Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive143

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Contents 1 Am I misunderstanding something in these speedy delete images? 2 SPUI 3 Help needed with copyvio policy dispute 4 Travb 5 Question about importance 6 User:BubbaJubba 7 Constitution 8 Jesús Gabaldón shenanigans 9 Inappropriate editing 10 Reverting or removing tags without fixing problem 10.1 "Citation Needed" in John Lee Hooker 11 Propose indefinate block of User:TV Newser, and a look into his buddy User:Ponch's Disco 12 User:Gardez Bien and Washington, D.C. related articles 13 User unwilling to accept messages or discuss on user talk page 14 User adding content to XennoBB talk page 15 Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Kilz 16 Another IP puppet of User:Zarbon 17 Reverse dictionary attack? 18 Francis Schonken (talk • contribs): knowingly filing a false 3RR/sock puppet report 19 User:The Ministry of Truth 20 User:Rexisfed & Wicky woo 21 Cmr924 (talk • contribs) and 24.7.214.28 (talk • contribs) 22 Dralwik (talk • contribs) 23 Legal threats from user:Diane S 24 Request for assistance 25 Request roll-back anon's multiple spamming 26 Enormous sockpuppet army wiped out 27 Copyvio on Gymkata - does anything need to be done? 28 Stalking, vandalism, possible sockpuppetry evasion of block by Timmy12 29 Harassment by Hanuman Das and User:Ekajati 30 Tyciol (talk • contribs) 31 User:Sneewop 32 Help for Anti-Georgianism article 33 Vandalism warning -- question 34 Possible Username violation 35 Cyrillic alphabet 36 Vandalism warning -- question again! 37 slow spam + harassment 38 User:Omallystwin 39 Legal threats from anon 40 Inappropriate usernames waiting to be blocked 41 Episode nuking 42 Issamlee@hotmail.com (talk • contribs) 43 Old Proxy blocker block? 44 User: Éponyme 45 Spammer using a bot to flood Wikipedia? 46 User:Fact Finder 47 User:HannuMakinen 48 Block of NBGPWS 49 Jack Cox - Daniel Brandt's plagiarism data 50 Briefs-related articles - WP:HOAX?? 51 User:Truthseeker 85.5's disruptive behaviour 51.1 Too soft: permaban for extreme trolling and xenophobia is warranted 52 Sneewop (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log) 53 Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg 54 More plagiarism 55 Persistent disruption by User:Heqwm 56 RFC rules 57 Copyvio edits by me 58 Removal of personal information 59 Block for removing warnings 60 Continuous talk page blanking 61 User:ZAPWORLD 62 User:Sheepo39 63 Alismatic 64 User:Mattisse 65 Continued defacement of the Pedro Zamora and Judd Winick articles 66 User:Mikulas 67 IP User: 204.69.112.254 68 Huge mess with WP:DASH 69 User:Horde Zla 70 User Cris Ericsson 71 User:SuperDuperMan 72 User:Azwatchdog and other Anonymous 73 Vandalism, personal attack, personal information by 69.250.68.49 74 Guettarda 75 User removes my comments from his talk page 76 Konstable and Netspine 77 User:Street Scholar 78 Quick Question on Wikistalking 79 User evading ban to add AfD notices on articles which are not nominated for deletion 80 User:Madkunt 81 User:Anarcho-capitalism 82 SLS Health AFD needs to close 83 Improper language 84 60.228.118.45 85 User:KittenKlub refusing to sign vandal warnings 86 Socks ahoy 87 User:Gavin06 88 Eastern University Page 89 Cogito ergo sumo and right to vanish 90 Ecm2006 91 User advertising for job openings on his page User:DJ_BatWave 92 Holy anointing oil 93 People of Praise 94 Edit summaries are a contravene [sic] of US law... 95 The right to disappear (continued) 96 User:Cloveious and violation of Wikipedia:Fair use criteria item #8 97 Impersonation 98 Ebionite pages may be bugged

[edit] Am I misunderstanding something in these speedy delete images?

Image:CloudOpticalThickness.jpg, Image:Cincinnati-procter-and-gamble-headquarters.jpg and Image:Cord Front Drive Model 812 (1937).jpg are a few of a bunch requested for CSD because "This is an image page for a missing or corrupt image or an empty image description page for a Commons-hosted image" but they appear to be the images from commons, not just a duplicate. Am I misunderstanding something, or is the template incorrect? Gotyear 01:13, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

You are ;). See the [1] vs. [2], and notice the odd question in the image description on the Wikipedia one. That's the bit that needs speedy deletion. 24.76.102.248 01:26, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

If you look at the history you will see it is a new user either being ignorant or malicious. I am trying to determine which. And 24, that is not enough to qualify it for speedy deletion. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 01:28, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh dear, look at this[3], I don't have time to fix this right now, but he needs a swift block in the pants. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 01:29, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

The template is incorrect, he is a vandal, feal free to revert any or preferably all of his edits to images where he puts incorrect templates. The vast majority of his edits are vandalism if not all, so mabye an admin could fix it faster. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 01:32, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Not all his edits are vandalism. I sampled one lower down, and it does indeed have no license info, as the template he added indicates. Since I created none of those images, and I'm now pretty sure the templates with that reasoning and a "from Commons" description are incorrect, I'll remove a few, but he has 130 edits. If a majority of them are bad, I'll need help. If an admin can rollback, that'd be great. Gotyear 01:44, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

At least one of the images user tagged did not have an empty description page. Many of the blank ones have history that may be worth saving. The template was edited October 14; is this not in accord with I2 or should this be reverted too? Gimmetrow 01:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Many of these images were uploaded by the User:Aka - is a connection possible? Gimmetrow 02:02, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

With a lot of help from Grandmasterka, I believe all of the commons images are now off CSD. The rest have "no source/copyright info, delete in x days" tags, which I didn't scrutinize but generally look correct. Gotyear 07:45, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Again, how is tagging empty image description pages for commons images with the correct template vandalism? I thought we already went through this a day ago. - Bobet 19:19, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

So deleting those pages will not affect the pages that link to those images? If so, then I admit I'm completely in the wrong, which is why I waited for more opinions on AN/I before proceeding. I and others who responded were concerned the images might be CSD'd incorrectly and lost.

Considering this incident and another you mention, the template should have a bold note so it's crystal clear slapping it on images with "This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons. The description on its description page there is shown below." is exactly what's supposed to happen.

While it's clear to you, it's not clear to the people who responded here, all in good faith. I had no knowledge of the previous incident and noticed this one when I browsed some images in CSD.

I apologize for my actions.

I'd be willing to revert the edits, though I'd be doing them manually. Is there someone who can revert all of ours in just a few keypresses? If not, I'll do my part. Gotyear 21:30, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Deleting the description page here won't affect the image in commons, or the description page there in any way. If you want to delete the actual image from commons, you'd need to log in to commons and be an admin there. Sometimes the description pages that are on wikipedia for commons images aren't useless, such as translations for longer pieces of text in the image description, but in these cases they were empty, and as such added nothing to the descriptions themselves. That's why the template says "[...]or an empty image description page for a Commons-hosted image". - Bobet 05:59, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm copying your reply on my talk page because it imparts useful info that your AN/I reply doesn't have, and I'm replying on AN/I so that a few more people might see it, even though it is Grand Central Station. Gotyear 09:39, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi, don't worry about it, I'll probably fix (ie. delete) them eventually. And there's really no fault in what you did, you just happened to get unlucky by having people who weren't familiar with the subject answering at WP:ANI. As an example, I deleted the image page I linked above. As you can see, it's still a bluelink, but if you click on it, you'll see that it doesn't exist on wikipedia anymore (the "image" tab at the upper left corner is red). This is how it should be for the commons images. - Bobet 06:36, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad it's not a big issue and that you understand. I see the image is still there and that the Image tab is red, and "empty image description page for a Commons-hosted image" makes sense now.

See, I thought that "empty image description page" means that there'd be no image to view, just a description, especially given the other two: a missing or corrupt image. I wasn't sure if deleting the file "here" would delete it from commons or not, but I thought there'd be many missing images on the pages in "File links". Yes, some of the images had no WP pages linking to them, but in my mind there was a chance they'd be deleted from commons as well.

The other possibility was exactly what you just explained to me, that deleting these pages are fine. (How'd they come to exist on WP, since none of them had English translation descriptions?)

The wording is unclear since we all believed the incorrect option or were at least very unsure, and this is the second such incident. I suggest adding IMPORTANT: This will NOT delete the image from Commons, and if you see the image fine above, you will STILL BE ABLE TO SEE this image on any page it's linked to, at this exact address and with this description. In other words, Don't Panic!

I'm serious. It should be crystal clear that a good faith user seeing this 1. Shouldn't panic and 2. Why s/he shouldn't panic. I'd be bold, but Template talk:Db-noimage says Be timid. Or to be precise, "Please read Template talk:Db-reason before editing." That link gives me no help to understanding what I might screw up if I edit this template. Gotyear 09:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] SPUI

It seems SPUI has been trolling with the edit summaries of SQUIDWARD! for the past few days now. Any comments on how to deal with this? semper fi — Moe 04:49, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

He was blocked for this disruption before following a report on an arbitration report page. He is obviously ignoring that, he needs another block.--Konst.able^Talk 05:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

You what? For inappropriate edit summaries to six edits in the last ten or so days? Erm... Thanks/wangi 05:07, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Has anyone asked SPUI nicely to not do that? It's not like he's really disrupting anything, just being mildly silly. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 05:13, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes he has been asked not to do it a week ago by Lar (talk • contribs • blocks • protects • deletions • moves), he has ignored this. He is also on ArbCom parole for disruption on Highway-related article.s--Konst.able^Talk 05:15, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I would give him a more mild block next time he does it then. Obviously 15 minute blocks don't cut it and, when warned, he ignores it, so maybe a 24 hour block he continues? semper fi — Moe 05:20, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I just had a 24 hour block on him shortly after reading this, but I've shorterned it to 8 hours. I don't think this will affect him too much, he doesn't seem to edit too frequently, but could work as another warning.--Konst.able^Talk 05:24, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Most certianly agree with the short block. Since he's not frequently editing at this point, there stands a reason to give this block for this blatent disruption.. OK.. maybe his edits weren't all that too bad, but edit summaries copying a well known vandal isn't exactly what I would call helping. semper fi — Moe 05:28, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Hes SPUI. Hes a little silly, but really, hes a freakin genius. --CableModem 05:38, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

He obviously does not care. Any thoughts?--Konst.able^Talk 06:22, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

At this point, he has 110 entries in his block log. Short blocks are perhaps business as usual. I don't know.... is it worth trying to force someone to not use silly edit summaries for otherwise semi-productive edits? --Interiot 09:19, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

My opinion is that, whatever positive edits SPUI is contributing, it's more than offset by his unacceptable behavior and he should be blocked indefinitely. Unfortunately, others don't agree and will simply unblock him no matter how unacceptable the behavior is, and he will resort to sockpuppetry (with impunity) if blocked, anyway. --Nlu (talk) 10:01, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Or, hell, maybe we ALL should start taking breaks to vandalize and disrupt every so often, if it's going to start becoming an acceptable practice. --InShaneee 13:40, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Vandalize? As I understand it the complaint here is solely about edit summaries? How is that vandalism? If he used no edit summaries AT ALL would we be blocking for that? It isn't the preference, but hasn't normally been a blockable offense. Is "SQUIDWARD" so much worse than nothing that we must warn and then block for it? What exactly is it harming other than his own credibility? To me this seems like looking for excuses to inflate a trivial issue into an actual problem. Leave it alone unless he does something which would actually require a block to prevent damage to the encyclopedia... not because he is using silly edit summaries while improving the encyclopedia. --CBD 23:32, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Sillyness is harmless fun. As soon as someone starts debating whether or not it's harmless fun, it's not sillyness, it's disruptive. Stop it or be blocked. That's how I feel. --Lord Deskana (talk) 23:36, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Normally I would agree with you CBD. But, look at this diff [4] This is hardly what I think of when I think 'harmless' or 'silly'. To me, removing cleanup tags, blanking an article and adding the edit summary SQUIDWARD are not the kinds of things I expect out of an editor to behave. I wouldn't mind one or two of those silly edit summaries if he actually had a point to add the summary, but copying the vandal's edit summaries repeatedly after an extended period of time and after two blocks, whats there left to assume good faith with? semper fi — Moe 23:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

With this many blocks he should be thankful that the ArbCom put him on probation and did not ban him for a couple of months. Instead he continues to make intentionally disruptive edits. If you look carefully, he was not just removing the tag once earlier, he was revert warring over it with that edit summary! (See [5], [6], [7]) This is almost vandalism. I see no reason to let him get away with it, especially while on probation.--Konst.able^Talk 00:13, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

But the stuff being removed is a bunch of unsourced original research... Disrupting attempts to re-add drivel of this sort seems morally ambiguous perhaps, but not disruptive to Wikipedia itself. The edits you cite are improving the article, in spite of the trolling done with the edit summary. Mike Dillon 00:17, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Edit summaries are meant to explain your edit to help others understand. Edits removing large ammounts of content (wether it belongs or not) with the edit summary "SQUIDWARD!!" will be seen as trolling. When he begins edit warring, not explaining his edit at all, it is disruptive. An indef sounds perfectly logical to me.--KojiDude ^{(Contributions)} 00:27, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree completely, Mike. The article is unsourced nonsense and perhaps JesseW summed it up best [8]. This was discussed at length in #wikipedia IRC. I looked at the article and suggested it should be either deleted or the scarce useful content merged to Turnpike. At worst, SPUI is guilty of proving a WP:POINT, that some people will look for any excuse to block him. — CharlotteWebb 00:38, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Looking at the specific situation in the diffs above I agree (with Moe) that this is more than just a useless edit summary... those were extensive changes which could lead to confusion as to whether they were valid or not. The usual situation then is to communicate about the reasoning... I checked Talk:Shunpiking, User talk:SPUI, and the edit summaries in the history of that page, but it doesn't look like anyone even asked SPUI for an explanation. Others have since provided seemingly valid reasons for SPUI's changes here. Yes, meaningful edit summaries might have explained the changes up front and thus avoided the need for additional communication... which is why we strongly suggest that people use them. However, again... we have not to date blocked people for failing to provide that 'up front' explanation so long as they do explain when asked directly. SPUI seems to be 'acting out' in a less than helpful way... presumably because of the browbeating with which the road poll was pushed through (which, it should be noted, I supported, though reluctantly, given the wider disruption resulting from not settling on some standard). However, jumping to block isn't going to make that better. If he does something which seems strange without explaining it we should be able to muster the civility to at least ask WHY and only block if he doesn't explain it. Basically, the situation here is that we'd rather block than expend the effort to ask for an explanation. If SPUI were an actual 'vandal' who was unlikely to have a valid reason I could see that, but given that everyone (I think) agrees that SPUI is trying to improve the encyclopedia (as he sees it) why make a small problem into a bigger one? We should block people when we find we have to, not when we think we can. If SPUI wouldn't provide explanations for disputed edits then we'd have to block him... but if we don't even ask for explanations it doesn't seem like we're even trying to resolve things - just going straight to blocks whenever we think there is some reason that we can. --CBD 12:42, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm wondering, what philosophy drives this block? An edit summary of "SQUIDWARD!" is not disrupting anything, nor is it any more useless/useful than a blank edit summary, which i don't see many other people being blocked for. If I chose to write SQUIDWARD or leave the edit summary blank, what difference does that make? atanamir 19:03, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

You are obviously not aware there is a recurring vandal who vandalizes articles by posting pictures of squidward and leave the edit summaries of SQUIDWARD!!!, right? semper fi — Moe 20:49, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I was not aware of that; my apologies. You aren't referring to SPUI as the vandal, correct? I havne't seen him doing that recently. In either case, unless this vandal is / is a sockpuppet of SPUI, the edit summary alone shouldn't warrant a block though, is my opinion. atanamir 21:10, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

No problem. No, I wasn't refering to his as a vandal, but his edits did look suspicious when he blanks article sections and tags and has the edit summary of SQUIDWARD! He clearly didn't vandalize, but the edit summaries just go beyond exceptable of what WP:DISRUPT and WP:POINT say. SPUI shouldn't be blocked anymore right now. If warnings on his talk page continue to grow, I would call for a more stern block. semper fi — Moe 22:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help needed with copyvio policy dispute

I have been engaged in a lengthy correspondence with User:PM Poon. The history is as follows:

• User posts three copyvio articles.
• I mark them as copyvios.
• They write back, unhappy about this. I explain why I did this, and explain why it is sometimes difficult to AGF in the case of multiple copyings, and express my relief that they are a good-faith editor.
• User apologises, rewrites two of them, I rewrite the other.
• I write back to them, thanking them for their good edits, and all is right with the world.
• Some time later, the user returns to my talk page, arguing the toss about whether their edits were a copyvio in the first place, and demanding that I show them how their text resembles the original text
• I show them, in a long and careful (and partially computer-aided) analysis of their text. (Summary: over 90% is either literally copied, with slight puntcuation changes, or lightly paraphrased from the original source)
• They take this as a personal affront, and advance a number of impassioned arguments about why they are right and I am wrong, wrong, wrong. (The correspondence is no longer of my talk page, but can be found here: [9])
• When asked for a second opinion, I invited them to take up my deletion of their content on Wikipedia:Deletion review, but they have not done so.
• They complain about the "ABUSE OF ADMIN POWER". They complain about my "HALF-BAKED IDEAS ABOUT WHAT COPYRIGHT IS ALL ABOUT". They invite me to "Ask God whether you have indeed been honest to yourself, and had weighed the evidence fairly and squarely?" They claim to have "consulted my ex-company's lawyer" who has apparently told them that they are in the right.
• So far, so normal.

However, they are now advancing a new and potentially dangerous argument, in which they justify their literal copying under the principle that, since they are only copying a small part of the original work (for example, "only" a few paragraphs from a longer work), and are not doing it for profit, this qualifies as fair use. They are clearly convinced that they are in the right, and seem intent on continuing with their behavior.

At this point, I feel that rational argument has failed. They clearly feel that they are now legally entitled to copy as much stuff as they like into Wikipedia, regardless of what anyone else says, and consider my attempts to stop them from doing this as persecution. They feel that they have the law, their friend the lawyer, God, right and truth on their side. And they won't be told otherwise.

At this point, I seriously considered just blocking them as a serial copyvio artiste, and being done with it. However, that edit was carried out before our lengthy discussion, and the user has not made any further copyvios since the discussion started. Indeed, they haven't done anything else other than carry on this lengthy discussion, in spite of my repeated attempts to bring it to a close.

However, if they are allowed to carry on with this, WP:COPYRIGHT enforcement will become impossible, since they no longer regard the copying of whole sentences, or even paragraphs, from elsewhere as being evidence of potential copyright problems. Short of blocking, the only course of action I can see would be watch their every edit like a hawk from now on, and to clean up after them, forever. I don't have the time to do this, and nor, I believe, does anyone else.

At this point, I feel that their announcement of their intention to start ignoring the copyright policy has become, in effect, an announcement of an intention to disrupt Wikipedia. However, I am reluctant to simply LART-and-go, since I don't want them to have any justification for them regarding this as a personal campaign against them on my part.

I feel that I have exhausted every possible avenue with this user, short of blocking them. I'd like to believe that I've done so whilst remaining civil, and assuming good faith as far as possible. I would appreciate it if other people (preferably several other people) could take a look at this, just to be sure that this matter has been properly dealt with. -- The Anome 12:23, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

If he makes one more post which implies that he will continue violating copyright, whether on talk or posting copyvio, then he should be indef blocked, immediately, and told that until he promises to respect copyright policy he will not be unblocked. I'll do it myself if I happen to be around when that happens. We don't play games when it comes to copyright. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 12:35, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Update: Aaargh. After taking a second look, the fourth and last copyvio previously mentioned above, in Internews Pakistan, wasn't theirs: it was introduced in an earlier edit. I've removed that from the comments above: the remaining three are still valid, as admitted by the user in their earlier comments. I'm also going to remove my text concerning it from their talk page, since they do not appear to have read it yet, and the last thing I want to do is to mistakenly accuse them of anything extra that they didn't actually do. However, the rest of my comments stand. -- The Anome 12:44, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm myself not quite sure about this aspect of copyright law - does it make sense to distinguish between "copyright violation" (a legal concept) and "plagiarism" (a concept of academic ethics)? In the case above, it seems quite clear that, even if the guy should be right and it's not the one, it's the other. Does plagiarism automatically fall under copyright terms according to US law? And if not, should Wikipedia add to its policies that plagiarism is just as unacceptable even if it should escape the legal definitions of "copyright"? Just a thought. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:54, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

As a policy issue, this problem will probably get worse before it gets better. As the screws are tightened on WP:V and WP:OR, it becomes more difficult to add original writing to an article, especially on more contentious subjects. Everything has to be tied to a quote. If the quotes are too short, someone complains that the quote is out of context. If you paraphrase the quote, you're accused of original research. As one editor (a well known admin) has written, "We publish what the most authoritative sources on the subject have written. That is all we do." Thus, with limits on original writing on one side, and limits on copying on the other, it becomes difficult to write anything in articles where all the rules are very strictly enforced. Tightening up even further may make it impossible. --John Nagle 18:48, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Travb

This user has previously conspired against me off wiki by attempting to get in touch with users I have had disputes with [10] [11] [12] [13]. They are currently editing under two names Travb and RWV. They have begun an edit war on the article Allegations of state terrorism by United States of America and so far have not stated why they are reverting. They originally said to see talk page, however they cited a straw poll as reason why a section without sources should be kept. As I pointed out to them and want to make clear here, the sections have sources stating they happened, however they do not have sources stating accusations of terrorism carried uot by the US, per the article title. It was decided long ago that section would have to meet this criteria, containing sources that actually allege terrorism, however Travb has initiated an edit war without providing these sources. I making this note here because I want it on record that I attempted to discuss on the talk page with him, and he has instead reverted without even adding the sources, or continuing the talk page discussion of it needing sources that accuse the US of terrorism. --NuclearZer0 12:59, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

The user has now attempted to intimidate me instead of discussing by mentioning my previous arbcom ruling[14], which User:Thatcher131 previously warned him of doing, stating Arbcom rulings are not act as scarlet letters. [15] --NuclearZer0 13:10, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

This user has a long history of using Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard against other users, this is the third time he has reported me here on this same article, it would save a lot of people's time if he simply read the above:

This is not the Wikipedia complaints department. If you came here to complain about the actions of a user or administrator, or if your problem is a content issue and does not need the attention of people with administrator access, then please follow the steps in dispute resolution. These include: mediation, requests for comment, and as a last resort requests for arbitration.

Now that he has brought his complaints to the attention of ANI, I feel I must respond.

It appears like Nuclear/Zer0 is violating Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Zer0faults, which if this edit war continues, I will have to report him to the arbitrators.

There was a strawpoll which was mediated by a third party, User talk:Wikizach in which the consensus, decided by the mediator was to keep, these sections Nuclear/Zer0 is now deleting.

I am editing different articles under the name RWV and Travb, which is permitted under Wikipedia:Sock_puppetry, I made no secret about this change either, and was very open about the change (unlike this user). I started editing under a different account for several reasons, but one of the reasons was because of Nuclear/Zer0 harrasment, including deleting my newly created articles, which User:Sean Black called "trolling". Travb (talk) 13:19, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

May I ask, Zer0faults, although it is clear that there is no question of you trying to hide the fact, why do you use the "User:NuclearUmpf" sockpuppet? Its a little confusing. Lord Seabhcán of Baloney 13:45, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

My attempts to hide it by linking my other profile in my name or by linking it on my userpage for NuclearUmpf? Or by it being included in my arbcom decision? Please stop your wikidrama. --NuclearZer0 15:30, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I specifically noted you weren't trying to hide it, yet it is still confusing that you, Zer0faults, use a sockpupped called NuclearUmpf. I was politely asking why? Lord Seabhcán of Baloney 15:36, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Its noted above in my initial complaint, Travb attempting to ally people I disagree with via off wiki means, its been discussed already with an admin, and he has been warned about it. Please read the my first paragraph again if you do not understand. --NuclearZer0 15:37, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Please refrain from personal attacks. I again ask an admin to look into the situation with Travb please. --NuclearZer0 15:04, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I think it's a valid question. --InShaneee 15:18, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[16], that covers the issue. Or you could ask Thatcher131. Again I ask for an admins intervention in this user threatening me with arbcom etc. --NuclearZer0 15:22, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Zerofaults adopted a new name to get a new start, offering on his talk page to tell admins privately his new user name. When he was called on it by Travb, and informed of his error by one of the arbitrators, he changed his sig and has been open about it since. That aspect of the case is a closed book in my opinion. Regarding his current allegations, I have previously said that arbitration provides remedies for disruptive behavior but is not a scarlet letter. The arbitration enforcement page specifically warns users against baiting editors who are under arbitration restriction. (For precedent see one of the [[Deathrocker cases, where Deathrocker was blocked for edit warring but so was the user who was baiting him.) Unfortunately I am at work and can not analyze the specifics right now. If any other admin can examine the facts (is NuclearUmpf editing disruptively and is he being baited) a third party review would be appreciated. I will return to this probably after work. Thatcher131 16:00, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Amazingly, while I went and had what passes for a life around here for a few hours, the problem took care of itself, largely through the actions of a third editor who provided sources for a disputed section. Amazing how things work out when you follow policies. Thatcher131 03:38, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question about importance

An article Indian rock cut architecture, having inline citations from five different sources on the web, has been tagged unimportant for the following reason:

This looks like original research based on web-only sources. Aren't there any books or academic journals on the subject? If not, how is this important? Ekajati (yakity-yak) 15:48, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Is this a valid reason for tagging an article as unimportant? Mattisse(talk) 16:06, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I think this shows signs of actions specifically directed at one user. User:Ekajati and User:Hanuman Das seem to be following User:Mattisse around, tagging articles User:Mattisse has worked on, reverting tags which M has added, and generally trying to stir up problems (see User talk:Aguerriero). This is linked to past tagging by M on articles HD worked on and lots of sockpuppet acusations. It seems to me they are on the wrong side WP:POINT and WP:AGF. --Salix alba (talk) 16:37, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

You've got that backwards. It has been Mattisse stalking first Rosencomet, then 999, then Hanuman Das and to some extent myself. She used sockpuppets to stalk Rosencomet and 999, and is probably using Timmy12 now to continue to stalk Rosencomet. How long will the admins let this continue? I've put many of the involved article on my watchlist so can see the patterns. Have you looked? Ekajati (yakity-yak) 16:49, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

That is a past event which has been resolved with administrator intervention. We are now talking about current events such as [17], [18], removing/moving citation tags on various blues artist. Basically anything Matisse edits seems to have Ekajati quickly doing a dimetrically opposite edit. Comparing contributions for Mattise [19] and Ekajati [20] show remarkable similarity. --Salix alba (talk) 17:10, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe it is over. Check out these edits by Timmy12:

• edit comment - starts calling removing tags "vandalism" at the same time Mattisse does
• ditto
• adds a "personal file" of an incident involving Mattisse but not Timmy12
• titles notes section "Reference notes" just as Mattisse has been doing on multiple articles she has created.

