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Administrative discussions

Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive367#Close challenge for Talk:1948 Arab–Israeli War#RFC for Jewish exodus

(Initiated 13 days ago on 13 December 2024) challenge of close at AN was archived nableezy - 05:22, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard#Request for closure review

(Initiated 10 days ago on 16 December 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:40, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

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Requests for comment

Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/In the news criteria amendments

(Initiated 80 days ago on 7 October 2024) Tough one, died down, will expire tomorrow. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:58, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Talk_page_guidelines#Request_for_comment:_Do_the_guidelines_in_WP:TPO_also_apply_to_archived_talk_pages?

(Initiated 71 days ago on 16 October 2024) Discussion seems to have petered out a month ago. Consensus seems unclear. Gnomingstuff (talk) 02:34, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

 Note: Needs admin closure imho, due to its importance (guideline page), length (101kb), and questions about neutrality of the Rfc question and what it meant. Mathglot (talk) 21:28, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

And in true Streisand effect fashion, this discussion, quiescent for six weeks, has some more responses again. Mathglot (talk) 01:30, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

{{doing}} voorts (talk/contributions) 23:35, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Oops; I put this in the wrong section. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:30, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 459#RFC_Jerusalem_Post

(Initiated 59 days ago on 28 October 2024) Participation/discussion has mostly stopped & is unlikely to pick back up again. - Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 21:15, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

 Note: This is a contentious topic and subject to general sanctions. - Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 21:15, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Archived. P.I. Ellsworth , ed.  22:26, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/Grey_Literature

(Initiated 46 days ago on 10 November 2024) Discussion is slowing significantly. Likely no consensus, personally. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 03:09, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Option 2 was very clearly rejected. The closer should try to see what specific principles people in the discussion agreed upon if going with a no consensus close, because there should be a follow-up RfC after some of the details are hammered out. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 03:10, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

 Doing... —Compassionate727  13:43, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

@Compassionate727: Still working on this? — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 17:18, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Ugh… in practice, no. I'm still willing to do it, but it's in hiatus because of the three(!) pending challenges of my closures at AN, while I evaluate to what extent I need to change how I approach closures. If somebody else wants to take over this, they should feel free. —Compassionate727  22:16, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Taking a pause is fair. Just wanted to double check. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 00:52, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

asking for an update if possible. I think this RFC and previous RFCBEFORE convos were several TOMATS long at this point, so I get that this might take time. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 16:34, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment#RFC_on_signing_RFCs

(Initiated 43 days ago on 13 November 2024) - probably gonna stay status quo, but would like a closure to point to Bluethricecreamman (talk) 06:14, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

•  Closed. Soni (talk) 21:41, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#RfC: Check Your Fact

(Initiated 43 days ago on 13 November 2024) RfC has elapsed, and uninvolved closure is requested. — Red-tailed sock _{(Red-tailed hawk's nest)} 15:49, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Articles for creation#RfC: Should a bot be created to handle AfC submissions that haven't changed since the last time they were submitted?

(Initiated 41 days ago on 15 November 2024) This RfC expired five days ago, has an unclear consensus, I am involved, and discussion has died down. JJP_Master (she/they) 22:56, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#RfC Indian numbering conventions

(Initiated 40 days ago on 16 November 2024) Very wide impact, not much heat. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:30, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

•  Closed – Consensus seems clear, I don't think my Indian-ness poses a WP;COI here, closed. Soni (talk) 22:03, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Talk:List of fictional countries set on Earth#RfC on threshold for inclusion

(Initiated 36 days ago on 20 November 2024) TompaDompa (talk) 17:50, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Israel#RfC

(Initiated 34 days ago on 22 November 2024) Legobot has removed the RFC notice. Can we please get an interdependent close. TarnishedPath 23:08, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (music)#RfC about the naming conventions for boy bands

(Initiated 18 days ago on 8 December 2024) No further participation in the last 7 days. Consensus is clear but I am the opener of the RfC and am not comfortable closing something I am so closely involved in, so would like somebody uninvolved to close it if they believe it to be appropriate.RachelTensions (talk) 16:00, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm not comfortable closing a discussion on a guideline change this early. In any case, if the discussion continues as it has been, a formal closure won't be necessary. —Compassionate727  13:00, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Place new discussions concerning RfCs above this line using a level 3 heading

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Misplaced Pages:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 November 24#List of Chalcolithic cultures of China

(Initiated 58 days ago on 30 October 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:02, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 November 17#List of Neverwinter Nights characters

(Initiated 58 days ago on 30 October 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:02, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 November 24#Lu Tianna

(Initiated 54 days ago on 2 November 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:02, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 November 24#Shen an calhar

(Initiated 54 days ago on 2 November 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:02, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 November 21#unmentioned suikoden characters (episode 1: a-h)

(Initiated 42 days ago on 14 November 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:02, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 November 21#Clock/calendar

(Initiated 42 days ago on 14 November 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:02, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Files for discussion/2024 December 14#File:The badge of the Military Order of the Serpent.png

(Initiated 37 days ago on 19 November 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:02, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Files for discussion/2024 November 27#File:The Musician (Erling Blöndal Bengtsson) by Ólöf Pálsdóttir.jpg

(Initiated 29 days ago on 27 November 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:02, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Files for discussion/2024 December 2#File:Batman superman.PNG ==

(Initiated 24 days ago on 2 December 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:02, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion/User:Est. 2021/sandbox/CURRENT

(Initiated 21 days ago on 5 December 2024) If there is consensus to do one of the history splitting operations but the closer needs help implementing it I would be willing to oblige. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:02, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Files for discussion/2024 December 9#File:Golden Lion size.jpg

(Initiated 17 days ago on 9 December 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:02, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Files for discussion/2024 December 9#File:Ang Panday 1986 animated series.jpg

(Initiated 17 days ago on 9 December 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:02, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

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Other types of closing requests

Talk:Arab migrations to the Levant#Merger Proposal

(Initiated 93 days ago on 25 September 2024) Open for a while, requesting uninvolved closure. Andre🚐 22:15, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Donald Trump#Proposal: Age and health concerns regarding Trump

(Initiated 71 days ago on 16 October 2024) Experienced closer requested. ―Mandruss ☎ 13:57, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Tesla Cybercab#Proposed merge of Tesla Network into Tesla Cybercab

(Initiated 69 days ago on 18 October 2024) This needs formal closure by someone uninvolved. N2e (talk) 03:06, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

I think it would be better to leave that discussion be. There is no consensus one way or the other. I could close it as "no consensus," but I think it would be better to just leave it so that if there's ever anyone else who has a thought on the matter, they can comment in that discussion instead of needing to open a new one. —Compassionate727  14:15, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Winter fuel payment abolition backlash#Merge proposal

(Initiated 59 days ago on 29 October 2024) There are voices on both sides (ie it is not uncontroversial) so a non-involved editor is needed to evaluate consensus and close this. Thanks. PamD 09:55, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Stadion Miejski (Białystok)#Requested move 5 November 2024

(Initiated 51 days ago on 5 November 2024) RM that has been open for over a month. Natg 19 (talk) 02:13, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Move_review/Log/2024 November#Carousel (film)

(Initiated 48 days ago on 8 November 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 19:52, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Shiv Sena#Merge proposal

(Initiated 29 days ago on 27 November 2024) Discussion seems to have stopped. As the proposal is not uncontroversial, and I, as the initiator, am involved, I am requesting an uninvolved editor to close the discussion. Arnav Bhate (talk • contribs) 11:02, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Williamsburg Bray School#Splitting proposal

(Initiated 29 days ago on 27 November 2024) Only two editors—the nominator and myself—have participated. That was two weeks ago. Just needs an uninvolved third party for closure. ~ Pbritti (talk) 18:37, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

 Doing... BusterD (talk) 20:28, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Deletion review/Log/2024 December 2#Rafael de Orleans e Bragança

(Initiated 25 days ago on 2 December 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 19:52, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Place new discussions concerning other types of closing requests above this line using a level 3 heading

Non-templated speedy deletion of sourced articles without creator notification

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

The initial section title "Implementation of own prods without creator notification" was a mis-description of the problem as pointed out by editors below. Fixed. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:14, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm somewhat surprised at the closure of discussion of User:Coffee's recent edits above. I would expect a User with this patterns of edits to receive a block, or at least a warning. Irrespective of the the unanimous content on the rest of the issues. As an admin on an academic forum I do not take the view that contributors with tools are exempt from normal contributor standards.

Be that as it may, among the questions (1)-(6) not answered, one related to a technical issue on which I would request clarification. Is it recommended that editors should act on their own prods in the case of sourced stubs (not talking about unsourced BLPs and other priority items - even though those get 7 days), and if it is the case that acting on own prods is recommended, does that void any requirement for a time gap between prod and implementation, or void any requirement to notify article creators so that sourced stubs can be improved? In ictu oculi (talk) 03:08, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Maybe your judgement is a little clouded because of his removal of rights a few days ago? I'm not saying for sure if it is but it's possible..Hell In A Bucket (talk) 05:04, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

It's my view as an admin on an academic forum.

Does anyone know the answer to the question? In ictu oculi (talk) 08:20, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Meh. PROD is supposed to be easy-come-easy-go. If you disagree with a PROD deletion you have the right to get it refunded. Since no harm is done, I don't see how it can be seen as disruptive. Reyk _YO! 08:28, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

According to WP:PROD the prodded article should be left for seven days. It also says that the article creator should be notified ("ideally"). The policy page also says "The article is first checked and then deleted by an administrator 7 days after nomination." That suggests to me that it should be reviewed by an admin other than the prodder (even if the prodder happens to be an admin). Otherwise it isn't really much of a review. The harm is done if there is no review and articles get deleted improperly. If the article creator or another major contributor isn't aware that the article has been prodded, they don't have an opportunity to make their case or improvements. Candleabracadabra (talk) 08:51, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Personally, I think that PRODs should not be actioned by the nominator, like AfDs (CSD is different territory). Reyk makes a good point in that WP:REFUND applies, but PRODs are commonly declined by a potential deleting admin, so doing it yourself would remove a rather important, if unofficial, part of the process. Ansh666 09:30, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree. In fact I wouldn't mind if it were a formal rule that the tagger should not also be the deleter. I might add that even on CSDs I think it poor practice for an admin to simply delete instead of tagging, except in cases like blatant BLP attack pages, and perhaps blatant copyvios. I for one practice "tag & bag" where if I find an untagged page that seems to me to be appropriate for speedy deletion, I tag it in my role as an editor. I only delete in my role as an admin pages that others have tagged, after reviewing them to confirm that I think the deletion appropriate. Oh I also exempt G6 houskeeping, especially redirects deleted to make way for uncontested moves, there is no need to wait for more eyes on those, in my view. DES 14:11, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Oh I should mention, I think it should be required for a PROD or CSD tagger to notify the creator (leaving aside the case where the creator is banned, when there is little point). Even if the creator does not log on in time to contest the action, it provides a record of what happened, instead of a mysterious vanishing of an article. Given the prevalence of scripts for such tagging today, notification is usually no more than one extra click or one preference stetting. If on Cad:CSD patrol I encounter a CSD where no notification has been done, I myself do the notification and do NOT delete the page, even if I otherwise would, I leave it for the next patroller instead, to give the creator some small amount of time. DES 14:16, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

• Comment by involved admin: Just so everyone knows (pinging Candleabracadabra), I never deleted any article that I PRODed myself. So I'm not quite certain what In ictu oculi is talking about. — Coffee // have a cup // essay // 14:08, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Nor have I. It would defeat the purpose of the procedure. DGG ( talk ) 15:21, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Exactly, and I think you, I, and everyone else here agrees with that. — Coffee // have a cup // essay // 15:53, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Since i commented above, i would not want my comment taken as asserting that Coffee has in fact deleted a page that s/he tagged with PROD. I have seen nothing to indicate that this is so. I was merely commenting on best practices in general. DES 16:01, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Same here. I wouldn't be able to tell, though, since I can't see deleted revisions. Ansh666 09:18, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

User:Coffee, then who did prod Bartholomeus Ruloffs, Raffaele Mertes, Turgay Erdener, Phan Văn Hùm and Genie Pace? I had been assuming that you acted on your own A7? In ictu oculi (talk) 00:58, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

So far as I can see, no-one proposed deletion of any of those pages. They were all deleted under CSD#A7 without prior tagging. The PROD procedure requires a waiting period, and generally the proposer will not be the deleter. The speedy deletion criteria outline cases where admins may delete articles immediately and without discussion. I see no barrier to an admin deleting a page under the speedy criteria without prior tagging. In both cases, courtesy notification of the article creator is recommended. I hope this helps. Bovlb (talk) 03:01, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

User:Bovlb, thanks, this strikes me as a more helpful answer than "I never deleted any article that I PRODed myself. So I'm not quite certain what In ictu oculi is talking about." Can you please link to where that is recommended for A7s? Thank you. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:22, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

There's no reason to assume Coffee did know what you were talking about. PRODs and SPEEDY deletions are quite different things. Deleting an article when you are the one who PRODed it may be a bit dubious, SPEEDY deleting an article without anyone nominating it is probably fairly common and consider normal by most admins. (Notice my wording here which is intentional. You can't delete an article under PROD without it ever having been nominated since it's obviously never a PROD in that case. You can SPEEDY an article if it meets the criteria, there's no real need for a nomination.) So there was likely genuine confusion at the time over what you were talking about, particularly as you had not specified which articles you were referring to at the time.

In other words, it's not unresonable for people to be confused when your explaination for what happend was wrong (or was something which never happened) and they have no easy way, without perhaps checking previous discussions and actions very carefully, to try and figure out what you're actually referring to.

I don't think anyone said there are any special recommendations for dealing A7s. Most of what was stated applies to all speedy deletions, as explained in Misplaced Pages:Criteria for speedy deletion and also Misplaced Pages:Deletion process, with perhaps the exception that there are a few cases where notification is not required.

Nil Einne (talk) 03:41, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Nil Einne the previous discussion was on this current page when I said "above", it has only since been archived into Archive256#User:Coffee. Also "in the case of sourced stubs (not talking about unsourced BLPs and other priority items - even though those get 7 days)," refers to the case of sourced stubs deleted without notification as mentioned above. No other case has been referenced.

Thank you for the comments on A7, which are informative. How then does the guidance In some cases, it would be appropriate to notify the page's creator of the deletion. work? It would seem pointless to notify The article you created has already gone. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:00, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

When deleting an article under A7, it is common practice to notify the creator with a template like this one. This suggests that you can recreate the article if you can fix the problem. If you feel an article was deleted in error, I would suggest contacting the deleting admin in the first instance, and if that doesn't work out, fling a request for undeletion for deletion review.

As Nil, says, A7 and the examples you gave are concerned with speedy deletion which is entirely separate from proposed deletion. It looks like you've been confusing the two processes (and it is somewhat confusing to have three or more processes for deletion), and I think that has made it difficult for people to respond helpfully to this thread. Cheers, Bovlb (talk) 18:17, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Correct - evidently this section was mistitled since I have understood the expression "prod" to mean any Misplaced Pages:Proposed deletion (WP:PROD) including proposed deletion using WP:SPEEDY templates. Also with several 1000s of article creations I have no experience of being followed by an editor silently deleting Google Book sourced stubs in this manner so had no exposure to the practice of implementing own A7s without notifications.

I have changed the section description to replace "Implementation of own prods" to "Non-templated speedy deletion of sourced articles" which I hope reflects your comments, and is a more accurate and complete description of the problem.

I am still not much nearer to understanding what went wrong in this series of un-notified blanking of print-sourced articles. Was it weak wording in the guidelines? or is it a result of replying to the AfD at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Lingdian (band) by pasting the text of the relevant guideline for examination? In ictu oculi (talk) 01:14, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Let me try to recap the situation so that we can identify the outstanding areas of concern and work to resolve them.

