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Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)#Make prompting for a missing edit summary the default

Would an admin close and summarize Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)#Make prompting for a missing edit summary the default and Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)#Improving edit summary use? The related discussions have been open since 20 March 2011 and 21 March 2011, respectively. Thanks, Cunard (talk) 07:12, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, NuclearWarfare (talk · contribs) for closing Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)#Make prompting for a missing edit summary the default.

Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)#Improving edit summary use has not been closed yet. Cunard (talk) 21:07, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Timestamp to prevent archiving. Cunard (talk) 07:00, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Timestamp to prevent archiving. Cunard (talk) 07:29, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Future timestamp to prevent archiving. 23:59, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

WikiGuide RfCs

Would an admin (or admins) close the following RfCs CSD criteria for new articles, being templated, and socialising on WP? Crossposted to WP:VPP. Thanks, Cunard (talk) 03:31, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure these RfC's should be "closed". I'm not saying they shouldn't, but I am raising the question. Not all RfC's are closed (I think) and not all RfC are necessarily looking for a GO/NOGO decision -- they are just that, requests for comments and conversation about a matter. In the case of Misplaced Pages:Wiki Guides/Allow socializing for instance, the proposal is

"Misplaced Pages should allow some amount of non-article related socializing on talk pages and possibly increase the visibility of Misplaced Pages's IRC channels."

It's quite possible that this is designed to foment further discussion that might lead to specific proposals for specific changes. If a person were to close this RfC with a result of "accepted", how exactly would the person then implement "Misplaced Pages should allow some amount of non-article related socializing"? Changes to the WP:NOT page and other pages, writing a new policy, or what? Similarly, at Misplaced Pages:Wiki Guides/Minimize talk page templates, the proposal is

"When dealing with new users, we should discourage excessive templating and encourage more personal messages."

If a person were to close this RfC as "accepted", how would she then implement this? The proposal at Misplaced Pages:Wiki Guides/Change CSD to userspace drafts is more specific and perhaps is amenable to a close. If closed as "accepted", though, implementation would require some changes to Twinkle as well as text changes at policy/procedure. Herostratus (talk) 17:03, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree. I think stuff like this needs more discussion, and if someone is going to close it, the close should mainly summarize the main points and arguments and not try to locate some consensus for something. –MuZemike 20:03, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. Not every RFC asks for consensus; these seem more like organized discussions, and as such should be closed by summary and not by consensus. --Jayron32 20:08, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the above comments that the closes should be summaries of the above RfCs, rather than than implementations. Cunard (talk) 22:48, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes a summing-up would be welcome. Herostratus (talk) 00:11, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Future timestamp to prevent archiving. Cunard (talk) 23:59, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, Beeblebrox (talk · contribs), for closing Misplaced Pages:Wiki Guides/Change CSD to userspace drafts. Misplaced Pages:Wiki Guides/Draft RfC:Minimize talk page templates and Misplaced Pages:Wiki Guides/Allow socializing remain open. Cunard (talk) 05:41, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)/Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles

Per the request at Misplaced Pages talk:Village pump (proposals)/Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles#This RfC has officially "expired" -- could somebody please close it, would an admin close and summarize Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)/Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles? Cunard (talk) 05:50, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The bot runs on a 30-day timer, simply it's impossible for a bot to figure out whether a discussion is resolved. Most editors 'forget' to remove the RFC tag when the resolve the question, and if we don't automatically remove tags at some point, then they'll stay 'open' for years. Most RFCs are actually resolved within a much shorter time, so 30 days is usually enough. However, if any RFC discussion is still active after 30 days, then you simply change the timestamp in the RFC to let the bot know that we're still talking about it. There is no magic 30-day timer on discussions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:34, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Future timestamp to prevent archiving. Cunard (talk) 23:59, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Sanction warranted?

Several weeks ago, I have been the only user to get sanctioned by the admin, User:Fainites, after a conflict between myself and User:Timbouctou. This is after I have taken great pains to carefully demonstrate, with diffs, that 1) the conflict had been provoked by the other party, after considerable effort in that direction, 2) that I have been WP:HOUNDed and insulted, and 3) that the other party was substantially more aggressive and insulting in communication (see the diffs here). As I said, well after the admin was shown the relevant diffs, I was the only user to be placed under any kind of sanction, and that was a broad topic ban on the only topic I edit (effectively a month-long block).

I have currently been placed under a "Complete Topic Ban" (capitalized) by User:Fainites for my having posted the following on Misplaced Pages talk:Requests for mediation/Draza Mihailovic

"You do not understand the history of the country and are not equipped to write about it. This you have blatantly demonstrated on several occasions. What knowlege you do posess was acquired through bias-tinged spectacles. Consequently you may expect my full attention in any of your edits."

Is this sanction warranted?
To be perfectly honest I feel I have even not actually insulted anyone and I resent User:Fainites' imposing such rigorous, arbitrary scrutiny, particularly since its being placed upon me and me alone. To say to someone he/she is not knowledgable in some obscure Balkans subject should certainly not be treated as a personal affront. Indeed if the above warrants sanctions in the form of a "Complete Topic Ban", then User:Fainites ought to get to work blocking and banning virtually every single editor on the Balkans articles, and beyond. It seems that since the admin has taken-up the mantle of my own personal "parole officer" I am to be subjected to special standards and sanctioned severely for virtually no reason whatosoever - such as using an overly "owning tone" of voice (whatever that is).

Over the period of the last five years I have posted some 32,000 edits on Misplaced Pages's (extremely difficult) Balkans articles. After five years in the "trenches" I admit: I am not a polite guy. I am easily provoked. And I did make personal comments of my own in these issues, no question, but at all times I do my utmost to evade any serious infractions of WP:NPA. I did not expect to be singled out, and if sanctions are empoyed I expected that the fact I was provoked will be taken into consideration. Least of all did I expect to be the only person to get essentially blocked for a month. This was not fair admin treatment. And while I did not want to cause a fuss back then (having been busy in real life anyway), this sort of thing now seems bound to continue. --DIREKTOR 10:14, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Just a comment - you say, a "topic ban on the only topic I edit" (effectively a month-long block). - and that you have a lot of experience 32,000 edits over five years - why don't you take this opportunity to work in some others areas of the project, there is a lot of beneficial stuff you could be doing whilst you take this little break from your topic focus. It must be difficult for you editing only in this area which you clearly hold strong views, why not just enjoy some time here and branch out working in new areas. Even consider dropping that sector altogether - let it go, relax the wheels won't drop off, when we become involved in a sector its easy to start thinking wikipedia is massively important and every word must be correct when the readers of the project don't expect complete correctness Off2riorob (talk) 10:32, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Discussing the sanction with Fainites before taking it here would have been good form. Your response on your talk page was rather high handed and not very helpful. The same could be said for your responses to Sunray's comments on your rude post in the request for mediation (for instance, accusing them of "tampering" with your post, when he or she actually removed it for good reasons and very correctly notified you of this action). These comments and your above comments here reflect a very unproductive battleground mentality. Nick-D (talk) 11:11, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

I had already been discussing the issue with Fainites before, and he is aware of all of the above. He has also made his position clear to me regarding the matter (see the first posts of the "ANI" section, here).

With regard to Sunray. I feel he has very likely removed a (politely-worded) post of a mediation participant, addressed to all other participants, before they can notice it, because he does not wish his perpetual mediation (by far the longest mediation in Misplaced Pages history) to finally die after months and years of effectively freezing the issue and the article in place. In all objectivity, this is very likely the case. I also had not "accused" him of anything, and I even accepted that it is likely he may be in the right - but I did simply request that he just presents a policy/guideline which he interprets as allowing him to move away posts by other users at his own perrogative. There may be such a thing, I merely do not know of it. I feel any user has the right to be presented with the policy by which an admin user has taken action against him, and I do not like this sort of "sheriff" mentality that I've been seeing lately.

Look, as always I am the first to admit I am not a particularly pleasant, polite, or even likeable person - but neither are the editors I am regularly engaged with. I admit its more than I can manage to remain perfectly calm and collected in the face of constant and continuous abuse by all manner of Balkans POV-pushers - but I am doing my best. And yes, I am annoyed no end with having wasted a year and more filling out mediation pages with sources, only to see them ignored and aggressive POV-pushers re-emerge out of hibernation to inevitably restart the conflict.

But the point of this thread is (and lets not digress I beg you), the question of whether a relatively severe sanction was incorrectly applied only to myself, as opposed to the party that went to great lengths to provoke and fan the conflict, and with far more deplorable conduct (as can, and has imo, been easily demonstrated). The second question is whether a Complete Topic Ban is indeed warranted for a post whereby a user is essentially told he/she is not knowledgable in some obscure Balkans squabble. --DIREKTOR 12:32, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

I find it incredibly difficult to believe that the situation has come down to this. DIREKTOR has an extensively long record of productively editing in this shithole of Misplaced Pages that is the Balkans. This is an absolutely unwarranted ban given the hostility of the environment in which he edits in and the users he must deal with. It is baffling that he has been singled out in this manner and given a "leash" handicapping his capability of contributing to Misplaced Pages. His opinion on the mediation was requested and, when given, was immediately removed and DIREKTOR effectively shunned. -- ◅PRODUCER _(TALK) 13:33, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

My original decision to topic ban DIREKTOR was based on WP:OWN and WP:DISRUPT, not directly because of conflict with Timbouctou. Although DIREKTOR is habitually rude, aggressive and condescending towards other editors I have not and generally do not impose sanctions for WP:CIV or WP:NPA. I have been watching and endeavouring to bring some order to various Yugoslav pages since January and have in that time issued various warnings and blocks. DIREKTORs 1 month ban expires on 9th May 2011. I extended the limit of the ban to a complete topic ban because of his behaviour on the mediation. The mediator is attempting to complete and close the mediation. I asked DIREKTOR on the 13th April if he wanted to continue to take part in the mediation and said I was prepared to lift the ban for that purpose. See also. I did not want the mediation to fail because of the topic ban. DIREKTOR prevaricated and then decided he would. The mediator asked him to sign the ground rules. DIREKTOR did not do so but posted extensively on the mediation page which was removed by the mediator. There was further argument on the mediators talkpage here. DIREKTOR then decided not participate with this post. He made a number of aggressive and offensive posts on the mediation page even though he was not a participant, attacking the conduct of the mediation, encouraging the others not to participate and making it plain that he effectively intended to ignore the results. These were removed by the mediator but DIREKTOR continued to make posts.

