas you seem to be in the habit of engaging in battles wherever you edit. And I should note that I get this impression primarily from your own battle archives that you've now wiped from your talk page. You're still pretty new here and there is no good reason why you should have engaged in upward of 10 acrimonious and epic-length arguments so far nor why this should be your third visit to AN/I. At a certain point you have to stop pointing the finger at everyone else and accept that it is your behavior that is most likely at least partially to blame. I'm encouraged by your claim that you aren't completely dismissing all my comments and that you'll take them into advisement. I really hope you do because, again, as an outside observer I see very little in the way of improvement since your last indef. block. You're walking on eggshells and you're carrying a bludgeon. Not a clever vantage point from which to be challenging administrators to bring you to AN/I for evaluation. -Thibbs (talk) 00:16, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

This is becoming circular, and consequently, lengthy. I could, again, disagree with you point by point but... to what end? I see an accusation forming on the horizon of this thread being another example of my treating WP as a battleground (whereas, you of course are merely "just contributing", right?). As far as this ANI is concerned, did I "harass" another user? No, I don't believe that I did. Did I care if an ANI was created? Initially, no, I didn't, as I had hoped it would bring an end to the personal attacks and empty accusations being posted about me. Perhaps I was naïve in thinking this, but then again... what do I know? I'm "still pretty new here". - thewolfchild 02:29, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I hope you haven't take offense at that observation. It was just a comparison of your total edit count to your number of battles and your number of visits to AN/I. You're not brand new of course, but you do have a particularly high level of conflict for your level of involvement with Misplaced Pages. If you were brand new then this wouldn't be as big of a deal, but you should be starting to understand the culture by now. I hope you are beginning to see that this isn't a gladiator's arena.

Regarding my contributions, I'm no model Wikipedian but I invite you to review my block log, my AN/I record, and the number of huge and nasty arguments I've been involved with during my tenure here at Misplaced Pages. Anyway I agree that a point-by-point refutation would be a waste of time for all parties. If you emerge from this unscathed then think it's time you hung up the battle axe once and for all, accepted (even if just internally) that you need to find a more peaceable and collaborative approach to editing, and avoided any further situations that could land you in AN/I regardless of your feelings of injury and innocence. Let's imagine, for example, that instead of edit warring with Toddst1 over the mild insult of calling your behavior "wolfchildish" you instead acted like an adult and just walked away. There's nothing admirable about escalating your every disagreement. Had you just let it go it would have been obvious to anyone which of you was the childish one and there would have been no reason whatsoever for me to review your sordid edit history. -Thibbs (talk) 04:22, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

• Comment Twc is well aware of both WP:TPG and WP:UP ...and if he wasn't before today, he became more aware here. Nevertheless, even with that knowledge, he has continued his harassing behaviour. I honestly felt Twc could be brought on board, even with his issues over the past year - this, however, is turning into WP:CIR and WP:BATTLE. Absolutely fricking clueless behaviour, even though clue has been liberally applied ES&L 23:57, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

thewolfchild reply

The term "ongoing harassment" is being used here both irresponsibly and quite cavalierly. This ANI is being presently with one hell of a slant that the facts simply do not support. While Bbb23 is obviously (in his own words) "pissed off", it is also obvious that this ANI is really in response to this edit, specifically the last paragraph, posted by me on his talk page at 18:13, 13 October 2013 (UTC).

The discussion at Talk:Intellectual_disability#Mental_retardation_as_a_term (ID), speaks for itself. I can certainly admit that I wish that thread had gone differently, but I was not the driving force behind the terrible, downward spiral it took. Toddst1 created that thread, out of what can only be described as a bizarre, self-contradictory agenda, intent on confrontation. Unfortunately, I happened to the one to respond. My first post was completely proper, reasonable and supported. This was met with unsupported accusations of advocacy and bias, followed by increasingly rude, dismissive and condescending comments, with edit summaries that are just as bad, if not worse.

In my opinion however, a major turning point was Michelle Bachman. He used a faux pas from one of her campaign speeches, found on youtube, to support his position of wide usage of the term mental retardation (MR). My response was that it was ignorant of her to use that term. Somehow, he felt that was a "violation of BLP", and posted a warning on my talk page, threatening to block me. I found this to be completely inappropriate. He is an admin, he is in a dispute, and in the middle of that dispute, he places a trumped-up warning on the talk of the user he is in the dispute with, and threatens to block them? Not only is this a complete violation of policy, but the threat of abuse, by an admin, is in of itself, admin abuse. What makes this worse though, is the fact that in his own edit summary, Toddst1 wrote; "Michele Bachmann is an idiot but...". That is a clear violation of BLP, and should result in both a block, and at minimum, a review of Toddst1's admin privileges. Not only is this an offensive violation, but now we have an administrative representative of the project, referring to a sitting member of congress as an "idiot". That's putting WP at risk and is inexcusable.

I removed the warning from my talk page, and placed it back on Toddst1's talk page. While I'm sure some here may find that action questionable, this pales in comparison to some of the actions by Toddst1. If, I am advised that this was wrong, I have no problem acquiescing to this, as I have never done this before, and would promise not to do it again. Anyways, as I found his warning to be an improper use of a template, I placed a notice, advising him of such, on his talk page. A notice that I feel was proper and, as of today, remains on his talk page.

Following that, I clearly tried to steer the discussion back on topic, at the ID talk page. However, this is where I was met with more abuse, as seen with this edit, and in particular, the edit summaries; "More false accusations and disruption from the child" and "enough bullshit". Following this is where Toddst1 began to bastardize my username, to use it as a personal attack. (ie: calling me "a child", referring to me "as childish", etc.) This carried over to Toddst1's talk page, where he created a section titled "thewolfchildsish behavior". I asked him stop, as did another editor. Despite our requests, and the fact that this violated WP:NPA, his response was to tell me to "shut up" (several times) and to "change my username is I don't it".

Further to the insults, abuse of my username, rudeness, condescension, constant profanity, unsupported accusations, threats, etc., etc... Toddst1 has demonstrated that he will, and has, used the term "retard" (or "retarded"), as a pejorative, (despite the crux of the very discussion this all started with). This is seen with this edit, or more seriously, with this edit, in which he clearly is referring to me, and is well beyond any boundaries of civility here. Toddst1's behavior became so offensive, that I finally had to state that I would no longer interact with him, in the ID talk page, and I withdrew (closing the thread).

Aside from the ID page, I did try to have Toddst1 cease his continued insults, personal attacks and obscene behavior. I placed two (2) warning templates, with supporting diffs, on his talk page, first a level 3, and then a level 4, after he failed to comply with the level 3. I felt these were proper, reasonable and within policy, but he simply deleted them. This edit shows all the templates that I added to Toddst1's talk page.

Following the deletion of the warnings, the "thewolfchildish behavior" section title still remained, and with this edit, Toddst1 posted comments directed at me. Since he did request that I no longer post on his page, I replied to that comment, and acknowledged his request, at the conclusion my post. With my reply, I had attempted to explain my position, in one last hope that he would be reasonable, and discontinue his behavior. The continued abuse of my username was nothing short or taunting, baiting, uncivil and unreasonable conduct on his part. He simply deleted that post as well.

At this point, I'm not sure if the accusation of harassment in this ANI stems from my own accusation of admin abuse, (which I stand behind), or the subsequent edits I made to Toddst1's talk page, which I will explain now. I made 5 additional edits. The first edit, I simply removed the "-ish" from "thewolfchildish". With respect to Toddst1's request, I added no comments. I felt this was within my right to do so, and I states as much with my edit summary: "WP:NPA violation".

Following this, user EatsShootsAndLeaves (EASL) reverted my edit. At this point, I was not sure why EASL would suddenly involve himself in this matter, and in such an odd way, but I soon found out.

My second edit was to revert EASL's revert, and again remove, the "-ish", with all the same reasoning from my first edit still applied.