Ekajati (yakity-yak) 20:15, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:BubbaJubba

Would appreciate someone else looking at BubbaJubba (talk • contribs). Appears to be leaving, and feels like s/he has been the victim of trolling, which is hardly the case IMO. Left a kind of nasty message on my talk page, etc. Not sure if deserving a block due to general incivility. I'm tired and cranky right now, so a 3rd opinion would be helpful. thanks. --ZimZalaBim (talk) 16:19, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Looks like a troll with few edits, I find it unlikely they were trolled. Anyway, check messages that have been left on their talk page. More than likely just a vandal unhappy with things.--Andeh 15:42, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Constitution

Can we please get a temporary user-protect on Constitution ?? Thanks for taking a look. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 16:20, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Serial vandal blocked for one month - no page protection warranted. --Aguerriero (talk) 16:32, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I left a similar message at intervention and another admin protected. By the way, the attack was coordinated by 3 or 4 IP's, did you get them all? ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 16:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jesús Gabaldón shenanigans

Ever since I nominated his autiobiographical article for deletion, a certain jazz/rock bass player from Spain has been giving me endless grief. Using a variety of anonymous IP's, Jesús has blanked my hilarious user page and my stimulating talk page 10-15 times each. Check out the edit histories[21] [22]--many of these IP's have already been blocked. Most recently, he signed up for an account, which plays on my own user name. After he resurrected the Jesús Gabaldón page in a foriegn langauge, I correctly tagged it for speedy deletion. In retalliation, he tagged my User Page for speedy deletion.

I admire his relentlessness, but his behavior is becoming exhausting. I don't want to ask an admin for broad protection of my user page and talk page, because I want any anon user to feel free to add his 2 cents about my edits. But is there a way to ban him alone from editing my talk pages--maybe a IP range block or something.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 16:24, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I just reverted it again. Someone want to block the IP till he cools down? Whispering 21:59, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inappropriate editing

There is some bad behavior summarized at this AfD that I would like someone to investigate. Rather than defending his behavior, Leinad-Z is accusing all the newer users there of being sock puppets, and I want my name cleared by somebody who is randomly appointed. --DixiePixie 16:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I am the user DixiePixie is talking about. I agree that the incident must be investigated. There are at least 3 apparent sockpuppets in that discussion, way too many for it being ignored. DixiePixie, who wrote the message above, is one of them. I have already tried to contact an administrator on the matter, but no response until now. Please help. --Leinad ∴ -diz aí, chapa. 17:43, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Leinad-Z has not limited his accusations to users participating in that discussion. He had also failed to notify the new users of his accusations. I just found out today. One of the new users left Wikipedia out of disgust early in the discussion. --DixiePixie 19:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reverting or removing tags without fixing problem

User:Ekajati, along with her cohorts, has repeatedly reverted or removed tags placed on articles without addressing the underlying problem between yesterday and today. I have warned her (and her cohorts) politely, as recommended above, not to do so.[23]

• On Bessie Smith she has done so 5 times between yesterday and today.
• On Muddy Waters she had done so 3 times, User:Hanuman Das 1 time, User:Anger22 1 time.
• On Willie Dixon she has done so 3 times, User:Hanuman Das 1 time, User:Anger22 1 time.
• On Charlie Patton she has done so 3 times, User:Hanuman Das 1 time, User:Anger22 1 time.

In placing these tags, I am going by a long standing discussion with User:TomTheHand.Please see recently (yesterday) on my talk page and User:Ekajati was involved. :[24] and

[25] This administrator :has been very clear and consistent over time.

I was told above [26] that if this persisted, it constituted vandalism. I would like to report it has such. Mattisse(talk) 17:10, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

My dear Mattisse. You are simply misinformed. I've removed an inappropriate tag "unsourced", from articles that listed their sources. That tag is inappropriate in that case. I've moved the appropriate tag, not removed it. Please don't mischaracterize what has occurred. What is happening is that you are tagging in an intentionally annoying and serial manner in violation of WP:POINT. You have annoyed several editors in doing so. They don't agree with you. You refuse to really discuss it with anyone, despite there requests for you to do so, but simply revert to "your way" right or wrong, without discussion. Then you try to tar others with your own brush. Why not do something more constructive? Ekajati (yakity-yak) 17:30, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to add that although Mattisse is acting with best intentions, this has been a problem in the past and a number of her sockpuppets (see Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Mattisse) have been indef blocked for mass tagging of articles. There have been two sockpuppet checks conducted ([27] and [28]) that resulted in blocks, and a third that didn't [29]. I'm not rationalizing any behavior on the part of User:Hanuman Das and User:Ekajati (especially removing valid tags), but perhaps it sheds some light on why other editors are wary of Mattisse's tagging activities.

Additionally, I would not group User:Anger22 in with the others. His involvement with Mattisse is similar to mine - we first noticed her when she began tagging a number of articles we have on our watchlists as part of various projects. Her replies to questions of her motivation/strategy for tagging have mostly amounted to "The rules say I can!" despite other editors making the point that it can be disruptive. --Aguerriero (talk) 17:43, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Please check the edit histories of each article to see what happened. Again I ask you to check

[30] and

[31]

Also, please check comments under Question about importance above which relate directly to this issue:

[32]

Thank you! Mattisse(talk) 17:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I would not normally raise it on this page, but tagging along with the discussion, I have found myself in conflict with the same user over a blues page. John Lee Hooker has a reference, to a book. After some other edits, and some edit warring over the addition of an "unsourced" tag, Matisse has added a swathe of "citation needed" tags, with the commment "added citation needed tags - please do not remove without addressing problem as doing so is considervanalizm as Ekajati, Notinasnaid [that's me] & Anger22 have done previously". I would remove them, because there is a reference and no indication that the reference does NOT apply, and no previous history before today (on this article) of inline citations. However, I don't want to do what would be considered vandalism. I would welcome guidance, in passing, from people already involved with or looking over this dispute (I realise content disputes per se don't belong here)." Notinasnaid 18:07, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Please check the edit histories of each article to see what happened. Again I ask you to check

[33] and

[34]

Also, please check comments under Question about importance above which relate directly to this issue:

[35]

Thank you! Mattisse(talk) 17:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I put User:Anger22 in the same category because of that user's involvement with my name over time. :e.g.[36] and because Anger22 makes assumptons about my behavior that are unjustified without evidence:

[37]

[38]

Furthermore, User_talk:Aguerriero is hardly unbiased. First, where is the evidence that I answered in the manner he characterized above? I have not had contact with any of these people for months, if ever. I don't believe I ever had a conversation with User:Aguerriero until yesterday. His talk pages contain conversations about his personal life to Anger22, so he is not neutral. Secondly, the following took place recently on his talk page:

[39]

So he is part of the "group". Mattisse(talk) 18:30, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Further, please consider the pattern of harrassment on User:Ekajati's part. The user was instrumental in disrupting my life with this incident:

[40]

and the user and his group have continued this pattern for months. Thank you for your consideration in this matter. I have done nothing wrong since my original mistake. Please allow me to function on Wikipedia without constant harassment. Thank you. Mattisse(talk) 18:59, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

P.S. I apologize for repetitious postings but editing conflicts confused me. Please overlook them. Thank you. Mattisse(talk) 18:59, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

There is no cabal. Ekajati (yakity-yak) 19:42, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Citation Needed" in John Lee Hooker

About the many "citation needed" tags on this article, rather than fighting over where they're really needed or not, the best thing seems to be to actually provide the requested citations. It's not that hard, most of them seem to be on actual fact issues that should be possible to look up and cite. Here, let me do one, just to show you how easy it is. Note, though, that all that I know about The Blues is that they come after The Greens and before The Indigos. :-)

1. Requested citation: "Hooker recorded over 100 albums and lived the last years of his life in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he licensed a nightclub to use the name Boom Boom Room, after one of his hits.[citation needed]"
2. Google for: "John Lee Hooker" "Boom Boom Room"
3. Get: lots of results that I don't know from Adam, but the first one is a link to the BBR page itself,[41] and on the second page of results is an excerpt from a For Dummies book.[42] That's a published book from a very well known series, a pretty good reliable source.
4. And what do you know - reading the reference the sentence in our article is wrong. He didn't license a nightclub to use the name, he founded the nightclub!
5. Rewritten sentence: "Hooker recorded over 100 albums. He lived the last years of his life in the San Francisco Bay Area, where, in 1997, he opened a nightclub called "John Lee Hooker's Boom Boom Room", after one of his hits.^[1]"
6. Ref: ^"Discovering the Blues of John Lee Hooker" Adapted from: Blues For Dummies, by Lonnie Brooks, Cub Koda, Wayne Baker Brooks, Dan Aykroyd, ISBN 0-7645-5080-2, August 1998
7. External link: The Boom Boom Room San Francisco nightclub founded by Hooker

I'll go add that to the article. Not so hard - 7 steps, a few minutes each at most. And the article is clearly much improved, useful link, additional reference, correction of minor inaccuracy. It's not as if by adding the tags Matisse is deleting stuff, he's just questioning facts that really should be possible to verify. John Lee Hooker is a well documented person, so it should be possible to do the same for most of the other requested citations without making a fight out of it. AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 19:10, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Folks, there seems to be a continuing misunderstanding about what citations are. Read WP:CITE for complete information, but in summary, when claims are made it's necessary to cite the claim's source at the sentence in which the claim is made. I believe part of the misunderstanding stems from the fact that WP:CITE says that an article can use any citation method. However, a list of references is not a citation method. They are half of a citation method, but the other half is the notes within the text stating which source claims were taken from.

As an example, the citation tag on John Lee Hooker placed here was necessary and appropriate. Removal of the tag by Anger22, Ekajati, and Notinasnaid was wrong and shows a misunderstanding of WP:CITE. On the other hand, Sir Isaac Lime and AnonEMouse added citations for various claims, which was helpful. Mattisse added specific "citation needed" tags to particular claims that were especially in need of citation.

Mattisse has never tried to force citations for every sentence in an article. Rather, tags are placed on articles that have absolutely no citations. Often, a contributor will add some citations, and Mattisse will add a few specific "citation needed" tags to claims that are felt to be especially in need of citation. This is the way things should work, and if we can just get rid of this "freakout phase" of the cycle everything will be great.

I'll summarize. Articles need citations. References are not citations. Do not remove tags requesting citations without adding citations. TomTheHand 21:38, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

WP:CITE is a guideline, not policy, and there is apparent consensus on Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics and Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics that is inappropriate on (some of) those articles. This may not be applicable to the specific problem here, but WP:CITE is disputed in some contexts. I'm afraid TomTheHand is bordering on WP:NPA, as well. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Arthur Rubin (talk • contribs) 18:38, October 24, 2006.

WP:CITE is a guideline to teach people ways they can cite sources. However, citing sources is mandated by WP:V. I've looked at Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Citation guidelines proposal, and it says this about not using inline citations:

There are a few cases when it is not necessary or helpful to provide in-line citations. Most commonly this is for short, technical articles which can be written using only two or three sources: a primary source and a review article or textbook. In this case, a short "References" section at the end of the article suffices. An example of this sort of article is scalar-vector-tensor decomposition.

That is not relevant in this case, and in other cases it encourages the inline citation of sources. The biographical articles in question here need to cite sources. TomTheHand 23:09, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Just because Ekajati is almost certainly wrong doesn't mean that the complaintant and TomTheHand are correct (or WP:CIVIL). But I don't know much about this sort of article. I have enough trouble dealing with situations in which the source material is in Japanese, and we pretty much have to trust the editor's translation..... — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:43, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Folks, there seems to be a continuing misunderstanding about what citations are. — Yes, but it is not the one put forward. A citation is the raw information necessary to uniquely identify and to locate a source. For (say) a book it is (at minimum) the author, publisher, title, and date of the book. The links between the citations and specific content are matters of style. But they are links from the content to the citations. They are not the citations themselves. An article without such links is not lacking citations. The citations identifying the sources are there. It is simply that the article isn't spoon-feeding to the reader the exact source to consult for any specific part of the article. (Adding such links from sections, or even paragraphs, to the relevant citations in general improves an article.)

Wikipedia:Citing sources is a style guideline, discussing (in addition to the Wikipedia house style of citations themselves) the Wikipedia house style for such links, which encompasses <ref>, Harvard referencing, and others.

The policy is Wikipedia:Verifiability, which merely requires that sources be cited, somehow. The (minimum) author+publisher+title+date information for (say) a book source, enabling readers to locate the book, must be present, in some fashion. The exact cross-linking of content and citations is a matter of style, some differences of opinion, and (anyway) what the cross-connections are in each specific case. Uncle G 10:34, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to insert a comment. I haven't read most of this conversation, so apologies if I'm abusing a deceased horse, but re: "About the many "citation needed" tags on this article, rather than fighting over where they're really needed or not, the best thing seems to be to actually provide the requested citations."

That's true. There may be legitimate concerns about the factualness of the article, and providing sources (inline or not) improves the quality of any article. However, I'd like to note that it's possible for an editor to be unkind strewing many ^{[citation needed]} tags all at once. The length of the tag, though relatively small, is still obtrusive, especially in great quantity. Partially, it's supposed to be obtrusive, to encourage editors to get off their backsides and source this one particular fact or sentence.

Instead of adding such a tag en masse though, a good faith editor should either add an Template:unreferenced at the top of the article/section (which may not encourage editors enough to source particular facts) or add a few ^{[citation needed]}s and at least make an effort to find some of the facts him/herself.

Nothing except derogatory material about a living person needs to be sourced immediately. It can be done over time. So don't do the easy, unsightly, unkind thing and strew the tag. Instead, add 3 or 4. If you want to source some yourself, do it. It shows you're willing to make the same effort you're asking of others. It's not necessary, but I argue that adding 3 tags and checking back in a week is far preferable to adding dozens and making it virtually unreadable.

Also, I'd like to prpose making it smaller. Some people said ^[?] (question mark) wouldn't be easily readable on all fonts, but something smaller and still differentiable from already sourced tags such as ^[1].

If there's a better place to discuss these aspects, let me know. Gotyear 12:55, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Propose indefinate block of User:TV Newser, and a look into his buddy User:Ponch's Disco

This has been going on and on. Newser was blocked on the 21st for repeated harassment of Tecmobowl, and continued it when he got off. He has therefore been blocked again. I'm getting sick of reading this. TV Newser is repeatedly adding sock puppet tags to Tecmobowl's userpage, and accusing him of being a vandal/sock without evidence and despite warning. His response to the latest block was far from dignified. While everything Tecmobowl has done hasn't necessarily been to code either, that still doesn't seem like a reasonable excuse for this.

As for Poncho's Disco, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The American Card Catalog, as well as Poncho's contribs. The user seems to be cooperating with TV Newser in this; Newser showed up in the AFD some 14 minutes after it started, and as his first contribution after the block. I'm guessing they know one another outside of the wiki.

I know there are discussions on this already. There is even a mediation (which only Tecmobowl has shown any interest in participating in). I don't think the hoopla is necessary; we should just block the troll and be done with it. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 17:13, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed on both measures. --InShaneee 19:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Khoikhoi 19:18, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Three's the magic number, I've blocked TV Newser indefinitely. I'm not sure about Ponch's Disco. Clearly some highly problematic behaviour, but I'm not sure whether he merits an indefinite block either on account of being a sockpuppet or being completely intolerable. I'd be interested to see how he reacts to Newser's block. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 19:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I support the indefinite block. The block I originally instated was supposed to give Newser time to reflect, not time to plan more mischief. His last edits indicate he has no interest in building an encyclopedia. I am not certain about Ponch, though it does seem suspicious. Firsfron of Ronchester 20:51, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

TV Newser has needed an indef block for a long time, really. He's been little but trouble since I came across him, which was within a few hours of his account creation. There is, and I say this only tentatively, a possibility that in fact he is a sock himself of a well-establisher socket, since he share linguistic traits with a particularly unpleasant user who I blocked long ago. Add to this the fact that his 'recommendations' on who I should block tend usually to be the reverse of what I actually decide to do and well....I may have allowed us to be...you know whatted. I've had my eye on Ponch's Disco for some time, and if he puts the outside edge of a toenail wrong, he'll be gone for good. -Splash - tk 21:06, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Good stuff. I'm glad we came to a solid agreement here; it's been long enough. I'll also keep an eye on Poncho, just in case. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 22:58, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Or I won't. He's been indef'd as well. Can't say I disagree too much; the creation and subsequent AfD'ing of self-created articles (the American Card whatsit one) actually fits the "MO" of the very vandal that TV Newser was accusing Tecmobowl of being. Odd, that. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 23:03, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Gardez Bien and Washington, D.C. related articles

Gardez Bien (talk • contribs) has been waging a one-man POV edit war on Washington, D.C., Maryland, Montgomery County, Maryland, and Prince George's County, Maryland, insisting on placing in the introductory paragraphs of all of these articles that the state of Maryland donated the land that is now D.C. A discussion on Talk:Washington, D.C. has shown a consensus against including this information in the introduction as opposed to purely the history section, based on the current relevance of that information. Gardez Bien has nevertheless continued to unilaterally edit war, and accused those who disagree with him of being POV Virginia and Southern boosters on that talk page, as well as in edit summaries.[43] Edits such as this and this show how absurd and non-constructive his position is, as he is insisting on defining the Maryland topics by the connection to D.C. Someone with no prior involvement with these topics needs warn him against disruption and POV trolling, watch him for 3RR violations, and block accordingly. Postdlf 17:54, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

He's at it again.[44],[45] Postdlf 15:16, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User unwilling to accept messages or discuss on user talk page

Mikkalai (talk • contribs) apparently refuses to accept messages or discuss issues on his talk page. Here's a revert of a recent message I left [46], with no followup on my talk page or the article (which might be acceptabel if he just wanted to keep is talk page clean). To me, this level of non-responsiveness is uncivil. I recall a discussion about this practice a few months ago, but don't recall the consensus. Thoughts? --ZimZalaBim (talk) 19:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User adding content to XennoBB talk page

Lately, XennoBB talk page has been "cluttered" with link spam by User:Draky, bad comments regarding some GPL violations which never occured (we're in process of identifying the user and pursuing legal charges against him), and the only "sources" he quoted are a forum he uses currently (no problem in adding content there) and a blog. Surely, this is not the case where I can add something on my blog then quoting it on WikiPedia for example, right? The comments must come from a legitimate and verifiable source, right? Well, this is not the case with our vandal. If the Wikipedia admins' idea of democracy is that everybody can add whatever content they wish to a software talk page(a free GPL redistributed software, which doesn't get any money from it) well, I'd say it's a serious problem. Hopefully the messages can be removed. Thank you. - Osgiliath 20:12, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Firstly, the user has done nothing outright 'wrong' and is certainly not a vandal, although his comments may certainly be incorrect. However, there are far better ways to deal with incorrect comments than suggesting they are "full of ####" and removing the comments you don't agree with. Leave the comments there and try to start talking things out in a civilized manner. Additionally, legal threats against wikipedia users such as the one you made above are absolutely not allowed, and if you make any more you will be blocked from editing. --InShaneee 20:35, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Okey so If I understand correctly, I can add ANY unverified content to any wikipedia talk page and the owner/editor of that page must prove that my statement is wrong? Good thing to know ... And my legal threat was not concerning wikipedia since it's not regarding this comment, it's because the user tried to hack our website on numerous occasions. And it wasn't even a legal threat, but heh, who am I to decide ... -Osgiliath 20:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Since nobody bothered to reply to my last statement, I consider it correct. I think that's a violation of the "somebody being innocent until proved otherwise" principle; I wonder if such content was added to an administrator talk page or a page monitored by him, any measures would have been taken against the editor. I bet there would be, but clearly, trashing the name of a legitimate GPL software does not qualify for the same measures. It's a pretty sick sight to watch ... Don't bother telling me I violated the WP:CIV rules or such, any administrator who read my first complaint clearly violated the WP:NPA and WP:AGF rules, which you so dearly "enforce". I kindly ask such a "neutral" administrator to block/remove my account because do not want my name associated anymore with Wikipedia and its unjust decisions. - a disgusted ex-user -Osgiliath 04:44, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Hello. As I'm involved, I'm telling some words. 1st, excuse my english, I'm French not English... (Osgiliath told me he didn't understand me so I'm excusing myself again). 2nd : I recognize that I was too rude and that I didn't respect exactly the "civility rule" of WP so I apologize for this point. The rest of the discussion is on the talk page of the article XennoBB where I was saying something that is sourced with blog and forum assertions (like source code comparison) so it might continue on the XennoBB talk page ! I do not wish to attack personnaly Osgiliath, I'm just telling that is "program" is not OK. So... thanks for reading me. and I apologize again for breaking the "civility rule". Draky 09:01, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Kilz

User:Kilo-Lima blocked User:Kilz's IP address for 48 hours due to it being "used to avoid 3RR detection". I have two problems with this block, which I've brought up on the talk page but since the user appears to be offline I'll mention it here too. Firstly, Kilz made one non-logged in edit (to Swiftfox) and acknowledged responsibility for it 6 minutes later, without any prompting that I can see, so it hardly counts as attempting to avoid 3RR detection, or even using a sockpuppet. Secondly, it was that user's first edit to that page for more than 24 hours, so I cannot see how 3RR comes into it at all. If there's something I'm missing here I'd be glad to hear of it, but otherwise I cannot understand the reasoning behind this block. Thanks. --Cherry blossom tree 21:01, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

The issue needs further attention as it looks like a larger issue with User:Kilo-Lima. He is very fast to close Sock reports and tagging the accounts as blocked. But he does not remove the tags if he changes his mind and unblocks, or as in one case even does not block the account in question. Just doesn not make sense. Agathoclea 16:07, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Please have faith. Firstly, I do not add the tags to suspected users, the accuser does that. Secondly, in case you do not know, I am the only one (of 1,035) administrators who take care of WP:SSP. This means that I have done this for about four months, closing and checking these cases. Because of this, and due to this page being backlogged easily, I have to quickly check, close, block, tag and report on all of the user accounts here; this cause me to, because of the pace that I do it at, to make mistakes. And, yes, I will admit it. Kilo•T 17:46, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

That does explain things. Maybe you could do with some help. Agathoclea 21:34, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Another IP puppet of User:Zarbon

Zarbon (talk • contribs) was blocked for 2 months for 3RR. Only a few hours after his block, he used an IP adress to continue his POV pushing, and that adress was also blocked for 2 months. Now he has another IP; 149.68.168.154 (talk • contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • RBLs • block user • block log). If you look at the page histories of Dodoria, Zarbon, and Kiwi (Dragon Ball), you'll see other socks (ex: Recoome (talk • contribs)) that he's using. This kind of behavior has been going on for months. I think an indef would be suitable here.--KojiDude ^{(Contributions)} 21:13, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

He's also using Recoome and 149.68.168.159 to avoid the block. Nemu 21:21, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Time to take it to CheckUser. --InShaneee 21:44, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Can you block the current IPs while the chekuser is being done/filled out? I'm trying to have a decent meal here but I have to revert all his edits.--KojiDude ^{(Contributions)} 22:08, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reverse dictionary attack?

Between 19:56 and 20:13 Wikipedia time, 169.204.238.174 (talk • contribs) requested that my password be reset over 150 times, at times around once every two seconds. I'm concerned that perhaps the new password is not generated randomly enough (and so collisions could be found with a bot), or maybe there is a plan to mailbomb people using this facility. Either way I thought that this should be brought to your attention. Dave 21:17, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Mass e-mails happen all the time, and we already know about them :) You don't get a new password everytime you get one of those e-mails. You have to autoconfirm this by clicking on this link in the e-mail, then it becomes your password. If you never confirm these e-mails and you delete them, you never change your password. semper fi — Moe 23:23, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

The emails I receive are like this:

Someone (probably you, from IP address 169.204.238.174) requested that we send you a new Wikipedia login password for en.wikipedia.org.

The password for user "Dave" is now "********". You should log in and change your password now.

If someone else made this request or if you have remembered your password and you no longer wish to change it, you may ignore this message and continue using your old password

Dave 23:56, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Yep, I got 200 of those in one minute once :\ I think you'll find in those e-mails a thing that says to confirm this 'click here' kind of message, right? Well, as long as you donn't click it, and do as the e-mail says ("you may ignore this message and continue using your old password"), you should be fine. semper fi — Moe 00:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Thing is, I was wondering if someone has found a loophole such that they can make a reasonable guess what the password will be changed to. Not being familiar with the mediawiki software, there may be some kind of attack possible. I can't think of any other reason to do it, except as a bizarre attempt at mailbombing. Dave 14:59, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I believe it has been previously established that one request overwrites the previous one so no matter what at any one time you only have two usable passwords. – Chacor 15:03, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Yep, but if you do a reset, then try a password, then another reset, and so on? Dave 23:23, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Since this keeps coming up, why not throttle the password request function down to once a day/hour/fortnight? -- nae'blis 16:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Talk to the devs. I've been told such a fix has been created, but not implimented. --InShaneee 16:21, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Hot off the presses mailing list - [47]. This has now been fixed. Hooray! the wub "?!" 23:55, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Francis Schonken (talk • contribs): knowingly filing a false 3RR/sock puppet report

This reports Francis Schonken (talk • contribs) as knowingly filing a false 3RR/sock puppet report re the Republic page (and what was verging on a 3R war), based on what he has made to appear as such (in a Checkuser report), but which is refuted by viewing that page's history. Therein, all will note that I failed to realize that I had signed out, subsequently resigned in, and made a new edit with a notice to that effect. He had to know and indeed knew all this, and chose to file a false report.

further, this user is falsely accusing abusive language by leaving out the words surrounding the alleged abuse, i.e., context. none of this is 'abusive' anyway. this user is also relentlessly badgering and otherwise harrassing me, which can be noted on the Republic talk page. i'm requesting a block of this guy, until he can be made to act like a civilized individual. Stevewk 22:25, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Steve, the RFCU seems to have been unneeded as you claimed that edit, but there does appear to be a 3RR violation there on your part. The same changes are made 4 times. What is the falsity in that claim? Georgewilliamherbert 00:23, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah, ok, I found it. The first listed should properly be:

Stevewk edits a version by Francis

The first edit listed by Francis is:

00:26, 23 October 2006 (as Stevewk)

is really:

your non-edit of ArmadilloFromHell's revert

Which was...

a vandalism fix revert

Ok. Got it. The first and last edits Stevewk actually made in the four sequence are greater than 24 hrs apart. The cited "first revert" skips several intervening posts which place the actual time outside 24 hrs, and the first edit in the sequence (first listed above) isn't a revert.

I don't know if Francis' selection of the skip-several-edits first comparison was on purpose or accidental, but the 4RR claim is bogus.

