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Plagiarism Detector Bot

Daniel Brandt has done us a huge favor with his Plagiarism Detector Bot ( http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/psamples.html), which scours our database, looking for key phrases that exist other than in Wikimirrors. I urge everyone to use this wonderful tool.

However, I do urge caution, since the bot doesn't recognize when large samples of text are public domain and hence I erroneously removed 90% of Charles Wheatstone, before realizing that the site Brandt's bot thought was the original source... had taken it from a book on Project Gutenberg (I have since replaced the material). DS 01:32, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Cute. It is good to know I will be able to do something while waiting for Wherebot to report suspected copyright violations. Thanks  :-) -- ReyBrujo 01:40, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I was thinking the same thing. :) Garion96 (talk) 02:14, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

First 19 lines are now clear.Geni 01:49, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually it's not a bot, I think he actually ran 30,000 google searches by hand. At least that's the impression people got on Misplaced Pages Review. Anyway, I encourage people not to delete the articles wholesale, just remove the copyvio stuff, these all seem to be valid article topics and almost every one I looked at had at least enough non-copyvio text for a stub. --W.marsh 02:03, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

use selective delete to remove copyvio struff from history. It is a bot. Sure it had a fair bit of human supervision but it was a bot. So the challange is to build a better one (I can think of a few improvements).Geni 02:06, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah now he's confirmed that it was a bot... initially he didn't say that. Anyway, it seems it's not as easy for him to run as he implied. Nevertheless it generates useful results for improving Misplaced Pages. --W.marsh 02:11, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I can't figure out what is going on with Milton Bradley.Geni 02:16, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

dito Matteo RicciGeni 02:31, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I've created a list at User:W.marsh/list so we can hopefully organize this ad hoc effort better. Shouldn't take much longer. --W.marsh 02:19, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

• We actually DO have a bot that works on this task, User:Wherebot, focusing on newly created articles that are copyvio and listing them at Misplaced Pages:Suspected copyright violations. — xaosflux 02:44, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Most of these seem to have been created years ago and are just not very frequently editted articles. We catch most stuff when Wherebot is up nowadays. --W.marsh 02:57, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget that a lot of websites steal Misplaced Pages's content without attribution, so what you may be deleting from here is actually the original and it's the other site that's a copyvio. --Cyde Weys 02:45, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Not run across one like that yet (except perhaps the problem ones I've mentioned above) a couple form PD sources on credited.Geni 02:52, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok it happened assumeing the dates are correct Francis Cunningham was coppied from us.Geni 03:19, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Hasn't a german journalist been fired because of copying and not citing the German Misplaced Pages? -- ReyBrujo 03:27, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that is any of our concern. More importantly is figureing out where the text was coppied from (the intial version looks like a copyvio but I can't find it).Geni 03:33, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

That was called a "trivia". I believe we could contact the journalist and ask from where the information was picked. If from Misplaced Pages, we can request to quote us. If from another source, we know from where our version has been copied). -- ReyBrujo 03:46, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Two things, shouldn't the copyvio versions be deleted, instead of just reverting to the last sane version? Also, note that Jimbo modified the CSD:G12 criteria, now a blatant copyvio article can be tagged with {{db-copyvio}} at any time, not only in its first 48 hours. We may tag them as speedy instead of sending them to CP. Unless you want to wait for Jimbo's reply. More on this here -- ReyBrujo 02:59, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I recently had a discussion about that. According to this old page and the instruction on WP:CP reverting is good enough. Perhaps it should be changed. That would mean lots of extra work though. Garion96 (talk) 03:12, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

• Incidentally, the edit summary I'm using is "removed material as per Daniel Brandt's anti-plagiarism bot (thank you, Mr Brandt!)", which I feel is polite and considerate. I suggest that we all use it in this circumstance. DS 03:03, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

This should be handled through deletion rather than editing.Geni 03:04, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

We're down to just 4. But there's more work to do, people should create stubs for the articles that had to be deleted. --W.marsh 03:35, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Finnished except Francis Cunningham and Francis Cunningham where I'm not quite sure what coppied what.Geni 03:47, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I removed the text from Georges Bizet (it was just 1.5 paragraphs) but couldn't find where it crept in. That's the last one left on the list I started. --W.marsh 03:49, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

This bot does not look at article history, and it effect has way too many false positives, like Henryk Sienkiewicz. Please always verify in the article history that the allegedly plagiarized text was copied in a single edit. If it wasn't, it's most likely copied the other way. Taw 19:19, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Precisely. This bot should be thought of as a way to detect instances where Misplaced Pages articles and external (non-mirror, non-clone, non-GFDL) websites have identical text. It is not detecting copyvios, and it is not detecting who did the copying. That requires a human to answer the question: "Did they copy from us, or did we copy from them?" That was the reason for the 48-hour limit in the first place. If that 48-hour rule is being discarded, then more care needs to be taken, especially if sections of articles are being detected, rather than whole articles. Carcharoth 21:04, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, imagine what will happen if someone finds that an article that they wrote 4 years ago has been deleted from here and is now claimed by another website that gives no attribution to Misplaced Pages? The system will have failed in a massive way. Carcharoth 21:11, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

The plurality of them were copy and pasted from Brittanica. I'm not too concerned about the feelings of the people who did that. Bizet apparently was swiped from Misplaced Pages without credit, but that's been fixed. --W.marsh 21:58, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Removing the plagiarism so quickly was a job well done and the admins who did it deserve a pat on the back. But now we really need to go after those who inserted the copyvios, see what else they've been up to and take appropriate action. That's going to be a lot more work. Haukur 22:00, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Brandt spent days of careful work weeding out false positives before publishing his samples. So while you should always double check, I think we don't need to worry too much here about accidentally deleting good stuff. Haukur 21:42, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if this comment is intended as a joke, but there are at least a couple copied from government and other websites which contain explicit grants of permission "for any purpose", etc. —Centrx→talk • 00:19, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Direct, verbatim copying from an uncopyrighted source is not a copyright violation. The so-called "plagiarism bot" is not interested in copyright violations, but rather in plagiarism. However, direct copying from an uncopyrighted source, where attribution is lacking or inadequate, is still plagiarism. The cure in this case is to add an attribution to the article. You have plagiarism, on the one hand, and you have copyright violations on the other hand. Many times an article, or a series of sentences within an article, is guilty of both. Other times it isn't. One reason why this concept is so difficult to grasp is that Misplaced Pages's policies rarely mention plagiarism, and this has left editors confused. 68.91.88.245 14:33, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Good point. Copying in PD text from the 1911 Britannica is not a copyright violation, but if you fail to attribute the 1911 Britannica when you first upload it, and continue to attribute the 1911 Britannica until the text is significantly rewritten, then that is plagiarism. Carcharoth 14:46, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

However plagiarism is not illegal per se so I'm less concernded about that.Geni 09:23, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Mere plagiarism is not a reason to delete anything. —Centrx→talk • 19:16, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

It likely means you have uncited claims which is problimatical.Geni 21:51, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Useful concept

All the above aside... Brandt seems to have found an effective method of locating long-standing copyright problems (along with false positives) in semi-obscure seldom edited articles. This seems like a good thing which we should examine and try to apply globally. Brandt claims to have checked 15,000 articles... which equates to about 1%. His list was focused on 'biographical info of pre 1900 individuals'... which logically is going to have a higher incidence of overlooked copyvios than more current information, but the same techniques could logically be applied to any article. How plausible would it be to build a bot to perform a scan of all articles and generate a list of suspect cases for review? --CBD 22:55, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

It's imposible for it to entirely be a bot, as most results returned would be false positives that would need experienced human review to sort out. We already have WP:SCV which should detect any new copyvios (and more help is always welcome there, we've probably identified at least 1,000 copyvios through it so far) but finding old stuff returns so many false positives from mirrors, people who've pasted articles to forums, blogs, etc. that it takes a ton of human effort to comb through the results generated by any search engine comparison results of finding copyvios. Thus far, ironically, Brandt has been the only person willing to devote that many hours to such a project. Plus, I imagine actually running 1.4 million+ probably involves a breach of Google/Yahoo/whoever's TOS somehow or other, unless you want to wait 1,400 days for the results (or whatever they cap the daily searches at). So it could be done, but there are some major obstacles to it. --W.marsh 23:40, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Brandt somehow bypassed Google's '1000 per day' cap. Between that and himself violating copyright, by displaying all of the copyvios he found, Brandt really seems to have a poor grasp of the 'ethics' he ostensibly seeks to promote.