Following this, the section title was changed from "thewolfchildish behavior" to "thewolfchild's inappropriate behavior". Again, I found this to improper, baiting, unsupported accusation using my username. My third edit was to remove the word "inappropriate", but I in the edit summary, I wrote "inappropriate how?". Again, I posted no content, as requested. I was hoping for at least some sort of explanation. Quite frankly, at this point, I had pretty much decided to let the whole matter drop. We were done on the ID talk page. I had not taken any admin abuse accusations to ANI. I had posted no further warnings. I did not engage Toddst1 anywhere else on the project. I wanted to know why he could not just let this go, and discontinue the abuse and accusations with my username. This matter could have been put to rest, had Toddst1 been willing to end this provoking behavior.

Following this, Toddst1 posted a comment, and as it was directed to me, I responded, to that comment, with my fourth edit. Unfortunately, within 20 minutes, my reply was deleted. Not by Toddst1, but by EatsShootsAndLeaves (!). This was somewhat bizarre, as I do not even know if Toddst1 had an opportunity to read that comment, before it was deleted.

By this point, I am ready to give up. I had simply wanted to know why Toddst1 felt that my requests for him to stop abusing my username, somehow equated to "inappropriate behavior" on may part, and beyond that, I still certainly wanted him to stop what he was doing. As a last ditch effort, I resolved to stop trying to deal with this on his user page, and instead, I emailed a copy of the last comment to him. My fifth, and final edit, was to simply add the {{You've got mail}} template to his talk page, but even that was deleted within the hour, again by someone else.

As far as I'm concerned, these 5 edits were completely justified, and even if that is disputed, they could hardly be considered as "harassing". If anything, I am the one being harassed.

As for EatsShootsAndLeaves, he simply has no business being involved here. As was pointed out, I was blocked over a year ago for NPA, and, part of the reason I was blocked, was because I was supposedly rude to EatsShootsAndLeaves, who then was going by the name of Bwilkins. There was an ongoing situation between us that was quite antagonistic. I asked repeatedly for him to stay away from me, while I also committed that I would stay away from him. He could hardly be considered neutral here, as based on our history, he is clearly biased. The last thing he should be doing, is involving himself here, hiding behind a alternative sock identity, surreptitiously baiting and passive-aggressively provoking things. No wonder he keeps popping up, deleting content from other users talk pages, and is now taking a position opposing me in this ANI. I will ask again, that EatsShootsAndLeaves/Bwilkins please stay away from me.

As for Toddst1, while this did mainly start at the Intellectual Disability (ID) talk page, there was one recent, previous incident between this Toddst1 and myself, involving this edit. To my knowledge, I had no previous interaction with Toddst1, prior to this somewhat obnoxious comment that he abruptly posted on my talk page. To me, it appeared to basic trolling, with the not-so-veiled insult regarding my education. Please note that in response, I did not engage him in the hostilities that he was apparently seeking, but instead, I simply asked him to no longer post on my talk page.

That pretty much concludes my statement. The sad thing is, as lengthy as it is, it still does not cover every instance on abusive, insulting, disruptive, obscene, editing on the part of Toddst1. Nor the questionable actions of the users who have shown up on both my and his talk pages, clearly in support of him, regardless of how neutral and uninvolved they claim to be. But to be honest, I don't really care. I am only participating here to defend myself. Despite the many opportunities, (and dares), I had to bring this to ANI myself, I didn`t, because I am not really interested in this sort of stuff (actually, speaking of interesting, it's curious how it wasn't Toddst1 that brought this ANI either, but Bbb23. and there is also the timing - right after my post on his talk page...) I don't really care what comes out of this. The community can/will review what I have done, but should certainly review, in great depth and detail, what Toddst1 has done, along with his companions, and in the end, what even happens, happens. For me, I don't feel I deserve to be blocked... all I want is that my username is no longer abused. - thewolfchild 06:24, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate the reply, and as lengthy as it is, I actually read the whole thing. I'd like to address just a few of your points. First, the easiest one. I assure you that what prompted my coming here (tipped the balance) was precisely what I said, your changing of the section header. The copying of the discussion to my talk page didn't bother me a bit. Your comment at the bottom was unhelpful, but it wouldn't have been enough in and of itself for me to go to all the work to create this thread. I deleted the whole thing from my talk page, but that was only because I opened this up, and it made no sense to have multiple discussions.

I'm having trouble figuring out Todd's edit summaries (when he uses the word "retarded") and your reaction to them. I'm curious what others think. I'm not a fan of obliqueness (I tend to be direct), and I generally avoid it.

Overall, you appear to have strong feelings about certain issues and a stubborn streak in defending your behavior when those issues are involved. It would be helpful if you had a little more insight into those two areas and were more willing to deal with them appropriately on Misplaced Pages. You can't change who you are, but you can change your behavior here. Regardless of your perceptions of Todd's behavior and your dissatisfaction with what he did on his talk page regarding your user name, you should have dropped it. Ignoring these sorts of things is almost always the best thing to do. Sometimes it's hard, but most of these sorts of things just fade away if you let them, and if you really think someone is intentionally provoking you, the most effective response is not to be provoked.

Finally, I intentionally did not request a block or a ban. Obviously, I have an opinion on how you could improve your behavior, but I don't have a strong opinion about sanctions. As I stated at the beginning, I'll leave that to the community.--Bbb23 (talk) 10:45, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I posted the comment I did, because I was, (and still am) somewhat confused at your position regarding the section titles on both Tossst1's and my talk pages;

- On his talk page, he had a section titled "thewofchildish behavior", posted as a follow-on to his referring to me as "a child". I found this to be an unacceptable manipulation of my username, specifically for the purposes of a personal attack. Apparently, you have no issue with that.

- Yet, there was a section on my talk page, titled "Toddst1". The discussion involved my contention that he was abusive as an admin, and as such, I changed the title to "Admin Abuse"... and you find that so unacceptable, that you had to create a ANI over it? You don't see an imbalance there? I do, and while "nauseating hypocrisy" might not be the best way to characterize it, there is still a troubling deficit, none-the-less.

I have no problem figuring out Toddst1's edit summaries. He regularly uses them to post obscene and insulting comments, ostensibly comfortable in the assumption that talk page summaries don't get looked at very often, if at all. That's no excuse, and many of his comments are clearly inappropriate.

As for my "stubbornness"... you and I see the debate on the ID talk differently. I did not start the thread. I did not make constant, poorly supported arguments in favour of retaining a term that is no longer used professionally, is both legally and morally censured and is now widely considered an insult. I supported my position, and once the fake templates, threats and insults started flying, I was the one that disengaged from the debate, and even closed it. So, really... how do you find that stubborn?

What I was stubborn about, however, was my pursuit to have Toddst1 stop his insulting abuse of my username and his continued, provocational and unsupported accusations towards me. The fact that, in response to his comments to me, I tried emailing him, instead of making another edit, shows that I had "dropped it". Once he posted the WP:HARASS comment, I left his talk page and tried to find another means to reason with him, to have him stop what he was doing.

Yes, I have been blocked before, but just like Toddst1, you, ESAL, and everyone else, I am not perfect. I am always working towards improvement, just as everyone should be doing. But ultimately, this isn't about me vandalizing an article, disrupting a discussion or even actually harassing anyone. I was in fact, trying to get another user to stop harassing me. There is a huge difference between adding harassing comments, and simply removing three letters, from your own username. - thewolfchild 21:07, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Just to addresss one point. If you want to say that Todd's behavior is inappropriate on your talk page, as he did about you on his talk page, or if you want to say that Todd is being childish on your talk page, as he did on his talk page, that would not be a violation of any policy or guideline. Even calling him abusive might be acceptable on your own talk page (at some point certain kinds of polemics can be problematic), but that's not what you did. You made it look like I called Todd abusive. You changed my comment on your talk page. That is absolutely unacceptable. It was deceitful.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:42, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

As to just what is a policy or guideline, what is a violation of a policy or guideline, and just what so-called violations get addressed, where, where, why and how... seems to be subject to constant interpretation here. While some users may find satisfaction, or dare I say justice, among these ANI's, one thing that is never found here is consistency. That said, I did not "change your comment", I changed the ==section heading==, above it. And since all I did was change a section header, on my talk page, to say "Admin Abuse", where the subsequent thread discusses "admin abuse"... I don't see how that constitutes "Ongoing harassment of administrator by editor" That is why you started this ANI, right? - thewolfchild 03:25, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

If Bbb23 added the section header, your changing the section header is changing his comment. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 14:51, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Based on your recent actions, I would not expect you to say otherwise. But, just the same, I disagree. - thewolfchild 20:34, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I did create the section header when I opened the topic, and the topic was not about administrator abuse. It was my failed attempt to mediate the interaction between Todd and Twc.

