Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive60

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[edit] Heads up...

We've been moving a lot of material out of Category:Copy to Wikibooks... see Wikipedia:Transwiki_log/Articles_moved_from_here/en.wikibooks. It would be helpful if these were deleted or fixed so we can see what's left in the category.

Also, please don't do copy-paste transwikis now that we have import (there are some procedures involved with transwikis, and we'd rather it be done in house). If something urgently needs to be moved, it can be posted at b:WB:RFI. Thanks! --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 00:28, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Why were copy-paste transwikis ever being done? Doesn't that lose attributions, thus contravening the GFDL under which the material was contributed to Wikipedia in the first place? Carcharoth 01:00, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Believe it or not, the import tool wasn't enabled until this week. Previous to that, the system was to either add a link to the diff that was copied, or the history was copy-pasted onto the talk page as plain text. I think the issue was with the potential for different users using the same name on 2 projects, but hopefully that will be put to rest soon with SUL. --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 03:21, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Um, would it be alright to just remove {{Copy to Wikibooks}} from these? I'm trying to keep track of what's already been imported (there's a backlog). --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 16:39, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm retagging these now with {{Copied to Wikibooks}} and {{Copied to Wikibooks Cookbook}}. These add the category Category:Articles copied to Wikibooks in need of cleanup. --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 13:08, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requesting consensus to unblock Mustafa Akalp

Hi all. For those of you who don't know already, Mustafa Akalp (talk · contribs) was recently blocked for RfA vote spamming. The block was later extended to indefinite, as there was somewhat of a consensus at WP:AN/I. Although what he did was wrong, I think it was too harsh of a punishment for a first offense. Furthermore, I doubt he will do similar things in the future. Most importantly, I believe that Mustafa is a good editor. He has contributed positively to numerous articles, most notably Imbros and Republic of Gumuljina. Therefore, I am requesting that we get some sort of consensus on his unblocking. I strongly support that we give him another chance. —Khoikhoi 18:22, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Khoi, this guy tried to gun you down by the worst way possible. Don't shoot yourself in the foot, or at least give him some time off (at least a week, like) to think it over... -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 19:08, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

A quick glance appears to show that Mustafa Akalp was severely and nastily distruptive... because he didn't know that isn't how we do things. Which raises an interesting question about how far WP:AGF goes. If we AGF, then he should be unblocked. But if we work from his record, we must assume that he will break each one of Wikipedia's rules and guidelines, in ignorance, one at a time. We don't, for some reason, tend to look at whether a person's Wikipedia behaviour would be acceptable in Real Life. In this case, I don't think it would be. But this isn't Real Life, it's Wikipedia, and thus we should AGF.

And then watch his every edit, obviously. ➨ ЯEDVERS 19:24, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

The problem/reason for the block is that he would persistently refuse that what he did was wrong. He sincerely believes that what he did was acceptable. I had requested someone (maybe Baristarim) to explain to him why it was wrong in his own language, as his level of English probably dosn't help him understand. If Mustafa understands that what he did was wrong, and apologizes, then I (and I am sure the rest of users who consented in perma-blocking him) will agree unblocking him. •NikoSilver• 19:39, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Support that idea. If we can talk to him in a way he will understand then there's an AGF hope. If we can't, or the result isn't good for his RL thoughts, then he must remain gone. And I know that's WP:ABF, but, well... ➨ ЯEDVERS 19:49, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Nearly everyone who screws up around here gets at least one second chance, even if he doesn't acknowledge that what he did was wrong. I would not want to see this user get the hammer because he does not have the right friends. On the other hand, I don't believe we should be overly generous with second chances. Thatcher131 04:45, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Wait a second. He doesn't understand guidelines and he doesn't understand english. What's he doing on the English Wikipedia? I'd say we give him a week to learn the language, another to learn the rules, and then unblock him on probation. yandman 07:05, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

If you've ever tried learning a language, you probably know that it takes several years, not "a week". Whether that has any bearing on this fool's block duration... hmmm... tempting. —freak(talk) 12:07, Oct. 25, 2006 (UTC)

I suggested that myself first on WP:AN/I. Mustafa is IMO clearly not an (overly) radical Turkist. Heck, his first edit here was to move Chalki (Turkish island) to Chalki (Greek island) — (and he screwed badly, not realizing there are two Chalki islands, leaving double redirects all over the place). Yes, his votespamming was vitriolic; but the cure is simple—block him forever if he does that again. We don't block users forever for the first offense, and I think Khoikhoi's vote has more weight in this case. Duja 07:57, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Buy that man Duja a drink! Also, have someone explain to Mustafa why what he did was wrong in his own language! Heck, I hadn't realized it myself until recently, although what I had done was a lot more in-line (InShaneee may remember that). Please don't make me regret posting that WP:ANI incident in the first place! I never meant this guy should be permabanned. Keep in mind that you have made a Turkish user be defended by a Greek pov-pushing nationalist one! :-) •NikoSilver• 09:34, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

This is simply a bad idea. The way I see it there's one less fanatic in wikipedia. Miskin 09:48, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I believe we should be guided in this by those who have had more contact with him. He has strong opinions and can be aggressive in putting those opinions forward, but he is not a vandal or a fanatic, and some decent explanation of why edit wars are a bad idea might put him on the right road. He has acted like a bull in china shop but he could be a valuable editor. If Khoikhoi (as the offended party) is asking for his block to be lifted and somebody is willing to explain to him how things work, I can't see any reason to object - it's not as if we won't be watching him. Indef block him on the next offense. Yomangani^talk 10:25, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Seconded. I've had previous dealings with Mustafa and have found him generally good-willing and prepared to learn, but of course quite strongly hampered in his interactions on Wikipedia by his rather poor command of English. The task of "mentoring" him should include discussing ways in which he can find useful tasks for himself on enwiki where this is less of a handicap. Trying to enforce his idea of NPOV language on ideologically sensitive issues is not really one of them. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:04, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Having discussed issues with Mustafa quite many times as well (and though in conflict most of those times), i also have to say that i agree with those here asking for giving him a second chance... Future Perfect at Sunrise is right: Mustafa edits in good will and he is willing to listen and/or to understand and to collaborate on the ground of improving articles. Personally, i am sure that if he knew that he was doing something wrong, he would never had done it. Also, have in mind that he is quite a new user, so, probably he did not know what happened in Khoikhoi's previous RfA... (the similarities with this is what i think played the major role in Mustafa's permablock). Obviously, he is gonna have this on his record, so, he much be extra careful from now on... But i think he deserves this second chance. Regards Hectorian 00:17, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll unblock him; I guess that whoever had to say anything on the subject already said it. I'll warn him about the "probation". Duja 12:52, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

If he doesn't think he did anything wrong, he'll just do it again once unblocked. We CANNOT let this guy back if he's blatantly not going to care about policy. --InShaneee 13:26, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Is anybody who speaks Turkish and understands the spamming policy willing to mentor him? InShaneee's point is correct in terms of protecting him from being indef-blocked again! •NikoSilver• 14:33, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I have asked A.Garnet in his talk. •NikoSilver• 12:00, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

He can't. Does anybody know anyone who could do it? •NikoSilver• 09:55, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unblock

• Thanks for Users and Admin-users to support my unblock.

1-As I declared before,at the first moment of my action, I was not aware of the RFA rules. I stopped my messages immadiately, as soon as I red first warning message from Gwernol.I think, this is enough to represent my good faith.

2-My account blocked in 3 hours after first alert, to prevent the RFA any further spamming.I believe that it was not a good reason to block my account, since I stopped to send any further message.It would be more logical to wait/check if there would be any further attempt from my side. In this period no body contact with me, to explain the rules (to declare any evidence in 24 hours etc) or to ask if there is any support to my alleges etc.

3-After my account blocked,I sent some mails to some admins. These mails include only explanations of my messages to some users on RFA, not include any explanations on the evidences,hints etc. So, it is not suitable to use my mails as an evidence of accusation that I continue to blacken any body without any evidence.

4-After investigation the rules for RFA voting, I see that My attempt can be seen/accepted as spamming.(However, the rules are not so strict and there are some exceptions).

• I am declaring that, I withdraw my alleges for Khoikhoi with all consequences.(At this moment. I have some oppinions on this matter. I will observe any further movements and I will decide ;I may transfer my allege with evidences to the proper/legal place in wikipedia or not.I think this a natural user right.)

5-Any definite crime has a definite punishment. In my case, there was a crime:"spamming" and a punishment:"block". No body/user has a right to insult,despise me, as I saw in the some User's message here.I think, I have right to require an excuse from these users for those words.

Regards to all who contributed in my case. Mustafa Akalp^TC 08:28, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

You most certainly do not have the right to demand apologies from anyone, for any reason. --InShaneee 23:10, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Long Live Chiang Kai-shek

Opinion requested: should Long Live Chiang Kai-shek (talk · contribs) be blocked as an inappropriate user name? (The user has also been POV-pushing.) --Nlu (talk) 10:47, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Because of his username and the area that the user is editing (China related issues), he is likely to cause a lot of un-needed trouble and arguments with that username (and his POV pushing). Because of his low ammount of edits, I'd block the username, and ask him to create an account under another username (one not so inflammatory). Someone should also have a word with him about following WP:NPOV. Thε Halo ^Θ 11:58, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Seems a very sensible proposal; potentially inflamatory usernames should be avoided.--Aldux 21:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] CSD assistance required

I'm firefighting at Category:Candidates for speedy deletion at the moment. I can't get past 125 articles and I have been working for an hour! Can one or more admins assist, please? (aeropagitica) 20:56, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm there -- Samir धर्म 20:56, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for everyone's help! It's going down much faster now! (aeropagitica) 21:35, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Back to 104! *panting for breath* - Aksi_great (talk) 21:43, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Down to 69 now. Can anyone tell me why these numbers are changing so fast? - Aksi_great (talk) 21:46, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Don't know, possibly new page/ recent change patrollers? Back to 106 now! (aeropagitica) 21:49, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think so many pages are being created. Also there are many articles like Junjo which don't have a speedy tag but still appear in the cat. How does that happen? - Aksi_great (talk) 21:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Aha! I think I found the root of the problem. See this. Amazing vandalism. - Aksi_great (talk) 21:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I have blocked User:Fast779 for a week for this vandalism of template:notability. It came after getting multiple warnings. I would like it if another admin reviewed the case and extend/shorten the block if appropriate. It is my first day as an admin! - Aksi_great (talk) 22:00, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

If there is generally lots of genuine CSD tagging, then obviously lots of people have decided to tag articles (check when they were created to see if it is mainly newly-created ones being nominated). If there is lots of dodgy CSD tagging, then someone might be having fun seeing if they can get lots of articles speedy deleted. If a person, or group of person, is creating lots of new articles that are then tagged with CSD, then consider investigating further and cutting the "fire" off at its source. If someone has decided to go and tag lots of articles that have been hanging around for several days or weeks, that's not really a fire that needs fighting. It doesn't matter if it takes a few more days to clear the backlog. ie. Look at who is doing the tagging, and who is doing the creation, to see if there is a pattern that would explain a surge in CSD numbers. Equally, it could just be a backlog because someone who normally does CSD stuff is away. Carcharoth 21:58, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Update. And it seems that Aksi has found a reason! Always worth stopping to investigate when something doesn't seem quite right!! Carcharoth 21:58, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Good show Aksi! Agree with indef that User:Pgk added -- Samir धर्म 22:02, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Wow. That's definitely the sneakiest vandalism I've ever seen. Good catch, Aksi (and RockMFR, who did the reverting.) Picaroon9288 22:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

This sort of situation is why we have WP:HRT (though it may not be necessary for this particular template). --bainer (talk) 22:47, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Admins may be better of New page patrolling and deleting on sight, as this is the source of most pages that end up in the CSD CAT.--Andeh 01:04, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I'll start speedy deleting later today. Expect the backlog to be cleared, teehee. =) Nishkid64 03:42, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Backlog currently at ninety articles. (aeropagitica) 05:02, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, CAT:ORFU is backlogged several days. Alphachimp 05:12, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Now, in the morning (US), we're still bloated like a tick, there. I suspect that we're getting a high school computer class running amok. We should take a moment to see the IP's that created the CSD's and see if we get a pattern. We had a lot coming from a British school a while ago. I noticed the backlog being invincible yesterday, too. We're getting a load of garbage, in addition to sneaky vandalism. Geogre 09:57, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Autoblocks and Autoblock tool question

Have others had recent problems with the autoblock finding tool? I received a Wikipedia e-mail from an editor inquiring about an autoblock message that was received related to a vandalism only account that I blocked on 2006-10-13. The e-mail message was sent at 25 Oct 2006 02:23:28 GMT, indicating that the autoblock was blocking an entire campus. When I use the autoblock tool - either entering the blockee's name or mine as blocker, search a time span of "all", I get no autoblocks back. Checking the IP addresses contributions list, I find a number of edits since the block date, up to 23 Oct. Shouldn't I be able to find the autoblock? — ERcheck (talk) 03:21, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

You should. Something is wacky with the toolserver. pschemp | talk 05:35, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

OOHoooh ooh, i figured it out. The toolserver name has been changed and our link goes to the old one. try this http://hemlock.knams.wikimedia.org/~pgk/autoblock.php it worked for me for blocks older than the 22nd of october. pschemp | talk 05:47, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

That shoudn't make any difference, we only have one database so the frontend refers to the same database if run it from zedler or hemlock. What has happened though is tht through trying to reload the enwiki database dump on the toolserver we have had various database problems including some downtime. As such the script which maintains the data has been down. I've restarted it now. Just for future reference if you get a problem with the tool feel free to email me on drop me a not on my talk page. --pgk 06:23, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

As a side note, autoblocks expire after 24 hours so looking any further than that is usually pointless. --pgk 06:24, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes thanks for that. Both addresses work now that you restarted the script. I don't know why hemlock worked when de didn't but it did for a while, which was weird. pschemp | talk 06:29, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. The reset seemed to worked. I showed the autoblock on 24 October 2006 (11 days after the original block). I was able to unblock the autoblock. (I do note that on Wikipedia:Autoblock, it indicates that sometimes indefinite blocks result in autoblocks happening many moons into the future.) — ERcheck (talk) 11:49, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Phantom autoblock

Could someone help User:LegitimateAndEvenCompelling out? He was blocked pending a name change, and now the block cannot seem to be lifted after the name was changed. I've tried unblocking the auto-block id's but it keeps on coming back, and the autoblock tool has no record of him. Conversation is here: User talk:LegitimateAndEvenCompelling. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. -- Avi 05:34, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

The autoblock tool doesn't see to be working right now, so there may be a record, but you can't see it. If the block has truly been lifted, his old name may still be blocked. The last time this happened to me, I had to get a dev to fix it. pschemp | talk 05:37, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. How do I do that for him? -- Avi 05:43, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Try this first. The toolserver name has been changed and our link goes to the old one. try this http://hemlock.knams.wikimedia.org/~pgk/autoblock.php it worked for me for blocks older than the 22nd of october. pschemp | talk 05:47, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

There seemed to be a block on his old name, because it did not return an error when I tried to unblock it. So maybe that will work. Thanks! -- Avi 05:50, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

That was it! Problem solved. THANKS pschemp! -- Avi 05:54, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Happy to help. pschemp | talk 06:21, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] IP 82.114.95.5

82.114.95.5 (talk · contribs) removed large parts of the article on Prizren (diff.). He has previously done similar edits in Serbia (diff.) and Belgrade (diff.). - Evv 13:58, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Warn the user and report then to WP:AIV.--Andeh 15:39, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deleted Revisions without Deletions Logged?

Admins, check out [1]. What's going on here? I'm seeing deleted revisions without any entries in the log. Alphachimp 14:50, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

It was a long time ago, there's probably been some kind of software change since then. Mangojuice^talk 15:09, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] moved from WP:AIV

I'm trying to edit Cell membrane and it says I have a 24 hour block on 152.163.100.202 (talk · contribs), someone should change the caption on that drawing, should read "Illustration of a lipid bilayer" the image is clearly from a cell bio text, yet the caption reads like a high school text book. No way to contact blocking admin, talk page is protected. I realize content editing isn't as important as stopping vandals, but someone should fix the caption, even if it isn't me--152.163.100.134 17:10, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

You should be able to edit again. You are editing from an AOL proxy server that changes IP addresses every few minutes, in fact the message you posted is from a different server than the one that was blocked. To release the block we need more information about it; the information should be provided (such as the block number or the user and reason). Thatcher131 21:26, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fake Article Creation

Notjames116 (talk · contribs) created a fake article Acceleration point, just to see how fast it could be found out. I find this behavior unacceptable and a complete waste of time. Ratherhaveaheart 17:23, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More eyes needed, please

Could I ask that some experienced folk drop by Guerrilla News Network, which has the potential to turn into a problem fairly quickly? Some folks have added a section to the article that is (to me) quite marginally sourced, there was a slow-moving edit war over it, and now one of the top folks at GNN has dropped in to start working on the article, adding a bunch of material that I think needs some parsing. Frankly, the whole article needs work. I've expressed some concerns on the talk page after stumbling into it from someplace else, and there's been some response, but I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to approach the numerous issues involved (and lacking in personal patience just now) - so, some added viewpoints would be much appreciated. Tony Fox (arf!) 18:15, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Never mind, I've engaged. My fireproof long underwear came back from the laundry last night, I should be okay. Tony Fox (arf!) 15:42, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Imessurstuffup (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) and Imessuup (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

No contribs from either account yet (likely the same person, as well), but usernames suggest possible vandalism. Thoughts? RadioKirk (u|t|c) 20:04, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Potential personal attacks, offensive content& Userpage abuse

Although until now I have not been directly involved with the current incident the edit disruptions caused by User:Cerebral Warrior and the ofensive content he posts have lead me to report the afair User:Cerebral Warrior seems to be blatantly pushing his POV on his Wikipedia edits, and takes a hostile tone when dealing with other editors, that may disagree with his perspective; accusing them of “support terrorism or Islamofascism” and frequently posting anti-Islamic messages on talkpages.[2] His talkpage itself has user boxes on it soley for the purpouse of atacking anothers religon full of the modern jargon of “Islamofacisim” [3], and with quotes such as News magazines don't kill people, Muslims do posted on it. Unfortunately due to the relatively formal appearance of this userboxes it may appear to the casual observer that Wikipedia supports his position this makes some action al the more important, any form of administrative intervention would be welcomed.Freepsbane 21:09, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, the user in question has repeatedly tried to insert his rather biased POV into articles, adding "rogue state and a member of the axis of evil" to the article on North Korea several times, and stating on his talk page that all Muslims (With the possible exception of a lone peacenik) are out to kill innocent people. I've defended his userpage up to now mainly because there are better ways to deal with it than the mindless edit wars that were going on it; this is the better way. Let's deal with this now. I'd propose an RfArb if I didn't think it was a waste of the ArbCom's time. --Golbez 21:49, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Despicable, I have blocked him for 48 hours and deleted his user page.--Konst.able^Talk 00:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I have lifted the block now, as I think this would be better discussed rather than just blocking him which would just stall the discussion that he is in regarding this with another user. The most offensive statements that I saw were on other (non-Muslim) user talk pages and not on article talk pages. I think an RfC could be a good idea.--Konst.able^Talk 06:08, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'm making a final formal request to Cerebral, on his talk page, asking him to accept the current version of his userpage: [4] and generally improve his behaviour. yandman 07:07, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

I don't know much about the systems in place at wikipedia, so I'm not sure how to handle a small problem I noticed. I was looking for some basic info on mushroom and discovered a section had been replaced with an obscene line. I think I fixed the edit, but I noticed the person had made several recent changes in a similar style. I don't want to fix all of them, because I'm afraid I'll mess something up, but if someone wants to follow him around and fix things, go to the recent history for the "mushroom" article and it's the user at IP 65.96.215.5 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Raistlin212 (talk • contribs) 22:34, 25 October 2006

Thanks for wanting to help the encyclopedia out, and yes, you did "fix" the edit. See also help:reverting. I checked the the anon's other two edits, with one being more experimental-nonsenical and the other being obvious vandalism; both have been reverted already. If, once the vandal has been giving a full set of warning templates, they keep on vandalizing, you can report them to WP:AIV. Again, thanks. Picaroon9288 00:24, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] R&D 100

I was wondering if another admin could undelete R&D 100, which was prodded. I could go through the formal undeletion process, but I think that it would be a waste since the R&D 100 is very notable. Also, other articles deleted through prod have simply been undeleted upon objection. Major corporations, NASA and the U.S. DOE national laboratories often tout how many R&D 100s they get, and "R&D 100" gets 245,000 Google results (if you are wondering how many are unique, remember that the "unique results test" breaks down for large results and you'll only get about 400 to 800 unique results, even for words found in millions of pages, like "rock" or "computer"). The award has been around for 44 years and is one of the top awards, if not the top, for applied science breakthroughs. I wonder if the prod log is under-watched lately (I just checked and it's a category now). -- Kjkolb 04:26, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Contested PROD, so speedy undeleted. Titoxd^(?!?) 04:31, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Titoxd. -- Kjkolb 08:07, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AfD backlog?

