Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard

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For urgent incidents and chronic, intractable behavioral problems, use Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. If you are new, try the Wikipedia:Teahouse instead. Do not report breaches of personal information on this highly visible page – instead use Wikipedia:Requests for oversight. For administrative backlogs add {{Admin backlog}} to the backlogged page; post here only if urgent. Do not post requests for page protection, deletion requests, or block requests here. Just want an admin? Contact a recently active admin directly. If opening a close appeal, use {{RfC closure review}} When you start a discussion about an editor, you must leave a notice on their talk page. Pinging is not enough. You may use {{subst:AN-notice}} ~~~~ to do so. Sections inactive for over seven days are archived by Lowercase sigmabot III.(archives, search) Start a new discussion

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There is no fixed length for a formal request for comment (RfC). Typically 7 days is a minimum, and after 30 days the discussion is ripe for closure. The best way to tell is when there is little or no activity in the discussion, or further activity is unlikely to change its result.

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Please append {{Doing}} to the discussion's entry you are closing so that no one duplicates your effort. When finished, replace it with {{Close}} or {{Done}} and an optional note, and consider sending a {{Ping}} to the editor who placed the request. Where a formal closure is not needed, reply with {{Not done}}. After addressing a request, please mark the {{Initiated}} template with |done=yes. ClueBot III will automatically archive requests marked with {{Already done}}, {{Close}}, {{Done}} {{Not done}}, and {{Resolved}}.

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Administrative discussions

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive366#IBAN_appeal

(Initiated 28 days ago on 18 October 2024) This shouldn't have been archived by a bot without closure. Heartfox (talk) 02:55, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

@Heartfox: The page is archived by lowercase sigmabot III (talk · contribs), which gets its configuration frum the {{User:MiszaBot/config}} at the top of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard. Crucially, this has the parameter |algo=old(7d) which means that any thread with no comments for seven days is eligible for archiving. At the time that the IBAN appeal thread was archived, the time was 00:00, 2 November 2024 - seven days back from that is 00:00, 26 October 2024, and the most recent comment to the thread concerned was made at 22:50, 25 October 2024 (UTC). This was more than seven days earlier: the archiving was carried out correctly. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:16, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

There was no need for this because archived threads can be closed too. It is not necessary for them to remain on noticeboard. Capitals00 (talk) 03:28, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. It is back in the archive, and hopefully someone can close it there. Heartfox (talk) 05:23, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Is_WP:RECALL_a_policy?

(Initiated 17 days ago on 28 October 2024) Discussion has slowed for the last week. I think the consensus is pretty clear, but I'm involved. – Joe (talk) 17:24, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Requests for comment

Wikipedia talk:Notability (species)#Proposal to adopt this guideline

(Initiated 97 days ago on 9 August 2024)

Wikipedia talk:Notability (species)#Proposal to adopt this guideline is WP:PROPOSAL for a new WP:SNG. The discussion currently stands at 503 comments from 78 editors or 1.8 tomats of text, so please accept the hot beverage of your choice ☕️ and settle in to read for a while. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:22, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Talk:International Churches of Christ#RfC: Referring to International Churches of Christ (ICOC) as a cult in the lead

(Initiated 56 days ago on 19 September 2024) Legobot removed the RFC template on 20/10/2024. Discussoin has slowed. Can we please have a independent close. TarnishedPath^talk 23:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

 Doing... I've read the whole discussion, but this one is complex enough that I need to digest it and reread it later now that I have a clear framing of all the issues in my mind. Ideally, I'll close this sometime this week. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 20:23, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. This issue has been going on in various discussions on the talk page for a while so there is no rush. TarnishedPath^talk 03:26, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 456#RfC: using photos of record labels from Discogs?

(Initiated 47 days ago on 28 September 2024) Discussion has died down and last vote was over a week ago. CNC (talk) 17:31, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Archived. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 20:53, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/In the news criteria amendments

(Initiated 38 days ago on 7 October 2024) Tough one, died down, will expire tomorrow. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:58, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Turkey#RfC_on_massacres_and_genocides_in_the_lead

(Initiated 37 days ago on 8 October 2024) Expired tag, no new comments in more than a week. KhndzorUtogh (talk) 21:48, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Talk:David Lammy#RfC: First sentence

(Initiated 30 days ago on 15 October 2024) Discussion has died down. The last vote was on 4 November. Khiikiat (talk) 10:10, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Administrator recall#RfC: Should we add text prescribing just signatures, no discussion?

(Initiated 12 days ago on 3 November 2024) The amount of no !votes relative to yes !votes coupled with the several comments arguing it's premature suggests this should probably be SNOW closed. Sincerely, Dilettante 16:53, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/2024 Wikipedia blackout#RfC: Should a blackout be organized in protest of the Wikimedia Foundation's actions?

(Initiated 0 days ago on 14 November 2024) Anyone up for a barnstar? This one's long, difficult, and new. If no-one wants to close it, that's fine. However, it's clearly not reaching the super-consensus required. It should probably be closed so that we can stop wasting editor time and/or apply ourselves to proposals that have a better chance of passing. Sincerely, Dilettante 01:28, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

• No, nobody's going to SNOW close a discussion of that nature with that much participation when it's only been open a few hours. It may be "wasting editor time" but there's a darkening mood in the community about this and it's best that we allow a pressure valve: a place for editors to gather and speak their minds.—S Marshall T/C 08:10, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Deletion discussions

XFD backlog

V	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Total
CfD	0	0	0	19	19
TfD	0	0	0	5	5
MfD	0	0	2	5	7
FfD	0	0	1	2	3
RfD	0	0	8	39	47
AfD	0	0	0	3	3

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 November 3#Category:Online-only games

(Initiated 27 days ago on 19 October 2024) HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 03:27, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

 Done —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 17:22, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Other types of closing requests

Talk:Feminist art movement#proposing merge of Feminist art into Feminist art movement

(Initiated 303 days ago on 16 January 2024) It would be helpful for an uninvolved editor to close this discussion on a merge from Feminist art to Feminist art movement; there have been no new comments in more than 2 months. Klbrain (talk) 13:52, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

 Doing... may take a crack at this close, if no one objects. Allan Nonymous (talk) 17:47, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Talk:List of pholidotans#Merge to Manidae

(Initiated 15 days ago on 31 October 2024) Discussion only occurred on the day of proposal, and since then no further argument has been made. I don't think this discussion is going anywhere, so a close may be in order here. Wolverine X-eye ^{(talk to me)} 07:03, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm reluctant to close this so soon. Merge proposals often drag on for months, and sometimes will receive comments from new participants only everything couple weeks. I think it's too early to say whether a consensus will emerge. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 14:52, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

@Compassionate727: OK, so what are you suggesting? Will the discussion remain open if no further comments are received in, say, two weeks? I also doubt that merge discussions take months to conclude. I think that such discussions should take no more than 20 days, unless it's of course, a very contentious topic, which is not the case here. Taken that you've shown interest in this request, you should be able to tell that no form of consensus has taken place, so I think you can let it sit for a while to see if additional comments come in before inevitably closing it. I mean, there is no use in continuing a discussion that hasn't progressed in weeks. Wolverine X-eye ^{(talk to me)} 15:52, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

@Wolverine X-eye, I don't think thats what they are saying. Like RfC's, any proposals should be opened for more than 7 days. This one has only been open for 4 days. This doesn't give enough time to get enough WP:CONSENSUS on the merge, even if everyone agreed to it. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 21:24, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

@Cowboygilbert: So what should I do now? Wait until the discussion is a week old? Wolverine X-eye ^{(talk to me)} 11:14, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

@Wolverine X-eye:, Yes. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 17:04, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

@Cowboygilbert: It's now 7 days... Wolverine X-eye ^{(talk to me)} 14:09, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

@Compassionate727: You still interested in closing this? Wolverine X-eye ^{(talk to me)} 04:04, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

This isn't a priority, given all the much older discussions here. I'll get to this eventually, or maybe someone else before me. In the meantime, please be patient. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 13:34, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Could an admin review the discussions at Wikipedia:Gadget/proposals?

There are a couple of gadget proposals at Wikipedia:Gadget/proposals that have been stale for months now. It would be good to have an admin close them. Kaldari (talk) 18:10, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) A million times yes. Furthermore, whoever decides to take this on should also check the archives of that page; since so few people look at it, many deserving gadgets have been archived without proper discussion. Enterprisey (talk!) _{(formerly APerson)} 19:33, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

I did not know it existed. I have added it to my watchlist. You folks should have a bake sale or something to drum up attention. HighInBC ^{Need help? {{ping|HighInBC}}} 19:37, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Agree with trying to resurrect some of that stuff, and promoting the page more. I had no idea it existed either, and I've been here 10+ years, and am a templateeditor. Its like I just discovered elves living in my garage.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  18:21, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Please see this proposal to mark as historical. Enterprisey (talk!) _{(formerly APerson)} 00:52, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

RevDel advice

Split Enz is at this point tagged with {{Copyvio-revdel}} due to a long-standing copyright violation introduced over a decade ago that has been edited to the point of becoming a close paraphrase. There are 1000+ or so revisions affected and I'll have to perform one or two batches of RevDel to get rid of the issue. Can (technically) and should RevDel be applied here at all? Informing @Gadfium and Justlettersandnumbers: as they are involved.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:22, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

• I'd delete it and restore the good versions. RevDel is going to be too clunky to do this huge batch, and you get the same result. Katie^talk 18:07, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

  I was also thinking of using this very large URL to tag all versions, then uncheck the good ones and perform the revdel on the remaining revisions.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:14, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

  That's not just large – that's gargantuan. I don't think that long a copyvio history should be revdel'd but simply deleted. But I could be wrong. Katie^talk 18:52, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Thanks for the ping, Jo-Jo Eumerus. I know nothing about the technical aspects of revdeletion, 'cos I'm not an admin. As to whether it's appropriate in this case, I think so, but obviously am open to correction on that. I almost always request revdeletion after removing copyvio (I'm a copyright clerk), especially in such egregious cases as this one. To date no-one has ever declined one of my requests, so I keep them coming. I've noticed that more than one bite at the cherry is often needed when the history is long. Diannaa has handled many, many revdeletions for me (thank you, Diannaa!), and may perhaps have some tricks to make it easier? KrakatoaKatie, I don't think it would be appropriate to perform a selective deletion instead, as attribution would not then be preserved. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:06, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Justlettersandnumbers that it's important to preserve what we can of the page history so as to fulfill the attribution requirement of our CC license. I have done some really really big ones, such as Diana, Princess of Wales, where literally thousands of edits were revision deleted in January 2016. I do them in batches, modifying the history page so that 500 or even 5000 diffs appear on the screen at one time. It looks like the largest batch on Princess Diana had 383 diffs. — Diannaa (talk) 19:17, 8 July 2016 (UTC) Adding: It might not be obvious (it wasn't for me at first), so I'd like to add that you don't have to tick each individual diff to select them; you can tick one box and hold down the shift key and tick another, and all the intervening boxes will be ticked. — Diannaa (talk) 19:22, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

See? Told ya I could be wrong! :-) Katie^talk 19:25, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

One more thing: The policy page states that "the prior method (delete and partial undelete) should not be used except for history merges and occasional other cases where it is needed" so no, don't do it that way. — Diannaa (talk) 19:26, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

• Seems like the RevDel function cannot handle this many revisions at once. Thus, I'll have to do it batch-wise anyhow.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:02, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

  And done. 5 batches for 1180 revisions.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 22:16, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: I'm not sure how necessary that was. See my comment on the Split Enz talk page. Graham87 06:38, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

D'oh! No idea why I didn't find that before. "Use on Wikipedia" may be too narrow a permission, though - Wikipedia text is aimed to be reused by everyone. I'll ask Dunks about this.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:56, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Don't know what the next step is here. Jo-Jo Eumerus revdeleted 1000-plus revisions of the page (thank you, Jo-Jo!), MSGJ undeleted them again, I asked MSGJ to undo that, but no response. There's apparently no permission logged in OTRS for the copyright content (I've checked, and so has Moonriddengirl), and no-one's yet been able to tell me where permissions were logged before OTRS was set up; so, for the moment at least, I think the content has to be considered a copyvio, even if there are some talk-page assertions of ownership of the website. Please see Talk:Split Enz#Copyright problem removed for comment from users who know a lot more than I do about this stuff. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:33, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

The next step will have to be either MSGJ undoing their action or gaining clear consensus for revision deletion, as per WP:WHEEL. The only permission here is "use on Wikipedia", but that is clearly incompatible with Wikipedia's license, so this really does need revision deletion. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 16:47, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Ban appeal

Almost two years ago I was topic banned by Drmies (link). I hereby appeal for lifting this ban.

This is a link to discussion regarding my first ban appeal. At that ban appeal, I explained how many articles I created in the meantime, how many of them were approved as DYK articles, how many of them were start or C class articles. In the meantime, the list is much longer with 97 new articles and 19 DYK approved. I will repeat that I want to return to the topic area because the subject of my particular interest (Ottoman Empire) is frequently related to post-1900 Serbs and Serbia and because I am able to constructively contribute to it, but can not due to the restriction. I promise to continue to take a very good care not to violate wikipedia policies while editing articles related to the topic area from which I was banned as well as other topic areas.

Although most of the votes in support of my ban (especially Joy, Peacemaker67, IJA, Future Perfect at Sunrise, Bobrayner, No such user, ...) came from editors who had been involved in numerous disputes with me, I do have a plan to avoid similar problems in this topic area by strictly following wikipedia policies and avoiding both content and conduct disputes with other editors. Based on the recommendations (here and here) from editor (Ceradon) who closed my last ban appeal link my plan in the topic area I was banned from for a probation of one year two years includes:

• 10RR restriction
• limiting the amount of comments I make to a particular thread to one per day, two totally, including the amount of times I responded to other users' comment in the specific thread. If after 2 comments I wrote to a specific thread there is still no consensus reached regarding some content or conduct dispute, I oblige myself to use relevant noticeboards or WP:DR tools. I underline here that I was wrong and made mistake for not doing it before.
• If any of above mentioned editors explicitly express concern about my conduct, I oblige myself to report myself a to relevant noticeboard.
• limiting the amount of times I mention the same thing on a talk page to zero.
• limiting the amount of new sections I make on a talk page to one per month, two per year

Apart from group of editors who reached consensus to ban me and keep me banned, I would appreciate if only uninvolved editors would present their !votes for lifting the ban. All the best.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 17:37, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

• • I am very grateful to all support !votes to my ban appeal. To show my gratification I will amend my above proposal and change one year probation period to two years and 1RR restriction to 0RR restriction in the topic area I was banned from. Thank you.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 19:41, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, AD. Our most recent contentious interaction was at Talk:Marin Temperica, where I found a non-trivial error in a related topic area that you appeared to have made, and failed to correct it after an editor pointed it out (and this was four months after your latest ban appeal). It reminded me of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Skaramuca, and I started to fret. But, once I clarified the complaint further, you handled it reasonably well. I liked that, and honestly it was a relief. I don't know if your restraint and graciousness there was helped by the fact that you still had this this topic ban here.

The main troubling part in this appeal is that you still seem to think that since many of us were involved in disputes with you that this rendered the ban somehow less valid. It has been said over and over again - there aren't that many editors in the WP:ARBMAC space and the fact that so many managed to see a serious problem was more damning than exculpatory.

My feelings are mixed at this point. I'll defer judgement after I see some more input from others. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 18:01, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

• I say let's lift the ban. The editor seems to want to avoid further problems, and I'm sure if they slip up any uninvolved admin can reinstate it quickly. The risk is minimal, and lifting it would being a good content creator back to the area. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 18:09, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
• Support Lifting the Ban - seems legit LavaBaron (talk) 22:32, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose lifting the ban; there was a long-term problem of POV-pushing and adversarial editing, and I've seen no evidence that would stop. On POV-pushing, well, Antidiskriminator asks for the ban to be lifted by citing a high volume of editing (which is at worst part of the problem, and at best utterly irrelevant to NPOV problems). As far as the adversarial editing is concerned, Antidiskriminator helpfully provides us with a list of perceived adversaries (it's difficult to find somebody active on Balkan articles who hasn't been involved in a dispute with Antidiskriminator). bobrayner (talk) 23:34, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose Lifting the ban. While this is an improvement on last year's request to have the ban lifted, it's still not satisfactory. In particular, it's concerning that AD is still stating that the ban was somehow mainly the result of comments from editors they had been involved with in an attempt to undermine it (even if this was originally true, the similar views expressed by the editors he or she had been interacting with and near-total lack of editors defending them is obviously grounds for concern, and the discussion of the ban last year attracted much wider coverage) and that he or she was "topic banned by Drmies". The ban was imposed by the community in 2014, and re-endorsed by the community last year. This suggests to me that the conduct which led to the ban is likely to re-occur. Nick-D (talk) 01:43, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
• CommentOppose I appreciate the ping. Obviously I'm involved, but so are most of the regular editors in the space Ad wants to return to, and in my view our perspectives are equally as valid as those of uninvolved editors. At this stage I am tending to agree with Bobrayner and Nick-D. Ad's user page is a case in point (just click on "Useful links). He refuses to get the point as to why he was TBANed in the first place, which gives me no confidence that his behaviour will be any better if the TBAN is lifted. He maintains subpages where he lists, in significant detail, every single tendentious thread he's created on various articles, and lists of articles he now won't edit because of his "hurt feelings" because his tendentious behaviour on the talk page was called out for what it was. Much of Ad's objectionable behaviour was on talk pages, not in articles, so a 1RR restriction seems pointless in that regard. Given his expressed interest in the Ottoman Empire, I'd be willing to consider reducing his TBAN to "Serbs and Serbia 1924-current (broadly construed)", as the Ottoman Empire folded in 1923, and that still keeps him clear of WWII and later. He has already had a TBAN lifted after which he just went back to his previous behaviour. If the TBAN is adjusted or lifted, the community needs to be willing to impose significant ARBMAC discretionary sanctions if he goes back to his previous behaviour; I'm talking a substantial block followed by re-imposition of the current TBAN with a minimum two year no-appeal period. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:07, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of User:Antidiskriminator/Articles I will not edit nor comment, where section headings are thinly veiled references to other users. That's... less than reassuring. I looked at my reference and it's to a now-deleted article's talk page, [1] / [2] (links visible to admins). I'll re-read it again later and try to see how I could have done better. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 21:07, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

I've re-read it twice now and I guess I see the problem. The discussion basically ground to a halt because AD employed methods of communication that have frustrated me to no end in the past, and I just lost patience to try to engage in a more productive manner. He was citing snippets from Google Books based on *snippets*, not an actual reading of the relevant text. I tried to click all those book links again and use the Google Books search within, and in the Croatian author's book I found the snippet to page 87 as AD mentioned, but right below it also page 111 which says that these people called Skaramuca are Croats. Add to that that the book was published in 1991 - I'm not very comfortable with citing that by default. So this was basically another one of those situations that led me to propose this topic ban - AD was citing something to try to prove a Serbian-ish POV statement, while disregarding conflicting Croatian-ish POV statements found in the same set of sources. It's an incongruous editorial method at best, and because it happens in WP:ARBMAC topic area, it's often harmful to the encyclopedia. There's little to no promise of disputes being actually resolvable, because the underlying cause remains unresolved. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:09, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

