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Here are some links I thought useful:

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Feel free to ask me anything the links and talk pages don't answer. You can sign your name by typing 4 tildes, like this: ~~~~.

Be Bold!

Sam 01:49, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Outstanding contributions recognition

Outstanding Contributions Recognition

GoldenRing, I've followed your Rfa and subsequently have had a chance to see your contributions across Misplaced Pages. What I've noticed is a person who is passionately dedicated to Misplaced Pages and is amongst the most intelligent ones I've come across here. I applaud the absolute honesty you've shown in your Rfa while offering to contribute as an administrator. They may not be necessarily as many as of other prolific editors, but in my opinion, your contributions are exemplary. And in that spirit, you truly are an outstanding contributor. Keep up the great work! :) Lourdes

Get Ye Back With Thy Low Wit  :)

Heh :) thanks very much for this GoldenRing. But I just wanted to check you were joking (again). Wisdom indeed! I'd like to see that seconded. Wot I said about templates previously was just a throw-away comment about ANI notifications, you know, fucntionary tools, not the same as abuse of templates as we saw in the recent case. Even so your 'low-witted' reply cracked me up. Brilliantly understated! Anyway, just saying that you don't need to feel you had done anything wrong in the second case as it was completely different to the first. And it was, I think the correct and- even- a restrained response. Cheers! — fortunavelut luna 06:18, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm glad you enjoyed it. 😀 GoldenRing (talk) 07:23, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Just a suggestion...

...but you might want to take a second look at your close of the QuackGuru topic ban. I think there was more support for Ian.thomson's narrowing than you you indicated. No worries if I'm wrong, but it won't hurt for you to confirm that the "broadly construed" version was the most supported version.

Thanks for your very good work patrolling the noticeboards, it is appreciated. Best, Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:13, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

@Beyond My Ken: I'll have a look tomorrow. It's been a good night... GoldenRing (talk) 20:42, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:55, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

@Beyond My Ken: My apologies that this has taken me another day to get back to - I got caught up in other matters yesterday. On a simple nose-count, I make it 10-7 in favour of the broadly construed topic ban, with one editor supporting a ban but expressing no opinion on which version. There were also a number of editors who supported going further, with some supporting a site ban and some an extension of the topic ban and I think it's reasonable to count at least the 'site ban' supports as supporting a broad topic ban if the site ban proposal failed. But what really swayed me was the evident change in some editors' thinking through the discussion. S. Marshall in particular struck his early comments and changed his !vote, but even Ian Thomson went from his proposal to "If you are not willing to (or worse, cannot) consider what any other member of the community has to say except when it's backing you up, you do not belong on a collaborative project" in the course of that discussion. Some other editors changed from supporting a topic ban to supporting a site ban.

That's my thinking behind my assessment of consensus there. I don't object at all to you querying this and I'd be happy, if you have further thoughts, to hear them. GoldenRing (talk) 11:17, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

No, nothing further. My thanks for taking the time to go through the close again and explaining your thinking to me. As you lay it out, your close seems quite reasonable - in particular, I wan't taking into account the change of heart by S.Marshall and Ian.Thomson, so my subjective feeling about the trend of the discussion never got altered. Thanks again. Beyond My Ken (talk) 16:20, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Word count at both cases

It seems that multiple users are transgressing the 500-word limit, and aren't even being advised/warned. Two of them, at least, are admins. Is there a reason they're not being notified that they're in violation of the rules applied stringently to one or two of the rest of us? The Rambling Man (talk) 12:34, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

@The Rambling Man: We're reasonably tolerant of going slightly over the limit; even {{ArbCom evidence length header}} doesn't complain up to 10% over, and we generally start prodding people at 20% over. I've asked Snow Rise to trim their statement but otherwise I don't have any immediate concerns. I see in the page history that you have had to trim responses from your statement; since you're named as a party, you could have requested that the limit be relaxed and this would normally be granted. Would you like me to take that up with the committee? GoldenRing (talk) 13:03, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

No, there's no point, the committee have aleady made it clear that they are more than satisfied with the current state of affairs and that threads of conversations can be post-edited, or even removed. To limit the ability of anyone to respond to pinged comments seems completely unreasonable, but I suppose it's worse than ever on this case since it's been quorate for weeks now with no sign of any progress in the case. And unless I'm wrong, at least one of those admins has gone beyond 500 words by nearly 200. But hey ho, no such thing as a level playing field. And, for what it's worth, the "August" and "Wikimania" excuses are running far too thin now. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:10, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

@The Rambling Man: I'm recused from the Arthur Rubin case, so won't do anything there on-wiki, but I'll prod the clerks privately to do something about AR's statement (I make it 632 words - I don't count timestamps). I note that your statement there is still over the 500 limit, though not by enough for anyone to do anything about it. On the Winhunter case, I see BU Rob13's statement at 578 words and Ivanvector's at 521 - neither enough to normally trigger clerk action. Snow Rise's is 630 and, as I said above, I've asked them to trim it. Is there anything else that I'm missing? GoldenRing (talk) 13:20, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

No it's fine. When my statement was merely templated, I wasn't aware of all the various allowances that were being made to various people. I'll happily delete sentences (every other one perhaps) from my statement, it's all a little academic really since we reached the required number of accepting Arbs a couple of weeks ago. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:26, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Hamilton High School (Chandler, Arizona)

They're all news reports about ongoing events, as far as I could see. Was one of them purely retrospective? Nyttend (talk) 13:07, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

@Nyttend: No, so far as I know they are all news reports. BLPPRIMARY doesn't discuss the use of current news reports. I'm also not clear exactly what BLP concerns you have; the text as I added it doesn't identify anyone involved (previous versions were very clear BLP violations). I'm not going to re-insert it (I don't care that much), but I think you're being over-cautious. GoldenRing (talk) 13:25, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Precisely. News reports are primary sources for the events in question. Nyttend (talk) 13:44, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Closed means closed

Yeah, I said as much once after my nac was ignored. I was heckled into retreat, and I didn't see you or anybody else there defending my position. It is not the bright line that you claim it is. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:52, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure which previous situation you're referring to; I'm sorry I wasn't there. There is a difference between reverting a close and editing a closed discussion and Flyer22 is becoming frankly disruptive, even just in the context of that discussion, ignoring whatever you think of the BLP discussion. GoldenRing (talk) 21:56, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm sorry you weren't there too. Other admins were obviously there. As for Flayer22, what I was about to say before you closed was this: Anybody is free to propose something, in a separate subsection, whether it's a sanction or just some kind of censure. I would oppose. Any other such comments are a waste of space and are themselves disruptive. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:59, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Perfectly ordinary?

Hi GoldenRing. I hope you're having a good week. Regarding this comment, I believe your suggestion that it was "a perfectly ordinary discretionary sanctions notice" may indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation. I'm not sure exactly what you meant by "perfectly ordinary". If you meant that it fit a longstanding pattern, then you're quite right. However, I don't think that the normalization of such behavior is wise; it should be anything but ordinary. I have no way of knowing how deeply you probed before making the comment, but there is a lengthy history of threats involving the administrator and the editor in question, following content disputes. In the context of the totality of that history, I believe that the administrator's "warnings", while perhaps within the letter of policy, were ill-advised and did not conform to the community's expectations for optimal administrator conduct. I therefore also believe that the editor's remarks at ANI were completely understandable and actually quite reasonable. Context is important. In the unlikely event that an editor as experienced and diligent as the one in question needs reminding about a particular policy, there are hundreds of uninvolved, active administrators on the project who are capable of issuing a friendly reminder. Rivertorch_WATER 14:42, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

I can see how it might look that way. However, in controversial topic areas, these alerts are absolutely perfectly ordinary and policy deliberately protects the right of any editor, no matter how involved, to give them. They imply no wrongdoing and the only weight they have is that discretionary sanctions cannot be applied to an editor who has not received one (with some exceptions). I was frankly surprised to see that Flyer22 had not already received an alert to BLP DS. GoldenRing (talk) 16:25, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

@Rivertorch: I was not aware of this when I wrote the above (though I was pinged in the discussion, somehow it got lost) but what prompted User:John to issue the notifications he did is in fact perfectly clear - he was told to do so by a sitting arb. GoldenRing (talk) 18:13, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I saw that before I posted the above. You read it as "he was told to do so". I read it as he was reminded of the proper sequence of events in discretionary sanction enforcement. I wasn't aware that arbs were in the habit of issuing orders to admins on the talk pages of third parties—I can't imagine someone as conscientious as that arb doing such a thing, at any rate—but many aspects of the world have become unrecognizable to me of late, and I guess Misplaced Pages isn't immune from it. In any event, I already conceded that the warnings were within the letter of policy. But expecting an admin merely to meet the letter of policy is setting the bar too low, in my opinion. Good adminship means being sensitive to context, taking care to avoid the appearance of involvement, and avoiding dumping fuel on a fire. People skills, in other words. Rivertorch_WATER 05:27, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