So it seems like our best bet may be to continue doing manual spot checks of suspect seeming articles. A huge project, on the lines of the 'missing encyclopedia articles' concept, might be a complete 'article review'. Get the list of current articles as of now and start going through them one by one for copyvios, obvious vandalism, WP:BLP problems, et cetera. Would take a long time... and likely need to be repeated periodically, but it is probably the direction we should be heading with the whole 'quality over quantity' change in focus. When stable versions are implemented (assuming they are along the lines of what has been discussed at the German Misplaced Pages) a project like this would be good for cleaning up all of our older articles to have a 'non vandalized version'. --CBD 11:40, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Woudn't copying the source texts and the plagiarized texts on Misplaced Pages to expose copyvios count as fair use? Turnitin has another database that is full of copyvios which is probably protected by fair use to fiind plagiarism by students whose papers are run through it. (I found out about this service while I was researching what counts as plagiarism because I was assigned to grade a fellow student's paper in a peer grading system, and it looked like a plagiarized paper. My professor confirmed that it was a plagiarized paper in that incident.) Jesse Viviano 03:14, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

scans of databse dumps agaist know sources for people produceing copyvios would be a logical aproach.Geni 21:54, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

User:Benitrimi

Benitrimi (talk · contribs) & 69.121.55.31 (talk · contribs) are/is reverting the article "Avni Abazi", thus removing an AfD template (added by User:Calton), removing wikilinks, and replacing "Kosovo" & "Priština" by the Albanian names "Kosova" & "Prishtina" (diff.). - Regards, Evv 03:04, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

He's been warned and it seems that he stopped. If continues, a block will be needed. I'll watch him. NCurse _work 07:12, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

69.121.55.31 (talk · contribs) again, same thing: diff. & diff.. - Evv 22:17, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Open letter

Evv, Deiz, Calton and Luna Santin I really appreciate the help and support that you were doing lately on my articles but honestly there is no need for that. I would like to advise you people to take care for articles like Ratko Mladić, Mr. Slobodan Milosevic and others like them and help the general readers know the truth about their miserable massacres that they did to kids and insistent people in Bosnia and Kosovo .

There is not just Mr. Abazi’s article that has been vandalized by you but all the Kosovo famous and honorable people including the history of Kosovo. It has been so clear that all the editing that you people have done about that Country is just to make a bad propaganda now that finally Serbia will lose for ever Kosovo in its final status which for sure would be Independent country as it disserves.

I understand your feeling because you are grown in the communism system where everything was leaded by the dictator and you were their kids doing the same they did with people from Kosovo. Even now through the internet you wana talk about us believing in your fathers lies that Kosovo is yours. 7 is the century that we accepted you in that region to work, clean for us and 7 is gona be the number that you gona say Goodbye for ever to Kosovo. Listen people Misplaced Pages is free and you can create any network to put adds and protected your fake ideas but please put ones your finger in your head and ask your self how can this be yours when there was never more than 10% shkije - serbs in there And what right do you have to talk about it when you may have never been there and when the whole world knows that Kosova/o is not Slavic place . Tell your fathers that All the churches and abbeys where owned by chthonic Albanians before 1200 and Vatican has the property papers for that. Accept the truth.

For the end. There wouldn’t be any other respond on this desiccation page or any other like this from me. I just needed to tell you this. You can take it off if you feel like some none Balkan people will read this little truth.

You do what you can to lie and I do what I can to tell the truth with my articles.

Beni — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.121.55.31 (talk • contribs) 11:54, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

• Who would have thought one non-notable actor had the future of an entire country riding on his shoulders? :) Well, I'm off to put my finger in my head. Deizio talk 18:57, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

User:Vcaaweb

Hello, this account appears to be being used as an 'official' account for an organisation (see my comment on the talk page). Just wondering if this should be kept an eye on? pfctdayelise (translate?) 15:27, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Accounts shouldn't be used by more than one person, may need blocking. *Vcaaweb (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log).--Andeh 15:38, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Role accounts are blocked by policy. A note to the user seems in order, and a suggestion that the users behind this ID establish accounts under their own identities, seems in order. So I left a message to that effect on the talk. If it's not replied to soon, a block (with a reference to the policy) seems in order. ++Lar: t/c 13:09, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Disputed fair use images

I have just tagged a very large number of judo-related images with a disputed fair use tag. Unfortunately if I had realized at the start what a bulk operation it would be, I might have gone about it differently, but I kept finding more (with Google) and was already well into the task when I finally found others here and saw how many there were. If I'd have known, I might have created a temporary template/category to group all these disputes together. So sorry that you don't have that. I don't know what now happens about actually discussing deleting them, whether they all need to be taken to WP:IFD. I'll leave them now entirely in the hands of you more knowledgeable people. But what does seem very clear to me from the examples of what is and isn't allowed under fair use (at WP:FU) is that using these images in articles about things contained in the film rather than the film itself doesn't count as fair use. Arbitrary username 20:28, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

If they stay tagged and there's no discussion, then sooner or later, FairuseBot is going to remove them from any articles they're in, and FritzBot or Roomba will then tag them for deletion as orphaned fairuse. This takes about a month to get the images deleted, but also usually generates the least amount of fuss. To get images deleted faster, tag them as {{Replaceable fair use}}, or if the violation is blatent enough, {{db-copyvio}}. --Carnildo 06:15, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. Frankly I do think that it is blatant enough to warrant {{db-copyvio}}, but as I say, I'm leaving them for others to deal with now, as I'm certainly not going through them all re-tagging them. I really don't see the point in creating unnecessary work for ourselves, as the speedy deletion templates are presumably only ultimately for the purpose of drawing them to the attention to administrators anyway, which I've now done by posting this message here. If an administrator agrees with me that they no way qualify for fair use as described in our policy on the matter, and is prepared to take responsibility for speedy-deleting them, then he/she is presumably able to do that without anyone having to go through retagging them all. Now that I've tagged them already, they are in fact very easily found just by looking at my contributions in the Image namespace: they all start "Image:Ej km" and there's not much else in there. Anyone, please? Thanks. Arbitrary username 07:56, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Uploader informed. If they remain tagged as fair use after 48 hours, they will be "speedyable" under CSD I7 provided that the deleting admin agrees that they do not satisfy fair use. Arbitrary username 08:49, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

For the record, the images in question have now been deleted (by User:Robdurbar). Arbitrary username 08:14, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, on a related note (although I appreciate that the following isn't something requiring admin privilege to deal with), I see that there are still a number of links to the video on Google Video. I've already explained elsewhere (, ) that it appears to me that that video is likely to be violating others' copyright. Does anyone have any thoughts on the matter if I go ahead and delete those hyperlinks? (By which I mean, preserve the link text, but stop it pointing to anything.) Thanks. Arbitrary username 08:50, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Race-baiting

Have a look at the contributions of Rbaish (talk · contribs). Looks to me like nothing but a steady chain of race-baiting. So far, he may be staying (barely) within what is allowed, but he certainly seems to me to be riding the line. - Jmabel | Talk 05:29, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

He certainly has some POV, but I don't see racism. —Centrx→talk • 05:45, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any violations of WP:CIVIL, WP:POINT, or other applicable policy. You might ask for references, but most of this user's edits are minor. Durova 15:43, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I'll leave it to others to make their own judgments about whether the guy's a racist or not. I certainly have my own opinion on that. :p He certainly seems to be trying to provoke -- but he hasn't succeeded. The text he's proposed inserting into the article is outrageous on its face -- as is his "rationale." It doesn't begin to pass muster -- which is probably why he hasn't inserted it, despite the urging of another editor. deeceevoice 18:00, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Please post diffs of specific examples you consider outrageous. Durova 22:28, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

As I said, I think the guy's intentionally trying to provoke, but so far he hasn't succeeded. This is the text he's stated he intends to insert into the article and my response.