FWIW Joy, your experience mirrors mine to a significant extent particularly the use of cherry-picked snippets and failure to place material in proper context. I just don't see a way to address this behaviour other than a TBAN. It is a consistent modus operandi demonstrated on many talk pages. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:01, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

• I appreciate Nick-D's clarification/parsing of "topic banned by Drmies"; indeed, it was a community decision and I don't think it could have gone any other way. Personally, and I think I said this last time, I don't have much of a problem with a (partial) lifting of the ban, but I'm hardly an active editor in the area so I wouldn't be the one suffering from any possible disruption. Sure, the nay-sayers were active in that ban discussion and the subsequent unban discussion, and they are active in that field--that's simply how this goes. There's more editors than that half a dozen or less editors, but not many of them spoke up in Antidiskriminator's defense. I found that unfortunate but again, that's how it goes: communities are made up of microcommunities, and here is one which apparently saw little promise in the unban appeal last year. Peacemaker67's proposal is perhaps a good begin to start a discussion, but I have to say, AD, naming names of your opponents already backs them into a corner and is not very likely to make any of them change their mind, or the minds of those who may listen to them. Good luck, Drmies (talk) 04:51, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose lifting of ban. I guess I also still count as "involved", having occasionally clashed with Antidiskriminator on a small set of issues (though nowhere around the bulk of what he edits). In my perception, having a look over his recent contributions in the fields he's not topic-banned from, he is still the same old type of tendentious "polite POV warrior" – a person who is quite incapable of constructively engaging other editor over content disagreements, but covers up his stonewalling under a fixed facade of never-failing formal "civility". A brief look over his (sparse) talkpage engagements in the last few months gives this [3], a brazen-faced defense of a rather blatant piece of tendentious WP:OR in an article he wrote, completely ignoring the valid point of criticism raised by another editor. The article in question (almost exclusively his work) is a nightmare of bad writing and plain bad English, and in effect a completely unnecessary POV fork of a much better (though arguably over-long) section in the main Skanderbeg article. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:37, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Fut.Perf., let me take this opportunity to clarify something for this thread: while Antidiskriminator notes that the named editors are "involved" with his case, that in no way means that they are not allowed to participate, or that their opinion holds no value. You, as an admin, could possibly be WP:INVOLVED (I don't know, I haven't looked into it) but, Antidiskriminator, if Fut.Perf. were INVOLVED with you, that would only mean that it would be wise for Fut.Perf. not to take administrative action against you (unless specified as exempt in INVOLVED and blah blah); it does not mean that his opinion here isn't appreciated. "Involved" is frequently used on ANI as a kind of pre-emptive deterrent (not saying that's what's happening here), but that really doesn't mean a lot. Drmies (talk) 14:50, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
    • I'd second that. I'd also note that from reading the previous discussions of the bans its obvious that the editors who had been in dispute with AD were supportive of the ban due to legitimate concerns, and weren't out to get them (the rare occasions when this occurs are usually painfully obvious, and typically involve editors who are already not in good standing - neither of which was true here). Nick-D (talk) 08:11, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Notice how the problem is that he engaged what appears to be a pro-Albanian POV editor, and they had a largely fruitless discussion. Or at least that's my impression reading that discussion - the issue of WP:CFORK was brushed aside in favor of pontificating over nationalist terminology. This is the risk that comes with having editors that do not have true, battle-tested NPOV sensibilities - they will fail to improve the encyclopedia, and may well cause problems. Only the amount of these issues is in question. I know it sounds horribly elitist when I put it that way, but painful experience teaches me that it really boils down to that. Just like not everyone can make quality physics articles, not everyone can make quality history articles. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:09, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
• Remove', per rope. Can always reban if AD becomes problematic again. A topic ban imposed after a total of 5 votes, at least 3 of which were people either (at the time) currently or previously in content disputes with AD... Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:33, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose Until Antidiskriminator is willing to explain, in their own words, what actions they undertook that caused them to be t-banned in the first place. I like to see unbanned editors identify their own mistakes and identify the steps the will prevent them from re-occuring. Confession is the first step to reconciliation. --Adam in MO Talk 01:50, 14 July 2016 (UTC) Changed to Support. I had originally thought that since this editor had not shown an understanding of what lead to the ban in the first place that, such an understanding should be demonstrated before returning. After this time period, though, I changed my mind and I think we should give them another opportunity. Thanks Bishonen, for speaking with reason and compassion.--Adam in MO Talk 17:45, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

• Of course it is, compare (mutatis mutandis since it's about blocks, not bans) item 6 in the Optimist's guide to Wikipedia: "When people insist that before blocked users can be unblocked, they must apologise, admit their mistakes, agree to learn to avoid previous pitfalls, work to address all of the issues, pave the road, seek redemption, face the music, show that they understand why exactly they were blocked and how right it was that they should be, or show remorse, it's probably not because the insister would like to see a show trial or ritual humiliation. More likely they have some psychiatric training and know how important it is to resolve conflicts and seek reconciliation, and how much better the delinquent would feel afterwards." (There's some good hidden text in there, too, not sure who added it.) What I'm trying to say is that I support lifting the ban and giving AD a second chance, without requiring any self-abasement by him. It's been two years and, as Only in death points out, the original TBAN discussion was somewhat skinny. Bishonen | talk 10:07, 14 July 2016 (UTC).

I can't help but think discussion appeared too short because nobody wants to read all the linked walls of text that had led to it. (No slight intended - I often don't want to do it either.) --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:09, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Thank you Bishonen. Yes, recognition of past errors is important and frequently helps speed along such requests, but ritualized abasement is quite another matter. In overt cases of total malfeasance I and others have asked for an allocution of previously committed crimes, for instance sock accounts etc., but these were POV accusations, and much more is in the eye of the beholder/community. I repeat that I think it would be a good idea for AD to indicate what precisely they think they won't do that get them in hot water before, and I repeat to AD's opponents that we should be willing to give them a chance. Drmies (talk) 14:48, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

I also think many admins and other interested parties don't work in ArbCom areas, and steer clear of any discussions that touch on them. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when we complain that no-one else other than "involved" editors will give their opinion. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:53, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

'Question to the OP You have just changed one of your proposals to acceptance of 0RR in the area of your topic ban. This will mean that you will be unable to make any edits in that area. How is this any different from your topic ban that you requested be lifted? DrChrissy ^(talk) 19:54, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

• • @DrChrissy: WP:0RR says "The zero-revert rule means a complete prohibition on reverts...Editors may also voluntarily agree to abide by a stricter reverting standard such as 1RR or 0RR, either in response to problems in a particular area, or as a general editing philosophy. For more details, see Wikipedia:Revert only when necessary."--Antidiskriminator (talk) 20:52, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
    • The reason I sent the post was because I was wondering whether you realised that a normal edit which removes the content of another editor counts as a revert, even if you do not use the revert function. I guess this means that you could make positive additions to articles which do not influence other editor's content, but I wondered whether you realised it will be this restrictive. DrChrissy ^(talk) 21:45, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
      • @DrChrissy: Thank you for pointing to this. Yes, I did realize that this means that I could make positive additions to articles which do not influence other editor's content.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 07:24, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Pengo issues block on bot, no reason given or warning.

My bot, BG19bot has been blocked by Pengo saying the bot has malfunctioned. They added {{nobots}} tag onto their articles without following the instructions, one of which is to contact the bot owner. I and Magioladitis have left a message on Pengo's talk page before they blocked the bot. Instructions say on the bot's page to leave a message on the talk page to stop the bot. The bot has not edited in 2 hours and won't again till ~4z tomorrow.

Pengo has just written on their talk page, I've asked you to stop making edits to these pages before. Bots are meant to be useful, not waste everyone's time. Pengo has never left a message on my talk page. Pengo is now adding {{nobots}} to pages again. I still haven't a clue what they are objecting to.

Summary:

1. Pengo abused admin privileges by blocking the bot... no warning and no discussion and bot hasn't edited in awhile.
2. Pengo applied {{nobots}} without discussion
3. Pengo has never left a message on my talk page before and I've never contacted them before.
4. Pengo is refusing to discuss what in the world is going on.

Bgwhite (talk) 08:33, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

• Well your bot made this edit which is what I assume kicked it off - and on the face of it, appears to do nothing. Likewise the recent edits of the bot on other articles can be described at best, as having zero negative effect on the article. But no positive either. The relevant part of NOBOTS is "These templates should be used carefully outside userspace to avoid blocking useful bot edits." As far as Pengo is concerned its not making useful edits. Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:03, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
  • It's Checkwiki error #16, remove invisible Unicode characters. It is an approved task. Still does not excuse the bot being blocked, absolutely no discussion and addition of template without discuss. Not sure if that is the problem Pengo is having. Bgwhite (talk) 09:09, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

I'll unblock the bot in a short while, unless I hear some good reason not to do so here. On the face of it, the block reason given by Pengo, "Bot malfunctioning", is patently wrong: the bot was doing exactly what it was supposed to be doing, and approved to do. Pengo's claim that he had previously "asked [Bgwhite] to stop making edits to these pages" (besides displaying a form of "ownership" attitude in its wording) seems to refer to an exchange with a different bot owner, about a different bot task [4]. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:39, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Looks like Pengo is running his own bot as well. Interestingly enough he states here that he's waiting for a bot flag and | over in this report his bot appears to have not been approved. Further, there appears to be no interaction between Peno and Bgwhite until he blocked him. He appears to have had issues | with Yobot | a few times in the recent past . I'd say he has a bit of explaining to do. KoshVorlon 15:51, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

That bot was active circa 2006, and has only made one edit since. I think we can safely say that whatever else is going on, Pengo is not currently running that bot. Dragons flight (talk) 16:16, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

What an incredible waste of my time this bot is. But now I have to present my point of view, so I will do so.

I've created and have been maintaining around 57 pages of IUCN Red Listed species. Most of the pages are listed here: User:Beastie Bot/table. The IUCN recently updated their listings for the first time this year, and I've been working to update the pages, which is tedious partly because there any many issues to fix around how they are presented and how to select common names, and partly because I attempt not to clobber edits from other users. This can be a time consuming process. (Beastie Bot does not do any edits because I paste them in myself to check over the changes) Many of the user edits to the pages have been helpful, such as finding typos and mistakes in the data, some of which I've relayed back to the IUCN, sometimes it's been neutral such as choosing a different common name for species (e.g. an IP editor changed African wild ass to African wild donkey, which I've kept when regenerating the pages). And sometimes I'm bombarded with utterly useless or deleterious edits from WCW bots, especially BG19bot and Yobot. At one point Yobot started breaking the pie chart graphic [5]. I reverted its changes and it did it again. Honestly? At this point I am literally having a revert war with a bot which is repeatedly re-breaking a page. I cannot go and update any other pages which I was about to update because the bot will go and break those pages too as they have similar wikicode. So now I'm stuck and I have to confront the bot owner, Magioladitis, whose broken bot is messing up. Literally, it's an automated tool to mess up a page in an attempt to something that has absolutely no purpose other than to rack up edits and bloat the Wikipedia database. If you haven't guessed, by now my opinion of these WCW bots is not high. Magioladitis claims his bot is "not malfunctioning" and refuses to fix it. He does not stop its edit warring behaviour, and does not fix its behaviour with the template it breaks, but he instead works around the problem by moving the wikicode that his bot can't deal with to a separate template where his bot will leave it alone. Ok, fine, whatever. He also says "Pengo please read the instructions. You could add a tag on the pages to avoid Yobot revisiting till the issue is handled." Read the instructions, he says. "till the issue is handled" he says. It's not being handled. He is not handling it. There's no link to any instructions. I don't care for this bot. I just don't want this bot to go around messing up pages. But I file away in the back of my head for later that there are "instructions". So he graciously applied a work around to a number of pages, but there are many more pages that I haven't updated yet that I will have to do the same workaround for or else his bot—which he apparently cannot control—will mess up those pages too, repeatedly, even if its edits are reverted. So I spend my time making these changes, making a bunch of separate templates for these charts, which I did admittedly plan to do eventually but not just because PointlessBot is broken and is threatening to break any page that I don't fix in this way. I did have a lot of higher priorities for things to fix with the lists (e.g. there are none for threatened plant species yet). While I'm making edits, I decide to change non-breaking spaces on the pages to use a Unicode non-breaking space instead of the   code, as as to make it more readable in the wikicode. And now BG19bot decides it doesn't like this and starts replacing them with ordinary spaces. I don't know if there's a preferred way of including nonbreaking spaces on Wikipedia, and I really don't care, but this bot is not doing it, it's just stripping them. So, given my previous experience with WCW bots, I started adding the code to stop BG19bot. Sorry, I do admit I did get the two bots mixed up, as they both make many completely useless edits and are both part of the same project. I would have included both bots in the bot-deny tag if I had realized sooner. But anyway, the next thing I know Bgwhite removes the bot-deny tag from the page. Now, not only is his useless bot going to fuck up every page I upload, he's personally going to make sure of it by removing the tag to stop his bot from doing so. His edit comment was "Follow the instructions". Well I'd already spent quite some time looking for those instructions previously to work out how to format this bot-denial tag as there isn't an obvious link to it on his bot's page (And I'm not sure even has any effect as his bot is listed as ignoring it) but I immediately went back to User:BG19bot again to look for any "instructions" to follow, and the only instructions were for how to shut it off so I followed them as requested. Can I ask you and your WCW friends to kindly refrain from editing or vandalizing any of the pages listed currently or in future on User:Beastie_Bot/table. I have zero interest in helping you fix your bots. You cannot simply demand editors help you with your malfunctioning garbage, as you have demanded from me. Please stop your bots from continuing to vandalize these pages. I don't like having to write your dumb bot's name on pages to stop it messing things up but it's the only automated way I know how. Apologies again for getting the two of you, and your bots which do identical things, confused. I'll leave it to someone else to reinstate your automated user harassment tool if it hasn't been already. —Pengo 19:59, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

• • Look, is this an approved bot task? If not, then support it being blocked and getting approved. If not, then I'm fine with Pengo going to the approval page and making an objection that this is useless or to ask for it to stick to mainspace or better yet to ask that it only do when there are other tasks to do. Given that there is some opposition, then the bot should stop and we can further discuss what it can or should not be doing. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 20:22, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
    • I believe the relevant request would be this one. So yes it is approved. I think Pengo can be forgiven for mixing up the two bots as they do actually perform the same functions and the bot requests for BG's bot does say it is meant to be a backup/additional to Yobot. However being approved for a bot-task just means that task is approved for completion by automation. It doesnt mean it necessarily should be done, or override editing consensus at an article. Saying that, bot is working as expected according to that BFRA. As Pengo has posted a lengthy explanation above as to why he doesnt want it editing that particular group of articles, apart from excluding the bots from the pages, or blocking the bots (which Pengo did sequentially) is there a realistic way to prevent them from editing an article when you do not want them to? In a quick and easy manner that doesnt take days of talking? Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:25, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
• I will say the bot policy does have a bit of a blind spot on this, it deals with approval of bots, what bots should and shouldnt do, but doesnt really address what happens if you as an editor disagree with a bot-task. The key parts relevant to this situation I feel are 'bots should only do tasks for which there is consensus', '(bot operators may wish to include) Providing some mechanism which allows contributors other than the bot's operator to control the bot's operation is useful in some circumstances', and possibly the bit on cosmetic changes. The bot is 'exclusion compliant' which means it is set up to specifically respond to the exclude template. If the bot operator then goes and removes the exclude template, whats the point in making it exclusion compliant in the first place? I can see *why* pengo took the route he did, once the template was removed there was nothing protecting the article from what they perceived as disruptive editing, as an editor that would be amazingly frustrating, as an admin there is always the option of blocking the bot. There really should be something in policy somewhere that means bot-exclusion templates shouldnt be removed without discussion first. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:37, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
  • • • It is an approved task to fix Checkwiki problems. I'm highly offended that I'm labeled being a vandal and being useless, especially since Pengo levels the charge without ever asking what I'm doing.
        1. Pengo abused his admin privileges by blocking, never contacting, no warning and not following instructions. Messages were left on Pengo's talk page before they blocked. Never once did Pengo talk, discuss or saying anything else.
        2. Instructions on {{nobots}} clearly state one must contact the bot owner first and not use the template as a blunt instrument. Pengo has added it again without discussion.
        3. Invisible characters is listed at MOS:RTL. The correct way to produce nonbreaking spaces is either  , {{nowrap}} or {{spaces}}. Having invisible Unicode characters makes it is impossible for one to see and causes other problems. Pengo owns their pages and does not see other people editing. Removing invisible characters is also done by AutoEd. Examples of the problems they cause. Invisible Unicode on Pengo's articles are not limited to text. The nobot templates was added twice for making this edit. This has nothing to do non-breaking spaces.
        4. Previous problem Pengo had with Magioladitis was the article had a wikilink to itself. The discussion that Future Perfect mentioned says Pengo is not following the examples given in the module page. I changed the article to reflect the example and the page was identical to the reader. I was reverted. Magioladitis did it another way and Pengo hasn't reverted.n
        5. There is a whitelist feature of Checkwiki. Checkwiki will not detect an error for the article and page number listed. Offer was refused
        6. Pengo is going to add (fifth item down) {{nobots}} to every one of his pages. Other bots besides BG19bot and non-AWB bots do the same thing. That means Pengo is going to exclude all bots from every page they own. Offer refused.
        7. The bot is not broken. It is following MOS. Pengo wants to go their own route, everybody else is a vandal. We've shown how to avoid wikilinking to itself.
      • Summary: It is an approved task. It is following MOS. Pengo is reverting, adding nobots without discussion to articles in which there is non-breaking or any other invisible character in the article's text. Pengo is not following examples to work around a wikilink to itself. Bgwhite (talk) 21:40, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
        • Again BRFA only states that a task can be done by a bot, it doesnt address if it *should* be done. Just because an editing task is approved for a bot - it does not therefore make it supersede or avoid consensus discussion when someone disagrees on an article. And the entire MOS is a guideline and not policy - if the bot is making edits to comply with the MOS rather than fixing an outright error, thats a cosmetic change and should only be done in conjunction with substantial edits. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:48, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
          • Again, we told Pengo how to fix one issue, one answer was to follow the examples. Offer refused. I've gotten no messages or anything else. How in the world do we do anything when Pengo refuses to communicate. MOS should be followed unless there is a good reason not to. No reason was ever given. There isn't any reason to have an invisible character in a category, but it was reverted anyway. Bots are allowed to make some non-cosmetic changes. They are used to remove obsolete infobox parameters, fix defaultsort parameters and remove duplicate parameter is in templates. As stated above, invisible Unicode characters do cause problems. Great I get blocked, I communicated, I'm not showing ownership, I followed BRFA and followed MOS... I'm the one in trouble. Bgwhite (talk) 22:03, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
            • Fix one issue? What issue? The issue was with the bot. The page was fine. It loaded fine. It displayed fine. The issue was that Yobot was unable to deal with it. The bot made a mess of the page so it displayed an error message in place of a pie chart. Your "fix" involved removing information content from the chart and making it inconsistent. Why? Because the dumb bot would automatically fuck it up again and again otherwise. You seem to think each page is an individual case, but they all use the same underlying script, which I cannot use if your bots keep fucking everything up. And you wonder why I have to put {{bots|deny=BG19bot,Yobot}} on every page I generate? —Pengo 03:50, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
              • Pengo The bot is following MOS. You are not. You are not following examples given in module. You didn't follow instructions on a template. You abused you admin powers. For four years nobody complained about this issue to any bot owner that I'm aware of. You are the only one doing it your way. Bot is behaving fine, you are the one perverting things. You need to change it to {{nobots}} and deny all bots. There are atleast 20 different bots that does the same thing. Bgwhite (talk) 04:59, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