• On 2013-11-18, Coffee deleted five articles under WP:CSD#A7. All five articles were created by In ictu oculi between 2013-10-17 and 2013-11-10. The deletions were not preceded by any CSD or PROD tagging. Coffee did not notify In ictu oculi about these deletions. At the time of deletion, all five articles were stubs, but included at least one offline source.
• So far as I can see, In ictu oculi did not raise these deletions either directly with the deleting admin, or with deletion review.
• At the same time, Coffee removed the autopatroller right from In ictu oculi, which was notified. In ictu oculi objected on his own talk page, but there was no response from Coffee.
• On 2013-11-19, Candleabracadabra started a thread on this board regarding In ictu oculi's autopatroller right (and other interactions between Coffee and Candleabracadabra). As a result, the rights were restored and all five articles were undeleted.

There are a number of interleaved issues here. The title you have given this section appears to identify the following issues:

1. Speedy deletion was not preceded by the addition of a template.
2. Articles were speedy deleted under A7 despite having sources.
3. Creator was not notified about the speedy deletion.

Is that a fair summary? Which issues do you feel still require resolution? Cheers, Bovlb (talk) 18:48, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

It seems odd to note in the summary "So far as I can see, In ictu oculi did not raise these deletions either directly with the deleting admin, or with deletion review." - part of the problem was that User:Coffee did not indicate these deletions before going straight to moving to removal of user rights. It was left to other users to dig through Coffee's contributions and find them.

Also the summary is only half the history, the history goes back to this edit on 7 November where I responded to User Coffee's first AfD by pasting the guideline I believe it is this AfD that started Coffee's subsequent edits.

The issues which I feel still require resolution would be clarification of whether (1) non-templated speedy deletion of sourced articles without creator notification is appropriate (2) is User Coffee encouraged or disencouraged to do the same again to other long-standing Users. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:37, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you outlining (potential) issues OP has. I will, as an uninvolved admin, leave my two cents here for what it's worth. Admins do not need to add a template to an article that s/he deems meets the criteria for speedy deletion (hence the word "speedy" in the title). Again, speaking generally, articles that have references can still be deleted; it's a case-by-case thing. Lastly, notifying the article creator is usually a GoodThing™ but not always done (nor mandated). Killiondude (talk) 19:49, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

• To my understanding, I had already explained all of this in the previous thread... If anyone can point out where I missed something I'll gladly clarify further. But, at the moment this seems to just be a repetition of the previous thread, whereby any further points by myself here would be simply redundant. — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 19:05, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Coffee, I did not mean to imply otherwise. The OP clearly feels that there is some unresolved issue, so I 'm trying my best to help them express it. Perhaps we won't be able to resolve it any further here, but hopefully we can at least reduce the frustration they're obviously feeling. Bovlb (talk) 19:37, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

To be honest I feel violated. I could describe it that a User with only 6 stub creations and 18,942 edits followed a fellow editor making unnotified deletions and AfDs (e.g. of 9 Google Book-sourced stub articles, then misused admin tools to remove autopatroller from a User with 1,000 article creations none of which, to the best of my recollection, have ever been deleted or AfDed. This felt like WP:STALKING followed by an attack.

Also the issue of what appears to be a threat on User:Candleabracadabra's Talk page "Simply stating that sources exist, without providing them, is doing no more than making a vote which is irrelevant. As there weren't any sources provided for this article, I've deleted the article per the consensus in the discussion. Next time, please try to actually back up your arguments at AFD or they may be considered disruptive". - "or they may be considered disruptive" for stating that sources exist in a AFD debate? Seriously?

But what concerns me most is the User's completely unapologetic "run of the mill" attitude, as seen here in reply to User:StAnselm. If this behaviour is "run of the mill", then it suggests that this User has probably done it before and will do it again. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:21, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you feel violated, and regret that nothing I can say here will be adequate to salve that. With all due respect, a section on a board like this one isn't a good way to resolve multiple unrelated issues, so I hope you'll forgive me if I do not address the interactions between Coffee and Candleabracadabra further. Also, while I have the greatest respect for content contributors, I feel that we can more usefully discuss the actions involved here without comparing edit counts.

It seems to me that you are identifying the following issues:

You were not notified about the speedy deletions of your five articles

Coffee already explained in the earlier thread that they had intended you be notified and believed Twinkle would do so automatically. Twinkle preferences include a section under "Speedy deletion (CSD)" saying "Notify page creator only when tagging with these criteria:" where A7 is (I believe) checked by default. As I understand it, creator notification only takes place if this box is checked and also the "Notify page creator if possible" box is checked on the Twinkle CSD box. The latter box is checked by default when "Tag page only, don't delete" is checked, but is greyed out otherwise. I don't understand why that should be the case.

Articles were speedily deleted under A7 despite being sourced to books

Coffee's position is that the articles made no claim of notability. I personally would not have speedy deleted these articles, but their claim to significance is definitely borderline and I can see a good faith basis for Coffee's position. Sources and references are not an explicit part of the A7 criteria, although Misplaced Pages:Credible claim of significance does say that "the inclusion of reliable secondary sources sources may itself be an indication of significance". All five articles have now been undeleted, which reflects an assessment by those admins that the subjects are likely notable, and not necessarily an assessment that they included claims of notability at the time of deletion.

Speedy deletion is intended not only to be a lightweight way to delete qualifying articles, but also to allow for lightweight reversal. We'll never know now, but I suspect that had you simply contacted Coffee (or deletion review) promising to improve the claims of notability, then they would have been undeleted at least as swiftly.

An admin followed your contributions to delete five articles in one go

If you find a deletion-worthy article, it is normal practice to review other contributions by the same editor. If we assume, for the sake of argument, that these articles did qualify for A7, then such "following" is entirely appropriate, I'm afraid.

Your autopatroller right was removed, and this was described as "run of the mill"

Again, if we assume that the articles did qualify for A7, then it makes sense to me that the creator of five speedy-deletable articles in a few weeks should have their contributions scrutinized more closely by the community. Perhaps Coffee should have warned you. Perhaps they felt the issue had already been raised with you.

So, looking narrowly at these events, it comes down to some unexpected behaviour by Twinkle, and a disagreement about whether book-sourced stubs can qualify for A7. I recommend that:

• The Twinkle notification issue be investigated further for everyone's benefit;
• In ictu oculi tries to create articles that are less stubby, and include a clear claim of significance; and
• Administrators applying A7 consider the significance indicated by sources.

I hope this is helpful to you. Bovlb (talk) 21:29, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Bovlb,

I'm sure you mean well, but not really, no, I was there remember, you weren't. So for example you've missed the first event in the chain.

Do you mind, please excuse me, can I just ask does your role replying here relate to a function of Misplaced Pages help desk volunteers, Wikipedian recent changes patrollers? Or as an article contributor here as I am? In ictu oculi (talk) 12:15, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Yunshui, I want it not to happen to other article contributors. In ictu oculi (talk) 13:02, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

But by all means close the section as the original question I asked has been answered. In ictu oculi (talk) 13:04, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

I have restored two comments by in ictu oculi apparently deleted twice in error by editors intending to delete a different section. Bovlb (talk) 03:21, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Anime and Manga RfC - Update, request for closure

I had very much hoped that the Anime and manga franchise coverage RfC could resolve the content and conduct disputes between ChrisGualtieri, Ryulong, other Anime and Manga WikiProject participants, and which had spawned several threads on this board and AN/I several over the past few years. Unfortunately, due to an evaporation of goodwill and a renewing of open hostilities between the involved parties, I no longer believe that the RfC will be fruitful, and have withdrawn from the RfC (announcement).

If any uninvolved admins would like to close that RfC, I would greatly appreciate your efforts. To those parties that were planning on taking the issue to ArbCom, and put those plans on hold because of the RfC, I no longer have any objections to you continuing forward with those plans.

Thank you, Sven Manguard Wha? 22:31, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Please do not go down this road. An unrelated dispute blown out of proportions by a third party should not be the nail in the coffin for the RFC.—Ryulong (琉竜) 22:47, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Sven Manguard So, with the RfC that was proposed during the last drag out fight at AN* was had between the involved editors has failed are you willing to consider the Scorched Earth topic/interaction bans that were proposed last time?

Topic/Interaction bans were indefinite topic (broadly construed over Anime,Manga,Japanese Culture) and interaction (Ryulong and ChrisGualtieri)

Also you forgot to notify Chris. I have taken care of this for you. Hasteur (talk) 15:05, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Hasteur: I really didn't want to get into this before the ArbCom case, but if we can set up something that will prevent an ArbCom case, that's less stress for everyone.

Ultimately, my personal feeling is that the way that Ryulong and ChrisGualtieri seem to get at each other all the time, all over the project, at the very least an indefinite interaction ban is needed. But I'm not sure that goes far enough. At the RfC page, Ryulong objected to my, for lack of a better term, giving up on the proceedings by saying that "A dispute regarding the content of race in America should not end this discussion at all". He's missing my point. Somehow the two of them managed to find each other in a dispute that is entirely separated from Anime and Manga, in an area that, as far as I know, neither of them worked in before. ChrisGualtieri made a revert on that (Knockout (violent game))page eight days before using automated tools, and might have had it on his watchlist, but if he saw Ryulong come along and start making major changes, he should have backed off and let someone else handle it. Ryulong, once he saw that ChrisGualtieri was reverting him, should have backed off and let someone else handle it. The two of them should know that every time they edit the same article, they fight. And yet they wind up doing it anyways.

I would support the following package of sanctions:

• An two-way interaction ban between Ryulong and ChrisGualtieri
• A topic ban from anime and manga topics (but not on Japanese culture topics) for both Ryulong and ChrisGualtieri
• A topic ban from deletion and merge discussions for both Ryulong and ChrisGualtieri
• A 1RR restriction for both Ryulong and ChrisGualtieri (for manual edits only, not counting vandalism fighting using tools)
• All restrictions are indefinite, but can be appealed after at least six months

I don't think anything short of that will solve the problem. Ryulong and ChrisGualtieri need to stay away from each other, and need to stay out of the area that their intractable dispute has poisoned, and need to stay away from the behaviors (revert warring and deletion/merge discussions) have led to their battleground mentality. Sven Manguard Wha? 18:35, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I had added Japanese culture in the package for the reason that the topics of Anime and Manga could be wiki-lawyered around and proxy fights on "Reactions to PROPERTY" type articles. I foresee the fight being carried to these topics as one editor or annother "claims" it for their own which excludes the other from editing the page. I do agree that the 6 month appeal of sanctions is appropriate, but as was mentioned in the last AN thread, there were Diva-like threats, so I don't expect a great improvement in the conduct of these editors Hasteur (talk) 19:49, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I believe you need to include Lucia Black in any sanctions, and propose the following tweaks:

• Two-way and three-way interaction bans between any combination of Lucia Black, Ryulong and ChrisGualtieri
• A topic ban from anime and manga topics (but not on Japanese culture topics) for Lucia, Ryulong and ChrisGualtieri
• A topic ban from deletion and merge discussions for Lucia, Ryulong and ChrisGualtieri
• A 1RR restriction for Lucia Ryulong and ChrisGualtieri (for manual edits only, not counting vandalism fighting using tools)
• All restrictions are indefinite, but can be appealed after at least twelve months
• Ryulong to be prohibited from obtaining or using Rollback for at least twelve months following misuse of the tool to edit war recently (for which he was blocked for 24 hours).

The topic bans I feel need to specifically include a ban on vandal fighting on those topics, because I'm far from convinced they wouldn't use that as an excuse to revert edits by others and wikilawyer their way around the topic ban.

There needs to be a standard set of sanctions, rapidly increasing in duration each time. Nick (talk) 20:33, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

There is absolutely no point in involving me. My topic ban had just been relieved. Unless you find more evidence of innapropriate behaviour coming fro m me between Chris and Ryulong, i find it to be undeserved. AKA Double jeopardy.Lucia Black (talk) 20:41, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

@Nick: The reason why I haven't included Lucia in the set is from my perspective since she came off the official topic ban, she's kept her head down for the most part (and hadn't boiled over to AN*. She's been tangentially references in this ongoing discussion, but without digging into the individual atoms of the current dispute, I'm going to assume that she's taken the advice of the previous topic ban and is considering her actions carefully. Hasteur (talk) 20:45, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)(←) Lucia Black has a point here. Past sanctions and the behavior that caused them are, in and of themselves, not grounds for future sanctions. Otherwise, what is the point of setting expiration dates on sanctions? If Lucia Black becomes a problem editor in the area, it would be easy enough to add her in, but we should not be doing that until there's evidence of that. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:47, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

• sigh* What a surprise. I predicted this would end up at arbcom eventually. At the core you have Chris who wants to improve (and has, massively) the quality of Misplaced Pages's manga and anime articles, faced with Ryulong who wants to keep them in some sort of stasis of mediocrity. I have generally supported Chris since I encountered him because of his intent and willingness to take on a task against entrenched opposition. Mediation was never going to work, because it does not matter what reasoning or policy based discussion Chris uses with Ryulong, Ryulong just changes position and comes back with a different reason not to improve the articles. In short, interaction ban yes, but dont go topic banning one of the few people actually willing to put in the hard work on bringing the quality up. Only in death does duty end (talk) 23:32, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
• Comment from ChrisGualtieri - Ryulong and I have already resolved our issues in private two days ago. We have both come to an agreement about the two project spaces. Ryulong himself will make that clear - and we did so right after his 24 block from AN3 that I did not file. I was about to bring it Arb Com, it was ready to go and save for Ryulong's contacting of me... I was going to do that instead of letting another drama like this occur. Ryulong has asked for assistance in his editing space and acknowledges that A&M is equally problematic - we may disagree, but we have finally agreed that neither is out to destroy Misplaced Pages and if becoming his ally on the admittedly terrible Tokusatsu articles than the MOSAM situation and the entire A&M dispute has come to an end. And don't consider Lucia Black in this thing at all. We've patched that up and worked together to get Ghost in the Shell (video game) to near GA standards and Ghost in the Shell (film) is now a GA and that was a joint effort. I'm not out to make enemies and the three of us have finally understood each other. Close the RFC, but not because it failed, but because the disagreement has been resolved and all parties acknowledge the communities consensus. The metrics may not be worked out, but I feel that this rough period is over and some third-party dispute on a page I responded to an editor's request online should not have been the "kill" action. My thin-skin about a certain "topic" is more of my own problem - and Ryulong did not intend it as such. And contrary to what some people have expressed - I do not want Ryulong gone, while I was considering Arb Com to make the decision, it seems unnecessary. Everyone can drop the pitch forks and look forward to 30 A&M GA's making their way up as soon as the Tokusatsu thing is dealt with to Ryulong's satisfaction. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 00:26, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

  I did indeed contact ChrisGualtieri offsite two days ago and we came to an agreement as to what should be done and I implored for his assistance in cleaning up another topic area. Also, Nick, your statement that I should be banned from obtaining rollback rights is unfounded, as in the dispute that I was blocked for edit warring recently I did not use said rights in the first place. I don't see why it had to be revoked in the first place but whatever. I should be using the installed twinkle rollback for everything that I had been using rollback in the first place. Only in death, your summarization of what you see as my position on this site is insulting. I do not want these pages to "stagnate". I just have a different opinion as to how they should be laid out. And call it WP:Diva if you want but a topic ban from my entire editing area will drive me off the site for good. This place isn't worth the stress it causes.—Ryulong (琉竜) 03:25, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't buy it, honestly. Your willingness to cooperate with each other appears to be directly proportional to how close the two of you are to being sanctioned. How many times is this now that you've resolved your issues? Why couldn't these issues have been resolved weeks ago when the RfC was started, or a few weeks after that when the two of you started participating in the second part of the RfC? Why couldn't you have worked out your differences before the blowout that led to the discussion that led to the RfC? Or after any of the previous blowouts before that? In talking with other users since starting this thread, the consistent theme that I've gotten is that everyone else got tired of the two of you a long time ago, and that trying to broker a solution that kept the two of you from getting topic or site banned was never going to work. Right now, call me jaded, but I find myself agreeing with them.