Georgewilliamherbert 01:07, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:The Ministry of Truth

Ok, I was just looking through recent changes and saw this user. I went to his contributions and found that every edit is to his userspace and his userboxes, even some of which I find offensive or not in good taste. I find it strange that this user's first and only edits this far are userbox creation and too his userspace. Does anyone else think this is very suspicious? semper fi — Moe 23:42, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Sock of a userbox fan created to store userboxes probably, only thing they could really be violating is WP:POINT, other wise unless they edit else where you can't really do anything.--Andeh 01:07, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I was going to wait and see if, as a new user, he did anything productive, but it does appear that he is not actually new. —Centrx→talk • 01:29, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

He is doing all his edits at User:The Ministry of Truth/Userboxes. On that page, he says This is a userpage directory of "beliefs" userboxes. It is intended to track migrations to and help archive and organize userboxes in userspace. The corresponding directory, Wikipedia:Userboxes/Beliefs was deleted.

I don't see any violation here (perhaps it's subtle?); he's clearly only playing around in his own space. He could be preparing for something, I suppose; my sense is that wikipedia administrators don't often do preemptive strikes. John Broughton | Talk 15:19, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

It's not so subtle. Wikipedia is not a free webhost. He's playing around not really in "his" user space, but in everybody's. Way back when, we discussed how to make rules governing those people who don't do anything but build in user talk space. No one could figure out a rule, but it's pretty clear that you've got to be working on Wikipedia in some way to get that lovely storage space. If he's an unlabelled alternate account, then he's a user who isn't editing Wikipedia. That's not good. Geogre 16:21, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

The rule is it's not allowed, but if someone were a new user they are given a chance to make productive contributions. —Centrx→talk • 19:18, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I've warned him that I will delete them unless he comes up with a good reason for having them. Let's see what he has to say first though. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 19:28, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Rexisfed & Wicky woo

Can someone monitor Rexisfed (talk • contribs) for me? Ever since the article Wicky woo was put up for deletion earlier today, he has continuously removed the AFD tag, replacing it with angry messages. I have already warned him up to {{drmafd4}}, but I will be signing off soon, so I probably won't be around to watch his next action. Scobell302 23:56, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I'll do the best I can to moniter it. :) semper fi — Moe 00:24, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

After I proposed his article for deletion, he vandalized my userpage, and then did it again with Rymysterio3 (talk • contribs) --Sbluen 03:45, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cmr924 (talk • contribs) and 24.7.214.28 (talk • contribs)

Cmr924 (talk • contribs) and 24.7.214.28 (talk • contribs) these two or same users are on my talk page "demanding" I explain why they can't remove cited criticism. Cmr924 (talk • contribs) removed warnings on his page. They appear to be the same users it you look at my talk. An adminstrator should step in and deal with his issues as he doesn't want to listen to me. Arbusto 01:56, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Arbustoo has not helped at all. I want to know why the last edit I made, as user Cmr924, is in violation of vandalism. I clearly had good intentions. As the article stands, it is very biased. It is very one-sided, and reflects negatively. This is not something Wikipedia is about at all. White washing? So, trying to fix its inherent bias is now white washing? It would be white washing if it was a BALANCED entry. Also, I simply did not login, although I thought I had. This is why my IP Address showed up first.

Arbustoo also claimed I was a bunch of different users. I invite you to investigate that, as I only have one username and that is Cmr924.

[edit] Dralwik (talk • contribs)

Dralwik (talk • contribs) is going through wikipedia and changing [[Chicago, Illinois]] to [[Chicago|Chicago, Illinois]] or [[Chicago]]. Chicago, Illinois is a functioning redirect and does not improperly reflect the city. The user has been told twice to stop changing, but continues. [48][49] Think someone could make a swing by the user's talk page and add an admin voice to stop with the pointless changes.;) --Bobblehead 02:04, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Why? He's not doing any harm. If you have an editorial dispute, discuss it with him. Administrators aren't content police. --Slowking Man 07:08, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

It's not a content issue though. The issue is the server cost of making these changes. The cost in server load of making the changes is thousands of times more than the cost of letting them stay and just letting the redirect work like it should. Changing functioning redirects is completely unnecessary and wasteful. — Scm83x ^{hook 'em} 07:17, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Um, right. Of course. Where did the developers provide those figures? Or did you do profiling? Morwen - Talk 10:57, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

FWIW, I haven't researched where that information comes from, but it has been stated like Scm83x says on WP:R#Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken for a long while. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:05, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Still, I'm not aware there's an actual server performance problem being caused by all these people making minor unnecessary style edits : this page seems mainly there to explain that if you are doing it because you think it helps server performance, you are wrong, not to tell people not to do it for aesthetic reasons. Morwen - Talk 11:19, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I can think of no logical situation where the right side of a piped link would be longer than the left one. However, changing [[Chicago, Illinois]] to [[Chicago]], [[Illinois]] would be quite logical, as it gives the reader the benefit of an extra link, with no sacrifice on the wiki-text end. Generally speaking, don't ever pipe a link just for the hell of it. If you think a redirect should be bypassed, rephrase the sentence to accomodate an unpiped direct link. If that can't be done, you might be better off canceling the edit. —freak(talk) 11:37, Oct. 25, 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Legal threats from user:Diane S

Diane S (talk • contribs), in real life a moderator of the forums at Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry, wrote to an administrator:

• Yankee Gal, you are being reported for the locking of an article that contains links to libelous websites, you have locked the article after including former edits of atheists/ propagandists, and liberal/atheists linking and editing this article. We will proceed with legal recourses, no not a threat, a factDiane S 02:28, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[50]

This appears to me to be a clear legal threat. I posted this note to her talk page:

• You may be aware of WP:NLT. In any case, it'd be best if you do not engage in further edits to Wikipedia until your legal recourses have been completed. I'm sure you understand that it would not be appropriate to be participating in this project while you are involved in legal action against it and its members. -Will Beback 02:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[51]

Does this merit a block? -Will Beback 02:49, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I think so. I'll take care of it. --Yamla 02:54, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Legal threats screw everything up, and should be treated fairly strongly. The user is also an SPA, repeatedly trying to push her own obvious bias on only a couple of articles. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 02:57, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Clearly, good call on your part. Snoutwood (talk) 03:03, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Please everyone keep an eye on related topics (e.g. Matt Slick) and sock/meat puppets, several of which are still active on both articles as whitewashers/criticism-removers. Antandrus (talk) 03:11, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Is this your card? No? How about this one? Still not right? Then maybe this one is!—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 03:30, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and I forgot to ask about this one, too.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 03:31, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. And it looks like Matt Slick's article may also need protection soon if "they" persist. Antandrus (talk) 03:34, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

And now another. I'm catching just a whiff of checkuser upwind. Antandrus (talk) 03:37, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

May need to look under this card, too! Justin Eiler 04:38, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for assistance

I have been drawn into a sockpuppet, etc. mess I want no part of surrounding User:Timmy12. Said user, who has an apparent history of tagging articles for various reasons with little or no reason, and has aggravated various people with said actions while refusing to read anything associated with the article in terms of references, rather simply posting annoying tags, etc. The article in question is Joseph Byrd, which Timmy12 has repeatedly tagged despite the fact the article has numerous inline citations and references listed at the bottom of the article from a variety of sources. After disputing Timmy12's tagging, they have labelled me as part of some cabal of people they've had an ongoing set of issues with I have nothing to do with. Timmy12 has now crossed any sense of good faith by reverting a significant number of inline citations I made to the page earlier today, just to attempt address an issue they raised I felt never existed in the first place, merely to repost their own citation tag that was inappropriate to begin with. I and others, from reviewing the history of Timmy12, have repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate with this person, who may or may not be a sockpuppet. The last revert by Timmy12 can be seen as nothing but vandalism, and this person should be suspended from continuing this kind of behavior. I read commentaries on cites, etc. from a link Timmy12 left on my talk page, but they don't follow what they insisted I read. Any and all assistance/advice you can provide would be helpful, this kind of behavior is absurd. I'd add, in this particular case, the material on the page has been verified not only via the numerous sources cited, but by Joseph Byrd himself, who has commented directly to me and others on the material provided, is a person I have known for some years and have published material about. I should also add I write for a major newspaper group and am a professional writer and researcher by trade. Thank you. Tvccs 04:51, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request roll-back anon's multiple spamming

Hi, could an Admin consider doing your "roll-back" option on User:203.45.150.147's dumping of external links into multiple pages for a single website's articles on acupuncture please (counts as WP:SPAM). Thanks David Ruben ^Talk 07:25, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Done. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 07:28, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) LOL I started at the top and Physicq210 started at the bottom of the contributions list and we met in the middle. Done. Grandmasterka 07:31, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I would have thought the time spent writing a paragraph of text (and waiting for somebody to read it) would be much greater than making 15 reverts. — CharlotteWebb 07:55, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

No big deal, is it? --Lord Deskana (talk) 08:09, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Some of us have slow dial up connection, so yes 15 reverts does take time, and any way I did not think there was any race to perform the reverts (also I did rather need to leave to get to work). So yes, if a nice Admin such as Physicq210 (thank you) can do this with a single click, so much the easier is the overall effort on the wikipedia editorialship. If at any point I gain Admin or rollback privelages, then even easier too :-) David Ruben ^Talk 15:12, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Enormous sockpuppet army wiped out

After seeing some vandalism tonight, I ran a checkuser on an account and discovered an *enormous* sockpuppet army massing. Come to find out it happened to be the range used by Blu Aardvark (72.160.0.0/16). I blocked over 100 of the easily recognizable ones (see Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Blu Aardvark - almost everyone one of them was one I blocked tonight). I blocked that range for 6 months - anon editing and account registration, but not regular users.

Here's another 45 or so accounts that may or may not be Blu's. I suspect the vast majority are, but didn't block them for fear of hitting a bystander:

• Alightdirigible (talk • contribs)
• AnneFeastClark (talk • contribs)
• Anydoc (talk • contribs)
• Athalia (talk • contribs)
• Bear712 (talk • contribs)
• Big bob 07 (talk • contribs)
• Bobobo760 (talk • contribs)
• Boogielove (talk • contribs)
• Boundaryman (talk • contribs)
• Burnt Siena (talk • contribs) - confirmed Blu sock. Raul654 10:09, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
• Candymanl4b (talk • contribs)
• Charlesdayhoff (talk • contribs)
• Cmuniga (talk • contribs)
• DRc (talk • contribs)
• DavidBrowne (talk • contribs)
• Daydreamerz43 (talk • contribs)
• Dragonfly85 (talk • contribs)
• Dt61 (talk • contribs)
• Eileenmclain (talk • contribs)
• Fenryr (talk • contribs)
• Goozie212 (talk • contribs)
• Grimsby85 (talk • contribs)
• Hankpac (talk • contribs)
• Hnolde (talk • contribs)
• Ice Lollies (talk • contribs)
• Iwrite1969 (talk • contribs)
• KTBranson (talk • contribs)
• KaloniceStarfire (talk • contribs)
• Kodes (talk • contribs)
• Ldonegan (talk • contribs)
• Lonca38 (talk • contribs)
• MAB88 (talk • contribs)
• Mark N Ruggles Sr. (talk • contribs)
• Maryjuneb (talk • contribs)
• Mkolerich (talk • contribs)
• Patricke44 (talk • contribs)
• Phil 737 (talk • contribs)
• Ratpack1964 (talk • contribs)
• Rdc1103 (talk • contribs)
• Rerelovesbacon (talk • contribs)
• Ronin-man (talk • contribs)
• Sinnocent1 (talk • contribs)
• Sugarbear61 (talk • contribs)
• Teh nab (talk • contribs)
• Tim card (talk • contribs)
• Tony 747 (talk • contribs)

I would appreciate someone keeping an eye on them. Raul654 09:42, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Modified list to display talk/contribs encase any get any messages.--Andeh 09:47, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Cmuniga (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log)

Dt61 (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log)

Currently unblocked vandals from above list.--Andeh 09:51, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmmmm, tagging them and making sure they were all blocked sure was fun - took myself, Raul and aksi forever to do it! Cheers, Daniel.Bryant 09:49, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I just reran through the list and I found a few more probables Raul654 10:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• Kararowe (talk • contribs)
• Zak2023 (talk • contribs)
• Bevsmith (talk • contribs)
• Bob` (talk • contribs)
• Cfranklu (talk • contribs)
• Anydoc (talk • contribs)
• Mkolerich (talk • contribs)
• Spinnertabi (talk • contribs)

You should probably post the diffs of this conversation to Blu's arbitration cases. Thatcher131 11:33, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I've gone through and blocked a lot of the obvious ones that follow the typical pattern of Blu Aardvark's sockpuppet names. Some already had vandalism but weren't yet indef-blocked. --Cyde Weys 20:45, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copyvio on Gymkata - does anything need to be done?

I just blanked the plot synopsis of this movie because it is identical to its IMDb entry. Does anything else need to happen? Anchoress 11:11, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

You could leave a note for the person who added the copyvio material, or go through his contribs to see if s/he's done it in other articles. (Sometimes people go through and add IMDB stuff to a whole batch of movie articles at once.) In this case, though, he hasn't contributed since August, so I wouldn't bother with the note. And I looked at his other contribs, and they look okay. :-) FreplySpang 12:44, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, cool. I was wondering if it is supposed to be purged from the history? Anchoress 13:22, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

We do that if the copyright holder asks us to, but not by default, in cases like this. If the entire article was copyvio, we'd delete the whole thing. FreplySpang 14:25, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

K, thankx.Anchoress 16:12, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stalking, vandalism, possible sockpuppetry evasion of block by Timmy12

Timmy12 (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log) appears to be stalking Rosencomet and vandalising Rosencomet's additions of citations by removing the citations. In the past, Mattisse also stalked and tagged articles by Rosencomet. There is reason to believe that Timmy12 is a sock of Mattisse currently being used to evade a block for 3RR. -999 (Talk) 13:56, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm Rosencomet, and yes, it seems that Timmy12 is actively stalking me, following behind me and eliminating the citations I post on articles I have either created or contributed to. He characterizes them as commercial, although I have asked respected Wikipedia editors who have been here much longer than I if I am doing anything wrong, and they say I am not, and have in fact reversed his efforts several times. Evidentially, I am not the only person having problems with this individual.

The most recent examples have been elimination of citations for speakers and presenters appearing at an important event, one that constitutes a credit for them, that is three years old. The web page referred to advertises no new event nor any product, although one could visit the rest of the website from there if one was interested, but the purpose of the citation was to support the fact of the participation in the event, not to promote anything. In fact, they were mostly reactions to others (if they were others) claiming that I must provide citations when I state such facts in an article.

Except for the declaration that he has "taken down a commercial link", he has given no justification for his actions nor attempted to contact me or my talk page, yet the moment I reverse his actions he repeats them. I see that he has done similar vandalism to others, yet I find little or no contributions by him among the articles of Wikipedia. I'm relatively new at this, yet I've created and/or contributed to about 100 articles, revisiting most of them often with additional data. I've encountered several very helpful folks in this microcosm, and have been pleased to see stubs grow and expand into useful and informational articles. People like Timmy12, it seems to me, ruin it for the rest. I'm not sure what I should do at this point. Please advise.Rosencomet 14:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I think there is a need for a CheckUser on User:Timmy12 and User:Mattisse. The previous sockpuppet enquiry Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Mattisse (3rd), which was negative but inconclusive. Some users still beleive these to be sockpuppets, and are spreading the acusation around, which is not condusive to a plesent community. There is a chance that they are actually socks, in which case Mattise is looking a a ban. --Salix alba (talk) 15:12, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Quite. The place for sockpuppet checks is WP:RFCU. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:28, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Although not really comfortable doing so, I've filed a checkuser here. If anybody could contribute further evidence or support the need for the checkuser I would appreciated it. Ekajati (yakity-yak) 16:26, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

A more pertinent issue to examine might be the probable linkspamming by Rosencomet (talk • contribs) of his website, often using the claim that they're "citations". --Calton | Talk 00:45, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

77 links -- that's a lot! I've left a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam. --A. B. 04:38, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I apologize for barging in uninvited. I do RC Patrol, and it is common practice for me, when I see vandalism, to check the contributions of the user involved to determine if there is more vandalism to be reverted. I do not know whether that is Wikistalking or not, but it is my practice, and as far as I know it is standard practice for many RC Patrollers. It would seem to me quite non-sensical not to follow up on the users contributions.

User Rosencomet has an extensive history of editor's complaining about his/her link spamming or otherwise promoting his/her festival. [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] [57] [58]. So, all in all, I think looking at this users contributions is an appropriate way to protect Wikipedia. --BostonMA ^talk 04:31, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Please note that two of those complaints were from confirmed sockpuppets of Mattisse, GBYork and NothingMuch. One is from me, and after discussions with Rosencomet and my own research, I no longer consider the links to be spam. I've struck out the three comments above. —Hanuman Das 15:47, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Harassment by Hanuman Das and User:Ekajati

I am reporting this now, having spent time gathering evidence. There is much more I can get.

• 1. See my talk page User talk:Timmy12. I joined Wikipedia 9-8-06 and the abuse started almos immediately.
• 2. You again? - 999 and Hanuman Das often team up.
• 3. Sockpuppetry First accusation of being sock puppet by by Hanuman Das.
• 4 Sockpuppetry Case] This is the filing of the Sockpuppetry case.
• 5 Stay off my talk page Next Hanuman Das tells me to stay off his talk page.
• 6 Harrassment by Timmy 12 Next Hanuman Das accuses me of harrassing him. The administrator says Hanuman Das is being hasty.
• 7 sock puppets/Mattisse (3rd) where I am notified that Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Mattisse (3rd) has been filed.
• 8 Maybe you can help where I appeal to User talk:JzG for help. Both User:Ekajati and User:Hanuman Das put comments after User talk:JzG notes that he is not tolerant of commercial link spam. User:Hanuman Das asserts: User:Timmy12 is clearly a sockpuppet of User:Mattisse.

User talk:JzG replies: You assert this as fact, but CheckUser suggests otherwise. Guy 10:30, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• 9 As was noted on various talk pages where User:Ekajati and User:Hanuman Das accuse me of being a sock puppet, I was cleared by Check User. [59]

and User:Netsnipe said on many such pages that User:Ekajati and User:Hanuman Das should use Check User before sockpuppet accusation. I have not gathered the talk page mentions, but I will if necessary. Nor have I gathered the rude and uncivil edit summaries that are routinely entered. An example is below:

• Malicious edit put in the edit summary by Hanuman Das on Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart on 05:18, October 13, 2006 - (revert malicious edits by User:Timmy12; several editors have attempted to communicate with this user on his talk page and have been ignored). This was after he banned me from his talk page. See:

[60] I consider that a malicious message. Some users who have been involved by reverting and removing my tags in tandem with hosting talk page conversations against me, with uncivil and rude comments and personal attacks on me are

• User:Hanuman Das
• User:Ekajati
• User:Aguerriero
• User:Tvccs
• User:999 was the first to call me Mattisse
• User:Anger22

Thank you for checking into this very much. Timmy12 15:57, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Without commenting on the above material, we've now got about 4 threads here involving Timmy. Anyone want to combine them for easier reading? And can anyone fast track those checkuser requests so we can say something decisively about them? --InShaneee 16:03, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Please indicate which of my edits are relevant here, so I will know whether to defend myself, plead ignorance (I have learned something useful today), or apologise. Based on a quick scan of recent edits, I can't see anything in common between Special:Contributions/Notinasnaid and Special:Contributions/Timmy12 (except this page, of course), but I could easily have missed something. Thank you. Notinasnaid 17:30, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually Timmy12 is getting his personalities mixed up. He listed me and you above, when actually we have reverted Mattisse's tags, not Timmy12's. It's all very confusing. [61] [62]. --Aguerriero (talk) 18:03, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, so Timmy12 is complaining about reverts which affected Mattisse, not Timmy12. That's more evidence of sockpuppetry. Ekajati (yakity-yak) 18:16, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• Addendum by User:Timmy12:

This is a plea for help message I sent to User talk:JzG maybe you can help. It is a long passage with comments by User:Ekajati and User:Hanuman Das As a result (I think) of this long conversation, User talk:JzG nominated Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart for deletion Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart Timmy12 18:41, 25 October 2006 (UTC) We also discussed User:Rosencomet's commercial links and User talk:JzG said there were at least 75 such commercial links from Wikipedia to User:Rosencomet's commercial sites and that he disapproved of commercial link spam. Timmy12 21:31, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• Addendum #2 by User:Timmy12:

I found this message to User talk:JzG Timmy12 and check user from User:Hanuman Das in response to one left on his user page: Timmy12from User talk:JzG that User:Hanuman Das did not like.

• Addendum #3 by User:Timmy12:

Messages from User:Ekajati Timmy12 and Removing tages from articles is vandalism to User:Tvccs. This explains the long, lengthy messages he left in my talk page. Let me second Ekajati

Therefore, I am substituting User:Tvccs as a member of the harassing group in place of User:Notinasnaid, a name that I could find no harassing evidence for. I am removing User:Anger22 for now as currently he is staying out and seems to be distancing himself. Timmy12 21:24, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• Addendum #4

I am adding User:Anger22added back on list do to recent activity: Timmy12/Mattissee Saw your note

Please note that Timmy12 has been editing the wording of her complaint [63], in the process removing one of the users in which the dispute was with Mattisse rather than Timmy12, but which Timmy12 claimed as her own. Ekajati (yakity-yak) 22:19, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• Addendum #5

After an administrator removed warnings placed on my talk page by User:999, Vandalism warning question I received the following message from User:Ekajati: Removing citations is vandalism The warnings were removed from my talk page after I posted here below *Vandalism warning -- question* Timmy12 22:23, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Timmy...this is not the Wikipedia complaints department. Take this elsewhere. --InShaneee 22:24, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Where should I take it? Look at the history of my talk page history:

Timmy12 talk page history Tell me where to go and I'll go there. These people are preventing me from doing anything on Wikipedia. Timmy12 22:47, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• Addendum #6

Don't be taken in by Timmy12 This message appeared above an administrator User:Samir I consulted after User:Samir removed vandalsim warnings from my talk page and they reappeared within minutes. User:Ekajati is stalking me. I am being stalked. Timmy12 23:58, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tyciol (talk • contribs)

• Tyciol (talk • contribs) is repeatedly violating WP:POINT by harassing people who vote to Delete articles of his that are up for deletion, particularly here, where he seems to admit the article is a joke but continues to get confrontational with other editors. Danny Lilithborne 18:44, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Sneewop

Sneewop (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log) is on his second block, once for vandalism and now for repeatedly blanking warnings from his talk page. He has threatened to evade blocks/bans by creating a new account. Would there be support for a indef block or ban in this case? --Aguerriero (talk) 18:47, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help for Anti-Georgianism article

How can I extend this article Anti-Georgianism? Can you give help me? --AGNLDM 19:12, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism warning -- question

I received these two vandalism warnings today:

*First warning:

--Vandalism warming--

Please do not remove content from Wikipedia, as you did to Winterstar Symposium. It is considered vandalism. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you. -999 (Talk) 13:39, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

*Second warning:

--Removing citations is vandalism--

Please stop removing citations from articles. It is vandalism--

This is your last warning.
The next time you vandalize a page, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. -999

---

*My actual behavior:

The "vandalism" of Winterstar Symposium consisted of (as recorded in the edit summary) -- (External link - removing 1 of 2 links to a Rosencomet commercial site as 2 links to exact same site address are unnecessarily commercial). This was one edit only. I have not edited that article since, so I do not know what the second warning refers to. The last time I edited that article was October 12, 2006.

The warning was given to me by the same person who left the note below, soon after I joined Wikipedia so I had no idea what it meant:

-- You again? --Hello, Mattisse! -999 (Talk) 17:35, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I had a discussion of User:Rosencomet commercial links a while ago with User talk:JzG [64], he agreed the site was commerical and said he was in favor of reducing link spam.

How am I to interpret these warnings? Are they real? What are the actual rules? Timmy12 20:01, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I can tell you the rules of this page. It's in red at the top, and you've violated it about three times now. "This is not the Wikipedia complaints department". This is not something that needs immediate admin intervention. --InShaneee 21:24, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah, so instead of doing something about the complaint, threaten the complainant. ALWAYS a useful and productive approach that fosters a good working atmosphere. --Calton | Talk 01:20, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I think you are correct Timmy12 and will remove the warnings -- Samir धर्म 21:50, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you so much! I was just posting it on Technical Pump, not knowing where else to go. So Thanks! Timmy12 22:00, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Possible Username violation

user:Bastardpoopshoot Only two contribs, but seems to be vandal only. Additionally, the username violates WP:UN:

• "Names that are recognised as slurs or insults"
• "Names that refer to or imply sexual acts, genitalia, or sexual preference including slang, innuendo, and double entendre"

If this is not the right place to report this, let me know and I'll put it in the correct place. :) Thanks, Adminers. Justin Eiler 21:32, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Blocked by DakotaKahn (in general, check out Special:Log to see the blocked status of a particular user). Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism is generally preferred to AN/I for obvious username violations, but don't worry about it. ~ PseudoSudo 21:47, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks--I forgot to check the block log to see if they had already been blocked (didn't see anything on the talk page). :) Justin Eiler 21:51, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

With cases these obvious, it's not necessarily needed to leave a talk page message. The user will already see the entry in the block log when they try to edit a page, and frankly with cases like these it should be perfectly obvious to them why they're blocked. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 23:55, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Any user with the phrase "poopshoot" should be automatically perm-blocked. Just wanted to add my two cents.IWentToTheAlexanderGrahamBellMuseumAndGotWikiBlocked.Why? 17:36, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cyrillic alphabet

Can an admin add {{protected}} to this page? It has been protected in lieu of an edit war, but the sysop protecting it forgot the template. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 22:34, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Done. --Mr. Lefty (talk) 23:45, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism warning -- question again!

As soon as you removed the warning, saying:

I think you are correct Timmy12 and will remove the warnings -- Samir धर्म 21:50, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

See: Vandalism warning question asked above.