I admit I haven't looked to see if there's a serious logjam right now, but I have an AfD discussion that is over 5 days old: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/AutoCAD Layers. Did this one just slip through the cracks or is it one of many unclosed after 5 days? Thanks. ju66l3r 04:47, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Samir, for taking care of this AfD. ju66l3r 04:56, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

No probs, I listed it for transwiki on Wikibooks also -- Samir धर्म 05:04, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

The AFD on Notable YouTube memes is approximately nine days old. I think this woudl close at "no consensus"? Hbdragon88 05:23, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

WP:AFD/Old is currently at a six-day backlog (i.e. don't be surprised if you see an open AfD that's any less than 11 days old). I would call that serious, though less serious than I've seen it recently. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 09:49, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] request for deletion possible?

I have received a request for deletion of personal information that seems to have been leaked User_talk:Gryffindor#Hi.21, is there anything possible that can be done? Gryffindor 18:33, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the info from the history accessible to ordinary mortals. Administrators will still be able to see it: to obscure it from administrators you would need a developer's help, or a steward's (see Wikipedia:Oversight. - Nunh-huh 18:43, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] recreation of deleted article

Various socks keep recreating this article (I think this is the 4th or 5th version at this time. Is it possible to em.. salt the earth? (is that the right phrase?) --Charlesknight 21:33, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

(aeropagitica) salted it. --Coredesat 21:52, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Vcaaweb

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

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

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

[edit] User:ZEC117 using a backslashing proxy.

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

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

[edit] Increasing impostor accounts on sister projects

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

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

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

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

[edit] User:Horde Zla

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

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

[edit] Annonamous user 216.195.203.194

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

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

[edit] deletion of joe leste article

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

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

[edit] Could Someone Help Me Out with an Undeletion?

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

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

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

[edit] An unlicensed illustration and edit warring

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

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

Anyway, here's a diff for the guy at A.D.A.M.'s comments about the copyright status of the eurocentric illustration.[5] Someone, please delete this image permanently. It's a copyright violation. deeceevoice 21:44, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

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

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

[edit] Plagiarism Detector Bot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Useful concept

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] IP vandal on Homer, Odyssey, etc.

4.21.182.18 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) received a final warning, continues to vandalize (e.g. [6]), was reported on WP:AIV, not blocked. IP belongs to a school and is shared by many users. --Akhilleus (talk) 17:25, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

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

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

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

[edit] Another serial plagiarizer

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] A small issue at Wikipedia:Editor review

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

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

[edit] Clear Water Academy

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

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

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

[edit] Race-baiting

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

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

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

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

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

As I said, I think the guy's intentionally trying to provoke, but so far he hasn't succeeded. This is the text he's stated he intends to insert into the article[7] and my response.[8]

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

[edit] A somewhat related matter

There is, however, a matter to be brought to your (meant collectively) attention, and that is the edit-warring of a "new" user, whom I believe to be a sockpuppet, of either User: CoYep or, more likely, of User:Justforasecond, the latter having, I understand, announced his departure from Wikipedia a while back. User:J jackson (also a "new" member and, IMO, even more suspect as a sockpuppet than User:Rbaish), while committing no wiki violation in so doing, has visited the talk page to egg on Rbaish in this matter[9] and repeatedly has block-reverted the article on Black supremacy to a highly and clearly purposely distorted, POV version.[10][11][12][13] The deliberate distortions of fact have been detailed on the article talk page, and while Jackson has found the time to encourage User:Rbaish's unfortunate proposed additions, he has refused to respond to the critique of his preferred version or explain his block reverts.[14] Yet, he continues to revert the text. Jackson has done precisely the same thing on Prognathism, reverting the article to an earlier, highly eurocentric -- and, IMO, racist -- treatment of the subject matter[15] and refused to discuss his repeated, serial block reverts on the talk page in response to an earlier discussion about the eurocentric slant of the article[16], or to my later detailed explanation of the changes I've made[17]. The same changes made by Jackson to Prognathism have been edit-warred repeatedly by an anonymous editor utilizing the same IP address.[18][19][20][21][22] deeceevoice 04:01, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

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

[edit] possible sockpuppet?

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

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

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

[edit] Self-proclaimed Sockpuppet

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

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

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

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

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Giano

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

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

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

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

[edit] Page protection for LTTE

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

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

[edit] User:Intello

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

[edit] Review requested

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

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

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

[edit] User:Benitrimi

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

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

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

Open letter

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

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

I understand your feeling because you are grown in the communism system where everything was leaded by the dictator and you were their kids doing the same they did with people from Kosovo. Even now through the internet you wana talk about us believing in your fathers lies that Kosovo is yours. 7 is the century that we accepted you in that region to work, clean for us and 7 [2007] is gona be the number that you gona say Goodbye for ever to Kosovo. Listen people Wikipedia is free and you can create any network to put adds and protected your fake ideas but please put ones your finger in your head and ask your self how can this be yours when there was never more than 10% shkije - serbs in there And what right do you have to talk about it when you may have never been there and when the whole world knows that Kosova/o is not Slavic place . Tell your fathers that All the churches and abbeys where owned by chthonic Albanians before 1200 and Vatican has the property papers for that. Accept the truth.

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

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

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

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

[edit] Request for copy of deleted article

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Spam site / Wikipedia impersonator

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

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

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

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

[edit] Stopping the nonsense at RD

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

[edit] Really Weird Vandalism of "Counter Vandalism" page

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

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

[edit] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

This page was just blanked, and for some reason I can't revert it. It tells me I'm adding a black listed link. Maybe takes an admin to revert it? AuburnPilot^talk 02:27, 30 October 2006 _(UTC)

It seems Blnguyen has taken care of it; I still don't know what the deal was with the black listed link. AuburnPilot^talk 02:33, 30 October 2006 _(UTC)

It's likely that someone added a link to the page, and the link was then added to the spam blacklist so that once it was removed (in this case by the blanking), it couldn't be readded. You could unblank the article by removing the link that was causing the problem in the process of reverting it (if the link's blacklisted, it's probably spam and adds nothing to the article, but I haven't checked). --ais523 09:02, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please speedy delete something I myself uploaded?

Hi, I'm not sure that this is the place to ask for this, if not please direct me to the proper place. I uploaded an image (that is Image:Athos Diamonitirion.jpg) and shortly after I realized that it surely is a copyright violation. So I request that the image I uploaded be speedy deleted by an administrator. I have tagged the image with Template:PUInonfree, but I'm not sure it is the right tag. Mea culpa.... --Michalis Famelis (talk) 08:54, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

You can request speedy deletion of a page (including an image) you created by mistake and noone else has edited by placing a {{db-author}} tag on it. I've tagged it {{db-authora}}, so it should be deleted too. (WP:AN is a valid place to ask for deletions, but the db-tags are likely to be quicker and should be used where possible to reduce the load here.) --ais523 09:00, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a bunch! --Michalis Famelis (talk) 09:19, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

That's deleted now. Cheers. -GTBacchus^(talk) 09:33, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disputed fair use images

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

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

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

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

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

Actually, on a related note (although I appreciate that the following isn't something requiring admin privilege to deal with), I see that there are still a number of links to the video on Google Video. I've already explained elsewhere ([23], [24]) that it appears to me that that video is likely to be violating others' copyright. Does anyone have any thoughts on the matter if I go ahead and delete those hyperlinks? (By which I mean, preserve the link text, but stop it pointing to anything.) Thanks. Arbitrary username 08:50, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

No response. Okay, I'll make the edits. Arbitrary username 13:23, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Saber's Beads

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Fuck the movie

I am posting here to receive some feedback on the issue below which occured on the article List of films that most frequently use the word fuck and the related article Fuck (film).

Since some time, an anonymous editor keeps changing the number of reported uses of the word fuck (629 according to indieWire [25]) to 800 ([26][27][28][29][30]). The user claimed first to have a copy of the film ([31][32]) and later on my talk page to be the director of the movie ([33][34]). He also posted a statement in support of this on the blog of the director ([35]), which is linked from the official site of the movie ([36]). For now, I added the blog as a source. Comments are welcome on how to proceed. The editor has suggested I email or call him, but even that will not solve the problem of verifiability. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 09:53, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Addition: at this point, the editor supplied another blog source for the number 800 [37]. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 15:46, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment: after further contact with the user in question (who now has an account), I consider this dealt with for now. Comments are still welcome ofcourse. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 16:27, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment: I'd sugust includeing both numbers and have a note about the issue in the article. (A claims X but B claims Y) ---J.S (t|c) 22:29, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

That's a very good idea, and I did something like that now. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 23:37, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Awareness Center, Inc. (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Two editors alternate between an attack page and a sympathetic article. The talk page is empty except for a comment from me. --TruthbringerToronto (Talk | contribs) 17:56, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] admin Betacommand has started a personal crusade

hello, it looks like admin User:Betacommand has started a personal crusade against me; he (or she) started to vandalise the articles i edit by removing links from them - but the links in question are not some useless ones, they point to unique resources that truly expand wikipedia articles (discography sites). also, nobody has ever complained about the links, and he (or she) has not removed other (less important) links on the articles - only the ones i added. --who-am-i 23:14, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Specific diffs and more background would be appreciated. If you're referring to your multiple additions of the website "not-in-our.name", see WP:EL, WP:SPAM, and WP:NOT. Thanky. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 23:18, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

yes that was what i was reffering to. it does not apply to any of the categories mentioned. its not spam. its just a server that hosts several of my sites that, like i said before, contain unique content that expands the articles - once an article was even deleted because it stole ("copied") content from one of my sites. and like i said before, the admin i complain about ONLY removed to my sites, NOT to other ones (of which some are unimportant indeed). --who-am-i 23:26, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Besides their titles, you did not read the links I provided, eh? -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 23:27, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

dif would likely be [38][39][40][41].Geni 23:31, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I've pointed out to User:Who-am-i that Point 1 of "Links to normally be avoided" and WP:EL in general is pretty clear on these links not having a divine right to be added to WP articles. Some of the edit summaries I've seen from W-a-i aren't flattering either. Recommend serious chilling out and W-a-i actually adding content (discographies etc.) to the relevant articles rather than just linking to it off-site. Deizio talk 23:33, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't matter, any links add by you User:Who-am-i need to be removed as they quite clearly breach WP:EL on the accessibility front (WP:EL Section 2 Subsection 10). You quite clearly state on your user page about the link to "not-in-our.name" that this site (does not work in IE, get Opera or any other modern browser). This link is therefore prohibited under the WP:EL guidelines and User:Betacommand along with any other user is 100% justified in removing this link from Wikipedia. There's no case at all against Beta. Heligoland 23:38, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

This isn't realy the right place for this kind of complaint anyway... I think WP:RFC might be better? ---J.S (t|c) 00:22, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Square (slang)

2nd opinion, please. Check out User:146.57.92.37's "contributions" to this article. I believe them to be vandalism, but I'd like a second opinion before I start with the official warnings. Joyous! | Talk 00:53, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

It appears that the user is changing the page for their own taste, and they are not discussing the changes with any other people. The edit summaries appear to be "threatening" and I see a possible 3RR here. Do whatever you want here. I don't think the user's contributions are actually helping the article. Nishkid64 01:50, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Sure looks like vandalism to me. See his first edits to Elvis Presley [42] and Square [43]. The only reason his more recent edits to Square look less questionable is that he's reverting directly to his vandalized version, which makes (most of) the diff look like a content dispute. —Cryptic 02:03, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

• Blocked yet? Everything looks like trolling. Every bit of his "contributions" is in that firm "we R 3733t d0de" standard. The "information" he wants to insert is bogus, as well, as "square" for "unhip person" pre-dates Elvis considerably. The "we cannot be stopped" is pretty much an admission that this is another evil clown. 3RR justifies 24 hr, but more at your discretion. Geogre 02:59, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I passed out a 48 hour block. 7 reverts in under 24 hours with taunting edit summaries. Editor was previously blocked for 31 hours on Oct. 28. Durova 03:39, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Edi bice making tons of empty articles

Edi bice seems to be going on an empty article spree - over the past hour or two he has made over a dozen articles with nothing more than a references section or a link, despite repeated warnings (mostly from User:ArmadilloFromHell). It's pretty obvious that he's not going to stop, so perhaps a block is in order? —Keakealani 04:01, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Indonesian Politics

Could someone look at Prabowo and the blanking and comments by User:210.210.145.9 as there is a need for an outsider to look at this - and i suspect the editors who have it on watch are in sleep zones at the moment SatuSuro 15:14, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lostpedia (second nomination)

This AFD was open for much more than 5 days. I'm sure one of you were keeping an eye on it, but I wanted to remind all of you of this. I'm no SysOp, but I think it's safe to say that the result is either keep, or no consenseus reached (it's still keep though =P). Iced Kola^{T - C} 01:05, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Closed. Naconkantari 04:37, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Another triumph for vanispamcruftisement. Guy 12:08, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Patchouli

Patchouli (talk · contribs) has been editing in good faith since March. He has been fairly active and done many good things, but recently, he has been creating many POV articles about the Middle East and editing Middle East-related articles in a very biased way. I've gotten two of his articles deleted through AfD, but there are some more things that he has done (some complaints are at User_talk:LittleDan#POV_pushing, but that's not everything). In my opinion, he should be banned, and his edits in the past few months should be systematically examined for bias, if that's possible. A number of users have complained about him (User:Patrick987, User:Fan-1967, User:Barnetj). But I'm not exactly sure what to do. I'm an administrator, but I don't know the banning procedure. Should this go to arbitration (or mediation, somehow)? LittleDan^talk 04:07, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User talk:Winona Gone Shopping

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who are you 64.183.52.10? Some rogue admin who doesn't want to log in, because he fears sweet Winona? 69.106.205.63 07:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Muhammad picture edit war

There is an ongoing editwar about some pictures on Muhammad, involving User:Ibrahimfaisal and User:Opiner. I don't know who started this but this has been going back and forth for days, breaking WP:3RR along the way, including today. I think, a mere link to the history is enough: [44]. Str1977 ^{(smile back)} 15:14, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

While I see the debate is not over, I do not think they have been disruptive enough to warrant full protection of the article. Additionally, there appear to be quite of few useful edits within the fracas. -- tariqabjotu 16:55, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External Links and YouTube

With the explosive growth of YouTube in the past year I’ve noticed an increasing trend. Many people are linking to YouTube as a source. In John Doolittle someone added a link to a debate that Doolittle was part of.

My initial reaction was that YouTube, due to it’s very nature, made a very suspect source. WP:EL has a few things to say about linking to “A page that violates the copyrights of others...“ (does reproducing an entire program in sixteen 10 min segments count as fair use?). But beyond that, YouTube is basically a free host with anonymous uploads and only rudimentary control over its content and no fact checking. I could easily see a situation where someone would upload modified videos for the express purpose of supporting bias material here.

We probably have 1000s of links to YouTube at this point… perhaps it’s time to blacklist it? I think it would be a very rare situation where YouTube would be acceptable… Can we whitelist for a particular article? (“YouTube” aught to have a link, etc). ---J.S (t|c) 22:26, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

If we blacklist YouTube, then you wouldn't be able to link it anywhere; I don't think it's possible to have it whitelisted for one article. But I do agree, too many users are using YouTube as a source and with it's growing trend, more and more people are going to think all YouTube videos are notable and should be included in Wikipedia. Check here to see where YouTube is linked. semper fi — Moe 22:49, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

IMO YouTube does have some valid use, such as linking up to game trailers. External links only though. If YouTube is notable, newspaper articles should have already covered it. But I do agree that it should be probably be blacklisted like how ytmnd.com was blacklisted for similar reasons. Hbdragon88 22:54, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Over 11000 articles currently include a link to YouTube. Also see [45]. There'd be no way this can be blacklisted effectively. Naconkantari 22:58, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

If we can't blacklist it, could I suggest that some editors go through this mass list and see which ones are being used correctly and remove the rest? And does anyone else think Template:YouTube is rather unnessecary? semper fi — Moe 23:04, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

About 600 pages use that template. Hmmm that list shows something like 1500... where did 11,000 come from? ---J.S (t|c) 01:26, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

This is a disaster waiting to happen. A huge amount ot material in YouTube are copyvios, and we do not lik to copyvios. In addition, most video clips there do not pass the threshold for reliability. It takes very little effort to modify a video clip, change words, spoof it, etc. Only very little useful content (for WP, I mean) is uploaded by news organizations as NBC, as well as some studios that have arrangements with YouTube. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 23:34, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

We need to get into action immediately and revise these links. But it is necessary that a special mention is made at WP:V. I will place a comment on the Village pump. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 23:36, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Things like this are what worries me - they're just a link to search YouTube for stuff, not even a link to a specific possibly useful resource. It's taking the link-directory concept, which we try to stay away from, to an extreme... Shimgray | talk | 23:42, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

There shouldn't be an issue with linking to non-copyvios, and using links to debates as primary sources shouldn't be a major issue, I would think. Certainly this isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. --badlydrawnjeff talk 00:07, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

You don't see the potential for abuse? Given 2 hours I could have Bob Dole supporting my candidacy for emperor. Yeah, that would be obviously fake, but think of the more subtle abuses. ---J.S (t|c) 00:20, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I can see the "potential" of abuse using any external link or source or reference. I think there's more room for abuse regarding print sources than YouTube, quite honestly. At least we can easily monitor a YouTube link for a) accuracy b) relevance c) and copyright. "Potential for abuse: isn't a good enough reason to kill with fire. --badlydrawnjeff talk 00:24, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'm sufficiantly convinced there are deffinatly some good uses for it, but theres still a problem with how it's being abused. Frankly, YouTube gets more hits daily then almost any print mag has subscriptions. We must look at YouTube as generaly having the same reliabibilty as a personal website on geocities. The only cases it can be trusted is when the uploader is verifiably known. (for instance, a band who creates a profile, uploads some of there own music videos and links to it from there own website.) 00:34, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Even if someone like a band posting a YouTube of themselves meets WP:V, it doesn't meet WP:SPAM, as that is clearly self-adversting. IMHO, there is nothing on YouTube worth linking unless your looking for laughs or adversting yourself. semper fi — Moe 00:40, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

• Ok, can we put together a list of every article space (excludeing talk) link to YouTube? Excludeing user pages might make the number a more manageable amount. ---J.S (t|c) 00:20, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I think it's impossible (even for me :p) to make a list of that many articles that have all the links. With over thousands of thousands of articles linked, it's better to go by lists linked above that are automatically updated. semper fi — Moe 00:35, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

• Youtube is useful as a source in some contexts, e.g Catchphrase (game show) but not in others. Blacklisting it would be wrong. It's not a 'one-size-fits-all' problem. SunStar Net 00:23, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah... but theres a problem, so whats the solution? ---J.S (t|c) 00:34, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I noticed that a bunch of youtube links got dumped on a political article, John Pavich, my first impulse was to delete, but proximity to the election made me balk at it. Should I have deleted them? --Dual Freq 00:31, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Pending on what the YouTube was about, but personally I would have removed it. semper fi — Moe 00:35, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

If the vids were on geocities.com would you keep them? YouTube has the same reliability in essence. ---J.S (t|c) 00:40, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Probably not, but they were political debates and election related. Since the article is a stub, I thought it might not hurt to wait until after the election to delete it. --Dual Freq 00:48, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