MRV close

Thanks for your work on these: they get chronically backlogged so I appreciate your taking the time. On Talk:Damn (Kendrick Lamar album) would you consider wording the result similar to your close: since they main question was whether to endorse or overturn to no consensus, a simple "no consensus" banner might be a bit confusing. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:40, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

@TonyBallioni: Done - it's a fair point! FWIW, I personally agree with your original close, but can't close the MRV discussion on that basis. GoldenRing (talk) 19:46, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Oh, of course. I wouldn't expect anything otherwise. I'm not sure if you've ever dealt with RMs before, but the previous close actually tends to be taken into account more than at other discussion forums (for better or worse). I zero opinion on this article title myself (hence why I closed it). I just want to make things clearer for the inevitable 2nd RM and those participants/the next closer. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:48, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Talk:Minorca

Hey GoldenRing. Just wanted to give you a heads up that I refactored a couple of your edits/comments on Talk:Minorca. The placement of your comments broke the way User:RMCD bot posts move discussions on Misplaced Pages:Requested moves. For the bot, {{relisting}} must go immediately after the timestamp left by the nominator in their nomination statement. Also, the nomination statement must go directly after the {{requested move/dated}}; otherwise, the nomination statement will appear as whatever is the top-most comment with a timestamp after it. Steel1943 (talk) 22:26, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

MD KD

Thank you for declining the A7, my eyes must have played a trick on me and I somehow missed the "... topped in Northern India" claim when I read the article. Regards. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 16:51, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

→== False accusations ==

This comment contains numerous false accusations. You have not provided diffs to support ANY of the accusations you make. As an admin you should know better than to cast WP:ASPERSIONS on others, since that constitutes personal attacks. Please strike all the nonsense about "outright falsehoods" and calling IPs vandals or "gaming protection levels".

Honestly, I find your comment to be extremely ... I'm just gonna say "wrong" here. Volunteer Marek  21:10, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

@Volunteer Marek: I have responded at ANI. GoldenRing (talk) 21:35, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

For anyone who comes here looking for me, I'll be offline for the next approx ten hours. GoldenRing (talk) 21:38, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Right. Typical abusive admin behavior. Screw something up. Refuse to back down. Go run and hide while the wronged party suffers. This is horrible behavior from an admin. How about fixing the mess you made first? Volunteer Marek  21:58, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

AN/I closure

Thank you for your close of this AN/I discussion. Without that action, I suspect the initiator and the 3 like-minded editors would be re-re-repeating their accusations and bumping that thread every 71 hours until they achieved a successful lynching. I cannot claim to know what exact considerations and evaluations led you to conclude, "No-one has suggested any action that has any hope of gaining consensus, so I am closing this", but needless to say I came to the same conclusion for several reasons.

What brings me to your Talk page, however, is this warning you added to your closing statement: User:Xenophrenic is warned, as his block log should already have made clear to him, that our policy on edit warring does not contain an exception for when you are right, and even less for when you think you are right. Exemptions from the edit warring policy are narrowly defined and editors are expected to be familiar with them. I am asking you to please consider striking that part of your statement. Why? Because such a warning implies that I edit warred "because I was right, or thought I was right", which never happened, and that AN/I discussion (and your closure of it) is going to be referenced in other proceedings. To be sure, several other editors and even Admins did argue on my behalf that my edits were "right", and "correct" and had "the moral high ground", so perhaps that is what prompted your warning? Please understand that I never spoke those words (even if I agree with them), nor did I ever claim that reasoning as a justification for edit warring. And I certainly didn't claim any "exemption from the edit warring policy" for my edits. Your remark strongly implies I took that position, which I never did. The message in your warning that "being right isn't justification" is 100% accurate, I don't dispute that at all, but the warning itself is inapplicable in this situation, and sends what I feel is the wrong message to readers of your closing statement. I hope you will consider my request.

Kind regards, Xenophrenic (talk) 18:30, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

I didn't catch this earlier, but your little editorial insertion: "and even less for when you think you are right (italics emphasis yours)", strikes me as unnecessarily provocative -- it goes beyond what our EW policy states, and instead appears intended to convey an unsubstantiated personal judgement of yours. You didn't think that might be just a little bit offensive? Anyway, I'll take your silence in this matter as your response to my request. I'll pursue this elsewhere and won't bother you further. Thank you for your time, Xenophrenic (talk) 05:04, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

@Xenophrenic: My apologies for not responding sooner. I'm happy to at least discuss this. Perhaps, without re-litigating the whole ANI thread, you could state why you were edit-warring? GoldenRing (talk) 07:10, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm always willing to discuss (perhaps too much, as my detractors are fond of pointing out). It is a fact, per our policies, that even a single revert can be viewed as edit warring, and it is also a fact that any change to article content, whether adding to, subtracting or otherwise altering what other editors have previously edited, meets our definition of reverting. So given these two facts, and with enough wiki-lawyering of the policy wording, all of my edits to Misplaced Pages (with the rare exception of edits to new or virgin articles where no one else has yet edited) can be (mis)interpreted as edit warring. Some edit warring is of course exempt from administrative action (gross BLP violations, CopyVios, clear vandalism, etc.), but every other edit I make can be subjected to a judgement call. But I'm sure you know all this. So there is your answer as to why my edits are edit-warring. The real question that needs to be asked is: was I editing disruptively in this situation? No, in my opinion, but I would appreciate your take on it. I commented already on this editing situation here (see 3rd bullet point), but here is the "in a nutshell version":

An editor (BD2412) created a problematic category and started inserting it in multiple places. I replaced it with an improved category name. Another editor then re-inserted the problematic category. I removed it, and I also took the additional step of initiating a Talk page discussion, which is considered best practice. Again the problematic category was re-added, but I left it there while waiting for an explanation and discussion, which is again best practice. I requested justification for the inclusion of the problematic addition, as required by policy. I waited, and waited, and after almost 4 days of silence I went ahead and removed the problematic category. (As an Admin, I'm sure you've witnessed this many times: as long as their preferred edit is still there, bad-faith editors feel no need to engage in discussion. You can witness this happening in real time, yet again - check out the last comments, even as you read this right now.) My edits were always policy-compliant and reflected the Talk page discussions; I also was not alone in voicing concern on the Talk pages for the problematic category, nor was I alone in removing the problematic category when discussions failed to produce the required justification to add it. I also never broke 3RR, or 2RR for that matter, and there was never any "gaming". At no time did I ever express the sentiment: "I'm right, so therefore I'm going to edit war". I did, however, persist in requesting (or "badger", to use BD2412's term) that the editors proposing to add the contested content provide the required reliable sourcing and justification. That resulted in BD2412 trying to have me removed from "this area" via administrative or community action, a tactic I've been the target of time and again. Regards, Xenophrenic (talk) 18:08, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

This unfortunately appears to be slowly sinking into a memory hole, so I've gone ahead and removed the unsupported commentary on behavior mentioned above. If you'd like to revisit the matter in the future, I'm always open to that, just ping me. Regards, Xenophrenic (talk) 16:52, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

@Xenophrenic: I am still thinking about this, though admittedly life has been rather busy of late and I haven't been thinking about it very much. At any rate, it is completely inappropriate for you to edit the close of a discussion about yourself. I have reverted it. I will get back to you in the next day or so. GoldenRing (talk) 17:05, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

I can totally relate to "life has been busy of late", so I feel bad for pushing things along - but as I mentioned above, I'll be referencing that discussion elsewhere and I want to be sure all the "i's" are dotted and "T's" are crossed. I hope it's the good kind of 'busy'. I also just noticed, and regret, that my gripe here came immediately on the heels of another editor's similar complaint, and I certainly didn't want to give the impression of "piling on". As for my edit being "completely inappropriate", of course it wasn't (see WP:RPA), but it would certainly be better all around if you were the one, instead of me, to redact or strike the unsubstantiated commentary about an editor's behavior (see also What is a personal attack - bullet #5). The "closure box" in the corner of an AN/I discussion is not exempt from our policy against making such personal attacks.