The warning reappeared on my talk page within seconds: Removing citations is vandalism

What should I do? Where should I go for help? Thanks! Timmy12 22:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

For the last time, go to dispute resolution like it says in BIG, RED LETTERS at the top of this page. One more complaint here and I'll block you myself for disruption. --InShaneee 00:00, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I've told Timmy to stop posting to AN/I on his talk page, however... on first inspection, what's happening here is that he's deleting a widespread commercial spam by Rosencomet (talk • contribs • count) and some possibly related accounts posting links to rosencomet.com wildly. I believe this needs to be investigated and possibly add that site to the URL spam block list if the links are found to be spam. Georgewilliamherbert 00:36, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I've asked him what Rosencomet is as a start, and what the affiliation is with the Association for Consciousness Exploration. It looks to me like they are synonymous, in which case, it may be appropriate to judiciously include Rosencomet based links as references for ACE events -- Samir धर्म 02:35, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] slow spam + harassment

204.50.176.199 (talk • contribs) has run up to the spam-4 level with links to highspeedsat.com and other sites. Now appears to have slowed to avoid being blocked and turned to harrassment in the form of user-page vandalism. Suggestions? JonHarder 22:45, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Already blocked. Grandmasterka 22:48, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Omallystwin

Could an uninvolved administrator or two take a look at Omallystwin (talk • contribs) and his activities at Alton Brown (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) to help determine is utilizing Wikipedia:Disruptive editing is appropriate. --Allen3 ^talk 23:03, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Legal threats from anon

I blocked an anon (128.226.160.147 (talk • contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • RBLs • block user • block log) who was reported on AIV (anon only block) for repeated and varied issues today for 3 hours, and left a list of recommended reading for him[65] which I hoped he would read while blocked. Instead, he removed several posts from his talk page and went to lunch. He now has shown his need to be also educated in WP:NLT:[66] As he stated that "I HATE YOU FOR BANNING ME FOR THREE HOURS" and "if I wished, I would sue you." I am guessing that 1) he will not be open to hearing anything from me and 2) he is either ignorant of NLT or doesn't care. I am posting this here for another, previously uninvolved admin to deal with it - if you can get this person to calm down, and read the policies, and help mentor him some, he may be a helpful contributor. If the consensus is to block him for legal threats, that's fine too. I am leaving his horrendously long and poorly formatted post on my page (most of it is a cut-and-paste letter to another editor, some is commentary about what others have left on his page, and some, of course, is actually directed to me.) Note: He looked at my block log; comparing my block message about him to a block message I left for another anon; He signed with a link to Liberty and a small icon of an American flag, and all in all seems to have a good bit of Wikipedia experience, legal threats and calling a short block "banning" notwithstanding. He has repeatedly vandalized another editor's User, not Talk, page, and in this puppy's opinion knew what he was doing. I could be wrong, of course. Cheerfully awaiting community input and assistance on this issue - KillerChihuahua^?!? 23:47, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Blocked for 2 fortnights. That should about solve it ... (for 2 fortnights at least). --Cyde Weys 23:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

thanks, Cyde - he'd already made 9 edits to my talk page! Sheesh. KillerChihuahua^?!? 23:53, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

You could've just blocked him yourself, I think. No need to worry about a potential conflict of interest or whatever when the other person's abuse is so blatant. --Cyde Weys 23:55, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

True, but I tend to be careful if I think it is at all unclear. OTOH I've merrily blocked people myself, while others were discussing how to best work with them (Trolls are only good for reducing the goat population!). KillerChihuahua^?!? 00:03, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Adding:Also, I think it is better coming from another Admin, as that shows that he is actually violating policy here and not being trampled on by one Rouge Admin. KillerChihuahua^?!? 00:34, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I think it was quite classy to have an uninvolved admin take care of it. -- Samir धर्म 01:01, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for having him removed. I probably could have handled that better, but seeing that he was invading my own user page and talk page after just a simple revert of some stupid edit he made to a article, I just stopped caring. Let's hope that this resolves everything. :) :: Colin Keigher 00:16, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

fyi, He's not "removed" just blocked for a while - and he can always register. KillerChihuahua^?!? 00:34, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Poor choice of words on my part. I meant "removed" as in "gone for a bit." :: Colin Keigher 01:01, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

His IP traces to the State University of New York at Binghamton WhisperToMe 01:08, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

and now I wonder (disproving Samir's very kind assessment of me as classy) what the standards are now for admission to that University? KillerChihuahua^?!? 01:27, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

They appear to be quite high, actually. Then again I know from some experience that colleges will often trump up their own statistics a lot. Grandmasterka 04:48, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inappropriate usernames waiting to be blocked

Virus (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log) and Worm (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log) are all usernames relating to malware, so I listed them at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism as violations of Wikipedia:Username. Xaosflux then removed them from WP:AIV claiming that this is not the right place to report bad usernames, and said that they should be listed here, instead. Could someone please block those bad usernames and edit Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism/header to reflect that WP:AIV is the preferred way to report bad usernames. Please correct me if I am wrong. I used the same place to report Maf54 (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log) yesterday, and the inappropriate username was blocked. (See Mark Foley scandal if you do not know why Maf54 fails the username policy.) Jesse Viviano 04:42, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with Virus or Worm as usernames. --Carnildo 06:25, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Nor do I. In any case, here isn't quite right, either; you want to be at WP:RFC/NAME. —Cryptic 08:46, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I see no problem with either name, especially Worm (talk • contribs) which holds a number of benign meanings besides the reference to Computer worms. No reason to discriminate against worms in general.  ;-) We should avoid instruction creep, assume good faith, and maybe think about culling back some of the Wikipedia:Username#Inappropriate_usernames verbiage if it is going to be taken so literally. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 09:19, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

To clarify, obviously bad usernames that merit an instant no-questions-asked block (profanity, sockpuppets, etc) can be posted on WP:AIV, but anything that isn't obvious shouldn't be. Asking the user politely to change is the best first step, then WP:RFC/NAME. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 09:47, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Episode nuking

Narfers02 (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log) has been making (horribly written) pages for every single episode of Codename: Kids Next Door which are all copy-paste jobs from the various episode lists. Practically all of her contribs need to be nuked, and perhaps a short block placed on the account so we can clean up and she doesn't keep making more and more useless articles. —Ryūlóng (竜龍) 04:48, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

They are copyvios, then? Can you point us to an example of where one was copied from? Grandmasterka 04:52, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) They're not really copyvios, but copy-paste jobs from List of Codename: Kids Next Door episodes. Pretty much any blue link there is a copy-paste from that season's own article. Compare List of Season 2 episodes in Codename: Kids Next Door#T.H.E.-S.H.O.G.U.N. with Op. T.H.E.-S.H.O.G.U.N..—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 05:02, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

See Op. S.P.A.C.E. --ArmadilloFromHell 04:58, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh man, what a mess. I deleted all of the split-off articles and administered a short block to end this and force communication. --Cyde Weys 05:13, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, looks like someone should go through and remove all of the redlinks on List of Codename: Kids Next Door episodes. That looks to be what led to this mess in the first place ... this user saw those red links and thought it'd somehow be a good idea to split up the list of episodes into dozens of individual pages :-( Cyde Weys 05:16, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Mission complete! Although, Op. P.O.O.L. might have to go :/ —Ryūlóng (竜龍) 05:41, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Issamlee@hotmail.com (talk • contribs)

Can someone have a talk with this user about how to use fair-use images? He or she has repeated reuploaded unsourced images, again and again, simply reuploading them whenever they're deleted, and I don't really have the energy to deal with this. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 05:56, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Block and/or request username change is also required. Daniel.Bryant 08:59, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Old Proxy blocker block?

Hey everyone, could someone please unblock DarkElf109 (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log) who's currently being blocked on 68.98.18.98 (talk • contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • RBLs • block user • block log) which was previously a TOR exit node. Despite numerous attempts to unblock the address, it seems like an old unlisted Proxy blocker (talk • contribs) block is still in effect. Could someone else please take care of this for me? Thanks. --  Netsnipe  ►  07:50, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Something isn't right, I don't see any blocks made by Proxy blocker (talk • contribs)? Anyone else? Can't sleep, clown will eat me 08:57, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

You need to ask one of the devs, the Proxy Blocker is a list of blocked addresses which works outside the regular blocking mechanism. --pgk 11:58, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User: Éponyme

Need some guidance. I was about to block this user when I realized I should get other opinions first. He's been a problem in the past, blocked twice for racist, disruptive and personal attacks on others. He was blocked on September 19th and 25th. Well, he's back at it. Here is a racist (and homophobic) edit summary ("letting the sweaty Nazi immigrant faggot beat me down"). And then we also have this and this, 2 more racist posts from the last hour or so. And finally, we have a personal attack here, with such choice lines such as "Therefore, cease this prattle and go back to your Mitteleuropaische shithole." and "Epf also thinks he is "English", even though his recent Italian heritage really doesn't fit in the concept of an English person.".

Actually, I am going to block him for 2 weeks (1 week was his last block). If someone disagrees, they can shorten it. To me, this is a user who apparently is going to just keep on attacking and attacking. --Woohookitty^(meow) 10:34, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

And now he is reverting others out of hand. --Woohookitty^(meow) 10:41, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Two blocks for the same thing in the last month-or-so, then returns to such diabolical behaviour? I would have been thinking at least a month, considering what he said. However, if you reckon 2 weeks is enough, that's fine. I can't see anyone shortening it, given his past, and the fact that the blatant PA's contained such racist and homophobic content. Cheers, Daniel.Bryant 10:54, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

On a side note, a user got a one month block for racism with no prior blocks. I think it would be justified if (considering earlier blocks) a fairly long block were applied in this case. Michael Billington (talk • contribs) 11:01, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

OK. I'll extend to 1 month. I usually start small. --Woohookitty^(meow) 11:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

That's fair enough. However, I think it'd be stretching AGF a little too far to block this user for less than what he has been. Daniel.Bryant 11:48, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spammer using a bot to flood Wikipedia?

If you check the history of User talk:Brian0918/Guestbook, you'll see that two different IPs spammed content on this talk page recently, using gibberish of the same format (a first name and 3 random letters) for the comment each time, and spamming links that you'd normally find in junkmail. It looks like someone has created a bot to spam articles in the same way used for spamming junkmail. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-10-26 11:53Z

Those were the only edits by those IPs. Probably a prank from someone who knew him. Durova 14:40, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Not likely. I've blacklisted the links and blocked the IPs. The bot was probably programmed to find pages with "Guestbook" in the title and spam them. Naconkantari 14:46, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I really doubt that it was simply a prank. Why would they create all those spammer accounts on blogs? That there is only 1 edit to each IP is not surprising; persistent AOL vandals often look the same way. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-10-26 20:25Z

note: 68.74.157.27 is registered to ameritech in the US and 84.72.93.12 is registered to CableCom in Switzerland. ~crazytales56297 ^{O rly?} 03:16, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Fact Finder

Fact Finder (talk • contribs) has been ranting on his user talk page and the Wikipedia:Help Desk about how other editors are violating a trademark (perhaps of his employer?) by mentioning the name (Ecopave) in discussion and not letting him censor it from others' comments. His rants have sometimes included legal threats. *Dan T.* 11:58, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

• See JzG's note at the bottom of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ecopave Australia. Uncle G 12:34, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:HannuMakinen

Some months ago, I had added to the article "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life" some information I considered relevant to the film's low box office numbers, specifically a comparrison to the film "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in which I and many others had seen an apparent remake of the first twenty minutes of "Raiders" into "Cradle". This was mearly trivial information which added to the scope of the artical. However, someone who is known as "TheHandle" did not see it that way, erased what I had written, and left an abusive paragraph in the Discussion page. I had replaced the article, but he deleted it again, this time with statements in which he has refused to allow me to answer. Instead of doing what is required in the Discussion page, "TheHandle" decided to use foul language and behave in a very un-professional manner. Can something be done about it? Carajou 15:39, 27 October 2006 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lara_Croft_Tomb_Raider:_The_Cradle_of_Life

[edit] Block of NBGPWS

I have blocked NBGPWS (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log) for a month due to ongoing issues about civility as posted at the personal attack noticeboard [67] and based on the fact that NBGPWS had already been blocked 6 times by 6 different admins in the last two months. NBGPWS was offered to be unblocked to post an Rfc or go and file a case with arbcom and declined. He is now posting links to what he claims is misuse of WP:BLP by a third party for their political gain and I am requesting a neutral admin look at the following link and see if there is any merit to his claims.[68] Thanks.--MONGO 06:36, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

No comment on the link; general comment on the block--support as he has been doing a lot of trolling recently. Not sure about the duration as it seems a big escalation from a week, but I trust your judgement. Thatcher131 11:35, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Having looked at the article he is upset about, the content he wanted left in may not technically be a violation of BLP since the persons aren't named, but it is definitely un-encyclopedic axe-grinding, and its removal certainly doesn't justify acting out rather than following the normal dispute resolution processes for article content. Thatcher131 12:17, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Additional harrassment by this user

• Vandalism:
  • [69] [70] user just keeps adding it. And to others pages [71] [72], that is two times to the same page, and in the same exact section, notice the semi threat attached. They then started using it for edit summaries when adressing me as a means of intimidation. [73], there own user history also reflects this [74]
• Insults and labeling:
  • deletionists" / "deletionist hit squad" - [75][76][77][78][79]
  • Wiki Stalinists" - [80]
• Inappropriate comments:
  • "WHAT???? If you think THAT'S an attack, You need more (or less) Byron!" [81]

    Byron reffering to The Byron Technique, "a sexual technique in which two male homosexual partners are involved"

--NuclearZer0 10:28, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

(Procedural note: MONGO has since reduced the block to 48 hours "due to email".)

NBGPWS's intentions are clear from his username: "Neocons Be Gone, Protest Warrior Sucks". Until recently, NBG has put a great deal of effort into vexing supporters of Protest Warrior at that article and related articles. In other words, NBGPWS is a special-purpose troll account. NBG has since branched out into wild claims at AfD and DRV pages. NBG's marked problems with spelling, grammar and wikisyntax seem to fade out when he gets really het up, suggesting to me that NBGPWS may be a sock-puppet account. Is a longer ban appropriate? CWC(talk) 11:54, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I also request this considering the additional information I provided above as well as the information now provided by CWC of the users name. --NuclearZer0 12:02, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

The question really shouldn't be whether he is vexing "supportors" of Protest Warrior. Is he vexing _neutral_ editors at those articles? At any rate, MONGO had his reason for the block and he had his reasons for the shortening, and there's nothing new presented here that wasn't known before. Derex 12:24, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually Mongo's block wasnt based on the information I listed, I believe, I am sure Mongo can state if it was or not however. In any event this is a noticeboard and both I and CWC feel this users actions require further attention from administrators. --NuclearZer0 12:29, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I reduced his block which now should expire in about 40 hours. He promised me he would be nice...so give him a chance and if the same patterns start up again, then the block will probably be reinstated. Nobody better be baiting him either as folks are usually hot anyway when they come off a block. I wish everyone would let the votes do their job and not let the upcoming U.S. elections over run Wikipedia...I never trusted a politician anyway, no matter what their politics are.--MONGO 12:33, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Has anyone been baiting him in the first place? He's made a habit of baiting other people since Day One; he hardly needs anyone else to help dig a hole for himself. Rogue 9 18:04, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Ive been remaining neutral on the Protest Warrior article, and he has tried using me as an individual as a consensus to push his agenda, when I was reasonably trying to support his argument. Id certainly say thats vexing, because it does a good job in deamonizing me. Im sure his block log speaks for itself, and I dont take "He'll be nice" at face value by any means. Piuro 19:05, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Update to my comment above for full disclosure: NBGPWS recently stated that his username "now stands for Nothing But Goodness, Protest Warrior (and others) Spincontrol". He did not discuss what it previously stood for. CWC(talk) 00:59, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

He posted on PW under the handle NeoconsBeGone, and after being banned, used NeoconsBeGoneProtestWarriorSux on at least one other forum. He's not fooling anyone who's had the misfortune of interacting with him in the past. Rogue 9 10:09, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

He created a new user, now: User:Fairness_And_Accuracy_For_All --NuclearZer0 16:42, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jack Cox - Daniel Brandt's plagiarism data

Jack Cox (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log) has been contributing to Wikipedia since February 2005 and has some ten thousand edits under his belt.

Daniel Brandt's recent plagiarism report uncovered that Jack had added text without attribution from the Utah History Encyclopedia, which is not a public domain resource, to the article on Utah governor Henry H. Blood. Following Brandt's lead I've found that Jack Cox also plagiarized from the same source in writing articles on Charles R. Mabey, John Christopher Cutler, Heber Manning Wells, William Spry, Herbert B. Maw, George Dewey Clyde, Calvin L. Rampton and Scott M. Matheson - all of them Utah governors. In each case I've deleted the articles and restored pre-Jack versions where there were any.

I have checked a few of Jack's other contributions and found one more plagiarism incident, Charlie Wyse, which was not from the same source. Obviously I have made nothing like a comprehensive check of Jack's thousands of edits, most of which don't have an edit summary. It his highly likely that multiple copyright violations inserted by him are still out there.

Looking at Jack's talk page I notice that OrphanBot doesn't like him and the feeling is mutual I get the feeling that this contributor habitually doesn't exercise enough caution in handling copyrighted material. Please take whatever action you feel is appropriate. We would of course be fully justified in banning him but if someone could engage him productively, get him to clean up his act and help in identifying old boo-boos that could be even more valuable.

I'd also like to encourage more admins to get involved with the project on identifying serial plagiarists at User:W.marsh/list. We've already found multiple longstanding copyright violations starting with the data from Brandt and looking at other contributions by the same editors. Haukur 12:36, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• RJNeb2 (talk • contribs) seems to be a serial offender, too. We do need more admins on this... it seems some of these people have been quietly plagiarizing for months and even years. --W.marsh 15:18, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Could somebody link to the 'Daniel Brandt's recent plagiarism report'? I'd like to read about it, and I am sure some other editors would like that, too.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  22:35, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

It's on wikipedia-watch.org/psamples.html - there are also some posts on wikipediareview.com where he lays out his methodology as it developed. Haukur 22:38, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Since no-one stepped forward I blocked him myself. He's asked for a review of the block. I, of course, have no objections to someone unblocking him (or shortening the block) if they think that's justified but I hope that whoever does it will undertake to mentor him a bit. You don't just accidentally plagiarize article after article and you don't accidentally make edits like this. Haukur 22:39, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

This is going to sound odd, but has anyone thought to do a checkuser for Cox and Brandt? Admittedly, I mat be overly suspicious, but it would not be the first time I've seen a troll cause the very situation they're complaining about. Justin Eiler 22:44, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

If anyone runs CheckUzer, they should be running the comparison against Primetime, the most notorious copyright violator.

[edit] Briefs-related articles - WP:HOAX??

Recently there seems to be a few articles about briefs being created, many of them I suspect to be WP:HOAXes.

This may require further investigation. --SimonTheFox 15:42, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Please point me to some.--Andeh 15:43, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

At a glance I'd say [82] or [83] is what Simon is referring to; looks like more Colberrorism. -- nae'blis 16:23, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

These articles don't seem to be created because of Colbert, I suspect it's rather more that there is a user/a group of users obsessed with briefs. --SimonTheFox 16:36, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

This is the second briefs-related section to appear on AN/I today. The first was added about twenty minutes before this one [84] by User:Pajnax. It was then removed a few minutes later by User:Jeffrey O. Gustafson. Just pointing this out, draw from it what you may. Metros232 16:50, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

It's kids from Range High School, SimonTheFox is a student there, so is Pajnax. All coming from an Internet for Learning grid of IPs. --Neil McCarthy (Internet for Learning) 17:15, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, one of these bored kids created his own long term abuse section recently (I deleted it). Basically he/they plan to create a fake article, nominate it for AfD and swarm it with disruptive fake Keep "votes". I suggest you delete the pages and any AfDs on sight.--Konst.able^Talk 23:54, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Briefs, eh? Wikinews has had a problem with a "briefs vandal" where a sockpuppet army (one sockpuppet at a time) would basically rise and create articles about briefs. They, of course, get banned quickly, do the CheckUser, and get on with our lives. Anyways, Wikipedia may be encountering the same thing. —this is messedrocker (talk) 00:42, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Simple: delete silly hoax articles on sight, protect and block/ban for repeat offenses. Once the person behinds it realises they're wasting quite a bit of effort on nothing at all, they'll stop. If it does get to be a bother, a call to the school might be in order. (Note: I only remember one briefs-related hoax article, Briefsism, which I've just protected against re-creation). Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 16:13, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Remember Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Prince_Charles_underwear_heist - another schoolboy hoax! What is it with these schoolkids? SunStarNet; 20:16, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

It looks like someone out there desperately wants to be a "named vandal" a la Willy on Wheels. What they apparently aren't aware of is that these days with WP:DENY and WP:RBI, there aren't going to be any more Willys or famous vandals. Besides, even Willy had a certain silly wit. The briefs stuff is just plain dumb and boring. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 01:22, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Truthseeker 85.5's disruptive behaviour

I'm hereby reporting User:Truthseeker 85.5's behaviour, that is becoming more and more disruptive with time.

Originally an anonymous and variable IP stalking several people on WP, his finally made an account and was warned by Alex Bakharev and Blnguyen against such kind of stalking [85].

He was again warned by Bishonen for RFA disruption and PAs: [86]

Just a few days ago, he was warned by Alex and Piotrus as per WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL policy: [87]

I warned him yet another time for personal attacks just today. Indeed, I discovered that he has been spamming people's talk pages to vote on a (in)famous WP:RM regarding the Jogaila article. In addition to that, his tone was deeply inflammatory and offensive (see an example here).

Needless to say, he promptly blanked his talk page for "archiving" [88] Of course, no archive files was made, it is just plain BS to remove all these warnings.

Based on this, I request that a stern action should be taken against such kind of disruptive behaviour. Thanks in advance, Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 12:03, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

That is some disturibng behavior. I propose a short block, as I believe it is the user's first. Hopefully, the blocks don't need to escalate in time and severity as time continues. RyanGerbil10(Упражнение В!) 13:47, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I've restored his user page talk warnings, blocked him for three days, and asked him to consider why this happened and how he could change his behavior. RyanGerbil10(Упражнение В!) 13:56, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Ryan. Such behaviour is indeed not tolerable on Wikipedia... -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 14:25, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

While Truthseeker should mind WP:NPA more, please note that his behaviour (which is inexcusable and I do support the block) is only a reply to comments on Talk:Jogaila such as 'I am amazed at the tireless activities of some Polish guys, who manage simultaneously to promote their agenda'; ' I don't see why the opinion of four nations is dismissed so carelessly, in order to please the Poles', ' let's give the Poles what they want and add the stupid diacritics', It looks like that you voted on hatred'... if Truthseeker is blocked for his comments, those other editors should be at least warned for their part in this flame war.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  15:29, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

If you are quoting, quote properly: It looks like that you voted on hatred not knowing the main problem here. The present title of article bears Lithuanian name of the monarch, the original one which he personally used till death. By taking baptism Jogaila received and new name; now Poles trying to rename this article by presenting new one Wladyslaw II Jagiello, which is not his baptism name at all. And I do not see here any “childish name-calling” and even do not see “they gather voters and blacklist others”. For Jogaila to stay, voting many different people – from Lithuania, Belgium, Russia, Scotland etc.The message was to find out the reason of the content delivered by particular contributor, which was: “my opposition to acts by propagandists on Portal Russia”, “I dislike childish name-calling”, “way they gather voters and blacklist others.” And mine message was not hostile and insulting, and was delivered to better understand the problem of complex voting not to bring flame wars and was not connected to User:Truthseeker 85.5. M.K. 16:42, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

First, to put things mildly, that statement is not true. This guy was an anon IP stalker in the first place, resorting on dynamic IP to turn down any block attempt, then recieved warnings (including one of Piotrus') back in September (and even August if memory serves). He should have been blocked back then, but for some reason wasn't. Plus, he spammed talk pages and blanked his own in an attempt to delete warnings. He also disrupted an RfA with PAs. So all this stuff is only a catch-up for a block that should have been applied long ago.

Second, since when is it permitted to reply to incivility with incivility? That's absolutely false. Even if some statements were made (and while borderline, they don't reach the heights of Truthseeker's own comments), it is NOT a reason to go spam talkpages, be incivil, blanking your own talk page and so on.

Consequently, a) the block is well deserved, b) I don't see what's the problem is. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 16:26, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I am not disputing this block, but I am asking if this is the only user that should have been warned/blocked in this particular dispute?-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  19:30, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

You are right, this contributor actions should be evaluated too: [89] [90] [91] M.K. 20:17, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I was rather thinking yours contributions should be closely evaluated.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  22:23, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Too soft: permaban for extreme trolling and xenophobia is warranted

User:Truthseeker 85.5's only contributions to the article space come from stalking a couple of editors and his choice of stalking aims and edits is entirely based on his xenophobic views, as he recently expressed in this edit where he addressed the editors who happen who disagree with him on images copyright status with an uspeakable xenophobic and racist tirade picking up on the ethnic issues:

Feel free to pirate images with false tags and dubious rationales at your own "Russopedia", whenever you create one. This is a western project, and inherently respectful of copyright laws. Truthseeker 85.5 00:15, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Sadly, user:Lupo, who received this kind of "support" from this fellow chose not to dismiss such "help" either. --Irpen 17:26, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree with Irpen that a block for three days is too soft (he has made longer breaks in his edits). I am going to block him for a month for stalking Ghirlandajo and Irpen in the past couple months. The recent edits were just a part of it, but this time it got out of control. Usually the stalking was done in the article namespace over some minor details and one could argue it helped to NPOV the articles, but spitting out hatred on talk pages, already troubled with conflicts, is too much. Of course, not mentioning some insulting edit summaries. I hope one month will give enough time to reconsider behaviour. Renata 17:44, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

As the original blocker, I would endorse a longer block if the community agress on it. I only blocked for three days because it was the user's first block, and there wasn't community consensus for anything longer. The user had seemingly violated a buffet of Wikipedia policies, but didn't press his luck with any particular offense. Since there were not warnings for having either posted multiple personal attacks, multiply blanked his talk page, etc., I decided a short block would be appropriate. However, if there is community consensus to block for a longer period of time, I do not contest it. RyanGerbil10(Упражнение В!) 18:46, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

There is a long story about this user. At first he was a dinamic IP wikistalking a couple of editors, but then somehow was convinced to get an account. He continued stalking but since the "stallkees" knew who they are dealing with they did not bother with formal warnings or reports. His main offense is not blanking or removing warnings from talk pages, but stalking. He made those comments on talk pages that were reported here because he followed contributions of one particular editor and rigoriously opposed whatever he had to say. Renata 21:09, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Please don't let's confuse the issue with the supposed but non-existent crime of "multiply blanked his talkpage" (compare "Continuous talk page blanking" below)... That said, a block for a month for stalking and harassment is just fine by me. That's serious stuff. Next stop indefinite. Bishonen | talk 02:40, 27 October 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Sneewop (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log)

Unproductive user, refuses multiple requests to be reasonable. After I protected s/his talkpage after a dozen blankings, s/he decided to go blank mine. Asking for an indef block on this user. - CrazyRussian talk/email 14:52, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

This user clearly isn't going to edit productively (at least on that account), especially after this. Infef'd. -- Steel 15:04, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg

This admin used totally unnecessary offensive wording in this edit summary [92] "As much as I hate those limey bastard". I would certainly have expected that someone would be blocked if they stated "as much as I hate those Jew bastard" in an edit summary so I assume similar action will be taken here. Arniep 15:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm British, and I'm not offended. Let's all move on and not worry about minor things like this. -- Steel 15:42, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if you're not offended. If everyone is allowed to use those kind of racial slurs Wikipedia will become an even more unpleasant place than it already is. You are in effect saying that it would be OK to say "as much as I hate those kike bastards" or "as much as I hate those nigger bastards" in edit summaries. Arniep 15:53, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

You really ought to provide the full context for the quote. The full wording was As much as I hate those limey bastard we must give precdence to whatever variant was written first on a case by case basis, and it was a reversion of an anon's edit which changed the spelling of an article from British English to American. Note also that – unlike the words kike or nigger – it is actually possible to use the word limey in friendly (albeit very informal) conversation. WP:AN/I is not the political correctness police, and the usage in this context was obviously not meant to be offensive or derogatory. Please find something worthwhile to worry about. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:00, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry this is not about political correctness it is about people and races being treated equally. Yes the word nigger may sometimes be used among black people themselves as a joke- but I doubt if the phrase "nigger bastard" was used it would be taken merely as a "joke". Arniep 16:05, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't suppose you asked Moshe nicely first, did you? Thatcher131 16:43, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Just thought I should point out that User:Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg is not an admin. --W.marsh 17:00, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh for goodness sake. "Limey" corresponds to "kike" now? Arniep, if there is any substance at all to your concern for not making wikipedia "an even more unpleasant place than it already is", I respectfully request you to not post unpleasant rubbish. Bishonen | talk 02:48, 27 October 2006 (UTC).

