Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents

Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents
This page is for urgent incidents or chronic, intractable behavioral problems. Before posting: Read these tips for dealing with incivility If the issue concerns a specific user, try discussing it with them on their talk page Try dispute resolution Just want an admin? Contact a recently active admin directly. Be brief and include diffs demonstrating the problem Do not report breaches of personal information on this highly visible page – instead go to Requests for oversight. When starting a discussion about an editor, you must leave a notice on their talk page; pinging is not enough. You may use {{subst:ANI-notice}} ~~~~ to do so. You are not autoconfirmed, meaning you cannot currently edit this page. Instead, use /Non-autoconfirmed posts. Closed discussions are usually not archived for at least 24 hours. Routine matters might be archived more quickly; complex or controversial matters should remain longer. Sections inactive for 72 hours are archived automatically by Lowercase sigmabot III. Editors unable to edit here are sent to the /Non-autoconfirmed posts subpage. (archives, search)
Start a new discussion

Massive number of Playboy-related AFD nominations by a single user

User:Damiens.rf has, over the last few hours, nominated more that 100 articles converning Playboy models (mostly Playmates) for deletion; the count is steadily growing. The nominations really can't be bundled together, and typically require examination of each individual's movie/TV credits. There's no way that interested editors can handle this volume of nominations, which often prove controversial. This runs afoul of the fait accompli principle set out by Arbcom in the TV episodes and characters cases; while not formally adopted as policy or guideline, I think there can be little doubt that the principle enjoys community support -- without it, consensus-building becomes a war of attrition. Make no mistake, I believe Damiens is right on principle on the notability issues involved, and disagree with him only as to exactly where to draw the lines involved. I don't doubt his good faith; while not all the AFDs on Playmates he made in the recent past were successful, I think they demonstrated significant support for the arguments he's advanced. But this is too much for the process to handle in one batch, far too much. It's inherently disruptive, despite the nominator's good faith, and it's likely to turn into a contentious mess that prevents the sort of article-by-article decision making that ought to be going on. Similar large bundles of Playmate nominations in the past have led to cookie-cutter voting and unpleasantness, and didn't contribute enough to building an encyclopedia to justify the effort and bad feelings involved. Full disclosure: I've been working in the same direction as Damiens for some time now, working gradually and using "soft" redirects to convert the large number of poorly sourced Playmate stubs into better-organized, more notability and BLP-compliant components of group articles. That process has been minimally controversial so fsr, and I believe it offers a better compromise that can enjoy a broader consensus. But even if I agreed entirely with the nominator, this is too much to handle in a single wave of AFDs. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 04:05, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Damiens has agreed to stop, so I think this is set for now.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 04:24, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Is everything set? Damiens.rf has a history of doing these large scale mass nominations for both images and articles. He's been brought here more than once for this very issue. He'll likely be brought here again. AniMate 04:58, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Geeze, and I thought I did too much when I did about 10 at once. BelloWello (talk) 05:08, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Didn't we tar and feather another editor who went on a AfD spree of articles that may or may not have had appropriate justifications? Just wondering if we intend to trot out the WikiMob on this case as well as 100 is significantly more than the ~20 articles that were nominated in the other case (with the other case also having the multiple distinct "events" of nomination frenzies). Disclosure: I've interactied with Damiens before on a discussion about a picture's Fair Usage Rationale. Hasteur (talk) 12:40, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

There's an important difference here -- Damiens did a much smaller batch of Playmate nominations a short time ago, and these nominations are reasonably consistent with the results there. The previous spree you're referring to, by a different editor, was completely off the wall, and completely indiscriminate -- and used an automated tool in evasion of his blacklisting from the use of that tool. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 18:00, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, Wuhwuzdat had it coming. HalfShadow 21:25, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

background - Some years back, folks at WP:PORN decided to include "is a playboy playmate" as one of the final evidences of notability in WP:PORNBIO. What followed was that there were articles created for every girl that has ever striped for playboy. When this piece of WP:PORNBIO was brought to an wider audience via an RFC, the community decided that being a playboy playmate is not, by itself, evidence of notability, and playmates should have articles only when otherwise notable.

These deletions were expected. I have not run across all of the playmates. And I have not nominated all I have ran across. Of course, some of them may be proven otherwise notable, but that's why we have a discussion process.

Most of the articles will surely end up being deleted or redirected to a list. After that, the playmate's enthusiast's efforts may concentrate on improving the articles on really notable playmates, as today, many of these are stubs just because there's simply not enough volunteers to keep up with an playmate sub-encyclopedia. --Damiens.rf 13:21, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

The concern, I think, is that those who are interested in this topic area have to go through a large number of AFDs at once, each debate generating its own discussion and finding its own consensus. If I were intent on Keeping each of the articles you nominated, checking and following such a large number of debates would be a full-time job for the coming week. I'm sure as hell not going to edit much else, either. Here, the scale of the nominations detracts from the (probably valid) point that the subjects just aren't notable.

If you were intent on keeping each of the articles I nominated you'd be wrong to begin with. Each case should be judged on its own merits, and an intention of blindingly keeping all playmates was the original problem we started from. --Damiens.rf 15:24, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I think it would have been far better to nominate a dozen or so to establish your test cases, and then bundle 5 or so at a time thereafter. If, as you say, these articles are sure to be deleted, the second and third sets of articles would have precedent to follow, and the debates would be much simpler. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 14:01, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

He did do a run of test cases. They're in the deletion log for April 4. [1] Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 18:07, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

@Damians. Restrict the nominations to a level that the guys at Wikipedia:WikiProject Pornography can handle. For example, 7 AfDs per week. Just make all your research in one go, write the AfDs, and save the list of AfDs in a text file. You can open it every week and mechanically nominate the first 7 items via copy/paste. You can combine this with Ultraexactzz's advice above. I know, this is nowhere near as rewarding as doing all of them in one go :-) . --Enric Naval (talk) 14:22, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

7 Afds in a week would be a good rate; you don't want Wikipedia:WikiProject Pornography to be slammed to hard, after all. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 14:32, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Pacing AFD nominations is especially important when nominating biographies whose potential sources are likely to predate the Internet era. It's pretty easy to determine notability -- or the lack thereof -- for someone active in 2002 or even in 1995. But some of these nominations are from the 1970s, and may require additional legwork (especially due to newspaper paywall policies). Serpent's Choice (talk) 14:41, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Seven articles per week is ridiculous low. Why should I restrict the pace of deletion nominations where there were no restriction of the pace of creation for such articles?

It has been a long time since the rfc that established that it was a mistake to consider all playmates notable, and I have seen not organized effort from wp:pornbio to clean up the mess.

There's no reason to worry. AFDs that do not have enough participation get relisted. And if a stub of the form "Rose Rosewood was the Jan 1961 Playmate. She was clicked by Mr. Photographer" get deleted, and we later find out that Ms. Rosewood was notable, it can easily recreated. As easily as it was first created. --Damiens.rf 15:24, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) WP:KITTENS works both ways. And there are significantly fewer people able to handle AfD nominations than there are people willing to create articles. --Alan the Roving Ambassador (talk) 15:30, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

You should restrict the pace of deletion nominations out of respect for the people who will be trying to determine consensus on each article. Seven per week is ridiculously low, but there is no reason at all why you can't limit to say, five per day. And I would say to nominate no further articles until the current backlog clears. Resolute 15:41, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I will nominate no further Playmate-articles until the current backlog clears. --Damiens.rf 15:46, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Resolute 19:46, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I think the nominator should be commended for instigating these long-overdue AfD discususions. Particularly so for going through the AfD process honestly, rather than sneaking around a discussion by creating a redirect. A subject whose only claim to fame is to being a Playboy Playmate is not notable, as consensus has determined. It is wrong to redirect this article to a list of 12 other such non-notables, whose only claim to fame has been specifically determined to be non-notable. List of Playboy Playmates of 1961 for example links to not one artice, contrary to all guidelines, and the subject of the list is in itself non-notable. If the subject is notable, she will have a standalone article at which her Playmate centerfold can be mentioned. Including her on a list of a non-notable subject is simply wrong. Kudos to User:Damiens.rf for stepping up and doing the honest work that the fans have been covering up. Dekkappai (talk) 18:15, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

• On a separate note, Dekkappai's nomination of said list he linked, AfD here, seems to be failing spectacularly. And my arguments would be the same as is stated in the AfD, essentially that Dekkappai is completely wrong about what lists are for, considering in most cases they are specifically for listing people or other information that are not notable enough to have their own article. Silverseren^C 00:29, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment - Automated tools to send material to AfD for existing articles should be banned. This reminds me of the case of a recent editor who went WP:IDONTLIKEIT on sororities and fraternities, starting with the Alphas... Carrite (talk) 04:17, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Sure. Only tools that send material to AfD for non-existing articles should be allowed. --Damiens.rf 05:31, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I speak of New Pages, of course... Carrite (talk) 02:40, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