I didn't intend this to be a time-sink for you. You requested that we not re-litigate this thing, so I haven't bothered to go into detail on the two arguably legitimate edit-warring blocks in my decade-long log (which had nothing to do with "thinking" I was right), or what my level of familiarity is with our edit warring policy. I assumed I was requesting a quick and simple fix to a small oversight. Looking forward to your thoughts, Xenophrenic (talk) 20:22, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

@Xenophrenic: I've been thinking this through at some length over the weekend and have finally found some time to formulate some thoughts on it. My apologies that it has taken so long.I don't know how to interpret your approach to this other than that you think you are right and it excuses "edit warring, disruptive and tendentious editing" (to quote your block log). A large chunk of what you've written above is simply an explanation of how you were in the right. You don't seem to understand that being right and editing disruptively are not mutually exclusive; reading through the AN/I discussion again, I don't see anyone objecting that you weren't edit-warring or editing disruptively; the argument is about whether your edits were excusable because you were right on the content underlying it and whether those opposing you weren't behaving just as badly. Since it is clear that there is good-faith disagreement between editors on the underlying content, you need to proceed by building consensus, not by edit-warring or bludgeoning discussions.
In case it's not obvious from the above, I decline to change my close at AN/I. WP:NPA does not give you the right to edit the closure comments on a discussion about you (or about anyone, for that matter) to say what you would like it to say. If I'd seen you doing it to someone else's closure, I'd likely have blocked you for it. If you object to the terms of the closure and still wish to pursue this, then requesting a review of the closure at AN is your next step (you can of course also request arbitration, though it is my opinion that such a request would be declined as premature and I do not recommend it). GoldenRing (talk) 08:35, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for giving the matter some additional thought, but it doesn't appear that we've advanced the discussion at all. In fact, after reading your latest response, I'm left wondering if you've even bothered to read my comments just above. You appear to be repeating the exact same thing, without even the slightest acknowledgement of what I said above. I'm going to respond once more, but please forgive me if I mostly copy-&-paste what I've already said just above.

...you think you are right and it excuses "edit warring, disruptive and tendentious editing" (to quote your block log). A large chunk of what you've written above is simply an explanation of how you were in the right. You don't seem to understand that being right and editing disruptively are not mutually exclusive... the argument is about whether your edits were excusable because you were right on the content underlying it --GoldenRing

Incorrect. Regarding me "thinking I'm right", I've already explained to you that never happened, ... To be sure, several other editors and even Admins did argue on my behalf that my edits were "right", and "correct" and had "the moral high ground", so perhaps that is what prompted your warning? Please understand that I never spoke those words (even if I agree with them), nor did I ever claim that reasoning as a justification for edit warring. And I certainly didn't claim any "exemption from the edit warring policy" for my edits. Your remark strongly implies I took that position, which I never did. The message in your warning that "being right isn't justification" is 100% accurate ... At no time did I ever express the sentiment: "I'm right, so therefore I'm going to edit war". -- do you not see the disconnect in what you are saying, GoldenRing? You and I (and WP:EW policy) agree that "being right" is not a justification for edit warring. I've never used that justification, so I'm going to have to call bullshit on your accusation and insist that you provide diffs of evidence to where I've excused edit warring because "I think I am right". And while you are at it, please quote for me, exactly, that "large chunk of what I've written above" that you misinterpreted as an explanation of how I was "in the right". If you'll read the above with more care and comprehension, you'll discover that instead of "edit warring because I was right", I chose to pursue dispute resolution by initiating and engaging in discussion, seeking problem resolution and editing in line with consensus. If you want to argue, for example, that I misjudged consensus, or that I misunderstood a policy, I will listen attentively to your reasoning.

... I don't see anyone objecting that you weren't edit-warring or editing disruptively ... --GoldenRing

Nobody objects (not even me) that I had edit-warred, because anyone who makes even a single revert (which I did) qualifies as having edit-warred. However, nobody in that discussion suggested that I had edit-warred disruptively with the exception of Ramos1990, and nobody has substantiated with actual evidence the allegation that I had edited disruptively, including Swarm and Ramos1990.

WP:NPA does not give you the right to edit the closure comments on a discussion about you ... to say what you would like it to say. If you object to the terms of the closure... --GoldenRing

As I said previously, I don't object to the terms of the closure, I actually agree with them: Thank you for your close of this AN/I discussion. ... needless to say I came to the same conclusion, so your suggestion that I request a review at AN or Arbitration seems nonsensical. As for your assertion that WP:NPA doesn't give me the right to edit your comments to say what I want them to say, that is rather obvious, and I'd never change someone's comments to say what I want them to say. WP:NPA does allow me to remove clear-cut personal attacks, which is all I've done. Here is the relevant policy wording for your edification: Do not make personal attacks anywhere on Misplaced Pages. ... Derogatory comments about other editors may be removed by any editor. ... especially where such text is directed against you, removal should typically be limited to clear-cut cases where it is obvious the text is a true personal attack. The RPA template can be used for this purpose. It shouldn't be necessary for me to be quoting policy to an Admin. Your commentary about a fellow editor's behavior was made without a single shred of accompanying evidence, which makes it an unacceptable personal attack, in addition to being insulting and, well, nasty. If you post unsubstantiated accusations about a fellow editor, and I bring that violation to your attention, you are expected to remedy it. You've already demonstrated you know what to do in your comment below: "it's traditional to provide diffs or retract the accusation." It's more than 'tradition', it's mandated policy. Regards, Xenophrenic (talk) 04:43, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

• GoldenRing, Xenophrenic has again altered your close of the ANI thread in the archive just now: . I reverted him. Softlavender (talk) 05:08, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Edit warring accusations

GoldenRing, FYI, Xenophrenic is edit warring on the same articles that he was blocked for edit warring over after being unblocked. He has wasted so much of everyone's time. Is it time to open another ANI thread for a topic ban? desmay (talk) 16:06, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

@Desmay: I've had a brief look through Xenophrenic's recent contributions and I'm not seeing obvious problems; it could be that I'm being slow or not looking far enough back, but at this point I think it's traditional to provide diffs or retract the accusation. GoldenRing (talk) 08:38, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

I understand the necessity of providing diffs completely. Here is one diff, where Xenophrenic continues to remove the category that was kept through consensus . In this other edit, he removes "atheistic" from the article despite it being in the reference . Here, he also does the same thing, trying to mischaracterize the Cult of Reason . (Personal attack removed) I would propose that he be topic banned from anything related to religion/atheism completely. Despite being blocked a few times in the last year for edit warring on this topic, he still persists. desmay (talk) 16:17, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

The request wasn't to provide random diffs, Desmay, but to provide diffs that actually substantiate your accusations. Let's look at your first diff, where you falsely claim I removed a category from a page when there was consensus to keep it there. There was no such consensus to keep that category on that page, as you'll note in the Talk page discussion about it; in fact, consensus is to the contrary. Now let's look at your 2nd and 3rd diffs, where you falsely claim I tried "to mischaracterize the Cult of Reason". Once again, if you'll read the Talk page discussions at each of those articles, you'll find the reasoning clearly explained for those edits, and there has been no mischaracterization. I also once described it as atheistic before seeing that it is the reliable sources that conflict on how to accurately characterize the cult. If you have reliably sourced information that would help resolve the conflicts, you should bring it to the Talk page and engage in discussion. You'll find that to be a much more productive approach than to campaign to have editors banned just because they get in the way of your personal efforts. Xenophrenic (talk) 04:43, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

• Comment - Since being called to comment on a vote on an 'atheism' topic some months ago, I've been watching with dismay as one admin after another arrives towards the end of a long conflict/discussion on this (or related) topic, gives the case a cursory glance, and makes a bewhaviour-related 'face-value' judgement (in totally ignoring the policy or content issues that started the thing in the first place). Xenophrenic is alone against what seems to be an organised group of congtributors maintaining a 'footprint' in certain articles, and their methods... well, let's just say that it reminds me of a tactic my little brother used to use when he didn't like someone playing with a shared toy he considered 'his': he'd try to grab it from whoever (no friend of his) while shouting (for an adult to hear) "You're going to break it! You're going to break it!".

I'm not going to name names (this is not an ANI case) but I would advise any admin to investigate further before meting out any punative judgements based on accusations alone (or a events 'interpreted' through the same). There is a concerted effort to 'remove opposition', and it seems to be working, and complaints seem to be directed at admins who have 'behaved accordingly' in the past. To witness this is disturbing, so remain vigilant, please. TP ✎ ✓ 22:20, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Xenophrenic is alone against what seems to be an organised group of congtributors...

While I agree with your overall summation about the concerted effort by an organized group to 'litigate' opposition to their agenda out of the picture, I'm far from "alone" in spotting and resisting it. Numerous Wikipedians, editors and Admins alike (see the recent CfDs and AN/Is), have also noticed and denounced their efforts. I just happen to be one of the more vocal editors as of late. Xenophrenic (talk) 04:43, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Hillbillyholiday new violation

https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Hillbillyholiday_Editing_Restriction_Violation_.28again.29

You seem to have previous experience with this situation, so could you give your opinions on this new violation of the editing restrictions? Spacecowboy420 (talk) 14:00, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Admin's Barnstar

I want to take a moment to commend you for making the difficult decision of imposing a TBAN under AP2 in the case on AN. I hope you are not discouraged by the consensus of several editors who rarely disagree. I for one think your action was justified, and if I had seen the discussion in time, I would have supported it. Thank you for your efforts in improving the project. AlexEng 02:23, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Reply

In regard to this comment you made at the Administrators' noticeboard. I've come to the understanding that the community (who participated there at least) wants more than what is specifically enumerated in WP:IBAN, they want, as someone bluntly put it, me to "leave alone" mega-broadly. Whether or not that is fair is beside the point. I plan to do that, whether that manifests in me editing in different area(s), ceasing editing altogether, or requesting relief from the arbitration committee (either of the first two is very likely, while the latter is very unlikely unless the additional proposal is closed as having consensus) is yet to be seen. I wanted to say this informally here, slightly more privately, and so it likely will not be quoted in the closure of that discussion. I also do not care to address the mischaracterizations or falsehoods in the extended content of the proposal. I hope that dissuades you from supporting a site ban. Best Regards, — Godsy_CONT) 23:30, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

@Godsy: Thanks for saying that. It alleviates many of my concerns. I get the impression you would rather this wasn't referred to at AN, but I'm not sure how to modify what I've said there without referring to it in some way. Actually, I think saying exactly what you've said above would win over a lot of editors at AN, so I'm not exactly sure why you don't want to say it there? GoldenRing (talk) 07:23, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Invitation to Admin confidence survey

Hello,

Beginning in September 2017, the Wikimedia Foundation Anti-harassment tool team will be conducting a survey to gauge how well tools, training, and information exists to assist English Misplaced Pages administrators in recognizing and mitigating things like sockpuppetry, vandalism, and harassment.