You want to convince me that this is real? Fine, here's what to do. I want both of you to voluntarily accept the interaction and topic bans that I set out above, as a year-long suspended sentence. As long as the two of you either work together without fighting, or simply stay away from each other, until the end of 2014, the sanctions won't be applied. But if the two of you pick up where you left off before this began, and you two get dragged back to this page for fighting with each other or causing disruption to Anime and Manga topics through battleground behavior (edit warring, merging and splitting articles without getting prior consensus, etc.), and an uninvolved admin agrees that you've crossed the line, then the package of sanctions goes into effect. No arguments, no last minute reconciliations, the package goes into effect and stays in effect for at least six months.

If you agree to that, I'll give you one more chance. If not, as far as I'm concerned, you had your last chance at the RfC and blew it. Heck, at this point I'm not sure that the rest of the community will even buy this as a solution, but if it solves the problems you two are causing, they might. Sven Manguard Wha? 03:55, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Hello. I'm an unrelated third-party in all of this. Ryu and Chris may remember me as that guy that pops up from time to time when discussions like this happen. If I may add my two cents, I've been watching a good portion of this drama unfold between Ryu and various parties ever since I was alerted to his ongoing (at the time) habit of reacting fairly confrontational with other editors. I was surprised to learn that Ryu is a former administrator; I would never expect the kind of quarreling he's done from an admin, former or otherwise. I then popped up when Ryu had an AN/I discussion started about him concerning said behavior. Ryu said he would straighten up his act and I thought it was a good intervention on all sides. But lo and behold, after that we have a gigantic RfC, a 24-hour block, removal of Rollback rights and a slew of AfD's created by Chris that seemed personally directed at Ryu.

This entire thing is a mess. As it stands from my perspective, Ryu's been taking far too much personal stake in his edits and reacts very arrogantly towards others. On the other hand, it seems like Chris is something of an enabler that just pours fuel on the fire to continue this drama between them. While I do not have the entire scope of the problem, from what it sounds like to me, this 'scorched earth' idea may just be the best way to go. It's unfortunate that two passionate editors should be blocked/heavily restricted for a long span of time, but with the way things have gone, it seems necessary. As I said on Ryu's AN/I, I don't think either of them are "bad" editors, but their passion for editing can very quickly turn heated. Antoshi ☏ ★ 04:31, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Ryulong actually voted to delete the card articles I tagged with deletion. These are ones he actually made. We discussed this and some of the others should be merged instead of being deleted. I think only one was really questionable on his end and I've asked for it to be withdrawn. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:02, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

• We have never resolved our problems prior. This isn't some "let's be buddies" for the moment and go back to fighting one another. As I write this, I am trying to get WP:TOKUSATSU's Wikiproject setup working so its not such a pain to maintain it. The two of us may not particularly agree on everything, but we both recognize that each other wants Misplaced Pages to be better and Ryulong has asked for help in the area - I'm willing to wade into something I don't understand and try and help because Ryulong agreed that MOSAM needs an overhaul and we'll work it out AFTER Tokusatsu is fixed. Ryulong's daily tasks are overwhelming for any editor and I don't think many of us (I know I sure didn't) understand how bad some of these articles get when he turns his back away. Though with that being said... I don't think "fear" is a great weapon to wield, when my differences with Lucia were resolved without some suspended noose around our necks. This isn't the Cuban missile crisis and given that the community would either be done with one or both of us than resolve the problem has shown a clearly different and alternate resolution: Either work together or one or both of our topic areas get much much worse. I don't personally like the thought, but the last "issue" in the project space has been resolved through the calm interactions of each other. If the "RFC" must be closed by this mess, it wasn't going to change that both of us acted civilly and proper and a clear consensus on the main issue was resolved and no amount of time was going to get a further metric for it. And I think the fact Ryulong hasn't "blown up" over nominating over a dozen articles for AFD and single-handedly altering and building up the Wikiproject's categories and tagging, labeling and sorting them is a pretty good sign that we are working together. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 04:22, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
  • And honestly Sven, I told you we resolved our issues before your dramatic post about us. The two of us worked it out and hence my surprise when I found this. Though I have been watching that Knockout page since November 12th. I noticed an IP inserting racially charged text not found in the specific source and make a note at User_talk:72.92.132.215, he reverted me than reverted himself and I thanked him for doing so and dropped a welcome/help template. Race is a sensitive subject for me and I took offense without realizing Ryulong did not intend it as such, its not the end of the world. Misunderstandings happen, but the "issue" was not even tangentially related to A&M or Japan, so I'm not sure why there is this drama when we haven't done anything "dramatic" since prior to the RFC. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 04:36, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
    • By bringing up off-Wiki conversations, you are putting me in a difficult position, ChrisGualtieri. I strongly believe that, unless the other party agrees to it, off-Wiki conversations should remain off-Wiki. I hadn't planned on mentioning it publicly, but I will say that I had a forty minute long conversation over IRC with someone closely involved in this dispute, which took place immediately before I withdrew from the RfC and started this thread. That conversation is also why I am reluctant to believe that you and Ryulong have truly patched things up. Unless this issue goes to ArbCom, in which case I will likely be compelled to provide details, I won't publicly reveal who I had the conversation with or what it was about. While it would make my life much easier, and would make it very clear to everyone else exactly why I lost confidence in this issue being resolved, it would also change this conversation in a way that doesn't benefit anyone. I was content to sit on that conversation, to not let everyone know that there even was one, and take the PR hit that came with that. I know that the 3RR block thing wasn't a big enough deal on its own to derail the RfC, but I was willing to pretend that it was the main reason that I backed out of the RfC, because, despite my better judgement, I still want to see this thing resolved without a bunch of people getting banned. I'm at my wits end though; I'm tired of trying to broker a solution here. At this point, I really don't care how it's resolved. But if I see another ChrisGualtieri vs. Ryulong thread on AN or AN/I, ever again, I'm going to recommend a full site ban for at least a year. The community has had enough, and I'm not going to fight to keep the two of you around any more. Sven Manguard Wha? 18:36, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
      • Off-wiki? Huh? Since you sorta spilled that contact I'll be open, its no shame nor secret. I mentioned it in IRC on 1 line; but you did not respond to it and I thought you didn't even read it. It was hours before my question on portals was answered. Now if a question on portals is privileged, I apologize, but I don't care about IRC or whatever misunderstanding that exists here. Forty minute long conversation about us? So what. I made my peace at A&M and that was what I meant - IRC is semi-offwiki, semi-on, but I don't know what provoked the response above. Whatever conversation you had, it obviously upset you. I still believe the RFC was a success and mirror Ryulong's comment about it - which is why given the situation I was surprised about the above drama. If you know that some 3RR thing which is unrelated to the A&M and not even filed by me is enough to sink everything that's a bit sad. Though that misunderstanding preceded our breakthrough and alliance - the community has demonstrated that it cannot resolve our problems satisfactorily and that whatever disagreements we individually have no amount of DRN, RFC, ANI, Mediation and likely ArbCom will ever result in something mutually agreeable. Yes, I was tempted by the community's ability to force a decision to end it by overwhelming consensus, but aside from an already seemingly agreed upon stance the actual specifics are of only interest to about four people. For the next six months, let us work together - if it breaksdown fast-track an interaction ban, but I don't say "things are resolved" without meaning it. Ryulong's stressed out enough by this too, but its been handled and if the Tokusatsu alliance and positive response to the AFDs and Ryulong's own desire to reform the area isn't indicative that we've come to a clear agreement I don't know what is. Just give it a few months off the drama pages and you'll see that this is for real. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 00:50, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
        • The conversation you're referring to is most certainly not the one I was referring to. Sven Manguard Wha? 01:09, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

(←) Alright, I've had enough. If an admin wants to close the RfC, that would be much appreciated. There are people that see a workable consensus there, and if that's the case, we should definitely not waste it. I personally, however, am beyond done with this issue. I put a lot of time into the RfC, I put a lot of time into this discussion, and I don't feel that any of that time ended up resulting in something constructive. Until the ArbCom case, I have no intention of speaking to or about Ryulong or ChrisGualtieri again, and I have no plans to become further involved in this or any related threads. To whomever winds up picking up the pieces here, good luck. Sven Manguard Wha? 01:09, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Why do you keep mentioning ArbCom when Chris and I have buried the hatchet?—Ryulong (琉竜) 10:34, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Possibly because the effort you two make to get along (as mentioned above) appears to be directly proportional to how close the two of you are to being sanctioned. Existing community policies have not succeeded in diffusing the no holds barred battle field that you two present, and the last time community endorsed sanctions were proposed they were short circuited for this last chance RFC. In my counting this has been the 3rd or 4th RFC held over this issue with each one being a failure to get the space to be settled down and to have you and Chris not at each others throats and at a various form of DR (DRN,3O, RfC, AN, AN/EW, ANI, etc.) every few weeks because one or the other throws a tantrum and those outside the topic space have to sort it out. Hasteur (talk) 12:33, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Well the RFC served its purpose. Sven's absolute refusal to participate in it any further shouldn't mean ArbCom is the next step to resolving a dispute that has been dealt with in private.—Ryulong (琉竜) 18:40, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Backwards text vandalism

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

Please be wary of "backwards text" vandalism, see above for examples.

The vandalism changes the text to backwards, but without any additions or removals it doesn't show up as really anything modified as far as green/red text added/subtracted.

Dunno if there's a specific abuse filter or vandalism monitor way to check for this.

Perhaps someone could help and alert vandal patrol boards about this?

Thank you,

— Cirt (talk) 17:21, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I generally try to take a look at "(0)" edits on my watchlist, just because of nonsense like this (although I've never seen this specific kind of vandalism). Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:38, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

ykaens yrev woH... I've blocked the IP listed above. Mark Arsten (talk) 19:02, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

How is that done? The code looks as if nothing got changed, unlike if I spent a ridiculous amount of time to retype everything backward. Perhaps the insertion of some weird control character meant to support Bi-directional text? Nyttend (talk) 03:09, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

lmth.rotareneG-txeT-esreveR/moc.cinahcemtxet//:ptth gnidulcni ,gniht fo tros siht od taht seitilitu ffo dna enilno suoirav era erehT .dnuora dehctiws gnieb yllaer era srettel eht ,oN _{Hint: click on the link; it still works)} --Guy Macon (talk) 03:43, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Nytend, they are adding a Unicode format charater, such as a right-to-left mark. It adds three bytes (the size of the RLM in UTF-8) to the file size, but it is a zero-width formatting character, so it does not show up as a visible new character in a diff, and it has no effect beyond a new line. VanIsaac_{WS Vex} 03:58, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

As a reminder, WP:VisualEditor has had at least one bug that causes this unexpectedly, and bug regressions are an unfortunate fact of life. Usually, people notice the problem and try to fix it before saving, but if you see this on an edit tagged with "VisualEditor", then please let me know at WP:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:23, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

If bug regressions are an unfortunate fact of life, the developers and testers need to start running an automated regression test every night. This changes the fact of life into a fairly rare occurrence. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:55, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Complaint about User:Nikkimaria

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

Hi,

This user refuses to explain why he finds the sources unrilable despite my efforts in his talk page and continues to edit war . If you folks can have him act more "diplomatically", it would be very appreciated. PS. One of the sources that he removes constantly is published by Oxford University Press.--Kazemita1 (talk) 22:53, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Nikki's changes look sensible to me, and your claim that she hasn't explained why she made them seems entirely baseless given that discussion on her talk page and Talk:Husayn ibn Ali#Bringing back sourced content. I'm not seeing any arguments from you on her talk page or the article talk pages about why this content should be in the article. Escalating a low-level content dispute instead of justifying your position in the discussion on the topic is poor practice, as is starting a thread about an editor here without bothering to notify them (I've just notified Nikki). Nick-D (talk) 23:05, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I informed her before you.--Kazemita1 (talk) 23:49, 25 November 2013 (UTC). Also, I would like to know your opinion on edit-warring, specially when it comes from an admin. That being said, I will go ahead and explain in the talk page why I think Oxford University Press is reliable and why people like Edward Gibbon, and Charles Dickens are notable enough to include their opinion (mirrored by a secondary source) in the article.--Kazemita1 (talk) 23:54, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I think it's fairly clear that you haven't actually understood my objection; nevertheless, this conversation belongs elsewhere. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:56, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for engaging in the discussion. That is most important. I ported over our conversation from your talk page to the article's talk page and we can continue from there.--Kazemita1 (talk) 00:01, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

She was already engaging in discussion... Nick-D (talk) 05:31, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Articlespace editnotices

Per the recent Featured article review of the Natalee Holloway article, this articlespace editnotice (since removed) came to my attention:

• Edit notice on Holloway.

It was on the article for more than three years. I raised this query in a thread at ANI, but got no response; since the template was removed three days ago, it is no longer an "incident", but there are still issues to be clarified.

I had never encountered such an editnotice in articlespace, and didn't realize it could even be done. When I investigated, I learned that a) only an admin can place or edit an editnotice in articlespace, and b) there are editnotices on many articles where there are arbcom sanctions in place. I am not aware of any FA or article where there are not sanctions in place having a "warning" notice to this effect, although I have found some that include a mention of the date formatting used in the article.

Besides needing clarification on the issue of whether this level of "warning" about editing an FA because, essentially, "admins are watching" is appropriate or should be happening on other FAs, I'd also like followup on a) whether the most involved admin with the article should be placing an editnotice like this or who can place them, and b) considering our stance on admins being just like any other editor patrolling an article except as it relates to the use of tools, why the wording about "admins" having to clean up (anyone can clean up), which might be intimidating and off-putting. If this went on in an FA without even me (considering my involvement in the FA process) knowing it, how many other FAs might have followed suit? Others might now realize they can do this, or have done this. Here we have the ability on Misplaced Pages for an admin to influence editing on an article where s/he is the principle editor, without the broader community even becoming aware of it unless they edit the article.

Should we have these kinds of editnotices, should they be placed by admins involved with the article, and is there a way for us to find out how many of these are out there? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:23, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

There are a lot of editnotices, but many of them simply notify editors of existing discretionary sanctions (e.g. on Israeli-Palestinian articles). The editnotice in question probably crossed the line into inappropriateness, but since it's been blanked (and given the level of acrimony in the recent WP:AN/I discussion) it's probably better to focus on the more general question of appropriate guidelines for editnotices. MastCell  23:21, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that is precisely the problem: there is not much said at Misplaced Pages:Editnotice. (We editconflicted as I was cleaning up my post to make it more general-- I had copied it from the earlier ANI which was too specific.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:27, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

From my experience edit notices are increasingly used in place of hidden comments, particularly for issues which affect most of the article or in recent articles on developing situations, to remind edits to require proper sourcing etc. Probably the strange thing about that edit notice was the mention of admins, it did seem out of place since it won't just be admins fixing the problems. I don't personally see a problem with reminding edits that poor quality may mean a burder on other editors. IIRC an editnotice was used in the Bradley Manning article while fullprotection was applied, that seems to be one of the few cases when mentioning admins would be appropriate. Perhaps editnotices are less important for FAs although they could potentially be cases without sanctions where they would be helpful.Nil Einne (talk) 04:38, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

See Template:Editnotices/Page/Amy Pond for an example I'm thinking of or Template:Editnotices/Page/Aslan (disambiguation) or Template:Editnotices/Page/69 (sex position) (not ones I think I've seen myself before) or Template:Editnotices/Page/Anders Behring Breivik (which I may have seen and I do know there was a fair amount of discussion over the issue if not the editnotice). Of course other than date formatting issues, their use in language ones is perhaps also not uncommon, e.g. Template:Editnotices/Page/Air New Zealand and perhaps more important Template:Editnotices/Page/Ape Escape (video game). Something slightly different but which was I presume deemed useful at least at one time Template:Editnotices/Page/Antonin Scalia.