• YouTube really should never be used as a source, for the same reason that Wikipedia should never be used as a source. It is a site that anyone can put content on with no fact checking prior to publication. It just doesn't meet the standards at WP:RS. As an external link, links to provably non-copyright violating material might be appropriate. As a general rule, I'd say that unless the video is an original work or recording from life by the YouTube poster, it should be assumed to be a violation. GRBerry 00:40, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
  • So if I post video of the President of the United States making a speech, you're telling me it can't be reliable. This is, frankly, absurd, and if that's even the spirit of WP:RS, that guideline is an even bigger mess than I already thought. --badlydrawnjeff talk 00:42, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
    • If it's your personal homepage, yes. How diffrent is YouTube from your personal homepage? ---J.S (t|c) 00:44, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
      • You can't paint YouTube with one solid brush. Some content on YouTube is worthless, yes, I agree. Others are copyvio and shouldn't ever be linked here. Some, however, is perfectly reasonable as source material as long as it's labeled as such. It'd be silly to think otherwise. --badlydrawnjeff talk 01:06, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

• • • • • A personal website can be an acceptable source in -some- cases. Your example is the exact kind of things I'm worried about. Lets depersonalise the issue a little bit please... if an upload of unknown origin uploaded a speech of GHWB to YouTube we would have no way to judge the source or origin of the clip. However, if the clip was uploaded as some kind of co-op project with NBC then then we would be able to evaluate the reliability of the source. That is the exact same reason why personal homepages and blogs are usually unacceptable. ---J.S (t|c) 01:21, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

A video on Youtube of the president making a speech is not a reliable source for what the president said. A quote in a Washington Post news story is a reliable source for what he said. A Youtube video may be suitable as an external link, or it may not, but it is almost never going to be a reliable source. Tom Harrison ^Talk 01:23, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

But sometimes it is... cf. Bus_Uncle

I just reviewed about two dozen YouTube links and almost all were bad. ---J.S (t|c) 03:07, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Youtube is not a reliable source, and so should never be used as a reference. Ever. As an external link, to add context, yes, where appropriate, correct, and where no other alternative is available. Proto::type 12:21, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I would say that linking to it is mostly going to be bogus ("see LordViperScorpions pwned video dude!"), but linking as a source can be good/bad. It's reliable in that you can say, "This is where this information came from," but because YouTube allows mash ups and does not check on the integrity of primary documents, it's not assured in any way that even the video of the speech of the congressman is whole. On the other hand, when people want to pull down their video documents quickly, YouTube and Smoking Gun are going to be the only places they can be found. I.e. it can be a legitimate source, but it can't be reliable by itself nor unreliable by itself. It's a wharehouse. Some things in there are spurious, some not. Geogre 12:41, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

The point is, YouTube is, simply, not a source. Template:YouTube should be deleted - there's no need for something like that at all, unless we want to make templates that let you search for a particular topic in lots of places, which, frankly, people can do themselves. The question of whether individual YouTube videos can be sources is a different matter. I think they should be viewed with skepticism, and if anyone makes the claim that a piece of video found on YouTube is not authentic, I don't see how that claim can be rebuffed easily. Even if the video is constant video of the president speaking, it could be spliced together to distort things. We should absolutely not be linking to YouTube copyright violations: people post lots and lots of, for instance, Family Guy clips, and we should never link to that to help people download copyrighted content for free. Mangojuice^talk 12:54, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I just looked through a whole bunch of pages that use the YouTube template, and every single link I saw was either a link to a copyrighted video someone had uploaded in its entirety (usually music videos), almost certainly without permission, or the video had already been removed... except for one, at Farncombe railway station, which I suppose is okay, but obviously not that important. Mangojuice^talk 13:08, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Most of us in this discussion are word-oriented - that's what encyclopedias have historically been, with a few pictures. The world is changing. With inexpensive camcorders and YouTube, it's going to be trivial to (say) do a 15-minute mini-documentary on a historical building and upload it, or even combine a bunch of videos from a bunch of sources of an event. Would such videos meet the current WP:RS criteria? Probably not. Would they be useful? In many cases, thousands of words wouldn't approach the usefulness of a video. (Another example: doing an archaeological dig - suppose someone filmed that, or parts of that; it would really give someone a much better idea of day-to-day work at a site.)

So the issue, it seems to me, is how to take advantage of YouTube and what will certainly be a world getting constantly richer in video resources, without encouraging a massive violation of copyright law or linking to videos which are less than useful (fraudulent, commericial links, etc.) With all due respect, I don't think that's something that a randomly selected group of editors (that's us, here on this page) can solve. I'm not arguing against a temporary solution (although I don't see much of an urgent problem), but it seems to me that this is something that should be given a bit of upper-level, more structured consideration. John Broughton | Talk 13:33, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't get this "the world is changing" argument; YouTube is Geocities with video. A YouTube video not a reliable source even when someone is posting clearly unaltered content that is itself from a reliable source any more than a Geocities site that copies and pastes from the Times is a reliable source. The vast, vast majority of the time YouTube is either going to be dubious self-published content (and thus not much of a reliable source) or a somewhat useful external link when it isn't copyvio. All of the examples about "documentaries" don't explain why those documentaries or diaries or other self-published content meet any sorts of reasonable standards for reliability; they're just some thing some guy posted on the internet, just in a different medium.

YouTube isn't a source. It's a medium. Whenever considering a YouTube video, you need to consider whoever posted it as the source; if the answer is "just some guy," then it's not a source.

That said, there are lots of good reasons not to blacklist YouTube; it can make for useful external links occasionally, and there is the rare exception of YouTube video that is itself published on YouTube by a reliable source. (To abuse my analogy from above, if the Times' online edition was on Geocities, it'd be a reliable source despite the general uselessness of other Geocities sites, for obvious reasons.) - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 14:00, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Cool, a toga party, as we get to be philosophers! (I'm not being sarcastic.) The world is changing, and yet we are at the vanguard people say, as we are one of the instruments of that change at Wikipedia -- the site that made YouTube seem viable, the site that argued that a hundred monkeys with a hundred typewriters could tell the truth straight off the bat. That said, Wikipedia is forever saying, "We are not definitive. We are not the last word. We do not promise to be correct." YouTube should be understood as a mix of us and Geocities, as AMB says. It is not a source, but rather a location. On it will be useful documents of ongoing news events, much teen moaning, more moaning, much mooning, some "humor," and all of the copyright violations a person could wish. Also, though, is a corporate structure that wishes to cooperate with other commercial ventures, and so some things will be hosted there that are "authentic" (e.g. NBC deciding to hop in bed with YouTube and snuggle up). Authentic is not definitive. In general, YouTube is a place, not a document. Geogre 16:14, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

A place where everyone is wearing masks and are selling cheep "rolex" watches. :) I think this is the second most interesting discussion I've started (first being the one on Arch Coal.) ---J.S (t|c) 18:39, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Youtube should be treated as slightly less reliable than a personal website, it should be treated as a newsgroup posting is treated because it is video / audio newsgroups about particular subjects. It sports no (proven) attributability, no fact checking is required by the uploaders, there is no legal responsibility for content. Think of it as a video / audio newsgroup. Terryeo 01:05, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moving forward...

So far two of us have checked a decent sample of YouTube links and each of us, independently, have found a huge percent that should be removed. So far theres 1500+ links to YouTube (with 600+ useing the template). If 90% are problem links then we have 1350 violations of WP:EL/WP:RS/WP:V staring us in the face. ---J.S (t|c) 18:43, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Doing a search returns greater than 10,000 external links. I just don't see Wikipedia having enough people to remove them all without the aid of a few bots and even then, bots really shouldn't be used for removing links that are possibly valid. Naconkantari 18:46, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Is there an easy way to do the same search but limited to articles? Chick Bowen 20:08, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Not sure. I'm trying to figure it out. ---J.S (t|c) 21:16, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

So how do we address this? I do have an idea. First of all, I think most of these links were added in a good faith, so theirs no need to go after the people who put them up.

Potential Solution

Create a bot to add a boilerplate to each article's talk page. (The ones that have YouTube link that is...) Here's a possibility:

==YouTube External Links==

(This message was posted by automated bot)

Some concern has been raised about the large number of inappropriate links to YouTube (and other similar sites) in the article space. This message is a request for editors of this article to take a look at the links in this article to make sure that they follow guidelines. If the video clip is a violation of someones copyrights, we shouldn't link to it. We would almost never want to use YouTube as a source. Videos on YouTube should be treated in the same care as other self-published sources like personal websites and blogs. ~~~~

Comments? ---J.S (t|c) 19:03, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I rather suspect this would result in about as many links being removed as {{cleanup-spam}} typically does. Certainly far fewer than would go than if whoever wrote the bot had spent the same ten minutes removing links by hand instead. —Cryptic 21:05, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I wish I knew a better way but I think it would do more then expect. ---J.S (t|c) 21:16, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I raised this in the past, the spam blacklist people simply removed the request without discussion, but I am 100% in favour of expunging these links since as noted above a very large number of them are copyvios. You can see the full list here: Special:Linksearch/*.youtube.com. There are thousands, but there were a thousand links to YTMND at one point and we managed that. 62.73.137.190 10:33, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi admins--I heard a news report last night about a thing called "Google bombing" where political activists have organized plans to flood the searchable web with their particular points of view right before the election. Youtube would be one way to accomplish this. I imagine yall are already on top of the need to freeze certain political pages but thought the concept of Google bombing was worth bringing up in case there are any extra measures you can take, given that Wiki is open and anyone can edit it. Thanks for all the good works yall do.Harborsparrow 14:41, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Yikes. Atleast they don't know that there can be up to 3 weeks delay befor google's index catches up. lol ---J.S (t|c) 16:35, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2006_October_26#Emmalina

I had no idea this was back up at DRV, and it shouldn't be. As I've noted there, the existence of Notable YouTube memes played no part in my original decision, was never cited as such, and therefore there is no basis to reconsider the decision. I did suggest after the deletion that Notable YouTube memes was an alternative possibility for a redirect, but never a reason to delete the page. That this has been described as an "emergency", and that no-one pointed out to me this process was happening (we don't all monitor DRV, I happened across this by total chance) leaves me a little stunned. The AfD was closed as delete because she did not meet WP:BIO. It was redirected to YouTube, and the deletion was reviewed and endorsed. Deizio talk 04:10, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

• Doesn't look like the DRV closer took this into account. WarpstarRider 23:40, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Earn a brownie point: help the newbie admin

...and I thought I was doing the right thing... I've just made a goof and rather than implement the wrong fix I'm asking for assistance. Saw a threat[46] and then an explicit death threat[47] from an IP. So I indef blocked the IP. Slam dunk, right? Unh-uh. A minute after I issued the block, sipping my coffee as the sun rose over California, I remembered This IP has been editing Australian topics. Suppose they use that darn variable IP...drat, they do: TELSTRA! So I thought Unblock and range block a month? A week? Ridiculous, this is an explicit death threat! Go ask the experienced admins. So I've left the (useless) indef block in place and humbly submit to your collective wisdom. Pouring more coffee... Durova 14:17, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Was it a soft block? IP only? KillerChihuahua^?!? 14:39, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Nope. I thought this was a unique IP when I blocked it. When I realized this was variable I also realized I don't know the right response to a death threat from a variable IP. Durova 15:24, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Hrm. Well, there is the possibility of issueing a soft block for the entire Telstra range, but that seems a bit much. We could inform Telstra, but I doubt they'd be able to do much. Anyone else have a thought? KillerChihuahua^?!? 16:43, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Informing Telstra seems to be reasonable. Death threats are unacceptable. Meanwhile, we should treat the user as permanently banned and revert all edits that are obviously from that individual. JoshuaZ 16:49, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, after slightly more thought I'm not sure contacting Telstra is obviously necessary. These look like juvenile blustering rather than plausible death threats. JoshuaZ 16:50, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Do we really want to assume the responsibility of making that guess and possibly being wrong? Durova 16:56, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Good point. JoshuaZ 17:03, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

IPs should not be indef-blocked anyway. For most persons, they simply need to disconnect their modem and reconnect to get a new IP address. Even static IP addresses change to another person after a long while. —Centrx→talk • 16:59, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

• Centrx makes a good point. Blueyonder IPs are variable as well... I should know, I use one! --SunStar Net 17:53, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

So what's the best solution? I can't be the first admin to see a death threat from a variable IP address. Durova 01:21, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Report it to the ISP's abuse address? (Generally, you should be able to see this with on the WHOIS). It really depends on which ISP it is though; some will send the user a scary email, some will outright ignore you.-- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 01:27, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

And, eh, indef-blocking IPs usually isn't a terrific idea for this reason. It's too easy to cause collateral damage. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 01:28, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I've e-mailed Telstra. Looks like that's all we can do - one more reason I'd really like to require account registration or stable proxy use from all variable IP provider customers. Durova 15:51, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Halloween

Could some more admins please help me keep vandalism at Halloween at bay today? I have the feeling I'm the only person with a rollback button who's keeping an eye on it at the moment. Thanks! —Angr 14:32, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I've put it on my watchlist. You might want to consider a request for protection should it get out of control. Happy Halloween!-) Gryffindor 15:17, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I was about to put a semi-protection on it when I saw that another admin had recently lifted protection. Durova 15:26, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problem Page Question

Sorry all, I'm sure this isn't the right place, but I've never run into the issue before: [[48]], the history page for The Curse of King Tut appears to generate an error. Not sure if I'm asking you to fix it, or guide me. CMacMillan 18:44, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I cannot reproduce this -- it works fine for me. Jkelly 18:46, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. I still can't load that particular history page, but it may be my issue somehow. CMacMillan 18:51, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Slightly crazed user

Richard Lauzon (talk • contribs • count) is not behaving in an encyclopedic manner, is putting up images of doubtful copyright status, and has sent two long incoherent messages to unblock-en-l despite not being blocked. Can someone with some patience take a look at him and see if he needs user mentoring, or whatnot? Georgewilliamherbert 19:40, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmm... his talk page reads like the Time Cube site. This quote in particular concerns me: "here, my friends, They have been Juggling my computer and me for three years, had me thrown off of every valid SITE that I write to!-!-!" He may be a bit of a handful. – ClockworkSoul 19:56, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I've just reverted his edits and deleted a pile of very strange new articles, which alternate between complaints of how we're biased against his religion ("we" meaning the entire internet) and also how he's the unknown elder son of the late crocnut Steve Irwen. I haven't blocked him - although someone could make a very good argument for a blatent vandalism indef block - but, yes, the guy is either a troll pretending to be a nutjob or someone with a significant problem that I hope he seeks and receives help for. Either way, he will need a bit of monitoring if he reappears. Unless some heartless swine would like to press the button and make this a non-problem for us. ➨ ЯEDVERS 20:04, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

IANA psychiatrist, but I think that this guy might be genuinely psychotic. – ClockworkSoul 06:58, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I am genuinely frightened. I think an indef block might be in order (since there don't seem to be any constructive edits), and if someone does block him (if I don't), his user talk page will need protecting. --Coredesat 07:43, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I indefinitely blocked him for vandalism and impersonation (he claims he is Steve Irwin's son). I suggest that we block people who vandalize (or commit other blockable offenses), even if their behavior might be caused by a mental illness. While some of us might be able to make educated guesses, we cannot diagnose people online and we cannot get them medical attention, unless they are a danger to themselves or others (usually threatening suicide, in which case we notify the proper authorities). -- Kjkolb 09:47, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Google - Wikipedia Search

I like to point out that a new www.wiki-search.eu is available. It uses Google Co-op to get the results. So feel free to link it, to search Wikipedia the Google way (all suggestions are welcome of course)!!! Bart l 19:51, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, I hate to be picky (but this wouldn't be Wikipedia if someone wasn't) but there are two legal flaws and an ethos problem with this.

First, whilst I don't speak for the Wikimedia Foundation, I'm sure they'd like the operators of the site to cease and desist from using a copyrighted service mark of theirs for a service they are not providing and do not endorse.

Second, I'd be sure that Google feels the same about the derivative version of their trademarked logo.

Third, the spirit of Wikipedia and the GFDL aren't exactly being met with the prominent copyright message. In what way is it copyright? Google technology + Wikipedia content =/= any claim for copyright control. And besides, many of us are here because we don't like such claims of copyright and want to set information free.

On that basis, I think I'll keep using the direct site search method. But thanks anyway! ➨ ЯEDVERS 20:24, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

And no contact information by which one could let them know that they are violating two copyrights. User:Zoe|(talk) 20:33, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

No claim for copyright was intended here and has been removed ! Also the (mis)use of the logo's have been removed... I Hope this is correctly changed this way! Bart l 22:50, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Personally I like that image (still visible in search results), but yes, you have to ask for permissions first (I think you should get them).-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  22:58, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Speedy backlog

Please help out, 150 images for speedy deletion. Thanks. NCurse _work 20:40, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hysteria regarding an Article for Deletion

The nomination of Ophelia Benson for deletion (and so-far unanimous-minus-one agreement to delete) seems to bother VivianDarkbloom (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log) quite a bit. She has expressed her dismay both here and here. Despite her spray of personal attacks and the evidence that she is a sockpuppet created solely for AfD purposes, I don't think there is any need for immediate action, though a general watchfulness may be in order. ➥the Epopt 21:22, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

This one was also good: [49]. It seems to exceed the tolerable level for NPA and such. Georgewilliamherbert 23:06, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

The identical message was left on the talkpages of all 5 or so "delete" commenters. I've commented that the user (which I agree with her on the merits of the AfD, as it happens) should tone down the rhetoric. Newyorkbrad 23:09, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

That's my talk page above. I don't wish to claim any personal offense, NPA or not. But I do think it would be good if an admin could issue a warning, because the level of vitriol is high enough to cause serious trouble in the future. Auto movil 00:44, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

A pound says we have seen this awful thing before... Guy 12:05, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

That may be; User:VivianDarkbloom specifically self-identifies as an alternate account created for so that an established editor can !vote on AfD's, etc. without harassment/feedback to his/her main account. But it's also worth noting that the AfD nomination of Ophelia Benson was the nominator's first-ever edit. Incidentally, the consensus on the AfD has now evolved to Keep. Newyorkbrad 13:25, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I stopped a hair's breadth short of a block in my warning on that user's talk page. Show me the page diffs that demonstrate who owns this sock drawer. Durova 15:32, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Apparently yet another person who thinks being as rude as possible is a good thing. This is why we have such a toxic environment here... I've given them a warning, for which I'll almost certainly get grief, but whatever. --W.marsh 15:52, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gaming Wikipedia's page for deletion process

The page Wikipedia:WikiProject Islam:The Muslim Guild/Articles for deletion is a blatant violation of advertising and soliciting meatpuppets which states:

It is considered highly inappropriate or unacceptable to advertise Wikipedia articles that are being debated in order to attract users with known views and bias, in order to strengthen one side of a debate. It is also considered highly inappropriate to ask friends or family members to create accounts for the purpose of giving additional support. Advertising or soliciting meatpuppet activity is not an acceptable practice on Wikipedia.

This page is used members of the "Wikipedia Muslim guild" to game the page for deletion process. When a Muslim guild member nominates a page he wants deleted, he post the link on this page, so that other members of the Muslim guild can go there and vote in line with the nominating member of the guild. This seems to be a tactic used to game the Vote for deletion process through sheer force of numbers.

A recent example of this practice can be seen here. where members of the Muslim Guild or like minded editors like :user:Striver , user:BhaiSaab , Szvest, User:Itaqallah,User:Irishpunktom ,Nielswik followed the link to the afd and voted in support of the nominator of the AFD. (updated this para 11/1/2006 CltFn)

I would like to nominate this page for deletion but since this is a project subpage it requires the subst:md1 tag , but that tag points to an earlier miscelleanous for deletion discussion page. Thus I am not able to create a second nomination for deletion.