When I opened this topic here at ANI, I did not request any specific sanctions. Based on Twc's conduct here, I believe sanctions are warranted. They have shown no insight into their own behavior. Effectively, they are right and everyone else is wrong, whether it be Todd, me, Thibbs, ES&L, or most recently Bushranger. They have engaged in wikilawyering and compounded that by being wrong in their analysis. I am beginning to understand why Todd was provoked.

I also went back to August 2012 when Twc was unblocked by @Amatulic: after being indefinitely blocked for personal attacks or harassment in June. In their unblock request, they wrote: "I have 'taken some time off', acknowledged wrong-doing, accepted responsibility, offerred an apology and gave a commitment to abide by the the rules and policies of wikipedia." In unblocking, Amatulic wrote: "In the spirit of Misplaced Pages's guideline Misplaced Pages:Assume good faith, I am lifting your block. Please understand that any further violation of our policies/guidelines WP:CIVIL, WP:AGF, and WP:BATTLEGROUND will likely result in a new indefinite block that cannot be appealed." (see here)

Twc has made a grand total of 2,056 edits in the few years they've been here, of which 782 have been to article space. Even assuming some of those contributions have been constructive, based on their history, their recent conduct, and the obvious WP:IDHT, I wonder if it's time, even a year later, to impose Amatulic's threatened sanction.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:21, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

• This is certainly not the first time I've seen Toddst1 involved in abusive behaviour. Is s/he fit to be an admin? Tony (talk) 09:13, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I'll be uncharacteristically brief: yes they are (he is). Drmies (talk) 18:36, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
• Interesting attempt by twc to deflect away from his behaviour. As I'm an adult who doesn't hold grudges, I do not recall previous negative interactions with twc ... I'll take it from their response that they indeed do hold a grudge, and that some form of negative interaction may have occurred. Nevertheless, that's a red-herring. Toddst1 was well within their rights to request that twc STOP editing their talkpage; period. My only reversions of twc's posts were AFTER that message was loudly and clearly stated. Toddst1 went so far as to link to WP:HARASS, so it was clear to the world that he was 100% serious. My reversions were protective in nature - indeed, they were an attempt to protect twc from further action under harassment. Unfortunately, he believes that ethics and rules don't apply to him, and although "no (posting) means no (posting)", he doesn't give a shit. If he had a problem with the discussion on a page he was not permitted to post on, then he should have escalated it to a place where he WAS permitted, rather than repeatedly break the rules. ES&L 11:42, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Solution

In light of an e-mail I received this morning, this topic has more to be added in the sections above. However, to prevent early archiving, and to move things forward, I see no real solution being put to the community ... now might be a good time ES&L 09:18, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

As the target of this harassment, (and someone who could have been more patient/diplomatic with TWC as Bbb23 rightly pointed out) I've been standing back from this thread.

TWC is already on a "WP:CIVIL, WP:AGF, and WP:BATTLEGROUND" parole as part of his/her unblock in 2012. It's hard not to see this as a recurrence of those problems. However, it's clear that TWC is in general a positive contributor, except when s/he engages in this type of conflict.

To attempt to prevent further recurrences of these problems, I'll suggest the following editing restrictions for thewolfchild:

1. thewolfchild is subject to a 0rr on talk pages indefinitely.
2. thewolfchild may be blocked without warning for further violations of WP:CIVIL, WP:AGF, WP:BATTLEGROUND or WP:HARASS, broadly constructed.

Toddst1 (talk) 15:56, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

What's concerning is that they were unblocked with the understanding that any such repeat of CIVIL and BATTLE would mean an indef block immediately with no chance of unblock. It appears that those were not formally logged ... but that does not mean they were not in force. Is the the final WP:ROPE? ES&L 20:08, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

DigbyDalton

Hi, I hope this is the right place to request this....

In this edit, DigbyDalton displays a colorful disregard of the principles highlighted in the ARBCC decision. DigbyDalton's broadside begins

"I'm not going to read ARBCC because I already know that the communists have taken over the Global Warming article on Misplaced Pages..."

This was in reply to my third informal head's up about ARBCC (prompted by edit warring, etc). Two of the informal ARBCC warnings I gave him are in his user talk page thread titled

• "Edit warring in articles under ARB decision"

and a third head's up is on his talk page in the thread titled

• "Please self revert, go to talk, and maybe consider joining me at WP:THIRD"

Both of those threads include DIFFS for separate instances of recent climate-related edit warring.

ACTION REQUEST Pursuant to WP:ARBCC would some uninvolved admin please give DigbyDalton an official ARBCC warning and then make an official record of that warning in the notification section of that decision?

Thanks for your attention and assistance NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:26, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

PS User was notified of this request here NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:27, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

@NewsAndEventsGuy: I give up. I've looked everywhere I can think of. Is there a template for the notice or do all the admins just copy and paste the same text? Shouldn't be this hard.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:12, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

You can find them at Template:Uw-sanctions. Paul Erik 00:32, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

e/c

@Bbb23: There is a template that doesn't really get used much

{{subst:Uw-sanctions|topic=cc}}

and a sample of commonly used copy-and-paste text is

] The ] has permitted ] to impose, at their own discretion, ] on any editor working on pages broadly related to ] if the editor repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the ], any expected ], or any ]. Inappropriate behavior in this area may result in sanctions including blocks, a revert limitation or an article ban. The committee's full decision can be read at

Thanks for your interest

NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:34, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

 Done. I used the template Paul pointed to. It may not be commonly used, but it has a very pretty box. Besides, I like templates for this sort of thing. Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:57, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

At least it wasn't Nazi Communists infiltrating the article... - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 09:25, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Followup: Enforcement request under ARBCC

You can lead a horse to water....

• 00:45, 14 October 2013‎ User given formal ARBCC warning, but a day later....
• 15:19, 15 October 2013 user posts uncivil anti-FOC and anti-AGFWP:BATTLEGROUND climate change POV on his talk page saying:

"Not really. I added that the storm was especially destructive because it hit land at high tide, which was 5 feet, and it's clear that every reversion to this text was done merely to "hide the tide" and make it look like Sandy's destructiveness was mainly due to global warming's 9 inchs of sea level rise, which happened over the course of a century. These reversions, as preposterous as they were, were done entirely for political reasons, because left wingers are still banging the global warming bell trying to tax the corporations to redistribute the wealth, and the IPCC is still fining the rich nations and giving to the poor ones, once again redistributing the wealth, and it's all so obviously a part of the communist manifesto a child can see. Call it socialism, Marxism, call it what you want but forced redistribution of wealth is communism. Global warmists don't care about the planet, they don't care about the warming or the sea level, they only care about redistributing the wealth. That's communism. Own it, don't deny it."