Arniep, WP:AGF. This is not the first time (links per request) you are trying to do this same nasty trick: reporting another editor behind his back, without inquiring what he meant to say. Please grow yourself bloody sense of humor and don't waste other's time. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 03:08, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

This is not something we should simply sweep under the rug - when someone says something like "as much as I hate the $epithet bastard", it's something that people can reasonably assume is meant to offend. There are limits to AGF, and this goes clearly beyond them. If it's a joke, it goes way too far and should not be repeated. If it's not a joke, it's a moment of rather poor judgement and should again not be repeated. It's appropriate that Arniep bring it up (although perhaps this isn't the right place) - we should not have this kind of behaviour in our community. --Improv 12:58, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More plagiarism

Note that Daniel Brandt is still adding to his plagiarism report. These are the most recent articles: Henri Pitot, William Coddington, Thomas Gisborne, Cuno Amiet, Meredith Miles Marmaduke, Thomas Willis, Herbert Stothart, Julia Tutwiler, Édouard Vuillard, James Tait, August Zaleski, Anna Magdalena Bach, John Skene, Albert Thomas, Mary Church Terrell and Charles Young. Please help sorting this out. Haukur 15:36, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Something I haven't understood since the start of Brandt's plagiarism project: why not just post everything he finds on Wikipedia:Copyright problems? There are a number of editors constantly reviewing that page. I got involved there myself on what turned out to be a silly mixup about the Steven Millhauser article.

Every month the WP copyright problems page finds far more examples than Brandt ever has. So why not just put his examples on the same page with everybody else's, so they can be dealt with accordingly? Casey Abell 17:38, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Sure, wherever. But that page is still a bit top-heavy. Haukur 21:48, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, with the introduction of G12 as a speedy criterion, things like this don't really need to go to WP:CP anymore (not much does, really). People just need to be made aware of them to deal with them. --Robth^Talk 17:45, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

(edcon)Brandt doesn't much like us, I'm afraid. The purpose of his project is not to assist Wikipedia, but to advance the theory that Wikipedia is a massive infringer of copyright and a massive hive of plagiarism. My suspicion is that if and when we fix any instances of plagiarism or copyright violation (the two shouldn't be confused--neither is a subset of the other, and only one is illegal, though the other is certainly unethical and shouldn't be tolerated on Wikipedia), he may well claim that our doing so is "misconduct" and/or "destroying evidence". Brandt's understanding of the "safe harbor" provisions of the DMCA is a bit suspect; that's entirely the point. When copyvios are discovered (by the rights holder or anyone), they are removed. Which is how the law is supposed to work.

Brandt seems to think that the safe harbor might not be as safe if a) particular copyvios persist for a long time, or b) if the number of occurrences exceeds a given threshold. There is AFAIK no case law to support either conclusion. a) might hold if agents of Wikipedia (however that is defined) were to know about a copyvio for a long time and do nothing, however Wikipedia is fairly agressive about dealing with copyvios. An interesting legal question is who exactly are "agents" of Wikipedia--Brandt feels that any administrator is an "agent".

--EngineerScotty 17:57, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not a lawyer and I don't play one on WP, but putting Brandt's examples on the copyvio page (at least when a speedy is not immediately indicated) seems like the best defense to a charge that WP doesn't care about plagiarism. We could make the case that we did everything possible to handle his examples, by using the mechanisms we've already set up and which have successfully dealt with many other examples. As for supposedly "destroying evidence", anything deleted can be successfully restored, so nothing is really getting destroyed in the first place. Casey Abell 18:08, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Because the speedy deletion criterion, the mechanism we have set up is to delete them immediately unless it is uncertain, or where there is something salvageable in the page history that should be retained. —Centrx→talk • 18:47, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Brandt hates us, but we can put the energy he puts into his anti-Wikipedia campaign to good use. It's a little like the way in aikido you use your opponent's energy for your own purposes. I think there's a quotation by Morihei Ueshiba on the matter. We can put his list to good use. (I'm still struggling to find what's plagiarised in Anna Magdalena Bach, though.) Antandrus (talk) 18:58, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

That's because I've removed it already. One paragraph, present from the initial revision, went practically unchanged up until my edit, with other, presumably legitimate, material being added around it. This puts us in sort of a catch-22. If we delete the article and only restore the lone non-copyvio revision, it would create the appearance that I wrote the entire article myself. And that, my friends would be plagiarism in itself, not to mention gross exaggeration of my writing abilities. —freak(talk) 19:13, Oct. 26, 2006 (UTC)

Ah, thank you. I figured it out just as you posted this (but I had to go to Brandt's site to find it). I can add something unplagiarised in place of the deleted material. Antandrus (talk) 19:39, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

That might be particularly helpful, as I know nothing about the topic. —freak(talk) 19:49, Oct. 26, 2006 (UTC)

Not that it matters a heck of a lot, but Brandt is wrong about the copyvio source. The website that Anna Magdalena Bach's entry was partially copied from is itself pillaged from the 1980 20 volume New Grove Dictionary; I just found the entire passage in my hard copy, with minor variations, in the J.S. Bach article. Antandrus (talk) 02:16, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

EngineerScotty got one thing right. I do indeed believe that administrators are "agents" of the Wikimedia Foundation. As such, their failure to respond to copyright violations could result in action by the copyright holder against Wikimedia Foundation. Now then, the entire point of my plagiarism page was to investigate a sample of Wikipedia articles. I downloaded 16,750 articles from the listings at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dsp13 These happen to be a subset of biographies in Wikipedia of people born before 1890. It looks like these are about 32 percent of all the articles Wikipedia has that fit this description. I tried to process these articles in an effort to find plagiarism. The upshot is that I was able to do one or more Google searches for 12,095 of these articles. The rest weren't googleable because my software couldn't extract sentences that looked like they would work in Google.

Of these 12,095 articles, Google came up with at least one non-Wikipedia URL for 5,867 of the files. Some of these 12,095 files had several URLs that hit on several sentences in the article. Since I asked Google to exclude all pages with either the word "wikipedia" or "wiki" on them, these URLs tended to be either scraper sites that did not credit Wikipedia on the page, or possibly a site that existed prior to the Wikipedia article. I was looking for the latter.

To separate these two types of sites, I extracted all the URLs and sorted them by domain. Then I looked briefly at each domain. I came up with a list of 965 domains that looked like they scraped from Wikipedia. Using this list, I back-purged the data from Google, and eliminated any files where all the URLs found by Google came from a scraper. This left me with 1,682 files.

I compared these 1,682 Wikipedia articles with the suspicious URL, side by side. Most of them turned out to be from public domain material, and there was an attribution. (If I knew this before I started, my software could have looked for phrases such as "1911 Britannica" and eliminated that article immediately.) Some of them turned out to be scrapers that I didn't catch when I compiled the list of 962 domains. Others had only a sentence that may have been scraped. Others were marginal for other reasons -- the site had no copyright notice anywhere, or it was a blogger, or a forum, or someone trying to sell something such as artwork, a tour package, or music CDs. I rejected the marginal URLs. In the end, I had 150 examples of an article from Wikipedia in which some portions of the content appeared to come from an external URL that existed prior to the Wikipedia article. Most of these had bylines or copyright notices. Some were public domain sites, but there was no attribution on the Wikipedia article. That may not be illegal, but it's plagiarism. This is a plagiarism project, after all. I'm matching sentences, and the copyright notices are just another clue as to which content existed first. I'm not looking for copyright violations.

Then I went through the 150 and manually highlighted the plagiarized content. During this process, I discovered another 8 that were scraped from Wikipedia -- a some of these were second-generation scrapes that were harder to identify. I ended up with 142 articles.

The whole point of the exercise can be summed up in one sentence: I looked at about one percent of all English-language Wikipedia articles, and I found that one percent of these contained plagiarism. If you take 142 times 99, then that leaves 14,058 articles that probably contain plagiarism. I'm not going to look for these. It's not my problem.

Given that the agents of Wikimedia Foundation have now been notified that there is a systemic problem with plagiarism in Wikipedia, they have a duty to initiate, to the best of their ability, programs and procedures to identify the 14,058 articles that I did not try to identify. My sampling is the equivalent of a notice that there is most likely about 99 times more of a problem on Wikipedia, than the problems that have already been found from the titles I've identified on my site. Now Wikimedia Foundation and its agents should go out and find them. It's your fault that they are there, because adequate screening has never been in place. That's the conclusion that should be drawn from my plagiarism project. -- Daniel Brandt 68.91.88.245 23:03, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

• Although you'll probably be blocked rather quickly, being banned here :)... we seem to be doing exactly that. Your argument seems to be that Wikipedia, in order to take advantage of the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA, has an absolute and affirmative duty to actively hunt down and remove every possible copyvio (I'll ignore plagiarism for now, as many forms of plagiarism are not illegal); and that such efforts must be 100% effective. However, the DMCA doesn't say that--to qualify for the safe harbor, a website operator need only remove infringing material upon notification. Wikipedia does this, far more aggressively than most website operators. In addition, we must not actively seek to profit from them (certain peer-to-peer networks, for instance, traffic in almost nothing but copyrighted works, and benefit financially from their presence, and have been held liable for copyright infringement); as Wikipedia is a non-profit entity, we meet that criteria by definition. (There are interesting comments by some concerning Google's buyout of YouTube, and whether or not Google's style of targeted ads might evict a Google/YouTube combo from the safe harbor; this doesn't apply to Wikipedia as we don't accept any advertising). Your analysis reveals that of our 1.4 million articles or so, 99% are likely infringement-free; obviously Wikipedia has substantial non-infringing uses. We should chase down the remaining 1%, I agree; however, Wikipedia appears to far exceed our duty under the law. Of course, I'm not a lawyer--but then again, Daniel, neither are you.--EngineerScotty 23:14, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

• Is that still assuming that a court would accept Wikipedia as a service provider rather than a publisher? Or doesn't it make any difference? Some other things - Wikipedia is a bit unusual in that it actively encourages and enables third parties to copy its content. Thus a copyvio hosted here can spawn many copies all over the web. When something gets plagiarized from, say, Britannica, the Wikipedia entry will typically get a higher Google rank than the original page and be widely mirrored - suppressing the original work into obscurity. I noticed this with the half a dozen copyvios from them which I deleted today. Britannica could argue that this is highly damaging for them (and we probably have hundreds of copyvios from them). It's a bit counterintuitive that Brad Patrick can say: "Not our fault - it was user X who did it. We'd give you his IP but our records don't go that far back. So no-one can be held responsible." If we really do far exceed our duty under the law then it seems to me that the law is very kind to us. Haukur 23:42, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

• The '1% have copyvios' conclusion seems implausible to me. Daniel's test found that 1% (actually, 142 / 16,750 = 0.85%) of the articles he tested had plagiarism (not necessarily copyright violations)... but he tested articles on people born before 1890. Surely that subset is both more prone to copying and less likely to be extensively reviewed to catch / clean-up copyvios. You aren't likely to find alot of encyclopedia articles on Britney Spears to copy from and people are more likely to know about the subject and write their own text anyway... and even if something were copied more people are going to be looking at 'recent history' articles like that and be more likely to recognize the text as coming from another source they have seen. Granted, articles on pre-1900 history and other topics may be just as susceptible to overlooked copyvios as 'pre-1890 people', but the whole of Wikipedia is not. I'd guess that 0.5% or ~7000 articles is probably closer to reality. Still an issue which we should look for ways to address, but hardly "systemic". Indeed, it is less prevalent than I assumed it was prior to this. --CBD 12:47, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• There are also other factors to consider. Brandt's 0.85% figure is just for plagiarism he was able to fairly definitely identify using a particular methodology. It will only pick up articles which were plagiarized from web sources which are still online. It will not even pick up all of those and it seems Brandt threw out some possible examples he wasn't really sure about but might well have been problematic as well. So this figure does not include articles with text plagiarized from web sources no longer online nor from printed works. Also note that Brandt only checked three sentences from each article and only checked for exact matches on Google. This means that a part of an article can well have been plagiarized but Brandt's bot might miss it because he didn't happen to choose the right sentences. Or someone might have made minor changes to the text, enough to make a direct Google search fail but not enough to eliminate the plagiarism problem. And I'm not convinced that 'pre-1890 people' is a field especially sensitive to plagiarism, the Spears example is not very apt. In sum I think Brandt's estimate that 1% of Wikipedia's articles contain plagiarism is a very conservative one. My estimate would be 2-3%. Haukur 13:14, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• IANAL and stuff, but it seems that Wikipedia's designated agent (as of this writing) is Jimbo himself. As such, it seems that Mr. Brandt's assumption is wrong in this respect. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 12:52, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Brandt's view is that by enabling us to delete articles, block people from editing etc. the Foundation has designated us as their agents in the legal sense. Jimbo et al. disagree. I don't have an informed opinion on who's right. Haukur 14:44, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
    • The word "agent" is overloaded here. One meaning is "designated agent" as defined as DMCA; that person is presently Jimbo. Nobody else. The other meaning of agent is as follows; Agent is occasionally used as legalspeak as a person whose actions may legally represent an organization--in this particular case, the suggestion being that the WFM is liable for the actions of each and every administrator. (What about wikis where there is no admin class--and anyone can alter content as they please? Are all users "agents")? Such an interpretation would make operation of a wiki legally problematic--not just Wikipedia, but any wiki. There is scant case law on the subject of wikis. The WFM could argue, that only those employed by it are "agents"--volunteer editors, regardless of how many bits they have--cannot be and should not be construed as agents. You might ask User:Brad Patrick what he thinks--he's our lawyer, after all, and I'm sure he has done research on this subject. And unlike Brandt, BP has Wikipedia's best interests at heart. --EngineerScotty 20:52, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
      • I already know what he thinks - we discussed it here Also note the legal opinion at wikipedia-watch.org/sec230.pdf which suggests that the line dividing agents from non-agents could lie through the sysop bit. Haukur 22:32, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Jimmy is the "designated agent" for DMCA. That only means the Wikimedia Foundation filled out a form and enclosed $30. It means little else, according to http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/

"The fact that the Office has accepted a designation of an agent and has included it in the Office’s directory of agents should not be construed as a judgment by the Office that the designation is sufficient or error-free."

"Definition: For purposes of section 512(c), a "service provider" is defined as a provider of online services or network access, or the operator of facilities therefor, including an entity offering the transmission, routing, or providing of connections for digital online communications, between or among points specified by a user, of material of the user’s choosing, without modification to the content of the material as sent or received."

Look at that last phrase. Administrators spend all day long modifying material. They block users, ban users, protect articles, unprotect articles, and delete articles. Look at all the deletions they just did on the plagiarism articles. That means that Wikimedia Foundation is not a service provider but rather a publisher. The DMCA doesn't even apply here. The Foundation owns the servers, controls the software on those servers through employees, and is ultimately responsible for designating administrators. These administrators are expected to go out and modify content. They tweak, they delete, they revert, and they run bots to do it when they cannot do it fast enough. The Foundation is not a "service provider" under the DMCA's definition. Therefore, they should be doing the prior screening that any publisher is expected to do. 68.90.178.184 00:58, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

IANAL, but your statement "These administrators are expected to go out and modify content" seems to be a fundamental point of error on your part. ALL editors "go out and modify content," whether or not they are administrators. That's a fundamental function of Wikipedia.

Wikipedia, as an organization, makes every effort to prevent plagiarism and copyright violations before it happens. Wikipedia has a policy of removing plagiarism and copyvio on site, and the administrators (and those editors who comply with said policy) not only make every effort to abide by that policy, but many of them actively seek out examples of such postings. Not only that, but editors who post material in violation of that policy are subject to disciplinary action, up to and including temporary or permanent revocation of their editing priveledges.

Frankly, Mr. Brandt, no program is going to be perfect, but we're doing pretty well. And if our efforts are not good enough to satisfy you, then I humbly invite you to start up your own open content encyclopedia and implement the anti-plagiarism and anti-copyvio policies that suit you. We will continue to do the best we can--and in light of our continuing efforts, frankly, your complaints don't matter a fart in a windstorm. Justin Eiler 01:49, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Persistent disruption by User:Heqwm

Heqwm (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log) has been persistently attempting to push his POV at Boy Scouts of America and related articles. Much discussion has occured at that article's Talk page and also on Heqwm's talk page and is still visible.

Heqwm himself filed a mediation cabal case, Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-10-08 BSA. Several editors have responded to that cabal case and documented Heqwm's problematic behavior. 10 days ago, a moderator said he would accept the case, but wanted to make sure he was acceptable to the parties since he has belonged to the BSA. Heqwm has continued to edit the articles [93] and the mediation cabal case[94] during this time, yet he did not reply to the question of whether he would accept the moderator. Today, after the moderator stated that he would take the case, since there has been no objection, Heqwm has objected.[95] This is clearly a stall tactic.

Meanwhile, he continues to be disruptive at the articles. For instance, he made this massive deletion today removing multiple sourced statements with the spurious edit sumarry "Removed unsourced claims". This has gone on long enough as he is consuming time and harming the project.

I believe that he should be blocked under WP:Civility and Wikipedia is not a battleground. I have also documented what I believe to be a personal attack against me in that Heqwm repeatedly accused me of lying even after I provided diffs to back up my statements. Johntex\^talk 16:02, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't know the situation in detail, but the massive deletion seems to be well justified, if perhaps not in the best of style. You cannot use documents published by an organization directly as sources about the organization. You need to find reliable neutral sources for your statements. --Stephan Schulz 17:49, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the policy at reliable sources says "Material from self-published sources, whether published online or as a book or pamphlet, may be used as sources of information about themselves in articles about themselves, so long as there is no reasonable doubt who wrote it, ..." We often use information provided directly from the source. For example, sales figures of companies, quotes from the subject of a biography, etc... Deletion of that material was absolutely not justified. If the user felt this sourced informaiton was inappropriate, he should have discussed it. Instead, he continues his pattern of disruption and incivility. Johntex\^talk 18:00, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Read the article in whole. Self-published sources should only be used "when not contentious; not unduly self-serving or self-aggrandizing;", also note "Although the company or organization is a good source of information on itself, it has an obvious bias." (and should be used with caution only). Your examples are very different from the case at hand: Quotes are properly attributed. If you write "according to the BSA, they do...", you can use them as a source. For the absolute statement "The BSA does ..." this is not a good source. Performance data for notable companies is typically audited by a professional auditor, and people who misrepresent them can go to jail. As such, they have a certain level of review and are more reliable than pure fluff and marketing materials.--Stephan Schulz 20:21, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, but even if we conclude additional sources should be added, that does not excuse the behavior of this user, who does not bother raising these types of arguments at all. He is simply making deletions. And he is doing this in the face of his own supposed attempt to bring in a mediator. He needs to recieve a block and/or a stern warning against this sort of behavior. I can't do it because I'm a party to the mediation case - if it ever moves forward. Johntex\^talk 21:01, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

As I wrote above, I don't comment on the overall behaviour, having no detailed knowledge about the case. If you cannot get mediation to work, the next step would be an RfC. However, also assume good faith. Not every editor is online all the time, so delayed responses are to be expected. --Stephan Schulz 21:20, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I am fine with assume good faith but no policy says that we have to have blind faith. The fact that the user editted during the meantime, *especially* since he editted the actual cabal case, is sufficient evidence that they were on Wikipedia. Johntex\^talk 21:34, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

• Comment To quote you, I don't know the situation in detail, you need to look at the whole history before commenting on it. Heqwm has clearly being intentionally disruptive and the mediation records, article history, and talk document this. This needs to be stopped now, not months from now. Rlevse 21:18, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Looking around a bit, User:Heqwm has 62 edits in 3 weeks, about half of them on talk or on the mediation page. How disruptive can 28 name space edits (slightly more than 1/day) be? I fail to see the urgency.--Stephan Schulz 21:30, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

The urgency is that valuable contributors have been assuming good faith by trying to steer him in the right direction, reply to his mediation cabal case, etc. He takes one minute of his time to delete something, and then other people have to waste tens of minutes or more. Also, his behavior goes back much farther than 3 weeks. There was a lull where he was inactive, but this has been going on for months. It is likely (though unproven) that he was doing this sort of thing as an IP even before creating an account. Johntex\^talk 21:40, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

His first edit to the BSA article is on September 25th. "Much longer" than three weeks? And his first ever edit is from September 14th...how many "months" (plural) does that make? --Stephan Schulz 22:31, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Because they're almost all on the BSA article and the same edit/revert/edit/revert. He is being disruptive and doing it to make a point. He seems to refuse to accept the mediation cabal though he himself requested it, which shows unwillingness to compromise and clear POV. This history of disruptive editing, towit: Misleading edit summaries - removing content for lack of citation, when the content removed includes a valid citation, adding tags for cites directly on a valid ref--http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Boy_Scouts_of_America&diff=prev&oldid=82952665, continued warring on a A-class article without working toward consensus (note no one else has supported him). Evidence that BSA editors are not censoring, is that we have a FA on BSA membership controversies that was and is worked with BSA and non-BSA editors. Rlevse 21:46, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Looking at your example of a "valid cite", it isn't. Not only is it a link to the BSA itself, hence not a good source as stated above, it also does not support the sentence it is attached to. Again, I very much think that Heqwm should work much more cooperatively, but I do not find serious problems with the substance of his edits.--Stephan Schulz 22:31, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

• Comment by the puppy: I'm feeling rouge-ish. He's wasted enough of other editors' time. Block him for a month with a recommended reading list of policies, and when the month is up if he has read them and abides by them, fine. If not, community ban. I would also support a community ban if those who have attempted working with him feel he is beyond redemption. If he won't even work through a mediation case there is little hope of Rfar being anything but a waste of time for the very busy members of Arbcom. KillerChihuahua^?!? 21:50, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Alternative view by admin: I have reviewed this "case" in detail. The "massive deletion" is part of a pattern of WP:POINT edits by User:Heqwm. Misleading edit summaries are part of the pattern — "Deleted unsourced claims" as the reason for removing a section of the article (that is cited) that he does not like is misleading. The citations clearly reference the topic; though it is possible that a slight rewording of the section, such as "according to the BSA mission statement", could be made. On the same vein, Heqwm has put {{fact}} tags immediately following a cited sentence in the article. After filing a Mediation Cabal case, he has shown an unwillingness participate. While the editing has been on and off, it is disruptive. — ERcheck (talk) 21:54, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Damn, that looks so official. Wonder if I should have started with Alt view by admin in boldface, instead of Comment by puppy. KillerChihuahua^?!? 21:58, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment by puppy is nice way to lighten the mood ;-) — ERcheck (talk) 22:33, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Which helps when I'm saying "Ban the trolls!" heh. KillerChihuahua^?!? 01:41, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

User:Heqwm strikes me as a candidate for Wikipedia:Community probation per Wikipedia:Disruptive editing or a 1 month block. FeloniousMonk 22:01, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea of Wikipedia:Community probation per Wikipedia:Disruptive editing. Would there be support here for putting him on probation from editting BSA-related articles for a period of one month or until the mediation cabal case comes to some mutually agreeable conclusion, whichever is sooner? Johntex\^talk 23:38, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea. --InShaneee 00:04, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Concur. KillerChihuahua^?!? 01:41, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

How/when would this be implemented? Rlevse 09:51, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Implimented. --InShaneee 14:52, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment note community block implemented by InShaneee. Rlevse 17:20, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Coulda swore I just said that. :) --InShaneee 13:26, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

From the medcab case it certainly looks like Heqwm has an axe to grind, rather than an interest in neutral editing. Let him work his issues out in mediation first, if he can. Thatcher131 05:06, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The problem with that is he's not making any attempt at compromise (like not objecting when the mediator asked if he had one and then objected after he accepted it) and this needs resolved now! Rlevse 09:51, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RFC rules

I've tried to explain how things work at RFC to User:Black Flag, but I've been met with . . . well, stubborn resistance. Take this and this, for example. I don't know what else to do about it other than mention it here. · j e r s y k o talk · 20:12, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, I've reverted back to your version with, I hope. a helpful edit summary.[96] I don't know what else to do either; perhaps a bit of a mass effect might do it. Bishonen | talk 20:24, 26 October 2006 (UTC).

I had respectfully requested that Jersyko not blank my RFC comment. He continued to blank, actions which I deem inappropriate. Furthermore, when I left remarks on his talk page, he blanked those as well, actions which I understood to be likewise inappropriate.--Black Flag 20:27, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, Bishonen. I believe your edits are fair, and that is all I and others ask. Respectfully, --Black Flag 20:29, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

The "remarks" left on my talk page warned me of "vandalism" and 3RR (which I did not violate). Keeping Rfc in line with the rules at the top of the page is hardly "vandalism", yet I kept that comment on my talk page. I did remove the big, ugly 3RR stop hand, though. And I'm glad you agree that Bishonen's edit, which was identical to my own, is fair. · j e r s y k o talk · 20:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copyvio edits by me

I have received several messages that in the first months of my editing wikipedia (early 2004), I violated the copyrights of others on Cuno Amiet (now deleted for copyright reasons), Edvard Munch and Edouard Vuillard. I will manually go through all my edits, to see if I have done this in other articles. If any of you come across such edits before I've found them, please let me know. I deeply apologize for this. Aecis ^{Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984.} 21:12, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I applaud you for taking the initative to go through all your contribs for this. ~crazytales56297 ^{O rly?} 03:21, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

68.39.174.238 21:23, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of personal information

I have reverted the personal information posted here and warned the IP user posting it. I'm still getting a handle on the admin tools. Can I delete this edit myself, or do I in fact need an Oversight to do it? Thanks, Irongargoyle 23:38, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I've tried to do it for you twice, but it kept undeleting all edits, including the personal information. Aecis ^{Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984.} 23:46, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Turns out that the second undeletion was succesful :) You can remove personal information yourself. First you delete the entire article, then you go to the page history that only admins can see (at Special:Undelete). On the top is the deletion log, on the bottom the edits to the article. Tick the boxes beside the good edits, and leave the edits with the personal information unticked. That restores/undeletes all the proper edits, but keeps the personal information removed. Aecis ^{Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984.} 23:51, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

There is also some Javascript that will check all and then you can uncheck the ones to not restore. —Centrx→talk • 00:06, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Block for removing warnings

To the best of my knowledge, there is no consensus that one should not remove warnings (cf. Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Removing warnings). On that basis, I believe that User:Mets501's block of User:Jooler for removal of warnings is clearly incorrect. In addition, this is based on Mets's close of an RM at yoghurt in which he threw out 5 votes for flawed logic, simply ignored another 5 votes, and declared that there was a 7-4 majority in favour of the move. (He also move-protected the page after making his "decision" and left the message "Please do not come to my user talk page with long monologues; I will not change my opinion if you write to me").