I don't see that anyone has even talked to him about the problem, which I see as a real problem in the making. User:Jmabel appropriately removed an inappropriate link twice, but didn't discuss it with the editor. User:Zoe|(talk) 03:16, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

A somewhat related matter

There is, however, a matter to be brought to your (meant collectively) attention, and that is the edit-warring of a "new" user, whom I believe to be a sockpuppet, of either User: CoYep or, more likely, of User:Justforasecond, the latter having, I understand, announced his departure from Misplaced Pages a while back. User:J jackson (also a "new" member and, IMO, even more suspect as a sockpuppet than User:Rbaish), while committing no wiki violation in so doing, has visited the talk page to egg on Rbaish in this matter and repeatedly has block-reverted the article on Black supremacy to a highly and clearly purposely distorted, POV version. The deliberate distortions of fact have been detailed on the article talk page, and while Jackson has found the time to encourage User:Rbaish's unfortunate proposed additions, he has refused to respond to the critique of his preferred version or explain his block reverts. Yet, he continues to revert the text. Jackson has done precisely the same thing on Prognathism, reverting the article to an earlier, highly eurocentric -- and, IMO, racist -- treatment of the subject matter and refused to discuss his repeated, serial block reverts on the talk page in response to an earlier discussion about the eurocentric slant of the article, or to my later detailed explanation of the changes I've made. The same changes made by Jackson to Prognathism have been edit-warred repeatedly by an anonymous editor utilizing the same IP address. deeceevoice 04:01, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I've protected the page and recommended WP:RFC at Black supremacy. Left a message on an IP talk page, but noticed no one has left any messages on JJackson's talk page. Really, the appropriate way to address this is for one page editor to approach another page editor before asking for administrator involvement. Durova 18:10, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

IP vandal on Homer, Odyssey, etc.

4.21.182.18 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) received a final warning, continues to vandalize (e.g. ), was reported on WP:AIV, not blocked. IP belongs to a school and is shared by many users. --Akhilleus (talk) 17:25, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Blocked for 1 week. This is the eighth time the IP has been blocked. BTW, what do other admins think about longer blocks for school IPs? After reading this IP's talk page and block history I'm inclined to think that schools are no different from anywhere else: if the teachers and librarians don't supervise adequately then they can't expect to continue receiving unfettered access. Durova 17:43, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I re-add vandals to WP:AIV, even if an admin believes they shouldn't be blocked. And yes I know it says that you shouldn't re-add them, but admins are only human.--Andeh 18:12, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Follow-up - I had a couple of chats with the school district's IT folks. They've been very friendly and cooperative. I suggested that when they find the culprits they assign them to improve a Misplaced Pages article about local history under teacher supervision. This happens to be Plymouth, Massachusetts. :) Durova 05:15, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

possible sockpuppet?

There have been some strange going-ons at the voting for the article "Trentino-South Tyrol" during the voting procedure. The possibility of Misplaced Pages:Sock puppetry has been brought to me. Can someone take a look at the voting Talk:Trentino-South_Tyrol#Survey and give an opinion on User:Rarelibra and User:Vargwilku, or give further opinions? Thank you. Gryffindor 18:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Some quick background on this - Vargwilku already stated how he is a coworker of mine that accesses Wiki via my network connection. And Gryffindor and I have 'buried the hatchet' (per se) in allowing User:Lar to mediate the process that is ongoing with "Trentino-South Tyrol". I have not interfered one iota with you since this mediation began, Gryffindor. So you are bordering on wikistalking me in pursuing this (seeing that this entry is dated today). The final verdict of naming convention will be decided through the correct, consensus process with mediation by Lars. Please don't utilize any feelings of misgiving against me to cause you to continue to pursue things with me. As you can see by my contributions, I have been busy at work with various other projects and not taken the time to focus on you (as I see you have done to me). So if you would please mind doing the same and we can make positive contributing efforts, rather than waste time on administrators' noticeboards. Rarelibra 21:06, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

This is not an accusation of wiki-stalking, this is real. If you look at Gryffndor's pursuit of me, on my talk page I added an Archive. Gryffndor failed to notice this and accused me even more of removing things, when they were, in fact, on my archive page as is permittable by Misplaced Pages. Rarelibra 15:07, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Self-proclaimed Sockpuppet

user:Just to clarify says right on his user page that he is nothing but a sockpuppet. Just alerting the appropriate admin. Princemackenzie 19:21, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

• No crime in having a sockpuppet unless it is used abusively. As soon as you see that happening, report it. Until then, it's fine (for some reason) ➨ ЯEDVERS 19:49, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

• • Judging by these edits: http://en.wikipedia.org/Special:Contributions/Just_to_clarify I would consider those to be abusive, or at least borderline uncivil. Princemackenzie 19:54, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

• • • WP:SOCK#Legitimate uses of multiple accounts. Daniel.Bryant 00:31, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

User:ZEC117 using a backslashing proxy.

Per this edit he's using a backslashing proxy while submitting bad faith AFD nom, impersonating editors, and causing general disruption. Can someone bag and tag (at least the proxy)? Torinir _{( Ding my phone My support calls E-Support Options )} 23:53, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Dmcdevit already blocked the underlying proxy (WP:RFCU#ZEC117). —Cryptic 08:20, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Increasing impostor accounts on sister projects

Hello. I am a Wiktionary admin. I've notice an increase in impostor accounts of Misplaced Pages admins recently. Because rumors of "single user logon" (SUL) have been increasing lately, the "regular" Wiktionary vandals are making quite a run on well-known Misplaced Pages sysop names. I imagine the same is true on the other sister projects as well.

Misplaced Pages admins: please take a few minutes to create your accounts on the various sister projects. Please remember to update your own Special:Mypage here, indicating which accounts are not impostors.