P.S. Without commenting specifically on the appropriateness of any of these cases, nor suggesting that we as a community have to use them, wasn't one of the intentions of the development of editable editnotices their usage on articles? At least I've always assumed that since I first saw them since while helpful, they seemed not so important for talk pages, noticeboards, userpages etc particularly from the foundation POV. I also see from Misplaced Pages:Editnotice that there are a bunch of templates Template:Editnotice templates and Category:Editnotice templates, I think at least two of the earlier examples used these.

Nil Einne (talk) 05:22, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for more samples, which are all illuminating examples of effective ways to use editnotices. I wasn't even aware before the Holloway FAR that they were placed on articles, and now see that there are gaps in the guidelines about their application in articles at Misplaced Pages:Editnotice. Since this example has come to light, I am thinking we will see more FAs using them, with wording along the lines of WP:OWN#Featured articles. That is the one of the areas where I think some admin discussion of the broader issues would be helpful; that page needs to be expanded to include discussion of appropriate use of the template in ways that don't further ownership. I edit numerous Featured articles that have recurring issues and new editors don't always read the talk page FAQ. Another related issue is that I would have to request an admin to place an editnotice on one of those articles. Where would one make such a request, at ANI or here ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:21, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

• I wouldn't object on principle to (such) an edit notice, but the mention of "administrators" in there is superfluous and possibly rhetorically loaded ("chilling effect"). I don't think we need more guidelines; I think the regular editing process can take care of it--though in this case very belatedly. Drmies (talk) 16:24, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks, Drmies! Ok, to specifics, would the wording at WP:OWN#Featured articles be appropriate for an editnotice an FAs? If that is the case, then perhaps the appropriate forum for non-admin requests might be at WT:FAC. Or should we run a bot to do all of them? Or do we individually approach an admin we know? Or do we subst a template? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:48, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with the edit notice. It could be phrased differently, but it was neutrally written and correct on policy. GregJackP Boomer! 16:42, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I support the idea of an editnotice conveying this kind of message; in my opinion, the only problem with this editnotice is the comma splice and other grammar problems. Nyttend (talk) 17:59, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I've added an editnotice to U.S. Route 131 (template-editors can add them, not just admins, btw), only because a section of the highway was rerouted. Once MDOT updates their maps online, I can revise the article to account for the change in mileage, etc. Until that update, I don't want every IP out there "being nice" and making a mess of those figures because "they're wrong!" or something. I offer that as just another example of where they can be useful, especially on FAs where stability and consistency is important. Imzadi 1979 → 18:20, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

• As a bit of a tangent, it's worth noting that +ACC (in addition to template editors) can and do create editnotices, which may effect wording somewhat. Kevin Gorman (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:22, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

• Kevin Gorman, I don't know what you mean by +ACC. Could someone give me the dummies 101 version of what Kevin is saying? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:15, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
  • He means users with the "accountcreator" right. This is a side-effect of how create-protection of editnotices are implemented: through the title blacklist. Accountcreators are not subject to the blacklist (since it also prevents user account creation, and would hinder them in their tasks) and so can create editnotices. I don't know if that's a legit thing or just a known side-effect though. As far as the procedure, I know that people have asked me to add editnotices to pages in the past (mostly Bishonen, for some reason, who can do it herself), and I've complied with the requests when they seem reasonable. Not a big deal, really. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 22:20, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

My thoughts are the same as Drmies's: only the bit about administrators seems off. This sort of notice might be useful, really, in helping good-faith editors add cited material to FAs. --Coemgenus (talk) 18:34, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

• I added something not unlike this to Elk (also an FA) in order to prevent the same discussion from repeating itself umpteen billion times. It is worth noting that while only certain users can create these, once they are created anyone can edit them. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:39, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I think you're wrong there, Beeblebrox. I just tried to edit Template:Editnotices/Page/Elk, and MediaWiki wouldn't let me. --Floquensock (talk) 23:46, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

This is the page notice for Elk.
This editnotice can only be created or edited by administrators, accountcreators, and template editors.
To request a change to the page, add {{edit protected}} to the talk page, followed by a description of your request. I'm surprised, because I too thought that anyone could edit editnotices after they're created. My only userrights are IP block exempt (since my main account is an admin) and autoconfirmed. Nyttend backup (talk) 00:36, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Editing an editnotice requires the same blacklist override that creating one does, since the "noedit" flag has been set for editnotices in its blacklist entry. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 00:42, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Well that's my bad I guess. I could have sworn that some of the edit notices had made had been modified by users without any superpowers. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:58, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

I think I see clear consensus that other than the wording about Admins, the notice is appropriate, needed, and accurate per policy. I think they should be added to all FA's as standard. Perhaps someone is willing to be bold and suggest this be mentioned in a guideline as standard procedure? Regardless if it is spelled out, it should become our standard, I do not have the statistics on how many FAs have lost their status, but I would wager it is because of continual inane editing. I once saw the numbers someone got together on how many GAs have lost their status and it was quite a lot more than I was aware of; Im curious how many FAs have if we looked into it.Camelbinky (talk) 02:40, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Those numbers can be found at WP:FAS, the talk page of that page, and at WP:FFA. Your wager is wrong; most FAs fall into disrepair when the people watching them leave Misplaced Pages, or are defeatured because they were never at standard to begin with. Additionally, our numbers are way out of whack now because WP:FAR has gone moribund and articles that should be defeatured are not being nominated; my personal estimate is that at least 20 to 30% of our current FAs are not at standard. Adding this editnotice will not likely change the percentages of FAs that fall from standard, but it can make editing easier for those who watch them. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:35, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Summarizing:

1. Can someone knowledgeable in this realm update the page Misplaced Pages:Editnotice ?
2. Adding editnotices akin to WP:OWN#Featured articles on all FAs seems to have consensus?

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:33, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

No. This is not the appropriate place to make those two decisions based on limited consensus on a board aimed mostly at admins and those, like me, who keep an eye on admins because of the many rogues. A discussion to make those changes must take place either at the VPP for your second proposal, and for the first proposal the place would be the talk page of Misplaced Pages:Editnotice. Once consensus takes place there then it can be instituted. However, I doubt the second proposal should be written down or mandated. It should be allowed, but not mandated and I don't see consensus on it being mandated even in this limited discussion.Camelbinky (talk) 02:51, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Admin action requested

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

Could an Admin please review and take action on consensus violation at ANI. I don't want it to get archived without any action taken. Thank you, JMHamo (talk) 15:36, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

 Done Closed and editor warned. JodyB _talk 16:02, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Admin eyes are requested on Jimbo's talk page

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

on this thread, . --Mark Miller (talk) 00:36, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

A better idea would be to move that thread to an appropriate page...and why are admin eyes more important to this current editorial dispute? --Onorem (talk) 01:17, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

There is already a discussion at Talk:Societal attitudes toward homosexuality which may perhaps be more productive. I see no particular reason why admin eyes as opposed to experienced editors are needed. No admin actions seem to have been called for. DES 01:29, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Nyttend's unblock

I performed the IP's block, on the grounds that the IP was an activist homophobe, but Nyttend subsequently unblocked.

Nyttend unblocked the IP with the unblock request explanation "Accepted, since you weren't engaged in activism, and our policies prohibit blocking people just because they believe something different from the party line "

The two edits which justified the block were:

1. "But this isn't a map showing tolerance for different races and ethnicities, its a map purporting to show views on sexual immorality / morality. Therefore, logically, a map of countries' attitudes toward bestaility, incest, pedophilia would be a much closer analogy. "
2. "Really? Because you are attacking my government? Homosexuals have always judged the entire world through their sore tortured prisms, that's nothing new but they need to get their own wiki or their own pedia, this isn't the homopedia, this is everybody's wikipedia like it or not! "

The IP's mere anti-homosexual position did not justify that block (or any block), nor did their opposition to the map which they started the discussion over (I agree it's evidently OR, and suspicious on those grounds). Those two comments were unacceptable.

The criteria I used for blocking was comparing these edits to what the reaction would have been for similar comments made against (for example) religious groups such as Jews, Moslems, or ethnic groups such as Blacks or Asians. Had someone compared any of those groups to "bestiality, incest, or pedophila", or "judged the entire world through their sore tortured prisms", the account would be blocked without any doubt.

Nyttend, please reverse your unblock. The block was entirely proper in the first place. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 23:05, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

FWIW, a lot of incidents today (including this one) really stimulated my creative juices. I'll start assembling my thoughts at User:Dank/Human dignity is not up for discussion. - Dank (push to talk) 01:09, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

. The admin who unblocked does not have clean hands: "Came here from Mark Miller's WP:AN posting. Atlan's comment is a textbook example of how we are nowhere near being neutral on the issue of homosexuality. In favor of pretending that homosexuality is normal/okay/etc.: you're normal and can participate here. Opposed: you're hateful and don't deserve to participate here. Let me remind such commentators that aggressive advancement of such a position is harassment. Nyttend (talk) 00:43, 27 November 2013 (UTC)" This comment was due to this:"https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Wales&diff=583464088&oldid=583463835".

Admin Georgewilliamherbert blocked the IP "Blocked 1 month for homophobic activism on several pages". An unblock request was declined: by admin Yunshui. Then Nyttend unblocked, from the falling request: "I was blocked for a fraudulent, spiteful reason without any warning, by a spiteful admin whose politics disagee with what I asked Jimbo. I realize that my IP has auto changed since then but I am officially barred from rejoining the conversation and this is done to ensure that only about 10 percent of editors who see things a certain way are allowed to participate, producing the illusion of a "consensus" that excludes 90 percent of earth's human population. And this being 2013, what "neutral" wikipedia does like this gets blown all over the globe the next day." when in fact, the consensus of editors was that the image violated Misplaced Pages guidelines and policies on OR and synthesis. I feel this is a wheel war where an admin is clearly not seeing the disruption or recognizing the issue and even allowed an accusatory unblock request to be the reason for their unblock. I request that this be reviewed to see if this was an appropriate unblock. Thank you.--Mark Miller (talk) 02:29, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• Comment - The administrator Nyttend obviously feels that homosexual people don't have the same rights as other people. This is obvious by his comment on Jimbo's Talk page, his unblock of the IP and his reason given. It's very disturbing that someone who so obviously has an extreme bias against a certain group of people has admin rights. Would we let antisemitic editors become admins and unblock neo-nazis? Disturbing indeed. Dave Dial (talk) 03:04, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

The first of the two edits is asserting that it is a bad behavior and should be treated as such. The second is a claim that such persons have a view centric on their position and a complaint that they feel that view should dominate Misplaced Pages. This reflects viewpoints (not my own) that many persons, religions and governments hold. Even though I disagree with those sentiments, I don't see how that it was blockable offense. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 03:17, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Really? There are editors who believe that unblocking an openly homophobic IP is OK? So comparing homosexuality with "bestaility, incest, pedophilia" is acceptable by your standard? Gaba 03:26, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

At this point, I'm more concerned about the unblock and about Nyttend's statement above that Wikipedians are "in favor of pretending that homosexuality is normal/okay/etc." I'm assuming that Nyttend doesn't know that public opinion in Western democracies is now more or less decided at least on that issue, if not 100% on peripheral issues such as specific rights. That is, there seems to be a strong consensus now (and a stronger consensus among everyone under 40, making the eventual outcome of the issue inevitable) that it's not okay to advocate that homosexuality is abnormal and not okay, in view of the horrible things that have been done in the past using that justification. But OTOH, I think it's really important not to attack Nyttend for the statement; I've started on a relevant essay at User:Dank/Human dignity is not up for discussion. I think what we need to do is figure out where the lines are, which personal attacks merit what responses, but at the same time, we should keep a sense of humility, and only draw the lines where they absolutely have to be drawn to keep discussions from blowing up and getting personalized. The concept of "dignity" is constantly evolving; I may object to something Nyttend says today, and then tomorrow I may find out that some of my own speech and my own attitudes have been found to cross some line. That is, I don't see a contradiction between saying "Wikipedians (including admins) shouldn't say that" and acknowledging that in some cultures and on some websites, it's perfectly acceptable to say that, and things I'm saying today might not be acceptable in another time or place. That doesn't prohibit us from drawing lines that need to be drawn to avoid harm being done to the fabric of this community; for instance, I think a firm rule could have avoided a lot of damage I believe was done during the recent Arbcom case on transgender issues. - Dank (push to talk) 03:31, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) No. The first post was insulting and obvios trolling for effect. ;https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Wales&diff=583449040&oldid=583437494] The thread was originally titled: "Misplaced Pages's flamingly obvious biases and prejudices" and in the first sentence continued the trolling with: "I noticed this image and it is the most flagrantly and flamboyantly biased, point of view.."

But that was not all:"But this isn't a map showing tolerance for different races and ethnicities, its a map purporting to show views on sexual immorality / morality. Therefore, logically, a map of countries' attitudes toward bestaility, incest, pedophilia, and then judging them as "better" "improving" and "worst" countries using that as the be-all and end-all sacred cow criteria, would be a much closer analogy. 71.127.137.154 (talk) 00:19, 27 November 2013 (UTC) "

And continued with:"I do not like the way homosexual behaviour is now being actively and vehemently promoted in every country and in my country by a few foreign individuals. I deeply resent anyone suggesting that wikipedia is obliged support this sickness and adopt the same bias in the name of "tolerance" and directly label my country in opposition to my country's government. This will become a political issue with wikipedia and will then have to be pursued that way. So, yes, you could say I have bad faith with this poster. 71.127.137.154 (talk) 00:32, 27 November 2013 (UTC)"

And more:"Really? Because you are attacking my government? Homosexuals have always judged the entire world through their sore tortured prisms, that's nothing new but they need to get their own wiki or their own pedia, this isn't the homopedia, this is everybody's wikipedia like it or not! 71.127.137.154 (talk) 00:40, 27 November 2013 (UTC) "

No, I am sorry North but you are just incorrect.--Mark Miller (talk) 03:33, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

What I stated about logic is touching on the logic on the analogy that had been offered to maps of race and ethnicities. Unfortunately you are looking at it emotionally and not logically or you would see that clearly negative societal attitudes toward homosexuality tend to lump it in with the other behaviours as unacceptable, so it is a better analogy. 71.246.145.185 (talk) 03:41, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

I am looking at it through a professional approach that you trolled Jimbo's talk page and deserve the one month block you received and as I am sure you know, I agreed that the map was OR and even the author has agreed to delete it. This isn't about your complaint it is what you said and how you presented it in a VERY inappropriate manner.--Mark Miller (talk) 03:47, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Just to avoid confusion, I believe that homosexuality is an embedded attribute, and I advocate the societal normalization of it. But I also acknowledge that there are others who feel that it is a chosen, improper behavior and I also have tolerance for that. And my comment was that the posts in the two provided diffs did not appear to be blockable offenses. North8000 (talk) 03:42, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Avoid confusion or add to it? This isn't about your view on Homosexuality North.--Mark Miller (talk) 03:47, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

To be clear. This is about an editor that made a homophobic rant and was blocked for one month for using Misplaced Pages to propagate his "homophobic activism on several pages" and the subsequent wheel war that occurred after wards with an inappropriate unblock that made accusations against the originating admin. That is unacceptable.--Mark Miller (talk) 03:57, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Another reason I think we need a firm guideline on so-called "hate speech" is that that would do much less harm, I think, than is done by all the arguing back-and-forth about what's okay to say (and what's "normal" or not) every time some vandal strikes a nerve. There are still a lot of people in more conservative cultures who feel that their culture is being attacked when the issue comes up, just as there are still plenty of (in this case) gay people who feel attacked when people argue that there's no particular harm in representing them as they're being represented above. - Dank (push to talk) 04:04, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