On this basis, Jooler's action (undoing a move based on a fatally flawed RM close) is correct, Mets' warning to Jooler is incorrect, and Mets' block of Jooler for removing the warning is clearly unacceptable. Guettarda 00:12, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Agree on the undoing and blocking - both unaccptable. What exactly did Mets warn about? – Chacor 00:17, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Just to get the view from Mets, was the block for removing the warnings or for disruption by reverting the move? If it was for reverting the move, fair enough (although he'd of course need a warning, so if that was what the warning is then I agree with it), but for removing warnings, no. – Chacor 00:19, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The block was originally for changing national varieties of English on all articles that linked to Yoghurt (or is it at Yogurt now?) despite a final warning and previous informal warnings. I extended the block when the warnings were continually removed from the users talk page. This block had nothing to do with his moving the Yoghurt page and our difference of opinion as to the location of the page. —Mets501 (talk) 00:22, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Then I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with the block. There has never been any consensus to block for removing warnings, you should have asked the user to archive them, or even do so yourself. – Chacor 00:25, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Mets' moved the page against consensus - he simply ignored a substantial block of votes. He made it clear that he was not willing to discuss the matter, so there was no reason to talk to him personally about undoing his mistake. He has no right to threaten people for fixing his mistakes. His rationale for the warning was flawed - it was Mets who moved against consensus. Guettarda 00:25, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Whoa, hold up, Mets was involved in the dispute and issued the block? Can you spell "conflict of interest"? This should have been posted on AN/I first and someone else should have issued a block if merited. Both his actions and Jooler's should have been examined. •Jim62sch• 00:26, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

This is nuts. Perhaps I'm feeling a little bellicose, but why is this "removing warnings" thing continuing to plague Wikipedia? If a user removes a warning, then he has clearly indicated that he has seen the warning. If he then continues to behave in the way for which he was warned, further action is warranted. As far as I can see, that's the end of the story. How did we come to take such minutiae so seriously that some admins think it is OK to block people for removing warnings? –Joke 00:26, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, Guettarda "forgot" to mention that I "threw out" 5 votes supporting the move as well. My personal opinion was not involved in closing the page move. Please read Talk:Yoghurt for more information. —Mets501 (talk) 00:27, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

So in other words you ignored the consensus-building process? •Jim62sch• 00:30, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

No, quite the contrary. I attempted to enhance the process by analyzing the discussion, and the rationales behind each vote, instead of just saying 55.2424232324252% majority so this side wins. —Mets501 (talk) 00:32, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I think you need to take a look at the consensus process. •Jim62sch• 00:36, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

This issue isn't the votes thrown out (although I disagree with that), it was the fact that he simply ignored votes (votes which met his criterion for "approval". Guettarda 00:29, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

No, I did not "ignore" the votes. I read every single vote and all the discussion, and the votes that Yoghurt votes that you claim I "ignored" were all based on the incorrect assumption that the first version of the article was at Yoghurt. I could of done the opposite: since it was clear all of those people just wanted the first name of the article I could have changed their votes to votes for Yogurt! —Mets501 (talk) 00:37, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Unblocked. If consensus here is to re-block I will not unblock again, but it seems to me that this block is clearly flawed. Guettarda 00:30, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

And I repeat: the original block was NOT for removing warnings. It was for changing national varieties of English on ALL PAGES that linked to Yoghurt. —Mets501 (talk) 00:30, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Guys, chill out. Mets apparently made a mistake here, we admins all do it. So deal with it and stop jumping down his throat about it. // Pilotguy (Have your say) 00:32, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Then have the mistakes been undone? – Chacor 00:34, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

If you'll read above, yes I believe so. If not we are fixing pronto. // Pilotguy (Have your say) 00:38, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Mets has made several mistakes, and he has refused to change his behaviour when the mistakes were pointed out. I warned him half an hour before I brought the matter here. I think this one should never have gotten past RFA. Guettarda 00:38, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

If you believe so, then I would suggest making use of Mets' willingness to sign up for Category:Administrators open to recall and initiate that process with him. -- nae'blis 15:07, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Can someone please explain to me why a block based on changing national varieties of English repeatedly despite warnings is "a mistake"? Perhaps I'm missing the point. —Mets501 (talk) 00:38, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Your close of the RM, your move of the page against consensus, your move-protection of the page, your issue of warnings for correcting your page move, your block for a non-existent offense, your protection of Jooler's user page after you blocked him/her (making him/her unable to contest your improper block), and your refusal to undo your block over the course of half an hour after I told you the block was improper can all be characterised as "mistakes" (if someone chooses to stretch WP:AGF almost to the breaking point). It could also be characterised as abuse of your admin privileges. Guettarda 00:46, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

At minimum, Mets should not have made the block as an involved admin. (I think This entire Yogurt/Yoghurt/Yoghbadslhdfbkuurrrrt disagreement is really getting to be ridiculous but that's a separate issue). I would support unblocking. JoshuaZ 00:48, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I have to concur with Guettarda here, blocking then protecting the talk page of a user with whom you were involved in a dispute is beyond the pale, and there is no consensus that removing warnings from a talk page is a blockable offense in any case. Your summary of blocked and still trying to remove warnings from user talk page as why you blocked makes it clear that was the reason for the last block. KillerChihuahua^?!? 00:52, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

After Mets moved yoghurt out of process I moved it back [97] - Mets then put a personal attack on my page Can't you read? I removed his insulting words (there were no warnings at this point) and he kept putting them back - [98] - I have to admit to misunderstand what he asked me to do. He was talking about double redirects but I thought he said fix the redirects (it's late at night) - which is what I was doing and got me into trouble - I did fix the double redirects when I realised though. Met did not attempt civil discussion before getting my goat up. Jooler 01:04, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, perhaps I did make a few mistakes in the process. Let's forget this and move on (this is not an attempt to cover up for my possible mistakes, but an attempt to remove possible future grudges). This does not need to be discussed further. —Mets501 (talk) 01:18, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

No, this editor clearly needs some sort of mentorship, or at least some sort of commitment to familiarise himself/herself with policy before he uses any additional admin priviledges. Guettarda 01:23, 27 October 2006 (UTC) And, obviously, an apology to Jooler. Guettarda 01:24, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

And now Jonathunder has abusively reblocked, without bothering to chime in here. Guettarda 01:56, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

A discussion of the name of yogurt/yoghurt is ongoing, and both sides have requested the article not be moved during that, as it makes the survey of whether to support or oppose exceedingly confusing. Jooler was aware of that and yet moved the page anyway. This is disruptive. I have restored his block. Jonathunder 01:59, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Seems we should have an admin training course that needs to be taken before the RFA. Jonathunder, there really was no reason for reblocking, especially before talking about it here. Additionally, if you felt the need to reblock for what appear to be questionable reasons, you should have blocked both in order to be fair. •Jim62sch• 10:25, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

"Jooler was aware of that" - was not Jooler 02:02, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Your characterisation of "disruptive" is disputable - clearly Mets move against consensus was disruptiuve. Your block without any prior warning for an article dispute is a clear abuse of priviledge. Jooler 02:04, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

No more Wheel warring you two. Discuss this before disrupting this poor users block log anymore. semper fi — Moe 02:01, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Jumping to a conclusion in the middle of a discussion doesn't do anyone any good. --InShaneee 02:07, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Concur with Moe. One more thing: maybe it is more constructive to actually voice your concerns regarding the name rather than engaging in personal ax-grinding. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 02:09, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

It might be somewhat useful to discuss it without making it a witchunt too (per the previous section). Bad blood is all well and good, but comments such as "...should never have got past RFA" can only be destructive. Mets501 has admitted a mistake, and und Understands why - that's all that really needs to be said, surely?

However, as Jooler now knows of this discussion and the agreement not to move the article, surely now would be a good time to move it back to where it was at the beginning of the discussion/vote and protect the page untill the debate is over to ensure it isn't moved until then, rather than swap everybodies votes and comments around?--Crimsone 02:18, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Mets' admission came well after the comment, and only after numerous editors pointed out his mistake rather forcefully. •Jim62sch• 10:31, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

True, we shouldn't be witchhunting any admin right now, it's only going to make it worse. Move protecting the page may not be needed right now since all parties have agreed to stop moving it until the discussion is over (but I'm not against it). semper fi — Moe 02:22, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I wonder if anyone has named the article "Yog(h)urt" (with parentheses in title) just to please everyone (or no one). --²¹⁰physicq (c) 02:39, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

LOL. Probably not :) --Crimsone 02:42, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Lol, no. Probably not the best idea to make a third possible move location, it might confuse too many people. :) semper fi — Moe 02:44, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The article is normally stable at yoghurt - moving away from this and then discussion from that point on is effecting a 'fait accompli' and very much against the spririt of Wikipedia in my opinion. Jooler 02:50, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The article at this point belongs wherever it was at the start of the discussion/vote. Moving it now is disruptive, and against a consensus agreement from both sides to leave be untill the discussion is completed. Your opinion does not overide consensus - nor does it override the need to minimise disruption and confusion over the vote. The spirit of wikipedia is fundamentally that of being constructive in the day to day work of building an encyclopedia. Anything that is disruptive, such as movine an article during an ongoing vote where both sides have agreed not to do so, is very much the anti-thesis of the wikipedia spirit. --Crimsone 03:06, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

"Your opinion does not overide consensus" - and the consensus over the last 3 or 4 votes to move that page has been that it should staty as yoghurt. I moved an article that had been moved out of process against consensus after a dodgy vote count. I was reverting an act that was very much against the spirit of Wikipedia. I was unaware of any agreement not to move the page. In any case how many people does it take to make such an agreement, Two? Three? Four? Where is it written? Jooler 04:34, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

As your previous comment was referring to the exact same thing I was referring to, I suggest you drop it as this is not productive. You had mistaken my comment to mean the opposite of what I actually intended (which I later clarified). Consensus is that the page not be moved during a vote on whether to move or not for wuite obvious reasons. If it was at Yoghurt to start with, that's where it should stay untill the vote is over. I have no opinion on what the name itself should be. I'm interested only seeing disruption minimised. I'm not advocating your opinion on the final resuult, not am I advocating the other. I'm merely pointing out to you that even if the artcile started at yogurt (which it didn't), then your opinion alone is not grounds for causing disruption by moving it (purely because you asked the question.). Moving an article after a dodgy vote count doesn't nessecarily mean that it was against the spirit of wikipedia. It could quite simply be a mistake (as here). We're all human and we all make them from time to time. Crimsone 05:23, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I have protected the page from further moves, which should have been done long before this, and expanded its listing on WP:LAME. Grandmasterka 10:05, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Good idea, Grandmaster. This page's history over the last five days isn't pretty... Daniel.Bryant 10:20, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Continuous talk page blanking

User talk:Webwizard09. Has blanked his talk page 8 times by now. I told him to archive it. Instead he keeps blanking it. Request a block. Regarding the background of the initial warning, see his first contribution here. I would say that qualifies as 'nonsense'. --Daniel575 | (talk) 00:23, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

What are you doing? Stop and think please. Let the matter drop. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 00:28, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

In the interests of peace I've deleted his talk page. Please don't edit it again. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 00:35, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

What is this obsession with forcing users to archive their talkpage? It's good if they do archive it. It's their call if they don't archive it. Some admins don't archive theirs. Try to avoid an unhealthy fascination with other users' talkpages. Bishonen | talk 00:41, 27 October 2006 (UTC).

Yes, perhaps we should force User:William M. Connolley to archive his. That would be a worthwhile use of our energies. I move my talkpage to the archive pages. Am I going to get in trouble for that? –Joke 00:44, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Daniel, there is already a current RfC over your actions, I suggest you try not to do anything controversial like this. JoshuaZ 00:45, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

This happens far too often. I made an update to WP:HA to spell out that it just isn't kosher. Comments / adjustments welcome, but this has always been a blockable form of harassment and way too many people don't seem to get that. --CBD 12:17, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Excellent update, CBD ! Bishonen | talk 19:39, 27 October 2006 (UTC).

[edit] User:ZAPWORLD

ZAPWORLD (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log) This may be an account created solely for spam. User contribs include twice replacing a disambiguation page with a spammy article about an electric scooter company. Natalie 00:48, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Gave 'em a warning, will keep an eye on this user. Grandmasterka 07:10, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Sheepo39

Continues to vandalize pages, if an admin could step in and ban him or set him straight if he continues to act up it would be much appreciated thanks, Derktar 03:32, 27 October 2006 (UTC).

Please head on over to WP:AIV.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 03:37, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Oops sorry 'bout that, not sure where to put this, I'll go ahead and re-post it there if he starts up again, thanks again. Derktar 03:43, 27 October 2006 (UTC).

No problem. :P —Ryūlóng (竜龍) 03:55, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alismatic

Please monitor this user, as I am about to sign off for tonight. S/he has been creating articles about a town (and schools) that s/he claims are real just because s/he claims to live in it. S/he is also removing AFD tags and adding speedy tags to AFD discissions associated with the articles s/he created. When I issued my warning, the response I got was a personal attack. I think this situation will only worsen, so some form of admin intervention will be needed sooner or later. Scobell302 04:36, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I believe the user Alismatic (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log) has already been blocked. Last edit was the love note on your talk page. Fan-1967 04:39, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Mattisse

A week ago here Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive141#Puppetmaster_Mattisse_repeatedly_removing_puppetmaster_tag (and on Mattisse's talk page User_talk:Mattisse#Sockpuppet_tag) there was discussion about Mattisse removing the sockpuppet tag from her user page. It had led to a revert war over tag. Some argued that she had put it in her past so she should be allowed to take it off her talk page. But Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/Mattisse has confirmed that Mattisse was operating a sockpuppet, User:Xampt, just 6 days prior to her removal of the sockpuppet tag. I'm not sure what should be done about this (and since I'm not an administrator, there's not much I can do) but this appears to be the 19th sockpuppet she has operated based on Category:Wikipedia_sockpuppets_of_Mattisse. Metros232 10:35, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Moreover the other people accused of being sockpuppets especially User:Timmy12 are confirmed not to be sockpuppets. I think timmy has a good case for grievance over the way he's been treated. Mattise stated [99] that she was changing username, because of all the grief she had been receiving. User:Xampt has a total of 16 edits over a period of 3 day, none of which were vote-stacking, block avoidance or any other misdemeanor. Apart from two comments to User talk:Netsnipe the two accounts were not operated at the same time. --Salix alba (talk) 11:12, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't do 'scarlet letters'. The sockpuppet tag is for users who have been indefinitely banned as abusive sockpuppets... not active participants. Neither account here was banned, and indeed as there was no apparent abuse of the dual accounts I'm not sure why a checkuser was even run. In any case, repeatedly editing another active user's page in ways they do not want you to is generally considered harassment and/or vandalism. Don't do it. --CBD 11:45, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The Xampt part of the RFCU was added only because I didn't think it warrented its own RFCU since, as Salix alba stated, the account was never really disruptive. I just tacked it on to this fishing expedition that the rest of the RFCU appears to be since I didn't think it justified having its own RFCU. Metros232 16:04, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Continued defacement of the Pedro Zamora and Judd Winick articles

Semi-protection is not working with this guy. He simply removes the protection, has ignored requests to cease his behavior, refers to another editor's reverts of his vandalism as "lies", and one of his Edit Summaries was simply "Judd's a loser". Nightscream 10:54, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, only admins can remove protection. Removing (or adding) the tag doesn't do anything. Secondly, the Winick article sometimes goes days with no edits. Anyway, I just blocked the editors who got around SP and edited the Zamora article. If they do it again, list them here and we will block them. --Woohookitty^(meow) 11:37, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Mikulas

Mikulas (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log) has just registered, and the only thing he has done so far is creation of multiple more accounts. I don't know if he needs to be blocked right now, but he should definitely be brought to the admins' attention. - Mike Rosoft 12:11, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] IP User: 204.69.112.254

This user has constantly been vandalizing the JetBlue page. I don't want to repeat some of the stuff he said here, but if you check the history for edits made on Oct. 27, there are quite a few. Reccomend immediate blockage from JetBlue page, thank you. - Neo16287 14:33, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

A school IP, as is usually the case with such edits. The user has been warned, but the behaviour seems to have stopped. For now. Thanks for the notice, Aecis ^{Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984.} 14:40, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Huge mess with WP:DASH

I have a seemingly minor but thorny problem with User:Leandrod. He engages in frivolous changes of "typography" as he calls it, without bothering to explain his rationale. He moved scores of military articles, from Anglo-French War to the large series of Russo-Turkish Wars, so that en-dash would separate two parts of the war's name. This resulted in huge trails of double redirects, which nobody bothered to fix.

The latest bout of his activity happened a week ago, when he moved all Russo-Swedish Wars to his preferred spelling. When I asked him for a rationale, he went to consult WP:DASH and discovered that he was wrong about the en-dash. After I requested him to undo the damage he inflicted, he moved Russo-Swedish articles back to their original names but failed to revert his previous moves or to fix double redirects.

Leandrod told me a week ago that "he is in no leisure now" to clean up all this stuff himself, although a scrutiny of his latest edits shows that he may not be as busy as he claims. As a consequence, scores of anonymous editors have to clean up the results of his ill-informed zeal (see here or here). The most disturbing thing about all this mess is that links to some articles repeatedly moved by Leandrod went red. See Template:Russo-Swedish War Series, for instance. I don't know why this happens, as the red-linked articles actually exist.

For a full list of disrupted articles that need to be moved back to their proper titles, with subsequent clean up of double redirects, check Leandrod's move log. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 15:03, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Horde Zla

Hello. I have reason to believe that User:Horde Zla is a user who is trying to evade indef. block. Observe his stlye of writing at User_talk:Horde_Zla and posts by User:Hahahihihoho and his sockpuppet User:Thunderman on the Talk:Ivana Miličević and you will see that they are identical. He also continues to edit-war on the same articles as well. Oh and I wasn't sure where would this fall since he is also edit-warring so I reported him at the genral Admin noticeboard however due to my serious doubt that he is evading block I report him here too.--Factanista 15:06, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Factanista, thanks for the tip. I agree that that's an obvious Hahahihihoho sock--nothing to bother CheckUser with--I've blocked it. Feel free to drop a line directly on my page if you come across any more like it. Bishonen | talk 19:59, 27 October 2006 (UTC).

No problem, will do.--Factanista 09:50, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User Cris Ericsson

Is a Vermont politician whop has vandalsied her own article [100] after discovering she couldnt use it to promote her politics. Her verbal attacks are crude and unnecessary. Please can an admin take a look, SqueakBox 15:56, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Claims to be the politician, at least. I've warned the IP, and the user appears to have stopped her attacks for the moment. --InShaneee 16:12, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Blocked 2 hours. (No other admin had replied when I read the request). Durova 16:19, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

This edit summary gives her personal information, as confirmed by a google search. Should that be removed? Aecis ^{Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984.} 16:41, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I would say no.If you can confirm it by a google search it's public not personal isn't it? Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 17:19, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

It's still personal information, because it's her telephone number. Even though other sites have listed it before. Personal doesn't mean secret. My real name is personal information as well, even though it can be confirmed via google. Aecis ^{Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984.} 17:31, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

It's the phone number that you should call if you want to volunteer to lend a hand. It's listed on her website. I think it's pretty safe to assume it's not her personal phone number. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 17:43, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Isn't this a violation of WP:AUTO?? SunStar Net 17:33, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I have ifdef blocked, per Wikipedia:Username and left the following comment on their talk:

Hello. It seems your Wikipedia user name resembles that of Cris Ericson, a United States Senator candidate. To prevent unfortunate cases where pranksters pretend to be someone well known, our user name policy (at Wikipedia:Username) requires that such accounts be blocked (the part where it says "Names of well-known living or recently deceased people"). We do, however, realise that some (regrettably only a very few) of such cases are infact the real person named; to that end, can I ask you to email info-en-q@wikimedia.org (mentioning this discussion at "User talk:Crisericson") from your official email address and confirm that you really are Cris Ericson, or that you're editing on their behalf. The people who handle that email list will then be able to unblock this account. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but I hope you'll understand why we need to be careful in this regard. I have also blocked User:Cris Ericson.

I'm fairly certain this is not the person they claim to be. Ta/wangi 18:00, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I also removed the "zombie eyes" photo from Cris Ericson due to WP:BLP concerns. Thanks/wangi 18:02, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

If she were the real candidate it is unlikely she would engage in the juvenile attacks against me or trying to use wikipedia as a blatant political platform and I think it is best we assume this person is not the real Cris Ericson, SqueakBox 18:12, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

She's the candidate of the marijuana party. I see no particular reason why we should assume she wouldn't be juvenile. Why on earth would someone pretend to be an obscure Vermont 3rd party candidate? john k 17:45, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Purely on the basis of being safe rather than sorry and not assuming she would be juvenile when we might be wrong as someone may indeed be impersonating her. If it is her then she is not a credible politician, but perhaps that is the point? SqueakBox 17:51, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

You know what they say about assuming. Whether or not it is her she is not a credible politician. I wasn't suggesting that we assume it is not her. I would even be perfectly happy with pretending that we do not believe it is her, as I think it's best policy to be better safe than sorry. I was mostly just nitpicking at the idea that it is "unlikely she would engage in...juvenile attacks" if she were who she said she was. I think that's nonsense, and I think it's much more likely that she is who she says she is - as I said before, who would bother impersonating her? Other than that, I don't think I disagree with the actual course of action taken, just with the way it was expressed. john k 19:33, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

John, credibility and support for legalising marijuana are not mutually exclusive. Anyway, had Cris Ericson's campaign webpage had the same photoshopped image i would not have deleted the one which was uploaded here, but it doesn't...

Should we be looking to AFD this article? /wangi 18:03, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Nobody said they were. I support legalizing marijuana, and consider myself to be fairly credible, in general. But credibility and running as a third party candidate in the United States are not closely associated with one another. john k 19:33, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

It depends on her notability, which not being American I couldnt comment on. No harm trying, I would have thought, SqueakBox 19:04, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:SuperDuperMan

For the past month User:SuperDuperMan, who also edits under User:MookiesDad, User:Fwdixon and User:71.125.234.14, has engaged in edit warring, flagrant sockpuppetry, repeated personal attacks, removal of legitimate warning messages from his various user talk pages, placement of prank retaliatory warnings on other people’s user page, and at least one 3RR violation. This demonstrates a brazen disregard for the rules of conduct governing Wikipedia. It is unlikely that his disruptive behavior will stop unless his conduct is reviewed and appropriate action taken for these various offenses. Can anyone take a few moments to review this? Most of the activity has happened on [[101]]. Pak434 17:14, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

User:Pak434 has consistently violated the 3RR rules, also edits under the sockpuppet User:Noumenes, he has insisted on posting supposition as fact on the Tom Swift page. I suspect both edit names are sock/meat puppets of User:Antaeus_Feldspar SuperDuperMan 19:35, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I am not an admin, however...

Assuming the sock claims are true, both of you seem liable for about a week of blocking each for edit warring and 3RR. This is not acceptable Wikipedia editor behavior.

Nlu protected the article. I recommend both of you to have a civil discussion on the relatively minor points of disagreement and come to an agreement between yourselves and other interested editors on the Talk:Tom Swift page. If you keep this back and forth edit warring up after the page is unprotected both of your sets of accounts are probably going to get blocked for increasing lengths of time.

If you can't come to agreement see WP:MEDIATION.

Georgewilliamherbert 19:48, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I wish you would look more closely before assuming that both parties' claims are equally credible. There is no evidence to support the claim that Pak434 is a sockpuppet of anyone else or that anyone else is a sockpuppet of his. There is, on the other hand, evidence amounting to proof that Fwdixon is MookiesDad, 71.125.234.14, and SuperDuperMan, and very probably he is Noumenes, not Pak434. There is no truth at all to the claim that Pak434 has violated 3RR, as can be seen from the edit history of the page in question. I am frankly quite perturbed that when there is evidence of one party acting disruptively and in malicious bad faith, someone who is not an admin steps forward and pronounces an opinion based on the presumption that the party who has been operating sockpuppets to deceive the entire Wikipedia community could not possibly have also been slandering anyone who tries to expose his bad behavior. -- Antaeus Feldspar 21:24, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I did look more closely. You (Anataeus Feldspar) just slipped under 3RR in 24 hrs twice in the last 4 days; Pak434 did 3 reverts in 24 hrs about a day ago.

If you intend to assert that these are sockpuppets, then say so and present evidence. Implying and failing to back it up here is wasting ANI time. If you think they're sockpuppets intended to get around 3RR then file a request for checkuser. Georgewilliamherbert 22:00, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• Evidence that Fwdixon (talk • contribs) is 71.125.234.14 (talk • contribs) and that 71.125.234.14 is SuperDuperMan (talk • contribs): By his own admission Fwdixon edits from the IP address 71.125.234.14. In this edit 71.125.234.14 expands on comments previously left by MookiesDad, removing MookiesDad's signature in so doing and signing with his IP address. Two minutes later in this edit, SuperDuperMan replaces that signature with his own signature, taking credit for those comments.
• Evidence that Fwdixon (talk • contribs) is actually MookiesDad (talk • contribs): We already have the above, where an IP address we know to be used by Fwdixon altered and took credit for comments by MookiesDad. In addition: Fwdixon, by his own admission, is the webmaster of "The Hardy Boys Unofficial Home Page" at http://hardyboys.bobfinnan.com/ . Late on October 5th, MookiesDad edited fourteen articles about individual books in the Hardy Boys series, with the edit summary on each one "rm copyrighted material from my web site" (emphasis added). A sample of the removed material is the following removed from A Figure in Hiding: "The Hardy Boys foil the fake eye surgery "Eye Syndicate" of quack Dr. Grafton. Revision: The Hardy Boys smash the "Evil Eye" (aka "The Goggler Gang") theft ring." This is word-for-word identical to the capsule description of that book at http://hardyboys.bobfinnan.com/hbos.htm: "The Hardy Boys foil the fake eye surgery "Eye Syndicate" of quack Dr. Grafton. Revision: The Hardy Boys smash the "Evil Eye" (aka "The Goggler Gang") theft ring." Several of the other thirteen capsule reviews are also identical to the corresponding descriptions at http://hardyboys.bobfinnan.com/hbos.htm: What MookiesDad identifies as material from his website is actually from the website of Fwdixon.