Would some admin please impose an approrpiate ARBCC enforcement action? I think discretionary sanctions apply. Thanks for your attention, NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:54, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

PS User alerted here NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:59, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Hurricane Sandy does not fall under ARBCC because it's not related to climate change. It's an article about a hurricane. NewsAndEventsGuy is the one being disruptive because he keeps reverting information about the hurricane. I posted that it was especially destructive because it hit at high tide, he keeps downplaying that to make it sound like it was destructive due to global warming's sea level rise (9 inches in the past century) when IN FACT it was actually destructive because it hit at high tide (5 feet in a few hours). He cares nothing about the truth, just his global warming alarmist agenda. DigbyDalton (talk) 16:32, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

@DigbyDalton:, ARBCC does apply here: "The climate change topic, broadly interpreted" - the fact that you continue to make these edits based on climate-change, by your own admission, brings them under its umbrella. You have been given plenty of warnings on this issue, so consider this your final one: if you don't drop the stick on the contribution of climate change (or not) to Hurricane Sandy you will be sanctioned under WP:ARBCC, and if you make further comments accusing other editors and/or Misplaced Pages itself of being part of a Communist plot you will be blocked. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 19:46, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks and please create a papertrail explicitly stating that this includes soap and battlegrounding on user talk pages (see diffs above) NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:57, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

User:Cau7ion POV editing and insults

User:Cau7ion is engaged in POV editing of White American and insults to me. He does not understand or care about the rules of Misplaced Pages that I furnished to him:WP:NPOV, WP:OR, WP:VERIFY, WP:SOURCE, WP:CON. He just repeats that he could provide sources, but does not do so. The changes he makes to this cited article are based, as he says, on what he believes to be right regarding his questions on the 'legitimate whiteness' of White Hispanic Americans and other such assertions; he does not provide reference citations for the content changes he makes in the article. In an edit summary reverting his edits, I pointed out his changes were 'made without a discussion resulting in an agreement on these changes'; his response in an edit summary was 'that has to be the most idiotic reason for editing my changes'. In the Talk:White American where I pointed out the rules WP editors must follow, his response started out with 'you must be an illiterate fool son'. Perhaps an administrator can help here as I am uninterested such dialog; my only interest is in content based on reliable cited sources. Hmains (talk) 00:54, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

There was no biased editing for White Americans.

I fixed grammatical errors and used the non-Hispanic white population as a reference (63.7%, etc) and that's an official number from the Census regarding the non-Hispanic white population and actual white population used by most sources and even the census.

I did not delete the White Hispanic reference from the White Americans article but did not use their percentage and number for the overall white population because they get a separate category from Europeans, Middle Easterners, and North Africans for their number and percentage. There is subliminal connotations about their legitimate whiteness regarding their ancestry -- hence the reason they get a separate category on the census.

See: social definition on the White Americans article.

Using the non-Hispanic white population on the page is not POV editing, but using an actual percentage reported by the census and used by most sources.

I already elaborated on my edits in the talk section on the White Americans page regarding Hispanics.

This also appears to come off as more of a content dispute than a legitimate problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cau7ion (talk • contribs) 06:44, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

- Cau7ion (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:37, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

this editor Cau7ion does not seem to care about wikipedia policy, on other pages the POV pushing and edit warring are also going on.learn to use talk page and wait for that process. action must be taken if he/she does not stop.--Inayity (talk) 07:52, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I'd say that some diffs be provided to show this behaviour. Blackmane (talk) 09:25, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Lol at Inayity talking about biased editing when his information on the Musa_I_of_Mali page isn't even from a legitimate source (deemed that by another editor by the way) and in the talk page I have already provided a source that shows how his information is false.

See: legacy.

He put up information from an illegitimate source, made up information that isn't even in the improper source too, and says I don't care about Misplaced Pages policy?

Hilarity at its finest.

As for Hmains, he was mad for me disagreeing with his changes on the White Americans page in a feisty-esque way.

I already provided sources regarding the non-Hispanic white population too.

How much more do you want me to provide?

http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/united-states/quick-facts/all-states/white-not-hispanic-population-percentage#map

http://www.forbes.com/sites/trulia/2012/11/13/finding-diversity-in-america/

There is two more, just for you.

Someone who isn't registered edited the page earlier today, so I had to revert it back.

Apparently me pointing out false information on pages, changing this info to correct information, and rectifying grammar on these pages is violating Misplaced Pages's decree?

Lol, sure...

- Cau7ion (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 10:04, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I've certainly been vexed by User:Cau7ion re Musa I of Mali, where I have actually checked the older print sources for the article myself and they manifestly have not. I do rather catch a whiff of an odious POV when someone starts to talk about "legitimate Whiteness"; all User:Cau7ion's significant edits seem to be race-related. Pinkbeast (talk) 11:04, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

You do realize, Cau7ion, that a user doesn't need to be registered to edit Misplaced Pages? Being an IP account isn't grounds for a revert, reversions should be based on the content of an edit.

As for your conception of "legitimate whiteness", if you continue down that road, I see more visits to AN/I and maybe an RfC/U in your future. The U.S. census defines Hispanic heritage as an ethnicity, not a race so one can define oneself as a white Hispanic, a black Hispanic or a Native American Hispanic. Being Hispanic in itself doesn't negate someone's whiteness. Racial categories are socially constructed and have fuzzy boundaries...no Editor should put themselves in the position of judging who is "in" and who is "out", who is legitimate or authentic and who is not. Liz 11:23, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

If someone wants to put a separate category for White Hispanic and non-White Hispanic under the total population percentage and number, then fine, I already said go ahead.

My other edits on the White American page was minor and regarding grammar mostly and a few other mishaps.

Once again, 63.7% was not a false number, as for me asserting 50% of Hispanics in America aren't white and providing a source to prove that they are of mixed ancestry generally, how is that false?

I've already had editors state that most of them are of mixed ancestry like I said and I didn't remove the White Hispanic reference from the article.

If you really think 50% of Hispanics in America are white, then sorry, your vision must be bad.

I mean under the White Hispanic page it has a picture of Salma Hayek, smh, really?

Whatever, I don't think anything else needs to be said, except if someone wants to put the White Hispanic number and percentage under the total population number and in the paragraph, just keep the non-White Hispanic number and percentage there too.

I would also appreciate it if we're gonna put one for whites, then blacks and Asians need one too, only to make it fair.

- Cau7ion (talk) 15:11, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

User:Cau7ion is now simply lying about my edits on Talk:Musa I of Mali. Pinkbeast (talk) 02:09, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Loss and damage

I believe this page should be deleted or at least moved, though I'm not experienced at doing this, and don't feel comfortable doing so, so I thought this would be the best way to bring it to an admin's attention. I believe it's pretty obvious why it should be moved, but I've put a message on the talk page explaining this. Thanks. TeragR | talk 05:31, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Can you provide your reason here, TeragR? Liz 11:26, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Because the title is overly broad for the subject. It's a valid point. It's being discussed on the article talk page and that's the best place for it. Herostratus (talk) 19:59, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Understood. Thank you!TeragR | talk 22:13, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Cyberbot II, take 2

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

Could somebody shut down the blacklisted links task again for now please? The bot seems to be going wild again — it's now tagging old archive pages, talk pages, user pages, log pages, process pages, etc., for blacklisted links. There is a broader discussion to be had somewhere soon about this bot and its many problems, just hoping to avoid a bunch of nonsense tags for now. Thanks, - Wikidemon (talk) 08:27, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

It is currently disabled, see User:Cyberbot II/Run/SPAM. This of course means that all those unintended tags will not be removed again automatically. Amalthea 08:37, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. - Wikidemon (talk) 08:41, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree that this bot needs some major changes before it is allowed to run again. It is too unstable, has made numerous errors and obviously lacks supervision: in this last run it tagged 950 pages erroneously over a four hour period. I have started to revert these manually, but it would be good to see the bot operator, Cyberpower, help with this job. Slp1 (talk) 13:25, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I can mass-rollback those if desired. Amalthea 13:43, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I hadn't thought about that. That would be great idea... I've done a hundred manually and it is a slow job; and there are 850 to go... Can you point me to the page where the mass-rollback procedure is described? I guess I could probably do use mass rollback myself, but I think I'd rather let you do it this time so that I can watch and learn.Slp1 (talk) 14:00, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