The survey should only take 5 minutes, and your individual response will not be made public. This survey will be integral for our team to determine how to better support administrators.

To take the survey sign up here and we will send you a link to the form.

We really appreciate your input!

Please let us know if you wish to opt-out of all massmessage mailings from the Anti-harassment tools team.

For the Anti-harassment tools team, SPoore (WMF), Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 20:56, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

A cheeseburger for you!

Thanks a lot for declining the request to speedily delete Anjali Pawar article. -- Abhijeet Safai (talk) 03:55, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Highly offensive comments

This is one of the few times I've ever actually thought this (maybe only 1 or 2 other thimgs) since I'm much more generous than most other editors. You should not be an admin. Anyone who will completely ignore what someone actually said and make such highly offensive comments should never be. Nil Einne (talk) 10:44, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

I apologised unreservedly at ANI and I will do so again here. That was very careless of me. I was trying to think through some ideas you'd brought up and shouldn't have characterised them as I did. GoldenRing (talk) 14:17, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Just FYI

Please see User_talk:GorillaWarfare#Concerns about altered images and other questionable image uploads. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 20:18, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

The Hidden Tempo closure.

Thanks for having the courage to tackle that, but I'm a little puzzled. I'm not sure how there can be no consensus to unblock, yet "Any admin is therefore free to unblock Hidden Tempo on their own discretion, should they find that it is warranted." Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:46, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

I should add that the whole point of appealing to AN was that the "Any admin is therefore free to unblock Hidden Tempo on their own discretion, should they find that it is warranted" route was failing, the unblock request had been open for a month, and I took it to the comnunity to make the decision. What we need is clear answers to "Unblock, yes or no?" and "Topic ban yes or no?", and if you can't discern both of those answers I think you should revert your close and let someone else try - over at User talk:MjolnirPants#Why?, User:RickinBaltimore is talking of getting together a three-admin panel to work on it together, and I honestly think that woud be a better idea. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:26, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

• You don't seem to be around right now, and we need a quick resolution before people go off in all directions. So I am sorry, but I've reverted your close and I hope you aren't too miffed with me. I've explained at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard#Second close. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:43, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

To add to Boing's comment above, Primefac and I are willing to work on a closure, and if you'd like to join that would be fine too. We want a definite answer though, one that wouldn't leave the door open for another month of this. RickinBaltimore (talk) 17:52, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

(ec) @Boing! said Zebedee, RickinBaltimore, and Primefac: I have no problem with the revert of my closure and won't object to you taking it as a panel, though I don't think I'll be around at the right times to participate. But if you want my thinking to go into it, here it is: The difficulty with the no-consensus-to-unblock / any-admin-is-free business is that consensus that Hidden Tempo should not be unblocked would, in my view, amount to a site ban, which would then require another discussion at AN to appeal whenever it happens. My reading of the discussion there is that the community is not - quite - at that point with Hidden Tempo yet, and that if they had a change of heart tomorrow and actually accepted there are problems and that they should work on them away from AP2 then most people would be fine with them being unblocked on that basis; on the other hand, that understanding is clearly not there at present and so the community is not happy with him being unblocked as things stand. I realise it's a subtle line to draw. There is also the consideration that the topic ban be given a(nother) chance to work. GoldenRing (talk) 17:57, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

I do understand what you're saying, and I really do applaud your attempt to get a solution - and I appreciate your willingness for these other two suckers to have a go ;-) Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:03, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

PS I'll be off to a ballroom dancing lesson shortly, which I shall enjoy a good deal more than you likely will digging through all this (sorry). I'll likely not be around until tomorrow morning UTC. GoldenRing (talk) 17:59, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Seems like you're dancing already around this :) I kid, I kid. At the least, if there was a topic ban imposed for a on HT, it would be in effect for at least a year. The community felt the block some remain, so I would say HT would not be able to appeal this decision for a year based on these two factors. We would be right back to this next week if we kept the status quo to be honest. RickinBaltimore (talk) 18:03, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Have a great evening. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:03, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Abided by it?

As someone who has taken a side, I don't think I should comment in the uninvolved admin thread at User talk:Primefac... I imagine you all don't want the discussion to revive there too. So I'll comment here, because I saw you say ...as far as I can tell, abided by it... and I can't just let that go. Are you sure you read the whole thing? HT evaded the topic ban with a sockpuppet, for which they were blocked; and they were given a warning for violating it again on their user page, which resulted in the deletion of their user page. "Abided by it"?? I have other things I want to say about whether this is a community ban or not, but I will bite my tongue and keep them to myself. But HT simply did not "abide by" the topic ban by any stretch of the definition. --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:09, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

• Besides the socking during the T-ban, HT also failed to abide by the topic ban as late as 25 May. FT2 protested that episode was a trifle until I explained it in excruciating detail, and persuaded him, FT2, to use his admin X-ray vision to look at the deleted userpage which was the crux of the ban violation. Not sure people were still reading his posts, ot mine, when FT2 eventually acknowledged I was right, though — it was getting complicated by then. (It's all in the AN thread, I can't face digging it out the diffs again, sorry. The search function should help for the back-and-forth between FT2 and myself.) Bishonen | talk 00:11, 26 September 2017 (UTC).

• @Floquenbeam and Bishonen: Quite right - I meant to say abided by it for four months since their block in March. The comment was based on FT2's commentary regarding "several months of apparently clean editing" at HT's TP and I forgot to add the qualification he made there. I've edited my comments at Primefac's TP accordingly. GoldenRing (talk) 08:15, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

• "For four months since their block in March"..? You ping me and say I'm right, GoldenRing, but did you read my post? It's about a ban violation in late May. Bishonen | talk 09:21, 26 September 2017 (UTC).

Cool-off Block on User:Tillman appears to have been ineffective

Unfortunately, now that the 1-week cooling-off block has expired on Tillman (talk · contribs), the first thing he has done is to complain about the process, including his original ban; and to again, violate that topic-ban on discussing climate change. Although the notice has been linked for the past two years, he apparently is unclear that the topic ban also includes making claims about climate change on his own talkpage:

• "This was part of a largely-successful effort to drive out editors skeptical of the manufactured "97% consensus" on climate change."
• "Well, fuck that. Life is too short. I know of no other editors in the Wiki Climate Wars who got such a drastic penalty."
• "Far too maddening & time-consuming to battle the religious intensity of the climate activists here."
• "I'm technically qualified to speak on a number of aspects of climate change."
• "So I can assure non-scientists that you can't get 97% of any bunch of real scientists to agree on anything more controversial than whether the sun will come up tomorrow."
• "I had the temerity to revert an obvious smear on the BLP of respected Canadian academic Ross McKitrick, by yet another vexatious "climate-activist" editor, who was far more interested in labeling Prof. McKitrick as a "Climate Denier" than making any substantial contributions to the project."
• He ends his tirade by referring to himself as "advanced-amateur paleoclimatologist."

