User:Orkadian

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An editor has expressed a concern that this user may be a sock puppet of Mallimak.
Please refer to editing habits and/or contributions; this policy subsection may also be helpful.

Account information: block log – current autoblocks – edits – logs

Please see: Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Mallimak. --Mais oui! 20:59, 18 August 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Independent Orkney and Shetland wiki site

User:Mallimak and I held a meeting in Stromness this weekend with a number of interested parties and a group of visiting colleagues from Shetland.

We are all shocked at the way Orkney contributors and contributions have been treated on Wikipedia. It is clear to us that Wikipedia has less to do with encyclopaedic articles and more to do with information control.

There is currently a group of “Wikipedians” dedicated to editing Orkney articles to suit their own agenda and attacking (see below!) anybody who tries to resist them. None of us can compete with those with the time and inclination to make literally a hundred or more edits each day. We would be willing to contribute scholarly articles and to allow them to be edited (if necessary) and added to by responsible editors – but that is not how things are happening on Wikipedia.

We have resolved to get our own independent wiki site up and running exclusively for encyclopaedic articles on Orkney and Shetland. We shall be approaching local internet service providers and website developers to help us set this up.

If you are interested in contributing to this project please leave a message on the Category talk:Orcadian Wikipedians page. (The Orcadian Wikipedians’ Noticeboard was demolished!)

Locally, we shall advertise in the press in due course.

Orkadian 17:21, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I am not a sock puppet, and I wish User:Mais oui! would stop accusing me of being one!

Orkney is a small place with a limited number of telephone exchanges, and furthermore we don’t have much choice when it comes to service providers here, so it is quite feasible for different Orkney users to have similar IP addresses.

I have had to hunt hard to find the quote, but I have followed the links, look back in past and found it. Here it is:

“Although to be honest it is possible they are three different people, in the same area / telephone exchange who all use BT for a broadband connection... Some of the comments in the MfD discussion are very similar. Thanks/wangi 16:45, 17 August 2006 (UTC)”

Yes, it is not only possible, but highly probable! So will User:Mais oui! stop harassing me, too, please. Orkadian 15:29, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

(To put this in context, I have placed the whole discussion from which this extract is taken below. The link is: [1] )

[edit] Harassment by Mais oui!

I would like Mais oui! to be blocked. He regularly makes sock puppet accusations against me and persistently makes disruptive POV edits to practically all of my contributions. He admits that he is keeping watch on me. I am growing increasingly weary of having to fight a constant rearguard action against his unconstructive POV changes. If he continues, I am going to have to give up contributing to Wikipedia. I am sure I am not alone in considering him a disruptive element, and it would be best for the Wikipedia project if he were blocked from editing it. Mallimak 00:26, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

The pair of you should stop spamming people all over the place if you expect to earn any sympathy for your respective plights. People won't take you seriously while your approach is akin to stuffing pizza leaflets through their letterboxes. This page is not for dispute resolution, and doling out a block is rarely used to resolve a dispute, and irritating you is not nearly serious enough to earn an idefinite block (nor, likely, any block at all). You need to use dispute resolution properly. If you've tried RfC, which I expect you haven't seeing as my talk page didn't get spammed about one, then try one. If that fails, try Arbitration. Also, try being nice to one another and tolerating each other's foibles. -Splash - tk 01:08, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Firstly, this is a repeat posting of this:

Secondly, for background, you may wish to read these:

Thirdly, for a second opinion from Admins familiar with User:Mallimak, you may wish to consult:

Fourthly, as User:Alai puts it:

" ... this is just abuse of the project space (to go with earlier abuse of the article space, the category space, and template space by the same user). The description of an edit that adds "The Orkney archipelago is a council area of Scotland." as "vandalism", and reverting it with summary "Mais oui! Why are you interfering here? Can t you just bugger off?" basically sums up the problem with Mallimak's behaviour: a determination to have his "own" content in some niche of wikipedia, regardless of encyclopaedic value, and independent of other editors' input. If this keeps up, an RFC would be indicated."

And fifthly: life is just too short. Frankly, I am "sick to the back teeth" of him, and would strongly prefer for Admins to deal with him, rather than me having to monitor his growing WP:POINT campaign. In summary: User:Mallimak has a very serious attitude problem, and is totally unwilling to even make an attempt to follow WP:NPOV, WP:CITE, WP:AGF, WP:CIVIL or WP:NPA, among others. Thanks. --Mais oui! 01:18, 17 August 2006 (UTC) - Don't game the system! Mallimak 16:04, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't wish to be drawn into the specific complaint raised by Mallimak. However, Mais oui! has also falsely accused me of sockpuppetry and now routinely reverts my edits simply because they are my edits, without any discussion or attempt to reach consensus. He is the only user against whom I have encountered these problems.