I'm sorry for not presenting this evidence sooner; I had no idea that you actually wanted to see evidence, since you started off your remarks with "Assuming the sock claims are true ..." As you can see, the claims of sockpuppetry against Fwdixon/71.125.234.14/MookiesDad/SuperDuperMan are indeed backed up by evidence. By contrast, "SuperDuperMan" makes strong accusations about Pak434 and Noumenes and I all being the same person but has provided no evidence whatsoever, neither on Talk:Tom Swift nor here. The claim that Noumenes and I are the same person seems particularly ludicrous, given that to my knowledge Noumenes and I have never agreed on anything so far. -- Antaeus Feldspar 00:49, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

As User:Antaeus Feldspar has already pointed out, I have never, much less "consistently", been in violation of 3RR. User:SuperDuperMan’s claim that I also edit under User:Noumenes or that I am a sock/meat puppet of User:Antaeus Feldspar likewise has no basis in fact. If anything is a waste of ANI time it when someone engages in allegations like these which are manifestly untrue. This is not a defense or explanation of his behavior. It is a retaliatory claim intended to discredit his accuser now that his conduct is about to come under scrutiny by administrators who are in a position to impose a penalty for this behavior. The issue at hand is whether there is any merit to the complaint that I have lodged: that this user has engaged in flagrant sockpuppetry, repeated personal attacks, removal of legitimate warning messages from his various user talk pages, 3RR violations, etc. Evidence of sockpuppetry has now been provided by User:Antaeus Feldspar. Clear evidence of a deliberate 3RR violation by User:SuperDuperMan on 27 October exists on [[102]]. On 22 October 2006 on [[103]], this individual stated "as long as I live I will remove the See Also section that points to Edisonade or Frank Reade". Does this sound like someone who is interested in arriving at a compromise to resolve a content dispute or someone whose parochial view on an article is so entrenched that dispute resolution is impossible? The answer to this question is self evident. Does this sound like someone who is concerned about edit warring and 3RR violations or someone who has a complete disdain for the rules governing this type of conduct? Pak434 15:00, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Azwatchdog and other Anonymous

For the past couple days, User:Azwatchdog, as well as two other anonymous editors, User:68.230.55.156 and User:71.209.183.28, have repeatedly inserted an external link misrepresenting US Senate candidate Jim Pederson's political platform. After simply reverting several times what User:68.230.55.156 inserted, I put the BLP1 warning on the user's talk page. After that, User:71.209.183.28 inserted the same link, and, after I reverted their edit left BLP1 on their talk page, User:Azwatchdog inserted the same link, I reverted that user's edits and also left the BLP1. Since the edits of these three users are identical, they may be the same person. I'm not sure of what procedure to go through now, so any help given by an admin would be invaluable. --JMurphy 18:20, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Now it's just getting ridiculous. I've probably violated the 3RR just trying to stay ahead of this guy. Just take a look at the history for the page Jim Pederson. --JMurphy 18:27, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The spurious links continue on this page, including a youtube video labeled as "Jim Pederson Myspace Video" which actually takes one of his myspace videos and edits in pictures of gyrating young women. It's unclear exactly where that link came from or who put it there, but I deleted it twice today. I'm offline for the next few days, so it would be appreciated if others could put this on their watchlist. Thanks. Risker 05:01, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism, personal attack, personal information by 69.250.68.49

Diffs: [104][105] [106]

69.250.68.49 (talk • contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • RBLs • block user • block log)

An anonymous user has posted a derrogatory message with someone's personal information on the Hehe page, Slut, and Promiscuity. Whether or not the information is accurate or not, the diffs probably need to be deleted and the user handled appropriately. Neil916 (Talk) 19:23, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• Deleted the Hehe revision, and left note for user not to do so again. ♠PMC♠ 19:53, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Guettarda

I have come here basically bacause I can't do this alone. Guettarda won't leave me alone. There is already another thread about this above. I have admitted that I may have made a mistake, but for some reason Guettarda thinks that I intentionally am trying to harm Wikipedia, which is absolutely not true at all! He claims I "chose to ignore a large number of votes in order to get [my] desired result" in the Yoghurt requested move, which I have already explained is not true and have explained many times why I discounted various votes. I do not have any bias at all towards American spellings: I myself use various British spellings due to my British family history even though I live in America. And I discounted an equal number of votes for Yogurt and Yoghurt, so he cannot claim I attempted to alter the outcome. He claims I "refuse to explain why [I] simply ignored many of the other opinions" which again is not true: I wrote next to each opinion that I discounted the reason for doing so. He continues to make comments like "STOP VIOLATING WIKIPEDIA POLICY" and "This one never should have gotten past RFA". Can someone please tell him to leave me alone? —Mets501 (talk) 19:49, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Left him a message. semper fi — Moe 20:17, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! —Mets501 (talk) 23:25, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

That this keeps coming up is tiresome. You have not admitted you made a mistake. You said "perhaps [you] made a few mistakes" and admitted that you "may have made a mistake." You have not apologized and you continue to argue that it is correct to block users who remove warnings on their talkpage – something for which there is no consensus! I can't for the life of me see why this issue keeps coming up day after day on the AN/I. If you wanted to let the matter drop, you would have, rather than coming here to post yet another complaint. –Joke 00:53, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. To be blunt, move along folks, there's nothing to see here. •Jim62sch• 00:59, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Judging by user talk page conversations, this situation seems to be amicably resolved. --CBD 19:56, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User removes my comments from his talk page

User:Lysy continuously removes my comments from his talk page:[107][108]--Nixer 20:33, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

This has to be the third time this type of issue has come up in the last couple days (read some of the above sections). There is nothing wrong with the user removing these comments. It's his usertalk, and by removing him he's acknowledging that he's read them. It's not polite, but it's not against the rules either. Constantly reverting the removal quite possibly is, however. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 20:36, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

And you have just been reported for 3RR, I think you should take a rest and let things cool down before you get youself too deeply into trouble. --ArmadilloFromHell 20:40, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

In fact he removes constantly.--Nixer 20:44, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

He's allowed to remove comments from his talk page, whether or not he archives it. It's his choice if he wants to, and it's not your place to enforce this. semper fi — Moe 21:14, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Konstable and Netspine

Konstable and Netspine have been stalking, blocking for no legitamate reason and personally attacking users in my public library and now it has been blocked. I know by posting this myself I will probably be blocked, but I need to use that library for my bussiness. All I would like is a legitamate reason (prefferably not by one of those two users). Alfred Norman 00:25, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

New user, no article edits, and finds ANI so quickly? Hmm. Pinch of salt. – Chacor 00:34, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Alfred by all means use the library for your business. Admins here can only block people from editing this site, they cannot block you from using the library or the internet. Obviosly you don't intend to conduct business here on wikipedia do you? Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 00:42, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmm just read his userpage. Funny but probably trolling. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 00:55, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

They found ANI from Jimbo's talk page; how they found Jimbo's page is the question. I think they are a sock of someone banned--more accounts were complaining in there earlier. Maybe the userpage is fake, but maybe not -- if you always just assume bad faith it'll hurt someone's feelings one day. Anomo 01:06, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

No, they didn't, the message to Jimbo's page was posted at 00:36, this one at 00:25. I'd think it's a troll. – Chacor 01:11, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I didn't realise libraries in Adelaide were open at 9:00am (when this guy posted)... Daniel.Bryant 01:14, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Yep clearly a troll. Note no info whatsoever on the library - what is the IP ? There is no way we could actually investigate the abuse claim without some sort of background info. Also how could somone play multiuser games over the internet uless they had thier own computer - so why do they need a library one? Assume good faith is one thing, assuming it blindly without thinking is another. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 01:17, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I regret restoring it on Jimbo's page. I thought somebody was erasing them when they put it here. It would help to know their real account. Anomo 01:32, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. This is fishy. // Pilotguy (Have your say) 01:18, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

On a completely random note - the user also lies on their userpage (63 is an unattainable level in World of Warcraft, though it pains me to have such knowledge). I would block the user myself, but he or she hasn't really done any damage yet. Cowman109^Talk 01:21, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Their first edit was to create a userpage. I'd support indef blocking as a troll. Alphachimp 01:23, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

A userpage with a userbox...hmmm. Support indef as an old sock troll. Daniel.Bryant 01:28, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I think some of our WOW articles suggest that level 63 will be posible with the next expansion pack.Geni 01:31, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I've never played WoW but on StarCraft Atlantis they mentioned level 90 and level 75. Anomo 01:32, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

You guys should go edit articles or something... (The new expansion goes to 70, I thought) Alphachimp 02:02, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

So, in conclusion, he is either a troll or a Blizzard beta tester. — Centrx→talk • 01:36, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

And he's an indef blocked troll. No substantive edits other than to attack sysops. Alphachimp 02:01, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

LOL Troll (Warcraft) Playable race. Anomo 02:40, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Looks like another Fredguy (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log) sockpuppet from his userpage. Fredguy was initially banned for vandalism and after given a second chance started posting personal details of other people which have now been deleted by oversight. Usually comes out of 203.28.159.168 (talk • contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • RBLs • block user • block log), a Shared proxy in Adelaide for the ISP Internode. Me and Konstable blocked a whole ring of sockpuppets who whose only edits were to support each other as good candidates for administrators. His userpages would also always lie in English that you'd expect from a 14 year old that they were either a doctor, a lawyer, or a scientist and twenty-something years of age from anywhere but Adelaide, and unblock-auto would always expose them. Each time we block another sock, it's causing a lot of collateral damage on the autoblocker. --  Netsnipe  ►  04:54, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if there was a CheckUser, but someone should check if there wasn't. It's good to know who it was, but it's bad to have guessed wrong. If it was Fredguy, I'm glad someone found who it was (but yet I'm sure the userpage info will be deleted in about a month) Anomo 18:53, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Street Scholar

I recently had a run-in with this user over the speedy deletion of some pages he'd worked on. I offered to restore two of them (without going through DRV), but his sexism and personal attacks quickly made the conversation turn. (See the conversation I removed here, as well as my comments (admittedly not the calmest I could have written) here.) Another user alerted me to the fact that he'd been warned for personal attacks in the past (which I had gleaned from his talk page), but I did not realize he had a similar incident report just a few weeks ago (see here). While this was amicably resolved, it seems that he did not learn from the incident. While a person's beliefs are his or her own business, attacking a person based on gender is a clear violation of WP:NPA, and requesting all womankind to respond to his attacks is using WP as a soapbox. I'm not sure if this should go to RfC, since the first attempt to resolve this was "successful". Any help would be greatly appreciated. -- Merope 18:29, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I have encountered similar irreverence to wikipedia norms from this user before.I'm not sure how to link to this, but he made several uploads of images that were blatant copyvios (he put one in Mountain warfare here) which were speedily deleted. However, he had uploaded several such images from the same website that had a clear "All rights reserved" statement on it and, if an admin could assist me, then I can cite the records of the speedy deletions.This shows an irreverence for copyright rules on wikipedia. In addition, a mediated debate progresses on Cheema (see Talk:Cheema) where he continuously misrepresents sources and tries to push a POV without adequate WP:V. Most of the sources cited in the article are fabricated or misrepresented and, when confronted about this by a mediator here ignored the mediator completely and still continues with such tendentious editing (see mediator's assessment here). He has also made numerous veiled ethnic slurs on Talk:Cheema and further misrepresented the facts to try to bait users into argument here is an example. He remains unapologetic for these acts and continues on Talk:Cheema.Hkelkar 19:09, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

"I'm not sure if this should go to RfC, since the first attempt to resolve this was "successful"."

To be honest, I considered it closed at that time for that reason (assuming of course you were referring to the incident on my talk page and elsewhere). However, this doesn't appear to be the case! If the previous incident had been resolved successfully, then surely the same problem wouldn't have arisen again. While this user does have many good and invaluable edits among his contributions, it's also evident that he has displayed/aired these very offensive views on wikipedia throughout the history of his membership and is unlikely to change them. I would say that a firm message needs to be sent - the question of course is what that message would entail, which is a question I cannot answer. The eeasy way has been tried already. --Crimsone 22:22, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

he persists with his remarks even after he got admonished [109] [110]. He does not seem to have reformed at all.Hkelkar 17:17, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

In light of those attacks (and this edit), I've blocked him for 48h. I'll monitor his edits once the block expires. -- Merope 17:26, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

This user is thoroughly unpleasant and seems to want to push his distasteful view of women on anyone nearby. It doesn't help that he's insulting and demeaning to those who disagree with him. My own peace of mind (and civility of comments) has slid downward such that I doubt I can interact with him civilly, and that's even without having the gender his bile targets. Wikipedia doesn't need behaviour like this, and he's expressed that it is his God-given duty (literally, as he's excused his words on religious grounds) to not keep it to himself. — Saxifrage ✎ 17:28, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

He continues his behaviour on his Talk page even while blocked for it.[111] — Saxifrage ✎ 15:46, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed that, too. He's earned himself a week's block. After this, however, I'd like another admin to review his actions. I dislike being the only admin involved in this kind of dispute, particularly when I was one of those attacked. -- Merope 15:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

As another admin I endorse the current blocks. If you want I'll make any further blocks as an uninvolved admin. JoshuaZ 16:02, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

And yet more.[112] (Note the linked diff is over three contiguous diffs, to capture his whole edit including corrections.) The message doesn't appear to be getting through his convictions. — Saxifrage ✎ 15:29, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

After the latest one, which Merope has had to reply to, I have to say this is amazing. If RfCs were votes and worked like requests for adminship I'm sure he's be blocked in no time (referring to the RfA "gauntlet" that is, per the village pump). I rather suspect he may invite that RfC anyway, but I have to say that I doubt it'll change anything. Worth a try though/ Crimsone 23:08, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Filing an RfC seems like too much work for this kind of situation: most people would agree that he's in the wrong, but I don't want to drag it out. *sigh* I think I'll just disengage and encourage others to do so as well. Any attacks after his block expires will just earn another block. -- Merope 20:47, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Merope and Crimsone, you have already been a lot more patient with this user than I would have been, and the work of filing an RFC is really unnecessary in such a clear case. If they return to the misogynistic insults and contempt on return from this block, I suggest a month's block. Promptly. If that doesn't give them time enough to reflect, it'll be time to think of a community ban. Meanwhile, I agree about disengaging. Bishonen | talk 13:31, 29 October 2006 (UTC).

Absolutely Bishonen and Merope. (thanks by the way :)). Disengaging does seem the best course for now, pending any further notable event which can of course simply be recorded here for somebody else to see and deal with as appropriate, which if nothing else should further indicate consensus to this editor. --Crimsone 15:32, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quick Question on Wikistalking

Where should I go to report a wikistalker? Senator Cooter has been reverting my edits on 6-7 pages and calling my edits vandalism after I removed one of his edits. I have warned him numerous times about civility, wikistalking and have asked him to leave me alone. I would spell it out in greater detail here, but I want to make sure I am in the right place. Thanks Jasper23 02:20, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Providing diffs wouldn't hurt. That is, the URL to the diff links in the user's contribution, or what you get when you compare two revisions in the history. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 02:22, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks CC. I will also return with sock puppet accounts that user has just created. I have never learned to do diff links. Which edits should I include. There could be like 20 potential diffs. Jasper23 02:48, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Go to the History, or a user's contribs list. Find the edit you want to link to. Right-click on the word "last" in it, and select "Copy Link Location" or similar (however your browser expresses it). Your clipboard now contains the diff link you want. Present it enclosed in single square brackets--not double like a wikilink--to make a footnote in your text. Hope this helps, please ask if it doesn't. The reason people are always asking for diffs is that they're the only permanent links; other types of links will deteriorate and die as the page they're on is edited. Just include a few good examples (not 20 of them). Bishonen | talk 03:14, 28 October 2006 (UTC).

Help:Diff explains it quite nicely :) Cheers, Daniel.Bryant 01:28, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User evading ban to add AfD notices on articles which are not nominated for deletion

User:Pokeant was banned for 48 hours for disrupting Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Here Comes the Squirtle Squad. He was slipping in articles not apart of the AfD into the AfD opening, removing other people's comments, and finally editing words in other people's comments.

Contributions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Pokeant Block log: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&page=User:Pokeant

Once he was blocked, he returned as User:Pokants, and continued to add AfDs onto articles not nominated for AfDs.

Pokant's contributions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Pokants

The two are obviously the same. this conversation on my talk page proves it.

Pokant has also voted again at the AfD (shown on this diff). He's already voted before as Pokeant.

--`/aksha 03:09, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I've blocked the second account as a sockpuppet, and explained to him on his talk page why. Tagged as {{spa}} in the single AfD discussion he had time to add to. For the time being, I'll assume his AfD noms are incomplete due to a relative newness with the templates/process involved? I think this particular guy is more misguided than malicious. Luna Santin 03:21, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the AfD noms, this is basically what happened:

I nominated all the pokemon episodes for a group AfD (it actually turned out the Pokemon Collaboration Project was already trying to deal with them, but i didn't know). This was about four days ago. Since not all the pokemon episode articles are properly categorized, it turned out i had missed quite a few. This guy turned up today and slipped about 10 more articles in my group AfD nomination (slipping in as in he put them into the middle of my opening, making it seem like i'd nominated them in the first place.) I removed them, explaining that he shouldn't have slipped them in - because it's misleading. It made it look like as if i'd also nominated those 10 articles from the beginning, which wasn't the case at all.

But when he'd added those articles into the group AfD, he'd tagged them all as AfD. So i went and removed the AfD tags, since those articles aren't nominated at all. I decided not to add them into the group AfD, because it's already been about 4 days, so it's a bit unfair on the people who commented when the AfD started. And he...just kept on adding AfD tags back in on the basis that those articles should also be nominated together with my group nomination (note that he didn't actually try to create a new AfD nomination for them.)

And he's been stiring up some revert wars with people over at the pokemon project who're performing a bunch of merges (which i'd assume is what their project agreed to.) --`/aksha 04:20, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

This user (Pokeant) is one of a string of abusive sockpuppets established at this RFCU case.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 20:46, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Madkunt

Seems like a fairly offensive name, so as per WP:U, I am posting it here for Admin consideration. Cheers! -- moe.RON ^{Let's talk | done} 04:34, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I've posted a note on their talk page and done a username block/wangi 04:44, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Anarcho-capitalism

I recently stumbled upon the Wikipedia:Tendentious editing essay and realized how well User:Anarcho-capitalism fits the description of a "problem editor". This characteristic of a problem editor particularly struck me: "You challenge the reversion of your edits, demanding that others justify it. Wikipedia policy is quite clear here: the responsibility for justifying inclusion of any content rests firmly with the editor seeking to include it." Anarcho-capitalism is similarly demanding that I demonstrate, "one by one", why his edits are not worthy of inclusion before deleting them; until then, he believes, his contributions have a right to remain, even though he hasn't justified or discussed them at all. Besides this illogic of "true until proven false", Anarcho-capitalism has the audacity to say that "There is no rule on Wikipedia that says I have to discuss my edits before I make them." This is right after I made him aware of WP:CONSENSUS. He also seems to think that he has the prerogative to determine the controversiality of his own edits: "I do not believe they are controversial edits at all, so I see no need to do so."

Overall, this editor's rejection of WP:CONSENSUS and explicit rejection of formal mediation indicate that it is impossible to bring about a consensual resolution with him—plus, I and others have been trying to discuss things with him for months on the anarchism and anarcho-capitalism pages, yet he has made no, or only very minor, concessions. Likewise, an RfC would be futile, because he adamantly believes, despite all objections, that "[He hasn't] violated any Wikipedia rules," and that he does not have to discuss edits that he believes are uncontroversial. I therefore suggest that he be blocked as per Wikipedia:Disruptive editing, because he is tendentious (he is a single-issue editor, as you can deduce from his user page, with avowed partisan intentions; and he only cites sources that endorse the anarcho-capitalist POV, leaving others to rectify the massive imbalance), he abuses WP:V (he says, "I haven't violated any policies. I cite my additions." — that something is sourced does not automatically make it worthy of inclusion, however, nor does it preclude violation of WP:NPOV), and he preemptively rejects community input by explicitly refusing to discuss his edits in advance. At the very least, I would like him to be admonished by an administrator so that he will not continue to believe that he is operating within the parameters of Wikipedia policies and guidelines.

(To view the above quotations in their context, and my responses to them, see Talk:Anarcho-capitalism#Unilateral.2C controversial edits by User:Anarcho-capitalism)

-- WGee 06:35, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

There is no rule on Wikipedia that says one has to get permission from you, or anyone else, before they add cited information to an an article or remove uncited information, which is what I've done. You should focus your energies on questioning things that are not cited instead of being disruptive. And, don't tell stories that I refuse to discuss my edits. I asked you to tell me what specific problems you had with them. You wouldn't answer until you were pressed. Then, when you did answer, I told you my justifications on the discussion page.Anarcho-capitalism 08:08, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Please use dispute resolution. Whether this is RFC, where his actions will be examined by the community, and concensus may be reached regarding this and what to do about it, Arbitration, where a select group of users will implement binding solutions, or mediation (Committee or "Cabal") to try and reach a comprimise, this page is not the Wikipedia complaints department. Daniel.Bryant 11:03, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Gotta agree with WGee, this isn't a simple dispute, this is an editor who has consistently pushed his point of view and has no respect for Wikipedia or its policies. He started in breach of policy: "I received a message on an email list requesting people knowledge about anarcho-capitalism to work on this page." [113]. He's recently shown his attitude towards WP and its policies: "'Original research' or not, the theory is wrong." [114] and the classic "I dont know why you keep referencing Wikipedia. Wikipedia is garbage." [115]. His User page is a classic example of POV and unwillingness to see any other point of view - "ANARCHO-CAPITALISM EXPLAINED FOR STUPID ANARCHISTS (a work in progress)". Donnacha 12:12, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Wow, that is deep... I don't think I have ever directed any user to seek arbitration before - rather, I prefer RFC/Mediation, as the AC get angry if people send too much stuff their way :) - but I can't see this being solved on any level of DR to a satisfactory level other than arbitration. POV disputes are especially yucky, and this just makes it even harder to attempt anything other than arbitration. *shakes head in awe of this dispute and its' all-encompassing radius of gloom* Daniel.Bryant 12:26, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, I doubt User:Anarcho-capitalism is anymore biased than other users who work at the Anarchism article, or comment on the article's talk page. The links above from User:Donnachadelong are from a discussion on the Anarchism talk page, not from actual edits User:Anarcho-capitalism made to Wikipedia articles. In this case, [116], this user simply notes that the Labour Theory of Value is an out-of-date economic theory. That's not a bold statement at all. Intangible 15:57, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

'Sfunny how one of the people who agrees with him appears to slag the rest of us off. Virtually all left-wing editors have gone out of their way to allow a disputed reading of anarchism have a place in the article. However, POV-pushers like anarcho-capitalism and banned users like thewolfstar and Hogeye (and their many socks) insist on redefining the entire history of anarchism to make this disputed idea fit. Yes, we're biased, in that we have our own POV, but that's very different from pushing our POV onto the entire article. Donnacha 21:31, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Daniel, is there no course of punitive action that you are willing to carry out right now? — because his being blocked temporarily could allow a return to consensual editing. I understand that this is not the Wikipedia complaints department; I have actually followed Wikipedia's recommendations for "Dealing with disruptive crank editors." Since the editor has refused impartial dispute resolution in the form of mediation [117], which is step 4, I've carried out step 5 (seek administrator intervention) because he refuses to attempt to build a consensus. As I've attempted to demonstrate, he fits the definition of a disruptive editor quite well. It will probably be necessary to ultimately seek arbitration, but I do think that a temporary block is justified under policy; it would also cause an increase in productivity at the anarcho-capitalism and anarchism articles. -- WGee 17:09, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

IIRC the Arbitration Committee has the power to issue temporary injunctions. You could file a Request for Arbitration and include a plea that the user in question be temporarily prohibited from editing any disputed articles until the Arbitration is completed. —Psychonaut 17:22, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

WGee is just making a lot of noise. I haven't violated any policies, and in my opinion I have done some pretty good editing. I've added sources where there were none, took out some unsourced false information, and better explain some concepts. For some reason WGee thinks others need his permission before they make changes to an article.Anarcho-capitalism 01:25, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Having seen some of these issues surface at WP:FAR, this has been going on much too long; I'm glad all parties have at last read up on tenditious editing, and I wish you would both make an honest effort at mediation. The last time WGee approached WP:FAR about removing status of one of these articles, I encouraged him that dispute resolution would result in a better outcome for Wiki than seeking removal of featured article status; I haven't yet seen what looks like a sincere attempt to put forward a mediation case to resolve these issues, and two are tangoing. Sandy (Talk) 04:02, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

There appear to be several editors in this area that fit the classic definition of Single Issue. I'd agree with what WGee is alleging about AC but point out that there may be more to this than just one side. However AC's user page!!!! My goodness, what a screed... I've been involved in trying to help in this area in the past and it's a big mess. No surprise it tends to fester, really. ++Lar: t/c 04:14, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

WGee is claiming that I am required to discuss my edits before I make them, but that's not true. It's perfectly permissible for me to discuss them after I make them. I'm trying to discuss the edits on the discussion page but he refuses to participate, because he's upset that I didn't discuss FIRST. It's ridiculous. He's the one that's refusing to discuss. I've been trying to get him to discuss what problems he has with my edits but he won't do it. All he wants to do is threaten to report me to administrators, threaten an arbitration case, etc. He's trying to coerce me, with threats, into not reverting back when he deletes my edits. He simply refuses to allow others (or at least me) to make edits if they dont talk about them on the discussion page first. This is all obvious if you read the "Unilateral, controversial edits by User:Anarcho-capitalism" section at bottom part of the discussion page.Anarcho-capitalism 04:26, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

So open a mediation case. Sandy (Talk) 04:32, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Have you read my initial post? I've already proposed mediation, but Anarcho-capitalism has explicitly rejected it, twice. [118] [119] I appreciate your trying to help, but please ensure that you are up-to-date. -- WGee 06:01, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I have actually followed Wikipedia's recommendations for "dealing with disruptive crank editors" (including months of discussion), so please be careful when alleging that I've not made sincere attempts to resolve this dispute. It's important to note that this isn't a one-on-one dispute, either, as User:Donnachadelong (who has commented above) can attest: Anarcho-capitalism has exhausted the patience of many editors at the anarchism article, as well. -- WGee 06:16, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

To give you an idea of the nature of the disruptive behaviour, here is an example of the outrageous behaviour and personal attacks that I must face at the anarcho-capitalism article:

Honestly, WGee, I don't know what your problem is. The consensus seems to be that Anarcho-capitalism's edits are just fine. You are the one who is going against consensus. He has tried repeatedly to discuss what your problem is with his edits and you refuse to state one damned thing. You are acting irrationally - he's right. You are only here to cause trouble with this article because you don't agree with it's phiosophy. That much is clear. I suggest that you might benefit from psychiatric help, WGee. Jesus, you're only 16 years old and you're acting like a mean cynical old man. Get some help before it's too late. Doctors without suspenders 05:11, 29 October 2006 (UTC) [120]

Now you can understand why I'm so keen to seek binding administrative intervention to deal with this problem. Users such as Doctors without suspenders (whom I and others suspect is a sockpuppet of User:Lingeron, User:Thewolfstar, etc.) gain encouragement from fellow anarcho-capitalists like User:Anarcho-capitalism, who treat Wikipedia like a battleground. Well-intentioned users are deterred from important articles because of such acrimony. All in all, this situation is a shameful mess, and it will not improve unless the disruptive editors are blocked or banned in a timely manner. -- WGee 06:32, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

To be fair, User:Anarcho-capitalism started out reasonably open and interested in properly developing the articles. However, he's clearly picked up bad habits from the stream of banned users and socks on these articles. Donnacha 13:03, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

And this is Anarcho-capitalism's inflammatory and offensive response to that slew of personal attacks: "Well, that explains a lot." [121] This trollish behaviour is getting out of control. -- WGee 17:25, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Arrrggghhh!!! 'Nuff said.