It seems Damiens.rf is simply implementing previously established site-wide consensus, against a minority of vociferous WikiProject members. How many articles are we talking about here in total? Tijfo098 (talk) 19:20, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Except for the fact that Damiens.rf has not been previously banned from using automated tools, I honestly don't see much difference in his deletion nominations here and the ones for which Wuhwazdat was banned from starting AFDs. How can you possibly be following WP:BEFORE if you post an AFD at a rate of one a minute, and use a completely boilerplate rationale in every AFD? The proposition that being a Playboy Playmate does not guarantee notability does not in turn mean that being a Playboy Playmate means that you are not notable. The results thus far seem to be varying widely, suggesting that these were just as indiscriminate as the past sprees against British models or fraternities, targeting a subject rather than considering each article topic on its own merits (for example, that sufficient sources exist here, or that the subject is notable for other things here or here). I agree with Carrite: there needs to be some restriction on using automated tools to AFD articles, even if it's just a cap on the noms per day or per hour, because that kind of bot-like editing is completely at odds with the kind of consideration that an AFD requires, Isn't the point of automated tools to make noncontroversial edits easier? The purpose is not to make one side of a deletion debate labor-free, while imposing the unreasonable burden of researching 100+ articles a day upon those who are interested in seeing if they can be saved. Particularly where the AFD nominator obviously hasn't bothered to do that work. postdlf (talk) 19:42, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Q - "How can you possibly be following WP:BEFORE if you post an AFD at a rate of one a minute, and use a completely boilerplate rationale in every AFD?"

A - It would be only possible if the articles were almost all just one paragraph long and equally boilerplatelly written. Oh, wait a second!

The proposition that being a Playboy Playmate does not guarantee notability does not in turn mean that being a Playboy Playmate means that you are not notable.

Are you implying I used this rationale? I haven't.

"The results thus far seem to be varying widely, suggesting that these were just as indiscriminate"

No, they are not. Most of the articles are going to be deleted/redirected.

My nominations were not undiscriminated. I reviewed every article and, when needed, searched for the model's page on imdb. Of course, in some of the nominations, it could turn out that the model is notable after all. But these will be the exceptional cases.

You know, many of the articles say nothing more than "Ms. Nice Flower was <insert date> Playboy Playmate. She was shot by photographer Mr. PhotoMan". Since being a playmate is, by community consensus, a grant of notability, such articles are qualified for WP:CSD#A7. But I have sent them to AfD anyway. --Damiens.rf 19:58, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh really? Explain your review process for someone like Ms. Teen Oregon USA 1994 who has multiple acting credits? Garbage. Just like how you seem to interpret the consensus that playmates are not inherently notable to mean that reliable source coverage about their "playmatehood" are disqualified in determining notability, which is a perverted interpretation that defies WP:BASIC. The proper reading of that consensus is that playmates are not notable in and of themselves if they do not have independent coverage by reliable sources. If several newspapers cover some girl with some depth because she was named playmate or only cover her because she is a playmate, that's her notability! Morbidthoughts (talk) 06:24, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

It is also clear from your mention of WP:CSD A7 that your understanding of deletion criteria is weak. CSD A7 is for articles that don't indicate why a person is important. It "is a lower standard than notability" and to use it on Playmates just because playmates are not inherently notable would have been improper and probably would have gotten you blocked if you had done 100 in a day. Morbidthoughts (talk) 06:35, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

There's no use arguing with deletionists. They don't care about concensus. They live to delete stuff... and vice versa: If they don't get their daily ration of deletions, they could shrivel and die. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:40, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

No need to be nasty, Bugs. Many of us care about consensus and take the time to clean up around here.—Kww(talk) 07:15, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

The editor in question says he doesn't care about concensus, he's nominating for deletion anyway. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:38, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Welll, A7 isn't about notability, so that part's just a common misapprehension. As for "Since being a playmate is, by community consensus, a grant of notability, such articles are qualified for WP:CSD#A7. But I have sent them to AfD anyway.", the only way that parses at all is if you assume he mean "...by community consensus, [not] a grant of notability,...". Either way, it doesn't excuse discussing people that work at identifying the material that needs to be removed from Wikipedia with such negative tones and implications.—Kww(talk) 07:50, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

If he meant to say "NOT", then he should have said "NOT". I'm not a mind-reader, I can only go by what he said, or appeared to me to say. As far as negativity... deletionists are pretty much useless. They take away instead of adding. They aren't interested in value to the readers. They are only interested in deleting stuff. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:38, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm strongly inclusionist myself, but I think that there are definitely some deletionists who do add some quality content to the project. The problem is when some of them get in their minds that all articles on certain topic are all inherently non-notable and do spray and pray style nominations. I mean, if they just took their time and picked the low-hanging fruit they'd have more success getting junk deleted with much less drama. (Though I accept that the nominator in this case was acting in good faith) Qrsdogg (talk) 14:39, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Let's be clear here, Bugs: I don't think that I am "pretty much useless", nor do I consider my preference for removing material to be one that doesn't add "value to the readers". I take your statement as a personal insult, and think you should stop. A project where no one took out the trash would be just as useless as a project where no one added content.—Kww(talk) 15:22, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

• At Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Serria_Tawan I see the only two people trying to delete it are copying and pasting the same exact argument time and again without even reading the article, considering its merits, or looking for sources. I clicked the Google news archive button at the top of the AFD, and found she had written a book which was reviewed in the news, and she interviewed for it. WP:BEFORE exist for a reason. You can't expect people to go through a hundred different AFD at once. And the mindless boilerplating "Delete them all, I don't need to bother looking for sources or even reading the article" should be stopped as well. Dream Focus 09:23, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
  • The editor's AFDs here are at best incompetent, and at worst malicious / bad faith, and should all be immediately dismissed. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:09, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
  • While I do believe checking for WP:BEFORE prior to the nomination of all these articles is something that should have been done, this particular article is not a good example to illustrate this. Nimuaq (talk) 16:22, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Right, DreamFocus. Damien says above that he was 1) nominating on the basis of the article's current state, rather than its potential, and 2) doing no more than "review[ing] every article and, when needed, searched for the model's page on imdb". That's not compliance with WP:BEFORE, and you can't justify this by saying that most are delete-worthy, even if it's only a few that are notable. We don't expect every AFD to be correct, but it's simply not acceptable to post an AFD on the based on averages related to the subject matter rather than a careful consideration of that particular article topic.

    So we do we need a ban here from Damien.rf using automated tools to list articles at AFD, or is it enough that he's said he will stop? postdlf (talk) 14:59, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    • No, it's not enough. The AFD's need to be deleted, as being driven by incompetency and/or bad faith. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:13, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Close all of them. If people want to nominate just a few at a time, after doing things properly, such as taking a few seconds to do a Google news search first before each nomination, so be it. Dream Focus 16:06, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I think it would be fair to at least speedy close all the AFDs that just have the same copied and pasted boilerplate comments from the nom and the delete !voters, with no other substantive comments. postdlf (talk) 18:01, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't go that far. After the RfC change, these Playmate articles do need to be reviewed, and speedy closing them would force someone to start all over again with AfDs. And if a speedy-closed article were re-nominated soon, someone would object with a "this was just speedy closed a few weeks ago". I would be more in favor of (1) speedy closing only the clearly notable nominations, and (2) a promise from Damiens not to make any more nominations until this backlog is fully cleared. --JaGa^talk 18:32, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

They should be rolled back as if the nominations had never occurred. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:07, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Why nominate them at all? Why not just merge them all into some big "List of" articles? That lets the articles get broken out again if notability is established. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 07:54, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

If this is a repeat problem for Damiens.rf, ie, if he has a repeated history of causing problems, then he should be stopped. BarkingMoon (talk) 23:09, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

(non-Admin comment)I'm troubled by the very act of mass AfD nominating by anybody. I disagree with the inclusion of some content, but that doesn't entitle me to create headaches for the people who put it in & defend it with good reason (even if I disagree with them). That appears to be what's at play here. I'd also disagree Playmates aren't inherently notable. Any member of such a readily-identifiable group would seem to be, IMO. Moreover, deletion risks deleting useful information. (Yes, I am strongly inclusionist most of the time.) IMO, this kind of behaviour should be discouraged strongly. In this case, it's way over the top IMO. TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 16:38, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

This does appear to be a repeat problem. There seems to be a long history of disruptive editing here. But unfortunately all anyone here will tell you to do is go start an RfC which will fester for a month or two and accomplish nothing.--Crossmr (talk) 02:19, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I think we need to move this to a policy discussion, because I think there are a few critical issues here.