--Connel MacKenzie - wikt 01:07, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

That's a good idea. Don't have to do every project, but it's no biggie to do say Wiktionary, the Commons, Wikisource and the other "biggies". --Woohookitty 11:39, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

User talk:Winona Gone Shopping

The user appears to have been using her talkpage in an odd manner; not sure what to make of it! Can anyone please investigate?? It looks like maybe she is abusing the feature in MediaWiki where a blocked user can edit their own talk page. --SunStar Net 10:56, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

looked like a blog to me. That and several subpages are now gone. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 11:45, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Yep and I added the indefblockeduser tags. I'll watchlist the page and protect it if she comes back. --Woohookitty 11:46, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Well she's back and I hope you all like getting email. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 12:00, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

It appears (s)he's also using socks. Image:FreeWinona.gif was uploaded today by User:Alexander 007, and was being used only on WGS's userpage. This is a rather akin to an instance of a copyvio image (Peek_a_boo.jpg) used on WGS's page last month, uploaded by User:James 007. That 007 had a history of bad uploads, including 'Winona Gone Shopping Logo1.jpg.' - and like WGS edited Macedonoan/Moldovian articles. Perhaps time for a checkuser?--Doc 12:09, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

She actually does admit to them being sockpuppets on her talk page. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 12:23, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Just for the record, for those who are not familiar with the case: "Winona" is a formerly productive contributor who has withdrewn from actual editing for several months now and seems to have been only trolling, and there has been strong indication of his/her account being used by several people - that's what makes all those now deleted pages so confusing, they are constantly talking to each other or themselves, or talking about themselves in the 3rd person, etc. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:01, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I have blanked and protected both the talk page and the user page. These users (and I am convinced there is more than one) are continuing to use the page as a blog. Having reviewed all the deleted sections I am convinced that a group of people have been using the page and possibly Misplaced Pages as an experiment of some sort. I also think that she was trying to con User:Khoikhoi into getting the account unblocked. Take a look at the deleted versions, in particular the 23 October version. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 15:42, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I emailed the user, reminding them of WP:NOT. Thanks for protecting the page, people, much appreciated. SunStar Net 16:54, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

No, he wasn't trying to con me—it was actually I who asked Tony about him being unblocked. I guess there isn't much hope in that anymore... The reason why I suggested it was that, as Fut.Perf. said: Winona was formerly a productive contributor, and I was hoping that by unblocking him he would go back to encyclopedia-building. He wasn't really given much of a chance, though. I don't think that he would start making death threats again (the reason he was blocked in the first place). Khoikhoi 23:48, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

And the only death threat that she/he/they made was in an edit summary on User talk:Winona Gone Shopping. The threat consisted of a dare: out of nowhere, it stated that it could kill anyone who permanently banned it. There was no prior talk of banning the user. As the user explained later, it issued this challenge because it wanted to get itself blocked ASAP, and it used this ruse. User:Tony Sidaway decided to indulge its/their game, and he indefinitely blocked the user. You see how silly it was. 69.228.52.2 00:54, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

The non-specific death threat was a ploy. I don't think it called for an indefinite block. And if the User were to be unblocked I'm pretty sure it would have no use for any more threats because it would not want to get itself banned again. 69.228.52.2 01:10, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Hello? I don't want to be accused of writing a blog (if I'm writing a blog here, then so are the editors above) but I can explain more. It seems like the entire dare shows how stupid some processes are. After all, the "threat" would have been meaningless unless someone came along and indefinitely blocked it. And besides that threat and one other offensive edit summary, there was nothing in its activity that called for any type of block. Basically, the affair was silly and it called for some months of banning at most (a disruptive game, more than a threat), and those months (since July) were served. 69.228.52.2 01:31, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

WP:NOT, WP:TROLL, WP:DICK, WP:POINT, pick a feature—and, make no mistake, a preemptive threat is still a threat. Since we're all—theoretically, anyway—here to build an encyclopedia, there is nothing this user currently offers on point, period. Bad rubbish, and all that... RadioKirk (u|t|c) 01:37, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

No, I don't think the prank that this user pulled called for an indefinite ban. If the user is unbanned, what will it do? Blow up Misplaced Pages? Probably it won't even edit much, if at all. Obviously, a preemptive threat is a threat in most contexts ("If you take my car, I will kill you John", or "I will kill the diplomat if he comes to my town"), but when somebody just comes out of nowhere, when there is no talk at all of a block, and says that it will kill whoever permanently blocks it, then someone comes and blocks it, that affair is obviously stupid on both sides. 69.228.52.2 01:46, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

(to RadioKirk) Yes, but if we give users like GreekWarrior (whose contributions mostly consisted of threats and trolling) second chances, I think we should apply the same rules towards Winona. Alright, I agree that Misplaced Pages is not a blog, but indef blocking for a single threat doens't seem right to me. All that would've been necessary is to give the user a stern warning, and tell him/her not to use Misplaced Pages inappropriately. If they don't follow up to it then a ban would've made sense. Khoikhoi 01:50, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

While it's obviously (though only occasionally) possible that users will get back on track and treat Misplaced Pages for what it is, there are certain activities for which I'm disinclined to give a second chance; some users have felt threatened in real life and left Misplaced Pages over the threat of death; AFAIC, anyone who makes such a threat should be dealt with in the sternest possible measures, both on- and off-Wiki—and I mean this with every fiber of my family's well-being... RadioKirk (u|t|c) 02:01, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Keep in mind that the person is capable of creating a new account and contributing productively—they have created sockpuppets before. The indefinite block just means they can't keep their contributions which make them appear to be an established user, and they can't keep their favorite nickname. —Centrx→talk • 02:19, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Centrx. The postings of the previous anonymous IP are unnecessary and should be disregarded. User:Winona Gone Shopping did not have any WP:Point in mind when it made that so-called threat. It was simply initiating a block to set up its talk page for its blog (experiment, prank, cryptic hints at something, who knows what was going on there). As this shows, May 5th 2006 was the end-point/start-off point for something. As regards the block, it suits the party just fine. I can't figure out the point of all the confusion in that talk page, but beneath it there is a possibility of multiple deceptive users, and Misplaced Pages does not need that. 64.183.52.10 04:39, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

User:Horde Zla

Can someone check this guy out? He is constantly enforcing POV on Vesna Pisarović, Vladimir Prelog and Ivana Miličević articles. If you check his contributions (http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special:Contributions&target=Horde+Zla) you will see that the only thing he did so far is edit-warring and POV enforcing on those articles. I have also found his style of writing (check on his talk page -> User_talk:Horde_Zla) and communication extremely similar (identical in fact) to another earlier user who was banned and also used sockpuppets User:Hahahihihoho (his sockpuppet User:Thunderman). Observe Talk:Ivana Miličević and compare it with recent User:Horde Zla posts and you will see that they are identical, you will also notice that he enfoced his POV on those same articles with those accounts as well. I have reasonable doubt that this is the same person.--Factanista 14:47, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I've blocked the account as a sock of Hahahihihoho. Thanks for the tip, Factanista, and if you come across any other obvious socks of Hahahihihoho, please report them on Suspected sock puppets and/or simply drop a line on my page, as I'm pretty familiar with his editing. Bishonen | talk 20:13, 27 October 2006 (UTC).

Annonamous user 216.195.203.194

Annonamous user 216.195.203.194 has been causing trouble (just check his contributions). Please do something about it. Thanks. Mr Rookles 15:31, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

He has been blocked for 24 hours. NCurse _work 17:28, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

deletion of joe leste article

I hope this is the right place to put this. The article on Joe Leste was deleted as being "non-notable". While he may not be as notable as Eddie Van Halen, for example, I don't think he qualifies as NON-notable either. Gringo300 19:39, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Please see Misplaced Pages:Deletion review. Jkelly 19:45, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Could Someone Help Me Out with an Undeletion?

I am wondering if someone could briefly undelete User:WCityMike/monobook.js. It is admittedly for selfish reasons but is a small task; I'd like to use some of the monobook hacks I had there on a private MediaWiki installation I'm using as a notebook of sorts. If you're kind enough to do so, my thanks in advance. — Mike 20:28, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Done. The history is fully restored. Just tag it if you want it redeleted. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 20:33, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

My thanks. — Mike 20:35, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

An unlicensed illustration and edit warring

I've been railing against this eurocentric image for a long time. And as luck would have it, the edit warrior who originally inserted this image and claimed to have done it himself (no longer on record as having done so; the file history was changed) was, apparently, not on the up and up. The image is ]. I've happily expunged it from the article, but it needs to be deleted from the system. I contacted A.D.A.M., the project to which this image is attributed on the image page, about the limited, blatantly eurocentrist information on that website about prognathism -- and received the unexpected response that Misplaced Pages has no right to publish the image. The contact also responded that he recognized that the information, which -- like the eurocentrist version of the wikipedia article that keeps getting edit-warred back in -- is unpardonably inaccurate. Prognathism is not inherently a pathological condition; in fact, the majority of the peoples (mostly non-white) of the world have some degree of prognathism. However, the eurocentric version of the wiki article treats it, first and foremost, as an abnormal condition.