This is all very troubling, as he doesn't appear to understand or acknowledge why he was topic-banned in the first place, nor is he done making claims that do not align with reality. He likewise seems to consider his ban/block as part of a "battle" in "the Wiki Climate Wars" -- an indication of a siege mentality. Should another Enforcement request be (re)opened-- or some other avenue (if there is one) to guide Mr. Tillman towards editing in a more productive fashion?--HidariMigi (talk) 00:45, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Golden Ring: I have absolutely no plans to edit climate-related topics on the project, now or in the future. Best regards, Pete Tillman (talk) 01:31, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

• As pointed out, it's not an issue of editing climate-related articles, which Mr. Tillman has already breached, yet still denies doing; a topic ban also means a prohibition on posting discussions-- even on one's own talk page-- on the banned subject matter. It seems that he is unable to wrap his head around that, or being especially intransigent. --HidariMigi (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:39, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

• @HidariMigi: while the topic ban does apply everywhere on Misplaced Pages and another admin might take a different view, I'm generally in favour of allowing a bit of leeway for people venting about the sanction itself (as opposed to other edits about the topic on their talk page). Trying to police this sort of thing is usually more disruptive than the violation. As Tillman has indicated above that he intends to otherwise abide by the ban, I'm inclined to let this slide. GoldenRing (talk) 05:50, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

• (talk page stalker) I concur. Within limits I think a little venting on one's talk page is permissible. That said, user pages are not intended for use as blogs or similar venues for soapboxing. Discretion and a little good judgement are needed when determining where the line between the two is drawn. On a side note; I'd steer clear of the term "cool off block." That is not an acceptable rational for blocking a user. -Ad Orientem (talk) 12:44, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

• @Ad Orientem: To be clear, that was not my term for the block; it was an arbitration enforcement block for topic ban violations. GoldenRing (talk) 15:10, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

As I clearly noted in my talk-page "rant", I'm unhappy about the intense politicization of the science of climate-change , here and elsewhere. Editor HidariMigi seems upset that I would claim technical competence in this area. So be it. This editor (and others) seem more interested in pressing their political views on Misplaced Pages users, than presenting an accurate account of the actual science. I'm retired, and have health issues. I really don't have the energy and thick skin to go on with this here. I don't plan to contest the topic ban, and will abide by its terms. Thank you, Pete Tillman (talk) 15:52, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

1R question

I have a question about what counts as one revert - would reverting several edits count as one revert if the edits included content changes to substantially different sections of the article (enough that I would say they were entirely separate reverts) as well as some citation needed tags (made in separate edits) - is what counts as an edit it's proximity in time it's been made to other edits? Seraphim System 01:30, 14 October 2017 (UTC) Seraphim System 01:30, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

@Seraphim System: I think the deciding factor here is the material you are reverting. If you're reverting material a single edit or a cluster of edits by a single user but it takes you a couple of bites to get it right then I think most people would understand that as a single revert. If you take several edits to revert edits by multiple editors, or material added by a single editor over a longer period, then I think that would count as multiple reverts. My word is not as law on this, though. GoldenRing (talk) 22:17, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Morty C-137

Morty's been causing me some concern at Talk:United_Daughters_of_the_Confederacy#So_I_cut_it_out_again, effectively accusing Carptrash, a productive editor of long-standing, of lying and implying that he was a fellow-traveler with hate groups there and at RSN. This has caused Carptrash some distress, and it appears to be a return to the battlefield behavior and tendency toward personal attacks that was the subject of a long ANI thread that you closed with a one-month topic ban (since expired). I'm not quite there yet, but Monty's determined not to drop that stick. For extra joy, the sockpuppet that was following Morty has returned. I'd appreciate your views on the matter. Acroterion (talk) 13:42, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

As a lurker who's been following the various related conversations I'm wondering if Acroterion noticed the other responses to Carptrash on the noticeboard, especially from Calton. It would seem that Morty is not the only person losing patience with the behavior of Carptrash there.67.245.223.5 (talk) 15:13, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

I read the whole thread, and that's not an excuse. Acroterion (talk) 15:44, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

@Acroterion: I've left a note at their talk page. The personal attacks are not acceptable and indeed entirely unnecessary; "I emailed this guy and he said I was right" is never going to meet V or RS so it should be left at that. GoldenRing (talk) 10:04, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Carptrash has one of the references at hand - Monty has neither. Marek may have the other or had access to it. In this case the RS and V matter can be settled by reference to the source (eventually), but RS and V should never be used to treat with open contempt an editor's sincere concern that we have inaccurate content, or to discourage their work to verify it.

Going a bit beyond that, there appears to be a now-set notion on Monty's part that Carptrash is "gaslighting" and an enemy to be battled and belittled. Carptrash has been studying war monuments for years, which doesn't make him a confederate sympathizer or a fellow-traveler with hate groups, and he's said so. The commentary at RSN appears to me to have degenerated into attempts to Godwin the discussion by several editors, at least some of whom should know better. Carptrash may be wrong about some things, and he may be persistent, but he's been reasonably patient and mostly polite, which cannot be said of other participants in that discussion.

I'm traveling over the next couple of days for work, so I was reluctant to to engage in extended discussion when I might be unavailable, without consulting you. It was getting repetitive in any case, and these kinds of situations are best handled by consensus. I'll look in when I can. Acroterion (talk) 12:10, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Happily, Volunteer Marek has addressed the issue raised by Carptrash and has offered a gracious acknowledgement and apology. Acroterion (talk) 16:33, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

@Acroterion: I can't see any documentation at SPI, but Morty has now been indeffed by a CU so I guess it's just a game of watching out for the next sock. GoldenRing (talk) 08:15, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Lexers615

What about the issues with the other involved admin and editors with powers? As I said, my petition for appeal was not about the rejection, but the behavior of the involved people... I may only have a couple months old account but I've been collaborating for about three years now, in English, French and Spanish, and though it's the first time I see this much trolling, seeing that common trolls ganging up on a so called help desk, seeing how high a common troll can rise in the hierarchy without even hiding his ill intents, and seeing the double standards definitely encourages me to stop wasting my time in here... Lexers615 (talk) 07:46, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

@Lexers615: Either way, arbitration enforcement is not the right place for it. Things which can be brought to AE are:

• Enforcement of sanctions imposed by the arbitration committee (typically where an editor is named in an arbitration decision and has a sanction such as a topic ban imposed);
• Enforcement of discretionary sanctions authorised by the arbitration committee (these always cover some topic, such as biographies of living people, post-1932 American Politics, climate change, the Arab-Israeli conflict etc). Any edits related to a topic covered by discretionary sanctions can be the basis for an AE complaint, though for anything to be done about it an admin would have to agree that the edits are disruptive in some way.
• Appeals of either of the above.

Since your complaint didn't pertain to any of these, I closed it.

Regarding the underlying issues, I think that David is right that the draft you submitted to AFC amounts to a dictionary entry, and so far every other editor you've interacted with regarding the issue has taken the same view. I don't see that there has been any abuse of admin or other powers here; David rejected your draft on absolutely correct policy grounds and with a brief but civil and helpful message; your response was to call him a "self-centered arrogant vandal and scumbag." I'm having difficulty seeing any grounds for you to complain about anything, and indeed difficulty seeing why you haven't simply been blocked from editing for making baseless, uncalled-for personal attacks.

Misplaced Pages operates by consensus. Sometimes you disagree with that consensus and that's just tough; you have to abide by it anyway or not edit here. GoldenRing (talk) 08:36, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

A professional note telling me: "Look you got to beef it up a bit this way or that way." would have triggered a very different reaction. However, all I had was a meaningless canned response and the direct link to his profile. Speaking of which, and have you double checked his flamebait profile? First line on, he caricaturizes anyone he reverets the edits of and/or disagrees with him.

As for consensus, if I meet four friends at a bar, and we start picking up on some random guy there, the four of us agreeing on something vs a single random dude has no validity whatsoever as a consensus, so it's wrong from A to Z to consider David's friends ganging up to defend him to be some form of consensus; and my very first mistake was to bring it there on API in the first place, as it is more or less openly referred to as Misplaced Pages's trolls playground, even by many experienced users! WP:ANIISLOUSY, for exemple. That's also why I was seeking a forum to have this point addressed.

As for the "every other editor you've interacted with regarding the issue has taken the same view", well, next time, I'll just do what seems common practice here, gather and coordinate buddies IRL to fake a consensus here and game on, more or less just like what that other guy did, and my seeking of an appropriate forum just resulted in his buddy ATrain to grease an extra layer of public shaming to savour their victory, and wait for the next unsuspecting guy who will have fallen for the troll bait.

Lexers615 (talk) 04:35, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

I've indef blocked this user per WP:NOTHERE; after looking at their contribs this morning I saw 90% drama-mongering, 10% (arguably) useful edits. A Train 08:40, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

@A Train: Thanks. I was basically in the process of making the same decision. GoldenRing (talk) 09:43, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Noticeboard Diff

In your last post, that diff, I do not think it leads where you think it leads😁! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:2000:28C1:7200:8495:9757:BE49:FE5D (talk) 11:51, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Do you know, you are so very, very right. Thanks. GoldenRing (talk) 15:09, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Reference Desk at AN/I

Thanks for taking the initiative to close. Alex Shih (talk) 17:48, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Notification

Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard#Closure_review_request_for_.22StuRat.27s_behaviour_on_the_Reference_Desks_.28again.29.22 StuRat (talk) 17:57, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

email

WP:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Statement_by_Dank

I've decided I want to say something there, but first, I'm in search of clue. One way to get clue is to talk with people who disagree with me (particularly if they're making a statement at WP:RFAR, because people often truncate their statements drastically, and actually know a lot more than they're saying). I was 100% with you as I read your statement ... and then you arrived at the opposite conclusion to mine. I don't think it's fair to say that Arbcom shouldn't take the case because there are options they can't pursue. Arbcom is much more likely not to fix something that they could actually fix than the other way around; there is little chance that they will go all bull-in-a-china-shop. They may go the other direction, and do something minimal and limited to just the two principal parties. But even a minimal ruling can be one important step along the way, as people grapple with this very extensive and tough problem.