This is going to be hard to do, we would need a non bias type of group (A kind of jury if you want to compare) to put this together. Some of the existing policies that we have to be wary of are: WP:NOTCENSORED and WP:NPOV. I do however agree there needs to be a guideline in place, Dank do you have any suggestios on how to begin this process? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 17:07, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Comment As a person commenting in the discussion when said block took place, I too did not see the IP as a homophobe. In the IP's defense there were comments being thrown towards the user such as: "Sorry, can't hear you, the right-wing doesn't play very well where science and rational thinking are needed" So, no this was not a one sided argument. I cant speak for the IP but what I feel is that the IP user got offended by what they saw on the map, brought it up as a legit issue and comments took a hold from there. Not everyone has the same view on things and some of the comments made did not help. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 04:18, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

What?--Mark Miller (talk) 04:24, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• I saw the discussion on Jimbo's talk page and was about to block the IP when I saw that George had already done so. The rationale for my block would have been that the IP was engaged in disruption, per his persistent soapboxing. Regardless of how offensive we may or may not find his opinions, it's just disruptive for someone to be spouting off like that. We have people from a lot of different cultures here, so we shouldn't be blocking people based on their personal beliefs, but we should when they promote them to the point of disrupting the encyclopedia. So I disagree with Nyttend's unblock rationale--I don't think the IP was blocked for having views that are different than the party line, his behavior was the issue. In this case, the IP seems to be on a dynamic connection, so while I disagree with the unblock, restoring the block would serve no purpose here. Mark Arsten (talk) 04:30, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• If the IP had had a history prior to the talk on Jimbo's page then I retract my comment above, I just try to assume good faith. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 04:34, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

As far as I know, he didn't, but last night I felt that by the time he got to the "this isn't the homopedia" comment he had been sufficiently warned by the other participants that his rhetoric wasn't acceptable. Looking at it again tonight though, I think it would have been better if he had been given a final warning instead of a block at that point. I think Sportsfan probably should have been warned for one of his comments there, but again, I think a warning would have been enough. Mark Arsten (talk) 04:44, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Dont get me wrong I found that comment un-acceptable as well, but the map was in the wrong and the IP started out the convo in a non disruptive way. That leads me to believe it could have been a case of hotheadness and as you mentioned there was a lack of final warning. Could something have been done different? I believe so. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 04:49, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Hogwash. He started it with a hateful and contemptuous header title. While he was spouting hate, others were attempting to address the actual concern.--Mark Miller (talk) 04:52, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

There is something wrong here. I kept to neutral prose, and attempted to understand what the issue was past that hateful diatribe and I get rewarded with this crap. I have a real problem with this.--Mark Miller (talk) 04:53, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Clearly this needs formal arbitration.--Mark Miller (talk) 04:55, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• Nyttend's actions are very troubling. From the moment he stated "Atlan's comment is a textbook example of how we are nowhere near being neutral on the issue of homosexuality.", he exposed his personal bias and lack of objectivity. I'm not even sure what it means to be "neutral on the issue of homosexuality". Is that like being neutral on the issue of being Jewish? Unblocking the trolling IP is disruptive and probably a violation of WP:ADMINACCT. The block should be promptly reinstated. - MrX 05:16, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• Bad unblock. The IP user found a legitimate issue. The image is a work of synthetic original research and is far from NPOV. It shouldn't be in the article. It seems to have been uploaded by a well-intentioned new user. The IP's first port of call to object to this is to jump on to Jimbotalk and start screaming about how the proverbial sky is falling, and then follows up by getting into bad-tempered discussion that was always going to produce more heat than light. Instead, perhaps, the user could have had a civil discussion with the user who uploaded the image. There are situations where civility is debatable but this isn't one of them. The point of having a policy on civility is that it is to try and encourage people to take the course that will cause least pain and drama when dealing with other users. The point of WP:AGF is that when someone uploads an image like the one the IP user complained of, we should assume that they are just trying to do something good for the encyclopedia and patiently explain policy to them rather then conclude that some giant homosexual conspiracy is out to steal away the wiki's neutrality.
  There's a procedural issue here too. Another admin already denied the unblock request. Sure, the block is probably too harsh (48 or 72 hours would do the job). But in cases like this, take the block to AN/ANI and get community input as to whether to unblock. (And, yes, I'm fully aware that having a "This user identifies as gay" userbox on my user page means I'm going to be alleged to have a conflict of interest at some point. C'est la vie.) —Tom Morris (talk) 08:55, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

To reply to North8000 - The IP editor was not blocked because they are homophobic or opposed to homosexuality. That describes about 25% of the US population, roughly, and recently described 50% (and not that long ago, 75%, and within my lifetime more like 85%). I have no intention of using blocks to attempt to push out or punish minority viewpoints.

Specifically, the block was because of the two statements I listed above with the diffs.

Take any random group - whether it be Jews, Moslems, Blacks, Asians, etc. There are people who legitimately feel that Jews are subhuman and / or an inferior race and / or part of a conspiracy against true White Men. There are people who feel that Moslems are a strange hostile religion, traitors just for their religion, and various desert-related epithets I won't even use for an example. There are people still who feel Blacks are inferior and want them segregated, won't accept them living nearby or taking jobs or marrying into their families. The same with Asians. Those beliefs are sadly widespread, even on Misplaced Pages. Those people are tolerated.

Take any editor who comments comparing the group to people who practice "pedophillia, bestiality, or incest". That editor will be blocked. This will not be controversial.

The question is not whether those beliefs exist. The question is not whether those beliefs are present in large swaths of the population. The question is not whether those beliefs are present in large numbers (even if it's a small percentage) of Wikipedians. The question is, if you believe any of those things, what level of expression is tolerable in Misplaced Pages forums, and what is not.

Equating any group with those groups, is unacceptable on Misplaced Pages. It's hate speech. It's intended to incite and offend and disrupt. It immediately removes any pretense of an attempt to cooperate with a community of diverse opinions and build an inclusive encyclopedia.

We do have behavior standards. This IP flipped those standards - and the community - the bird, rather than being here to build an encyclopedia. They do not belong here.

The IP did point out a map which is original research. There's been general agreement on that point, and we thank them for that service.

That does not excuse the unacceptable comments in any manner.

Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 09:10, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• I just woke up to this. At first I thought Nyttend just had not read the discussion on Jimbo's talk page very well and that he drew the wrong conclusion because of that (he called my call for a block on the IP "harassment" and that it is "what is wrong with Misplaced Pages right now"). I see now that he really does think the IP did not go over the line, and I find that troubling.--Atlan (talk) 11:46, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
• Bad unblock. Let's see how it plays out with a simple word substitution:

Template:Blockquotetop

I do not like the way Jewish behaviour is now being actively and vehemently promoted in every country and in my country by a few foreign individuals. I deeply resent anyone suggesting that wikipedia is obliged support this sickness and adopt the same bias in the name of "tolerance"... Jews have always judged the entire world through their sore tortured prisms, that's nothing new but they need to get their own wiki or their own pedia, this isn't the Jewpedia, this is everybody's wikipedia like it or not!... It's no wonder you have a "consensus" for such pro-Jew biases and prejudices when you muzzle and banish everyone who does not share them!

Template:Blockquotebottom

Even if you substitute back in "homosexual" for "Jew", you can't say stuff like this. It will get you shunned by decent people, and "banned from the Misplaced Pages" is a subset of "shunned by decent people" I'd say. There are a couple of mitigating factors: fifty years ago the IP's rant would have been acceptable, and the IP was sorely provoked by some unnecessarily combative and off-subject editors. These are not sufficient mitigation: the past is sometimes nice to visit but we don't live there, and not letting yourself be baited is a person's own responsibility, to some extent. We don't need and don't want stuff like this here, it is not helpful to our mission going forward, so the block was proper on that basis. Herostratus (talk) 13:16, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• Nyttend was WP:Involved with his/her soapbox comment about Atlan and "we" (ie., Misplaced Pages) . Atlan is not "we," nor Misplaced Pages, and Nyttend's attempt to soapbox about Wikipedians in the IP's favor demonstrates he/she was involved. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:28, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
• Happy Thanksgiving to everyone on this side of the pond (both ponds, actually). Before this Nyttend discussion spirals in a bad way, I'd like to try a more global approach to the problem we're talking about here ... I'd like to be one of the closers in an RfC that deals with the subject of "sensitivity training". As a closer, I can't take any position pro or con, but since this is a subject I've said very little about in my six years here, I'm letting people know where I stand at User:Dank/Human dignity is not up for discussion, and you can judge for yourselves whether I meet your definition of "neutral". Nyttend, if you're reading this, I'd really appreciate your voice and your perspective; as a committed and competent admin who has a different point of view than most here, you'd be a valuable asset to any discussion. - Dank (push to talk) 16:18, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
• Comment Yes Happy Thanksgiving everyone =) I find it a bit odd that Nyttend is not defending his actions here, after all this kind of thing if proven true could cost an adminship I would think. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 17:00, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

He has not edited since the conversation began, as far as I see. The description of this as "cost his adminship" is not likely; we expect ordinary errors and disagreements among admins. A grievousx error, or ongoing pattern, is required, neither of which I see here. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 17:12, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Given that today is Thanksgiving for us Yanks, I would say Nyttend's absence is understandable and not an indication of anything disconcerting.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 17:20, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

As a participant in the discussion on Jimbo's page in which the comment was made, and in the exchange on the articel talk poage which actually seems to ahve resolved the matter, i did not think that the IP's remarks were worthy of a block, even thoguh i disapproved of them. I might add that I think that the "bestaility, incest, pedophilia" commtn is being taken out of context or misinterpreted, the IP's (IMO invalid) point seemed to be that if the issue is one of sexual morality, it should be compared to other issues seen by many to be sexually immoral, not to racial issues. In any case, I have seen many people expressing racial or ethnic dislike on talk pages, particularly on talk pages of disputes over such issues. I don't recall seeing blocks without warnings over such speech, even so-called 'hate speech". Until it gets to be attacks on specific editors here or far more extreme than this did, I think the proper cure for hate speech is anti-hate speech, not blocking. I would have unblocked myself had I not been so deeply involved in the discussion. DES 21:54, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

DES, no, those comments were taken directly as they were given and I was involved up to my ears as you were. We take things differently. Cool, perhaps as a gay man you accept such behavior or perhaps you are not a gay man and have absolutely no clue, but I will say this; that IP meant to be insulting and disgusting and trolled Jimbo's talkpage trying to flip people out. We stayed calm, dealt with the problem with no drama and this is the result...the editor gets away scott free and those that worked on that situation were just dumped on, you included, whether you want to admit it or not. Clearly more drama is needed because this is what happens when you handle things calmly.--Mark Miller (talk) 03:08, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

• Unnecessarily combative and tasteless remark, excessive block, acceptable unblock. Wow, I saw this a few hours ago and was pretty certain I would come back and see things had calmed down and people had by and large endorsed Nyttend's unblock. It's an indication how variable our concepts of acceptable discourse are on this cross-cultural 'pedia. In my opinion, IP was provoked and responded unnecessarily combatively, even offensively. An appropriate reaction would have been anything from a stern but polite rejoiner in-thread, to a warning and request to strike on his talk page, to a 24 hours block to avoid further escalation. A 30 day block seems an extreme overreaction. While a bit more dialogue between Nyttend and the blocking admin would not have been amiss, the unblock to me seems quite uncontroversial. By the way, in reading through this thread I have done the thought experiment of replacing "homosexual" with various other groups, historically discriminated against and not, of which I am personally a member -- I would have the same conclusion. Martinp (talk) 23:53, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• Agreed, Im happy I am not the only one who sees this angle to it. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 23:59, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

I, in turn, am deeply disappointed that some members of this community are so willing to immediately accept an unblock request that is so completely unrepentant about the use of hate speech. This wasn't an "oops, I got hot under the collar, sorry, won't happen again" unblock request. It was an "I was blocked by the homosexual conspiracy" unblock request. I quote:

"I was blocked for a fraudulent, spiteful reason without any warning, by a spiteful admin whose politics disagee with what I asked Jimbo. I realize that my IP has auto changed since then but I am officially barred from rejoining the conversation and this is done to ensure that only about 10 percent of editors who see things a certain way are allowed to participate, producing the illusion of a "consensus" that excludes 90 percent of earth's human population...."

That is the request that Nyttend unblocked on. I'm hoping that you two – Martinp and Knowledgekid87 – just didn't investigate this situation very closely before commenting, and not that you realize the type of editor you're dealing with and consciously chose to endorse his unblock anyway. Nyttend, of course, has no excuse. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:35, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Ten, I respectfully disagree. It's regrettable but not terribly surprising that an editor blocked without warning in an over-reaction is rather peevish about it, and while I don't agree with the wording he used in the unblock request any more than I agree with his wording that prompted the sanction in the first place, I do have empathy with him as well. When we sanction someone inappropriately and excessively, the right thing is to remove the sanction, not wait for them to make promises as if they accept the premise of the sanction. Though after unblocking would not hurt to explain to the blockee what he could do differently to avoid a similar reaction next time, and maybe even give an explicit warning. As to the rest, I agree with DES' comment right above my own. While it is possible we are all just being artfully trolled here, I think the "type of editor" (your last sentence) is someone who to a crowd of moderate-to-socially-liberal North American and European 40-and-unders seems hopelessly and anachronistically bigoted (we don't think like that and certainly don't talk like that!), but to an older generation and/or in some other parts of the world is quite typical. We should AGF; if appropriate discuss and attempt to persuade; if necessary to prevent disruption respond with appropriately escalating sanctions -- but not automatically reach for the nuclear option. Martinp (talk) 02:48, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I do not know who you think is under 40. At any rate, since Nyttend was involved, he/she should have done nothing. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:41, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

There is no way to assume AGF when being told you rape animals. It was as horrifying and inappropriate as comments go and the admin who unblocked abused their tools. I believe the editors agreeing with the unblock are as insensitive to their community as Nyttend. it's really is disgusting.--Mark Miller (talk) 03:00, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Mark, I am sorry that is the reaction you had to the statement. However, it is really quite far from what the original statement said -- though I am also empathetic that those who themselves or as an identifiable group have faced discrimination, hate, and violence who might jump to such an interpretation. Nevertheless, it's pretty clear that tempers are frayed and my back and forth isn't helping matters here, so peace and good night. Martinp (talk) 03:18, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Mark please keep a cool head here, everyone has a right to their opinions it does not mean that they are being insensitive. We are a neutral encyclopedia after all are we not? As for the comments made by the IP while I may disagree with other people's viewpoints from different countries I do not see as per above any evidence that the comments made by the IP were directed towards editors here. Comments made to the IP include: "You're making a fuss out of nothing." and "OMG! The Gays are at it!" Even if it was made as a joke, the IP user made the first post first comment towards Sportfan5000 and none other which is telling that it could have provoked a reaction. The comment afterwards: "Sorry, can't hear you, the right-wing doesn't play very well where science and rational thinking are needed" pretty much had things going downhill from there. I will however say the wording of the header was badly chosen but I feel as i have drawn the line here. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 03:47, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