DIREKTOR's behaviour is not remotely justified by the "hostility of the environment" in which he edits. This is mainly about his interaction with the mediator and other mediation participants, not the random nationalist IPs who infest Balkans pages. They are a nuisance but not an issue here. The mediation has apparently produced a draft article with the intention of replacing the existing article.Fainites scribs 17:39, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

That is demonstrably false. In both cases you have implemented sanctions in response to my involvement in Balkans disputes - with Balkans articles' editors. As for the mediator himself, I affirm that you will find that, while I have criticized his handling of the mediation, I have never posted anything that could be construed as blatant incivility (much less a personal attack) of any sort.

The draft present in the mediation: it is good, high-quality editing - unfortunately it does not address any of the disputed points in any way shape or form, which was (incredibly) an intentional policy of the mediator, "to avoid conflict" apparently. The conflict that was "avoided" happens the one that should have been, and still is not, resolved.

Furthermore, your liberal use of the words "attack" and "agressive" do not change the fact that my comments on the mediation talkpage were not personal, but criticism of the mediation itself and its handling by the mediator. In fact I've actually explained several times that I have absolutely nothing against Sunray, but that he has botched here and badly. Indeed, I doubt anyone here would assert that a perpetual RfM, the longest ever, lasting for years and months is going perfectly smoothly. Or that any one user who has spent months and written volumes of text and source quotes would not at all be annoyed at the realization that this is all completely wasted effort. The mediation is actually "leaning" more to my side than the other, but it is completely incapable of drawing this matter to a close. --DIREKTOR 19:23, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

I think a few important facts are being missed here:

• 1st, Direktor has excluded himself from the mediation a long time now, and Sunray, the mediator, has all the right to remove all comments that are disruptive for the mediation process done by non-participants, including former participants.
• 2nd, this user, direktor, has some need to repetitively excuse his disruption by saying that he acknolledges that he is not polite. He does this for years now. If he can´t modify his behavior despite acknolledging it, and knowing the policies, perhaps a stronger sanction could impose a change of that behavior. Thinking: "I am this way and I just can´t change" is no excuse.
• 3th, this user, DIREKTOR, just as this other user, PRODUCER, have some prejuditial manner of naming Yugoslavia related articles as obscure (direktor) and shithole (producer). As an experienced editor in this field, I wouldn´t be exagerating to say that the same users are basically to blame for the fact that they feel and treat the articles from Yugoslav area the way they describe.

The "longest mediation of wiki history" seems finally to be ongoing, and the only difference is that one user, direktor, is no longer present, obvious conclusions? People that treat historical sensitive subjects as obscure shitholes shouldn´t simply participate in an encyclopedia. Fainites has basically put an end to a longstanding disruption by this user that has been forgiven and had assumed good-faith for too long time. FkpCascais (talk) 19:53, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Fainites, we both know this hostility is not limited to the "random nationalist IPs", but includes many users who frequent this part of Misplaced Pages and indeed the mediation. He should not have been treated in the manner that you have.

Fkp, my opinion of Balkan Misplaced Pages is not a "prejudice", but is based on the poor quality of the articles in the field and on the necessity of ARBMAC to "tame" Balkan editors. Your observation is dead wrong considering the high quality information that both I and DIREKTOR have contributed to this area of Misplaced Pages over the years in an effort to improve it. -- ◅PRODUCER _(TALK) 21:45, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

(Just in case anybody is choosing to spend their weekend looking through all this - one of DIREKTORS archives has not linked properly on his page and is here.Fainites scribs 22:32, 8 May 2011 (UTC))

Yes thank you, Fainites, my mistake. As for "not spending the weekend on all this", I must say it sounds like the second time I've heard Fainites openly express his reliance on sheer neglect of this issue on the part of his fellow admins. In his opinion, such threads like this one are "pretty much ignored" ; and that is indeed the rule. I'm hoping this might be an exception. --DIREKTOR 23:01, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not relying on it. I just know how the heart sinks sometimes when faced with long, complex disputes in less well known subject areas. I also know conscientious admins do this - but not on the spot. You will note that I provided diffs to the relevent exchanges.Fainites scribs 23:10, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

In my view, Fainites' rationale for applying this ban is sound. The diffs he or she provided and DIREKTOR's aggressive and high-handed conduct since the sanction was imposed demonstrate that their behavior is out of line and the ban is justified. In particular, DIREKTOR's "but other people were doing it as well"-type excuses don't cut it in my view, and basically constitute an example of WP:NOTTHEM. If an editor is working in a hostile environment, they should seek to contribute to cooling tensions rather than using other people's (alleged) misconduct as an excuse for their own poor behaviour. Nick-D (talk) 08:00, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm actually not using it as an "excuse" as such. What I'm saying is that I was the only person to receive sanctions in this dispute - for no particular reason - and listing that as an example of unequal treatment. I'm saying I feel I'm being singled out as some sort of perceived "troublemker" and sanctioned severly at every turn, while others get away scott-free. I'm saying I'm being held to a much higher standard than seems to apply to others.

What excuse did the other participant(s) use? 'Cause theirs is obviously working. --DIREKTOR 17:12, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

This may seem like pointy-haired bureacraticness on my part, but I'm pretty sure that the WP:Banning policy does not empower individual admins to issue a topic ban. It might be a good idea, but I believe that it is not actually authorized. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:42, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

A single admin may issue a ban is as part of Misplaced Pages:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions, but that's the only case so far as I'm aware. VernoWhitney (talk) 17:47, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

We're talking about a case under WP:ARBMAC, if I'm not mistaken. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:49, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

We are indeed.Fainites scribs 21:30, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh, of course. Thank you for explaining. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:05, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

RevisionDelete policy

It's come to my attention that an admin has been using RevisionDelete to systematically delete page revisions some banned users are responsible for, citing an WP:SPI case in the RevisionDelete log summary. This has been going on for over 6 months, and sometimes involves dozens of revisions together. This seems to me to be a clear breach of (current) RevisionDelete policy, and an email discussion with the admin didn't alleviate those concerns. The admin's name will probably crop up soon enough, but I'm omitting it for the moment, as I want to initially focus on the policy.

1. Is this in principle an acceptable use of RevisionDelete already (under current policy)?
2. Should it be?
3. Should the policy be amended to clearly include/exclude it?

Rd232 22:45, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

• It certainly doesn't meet the letter of WP:REVDEL, as the standard there requires that the material not only be material that there is "little likelihood of significant dissent about its removal", but that it also be "grossly offensive". There's not substantial dissent about removing edits by banned editors, but they aren't necessarily grossly offensive. Should the policy be amended to include it? I certainly think so, and feel like it's covered by WP:IAR today. Banned users are banned users. Some banned users use a brute force approach: sock after sock after sock after sock, in the hopes that people will fail to revert the edits or accidentally build on them. When a sockpuppeteer gets too active and persistent, I begin to semi-protect his targets after reverting his edits. If the annoyance that causes doesn't do the trick, revision deletion is the next logical step.—Kww(talk) 22:53, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

  I don't think the desire to cause annoyance to a sockpuppeteer justifies use of revdel. I also fail to see the harm of allowing a banned user's contributions to remain in history once they have been reverted, absent a normal revdel reason to hide them. Monty₈₄₅ 23:00, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

  On the contrary, there is no feasible way to comment on Rd232's exertions since a) He has a specific case in mind and b) he does not tell us what that specific situation is, so we have no way to meaningfully comment if it is within policy. It is possible that it is within policy, and it is also possible that it is NOT, but we cannot have a meaningful conversation in the general when there subject is in the specific. Rd232 looks to be fishing for a response which will justify his opinion that a specific use of RevDel is the in the wrong; however we have no way to know if it is in the wrong based only on HIS characterization of it, without being able to review the specifics ourselves. It is irresponsible for us to give him a false sense of righteousness by confirming his notions over specific usage of RevDel, when we have not been presented with that usage itself. There are instances I can come up with which would be good uses of RevDel which exactly match all of the vagueries he has provided, and I can come up with similar hypothetical instances which would be poor uses of RevDel, and because of that we have no way we should be making blanket statements on "rightness" or "wrongness" based on a lack of specific details. --Jayron32 23:03, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

  @Monty845More easily re-inserted, for one thing. Also, restoring the identical text of a deleted revision is an absolute giveaway of yet-another-sock. "Desire to cause annoyance" also minimizes things a bit: the goal is to enforce the ban, and get the banned user to stop attempting to edit.

  @Jayron:I have the advantage of knowing that Rd232 is discussing me. I routinely use revision deletion on sockpuppets of Brexx, Wiki-11233, ItHysteria (when he gets too active), and any other sockpuppeteer that simply refuses to give up. I'm being discussed on Misplaced Pages review as we speak: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=33655 .—Kww(talk) 23:08, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

  In that case, do you have some specific examples of articles which you have used RevDel under these justifications, along with an explanation as to why RevDel was necessary (for example, where leaving the edit in the page history was inadequate in dealing with the socker). If you have a set of examples, along with specific justifications, we could move this discussion along nicely. --Jayron32 23:36, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

  I generally don't pay any attention at all to the content of the edit beyond making sure that I'm not inadvertently reverting vandalism back into an article. The one that caused the fuss was here. That one was part of a science experiment by Abd, who is intentionally violating his ban, self-reverting, and then placing off-wiki links to the edit. Revision deletion is the only way to defeat the off-wiki link. Self-reversion is intended to be an out for someone that has accidentally violated a topic-ban or a 3RR threshold, not a "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" method for a banned editor to participate in Misplaced Pages. A more typical case is in Dana Delaney, where I revision deleted edits by Brexx on Jan 6 2011 and Dec 10 2010. Nothing exciting about the edits, just making sure that they weren't easily reinserted by Brexx, who tends to edit-war my removals of his content. The only screwups I'm aware of were the edits of Gtommy17, whom I believed to be a sock of G.M.-Cupertino, where I deleted all of his revisions, and restored them when it became apparent that my block was incorrect; and those of Wecantdoanythingaboutit (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), whom I believed to be a sock of Wiki-11233. The latter edits were not restored, as they turned out to be the edits of another block evader.