Yeah, yeah. I know all this is off-point, but I decided to make my case here one more time (since it's gotten absolutely no attention above under "Race baiting"). Someone needs to intervene to stop the blatantly eurocentrist version of the article from remaining in place. The edit warriors repeatedly have been invited to weigh in on the talk page before reverting a perfectly reasoned, balanced and accurate version -- and they repeatedly have refused to do so.

Anyway, here's a diff for the guy at A.D.A.M.'s comments about the copyright status of the eurocentric illustration. Someone, please delete this image permanently. It's a copyright violation. deeceevoice 21:44, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I deleted the image. I'll note that it is a common mistake to think that everything on a U.S. government website is in the public domain, when in fact much of the material is licensed for republication there but is still under copyright by the creator. Jkelly 21:52, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Yep. But I remember distinctly that when this image was first introduced, an edit-warring Wiki editor actually took credit for creating it. I don't know if that image ended up being deleted and was eventually replaced with this one -- but if so, the earlier image was a plagiarized version of this one. (Too bad there's no record of it now.) Anyway, thanks for taking care of the image. deeceevoice 22:30, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Another serial plagiarizer

Almost all edits I've looked at by Duggie roy@hotmail.com (talk · contribs) are copied from various websites with no attribution. At least one was from NASA and public domain per the terms of their website, but most are from sites that claim a copyright. This editor seems to mean well and at least cleans up and formats his copy and pastes somewhat, but nevertheless he'd made about 150 edits and most to all seem to be plagiarism, including ones as far back as July of this year. I've deleted a handful of them and will eventually get them all dealt with, but more help is appreciated. --W.marsh 23:04, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm going through some of them now, I haven't found a single edit of his that wasn't plagiarism in some way. Sometimes he changes around punctuation and some words, but it still remains an obvious derivative work.--Konst.able 23:45, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I've done about 15-20 so far, a few weren't plagiarism apparently but most were.

Additionally, he says on my talk page that he won't do it any more... so now we should just have to deal with the existing ones. --W.marsh 23:48, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Keep open to the possibility that it is a sock of the notorious plagiarizer Primetime (talk · contribs). He, too, would usually promise to stop when discovered. -Will Beback 02:20, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

A small issue at Misplaced Pages:Editor review

Two hours after creating his/her account, Hipster Beatnik (talk · contribs) requested an editor review for Rainbowwarrior1977 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log), who apparently is indef blocked. Could an admin delete the review? I am informing this here in case someone wants to check Hipster Beatnik. Thanks. -- ReyBrujo 02:43, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Review deleted, sock blocked.--Konst.able 06:23, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Clear Water Academy

My idiot friends decided to add their phone number to the article in the title, and the Administration there found out. While the page has been reverted, the principal is still concerned that people will look at the history and find the person's phone number. Is there any way to take off the edits from the history on this page from user Pmichaelh? Dylanga 04:01, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I deleted the information from the edit history and will leave a note for an oversight to cleanup the remnants. Are there any edits left? Cowman109 04:11, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Nope, no edits left... I am eternally in your debt! Thanks! Dylanga 04:23, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Giano

This case is now closed and the results have been published at the link above.

Kelly Martin is thanked for her long and honorable service. As Kelly Martin and Tony Sidaway gave up their sysop and other rights under controversial circumstances, they must get them back through normal channels. Giano II may, if developers cooperate, be restored to access to the account Giano. He is requested to avoid sweeping condemnations of other users when he has a grievance. Jdforrester is reminded to maintain decorum appropriate for an Arbitrator.

For the Arbitration Committee. Arbitration Committee Clerk, Thatcher131 14:08, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

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

Archived - Agree with Newyorkbrad, best for all of us if we don't go here --Doc 18:06, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

• This is a generally peaceful resolution to the disputes that broke out here 2 months ago. If people want to know the details of how the various potential and voiced issues were dealt with or not, please see the talk page of the proposed decision, and let's all pick up needful issues appropriately and in a proper venue, if desired, and otherwise go about our business of writing an encyclopedia. Geogre 14:28, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Eh? Yes, the case is over - accepted. And you're basically content with it - fine. But since you well know others will not be, how is this comment helpful?? How is it helpful for you to open a thread and lecture us in this venue, just inviting people like me to be stupid enough to respond to you? Salt is best not rubbed in wounds. Now, we're probably all doomed to battle over who gets the last word in this? Foolishly, yours)--Doc 14:48, 28 October 2006 (UTC) Sorry, I shouldn't have risen to the bait.--Doc 16:09, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
• Excuse me? First, I'm supposed to be the leader, and now I'm trying to get the last word? My fault for believing you were sincere? If I was "leader" of the anti- forces, then I was trying to assure those who haven't been in the trenches that this is a thing best discussed in other forums, and I was trying to tell them to look there for the issues and how the parties feel about them, rather than here. Good Lord, man, try to have some benefit of the doubt, if no actual good faith assumptions! Geogre 17:53, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
  • And, uh, how do you think you were baited? Since you weren't in dialog here, how are you baited? How is anyone baited by telling people that things are resolved as far as this case goes and that anything new needs to be done in another forum? Also, how is this getting in the last word when the announcement is in AN/I as well as here, on talk pages as well as here, etc., and I only thought to try to head off further discussion on AN, where the actual firestorm that brought the case occurred. I felt that this particular case closing summary needed more detail for the AN folks who might still have raw nerves on the situation. I foolishly thought more of them would be on the "anti" side than the "pro" side, but your response shows that I was wrong. Geogre 17:56, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Let's stop this now. Good faith assumed all around and can we think in terms of not having another round of this before we come full circle to two months ago. Can someone kindly put one of those nice shaded archival boxes around this section? Newyorkbrad 17:57, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

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

Page protection for LTTE

I wanted to ask for temporary (full) protection of the LTTE page, in order to prevent a revert war and complicate the mediation effort that started a week or so ago. This would encourage all sides to sit and talk rather that unilaterally impose changes on the page and expect a cycle of reverts. Elalan 15:04, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

You'll be looking for the Requests for Page Protection page, then. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:58, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Angela Beesley

I've moved this from Talk:Angela Beesley as this is more a matter of policy than Angela's article. It seems that the reputation of a school is bing "damaged by gossip spread by Misplaced Pages Volunteers".

Dear Angela, Please accept my apology in advance if this is not the place to share this information. The rules of Misplaced Pages are such that I am personally lost with regarding to correct forums for various purposes. That being said, please forgive me, and take a few minutes to read the following:

Linda Christas, as school of over 4000 online students and over 300 faculty and counselors has been damaged by gossip spread by Misplaced Pages Volunteers. Our parents, faculty and students have attempted on several occasions to add Linda Christas to Misplaced Pages. We are a recognized effort to reform Western public and private schools. We do that by taking the aptitudes, skill levels, interests and learning style of each student PRIOR to adopting curriculum. In other words, we believe that much of the alienation found in classrooms throughout the West is a result of the West adopting the system of klaxons, bells and whistles, as well as one size fits all curricula for children as if children all matured at the same time and in the same way, such as we might find with carrots.

We feel financially damaged since one of our celebrity board members, Alison Jiear, resigned from our board as a result of Misplaced Pages sharing with her gossip that a true racist shared with her, gossip incidently which was just that. But, Alison's management didn't seem to care if the material was true or not. They recommended that she resign and she did.