A mass rollback script is at User:John254/mass rollback.js, there are probably others. In this case I'll do some work first to make sure no other edits are rolled back, and I think there was an option to add a "bot" flag to hide the reverts from recent changes. Amalthea 14:08, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I will watch how you do it from your contributions, I guess.--Slp1 (talk) 15:20, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• 950 pages erroneously? This is the first time I've ever seen this bug. The API isn't communicating correctly with the bot. I have no idea what's causing it.—cyberpower _Offline 13:49, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

The bot is operating normally again after resetting the connection to the API. The connection was apparently "half-dead" for a lack of a better choice of words. Provided the bot is switched on, the bot can remove it's own mess.—cyberpower _Online 16:04, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

User:Amalthea (bot) has already kindly taken care of cleaning up the mess. Cyberpower, I realize that you are frustrated, but by far the best thing you can do is to wait for consensus to develop about this bot, hat it should be doing and how. I will have some concrete proposals for the community to consider shortly. --Slp1 (talk) 16:30, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• Nevermind my question. When it gets the data from the API in it's serialized state, PHP doesn't seem to be able to unserialize the data. I don't know the cause at the moment. As a result it's getting blank data in place of the page that tells the bot which links and pages to ignore. Once I have the bot working again, I will re-enable it to have it remove the incorrect tags.—cyberpower _Offline 13:53, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

"I have no idea what's causing it" that's one of the problems with this bot... Overall, there needs to many changes to this bot and its operation before it is let loose again. Please do not re-enable the bot again until there is consensus to do so. Too many editors have too many concerns about it over a period of more than a month. Slp1 (talk) 14:00, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

There already has been a discussion about its concerns and consensus has already been established, if you ask me. It could also be a PHP error. There is no logical reason why the bot can't read the API anymore. I have made no change to the framework recently that could affect it. Ordinarily the bot should terminate itself in the event of an API failure. I'm going to try a reboot of the script to see what happens once the run completes.—cyberpower _Online 14:11, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Rather than attempting some sort of half-arsed diagnostic analysis here, will you please accept that there is sufficient concern about your attempts at automation for you to cease and desist this process until you can satisfy people who actually know what they are doing that you have the necessary grasp of development, testing and execution to prevent further examples of the wholesale incorrect and disruptive tagging with which your bot has been associated in recent weeks? Leaky Caldron 14:26, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

And with that snarky comment, I have just disabled all of my bots.—cyberpower _Online 14:43, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I think that is a very good decision.--Slp1 (talk) 15:20, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I meant I shut them all down.—cyberpower _Online 15:30, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I had understood that.--Slp1 (talk) 16:30, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Just so we are clear, that means RfX Reporter, tally, adminstats, badimage task, afdbot, rfubot, rfppbot, noombot, and others as well. If that's how you're interpreting it, then I'm going to ask, why? If not, now you know.—cyberpower _{Limited Access} 17:36, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Yup, you are right, now I do know. Your behaviour is a variation of WP:DIVA and taking your ball and going home. Is that really what you want? I doubt it, I truly do.--Slp1 (talk) 17:53, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

No it's not. I am responding to Leaky Caldrin's statement. Just as editors here with competence issues shouldn't be editing here, the same principle goes for botops. Since Leaky called me incompetent, I shut down my bots. Where did I get that accusation from incompetence from? Well...I was apparently "attempting some sort of half-arsed diagnostic analysis" and apparently I don't "actually know what I'm doing" and "that I don't have the necessary grasp of development". The bolded as been changed from second person to first person but is still within context.—cyberpower _Online 18:12, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Loads of editors raised concerns no more like a few who have decided to almost stalk the bot if you ask me and on top of that Leaky caldron's comment above is completely out of order. The bot has one fault just now and on all previous runs its not been a fault with the bot but rather users not happy with links being on the blacklist. What on earth is the point in having a blacklist if we don't enforce it. The answer is their isn't one at all. Think maybe a RFC specifically on how we enforce the blacklist and remove links that have sneaked in is the way forward getting full community support so that the few who aren't happy with it being enforced can have no complaint. Very disappointed in some users conduct regarding this.Blethering Scot 14:51, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Cyberpower, there's about 3 or 4 editors who attack your bot every chance they get. Don't let them convince you they're a bad idea with everyone else saying otherwise. Leaky cauldron, this has came to ANI once already, and to WT:BRFA, and neither of those established consensus that the task should be stopped. Jackmcbarn (talk) 14:56, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

No, the bot has had multiple problems, and in fact has had to be stopped twice in the last two days for errors in tagging . And please note accusations of stalking require serious evidence. It is also disappointing that other editors are choosing to misrepresent the concerns from other editors: as far as I can see on all the discussions all editors understand the problem and that blacklisted links removed or whitelisted, but are unhappy about the method that has been chosen, most especially when the bot seems to be quite unstable and often runs unsupervised. Having said that, I would thoroughly agree with Blethering Scot that an RFC about how we deal with blacklisted links is a very good idea. That should be the first step before this bot is renabled. I was actually about to launch something in this line. Slp1 (talk) 15:14, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)We all know that consensus can change. There is clear evidence that this bot has random characteristics that may be doing harm and creating much work to rectify. There can be nothing more off-putting to lay readers (not wikipedians) who see a wall of text at the top of an article they are researching that talks about blacklists, whitelists and what to do about essentially technical errors on the page. It's about time we looked at this from the perspective of the general public user of our articles, not those of us who simply maintain the stuff. These messages in their current location are gobbledygook. If it was accurate gobbledygook that would be one thing. It turns out that much of it is inaccurate gobbledygook. Leaky Caldron 15:17, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I am apparently an incapable bot op. I supposedly don't supervise my bot. I apparently can't debug things. I shouldn't be running bots. With that being said, since bot work has become my contributions to Misplaced Pages, I have nothing more to do here. So I will make this statement. This bot has resulted in the whitelisting process to be more responsive. This bot has freed 1500 pages of blacklisted links, where only a small fraction resulted in actual removal of the link. This bot has resulted in fixing a good chunk of a faulty blacklist. The bugs that happened, was a result of a labs NFS shutdown confusing the bot. This bug isn't logical.—cyberpower _Online 15:22, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• Looks like this was a simple case of the connection to API timing out. The bot seems to functioning normally again.—cyberpower _Online 15:38, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Some of those links are blacklisted for copyvio - and copyvio links don't belong anywhere. I'd like to see the bot working again for that reason and because we should be enforcing our blacklist. Dougweller (talk) 17:46, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think anybody disagrees that we need to get rid of the blacklisted links. But there are other ways of achieving the same end with some changes to the bot's method of operation without causing so many problems. Please see the suggestion at Misplaced Pages talk:Bots/Requests for approval that I am about to post. Slp1 (talk) 17:53, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