1) PORNBIO is widely seen as the lowest of the low-hanging fruit when it comes to notability. It probably needs a strong rewrite to bring it in line with general notability guidelines (most curiously how is a single limited-scope award "multiple significant reliable sources"?). It is my understanding that WP:GNG is the minimum standard and project page guidelines should not go lower than that.

2) We need a process for mass deletion that allows for consistent results across an entire field without creating a fiat accompli by volume of nominations. The current situation is utter chaos because it's all on a case-by-case basis. I realize that every article needs to be examined on its own merits but I would rather see a standard created, and then applied. We should be arguing over the standard first, then how it applies to given articles, not judging each article by a different standard.

3) Wikipedia has a serious problem with a lack of adherence to GNG, especially in areas of fandom. The end result is, in practice, that areas that have a wide fan-base willing to vocally defend them have voluminous coverage and very low standards for inclusion. Because articles are judged on a case-by-case basis whomever shows up carries the day most often. Without a method for mass deletions and soliciting wider community input the process is vulnerable to canvassing and meatpuppetry. HominidMachinae (talk) 12:15, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm all for a review of all the specific notability criteria. Local criteria are supposed to be specialized clues to help identifying when someone on a given field passes the general criteria. But since they are mostly written (and only reviewed) by local enthusiasts, it's usual for them to serve as a backdoor entrance to Wikipedia for otherwise non-notable subjects. --Damiens.rf 20:58, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

The specific notability criteria are a double-edged sword; in many cases they may be higher rather than lower. (I've been involved in a few AfDs where folk from a sports wikiproject argued "Delete" because a BLP didn't meet that project's criteria (ie. the person played in a specific league/event), even though the subject did pass the GNG (ie. there was substantial discussion in reliable sources). bobrayner (talk) 19:57, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Should automated tools ever be used to list articles at AFD?

Apart from the conduct of any individual editor, it seems like the use of automated tools generally to post AFDs just causes ill will and can easily be abused (whether or not in good faith) by the rapid posting of bulk nominations. Per WP:BEFORE, we expect that those listing articles for deletion individually assess each article and its potential as a topic before listing it, and we expect tailored deletion rationales rather than boilerplate votes. Automating this process obviously runs counter to those expectations, and I see no inherent benefit to enabling people to post more AFDs at a faster rate. When is it ever a good idea to post AFDs in bulk? When has it ever improved the accuracy and validity of deletion nominations and rationales? As I noted in the last AN/I posting about abuse of automated AFD postings, it not only causes a wide net to be cast that inevitably catches valid article subjects in with the crowd, however few proportionately, it also hinders deletion of the articles that should be deleted because the whole process ends up being mistrusted as indiscriminate. Listing an article at AFD shouldn't be quick and easy; it should be cautious and deliberate.

So I think we need to evaluate whether this feature should be disabled entirely in all automated tools, or at least hindered in some way to prevent rapid-fire mass nominations, such as by capping the rate (e.g., no more than one every ten minutes) or absolute number (e.g., no more than ten per day). postdlf (talk) 17:55, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

As a regular participant in AfD debates, I place great importance on WP:BEFORE and believe that AfD nominators who ignore it create a fair amount of dissension. Automated nominations pretty much assure that individual assessment of the notability of the topic and the avaiability of reliable sources has not taken place. I agree with most of what Postdlf has said. However, I think that a hard working and conscientious editor could make more than ten nominations a day, if each was researched and had its own rationale, so I would oppose such a limit. Cullen328 (talk) 19:55, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

The limit I propose is not for manual AFD listings, just automated ones. postdlf (talk) 20:12, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

The AfD templates are also set up the be pretty self-automating. I mean, once you {{subst:afd}} into an article, you get links for the the AfD page preloaded with templates, the day's list where the new AfD is reported, and the author notification template. IMO, it's not that hard to take the AfD the rest of the way manually for there.

That said, I know there are some editors who batch process. They will find 10–20 articles they have concerns about, research them, and then post all the AfDs consecutively for the ones that warrant deletion. If they choose to use an automated tool to help them post the AfDs, I don't object to that usage—so not every person who fires off a bunch of AfDs consecutively has not thought them through. However, those batch-processing editors are probably the exceptions to the rule, with the editors who do start a bunch of ill-considered, cookie-cutter AfDs being more common—and if the latter group is abusing the automated tools, then the tools need to be either throttled or disabled. —C.Fred (talk) 20:28, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Does this proposal treat individual (i.e. non-bulk) Twinkle-style AfDs as "automated"? Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 20:33, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Lots of responsible editors use automated tools for nominations. Anyhow, a general proposal like this should be at the Village Pump, not ANI. --RL0919 (talk) 20:37, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I use twinkle to place xfds. Automated tools for such purposes are convenient for avoiding mistakes, like forgetting to notify. I think there's nothing why with doing mechanical things by using machinery. Judging when to nominate for deletion is needed no matter how one is going to do it. It's true that the availability of the tools makes it easier to be thoughtless, but the lack of required thought is in the responsibility of the editor who uses them. Large batch nominations have been a problem for a long time: there are some times when individual attention is clearly not needed, but often it is. Nobody should be nominating in significant batches, either in one group nomination of in many closely spaced individual ones, without making it very plain from the start that they have searched carefully each of the individual items, and how they have done it. Proper preparation makes things go much smoother, than placing the nominations without such comment, and then having to justify oneself in response to criticism. DGG ( talk ) 05:21, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Short answer, no. Mass edits of any sort need to be approached carefully, and in particular invocations of a deliberative process like an AfD need to be done deliberatively rather than in mechanical fashion, lest Wikipedia turn into a battle between editors and bots. That's not to say there's anything wrong with helper bots and Twinkle, applied carefully, or that you can't do just as much harm by cutting and pasting. The point is that unleashing a whole bunch of processes at once swamps anyone's ability to deal with them. Seven (or five, or fifteen) per week is not ridiculously slow, as Wikipedia has no deadline. But it would still need some consensus, as it's not reasonable for a single editor to dictate process for everyone else. There's a threshold somewhere between several dozen and several hundred pages with the same issues, beyond which AfD is just not the best venue for making decisions. Anyway, best to put the brakes on things before people invest too much in it. For example, why not keep all the AfDs open as is, but announce a schedule for closing them in batches of a period of 30 days? Or maybe group all the sub-stubs with no claim to notability other than being a playmate into a single batch (all of which would be deleted within 7 days if no further sourced claims to notability are made). That would give people enough time to handle it. - Wikidemon (talk) 08:40, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

This case again points to the need for a mass deletion policy. To avoid both the issues of inconsistency and fiat accompli in these matters. Also, for the record, I disagree with any ary arbitrary throttle limit on AfD nominations of non-notable articles ESPECIALLY BLPs. HominidMachinae (talk) 11:58, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd be very wary of saying that we should absolutely never automate big batches of submissions to AfD; it might not be appropriate here and now, but it's difficult to anticipate the future environment (including who !votes, how they !vote, changes to what might need deleting, changes to other bots and other processes...). Agreed that it would be helpful to improve how we deal with bulk deletions of related articles which don't fit within CSD criteria. bobrayner (talk) 12:59, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

On the encouragement of several editors I'm going to take a stab at a mass deletion policy to put up for RfC. I have a job interview tonight maybe I'll have it up tomorrow. My goal is a policy that allows for us to look at localized criteria that might show adherence to GNG and other important policies in that specific area and apply it in a uniform fashion to a wide area, to ensure consistency and adherence to core policies and guidelines. A side goal is a process that is NOT limited to the 7-day AfD term, to avoid the creation of a fiat accompli by giving an article's defenders more time to perform proper research. HominidMachinae (talk) 21:05, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I can see using automated tools at New Pages. There's a ton of crap at the gate. But using automation against standing articles en masse, be they sororities starting with Alpha or Playboy playmates or whatever the next person decides they really, really hate, should be banned outright. Once an article clears New Pages, gets patrolled, a higher standard of research should be required before it is taken to AfD. The "machine gun 'em all and let the saps at AfD sort 'em out" approach smacks of bad faith. It is disrespectful of the work of those who created the page, and it disrespects the process at AfD. Carrite (talk) 02:48, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