Over and over again, we have been deleted from Misplaced Pages, even though Pat Boone, Efrem Zimbalist Jr, and Sue Grafton, along with pioneering surgeons, Naval officers and Fulbright scholars have endorsed the school.

We really do not wish to involve ourselves in any type of litigation. We simply want to be treated fairly with a permanent entry on Misplaced Pages. Surely this isn't asking too much given the treatment our students, faculty and parents have been subject to thus far from Misplaced Pages volunteers.

Please keep in mind that Linda Christas is oppposing a one size fits all monolith supported by hundreds of billions of education dollars each year. We do not collect any public money, and it is safe to say that we are outmatched by public sector power. If we cannot even be recognized by a liberal organization such as Misplaced Pages, we certainly are doomed.

Ronald F. Bernard, Dean, Linda Christas www.lindachristas.org

The following was the note I received from a Misplaced Pages volunteer after my protest of the latest deletion.

Dear Ronald Bernard, Thank you for your mail. Ronald Bernard <rbernard@lindas.com> wrote:

> 
> *Dear Misplaced Pages,
>
> It has been brought to our attention by Alison Jiear that someone at
> Misplaced Pages has been reading IP addresses and misinterpreting them as
> coming from the same computer9s).
>
> Our servers process e-mails from over 4,000 students and their families
> daily.
>
> One of the things we ask of all our students and faculty is they use the
> school's servers so we will have a record of daily activities at the
> school similar to a brick and mortar institution.
> 
> That means, of course that the IP addresses will be similar for all
> e-mails processed through the school's servers.
>
> So many people believe that they are computer literate and most are, but
> reading  IP addresses to uncover dishonesty is not demonstrative of very
> much.
>
> That Linda Christas must continually fight for any recognition is a
> mystery to our faculty and our students.
>
> I see that once again, Linda Christas International School has been
> eliminated from Misplaced Pages, when brick and mortar kindergartens with
> enrollments of as few as 25 are maintained.
>
> With over 4,000 students world wide and 312 licensed counselors and
> credentialed teachers, someone or some-many are not being fair with our
> School.
>
> And, we do not know what to do about that.
>
> Any counsel you may wish to share with us regarding how we can maintain
> a listing for Linda Christas would be very much appreciated.
> 
> Our best,
>
> Ronald F. Bernard
> Dean
> Linda Christas*> 

I'm sorry to hear your experience with Misplaced Pages has been frustrating.Articles on Misplaced Pages are deleted according to our Deletion Policy:<http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy>. If your article was deleted by an administrator without a discussion, thatmeans the article probably met one of the criteria for Speedy Deletionoutlined here:<http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion> If yourarticle was speedy deleted, this may be because it was extremely short orbecause it did not provide information about why its subject was notableenough for inclusion in an encyclopedia. If your article was deleted after a debate on "articles for deletion"(<http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion>), it isbecause members of the community decided that your article was for some reasonunsuitable for inclusion; possible reasons include being not verifiable fromoutside sources, or because it was a page on a person, group, or idea that isnot sufficiently well-known for an encyclopedia article. If you believe after reading the deletion policy that your article wasunfairly deleted, you can ask the administrator who deleted the article for afuller explanation. (You can find out which admin deleted the article bysearching for your article title in the deletion log at<http://en.wikipedia.org/Special:Log/delete>.) If after an explanationyou still believe the deletion was unfair, you can bring up the article atDeletion Review (http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Deletion_review) wherethe community can take another look to see if the article was deleted inerror. For more guidance on how to write a Misplaced Pages article, you might find thenewcomers' guide to writing Misplaced Pages articles helpful:<http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Your_first_article> The Tutorial is also a good reference for help on all aspects of Wikipediaediting: <http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Tutorial> I hope this helps, and I'm sorry for any trouble this has caused you. Yours sincerely,Michelle Kinney -- Misplaced Pages - http://en.wikipedia.org---Disclaimer: all mail to this address is answered by volunteers, and responsesare not to be considered an official statement of the Wikimedia Foundation.For official correspondence, you may contact the site operators at<http://www.wikimediafoundation.org>.71.142.242.201 00:58, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

The AfD was full of spa's and sockpuppetting, with several of the spas having been proven to be from the same IP address. There were zero independent sources for any of the claims, including that the named individuals are really members of the board. Despite repeated requests for verification, none was forthcoming. If you want to take it to DRV, you may certainly do so, but more sockpuppeting there will do no good, and you should read WP:SNOW. If you feel the need to take legal action, please contact the Misplaced Pages legal representation, but threats here will only lead to any accounts making such threats being blocked. User:Zoe|(talk) 01:40, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm somewhat confused by the claims in this. It seems to assert being damaged by gossip and "result of Misplaced Pages sharing with her gossip that a true racist shared with her". Yet I'd woukd have thought that gossip would be pointed to, so it could be sorted out. Instead it just stays as just vague claim, the fact that their isn't an article means this "gossip" can't be there, nor does the AFD appear to contain "gossip". The second sentence makes no sense, who was it who told the gossip Misplaced Pages or this "true racist"? Or is the suggestion that this "true racist" said that wikipedia contained gossip? Regardless of that I can't see how Misplaced Pages containing an article on the subject would solve this problem. --pgk 09:57, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

From what I can gather in the deleted talk page comments there were apparently things said on other sites which they are attributing to 'Misplaced Pages volunteers'. They describe these 'off-Misplaced Pages' comments as negative/biased against them, but don't provide any actual links that I saw. In any case, the extreme 'ranting quotient' in all of this does make it rather hard to follow. I'd expect an educational group to be capable of presenting a better / more coherent case... and thus find the whole thing rather questionable. There continues to be no evidence that this group has ever been mentioned in a reliable third party source... or even that it IS a 'group' rather than a web-page set up by one person. Maybe they exist and do something noteworthy... but if that were the case you'd expect to be able to easily find evidence of it - or that they would be able to provide such. --CBD 12:34, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Speedy deletion assistance required.

Currently running at 97 articles. Any spare admins out there at the moment? All assistance appreciated! (aeropagitica) 20:46, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Ahh...too many images! At the moment, there are around 40 articles needing deletion, and 200+ images. Nishkid64 01:04, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

There appear to be several images at CAT:CSD that were uploaded with {{db-noncom}} in licensing; see Image:Babalogo.gif and Image:1981 Datsun 810.PNG. Am I missing something? Why would the images be uploaded with that tag? Chick Bowen 03:03, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

You can choose that option at Special:Upload. It works the same way as 'found the image on the web somewhere'. It is best that uploaders are honest about what licence the image has, rather than pick a licence which does not apply. -- zzuuzz 03:09, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, now I get it. Sorry, I've been away for a few months, and some things have changed. I've deleted both. Chick Bowen 03:33, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

How can this work? When users upload images with invalid licences, should they be deleted immediately? Conscious 10:39, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Depends, idealy you may want to give them an hour or so to make sure they have read the message and gotten a chance to either make a fair use claim or pick a better license (people seem to often tag self made material as "permission to use on Misplaced Pages", wich is unfortunate, if it looks self made I sometimes change the tag to "no license" and drop them a note to make sure they have a chance to fix it). Also if the image is obviously fair use (like a logo or albumcover) you may want to just fix the tagging rater than delete too. --Sherool (talk) 11:27, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

What about automatically adding {{subst:nld}} instead of a speedy deletion tag in this case, to provide for a one-week waiting period? Conscious 12:03, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, "delete on sight" is what the famous email says. So the speedy deletion tag makes sense from that point of view. Chick Bowen 04:14, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