Could an admin advise on how to create a second nomination for deletion for Wikipedia:WikiProject Islam:The Muslim Guild/Articles for deletion or alternatively advise on what course of action should follow in light of the blatant gaming of the wikipedia vote for deletion process.--CltFn 05:40, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I think you'll find that not many people even watch this page. If you go to Striver's very next comment about Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Hadeeth_Encyclopedia, there is not a single Muslim Guild member who has voted on that. I found the mention of Anti-Dhimmitude up for deletion on someone's talk page actually. BhaiSaab ^talk 12:04, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

This page is completely unacceptable and against the guidelines on Wikipedia. AfDs are not supposed to be votes, but genuine discussions. As it is quite evident that this page can incite creation of meatpuppets and unethical ways of "voting" in AfDs, – I am going ahead to delete this page. — Nearly Headless Nick ^{L} 12:11, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Please reverse that. Keep in mind that it was kept by consensus in March. If you want to delete it, there's nothing wrong with sending it to MfD again instead of giving the appearance of an abusive deletion. --badlydrawnjeff talk 12:18, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I urge you to look at the MfD discussion, where some user provided enough evidence of this page being used for advocacy, and if you would please have a look at the deleted page, there is another administrator who has made it clear to the users not to use that page for advocating deletes and keeps. — Nearly Headless Nick ^{L} 12:21, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Reverse it, in case you think that it was an abuse. — Nearly Headless Nick ^{L} 12:25, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

AFD is definitely not a vote, but to discuss, unlike in the past. Well, I believe this should go to MFD and we can have more than one nomination. I don't see why we have this page for, what is the key purpose of this, to "discuss" the matter so it would be a definite keep? --Terence Ong _{(T | C)} 12:35, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

If I could reverse it, I would. I can't, so i'm urging you to do the right thing in my stead. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:08, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Agree. Please undo the deletion and send it to MFD. I am highly disappointed that you chose to delete the page, with an obvious earlier MFD blatantly ignored. – Chacor 13:12, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

The quality of AfD discussions can only improve, if editors which expertise in the affected subject take notice. Compare Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/India. Perhaps the page in question should be integrated in the deletion sorting hierarchy to avoid misinterpretations. Gaming the system for vote stacking is an orthogonal issue. --Pjacobi 12:40, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I have undeleted the page because I respect your decisions, Jeff. Expect to see this on WP:MFD soon. — Nearly Headless Nick ^{L} 14:18, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate your actions here. Thank you. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:26, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

er.. just for the record.. i am not a member of "The Muslim Guild" (and never have been) and neither is it on my watch list. i did not participate in that AfD per anyone's instruction nor this "Articles for deletion" subpage. i did not "vote in support of the nominator" as alleged (i opined "merge"), and neither did BhaiSaab nor Svest. ITAQALLAH 17:27, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Budd16

Not sure if this is the proper place for this, but User:Budd16 keeps blanking his talk page. --James Duggan 05:52, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

That's not an admin matter, please see this and this. How about asking him nicely not to, and explaining that it's not polite, what he's doing? I don't see anybody in the History saying anything to him about it. ("Keeps blanking" for blanking once in July and once in November is rather a strong way of puttiing it.) Bishonen | talk 10:11, 1 November 2006 (UTC).

He is no a vandal, and he hasn't been disruptive. He should not be troubled over this matter as the previous discussions are already preserved in the history. — Nearly Headless Nick ^{L} 12:23, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I only brought it up here because I wasn't familiar with the rules concerning that. I know it's not vandalism, but I didn't know what it classified as. I just thought it'd be easier if an admin looked at it. Personally, I don't care either way, but I thought it might have violated something. Sorry for bothering y'all. --James Duggan 03:52, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of doughnut shops

The page was deleted at AfD back in June and I can find no record of a DRV. Could someone take a look at the deleted history and see if it qualifies for speedy Deletion under G4 or if I should repost it to AfD? Eluchil404

There was no DRV. The article is somewhat changed (more doughnut shops were added), but I'm not sure that it's substantially new content. I'm going to editorially redirect to Doughnut, and if someone reverts me, take it to AFD. Ral315 (talk) 16:11, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for taking a look. Eluchil404 16:43, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Backlog of speedies

Hi all. Hope I'm not out of line by letting you know that there is a big backlog (218 at last count) of stuff with speedy tags. I know you're all busy, but it helps us plebs feel we're contributing when articles we tag for speedy get relatively speedy attention (one way or the other!) Thanks in advance for doing this usually thankless task. --Dweller 15:11, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

There's still a huge backlog of items. There's at least 300 images and articles listed right now and a lot of them have been up for upwards of 10 hours. If a handful of admins could puruse it and make a dent in the backlog, us mere mortals would greatly appreciate it. Metros232 04:00, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WP:DRV Review Valentino (band)

I would like this to be revied because I believe it was incorrectly removed from WIKI. It is not a promotional tool used by this band, but information on the band. In the DFW area the band is know and this was a serious article for WIKI. The phrasing of the opening sentence will be worded as it is the offical bio for Valentino. It is also used in promotional items used by the band, this is why the article seems like an advertisement. The article wording will be changed to reflect information. This article never has and never will be used as an advertising tool but rather an informative way to learn more about the band "Valentino"

Such requests should be posted at Wikipedia:Deletion review. This particular page is not the proper venue for it. Aecis ^{Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984.} 18:17, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help

User A Man In Black and 65.29.167.251 are meging the Pokemon episode pages after their was no consensus to merge or delete the pages (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Here Comes the Squirtle Squad) May you please help me! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lovehinaqueen (talk • contribs)

Can another admin assist this editor, please? I have to end my WP session now! (aeropagitica) 18:52, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

This was discussed, at length, at the Pokémon Wikproject. (It turned out the only points of contention were whether to use images or not and whether to keep a handful of episodes important to the anime, and these points have been resolved.) The AFD was brought in the middle of the ongoing merges, and I even asked Luna to close the AFD (which was clearly no consensus) so the agreed-upon merges could continue. It's sort of unfortunate that an anon merged many of them poorly and without referencing the project very effectively in edit summaries, but the fact remains that there really is a consensus to merge. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 18:59, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

The only binding decision that AFD can do is delete. Users can still merge articles after an AFD is complete. Hbdragon88 21:59, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Curiously forged userpage

User:Weatherman5000's user page shows about 30 barnstars, every single one of which has been copied and pasted form other user pages (including my own). At least one other user has removed such items from his user page in the past. Notes I left on his talk page went unanswered, but when I removed the stars from his page, his response was less than civil. I've reverted his page twice now, but I don't want to push the issue without bringing it into the open first. Thoughts? – ClockworkSoul 19:46, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the problem here is the forging of comments and not so much of awards. While it is sleazy and dishonest to give oneself barnstars, it's a more serious problem to attribute the associated comments with users who didn't actually make them. There's certainly no justification for this edit, for instance, as he's signing those comments as other users. If he wants to have a bunch of fake trophies on his page, whatever. —ptk✰fgs 20:18, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not an Admin, but no one should have to put up with the response that ClockworkSoul received. Sorry, but I personally believe uncivil and outright abusive users should be clearly helped to understand that the actions are unacceptable. If ClockworkSoul had been a less than dedicated wikipedian you might have lost a valuable asset over a comment like that. CMacMillan 20:24, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I concur that the user conduct here is unacceptable, including both misrepresentation and incivility. No one's userpage should include multiple barnstars awarded to other users and no one should be addressed as reflected in the diff that was quoted. Newyorkbrad 20:56, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Of course, but as an involved party, I don't want to block him myself, or even suggest that such a course of action be taken. Should somebody else see wisdom in such an action, however, I won't shed any tears. – ClockworkSoul 20:58, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I blocked for three months. Not a permanent block in case of rank stupidity. Not a short block in case of disruptive trolling. Just a block that reflects extreme community displeasure but allows for redemption. Possibly. ➨ ЯEDVERS 21:05, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Reasonable. If there is a next one, and I suspect that there may be, it will no doubt be indefinite. – ClockworkSoul 21:06, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I would have suggested a few days for the incivility, plus a strong warning from an admin to immediately delete and not to restore the plagiarized barnstars. Three months is a long time in Wiki-time. Having said that, I'm not shedding any tears for this ill-mannered, uncivil user. If he really wants to edit in good faith, he's probably best off starting with a new account anyway (which is not to say that block evasion would be acceptable). Newyorkbrad 21:12, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

In isolation, it would be a fairly lengthy block, but it's really quite generous considering that he's already been blocked twice for vandalism. – ClockworkSoul 21:17, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

You're right; the lengthier block fits in light of the other matters. Newyorkbrad 21:22, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I think 3 months is quite severe. I was one of the users that had my words falsely atributed to his actions. Yet in my case no retaliation was given for there removal. Because of this I think the user might be reasoned with. Considering that the vandalism (pertaining to the userboxes) was generally contained to his/her own userpage. I would say that 3 months should only be used if a shorter block did not work. Such a long block should only be used for worse case scenarios. Knowing that he/she is on notice might help. Also I believe that only the forged Barn Stars should be removed and not the UserBox, I don't see them as causing any harm. -- UKPhoenix79 21:34, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget that there was more to this. – ClockworkSoul 21:37, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I did know about this. This action is the main reason I believe the user should be blocked. It was rude and uncalled for. Yet I do not believe that it should be for 3 months. The main problems were on the user page and the refusal to remove them. I think that a shorter period would be more apt. A users own page is unique inside of wikipedia. The user did take those liberties a bit far, but he/she might have been under the impression that it was ok. I would think that 7 days might be more appropriate as a max. If the user does not take the warnings seriously then the 3 month ban would be justified. Asside from all this, how about re-introducting content that is ok like the userboxes? -- UKPhoenix79 22:02, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

At a minimum the block should be for one month. Seven days is just a wikibreak. Let the user know what it means to lose editing privileges. Maybe after that month the user will think twice about engaging in such behavior. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 22:17, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Still long, but if that works for everyone else it should be fair enough. Its much better than 3 months -- UKPhoenix79 22:26, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Not so sure. He has existed only since 31 August, and has almost no edits that are not vandalism. He has vandalized user pages, forged other user's comments, misrepresented himself on his user page, and been profoundly uncivil. He has already been blocked twice before; he does not need a third slap on the wrist, he needs to be blocked. – ClockworkSoul 22:51, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Well this one is a bit difference only because the forged info was on the users own page. The user should have known better especialy when people removed them. I would say that the Ban should be for the vandalizing of your page and a warning for the content inapropriatly added. Another user suggested 4 weeks when I suggested only 1. Either one I think would be better than the 3 months the user currently has. This user might eventually be completely blocked, but I like to give users a chance. Who knows it might change the users perspective on others in wikipedia if someone tries to help out in this situation. I am also going to return the userboxes removed unless there are any objections. -- UKPhoenix79 03:42, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

p.s. it looks like the 1st edit on the users page was on 20 February 2006, not August 31st. I doubt that says anything about the users contributions but I though that I'd point it out. -- UKPhoenix79 07:14, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/sarvagnya

Given the results here, I make the following proposals:

• User:Gnanapiti has been permablocked for being a sockpuppet. User:Sarvagnya, having used that sockpuppet abusively to endorse an RfC against me here should also be blocked for abusive use of sockpuppets in order to get around a potential block for disruption and WP:POINT that s/he knew was coming.
• The RfC at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Redvers should be deleted for being in bad faith, being abused by User:Sarvagnya and for failing to get the required endorsements (those endorsing it are the puppetmaster, an ally with an agenda to push and a proven puppet).

Obviously, I could do this myself, but just as obviously I won't. I'm not, by the way, seeking a debate here about RfCs, this RfC or the issues in this RfC.

Thanks folks. ➨ ЯEDVERS 19:50, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I was just about to post here regarding the matter but Redvers beat me to it. I have already permablocked User:Gnanapiti. I haven't blocked Sarvagnya yet. I would like other admins to review the case before deciding. The 2 users have also been involved in disputes over Belgaum and many other articles also. Since my block I have received mails from Sarvagnya and Gnanapiti disagreeing with the results of the checkuser. Dmcdevit has twice confirmed the result at the checkuser page linked by Redvers. I have asked Sarvagnya to mail Dmcdevit regarding the matter, and that the permablock would remain till proven otherwise. Please also see this and this - two related posts on ANI. - Aksi_great (talk) 19:58, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I wonder why sarvagnya is not blocked when arya and his sockpuppet were blocked. sarvagnya is bullying and harrasing me and using his socks for concession of 3RR rule.See his some action at Talk:Belgaum and talk:Belgaum_border_dispute. Why is User:Arya_Rajya_Maharashtra along with his puppet blocked but sarvagnya isnt? Please be neutral. I strongly recommend strict action against him for he is troubling me and few other users from too long. Mahawiki 20:04, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Also Note that Arya was termed as very likely and still blocked but sarvagnya's confirmed sockpuppetmaster. Mahawiki 20:16, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

If Redvers thinks that my RfC was frivolous, I am prepared to apologise to him unconditionally. But I can assure to everybody here that I and Gnanapiti are not sockpuppets. I request a recheck and I am sure results will be different. If there is anything at all that I can do to prove that Gnanapiti is not my sockpuppet, I am prepared to do that. Please do not take any hasty decisions. Gnanapiti may have shared my views on certain subjects, but surely that doesnt mean he is my sockpuppet. Two different individuals can certainly share the same views - Arya and Mahawiki are themselves examples of this.

I have sent emails to admins Blnguyen, dmc and aksi explaining the situation. I am prepared to give any clarifications they want. But please do not take any hasty decisions. Sarvagnya 20:22, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Further trolling, further attempts to drag other editors into the bickering in order to pillory them. Sorry, but my good faith is obviously exhausted by now. ➨ ЯEDVERS 20:30, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Please also look at 3RR gaming and consensus faking by the editor in question on the checkuser.Bakaman _Bakatalk 02:47, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Plz look at Talk:Belgaum and Talk:Belgaum_border_dispute to see how sarvagnya had used sockpuppets to overwhelm other editors, fake consensus, concession in 3RR. He is confirmed of sock-puppetry,why is he still not blocked? Mahawiki 04:18, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 64.75.72.4 (talk · contribs)

The IP address has done nothing but spam countless pages on a daily basis. The block log records a previous 24 hour block in June, which apparently did nothing to deter this individual/individuals. Seeing as I can't find a single legitimate contribution, I would request that this IP address be permanently blocked.--NPswimdude500 20:59, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

We don't usually do long-term blocks on IP address unless it's an open proxy. ---J.S (t|c) 21:04, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I put a 1 week anon only block on it. If the pattern continues after that it can be blocked longer. Note: Please do put warnings on vandals' talk pages when they revandalize, as some of us admins may notice that more quickly than the individual pages vandalized. -- Infrogmation 21:57, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Blocking broken

I don't know who's updating stuff on the fly right now, but blocking users doesn't work, which probably brings great joys to users such as User:DEATH_TO_ALL_NIGGERS_AND_JEWS. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 21:35, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

WP:BEANS. Perhaps you'd like to mention it on IRC or generally elsewhere? Thanks! ➨ ЯEDVERS 21:37, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

No, I keep my Wikipedia communication to Wikipedia. Feel free to suggest other places to mention it, though. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 21:45, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Seems to be working again. -- Infrogmation 21:54, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

If the problem is actually one that requires immediate attention, IRC is probably the best place to ask simply for practical reasons like wanting an immediate response. --tjstrf Now on editor review! 21:57, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I suppose, but then one has to mess around with getting familiar with IRC, which I've no interest in doing. No matter; next time things are urgently broken, I figure someone else will worry about it and I'll go play a game or something. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 22:22, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Order of Saint Stanislaus

This page was recently split into five next to identical pages. I've suggested a merge and listed the page on WP:RfC to get input on this issue. An anon editor apparently disagrees and continues to simply remove the merge tags without offering any comments. I'm somewhat tired of restoring them, but I believe this is disrupting a process. Suggestions are very welcome. Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 22:00, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bohemian Grove

Hi, would someone please place Bohemian Grove into a semi-protected status. An anon editor keeps removing the -cleanup-afd- tag. That way I can avoid any 3RR problems. Thanks Brimba 04:01, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Premature, I think. I reverted the article and mildly warned the user. Chick Bowen 04:56, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Main page fixing turn around time

I was wondering how long fixes to the Main Page took. Seems like it should be a high priority. Also, I was wondering if an admin could fix the caption for the Earthrise pic as noted on Wikipedia:Main_Page/Errors. I posted the correction over an hour ago, is the MainPage/Errors not checked frequently? --Rajah 05:07, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Done. I edited it to match the wording from synchronous rotation precisely (by the way, that one could use some expansion. . .). Chick Bowen 05:25, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

See User talk:Rajah#Earthrise. Carcharoth 12:58, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article history cleanup needed

Hohe Marter (Nuremberg U-Bahn) (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) was a stub which was expanded with a translation of copyrighted text. I saved it from being speedy deleted by bringing it back to stub. I believe the history has to be cleared as well. Agathoclea 06:46, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright - how to establish ownership query

I removed some material from Philip Bradbourn which came from [50]. User:Thelongroad1980 then reinserted the material, claiming to be the site owner (see diff [51]). I went to Wikipedia:Copyright problems to see what to do, but the page is rather cluttered and hard to follow, so I thought I'd flag it up here and see if someone knows what should be done. Catchpole 13:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

If a user owns the copyright, they should either put a visible copyright notice stating the conditions (or a statement of public domain release) at the same location as the original, or email permissions at wikimedia dot org from an email address associated with the original website, to act as proof. --ais523 13:15, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay thanks, I've added a note at the user's talk page. Catchpole 13:52, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Speedy deletion assistance required.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nominate me for Adminship then! I'm tanned, rested and only occasionally refer to the current crop of admins as insane! - Richfife 01:10, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Martial Law

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The reason I asked about having more than one mentor, is that they have quite a caseload, other commitments. That way, if I do get one, more than one, I could ask the questions that need to be asked w/o burdening anyone. Again, I really do apologise for being disruptive. Martial Law 22:27, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

There are two kinds of mentorship - voluntary and involuntary. Since you seem enthusiastic about the idea, I guess there's no need for the latter. Perhaps you could have multiple mentors, if multiple people volunteered to mentor you. I would be willing to mentor you, although I should warn you that I'm not sure whether or not my availability will be sufficient. Armedblowfish (talk|mail) 01:03, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Do appreciate the assisstance. Be advised I don't have E-mail at this time. I do, on the other hand, have questions. Martial Law 01:41, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Of course. : ) Feel free to leave questions on my talk page. Armedblowfish (talk|mail) 01:58, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Bunch of Grapes, I have some questions on my Talk page for you and those involved. First and foremost, I am seeking to comply w/ you guys, and enlightenment as well, thus the questions. I do have questions from time to time. As may be stated elsewhere, my ISP has caused me to be thrown off the 'net, has caused strange things to show up, thus is why I had to drastically cut my time on WP. As stated, I will comply w/ you all, I just need guidance. Martial Law 09:29, 31 October 2006 (UTC) :)

Bunchofgrapes will mentor

My reading of the above is that there isn't quite the unanimity I'd like to see before calling my proposed measures "approved". So, instead, I have offered to mentor ML in at least a semi-official capacity, to try to work on these issues. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 21:38, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bad faith AfD nomination

Hi, could a fellow admin please close out this AfD which is clearly a bad faith nomination - see my comments for evidence. I can't close it myself as I've already commented on it. Thanks, Gwernol 02:56, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Done. And I blocked the user in question for 3 days. His 7th edit is nominating an article like that for deletion, and he followed up by trolling about it. This is clearly someone who has been here before under another name. Nandesuka 03:06, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Indeed on both counts. Many thanks, Gwernol 03:08, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

See User:Hipster Beatnik and The Monkey Thing's history. Curious that. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 03:10, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like the sort of thing User:Amorrow would do ... User:Zoe|(talk) 03:16, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

He may be back as Policratus (talk · contribs), for the record. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:17, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jaakko Sivonen (talk · contribs)

I have blocked Jaakko Sivonen (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) this user 24 hours for constantly moving Treaty of Fredrikshamn to Treaty of Hamina. Evidence presented on Talk:Treaty of Fredrikshamn do not support a page move, and despite warnings, the user is persistant. He is also calling me a vandal on his user page so I thought I'd inform other administrators about this.

Fred-Chess 21:48, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Is it really good form to block someone when you have a content dispute with him? I don't see a 3RR violation; what is the offence that warrants a block? Weregerbil 23:05, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Blocking over a content dispute is definately a no-no in my opinion. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 23:57, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

This user have been pretty disruptive, so it had to happen at some point... -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 00:06, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I have blocked both Jaakko Sivonen (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) and Fred Chess (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) for 24 hours for move warring. See these move logs: Treaty of Fredrikshamn & Treaty of Hamina.