For the record, it took me one full hour just to paste in the same rationale again and again and again down the list of Playboy Nominations — doing no research into any of them, stating my case for a procedural keep. How are those at AfD supposed to do adequate research into each of these nominations if it takes that long just to spool through them? It can't be done... This is why automated mass deletions like this MUST be prohibited. if WP:BEFORE is allowed to be ignored, there is no way to adequately defend against essentially disruptive mass WP:I DON'T LIKE IT attacks. Carrite (talk) 14:40, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

It took me more than a day to analyze all those articles (and some more, that I felt passed GNG), but just a couple of minutes to nominate them for deletion. --Damiens.rf 15:37, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I love that Damien denied using automated tools, [2], when he's used Twinkle for every nomination. He characterises it as tabbed browsing. Uhh okay there. Morbidthoughts (talk) 15:23, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

• I never denied that. Take your spurious accusations elsewhere. Try to understand what tabbed browsing is and stop caring about the timeframe my contributions log span. --Damiens.rf 15:37, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Nothing spurious about commenting on your attempts at misdirection. Morbidthoughts (talk) 15:48, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
    • Stop that. I did not attempt that. Stop such accusations. --Damiens.rf 16:15, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that WP:BEFORE was ignored and mass deletion nominations made. I don't care if it was Twinkle or a magic F12 key on an antique computer that makes it happen, it's a form of automation that needs to be banned. Carrite (talk) 18:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC) last revision: Carrite (talk) 18:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

If you're honestly care about it, WP:BEFORE was not ignored. It may be the case that this or that article ultimately comes out not to be deleted, but it will not be more likely to happen in my nominations than in it is in general. --Damiens.rf 19:11, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

• Non-admin comment. I'm all for discussing it at the pump, but for the record I agree with Postdlf's logic. AfD's should be limited to a more manageable number per day, although discussion on an AfD is fine. Crisco 1492 (talk) 09:54, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I've been looking in to related occurrences since one of Mhiji's incidents in January. Most of these occurrences are used as a form of mass disruption of Wikipedia and some of these have been done by technically sophisticated users. For example; Wuhwuzdat's hacking of the Twinkle blacklist and Mhiji's use of an unauthorized bot (possibly a hacked version of AWB). Many use sockpuppets to perform mass disruption such as Claritas' mass AfDs of transformer characters last year. These are often done in the guise of helping the project but are actually just a different form of vandalism that uses up our limited resources. It's clear that we need to address this mass disruption some how. I requested a few edit filters a couple weeks ago. I'm not sure if what I requested is possible though. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 18:04, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

No, you are going to need another hardline policy like 3RR to accomplish that. –MuZemike 06:25, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

All the mass-AfDs that I can think of have been disruptive - another example involves visa-policy-by-country articles, for very many different countries, last year. A large part of that disruption is due to the fact that somebody with a little automation can simply click on "AfD", whilst the stokers in the AfD boiler-room still have to do real work on each nomination.

However, that doesn't mean that wanting to AfD many articles is a matter of bad-faith editing; there really are lots of articles out there which are deletion-worthy, so there can be legitimate reasons for wanting mass-deletion. A couple of times in the last year I've stumbled across walled gardens of a hundred articles which don't really belong in an encylopædia, and I had to hold back from AfD because treating these articles the same way as a single article would have been disruptive. Hence a single bad article might be deleted, but the determined editor who churns out 100 bad articles may find that many survive much longer, because other editors are worn down. I don't think that's a desirable outcome for wikipedia. bobrayner (talk) 12:42, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I got sidetracked there, and should make that point clearer. Mass AfDs may often be disruptive, but that's due to awkward processes rather than evil nominators (though a few nominators might be evil). Simply cracking down on mass AfDs might reduce that disruption, but it still leaves us with a problem, because we need mechanisms to deal with groups of bad articles. bobrayner (talk) 15:09, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• One of the articles, which got noticed and had people comment in, ended as keep. Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Tylyn_John But with so many mass nominated, and the only people commenting the nominator and someone else who just copy and pasted the same delete rational in every AFD without bothering to even look at the article or look for sources, how will they close? Should articles be deleted simply because no one was around to participate? If people just followed WP:BEFORE and only nominated things which should be, then we wouldn't constantly have far more AFDs open than anyone can go through. Mass nomination means you are guaranteed to destroy most of the articles you don't like. Dream Focus 16:42, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Question

• Is there are equivalent of WP:BEFORE for article creation?

Some have accused me of creating a mess to be sorted out by others with my AfDs. But this descriptions fits well to those creating ever lasting unsourced stubs with the minimum claim of notability to avoid a PROD. At this point, WP:BEFORE forces any AfD nominator to do the research work the article creator should have done to begin with. There's not really an incentive not to stuff the encyclopedia with tons of garbage. --Damiens.rf 18:09, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• Yes, you created a useless mess. The playmate articles are far from garbage, even for ones deemed non-notable. No content is being deleted, its just being merged into list articles. People can choose to work on what they want, of course, but the reward here if any is extremely small to the project's greater good. WP:YFA, among other places, is where guidelines for article creation are set forth. The truth is that new editors are being run off the project at a rate so high, in part because of the way their contributions are treated, that wikipedia is alarmed about it.[3]. That in part, seems to be driven by zealous enforcement of policies to keep out "garbage."--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 19:10, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
  • We do have equivalents of WP:BEFORE for article creation. The worst creations tend to get speedied shortly after creation for this reason; the more effort the creator made, the more likely their article will survive the initial gauntlet. However, two wrongs don't make a right; just because you feel some articles were created rashly doesn't justify rash AfDs. bobrayner (talk) 19:52, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Once again, Wiki fails to deal with problematic editors.BarkingMoon (talk) 21:48, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• (non-Admin comment) I think this has got out of hand. I don't see the issue of mass nominations of Playmates being dealt with, and it has now veered to a discussion of using Twinkle for mass deletion nominations. I go to AfD daily and select a number of nominations and then do the research and checking of these nominations, clicking just about every link. Checking takes time; sometimes it is quick, other times it is slow - to see if deletion is really merited. Often it means going and reading quite a few other pages before coming back and making a decision which can be to comment, keep, close, delete or make no comment at all. I will tell you that on 28 April and on the day these nominations were relisted, I chose not to do any AfD noms on that day, because I felt it was an abuse of the process - lumping the matter with regard to notability for Playmates to the small team at AfD to be settled and the issue of mass nominations and its impact on the daily AfD list. AfDs' are dealt with individually, not en masse. Consider that we need closure on the issue of notability and Playmates; and that need closure on the issue of mass nominations for AfD in a specific topic or category. --Whiteguru (talk) 08:06, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Judaism

Not that it probably will do any good and I'll probably just get attacked myself in order for others to avoid their own problems, but here we go- at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Judaism#2 sources to support that Nikki Yanofsky is Jewish? I have been personally insulted and had words put in my mouth by User:AndyTheGrump. He has called me a bigot and accused me of spreading anti-semitism. I am in fact a Jew, a declaration I have made many times over many many years, one that is not in doubt and in light of User:Noleander and the years I fought to try to bring at AN/I some sort of resolution to that user's perceived anti-semitism should show how I feel about that remark by Andythegrump. Considering nothing was ever done about Noleander here at AN/I until ArbCom had to FINALLY step-in I hope that a stern warning to AndyTheGrump regarding his comment that "Jews can never be a nationality" is all I would like. Such a declaration as fact along with his other comments are over the line. His OPINION that Jews are not a nationality is his opinion, to state it as fact is insulting.Camelbinky (talk) 01:46, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Check your definitions. think you are confusing a number of terms as Nationality Ethnicity are separate categories and imposing them on a minor is WP:BLP violation under WP:BLPCAT. Nationality is not the same as the latter two. Since there is not Jewish country on earth there is not "Jewish nationality" there is an Israeli Nationality totally separate issue. Please review your terminology. The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 02:08, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

ResidentAnthropologist—you say, "think you are confusing a number of terms as Nationality Ethnicity are separate categories and imposing them on a minor is WP:BLP violation under WP:BLPCAT."

Two questions:

1. Does WP:BLPCAT say anything about minors?

2. Does WP:BLPCAT say anything about material for placement in the body of an article? Bus stop (talk) 19:10, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Firstly, nothing I said could remotely be described as accusing Camelbinky of anti-Semitism. I did however object to him/her making offensive remarks about Canadians and Moslems, as well as as repeating a highly-questionable stereotype implying that Jewish people necessarily have stronger allegience to 'Jewishness' than to their own nationality. Regardless of who claims this, it is a particularly harmful assertion, and one that has led to persistant attempts to exclude people of Jewish faith/ethnicity from positions of political power.