[edit] SLS Health AFD needs to close

The AFD debate for SLS Health has been open since October 19. Can someone close it please?

Done. Easy decision, for an AfD that fell through the cracks. Usually this happens because no-one who's already seen it wants to close it. Grandmasterka 07:08, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Good, good, but here's another one: the AfD debate for Seth Sabal, which started a day earlier at 18 Oct and swiftly generated heat and light, but which hasn't been touched since 20:20, 19 October 2006. -- Hoary 08:27, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

The backlog at WP:AFD/Old currently goes back to 17 Oct. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 15:00, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Yep. I do my bit, but I'm limited by this. Daniel.Bryant 01:26, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Improper language

Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha

The above article is highly offensive

"62.193.106.87 09:30, 28 October 2006 (UTC)"

I don't see what you're getting at. I don't see anything offensive there.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 09:39, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, not now. I just reverted it and warned the user for this. --Wasell 09:43, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

"It seems to me that you are acting in an uncivil manner" -- mmm, we should set up an "admin polite understatement of the month" award. -- Hoary 09:49, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Usually, these people are smart enough to vandalize, and then point out the flaws :P—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 10:27, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

The vandal, in this case, was 125.22.53.166 (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log). Who are you talking about? (Not me I hope! ;-) --Wasell 11:11, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 60.228.118.45

I'm hereby reporting the ip 60.228.118.45 for his unnecessary editing and vandalism, which can be found [122]. Most notably editing the Australian motto into something offensive.--SGGH 10:07, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

In future, please use admin intervention against vandalism for problems like this. Daniel.Bryant 01:21, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:KittenKlub refusing to sign vandal warnings

KittenKlub refuses to sign his posts when he gives vandal warnings. According to him, this is standard practice on the Dutch Wikipedia, and prevents vandals from retaliating. I see three problems with this: one, if he makes a mistake, the user will find it much more difficult to explain himself; two, it's discourteous, and arguably a failure of WP:AGF to assume that someone is going to vandalise your userpage if you give them your name; and three, user page vandalism isn't usually a big deal anyway. If a vandal is diverted to someone's userpage, that means he isn't vandalising the encyclopaedia.

After a brief exchange, which was then archived, KittenKlub refuses to sign based on the fact that it's a bad guideline and only a guideline anyway. For the reasons above, I disagree, but he is right that it's a guideline and currently it's just a matter of my opinion against his. If anyone feels the same way, please consider leaving him a message. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 14:15, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

"you should not make it too easy on them"...I'd definitely call that not assuming good faith. --InShaneee 17:13, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I also don't think not signing warnings is a very good idea, but unltimately he's correct: it's a guideline, and a guideline cannot be enforced. Let's face it, we've made ourselves a community where ignoring all rules is standard practise, and from that we have to take the bad with the good. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 19:42, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I think this might be a bit of a different case; while it may be a guideline in the general sense, I think in the case of warnings it's assuming bad faith (especially from Kitten's statements), and almost harassment (in the sense that they're not making it easy for people to contest/explain their actions). --InShaneee 20:31, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't want 'enforcement' as such, I'd just like someone to give him a third opinion. Guidelines may be only guidelines, but they tend to stem from policy - notability guidelines, for example, are extensions of WP:NOT, WP:V etc. In this case, both WP:AGF and WP:CIVIL are arguably being broken. There has to be a good reason to ignore guidelines apart from 'they're only guidelines'. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 23:19, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't see why vandal warnings need to be signed. —Centrx→talk • 23:20, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Centrx. I think it is good form to sign the vandal warning although I think it does open one to being vandalized and attacked. If the vandal wants to explain himself, he can do so on his own Talk Page. Besides, the identity of the warning's author is available in the edit history. So we're only talking about courtesy here not anything very substantive. Considering how many people do not leave warnings when reverting vandalism, we should be happy that KittenKlub is leaving a warning at all. I would advise that you leave him be and focus your energies elsewhere. --Richard 23:28, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I always sign mine, but I don't think it's that big a deal that he doesn't do it. Vandalism warnings are basically a community action anyway, so unless he's leaving them in an abusive manner (i.e. for people that aren't actually vandals), his identity isn't really relevant. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 02:13, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

The least I'd like to see is five tildes (timestamp), whcih would make it easier for future warnings. Not signing it makes the job longer going into the history to see how long ago the warning was, especially when it may have been issued five or six months prior, in which case the IP could've been re-assigned and a next-level warning would not make sense. – Chacor 02:30, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree. People leaving warnings later need to know when the warning was given. While it's possible using the history, there's no need to make it that difficult. --bainer (talk) 03:15, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I'd say it's a "big deal", but I'd largely agree with SB here. It seems especially odd to do this, while explicitly asking on one's own page "Please sign your comments using four tildes". The Golden Rule, and all that. That it's policy to ignore guidelines (as well as policy to ignore policy) is ultimately a problem with that policy (and the dictat that underpins it being policy), but in this case one struggles to see how the imposition of signing warning even satisfies the side-condition of same. Doubtless we'll shortly be seeing a Wikipedia:Just a guideline essay (or guideline?): it's a depressingly familiar refrain. Alai 02:39, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't see why this was posted to WP:ANI. If all you wanted was more opinions on the matter, why did you not raise this on WP:VPP or as an WP:RFC? This certainly isn't an administrator-only issue. —Psychonaut 02:53, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Not an admin, but before this gets moved to a page not on my watchlist, I think people should always sign warnings (although like others I don't think this is an issue that deserves punitive action). If nothing else, an unsigned warning carries less weight. If an editor is unwilling to put their name to the complaint they're making, then it encourages (IMO) the recipient to ignore the warning. Also, I think retaliation is a red herring. The thing is, editors who are not savvy enough to figure out how to use the history to discover who posted the warning are likely to have adverse reactions (as noted above), and those who are savvy enough can still harrass the poster of the warning. Anchoress 03:01, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

This is about a specific user, not policy in general, so WP:VPP is not the right place, and this isn't serious enough for RfC - that's blatantly obvious by the fact that I wouldn't have a second certifier. It may not be an admin-only issue in the strict sense of what privileges your account has, but it's an adminstrative issue in the sense that it relates to a 'behind the scenes' matter. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 03:41, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

There are two reasons why I sign my vandal warnings is to provide a timestamp for other vandalwhackers so they can provide the appropriate level warning and to make it easier to get feedback. You can easily deal with the userpage vandalism by 1) revert, block, ignore or 2) semi-protection. MER-C 11:07, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Socks ahoy

An AfD on an expat's version of WP:NFT seems to be attracting a group of anonymous IPs (despite being claiming to be expats in Japan, half of them trace back outside the country) and one fairly dormant named editor (User:Crossfire), with few if any edits, with the same verbose style and claims of personally witnessing this, and ALL (including User:Crossfire) with the identical unwillingness/inability to leave signatures. I'm NOT willing to swallow that as a coincidence. And yes, I left the list at Open Proxies Reporting. This is really getting on my nerves. --Calton | Talk 14:24, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Closed as delete, and it had little to do with the SPAs — had only one of them were to provide a few reliable sources, I likely would have closed as no concsensus. Please feel free to review my closing comments. Hope they makes sense. El_C 11:49, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Gavin06

This user has consintantly been uploading images, mostly relating to Elena Paparizou, which have no copyright tags. He (presuming the name reflects actual sex) has been warned multiple times on his talk but continues to do so. He has also been disruptive in addition of these images to articles. A good example would be this where he added the image Image:Helenapaparizounew1.jpg with no copyright status (I would presume fair use). I subsequently replaced it with properly fair use (with rationale) tagged Image:elenapaparizou.jpg (now PNG of same name) [123]. Then today, he uploaded an identical copy of the previous untagged image - again with no tag - to Image:Thegameoflove.jpg and replaced the properly tagged image in the article [124] (I have now speedied it). However, this is not a lone incident. There is an enourmas trail of "untagged images" left by OrphanBot and other users, all of which have been ignored (the ones that were tagged, were done by other users like this). I really think that a strong warning needs to be given (or a block from uploading, if that's possible). But without doubt, an admin should start watching his talk page (obviously no admin has noticed so far). Thanks - ^Рэд_хот^{(t • c • e)} 14:38, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I've given him a warning; if he continues, I think he should be blocked for 24 hours, or at least have his ability to upload images removed for a longer period (if that's possible). It's a pity that users who repeatedly fail to provide adequate source and copyright information when uploading images, despite being asked to do so many times, often go unnoticed. Extraordinary Machine 14:56, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah. I intended to report last month, but couldn't find the page to do it. Come to think of it, I can't remember how I found it today! Oh, I also strongly suspect the, now inactive, user, User:Gavinhoskins is him also (look at the contribs and the original versions of the images uploaded by the account, which also have not tags) - ^Рэд_хот^{(t • c • e)} 15:00, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Eastern University Page

The Page for Eastern University has been vandalized several times since yesterday. the IP address for one of them is on campus (I work there) and others are registered users including one that is the name on a non notable alumnus who added his name with a link to his Facebook page to the notable alumni section. I added a semi protection stub for the time being. --Ted-m 14:54, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I also wanted to add "Shame on the Eastern University vandal. What a jerk for adding a Facebook link. When do you think would be a good time to unprotect this page?Ted-m Ted-m 16:37, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Why did you create a second username to post that? --InShaneee 17:02, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cogito ergo sumo and right to vanish

Cogito ergo sumo (talk • contribs) after a lengthy revert war was blocked for a violation of 3rr and left in a huff. A few days later he resurfaced as Ex post factoid (talk • contribs) and continued his edit war. Subsequently a sock investigation was initiated. It was established that they both are E Pluribus Anthony (talk • contribs) and both accounts got blocked. After questioning by some if really a violation of WP:SOCK occured (see: User_talk:Kilo-Lima#Curious_blocks) the blocks were recinded as the accounts were used in sequence and not simultaniosly. Now the user wants to vanish the evidence of his revertwaring by excersising the "right to vanish" which is fine for his userpage, but not for the talkpage which includes a) evidence of his revertwaring including the denied unblock[125], also it includes evidence that he is User:142.150.134.58 see [126]

Therefore I suggest the history of the talkpage will stay visible - while I have nothing against blanking the page - in case a further incarnation of the user appears.

P.S. E Pluribus Anthony (talk • contribs) equally requested to have his user and talkpages removed thereby proving the connection.

See also User_talk:Tone#quote_from_meta for the discussion following the first deletion of the talkpage. Agathoclea 19:27, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I would undelete User talk:E Pluribus Anthony as well. He was a very active editor and usually deleting talk pages like his are frowned upon. semper fi — Moe 19:42, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I have reversed my recent deletion of this page. Another admin is of course free to review depending on how this thread goes. - BanyanTree 20:39, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Looking at Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/E_Pluribus_Anthony there are User talk:A the 0th and User talk:Lucky Mustard which equally "vanished" 17/18 May. Agathoclea 19:50, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ecm2006

User Ecm2006 (talk • contribs) apparently created EverTeam, which was db-speedied. Now the editor is speedying every competitor that can be found. I don't know if this is a concern or not. This is almost certainly related to the edits of 82.255.142.13 (talk • contribs), Cduudc (talk • contribs) and Ucddcu (talk • contribs). I think the editor is trying to make a point because they repeatedly fail to get their own article in. See the deletion log for Ever-Team and EverSuite. JonHarder 00:44, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User advertising for job openings on his page User:DJ_BatWave

This nominally underage user had his phone number along with a request for band members. I removed it, naming WP:NOT. I'm not an admin, just FYI. Anchoress 03:28, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Considering the nature of the information, and the fact it contains specific personal information, I would suggest an admin speedy this. Daniel.Bryant 03:30, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

You mean speedy the whole userpage? The user is a contentious but prolific editor who hasn't ever been blocked (although I'm surprised at that because he's been monstrously uncivil several times lol), so it's not a socialising-only account. Anchoress 03:34, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll reword my statement: delete, and restore without personal info (which is exactly what was done [127]). Apologies for the misunderstanding - it's just that we don't want that kind of info floating around, even in the histories of pages. Daniel.Bryant 03:37, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I've deleted it and restored it without the personal info. If other admins want to revert my action, they can feel free to do so, but it only seemed logical to me. Alphachimp 03:40, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Holy anointing oil

Cannabis is repeatedly added to Holy anointing oil. I am now taking it off my watchlist. WAS 4.250 03:46, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I just reverted to the last version by WAS 4.250 but there seem to be cannibis references even in that version, so I'm a little bit confused as to what a good version of the article is supposed to look like. In any event, the last 4 references to cannibis were added by the same IP and there are no vandalism warnings (I would issue a "blatantvandal" now except that based on the above, as I said I'm not sure what exactly is vandalism here). Newyorkbrad 03:51, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

All "cannabis" references are now deleted and the vandal's been final-warned. Newyorkbrad 03:53, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Uh, no, the reference is back again. I have added {{fact}} to the cannabis reference and slapped an {{unsourced}} on the whole thing. User:Zoe|(talk) 19:34, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] People of Praise

There seems to be a small edit war going on within the People of Praise article. About a week or two back, D1xrfgf3, a new user who claims to be a former member of the group, made an edit putting the group in a darker light then previously. Danbold, whom I know via real life to be a member of the group, quickly cleaned up the article to his standards. Justinw, whom I know nothing about, but has been here since May 2004, made a small edit. D1xrfgf3 then made a small edit, reinserting charged material implying the group is a cult. 76.17.232.181, an anonymous IP whose only edits are to the POP article, and whose location seems to be somewhere in Minnesota, a location where a large part of the group lives, then reverted the previous edit.

I'm not a member of the group, but I do attend their school, and know many of them personally. I'm not going to say anything as to whether it is a cult or not right now, as I don't want to bias anyone either way. However, if you do want questions answered from someone with firsthand real life knowledge of the group who is willing to give NPOV answers, I'll answer at my talk page.

I'm not nearly as active as I used to be around here, just have a ton going on in real life - on an indefinite Wikibreak, checking in daily or so. So I'm gonna have to hand this issue off to someone else, but I think it may need administrator intervention. Thanks a lot for taking care of this. -Zapptastic (talk) 05:12, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edit summaries are a contravene [sic] of US law...

...according to Prof02 (talk • contribs • count). I couldn't bear to let this remain on a secluded user talk subpage, so I copied it here. Basically, someone asked this guy to use edit summaries, and this was the response:

“

(1) Edit summaries. No court of law anywhere in the world, not even in the post-Orwellian world, would legitimize the doublespeak whereby the author of a work-in-progress could be considered to be his own ‘editor’ for the purpose of defining his rights vis-à-vis his own work. If however, as the author of the work-in-progress in question, I am asked to provide ‘edit summaries’, I am in reality being asked to provide you and others, not with any ‘editorial’ details that might help anybody with anything, but rather give you a privileged insight into my creative process, disclose my work methodologies, organization of material, priorities given to certain aspects of the subject, the direction in which I am going with the article, etc., etc. No one has any right whatever to this information, and insistence that I divulge it constitutes an invasion of my privacy as the author. While such an invasion may not violate Wikipedia’s internal guidelines and policies, it is against the law of my country (which is also the country where Wikipedia was founded). By becoming a guest on this website and by using your facilities I did not, voluntarily or involuntarily, implicitly or explicitly, surrender the rights vested in me by the law of the land. Their infringement is an offence. Whatever Wikipedia guidelines might say, they do not supersede the law of the land, whether they are pressed ‘politely’ or ‘impolitely’. --User talk:Prof02/Erich Heller#Ease of editing section break

”

This is just an example of what this user is ranting about. Maybe someone should Wikilawyerespond back - taking a look at his user talk page and that of the subpage, someone needs to explain that Wikipedia is not a US court of law and you have no right to edit Wikipedia etc. I didn't know where else to post this, and I guess that admins need to intervene in this case - most normal users will just get lawyered into the ground. He seems to think that Dispute Resolution means running a court case on his talk page, also. Cheers, Daniel.Bryant ^{[ T · C ]} 09:16, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

This user certainly has ... idiosyncrasies ... but you have cited to a post from a couple of months ago on an old subpage. I believe a scroll down his main talkpage indicates that several admins are already dealing with this matter. Newyorkbrad 09:40, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Now that's the most verbose way of saying "mind your own business" I've seen in quite some time. Rather touching, actually. —freak(talk) 09:45, Oct. 29, 2006 (UTC)

No, no, that is not at all what I was trying to say. Daniel, who is not an admin (though his day will arrive, and he performs a number of admin-type tasks), was posting here to point out a problem that admins should look at. My point was that admins were already engaged in the situation so that busy admins, seeing the post here and trying to prioritize, needn't give it urgent attention, instead of 10 people checking the userspace and finding the same thing I found.

This noticeboard has become a very unpleasant place to try to be helpful. Newyorkbrad 10:52, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

See below. —freak(talk) 19:40, Oct. 29, 2006 (UTC)

My apologies...I didn't see that there were admins who were trying to sort it out, other than the two who he wants desysopped. And don't worry NYBrad, I didn't interpret your comment hostile in the slightest - actually, quite civil compared to what you get other times from certain users :). Still, that makes for interesting reading (where, by "interesting", I mean "hilarious"). Cheers, Daniel.Bryant ^{[ T · C ]} 11:00, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I think freak was referring to Prof02's statement, not Newyorkbrad's statement :) --bainer (talk) 11:42, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

You are correct. —freak(talk) 19:40, Oct. 29, 2006 (UTC)

Ah ... I thought it followed ... Oh well, <Emily Litella>never mind.</Emily Litella> I comfort myself that DB was confused too. Newyorkbrad 03:44, 30 October 2006 (UTC).

And here I was thinking Anglius could never be topped :) Aecis ^{Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984.} 11:48, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Funny he should mention Orwell. Oh the irony. I strongly recommend he read "Politics and the English Language." Antandrus (talk) 20:03, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

And, anyway, the original writer was wrong in his basic premises; in fact, there were many occasions when I was both writer and editor, long before Wikipedia existed; it occurred every time I was the editor of a publication and also wrote some of the material that appeared in it. *Dan T.* 20:14, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The right to disappear (continued)

I feel it is my sworn duty to remind Wikipedians of this policy. Nothing personal, but if I ever want to pack it up on this website, I would appreciate it if you'd all delete my contributions. Thanks.KevinS0814 10:16, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I find it odd that this is your very first edit here, and that you would know about this page and that policy.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 10:20, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

My other name got blocked,(but my contributions didnt). I'm not gonna get into the long story on how that happened, but lets just say I wish I could make those edits disappear!KevinS0814 10:24, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

By the way, your contributions cannot be deleted on whim - they are released under the GFDL license, and hence must fufill Wikipedia's deletion policy if the pages they are on are to be deleted. Daniel.Bryant ^{[ T · C ]} 10:25, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

The right to vanish includes deletion of pages in your user space (your user page, user talk page and any subpages), but not deletion of your contributions. However you may be able to have your username changed if you don't want it to be associated with the contributions you have made. --bainer (talk) 10:33, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

That would be the perfect {{nutshell}} statement for that proposal. Kudos to you, Thebainer - nicely summed up. Daniel.Bryant ^{[ T · C ]} 10:36, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Also note that the right to vanish is not really a proposal, nor even a policy. The page explaining it was started in late 2004 as a spin-off of the foundation:privacy policy. --bainer (talk) 11:40, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's exactly what I've done. I'm really ashamed of my previous contributions and would've felt better jumping out the window, but instead I changed my username.KevinS0814 10:42, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

For everyone's sake, don't jump out any window - it's not good for your health (I fell off a balcony once - I imagine a window would be just as painful...) :) Daniel.Bryant ^{[ T · C ]} 11:03, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

The only exception to are users talkpages, which are not autopmatically under that idea. see Wikipedia:User_page#How_do_I_delete_my_user_and_user_talk_pages.3F A sysop will then delete it after checking that the page does not contain evidence of policy violations that may need to be kept. If there has been no disruptive behavior meriting the retention of that personal information, then the sysop can delete the page straight away in order to eliminate general public distribution of the history containing the information. If the deletion occurs immediately, others may request undeletion if they feel there was in fact a need to retain the page. In such a case, the page should be undeleted and listed on Miscellany for deletion for a period of five days following the deletion of the user page. If a user page were deleted because a contributor left, it may be restored by a sysop if the contributor returns, particularly if the history contains evidence of policy violations. Agathoclea 22:15, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Cloveious and violation of Wikipedia:Fair use criteria item #8

On Friday, I removed political party logos from 40th Canadian federal election because they were being used in a decorative manner when identifying the party by its name with a link to the party's article was sufficient [128]. Wikipedia:Fair use criteria item #8 forbids the use of logos in the manner in which they were being used on the article. Saturday, User:Cloveious reverted my removal with an edit summary of "Reverting, Party logos are an important identifier during a campaign" [129]. I reverted his re-insertion of the logos [130] and immediately left User:Cloveious a message on his talk page regarding the issue [131]. Later Saturday, [[User:Cloveious left me a message on my talk page [132] saying "I will revert what ever I see fit" and subsequently re-inserted the logos, yet again [133] with the edit summary "Reverting Durin's fear mongering campaign of non contribution".

Please note that the use of logos in the manner that User:Cloveious violates not just Wikipedia policy, but fair use law itself. If his treatment of this issue were legal, anyone could make a million t-shirts with any logo on it because it serves to identify whatever the logo represents. This isn't how fair use law works.

I am reverting User:Cloveious's actions again, and am seeking other admins to comment on his talk page and revert him if necessary. --Durin 13:21, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll issue a final warning. He does it again, he's blocked.--Doc 13:27, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Bring it on, you will only make me a martyr in the fight againts Durin's tirrany --Cloveious 01:00, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

• It is disappointing that despite being encouraged to do so [134], you have failed to engage in rational conversation regarding this issue, and have instead decided to willfully violate Wikipedia policy [135][136]. Given the willful violation and the presence of a final warning from another admin, I am temporarily blocking you. More discussion on this on your talk page in a minute. --Durin 04:36, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Impersonation

User:Anthony.cfc is, in my opinion, attempting to impersonate my Username (User:Anthony_cfc). Evidence for this is:

• User talk:Sj - if you look closely User:Anthony.cfc has linked to MY userpage to invite a response which clearly demonstrates impersonation.
• His userpage clearly makes up lies about me, as well as demonstrating a motive for impersonation (he seems to evy my userpage).

I have not bit the vandal, and I have remained civil in all my communication with User:Anthony.cfc, despite the fact I have seriously lost my patience.

In conclusion, this user has no intention of contributing to Wikipedia and has only created an account in order to brand me homosexual and a prik and similar mindless lies.

Please resolve this as you see fit. Cheers.

Anthonycfc (talk • email) 07:26, Saturday March 31, 2007 (UTC)

I've blocked the account indefintely and deleted their userpage which was little more than an attack (claiming to be from the same place and a petty insult) --pgk 14:35, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

As an aside can you fix your signature. Including {{currenttime}} etc. is pretty useless as it updates the timestamp each time the page is changed so give no indication of when you really made your post. --pgk 14:36, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ebionite pages may be bugged

I found evidence that the Talk:Ebionites and Talk:Ebionite Jewish Community pages may be bugged with some kind of Trojan Horse. In the Privacy log on my anti-virus software, I found the following: [137] , [138] , [139] , [140] , [141] , [142] , [143]. The last one is a redirect with source title=Talk:Ebionites&action=edit&section=5.

I believe that all of these originate from the same user, Nazirene, who is the owner of numerous websites promoting his own religious group. A stub created by this user to promote the group recently went through two AfDs resulting in deletion and page protection Ebionite Restoration Movement. Recently, this user has been complaining about censorhip on the Ebionites talk page Talk:Ebionites#Please Don't Fix and in a website linked to the talk page [144] that criticizes the editorial policies of Wikipedia.

I was tipped off to the problem by a warning message when I clicked on the talk pages and the edit history. If I'm wrong about all this, I apologize in advance, but it's better to be safe than sorry. Ovadyah 16:52, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

If it helps, I recovered these IPs from my connection log. I think these are all linked to this user: brotherofyeshua.com(66.94.237.68;66.94.237.82;66.94.237.85), thethreelies.com(68.142.212.90), ss.webring.com(69.90.135.88;69.90.135.89), hostingprod.com(66.94.237.82), visit.geocities.com(66.218.77.64), geo.yahoo.com(68.142.232.54). Ovadyah 17:07, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

The same funny-business is apparently going on with my user page User_talk:Ovadyah. I tried several other user pages, but I only see a warning on mine. Ovadyah 21:42, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia pages cannot contain web bugs or trojans. Whatever it is that's happening to you, it's nothing to do with the contents of those pages. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:44, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Even so, it's odd that only certain pages are affected. I'll take your word for it, but I'll keep monitoring and testing. Ovadyah 02:22, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

It is possible to put a link on page for the purposes of getting peoples IPs, but that is about all. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 16:46, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

This is what I suspected; that the purpose was to troll for the IPs of users working on the article. It should be noted that soon after this user appeared on Wikipedia to engage in a dispute over the article, a Downloader Trojan was placed on the web host of a rival group. It could just be a coincidence, but the timing coincided precisely with a talk page dispute between this user and the other group's leader. Ovadyah 14:00, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I think it is far more likely that these problems are not directly related to wikipeida. If this site had been compromised then many people would ave noticed by now, especially after having it pointed out. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:40, 31 October 2006 (UTC)