So, I'm leaving this note for both you and Hawkeye7, for two reasons: 1. you guys are the only two who disagree with me (although we do have a few noncommital statements from others), so you're the ones in the best position to explain to me why I'm wrong, and 2. Arbcom is hesitating, and I can understand that ... they're not masochists. But I think it would be good to apply peer pressure to get them to step up and do the right thing, the necessary thing, and a unanimous case request would be a suitable form of peer pressure. IMO, Arbcom is a kind of single point of failure for Misplaced Pages ... if they turn away from disputes that can legitimately be framed as ongoing policy violations and that can't be solved elsewhere, then the whole dispute-resolution system fails. - Dank (push to talk) 18:59, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

FWIW, Hawkeye just struck (in part). - Dank (push to talk) 23:53, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

@Dank: thanks for coming by to discuss this. I'm struggling to formulate coherent thought this weekend as I have a heavy cold. So my apologies if I'm a bit muddled.I hoped that I was clear, but maybe I wasn't, that my opposition was to the committee answering the big policy questions about wikidata, not them dealing with behavioral problems.The point of my statement was that underlying all the behavioral disputes there are hard policy questions that need to be answered somewhere. Our policy framework at the moment, if applied rigorously, probably doesn't allow us to use wikidata at all on Misplaced Pages. We require that basically everything in an article be verifiable from reliable sources. Wikidata does not have that requirement. So someone inserting a link to wikidata not only has to check that the information currently in wikidata is verifiable, but needs to worry about whether someone's going to change that information on wikidata to something that's not verifiable, according to our policies, but still ok by wikidata policies.As far as I can see, this leaves us in a position where we can use wikidata templates on Misplaced Pages so long as the information on wikidata is reliably sourced. If someone changes some information on wikidata so that is not reliably sourced, our only option is to stop using the template on Misplaced Pages. If wikidata policy also held to our standard of sourcing, then we would also have the option of going and fixing it at wikidata, but they don't so we don't. If our only option is to switch back and forth between wikidata and non-wikidata versions as the data at wikidata changes, that seems to me obviously untenable. Or at least far too much effort to be worthwhile.Arbcom have no remit to create policy. They can only enforce our existing policies. I think it follows that if they are asked to answer the policy questions, the only answer they are capable of coming up with is to ban the use of wikidata on Misplaced Pages. Anything else would be creating policy.There are certainly some people on the project who would like to see that outcome and maybe aren't too worried about how we reach that outcome. But I think that arbcom imposing that solution would only lead to trouble. I'm not yet convinced that it is the best outcome for the project and there are certainly editors who believe in good faith that it isn't. So I think it's the sort of decision that needs to be taken by the community and have the support of the community. GoldenRing (talk) 10:24, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Ugh, cold season, I hate it. Anyway, this stuff is so good that I pointed people to it in the Arbcom case request; if I overstepped, I'll be happy to strike. - Dank (push to talk) 13:13, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

"Our policy framework at the moment, if applied rigorously, probably doesn't allow us to use wikidata at all on Misplaced Pages." - I don't think that's true; for example, Template:Infobox road allows for us to share the maps for each road between different Wikipedias, without our having to manually enter it into the page (useful for languages where the other language article is more developed). There has also been a long-existing RFC from 2013 that has allowed this: Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Wikidata Phase 2.

I was going to write something about the legitimate concerns of people concerned by the lack of sourcing, the bots run amuck on Wikidata, and the battleground behavior on and off the site, but it probably wouldn't be politically correct, especially at 12:45 AM. All I can say is, I would encourage people to get involved on Wikidata more and try to at least present these concerns. My perception has been that after more scrutiny was placed on Commons a few years back, things did improve a bit. --Rschen7754 07:45, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

@Rschen7754: Yes, I'm aware of the 2013 RFC but I don't think it resolved any of the policy questions, just said we're going to start trying it out and see what happens. I feel, and I suspect a lot of people are in a similar place, that I can see a lot of potential in wikidata but that as things stand its use is not feasible. I just can't see myself adding links to wikidata knowing that tomorrow the data may be edited in a way that is incompatible with enwiki policy but which is considered perfectly acceptable by wikidata standards. To encourage people to be involved at wikidata is probably the only way that wikidata is going to become usable here. But the call to wikidata often looks, on the one hand, like people who have built a failing project blaming those who don't want to use it for its failure, and on the other hand like a call for lots of enwiki editors to invade wikidata, kick over the furniture and rebuild it all how enwiki wants it. Those are both very course caricatures, of course, and you have been at pains above to avoid that look, I know, but all too often wikidata advocates do appear to be trying to push something on a community that doesn't want it while also blaming that community's lack of interest for wikidata's shortcomings. I don't think you'll find wife support for wikidata here until these problems are sorted out, and those pushing its use here before they are resolved (and all too often denying the existence of a problem at all) are probably not doing themselves any favours or winning people over to their cause. GoldenRing (talk) 08:29, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

I, honestly, don't care if Wikidata is used on WP or not - so long as the data sourced from it is reliable. Because there is no guarantee that it is reliable and verifiable at any given point in time (as I write this) perhaps it would be for the best if we stopped using data sourced from WD even in the short term until the necessary policies are both written and rigorously enforced. As a concept, I like the Wikidata idea: to centralize various datapoints on various topics, but surely when the WMF started it up they should have seen this coming.

If WP (and other sister projects) just stopped using WD within themselves, even briefly, perhaps it'll get the attention of the right people (either to sort out the policy mess over there, or shut it down) - because it's only useful while it's being used.

Just my opinion, Dax Bane 06:37, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

On enwiki I've mainly seen folks who believe that Wikidata should be shoved down everyone's throat and no objections are legitimate, and others who want to burn Wikidata (and VisualEditor, and any new WMF software product, really) with fire. That's where all the battleground behavior comes in. There's all sorts of nonsense in the policy discussions on Wikidata lately too. This was our last attempt to institute a BLP policy, which went down in flames because a small group of editors successfully derailed it without making any changes.

What Wikidata really needs is sensible people who are willing to compromise and come to a consensus rather than drawing battle lines. We are in the top 5 of largest wikis with over 38 million items, and yet we only have 52 admins, and many of them are not that active, and those that are are dealing with nonsense like this. I used to try and work on sensible policies years ago, but Wikidata is not even my highest priority on Wikimedia, and I just don't have the time to edit like I used to.

With that being said, people who want to get involved should be willing to get their hands dirty and do some work on the site. It's just a general principle that people don't really want outsiders coming in and telling them what to do. But people who really seem interested in contributing to Wikidata (or Commons, or Meta, or whatever) and who have the edits to prove it generally get listened to more. Maybe I'm rambling at this point, but maybe it will help someone, so I dunno. --Rschen7754 07:04, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

@Rschen7754: It's hard to disagree with much of what you're saying here. I'd love to have enough time to contribute to masses of wikimedia projects; as it is, I don't really have the time to do what I do here, let alone get involved in another project from scratch.

The BLP discussion you linked to is indeed worrying, though I'm not that surprised by the opposes. To pick up one point, the proposal was to say that (with a few exceptions) all information must have at least one reliable source. This actually goes further than our policy on verifiability here; our policy requires that all information be verifiable, not verified. We only require an actual inline citation for "all quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged." In practice, the "likely to be challenged" provision is not much different to "has been challenged" and people who remove large swathes of uncontentious material from articles solely because they are unsourced tend to end up sanctioned for it. Even for material where an inline citation is required, the policy still only says that it may be removed, not that it must. As one editor in that discussion said, it would have been better to draft a detailed guideline that spelled out some of the complexities, rather than a series of (essentially) bullet-point proposals.

The same could be said about the proposals on living persons; the enWP policy on verifiability in BLPs only really differs from WP:V in that information requiring an inline citation must be removed immediately, rather than may be removed in the more general case. The categories of statements which require inline citations are the same. Compare that to the proposal you linked, which required that any unverifiable information must be removed immediately. It's not surprising that editors there opposed a proposal that goes even further than our policies here.