To my eye 98+% of the "problems" are "ermagherd there's a big ugly tag scaring people away from clicking this link". The solution to the "problem" is the removal or whitelisting of the bad links - something that would still be in ostrich mode if not for the bot. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 20:17, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• A trout to Leaky Caldron for their utterly inappropriate comments. And to Slp1 for some of their comments. These are two users who clearly have next-to-no coding knowledge whatsoever, otherwise they wouldn't be making the downright stupid comments they have made (such as claiming it is a good idea for all Cyberbot programs to be closed down, despite the fact that the issue is one minor bug that isn't even necessarily the bot's fault) and they would also understand just how much effort coding takes. Without bots like Cyberbot, Misplaced Pages would be a far worse place. Bushranger is 100% correct; rather than bitching and whining about "omg there's this big tag on mah article" (when the tag is no larger than the COPYVIO tag, and is potentially as important), people should actually make the effort to get the link whitelisted, or replace it. It would be FAR more constructive if people did so. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 21:51, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Who suggested that he shuts down all of his bots? It wasn't me. Cyber decided to chuck all of his toys out of the pram, don't blame that on me. I might not be able to code - but I can read. I stick by every word. You know what you can do with your trout. Leaky Caldron 22:01, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
    • +1
      Leaky Caldron and Slp1 are right here. Cyberpower shouldn't be such a diva and should do more rigorous testing of his bots. I'm lightly reminded of Betacommand. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:05, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
    • Regarding the comment "There can be nothing more off-putting to lay readers (not wikipedians) who see a wall of text at the top of an article they are researching that talks about blacklists, whitelists and what to do about essentially technical errors on the page." - does that mean you also support removing templates such as {{BLP sources}}; {{Unreferenced}}, and {{notability}} from their position at the top of articles? - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 03:36, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
      • The advisability of cleanup tags on article pages may be a question for another day. The vast majority of people who see articles are not article editors, and it does them no good to subject them to tags designed to goose the editing community into taking action. Tags that call into question the quality or legitimacy of article content diminish Misplaced Pages's function of providing authoritative information to the reader. Sometimes that's apt and necessary, for example, NPOV or COI tags flag for the reader that there is a dispute among editors regarding whether article content is apt. A notability or even an AfD tag lets the reader know that this may not be a worthy encyclopedia article, and a reference-related tag lets editors know that the article may not be trustworthy. A blacklist tag, by contrast, taints the entire article for the presence of a single questionable link. For questions of spam, there are plenty of other ways to goose (or better yet, empower) editors without degrading the reading experience or calling the article quality into question. - Wikidemon (talk) 04:14, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
        • We're going to get off-topic if we return to the issue of the template headers themselves. The issue for this thread is surely the recent mistagging - after which the bot was disabled, its owner established the cause and another editor quickly cleaned it up (thank you Amalthea). There may or may not be arguments regarding the degree of care required for bot operation, about civility, about the operation of the blacklist, about whether to template article or talk pages. But AN/I is not the place to resolve these disputes. As a specific incident, this is surely close to being "resolved." Euryalus (talk) 04:30, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

As I understand (and I'm not a coder either), there was a problem with this bot's interaction with the API, cyberpower _Online has seen to the correction to this problem. I'd say that he can reenable the bots he runs. Larger conversations about the role of bots, the use of templates goes beyond this incident with Cyberbot and I agree with Euryalus, it should be moved to a different forum.

AN/I is a place to discuss "incidents" and it sounds like this one has been resolved, thanks to Cyberpower. Liz 11:43, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I disagree. The bot has made many faulty edits for various technical/design reasons since launch and the evidence is that the author uses considerable guesswork in their root cause analysis, to quote "This is the first time I've ever seen this bug. The API isn't communicating correctly with the bot", "The connection was apparently "half-dead", "PHP doesn't seem to be able to unserialize the data. I don't know the cause at the moment", "There is no logical reason why the bot can't read the API anymore", "I have no idea what's causing it", "The bugs that happened, was a result of a labs NFS shutdown confusing the bot. This bug isn't logical" and finally in this section "Looks like this was a simple case of the connection to API timing out." There a dozens of similar explanations about this Bot on other pages where complaint has been made during the last 3 weeks. This sort of scatter gun approach to diagnostic problem solving is a sure fire way to one thing only; further problems. No matter the cause, Bot owners must take responsibility for their process to handle exceptions and error conditions in a non-disruptive, elegant manner. Simply restarting an interface without some sort of measure to prevent the bot reacting the same way the next time a connection times out is insufficient. I see no evidence that this process owner is doing anythinbg to his script to learn from these numerous events. Without collaboration involving relevant experts to establish robust exception handling this bot must not run again. Leaky Caldron 13:13, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

What evidence are you looking for? What "experts" do you suggest? I've strained myself trying to WP:AGF here but I can only conclude that for whatever reason there is a serious dose of WP:IDONTLIKEIT regarding this bot, with an associated campaign to get it permanently disabled by whatever means necessary. The reasons for such a campaign against a blacklisted-link-tagging bot, including the spurious declarations that it will confuse/frighten readers through its tags, are difficult to fathom, but the only conclusion that can be reached about all this is that there's a disturbingly sizeable, and obviously vocal, group of editors who really would rather everyone's heads be stuck in the sand when it comes to the widespread distribution of links that are on the spam blacklist on Misplaced Pages's pages, and since Cyberbot II kicked the anthill it must be destroyed. (And once again, I have 7,250 pages on my watchlist and have seen all of two taggings - and none since the last brouhaha.) - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 14:47, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I have no idea regarding the motives of anyone but myself. Don't waste your time scouring previous conversations on this topic for any evidence that "I don't like it" because you'll be wasting your time. I have no opinion other than those expressed in this section. To summarise:

• the software as it currently stands is not stable,
• has a track record of failure leading to potential harm,
• has resulted in others needing to get involved in recovery,
• the author of the bot appears to be in denial about the extent of their competence to identify root cause & prevent further malfunctions,
• has so far been reluctant to seek advice from those bot experts (he is a relative novice, I understand) to achieve a stable process fit for live operation,
• Until these concerns are progressed, there is more risk than gain in allowing this bot to resume.

Leaky Caldron 15:05, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

• Given that you are VERY clearly not competent enough to run such a bot, or even understand the work that goes into it, I think that you are just being disruptive now. The bot does not have a track record of failure; it has a track record of a couple of errors, and a history of people like yourself hugely overreacting/throwing hissy fits every chance you get. And you prove your own incompetence with the arrogant and stupid statement of "the author of the bot appears to be in denial about the extent of their competence to identify root cause & prevent further malfunctions", given the fact that C678 has worked hard to fix the issues, and appears to have done so. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 17:28, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

• And with that, this discussion has officially jumped the shark. The bot's offline, the latest errors have been cleaned up, and a broader discussion of blacklists and the bot is underway elsewhere. Can we please close further discussion as moot? - Wikidemon (talk) 17:49, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

• That would be wise, I think, seeing as apparently "when you're in a hole, stop digging" doesn't seem to be on the table. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 19:31, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

IP editor making multiple slight changes to album and TV release dates

This seems to be a recurring problem, coming mostly from someone using 109.xx IP addresses. They basically turn up once every few weeks, make a huge number of small changes to dates in infoboxes and leads, often using the edit summary "fixed". I haven't actually checked any of the latest ones, but unless those details were all wrong before these clearly aren't genuine corrections. This is the latest spree. Here is a previous one, and here another. Could all their latest additions be reverted? I assume any kind of block as a longer-term solution will be problematic as the contributions come at random times from different IP addresses. N-HH talk/edits 09:23, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I've reverted. Is this a known long-term abuser? Would there be much collateral damage from a rangeblock, those who do such things? (In terms of his fix, he actually removed the source that contradicted him in one edit.) --Moonriddengirl 13:41, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I think this is an old and ongoing problem. There are multiple editors doing this and I think there may be some form of automation these vandals are using to find target articles. I've mostly noticed this kind of thing among the children's cartoon articles where these edits blend in perfectly with goodfaith edits by actual children. Broadcast date templates, infobox release dates, and acronym-related vandalism seem to be common traits. I believe height and weight-related vandalism became so common on BLPs that they've created a special flag for it. See 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 for more info. And if you can think of a good solution to this crap then please let us know! -Thibbs (talk) 14:37, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I am new to patrolling AIV and I have definitely noticed these. Because the changes are (mostly) subtle and the existing article content isn't sourced anyway, it's very hard to tell whether the changes are vandalism, good-faith but mistaken, or actually fixing something. They take up an inordinate amount of time to check out. Options are, in rough order of risk-to-existing-content to risk-of-collateral-damage: 1) Ignore them because they changed unsourced information to other unsourced information; 2) Investigate and block one-by-one (as we're doing); 3) Liberal long semi-protection of affected articles as we run across them; 4) Rangeblocks. I am really not sure what to do. Zad68 14:47, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts, Zad68. The only thing I'd note is that your option #1 assumes that these vandals are only changing unsourced information. I'm really kind of stumped as to how to fix this except perhaps by tagging edits when we have a non-autoconfirmed user rapidly changing dates. -Thibbs (talk) 15:18, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Looking at the list of past ANIs you've pointed to, this is an ongoing problem lasting a year or more. Based on what I've seen, if there were consensus to enact long-term semi on the affected articles, I'd be happy to try that. I think we should also have a "AIV Top 10" list--a quick list of common subtle vandalism types and what the suggested action is to handle them (as determined by consensus after discussions like these). Zad68 15:31, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