(outdent) No one is "in trouble" or at least that's the best possible outcome. I'm a generalist and not a bot or subject-matter expert but let me see if I can at least frame the issue. It seems we have a bot, doing an approved task in cleaning up unhelpful hidden coding. The allegation is that in making these constructive but invisible-to-the-naked-eye edits, the bot-edits are messing up the visible formatting of a class of articles. If I've correctly described the situation, then the questions worth discussing are (1) is there some change that could be made so that the bot will fix the formatting without harming the articles; (2) if yes, what; and (3) if not, what should we do? If I've incorrectly described the situation, someone please correct me. Thanks, Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:29, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

• It is not messing up the visible formatting in some instances. For example, there is no change of visible formatting in this, which Pengo has added nobots twice to. Last edit made by a bot was February 22, nobots was added on July 11.
• In this discussion, bot is removing a wikilink to itself. As coded by Pengo, this did cause a visible problem. Following the module's example or use fix given my Magioladitis solves the issue.
• In this case, bot is removing invisible non-breaking spaces. Following normal standards of   or {{nowrap}} solves the problem and tells the editor of their presence. The bot removes the invisible character and replaces it with a standard space. Bot cannot add   because non-breaking spaces are found in categories, defaultsort and other spots where adding in a &nbsp can cause problems. Bgwhite (talk) 23:20, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

• • As your bot cannot understand whether the non-breaking space should be removed or replaced then it should not be automatically making the edits. Please, leave it alone. —Pengo 03:50, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
    • And all the other articles that don't have non-breaking spaces that you have or will apply nobots? The articles that have wikilinks to itself and the all other reason reasons? Simple fact is you don't want people touching your articles. You have abused your admin powers and the nobots template. You have said a total of four sentences in two discussion to Magioladitis and me. I hadn't a clue what you objected to until your message above... after the block and addition of nobots. All of this didn't need to happen if you would actually communicate, not bark orders and use standards. Bgwhite (talk) 05:09, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

A general rule of thumb is that, if a particular kind of cleanup requires manual review, that cleanup should not be attempted by bot. Bots are limited to situations where the correct fix can be determined without manual review. Deciding which white spaces should be non-breaking does require manual review, so bots should not try to perform that kind of cleanup. --- Because bot owners can be slow to make changes that only affect a few pages, there is no reason I can see to prevent users from putting the nobots template on particular pages to prevent particular bots from editing them. In particular, the MOS is intended to guide editors, not to be enforced as a set of hard-and-fast rules automatically implemented without human review. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:00, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

• Wondering when you would show up. Pengo has applied nobots to pages with no problems and which the bot hasn't edited in months. Pengo has applied nobots without discussion. Pengo has blocked the bot without discussion. Pengo has refused offers of whitelisting and doing a module per examples or other means. Pengo has refused all discussion. One side blocking, applying nobots and not saying anything is the problem. This is a two-way street here and one side is refusing to talk. We are "slow" to make changes, but how do we know what changes? Bgwhite (talk) 05:09, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
  • From Pengo's explanation above he applied nobots as a preventative measure. Arguing the bot hasnt edited a particular article in months doesnt really scan unless you can also gurantee it wont edit that article again in the future. Generally editors should not have to jump through excessive hoops to prevent automated bots from interfering with their work. Only in death does duty end (talk) 06:55, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
    • Only in death Of course you *only* listen to Pengo. You don't add nobots as a preventive measure, period. You don't use the template as a blunt instrument. You remove the template when there is no problem. These are in the instructions for the template. The added template to the article that hasn't been visited by a bot in months and no objection or revert was done. I manually looked at the article via the bot and there is no errors. Therefore the template has no place. BTW... the template was later removed by someone else saying no reason was given and Pengo reverted again. I followed the rules, therefore I'm being punished and ignored. Pengo doesn't communicate, didn't tell use what is wrong, didn't follow our advice, abused admin privileges and is being praised. What a fucking joke this has been. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bgwhite (talk • contribs) 04:59, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Bgwhite If you didn't have a clue what I objected to, then why did you remove the tag which specifically requested your bot cease? That was my communication to you and your bot. You still don't understand that is the reason your bot was blocked. That should have been a tip off to you that something was wrong but you deliberately chose not just to ignore it, but to deleted it. This was your communication to me that you didn't give a fuck. That you wanted your bot to continue its rampage of edits that needed to be reverted. Changes made after your bot's messed-up edits needed to be checked for and re-merged in. You acted as if I had not attempted to communicate to your stupid bot in its stupid bot-specific language that it was unwanted and doing harm. You deleted the message that was specific to your bot, telling you that something is wrong, and your bot continued to make useless and erroneous edits. Why do you think your bot is so important that it should ignore editors who specifically request that it cease? Do you have any idea how much time your bot, which does nothing useful at the best of times, has wasted? I have 50+ pages to update. I cannot spend a lifetime reverting changes that your bot erroneously makes each time I update one of those pages, nor am I duty bound to explain to each bot owners want is wrong with their specific bot and why it should not be editing, especially as both you and Magioladitis have been disinterested in fixing your bots, but instead defend their actions which are clearly in error in these cases, and have offered me no apology for wasting my time in having to revert your bots' changes, make numerous time consuming changes to prevent your bots further breaking my otherwise functional pages, and spending time checking for and re-merge changes that were made after your bots messed up, not to mention the time wasted defending against your braindead attacks. If someone indicates in any way that your bot is doing the wrong thing, do not ignore them. Do not delete their message, or obviously your bot will be blocked again in future. I'm still waiting for your apology. —Pengo 05:17, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

• Support Pengo I noticed BG19bot making an edit to an article I had created recently. I looked at what it was doing and observed that it was fiddling with the white space in a category tag. This annoyed me so I looked to see how to prevent this and found that the bot was not exclusion compliant. My understanding is that it was this sort of vexatious content-free edit which got Rich Farmborough sanctioned – a penalty which has only just been relaxed – see above. Perhaps those sanctions should now be considered for this bot. Anyway, if it's causing disruption then I endorse Pengo's action in shutting it down. Andrew D. (talk) 06:58, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Because the bot runs with AWB, it may actually support the nobots template even though it is not documented as doing so. In fact, I suspect it does, because otherwise the operator wouldn't care if Pengo added a nobots template... — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:19, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Pengo block of Bgwhite

Pengo appears now to have blocked Bgwhite for disruptive editing. Is that acceptable, given the initiation of this thread and INVOLVED? - Sitush (talk) 07:28, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

No, it's an abuse of the tools. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:42, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Technically yes, but since Bgwhite was messing around over the nobots template *while this discussion is going on here* it was certainly a disruptive and pointy edit. Only in death does duty end (talk) 07:49, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Not only is this a violation of WP:INVOLVED, it's abuse of the blocking policy. It's scary how someone who thinks that they can go around blocking anyone they get into a content dispute with has access to the admin toolset. Omni Flames (talk) 07:52, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

There is no content involved as Bgwhite has made no edits to visible content. He continues to make disruptive edits to the pages he's specifically been asked to stop editing, seemingly just to make a WP:POINT in edit comments. How else am I meant to get him and his bot to stop editing these pages with useless, disruptive and deleterious edits? —Pengo 08:05, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

That's not remotely okay. Pengo cited this edit as a violation of WP:POINT, in his block message. I get how that edit could be seen as pointy given the above dispute and the less than gracious edit summary, but I doubt it justifies a block. More importantly, given the ongoing dispute, Pengo certainly shouldn't be the one deciding whether or not an edit like that deserves a block. Dragons flight (talk) 08:09, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

• I hadn't seen this thread, I just saw the block. It was a blatant violation of WP:INVOLVED and I have unblocked. I'm seriously concerned by Pengo's fitness for adminship by the horribly dictatorial approach I'm seeing here. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 08:26, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

PS: @Pengo: If you do anything like that again, I will be blocking you and then seeking an emergency desysop. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 08:28, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

He made nine edits in total to the pages which I've asked him specifically to stop editing in an attempt to make some kind of WP:POINT and harass me: List of data deficient birds‎‎, List of data deficient fishes‎‎, List of endangered amphibians‎‎, List of critically endangered mammals‎‎, List of least concern fishes‎‎, List of critically endangered fishes‎‎, List of vulnerable fishes‎‎. No one can spend all day reverting his childish nonsense. 24 hour ban is appropriate. —Pengo 08:29, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

I don't care if he made nine hundred edits - it is a dispute between you and him, and your blocking of him to try to win the dispute was a gross abuse of your admin tools. The fact that you cannot see this is seriously making me consider requesting an ArbCom case for your desysop, even with no further violations. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 08:35, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

@Pengo: Harassing you? That's ridiculous. In no way did he ever harass you. Blocking him when the two of you were in the middle of a dispute was totally uncalled for and you have still made no effort whatsoever to explain why you decided to use the block button despite quite obviously being involved. Omni Flames (talk) 08:39, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

@Pengo: Not to restate the obvious, but you cannot block someone when you are WP:INVOLVED. Report and let someone else make that call. If you cannot understand this principle, then it's time for you to hand in the bit. And it's not a "ban", it's a block. If you don't know the difference, why are you even an admin? Softlavender (talk) 08:39, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

As I said before, there are more bots than BG19bot and Magioladitis doing the exact same edits. For example, any AWB or WPCleaner bot will make the edits Pengo does not like. There are other bots fixing checkwiki errors including Josvebot, Menobot and Frescobot. I changed it to nobots to stop any bot from making the same edit. I was being proactive. Pengo, do you want other bots making the same edits or to stop them? FYI... I'm not a bot, so adding my name into nobots does no good.

This is now the 2nd block by Pengo I've gotten this week that has been quickly overturned. What happens when I edit one of Pengo's article's that I'm not aware of? Bgwhite (talk) 08:43, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

You can't just simply throw {{nobots}} onto a page without explicitly listing which bots you want to block because you effectively blocked my bot which combats WP:LINKROT on articles, and ClueBot NG, which we all know what that does, and numerous others. Pengo may be currently abusing the block button, but you're abusing an exclusion template. I would hate to have to remove compliance from my bots as a result of nobots being spammed on pages needlessly and abusively.—^cyberpower_Chat:Online 11:59, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

• Declaration: I'm not at home with bots, and don't understand the conflict very well. Regardless, Pengo's block of BGWhite was atrocious and policy-violating. Checking out the logs, I see Pengo has been an admin since 2003, a pretty inactive one, especially as regards blocks. Their block log for those 13 years contains only ten blocks in 13 years. That's less than one block per year, and this is the first time ever that they have blocked anybody other than IP vandals and bots. It reminds me of other cases where oldtime inactive admins who haven't kept up with the blocking policy or the blocking culture suddenly appear and place one block — an inappropriate one. I wouldn't normally have thought one such foray was cause for desysop, but Pengo's response in this discussion — "No one can spend all day reverting his childish nonsense. 24 hour ban is appropriate" — makes it worse. I would urgently like to hear from Pengo that he has now familiarized himself with WP:INVOLVED. That's really all we need here, IMO. Bishonen | talk 08:54, 14 July 2016 (UTC).

• Adding: Pengo has continued to edit without addressing my request above. @Pengo: please take the time to respond here about WP:INVOLVED as a matter of priority. Bishonen | talk 09:49, 14 July 2016 (UTC).

• I'd add reading WP:OWN and fixing the non-standard coding in the pages he created to the list... MLauba ^(Talk) 09:01, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

I will familiarise myself with the policies before placing any more blocks. —Pengo 10:23, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. With that, I think we're done. Bishonen | talk 10:38, 14 July 2016 (UTC).

@MLauba:. I have gone to lengths to explain that I have not taken ownership of content. There are only two bots which have repeatedly and persistently made detrimental edits to pages which I have created and I've been very specific in preventing only those two bots from editing, or from their owners removing the tags so they can continue making detrimental edits which are incredibly time consuming to revert over 50+ pages. I have welcomed edits from all other users and bots, and have gone to lengths to incorporate their changes into the script which generates the pages in question (including the less detrimental edits made by said bots) so their changes will not be lost when the data or formatting is updated. I find it awful that you would suggest WP:OWN. —Pengo 10:45, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

And... INVOLVED? Other administrators have also accused you of that. Is that "awful" as well? Doc talk 10:51, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

No, I did not mention INVOLVED in my response to MLauba. —Pengo 10:59, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Hmm. Well, it would seem that the charge of INVOLVED is more serious than the charge of OWN. I could be completely mistaken about that, of course. Doc talk 11:08, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

I think Doc9871 was comparing the 'awfulness' of WP:OWN with the ¿awfulness? of WP:INVOLVED... _Muffled ^Pocketed 11:10, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Not the first time (and won't be the last time) that Bgwhite makes all these pointless disruptive edits with their account and/or bot account. About time someone seriously looks into this. When it's brought up on his talkpage, he thinks the person raising it is in the wrong. The sheer arrogance is appalling. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 12:57, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

To be honest, I think there was far too much shouting and talking past each other here from both sides, and nowhere near enough listening. (I don't know enough to comment on who is right or wrong about the actual bot dispute.) Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:11, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Blocking without issuing a warning and while involved is a serious act. Moreover, Pengo seems to be in confusion to whom thy have talked with. I would expect more responsibility when using the admin tools. The dispute itself is not as important as this. The admin tools can't be used as a weapon. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:55, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

xeno Bgwhite's account was NOT blocked for doing bot edits. It was blocked by an admin who had a conflict with them. The big problem here is NOT the bot block (which IS a problem) but the block on Bgwhite's account. Any other discussion is misleading. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:55, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Well, the previous issue was a block of the bot account... Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:00, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Jo-Jo Eumerus true. I try to understand that. An admin gets upset with bots messing with some articles they created, blocks a bot thinking it's another and the hell gets loose. This is serious already because the block is a serious action and should be well justified. Still, some people like to block bots till the issues are resolved one way or another. I get that somehow. The greatest problem is the second block. It was not stop a bot. It was against an editor of doing an action the admin did not like. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:05, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

I've just glanced on this conversation. I don't mind the sort of gnomish edits Bgwhite makes, I might find them annoying, but that's my problem not theirs. I certainly think the one that puts punctuation and references the right way round is incredibly helpful when you have a large list of items in prose, all with individual citations, where seeing the wood for the trees is hard for a human editor. In any case, Pengo should absolutely not be calling good faith edits "vandalism" (and that was an hour ago, after all the above discussion), especially over something that so utterly trivial and pointless. That should be obvious. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:18, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

I agree with you on all points, Ritchie333. I am seriously doubting Pengo's competence to retain admin status now. - Sitush (talk) 10:58, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Bot edits

In general, many editors are aware that bots should not make trivial edits such as [6] unless there is some more significant edit to be made at the same time. Yet we have bot operators who claim to have bot approval to make such edits. It may not be clear to casual observers here how or why the bot approval group could have approved a task like that.

Here is the history of this situation as I understand it. There is a project, "Check Wikipedia", which scans for various "errors" (even though the space removed in the linked edit was not actually a syntax error, they consider it as such). A handful of bot operators obtained relatively vague bot approvals, such as Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BG19bot 7, which don't specify in any detail the changes that will be made, but just refer to the Check Wikipedia project in a general way. This has the effect of making an end-run around the usual bot approval process, because the actual, specific tasks the bot will make are dictated by the whims of the Check Wikipedia project and the bot operator, and can change over time without any additional bot approval. This is how the situation of bots approved to make white-space-only edits came about.

The vague bot approvals also had the effect of authorizing AWB bots to do something the AWB rules disallow specifically for human editors: making inconsequential edits such as [7]. This is something that the bot approvals group really should revisit, to bring these bots back into line with general Wikipedia practices about bots not making trivial edits. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:25, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

MBisanz could you comment on the bot approval in question? It does appear that it would grant somewhat unlimited scope to expand the bot's tasks without BAG oversight. –xeno^talk 13:56, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

It's from 4 years ago (referencing something from 6 years ago), so I don't have perfect recall. I believe it was my understanding that BG19bot 7 was a transfer of the task granted in Yobot 16. The BotOp in the Yobot 16 approval said he would set it so that it would ""Skip if only minor genfixes" and "skip if only whitespace changed" will be activated. I don't think there will be any insignificant changes." There was some discussion of whether all of the changes made were significant, but he explained why they were (e.g., DEFAULTSORT) and no one objected to the list he added. There's always been a tension regarding how much a BotOp can change their code before a new approval is needed. I believe I would have read the link to the CheckWiki page in the context of the BotOp's statement that "I'd rather not do any CheckWiki errors that may be controversial." to mean that he would only make significant changes that had been tested and implemented by the AWB coding team. MBisanz ^talk 12:16, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Would you expect the bot to conform to the AWB rules? (No inconsequential edits without substantial etc etc) Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:38, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

I would expect the bot to comply with WP:COSMETICBOT, which is a current policy (I'm not opining on what the policy said in the past or what which of the AWB general fixes are inconsequential v. substantial). MBisanz ^talk 14:44, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Sorry I may have been unclear, I meant from that BRFA it appears the bot is effectively running off/incorporating AWB code - so its edits are for all intents and purposes AWB edits - regardless if its the Bot doing it rather than (a user manually using) AWB. So would you expect all the specific AWB stuff to apply to a bot that is running/composed of AWB code? Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:49, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't necessarily expect an AWB Bot to mirror AWB 100%, if only because a BotOp might have a good reason for modifying the AWB code to produce the same results as AWB. I haven't followed this entire discussion, but if could you flag for me the place where a BotOp is running an AWB Bot and is deviating from AWB code, I could comment on a concrete example. MBisanz ^talk 23:56, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Nothing much wrong with that BRFA as it stands, it did exactly what it is supposed to do. The problem is editor perception. Some people seem to think because something has been BAG approved, this means it has 'authorisation' to do whatever its task is. All bot approval does is say 'yes this task can be done by a bot and is unlikely to break anything'. The rules of consensus editing and (as Carl has noted above) making trivial edits apply. If a bot encounters resistance to its task, it is up to the bot-operator to demonstrate consensus to make the changes before resuming the task. This may sometimes mean stopping the task/run entirely, or just excluding articles from the Bots run. It is *not* up to other editors to conform to the bot-operator. It is the bot that must conform to editors. In the above situation (which escalated far too quickly frankly by everyone involved) once the bot was prevented from editing an article, the bot operator should not have removed the template that was excluding the articles from the BOT. Firstly the reason why there is an exclusion compliant field on the BRFA is to ensure that bots can be prevented from editing specific articles. Thats why it exists. If the bot operator is just going to ignore when someone has excluded the bot, it is a completely worthless part of the process. Secondly - if you are removing the template that prevents your bot from editing, you are defacto stating your bot will continue to do its tasks on that article, essentially announcing your bot is going to edit war. Had Bgwhite not removed the nobots template, we wouldnt be in this mess.