I should also point out that it's disappointing that Fred Chess has used administrative tools in a content dispute of which he was a part, including move-protecting the page as well as blocking Jaakko Sivonen. If a user is being sufficiently disruptive to warrant a block, then that will be apparent to a neutral admin, and the user will be blocked. There are always admins available to help out. Using administrative tools in a content dispute is simply not on. --bainer (talk) 00:38, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think Fred should have blocked Jaakko in this dispute, but neither blocking Fred was fair and I would welcome unblocking. We should distinguish oranges from apples. In this dispute, Fred defends WP naming guidelines against an uncompromising revert warrior. I would like to hear arguments from those who think that Jaakko is here to improve Wikipedia. To the best of my knowledge, his edits are limited to frivolous POV-pushing reverts, accompanied by incessant accusations of vandalism against his opponents. I don't see why 1,000+ admins that we have in the project allow some serious trolling plague a certain segment of WP and then, when a fellow sysop ventures to sort it out, would readily block him for having erred. This is a wrong message for nationalist trolls. I believe a community block of Jaakko is in order. His behaviour does not differ materially from that of User:Molobo, who has been community blocked for a year. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 07:56, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, Jaakko's unwarranted accusations of vandalism against those who follow WP:NS have revolted even his fellow Finnish wikipedians (see here or here). There's no need to boil this cauldron until it explodes. Jaakko has been explained many times what vandalism is; that he still perseveres with accusations warrants a separate block, imho. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 08:16, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

His behavior is a lot like Molobo, though the one difference I see is the track record: Molobo had a dozen blocks and thousands of edits before he was banned. Which was, of course, stupid, since there was no reason to think he'd change. The difference here both that we don't necessarily have reason to think Jaako is incorigible, but also that early on. I recommend an arbitration request for this case, so we don't end up wasting our time with a dozen blocks, especially with the pretty clear misuse of administrator tools involved here as well. Dmcdevit·t 08:51, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Jakko went into a pretty annoying crusade of changing historical Swedish name in the historical articles into the modern Finnish ones. Particular moving of the Treaty of Fredrikshamn were very close to a simple vandalism. Thus, while I am second that Fred probably should ask somebody to do the admin work for him, I think blocking him is a way to strong a measure. Besides Fred did the second best thing for this he reported it on this board for the review. Please unblock him if possible. If you need a formal endorsement of Fred's administrative actions (the block and move protection) - I have reviewed them and think they were right although it would be better if they were performed by an uninvolved admin Alex Bakharev 09:24, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Right, Jaakko was already reblocked. I was speaking more to the bigger picture than a 24 hour block, since a community ban was proposed. Arbitration is probably a good place to take this case. Dmcdevit·t 09:57, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

If Fred is unblocked, both should be unblocked in his case. If a reblock of Jaakko is wanted after that, it should be performed by a different admin. I certainly hope everyone agrees that no admin should use blocking to solve a content dispute. Fred found his way to AN here after he blocked Jaakko. He should have come here instead of blocking. If other people would have agreed with Fred, another admin could have blocked Jaakko. The block of Fred is definately warranted. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 09:21, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Once again, Fred and Jaakko are not in the same league here. Jaakko moved the page twice as many times as Fred did. Furthermore, Fred regrets his actions in this case, which can't be said about Jaakko. Blocks for edit warring are supposed to be preventive not punitive. Under these circumstances, he should be unblocked. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 12:49, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

The number of times these editors reverted each other is irrelevant, since another editor was engaged in reverting against Jaakko before Fred joined in. He should not have taken over this job and then block the opposing party. And mind you, blocks for edit warring are always punitive, since they happen after the fact (and yes they might be preventive, but we'll never know for sure). If a block for edit warring is truely ment to be preventive, both sides involved should be blocked. Still, the fact that he understands that he was out of line, however, is a reason to unblock Fred. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 13:15, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

After undoing Fred's block on Jaakko I did block both of them, each for 24 hours, to prevent further move-warring, not to punish either of them for anything. I've told Fred that I would be happy to unblock him if he understands why it was necessary to block in the first place.

The issue of Fred's use of administrative tools is a question apart from the block. Fred has already acknowledged the error of his ways in this respect and I am satisfied to put that issue behind us and move on. --bainer (talk) 13:48, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Honestly, the way this things have evolved leaves me pretty puzzled. What is this thing about equal or unequal? This Jaakko has a pretty obvious Molobo-like behaviour, as Dmc said, so I honestly don't understand why reverting his moves should be considered as being in content dispute with someone. You don't block someone unblanking a page four times in a row, do you? Well, it would seem that in this case, the circumstances are pretty similar. So Reinoutr, you're pretty heavily mistaken, this is not content dispute but pure and simple cleaning up after a quite disruptive user. I support an immediate unblock of Fred...

As for the ArbCom stuff, I believe that Dmc advices inappropriate measures. If admins can take a consensual decision about this guy without taking the stuff to the ArbCom, which is a lengthy and tiresome procedure. Molobo was not blocked so long because of quite controversial circumstances, including several questionable unblocks. One more reason to not repeat the same mistakes... -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 21:31, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

"If admins can take a consensual decision about this guy without taking the stuff to the ArbCom" Yes, of course, but my point is that that isn't going to happen to an editor with only a few hundred edits and one prior block. Otherwise I wouldn't suggest arbitration. Also note that this was clearly not a case of vandalism. No matter how disruptive or against consensus, there's no reason to treat it as vandalism. Dmcdevit·t 23:57, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

"Grafikm_fr" seems to be on a personal crusade against me. --Jaakko Sivonen 20:32, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Huh? I am on personal crusade against no one. <_< -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 20:41, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Gta4announced.JPG

We have problem with this image the uploader is deleting <no source> tag to force keep a image without sources. --Canadian Eclat 11:47, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

New Image Uploaded Image:Conferencegta4.JPG The image was deleted today but uploaders still insist in push the image without source. --Canadian Eclat 18:12, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I ask for an administrator tell me if I'm made something wrong. I nominated the image with the tag for speedy deletion [52] because the original image was deleted today. --Canadian Eclat 18:18, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I re-uploaded the image with a new ttag, as you claimed the original tag was incorrect. Because it had been removed from the article (by you) it got deleted as orphaned, so I have re-uploaded it with correct source, usage, and fair use rationale. HawkerTyphoon 18:31, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

In the Image_talk:Conferencegta4.JPG you can see a consensus that image has no source verifyed with the agreement of User:Cohesion --Canadian Eclat 15:32, 2 November 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Vandal threatens massive attack for November 5

User:69.158.116.98 has vandalized several pages by posting messages trying to mobilize a massive vandal attack for November 5 in order to destroy Wikipedia. I'm not sure how seriously this should be taken, but I thought it should be reported here. Academic Challenger 22:29, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Those sort of threats have a long history. I remember MilkMan threatening on my talk page to do some invasion like that "two weeks from now". Same for the Communism vandal who was going to attack on Easter 2006 because Willy on Wheels was retiring. Also, let's not forgot the original, Intelivand Technologies. 68.39.174.238 22:37, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

We also had weeks (or was it months) of on "6 Jun 2006 Wikipedia will meet it's maker" (6/6/6), and on 6 June of course nothing out of the ordinary. Even if we believe it's a totally serious threat (and hey we all know how reliable and public spirited these vandals are) I'm not sure what we can do about it, busines as usual as far as I can see. --pgk 22:49, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I gave him a little wikivacation until after the 5th. -- Infrogmation 22:52, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Remember, remember, the fifth of November, the gunpowder treason and plot! Hbdragon88 22:59, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Damn... I was beaten to it.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 23:09, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

that phrase has several hundred years of history predateing that film.Geni 01:43, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

How many Toronto based IPs would know about Guy Fawkes Day?—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 02:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

It's something to do with a guy named Guy Fawkes who tried to blow up Parliament in the 1600s. When the British celebrate it, I don't know if they're celebrating the fact that he was hanged for treason or if they're celebrating it to remember him as a martyr.

The former. Although it is probably more an adapted fire festivle than anything.Geni 11:21, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

That's true, but it's come into the recent popular culture mind thanks to the film version. Hbdragon88 04:13, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that wikipedia is not letting those who wish to speak speak so if you agree please help me on’’’ November 5th’’’ change as many sites as you can mess them up completely! and we will blow up wik's credibility like V would have wanted. Randomly post this message on pages before the 5th to spread he word they must be popular pages because they'll get deleted soon - Hackers on nov 5th they might lock all the pages if our numbers are great enough so you'll have to unlock them. - - - Remember remember the 5th on November the typing and plot. I know of no reason the typing treason ever should be forgot - - remember don't wreck the pages until November 5th so as not to ruin wik's surprize!

The user's name is now Maialuna. -FisherQueen 19:04, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

This user is now using Xavier tiny25. -FisherQueen 19:12, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Abusive sock of sorts...

He just doesn't give up, does he? --172.194.199.168 00:58, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

See User:Encyclopedist and [53]. --172.194.199.168 00:59, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I haven't followed all the developments which led to the indefblock; is mentorship out of the question? El_C 06:17, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, by a heckuva lot. --172.193.246.175 23:35, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm willing to AGF with Encyclopedist - what I think he needs to do is send an e-mail to the Unblock-en-l mailing list, and once he gets himself unblocked, refrain from running for adminship for at least a year. I've tried to relay this point to him previously (see User talk:MyApologyII), but I'm not sure whether he really wants to return or not (see this). Scobell302 05:35, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User subpages former articles

In the past I've moved deleted articles to the user space in order for editors to improve on them in good faith. However, I have noticed that they have failed to make any improvements to the article and have no intention on getting it back in the article space. The specific case I'm referring to is User:Xkeeper/Mario Adventure, which includes the header "The correct title of this article is Mario Adventure; it is listed under this name because certain people with sticks up their bum deleted it.". Should user subpages like this be deleted as they are masquerading as articles still? Wickethewok 14:04, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

On the whole I don't think it matters. That particular userfication didn't work out, clearly, so I've deleted it. --kingboyk 14:21, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd say just leave them, unless they're using it as a platform for abuse. I have a couple of dead things in my userspace that I've just not got round to sorting out yet, such as User:Hahnchen/KISS and User:Hahnchen/E7broadband, but I'd be pissed if they got deleted without my requesting it. - Hahnchen 18:01, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wiki Administrator abuses

Hello,

TheronJ has repeatedly been vandalizing the Clint Curtis page, including the deletion of well cited sentences, paragraphs, the insertion of obvious bias (including the summary of a Wired news article that was completly skewed in libel to Curtis's biography). This includes the deletion of a well cited paragraph with quotes and citations from the Orlando Sentinel.

If you do an intestigation, he is a political activist that vandalizes negativly the profiles of Democrats by deleting information that can be considered positive and adds negative content and does exactly the opposite to Republican profiles. TheronJ insists that this is "balance." If you look on the Curtis page, you will see that Tom Feeney's response to Curtis's allegations has been twice as long as the section that describes the allegations. Under a campaign issues section, he adds Feeney's response to Curtis. It is wrong because the issues do not mention Feeney at all. Not only do these NOT reflect balance, it is a serious violation of Wikipedia's standards that requires action.

TheronJ is abusing his power as a Wiki manager and has had repeated warnings in the discussion page of Clint Curtis and now his user talk page. These flagerant abuses deligitimize Wikipedia and places it in a difficult position of dealing with slander against a living person.

In his last edit, he completly vandalized the "links" section. (Edit: this single part has been resolved).

Please take whatever action you can to take see that these abuses no longer continue.

Thank you. Rememberkigali 22:52, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

With regard to that last edit "vandalizing the links section", TheronJ certainly did not vandalize the article, he accidently messed up with some of the references, causing the layout to be severely damaged. I repaired it [54] and think its ok now. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 23:42, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

• I'm glad you found the error for the last edit, however, that mistake would not have occured had the abuses not taken place.
• Please look into this. There is no place in Wikipedia for these kinds of abuses. Libel is a very serious problem and every effort should be made to ensure that the content does not abuse a biography.

Thank you, Rememberkigali 01:54, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

• Please watch for any future edits by TheornJ, especially ones that can be considered Libel against Curtis according to Wikipedia standards.
• There have been some good faith edits by TheornJ but only after intense debate concerning libel coments.
• It is your responsibility as administrators to investigate this. I am doing my part and all that I can because I care about Wikipedia and its future. May it be a bright one for all of its people. Thank you. Rememberkigali 15:21, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

For the record: (1) this is a content dispute; (2) I have been bending over backward to be civil to RememberKigali and to the anonymous editor who preceded him; and have proposed dispute resolution several times; and (3) I am neither a vandal nor an admin. Please feel free to let me know if anyone would like to see diffs. TheronJ 03:40, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Potential abuse

Sorry, I'm not sure how to use this page. I feel strongly that a particular individual (who I think might be an administrator) has been using his powers to bully and press his own opinions. Despite a well-argued and even-handed approach from me (in my own point of view...) user Yandman has been placing warning signs all over my talk page. I want to remove all of that discussion from my talk page and this user is now putting amber and red signs and warning me that I'll be blocked if I continue. From my point of view I have operated very strictly within Wiki norms and sought an amicable discussion, I find the use of these signs patronising (and incorrect, as he therey alleges that my 'behaviour' is unacceptable) and the threat of blocking unbelieveable. Please help? JamesAVD 16:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Looks like you've been on the losing side of consensus, and it's not really an administrator issue. That said if you're truly moving on from the issue and/or the matter is resolved I'm willing to archive your talk page for you. --kingboyk 16:15, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, please Kingboyk. The proper place for that discussion is elsewhere and I feel strongly that the user in question is seeking to bully not gain consensus. I do not feel that I'm on the losing side of a discussion which was only begun this afternoon! Thanks again. JamesAVD 16:17, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

You're going against what multiple other editors are telling you. You're also posting the same message in multiple forums which is highly discouraged (==spam). I'll assume good faith here, that you're a newbie who doesn't know the ropes, but if I see any shenanigans I'll be blocking you - and there won't be any warning! (this is the warning :)).

Now, I'll go archive your talk page but please don't make me regret it. --kingboyk 16:20, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Kingboyk. But I do feel that the discussion which is necessary needs to be broadly supported. The individuals involved are (in my view) trying to impose a solution based on (very thin) discussion in a page which had not been seen by the broad base of contributors to the talk pages of the various countries involved. I may be a newbie but my actions were entirely justifiable. I still feel that the user I name above was using his administrator powers to bully and I would like to know how to complain about this. Thanks again. JamesAVD 16:25, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

User:Yandman is not an admin. I notice no-one ever properly welcomed you to Wikipedia. I think a lot of the problems here have occured due to an unfamiliarity with the rules on your behalf, and some other users seeing slighlty disruptive behaviour (specifically spamming) and presuming a little too quickly that you had bad intentions.

If I place the welcome tempalte on your user talk page, can you please promise to read the help pages that it links to? That'll give you a few ideas as to how to avoid giving the impression that you're here to cause trouble. Robdurbar 16:31, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Thankyou, both. I strongly dispute that I have been spamming. A change has been made to the infoboxes of EU member states which is non-standard and potentially POV. Some users tried to claim that this had been discussed on some ill-used page (Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Countries) and that this was sufficient. I have raised the issue on the talk pages of each of the relevant countries - this cannot be spamming. The users who are 'under the impression' that I'm here to cause trouble are the same users which have strong point of view on whether the change should be made or not, and instead of addressing the argument are using admin powers to imply that my actions are outside of Wiki norms. This is unacceptable. Specifically, user Yandman sought to use warning signs on my own talk page to bully and, ultimately (in my view), enforce his own point of view. It is I who have sought to generate a discussion about this issue; I have not been 'going against what multiple editors are telling me' whilst these three are not representative of the very broad range of contributors who have added to the Wikipedia pages on major European countries. And of the admins who have written here only one has addressed the concerns I had, the others have been verging on patronising, patting me on the head and telling me that I should listen to users who I have (cogently, calmly) alleged are seeking to bully me. Please, will someone tell me what can be done about this? JamesAVD 16:44, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I promise you James that I was not "seeking to bully" you, merely pointing out how consensus works here. Please try to assume good faith and not take it personally. You are right that I disagree with you on the content issue, but I have not (so far) used my admin powers at all, just given you some friendly advice which you may take or ignore, it's entirely up to you. However, ignoring what several other editors have said including me about the merits of centralised discussion may well get you into trouble. --Guinnog 16:49, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

At the risk of running around in circles here, and I would rather not have to comment again, this is precisely an example of what I mean. First Guinnog suggests that I was not assuming good faith, which if you read my talk page you'll see I did (unlike Guinog and others who assumed I was spamming or vandalising), then the threat: 'igorning what several other editors have said [subtext: admins] ... may well get you into trouble'. How can I get into trouble if I work closely within Wikipedia norms, unless the threat is that if I annoy certain admins (and go agains the opinions they hold), I 'get into trouble'. The only sort of trouble he can mean is, what, blocking? It is my belief that these admins are using their powers (and threats of using their powers) to intimidate contributors to Wikipedia, in particular to get their own way on points of discussion. This is surely an issue which needs some attention from more senior administrators or Wikipedia controllers? I would like someone to address my complaint that one user in particular tried to bully me by use of 'warning signs'. I would like Wikipedia to prevent, as a matter of policy, all use of these signs by users who might seek to use them to bully. JamesAVD 16:59, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

James, you've got to be careful when you make accusations. You'll notice that I've never been part of the debate on the new maps, nor have I ever made changes relating to the maps: therefore I don't see how you can divine that I have a PoV on the issue. Secondly, the reason I and others noticed you (in my case, RC patrol) was that you took it upon yourself to change the maps on every single EU member state page, and then remove any reference to the EU from the relevant infoboxes. I, along with 3 other users, asked you to stop doing this. Only then did you start spamming messages on talk pages, accusing us of having a PoV and then of trying to hide your comments. You then blanked the various warnings from your talk page (less than 30 minutes after they'd been posted), before simultaneously trying to open a RfC on my actions. I apologise to you if you felt offended by my actions, and maybe the warnings I gave you for page blanking were a little harsh, but you've got to learn to be patient and wait for consensus. People who are discussing something rarely appreciate it if you go and change it on your own. yandman 17:01, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. I saw a problem with the infoboxes which was non-standard and potentially POV (giving EU borders and EU accession a weighting in the infobox which would be a clear matter of dispute); I sought discussion on the relevant talk pages; finding none I made changes to each of the pages with a problem; three users began a discussion on my talk page which very rapidly descended (on their part) into accusations of bad behaviour; I disputed their actions; I raised the issue on each of the talk pages (which can be the <only> way in which the broader base of users can know there is even a discussion taking place); I sought to remove the aggressive comments from my talk page and was met with 'warning signs' from a user, patronising in tone and ultimately threatening blocking with no case for un-Wiki behaviour. I feel strongly that this user was seeking to bully me. I believe that these signs are open to misuse and that the discussion here raises serious issues about the use of admin priveleges. JamesAVD 17:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

You knew there was a discussion, you even took part in it: [55]. And this wasn't the first time you'd made these edits. Going through your contribs, one notices that you've already been on an EU-removal spree and have already been reverted by other editors. I'm finding it harder and harder to believe your innocence here, James. yandman 17:16, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you made me aware of it, Yandman. I note you didn't seek to make contributors to country pages aware of it, but still proposed it as a consensus. I in no way engaged on an 'EU removal spree': I'm personally strongly in favour of the effect of the EU on politics in Europe. This does not mean that an encyclopedia can be misleading. It was me who raised this for debate and it is those who want to deviate from Wikipedia best practice and avoidance of potential POV statements to justify a new map for each of these countries; this is a discussion for elsewhere, but the bullying which you attempted on my talk page should not be acceptable. I hope Wikipedia can do something about the problem of using these 'warning signs' and threats of banning. JamesAVD 17:35, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple language transliterationsorder problem-advice needed

Hi, I am having dispute with other users about Marathi and Kannada translirations on belgaum page.Though Belgaum has majority of Marathi speakers (about 3/4)[56]it is in Karnataka state of India and a dispute is going on between Indian states of Maharashtra and Karnataka states about it.Marathi people there refuse the imposition [57] of Kannada and instead embrace their mother-tongue,Marathi.My contesting editors say that kannada should be first as the disputed region is in Karnataka and as language transliterations should be in alphabetical order.But Carnatic_music along with many artocles doesnt follow such system. Please advice,according to wiki rules,which language transliteration should be first. Mahawiki 17:25, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

This issue has been discussed before on other talk pages also and the consensus is that scripts should be used in alphabetical order. And alphabetically Kannada comes before Marathi. This is what is being followed on Carnatic music page, Dravidian languages page etc., also, if I am right. The issue, if any, on Belgaum page regarding scripts is not about the order in which they have to be written but is infact, whether Marathi script is even needed or justified on that page. For now, editors are maintaining status quo by having both scripts on that page. And obviously it should be in alphabetical order, nothing else. Sarvagnya 21:01, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

First of while ur misdeeds of sock-puppetry are exposed I would not like to share space with u. Secondly if u know ur oppositon of Marathi script was total failure when I presented dozens of citations, mediators and admins agreed to it and u did a disappearing act. Mahawiki 03:54, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User 222.225.117.108

This user has been vandalising several Formula 1 pages with either minor edits--- changing 'Collision' to 'Accident' or altering the results table from the official one. They have just had a block and returned today to create more mayhem. Any help would be appreciated! Lemon martini 17:46, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Something else to look out for

Use of wikipedia as a trusted site to spread malware.