  As I said, the content is not the motivation: it's simply a matter of throwing up bigger and bigger roadblocks against the sockpuppeteer. By the time I'm doing this, I have already been reverting each an every edit of the sockpuppeteer, and escalated to semi-protecting every article the sockpuppeteer edits. Range-blocks have already been ineffective or deemed impossible. The only other possible escalation would be full-protection, and that would be unacceptable. This just makes it clear that they will not succeed, makes it more difficult for them to reinsert content, and, in the few cases that they have been stupid enough to save their change to a local disk, makes restoration 100% certain to be that of the sockpuppeteer.—Kww(talk) 00:06, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

  Those seem to me to be OK within the spirit of RevDel. Specifically, if a user is trying to WP:GAME the system by posting links to his edits off-wiki, or using old revisions to maintain disruption, it seems like a reasonable solution to RevDel those revisions. We regularly RevDel problematic revisions, for example, when off-wiki links are used by the 4-chan /b/tards to perform a sort of distributed vandalism attack using an old, reverted vandalism deletion. This seems within the spirit of that usage. I personally see no problem with these specific usages, as they clearly actively protect Misplaced Pages from attacks by banned users, and clearly help enforce the ban on them. That the edits themselves may or may not be vandalism, if they had been committed by a non-banned user, is irrelevent to me. The fact that these are banned users attempting to game the system to circumvent their ban, either by using old un-RevDeled revisions to find their own previous edits, or by using proxy editors to edit for them, I am quite fine with this usage of RevDel. Of course, I am 1/116,969 of the active users at Misplaced Pages, so my opinion counts exactly that much. We'll see what others have to say on the issue, but for me these uses seem fine. If Rd232 has additional uses of RevDel he would like reviewed, I will offer my (admittedly meaningless, percentage wise) opinion on those as well. --Jayron32 00:18, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

  • My own opinion is that they might stretch the policy a little bit, but they are very clearly intended to prevent disruption and thus quite justified. If nothing else, that's a textbook application of IAR and likely a good reason to sit down and see if it would be valuable to work this scenario explicitly into written policy. — Coren  01:10, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I will point out that based on Misplaced Pages:Revision deletion/examples, any deletion which is deletable under deletion policy is eligible. All of this material would have been permitted by CSD:G5 if they had been standalone article, which is what I think this clause is getting at. For an example that was supposed to make things clearer, that one certainly didn't help me much. Whether my edits fall under that one or not, something needs cleaned up in that wording.—Kww(talk) 00:21, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm less concerned with the user whose post at Misplaced Pages Review brought this to my attention, then for example the case of the 40-odd RevisionDeletes on the evening of 10 April , all referencing WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Wiki-11233. The deleted edits appear harmless, in many cases (I haven't time to check all) the articles weren't even previously semiprotected (Kww did add semi-protection in some cases at the same time), and in a number there was just a single incident of reversion. I'm struggling to see how this sort of thing meets RevDel policy. At any rate, it's a bloody long way from the sentiments that permitted admins to have the tool in the first place, namely, use with extreme caution and risk desysopping for just one instance of breaking the strict rules. Rd232 01:47, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

As I said, I don't review the contents of the edits except for making sure that I don't revert in vandalism. The deleted edits would have been harmless if they hadn't been block evasion. Take a look at my protection log and search for Wiki-11233 ... you'll see that I systematically semi-protect articles that he edits. I'm not a robot, don't use scripts, and you will find some exceptional cases where I see that the article has substantial activity with valid contributions by anonymous editors and I err on the side of not semi-protecting. On that day, I protected every article that was edited that the protection had either lapsed or had never been installed (it's not like every time I discover a new sock, he's been courteous enough not to edit any new articles, after all). I'm working against the sockpuppeteer, not individual edits to individual articles.—Kww(talk) 01:59, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

"The deleted edits would have been harmless if they hadn't been block evasion." - they're still harmless. Your logic seems to be that because WP:CSD#G5 exists to speedily delete articles created by banned users (though it isn't normally applied where the article's been around a while, edited substantively by others, and is useful), RevDel can be used to delete individual revisions from banned users, even though the RevDel policy says nothing of the sort. You want to sneak it in by the backdoor of "anything deletable under Deletion policy", but that doesn't really wash. To get back to the policy question (which is why I didn't bring up your name originally) - should this specifically be permitted? Because allowing it under a vague heading of combating disruption or even WP:IAR opens the door to RevDeleting almost anything. Rd232 02:47, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Years ago Kww would have simply used "deletion and partial undelete" and nobody would have protested; for me, this falls under "#5 Valid deletion under Deletion Policy, executed using RevisionDelete". (Also, when a sockmaster has a history of editwarring over reverts of his material you don't wait every time until he reverts a few times, you directly take measures to prevent the predictable editwarring.) --Enric Naval (talk) 04:16, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not entirely convinced that would have been really appropriate using deletion and partial undelete either; but at any rate, if there is a consensus that it's supposed to be acceptable, it should be mentioned in the policy explicitly, probably as an additional criterion. Rd232 16:46, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

• Okay, this is going to be almost as long as one of Abd's screeds, but hopefully folks read it anyway...

  First, I don't really think Kww's use of RevDel can/should be justified under WP:IAR. While I was not involved in the hashing-out of the WP:REVDEL policy, I think there's a clear similarity between that policy and WP:CSD. Both speedy deletion and RevDel are supposed to be used only in the obvious, uncontroversial cases. (From CSD: "Administrators should take care not to speedy delete pages or media except in the most obvious cases." From REVDEL: "The tool should only be used within strict guidelines. ... Material must be grossly offensive, with little likelihood of significant dissent about its removal. Otherwise it should not be removed.") We allow administrators to ignore the rules and summarily delete pages, but only in those unusual circumstances where the page meets none of the criteria but the need for a quick deletion is plain. Similarly, ignoring the rules and using RevDel in a way which is not laid out by the criteria should be unusual. Kww's use of RevDel over the past several months has gone beyond occasionally invoking IAR and almost amounts to a unilateral establishment of a new criterion for redaction. In addition, IAR should be invoked in situations where the encyclopedia will clearly benefit from the action. I don't think using RevDel here is any more beneficial to the encyclopedia than simple reversion is.

  Second, I don't really think this use of RevDel can be justified under WP:REVDEL. RD5 applies to "valid deletions under Deletion Policy, executed using RevisionDelete." Above, Kww said that because CSD G5 allows for the speedy deletion of "pages created by banned or blocked users in violation of their ban or block, and which have no substantial edits by others," redaction of banned users' edits may fall under RD5. I think that idea meets neither the letter nor the spirit of the policy. Rd232 already commented above on why the letter is not met. Why not the spirit, you ask? Well, the RevDel policy was drafted primarily by Fl and FT2 in 2009. FT2 added to the draft the criterion we now know as RD5 on May 25, 2009 (1, 2). This criterion would remain essentially the same between then and the consensus adoption of RevDel in October 2009. I don't see any indication that this criterion was intended, even by FT2, for the deletion of harmless edits by banned users. Indeed, after adding this criterion to the draft, FT2 proposed a separate criterion that would allow admins to RevDel banned users' edits; it garnered no support.

  I think the real issue here is that RD5 really needs to be clarified. In October 2009, an admin commented that the criterion was too vague in that it was unclear "in what situations the new tool would actually be helpful," and no one addressed the point. I'm pretty familiar with the criteria for speedy deletion; however, I'm honestly having a hard time thinking of a situation where one of those criteria could be applied to an edit but RD1-3 could not, and RevDel would be necessary. The only exception that comes to mind is blatant hoax material of the sort NuclearWarfare RevDel'd per this thread. Other than that, can anyone provide any clarification about this criterion's purpose?

  Finally, I find it hard to square Kww's ideas with WP:BAN#Edits by and on behalf of banned editors, which says: "Anyone is free to revert any edits made in defiance of a ban. ... This does not mean that obviously helpful edits (such as fixing typos or undoing vandalism) must be reverted just because they were made by a banned editor, but the presumption in ambiguous cases should be to revert. ... Wikipedians in turn are not permitted to post or edit material at the direction of a banned editor (sometimes called proxy editing or proxying) unless they are able to confirm that the changes are verifiable and they have independent reasons for making them." Not all banned editors try to insert misinformation into articles. Editors who are not banned should be able to look at edits made in defiance of a ban and see if they were "helpful edits." Non-admins like me cannot do that if the edits are not only reverted but also RevDel'd. That's a bad thing, and that's why I would strongly oppose permitting the automatic redaction of banned users' edits under policy. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 04:32, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

• A Stop at Willoughby is entirely correct in the interpretation of the policy. In response to Enric Naval, "years ago" is just about a year ago, and in fact adminstrators were told by developers not to do that unless the vandalism was a problem for other reasons because (particularly with large articles) it caused serious lags and occasional errors in the database. Realistically, the same issues still apply: now instead of causing database lag, it is having a serious effect on the history of articles. If there is another reason to revision delete, such as a BLP violation or personal attack or other form of harassment, please do use revision deletion; however, if it is just routine and has no serious effect other than to add a wasted edit, please use the standard RBI response. Deletion should always be a last option, not the preferred one, even when it comes to edits of banned or blocked editors. The section in the deletion policy referring to the acceptability of deleting edits by banned users was put into place to deal with extraordinary circumstances, not every edit. I'm also going to note that, unless every edit subsequent to that of a banned user is revision deleted, there can be attribution issues as well, particularly if someone else builds upon the edit made by the banned user. That is the other reason that deletion in any form needs to be carefully and selectively done, instead of being a routine response. Risker (talk) 04:39, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