Regarding the scope of the bot, at the moment it (and other bots, yobot etc) essentially has authorisation to 'fix' anything logged at WikiProject Check Wikipedia I dont think its entirely great that a single wikiproject can essentially operate multiple bots to 'fix' anything the wikiproject logs there regardless of how trivial or un-needed. Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:17, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

And the BRFA is pretty much a monopoly run by Bgwhite and Magioladitis. The latter who has had more warnings and blocks about his bot that anyone can count. Some people just don't like playing by the clear rules of AWB. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 14:21, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Remark: The edit in question was not done by AWB but by WPCleaner. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:58, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Exclusion compliance isn't enough. There also needs to be anti-edit-war measures, and awareness of edits from other bots. An editor must already be frustrated to go to the lengths to include a nobot tag (which is inelegant, difficult to find the documentation for if you haven't used it before, apparently makes you the target of further harassment by bot owners, and is clearly ineffective if you wish to just continue editing in peace). Bots which make a large number of edits, especially ones which are mostly trivial (purely trivial edits should never be made automatically), should be required to detect when they have been reverted. i.e. They must be proactive in not edit warring and be aware of each instance that their edit is rejected. Perhaps even compiling a public report of such instances. They should cease editing a page until the reverted edits are manually reviewed by the bot owner or several years has elapsed. If they feel it necessary, the bot owner can ask the editor why they reverted the edits. This is the reverse situation to what BGWhite expects: he expects editors to be responsible for engaging in lengthy debate with multiple bot owners who are all in denial about their bots objectively degrading a page, which is clearly not workable. It's like writing an essay each time you want to opt-out of spam. Simply reverting a bot's edit should be the end of the story from the editor's perspective unless the bot owner wishes to spend time actively looking into it. In fact, the bot should be automatically giving the user who reverted their edits a list of ways to "opt-out" of its edits in future. Although I've only had to deal with two malfunctioning bots (which both could successfully detect a problem but overestimated its importance and their capacity to solve it), BGWhite repeatedly claims there are over 20 other bots which would also do the same thing (seemingly this is an excuse for his actions, although I have not seen evidence of these other bots on the 50+ pages he defiled). If there are a large number of bots with overlapping purpose, especially if they are part of the same project (WCW) then they need to be aware of each other, and not edit-war-by-proxy (i.e. editing a page which recently had another bot's edit reverted). There should also be a wiki-wide bot report which shows how many edits of what kind each bot is making, and give metrics such as how often the bot was reverted, stopped by users, etc, so a larger perspective can be gained, and more heavily reverted bots reviewed. If all this seems like too much of a burden for bot owners, then they shouldn't be running bots. A bot goes very quickly from being marginally helpful to extremely frustrating.

—Pengo 01:31, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Finally someone who can see what a massive pain and detriment to the project this really is. Bgwhite is the classic example of someone who is seemed to be untouchable with their admin role, but isn't actually doing any good, and blames everyone else when his bot continues doing this shit time and time again. If a non-admin was doing this crap, they would have been blocked long ago. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 08:41, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't understand what the problem is. I'll take this edit as an example - can somebody explain to me in very simple terms how that is worse to the reader of the encyclopedia than the version immediately before it? All I see is "I hate Bgwhite - he's extremely annoying!" which just isn't enough to pull sanctions on an editor. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:38, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

It's his edits that are annoying. He might be perfectly sound. However, his complete lack of understanding of what he is doing and failure to admit he has a problem is the crux of this. Multiple editors have flagged this up, but he dismisses them and makes that editor feel that they are the problem! His complete lack of grasping the basics of what the rules of AWB say and the failure to implement them need to be addressed. Thankfully, there are lots more people now watching what he's up to. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 18:02, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Its not a question of 'worse' it is that it is trivial/unnecessary. AWB rules (#4 at WP:AWB) and the Bot policy (see 'cosmetic changes') basically prohibit that sort of stand-alone edit (indeed users access to AWB has been revoked in the past for it), trivial/unnecessary edits clog up the history logs, watchlist changes etc, large amounts of trivial edits *do* use up server resources (although I dont think thats a problem in this case) and so on. Its why all the rules/guidance say trivial edits of that sort have to be made in conjunction with substantial edits. Although I am not sure that is what Lugnuts problem is. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:45, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

What do you mean by "clog up the history logs"? If anything dominates the history logs, it is the determined effort of multiple editors to improve an article to GA / FA standard (example), and the typical bot edit stands out like a stripogram at a vicarage tea party. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:50, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Thats not a reason that bothers me personally, I was just providing you with some of the reasons people object to it. I also gave you some of the others. But it is largely irrelevant as policy (linked above) mandates that sort of edit is not to be performed by itself. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:54, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Well my immediate response to "rules" is the obvious - unless somebody can provide me with an absolute and concrete example of how the bot edits harm or degrade the encyclopedia that isn't "it's annoying", perhaps the rules should be changed. All I see, I'm afraid, is people getting upset over things that really don't matter in the grand scheme of things.

At least when I see nuclear warfare arguments about infoboxes, there are clear and obvious merits for or against them depending on specifics. FWIW, I don't even know how to use AWB and aside from making AfD nominations a little simplier, I give Twinkle a wide berth. The only time I can remember kicking back against automated edits was when a bot kept adding a full stop at the end of a {{sfn}} tag without me noticing, and I kept accidentally introducing harv errors into articles until I figured out what was happening. I end up changing the footnote to something different, and the problem went away. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 17:03, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Maybe one should discuss whether the policy needs to be loosened or repealed, it isn't the first time that drama has erupted at AN over that provision and I wonder if its benefits are worth these troubles. I thought that the bot userright existed precisely to avoid the swamping of RecentChanges with automatic edits.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:08, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

I again repeat that the edit was not done by AWB. In order to optimise our work we now use a mixed tactic: We run AWB using the rules agreed and then WPCleaner which has the ability to remove pages fixes from the lists. This helps so the page is not revisited after being fixed. A year ago I was revisiting the page twice using AWB. Now the second pass is done by WPCleaner and this has helped in having less "trivial edits". Still we are missing the point in this discussion... again. -- Magioladitis (talk) 03:57, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

This isn't an open issue. The community has long decided on WP:COSMETICBOT.

Before and after of bot messing up, which was then repeated by the same bot on the same page after being reverted.

Ritchie333 I've also pointed out multiple places where these bots have repeatedly made harmful edits to the same page or to a group of pages, such as this one by yobot which prevented another 40+ pages from being updated under threat of the same thing. I've already spoken at length on it so I fear I'm repeating myself. You can find references to it above. I also already gave the example of BGWhite's bot removing nonbreaking spaces instead of replacing them with a different code, as it has no way of telling the difference between wanted and unwanted non-breaking spaces, a job which generally requires a human. While Magioladitis (yobot's owner) did make efforts to work around the issue himself, the underlying issue was not fixed so other pages were threatened with the same treatment unless they also applied a work-around to a non-existent problem. In BGWhite's case he has yet to admit there was even an issue, let alone attempt to make amends. I've now wasted many hours because of these bots. —Pengo 04:18, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Pengo... and then you blocked a person, not just a bot, while edit warring with them. Do you understand that this was not OK? The bot issue can/could be fixed/handled/discussed. I am not worried about it that much. Your use of the block button was not OK though. Let's be clear. -- Magioladitis (talk) 04:31, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Stop changing the topic. I've addressed that already. —Pengo 05:14, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

"The bot issue can/could be fixed/handled/discussed." - Not with Bgwhite - he seems incappable/unwilling to do so. I see very little from him in this very thread, for example, which speaks volumes. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 09:28, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Protecting articles with woefully inadequate content in them

Hello,

A while back, I removed some text from an article that consisted mostly of text so badly translated as to be unintelligible with the remainder not even translated. For reasons that were never explained, an administrator reverted my change and protected the article. Months later, the unintelligible nonsense and the Portuguese remain in the article. Here is some sample text: In 1568, Brás Cubas, provider of Finance and Real captaincies of São Vicente and Santo Amaro received in donation from Sesmarias, 3,000 fathoms of land from the sea and tested to 9,000 fathoms of land from the river bottom to Meriti, or more properly "Miriti," cutting the piaçabal the village Jacotinga. Outro dos agraciados foi Cristóvão Monteiro que recebeu terras às margens do rio Iguaçu.

Does anyone think it can ever be justifiable to force text like this into this encyclopaedia? If so, I'm interested to know on what grounds. If not, then I would like to know how this situation arose and why an admin was permitted to behave in such a way.62.92.133.10 (talk) 16:28, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

What article is this referring to? clpo13_(talk) 16:33, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

A Google search of the quoted text would yield Duque de Caxias, Rio de Janeiro. --Izno (talk) 16:34, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

This appears to be about Duque de Caxias, Rio de Janeiro and the admin being discussed is Ponyo who I will notify next. -- GB fan 16:34, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

• Wow! That is some crappy English and un-sourced as well. I would try to decipher/re-write it but since there are no sources the section should be WP:TNTed. This seems to me to be a case where nothing is better than something, I certianly would not continue reading the article looking for information after the first part looked like that. The edit summeries say the revert was for block evasion but come on, the content as it stands is useless - if you must revert at least do something to clean up or bring attention to the issue once you know about it. Jbh^Talk 17:13, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
• Agree that it was crap. However, I understand why whole deletions can be reverted without a thought. Nevertheless there's a reason I don't protect pages I'm involved in. The page was only semi-protected so the talk page is still available and the protection has been lifted. Still two years is long enough without a source so I removed it. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:03, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Page move reversal?

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The last edits by the now blocked Soul of einstein (talk · contribs) were to move Yamaguchi先生 (talk · contribs) user and talk page to Fudu (talk · contribs). I think this needs to be reversed. I am about to log off so if this is in error my apologies. Also, if this is the wrong place to report this please feel free to move it to where it belongs. MarnetteD|Talk 05:33, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Move reverted. — JJMC89 (T·C) 05:56, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

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Personal attack in article text

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What should be done about this? --Redrose64 (talk) 18:05, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

I reverted the edit, and gave the editor a warning on personal attacks. Hopefully that's all there is to it, if the IP keeps it up, they may require a report to AIV. RickinBaltimore (talk) 18:07, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. For some time, this person - who has several IPs, but AFAIK no registered user name - has been going against WP:NOR and WP:V, since when they do indicate their sources, these seem to mainly consist of unpublished documents held in the archives of Bolton Public Library. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:33, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

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Page move cleanup for Derrick Rose

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The Derrick Rose article has been moved a couple times (to Aleksei Rose and then Derrick Meng, where the history now sits), and then copy/pasted back into the Derrick Rose title. Can an admin clean this mess up? Thanks in advance! -Niceguyedc ^{Go Huskies!} 05:51, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

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Pi Rho Sigma Military Society

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Could an admin look at this article and take appropriate action?

@Pirhosigma2014: has been reverting my addition of a speedy deletion tag-rather than edit war to keep it I came here.

The speedy deletion nomination and the username need to be addressed. Also, from my perspective, was there a better way to handle this? It feels like my actions to this point could not have been optimal, but I don't see where I went wrong.

Cheers, Tazerdadog (talk) 07:17, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Deleted. I don't see what you could have done better; coming here to request deletion was entirely appropriate, as was warning Pirhosigma2014 not to remove the tags. There's actually a template series for this, {{uw-speedy1}} through {{uw-speedy4}}. Nyttend (talk) 12:31, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

excellent. I don't think that there is any more to be done here.Tazerdadog (talk) 14:40, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

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Topic ban proposal for user:The ed17

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Following a string of errors of judgement and careless editing the main page "In the news" template (details below) and the seeming inability to understand why these were errors of judgement or why everybody is treating them so much more seriously than he is, I am seeking the following topic ban of The ed17:

The ed17 is indefinitely banned from making any edits to Template:In the news.

Note that indefinite is not intended to be infinite.

The string of incidents referred to are below. The dates below are the UTC day on which he made the edit(s) to Template:In the news, nominations at Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates (WP:ITN/C or WP:ITNC) are organised into dated sections based on (usually) the date the nominated event occurred and are not necessarily the same, or even in the same order, as Ed's actions.

• 5 July: Beatrice de Cardi

  This recent deaths entry was posted by Ed[8] with just two supports after 12½ hours (although Ed though it had been open more than 48 hours, indicating at best lack of care in reading the discussion). Even the nomination had been open more than 48 hours that still wouldn't be agreed as consensus, there is no deadline to post as Ed seems to think. Archived discussion.

• 9 July: Abdul Sattar Edhi

  Five hours after the nomination was made, Ed posted the death of Abdul Sattar Edhi to Template:In the news as a blurb [9] despite the nomination being expicitly for recent deaths only, and there being no mention of a blurb in the discussion. All but one of the comments was "support on improvements" (and the one that wasn't was "Fix and update"). Ed decided that his single fix was sufficient to allow posting, desptite not even mentioning this until the comment noted he had posted. Archived discussion.

• 11 July: Euro 2016

  Ed posted this [10] despite there being no comments indicating that the article quality was sufficient - long-standing consensus is that sporting events need to have a referenced prose summary of the event as whole and at least the final match (ideally other matches too) before posting. permalink to discussion

• 12 July: Wimbledon

  Ed posted with a blurb that bolded the players' articles [11] despite there being no discussion of doing so and those articles also not being sufficiently updated with prose. The article about the event is what has consensus to be posted regularly (see WP:ITN/R) but that had not (and still has not) been updated with sufficient prose to post. permalink to discussion

• 14 July: Nice attack

  Ed posted "per IAR/SNOW" 18 minutes after he supported it, two of the 4 votes that came after his indicated the article wasn't ready yet.took two edits to post The blurb still needed discussion as well, and he took two edits to achieve change it.1st2nd for two minutes having atrocious grammar on the main page. permalink to discussion

• 15 July: Goran Hadžić

  The recent deaths nomination was posted by Ed[12] when the discussion had just one "weak support" in addition to the nominator permalink to discussion. This is after his posting of Beatrice de Cardi (see above), which was made with more support, was criticised and Ed was reminded of how ITN works.

• 15 July: Pokemon Go

  This "IAR posted" by Ed[13] to the "Ongoing". Although there was possibly consensus for including a blurb there was clearly no agreement on which one, the possibility of posting to ongoing had only been breifly mentioned once with no follow-up discussion. Ed had at this point been very active in the discussion making this a very WP:INVOLVED posting. permalink to present state of discussion

  For me, the posting to "Ongoing" would be the least serious of this events mentioned here if it wasn't for the the WP:INVOLVED nature of the posting and it not being an isolated error. I think some others regard the posting to ongoing itself more seriously than I do.

• 15 July: Turkish coup

  Ed posted this [14], and then took two edits over 2 minutes to correct his posting 1st 2nd, just 7 minutes after the nomination was made diff of nomination with 1 "support" vote and 1 "wait" vote (endorsed by the nominator). This was pulled (removed from the template) by The Rambling Man [15], but Ed reverted to his version and then four minutes later reverted his reversion. As Template:In the news is permanently fully protected (because it is transcluded on the main page) only admins can edit it, and Ed's reverts have been described as "edit warring" and "wheel warring" in the ensuing discussion. permalink to the current state of the discussion

All these actions by Ed generated some degree of comments on the relevant nomination at WP:ITN/C, but especially the most recent (Turkish coup). In none of these discussions has Ed shown or demonstrated that he understands why his actions are wrong or even attracting criticism at all, has shown no appreciation for the seriousness with which other ITN regulars are treating this, and has not (adequately?) educated himself about the purpose of ITN. He has been asked several times to refrain from posting until he does understand all this, but he has declined. See [16] for example).

Unfortunately I think the time has come for a formal topic ban from editing the ITN template as proposed at the start of this section. Thryduulf (talk) 11:34, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Pinging the users who have been I think most involved with this at ITNC: @Muboshgu, Bender25, BabbaQ, The Rambling Man, W.carter, Lihaas, Cryptic, and Fuebaey:. Thryduulf (talk) 11:35, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

{{subst:AN-notice}} _Muffled ^Pocketed 11:38, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

I've placed that template on TheEd's page, and linked this discussion from ITNC. As it really only concerns the actions of The ed17 I think pings will suffice for the others who have just commented. Thryduulf (talk) 11:44, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose There's something of a winner's curse at WP:ITN/C in that the first admin to act and post an item, naturally risks criticism for being bolder than his fellows. Most of the items listed above were reasonable entries at WP:ITN and the one that was overturned – Wimbledon – was an absurd case because that's a major sporting event recognised by WP:ITN/R and it seems quite a significant failure for ITN to have omitted this. In such cases of disagreement, other admins can and do revert the first mover's action. As there are numerous admins who hang around WP:ITN the natural tension between boldness and caution should be left to work itself out on a case-by-case basis. Andrew D. (talk) 12:14, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  Wimbledon wasn't "absurd" in the slightest. WP:ITN/R is clear that inclusion is subject to the article being updated and of sufficient quality, and this year the article was not (and still is not) an article containing sufficient prose of a suitable standard. The purpose of WP:ITN is to highlight encyclopaedia articles about subjects that are in the news, not to report the news. To this end every item that is posted requires a consensus that it (a) is in the news, (b) is significant, (c) has a relevant articled, and (d) that article is updated and of sufficient quality. The job of an admin at ITN is to assess whether there is consensus to post, and if there is to check whether there are any glaring errors or other problems with the article that would prevent posting, and if there are none to edit the ITN template. As edits to the template go live on the main page immediately it is important to get the edits right. Ed hasn't just been being bold, he has been flagrantly ignoring the requirement for a consensus, despite being told multiple times by multiple people that this is not acceptible. Occasional disagreements about whether something had consensus or not or was posted too soon are fine, but nowhere near the extent it's happening with Ed. Thryduulf (talk) 12:34, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  Far from absurd, in fact defending it is absurd. The items targeted by the blurb were either not updated or were insufficiently referenced. Now I know that some users here are of the opinion that we should dump unreferenced garbage to the main page on even days and then review TFAs in their minutiae on odd days to complain about the slightest issues, but honestly. The recognition at ITN/R is entirely irrelevant other than to reinforce the fact that we needed to assess the posted articles for "quality" not just for blind consensus (which any poor admin can do). As for working out on a case-by-case basis, if someone is serially misinterpreting how to judge consensus, serially making erroneous posts to the main page, they should be asked to stop, and then, failing that, they should be made to stop. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:26, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  The Wimbledon case was completely absurd, as I said at ITN myself at the time. We always post the Wimbledon results on the day of the men's final or a day later. People have taken it upon themselves to rewrite the way ITN has worked over the past 10+ years, and that's not The Ed's fault.  — Amakuru (talk) 15:21, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  As an ITN editor for the past 10+ years, I must respectfully note that you're mistaken in your impression. We post a Wimbledon item after the relevant Wikipedia article is updated appropriately. This is not a deviation from ITN's longstanding practices. —David Levy 17:56, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