The enWP model of verifiability relies a lot on the concept of material being challenged; insertion of un-sourced but non-controversial information is generally tolerated (though perhaps not encouraged, as such), so long as when material is challenged, either a source is provided or the material is removed. This model works reasonably well here, where the process of content creation and maintenance means there are lots of human eyes on content. I wonder how well it would work at wikidata, where (I gather) much more of the content is created by automated processes; could we rely on there being enough human eyes present to challenge contentious material, or would the human eyes that are there be swamped by the amount of bot-created material? I suppose the theory is that all the eyes on all the wikimedia projects that consume that data are also available to challenge contentious material, but there we get into a chicken-and-egg situation. GoldenRing (talk) 12:20, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Excuse me butting in, @Dank and Rschen7754: but the ArbCom link brought me here. I have a different perspective to yours, GoldenRing, and perhaps you'd like to consider it. When people are bemoaning problems with the use of Wikidata, I ask them to consider how we deal with the equivalent problem when the same issue crops up with edits made locally on Misplaced Pages. Let's take the example of adding unsourced content to Wikidata. I've written the code used in many of the infoboxes to import from Wikidata (Module:WikidataIB) in such a way that a local value always takes priority a Wikidata-supplied one, and that no value is returned from Wikidata by default unless it is sourced. So if somebody changes a Wikidata value which is imported into an infobox here, I ask how does that differ from an editor simply changing a local value? The answer is that possibly fewer people are likely to spot the change, although such a change will be reflected on Wikidata as well as potentially on other wikis, so it's not a simple matter to determine how many people have watchlists that would monitor such changes – I mean that the item will be on Wikidata watchlists and other language watchlists, as well as on some enwiki watchlists. To get an idea of the scale of any problem caused, we'd have to get examples of vandalism from Wikidata causing problems here, and compare that with the rate of vandalism locally on enwiki. So far there's little actual evidence of a problem.

Nevertheless, it is proper to ask the question, how do we protect enwiki from problematical editing on Wikidata? I don't accept that "ban all use of Wikidata" is either an appropriate or sensible response, as there are many measures that we can take to guard against the issue. For example, we can build an infobox that will only show Wikidata values that have a source better than "Imported from Xyz Misplaced Pages", or make other filtering rules. That paradoxically results in slightly better situation than happens here. Despite the WP:V policy, our articles are riddled with unsupported statements, and it is easy to add a value to an infobox locally that is unsourced, so having at least some assurance that a value is sourced is going to be a bonus. Note that I can't guarantee algorithmically that the source is reliable – or even relevant – but at least we know immediately where to look to check.

If we examine the situation you postulated above: someone changes the Wikidata value, I believe that it does not follow that "If our only option is to switch back and forth between wikidata and non-wikidata versions as the data at wikidata changes, that seems to me obviously untenable." That is clearly what also happens when somebody changes a value locally in an infobox: if it's wrong, we change it back. Why would we not simply do exactly the same thing with a change to Wikidata? If it's wrong, use a local value that is verifiably correct. There's no back-and-forth because the local value always overrides Wikidata: no amount of changes there will affect what our infobox displays. Of course, if somebody eventually fixes the Wikidata by updating it from the verifiable value here – and adds the reference! – then there's no reason why we shouldn't go back to using the Wikidata-imported value, but there's no rush to do that.

The only policy (or behavioural guideline) change we need is to forbid the replacement of a locally-supplied value in an infobox with a Wikidata-supplied one, unless the two are the same. That would put the onus on anyone wishing to alter an article's infobox to one that uses Wikidata to make sure that the information displayed was no less reliable than that already in place. In the case of an infobox presently containing incorrect information supplied locally, the first course of action would be to establish the correct value (if necessary by showing that the previous value was wrong). That would ensure that a baseline of accurate information was present in the infobox before switching to a Wikidata-supplied infobox.

I hope all of that makes sense to you, and I'm happy to discuss further; but I do think you should reconsider your view that "as things stand its use is not feasible". Cheers --RexxS (talk) 18:04, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

"The only policy (or behavioural guideline) change we need is to forbid the replacement of a locally-supplied value in an infobox with a Wikidata-supplied one, unless the two are the same." So in effect, you're saying that if some bots mass-remove locally supplied values that are identical, there's no way for anybody to object to it? If so I don't think that's going to go down well with a lot of people. --Rschen7754 19:23, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Who's talking about bots? Not me. Behavioural guidelines are for editors (although the bot operators need to be aware of what behaviour is acceptable, of course). What problem do you foresee with an editor replacing a local value with a Wikidata-derived one that is the same? I assume you read the rest of what I wrote above to justify my conclusion. As for bots, even if you think that BAG is going to approve a bot to do that sort of job – which is almost inconceivable – that "lot of people" are going to be insisting that any such bot operator is held responsible for the bot's edits. I'm neither seeing a likelihood nor a problem there. --RexxS (talk) 19:58, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm talking bots, or AWB, or really any very determined editor who has a lot of time on their hands and who decides to remove the parameters from hundreds of articles. --Rschen7754 01:23, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Wouldn't we simply refer them to the 2013 RfC's conclusion: "this modification should be done carefully and deliberately, at least at first"? Nobody should be making any wholescale changes to large numbers of articles without careful consideration beforehand, in any case. For example, I wouldn't support removing parameters wholescale from articles using {{Infobox book}}, as there are far too many transclusions and too many nuances in the fields for the change to be simple. At the opposite extreme, the change of {{Infobox telescope}} to using Wikidata went off with few hitches, because there are relatively few articles, so they were easy to check and manage, and it was planned in advance and well executed. One consequence is that several smaller Wikipedias have now built a complete set of articles on telescopes, starting from an initial Wikidata-aware infobox that held the outline of the article for them to work from. If we ban the use of Wikidata because we're frightened of somebody potentially causing damage with {{infobox book}}, we have to remember we're also throwing out all the good work exemplified by {{Infobox telescope}}. The trick is to find ways of scaling up the curation of articles, so that the more complex cases become realisable. I think that establishing a convention that we don't replace local values with Wikidata ones without being absolutely sure that the transition is completely transparent is key to creating a pool of responsible editors who can modify infoboxes without causing WWIII to break out. --RexxS (talk) 01:58, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

(GoldenRing, if you ever want your talkpage back, please let us know... )

I think you've summarized the crux of the ArbCom case right there. "Nobody should be making any wholescale changes" - but at some point someone behaved badly, and that's what started it all. I'm a Wikidata admin and I have 100,000+ edits on that site, so I sure hope they don't ban Wikidata here. But I fear that it will happen if Wikidata is forced on groups of editors that don't want it. Telescopes and roads (my subject area) aren't BLPs, for example. VisualEditor could have been a great product, but it was rolled out too early and forced on groups of people that didn't want it, and eventually people lost patience and just wanted to burn it with fire. --Rschen7754 02:35, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

No worries having this discussion here.

I had written a long comment on this, then my phone ate it. Probably the only thing really worth saving out of it is an example of where I see real problems caused by the incompatibility of sourcing policies. Right now, something that causes some fairly protracted disputes on enwiki is the display of ethnicity and religion in infoboxes of living (and sometimes long-dead) people. This seems to be a particular problem for Jews, for whom complicated issues of ancestry, culture and religious belief intersect in the question of whether someone "is Jewish." It is reasonably common to find someone who the world generally regards as "Jewish" - even who reliable secondary sources routinely describe as Jewish - but for whom we will leave that field of the infobox blank because our standard for including it is a positive, reliably-sourced self-identification of Jewishness. Given the difference in policies, it would be very easy to have a statement in wikidata that someone is Jewish, sourced to what would normally be considered a reliable source here but where we would still want no value in the infobox. It is absolutely trivial right now to find people who wikidata describes as "religion: Judaism" where making the same statement here would be, roughly speaking, the end of civilsation as we know it; consider wikidata:Q302.

These types of situation are not resolved by strict application of rules, they are resolved by discussion and consensus. For all the potential I see in wikidata (and I am a fan of the concept) I can't see how this information can be stored at wikidata and questions like this can be resolved without essentially saying that enwiki will defer to consensus at wikidata on questions of sourcing and verifiability and I can't see that happening unless the policies on sourcing, verifiability and living persons are roughly compatible, both in their text and their practice. People here need to trust that problems at wikidata will be sorted out in a way that is broadly acceptable to the community here before there is mass adoption of wikidata here.

I hear what you're saying about local overrides, but it seems very likely to me that the result of such as scheme will be that every value in every infobox will be overridden with local data and then what's the point? Even if someone doesn't immediately write a bot to mass-import all the wikidata values into local overrides here or override them with null values (and there are certainly a few editors who would attempt exactly that), there are numerous situations where editors will have an incentive to override wikidata values with local values and never any situations where editors will have an incentive to change them back (except perhaps that they are wikidata fans - but try building a consensus on that basis!)

I think that trust between the projects needs to be built first, before we start with mass adoption of wikidata-based templates. Various things going on at present are not serving to build that trust but to build scepticism. Resolving that is going to take real humility and willing spirit from both sides, and perhaps some big sacrifices (eg perhaps deleting swathes of bot-imported data from wikidata because the sourcing is awful) and I sort of doubt that either community collectively possesses those qualities in sufficient quantity. GoldenRing (talk) 12:55, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps making it easy to fix any problem with the Wikidata entry is better than using local overrides, at least for simple errors. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:16, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

@GoldenRing: We had that scenario over 18 months ago at {{Infobox book/wikidata}}, where SarahSV explained that Night was problematical because there was no academic agreement about its genre, so the 'genre' field needed to be excluded. The section at Template talk:Infobox book/Archive 8 #See if this works explains how the module WikidataIB was coded to allow any field to be blacklisted on a per article basis. If an article using {infobox book/wikidata} contains |suppressfields=genre then the genre is never displayed (even if a drive-by editor adds something locally). The Wikidata-aware infobox can actually make dealing with the exclusion of fields easier, not harder.