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/80417

Geni 19:01, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but the following excerpt is reassuring: "The attentive editors at Wikipedia detected the misleading warning text and the links in the Wikipedia article about W32.Blaster immediately and deleted them in just a few minutes." Picaroon9288 02:07, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

but that was on de rather than en.Geni 02:51, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I realized that. Picaroon9288 03:09, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ernest Bevin College

82.44.58.180 has been adding WP:BOLLOCKS to the Ernest Bevin College article. Considering the fact this IP has made no contributions other than nonsense, a block might be in order.--Isotope23 21:09, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Done.  :-) Can't sleep, clown will eat me 21:28, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unblock after 48 hours

One of my wikiBuddies, User:Caligvla, IMed me and said he was put on a 48 hour block, and 48 hours as passed and no one has unblocked him. Could someone remedy that if that is the case? —ExplorerCDT 03:54, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

The block will expire automatically after the allotted time. Sasquatch t|c 06:10, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disruption to AfD for Vikram Rai

Could someone please look at the recent contributions by the following users, with regard to Vikram Rai and its associated AfD page.

• Finmin
• 69.181.55.159
• 148.87.1.170
• 148.87.1.171
• 148.87.1.172

I strongly suspect they are all sockpuppets of User:Vikram rai. At first, I thought these were just the actions of an innocent newbie, but I now believe that he is a malicious spammer. In particular, see this faked version of the AfD page. — Tivedshambo (talk) 07:49, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Since you've got multiple IPs with the same vandalism, I've sprotected the Afd for a bit. If someone thinks there's a better approach, feel free to reverse. Shell ^babelfish 08:12, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/GreekWarrior

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

GreekWarrior is banned from editing Wikipedia for one year. Following any ban GreekWarrior is placed on probation. He may be banned for an appropriate period should he engage in disruptive behavior. All blocks or bans to be logged at Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/GreekWarrior#Log_of_blocks_and_bans.

For the Arbitration Committee. --Srikeit ^{(Talk | Email)} 08:18, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] James Hetfield- metallica

Hi I hope I am doing this the right way. I just thought I would bring to your attention the abuse going on in James Hetfield's article. He is seen as quoting that he uses his penis on stage to perform homosexual acts to members of his band and also fans. There is also a mention of him giving oral sex to Lars Ulrich earlier on in the article. I would say that this article needs to be locked to protect it from further vandalism or at least to be deleted (the abusive statements) and the vandal(s) to be warned. Thanks Renee —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 220.233.173.57 (talk)

Thank you very much for this report. You've put it in the right place, don't worry. The vandalism has been reverted. Page protection isn't necessary at this point in time; however, if the vandalism continues then the page will be protected. Thank you. --Lord Deskana (talk) 14:20, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Offensive userpage "Freedom of Expression"

User:Cerebral Warrior has been posting rather disgusting quotes about Muslims on his userpage for example: "News magazines don't kill people, Muslims do", The 'offence to Islam' ruse is merely an excuse for Muslims to revert to their default mode: rioting and setting things on fire. There has been some "compromise" achieved between him and two users which involves him providing the {{userpage}} disclaimer if he wants to keep them.

But I do not see how they are acceptable even with a "disclaimer". They are worse than WP:NPA violations. (And a Muslim editor already has been insulted by this user.) What he has on his userpage is no mild insult either to accuse someone, their family, their friends and their friends' families, of being a murderers - even if it is through quotes of someone else who shares his view.

So I would like to see what others think of this "freedom of expression" as some call it, and this compromise of having the "disclaimer".--Konst.able^Talk 14:12, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I say, ask him to remove it politely; and if he doesn't assist – warn him and remove the shit and protect the page temporarily. Wikipedia is not a soapbox and its not a battlefield either. — Nearly Headless Nick ^{L} 14:26, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree too. See also my recent post on ANI on the subject. --Guinnog 14:31, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Other users (such as User:The Ungovernable Force and User:Bigkev) have posted far more hurtful and (possibly) libelous content on their userpage, including things like "This user believs george Bush is a Neo-Fascist", "This user is anti-American", "Who are you calling an illegal imigrant pilgrim", "This user loves Whites", "this user supports the Nazis", "This user thinks immigration to New Zealand should be restricted to only Anglospeher counties". If no action was taken against these users, why am I being singled out? Is this fair? Cerebral Warrior 14:46, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Argh. He's right. Probably we should have a policy on this matter. Political comments that might be considered offensive should never be accepted. — Nearly Headless Nick ^{L} 14:59, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Isn't this part of Wikipedia is not your personal webhost? The argument that one's usage should be accepted because others are making the same mistake just doesn't wash. Shell ^babelfish 15:08, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I got used to these types of personal userpagaes. As far as it concerns the owner of those kind of pages, the userpage in question does somehow respect civility i believe, though not ethically. However, there are other cases where they don't. Just because it happens that i sometimes edit Islam-related articles and because of my Arabic name i used to receive some hate speeches suck it u camel jockey cunt islam is wrong, Fayssal, how can you keep defending the outlaw gang called the Muslims ?, etc...

The best thing (at the absence of a policy) is to ignore them unless they do breach some of wikipedia core policies such as WP:No personal attacks where hate speech-only accounts got to be blocked indef. -- Szvest 15:39, 1 November 2006 (UTC) ^{Wiki me up ®}

In my opinion offensive and xenophobic material should be deleted from his userpage. He is using wikipedia to express hatred towards people of a certain religion. This is surely contrary to wikipedia rules. I would also like to point out that most of Cerebrals edits on wikipedia involve hate-speech towards muslims. His behaviour is also extremely disruptive on a number of articles related to the Middle East conflict.--Burgas00 17:14, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

For those new to this brawl, here's the heads-up:

About a week ago, I met CW in (yet another) argument about the use of the word "terrorist" in articles here. I found him to be a thoroughly unpleasant editor, making personal attacks for which I warned him here. This is when I noticed his userboxes (he hadn't yet added the quote), which I suggested he remove. After he added the quote, I asked him again to remove the stuff. Later on, someone made a complaint with Konstable, who immediately blocked CW and deleted his userpage. However, Konstable later backed down, explaining his actions here. Barely a few minutes later, CW made yet another trollish comment on the Al-Qaeda talk page. Not wanting to have to start an RfC, I decided to give CW a last warning, in which I asked him (among other things) to remove the hate speech from his user page. I asked the other users present to endorse this statement, which they did. However, two users voiced the opinion that we should not censor user pages, so I decided to put a slightly tailored warning up and let things lie, seeing as there is no policy about offensive userpages. I thought it would be better just to ignore CW, as did ThatGuy (see here). However, more and more people have come across this page, and CW has defended himself by implying that I had given him permission to keep the silly comments. This is not quite true: I stated that I would come down on any users who blanked his talk page without having discussed the matter first, as there's no strict policy about this. In my opinion, the best thing to do is to refrain from censoring userpages. There are no legal problems here (As far as I know, America doesn't have laws against "inciting religious hatred", or else half of FOX would be in prison by now...), and if we start removing content from userpages (I'm not talking about talk pages here), where do we draw the line? If a Turkish user puts a box up saying he believes the Armenian Genocide is a myth, do we blank it? If someone puts a box up saying they don't agree with US imperialism, do we blank it? The only viable solution would be to outlaw any opinions whatsoever on userpages, which would never work. If people have a page on which they can vent their frustration, maybe they'll stop venting it on the articles. I've been keeping a close eye on CW, and he seems to be making an effort. I think that the best possible solution is to not feed the troll. yandman 18:31, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Please study WP:USER#What can I not have on my user page. This includes:

• Polemical statements:

- Jimbo Wales[58]

Tyrenius 19:02, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I repeat: there is no policy on userpages. yandman 19:49, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Nonsense. Policy pages are descriptive not prescriptive, not having a page which says "policy" at the top doesn't mean that no policy exists, just that it hasn't been written yet. As noted below the block of Rookie helps define our practice and therefore out policy and similarly the situation sometime back with Deeceevoice's userpage. But if you want something which does say "policy" at the top of the page try what wikipedia is not with such as "Many of the policies listed here apply to your user page as well. Your user page is not a personal homepage..." and "Wikipedians have their own user pages, but they may be used only to present information relevant to working on the encyclopedia." --pgk 20:11, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I consider Rookiee's blocking to have been out-of-line and reactionary since there were no ongoing behavioural problems aside from the userpage, which was itself borderline. But it does make a convenient piece of psuedo-case law here. --tjstrf Now on editor review! 20:26, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Well "helps to define" doesn't mean it is a literal definition, as with anything there is a certain amount of interpretion involved. You could very narrowly interpret that situation and anyone repeating it "word for word" should be blocked, or you can look at it in a more general sense concerning appropriate use of userpages. I certainly hope we aren't in an all or nothing situation where your userpage is acceptable - carry on, or your userpage is unacceptable - never darken our doors again. --pgk 20:37, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Dismissing a guideline because it is not a policy shows little common sense. Very important pages like Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers and Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point are respected because they are obviously right. Wikipedia would be hell if nobody respected them. -- ReyBrujo 16:16, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, if User:Rookiee is any precedant, you can just indef block him if he won't remove the content. --tjstrf Now on editor review! 19:31, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Precedents are not good to have. Just because a certain decision applies in one situation does not mean that it should apply in another. The context of the decision is just as important, if not more important, than the decision itself. These decisions should be made individually, and not count as precedents. Also, when making a decision, sometimes it is more important to look at what is best for the community of Wikipedians then what is the consensus. Due to him offending some people, and his page becoming more and more controversial, I feel that the user boxes should be allowed to stay, where as the quotes and comments should be removed. I also think his page should be monitored so that he doesn't post comments like that in a userbox. It is one thing to tell people what POV you hold; it is another to purposely insult someone who holds another POV. This user's comments have shown that was indeed his purpose in posting those things, and that should not be tolerated; not now, not ever! It is best for the community, in my opinion, to remove the comments from the page because it is a very broad attack that many people can, and a few have, taken personally. -- THL 00:33, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I would just like to point out that there is a difference between "I'm Christian" and "I hate Muslims". The former is perhaps not the best idea, unless you are editing subjects related to Christianity, but is not inherently offensive. The latter is offensive. Just saying this in case anyone thinks that all political / religious statements should be strictly banned from user pages. Armedblowfish (talk|mail) 00:57, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a private website, it is not the guardian of User:Cerebral Warrior's freedom of speech. The material is insulting and offensive and violates our policies, and the user has been more thoroughly warned on his talkpage than anybody I've ever seen. I have removed the material and am going to bed. If it's re-inserted, I ask other admins to uphold our policies by re-removing it and protecting the page. Bishonen | talk 02:19, 2 November 2006 (UTC).

Well done. --Guinnog 02:22, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree. -- THL 04:28, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree, but I think that this should also be a cue to write a precise policy on the matter, so as to avoid wasting so much time on this in future. The guideline says that "using userpages to (...) campaign for or against anything or anyone is a bad idea", but we all know that there are myriad userpages out there that don't respect this. The policy about user pages says that only material relevant to collaborating should be included, which practically no-one respects. Maybe someone could press Jimbo for a relevant soundbite... yandman 08:41, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

All i see is an ethical problem:

• Wikipedia is a universal project where anyone can edit in order to spread and share knowledge. Of course freedom of expression should be protected but provocation should be avoided. So why couldn't users avoid provocation and be positive?
• If Wikipedia guidelines are "considered a standard that all users should follow... should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception..." than common sense here can be that users can easily understand that their actions cause problems w/in the community. If not than common sense would mean that this user is trying to disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. "If you think you have a valid point, causing disruption is probably the least effective way of presenting that point – and it may get you blocked." Can someone explain to me what this could mean? -- Szvest 11:40, 2 November 2006 (UTC) ^{Wiki me up ®}

Szves, he started the provocation by calling Muslims murderers. That is the tip of the iceberg by the way, I am not even quoting the things he has said outside his talk page (for example accusing a Muslim editor personally of being a genocidal Nazi). But he has agreed to tone this down already, and it seems to have been resolved to some extent - so I have not even brought it up here. (And just saying it now to emphasise that he was the one who started the provocation, and no one else.) --Konst.able^Talk 11:52, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree Konstable that he had insulted Muslims. I am a Muslim myself and think it is not tolerable to accept such behaviour in this place; be it against Muslims or animals. The thing is that if he insulted a user as he did than he surely should have been blocked for personal attacks like i did when i blocked the one i mentioned above at my first comment of yesterday.

Re provocation. Actually i was refering to WC's provocation and not users/admins who tried to get the trash out of his userpage. What i meant is that at the absence of a policy re those matters than common sense is for the provocator (in this case WC) to ask themselves if it is possible to be rationale and avoid slurring. Instead of insulting they could have had a userbox stating that they disagree w/ Islam. The case is simple. Hiding behind "freedom of expression" while abusing what does that mean and insulting others arguing that Muslims do not constitute a race is garbage. Insulting is insulting and while there are no policies the ball has been at their camp. They should have listened to reseanable calls and concensus made out of this story and remove the stuff instead of playing games. Again, he could also have been blocked for disruption instead. But anyway, the best solution was to ignore that except in the case of preaching hatred. -- Szvest 12:28, 2 November 2006 (UTC) ^{Wiki me up ®}

User:Cerebral Warrior asked me to step in and I have. I think I have a NPOV and completely noninsulting edition of his page now up and I have also protected it for the time being, as well as left a comment with him on his talk page.--MONGO 11:46, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I have here a quasi-democratic proposal for handling this. Please comment! crazyeddie 16:08, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed: Community ban for H. Ellwood Gilliland and his sockpuppets

I'm posting this here based on the response to the RFArb case I filed. Someone assuming the name of H. Elwood Gilliland has used over 20 named sockpuppets and innumerable anonymous accounts to insert vanity references to "himself" and his projects in many articles. He has been most active in the Online creation and now-deleted NiMUD article, but was active elsewhere as well. In the course of doing this, he has used multiple (proven by checkuser) sockpuppets to cast multiple votes on AfD comments, some of which influenced the outcome of the discussion. When his articles of choice are un-semiprotected, he edits them from anonymous IP addresses, some of which edits have left dispositive evidence as to the identity of the editor. When the articles are semi-protected, he uses registered accounts and avails himself of resources such as WP:RFPP and WP:PAIN to make the case that I am oppressing him. Applying my discretion, I had indicated to this user that while he is free to edit, he is not free to act disruptively and insert improperly sourced vanity references to himself, and have applied blocks until he indicates that he will stop. Since I have now substantively edited the Online creation article, where previously I was only acting in an administrative capacity, I'm no longer comfortable continuing in that manner under my own authority, and would like to see if others agree that this should become a general community ban. Context on this user's activities can be found here. Nandesuka 23:25, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Support a community ban. After looking at the evidence I see no need for the arb com case. This matter can be handled faster by the community. FloNight 00:52, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

WP:RfAr reflects that three arbitrators who have commented on the case have opined that they would prefer a community ban for this user to hearing this as an arbitration case. They would not say that lightly. The community has been very patient with this user. Support the ban. Newyorkbrad 03:39, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Support a community ban. One of the usernames matches the username of an editor who accused Nandesuka of personal attacks. I've asked for diffs and given several days to substantiate the claim, but nothing substantial has come up. Looks like this editor has more socks than the back of my laundry room dryer. Durova 04:05, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Support. If you get any grief for blocking accounts after you are "involved" (i.e. Wikilawyering) just point to this thread. Thatcher131 19:25, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Support banning. No good is likely to come of bothering with this abusive sockfarmer. One puppy's opinion. KillerChihuahua^?!? 22:59, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Joseph Todaro, Sr.

Does this fail WP:BLP? User:Zoe|(talk) 04:22, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Looks like it fails WP:V, WP:RS and a bunch of other stuff too... Tony Fox (arf!) 04:23, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

So I guess I need to start pruning. User:Zoe|(talk) 03:17, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Admin school

A new forum page called Wikipedia:Admin school has been set up for those wishing to prepare themselves to become admins by improving their Wikipedia skills and knowledge of Wikipedia. As awareness of the page grows, we can expect quite a few questions to be asked there. Admins and experienced users will be needed to answer them. Please keep an eye on the page for when that happens.   The Transhumanist   12:52, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd have thought WP:ESP/AC was enough. – Chacor 12:57, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Admin coaching was horribly bottlenecked, with a very long wait and very long waiting line. I am merely trying to accomodate users in not having to wait so long to get their questions answered.   The Transhumanist   03:28, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

"If you are a beginner, you have come to the wrong page". Gosh, that's a friendly, non-elitist, and totally agreeable message to give out. Entirely in line with what Wikipedia is about. And a huge list of exclusive and ridiculous prerequisites. I certainly will be making a note of how impressed I am with this when this page's creator goes to RFA. Proto::type 13:06, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

It's all subject to editing. If it presents the wrong impressions, then that's what feedback is for. I'll gladly modify the page to accomodate your concerns. As for the prerequisites, what would you think would be more appropriate? I am completely open to input.   The Transhumanist   03:28, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I would add that, with all respect to The Transhumanist's commitment to Wikipedia, that an admin school should be designed by admins, otherwise the "next generation" of admins will end up with values that could clash with the previous generation. Carcharoth 13:18, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

They always do. That's what allows things to change.Geni 13:53, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

So what stays the same? :-) Carcharoth 14:51, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Change stays the same.   The Transhumanist   03:28, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Me.Geni 15:21, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

.... Carcharoth 16:04, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

What a gigantic waste of time. --Lord Deskana (talk) 15:01, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Probably. a worrying trend certainly.Geni 15:21, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

A sort of wiki-spindoctor. yandman 15:28, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Sounds nice, I do like it, but doesn't it look rather redundant? --Terence Ong _{(T | C)} 15:52, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Admin school. Chick Bowen 17:57, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't see the point of having Wikipedia:Esperanza/Admin coaching and this running side-by-side. (aeropagitica) 18:00, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

This is an open forum, whereas admin coaching is one-on-one, and therefore very limited. A forum keeps the discussions out in the open, provides the opportunity for admins to comment on each issue or question that is posed by admin hopefuls, and allows each participant to easily read and contribute to the other discussions/coachings going on. It is intended as a supportive help desk.   The Transhumanist   03:28, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I think this needs deleting before it goes any further. --Lord Deskana (talk) 18:26, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Just a note that a link to this project has been added to the headers on the Help Desk and associated pages. Tony Fox (arf!) 21:13, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

And several other pages, all of which were inappropriate. I have removed them. —Centrx→talk • 00:18, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Concur - I had removed the one from WP:Administrators[59] but was called away by RL before I could get to the rest. KillerChihuahua^?!? 00:36, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

WP:POINT in any way? – Chacor 01:59, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