As for Jews being a 'nationality', this is simply false, in the sense that Camelbinky is attempting to use the terms. He/she clearly has little understanding of what 'nationality'/'nationalism' implies in regard to the nation state, and why it cannot be a term meaningfully applied to Jewish people as a whole. One can be An Israeli, or a Canadian, and if one chooses to identify as such one can call oneself an 'Israeli Jew', or a 'Canadian Jew' - one will search in vain for a Jewish embassy however. A nation-state is a social construct, but the 'state' part of the phenomenon tends to have a material existance too (usually including an army...) - note that Camelbinky explicitly states that he/she considers Jewish nationality as being "nothing to do with the State of Israel". I'm not sure I intended to imply that Jews can never have a nation-state - merely that there isn't one at the moment, so to assert that 'nationally' Nikki Yanofsky was more Jewish than Canadian is just plain wrong. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:10, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

There is no consensus here or in the world about the meaning of "Jewish". With respect to the article involved, personally, I regard meeting any of the numerous suggested criteria as sufficient. Where she does seems to depend on the interpretation of sources about a subject working in a field with which I am not familiar. I suggest that some compromise wording be found ("of Jewish background") or the like. But what we can really manage to do here is try to prevent personal conflicts or arguments over it, such as the argument above. It would not be productive to attempt to settle here whether Jewishness is or can be a nationality, or the relationship between nationality and ethnicity. DGG ( talk ) 04:05, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

If there is no consensus on what it means then why are we week in week out, arguing about labelling people with the term in lists, in articles, and in categtories? John lilburne (talk) 20:02, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

John lilburne—you say, "If there is no consensus on what it means then why are we week in week out, arguing about labelling people with the term in lists, in articles, and in categories?'

It is not the editors here at Wikipedia that have to agree fully on the significance of a term but rather the reliable sources, if there is more than one reliable source, that should be in agreement as to the applicability of a term to an individual who is the subject of a biography. Bus stop (talk) 20:41, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

This is AN/I. We aren't here to decide whether Yanofsky is Jewish or not (personally, I think she should be allowed to decide for herself, but I seem to be in a minority...). Instead we are here to decide whether me calling Camelbinky's comments 'bigoted nonsense' was justified or not. I'd like to be judged on the evidence, not on what we think of Yanofsky (who deserves none of this nonsense, one way or another - i've seen no evidence that she gives two hoots how Wikipedia labels her). AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:17, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Seeing as how I never said anything bigoted about Jews, Muslims, or Canadians I'd like to know how it is ok to continue to say I did. I said that if an article were made about my cat we could use the definition of Muslims that all animals are by default Muslims and I was doing that as an analogy to how it can be hard to label people (or animals in that case) as what the religion itself labels them because in the Jewish CULTURE all people whose mother is a Jew is considered a Jew (and this is a different label than a religious one, beit din does not care what a person personally practices when deciding if someone is a Jew, neither does the state of Israel when deciding if someone is qualified for the "right of return"). As for Canadians I asked that if it isnt notable if someone is Jewish, how is it notable that anyone is a Canadian? Because to me that would be a double standard. So how was either comment bigoted?Camelbinky (talk) 05:50, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't matter how any of you categorize "Jewish". Reliable sources use the term, sometimes in reference to people who are subjects of biographies. Reliable sources sometimes say that someone is a "Jew". Reliable sources do not necessarily categorize the term when they use it—in fact they generally do not. Can we report that in our biographies? Forget about whether we are talking about a racial grouping, a religious grouping, or what have you. Are we permitted to repeat what reliable sources say in this regard in our biographies? I think the answer is obviously Yes.

Here are 3 of the arguments presented against stating in our biographies that an individual is Jewish:

1.) Is that fact relevant to the person's notability? Perhaps not, but nor need it be, for the placement of such material in the body of an article.

2.) Has the person "self-identified" as being Jewish? Present policy does not require "self-identification" for the placement of such material in the body of an article.

3.) Do the sources specify whether the individual is religiously observant or religiously nonobservant? The reasoning is that we should not be permitted to state that someone is Jewish without the further information as to the person's level of religious observance.

By the way, every other post above is addressing this admittedly off-topic subject. Bus stop (talk) 12:18, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

"If you are in a hole, stop digging" as someone or other once said. Leaving aside your unsourced comments regarding Moslems and animals, and the fact that you wrote "How is it notable that ANYONE is Canadian?", you are still repeating untenable claims regarding Jewish identity. Do you really think that Yanofsky's 'culture' is Jewish, rather than Canadian? Or that she cannot be both, as she chooses? Evidently not, You insist that there is something both hereditary and essentialist about being 'Jewish' that can be applied to people (all people, regardless of their own beliefs) by a rabbinical court. This is not merely imposing the belief system of a particular faith/culture (or more accurately, a subsection of a faith/culture, since the issue is contested even amongst Jews) on outsiders, it is also marking out Jews as 'others', who's loyalty should be to 'Jewishness', and who can never be simply 'Canadian' or whatever. As I've already pointed out, this is a particularly harmful stereotype, often used to marginalise Jews (or worse). The fact that you yourself are Jewish does nothing to mitigate the harmfulness of this stereotyping. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:42, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—we go by what reliable sources say, by-and-large. Standard operating procedure is that if a reliable source says that a person is Jewish, we are probably justified in repeating that. It is not inconceivable that sources could be in disagreement with one another over such a point. That would create a gray area. But we are not talking about that sort of complication, are we? Bus stop (talk) 13:05, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

This is AN/I, and we are supposed to be talking about Camelbinky's complaint about my remarks, and my response. If you insist on trying to hijack this section for yet another forum-shopping exercise, I will raise a complaint about your behaviour in a new (and appropriate) section. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:23, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—if you would like to know the truth, I am trying not to address the real reason we are here: I too find your dialogue sometimes distracting and sometimes abrasive. I could engage in a good old fashioned mudslinging match with you, but I'm sure you would get in some good shots too. But I feel that I am contributing something edifying to this discussion. And most other posts including your own are going on longwindedly about the nature of Jewish identity etc. Standard Wikipedia policy is applicable here. "Jewish" is an attribute of identity. Sources use it to indicate the presence of that attribute, and in general to describe a person. No single word is expected to answer for all questions that can possibly be raised in association with a person being written about. A 500 page biography is not even going to answer all possible questions. We use the term Jewish as one of many building blocks in constructing a composite picture of a person being written about. Bus stop (talk) 13:46, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Hijacking_of_an_AN.2FI_section_by_Bus_stop_to_discuss_an_off-topic_content_dispute. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:11, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

That many Jews are identified and self-identify as such, including specifically cross-sections like "I am a Jewish writer", is a fact. And in either case this is not to be decided upon by WP:ANI. I think WP:ANI is here to address behavioral issues. I must say though, that sometimes I have found WP:ANI's reaction to antisemitism and general racism very prompt and adequate, while at other times lacking and even offensive. Debresser (talk) 13:09, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Can you clarify who it is you are suggesting is being antisemitic and/or racist? It is far from obvious from your comment. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:23, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The issue isn't self-identification as Jewish, but apparently Camelbinky's insistance that "Jewish" is a nationality, rather than a religion or ethnicity. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 17:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The issue is at hand here at ANI is that of Camel Binky's WP:BATTLEGROUND behavior in dealing with people he disagree with. CamelBinky flips out on what he thinks Andy is saying instead of actually what he said. Then CamelBinky makes some derogatory remarks about certain groups then when confronted with his inappropriate remarks decide to cast the specter of Noleander onto Andy. Andy is no Nolleander and frankly comparing him is basically Godwins law in action. I think the issue we should be looking at here is who failed to follow rationale discussion and who made a big stink over essentially nothing. The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 18:32, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

• Start an RFC/U or two, and quit sniping at each other here. Nobody involved in this discussion seems to be asking for any administrative action regardless, and I'd say that no administrator action is needed (except maybe a few troutings).
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 21:29, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I asked for admin action. I asked for admin action on several occasions regarding Noleander and this is exactly what happened. And this person's disregard for individual Jews opinions and dismissive attitude, not just towards me but to another user as well in that discussion, is in fact similar to that case and may get worse if it is not made clear NOW that it is not acceptable to disregard other's opinions regardless of nationality, ethnicity, religion, or personal viewpoint. Calling me a bigot based on what I said and refusing to show HOW it is bigoted is right along the lines of the type of talk page discussions Noleander did. If being a Jew is not notable then HOW is it notable being a Candadian is notable? That is a very relevant question and not bigoted. Show me how it is. Cats, and all non-human animals are by default Muslims in the Islamic religion. This is a fact, and in a talk discussion there is NO requirement that any fact or opinion needs to be referenced to a source, I was under the impression that it was common enough knowledge, and given that if you have Wikipedia you have access to Google/Ask.com/Yahoo! and I was under no obligation to enlighten further, you dont believe me, do research. Wikipedia is about learning, expanding one's horizons, and researching. If you're not willing to confirm what one person says and simply attack it as "wrong" and "rude" and say that it's part of being a "bigot" because you werent hit over the head with "proof", in my opinion you've come to the wrong place to work.