  @Risker and ASAW: I think part of the situation here is that banned users are specifically gaming the system with the overt purpose of finding ways to circumvent their ban. ABD in particular seems quite explicit about his purpose here; this is merely an attempt to circumvent the ban, by using Misplaced Pages's own tools and rules against us. Misplaced Pages is not a game, Abd doesn't get to "win" if he figures out a way to break the rules in such a manner as to be unstopable, or to devise a plan to allow others to do the same. So far, we've only been presented with a few diffs and explanation from KWW over some specific uses, and so far the ones he's presented as good uses of RevDel, I would concur that they are narrowly defined and targeted specifically at users who are attempting to game the system by using their own saved and reverted edits in the database to continue disruption. Certainly, this narrowly defined usage seems reasonable. No one has presented diffs or examples to support the argument that he's RevDeleting every single edit from every single confirmed sock; just those who have found a way to use old revisions to circumvent their ban or otherwise be disruptive. I agree that if KWW were being as cavalier about RevDel as you guys make it out to be, that may be a problem. SO far, however, I have only seen evidence of justifiable (if unorthodox) use of RevDel to stop specific problems. I issued the request to RD232 above, and I restate it again: Does anyone have any other situations where KWW has used RevDel in a way which is impossible to justify given the behavior or obvious intent of the banned user in question? --Jayron32 05:16, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Jayron, actually I do see a problem: Kww reinstated an error into the Dana Delaney article on both occasions, and the Brexx socks were correct in their edits. Risker (talk) 05:57, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but that's kinda my point; Brexx is banned from editing. Does that mean he's really banned, or does that mean he's only banned from getting edits in the front door, as long as he finds a loophole that lets him in the back door there is nothing anyone can do to stop him? What does banned mean if users are given a clear loophole that they can exploit with impunity? We regularly revert edits from banned users even if they are good edits. While RevDeleting them would be an extraordinary step in every case, we shouldn't tie our hands when a user has found a method to be disruptive where RevDeletion could hinder their disruption. The fact that Brexx's edits were "good" doesn't mean he gets to ignore his ban to make them. --Jayron32 06:04, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Umm no. Adversely affecting the content of the project to deal with what is essentially a social problem is the opposite of what we are supposed to be doing here. When the response to a banned editor results in greater disruption to the project than does the banned user, the response is inappropriate. It also becomes somewhat circular: if banned editor XX inserts appropriate information Y and is reverted, then another new editor ZZ inserts appropriate information Y again, new editor ZZ winds up being called a sock of XX and we still don't get the appropriate/correct information. Time to stop this cycle, and part of it is not using revision deletion unless it is an edit that would otherwise meet the narrow deletion criteria. Just because sockmasters may game the system doesn't mean we have to play the MMORPG too. Risker (talk) 13:18, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I truly and deeply resent the accusation there, Risker. Reverting banned editors does not cause disruption to the project in any reasonable sense of the word. After I've been there, the state of the project is effectively identical to the state it would have been in had the banned editor not edited at all. Since I don't have checkuser access, I do make occasional mistakes, but I generally request checkuser unless I am extremely certain. When checkuser is performed, my accuracy rate is unmatched: I'll compare it to any other editor on the project. In the cases that I have been shown to be wrong, I apologize, undo my work, and set things right. Not much more can be asked.—Kww(talk) 13:30, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Sometimes reverting edits by banned users makes articles worse. Often this isn't obvious, and if reverting a lot of edits, maybe it's a price worth paying (though there is some disagreement about that). But this is a red herring - the issue is not reversion, it's revision deletion. Rd232 16:52, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Yep, banned from editing, and as such we have a long standing policy of reverting edits of banned users on sight, regardless of the merits. On the other hand some of the RevDel's raised above do seem problematic because we do not have a long standing policy of RevDel'ing the edits of banned users. On the one hand there is sensible argument for some of the deletions above being useful to stop disruption. I share Rd232's concern over the 10 April RevDel's of innocuous content. This is IMO going a step too far. At a recent RFC the usefulness of RevDel in responding to vandals/banned users was discussed, and the feeling was that with reasonable discretion it could be used, in this case RevDel all edits of a banned user seems a step too far. Revert, Block, Ignore - but no need to delete unless it addresses disruption. At the same RFC there was strong support for admin discretion when it comes to these matters, but also that admin's were expected to show caution and use the tool in a restrained manner I will find a link to the discussion, it was a little while ago --Errant 11:38, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

One issue that has come up above needs to be put to bed: I do not blindly delete revisisons and cause licensing problems. I delete revisions only when I can keep the licensing straight. Usually it's a matter of simply reverting and deleting the interim revisions. Sometimes I have to examine intermingled edits and determine that they are only to material that is being deleted. On very rara occasions, I will delete a section and restore some text with an edit summary crediting the user. Generally if there's an intermingling problem, I don't do any deletion. It's the same case as an article created by a banned user and subsequently edited by others: preservation of the valid edits and keeping licensing straight takes priority over removing the banned user's edits. This is one of the reasons that I edit manually, without bots or scripts. I'd be the first to oppose doing this automatically, because it's just too complex of a task to do without human decision making.—Kww(talk) 11:25, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

A few additional data points: people are referring to sock edits as "innocuous": I find the idea of innocuous block evasion to be generally problematic, but think of the case of Wiki-11233: how far does it have to go before extreme measures are warranted?

• Suspected socks:Category:Suspected Misplaced Pages sockpuppets of Wiki-11233
• Confirmed socks:Category:Misplaced Pages sockpuppets of Wiki-11233
• History:WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Wiki-11233/Archive

—Kww(talk) 12:45, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

WP:BANNED is banned. They do not have the right to make any edits. If we let them slip by with "oh, it's a correction," the ban is no longer being enforced. People get banned for a reason; if they want to continue editing, they have recourse to do so by emailing unblock-en-l(at)lists.wikimedia.org . — The Hand That Feeds You: 14:53, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

We're not talking about letting edits stand (i.e. contributions allowed to stand in the current version of an article). We're talking about deleting old page revisions from the page history (where the edits have already been reverted). Rd232 16:46, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

But those revisions consist solely of edits by banned users, so the distinction is really whether you leave the contributions of banned editors readily available or not. No one has provided a solid argument for leaving the contributions of banned editors readily available when simply reverting their edits has already proven to be inadequate as a deterrent. That's a part of this debate that the people opposed to the deletion haven't addressed: when a sockpuppeteer has already persevered through having all of his edits reverted, and having all of his targets semi-protected, why isn't revision deletion the next logical deterrent step? What would you recommend in its place, aside from simply not bothering to enforce blocks and bans?—Kww(talk) 17:31, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Deterrent? You can never really prevent them from editing, because Misplaced Pages can in principle be edited by anyone. All you can do is ban editors, which means that they cannot participate in the Wiki-community like other editors here. We should not try to aim for more. Count Iblis (talk) 17:47, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Bans are to prevent editors from editing wikipedia.... WP:BAN is quite clear on that. Your definition of "ban" is at odds with what bans actually are. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:31, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I know, but the real reason why editors are banned is to prevent disruption; the formal procedures as written up in WP:BAN taken literally may not always work well in practice, given that Misplaced Pages at the end of the day is editable by everyone. It's a bit like banning the use of drugs, which is motivated by the dangerous effects of drugs combined with the fact that good judgement can be impaired when taking drugs. But the obvious tension between such a ban and the nature of a free democratic society, makes such a ban difficult to enforce. Count Iblis (talk) 19:38, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

No one argues that bans aren't difficult to enforce: they most certainly are. The question at hand is whether this is a reasonable step in terms of ban enforcement for editors that continue to violate their bans in the face of lesser impediments. You haven't directly addressed that.—Kww(talk) 19:58, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Note that Misplaced Pages is not "a free democratic society," rendering your analogy moot. — The Hand That Feeds You: 22:59, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Kww, you wrote above that "no one has provided a solid argument for leaving the contributions of banned editors readily available when simply reverting their edits has already proven to be inadequate as a deterrent." I believe I already did in the last paragraph of my previous post. However, I will explain the argument more fully. We can all agree that banned users are banned and are not supposed to make edits, period, even helpful edits. That's policy. We can all agree that, according to the policy, any user can revert any edit made in defiance of a ban. We can further agree that, under this policy, editors who independently verify the validity/helpfulness of the edits, and are willing to take responsibility for them, may restore them. I think we can agree that not all banned editors try to insert misinformation into articles, and that some try to evade their ban by making helpful edits. Surely, then, it follows that editors who are interested in the article in question and who are not banned should be able to look at the banned users' edits and determine whether they were helpful. If the edits were helpful, the article is improved; if not, oh well. Now, given the large number of non-admin editors relative to the number of admins, the interested, non-banned editors I mentioned are more likely to be non-admins than admins. If a revert-block-ignore process had been followed, no problem arises. But if a revert-RevDel-block-ignore process had been used, non-admin editors are completely incapable of viewing and judging the edits in question. That is where problems arise. Kww, you wrote that you "don't review the contents of the edits except for making sure that I don't revert in vandalism. The deleted edits would have been harmless if they hadn't been block evasion." In these situations, I think nothing is gained (in terms of deterring banned users) and something is lost (in terms of improving article accuracy). RBI should suffice when the edits are innocuous except for the block/ban evasion. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 01:11, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

What you describe doesn't include the "I", but is the basic reason that I don't do this for most socks that I detect. Most of the time, I simply revert edits. But what should be done when the editor just keeps going, and going, and going, in the hopes that some percentage of his changes will be adopted? That's why I do this as the final escalation, to deprive the sockpuppeteer of all hope of having his edits retained. I'd say that, on average, about 5% of the sock edits I revert wind up incorporated into articles. Most sockpuppeteers give up when only one edit in twenty gets incorporated into an article, and simply reverting them is enough. Add in the next layer, when I start semi-protecting targets, and most of the rest quit. Revision deletion seems to be the final straw to get the remainder. What would you suggest as an alternative with someone like Brexx? 131 socks confirmed by checkuser. 31 more suspected. I'd estimate that I've reverted him over 5000 times since he was banned. How much longer should I have kept up with RBI? Why should I have expected RBI number 4000 to work when RBI 1-3999 had not?—Kww(talk) 01:37, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

That's a very fair question, and I'm afraid I cannot give it a particularly good answer. All I can say is that I would not expect someone like Brexx to stop evading his ban after his edits are RevDel'd any more than I would expect him to do so after 4000 RBIs. Also, I will note that deleting Abd's edits only seemed to embolden him (if the WR thread to which you linked is any indication). I don't buy into the idea of RevDel as a ban evasion deterrent. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 02:17, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Abd's disruption is badly hampered by these deletions. But he is sophisticated enough to claim that he is emboldened by the deletions, in order to trick people into letting his edits stand. --Enric Naval (talk) 07:44, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

What really emboldens Abd is getting people tricked into supporting his unbanning, making them believe that Abd is willing to make only useful edits. As soon as he gets unbanned he will just revert to his old disruptive behaviour. --Enric Naval (talk) 07:51, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Proof's in the pudding, as they say: there's only been one confirmed Brexx sock this year. He either gave up, or got very, very good. In terms of achieving the net effect, if he got so good that no one can tell it's him, that's as good as going away in my book. One way or the other, I think the shift to using semi-protection and revision deletion caused the shift. No way to prove it, though.