You seem to be keeping a cool enough head here for everyone...but you do not speak for everyone. Keeping calm makes everyone think everything is fine and it isn't. Not by a long shot! I don't give a shit that people think it is OK to spout off about gay people in this hateful manner. You don't have you defend it like it was spilled milk. This situation is really showing the communities hateful blind eye and I know damn well the minute I cross any line I will be permanently blocked. In fact, I am certain Nyttend and other's have their finger, just waiting to get rid of as many gay editors as possible. it is absolutely clear now. This was purposely done by that admin to discourage gay editors from defending themselves. Again...we ALL deserve a safe place to edit and I do not believe we should tolerate this kind of bullying and harrasment, or for it to be supported by admin with such an obviouse bad unblock. I have been blocked several times without warning. Nobody gave a damn and still don't. And you can bet that homophobic IP will be guarded like fine china now.--Mark Miller (talk) 06:27, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)So what could have been done different, well while I dont know what the reaction from the IP would have been I could see something like this being done: "But this isn't a map showing tolerance for different races and ethnicities, its a map purporting to show views on sexual immorality / morality. Therefore, logically, a map of countries' attitudes toward bestaility, incest, pedophilia, and then judging them as "better" "improving" and "worst" countries using that as the be-all and end-all sacred cow criteria, would be a much closer analogy." --> Response: Not everyone agrees with this view, I have noticed that your thread here is not titled the best as well can you please keep the talk civil (WP:CIVIL) here. Some of us know here that you are at issue with the map, let us clear this up. Rather than saying "That sounds very much like a homophobic rant and nothing more." This is just one example. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 04:03, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Bullshit. The IP's comment were way over the line; they were hateful and hyperbolic. I assumed good faith until it was glaringly obvious that the IP was here not to improve the encyclopedia, but to use homosexuality as wedge and to bait the community. Guess what? It worked. Had Nyttend, simply kept the out of it as he should have, Misplaced Pages would have lost exactly nothing. Instead, he took a stand for for someone who has never made a constructive edit here and displayed very poor judgment. Defending this non-editing IP under some fallacious premise of free speech or new editor retention is idiotic, dishonest and insulting to the people who actually contribute to this project. Sadly, it's exactly what I've come to expect from a vocal few who swarm around these issues like shiny green flies. - MrX 04:20, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

MartinP, I decline to grant your premise that the block was unwarranted, nor that the situation was somehow so urgent that Nyttend had no choice but to unblock immediately without consulting anyone in response to paranoid and homophobic unblock request (and immediately after another admin had already declined one other such request). The editor was obnoxious and bigoted before he was blocked, very deliberately drawing an analogy between homosexuality and bestiality or pedophelia when comparing legal restrictions on sexual activity, after he failed to draw a sufficiently excited response to his use of "flaming" in the thread header he created. Your suggestion that he was simply reacting heatedly to a block puts the effect before the cause; the idea that this is simply an older person who is a bit confused about how the world has changed around him is charming, but demands an implausible credulousness on our part. If someone acts like a homophobic troll, I'm not going to go out of my way to make excuses for why they might be that way, and it's not Misplaced Pages's responsibility to provide them with a place to spread their particular brand of unpleasantness. I'm saddened that you disagree. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:55, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

• I think the unblock is appropriate. The blocked user needs to refrain from such inflammatory language, however. We should encourage people to express their views, but they should do so in a reasonably constructive and diplomatic fashion. Everyking (talk) 04:56, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

It isn't unlikely to happen now. We just basically told the editor he has free reign to destroy what he wants as long as it is related to homosexuals, the second class editors, who may be bullied, harrassed and trolled at your liesure. But of course we should say it was sorta bad, give a slap on the wrist and a wink of the eye at the same time.--Mark Miller (talk) 06:27, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

My reading of consensus here at this time is that the block was good... Perhaps a bit excessive, but good, and that the unblock was improper. If the IP does it again, I will block again, and if they are unblocked again I will take that admin to Arbcom for enabling bad behavior.

If the IP thinks they got away with it, they're wrong. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 06:25, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Interesting side note to know that people are able to get internet in and edit Misplaced Pages from a cave. Why do we continue to indulge the most vile of trolls with posts and drama like this when we are under no obligation to? When someone makes it so evident that they lack intelligence and the capacity for critical thought, why do invite them to join an academic pursuit? We need to remain open to every idea and every tradition and every point of view (no matter how disgustingly backward and utterly ignorant it is) but we do not owe the people that propagate such nonsense anything. John Reaves 05:09, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

• So anyone who disagrees with you lives in a cave and has no intelligence? I can see that you have remained open to every idea, tradition, point of view... etc. AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 05:19, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
  • This comment (my comment) was unnecessarily divisive and definitely unhelpful. It's just incredibly hard for me to fathom that this issue is an issue of "opinion" for some people. I can't understand how this is any different than dancing on hot coals around the sensitivities of Holocaust deniers or pediphilia activists. That being said; maybe I shouldn't be commenting here. Rather than saying we should be "open" to every idea, etc. I should have said we should be willing to document, in an encyclopedic fashion, every idea, tradition, etc. John Reaves 05:35, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
    • Well, at any rate, this thread has helped make it very clear to me that I'm no longer a Wikipedian. AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 05:38, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
      • That's awfully melodramatic. John Reaves 05:51, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
        • And your post was underwhelming. I am not a Wikipedian. It is clear. I am just this shit on the bottum of your shoes you can't wipe off.--Mark Miller (talk) 06:27, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
          • Perhaps you should re-read my comments. I'm not sure you understood them. John Reaves 06:40, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
          • "I can't understand how this is any different than dancing on hot coals around the sensitivities of Holocaust deniers or pediphilia activists" What the fuck is this shit? Really. Goddman it, this shit is fucking pathetic!--Mark Miller (talk) 06:31, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
            • Should we now begin to greet Catholic editors as child molestors? How about the Mormon editors as traitors to the US? Perhaps we can make fun of the disabled for all that chrome on their wheelchairs and laugh at people when they die because they couldn't hack it in the world? No....I think we should respect everyone but if this is the NEW WIKIPEDIA I guess everyone most conform to the new editing style.--Mark Miller (talk) 06:36, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Mark, I think you have misunderstood John Reeves. You appear to have taken his comments opposite to the meaning intended. Look at them, again, in that light. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:23, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

No, George I understood it, perhaps he was right and "( comment) was unnecessarily divisive and definitely unhelpful". It made things far worse, if that is what you mean. I am nether a "Holocaust deniers or pediphilia activists" and if that was supposed to be support...i could do without that shit. But thank you. It isn't a matter of taking his comments opposite of what he meant, he meant what he said and it was that this entire situation was attempting to be sensitive to really horrible abd disgusting people. TThanks John Reaves, but that kind of help is useless.--Mark Miller (talk) 18:02, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Who is George? It does not appear John Reaves was referring to you as a denier or activist -- he appears to have been referring and drawing a comparison to the IP's Jimbo talk page comments (as being like those of a denier or activist), which started this whole thing. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:13, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Alan, if you haven't figured out who George is in this situation by this point, I doubt I can help there. John was attempting to make an illustration and it was done badly. Regardless of anyone pointing fingers at me, you or anyone else, I am not going to use you or anyone else as an example. I will use myself. I know you understand that. I wasn't responding to you Alan, I was responding to George and John. I am not pissed off at John, just that his words were almost as hurtful to at least one editor and was rather awkward.--Mark Miller (talk) 18:57, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I was misled by the indent that you were responding to me (also the discussion of understanding and 'taking the opposite', which my comment also addressed) (See, WP:Indent). Just FYI. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:10, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

• I'd like to suggest that we shut this thread down at this time for two reasons: it's unlikely to produce any result that's fair to the subject(s) of the thread, and we're getting into territory where people get so disgusted that they actually leave Misplaced Pages. I'm not one to trumpet the "real world" ... but corporate culture and educational culture in Western democracies have standard approaches to inflammatory speech in the workplace and in the classroom that seem to work for them, and that seem to avoid exactly the damage that's being done here. There are many valid points of view on how to handle disputes like this ... the problem is we're not getting them that broad range of views, we're getting back-and-forth from people who feel attacked in various ways. That has very little chance of producing a stable or workable solution. I'd like to suggest that we come back to the question of the unblock at another time, and that we have the more general discussion in the context of a well-advertised discussion on the talk page of some relevant guideline or policy page, to add proper context. - Dank (push to talk) 12:02, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

  Please give the community an opportunity to actually address Nyttend's action. Yesterday was a holiday in the US and several commenters have made compelling arguments. This should be closed properly and in due time, by someone who is not involved. - MrX 13:20, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

  Not a problem. Regarding "compelling arguments", to be more clear, I replaced "them" by "that broad range of views". - Dank (push to talk) 13:57, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

  Thank you Dank. - MrX 14:03, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

  Is this argument really worth continuing in this setting? I realize the importance of what is being said, but the bottom line is whether or not to reblock an IP, with the individual in question using a dynamic IP. We generally do not block IP addresses for long periods of time. Yes, it is an expression of community feelings towards the individual's views, but the practical effect seems minimal.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:07, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

  Not the bottom line. This discussion is about Nyttend's tool use, which is why it is here not at Incidents. - Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:20, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

  Yes, it worth continuing since people are still discussing it. At the very least, Nyytend need to account for his actions and answer some questions. I would not object to moving it to AN/I if that would be a better venue. Also, the user was blocked from editing. Blocking the IP address is a technical issue which can be addressed by blocking the obvious evading IPs, with a notice on the talk pages that legitimate users using the IPs can circumvent the block by registering. (I think there's a template for it, but I can't locate it at the moment). - MrX 14:58, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

  Is there any evidence that this IP user has continued being disruptive? On the IP they used or any others? If the IP user really got off scott free as some say he/she did here then most likely it would embolden them to do something like it again and then of course it would be dealt with. The map got deleted so the request was carried out I feel that there is not much more to be said here as dragging this on is just throwing more salt in the wounds. As for Nyytend if you want to throw him in the spotlight then yes WP:ANI I figure is the better place. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 15:08, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

  I've just gotten Internet access for the first time in several days. Let me just say that we need to treat everyone equally. Blocking the IP for his activism is only appropriate if we block people like Sportsfan for activism for the other side. Block both sides for activism, or permit both sides to express their views, but imposing your morality on someone by blocking only one side is abuse of tools and blatant bigotry. I will not reverse any actions that I've taken in this case. Nyttend (talk) 15:31, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

  Well I am happy you got your internet working again, the issue seems to be beyond what you did though. I see a troubling divide here that is getting worse over time. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 15:41, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

  Nyttend, your analysis is absurd. Sportsfan5000 wrote:

  "Sorry, can't hear you, the right-wing doesn't play very well where science and rational thinking are needed."

  which I agree is a personal attack, and not at all helpful. The IP started off with an emotional, but marginally acceptable rant. But then she wrote:

  "I deeply resent anyone suggesting that wikipedia is obliged support this sickness and adopt the same bias in the name of "tolerance" and directly label my country in opposition to my country's government."

  which is indisputably a homophic rant, attacking an entire group of people for an immutable characteristic. The IP then wrote:

  "Homosexuals have always judged the entire world through their sore tortured prisms, that's nothing new but they need to get their own wiki or their own pedia, this isn't the homopedia,...",

  again an indisputably homophobic statement. The IP was blocked for "homophobic activism on several pages", which Sportsfan5000 was neither guilty of nor accussed of. If you are not able to see that the IP's behavior is the kind that we should quickly block and ignore, then you should not be an admin, and I will eagerly join in an effort to have you de-sysoped. - MrX 16:03, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

  If Sportsfan needs to be blocked (for a comment he retracted) an uninvolved Admin may do so. Moreover, whether the IP needs to be blocked does not hinge on what is done to Sportsfan. More importantly, Nyttend as an involved disputant should have done nothing as an admin. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:20, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

• Bad admin. I randomly just came across this looking at my watchlist. As a gay editor, I don't normally find talk page homophobia that worrying as most of them are either trolls or go away when they run out of steam.

What is disturbing though (and probably shattered yet another illusion I had of Misplaced Pages) is to find out that in a community which outright bans editors who engage in hate speech or violent threats, questioning my humanity by comparing it to raping animals and children is seen as merely a "political POV" that should be listened to for the sake of neutrality. And that one of them is an administrator.

I don't give a shit if some editors here don't think that I should get married, or that I would be going to their religion's hell. This is not about letting "both sides express their views" or NPOV. This is about the first entry on WP:NPA#WHATIS. Someone who can't tell the difference has no right to the mop.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 17:10, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I was directly involved with this situation and I am getting more and more pissed off. This site's behavioral guidelines and terms of service have been completely ignored in favor of a disruptive, hateful, anonymous IP editor that is supported by an admin who has a clear history of issues. The last Request for Comment/User conduct was three years ago, but it seems Nyttend has found their way back into controversy and refuses to budge from there wheel war unblock of an editor that consensus clearly shows should have that block re-instated.

We treated this IP seriously, we didn't badger them or hound them. We didn't ignore them or fight with them. We looked into the actual situation which had the originating article fully protected for three days and yet, we calmly and succently looked into the situation brought up by this editor in such a horrifying manner and did it with such civiltiy that the three day article protection was lifted in a few hours. But that IP DESERVED that block. It was not heavy handed. It wasn't against mulitple editors or about the ideaology or their personal beliefs. It was for the horrible manner in which it was approached.

Nyttend sickened me. Seriously. I am not just saying this for effect. I am sick to my stomach by what they did. He has taken Misplaced Pages away from me. I feel targeted directly. Not just because I happen to be a gay man...but because this gay man handled that situation per our policies and guidelines and Nyttend is allowed to screw all of that off and make the victims of this attack to be of absolutely no consequence. This has become a very dangerous place to be when such bullying is allowed...and it is allowed and will get worse before it gets better if the block is not upheld. No one has any rights on Misplaced Pages. But I am not paid enough for this shit...which is NOTHING. I give to this site...freely and of my own accord. But that changes today.

I am not walking away or quiting. I am just not stupid enough to stay where members are supported for their hatred and encouraged to harrass and bully. This is a serious issue and Misplaced Pages has become a very dangerous place for gay editors. What really saddens me personally is how neutral and fair I always try to be with opponents of my veiws. How disapointed I was at the mass sanctions after the Manning and Tea Party cases, but now I see I should just be happy that those went to arb com because clearly it arb com that has an issue dealing with civility, harrassment and bullying...it's our administrative core. Nyttend didn't mop anything up. They dumped the bucket of filthy crap all over everyone and did it on purpose with the absolute intention of making a point. I thought such editing itself was against our behavioral guidelines? I guess only when it suits our personal moral standard. And since everyone has such a differing set of morals.....we end up, not just hurting people, but actaully putting them in danger. Yes, Nyttend you put editors in danger and that should NOT be accpetable to anyone.--Mark Miller (talk) 18:41, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Mark can I suggest a WP:BREAK then? You are still seeing red here, and I get the feeling it goes beyond this one incident. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 18:47, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

KK87 has some good advice. Look, what the IP said was understandably upsetting, but Nyttend's actions in no way put editors in "danger" nor is Misplaced Pages a "very dangerous" place for gays. Exaggeration does not help your case.

You want to be able to speak on behalf of LGBT issues, and you should be able to do so. By the same token, there are editors from countries where being homosexual earns you a death sentence. Some of those editors believe in their countries laws and they should have the right to do so. We don't shut people up because we disagree with their views (unless we are becoming fascist), we block them for direct personal attacks and / or disruption.

There are many countries where I disagree with the countries laws and common viewpoints. That doesn't mean that we silence those from those countries unless they agree with us.