As they currently seem to get in the way of more important speedies (attack pages etc.), I would prefer putting these images in a separate category. That should mean they will be processed within 48 hours, which is not guaranteed in C:CSD because the category hasn't been empty recently, and some images might linger there for days without any control. Kusma (討論) 16:19, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Still the backlog not cleared for 2 days, get busy admins. feydey 18:25, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

• I'm visiting the page 3-4 times a day, and the count isn't dropping below 50. Everyone, if you know the CSD criteria well, please try to remember to glance over there a few times a day. We're getting a higher than usual number of mis-tagged CSD's, but the bulk of them are still legitimate speedy deletes. Geogre 02:55, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Saber's Beads

Saber's Beads article appears to be created by someone who claims to have discovered a "new" lunar phenomenon. I've asked for sources, but none were provided and the citation templates on the page were removed. I think it meets WP:CSD A7 criteria, but I'd like someone else to take a look. It certainly seems like a neologism since if this effect is real, it probably has another name, because lunar observation has been going on for centuries. Primary sources for the article are the creators personal Geocities web page. --Dual Freq 22:55, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

It's not an A7, as it's about a scientific phenomenon, not a person or group of persons or a website. I'd suggest AfD; a Geocities page is not, in the great majority of cases, a reliable source. Stuff like this is what WP:OR was invented for, and if he can't produce a significantly better source then AfD will take a dim view. The phenomenon he's describing does exist, but I don't think this guy is remotely the first to see it. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:39, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Isn't this just a specialised case of Baily's beads? Shimgray | talk | 23:40, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I was thinking A7 since he's trying to assert notability for himself by saying he discovered the effect then linking his own website. It appears to be a back door biography since his bio was deleted:Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Saber (Musician) --Dual Freq 23:49, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

IMO neologism and original research, but as unfortunately article has been around for a while, AfD listing seems a good idea. I have so listed it. -- Infrogmation 23:58, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't seem as clear-cut as I first thought when I looked at it. The phenomenon is real and distinct from Baily's beads, and it's just obscure enough (pun not intended) that I wouldn't be completely surprised if it didn't have an established name yet. Nor is the name a pure vanity case; it was coined on a discussion board, but not by its namesake, and there's some evidence that it's spread. Indeed, it may be riding on the crescent-spotting meme that seems to be popular in some amateur astronomy circles, in which case it may be spreading quite fast. Still, my preference (which I've already noted on the AfD page) would be for merging this into New moon until we have solid evidence that the name's actually going to stick. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:21, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Request for copy of deleted article

I am requesting a copy of the last version of the article on Andy Stephenson including the links, or even better, access to the article's history, if that's possible. There have been some mentions of him since the article was deleted, and the HBO documentary '"Hacking Democracy" which prominently featuring Mr. Stephenson debuts Nov. 2. This new info should be enough so that the subject of the article will pass the notability requirements of even the most stringent of editors. I will work on it on my user space.

Thanks Fairness And Accuracy For All 23:15, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any problem with doing that. I created a separate page in your userspace with a copy of the last version of the article. See User:Fairness And Accuracy For All/Andy Stephenson. Nishkid64 00:57, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

The claim that the documentary "prominently features" him was addressed on the DRV and rejected as there is no evidence of such a fact. His name is mentioned in articles about the documentary, but only in passing, and since the person defending the article has apparently not seen the documentary, it's not only OR, but crystal ballism, as well. User:Zoe|(talk) 01:36, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

It might be crystal ballism and OR right now, but I know it for a fact. He's prominently featured in the part on Volusia County. His picture is even on the HBO page about the documentary. photo The doubters will find out in a few days. Sincere apologies will be graciously accepted. Fairness And Accuracy For All 06:48, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Don't you just love single purpose accounts with grandiose usernames? They make it so clear that POV-pushing is the furthest thing from their minds... Guy 19:12, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I respectfully suggest that you AGF and keep civility in mind. Your post reflects neither. ThanksFairness And Accuracy For All 21:40, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

For a user with such a limited edit history, you certainly have the wiki TLAs down. The scent of well-worn socks is in the air. - Crockspot 00:50, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

It's NBGPWS (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). He says so on User_talk:NBGPWS. He should put a statement that says so on his userpage. --Tbeatty 00:57, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Good suggestion. Thanks. I had one on the NBG page, but just added the info to the FAAFA pages. Fairness And Accuracy For All 01:36, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Nishkid64. Fairness And Accuracy For All 06:48, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

The Andy Stephenson page was created (by me) to relocate ongoing edit wars about him at the 'Free Republic', 'Democratic Underground', 'Conservative Underground', and a few other pages to one location. Some time after that the article apparently lost all reference to the bit that made it most notable... specifically the widespread claim for months that Stephenson wasn't really dead. Stephenson's life was certainly only borderline notable, but the massive controversy and ongoing (more than a year later) internet-war over his death have spawned numerous articles and thousands of discussions which make the 'non-notable' claim seem exceedingly odd. He is vastly more notable than Daniel Brandt for instance. In any case I suspect this page will be back eventually, or you will just see it bleeding into the pages of all of the involved sites again. --CBD 12:04, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

User:Intello

Could fresh eyes take a look at the contributions of Intello (talk · contribs)? His/her edits look like they might have been copied from other sources, possibly French language. User:Zoe|(talk) 01:34, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Review requested

I deleted Fomp on the 27th. I have tried to explain to the user that it doesn't meet the standards for inclusion see User talk:Icedevil6; however Icedevil is alleging it should be included (see User talk:Trödel). I have asked the user to review the relevant policies, and asked that if s/he still thinks I have made a mistake to let me know. Since I will not be able to respond for about a day, can somone review the material posted at Fomp and either restore the material, or inform Icedevil that you concur with the deletion. As this is my first disputed admin action, I want to be extra cautious. Additionally, I did not check to see if s/he is a new user (my mistake) because there were vandalism warnings on the talk page when I reviewed the page for deletion; thus, I was a little more abrupt and possibly "biting" than I might have otherwise been. Thx in adv --Trödel 05:30, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely the page should not be on Misplaced Pages. Misplaced Pages is not a dictionary, Urban Dictionary is not a reliable source, a linkless page on verb conjugations does not an encyclopedia article make. —Centrx→talk • 05:34, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Thx it seemd that obvious to me too --Trödel 06:06, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Spam site / Misplaced Pages impersonator

( Has this already been discussed? ) I came across a serial spammer (reported on AIV — 63.223.66.152) who was putting in links on truck and car related sites. The editor also put in a few links with the domain wikipediia.info. At first glance, it seems to be a Misplaced Pages link, until you note the serial double "i". It seems to be a similiar site or redirect for the same sites that were used in the commercial spam ... many ending with sm.html. At least for my connection, the pages didn't come up, but, the same frown-faced icon appeared. Does anyone have any experience with this site?

Such lookielikie/soundalikie domains should be added to m:Spam blacklist. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:59, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. I've added it to the Proposed additions. — ERcheck (talk) 20:11, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

This looks like yet another work of the notorious SPAMming troll Universe Daily. 68.39.174.238 07:59, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Stopping the nonsense at RD

The WP:RD pages have become rife with in-jokes, snarky comments, and newbie biting. I'm taking steps to rectify this, including warning some of the most egregious offenders. There's quite a bit of background about this at Misplaced Pages talk:Reference desk. If some other folks would like to help, that'd be great. I do not want these folks blocked (they are generally very good contributors), but I would like them to understand we will not tolerate treating RD like some frat-house message board. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:05, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Really Weird Vandalism of "Counter Vandalism" page

Sorry, can't remember exact proper name of this page but this is current state Talk:Bobby Boulders Presents His Glorious Unit, hope there is some way somebody can recover it? --Zeraeph 00:05, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I fixed it. That'd be Bobby Boulders and/or Willy on Wheels in action. --Mr. Lefty (talk) 00:12, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Martial Law

Martial_Law (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) is a nice guy; a very earnest and friendly editor who clearly likes Misplaced Pages a lot. Unfortunately, he has been around a long time now and a lot of people -- myself included -- have spent a lot of time trying to guide him toward an understanding of what Misplaced Pages is, and what it isn't. With no noticeable results that I can tell. The majority of his talk-page edits are irrelevant to an encyclopedia, often just general topic discussion. The vast majority of his article edits are downright harmful -- very often involving the addition of (frequently malformed) external links to unreliable, commercial, and just plain bad paranormal sites. That said, he edits in perfect good-faith, I believe: he just doesn't understand Misplaced Pages.