They look like good-faith edits but without sources - this edit, (an attempted correction, if BFI is correct) was reverted, and the article now has two different places of birth listed; this matches the date on the official site but others are repeated errors (see history of Extra Virgin article for an example - the album was originally released in 1996). Those edits are not from 109xx IP addresses, but are from the same ISP. What's disruptive is the number of edits and lack of sources, and that the edit summaries are sometimes misleading; it's just unfortunate that it matches a common type of vandalism. Peter James (talk) 16:27, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

You can make a good argument (and I guess here I am making it) that all such unsourced data changes reverted or reported as vandalism have failed to meet WP:BURDEN and therefore are disruptive editing worthy of action (block or protection) after enough instances and warnings. If such a rule were enforced on all such edits in this area, it would fix at least two problems: 1) The articles would improve because over time more and more of the currently unsourced data would become well-sourced, and 2) It would make it very clear who is doing sneaky vandalism and who isn't. Zad68 17:05, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

If somebody is changing "unsourced information to other unsourced information" then neither old nor new can be trusted; so the first response should be to blank it. If possible, try to source it, but that's not always practical on recent changes patrol and is perhaps best left to somebody with subject-matter knowledge who has the article on their watchlist &c. If it's a serious or repeated problem then I would support blocks, protection &c. But back to first principles: If we can't trust something is true, the encyclopædia shouldn't present it as fact; and when a random passer-by tinkers with unsourced numbers, we can't be confident that either the old or the new version is true. We're not on a mission to accumulate as much text as possible regardless of accuracy. bobrayner (talk) 17:13, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

And changes from one source to another, where the dates given in those sources are different? Peter James (talk) 17:21, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

WP:BRD, revert if you think the earlier source is better, bring it up on the talk page. MChesterMC (talk) 11:02, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Right... if an editor is replacing sourced content with other sourced content, that's something other than the sneaky-vandalism problem that needs to be addressed here. Zad68 13:31, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

A rangeblock is not possible. The editor is on the largest and busiest ISP in the UK. Even in the three examples given, they are hopping not just from IP to IP, but from subnet to subnet. Black Kite (talk) 18:18, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Yep, agreed... Zad68 13:31, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

There are probably smaller ranges within that (three IP addresses used are similar:109.154.83.250, 109.154.85.183 and 109.154.90.41), but a large number of them and by the time they can be identified they'll probably be changed again. The edits are probably average for IPs - the majority good, some bad, all (or most) unsourced - but no blatant vandalism so probably shouldn't be blocked. Peter James (talk) 14:06, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

• So no more follow up? Is this just going to be yet another ANI thread about this problem that doesn't go anywhere and gets archived? Zad68 13:31, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
  • It was pointed out above that there can be no rangeblock here. There really isn't anything else that can be done beyond playing whack-a-mole every time this happens. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 14:38, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

This is a serious ongoing problem, especially with album changes and cartoon changes. I've long suspected there's some sort of central link between them, although it's very difficult to pinpoint the IPs. The "good faith" impressions above are just unfamiliar with the scope of the issue... massive numbers of changes like this without any explanation, and when spot checked most of them are incorrect or unverifiable, are extreme examples of subtle vandalism. There's a handful of discussions about this at Misplaced Pages talk:Counter-Vandalism Unit/Subtle Vandalism Taskforce. I've been dealing with this issue, and a list of IPs for literally years. I haven't been very involved lately though, but it's definitely a problematic ongoing trend.

I'm sympathetic to Bushranger's lassitude, but don't mistake this for some isolated vandalism... it would be nice if we'd make some progress in what has been going on for years. I also share the opinion that there is some automation involved (I've witnessed accounts blocked for years start up again within hours of their blocks expiring... and not with new random vandalism, but with the same exact kind of specific vandalism). Shadowjams (talk) 02:44, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I had no idea the WP:SVT existed. I hope this report may be the final push that's needed to make something happen to deal with this kind of vandalism. Zad68 02:58, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

When I seize control and rule en.wikipedia with an iron fist, my first order will be to set up an edit filter which prevents any genre change that does not cite a real source. Repeat offenders will be rounded up and sent to a WP:V reeducation camp. bobrayner (talk) 14:30, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Render unto Bobrayner what is Bobrayner's! This opens an interesting line of inquiry-- can these be handled with edit filters, or can ClueBot be programmed to catch them? Zad68 14:47, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Harriet Beecher Stowe

• Harriet Beecher Stowe (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Stowehistoricaldata (talk · contribs)
• Brunswickhistoricalsociety (talk · contribs)
• Downeasthistoricalinformation (talk · contribs)
• 75.68.244.122 (talk · contribs)

Long term unsourced or poorly sourced addition of content, going back at least to August. Primary intent appears to be the promotion of a property that Stowe purportedly rented. I've removed this content too many times, and rather than continue to edit war over this would really appreciate help. I've issued numerous warnings and tried multiple times to engage these accounts in discussion, to no avail. I've also requested page protection and opened discussion at the article's talk page, but the situation is complicated by the apparent use of multiple accounts and the lack of outright vandalism. Nonetheless, this is a persistent disruption. Thanks, JNW (talk) 15:16, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• Brunswick is blocked for user name reasons. You could consider filing an SPI on these SPAs. If disruption continues after protection runs out we can block for that reason, without an SPI. Drmies (talk) 17:20, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Herr chagall (talk · contribs) and repeated violations of WP:NFCC

The user in question is repeatedly inserting File:Cameo Word Up rear.jpg into the article Word Up! (song). There is zero critical commentary of the rear of the cover, fails WP:NFCC #1,3,8. Can someone please give the user a clue about policy? I have warned the user but they refuse to listen, I think only a block will be effective. Werieth (talk) 23:48, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

The contrary is true. Werieth has repeatedly deleted images on the article page despite the fact that they conformed to WP:NFCC. Ultimately, it has been decided that they are to be kept on the page, see ]. He does however try pushing his POV regarding the matter and waits for a certain amount of time to pass before he reverts the article to his liking. The image in question of the rear cover conforms to all criteria of WP:NFCC, since there are several different releases on various media. It is that of the original vinyl 7" single release, which has a specific track listing and producer credits. Apart from asking for other users who do not share his POV to be blocked, I fail to see any substantial contribution by Werieth, particularly given his inclination to delete images despite better knowledge. esse quam videri - to be rather than to seem (talk) 14:57, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

The file in question was just re-removed by an admin for failing WP:NFC Werieth (talk) 15:12, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

User:Mishae's deletion nominations

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

I'm concerned about Mishae (talk · contribs)'s engagement with our processes here. While doing CSD patrol this evening I encountered Altica tamaricis, a stub on a species of beetle. Mishae nominated it for speedy deletion under G7: . I found this problematic on three grounds: the article had existed since February 2012, the article was not obviously problematic in any way (nothing wrong with stubs), and Mishae couldn't really be considered the sole author for attribution purposes (see history. I declined it, and then decided to check Mishae's deleted contributions. I was surprised to find three articles, Altica bicarinata, Altica aenescens, and Orthotylus flavosparsus, where Mishae had followed a similar process (G7 for long-standing article), and then re-created the article afterward, with just the top revision. Puzzled, I raised the matter on his talk page: . Mishae replied on my talk page, indicating that he was intent on saving server space: . I must admit that this is not the response I expected.