How are the people who the page was designed for going to see the deletion notice? This appears to be a manipulation of the deletion discussion process. What are the policies concerning the choking of a page by removing it's links? I placed those links in good faith to provide access to the page. But is it appropriate to remove the links when a deletion discussion is ongoing? Something doesnn't appear quite right here. Is there a policy that covers this issue?   The Transhumanist   03:47, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I posted notice here, so that the page would have guidance and support of admins. I did not expect such a hostile reaction. If there is an admin monoculture or an elitist group, I may have discovered it right here on this page! But please consider this: if admins are actively involved in the coaching and question answering in the forum, then they would be helping, on a larger scale than the admin coaching page, to prepare the next generation of admins. Safety is built-in to the system. There is no danger of a mono-culture developing because the forum is available to all. Also, I've found that teaching is one of the best ways to learn, and so encouraging everyone to teach each other, would benefit all. Sincerely,   The Transhumanist   03:35, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Currently, admin coaching discussions between coaches and their coachees are tucked away on subpages all over user namespace. I've tried to bring these together in an archive, but I haven't come close to tracking them all down. Some of them may even have been deleted. I don't know yet. It just seems more appropriate to have a forum which is out in the open and therefore available for feedback from all who would be interested in participating. I have done my best to keep this as open and supportive as possible.   The Transhumanist   03:42, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

In addition to posting notice here, I planned on personally contacting admins to get them involved in answering users' questions as the volume of posts increased. I already have contacted one admin for this very purpose, because I didn't know how fast the volume of posts would grow.   The Transhumanist   04:04, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] American Greetings

User:Miracleimpulse is continuing to add a merge tag to the American Greetings article with the reasoning that it should be merged to Hallmark Cards "because American Greetings appears to be a Public Subsidiary of Hallmark Cards". The tag has been removed by several editors (including myself) because no evidence from a reliable source has been produced to suggest this is the case (you'd think there would be at least 1 WSJ article somewhere if Hallmark had purchased American Greetings). User:Miracleimpulse is continuing to add the tag back citing that "the discussion is in progress" to me this more POV pushing by User:Miracleimpulse (see also Talk:Sweetest Day without producing any evidence to support his claims and continuing to add the merge tag without evidence is borderline vandalism of the article.--Isotope23 13:59, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

• The discussion is in progress the tag should remain. Miracleimpulse 14:12, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Posting a tag with no evidence to support the merge, and not providing any evidence while continuing to repost the tag is at very least a violation of WP:POINT.--Isotope23 14:23, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Miracle, do you hate the greeting card industry or something? Because your behaviour on related articles (sweetest day) is rather odd, to say the least. --tjstrf Now on editor review! 22:43, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

72 hour block issued. As stated below, WP:DE is suggested reading for all involved. Durova 01:19, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree this is ridiculous. For the record, American Greetings' latest Form 10-K SEC filing states that Hallmark is "the largest competitor" of American Greetings, and there is no form 13D on file as would be required if Hallmark (or anyone else) owned 5% or more of American Greetings' shares. Newyorkbrad 01:36, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

This is a classic example of the kind of problem I had in mind when I helped draft Wikipedia:Disruptive editing. Suggest WP:RFC to establish an impartial consensus as required in the guideline. Durova 15:18, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] American Greetings Redux

Miracleimpulse has now resorted to WP:NPA in the discussion at Talk:Hallmark Cards, suggesting I am in some way being "paid" to disagree with him.--Isotope23 15:27, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Blocked for 72 hours. Suggest WP:DE and a community topic ban may be near if problems resume. Durova 01:17, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Short magazine column of interest to administrators monitoring U.S. political articles

Administrators and editors monitoring U.S. political articles in advance of next Tuesday's election may be interested in reading this short column called "Dirty Wikitricks" from this week's New Yorker, which discusses how campaign staffers and others are editing such articles for partisan advantage and gives specific examples. Newyorkbrad 15:55, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Isn't it going to be nice after next Tuesday when things quiet down on the political front? (he said with eternal optimism) Then we get to look forward to 2008, of course... Tony Fox (arf!) 16:42, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I've been seeing this trend grow. We already had a huge mess on our hands with the Mark Taylor (politician) case, but the one that lit my fuse was in 2004, when Bushcountry.org linked to an old version of the John Kerry article where one of their...sympathizers...had said that Kerry's wounds in Vietnam were superficial. "See, the encyclopedia says so." Brace yourselves, folks: if any of this gets to be viewed as helpful to even the worst of the least, we're going to be slashdotted daily. Geogre 17:23, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

It turns out that we look rather better on those talk pages than we usually do. What a relief he looked at those, instead of Bigfoot or Anarchism. :-) Geogre 04:05, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AfD backlog

I noticed a huge backlog of AfD articles. Someone should go take care of that. SchmuckyTheCat 18:06, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

It represents several dozen hours worth of somewhat difficult work at this point... so I wouldn't expect it to happen like this moment. It's been a problem for a while. --W.marsh 18:10, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the low hanging fruit is picked. :) Publishing for help won't hurt the effort though. SchmuckyTheCat 18:19, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

• I've been trying to clear some, but RL needs me in the meantime. :( - Mailer Diablo 18:40, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Terrorstorm

Several weeks ago, the entry for the documentary Terrorstorm was deleted. However, the film has become available via "mainstream" sources (e.g., Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble) and is currently 17th on Amazon.com's DVD sales chart. [60] Therefore I would like an administrators' permission to repost an article for it. Sorry if this is the wrong place for this request, but I can't figure out where else to turn to. GeorgeC 18:45, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

(FYI: I'm not an admin) Technically, WP:DRV is the right place to go if you feel there were problems with the way the deletion was handled the first time through. If you believe that the circumstances have significantly changed since the first cycle, however, then rewriting the article to incorporate the new information is OK as long as it hasn't been blocked from reinstatement. I believe that rewriting the article and including this and this, plus some links establishing the notability of Alex Jones (TV appearances, etc.) and you should be fine. Others may disagree, though. - Richfife 20:22, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

First note that I am not a fan of 9/11 conspiracy cruft., and second I'm probably going to get slapped for not listing this at DRV inistead. However the DVD is available and seems to be doing well, so I have undeleted the article on the basis that it probably meets notability guidelines for films. (call it SNOW/IAR if you want; there was nothing wrong with the initial deletion, just the circumstances have changed) When editing the article, please stick to reliable third party sources—reviews, criticism and rebuttal in reliable magazines and newspapers and so forth. This should really not be the venue to refight the 911 conspiracy battle all over again, please. Thatcher131 20:26, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll post this request at DRV then. GeorgeC 20:31, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Note that the DVD was released on 10/31 which probably explains its high Amazon sales. By comparison the 19th highest seller is season five of Northern Exposure which will be released next week. Given that the DVD was only released a few days ago I don't think the sales number reflects notability. GabrielF 07:08, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Leyasu

I don't know if this is the correct place to notice, but leyasu is back, and I am feeling some editwarring coming. Bryan 23:04, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

One week block on the IP (anon only). Thatcher131 03:13, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Kven

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

Kven-user limited to one account and is placed on probation. He may be banned from any article or set of articles which he disrupts by aggressive biased editing. The Kven-user is banned from editing articles related to Kven or making any edits regarding the topic. Should Kven-user edit under any username or IP prior to selecting a username any edit made may be removed on sight and the account indefinitely blocked. Should Kven-user violate any ban, he may be briefly blocked, up to a month in the event of repeat offenses. All blocks to be logged at Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Kven#Log_of_blocks_and_bans.

For the Arbitration Committee --Srikeit ^{(Talk | Email)} 00:17, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:TPIRFanSteve

I've had some issues with this user, a lot of it violating WP:OWN over various articles about The Price Is Right. This user keeps reverting my well-explained, improving edits for no apparent reason. I've removed a date from a succession box on the Bob Barker page that violates WP is not a crystal ball, and there is an edit war there. He has been doing this for a long time it appears, on various The Price Is Right related pages, when other users are trying to improve and trim the articles. 68.79.132.216 06:32, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Please discuss what you want here and not on AN. --Woohookitty^(meow) 11:01, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] JACKetOFF (talk · contribs)

Inappropriate username and vandalizing pages...Reswobslc 08:31, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

JACKetOFF is now history. I shan't bother to tell him this, as I don't want to give him anything to gloat over and also the more time he wastes wondering why he can't edit the less time he'll have for vandalizing with whatever replacement user ID he comes up with. Anyone who disagrees with my unorthodox and perhaps policy-infringing approach is welcome to splatter his user talk page with impressive white-hand-on-red graphics and the usual stuff.

But what's wrong with the username? (It occurs to me that it might be about wanking; but if so, why the worries?) -- Hoary 08:47, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I added the {{indefblocked}} template to his userpage, because that is procedure - to alert people who stumble upon it, for the next month or so, that the account is indefinately-blocked. Cheers, Daniel.Bryant ^{[ T · C ]} 10:28, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Move for a community ban

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Pravknight details some problems with an editor, Pravknight (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log), who is entirely convinced that Wikipedia is part of the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy and edits accordingly. His edits to biographies of living individuals are marked by strong political bias, and his interactions with others indicate that he perceives his own bias as neutrality. Needless to say, those admins who attempt to control this behaviour are also part of the conspiracy. The RfC has been open for over a month and thus far no editor, involved or otherwise, has disputed the findings of fact in respect of Pravkinght's disruptive editing.

I have proposed a community sanction at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Pravknight#Motion to close Guy 10:29, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I notified PravKnight. [61]. I told him that I would unblock him so he could make a response if he agreed to keep to the issues at hand and not make personal attacks toward editors and admins. FloNight 14:23, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Signed. Durova 15:02, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Massive sockfarm

In the past few months, there was a lot of edit warring concerning fair use images in Pokémon articles centered around the user Bobabobabo (talk · contribs) (who has recently been blocked and banned). A full list of usernames can be seen at User:Interrobamf/Bobabobabo. Several are blocked already, as are the IPs, but there are some that remain unblocked, as this user amassed 75 discovered sockpuppet accounts.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 04:59, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

You may want to ask for a checkuser to track down any others. JoshuaZ 05:16, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

He did - how do you think he found them ;) Raul654 05:20, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, since I made that edit I noticed. Most of them seem to be pretty obvious socks anyways. I've blocked about 10 of them. I don't know how many are left. In any event, I support a community ban. JoshuaZ 05:23, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

In the past, she's edit warred over a lot of things, but her latest obsession is messing with Interrobamf's page, reuploading Image:PokeAG191.jpg, Image:Satoshi and Haruka contest winners.jpg, and Image:TheIceCave.JPG, and making cut-and-paste duplicates of merged Pokémon episode articles (visible in Category:Pokémon episodes; if there's a name with ugly caps or unnecessary parentheticals, she made a new sock). In the past, she's edit warred over reinserting unnecessary images into Togepi, Bulbasaur, and Pokémon: Destiny Deoxys and reuploading this godawful ugly collage of Legend of Zelda covers to Image:LegendofZeldaseries.JPG.

I've tried to talk to her, to get her to concentrate on productive edits, but at this point (after her little foray with a dozen or so socks this morning) my patience is exhausted. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 05:23, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

User:74.78.65.143 needs to be deleted, as Bobabobabo was impersonating this IP to (poorly) throw off accusations of sockpuppetry. Interrobamf 05:27, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

All should be done with (unless there are those that were missed) and Centrx put a banned template on Bobabobabo's user page.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 05:31, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I think I've checked them all; all are indefinitely blocked. Interrobamf 05:34, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

And Bobabobabo emailed me claiming that only four of the usernames were actually hers, the text is as follows:

Thanks alot you meany head

I'm 13 years old

Those user names are not mine. My IP is a school IP. My User names are only

1. Bobabobabo
2. Yugigx60
3. Mewtwo4
4. Taiyou-BitetheLung

So stop speading lies!

And I also received this email from LordPrincess:

May you mind telling why I'm blocked. My IP is 208.101.35.51. I don't even konw what Sockpuppetery is. So may you please tell a adminsator to unblock me.

—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 05:37, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Interesting, I got a similar email from Lordprincess but with a different phrasing. see my comment on Raul's page. I'm particularly curious as to why LordPrincess would choose to email us two if she was blocked by Raul and had no interaction with either of us. JoshuaZ 05:40, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I did tag her page, but Raul has told me (privately) that both are full of bull. Both are residential cable modems.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 05:41, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I can't say all of them are cable modems, but the one that the vast, vast majority of them originated from is clearly a road runner residential cable modem. Raul654 05:46, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

208.101.35.51 is used by LordPrincess, as seen here. It's probably a school or public access IP. It's still pretty apparent that LordPrincess is Bobabobabo, because, out of the blue, she places indefblocked templates on user pages, something her sockpuppet did before, and says how great everybody, that Bobabobabo had troubles with, is, despite never coming in contact with those people. Interrobamf 05:47, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Princiess is telling the truth that 208.101.35.51 is an IP address she has used; however, it's not the only one. Raul654 05:52, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Figured that. Thanks for the help. Interrobamf 05:54, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I have also received an email from the Princess, with whom I have never dealt. I s/he just going down the list of admins and emailing all of us? She should be blocked for spamming, if that's the case. User:Zoe|(talk) 00:49, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Aaaand, I got an email from User:Woopert with an unblock request, a long list of pages to be protected, and a short list of admins to be blocked (User:A Man in Black, specifically.) Wonder how s/he picked me? Or are we going to see 997 other admins reporting similar emails.... FreplySpang 05:58, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, she also emailed OTRS to get me blocked from certain pages and to hack into AMIB's account :P—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 06:03, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I got the same email from Woopert (talk · contribs), claimed that the following were hers: Woopert (talk · contribs),Fabu-Vinny (talk · contribs) and Taiyou-BitetheLung (talk · contribs). Note how Bobabobabo and Woopert both claim Taiyou-BitetheLung is their account. Don't believe a word she's saying. Of course I support a full community ban.--Konst.able^Talk 07:24, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, right now that is the case. CSCWEM even locked User talk:Bobabobabo.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 07:30, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I also got an e-mail. It was a heart-wrenching story of the Pokemon gestapo cracking down on a poor child at the generically named "Learning Community School". It had good sentence structure and there was a good use of vocabulary, but it had clearly not been proofread. I give it a B-. —Centrx→talk • 17:24, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

My e-mail from Bobabobabo reads:

Please unblock me!! To tell you the truth, I was a wonderful contributor to articles in Wikipedia "Yu-Gi-OH and Pokemon". The story began when a user named Mitsumasa began creating and upload Pokemon images and articles. After about 5 months after the start of the articles the PCP began merging the articles (A Man in Black, Ryulong, Interrobamf) i tried talking to them, and the PCP but they did'nt listen. I gave up until recently students at my school "The Learning Community School" began bullying me, they knew that I was a contributor at the site "Wikipedia", so they told my teacher that they logged in some accounts and began vandalizing the articles that I personattly was currently having problems with you. My teacher Mrs. Lisa Mercato talked to the students Jene', Jessica, Aaron and restricted them from using the school computer. To tell you that I'm not some of those user names I merged some of the articles that i clamied I did. I'm very sorry May you please unblock me and my IP address 72.177.68.38."

(aeropagitica) 17:50, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Bobebobebo (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log) just popped up. Interrobamf 21:46, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Now indef-blocked and tagged as a sockpuppet. (aeropagitica) 21:55, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

75.126.40.74 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log) was used, as seen by this edit. Interrobamf 22:01, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

And from that IP, you can add these two newly registered socks: user:Jomarjerome and user:Shadownight1 Raul654 22:11, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

More fun.

• From Bobabobabo (Received today at noon)
  

  Please unblock me students at my school "The Learning Community School" were bullying me, they knew that I was a conmtributor at the site "Wikipedia", so they told me that the logged in some accounts and began vandalizing the articles that I personattly was currently having problems with you. My teacher Mrs. Lisa Mercato talked to the students Jene', Jessica, Aaron and restricted them from using the school computer.

  To tell you that I'm not some of those user names I merged some of the articles that i clamied I did.

  I'm very sorry

  Please tell Centrx to unblock me.

• And from Woopert (Received at 2:30)
  

  Please don't block Bobabobobabo for what we did. I'm sorry for bullying her. It was a wrong thing for to do.

  our stupid Bitch Teacher restricted us from the computer for doing the shit.

  THe IP I used was:

  72.232.215.170 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log), which I used on the proxy site: TNTproxy.com

  These are may sockpuppets:

  This list is on 72.177.68.38

  [Removed list of anything that's on Interrobamf's page, if you wish, email me]

  Don't be mean to Bobabobabobabo

  [Name withheld for underage reasons]

Frankly, with this mess, I don't know what should be done. Do we unblock the school IP (72.177.68.38 (talk • contribs • info • WHOIS)?) or should we just let the blocks stay in place for the bullshit that's gone on?—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 22:35, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, ManjyomeThunder1 (talk · contribs) just showed up.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 22:40, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Now indef-blocked and sock-tagged. (aeropagitica) 23:34, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

ONE MORE THING, 75.126.40.74 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log) (used by someone in this mess) is a backslashing open proxy.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 22:43, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't suggest unblocking the IP, as that'd only lead to more sockpuppet accounts; Bobabobabo hasn't proven herself to be mature enough to trust. If it blocks her "school", then so be it. Interrobamf 22:43, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Schools that are a source of constant vandalism are often blocked, regardless of this sockpuppetry; I think all this is just a deceptive stupid ploy though. —Centrx→talk • 22:52, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

This is getting ridiculous. Bobabobabo has registered a ja-wiki account at ja:利用者:Bobabobabo and it appears that she has also created an impostor account of myself as well at ja:利用者:Ryulong. I'm getting tired of this, and I was hoping I could actually edit at ja-wiki one day.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 08:59, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps we need to protect the sockpuppet talk pages, as Bobabobabo keeps reverting my redirects to her main talk back to the same old "classmate" story. Interrobamf 19:26, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Raul654

Raul654 has been systematically ignoring my requests for him to explain why he shut my FAC on Bereishit (parsha) after only 4 days, when, having spent three of those days pleading for my opposers to reply promptly, I was actually in the middle of addressing objections. I wrote to him here, and have left two other messages since, but despite replying to many other users who have posted after me, Raul refuses to reply.

I think this is very unfair, particularly I am genuinely seeking an explanation for something I do not understand. Raul, as FA director, is in a position of great power, and I feel frustrated that he will not explain his seemingly arbitrary actions. What can I do? Dev920 (check out this proposal) 11:28, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Bereishit (parsha)/archive1? The history for that page indicates no edits by Raul654 at all. —Psychonaut 11:42, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Raul654 closed the FA nom here. I see nothing wrong with that, as the article is clearly far from FA standard, as it is still mostly a summary with very little discussion of real-world recption, influence, and context. There seems to be more work to do than can be easily done while the article is on FAC. Kusma (討論) 12:34, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, please don't get into semantics. There is no influence on a work allegedly dictated by God. I countered that on the FAC page,and was in the process of acquiring expert help to explain and/or suggest what could be done. And Raul shut it, as I was addressing objections, after I had spent days trying to coax responses from people whose opposes I had dealt with. The issue here is not the article, (which I do believe is FA standard or I would not have nominated it), but the fact that Raul has persistently refused to reply to my messages to explain his actions, which I find, frankly, to be an abuse of power. Wikipedia is about collaboration, not control, why will Raul not work with me? What can I do? Dev920 (check out this proposal) 12:51, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

This isn't an admin matter, and doesn't belong on this noticeboard. Wikipedia admins can block people, protect pages, move pages over redirects, delete pages, and merge histories. None of these apply in this case. All we can do is, to a limited degree, enforce policy. It seems there is no policy regarding the FAC process - the community has, in essence, appointed Raul as a benign dictator in that regard. As far as I can tell he can promote or demote any article he wants to, for whatever arbitrary reason he desires. It's not up to admins to tell him how to operate the FAC process; it's not our business. If you don't like that, you need to get the community to agree to a policy for us to enforce. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:16, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the fact that Raul totally ignored Dev920 messages is downright rude. --Alex (Talk) 21:52, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Maybe, but administrators are not the manners police. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:36, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

But admins may have to block people for being rude and incivil. It is logical that they should avoid this behaviour themselves (and ignoring a message is rude). I currently have some ignored messages on a blocking issue. I'm waiting a few days for a response before bringing it here. I check that the users in question have recently edited, and I also also notify them when I take a question somewhere else, in case they have forgotten about the original message. Carcharoth 08:05, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I came to this page looking for help as to what I can do. The fact that I've basically been informed that Raul is a dictator who can do what he likes without any kind of redress is terrible! Only Jimbo has that right, and he at least explains his actions. This isn't right. Dev920 (check out this proposal) 10:02, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

This isn't even an encyclopedia article, let alone a featured article. It's just a straight summary of the Book of Genesis. —Centrx→talk • 08:14, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Take it to the talkpage please. I'm talking about Raul, not the relative merits or otherwise of the article(because I blatantly disagree with you but am not prepared to argue about it here). Dev920 (check out this proposal) 10:02, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Calling him a "benign dictator" is a personal attack and does not help your case whatsoever. If he's guilty of being rude to you, you're even more guilty of personal attacks. – Chacor 10:46, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

(Well, to be fair, a "benign dictator" is not necessarily seen as a bad thing in volunteer communities. See Benevolent dictator. It's not clear that Dev920 understands that, though.). — Matt Crypto 10:57, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Technically it was me that called him a "benign dictator" first. I think, however, that we should stop calling him that, as I suspect he'll rather like it, and demand some kind of special hat to go with it. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 11:00, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Finlay - as usual, you made me laugh out loud. Raul654 08:17, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I think you're overreacting, Dev920. Raul654 not answering you is a minor slight. While that may be impolite, you should probably just get over it. It's really not a world-shattering "abuse of power" nor a "terrible" instance of malevolent dictatorship. Raul has a reputation for doing a good job with FAC. You're troubling the entire adminship (and now Jimbo) with complaints that are out of proportion. — Matt Crypto 10:54, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

But Benign Dictator is the term used by admin in this very thread and I'm guessing that's where she has taken that term from. Lots of people use FA status as a guide to writing their articles, I'm not sure I like how it's explained here - that's it's the kingdom of one person and if editors don't like how they run it - tough. I think some of the responses here have been downright odd. --Charlesknight 11:00, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, for something to fail to achieve featured article status, all that is required is for the regulars at WP:FAR WP:FAC to raise valid objections that aren't addressed after a period of time (about a week). In this case, there are objections that haven't been addressed. See the FAR page for details. Carcharoth 14:02, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

That's exactly my point. People had raised valid objections, and I was addressing them. They did not reply as rapidly as I did and so the process was delayed. In any case, Raul shut the FAC after just 4 days. How does that give me any time to address objections?