So, in summary, I'd like to know how I did something wrong and how I am a bigot by asking a question about how it is notable to be a Canadian but not a Jew and by mentioning an unsourced FACT about Muslims. If it cant be proven how those things are wrong and how my comments were "derogatory" as ResidentAnthropolist stated. I'd like apologies if it cant be proven, and I'd like a warning on Grump on telling others that their OPINIONS are, in his own words "not necessary here" and his attack on Jews. MANY Jews consider themselves a nation (our own prayers state that very opinion), and by disregarding what we believe as not relevant is insulting and disrespectful.Camelbinky (talk) 17:25, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The only person showing "disregard for individual Jews opinions" is yourself. That you are apparently unable to see this, is no excuse. I happen to believe that people should be entitled to decide for themselves who and what they identify with, rather than have the opinions of others, whether on a Wikipedia talk page, or in a rabbinical court, define who they are, and which stereotypes to apply. As for your comparison between Neiolander and myself, I consider that utterly contemptible, and were it not to be so self-evidently false to anyone who has followed my activities on Wikipedia, I would be asking for action to be taken against you. Maybe I could have worded my initial comments in a more polite way, but your behaviour since has only reinforced my opinion that you are more concerned with enforcing particular perspectives regarding individual affiliations than you are with creating an objective encyclopaedia. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:42, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—you say, "I happen to believe that people should be entitled to decide for themselves who and what they identify with"… How do you reconcile that with present policy which does not require "self-identification" for purposes of identity as regards material for placement in the body of articles on living people? Bus stop (talk) 22:26, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I happen to believe that policy (or at least, your interpretation of it) is misguided. I also happen to believe that your inability to stop dragging in off-topic issues to push your own hobby-horse is disruptive to the Wikipedia project. Any more questions? AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:42, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—you say, "I happen to believe that policy (or at least, your interpretation of it) is misguided."

Policy requires "self-identification" for Categories, Lists, Navigation Templates, and Info-box statements. But I find no policy requiring "self-identification" for material placed in the body of an article.

If you believe that policy is "misguided" there are probably ways to try to change policy. But much of the discussion you and I have had has taken place in settings where the possibility of changing policy was not present, such as the Talk pages of individual biographies of living people.

Here and here are two recent examples.

The two examples I give above derive from the Nikki Yanofsky debate. I would not really call that such an "off-topic issue" as it is the issue that led to the WikiProject Judaism Discussion Board. It is of course from the WikiProject Judaism Discussion Board that we find ourselves here, because Camelbinky found some problems in the way you related to him/her at that Board.

I am simply asking of you that you respect policy as policy presently stands.

For instance—we are not the Ministry for Ethnic Truth just because in keeping with present policy we use reliable sources to say in an article that someone is Jewish.

And your reasoning that "She is who she is, she is what she is, and 'sources' may be right or wrong" is problematic because it disregards that under present policy we are allowed to rely upon reliable sources in support of saying that someone is Jewish.

You are combining abusive speech with disregard for a small part of policy. I think that is a small problem. I'm asking you to tone down the rhetoric where it has bearing on your fellow editor and as it concerns policy. That is all I'm asking of you. Bus stop (talk) 01:48, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

This is an AN/I thread regarding comments I made about Camelbinky. It isn't a thread about your obsession with ethnotagging Jews. Go away. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:02, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

For "ethnotagging" I find only one Google hit and it is Wikipedia. And for "ethno tagging" I get a mere 38 hits and they are almost all Wikipedia. I think it is potentially problematic when an idea cannot be expressed without resorting to novel terms. Bus stop (talk) 02:18, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Fortunately, ethnotagging seems to be an unusual hobby - hence the need for a neologism. Keep it up and I'm sure you'll get into the OED ;) AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:29, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

No, writing an encyclopedia is not an "unusual hobby". Bus stop (talk) 02:49, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

″encyclopedia (plural encyclopedias)

1 A comprehensive reference work with articles on a range of subjects.″ [4]

What exactly is the "range of subjects" that you write about, Bus stop? [5]

AndyTheGrump—this is an improper use of the Talk page of an article:

"The issue is that this isn't the Ministry of Ethnic Truth. Unless someone's ethnicity/faith is relevant to their notability, adding it to a BLP is placing undue weight on something they themselves may see as insignificant, and others have no right to impose. Sadly, a number of Wikipedia 'contributors' seem to consider this exercise in ethno-tagging as some kind of Mitzvah/Crusade/Jihad (delete according to taste), and do little else. Others see this symptom of OCD as disruptive, if not offensive."

This too is an improper use of an article Talk page:

"Bus Stop, do you really expect anyone to take your comments seriously, given your abject refusal to define what you mean by 'being Jewish'? I'm actually no longer sure you even know yourself, given your insistence that 'reliable sources' don't have to explain what they are being reliable about. Yanofsky may quite possibly be a follower of the Jewish faith (though this is hardly a yes-or-no question, given the divisions within Judaism), she may also consider herself ethnically Jewish (for which the evidence is stronger, though again, ethnicity is a social construct, rather than a biological fact). What I think we can be certain about is that she doesn't consider herself Jewish because either 'reliable sources', or you yourself says she is. You are neither telepathic nor omniscient, and on that basis, your insistence that if a 'source' states that she is Jewish, it is all that needs to be said is just plain nuts. She is who she is, she is what she is, and 'sources' may be right or wrong. You have no right to state this as a fact one way or another. Your insistence on doing so tells us nothing about Yanofsky, and a great deal about you."

In the above I think you are expressing a degree of disregard for some aspects of policy as it presently stands. Additionally, I think you are speaking to other editors in ways that engender bad feelings. And perhaps worst of all you are not being clear. There is no response that any editor including myself can give when the writing is as strange as that which invokes Ministries of Ethnic Truth, ethno-tagging, Mitzvah/Crusade/Jihads, and OCD. There's no realistic way for me to carry on a conversation with you when you tell me I am telepathic or omniscient. This language has nothing to do with that which is proper in interpersonal editorial communication. You can't be telling me I'm just plain nuts if you are seriously interested in collaborating with me in writing an encyclopedia.

If you know of instances in which I have spoken to you offensively or in an untoward way please bring it to my attention. Bus stop (talk) 04:06, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

This is an AN/I thread regarding comments I made about Camelbinky. It isn't a thread about your obsession with ethnotagging Jews. Go away. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:15, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—you say, "This is an AN/I thread regarding comments I made about Camelbinky."

I am not unaware of the context and the origin of the comments exchanged between you and Camelbinky. I was a participant in the discussion in which they transpired. That discussion is found here.

I find you saying in that discussion:

"Bus Stop, a simple question. Are you claiming that the sources you cite state that Yanofsky is Jewish (a) by ethnicity, or (b) by faith? These are two different questions, and need to be considered as such."

""Jewishness is an attribute of identity". Exactly. Yanofsky's identity is for her to define. Any outside source claiming to be able to assert her identity for her is therefore not a reliable source - you cannot assert that someone else is X or Y, only that you chose to identify them as such."

"So Bus Stop,in other words if a source says that someone is 'Jewish', the reliability of the statement has to be determined according to its meaning to Jews, who can then decide exactly what it means, or apply it arbitrarily to 'mean' anything? Wrong, just wrong. Scientologists could claim (indeed, they probably would) that Yanofsky is an an immortal spiritual being - a Thetan - currently reincarnated in in Yanofsky's "meat body". We don't apply the rules (or opinions) of particular ethno-religious groups to determine identity, for obvious reasons. Instead, we determine the reliability of statements from their context, and the meaning given to them. On this basis, a statement that Yanofsky is 'Jewish' that does not expand on this to indicate in what sense the term is used cannot be cited except as opinion - and even as that, it isn't much of a source."

"Your opinion on this is of no relevance - I note that this 'Jews are always Jews, and their nationality is of limited consequence' has been used before. Can you please find a less inappropriate place to push this bigoted nonsense."

""Jews, although known as a nation, are in fact a racial group". Utter garbage I strongly disagree."