• Support for at least six months. Although ITN is obviously time-sensitive, the repeated carelessness, gun-jumping, edit-warring, and overriding/dismissal of consensus and opposition is not acceptable. The fact that critiques of his actions are not being received or understood is even more worrisome. Time for a break from this arena. Softlavender (talk) 12:31, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
• Comment: in my view, this is incredibly wildly premature from Thryduulf, and I'm extremely disappointed that he chose to bring it here before more discussion with me (threatening to drag me here is not discussion). The impetus for this proposal from my rash revert of The Rambling Man on ITN yesterday; I reverted myself and have stated on multiple occasions that it was a mistake. If it wasn't already clear, that's not an action I'm going to repeat. Asking me to ensure that I get grammar right in the first edit is, of course, something that could be posted on my talk page rather than in a topic ban proposal. Please note that I am traveling today and will have only intermittent access to the Internet. (if that looks like an excuse, it's not—I'll be happy to confirm my travel plans with editors I know in real life) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 12:38, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  There is exactly one seriously controversial action up there, the Turkish coup. First, I misread timestamps on de Cardi; I strongly suspect that I'm not the first to do that on Wikipedia. Second, I missed the [RD] tag on Abdul Sattar Edhi. That was quickly fixed. Third, I fixed the Euro 2016 article myself. Fourth, on Wimbledon, there was support for that option in the discussion. More comments were made after I posted and it was pulled; that's a natural fact of life at ITN. Fifth, I'm not seeing any serious controversy around my posting of Nice and Pokemon Go. I'm really not sure why you included those here. And then there's the Turkish coup, the proximate cause of this discussion and one I've already said was a large mistake. Do we topic ban for that now? Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 12:47, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  We topic ban for persistent cluelessness and incompetence; someone who does something harmful in good faith will get blocked and/or banned before long, regardless of the field. No comment on whether that describes your actions; this is purely a general statement. Nyttend (talk) 13:12, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  Ed, Your actions yesterday (not TRM's) were just the final straw. We've been trying to communicate with you about your persistent errors for over a week and getting just WP:IDIDN'THEARTHAT. It seems you still don't understand why it is being treated this seriously. Thryduulf (talk) 13:18, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  David Levy very kindly came to my talk page to ensure that I was following image procedures correctly. No one else has attempted to raise a discussion with me, either on my talk page or on WT:ITN for wider input, before you prematurely brought this to AN. We have trouts for a reason, Chris. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 13:32, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  David Levy very kindly came to my talk page to ensure that I was following image procedures correctly.
  Among several other image-related errors, you transcluded an unprotected Commons image at ITN, despite the presence of the message "NOTE: Do not insert an image without first ensuring that it has been uploaded locally or protected at Commons. Our cascading protection does not extend to Commons images." directly adjacent to the filename and an edit notice containing a yellow box with a red "ATTENTION" heading and animated "stop" icon. I pointed you to Wikipedia:Main Page/Commons media protection, which you then used either without bothering to read its brief instructions or after failing to comprehend the language "Please note that the protection will not take effect instantly. Do not transclude a file on the main page until confirming that KrinkleBot has transcluded it at Commons:Auto-protected files/wikipedia/en."
  As I stressed at ITN/C, I'm not trying to belittle you or your contributions to the project. Each of us has strengths and weaknesses, and I'm pleading with you to recognize the latter in yourself and stop rushing to report the "news".
  No one else has attempted to raise a discussion with me, either on my talk page or on WT:ITN for wider input, before you prematurely brought this to AN.
  Good heavens, Ed. The underlying concerns have been brought to your attention over and over. Even if you don't understand why this has occurred, I don't understand how you could think that it hasn't. —David Levy 01:49, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

• Comment: Thryduulf, the pipelinking breaks if you don't substitute the brackets that were in the section headers (i.e. Wikipedia:In_the_news/Candidates/July_2016#.5BPosted.5D_RD_Beatrice_de_Cardi for instance.) - Penwhale | ^{dance in the air and follow his steps} 13:34, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  Should now be fixed. Your ping didn't work for some reason btw. Thryduulf (talk) 15:52, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• Comment: Since I was 'pinged' here, I think I should at least leave a comment. I was only seriously involved in the Pokemon Go debate and IMO that should be sticken from this list of alledged offences. That was bold, yes, but it was a good bold solution since not only were we getting nowhere with the blurbs (I wrote some of them) but editors were also befuddled by the fact that we had to deal with an ITN-worthy pop culture thing. Something the rules of ITN were clearly not prepared for. As for the other cases, I don't have enough knowledge of those to voice an oppinion. w.carter-Talk 13:36, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
• Comment The question of a topic ban is by-the-by, as mistakes on the Main Page have been and invariably will be reverted in short order. What concerns me to a greater extent is that we appear to have an admin who does not understand what consensus is. I hope that my previous sentence is a skewed conclusion from a small pattern of behavior, but it's fair comment based on what I've seen at ITNC. StillWaitingForConnection (talk) 13:42, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
• Support but would have preferred The ed17 to have seen the various mistakes, typos, mistaken claims of consensus, poorly posted blurbs etc as errors for himself and resolve to leave it to others for a while, then this wouldn't have to have happened. We don't post stubs, we don't post unreferenced material, we don't assume consensus can be achieved in seven minutes, we don't post RD nominations as blurbs, I'm afraid the sheer scale of the errors made in such a short time with such reluctance to step back and take a break from it means enforcement of a ban is the only way to restore some kind of stability. As I said yesterday, there was greater to consensus in minutes to request The ed17 to stop making such posts than in two of the blurbs he posted, claiming consensus. Bizarre. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:13, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose - I'm not seeing a substantial attempt to resolve this on talk pages before coming here; we have other ways of resolving disputes which should be attempted first. Indeed, unless I'm missing it, I can't see an attempt by Thryduulf to resolve it on ed17's talk page, which I would have expected before a noticeboard submission. Hchc2009 (talk) 15:32, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  @Hchc2009: The prior attempts to resolve this have been at WP:INTC, and Ed has indicated he is aware of those attempts (and replied to most of them). Opposing because the prior dispute resolution was on the wrong talk page is pointless bureaucracy. Thryduulf (talk) 15:49, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  (e/c) Are you suggesting the multiple notes left at ITN where The ed17 currently frequents, warning him to stop, asking him to revert, asking him to wait for consensus, asking him not to post erroneous hooks are not sufficient? I think it's a little "head in the clouds" to require a "talkpage" discussion when the matter at hand was discussed many times at the place in hand. Even The ed17 is completely aware of all the erroneous issues. That's why it would have been great if he'd have accepted the advice i.e. concede to a self-imposed moratorium on posting items. But I suppose if we achieve nothing else here, we are at least getting a few dozen more eyes on The ed17's behaviour, which will help in any subsequent actions we need to take should this behaviour continue. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:52, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  And even if additional discussion were needed, that wouldn't justify forcing the main page's readers to wait for Ed to be brought to speed. Wikipedia is not about us. No administrator should be editing main page content without first gaining a reasonable understanding of (and then adhering to) the relevant criteria and procedures. That's all that anyone is asking of Ed. —David Levy 01:49, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

• Support - The 14 July Nice attack is the clincher for me. An admin should not support a posting on ITN and then add said article to the template having supported. By all means mark it as [ready], but if you've voted, then leave it to others to post, no matter how strong the consensus. Mjroots (talk) 16:57, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  It's easy to find examples of other admins acting in this involved way at ITN. From the current crop,

  Andria_train_collision – Support, Posted

  Tone posted after the nomination, his own support and five other supports, and after five hours and after a suitable update. Why are you trying to suggest something "involved" took place here? I'm bemused as to why you think a comprehensive and fulsome consensus after a number of hours and a check on article quality which resulted in a good posting is worth your digging and tacit accusations? Seriously, I'm beginning to wonder about your reason for editing here. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:29, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  Wimbledon – Oppose, Pulled

  Actually, if you think a little bit harder, you'll realise I pulled the hook because the targets were inadequately referenced. And those weren't the targets I'd already opposed. So please, if you're going to try to stir the pot, do it properly. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:29, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  And for the current Turkish coup, lots of admins seem to have been editing the blurb through protection without much formality. My impression is that admins routinely ignore WP:INVOLVED at ITN and so Ed's behaviour is just more of the same. Andrew D. (talk) 20:21, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  Editing the blurb without formality is just fine, there's no such issue. We routinely update news stories when non-controversial. What was controversial was the posting of the hook. You know that Andy, I don't know why you have tried to reposition it so badly. I guess you're reacting to something, but I don't understand why you'd get this so wrong. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:29, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  After reading this, I just happen to look at WP:ERROR where we again see TRM editing the main page through protection without consensus. Mjroots seems to think that such behaviour warrants a ban. He should please understand how common such behaviour is. Andrew D. (talk) 21:02, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  Oh Andy, how do you think we are supposed to deal with errors on the main page? You can't have your cake and eat it. IF we trust admins to judge errors and fix the main page, then we do. This fix had no consensus attached to its original promotion incidentally, other than the DYK process of which you are a wholesale advocate. Honestly, please think twice before you continue to dig yourself deeper. And please credit Mjroots with some intelligence, he doesn't need your odd and incorrect diffs to form his own conclusions. And incidentally, if you wish to link a diff, please link a diff, rather than a permalink to a previous page status, it's most unhelpful. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:08, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  No, wait. I've had an epiphany. What Andy is saying is that admins can no longer make changes per ERRORS unless there is a consensus. Let's indoctrinate that and really help to promote an active and responsive encylcopedia. "Editing the main page through protection without consensus" does not equal "fixing ERRORS on the main page" does not equal "posting without consensus" &c. &c. Please read up a little before further comment, if you'd like some pointers, don't hesitate to ask! The Rambling Man (talk) 21:39, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  I note the remarks above. What I would say is this: - Other administrators are not under discussion here. This is solely about whether or not The ed17 should be restricted from editing {{In the news}} for an unspecified period of time. It is not about banning an editor that does excellent work elsewhere. There is a problem in one very small area of his editing, which is what we are seeking to remedy. Mjroots (talk) 05:53, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Again, The Rambling Man, you reply to people with viewpoints other than your own with invective language. Please, tone it down. Regarding Andrew Davidson, I don't want to speak for him, but he may be trying to comment on when you've complained about postings on ITN that did not have a previously agreed-upon blurb, even though once one is up, admins can and do edit it with impunity. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 06:49, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Not at all. But did you really make Prince's blurb purple? The Rambling Man (talk) 07:09, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Edit summary: "tweak" —David Levy 08:02, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

• I oppose this solely because restricting an administrator from performing administrative tasks is almost never a good idea, and this doesn't look to be an exception. If you don't have sufficiently good judgment not to do something without there being a formal restriction that prevents you from doing it, then you don't have sufficiently good judgment to have the bit, and vice-versa. The only person who labelled the recent actions "edit warring" or "wheel warring", as mentioned above in Thryduulf's summary, was me; and to the extent those labels are justified at all, it's only just barely, so I don't think a desysop is remotely called for either. If the behavior continues after the dramaz on ITN/C and here, of course, that's a different matter. —Cryptic 20:09, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  I agree with the general sentiment expressed above, but not with its application to this particular situation. When it comes to upholding the main page's integrity, pragmatism outweighs principle. Irrespective of whether Ed has abused the community's trust, he's continually causing non-trivial harm to the site's most visible page. Ideally, Ed would realize this and voluntarily agree to stop editing ITN until he gains a better understanding thereof. (I remain hopeful that this will occur.) Otherwise, a non-permanent topic ban is the most practical and least contentious means of addressing the problem. —David Levy 01:49, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  I think our positions differ more in semantics than anything else. My threshold for "behavior continues" is very low here, and I think - or at least hope - that the presence of this discussion itself is sufficient deterrent without the added insult of a formal topic ban. —Cryptic 02:53, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  To be clear, if Ed were to acknowledge that he's been insufficiently receptive to other users' constructive criticisms and agree to refrain from editing ITN until he understands what he needs to do differently, I would regard the proposal as moot. I sincerely hope that this occurs, but if it doesn't, a topic ban stands to preempt an otherwise-inevitable arbitration case (a far greater "insult", if one views these matters in that light). —David Levy 03:19, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

• Support also note the speedy post of the china floods [17]. At the time, the article had improved [18], but the users comments "503 words is enough to post this important news" concerned me because it suggests a focus on expedience vs consensus. I was leaning towards neutral until the users comments here "The impetus for this proposal from my rash revert of The Rambling Man on ITN yesterday" which indicates the user has failed to acknowledge a pattern of questionable decisions around the ITN template. --107.77.236.91 (talk) 21:18, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment If the user is sincere about backing off template edits until get gets a better handle of the workings at ITN, then no administrative action is needed. --107.77.236.91 (talk) 19:56, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
• Support I have nothing personally against the user but his recent behaviour was over all ignorant to the community. The proposed measure should be disciplinary enough so that the user will finally understand that we work upon principles.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 23:41, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
• Support. The problem extends well beyond Ed's tendency to commit serious errors when editing ITN. Alarmingly, he misunderstands the section's fundamental nature. This is not hyperbole; he literally regards ITN as something very different from what it actually is. He believes that its primary purpose is to report breaking news as quickly as possible, with this pursuit outweighing all other considerations. That's the rationale behind his rush to post items in the absence of consensus, concrete information, substantial prose, reliable sourcing, etc. This is flat-out unacceptable. Multiple editors have made repeated attempts to explain this to Ed, which he perceives as "attacks" stemming from "disagree[ment] on how to interpret the ITN criteria".
  Ed undoubtedly means well, but to quote Wikipedia:Competence is required: "A mess created in a sincere effort to help is still a mess. Clearly, every editor is incompetent when doing some types of edits in certain subject areas, so it is important to know or discover your limitations." (As I noted at ITN/C, this why I avoid Wikipedia tasks that I struggle to perform efficiently and without messing up.) Like others, I've urged Ed to refrain from editing ITN until he gains a reasonable grasp thereof, but he refuses (apparently because he genuinely doesn't understand what most of the fuss is about). I wish that a topic ban (albeit a non-permanent one) were unnecessary, but I see no viable alternative (short of desysopping). Ed's main page disruptions must stop. —David Levy 01:49, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Ed has stated that he intends to "step back from the ITN template for a non-trivial time and limit [him]self to commenting". Assuming that he follows through, I consider the matter resolved for the time being. —David Levy 07:57, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Hey David, thanks for your thoughts here; they're quite helpful. I fear, however, that you're misrepresenting my views, especially when you're referring to the so-called "attacks" I referred to; TRM's posts are of an entirely different caliber, and that word was meant to apply to his comments and his alone. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 06:49, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Duly noted, but you seem to have felt that you were targeted unfairly by multiple editors (even if you didn't apply that specific label to their comments). I'm hopeful that you aspire to be more receptive in the future. —David Levy 07:57, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  No, the only other comment that irked me was the sudden threat to move this to AN, which I considered premature at the time. I do apologize if I implied that I felt unduly targeted; that's not the case at all. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 14:24, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  I stand by everything I said, even more so now I've been made aware of your little game when changing the Prince blurb to purple text, you really did treat the main page as your own playground. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:04, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

• Support for the disruptive and incompetent behaviour shown above, and the incident when he edited the main page to colour Prince's death blurb purple entirely against consensus and with disrespect for the tools and process. Stephen 02:20, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Urk. I remember that. I hadn't remembered it was the same person who did it. —Cryptic 02:53, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

• Comment At the risk of being really controversial, I'm going to raise what I think is an elephant in the room here: the quality of ITN is generally not high. Blurbs are frequently poor grammatically, and the articles which are linked are rarely an example of Wikipedia's best work (it's not uncommon for them to contain biased material, copyright violations and/or misleading information, with there not even being a basic review procedure such as exists for DYK to guard against this). As such, this seems a rather large example of the pot calling the kettle black. I have to say that while I have the greatest respect for Ed, I agree that he should voluntarily take a break from ITN. However, many of the ITN regulars seeking to have him topic banned have led to all kinds of poor material appearing on the main page and should reflect on their own conduct before beating up on Ed further. Nick-D (talk) 02:23, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  If you see any biased matierial, copyright violations, misleading information in an article either fix it or note it. Before posting at WP:ITNC or after it at WP:ERRORS (along with any general copyvio, etc procedures if required). If you see grammatical errors in blurbs point them out. We don't and shouldn't require perfection, but we equally don't and shouldn't want those problems. Where we see them we call them out, but we are human and very rarely subject experts so we will miss some things. However, just commenting about it in discussions like this doesn't help anyone. Thryduulf (talk) 02:48, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  The irony being that Nick-D introduced a grammatical error to an item yesterday, that had to be corrected. Stephen 03:03, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Quite the opposite really - plurals don't apply to "a group". Shortly after reverting me David Levy significantly tweaked the blurb, in a much better way - though not, as far as I'm aware, without any discussion first - despite Ed being accused of being a cowboy for doing pretty much the same thing. Nick-D (talk) 07:06, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Actually, you're the only one to use the cowboy epithet, and in reality most of the issues here are to do with premature postings, erroneous postings, bad judgement etc, not adjusting blurbs post-posting, although that could use a look-at too, given the number of times mistakes were made while posting (although that happens from time to time, of course). The Rambling Man (talk) 07:26, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  This might be an English variety issue. In North American English, "group of servicemen" is treated as a singular group. Australian English may differ. (I know that British English does in some similar contexts, and Australian English has more in common with British English than it does with North American English.) Upon considering this possibility, I revised the blurb to work around it, per the logic behind WP:COMMONALITY. Similarly, we frequently use the construct "In [sport], [tournament] concludes with [team] defeating [team]", specifically to sidestep the matter of whether to treat a team as singular ("[team] defeats [team]") or plural ("[team] defeat [team]").
  I assume that you meant to write "as far as I'm aware, without any discussion first" or "not, as far as I'm aware, with any discussion first". Regarding "Ed being accused of being a cowboy for doing pretty much the same thing", who's complaining about Ed rewording posted blurbs? Is that what you meant, or are you lumping together all ITN edits not preceded by discussion (without regard for their specific nature and whether they're considered controversial)? —David Levy 07:57, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

• Comment: My apologies for not responding to this discussion earlier; as I alluded to above, I was offline traveling and celebrating with an old friend in a long-planned trip. Having now had the chance to go through the discussion, and with advice from several people I trust (including Nick above), I do want to acknowledge the legitimate points being made above about not heeding other's comments. While I do think that I will often be among the first to find a consensus and pull the trigger at ITN, I have clearly been too quick to pull that trigger as of late, and I apologize for the disruption that has caused. I would like to encourage individuals here to actually use user talk pages (for example, concerns about multiple edits to ITN at one time, rather than ensuring grammar via preview, would have been much more suited to that page), and I would strongly ask The Rambling Man to tone down his overwrought rhetoric aimed at me, others, DYK, and everyone. But that does not absolve the blame on my end. I'll step back from the ITN template for a non-trivial time and limit myself to commenting, whether or not the topic ban here passes. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 06:49, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Please note that I will be offline for much of tomorrow as well due to travel. If my opinion is desperately needed, please notify and message me off-wiki. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 06:57, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