I believe this case is too obvious and straightforward to take up ArbCom's time with. A brief look at his contributions (pretty much any of them) should be enough to convince any reasonable observer that the following restrictions are reasonable in his case. I propose:

1. Martial Law is banned from adding any external links to articles for a period of one year.
2. Martial Law is placed on talk-page probation: any administrator may ban him for up to a year from any talk page he disruptively edits, or repeatedly edits in a non-constructive manner.

Ban violations may be met with short blocks of up to a week. All talk-page bans to be logged at User:Martial Law/Talk page bans.

Input? Support? —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 00:20, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree; he is very earnest, friendly, and has utterly the best of intentions. I would not support a ban for talk page edits; however a moratorium on link adding would meet with my full support. Perhaps an editor with the time could officially, as opposed to unofficially mentor him? I agree, BoG and many others have given advice, and good advice, on how to benefit rather than disrupt Misplaced Pages; but it was not followed, perhaps because it was not official adivice. Were he to be told he had an official mentor, that might give added weight to any constructive criticism received. One puppy's opinion. KillerChihuahua 00:24, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Support. I've tried to explain to him why things like TV schedule updates don't belong here, but this seems like the best next step. --InShaneee 00:26, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Support. But if official mentor he must have, I nominate KillerChihuahua. Bishonen | talk 00:28, 30 October 2006 (UTC).

Bishonen, much as I appreciate your vote of confidence, and although I usually find you read carefully before replying, I am sure you must have missed the "an editor with the time" caveat - I know you would not be so cruel as to have suggested that from a wicked, and misguided sense of humor. Really. And if I click my heels together three times... KillerChihuahua 01:13, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Agree with Puppy's recommendation. JoshuaZ 06:47, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Support. He's already banned from WP:AN and ANI, afaik, for his disruptive edits (seriously, a weather event is not an admin incident). He's good-intentioned, but unfortunately does not seem to grasp why this is not acceptable, even after being told countless times. – Chacor 03:01, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Support, sadly. Really nice fellow, but edits are questionable. I don't know if mentorship would work, but would suggest the seek out assistance through that forum.--MONGO 06:40, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

If by "that forum" you mean WP:MENTCOM, they are either dead, in suspended animation, or in hibernation. KillerChihuahua 11:55, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose on the general grounds that any kind of prohibition such as this should come down from process such as mediation or ArbCom and not a poll on WP:AN. Mentorship sounds like a great idea. ---J.S (t|c) 07:57, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I understand your concern, but sometimes a case is obvious enough that it's not worth dragging through a 2 month arbitration. Misplaced Pages:Community probation is a useful idea and seems to have a fair amount of support. Thatcher131 15:28, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

If you'd prefer to couch it in slightly different terms to make it more palatable from a semantics standpoint, you're welcome to. As admins, we regularly intervene where editors – even good-faith ones – engage in behaviour that's detrimental to the encyclopedia or disruptive to our work. Where polite requests, patient guidance, and thorough instruction fail to ameliorate an editor's particular difficulties, there has to come a point where we say "enough". Eventually, we say, "I know you mean well and have the best interests of Misplaced Pages at heart, but these specific aspects of your work are disruptive, and you're going to have to stop doing them. We'd rather not have to, but if necessary we'll block you to make that point clear."

I strongly suspect that if Martial Law were to add a constructive, useful, beneficial, on-point external link to an article, nobody would get upset or block him—unfotunately Martial Law apparently hasn't acculturated to the point where he is capable of making that judgement for himself. (Suggesting an external link on an article talk page might be an appropriate compromise.) Anyway, I suppose my point is that we regularly impose such prohibitions on editors with even less process than presented here. This discussion represents – or ought to represent – a middle ground of process somewhere between the summary judgement of a single admin in a clear-cut case of abuse, and the long, drawn-out, kill-a-mosquito-with-a-cannon route of Arbitration. For the sake of completeness, I note that the ArbCom is obviously entitled to review the situation and its handling, and to revise any remedies we impose here—as well as to sanction any admins who might start a reign of terror while drunk on the awesome power of blocking disruptive editors after extensive warning and this long discussion.... TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:51, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the wise input, Ten. I totally agree with what you say, except for the matter of having Martial Law suggest external links on an article talk page instead of adding them directly. It sounds good, but the terrain is a surprisingly poor fit for your map in this case. ML does do exactly that on Bigfoot—I don't know if somebody at some point told him he should, or why he does it there in particular—and it wastes much more time for other editors that way. He suggests lots of links, indiscrimate ones—possibly he's going through the google hitlist for Bigfoot and suggesting them in bursts of five or so. Need I mention that the google hitlist for Bigfoot is a horror story? I thought not. My point is that explaining to ML on the talkpage what's wrong with the links is a lot more trouble than just reverting the far fewer links he will add directly to an article. It may sound cynical to say so, as it's obviously a good thing to keep inappropriate material out of articles, where readers will see it—but he seems to take the talkpage business as more of a carte blanche for proposing any amount of stuff. :-( And that's why I do believe that a moratorium on link addition needs to be supplemented by talkpage probation, just as a good fork needs at least two prongs. Please note that Bunchofgrapes is by no means suggesting "a ban for talkpage edits" as the puppy put it, but only the possibility for admins to page-ban ML iff he persistently disrupts a page—is it possible that puppy thought a more draconian measure was being proposed? Anyway, her eagerness to act as a mentor for Martial Law, which shines through in several of her posts above, really does her credit. Bishonen | talk 19:33, 30 October 2006 (UTC).

I did indeed read it as more draconian, thanks for the clarification. I must have been tired when I read that, apologies BoG. Bish, you realize your cheerful back-handed compliments will earn you a place in the Special Hell, right? KillerChihuahua 00:46, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Just to play devil's advocate.. is any editor worth this much babysitting? What's the best outcome, that he becomes genuinely useful as an editor, or merely that he does no harm? If we're after harm prevention, I see a much simpler way to accomplish that. I've no previous familiarity with this person, but if the situation is as bad as people are suggesting maybe a probation is useless- I think of probation as a way to try to reform a problematic editor, but it sounds like people don't even think that's possible in this case. Friday (talk) 20:01, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

So, we ban him? (Genuine question, btw.)--Doc 20:29, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I find his links disruptive, but oftentimes much less so than some POV pushing that goes on. At least he does try to discuss things. I used to try and converse with him about what is and what isn't acceptable as links for articles and asked him to stop adding links to suspect websites (which he did usually do only on discussion pages), but he hasn't gotten the point. I support a link and unconstructive editing ban on a progressive scale, start with a a few days and if needed, then a month and then longer if he persists.--MONGO 20:51, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

How does the mentorship program work ? Can I have more than one mentor ? I will have questions from time to time. As to the links, I did not know that some got "malformed". I do admit I need assisstance. I do admit I'm in error. I've had to reduce my time here, due to my ISP malfunctioning, caseload. I did not realize I was being disruptive. As to link submission, is discussing them O.K. ? I really do humbly apologise for being disruptive ? Martial Law 22:06, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

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