"Let's deal with the facts. Even 'scientific racism' in it's heyday didn't consider Jews as a 'race' - they were seen as part of the Semitic peoples, along with other people of Middle-Eastern descent. Likewise, 'hispanics' has never been a 'racial' category, and 'asians' wasn't normally used as a category ether. I can think of one obvious example where Jews have been identified as a race, but I hardly think it is necessary to point out, nor indicate why it is of dubious merit. In any case, since the diaspora, intermarriage with other populations have made any 'racial' aspect of Jewishness of less significance. From an external perspective (the appropriate one for Wikipedia), 'Jewishness' combines elements of ethnicity (which isn't the same thing as 'race'), and faith. These are the facts - though facts relating to social constructs, rather than biology, 'racial' or otherwise."

"How can we assess whether a source is reliable for a statement if we don't know what the statement means?"

I consider all of the above to be agenda-driven and/or abrasive to the editors that might hold differing views on the topic at the heart of the matter.

Policy permits placement in the body of an article, even a BLP article, the information that a person is a Jew or Jewish, if such information is well-sourced.

You are arguing that the existing state of policy should be different, yet you are taking up that argument where the potential for bringing about any change in policy is nonexistent.

I think the body of the article is the mainstay of Wikipedia. It is the meat and potatoes of our project in my opinion. Therefore I think you are taking up a fundamental argument against standing policy. I think you therefore have to use standard language—I don't think you should be calling those you disagree with ethnotaggers, and I think you should be confining your calls for policy change to those forums in which policy change is an actual possibility. It is a distraction to be interrogated by you at every turn whether Judaism is an ethnicity or a faith. Sources are really all that matter, according to present policy. Bus stop (talk) 14:24, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

This is an AN/I thread regarding comments I made about Camelbinky. It isn't a thread about your obsession with ethnotagging Jews. Go away. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:55, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—you say "This is an AN/I thread regarding comments I made about Camelbinky."

This is one of your comments addressed to Camelbinky":

"Your opinion on this is of no relevance - I note that this 'Jews are always Jews, and their nationality is of limited consequence' has been used before. Can you please find a less inappropriate place to push this bigoted nonsense."

Your above post addressed to Camelbinky is clearly abusive. It detracts from the requisite atmosphere of collegiality at this project. You can't expect to refer to another editor's post as "bigoted nonsense" without evoking a negative response. Bus stop (talk) 17:03, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

That is right. This was the phrase I used that Camelbinky complained about. Now, I clearly could have been more polite, and maybe I should have been. I stand by what I have argued however - that Camelbinky was making a generalisation about Jewish people that was not only unwarranted as any such generalisations are, but was particularly questionable in that the very same suggestion - that "Jewishness IS a nationality ON EQUAL TERMS with being a Canadian"[6] (or perhaps French?) has often led to people of Jewish descent being excluded from positions of power, and far worse besides. I assume that you consider the words I used to describe Camelbinky as ill-considered (with hindsight, so do I, if only to avoid this needless drama), but where do you stand on the substantive issue? Is it acceptable for people to repeat negative stereotypes about Jews (or people they consider to be Jews) merely because they are Jewish themselves? Or do you not consider the assertion of an inherent dual loyalty to be a negative stereotype? AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:41, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

In effect it is a confirmation of Norman Tebbit's Cricket Test, and adopted by neo-nazi to slander populations with for the last 20 odd years, that these others are not Loyal to their native country because given half a chance they'll be rooting for some foreign team. Good for you for calling him on it. John lilburne (talk) 20:22, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

John lilburne—I find you taking a stand in opposition to the adherence to sources when the reliable sources establish that a person is Jewish:

"12 days ago you were told that no one gave a shit about your sources, that you needed to show why "she is Jewish" is more relevant to article than "she was was brought up in a Jewish household", given that there is no self identification. 12 days later, you are being told that no matter how much whining you do, baring self identification, you will not get consensus here to add "she is Jewish" into the article."

I guess my question to you would be—how do you justify such a stance? You seem to be taking a reasonable position here, but in the previous post linked to you seem to be pushing sources aside, even when they say quite clearly that the subject of the biography is Jewish. Bus stop (talk) 23:46, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

My question to you, Bus stop, is what has this got to do with an AN/I thread regarding comments I made about Camelbinky? AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:54, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Comment

It seems that this AN/I thread, like so many others, went off track. True, Camelbinky seems to need a better awareness of the difference between being Jewish religiously and being Jewish ethnically, *BUT* at the point AndyTheGrump called the comments "bigoted nonsense" and Camelbinky objected, everyone in the WikiProject_Judaism thread should have taken a step back. We all lose our patience at times and end up needing to check our attitudes. How hard would it have been to say, "sorry, I disagreed with you, but my namecalling was wrong. Let's get back to our discussion"?

Instead, people grew more stubborn and the debate went off track because someone was slighted and couldn't get a simple apology. It seems from my reading of events that Camelbinky is sincerely trying to work with the other editors. So, rather than attack the person, why not look at what was said and try to explain, basing your reasoning on Wikipedia guidelines. And Andy, how hard would it be to just apologize? I think you would probably much rather be working on fun things than having to defend yourself here, right? Anyway, my 2 cents on all this. -- Avanu (talk) 17:57, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Avanu, initially all I requested was an apology for his words. Andy not only refused, but continued with saying I was bigoted against Canadians and Muslims, along with being bigoted against Jews. Andy then attacked another editor in the same manner calling their comments ridiculous and belittling them. Such personal attacks and belittling is unacceptable and I will not drop this until a sincere apology is given by Andy and assurances given that a realization that it was wrong (and not that "it was worded wrong", it wasnt just the wording, it was the entire idea).Camelbinky (talk) 18:33, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Please remember, Camelbinky, absolute statements like "I will not drop this until XXXX happens" kind of amp things up too. Your frustration is understandable, but hopefully in the end, we can get everyone to just try and tone it down and work more civilly from here on out. -- Avanu (talk) 19:53, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I apologize for being so forceful. I am indeed frustrated, I went years with dealing with Noleander and people at AN/I stating it wasnt a big deal and turning things around and making things about me, such as Anthropoligist did in this thread stating I was stating derogatory statements. I have yet to see any explanation of WHAT I said that was derogatory about Jews, Muslims, or Canadians; so I'll change my statement to- I'd like an apology and acknowledgement that I was not a bigot and did not say anything derogatory from Anthropolist and Andy.Camelbinky (talk) 21:17, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Let's get this straight. I object to you applying stereotypes to people on the basis that the are (or are seen by you to be) Jewish, so you compare me to a 'contributor' with a known history of dubious edits which if not necessarily antisemitic, are definitely pushing the boundaries (though this is being more considerate to Neolander than I think is merited). You refuse to acknowledge that you made derogatory remarks regarding Canadians, andf have made a sweeping statement about Moslems which you have refused to back up with evidence, and you still present yourself as entirely innocent in all this? And you expect an apology from me. Ok, then explain why exactly I should apologise to someone who chose to portray Jewish people in such stereotypical terms when I was unaware whether you were Jewish or not, and frankly, given your resort to stereotypes, still find it a little inexplicable? Are you suggesting that before I object to questionable comments regarding ethnicity, faith, 'race' etc I sould investigate the ethnicity, faith, or 'race' of the person commenting? Sorry, but I don't work like that. If I see prejudice, I say so. Maybe I could have been more polite in saying it, but I see no reason to withdraw my objections to the comments you made that led to my characterisation. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:11, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

You continue to be unable to show me how anything I said was derogatory about Canadians where I have several times already stated almost word for word what I said regarding them. At this point I can no longer Assume Good Faith with you when you use vague blanket statements stating that I have used derogatory language against Canadians! I have not, and I need an apology. How have I been prejudiced against Canadians by asking "If it is not notable to be Jewish, how is it notable to be a Canadian?" You obviously dont know anything about what a sterotype or derogatory comment is because I didnt make one about any group. And as I said before- you dont believe me that Muslims believe all animals are by default Muslim, then look it up! It isnt being bigoted by stating a fact. I am not your mother, I am not your teacher, I dont have to hold your hand and teach you anything. You are a big adult, I assume, and can look things up yourself. If you think I'm wrong about a fact, prove it. You are like Noleander in that you turn things on your accuser and attack them by stating ulterior motives and that Jews who are prideful about their heritage and use terminology about Jews in Jewish terms as I have done are some how "prejudice" or bigoted, which is what Noleander always did. Don't tell me what Noleander did, because I brought Noleander here and had these discussions with him many times. And the lack of Admin intervention here is disheartening because we're going down the same damn road. Nothing was learned apparently. So, go ahead Andy, continue acting the way you do, go right ahead, eventually your arrogance and condescending attitude and rudeness and refusal to apologize and name calling and hatred of Jews using their own terminology will catch up to you too.Camelbinky (talk) 04:22, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