• I am glad that Ed has taken on board the concerns and indicated that he will take a break from posting ITN items. In light of that, I don't think it is necessary to proceed with the topic ban proposal. Neljack (talk) 08:53, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

• Comment just as an aside, why does The ed17 feel the need to change other people's posts here, even if they are typographical changes? I thought we knew that we shouldn't edit other people's comments, for any reason. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:23, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Perhaps raise this with him in private (or at least, on his talk page) rather than adding fuel to the fire. — foxj 11:30, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Sure. Just seems a bit odd, in the midst of this discussion over his behaviour as an admin, he starts changing my posts. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:34, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  He fixed two obvious, inadvertent typos in the course of the ongoing discussion, probably because he found them distracting. I might have done the same thing and your objection about this seems like a case of looking for something to complain about. This point should be totally disregarded. Newyorkbrad (talk) 13:10, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Well try to refrain from editing other people's comments just because you find it "distracting", the same could be said of a number of whole posts, but we simply do not allow people to modify each ofher's posts. Do not encourage it please, very poor form from an "admin". The Rambling Man (talk) 13:20, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  And stop reverting edits which relate to me restoring my own post to the way I wrote it. You, of all people, really should know better. Very disappointing, but these days not surprising. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:59, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  I ... okay then. Forgive me for noticing two typos and attempting to offer a small olive branch. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 14:24, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  I'm not sure how violating WP:TPO could be considered an olive branch, but I understand that you were trying. What's much worse is Brad's "input" which directly violates the very behavioral guideline that I asked you not to. To do so in such a deliberate and wilful manner is outstandingly bad behaviour. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:37, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  We're really hitting storm in teacup territory. How many words is this worthy of, TRM? Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 14:54, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Once again you appear to be ignorant of guidelines, specifically in this case one which has had the precise effect the guideline intends to mitigate. The fun and games you had with ITN (purple?!) combined with a distinct lack of awareness on behavioural guidelines leads to one inevitable conculusion: You don't seem fit to be an admin I'm afraid. But that's for the next visit here I suspect. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:27, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  And once again, we see you using utterly unnecessarily invective language. I am intimately familiar with TPO and have cited it numerous times in the past, but I still did not expect you to interpret my edits in the way you did. Clearly I was mistaken in attempting to build a bridge and put this event behind us. Maybe in the future then. Cheers. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 15:45, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Not invective, conclusive. The barrel-load of issues here, added to TPO violations from you and jolly old Brad acting like the schoolmaster (a position he feels determined to occupy despite having no such credentials), led to the conclusion. If you knew about TPO and knew about the tone of this discussion, why would you violate it? As I said, we're done here, but I doubt this is the last time we'll see such matters discussed at AN. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:54, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Invective. Below, above, and elsewhere (looking at you, WT:DYK). Most people would have said "thank you" and moved on. Your mileage clearly varies. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 18:47, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Incompetence: TPO is a behavioural guideline that you have sought to ignore at AN. That's pure incompetence I'm afraid, nothing to do with varying mileage. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:19, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  The Rambling Man's overreaction to the correction of two typos, and his twice reverting the corrections, is indescribably foolish, and his personal attacks on The ed17 do nothing more than distract attention from any legitimate concerns raised here. (To The ed17's credit, he has not let himself be distracted.) I wonder what would happen if I fixed the typos again, which I am seriously considering doing. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:01, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  I'd revert your change, just to prevent TRM from having a 3RR vio, then probably open an RFC for your uncivil behavior for your pointed provocation of another editor in a thread in which you're not involved. I would expect nothing to come of it beyond some walls of text and wastes of time, but since you asked what might happen if you deliberately and unnecessarily antagonized TRM, I offered one scenario. --107.77.234.58 (talk) 01:45, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

  Time to reassess your ability to edit and use your tools Brad. Direct, deliberate and antagonistic violation of behavioural guidelines will see you at Arbcom if you're not much more careful if the future. The Rambling Man (talk) 06:08, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose per Andrew Davidson. ITN used to be a place where items in the news were posted. Obvious items like Wimbledon (which is posted every year), and the coup in Turkey (which is a snow news item) can and should be posted even if the article isn't yet B class or GA standard. The Ed has simply been applying that WP:BOLD logic as it has always been applied down the years.  — Amakuru (talk) 15:18, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  In fairness to the ITN regulars, I was anticipating that the Turkey coup would be a snow post—I didn't wait for the snow to actually fall. This is a discussion that would probably be best on WT:ITN with a well-written request for comment. I'm on board with the sentiment and would love to participate in the RfC, but that's not how the guidelines there are written at the present time. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 15:45, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Well fair enough. I also don't want to denigrate ITN regulars too much, because obviously I don't put in the hours myself there day in and day out, and the regulars do a sterling job. Apologies to anyone offended by my tone. But my point is simply that if ITN isn't actually going to show the most hot news stories then it is wrongly named.  — Amakuru (talk) 16:35, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  The idea of renaming ITN (specifically to discourage the misunderstanding that its purpose is to report the top news stories) has been discussed on multiple occasions – over the past 10+ years, interestingly enough. Unfortunately, we've yet to find a consensus-backed alternative. —David Levy 17:56, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  The section's purpose is not to report news, let alone vague accounts of breaking news whose basic nature is unclear and unverified by reliable sources. Your perception of "WP:BOLD logic as it has always been applied down the years" is inaccurate. —David Levy 17:56, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  This is not the place to try to refactor how ITN works. We post quality, we have standards and we depend on consensus, not just rogue admins making unilateral decisions several times within a few days, claiming IAR etc, particularly when they make mistakes and edit war on the main page. If you don't get that, try taking a break for a while to catch up with how Wikipedia works. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:40, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  @Amakuru: It's a very legitimate view, one that I sympathize with, it's just going to get awfully tangential to the purpose of this section. Hence my WT:ITN suggestion. :-) Best, Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 18:47, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose - I can only see that he has applied WP:BOLD. I see no clear reason for topic ban at this time.BabbaQ (talk) 17:10, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  I'm unclear on why editors are attempting to defend actions that Ed has now acknowledged to have been inappropriate and ill-advised. I can only express my astonishment at your apparent belief that WP:BOLD is about ignoring consensus and the standards and procedures derived therefrom. —David Levy 17:56, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Unfortunately there's a level of WP:COMPETENCE to which a number of those who regularly contribute at ITN fail to meet. Some of the opinions voiced here are clear indicators of such shortcomings. It's not worth a breath discussing it with the because they can't hear you I'm afraid. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:37, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) @David Levy: My edits were ill-advised, certainly—I reverted a revert on a protected page, and the edits as a whole caused people like yourself to devote time to this discussion. But on appropriateness, there are varying interpretations of WP:BOLD (as with most policies), so I'm not surprised to see this viewpoint.

  @The Rambling Man: Once again with the invectiveness, this time with a drive-by personal attack. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 18:48, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  (1) If the cap fits. (2) If you were competent, you'd know that ping copyedit doesn't work (3) it's hardly "drive by" since I've been commenting on this thread for a couple of days (4) just for a change, most of my comment was not directed at you, it was at those who frequent ITN yet have no clue about Wikipedia. Is there anything more wrong with your response? The Rambling Man (talk) 18:50, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  (1) a personal attack is a personal attack. (2) I really wasn't worried that you wouldn't see the post despite my typo. (3) Dictionary. (4) I'm not going further down this path with you. See m:Don't be a jerk and take the sentiments to heart. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 18:54, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Nothing attack about it. Pure objective commentary. If you don't like it, you should resign the mop, which would be a good thing for Wikipedia given you recent purple expedition. Do us all a favour. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:57, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Guys, please cool it down. There is nothing constructive to be gained by taking this tone. — foxj 19:13, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  Agreed, this isn't helping Ed's cause at all. So please, can he just accept the issue at hand, accept that violating TPO in this very thread was another poor judgement, and then we can all move on. We will monitor the situation hereafter. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:17, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) I'm disengaging, Foxj, like I said. :-) If TRM wants to go to Arbcom about my administrator rights, he can—but I suspect he won't, and that means there's no further need for my input here. Getting back on the road now, will be offline for a bit. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 19:20, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

  I don't need to go to Arbcom (that's hardly an effective course of action in any situation), like I've said the other multiple failings are not necessarily related to this thread, but the revelation is clear, and your admin actions will be much more heavily scrutinised going forward and that should be sufficient. Safe journey. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:23, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

My current take on this thread is that a topic (or template-editing) ban, even if not that big a deal (I can't edit that template either, but, like Ed whatever the outcome here, can participate in discussions and mark as ready), is not necessary after having read Ed's statement at 06:49, 17 July 2016. I hope this thread can be closed soon, one way or the other, because it's becoming painful to read. ---Sluzzelin talk 19:30, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Agree, there isn't a consensus for action, and the user seems to have acknowledged the concerns raised by this AN. --107.77.236.91 (talk) 19:56, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

• Suggested close:

1. Topic ban not necessary; User:The ed17 has agreed to stop editing T:ITN for a while ("I'll step back from the ITN template for a non-trivial time and limit myself to commenting, whether or not the topic ban here passes. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 06:49, 17 July 2016 (UTC)"). Personally, I don't think even that was necessary - all that was needed was an agreement not to act so boldly/rashly on the things that show up on the main page anymore - but that was what he said he was going to do, so that's what the close will say.
2. Enough people who Ed respects have told him what he did was wrong that I doubt we'll see a recurrance when/if he decides to edit ITN again.
3. Correcting typos of people you are in a conflict with is not trying to make peace; it is trying to get your own tiny little kick in, all the while having plausible deniability. Brad may not know this, but I do. Unimpressive.
4. For those who this applies to: 80% of the problem with ANI is people who come here not to solve problems, but who see someone they don't like participating, and see this as an opportunity to score points against them. You can claim whatever motivation you want, but whatever Diety you worship knows why you're really doing it, and she's not impressed. Bad Karma.
5. It must be terribly, terribly exhausting and lonely to absolutely have to win every single argument you're ever in. To always, always have to have the last word. And when all is said and done, it's just a lame website with quite a few lame people, so "winning" isn't even winning in the traditional sense. Being able to let stuff go is pretty liberating.
6. When you run into someone who absolutely must have the last word, your secret weapon is: just let them have the last word. It's OK, really, no one thinks you're agreeing or giving up.

--Floquenbeam (talk) 22:53, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

I agree with the suggested close as to points 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6. And because I agree with 5 and 6, I suppose I shouldn't protest too loudly about #3. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:59, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for closing this rather drawn out conversation that got increasingly painful to read. ITN has some rather counterintuitive norms given that it's about NEWS, and its reform requires thinking well beyond this case. Consider this a post-close Oppose to any type of topic ban for Ed. -- Fuzheado | Talk 04:38, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

I agree that ITN's conventions can be counterintuitive to someone who sees a section titled "In the news" and assumes that its purpose is to report news. As noted above, that's why there have been several attempts (all unsuccessful, unfortunately) to come up with a better name, with the first occurring a decade ago.

However, I'm confused as to how this excuses the actions of an administrator who's been informed of ITN's norms and continually deviated therefrom. It's reasonable to advocate changes to ITN's standards/procedures, but I hope that you aren't suggesting that disagreement therewith is grounds for disregarding them and imposing one's personal preferences – via the use of sysop tools, no less.

I also hope that you don't want Wikipedia to disseminate headlines about events for which it lacks encyclopedic content, including substantial prose and reliable sourcing. —David Levy 07:26, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

The primary purpose of WP:ITN is "To help readers find and quickly access content they are likely to be searching for because an item is in the news." In satisfying this goal, it says, "a highly significant event, such as the discovery of a cure for cancer, may have a sub-par update associated with it, but be posted anyway with the assumption that other editors will soon join in and improve the article." Ed's actions in cases such as the Turkish coup are quite consistent with this description of WP:ITN's nature. Andrew D. (talk) 10:12, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Have you read the rest of the page? You seem to be interpreting "sub-par" to mean "poor", which isn't the intent. Certain bare minimums – including the citation of reliable sources verifying that the event actually occurred, must be met. I emboldened that text because I remain gobsmacked by some editors' arguments in defense of Ed's posting about the Turkish coup attempt. In fact, I'm going to stress this again. Ed posted the item without confirmation from reliable sources that such an event was taking place.

He also disregarded the input of editors who noted the importance of waiting. Are you under the impression that ITN's criteria call for the abandonment of Wikipedia's consensus-based decision-making? Do you believe that it's appropriate for an administrator to use sysop tools to force his/her personal preferences on the community, and then to wheel-war when another admin intervenes? I'm trying to find some other way to interpret your message, but you cited that specific incident as an example of Ed acting in accordance with ITN's conventions. I genuinely hope that I've somehow misunderstood you. —David Levy 10:52, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

At the time that Ed posted the entry on ITN, the developing article already had confirmation of the event from the Turkish Prime Minister as reported by sources like the BBC, Guardian and Wall Street Journal. The event was indeed real and, after a quick bit of back and forth, it was at ITN to stay. It still seems that Ed made the right call and that this action was consistent with what WP:ITN says about posting significant events. The OED says that "sub-par" means "Below average; worse than expected or required." Andrew D. (talk) 11:24, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Since we're playing "cheery pick the bits from WP:ITN which we like", consider scrolling down a bit and reading: "Whether or not a topic is significant enough for inclusion in ITN is often contentious, and ultimately, there are no rules or guidance beyond two: - The event can be described as "current", that is the event is appearing currently in news sources, and/or the event itself occurred within the time frame of ITN. - There is consensus to post the event.". WP:ITN/C can seem slow, inconsistent, and aggravated. The one thing that binds it all together is consensus to post. I've seen people come to WP:AN/I to defend admins who posted a blurb with which they disagreed because consensus favored posting. What Ed did was disregard consensus, go completely rogue, and disrupt the main page. Fortunately, as you continue to defend his reckless actions, the user has accepted that they were inappropriate and has volunteered appropriate steps. If you're curious about the process to correctly change ITN, check out this months long proposal to modernize ITN/DC, which is still languishing. --107.77.233.165 (talk) 11:37, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

At the time that Ed posted the entry on ITN, the developing article already had confirmation of the event from the Turkish Prime Minister as reported by sources like the BBC, Guardian and Wall Street Journal.

Reliable sources had reported that Yıldırım claimed that a coup attempt was underway. Ed took said politician's claim at face value and posted it on the main page as a statement of fact, in spite of multiple editors' advice to wait until the situation was clearer.

In case you're unaware, significant concerns regarding the accuracy of Yıldırım's claims exist. As now noted in our article:

During and after the events, several politicians and commentators, including former leader of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) Deniz Baykal, expressed doubt regarding whether the coup attempt was genuine or staged by the government. The facts that the coup attempt began in the early evening rather than at a more inconspicuous time, the events were largely confined to Ankara and İstanbul, no members of the government or MPs were taken hostage, and pro-government media outlets were not obstructed from broadcasting live during the events, all contributed to doubts about the authenticity of the coup attempt. Journalists and opposition politicians branded it a 'tragic comedy' and 'theatre play'. Advocates of such theories pointed to how Erdoğan stood to gain heavily from the coup attempt in terms of increasing his popularity and support for his calls for an executive presidency, while being able to legitimise further crackdowns on civil liberties, judicial independence and the opposition in general. Opponents of Erdoğan's regime claimed that very little stood in the way of his government eroding the founding principles of the Turkish Republic such as secularism, which the AKP has been accused of wanting to abolish, and pursuing a more authoritarian agenda.

And yet, you appear to be arguing that it was prudent to treat "[Yıldırım's] confirmation of the event" as unimpeachable.

The event was indeed real and, after a quick bit of back and forth, it was at ITN to stay.

I'll cruise past your description of a main-page wheel war as "a quick bit of back and forth" and note that from the very beginning, ITN/C editors stressed the item's premature nature at the time of its nomination. There was little doubt that something highly significant was unfolding, but it was too soon to know what. Please don't misrepresent the matter of contention as a question of notability.

It still seems that Ed made the right call and that this action was consistent with what WP:ITN says about posting significant events.

See above, including the part about consensus.

The OED says that "sub-par" means "Below average; worse than expected or required."

"Below average" is what's meant, as is abundantly obvious in context (i.e., when one doesn't conveniently ignore the rest of the page). —David Levy 14:15, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Ed indicated good awareness that our coverage was provisional when he first posted the entry at WP:ITN, "Posted, with the knowledge that we will have to update the blurb as news unfolds". Even now, days later, the details of the coup are still unclear and uncertain. But throughout most of this time, we have had an entry at ITN and this indicates that Ed's call was correct. The guidelines at WP:ITN clearly indicate that such tentative postings are acceptable if the news is very significant and so we're good. There is not a problem here that needs fixing. Andrew D. (talk) 15:57, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

It's become obvious that you have no intention of engaging in an intellectually honest discussion. Take care. —David Levy 16:53, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

• Since I was not involved in this discussion, any particularly hard feelings if I close this in a manner that Floquenbeam suggested? --Tone 14:01, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
• I think this can and should be closed in the manner suggested by Floquenbeam. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:31, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

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

Article requiring admin attention

I came across Qandeel Baloch (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs), an biography of a person who died recently. There are swarms of disruptive edits by multiple IP users from the past 1 hour which increased the pending changes backlog by 50 edits which caused a huge difficulty for the pending changes reviewer to determine whether to accept or revert the edits. There's already a report at WP:RFP but no admin seems to be present there at the moment. This article really need admin attention. Thanks Ayub407^talk 11:58, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

•  Done semi-protected for 3 days. Thryduulf (talk) 12:08, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Was that really the best option? I say this (guiltily) as someone who hasn't been in actively involved in pending changes review, but it's hardly surprising that the death of a notable person would attract new editors. I would think the best approach would be the pending changes rather than just effectively telling them to go away. I realize it create some work for reviewers but isn't that the point — that such proposed edits should be reviewed before being accepted?--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:58, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Normally yes, but in this case the volume of useless edits was overwhelming. I have no objection to the protection being reduced sooner than 3 days time if the need for it ends before then. Thryduulf (talk) 15:46, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Removal of Topic Ban

I request here to remove the ban on me regarding religion related edits as I abided by this rule for a period of more than six months and didn't engage in any offence to this ban imposed on me. I assure that I will not become involved again in any activity that was responsible for this ban. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Septate (talk • contribs) 12:47, 16 July 2016 (UTC)}}.