What I wish you would concede is that is may be effective in some cases, and should be permitted as a final resort. No one is arguing that revdelete should be routinely applied. I opposed making it routine in the RFC, and I mean it: it's too difficult and error prone to make general practice.—Kww(talk) 02:29, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Your position would be more convincing if you had more consistently tried semi-protection (a standard anti-sock measure) before moving to RevDeletion (a very non-standard one). Rd232 03:48, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm very consistent. On April 10, I semi-protected 33 articles due to Wiki-11233, some of them for the third, fourth, and fifth time, because of edits by Wecantdoanythingaboutit. I think there was one article edited by him that wasn't semi-protected at the end of that round. March 27, I semi-protected 5 articles because of edits by Mark-Sinto-Vinto. That's a small enough set to look at closely: look at the logs of the pages he edited that day: Shift 2 Unleashed Infamous 2 Drake's Deception Ratchet and Clank 4 Play Station Move HeroesShift 2 Unleashed Tekken Tag Tournament LittleBigPlanet 2L.A. NoireTest Drive Unlimited 2Motorstorm: Apocalypse. In all of them you see revdelete and semiprotection being applied. Several of them were on their third bout of semi-protection. In general, I apply semi-protection in escalating periods (one month, three months, then six months) as the socks persist. I've never claimed that I only use revdelete on articles that have already been semi-protected first, only that I initially respond by semi-protecting targets, and only start revdeleting after the puppeteer has become excessively persistent. If he edits an article that he hasn't edited before, you will see semi-protection and reversion deletion being applied on the same day. If he makes one edit to an article that is being actively edited by other anonymous editors, you may see me skip protection on that article, even though I delete his revision. March 21, it was 4 articles. Feb 17, it was one: Areyoudown became autoconfirmed and then edited semi-protected articles. I'm not a bot: I exercise judgment and I make mistakes. Look over my protection log. Look over my editing log. Look over my deletion log. Truly erasing a sock is a tedious and slow job. I'm sorry if the hours of work I put in on this issue haven't met your standards of perfection sufficiently to be persuasive.—Kww(talk) 04:39, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

What I would expect to see, given ordinary disruption, would be the ordinary approach of 1. RBI and 2. semi-protection if that doesn't work on that article. Looking at individual articles, in too many cases I can't even see justification for going beyond step 1. What you've not done yet is explain how you reached the conclusion that produced a step 3. RevDel, and generally applied all three steps without (seemingly) much regard to individual article edit history (just going on involvement of a specific sock puppeteer). What is the exceptional pattern of disruption of these sock puppeteers that made you reach the conclusion that this exceptional approach was (a) effective and (b) necessary? Rd232 14:09, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

You've got to be kidding me. If one sockpuppeteer's disruption on article A necessitated revdeling plus semi, then when he moves to article B you don't just revert and hope somehow that the pattern of the disruption would be different. You revert, semi, and start revdeling. Suppose we normally move-protect an article after 3 vandalistic moves (random number pulled out of a hat). Do we need to wait for 3 moves on every single article even if we know that Grawp is after them? T. Canens (talk) 14:41, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Well said. The actions I take are to protect Misplaced Pages against people, not to protect individual articles against individual edits. As for whether these sockpuppeteers are exceptional or not, look at the sheer duration and volume of their efforts.—Kww(talk) 14:55, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)A pattern of a sock puppeteer moving between articles in a predictable way might justify lowering standards for imposing semi-protection, yes. But looking at the 10 April cases I was focussing on, I don't see a pattern of moving (just a bunch of edits being reverted). And the question remains - how does the justification for RevDel come about? PS Move-protection is a red herring, because moves are so much less common, it's much less of an issue to impose it. Rd232 15:02, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

The justification from the persistence of the socking, and the desire to make the message Go away, your edits cannot and will not ever be incorporated into any articles as clear as possible. I don't know how to say that to a sockpuppeteer more loudly than deleting each and every contribution he makes. RBI certainly wasn't effective with any of these editors: I did it for years. The only alternative you are offering (RBI) is one that has been demonstrated not to work in this case. It works in many cases, but not in some. How mahy more years would you have me try before you conceded that it failed? Or would you have me simply stop bothering to try?—Kww(talk) 15:45, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

T Canens' interjection was a distraction, but I actually asked you a clear question, and RBI was not the only alternative I mentioned. In addition, I'm not wholly opposed to employing RevDel to prevent disruption by banned users (I've used it myself to RevDel edit summaries from a persistent socker using edit summaries as a soapbox). The issue is that using RevDel in the way that you have (frequency of use, and volume of use in specific instances) really ought to be (a) covered clearly by policy and (b) not be a decision made by individual admins. Which is to say, once a collective decision is made that a particular socker justifies it, then any admin can do it, but there needs to be an initial discussion that it's justified. Rd232 15:57, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually, it wasn't a distraction. You desire an article-by-article response to a problem that isn't an article-by-article problem. T. Canens's response was quite to the point: once the sockpuppeteer becomes a problem, there's no need at all to have the problem be redemonstrated on an article-by-article basis. I could accept the argument that it could be decided by a group at AN or SPI, although I think it would be simpler to have a bright-line where it could be done without the need for the discussion, something like persisting for over 3 months past the original ban or block, with community discussion required only if someone thought it needed to be done earlier than that.—Kww(talk) 17:10, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

" You desire an article-by-article response " - not in the slightest. I outlined that the usual response is article-by-article and does not extend to RevDel. I asked you for a clear explanation how you reached a conclusion that (a) article-by-article RBI+semi wasn't working and (b) RevDel was going to be both helpful and necessary. Incidentally I'm not clear that either conclusion is compatible with policy; WP:SEMI doesn't foresee your application of it any more than RevDel foresees your application of that. Rd232 18:20, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I've answered the first part multiple times: "how did I conclude that article-by-article RBI+semi wasn't working?" The sockpuppeteers continued to edit. In the case of Wiki-11233, I've been reverting each and every one of his edits since July, 2009. I've been semi-protecting his targets since May 15, 2010. I started revdeleting his edits Dec 11, 2010. With Brexx, I've been reverting every one of his edits since Jan 22, 2009, and began semi-protecting his targets in Aug, 2010. I started revdeleting his edits in Dec, 2010. For Wiki-11233, that was 8 months of RBI and 7 months of RBI+semi-protect. For Brexx, that was 16 months of RBI and and 4 months of RBI+semi-protection. How did I decided it was effective? Brexx problems dropped precipitously. We aren't talkin a process that I started after a few weeks: I don't think anyone could look at those time periods and think that RBI was working. As for why I chose revdelete — I couldn't think of anything else to try. Can you?—Kww(talk) 20:34, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Alright, now we're getting somewhere - that's the sort of explanation I wanted all along, and that's the sort of explanation (perhaps with more detail) which I could imagine being used to justify activating a future RD7 for a particular socker. As I suggested in the RFC, RD7 should involve a consensus decision first, which anyone can then act on. It's not like these situations are so frequent, and especially not so urgent, as to preclude some prior discussion about whether to go down that route. Rd232 20:42, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

RFC

OK, this discussion has had a certain usefulness, but at this point the issue is best served, I think, but focussing on whether or not to actually amend the policy, so I've started an RFC at Wikipedia_talk:Revision_deletion#Proposed_changes. Rd232 23:59, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

whether or not we amend it, KWW's use was invalid under the existing policy, and we must deal with that also. I think the least we can ask is that Kww promise to not use RevDel in such cases until the RfC concludes, and only if it concludes in the position he supports. Otherwise it's a matter on the ongoing deliberate violation of policy, and I think it plain enough that I hope arb com would decide it by motion. DGG ( talk ) 15:01, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually, there isn't a consensus as to whether it falls under D5 or not, and many that think it doesn't clearly fall there think that my particular application was acceptable under IAR justification. I'll hold off while the RFC is in progress. Once that's over, I'll evaluate the result.—Kww(talk) 15:45, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Link to old discussion needed

A few years ago, a few thousand biology-related articles, created by a bot or script, were mass deleted after a discussion (AfD, RfC, VPP, whatever). Can anyone provide me with the link to that discussion please? I'm working on a somewhat similar situation now, and want to check if they are really similar, and how the earlier one was handled. Thanks! Fram (talk) 08:42, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

User:Anybot and Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Anybot's algae articles? T. Canens (talk) 09:05, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! That's the one that I meant. Fram (talk) 09:10, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I think it was I who called Fram's attention to this set of articles in the discussion about Dr. Blofield's Afghanistan place articles. As you'll see from the discussion there, this set -- apparently about 1000--wee done by a poorly programmed bot, apparently being run by an ed. who did not realize that the taxonomy of this group was not straightforward, that older sources were no longer applicable, & that there was no comprehensive up-to-date source. They contained sufficient errors in multiple aspects that they would all need rewriting by a specialist, slowly, from the disperse original literature, none of the few suitable people here were prepared to do it, and those who knew most agreed the fixing was impractical. This is very different from fixing the names of provinces & =checking for typos in a list for which there's an authoritative source that should have been used, but wasn't, with many people here experienced in geographical articles. Even so, I note it's been two years and the algae articles have not been re-created and our coverage remains deplorable. I think the wrong decision was made: we should have made greater efforts to quarantine them and fix them. DGG ( talk ) 19:31, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

You are all fantastic!

This is quite possibly the incorrect forum, but after a brief glance at the overwhelming amount of forum choices available to me, I honestly just picked the first one that I was vaguely familiar with and went with it.

I've been editing Misplaced Pages for years now, but nothing that really merited getting a user name to take the credit. I'm constantly on the road and can't make myself care for the wikipolitics, any of its user-spaces, or frankly having any sort of discussion with anyone else.

That being said, I very much appreciate all of the folks that do manage all of this. I realize this is the admin notice board and not the general user notice board (if there is such a thing), but I wanted to send warm wishes specifically your all's way. I certainly couldn't stomach having to put up with the random crap on the day-to-day basis that you all handle, but the wiki wouldn't exist if no one did. Your hard work shows, and I'm sure the thanks you get is as large as your paychecks for it. If heartfelt kudos sent byte-by-byte mean anything at all, I'm sending hundreds your way.

Good luck, and a friendly good bye! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.8.89.2 (talk) 09:15, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Prodego 15:02, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Always nice to read something like this :) Thanks to you too! NW (Talk) 17:59, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Reading this made my day.. thanks :) -- œ 09:41, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Is Misplaced Pages complying with super-injunctions?

See here:

Several celebrities alleged to be those subject to super-injunctions have been named on Twitter and Misplaced Pages, but the media's inability to name the public figures involved has meant innocent celebrities being named.