I have no view about the efficacy of formal steps against Mais oui!. He clearly makes a wide range of contributions, many of which are valued by others. He has a rather transparent agenda, namely to promote Scotland and other Celtic areas at the expense of balance, objectivity or context. I would suggests that an editor whom he trusts and respects encourage him to adopt a more collaborative, less confrontational approach and to discuss directly his objections and observations wih other contributors. Normalmouth 06:09, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

For the background to that last comment, please see:
Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Normalmouth
"... falsely accused..." - There is no proof of whether my allegation of sockpuppetry is "false" or true because CheckUser refuses to expose a Users IP address except in "extreme" circumstances, but the evidence clearly points to Normalmouth logging-out and using his IP address to vote in a Requested move discussion. And I am very sorry to say that Normalmouth has an extremely "transparent agenda": to do all he can to stain the reputation of Plaid Cymru. No other Wikipedia article on a UK political party is as one-sidedly negative as the PC article, and a large measure of the responsibility for that lies at the doorstep to Normalmouth.
"... routinely reverts my edits simply because they are my edits... " - Not true at all. I routinely have to revert your edits because they are consistently, and heavily, POV.
I am very happy to confirm that I do contribute heavily to Scotland-related articles (as is my prerogative), and if that "promotes" Scotland I would be delighted (although slightly surprised). As for "Celtic countries": I could not give a hoot - I do not look at the world in that way. But I do do my very best to "promote" other countries I like, mainly Sweden, Norway, England, France, Italy, Canada, the US, Australia, Switzerland (actually, this list could get rather long... ). --Mais oui! 06:57, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
"Thirdly, for a second opinion from Admins familiar with User:Mallimak, you may wish to consult: User:Wangi" — I'm not an admin, just another editor trying to settle things down. Thanks/wangi 08:37, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Note to admins: The above discussion is very revealing. User:Mais oui! would appear to have a tactic of indulging in edit wars and constantly attacking the contributions of users who don't agree with his POV, and of accusing them of sockpuppetry in order to undermine their credibility, obviously with the aim of getting them to give up contributing to Wikipedia. I wonder how many good contributors Wikipedia has lost as a result of Mais oui!'s tactics? He is bad news for Wikipedia and should be banned. Mallimak 09:52, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Both seem to be as bad (or at least almost as bad) as each other. However, Mais oui! certainly makes a number of valuable and constructive contributions, when he puts aside his own POV... I'm not as familiar with Mallimak, although his repeated spamming of this page over what appears to be a content dispute is not impressive. It might be an idea for both to talk to each other (and to whomever else might be interested) directly and to DISCUSS edits and changes before making them, in order to avoid future difficulties. That is the Wikipedia way, after all. Badgerpatrol 11:12, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Sorry about the spamming, having seen User:Mais oui! do it, I thought it was "the Wikipedia way" to inform potential supporters for one's case - so now we can add "setting a bad example" to his list of sins! Mallimak 11:26, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree that it's not always easy to know where to go in these kind of situations. Assuming that you have tried to communicate with each other (ALWAYS the first step) and still can't resolve the issue, then you might try here for a problem of this nature. Badgerpatrol 12:02, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I would agree that Mais_oui does indulge in edit warring, and attacking the contributions of other users. After I had nominated a Scottish template for deletion in favour of the British one- he responded by reverting all my recent edits with the comments- "rv English Nationalist" (see for example- [2]). Also any attempts to engage with the user and avoid edit wars is usually met with personal abuse- eg [3]. Astrotrain 13:49, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
He is difficult, he is aggressive, and he is a POV-pusher. By the same token, he does make very valuable contributions. I'm not taking sides in this particular issue, because it seems to me that neither are angels. But in general, I think many problems could be solved here simply by more communication and less unilateral action. Badgerpatrol 14:09, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Are User:Mais oui!'s contributions really so valuable that they make up for all the contributions lost to Wikipedia on account of his actions chasing other contributors away and putting others off bothering contributing? 81.158.163.232 15:44, 17 August 2006 (UTC) - (Now, look at that! I was away from the computer for a while and Wikipedia has automatically logged me off, so my IP address is given. Does that constitute sockpuppetry? Mallimak 15:47, 17 August 2006 (UTC))

An observation... I have noticed a series of less than helpful edits (removal of valid categories, switching Scottish to either Orcadian or British... you could call them disruptive) from a large number of IP accounts in the same range as Mallimak (talk · contribs)'s IP above:

Clearly Mais oui! (talk · contribs) thinks these edits are being made from an IP account to get around associating them with Mallimak's account. Thanks/wangi 16:25, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

  • Many of these IPs have been checkusered and are likely Mallimak. The question is do these IPs edit in a way that is abusive or to give the false impression of consensus, or is it plausible as Mallimak says that sometimes his computer logs out without him noticing. Of more concern are the two logged in accounts that are also likely Mallimak socks. Thatcher131 (talk) 16:37, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
The IP accounts themself seem to be used for nonsense switching of nationality - there is the potential of avoiding 3RR with them, but I don't think it's been the case. On the other hand Mallimak, Gruelliebelkie (talk · contribs) and Orkadian (talk · contribs) have all taken part in the current Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Orkney MfD. Although to be honest it is possible they are three different people, in the same area / telephone exchange who all use BT for a broadband connection... Some of the comments in the MfD discussion are very similar. Thanks/wangi 16:45, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one continually getting logged out. It's not only plausible, it's a damn nuisance. I get logged out during any good-sized edit, and am saving more often because of it - clogging the edit history with nonsense versions. I'd dated it from approx Chris73's total Tiscali block a few weeks ago, but it it's affecting BT users as well, maybe I'm wrong... JackyR | Talk 16:58, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
For long edits I work in a personal sandbox, saving as often as I need, then copy to the article when its done. Thatcher131 (talk) 17:06, 17 August 2006 (UTC)


I am an Orcadian. I have been encouraged to become a Wikipedia contributor by a colleague on account of my academic interest in the Orkney Islands, their history and ethnography. I shall be making contributions in due course, once I have found my feet here.