• Note: This is a community ban, and the original 2014 discussion was here. See also recent discussion on User talk:Septate. Bishonen | talk 13:04, 16 July 2016 (UTC).
• Oppose on Technicality without prejudice to refile at ANI as this should really be there as the TBAN was a community sanction. - Penwhale | ^{dance in the air and follow his steps} 13:41, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
  • @Penwhale: The banning policy says Community sanctions may be discussed on the Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard (preferred) or on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents so that appears to perfectly correct location. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 13:54, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• I'm okay with what Sphilbrick said below; I just feel that if the original discussion took place at ANI, it at least should be mentioned there. That being said... Normally I would be okay with loosening restrictions, but Septate did not understand the TBAN was still in place until properly appealed. I feel resetting for a shorter clock on the TBAN might be the best solution (say, 3 months) before we revisit this issue. - Penwhale | ^{dance in the air and follow his steps} 15:46, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• Comment Ban discussions are supposed to be here. I get that the initial ban was in the wrong place, but rather than attempt a "two wrongs make a right" solution, I'd prefer to simply add a notice there pointing to here, and continue the discussion here where it belongs.--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:55, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
  • I added a note and a link to ANI--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:44, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
• Question is Septate still under the topic ban? To me the wording made it look like it expired after six months but I may be reading it wrong. But if they are then Septate has recently edited articles such as Religion in Belarus, Islam in France, Worship in Hindusim, Religion in India, and Religion in the United Kingdom. These are just since June 15th, I see more going further back in Septate's user contributions. --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 21:14, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• The wording of the original restriction, Septate is topic banned from all articles, talk pages and subpages of both which are related to religion, broadly construed, for a period of no less than 6 months, leads me to believe that it was indefinite with a minimum of 6 months. - Penwhale | ^{dance in the air and follow his steps} 03:37, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

If that's the case, then he's broken his topic ban...142.105.159.60 (talk) 05:17, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

I didn't break topic ban. It was a misunderstanding. If I knew that ban removal requires an ani discussion I would have had applied earlier. As I have already told that I thought ban was for 6 months therefore istrictly I abided by this rule & didn't make any edits. All those edits are after a period of six months as I thought ban was over!Septate (talk) 07:01, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Let's move away for a bit from the procedural discussion. Septate, if the topic-ban is now lifted, what would you do differently in the future when your editing about religion, to avoid the sort of problems that led to the topic-ban being imposed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 13:18, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose. I'll admit I was intitially all for lifting this. You have a topic banned editor that went way beyond the point they thought they were TBed and stayed away from the area entirely. Then I read the ANI and just went through their recent contributions. For one, their use of edit summaries is non-existent or really not indicative of the changes they made. Two, most of the substantive edits seem to add negative material about Islam and positive material about Christianity. Don't really see what good would come to WP by removing this topic ban. Capeo (talk) 21:41, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
• Comment I think the confusion over the length of time on the Tban was inadvertent and I respect this user abiding by it once they were made aware that it was still in effect. I would support the ban being lifted if the user made assurances to 1. Sign all comments left on talk pages. 2. Leave edit summaries. and 3. Adhered to our neutral point of view standards.--Adam in MO Talk 02:08, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose A spot-check of recent edits is not encouraging; eg this edit which is flatly contradicted by the source associated with it and has the edit summary, "Minor edit" (note that the source was already in the article, Septate did not add it). This is, um, interesting; pretty much the definition of WP:WEASEL. The focus on religions is unmissable and the underlying POV is gentle but palpable. While Septate did adhere to the TBan for nearly eleven months, this consisted of four days editing about various species of beetle (almost a text-book example of how a TBan ought to be served, it has to be said) then a break from editing of ten months 24 days (less good) and then jumping straight back into editing Religion in Georgia (country) (bad, really). Since then he has edited almost solely related to religion. I can understand that he thought the TBan expired after six months (that seems to have been the understanding of other editors in the ANI thread that imposed the ban, too) but even given that, this pattern is not what I'd like to see. GoldenRing (talk) 13:31, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Neelix redirects

I am tired of Neelix redirects. I have processed hundreds of the deletion requests, but I have stopped.

It is incredibly inefficient for one editor to review an entry, decide it ought to go, nominate for CSD or RfD, then have an admin review and decide. Even though each step takes seconds, there are many thousands left.

• List with almost 3000 remaining
• List with almost 5000 remaining
• List with over 5000 remaining
• List with over 5000 remaining

At a time when it is a struggle to keep the CSD nominations under 100, this is an absurd drain on resources.

I get that some of the redirects were useful. However, I suspect that most of the truly useful ones have been reviewed and removed from the lists.

I propose:

• That we allow a period of time (a week, 30 days?) for interested editors to go through the lists to see if any useful ones should be removed from the list. I think that is a monumental waste of time, but if editors want to do it, go for it.
• At the end of that time, mass delete the rest.

I think a week is long enough, but will defer to a longer time if someone really wants to waste their time this way.

Note that this will inevitably delete some useful redirect. My main point is that if you can think of a useful redirect, you can recreate it in far less time that it is taking to review these items. We aren't talking about deleting an article with even minimal content, we are talking about deletion of an article containing a single word.

Let's end this madness.--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:50, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

I agree. This situation is essentially mass vandalism that went unchecked. Instead of devoting hundreds of editor hours to solving this we should soft delete them, and allow recreation by any user in good standing. If anyone misses them then they can be returned. Worst case scenario is we end up in the situation we would have been in if Neelix never made a redirect. HighInBC ^{Need help? {{ping|HighInBC}}} 14:54, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

I support the proposal. It is a waste of time to handle several thousands of thee redirects individually given that a chance any of them are useful is low.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:20, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

There are useful ones in there but there are significantly more that are not. Is there a way for a bot to go through and remove from the lists any that are more likely than not to be useful. Specifically:

• redirects to other capitalisations
• redirects that differ only by the presence or absence of diacritics
• redirects where the title of redirect appears in bold in the lead of the target
• redirects that receive a significant number of page hits (defined as receiving at least 20 hits in the last 30 days).

If that (or at least the first three) is possible, I oppose this until after the bot has been run and we can see how many are left. Iff that is not possible, then I will reluctantly support this. Thryduulf (talk) 15:43, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Oppose based on the comments below after looking again at some of the redirects that are left I was able to find 2 that were correct and one that required a simple retargetting in about 2 minutes. Yes the process is slow, but the vast majority of these are doing no harm at all so there is no rush. Thryduulf (talk) 17:39, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Indeed. There is no deadline and most of the redirects do no harm.—Godsy^(TALK_CONT) 17:45, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

I agree that two salvaged redirects, AAC (airport) and CID (airport), have some value. If someone starts typing AAC and follows with (airport) assuming they know our convention, they will arrive at the airport. But if they type in AAC, they will arrive at the DAB which includes the airport. Similarly, if you type in CID, you will see the DAB which also includes the airport. So if the redirect didn't exist, it is almost certain they will find the article they want. The AAC DAB had 3894 views in the last 90 days. The AAC (airport) had 8 views in the last 90 days.--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:07, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Absolutely support. There's enough backlogs on the project without allowing a single user to create a backlog that takes over 1000 editor hours to address. And I don't think that's an exaggeration. In response to Thryduulf, the diacritic ones are often not useful. I've seen plenty where he created a redirect where one letter had a diacritic but another had it removed. These mixed diacritic redirects aren't useful at all. Such a bot might be feasible, but again, it's dedicating extremely valuable editor time to save a very small number of useful redirects among a sea of dung. WP:Bot requests has a perpetual backlog. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 16:36, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Comment Creating a bot to go through it might not be feasible. I'm going through these Neelix redirects, speedy nominating the ones I'm sure that should be deleted, nominating some that I'm not sure or that needs to be retargeted, and leaving a lot of them alone if I don't know what to do with them. The temporary speedy delete for this redirect was made to preventing people from wasting the RFDs time, but if it's not useful anymore, then I'm fine with having another alternative. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 17:02, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• Nuke them from orbit This should have been done at the outset because of the demonstrated, shall we call them... "poor choices", made by Neelix in creating redirects. While some may be good it is simply not worth the time or effort to sort the good, from the bad, from the puerile, from the just plain silly. If nuking them breaks something it is still far less time and resources to fix those individual instances, should they occur.

  This case has caused enough stress and conflict. It is time for it to be cauterized and done with. Jbh^Talk 17:09, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• Strong oppose - The community already decided on a process to deal with these redirects. Some of the redirects are useful and valid.—Godsy^(TALK_CONT) 17:11, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Comment If these redirects are creating a backlog in CSD, perhaps create a separate speedy for these redirects. Creating a bot could be useful BUT only after all of these redirects are reviewed. Tag the ones that are to be deleted (or create a list) then have a bot delete them. I disagree with having a limited time to salvage redirects, because there are not a lot of people going through the lists, and it would be (in my opinion), impossible to review them all and agree which ones should be kept or deleted in that timeframe. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 17:22, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

There's a simple solution for the timeframe issue - a copy can be made in a user subpage, or a WP page, and then, any editor who wishes can go through and recreate any they find useful.--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:36, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

There's no need for a bot. --S Philbrick(Talk) 17:43, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose. I have great admiration for the editors who do the dirty work by going through these, but I think they should be filtered through the WP:RFD process to give the community an opportunity to discuss the merits of the redirects on an individual basis. -- Notecardforfree (talk) 17:28, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• Question: If the redirects are mass-deleted, is it possible to list the deleted redirects in a central location in case someone wants to go through them latter looking for those few that are worth restoring? --Guy Macon (talk) 17:30, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Answer Yes, I noted this about the same time you asked - easy enough to copy the lists, or even leave them in Anomie's subpage (if they don't mind). They would simply be red instead of blue.--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:40, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• @Sphilbrick and Guy Macon: The fatal flaw with retaining just the lists, is that they contain only the title of the redirect, not the target.—Godsy^(TALK_CONT) 17:58, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• Surely ^{(Stop calling me Shirley!)} we could create a page with the targets as well. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:40, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

off-topic

Comment: Those who drove Simon Trew away should be made to return and explain how their actions improved the encyclopedia. Muffled Pocketed 17:36, 16 July 2016 (UTC) Nobody "drove" SimonTrew away. He was blocked for making WP:Legal threats. He should know that he'll be unblocked if he renounces his threats. -- Tavix (talk) 18:33, 16 July 2016 (UTC) @Tavix: MRDA Muffled Pocketed 18:47, 16 July 2016 (UTC) Thanks for teaching me about the Men's Roller Derby Association. I appreciate it. -- Tavix (talk) 18:51, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose: I have to oppose because it has been 8 months since this temporary speedy has been made and only half of the list has been gone through. Creating a deadline to salvage redirects isn't the best idea, in my opinion. Also, @Sphilbrick:, your idea of mass deleting all of the redirects and going through and recreating the redirects that are acceptable seems wrong to me, because, either way, all of these redirects would have to be reviewed in order to be sure if the deletion of the redirect was correct or not. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 17:38, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose. This will create even more work. The worst offending redirects have already been deleted, most of the remainder are either useful ones or pointless ones. —Xezbeth (talk) 17:48, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
• Comment (edit conflict) Who of the current and future opposes to this suggestion are willing to help do the work. I strongly suggest that those who have chosen to take on this Sisyphean nay Augean task are the ones best able to judge the effectiveness of how we initially chose to address this matter - they are saying it is not working, please listen to them or dig in. Jbh^Talk 17:54, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

I bet I've deleted more of them than you. It's not a competition. —Xezbeth (talk) 17:59, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

I am sure you have. But when someone deeply involved in the clean up comes here and says it is too much. I listen to them. The conflicts resulting from the clean up seem to have caused more problems than the "event". At this point those involved should either decide to keep them by default, and look only for the purile and offensive or nuke them. I would nuke them because, from what I have seen they seldome rise above useless but redirects are funny things and people seem to find the oddest things "plausible". Jbh^Talk 18:47, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

I am digging in and of the random selection I've reviewed so far, I'm seeing more good redirects than bad redirects. Thryduulf (talk) 18:08, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

From what I am seeing there is nothing (once they are confirmed not to be articles per Thryduulf below) that the loss of, even in agregate, that would cause the same harm to the encyclopedia as the loss of editor hours reviewing them. It is a case of the best being the enemy of the good. Best=1000's more editor hours expended; Good less than a tenth of that. The made up word forms -ing -Ed -es, spaces, no spaces, hyphens etc. search engines can handle and who knows what Easter Eggs there may be. Jbh^Talk 18:25, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Note not all the links listed are still redirects so a bot must check this if tasked with deleting them. Thryduulf (talk) 18:06, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Can you provide some examples? It purports to be a list of redirect. Is that in error, or did someone convert a redirect into an article title and fail to remove it from the list?--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:15, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Taranta is an example. It was a redirect that Rigadoun converted to a dab page on 1 January this year, but which remained in the list until my edit of a few minutes ago. Whether Rigadoun was even aware of the list or of its purpose I have no idea. Thryduulf (talk) 18:18, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

That's a good observation, but easily addressed. When doing a mass delete, this list identifies whether it is a redirect or not. Whomever does the delete has to watch and uncheck non redirects. (I just checked in my sandbox to confirm it would work).--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:54, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose picking a few from one of the lists at random I'm seeing plenty that are perfectly valid redirects. For instance:

• A. J. Broomhall redirects to Alfred James Broomhall: the article says that he is sometimes known as A. J. Broomhall, so this is a perfectly good search term.
• John the theologian redirects to John of Patmos: again the article says that's one name the subject is known by, so it's a perfectly good search term
• Michael's Harbour redirects to Michael's Harbour, Newfoundland and Labrador: I assume the article has to be at that title because of a naming convention but that's clearly the best target for this search term
• Five Lanes End redirects to Kensington, Prince Edward Island: that's an old name for the area, so it's a plausible search term

There are plenty of others I could list here. Deleting these ones would actually harm the encyclopedia, and that's what would happen under this proposal unless someone went through the list to remove them and all the other numerous ones like them. Even in the cases where the redirect is not a particularly helpful search term it's hard to make the case that the redirect is actually harmful rather than just useless. Given that I don't think summarily deleting thousands of redirects is a good idea here. Hut 8.5 18:24, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• Do everyone a huge favor and remove those from the lists. It's impossibly slow if we have to re-do the work again and again. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 18:32, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• Meh. As the editor who proposed the splitting and organization, I'm far from a fan of these but we could use more eyes, preferably from admins to cut down the CSDs. I think the problem is that these are in a incoherent order (a cause of it just being a list based on creation) but man was this a miserable mess created. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 18:30, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose The ones I sampled seemed quite reasonable. Andrew D. (talk) 18:54, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
• Support some kind of deadline, was thinking of proposing a year myself (this November). That way people would only have to remove redirects that are "good" and leave the questionable ones in place. CSD/RFD wouldn't be bogged down this way and the ones with value will still be removed. -- Tavix ^(talk) 19:02, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose. As an admin who's processed some of these, even the ones nominated for deletion are sometimes correct redirects and end up being saved. It would do more harm to the project to nuke good ones than to retain bad ones.  — Amakuru (talk) 19:47, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose per Thryduulf (as revised) and Amakuru|. I also oppose stopping the present system, as sending them to RfD wouldn't help in terms of work. There are some that are OK as they stand, and some that can be retargeted to a more appropriate article. I have seen lot that are very unlikely search terms. but haven't seen many that were really harmful. Peridon (talk) 20:43, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
• Support - I'm not going to be liked one iota for this but the amount of time being wasted on these is ridiculous, Neelix should've been indeffed and these should've been mass nuked regardless of their usefulness, If editors believe certain words are useful then they'll get recreated as Redirects over time ... As it stands there's thousands upon thousands of redirects to go through and quite frankly we all have better stuff to do with our lives than to sit infront of a computer sifting though 500 redirects a day!. –Davey2010^Talk 21:09, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose per Thyrduulf. The most problematic have been dealt with, the rest are mostly useful or harmless and shouldn't be summarily deleted in this way. If we do want to have a way of more rapidly moving through them, a better plan is needed. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 04:03, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
• support deleting all. Why wasn't this done in the first place surprises me... It is plain simple vandalism. Suppose someone creates a "redirect creating bot" which simply picks every wikipedia page title and then makes semi-random dictionary replacements, word shuffling, case changing, turn words into initial, and so on. It creates a million redirects. I am sure that thousands of those would be perfectly good ones. I am also almost sure that the near unanimous solution would be to delete them all. Sure, some good redirects would be (and will be) lost, but the time spent saving them is best used re-creating them and creating something useful. - Nabla (talk) 13:07, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose as most of these are harmless and the danger of deleting some useful things is far more damaging than keeping around some useless things. We'd still have to check them to see what should be re-created. Time is better spent elsewhere. — Earwig ^talk 17:34, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose as we are at the point where most are harmless. I have deleted quite a few and declined to delete some as potentially useful. We should spend our time doing something productive now that the harmful stuff is gone already. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:06, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Alternative proposal

It is clear that my proposal is going down in flames. After review, I see I made some assumptions which were not warranted, so suggest the above section should be archived as failed, and I will propose an alternative, attempting to address the concerns of those opposed.

My unwarranted assumption was that editors have concentrated on salvaging the good redirects, so the quality of the remaining entries should be dropping. That doesn't appear to be the case. Instead, some of the more egregious, "inappropriate" redirects were nominated for deletion, and the remaining ones are more benign.

That still means many thousands of nominations for CSD, so I will suggest an alternative process which:

• Eliminates the timeframe problem - it will be done whenever it is done
• Eliminates the need to make a CSD nomination.
• It doesn't save the time needed to do an assessment, but the community message is that this should be done. (The community is right, even when wrong :)

In short, the proposal is to add a section to the bottom of each list, with a heading "Redirects to be deleted"

Any editor can look at any entry in the top list, decide it is worth saving, and remove from the list, or decide it should be considered for deletion, in which case it would be moved to the lower list.

Any editor who sees an entry in the lower list can either override it by removing it from the list (effectively, keeping it) or nominate it at Rfd and remove from the list

Eventually the top list will be empty and the only remaining entries are in the "Redirects to be deleted" section, and can be mass deleted.

I'll illustrate how this might happen with an initial list of four items, collapsed for readability.

Specific example of how this might work

Initial configuration (A list of all redirects for consideration, and a blank section for ones to be deleted ==Existing redirects for consideration== * Foo * Bar * Crappy crap * Good crap ==Redirects to be deleted== An editor looks at the "Foo" entry, decides it is a valid redirect, so simply removes it form the list Now the page looks like: ==Existing redirects for consideration== * Bar * Crappy crap * Good crap ==Redirects to be deleted== An editor looks at "Crappy crap" and "Good crap" and thinks they should both be deleted. The editor simply moves them to the bottom section. Now the page looks like: ==Existing redirects for consideration== * Bar ==Redirects to be deleted== * Crappy crap * Good crap Next, a different editor either decides that "Good crap" should be saved, in which case it is simply removed, or thinks it is worth discussing so writes up an RfD and removes it from the list. Now the page looks like: ==Existing redirects for consideration== * Bar ==Redirects to be deleted== * Crappy crap Next, an editor decides "bar" should be saved. Now the page looks like: ==Existing redirects for consideration== ==Redirects to be deleted== * Crappy crap Finally, the redirects to be deleted are mass deleted (taking care to make sure that they are all redirects, and none have become articles or DABs.