Count Iblis (talk) 16:37, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages, a U.S. Based entity, has no obligation to or intention of complying with the UK's super-injunction. Rklawton (talk) 16:42, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) AFAIK, only incidentally. That is, superinjunctions do not apply to Misplaced Pages specifically, since they do not apply to the press in the U.S., and Misplaced Pages's physical servers are in the U.S. Superinjunctions may apply to U.K. residents editing Misplaced Pages from the U.K., but IANAL, so I don't know the implications of that. Sometimes, material about a celebrity which may be covered by a superinjunction may be removed from Misplaced Pages for unrelated reasons (such as WP:BLP violations, or being irrelevent to the article, or being poorly sourced, or just being inappropriate per WP:UNDUE, or any of a number of other reasons), but that is merely a coincidence, and that doesn't mean that the material was removed to comply with such a superinjunction, if the removed material would have been removed anyways. --Jayron32 16:45, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Hasn't this been on AN/ANI several times now already? NW (Talk) 17:58, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I haven't seen such discussions here (but then, I don't closely follow all disucssions on AN/I and AN). here, it was mentioned that people could be found in contempt of court, although prosecutions are unlikely. Count Iblis (talk) 18:06, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

See WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive223#Super-injunctions and unnecessary censorship of Misplaced Pages. There were also two somewhat related threads on ani. Just search for "superinjunction" on admin noticeboards. Hans Adler 18:40, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah neither Misplaced Pages nor the Wikimedia Foundation have expressed any interest in adknowledging or complying with the poxy so-called 'laws' of the 'United Kingdom' and due to jurisdictional differences, that is their privilege (only Americans have any entitlement to privacy on the 'pedia). Still if you are a UK editor, you should probably stay well away from the the relevant areas as you may be personally liable for any edits you make. Bob House 884 (talk) 19:04, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Here's an interesting quote: "A spokesman for Misplaced Pages confirmed the website will continue to do all it can to prevent super injunctions being breached by British users." Not sure what that means, but it sounds good. There is also a current thread about this at WT:BLP#Super-injunctions, BTW. -- zzuuzz 19:16, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm, that would suggest that the British authorities would be able to get IP addresses of editors here upon request. Count Iblis (talk) 19:27, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

It'd be one fishing expedition after another, though, I can't see the WMF responding to that. What if I went to Imogen Thomas' page now and posted the name of the soccer player she's alleged to be connected to? (it is easy to find, btw) Are they going to try to get my IP info to see if I'm British or not? There's nothing identifying in my user page. Tarc (talk) 19:35, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

The Misplaced Pages spokesperson was User:David Gerard and he explains it in this comment. Basically, he was misquoted. Woody (talk) 19:37, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Well Tarc, 'they' could certainly ask WMF for your details who will be totally within their rights to release the information should they consider it 'reasonably neccessary' so it depends on whether you think thats a risk worth taking. You don't need probable cause or anything to just ask somebody. Still it's more of a concern to users (like myself) who clearly identify themselves as Brits or whos contributions make it very obvious that they are a Brit. Bob House 884 (talk) 20:59, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

It is hard for Misplaced Pages to "comply with super-injunctions" when it does not know what is in them. Only the mainstream media in the UK are shown these documents, Misplaced Pages is guessing like everyone else. The real threat is still libel if blog-sourced nonsense gets into an article.--♦IanMacM♦ 07:02, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, Misplaced Pages has long been violating a super-injunction, so the answer to the original question is clearly 'no'. --CalendarWatcher (talk) 08:57, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Lib Dem MP John Hemming (politician) revealed the existence of the Fred Goodwin super-injunction using Parliamentary privilege, leading to coverage like this in The Sun. The term "super-injunction" is somewhat loosely defined, and usually refers to an injunction where the plaintiff is anonymous.--♦IanMacM♦ 09:15, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

My question would be a content one. If a court has ruled that some recent material is private, damaging, not widely published, and that there's no public interest in disclosure, does that material belong on an encyclopedia? While there's no legal reasons for Misplaced Pages to exclude it, perhaps there should be a presumption in favour of exclusion in such cases. We are an encyclopedia, we don't do breaking news (or don't in theory) and we have a principal of erring on the "do no harm" side. Sure, there may be instances where it is quite clear that a court order is unreasonable, and we'd be grossly self-censoring legitimate content by exclusion, but I suspect that usualy that will not be the case. There may be the danger that we distort our content, and ignore our own principals, by deliberately inclucing material to demonstrate our independence from UK courts and our instinctive resistance to censorship, that would be most unfortunate. Misplaced Pages is not a political or legal weapon for free-speech campaigns.--Scott Mac 09:15, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

That's most probably correct in the vast majority of cases—marital affairs and the like almost certainly don't need to be included no matter if a court injunction is taken out on it or not. But it's unlikely that the courts will be correct all the time. It's something to judge on a case-by-case basis. NW (Talk) 14:15, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Scott, would you say the same about a similar move by some other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, or the PRC? Why should we automatically assume the UK has fair judicial practices in such matters? Certainly a number of people in that country think otherwise. We have stringent standards regarding sourcing for damaging BLP, and we should abide by them. Normally, our standards are stricter and result in our not publishing material which would be perfectly legal to publish, even in the UK. Sometimes, it's otherwise. I see no reason why we should care in the least about their judgment in deciding what to include, as we are not subject to their jurisdiction. As a particular complication, regardless of the underlying matter, the act of suppression is in my opinion very likely to be notable, and will often have reliable sources. . How we can write about it without violating BLP may be a little tricky, but it is our BLP standards that are in question (I think we might have to write about it without mentioning the allegations, if there are reliable sources for the suppression but not the allegations). The only reason we should ever comply with a court order for supression is on the advice on the WMF councsel--anything else is a violation of NPOV and NOT CENSORED. To the extent we follow those two policies, Misplaced Pages is indeed committed to free speech in the more general sense. DGG ( talk ) 14:51, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I like the idea of writing about celebrities taking out super-injunctions, without saying what the allegations are that the super-injunctions are intended to suppress. After all, the allegations will usually be the sort of material we would not choose to include anyway, but the existence of a super-injunction (if reliably sourced) can't really be seen that way. We could have a Category:People who have taken out a super-injunction, which would serve a useful encyclopedic purpose to people like tabloid journalists. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 16:45, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Old merge discussion needs closing

At Talk:2010–2011 Ivorian crisis#Clarified requested move / merger proposal, a merger proposal needs closing - it has been ongoing since 5 April but ground to a halt weeks ago with a perfectly even split of opinion (6 for, 6 against). It clearly isn't going anywhere. I'd close it myself but as a participant in the discussion that probably wouldn't be appropriate, so I'd be grateful if someone else could do it. Prioryman (talk) 20:08, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I've closed it with "(non-admin closure) The result of this discussion was no consensus, with no prejudice against proposing another merge with a notice on WP:WPAFRICA for more wider community input." – AJL 20:43, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Just a Kiss

Can an admin please delete the redirect Just a Kiss so I can move someone else's userspace draft to that title? Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • 21:43, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

et voila :) --Errant 21:47, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Donald Trump

More experienced eyes needed. He's been in the news constantly the past month with his political statements, and consensus has not yet formed on how to properly cover these events. Please come and lend a hand. --Tangledorange (talk) 00:19, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Re-Running for Adminship

In the last week, we've had two admins (HJ Mitchell (talk · contribs) and SarekOfVulcan (talk · contribs)) relinquish their tools and run for Adminship again. HJM's RFA was pretty clear cut and he regained the bit. Sarek's less so. As I'm writing this, Sarek's RFA is pending closure at 72% support (Update: Also closed as successful).

Although I supported both candidates, I feel that such re-RFAs are unnecessary. As has been shown, it give those editors who have been in conflict with an admin a chance to stick a knife in. There are better things for the community to do than keep re-electing admins who have not seriously abused the position. If there are concerns over an admin's conduct, mechanisms are in place to deal with them. So please, no more re-RFA's, eh? Mjroots (talk) 06:22, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Interesting that this is under the Donald Trump section... :P --Rschen7754 06:24, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Indeed a waste of time since anyone would be re-instated anyways. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 06:44, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I guess you forgot about Herostratus' recall fiasco; didn't and don't think it was the right outcome, but he was recalled. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 07:25, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Herostratus's recall was a different matter. Per his stated terms, a request was made that he be recalled, which he agreed to. Any admin is free to put themselves up to recall under whatever terms they wish to set. Having done so, if recalled, they should have the guts to stand again rather than try to wriggle out of being recalled. Mjroots (talk) 07:56, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

• Basically agree with MJroots. If an admin screws up hit them with a trout. If that doesn't work try RFC/U (like any other user) and if taht doesn't work recall them (through the admin recall, if they've agreed to it, or ArbCom). We don't need to give more time to divise personal drama like RFA is in general, but more especially once you've been an admin your actions are not designed to make friends. We don't need reconfirmation RFAs--Cailil 12:58, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I think all of you admins need to try to look at this a bit more from the perspective of the average user. I agree that these RfAs are counterproductive, but not for the exact reasons Mjroots has laid out. Just like all users, admins need to be able to abide by basic policies, and to deal with specific problems that arise as they arise. Refusing to deal with a problem and instead deciding to ask the community if you're still a swell guy overall sends the message that unlike the rest of us admins don't have to confront specific problems if enough people have their back, generally speaking (i.e. Sarek's RfA). Of course a non-admin like myself wont miss the fact that the proportion of admins to non-admins voting in this and other reconfirmation RfAs is undoubtedly grossly out of whack with the proportion of admins to non-admins in the general population of the encyclopedia. There are other examples that are disquieting form the non-admin perspective as well. A number of commentators at Sarek's RfA noted that if a non-admin running for adminship for the first time were to answer a question like Sarek did to his quest #6 there is no way that individual would ever pass. That, again sends the wrong message. At the end of the day these RfAs are divisive when it comes to the admin/non-admin relationship and not just because it allows people who have been blocked by an admin in the past to "stick knives in," but because inevitably they will engender an atmosphere where non-admins feel even more powerless to confront the reconfirmed admins when those admins do run afoul of policy or etiquette. I think the perspectives above are legitimate, but I wanted to present the other side of this coin. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 13:43, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I think the "Admin for Life" thing is absurd and that recall should be a part of regular policy. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 14:05, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

To me, adminship is like having a driving licence. I've earned it, and feel that I should retain it until such time that it can be proved that I should no longer have it. Mjroots (talk) 14:30, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Problem is, there's no policy-based process to discuss whether or not someone is still capable or trustworthy and every time someone tries to create a policy, it's shouted down by people who think any potential vehicle for the community to remove admins is "unfair" and "punishes admins". Most people who receive a driving license have to renew it every so often. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 14:53, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Looking at the indefinete block of Sarah777 it was correct to take his driving license away. He should never got it back! An English admin banning an Irish nationalist for attacking the English is 100% improper and looks like a POV-revenge. Eddylandzaat (talk) 15:30, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Nobody took it away from him. You could at least get your facts straight if you want to start spreading smears about him on this pathetic basis. If you can give me the name of an Irish admin, I'll gladly ask them to review whether these smears of yours have violated any policy, and we can test what your reaction would be if the unthinkable happened, and you as an Irish editor were to be blocked by an Irish admin. I'd be interested to see whether you'd explain it away in the same way Sarah did - all the Irish admins/editors who don't support her, are not true Irishmen. MickMacNee (talk) 15:59, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