Having said all that, the IP here is from a Verizon account in the U.S. and while it is conceivable that they are from one of those countries, it is doubtful. The block was good, although probably excessive. The unblock was reasonable based on the duration of the block. GregJackP Boomer! 19:08, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

• Comment I agree the block was appropriate due to the fact the IP seemed to be deliberately editing in a provocative fashion from the outset, but Nyttend's unblock was premised more on the comment cited to justify the block. Although it is understandably upsetting, the comparison of attitudes towards homosexuality to those towards bestiality and pedophilia is often made during discussions on this matter, including in the United States. While I think such comparisons are misguided and wrong, they should not be the sole basis for action. Nyttend's mistake was not paying closer attention to all the concerns regarding the IP and focusing just on that comment.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 23:13, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Nyttend's Arbitration block of Sportfan5000

• The above unblock was undone right after this admin was compelled to unblock me from an Arbitration block on the same incident, which apparently can't be simply undone by other admins. "This block is related to the Manning naming dispute Arbcom case and this comment. Nyttend (talk) 00:47, 27 November 2013 (UTC)" Everyone else who commented wondered what this had to do with the Arbitration case. Their explanation was - "Sportsfan attacked a really broad class of people specifically on a gay-rights issue, despite recently being warned of the provisions of the arbitration case. It's bad enough to make attacks on broad classes of people, but the attack was also quite clearly directed toward the person who originated the thread." Later another admin moved the note to the "Sexology" case. I feel the block was not needed in the first place as a warning would have done just as good, previously I was in trouble for reverting, not comments. I'd like my slate cleaned a bit of violating Arbitration cases. Sportfan5000 (talk) 04:24, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• It was an invalid arbitration block as the discretionary sanctions apply to paraphilia classification and transgender issues. Comments about the status of homosexuality and political attitudes towards it are not within the scope of the discretionary sanctions.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 05:54, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• As one of the parties to Sexology, I always thought that the general probation was too wide, especially as the disruption in the case only related to areas about the medical aspects of transsexuality, not the legal or social aspects. Sceptre 07:55, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

I'll admit to some concern over Nyttend's actions here. I asked him to unblock Sportfan5000 - which he obligingly did - since I could see no reason for the Manning Abitration case to apply to Sportfan5000's comment. However, the fact that Nyttend would then unblock the IP Sportfan5000 was opposing - using a rationale that could have applied equally to Sportfan5000's block - does smack somewhat of bias. Nyttend is perfectly entitled to his own views on homosexuality and right-wing politics, but I have to admit, this does look on the surface rather like personal opinion entering into a block/unblock decision. Yunshui 雲‍水 10:52, 28 November 2013 (UTC) Above comment struck, since it reads as though I'm making an assumption about Nyttend's beliefs, which I'm not trying to do. Yunshui 雲‍水 12:34, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• At any rate, the comment by Sportfan5000 was bigoted, intolerant and hateful, and it indicates his inability to be part of a collegial community that includes people with differing viewpoints. AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 05:27, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

  I assume that was meant as some sort of heavy-handed satire. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 05:35, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

  No, it was not. This is bigotry too. AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 05:37, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

  And that comment was struck, when brought to his attention. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:46, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

• Since it was not a proper block under that Arb remedy, it appears to further confirm that Nyttend was involved. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:46, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Protected redirect

I would like to redirect BIIT to Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi#Barani Institute of Information Technology. Also Barani Institute of Information Technology (if that page is protected, I haven't looked yet) to Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi#Barani Institute of Information Technology. Candleabracadabra (talk) 00:41, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Done. Nyttend (talk) 00:50, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Adminstats

Labs now has deleted edits. Adminstats is displaying deleted edits again.—cyberpower _Online 19:23, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Does statistics of recent admin actions (say 3 months or 6 months) exist somewhere?--Ymblanter (talk) 21:26, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

No. But I can make one.—cyberpower _Online 23:11, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

That would be very interesting to see, actually. Mark Arsten (talk) 04:48, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Would be great indeed.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:26, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

History-merging and page-moving requests

• While my computer has been down for 3 days, the work in Category:Candidates for history merging and Misplaced Pages:Requested moves/Technical requests has piled up. Please, does ANY admin except me do history-merging and obstructed page moves??? It is 11.55 pm here in England. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 22:49, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

  I know how to do history merges, but I generally don't keep an eye on the category. Feel free to ping me if you're going to be away from Misplaced Pages again. — Mr. Stradivarius 09:47, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

request for closure

The following RFC was opened on September 6th. I requested closure at WP:ANRFC on October 12th but have not gotten a response. Could an admin please close? Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style#MOS:IDENTITY RFC: Should the text "When there is no dispute..." be deleted, kept or changed?

Thanks, GabrielF (talk) 04:30, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

James McGibney

Would an admin please review the pending change to James McGibney. The article is fully protected as well as PC2 protected so a non-admin won't be able to review it. Given it could be seen as editing through protection in an edit war maybe it could be accepted with a comment like 'PC not used during disputes so this edit would be there anyway'. Thanks, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 06:13, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

I accepted all revisions since all of them are fine with the WP:PC point of view. The rest should belong to the yalk page of the article or possible even a block log, but there is no BLP policy violations in the edits.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:34, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

There is an active sock investigation ] regarding this and also a request for review at WP:BLPN. Hell In A Bucket (talk) 10:35, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• I've removed full protection since it seems that some more cleanup might be needed. Mark Arsten (talk) 20:05, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Happy Thanksgiving

Wishing all a Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it. :-)—cyberpower _Online 14:53, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, happy Thanksgiving to you, too, and everyone else here. :) A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 14:57, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

A bit late, eh? WilyD 15:00, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Good point. Just to be clear, my "this side of ... both ponds" comment above referred to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, not the Arctic :) - Dank (push to talk) 16:29, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Oh noes no Happy Thanksgiving for me then. And me with only three days of sunshine left. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 20:59, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

• ...and a happy Hanukkah to our Jewish friends! GiantSnowman 16:14, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
• And Happy Hawaiian Independence day or Lā Kū'oko'a!--Mark Miller (talk) 20:30, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
• And, for those who belong the world’s largest and most prominent non-religion that has a deity who is truly edible and Full of Complex Carbohydrates, Merry ChriFSMas and happy Holidays. :) --Guy Macon (talk) 20:33, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
• My first thanksgiving, at this end :). Seems fun so far, although a Safeway mix-up means I have a 17lb turkey for four people. This'll be interesting. Ironholds (talk) 00:01, 29 November 2013 (UTC)!
• Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 01:52, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Typical systemic bias! HiLo48 (talk) 02:10, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

• Hope everyone enjoyed their thanksgiving! Sportsguy17 :) (click to talk • contributions) 17:56, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Long-term "Alvin and the Chipmunks" vandal under different IP addresses

Apologies. I have just realised that my earlier post a couple of minutes ago about this vandal would have been better posted in the Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents section.

I have now transferred the content into that section. Kind Tennis Fan (talk) 21:39, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

You know, when a report is titled "long-term Alvin and the Chipmunks vandal" someone has jumped the shark. Viriditas (talk) 02:59, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Mass creation of very improbable redirects

I first left a note at User talk:Rybec#Redirects, but I have since noted that other editors like User:Anthony Appleyard do the same, so I'll post it here instead (I'm not going to try to find every editor who has done this individually).

User:West.andrew.g/Popular redlinks is a list of pages with lots of page views, but no article or redirect (yet). Some editors use this page to create the redirects, to help those editors using these search terms. The problem is that the page (or the script behind it) has a problem with unusual letters, accents, and the like, rendering them rather bizarrely. The result is that redirects are created with claims that they have been used thousands of time per month, while in reality they are never used (obviously, since they are extremely improbable).

Examples;

• Mar\xC3\xADa Gabriela Isler was created as a redirect because it supposedly was used as a search term "2036 tries/week". In reality, It had been used 0 times in the last 90 days(.
• Gisele B\xC3\xBCndchen
• Lo Que La Vida Me Rob\xC3\xB3
• Te Ika-a-M\xC4\x81ui
• Cambodian\xE2\x80\x93Thai border dispute
• Raven-Symon\xC3\xA9
• 2014 FIFA World Cup qualification \xE2\x80\x93 UEFA Second Round
• Rhinoceros Party of Canada (1963\xE2\x80\x931993)
• Kimi R\xC3\xA4ikk\xC3\xB6nen

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of these created by at least three editors over multiple months. This should a) stop, b) gett mass-deleted, and c) the list corrected. Fram (talk) 11:16, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

As an example of the improbability of this list; Lady Saigō has been viewed 1634 times in the last 90 days. But the redirect Lady Saig\xC5\x8D was created because it was claimed to have had more than 1,000 views in a week. It is unusual for redirects to have more page views than the actual target page, I think... Fram (talk) 11:27, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

yes, there is definitely something amiss here. GiantSnowman 11:31, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I've found a short old discussion at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical)/Archive 113#Are thousands of people a day not finding the articles they want? which may be of interest. Fram (talk) 12:23, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

• At the top of User:West.andrew.g/Popular redlinks it says that "Entries containing \x appear to originate from percent encodings of real titles but with % incorrectly replaced by \x (discussion). The error is probably made by some external software." Regards, — Moe Epsilon 12:40, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Considering that none of these appear on stat.grok.se (the page view statistics), I wonder whether the errors aren't created by some internal software instead of external software. In any case, there seems to be little value in creating these redirects, and (as indicated below) some potential problems with using this list). Fram (talk) 12:51, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
    • I agree, about the \x redirects, they don't appear to be useful and they aren't actually receiving any hits. I started looking at some other redirects that seemed silly and were created such as 2006 FIFA World Cupm (compare to 2006 FIFA World Cup), and grok.se actually did turn up some stats: "2006 FIFA World Cupm has been viewed 5620 times in the last 30 days." I could probably argue for the deletion of that redirect as nonsense, but you have to wonder why there was a spike in people typing "Cupm" for no apparent reason. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 13:04, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Per the developer, these assumptions are mistaken. There is an issue here: This \x thing is a real problem. It doesn't appear like it is a problem because stats.grok.se is broken in the way that it handles these requests. Let's work with the Brandon Ríos article as an example. This is percent encoded in Misplaced Pages's backend systems as Brandon_R%C3%ADos. If you try entering this encoding into stats.grok.se, it is the equivalent to searching for "Brandon Ríos" sans encoding (many recent hits). The problem here surrounds Brandon_R\xC3\xADos. Stats.grok.se says no views for this exist. However, go on over to the raw daily statistics traffic files which WE BOTH aggregate over. Get a file from late last week (this is largely hypothetical, you don't need to do this, these are BIG files, and I've done it; but someone could recreate this to show I am not lying) then "grep/search" that file and you will plainly see lines corresponding to Brandon_R\xC3\xADos (i.e., views). These are the views correctly reported at WP:TOPRED. Something about the stats.grok.se input screws up these cases. I assume it has something to do with the way escape characters or encoding are handled (it is tricky). I have spent many many hours investigating cases at WP:5000 and WP:TOPRED where users indicate my numbers do not agree with those of stats.grok.se. Every time I can point to evidence in the raw files which support my aggregation (see a recent one). I write only to confirm that some software out there is trying \x encoding and serving red links. I will support whatever policy the community decides regarding whether these redirects should be created (or alternatively, code could be created in software that handles them automatically). West.andrew.g (talk) 18:14, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, there were a couple of others with an m or an n added which got created and get quite a few hits. It looks like some bot, or another non-human error, not thuosands of humans suddenly deciding that Michael LeMoyne Kennedyn4000 hits this month is more logical than Michael LeMoyne Kennedya(0 hits) or any other extra letter. I don't think we should be basing the creation of redirects on such obvious non-human results (just check thoroughly and the pattern of additional "m" or "n" becomes extremely obvious. On the other hand, the page also lists Ramesh Tendulkar, which contrary to all these dubious ones has not been created as I write this down, but which is an actual, correct, human search term for either Sachin Tendulkar or his father. Fram (talk) 13:18, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

• • • User:Vanisaac/test/4 - Oh boy.. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 13:08, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
      • That's helpful, a partial list of what to nuke! Fram (talk) 13:19, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
  • I totally support the deletion of the redirects. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:54, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
• I agree, the creation of these redirects needs to stop. See Misplaced Pages:Redirects for discussion/Log/2013 November 20#Opera (web browser)m for a recent example of a discussion in which the consensus was to delete a large number of implausible redirects. One of the issues raised in the discussion was the implausibility that a human (and not a malfunctioning bot/script) would have generated the supposed demand for these redirects. WJBscribe (talk) 13:20, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
• About page Mar\xC3\xADa Gabriela Isler above :: is http://stats.grok.se/en/latest90/Mar%5CxC3%5CxADa_Gabriela_Isler counting accesses from outside, or accesses from within Misplaced Pages, or both, or what? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 13:23, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Pages with "\x" in the title always show zero hits. If you change "\x" to "%" the site will decode the special characters and redirect you: for instance, if you try to see the statistics for María Gabriela Isler you will be redirected to the statistics page for María Gabriela Isler. —rybec 06:00, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

• I have added a warning to the TopRedlinks page, here. Please remove, make stronger, make more visible, ... if this isn't enough or too much. Fram (talk) 13:41, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

  The warning seems like a good idea to me. Should we add something to say that this is not an appropriate task for automation and that each new redirect must be individually considered? Anyone who uses AWB to mass create these redirects now that the issue has been flagged up should really have their AWB access revoked. WJBscribe (talk) 14:30, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Nice of you to keep an open mind until you've talked with the people actually making these things. First of all, every one of these is individually considered, and I consider it to be extremely bad faith for you to have accused me otherwise. (BTW, nice job, Fram et al, of notifying involved editors) If the term is not so common that I have no doubt that we don't have that article, I will check on the target by hand, but I am not a bot, and I apply editorial judgement to each redirect created. So far, I've ended up with a bot having to fix a double redirect only twice out of around 700 of these. Second, what is your solution? Take a look at the stats pages: this is not some errant bot pinging the site over and over: these page requests show the unmistakable sign of human behavior: a big initial jump and slow trail-off - I've even noticed a double spike, where the link is obviously posted a second time somewhere else. These are links getting posted somewhere, with real, actual people trying to access these pages. Now I don't know why they are getting mangled, or where they are coming from, but my back-of-the-hand calculation puts these new redirects as serving about half a million page requests per week. I don't know what the answer to fixing this is, but until you come up with something better, please don't threaten those of us who are trying to mitigate the problem. Half a million people trying to access specific pages on this site and being thwarted is a real problem, so tell me what solution is better than redirects. VanIsaac_{WS Vex} 02:51, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Bit defensive don't you think? How about "yes, I agree they should be individually considered and that is what I do..." Why assume I'm accusing you of not individually considering redirects you have created? My point is a simple one - don't use automation for large numbers of controversial edits. Creating these redirects is clearly controversial, so users wanting to work from these lists need to be very careful that they are establishing a consensus for their edits. Also, I think we're exaggerating the consequence of what the lack of these redirects will do. There's no evidence that a human user (if it really is a human) will simply give up without these redirects, rather than just search for the article they are looking for some other way. WJBscribe (talk) 10:54, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Btw, I'm not sure how your statement that you do consider the redirects individually squares with your comment that, having been told a number of redirects were deleted following an RfD discussion, "Well, if they show up in this week's run, I'll be recreating them - surely individual consideration would include making sure the redirects had not already been considered by the relevant community process and deleted? WJBscribe (talk) 11:04, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, they are individually considered. The criteria are: 1)are they getting over a thousand redlink requests a week (from the list)? 2) is it a legitimate target to redirect to? 3) is the requested page a legitimate target in and of itself? If it passes #1 and #2, and fails #3, that's my criteria. #3 is important: we've had several dozen +p page requests, but I can't make a legitimate justification that Catp or SQLp and similar page requests aren't technical terms that should be left for someone to make an actual article. Likewise, I don't know enough about marketing and gadgets to say that Samsung Galaxy S IIm isn't a new product in the pipeline, so it doesn't get one. I've engaged people at the redlink talk page on numerous occasions about how to go about doing this, trying to get feedback on what the criteria should be for when we nuke these guys. Because yes, I don't like them at all - that's why I kept a list of every last one created - but I can't ignore half a million hits per week, and I still don't see any suggestions about how to handle these any better. VanIsaac_{WS Vex} 12:22, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

• Chiming in (since Fram left me a message and I did create a few redirects before I thought better of it): I agree with Fram and support deletion of these redirects. Trivialist (talk) 16:35, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

• There are many reasons for redirects. Some are valid, some not. Most on User:West.andrew.g/Popular redlinks appear to be errors in Misplaced Pages bots. Underscores, and trailing single letter such as 'n' or 'm' appear to fit into this case. I recommend posting on Bot owners' noticeboard to see if the cause of some of the issues can be identified. Regards, Sun Creator 17:37, 29 November 2013