--S Philbrick(Talk) 21:59, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

It might work, but there are a few problems. For instance, say someone removes a redirect from the consideration or deleted sections. I think they should provide an explanation why the redirect should be kept before it gets saved. Might look like

==Redirects to be deleted==
* Crappy crap
* Good crap - Singular name for good craps

If this proposal does work, then the temporary CSD for Neelix redirects should be closed then? --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 22:08, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• I don't see why this is necessary. If you want, if there's a set you think should just be junked, copy that to the talk page and ping an admin working on it like me and I'll review it. Better yet, we can create a separate page for those if you'd like. From there, it'll be either delete, RFD if I'm a maybe or keep by admin review. Just be glad we still aren't stuck with that stupid single one page listing of them all that crashed every browser it was on. I have no idea why people insisted on that system for months. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:12, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
• I like this idea a lot. This would be so much more efficient than tagging and deleting all of these one by one. I'd actually take it a step further by saying that an admin can clear that section if (s)he wants. -- Tavix ^(talk) 22:21, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
  • That and if the redirect is being sent off to CSD, remove it from the list. It'll be deleted and removed or rejected by an admin so you'll either end up doing it again or just moving on. If it's off to RFD, remove it. It literally should just be a first cut, no one has checked list to clear this out quickly. There should be zero related changes on any of those pages. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:46, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• All of that is currently being done. The difference with this proposal is that non-admins wouldn't need to tag every single bad redirect. Instead, they'd put in the "to be deleted" section (although I'd prefer a separate page covering all 4 lists, to enable d-batch) so it bypasses the need to go through CSD. That way, the CSD admins no longer have to deal with these redirects. As far as RFD goes, borderline redirects would still go there (as what's being done currently). -- Tavix ^(talk) 23:03, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• They can still go to CFD. The point is to clear them from pages 1-4. Either way, we can just make a new page right now and just use that as a clear-out ground for admins to review. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:17, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• Better still lets stop wasting time and having these stupid threads and just nuke the lot ..... There's been countless threads on these redirects and there's going to be countless more if someone doesn't grow a pair and just nuke the fucking lot, We're here to build an encyclopedia ..... and sifting through 20k worth of Neelix redirects is sure as shit not helping the project nor is it helping to build an encyclopedia ..... If they're useful someone will recreate it. –Davey2010^Talk 23:40, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Corollary: Better still lets stop wasting time and having these stupid threads and just accept that almost all of the redirects are harmless at worst and useful at best ..... There's been countless threads on these redirects and there's going to be countless more if someone doesn't grow a pair and just accept that they aren't doing any harm, We're here to build an encyclopedia ..... and sifting through 20k worth of Neelix redirects is sure as shit not helping the project nor is it helping to build an encyclopedia ..... If they're harmful someone will nominate them for deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 00:50, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
    • But that's my point ... if some are completely harmless then can and will be recreated as redirects by many different editors ..... I don't mean this in a dickish way but it's a complete waste of editors time doing this task and they could better spend their time improving the site .... –Davey2010^Talk 02:03, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
      • I actually think that deleting harmless redirects is actively harmful to the project as it wastes time and requires duplication of effort down the line and who knows how many people wont benefit from them before the first person with the time, ability and knowledge to recreate them does so? Improving the project includes making it easier for readers to navigate to the content they want, and preventing the nuking of beneficial redirects from people who think that will someone improve the project. So far since the start of this discussion, I've speedied 2 redirects, nominated 2 more at RfD and kept about 60 that were good or harmless - that's not a very good advert for nuking being at all necessary. Thryduulf (talk) 02:55, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
• A reminder to everyone but WP:G6 states explicitly that the temporary Neelix criteria "will be rescinded when the community concludes the problem has been brought down to a more reasonable level and can be handled by Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion." Now, it seems like we aren't at the stage where it can be handled by RFD. As such, I think any further discussion should be taken to WT:CSD for a revision to G6 rather than another system implementation via an ANI discussion. Policy wonkery and all but it's a resolution for now. Strike that, I forgot the inclusion was by ANI in the first place. I think the question is whether we have met the reasonable level criteria within these months. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:30, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

The Curious Case of SST Flyer

I think it's worth mentioning that SST Flyer was recently "tried" and "found guilty" by "the community" of inappropriate creation of thousands of redirects (May 2016). The net result was all the redirects were deleted. Lets end this embarrassment right now and just do the same with Neelix so we can draw a line under this mess and editors can move on. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 09:40, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

I don't know what SST Flyer's redirects were like, but the majority of the Neelix ones that are left are good redirects so I strongly oppose mass deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 09:48, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

That's super - now get cracking with the Neelix lists and clean them all up. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 10:02, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

WP:NODEADLINE, but they are being worked on and the job would go a lot quicker if there weren't the need to repeatedly defend against people wanting to harm the project by nuking them all. Thryduulf (talk) 10:06, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Nice essay. Do you have any policy to save all this crap from deletion? No, didn't think so. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 10:14, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

WP:DP. The guideline WP:POINT and essays WP:WIN, WP:DDH, WP:DLC and WP:FENCE are also very relevant here. I'd also like a citation that the redirects are all "crap" - based on what I've been seeing the past day or so there are at least 20 good redirects for every bad or potentially bad ones. Thryduulf (talk) 12:10, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Linking just to WP:DF is WP:VAGUEWAVE. Anything a bit more solid? Chop, chop! Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 12:22, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

The deletion policy makes it clear that the person wanting to delete something is the person who needs to justify how it meets the deletion policy - i.e. you need to justify why these redirects should be deleted, I don't need to justify why they shouldn't. Also, I find the tone of your comment very uncivil. Would you please kindly and civilly respond to the points raised without implying that there is any kind of deadline upon me to do what you are failing to do. Anyway, I've got to go offline now, so you have plenty of time to figure out how policies and guidelines can be used to justify intentionally harming Wikipedia. Thryduulf (talk) 12:31, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Well when you come back online, no doubt the Neelix pile o'shite will not have decreased by many (if at all), so there's plenty of pointless busy work for you to fill your boots with. Shame that effort can't be used into building an encyclopedia, instead of cleaning up the shit of an admin who snaked away after creating a huge mess. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 13:04, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

• Not a helpful comparison. SST Flyer's redirects were all of the form "List of people named X" redirecting to the disambiguation page on X. Since they were all basically the same situation it makes sense to delete them all once we determined that we shouldn't have a redirect in that situation. Neelix's redirects do not follow any kind of common pattern and were not created through an automated process. Again the vast majority of these redirects are either helpful or harmless and there's really no problem that requires such drastic measures as mass deletion. Hut 8.5 10:27, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

I know! As SST was a civilian and not a former admin. How dare we destroy the "good" work of an admin! For shame. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 12:23, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

How about you address the actual arguments instead of making up sarcastic insinuations? Hut 8.5 13:27, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

The argument is all of Neelix's redirects need deleting. The whole point of him being dragged through AN/ANI and being desyopped means they should be deleted, to save everyone time and effort clearing up his mess. Or do you condone his behaviour? Because it sounds like you do. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 16:53, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

It is not true that all of his redirects need deleting. Plenty of them are fine and constitute useful search terms. I gave some examples above, there are plenty more and a large fraction of the remaining redirects fall into this category. The really silly ones which prompted this to flare up (Tubular titties, for instance) appear to have gone. The remaining ones which are problematic generally fall into the category of unlikely search terms rather than things which are actually harmful or misleading. Wikipedia doesn't gain anything in particular from having a redirect from Consecrationally to Consecration, but I don't see how it's actually harming anything to have it there either. Do I condone Neelix's behaviour? No, but that's beside the point. The issue is whether at this stage deleting all the redirects which he created would be a net positive to the encyclopedia, and I don't think it would be. On the contrary deleting a load of useful redirects to get rid of a load that are merely a bit pointless would be counterproductive. Nor do I agree with the unspoken assumption that we have to get rid of all the useless redirects. I don't think it's worth experienced editors spending time working through them. Hut 8.5 18:26, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

"I don't think it's worth experienced editors spending time working through them" - Doesn't that just contradict everything you've just said? You don't think it's worth time working through them? Maybe not your time, but seeing as you only make 2 or 3 edits per day, that's not exactly end of the world stuff. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 07:30, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Well gee, if you only care about input from editors who have hundreds of edits per day, then you should have gone to Wikipedia:Administrators who make lots of daily edits noticeboard. You might have a point about the redirects, Lugnuts - but when you start criticizing editors who disagree with you, it really makes me not care what you think we should or should not be doing. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 13:42, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

I think it's also worth mentioning that the deleted redirects were later mass recreated via bot, along with others. Omni Flames (talk) 23:03, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Not quite, you're thinking of a different set. The redirects being discussed here were deleted at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2016 May 10#List of people named Henry Lopes. -- Tavix ^(talk) 23:20, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Oh, I see. My bad. Omni Flames (talk) 23:30, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

wp:NPOV issues at Anita Sarkeesian and Tropes vs. Women in Video Games related articles

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

---

Hello I went to the talk page for the Tropes vs. Women in Video Games where I propose an edit to part of the article to give it a more neutral wording. It currently says the following: "The series was financed via crowdfunding, and came to widespread attention when its Kickstarter campaign triggered a wave of sexist harassment against Sarkeesian." I proposed a change like ""The series was financed via crowdfunding, and came to widespread attention when its Kickstarter campaign triggered a wave of backlash that included harassment against Sarkeesian.

" or even 

"The series was financed via crowdfunding, and came to widespread attention when its Kickstarter campaign triggered a wave of backlash and sexist harassment against Sarkeesian.

" or something along those lines to stop it from appearing that all the backlash Sarkeesian received was harassment or sexist.

The source for this part is a blog, at www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/06/13/online_misogyny_reflects_women_s_realities_though_in_a_cruder_way_than_is_customary_offline_.html which is a bog. The people there state that because the blog is by a reputable feminist source, it's all good. This raises a red flag for me, because they often state on this page and this one that they can't include blogs because they are opinion based. users such as this one while meaning well ends up causing both the Tropes Vs. Women in Video Games articles and the Anita Sarkeesian articles to appear biassed towards the feminist side of things, and on the talk page for Sarkeesian's page, one of the regular patrollers of the page states that a point of view tag isn't needed. Would it be possible for an uninvolved admin to come along and take a look at these articles? It seems like the major editors there have a slight feminist bias twards the articles, and in spite of their good intentions, they're making the articles appear non-neutral. thanks.

Eric Ramus

199.101.61.70 (talk) 14:29, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

No comment on the actual situation, only noting both articles fall under the GamerGate topic area to anyone that might get involved. --MASEM (t) 14:34, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

And that is especially why why NPOV should be enforced on those articles. Gamergate is a controvercial topic, but Neutrality can be found there. I think that with these two articles are a good place to start in neutralizing this subject, this way Wikipedia doesn't appwar to lean either twards the pro-feminist side or the anti-feminist side. We also have to make it clear that the regulars who enforce the status quo for both of those articles don't own those articles either, and thus it shouldn't be exclusively up to them what goes and what does not. Yes we should avoid false information and use reliable sources, but the wording of Anita Sarkeesian and Tropes vs. Women in Video Games should be more neutral than ultra-pro feminist, that's all.

Eric Ramus

199.101.61.70 (talk) 14:46, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

This is a content dispute, it does not belong at AN, and nothing appears to have happened so far to require such attention. Please continue to discuss on the relevant talkpage, bearing in mind that the topic is subject to arbitration sanctions. Just becuase you're being disagreed with or aren't getting your way does not indicate either bias or misconduct. Acroterion (talk) 14:52, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

I'm coming here to try to bring about an inforcement of wp:NPOV in order to make the articles more neutral when 3 users, who have patrolled the articles for years, Cuchullain, 0serenity and DonQuixote appear to have taken ownership of the article I'm also trying to avoid their feminist bias while also assuming good faith. so what I'm asking is that either you guys find an uninvolved party to get involved in those two pages, or to point me somewhere other than to the owner's domain a.k.a. the two article's talkpages where I can at least try to get oneof my consirns addressed by a non-biassed editor. I'm sure that Cuchullain, 0serenity and DonQuixote are amazing editors, but with this subject, they appear to be biassed in favor of the feminist side, and are thus inforcing that side on those articles, less so on the here than here

Eric Ramus 199.101.61.70 (talk) 15:12, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

You appear to be under the impression that administrators adjudicate content: this is not the case. We do concern ourselves with conduct, and the accusations you're making about editors with "feminist bias" are concerning - but about you. Please stop making judgments about other editors and stick to content. Acroterion (talk) 15:18, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

I'm trying, but it appears that their excepting of a blog post as reputable due to it being written by a regular feminist blogger is less than smart. and my point about the bias is it's always these three specific users. I'm pushing for an uninvolved person to be put on this case temperarily.

Eric Ramus

199.101.61.70 (talk) 15:30, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

update: one has confirmed that hey may or may not really have much of a feminist bias, but POV issues still need to be delt with both by involved and non-involved. again, if this isn't the place to say "hey is tere any uninvolved party that wants to weigh in?" then where do I go to put it there where it isn't just the little group of already involved people?

Eric Ramus

199.101.61.70 (talk) 16:11, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

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

Is it odd to delete content from other wiki by G5

It's odd to me that content that is created on other projects is treated as suspected because one admin has an isolationist view of the English project. This kind of admin conduct requires a review and a reminder that this is an international project not an English centric one. Any thoughts? We should have all the content restored and then people can suggest problem ones for deletion not the other way around. Alakazam Kalazam (talk) 23:31, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Despite Ricky's words, G5 is not a hard-and-fast thing; it's permission to delete stuff added by banned users, not a requirement, and refusing to delete good stuff is fine. WP:IAR always applies, as well. However, you need to consider the reason for the ban. If someone's been topic-banned from an area because he's always causing dissension, and then he goes and writes a fine article in that topic, deleting would be absurd, and the IAR policy would demand that we ignore the G5 rule if it were a rule, which it isn't. Conversely, when someone's been banned for persistent copyright infringements, such as here, deleting regardless of quality is the only safe thing to do: we can't AGF for "self-written" claims by copyright infringers. Minus solid proof that a piece of content is WP-compatible (basically, it's taken from a CC-BY(-SA) site, or it's demonstrably in the public domain), it needs to be deleted on legal grounds. Same thing with a hoaxer: if you're repeatedly introducing false content, deletion is the only safe course unless the content is solidly referenced from something easily online, something that can be checked immediately by other editors, since we can't AGF about print sources or password-protected sources. Nyttend (talk) 00:42, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

@Nyttend: Not sure what happened there but a sock of a banned user complaining about G5 probably doesn't deserve an explanation. I already deleted the thread once but your edit brought it back. --Majora (talk) 00:43, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Ironically, my response to this question is basically the same as the first. Someone searching the WP:AN archive for this issue may get guidance from my words, so unless you think I've reached the wrong conclusion, I don't think there's a good reason to object. It makes no sense without the question by the banned user's sock; it's not as if I just left a random piece of text somewhere, all by itself. Nyttend (talk) 00:48, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

This discussion has been conducted at [[WT:CSD}] repeatedly. I'm aware of when it's appropriate to IAR and not G5. Largely allegedly translated content from another language that has almost zero additional contributions other than formatting changes from other editors that are almost all orphaned and somewhat qusetionably notable have been deleted and if someone think these all deserve a second look, I will restore all of them to draftspace for review and return if someone else confirms their accuracy. Otherwise, anything more is just WP:BEANS for sockpuppeters in terms of avoiding G5 for their stuff. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:59, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

• There's nothing odd here. User:Arcituno was blocked as sockpuppet of User:Slowking4 and the content was deleted under G5. The second block was for sockpuppetry so violating that block with another sockpuppet is a violation that can only be resolved with deletion. The slight wrinkle is the editor claimed that the content created was not new content but translations from other languages. On that basis, one could technically argue that the sockpuppet has zero content created here since the content was actually from another language but this was their allegedly accurate translation. Otherwise the vast majority (90% or more) of each page's contributions belonged to this editor translating pages from other places. As noted, there's no evidence that the translated text is in fact accurate and I see no zero reason we should take the word of a copyright-abusing, blocked user's sockpuppet that their text is accurate, in particular about the citations for obscure foreign-language sources about BLPs. It's been deleted under G5 and as I have expressed to an admin and two non-admin editors, if asked I will restore the content to draftspace akin to Draft:Rita Montero where someone else can review the translation and simply move the page back to mainspace if they confirm that this is an accurate translation. It seems like this is considered "isolationalist" or "impractical" but that's preferable than either (a) ignore the content that a copyright abusing editor just picked up and started again under the belief that they reformed on their own; (b) make this somehow the deleting admin's responsibility to police all this; or (c) conduct another copyright investigation and other discussion about whether a repeated sockpuppeting copyright violation in this account was also doing the same antics. As such, if people think that these pages are worth keeping, my talk page is open but one other admin has expressed interest as well. Otherwise I think people can see here why people have little interest in joining the admin corps. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:49, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

• As I said above, Ricky81682, I agree that we need to take a hard line on creations by folks who are banned on copyright grounds; it's radically different from ban-violating creations by someone who's been banned "just" because they can't get along with others editing in the same topic. Nyttend (talk) 00:56, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

• Thus G5 is for content created in violation of their ban. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:02, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Majora was right to remove this. I would have but they beat me to it. The OP is  Confirmed, blocked, and tagged. BTW, they've been on this noticeboard before ranting.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:51, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

• The OP is not a sock of Slowking4.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:52, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

• I've said it before (in last year's ArbCom election), but "being eligible for CSD" doesn't mean "has to be CSD'ed" (except for special cases, BLPvios, copyvios, etc.), and anybody who deletes a batch of otherwise acceptable content strictly per G5 is putting rules before content, which directly contradicts one of Wikipedia's five pillars, WP:IAR. If you're reverting/deleting quality content for the sole purpose of enforcing backstage rules, you're doing a disservice to readers and you're being destructive to Wikipedia's only goal and top priority: reader-facing article content. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 13:53, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

• I have recreated a few of the higher-quality articles under my own name so (but because doing so without preserving history would be an attribution copyvio I've also restored article history); I've gone through maybe half of their creations and recreated maybe the top third. There are dozens others to review though if anyone feels like adding some women BLPs to our content pool. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 14:30, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Delete request

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

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Hello, please revdel this edit by the racist piece of scum User:Jasonski 27. Pardon my French. Rgrds. --64.85.216.101 (talk) 03:13, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

@64.85.216.101:  Done. However, you shouldn't make a personal attack is response to another one. It only fuels the fire. Mike V • Talk 03:41, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

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

Hp printer support number

Hello Sir/Mam,

I want to share the information related to HP printer service live support number. That's not on wikipedia.org. It's a huge place where everyone want to search their problem solution. As we know about HP (Hewlett Packard) and their services provided all over world with their products. So I want to share this information on our wikipedia.org so everyone can get it easily. I am working on it, If you think this will be helpful for the users of HP printers please let me know. I'll share all information.

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yencyest (talk • contribs)

(Non-administrator comment) @Yencyest: I've just popped some information on your "talk page" which you may find useful. Wikipedia is not a vehicle for promotion -- samtar ^{talk or stalk} 14:47, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Backlog over at UAA

Hi all, it looks like there is a fairly long backlog over at WP:UAA. Some reports date back to the 13th of July. Thanks. -- LuK3 (Talk) 14:53, 18 July 2016 (UTC)