LOL, but I am Dutch. Get your facts straight... Eddylandzaat (talk) 16:19, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Then get me a Dutch admin. It makes no difference, your view is that you do not get treated fairly by admins on Misplaced Pages unless they share your nationality, or come from a 'neutral' country. Well, the Dutch are pretty neutral people no? So get me a Dutch admin. MickMacNee (talk) 16:43, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Ik ben eén nederlands sprekende admin, misschien moet ik hem te blokkeren?? Mjroots (talk) 16:48, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Basicly admins should stay away from interfering in cases that might be regarded as a conflict of interest. Eddylandzaat (talk) 18:29, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Mjroots, just to play along with the driving license analogy. Where I come from, driving licenses do automatically get revoked on chronological grounds. Now, admittedly that's more like after seventy years than after two years. But certainly what is expected of an admin on Misplaced Pages has changed about as much in the ten years Misplaced Pages has existed, as the laws of the road have changed here in the last seventy. (Or to put it another way, internet time moves faster.) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 16:38, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure if there's an age where the license is revoked on chronological grounds in my state, but I do have to prove that my eyesight is still good every four years. You only have to pass the driving and written test once to get the license, but you have to prove that you understand what you're looking at every so often to keep it. --Onorem♠Dil 17:30, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Non-admin commentary Let's keep playing a bit. Not only do I have to prove my eyesight is still good every four years, I also have to undergo a full physical examination every two years in order to exercise the full privileges of my driver's license. Why? Because I hold a Commercial Driver's License, and that's what this state requires for me to keep it. If something were to be discovered on the physical that disqualified me from operating a Big Rig, the state has the legal right to require me to surrender that license in exchange for a regular Operator's license. Now, if we're going to hold with the premise that having the admin bit set is WP:NOBIGDEAL, is there any real reason to make an admin go through the hoops at some arbitrary chronological point? Or, like my CDL, should mop-holders be subject to a review every so often? Personally, I don't think my CDL is any great shakes, although I did have to jump through some (rather expensive) hoops to acquire it. But it does mean I'm held to a higher standard when I'm behind the wheel, just as the "typical" user holds admins to a higher standard...whether they should or not. --Alan the Roving Ambassador (talk) 23:22, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

• As a non-admin comment, I appreciate the fact that both of them chose to do this. It was, in my opinion, an honorable attempt to be responsive to the will of the community, despite the objections that many users raised. But I'd rather see more administrators make use of administrator review, instead of going through all the fuss of an RfA that no one else asked for. And I also get the feeling that the overall mood of the community is evolving, to be more and more receptive to instituting a substantive policy for administrator recall. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:05, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
  • It was also completely pointless, as the outcome was never in doubt. And unless the same standards are applied to admin and regular RfAs then it will continue to be a pointless exercise. Malleus Fatuorum 17:08, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
    • Agree with Tryptofish on both counts. Yes Admin Review is a far better process. And an actual policy for de-sysoping would be fine. Unfortunately of the few desysopings (under the current system or lack of system) that I've seen many that have ended up being unfair and divisive (and some of those were carried out by ArbCom).
      As a sysop about 50% of the time it feels like we have a bullseye painted on our backs for drive-by 'wikipedia adminz r evilz' from block evaders; the other 50% of the time we're left dealing with editors who respond to civility warnings by saying they "weren't f$%&ing being abusive".
      Overall there is a misconception that being an admin is somehow a higher rank (I even saw somebody referring to HJM being "promoted") than a normal editor - it's not. It's just a bunch of buttons whose use are strictly defined by policies. Rollback is not for fun, neither is protection, blocking or deletion. Any sysop who is actually abusing their powers are easily identifed and dealt with. Those who in the line of duty have annoyed users is a totally different matter--Cailil 17:17, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
      • When I did Misplaced Pages:Administrator review/SarekOfVulcan, most of the negative feedback came from people I had run up against in the course of using the tools. This time around, there were a lot of names I didn't recognize on the oppose side, plus a few names I _hadn't_ expected to see. The feedback this time was a lot more effective, for that reason. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:36, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
• There is nothing else that comes close to a Reconfirmation RfA; Admin Review does not have the "gravitas" to enforce the communities viewpoint if an admin is found to be acting inappropriately, and yet ArbCom requires a level of misconduct so apparent as the sysop to be also under threat of a ban or other restrictions. I know, because I also looked at the alternatives when I ran under a reconfirmation RfA a couple of years back. I know it is an imperfect system, with the potential for accusations of grandstanding and fishing for compliments (and that is consistent with my experience) and the opportunity for some revenge taking, but it is the best an admin can offer without being able to ignore/nullify the result. Indeed, kudos to HJ and SoV for resigning the bits upon launching their requests - something in my naivety I did not do. For all those who complain both that reconfirmation RfA's are a inappropriate method of auditing a sysops performance and also admins are largely unaccountable for poor behaviours or regular instances of improper conduct, for fuck's sake find something better - there are less than 1000 active admins; any consensus from the community would not be able to be derailed by such a minority self interest group. There are admins who would welcome such a procedure, because having such a method of desysopping underperforming sysops would result in less pressure in the allowing of permissions to other RfA candidates and thus likely more successful (and less stressful) applications resulting in more administrators lessening the workload for the present lot and less requirement for sub standard admins to be allowed to keep the tools. Whatever the very many faults inherent with reconfirmation RfA's, do not move to stop it when there is no other option available. LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:57, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

  ...there are less than 1000 active admins; any consensus from the community would not be able to be derailed by such a minority self interest group. I beg to differ. If the statistics below show anything it is exactly that admins are quite capable of steering "community decisions" such as those at reconfirmation RfAs. Perhaps you missed the fact that non-admins came in only at 66% support, while admins came in at 86%. The massive relative volume of admins voting produced a 72.5% support for Sarek. What else do you call that?Griswaldo (talk) 22:23, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

  Also, generally speaking, almost all "community decisions" are in reality based on the comments of a very small percentage of the community. Ideally that small group is representative of the community at large. However, this means that if any one group shows up in disproportionate numbers they always have the ability to skew the results. I surely hope we're not turning a blind eye to that fact in general.Griswaldo (talk) 22:26, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

  And what would those numbers look like if a majority of non-admins opposed SoV instead of 66% approval? What would it look like if more non-admins joined the discussion? I'm trying not to misinterpret your claims but you are making it hard. Protonk (talk) 22:43, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

  I'm not sure what you are getting at. I'm not entirely sure what it would look like if more non-admins joined the discussion, but if the non-admins voting in the RfA are representative of the entirely population of non-admins and if the RfA reflected a proportion of admins to non-admins similar to the entire Misplaced Pages community then I can say for sure that the percentage support would have dropped well below 70%. I'm not trying to be argumentative here Protonk, but I have to admit that I don't understand the point you are trying to make. Please clarify.Griswaldo (talk) 23:09, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

  I was referring to creating a process for the desysopping of problematic admins, not SoV's RecFA... As for the rest of your concerns; why not agree to blame the 'Crats? Since no decision they could have made would have been acceptable to everyone, surely the blame must be laid at their door!? LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:29, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Good ol' boys and girls club?

I did a very rough count based on information found on user pages to determine how the votes in Sarek's RfA stacked up on the based on someone's status as an admin or a non-admin. If anything the admin numbers may be low since not every admin tags their user page with admin categories or banners. Here's what I found.

• Support: A-72, N-94
• Oppose: A-12, N-51
• Neutral: A-2, N-8

There is a pretty big difference between the admin vote and the non-admin vote ... in fact close to a 20% difference - 86% support from admins, and only 66% support from non-admins. Looked at another way admins comprised 43% of support voters but only 19% of oppose voters. At least 36% of all voters were admins. Does anyone know how that stacks up to an average RfA? I'm not entirely sure what I think about these numbers personally but Jimbo Wales made a comment recently on his talkpage comparing the admin core to the House of Lords, while suggesting that "Lords are seldom in favor of Lords reform." I wonder if reconfirmation RfA's are this heavily attended by admins what it means in the end. How much of this is a community decision and how much it becomes specifically an admin community decision? Are you still in the club or not? Again I am not suggesting that this is the case, but I think the high involvement of other admins is meaningful here and people might want to reflect on this fact. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 20:45, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

• Not sure what to do with this data. Do you want use to run RfAs or recall proceedings without admins? Is the non-admin vote the "right" result? Is the admin vote the "right" result? How do those breakdowns compare to regular RfAs? More broadly, I think attempts to bleed the politics out of adminship from this end are fruitless. We can impose some arbitrary restriction on admin reconformation or recall processes but that doesn't change the incentives--what motivates admins to protect each other from recall proceedings won't change. The right answer is to depoliticize the bit, remove or restructure processes which deem adminship a "social" right and fight against responsibility creep. Otherwise we are just engaged in a rearguard action vis a vis politicking. Protonk (talk) 20:57, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
• So, create (or allow) a format that is similar to ArbCom proceedings - where there is a division between "involved parties" (in this case Admins) and "non involved parties". Let there be some degree of "Due Weight" between the two, where comments by admins who are familiar with the pressures and difficulties of the role are considered against how the "outside" observers and recipients of admin actions and practice perceive the issues. If this is too much WP:CREEP, why not strongly suggest ReconRfA's candidates request that commenting admins clarify their status? These are not insurmountable issues, if there is a real appetite to have admins made accountable. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:06, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
• There's going to be some percentage of revenge voting from editors that have reprimanded or blocked, and some amount of "he's my buddy" voting from admins. I have no idea how you would adjust for either factor. How could you begin to estimate it?—Kww(talk) 21:10, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
  • I think I got two "he's my buddy" supports on the grounds that I had blocked them. :-) --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:13, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
    • You can get he's my buddy, or he's my enemy voting from admins and non-admins alike. I wouldn't worry about that part. The larger question is if admins on a whole might be a bit biased when it comes to something like this, since they are themselves admins. It certainly seems like in this example they were much more prone to offer support. It would be interesting if someone with the programing skills could figure out an easy way to measure RfAs in this manner, and especially the reconfirmation RfAs. It is natural, by the way, for people to be biased towards/protective of others they identify with. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 21:28, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
• Considering that the whole basis of this discussion is that admins aren't actually part of the community, I'm not sure we have to go much further in discussing it. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:11, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

  Where do you get that from? Admins are surely part of the community, but they are also part of a smaller subset - admins. If an RfA reflected the relative numbers of admins in the entire Misplaced Pages community the % of admins voting in the RfA would be much, much lower. The fact is that an amount of admins disproportionate to their number in the community at large, involved themselves in your reconfirmation RfA, and I bet this is true in other reconfirmation RfAs. You don't find that significant? You don't have to of course, but please do not misrepresent what I'm saying.Griswaldo (talk) 21:21, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

  But is it disproportionate? How many admins vote in RfAs generally? Do they vote to support candidates disproportionately? Protonk (talk) 21:32, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

  That's a question I would be very curious to see answered. I do not have the programming knowledge to find an easy solution, but I bet someone out there does. My gut says that admins vote disproportionately in all RFAs, but even more so in these reconfirmation RFAs.Griswaldo (talk) 21:36, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

  then I'm going to out and say that you probably should walk back your claims that admin representation in SoV's RfA is disproportionate if you don't know what the standard of comparison is. We can certainly say "more admins voted to support SoV than regular editors", but that data point alone doesn't inform any broader inference. Protonk (talk) 21:44, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

  Then you misunderstood what I meant by disproportionate (and I did say that I assumed his was similar to other reconfirmation RfAs already). I have clarified. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 21:48, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

  I can believe that admins are more likely than non-admins to support re-confirmation. I wouldn't call it a "good old boys' club" mentality, though. I think it's more that admins are quicker to sympathize with some of the challenges faced by other admins, and perhaps are more forgiving because they can see themselves falling short in the same ways. Certainly, when it comes to the line between involvement and administrative action, I've walked a mile in those shoes and so I'm more likely to empathise with Sarek or cut him some slack. If I were a non-admin, I'd probably view it more harshly (or more objectively, if you like).