Additionally, how can I be overreacting when there is no process for redress if Raul does something I strongly feel is out step with procedure? There is no proportion because there is no procedure. Maybe you don't think that Raul making an autocratic unaccountable decision an abuse of power, but I do, and you have no right to be condescending to me because you are an admin and I am not. Excuse me for troubling "the adminship" with a valid concern, but "users seeking help will often turn to an administrator for advice and information. In general, administrators acting in this role are neutral", and I somewhat expected people to weigh up what I was saying rather than come down on Raul's side because he's "has a reputation". So did Ed Poor. Dev920 (check out this proposal) 18:06, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I think you are missing the point though. Although Raul does make the final decision, the people you have to convince are the people commenting at WP:FAC. It probably would be best for Raul to use an edit summary when removing articles from the candidate list, and when adding them to the archive for that month. But if every editor involved in an article nominated at WP:FAC questioned his decisions, then the process would stall. You can safely assume, without asking him, that he removed it because, based on the comments received so far, the article's nomination was not going to be successful. Do carry on improving this article, or try improving other articles, and try again. Or work on implementing the proposal you are working on. That will be more productive than pursuing this complaint. Finally, as the admins in this thread have said (and I'm not an admin), this is not really a matter for the administators' noticeboard. Try Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates next time, if you still feel aggrieved. Carcharoth 18:39, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

But I was convincing them. I was in the process of convincing them, editing to their objections etc. The article was progressing smoothly, and after 4 days, the FAC was shut. Are you seriously saying that 4 days is enough time? You said a week was sufficient above! Maybe the process would stall if Raul had to explain himself to everyone, but not everyone would question his decision. You have given me good suggestions on that FAC which I will use, but I'm still going to file that RfC, and I sincerely hope that this is the final time Raul does this (because he did in fact do it with Jake Gyllenhaal's first FAC as well - which I nominated three days later and it passed with 100% support). I think some sort of policy defining the FA director's election, role, and limitations would be in order as well, at some point. Dev920 (check out this proposal) 19:19, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

If there actually is marked improvement in the article after a few weeks, can it not be re-nominated? —Centrx→talk • 19:27, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. But the issue was, Jake Gyllenhaal was fundamentally the same both FACs - again, I couldn't get opposers to reply fast enough for Raul, who closed it at 4-2 support. The second around, the opposers never showed up, so it passed at 2-0 support. Dev920 (check out this proposal) 19:49, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Only 2-0? I wouldn't shout that out too loudly, as in a few months someone might take the article to WP:FAR and it could get defeatured. Indeed, from what I've read at Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Jake_Gyllenhaal, I would say that the removal of the candidate and its subsequent renomination is rather unorthodox. You might be pushing it to try the same thing with Bereishit (parsha). I'd concentrate on keeping Jake Gyllenhaal at the level it is at, or even trying to improve it, rather than kick up a fuss about Bereishit (parsha). The other thing is not to obsess about process. Articles do pass WP:FAC if enough work is done on them. And standards are extremely high, so it is no insult for an article to fail. Just keep working on it, and come back in a few months if there has been substantial improvement. Carcharoth 23:39, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Most editors' standards are way in excess of what WP:FA? actually says. They've built it up into the Holy Grail so much they're losing sight of the original criteria, I think.Dev920 (check out this proposal) 10:35, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Anyone, not just Raul, can close a FAC that stands no chance (per WP:SNOW and WP:NOT a bureaucracy). I review FACs on a fairly regular basis & would have been sorely tempted to close Bereishit (parsha) myself - it is a long way from satisfying WP:WIAFA. Sure, Raul should have replied but he's under no obligation to do so & he's a busy guy from what I gather. Mikker ^(...) 00:59, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, thankyou very much for that damning but completely unhelpful piece of criticism. If you feel that it is sooooooooo bad, why don't you add suggestions to the FAC like Carcharoth did? Dev920 (check out this proposal) 10:35, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

And Raul has now responded on Dev920's talk page. So that should be the end of this thread! :-) Carcharoth 02:31, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

He has, I accept, case closed. Dev920 (check out this proposal) 10:35, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Gundagai editors

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

The anonymous Gundagai editor is banned from editing Wikipedia for one year. All blocks to be logged at Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Gundagai editors#Log_of_blocks_and_bans.

For the Arbitration Committee --Srikeit ^{(Talk | Email)} 18:12, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of ifd tags

I submitted one image for deletion, as I am confident it is a copyright violation. The uploader, whom I notified to the submission, is keeping on removing the ifd tag from the image page (but the submission is still at AID), claiming that the tagging is "vandalism" and "bad faith nomination" (we had some content disputes in the past).

What should I do? Is the nomination still valid, even if I can't restore the ifd tag because of 3RR?

The image is Image:Ottl ima 010805.jpg, the user User:Kingjeff.

Thanks.--Panarjedde 18:44, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Removing IfD tags is vandalism, and reverting vandalism does not count towards 3RR, so feel free to revert such actions (it would be helpful to also leave a note on the user's page to let them know that such a revert is not counted as contributing to a 3RR violation). _└ ^OzLawyer / _talk ^┐ 18:56, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of comments from talk pages/discussions

Is it possible to remove another users' comments from a talk page/discussion? Like in this, this, and this case? --Panarjedde 18:53, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

It is generally not allowed to remove other people's comments from talk pages, unless they violate specific guidelines. First, if they are chat or personal communications, they can be removed (kids talking to each other on their school's mandatory article page). Second, if the comments are wholly unrelated to the article the talk page accompanies, they can be removed, with some warning (usually by an administrator, usually after mentioning it on AN or AN/I to get some agreement among the community). Finally, some people believe that one can remove personal attacks, but this is not policy, and even the suggested guideline says that any removed comment needs to be archived and a link left in its place. If you believe that your talk page comments were removed inappropriately, you really should first give the one who removed them a chance to explain. If there were no legitimate grounds, then the person who did the removal was in error, if not actually vandalizing. Geogre 03:50, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

The instances Panarjedde has linked to are on an AMA Requests for Assistance page. Addhoc, an AMA member who answered the request, deleted the entire exchange, with the comment "this isn't a discussion forum, request for comment or mediation page. Your comments are not required" -- which renders this question moot. Tempers appear to be high in that case, & I'm hoping Addhoc can defuse the situation & help in this matter. -- llywrch 06:38, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

In other words, he felt that it violated the second instance -- that the comments were unrelated to the matter at hand -- and felt that leaving them was disruptive. That's a legitimate reason. It does look like folks are pretty hot over there. Geogre 13:47, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Would you be so kind to explain me why other people's comments are allowed, and mine are not? Notice that Addhoc has now accepted to leave my comments there.--Panarjedde 14:37, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User: Lalli

This user has for example vandalized my user page and been incivil on talk pages [62]. --Jaakko Sivonen 23:25, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help with new template

OK, I created this template in light of a situation that required it. Which policy should it be mentioned in? Does this qualify as a doppelganger or a sockpuppet template? The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 02:39, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Wait, are you suggesting that admins should start guessing what usernames banned users are going to pick? Unless I'm misinterpreting the use, I think this is a bad idea. Picaroon9288 02:55, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

The new template is essentially a rewording of the {{doppleganger}} template, hence making the new template quite unnecessary. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 03:02, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree. How is this different to {{doppelganger}}? --bainer (talk) 04:40, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Banned user pages

User:CoolKatt number 99999 (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) has thirty subpages left: Edit Wars, 26 lists of TV stations by channel number (MfD the aforementioned pages), and three other pages. I would love to house those three last pages, under User:TrackerTV/CK/(subpage title). TTV (MyTV|PolygonZ|Green Valley) 05:17, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Well that user isn't banned from wikipedia so I'm not sure what this is about. If the subpages don't meet Wikipedia:User page#What about user subpages? they should be deleted per the arbcom ruling arbcom ruling. I'll take a look --pgk 10:28, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Not much left I'm afraid the three pages I guess you were refering to had once been mainspace pages which went through VfD/AfD and were deleted, storage of such material is not what user space if for (not a free webhost) and circumstances like that were within the bounds of the arbcom ruling and as such have been deleted. --pgk 11:30, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedians by year of birth categories

I recently speedy deleted categories containing Wikipedians born in 1993 and later years. These categories are now on UCFD should admins wish to contribute. --kingboyk 12:40, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Angela Beesley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For what it's worth, during the AfD I attempted to contact the board members listed on the Christas site. Here is the email I sent to one of their managers:

Hello,

Rich Fife here with a question about <listed board member>.

I am doing some work investigating an organization called "Linda Christas" and I am trying to determine if <listed board member> is in fact on their board. Here is their page:

http://www.lindachristas.org/board.htm

Are they a member of their board? If so, what is their role? Thanks!

-- Rich Fife --

I feel it's a fair and neutral email. They replied in a non-committal way, and I replied as follows:

I'm working on an article about the Linda Christas organization for the Wikipedia online encyclopedia here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

The article in question is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Christas_International_School

There's considerable question as to their legitimacy, and one of their claims is that you are a member of their advisory board of directors per this website here:

http://www.lindachristas.org/board.htm

All I really need is a quick "Yes, that's me. I've been working with them to do <X>" and it will help the discussion out quite a bit.

Thanks a lot!

-- Rich Fife --

The member in question replied that they had been contacted by them after seeing a performance and asked if they wanted to be a board member. They said sure, why not? And that is pretty much the last they heard about it. They asked me if there were any issues they should be aware of. I explained as follows:

Thanks for your reply!

The answer is, as most things in life are, complex. The question I've been working on is "Is Linda Christas of sufficient profile to be listed on Wikipedia?" The answer is seems to be no.

Operative word "seems".

You have my permission to stop reading this as soon is it gets too arcane. Wikipedia isn't your problem, I realize.

The weird thing about Wikipedia is that anyone can add anything to it, but then the other contributors ("editors") can then change it or decide to remove it. An article on Linda Christas was added, then removed after a discussion here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Linda_Christas

The author put it back, then it was removed and banned from reinstatement. The author put it back under a different name here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Christas_International_School

and then added unrelated mentions to dozens of unrelated articles all over the place like so:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Government_Financial_Officers_Association&oldid=81335356

Causing much consternation. Discussion of removal of the second page starts here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Linda_Christas_International_School

I, naive person that I am, stumble in late while this is going on. Here's a point you should be aware of: Wikipedia has a way of determining whether a particular contribution has come from the same computer as another contribution (all computers have addresses on the internet just like houses have adresses on the street). All of the contributions to the discussion in favor of keeping the article save one (from TruthBringerToronto) have come from the same computer, but they are signed as if they come from more than ten different people. One person is pretending to be many people in order to swing the discussion in their favor. As you can imagine, this is a major faux pas.

Anyway, oddly enough, that's not the real issue. The real issue is that Linda Christas makes many claims that SHOULD have easily accessible means of verification, but no verification is forthcoming. They claim to have schools in China and Poland, but refuse to disclose where they are or how to get in touch with them. How can they possibly have any students? The list goes on and on.

Anyway, one of the high mucky mucks (I'm just a plebe with pretensions) finally decided they'd had enough and banned any newbie users from participating in the discussion, which shut the discussion down.

And that's the story as far as Wikipedia goes. Sorry you asked?

Here's a blog entry about another man's strange encounter:

http://ramblingtaoist.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_ramblingtaoist_archive.html

Here's them trying to shut him up:

http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/notice.cgi?NoticeID=1884

And here's their homepage:

http://www.lindachristas.org/

I'd like to mention this email exchange on the discussion page, but I don't want to name you without your permission. There is a possibility that bringing your name into the discussion will cause the whole thing to pop up when people enter your name into Google (Google really likes Wikipedia for some reason). I can refer to you indirectly or simply as "someone on the list".

Thanks so much!

-- Rich Fife --

p.s. <Compliment>

p.p.s. You have a Wikipedia article here:

<redacted>

Anything you'd like added? Is there a headshot you'd give permission to use? I (or someone else) should do it. You're not supposed to edit your own.

It turns out they are quite internet savvy and knew exactly what a IP addresses and sockpuppets are. They contacted Christas directly and received all manner of replies from different email accounts coming from the same IP address, which did not leave a good impression. Either they were being astroturfed or Christas was sharing their email address with lots of people. They asked to have their name removed. - Richfife 21:22, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I am bringing this back from a previous deletion as it relates to a controversy that has involved legal threats from Linda Christas towards Wikipedia (see above) and should probably remain on the record. - Richfife 16:17, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

THERE IS NO GOSSIP BEING SPREAD BY WIKIPEDIA VOLUNTEERS!!!! Dear Angela, Having just removed myself as a board member at Linda Christas, I hoped that I could forget about the school, but I am angered to find that I am now being grossely misquoted, and I am not going to remain silent.

I would very much like to elaborate on what Mr. Bernard has said below regarding my resignation as a board member of Linda Christas. Firstly, the truth of the matter is that I received a perfectly polite email from someone, on behalf of Wikipedia, asking me if I would kindly verify that I was on the board of Linda Christas. Simple, straightforward. I replied saying that yes, I was on the board, and that was the end of that. It was at this point however that I did wonder why I was being asked to verify my involvement, & realised that although I had accepted the Mr Bernard's invitation to be on the board (only months earlier), I really knew very little about the school. This I felt in hindsight was irresponsible on my part, and so decided to do a little digging and just make sure that I was happy with my decision to remain on the board. Unfortunately, I discovered various "chats / articles" about the school, which were not exactly complimentary. I also came across information that indicated that various contributions to Wikipedia all came from the same i.p.address, but under different contributors names. It all started to unsettle me. As a Patron for a very well respected charity in the UK, in which I actively participate in fundraising, I was angry with myself for not seeking this information earlier, before agreeing to "put my name" to it, and I considered contacting Mr Bernard to discuss removing myself as a board member. It is true that after putting feelers out, I received 2 private "comments" on my website from someone who was obviously not a supporter of the Linda Christas school, but this person was not from Wikipedia, and I NEVER told Mr. Bernard that they were. Mr Bernard states that "Wikipedia shared with her gossip that a true racist shared with her".... ALL LIES. Wikipedia only contacted me to verify that I was a board member, and that was all.

For him to say that a "racist" had shared information with me is incorrect. How curious then, to receive two emails, post resignation from two other persons I'd never heard of who were "connected" to the school( though strangely they came from the Dean's ip address, and it appears the same computer also ) suggesting that "if you really don't care about inter-racial harmony or children, then you will follow the path of least resistance" and resign. As a mother, and a supporter of various causes, I was deeply insulted, and their emails only confirmed that I did not wish to have anything further to do with these people, and to find that I am now being misquoted, just enfuriates me. They are trying to use my resignation as "fuel on their Wikipedia fire"... How the school can say that they have suffered financially from having me remove myself from their "school" is a joke, and beyond my comprehension. I was on the board for less than two months. Critereia for becoming a board member... all the school did was email me and invite me to be on the board, I said yes without looking into it, they stuck my photo and name on their list of board members, and I never heard from them again, until I emailed them asking to be removed, and now the mud is flying. For all I know the school may be completely above board... I will never know, but if the way I have been treated is any indication of their ethics and christian ways, I regret ever having been involed with this organisation. Alison JiearAlisonjiear 09:35, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:CommandoM

CommandoM has been adding pictures of upskirts and downblouses claiming that the pictures are pictures of the user and have tagged the pics as such. I think that at the moment the pictures should be removed until we know that these pictures really are of the user. Gdo01 04:13, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

As I read the license assertions, the uploader claims that the photos are by the uploader, not of the uploader. So they are validly under GFDL. Secondary to that, there may be a privacy issue of consent of the subject of the photo, but none of them include faces or are otherwise identifiable. Talk:Upskirt indicates there is an ongoing discussion on User_talk:CommandoM. I don't see a necessity for admin action in the meantime; others may disagree. --MCB 22:11, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Jose(Cha-Cha)Jimenez

Moved at Jayjg's suggestion to WP:AN/I#User:Jose(Cha-Cha)Jimenez. - Jmabel | Talk 23:40, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] recently returned from lengthy absence, is there anything I need to know?

. . .specifically, before I start using my admin powers for anything more than deleting a bunch of my old subpages. I stopped paying attention to all the behind-the-scenes goings-on in April or May of this year; since that time, have there been any significant technical modifications made to the admin buttons? Have there been any significant changes in the mores and customs surrounding the use of those buttons? Any landmark incidents or decisions I ought to review? The policies are their usual bureaucratic selves, and delving through six months of history on multiple heavily-edited pages to figure out what's a significant shift and what's a narrow agenda would be a nightmare, so any brief summaries or pointers would be appreciated. thanks in advance. —Charles P._(Mirv) 07:08, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

• There are new options for blocking; anon only and account creation enable/disable (which show all the time but only affect IP blocks) which have the effect you would think they do, and allow rangeblocks and longer IP blocks with less collateral damage; and disable autoblock (which only works with user name blocks) which is mainly useful for blocking vandal username violations (so that someone on AOL can't make a denial of service attack by registering a bunch of vandalistic user names).
• There have been major change to Speedy Deletion (WP:CSD) expanding the kinds of articles and images can be speedy deleted.
• More community-imposed permabans, and an attempt to start Wikipedia:Community probation.
• The 3RR applies to any 4 reverts in a day, not just 4 reverts of the same text
• Oversight can hide edits that disclose personal or libelous info even from admins; see WP:RFO, requests should be made on the mailing list.

What else? Thatcher131 07:49, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Nice summary! :-) Do you want to write the potted history of Wikipedia policies? Actually, that was a joke, but now I think about it, a brief overview of the history might be useful. What have the major changes been since the project started, and are they documented anywhere other than in megabytes of talk pages and page histories? Carcharoth 07:55, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Forgot WP:DENY. Thatcher131 13:27, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Image undeletion is also possible now, as of June 16 I think. I don't think all active admins even know about it yet, I get the impression a lot of admins shun image deletion like the plague still... --Sherool (talk) 13:54, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Copyrighted items can be speedied now without going through WP:CP. User:Zoe|(talk) 00:57, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Clarifying Thatcher's above, for 3RR the edits still need to be on the same article. JoshuaZ 01:01, 5 November 2006 (UTC)