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: It would be great to have a pop-up editing window to make the changes without leaving the article, but that's still in the pipeline. In the meantime, I made it so that values fetched from Wikidata will by default have an 'edit pen' icon after each one, which is a direct link to the statement on Wikidata that was used. Anybody who has done any Wikidata editing can click that link (or open it in a new tab) and fix the problem there and then. I know it's not everything that everybody wants, but it's a long way from being as difficult as you seem to imply. A lot of thought and development has gone into meeting the needs of Misplaced Pages editors and it's rather dispiriting to see no acknowledgement whatsoever that we've come along way in terms of usability over the past four years. --RexxS (talk) 18:10, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

I was more saying why I don't like having too many local overrides. Personally I only use Wikidata for Interwiki links. Perhaps there is a case to make that humans tend to work better with prose whereas automated things like bots struggle and thus that Misplaced Pages is more geared towards human readers and human editors, while automated things deal better with data and humans don't find them so interesting and thus Wikidata should be primarily edited by bots and semiautomatic scripts, with humans being more in an operational role. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:51, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

"somehow better than just not filling in those fields"

You see this really is the problem. You choose to disparage my efforts without showing any sign of understanding the problem and any possible solution. The reason why having the ability to have a blacklist – note that doesn't make it a compulsory element – is "somehow better than just not filling in those fields" is that these sort of occurrences are plagued by drive-by editors who come along and add a local value to the Genre field, if you "just don't fill in the field". As you'd understand if you'd bothered to read any of the discussions. You don't have to have blacklists on 99.9% of articles, but they are useful when you need them. What's easier for an editor who curates a music article: to continually revert editors who regularly add |genre=thrash metal despite consensus on the talk page that no genre should be in the infobox; or add |suppressfields=genre to the infobox once?

31 hours or indef?

You only blocked User:Mahir M for 31 hours; I was about to grumble about how it should be longer for that kind of bigoted attack, when I saw that you said at ANI you'd indef'd them. So now I'm thinking this was just a misclick? --Floquenbeam (talk) 17:06, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

@Floquenbeam: Yes, it was intended to be indef. Someone who's not trying to do something else at the same time take this block button away from me for a bit. Would you mind extending to indef? I've arsed this up enough times. GoldenRing (talk) 17:37, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

 Done. And I know the feeling... --Floquenbeam (talk) 17:43, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

List of European islands by population arbitration

I don't see how the case here relates to The Troubles as it is an issue of international borders rather than a historical or political point. You can have an opinion either way about Northern Ireland, but the article in this case relates to the current status of the territory of the Island of Ireland, as is recognised internationally, as this is a encyclopedia, not a political debating forum. The Troubles article is obviously a very different case to the one here, as that is an issue which is disputed by historians to this day. While Irish Republicans personally may dispute the status of Northern Ireland, there is no dispute internationally regarding recognition, nor is there a dispute regarding the reality of the physical presence of the United Kingdom there. Moreover, other lists such as the article listing islands by population worldwide on wiki, and the article for Ireland itself (the island not the Republic) both use the Republic of Ireland, United Kingdom (Northern Ireland) format to describe the governance of the territory. I mean there is a case that other options, such as Northern Ireland (United Kingdom) could be considered, but then we'd have a political flag dispute which would not exist if the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland) was used, but claiming that the entire island of Ireland is currently recognised as the territory of the Republic of Ireland is simply false. I respect the fact that many Irish Republican editors may feel that it should be as such, but similarly, the article references the current recognition of the territories listed, and its a geographic article, rather than a historical or political one, so the standard is obviously different to that used in The Troubles arbitration. As you can see on the Ireland article, they have mentioned both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, and as such any other articles on Misplaced Pages should be consistent with that. PompeyTheGreat (talk) 02:50, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

In addition, I would add that I have made attempts at dialogue, but the other editor made changes despite my prior notice on the talk page of the article. PompeyTheGreat (talk) 02:50, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

@PompeyTheGreat: If that's how you want to pursue the matter, then you are entitled to make the request. I was only offering advice from my perspective. In particular, I would direct you to Misplaced Pages:Arbitration#Scope_of_arbitration - you are expected to have exhausted - not just tried - other means of dispute resolution before arbitration. If someone is edit-warring against consensus and won't respond in talk space, a report at WP:ANEW or WP:AN/I will usually find an administrator who is willing to help get their attention. GoldenRing (talk) 07:50, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

ANI hat -- "despite what the usual AP2 suspects have to say"

Hello GoldenRing. It's not clear to me why you'd hat the subsequent exchange and not the gratuitous personal disparagement that prompted it. It's possible we'd all be no worse off without my observation, but I do believe we'd all be better off without that editor's disparagement of the several editors who commented there. FYI this view that there's some sort editorial bias or biased editors at American Politics relates directly to the narrative of Thucydides411 whose behavior is being discussed there. And this is not the first time that user Cjhard has injected that kind of partisan talk into a noticeboard thread. I don't think it's helpful. SPECIFICO talk 23:10, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi there SPECIFICO. When one group of editors (or perhaps a tag-team) routinely (exclusively) pushes one agenda or point of view in a specific editing area, and then supports sanctions on those whose editing conflicts with that agenda, despite a lack of serious misbehaviour, it's pretty helpful and common to raise that point. This is the case for any issue, whether it be Israel/Palestine, Gamergate, or AP2. Cjhard (talk) 20:02, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Unsubstantiated accusations of tag teaming are uncivil, see WP:Tag team. See also WP:Wikispeak#T: "tag team n. & v". Bishonen | talk 20:27, 13 November 2017 (UTC).

I don't really see an accusation there or anything even remotely uncivil. Perhaps is pretty mild - not really worth a civility warning, imo. Seraphim System 20:31, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm not going to hat someone's !vote. Their reasoning is, in my view, transparently inadequate and I wouldn't expect any closer in their right mind is going to give it much weight, but that decision is for the closer to make, not me trying to keep the discussion vaguely in order. We all know the narratives that are constructed around the AP2 subject area. Responding to that kind of comment only leads to endless threads of bickering that make it that much harder to form any sort of consensus at AN/I. Please just let it go. GoldenRing (talk) 11:10, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Daniel Steele

I thought the information shared there was mainly bullets points, which as far as I am aware avoids copyright violation due to the fact that it is mere facts, like a recipe, without further elucidation. That blog got the info from here: https://library.syr.edu/digital/guides_sua/html/sua_steele_d_prt.htm. I'd be happy to rewrite it so that it avoids any possibility of copyright infringement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CrossReach (talk • contribs) 18:30, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

You've got mail

Thank you

Thank you for the highly considerate approach you've shown in connection with the unblock request for BS. If the user still persistently resorts to sockpuppetry and CU reveals the same, no one can help! --Muzammil (talk) 18:55, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Question regarding what you said in AE

If for example I have asked the user not to use this term and they refused.Does it sanctionable conduct in your opinion?--Shrike (talk) 15:03, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

@Shrike: It depends a lot on the discussion, I think. Have you? GoldenRing (talk) 15:46, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

No I didn't I already explained my line of thought that such experienced editor should understand those basics.Do you think its would be suitable to do it now or after AE ends?--Shrike (talk) 15:51, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

@Shrike: IMO your best course is to withdraw the complaint at AE (I've not looked at it in a few hours, but I'd guess there's not a lot of appetite for sanctions anyway) and take this matter up with Huldra elsewhere. After all, what do you care about more, getting the content into NPOV shape or getting sanctions against Huldra? There are some things that are brought to AE that are cut and dried; violations of 0RR, 1RR, 3RR or whatever applies on a page, personal attacks, violation of a 'consensus required' restriction and so on are all things which I'd usually be in favour of sanctioning straight away (though it still depends on the severity & circumstances). The choice of one term over another on NPOV grounds is not one of those 'bright line' situations and it would have to be pretty egregious for me to support sanctions the first time around. It's not something you can write a hard-and-fast rule on; if an editor is changing a neutral term for a POV one en masse, that probably merits sanctions. If the term has been discussed and there is a clear consensus not to use it, that the editor was clearly aware of, that probably merits sanctions. If an editor is using the term in the course of content creation and no-one's even mentioned to them it might be a problem, I don't think sanctions are the answer. The point of discretionary sanctions is to reduce drama and conflict in the topic area, not to use as a game of 'gotcha' to remove opponents from the topic. These edits were not causing disruption, so the first step should have been to discuss it with them; for all you know, they might have just said, "Oh, yeah, good point, I'll go and change it." No drama there, and this is what we like. GoldenRing (talk) 15:58, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Appeal

Here you go. Volunteer Marek  16:36, 15 November 2017 (UTC)