  As a digression, physicians (for instance) are often criticized for professional solidarity when it comes to dealing with medical errors. I think the driving factor isn't collusion, but rather empathy: many physicians, called upon to judge a colleague, can conceive of a set of circumstances where they themselves might make a similar error. As a result, they're slower to condemn their colleagues when they see a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God scenario. I think a similar dynamic is at work here, with reconfirmation RfA's. MastCell  21:54, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

It's only human to do so, even if such a thought process is not in place. North8000 (talk) 22:07, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

(ec) The section heading was meant to be attention grabbing more than anything - perhaps that was a bad idea. Mastcell I think your comments might be right on the money. I actually never thought it had anything to do with collusion, but some sort of natural bias (as I tried to point out in another response above). Your comment is the best explanation I've heard yet about why there might be a natural bias. What I wonder is, if there is this propensity, what is the utility of reconfirmations, as a community process. Perhaps it should only be an admin process, like I'm assuming a review of medical errors would usually be conducted by peers, short of a malpractice suit that forces a judge or a jury to weigh in. What I don't like is the idea that an admin can volunteer for reconfirmation, benefit from some natural bias like this (if it exists), and then turn around and act as if the community as a whole has reconfirmed him/her. I think if that is the message htey get from the process it's a net negative to the project to have these reconfirmation RfAs as they accomplish nothing more than giving admins an inflated sense of community support.Griswaldo (talk) 22:09, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

To go off of what MastCell said, let me quote a passage from Atul Gawande's Better (pg. 102-103, ISBN 0312427654): "In a recent national survey, physicians and nonphysicians were given the following case: A surgeon orders an antibiotic for a sixty-seven-year-old man undergoing surgery, failing to notice that the patients chart says he is allergic to the drug. The mistake is not caught until after the antibiotic is given, and, despite every effort, the patient dies as a result. What should be done? Unlike 50 percent of the lay public, almost none of the physicians believed the surgeon should lose his license. But 55 percent of the physicians said that they would sue the surgeon for malpractice." The analogies to this situation are clear. But one part of the above example has no appropriate analogy, and that is the issue of malpractice. I think one thing that gnaws at editors in situations like this is that there really is no intermediate step between "desysopping" and "reconfirming", and that's something that should be remedied if we can do so. I can't think of how to do so though, so I'll leave it up to you. NW (Talk) 01:24, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

I think one thing that gnaws at editors in situations like this is that there really is no intermediate step between "desysopping" and "reconfirming", and that's something that should be remedied if we can do so. Yes, I believe that is a very significant factor and a telling point. There needs to be some method by which accountability can be enforced, with appropriate safeguards to prevent both payback and in-group support. I think that points to some kind of dedicated committee or council with appropriately selected representatives, both admin and non-admin, to hear the evidence, pro and con, filter out the remarks of the obvious bad players and cronies, and make the final decision concerning temporary or permanent de-sysoping, with the latter reviewable by ArbCom. I know that will stick in the craw of people who see WP:BURO as the apotheosis of Wikiphilosophy, but having a administrative functionary whose tenure is effectively infinite unless there's a major screw-up just seems like (and is) a recipe for abuse of power. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:00, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

IMHO It's a pretty blatant and serious offense to use the tools in a tussle or dispute that you are a party to, and one that is quite easy to avoid. But the more common "infraction" is inadvertent......using their half-immunity from the rules when acting as editors. Other editors are less prone to challenge them, other admins are less prone to find against them, and it is taken for granted in the community that the above two items are the case. The answer might be a dicotomy....encourage a high standard for behavior, while at the same time more firmly establish that admins are not overlords, they (as I've seen Gadget850 say several times) are fellow editors who have been given some extra tools to do some specific things for Misplaced Pages. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:26, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

• There once was a local news channel during sweeps week (when The Nielsen Ratings Company measures who is watching what) that announced that they were going to do a week-long news exposé about Nielsen viewers (the select few who are randomly chosen and carefully monitored as to their viewing habits) and how these select few influence the programming everyone else sees. The series of news stories skipped the part about how the Nielsen ratings that a given channel and program receives determines how much that station can charge their advertisers (“Oh, pay no attention to that detail behind the curtain!”) Well, guess what? What few Nielsen viewers there were in that broadcast area tuned into that station’s 6:00 news that week in droves to see a series of stories about them. The Nielsen Company had to later correct their numbers when the stunt was revealed.

  I think there is a lesson to be learned about admins here. They are extraordinarily well connected behind the scenes and can have undo influence on Misplaced Pages policy. My sense is that after the community grants them their special privileges and powers, they lose track of the simple truth that leaders shall govern only with the consent of the governed. Just like the Nielsen ratings can be unduly influenced when subject matter germane to their interests is being broadcast, so to are we seeing admins influencing Misplaced Pages policy to an extent greater than their numbers when the community is trying to deal with a problem admin.

  Sure, it can be argued that admins are more active than regular wikipedians and therefore deserve greater representation in RfCs and RfAs, etc. But it’s easy enough to compensate for this extra effort they devote to the project: it should be a simple matter to find out what the average number of edits are done by admins and how many are done by regular rank & file wikipedians. Whatever that ratio is, I propose that admin participation in matters pertaining to the rights and privileges of admins be limited to the same ratio of their contributions as a class. It is only fair. Otherwise, they can backchannel, get all excited, and circle the wagons to preserve the status quo of their clubby little world. Such a modification to the rules of participating in matters of gauging consensus would truly enable a proper consensus and help ensure that admins continue to enjoy the confidence of the community that gave them their privileges in the first place.

  Sorry about all the above plain-speak, which is the product of merely communicating precisely what is on my mind; I do that sometimes. Someone please tell me that the phenomenon I just described doesn’t really occur. Greg L (talk) 03:32, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

  • "circle the wagons"<LOL> You make me feel like one of those injuns riding in a circle around the wagon, hoping to take a scalp. ;-) --Ohconfucius 05:05, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
    • To bring up Herostratus' recall again (which was, albeit, under somewhat different circumstances), he initially wanted only non-admins to vote to prevent the Tribe of Sysop from protecting "one of their own". It ended up irredeemably poisoning the atmosphere there beyond what anyone expected; I don't think preventing admins from reconfirmation RfAs is a good idea. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 05:26, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
  • "it should be a simple matter to find out what the average number of edits are done by admins and how many are done by regular rank & file wikipedians" - in practice the ratio would be vastly in favour of the admins; they tend to do enormous numbers of robotic edits. And of course they edit this very page, and the more dramatic Incidents board, and all of the other policy boards, every day non-stop for years. It's what they do. I wager that the subset of users who are admins account for the majority of edits to the site. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 14:52, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

As a point of interest, on the RfA page in question, the words "INVOLVED", "uninvolved", and "involvement" occur:

• once in the self-nomination statement
• four times in the closing statement
• 24 times in the questions to the applicant
• 57 times in the Support section
• 89 times in the Oppose section
• 10 times in the Neutral section.

That's a total of 180 times; jeez, and it was waved through. Tony (talk) 14:43, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Seems like much ado about nothing. I would have tossed in a support had I known it was going on. Tarc (talk) 14:45, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Market Forces (ChuckleVision)

This AfD has now been open for three weeks for want of comments. Please could a few people argue either way and then we can get the thing closed? Thanks. ╟─TreasuryTag►secretariat─╢ 08:57, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I was about to vote redirect, but I editconflicted with future perfect who closed it as merge/redirect. Yoenit (talk) 09:06, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Old Images (without sourcing )

Can an administrator please provide some guidance on what to do about older images without a source?

At present I've been leaving image authorship requests on user talk pages, with the good faith intention of reducing the number of obvious cases. A number of the images ARE 'useful' , in use and would but for the missing source be valuable for Commons, and it seems a shame that they will eventually get deleted due to policy-zombies (For the record I've been accussed of being a bit of a policy zombie myself at times, see the archives at WP:ANI for example... )

Perhaps it's time to consider putting a sunrise date on when CSD's can be applied, and which could be applied in the appropriate automated tools?

On a more practical level, perhaps admins or experienced contributors would like to look over the images I've been slowly trying to add information too, with a view to reducing the numbers of 'technically' un-sourced images still further?

Sfan00 IMG (talk) 14:51, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

By older, do you mean like pre-1923 old, or like uploaded before 2006 old? /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 17:14, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

For the purposes of the disscussion - I meant stuff uploaded prior to Jan 1st 2010.

If you want to include pre 1923 uploaded after Jan St 2010, feel free... Sfan00 IMG (talk) 11:46, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Persistent vandalism by 216.73.65.77 at North West Company article.

Same IP (216.73.65.77) has vandalized the same article ( North West Company ) 4 times in 24 hours. Warned each time, each warning seems to make them do it again. No profanity etc., just messing it up. At first glance looks like them might have done a similar binge 2 months ago. No big deal at the article, but I think that such "in your face" persistent vandalism may need some response. North8000 (talk) 19:51, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Try WP:AIV instead after sufficient warnings are given. Guoguo12--Talk--  20:10, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Never noticed that. North8000 (talk) 20:12, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Usernames for administrator attention is pretty backed up

Resolved

• Misplaced Pages noticeboards