There's been further discussion at User talk:Mackensen#Re: Strange deletions and it's been rather unfruitful. I note also that @Eastmain: challenged a similar deletion about twenty minutes before I did and there's been discussion on his talk page as well. In the interim I restored the missing article history for the three pages in question I apologized to the two deleting administrators for stepping on their toes. Looking through Mishae's deleted contributions I see several more probably valid articles, mostly on beetles, which were written in the mainspace and then deleted for whatever reason. I have several problems with what I'm seeing here. First, it seems to me that it's an unusually assertive level of WP:OWNERSHIP (much like the parent asserting to the wayward child "I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it"). Second, it makes a mess of page history and attribution, since in the re-created article you've got text touched by other people but without any evidence they were involved. Third, it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding about how MediaWiki software works and Misplaced Pages's relationship to its servers. Space is not an issue, and even if it were, deleting an article doesn't lead to less space being used. Mishae's last comment to me suggested that he wasn't taking any of these concerns onboard, so I'm bringing it here for wider discussion. I should note finally that I don't believe I've ever interacted with him, Eastmain, or the two other administrators. Thanks, Mackensen (talk) 04:33, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

• @Mackensen:'s summary and analysis seem to me to be correct. Mishae has not tagged any further articles for speedy deletion since he was asked not to. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 04:57, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I personally don't understand the whole circus here. I nominated my articles for deletion as according to G7. JohnCD was a great admin, whom unlike you did an honour in my opinion. Yet, because of one rogue admin I need to suffer, and maybe get blocked...--Mishae (talk) 05:02, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
    • They are not "your" articles. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 05:31, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
• My two cents I was asked by Mishae to come here. Simply put, this can be resolved by discussion between editors and by referring to deletion policy. It's nice in a way to save server space but there's really nothing saved by deletion as the revisions still exist on the servers. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:22, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

  How does it even come close to "saving" server space? Creating new log entries when nothing gets deleted? The whole concept of "saving server space" is useless anyways. Legoktm (talk) 05:50, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

  • There's also the fact that it makes the "new" articles copyright violations as it breaks the attribution history. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 05:31, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
    • Thanks Justin for intervention, I too believe that we could have discussed it without the above circus, unfortunately someone wants to show who is the boss...--Mishae (talk) 05:49, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
    • @The Bushranger: Are you accusing me of copyright violations? If so, where?--Mishae (talk) 05:49, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
      • I'm not "accusing", I'm just pointing out that deleting an article and then pasting in the contents into a "rebooted" article is the same thing as a cut-and-paste move, and thus a violation of WP:CWW - this is why, even if doing this did save server space, it's not a good idea at all. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 05:52, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

• There was a discussion here in April about Mishae trying to save server space in a different way, and it includes both background and possibly the statement by Ryan Vesey that Mishae has misunderstood. It looks as if a short block resulted; Mishae, you promised at that time that you would stop trying to save server space in ways that the community finds disruptive, and you had it explained to you then that any and all changes are recorded on the servers; deleting an article does not make that record go away, it just makes it invisible to all but administrators. Yngvadottir (talk) 05:54, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes, and I remember it, now I didn't knew that it will be disruptive too.--Mishae (talk) 05:59, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
    • It is, for two reasons: you were not the only editor of the old version of the articles, so by having them deleted you are removing the public record of others' contributions to them - whether those contributions were major or minor, that is not right and actually violates the terms, which was The Bushranger's point; and secondly, it doesn't remove anything from the servers, because everything is recorded and remains recorded, including the history of deleted articles (which is why admins can see them and undelete them), so as with the edits removing spaces, you are actually adding to the consumption of server space. Please stop doing this. In any case, as you have been told before, the servers have plenty of space. Misplaced Pages:Don't worry about performance. Yngvadottir (talk) 06:05, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
    • Fascinating, I was not aware of that discussion, and both that discussion and this one feel needlessly confrontational (in the interim Mishae threatened me with a circus on my talk page, I've seen better circuses than this). This really ought to be a straightforward technical exercise but mainspace articles can't be treated this way. Mishae, you say you didn't know it would be disruptive. I, an uninvolved user whom you'd never interacted before, told you it was. You immediately became defensive and said you would be "very angry" if you couldn't do this. This is a collaborative project. We're all wrong sometimes. We have to be willing to take on criticism, usually constructive but sometimes not, from other users. Otherwise we're going to be back here again. Mackensen (talk) 11:56, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
      • Well, if you say we all wrong sometimes, then take back the threat. I used the term circus only as a term, there was no indication of a threat at all. As far as disruption goes, I was defensive because I didn't knew it, but now I kind off do. There are still many questions left unanswered: For example, how does a deletion of the entire article and its recreation afterword does add up more space? Like, I personally thought that by combining all edits into one, will result into a consumption of space. Second, how does my actions violate the copyright terms if I recreate the article the same way it was? And don't threaten me with Otherwise we're going to be back here again! What people don't realize is that eventually, someone will get the ownership of the articles to themselves, whether it will be Jimmy Wales or anyone after him... Theoretically, every article is owned by Misplaced Pages and therefore, by Jimmy Wales himself. In Russian Misplaced Pages there was numerous accusations of copyright infringement from Misplaced Pages part. And please, don't take it as a threat, its just my observation. Another question, is updating versions and dates is considered to be disruptive as well?--Mishae (talk) 13:29, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

{ec}Firstly, in the previous ANI that you were brought up in, which I believe was earlier this year, you were told that everything that is done on Misplaced Pages is saved, including any deleted articles. Deletion here does not mean that they are wiped away and replaced but that they are moved such that only those with admin (or higher) privileges can view them. When you recreate the article a new version is saved onto the servers. In essence, your attempt to "save space" has in fact used up even more space. However, you were also told previously that your attempts to save space were disruptive and warned against doing it again. Secondly, your hypothetical is incorrect. All articles and material on Misplaced Pages are copyrighted by those who wrote it or uploaded the images. However, the editors and uploaders freely release, irrevocably (meaning they cannot revoke this release), their copyrighted material for use by anyone as long as it does not violate copyright laws. Therefore, no it does not belong to Misplaced Pages nor does it belong to Jimmy Wales. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the copyright policy works here. Blackmane (talk) 13:56, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

O.K. Thank you all for calm explanations, I will follow them from now on. Still though, I am worried will I get blocked for my misunderstanding even though it happened before (but a long time ago)?--Mishae (talk) 14:10, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

To anwer your other questions above, even if you recreate the article in the same state that it was when it was deleted, there is no longer a viewable attribution history that shows others' edits - and that is required under Misplaced Pages's licensing, therefore it becomes a violation per WP:CWW. As for updating versions and dates - I wouldn't call that necessary, however I also wouldn't call it disruptive - it simply reflects that the content is still there but has been updated. I would, however, try to merge such an update into a cleanup/copyedit/wikignoming of the rest of the article if possible. As for potential blocking, now that things have been explained and you understand them, as long as you follow the advice given here and there isn't a repeat of what caused this, I think we can wrap this up with nothing more than some fresh seafood. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 14:37, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Disruptive editor

186.116.48.122 (talk · contribs) His general complaint is about material sourced to a former high-profile member of the religion (Raymond Franz) who is frequently cited in other sources as an expert about the religion. The critic's views are clearly presented as his own views, and there is no valid reason to delete entire sections from the article.--Jeffro77 (talk) 13:23, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

More recent diffs: --Jeffro77 (talk) 13:59, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree that this is pretty obviously and have warned Kitaro for 3RR. Including the IP he is at 5RR now. Jeffro, reverting him isn't an exemption from 3RR. Dougweller (talk) 15:09, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

WP:3RR: The following actions are not counted as reverts for the purposes of 3RR: ... 4. Reverting obvious vandalism—edits that any well-intentioned user would agree constitute vandalism, such as page blanking and adding offensive language.--Jeffro77 (talk) 23:27, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Note also that the editor deleted entire sections—including information citing other sources—rather than only statements from the individual source he was complaining about.--Jeffro77 (talk) 23:40, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Removed the other account - per WP:OUT if he doesn't disclose his name or IP address, we can't connect the dots either, it's considered outing. File an SPI or keep the speculation out please. (Yes I looked at the edits, the behavior is similar so I hear you loud and clear about that )

 KoshVorlon. We are all Kosh   16:13, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

In any case, this represents at least the 3rd such edit by a logged-in user. Completely ignoring any IP edits, this (and the warnings provided) is enough that any further such edits would merit a block, in my view. DES 20:57, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

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