• Distinct from my role as the person who generates these reports, and as I mentioned at User_talk:West.andrew.g/Popular_redlinks#trailing_m_and_n, I don't support the creation of these redirects. One primary reason is that we are treating the symptoms and not the cause of the errors. The \x encoding and "m/n" issues are almost certainly errors in software. When we provide redirects for broken software, we are obfuscating the fact something is wrong to those software users, causing possible further distribution of buggy software. They should hit a red link, as it makes obvious something is broken. Now, I think WP:TOPRED is a valuable resource that can guide article creation and (as we are learning here) provide insight as to how API software, crawlers, etc. might be mis-configured. However, we need to reign in which redirects are created. Consider also there is some evidence (see the "topred" archives) that people are spamming\visit redlinks (perhaps with a bot) in order to bolster the fact an article should exist (essentially an AfD "keep" tactic)? West.andrew.g (talk) 18:26, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Just like to note here that the comma key and the m key are right next to each other on most keyboard layouts. I've seen this outside Misplaced Pages, in family tree records. Occasionally someone will be said to have been born in "New Yorkm" or similar. Which means it could, or may have already done so, find its way here.--Auric talk 03:38, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

More serious than improbable misspellings alone

Delving further into this, it appears that based on the same page (e.g. ), redirects for other terms are created as well, e.g. Arabic texts to Misplaced Pages pages. Perhaps not a problem in theory (though of dubious value), but when you are creating redirects to e.g. Pornography, as most of these were (I also saw one to Zoophilia, and recent ones to Penis and Buttocks (you may notice a pattern here)), you have to be extra careful not to create BLP violations and the like. One such redirect was from سكس ليلى علوى, an entry on the top redlinks list, which redirects to pornography but gets translated (by Google Translate) as Sex Leila Alawi, where Leila Alawi is Laila Elwi, an Egyptian non-pornographic actress. It looks like that page is a combination of script errors and some external manipulation (I doubt that there are really suddenly thousands of people looking for سكس بنات المدرسه ("sex girls school") on enwiki). Fram (talk) 12:49, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

• This seems more and more like there are a few users who are blindly creating redirects without actually knowing what they mean, which is grossly irresponsible behavior. Looking at this example my feeling is that we should delete all such redirects and the persons who created them can then go back through the list and make sure they actually know what it is they are creating instead of just blindly following automated suggestions. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:30, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
• The first one Fram mentions, I have nuked from orbit. I've got to say, I support a mass culling of this nonsense within normal processes, but that BLP one had to go. Courcelles 17:34, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Rybec's reply

The "\x" encoding was discussed back in June, and someone requested that the Mediawiki software decode "\x" to "%"

If some definite pattern can be detected, such as these URLs with non-standard hexadecimal escapes, and there are substantiated expectation that it will persist, then developers should consider some URL rewrite built into the engine.

It's very likely that stats.grok.se does this decoding, hence it will always show zero requests for these mojibake, no matter how many actual requests there were. I suggest fixing the Mediawiki software before deleting the redirects.

The Arabic redirects were discussed earlier this month, at . I've only created two since then, طيز and زب. As Fram notes, they redirect to Penis and Buttocks. However, it's Fram who has redirected them to those pages. I had created them as soft redirects to pages on the Arabic Misplaced Pages about the exact Arabic terms. In other words, I had made ] a soft redirect to ] and made ] a soft redirect to ]. Fram objects to the fact that en:طيز redirects to en:buttocks and the other redirects to penis after Fram's own changes . This puzzles me. The documentation for Template:Soft redirect advises its use for making "short pages inviting readers to visit another page on a different Wikimedia project."

I think the Arabic-language traffic may be from people attempting to bypass censorship, or an intersection of:

1. people who look for pornography on the Web
2. browser software that has a Misplaced Pages search feature
3. computers with English-language browsers, which search the English Misplaced Pages when that search feature is used
4. people who speak Arabic
5. people who use their browser's default search engine to find pornography

The Arabic Misplaced Pages has pages called طيز and زب; although it's not customary, I think it's helpful to users of the site to provide links for popular search terms in foreign languages. According to stats.grok.se, one of these terms received 24,509 hits on the English Misplaced Pages in the 90 days before I created it, and the other 28,188. I think directing readers to the Arabic Misplaced Pages is appropriate when they make a search such as this; the interwiki links provide a means of navigation back to the English Misplaced Pages.

Let's add How to write Simple English articles to this discussion. I created it as a soft redirect to ]; instead of mentioning it here, Fram simply deleted it. According to stats.grok.se it was requested 4385 times in the past 90 days. Fram called it a cross-namespace redirect, but it was not: instead, it sent readers to the Simple English wiki.

I requested creation of Your first article as a cross-namespace redirect to WP:Your first article. It's been created as a soft redirect. It received 21,519 requests in the last 90 days.

—rybec 22:17, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Elexis Monroe (new information)

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

• Normally I would make a temporary undeletion request at WP:DRV, but that was tried already in the past. Anyway, I'm not trying to beat a dead horse here, but I think the article should be restored because now that the 2014 XBIZ Award nominations have been announced, the subject has been nominated for two new non-scene-related awards (Girl/Girl Performer of the Year and Best Actress), thus passing WP:PORNBIO. Erpert 14:02, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been added to the WikiProject Pornography list of deletions. Erpert 14:08, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

• This is forum shopping of the worst kind Erpert. You don't like what DRV says so you come here. DRV's view was broadly endorsed in the subsequent drama fest you opened here and PORNBIO is now tagged as disputed. So lets just cut to the chase. Have you got any decent secondary sourcing that would allow this individual to meet GNG? If not, this is just wash rinse and repeating what we already did. Spartaz 14:33, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Uninvolved Admin needed to evaluate and close RfC on use of royal titles at talk:Manual of Style/Biographies

At Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Biographies#Use of royal "Titles and styles" and honorific prefixes in articles and templates referring to pretenders to abolished royal titles and their families (which deserves a trout for the length of the name alone) I just undid an RfC closing because of serious questions about the result. See my comments here. I would like to ask that an unbiased administrator with experience closing controversial RfCs evaluate the consensus reached and close the RfC. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:23, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Would I be good enough?--Ymblanter (talk) 17:01, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

More than good enough. :) --Guy Macon (talk) 17:24, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Good, will start looking at it in an hour when I get home.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:32, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

 Done--Ymblanter (talk) 19:45, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Username policy

I have two questions:

1. WP:CORPNAME states, "Usernames that unambiguously consist of a name of a company, group, institution or product (e.g. AlexTownWidgets, MyWidgetsUSA.com, TrammelMuseumofArt)" are "not permitted because they are considered promotional". It also states, "A user who both adopts a promotional username and also engages in inappropriately promotional behaviors in articles about the company, group, or product, can be blocked."

   Assume you have a promotional username that does not promote in articles, what is the remedy if the user refuses to change the name? What's the point of saying "not permitted" if it has no teeth?

2. WP:UAA's instructions states, "This page is for usernames that are such blatant and serious problems that they need to be immediately blocked." It also states, "Please discuss less-serious violations with the user so that they can rename or abandon their account in good faith."

   Similar question: if you discuss the username with the user and they refuse to change it, where are you supposed to report it?

--Bbb23 (talk) 17:19, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Second question first: WP:RFC/N is usually the next step I that scenario. As to the first question, I am an on-again off again patrolling admin at UAA and it has been my observation that when it comes to spammer names, what gets blocked and what does not depends on who is dealing with reports at any given moment. The policy is sufficiently vague that "admin discretion" makes its enforcement highy variable. It also seems to me that some of the regulars there have come up with exemptions based on their own opinions of how specific situations should be handled, such as the "only edits are to AFC" exemption that was never approved by the community, it just sort of became a standard exception because one or two patrolling admins thought it should be one. I think the username policy is something that needs a periodic community review and overhaul, and it may be about time to do that again. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:36, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

That was very helpful, Beeblebrox, thanks. As to the second question, wouldn't it be a good idea to add something to the instructions at WP:UAA about WP:RFC/N? I'm sure it's buried someplace, but I didn't know about it. I don't patrol this area at all.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:55, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Huh, I thought it was mentioned somewhere in the header but it was not. I've added it to both the page header and the edit notice. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:19, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

• A point that should be emphasized here is that editors with promotional usernames usually have good intentions -- they have a COI but they are being transparent about it. We don't want to be in the position of harshly attacking people for being honest about their conflicts -- so the basic goal is to handle the problem in as nice a way as possible. Looie496 (talk) 18:17, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree. I used to be very tough on spam usernames until it became clear to me that the vast majority of them simply don't understand that we don't allow that sort of thing around here. That is why I favor "soft" blocking of all but the most obnoxious spammers. The block tells them they absolutely can't use a name that represents an organization, but the ability to immediately just start a new account without having to file an unblock request let's them know we are willing to give the another chance. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:23, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

As the UAA admin whose interpretation of policy has sparked this discussion (and not for the first time), I will just add my observation that we don't warn people about this when they create accounts. While I sort of don't think we should (the assumption we have is that legitimate editors, ones who are likely to become part of the community, usually don't use such usernames, thus allowing us to filter things somewhat), this then requires (to me) that usernames that are similar to companies or organizations not be blocked for that unless and until they start to promote those entities. The exception is names that indicate clear promotional intent (often combined with the suggestion of a role account), in the vein of "Consolidated Amalgamated Widget Co. Marketing Dept.", which I block on sight. Daniel Case (talk) 21:44, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I think it is probably appropriate to revisit this issue via an RFC. These username blocks jam up our unblock processes and our rename processes, and seem counterproductive. If the owner of an art gallery is editing Misplaced Pages, I'd like to know that when reviewing the account's edits to articles about art galleries. Ditto for pencil manufacturers, tire regroovers, and ukulele painters. On top of that, following our policy encourages dishonesty, which seems a perverse result.—Kww(talk) 21:51, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure of the history of the policy, but I would think that one concern would have been that the simple creation of a username does not guarantee that the person making the username is actually connected to the organization, or, of they are connected, is authorized by the organization to represent them. So, while I think there is sense in your suggestion that it's better to know who's making the edit, rather then hiding it behind a "false" name, I think that OTRS has to get involved in some way as well. What I would suggest is that organizational username be allowed, but when they're reported and become known, they be softblocked until the account can be established as being official through OTRS. When that happens, they can be unblocked, but be warned about WP:NPOV, WP:COI and WP:PROMO. If they then start making inappropriate edits, they can be hardblocked on the basis of violations of those policies. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:51, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

"I'm not sure of the history of the policy, but I would think that one concern would have been that the simple creation of a username does not guarantee that the person making the username is actually connected to the organization, or, of they are connected, is authorized by the organization to represent them." My guess was that whoever wrote that wasn't thinking that potentially corporate-sounding usernames might be used by people with neither connections to those organizations nor the desire to promote them. Or even real ones (cf. User:Bronx Discount Liquor, who specifically made sure no real organization used the name as far as he could tell). Some people just like having fun. And why should they be discouraged from editing Misplaced Pages productively because they made ironic or playful use of a corporate name? Daniel Case (talk) 05:24, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

One reason for not allowing "User:XYZcorp" is that accounts are supposed to be for single individuals only. That's why "Mark at XYZCorp" is allowed, but "XYZCorp PR Assistant" is not. I don't know the reason for that principle, but it seems to me a good one - it avoids "it wasn't me did that edit" excuses, makes it easier to conduct a dialogue, and improves the chances of the individual feeling some loyalty to WP as well as to his employer.

I believe German WP do allow company usernames, and I would be interested to know their experience. It seems to me that if "User:XYZCorp" were permitted, the account could not be allowed to edit their own article directly, unless we soften the COI policy greatly. Many of the "User:XYZCorp" accounts we get plunge straight in with blatant ads in the first person: "We offer luxury services blended with use of the best materials... Our years of experience and experty in this domain will help you..." etc.

Of course, they can't be blamed. What would greatly ease this situation would be if new users were presented before sign-up with a brief statement of what WP is and is not: "Misplaced Pages is a project to build an encyclopedia. It is not a place for you to tell the world about yourself or your company. Edits like that will be deleted. If that is what you have in mind, this is not the site for you - see WP:AUTO and WP:PSCOI." That would save enormous amounts of frustration and waste motion; but I fear it would never be allowed. JohnCD (talk) 23:23, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

My guess was that whoever wrote that wasn't thinking that potentially corporate-sounding usernames might be used by people with neither connections to those organizations nor the desire to promote them. Or even real ones. Your guess would be wrong. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:54, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

• I'll just add some observations that might be useful for this discussion. My estimate of the percentage of promotional user names that make it to UAA is about 1% at best. The typical promotional account is is created for advertising on their user page. They almost never create article or attempt to edit in article space. Rather, they create their account, place spam on it, and leave. These accounts are typically marked for speedy deletion, their spam user pages deleted, and account blocked. I have tagged well over 1000 such accounts. I send about 1% to UAA and I do so when the promotional nature of the account is clear but not as blatant as most. My observations over the last 8 months that I have been watching new user accounts is that the vast majority are simply created to put spam on their user page and then the account is abandoned, so I think that should be kept in mind when considering any changes to policy.I am One of Many (talk) 00:51, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I posted about this on the Username policy talk page. —rybec 01:15, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Arbitrator motion proposed regarding activity levels for holders of both CU and OS tools

An arbitrator motion has been proposed regarding activity levels for holders of both CU and OS tools. If you wish to comment, please join the discussion at the motion on the motions page. Thanks. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 01:51, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Sheldrake

I have been looking at the talk page of the Rupert Sheldrake (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) article. It's pretty clear to me that there is an issue with WP:TRUTH, or more likely The Truth™. One of the sources of heat more than light right now is Iantresman (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). This user has history (see Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience and Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science/Evidence).

It is pretty clear that Iantresman is a believer in concepts that are considered fringe or nonsense by the scientific community. My view, having read the talk page, is that he is advocating for the fringe beliefs of the subject rather than discussing how the article can accurately and neutrally reflect those fringe beliefs in the context of their acknowledged rejection by the scientific community.

On his talk page he says he is an active topic ban form at least one fringe subject; I haven't verified this but it is likely given that his primary purpose in fringe subjects is to advocate them rather than document them neutrally, as per ArbCom.

It is seven years since the pseudoscience arbitration, which placed him on probation for a year. I suspect that if the current dispute runs much longer he will end up sanctioned or banned, because he is displaying, to my reading, increasingly aggressive (or passionate or whatever you want to call it) advocacy of a fringe POV. I think this needs to be damped down because it is impeding progress on an article that already suffers from the input of single-purpose and advocacy accounts, and exhortations off-wiki to promote a certain POV. Guy (Help!) 12:44, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Nonsense. It's so clear, that you you haven't provided one single diff showing where there is a problem with my contributions, or to support your claims. If you are correct, you'll (a) have no problem finding diffs (b) there will be no disagreement from other editors. It is difficult to reply to such vague "criticism", but here goes:

1. I have not edited the article since 3 Jan 2012. Not one of my edits to the aritcle has been removed, ie. I have a 100% record of successful, positive contribitions. I have told you this before.
2. My edits have included adding material that SUPPORTS the description of Sheldrake's work as pseudoscience.
3. I have stated that we should include criticisms on Sheldrake's work.
4. I have stated that there are scientists that reject Sheldrake's work.
5. "I have never claimed, suggested, or even hinted that I think, or anybody else thinks, that Sheldrake's work is correct"
6. I have stated that "No one is suggestion we describe Sheldrake;s work "as fact or the majority viewpoint"
7. I have stated many times, that we should be adherring to the relevant policies.
8. I have stated that "I don't know whether Sheldrake's idea are valid or bunkum,"
9. I have stated that "No editor is suggesting that we exclude the description by some scientists that they personal believe is work to be pseudoscience" that "I am well aware of some primary sources calling some of this work pseudoscience, and am happy to include them," "I've happily provided and acknowledged sources that specifically say that Sheldrake's work is pseudoscience"

Every single one of these contradicts your assertions. For reference, other editors may wish to read "Persistent_Bullying_of_Rupert_Sheldrake_Editors"() --Iantresman (talk) 15:15, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

LTA

Would someone please create an LTA page for User:OneMadScientist? 69.212.173.43 (talk) 13:11, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

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