No, I am not "like Noleander [sic]", as any impartial observer can see. I have said nothing about any supposed ulterior motives of Jews, beyond stating that it is wrong to make assumptions about people based on a presumed allegiance to an ethnicity/faith/'nationality' that they may not have - this is stereotyping. You may think that being Jewish yourself permits you to make such generalisations about Jews - it doesn't. As I have already stated, if I see prejudice, I say so. Hiding behind facile comments regarding another contributor does you no good whatsoever, and is clearly a gross breach of WP:CIVIL, if not worse. Unless you withdraw your entirely unwarranted insinuations of antisemitism, I will have no choice but to request administrative action against you. Do you really think that you can redefine 'antisemitism' to mean "arguing with someone who is Jewish that is wrong to apply stereotypes to Jews"? Somehow, I can't see that getting you far. AndyTheGrump (talk) 11:37, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Comment This thread needs to be marked resolved as there is no administrative action coming from this clearly. At best this might have been WQA worthy, but certainly not AN/I. Also, Camelbinky you are engaging in personal attacks, please stop doing so. Saying that someone else is like an editor who has been topic banned from editing Jewish related articles is an attack. If you really think AndyTheGrump exhibits a pattern of behavior "like Noleander" then open an RfC. Now please lets stop this nonsense here. Thanks.Griswaldo (talk) 11:51, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I think this is utterly ridiculous that an editor can continue over and over to claim that I am 1- a bigot, then later move on to me being stereotyping. WITHOUT ANY PROOF of what I said that is either! His latest rant now doesnt talk about the Canadian and Muslim comments, wonder if he realizes if they arent bigotry now or he just forgot. I'm sick of AN/I being as Griswaldo did, just sweep it under the rug, ignore this crap and call it nonsense. Exactly what you people said about Noleander each and every time. What is the use of this place if this is what you do? How about taking people's complaints and DOING SOMETHING, anyone who doesnt want to HELP a person with a problem can just NOT COMMENT. Someone has a problem, try to make them feel better. This BS about "the problem is not legitimate" is not how the real world works. You make a complaint at work about another employee, it gets DEALT with SERIOUSLY by HR. Perhaps we need a more professional group at AN/I who takes things seriously. I have said nothing that is bigotry or stereotyping and continue to get harrassed by being said that I have. His belief that me calling my own people a nationality is stereotyping is wrong and his FLAT-OUT LIES that I ever said anything about Jews being more loyal to being Jewish than to their own nation is being allowed to continue. He lies. Why is there no consequences for the explicit lies continuing? I didnt say anything bad about Canadians, Muslims, or Jews, and yet he's allowed to continue in each post saying that I did. But Griswaldo attacks me saying that showing how that is what Noleander did, that's wrong and I get slapped on the wrist. This is what I have come to expect here. Well, I hope Busstop and others keep an eye on Andy and collect every time he makes comments about editors and Jews, because at ArbCom EVIDENCE IS ACTUALLY LOOKED AT and things are taken seriously and action is taken. Here, people read a thread attack the complainer and tell him to drop it apparently. That's not an attack, that's a fact of what has happened. You want to take action against me for a personal attack, go right ahead, hopefully it'll bring to light the crap that happens here. Yea, Im frustrated. An admin cant take 2 freakin seconds to bring to light that I didnt stereotype anyone and I'm not a bigot?!Camelbinky (talk) 14:34, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Now I've "attacked" you? Give me a break. What I said was that I don't see anything in your complaint that is AN/I worthy. I also suggested that if you really think there is a pattern of behavior here from Andy, then stop bitching here and start an RfC. If he is really "like Noleander" it should be very easy to get some satisfaction afterwards. Go for it, but this venue is a waste of time for you and everyone else. I'm not responding again.Griswaldo (talk) 14:47, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

And I think you might be confused because I'm not going to "take action" against anyone because I'm not an administrator just a commentator.Griswaldo (talk) 15:09, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

You said "You are engaging in personal attacks". Yes Griswaldo that is an attack when you say I am engaging in personal attacks when I'm not. I'm trying to get something to be done and when you, a commentator not an admin, come here and try to shut down discussion and state that I'm being disruptive and have nothing to complain about that is attacking. If you dont want to get involved, WHY COMMENT?! This is why AN/I doesnt function, people come here and all they want to do is shut down conversation that they dont even investigate. Blame the victim.Camelbinky (talk) 17:22, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and I'd like to point out that if I'm stereotyping and being a bigot by stating Jews are a nationality when Andy claims they cant because a nation-state doesnt exist, then apparently our own article on Al Jolson is bigoted and stereotyping because it calls him a Lithuanian singer, but when he was born it was the Russian Empire therefore his nationality would have been Russian because there was no Lithuanian NATION-STATE, which according to Andy is a prerequisite for nationality. Therefore anyone's ancestor's who came to the USA prior to the 1860s can't claim Italian as their ancestor's nationality either by-the-way because there was no Italian nation, according to Andy's definition. And there is a Jewish nation-state by the way, the State of Israel EXPLICITELY defines itself as a JEWISH state. Jewish prayers refer to ourselves as a NATION. To call me a bigot and state that I'm stereotyping is a red-herring to promote ideas and push an agenda to deny Jews the right to have people in Wikipedia properly defined as a Jew, and YES is exactly what Noleander often did. To say that Jews cant identify Wikipedia-article subjects as Jews, but Canadians for example CAN, is the bigoted remark; and that is what Andy is pushing. THAT is anti-semitic in nature, though not overtly obvious. Parallels to Noleander are obvious. If I have to push this to make it obvious to the point where I get in trouble, well it's worth it to bring it to the light of day so that eventually something can be done. Because it took too long for something to be done about Noleander, and it's ridiculous that no one learned a lesson about sniping these things in the bud sooner.Camelbinky (talk) 20:14, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Accusations of antisemitism

As can be seen above [7] Camelbinky has now made a direct accusation of antisemitism on my part. Needless to say, this is utter nonsense, as an inspection of the relevant texts will show. and I will ask a administrators to take action regarding this gross breach of Wikipedia standards. I can see no reason why this should not result in an immediate and substantial block. It should be noted that Griswaldo suggested to Camelbinky that "if you really think AndyTheGrump exhibits a pattern of behavior 'like Noleander' then open an RfC", which then led Camelbinky to accuse Griswaldo of attempting to "shut down conversation" - hardly civil behaviour either, and a further indication that Camelbinky is unable to behave in a collegial manner. Yes, I probably should have chosen my initial words better, but this doesn't give grounds for Camelbinky to make all sorts of wild allegations about other contributors. He/she seems utterly incapable of reading what I have written and instead seems to assume that any disagreement is evidence of sinister motives. This cannot be acceptable behaviour from a Wikipedia contributor. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:31, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

You are allowed and continue to state that I am a bigot and that I am stating stereotypes but then you accuse me of being the one crossing the line for saying you have stated things that are anti-semitic? Hilarious. Yes, please an administrator investigate. Block and ban me. This is ridiculous. Andy you called me a bigot over and over! You want me banned? Ban yourself then first and I'll gladly ban myself for the same amount of time.Camelbinky (talk) 21:33, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

This thread is going nowhere and is creating more heat than light - Andy seems to be quite well informed in these issues and Jewish comments in prayers do not a nation make. I would close this but its better if you just move along and let it close itself. Claims of antisemitism should not be thrown around lightly - save them for clear cut cases as throwing them around lightly is disruptive and demeans a serious charge. Off2riorob (talk) 13:47, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Evolutionary Psychology

The article Evolutionary Psychology is having problems. Memills (talk · contribs) is an evolutionary psychology professor who is very enthusiastic about his field, however this enthusiasm results in him editwarring to keep a large embedded table[8][9] about general phenomena of Evolutionary theory that are not specific to Evolutionary psychology in the article, and for accusing the group of editors arguing that this is off topic and is not a good way to approach article writing for being "anti-EP'ers" and motivated by wanting to put his discipline in a negative light. This is clearly issues of OWNership, of lack of good faith, of battleground mentality and it is in addition disruptive. I would like some disinterested admins to take a look at Memills conduct and help him understand how articles are written how writing a collaborative encyclopedia is different from writing textbooks. ·Maunus·ƛ· 19:52, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I welcome the review. I would note that Maunus has described the field of evolutionary psychology as "the EP cult" (see Talk:Evolutionary_psychology#Article_improvement) and he has repeatedly shown strong antipathy toward the discipline as evidenced by his edits and comments on the Talk page. He has repeatedly "collaborated" (or tag-teamed) with others with similar sentiments to delete sourced, notable and relevant information from the article. In addition, he has repeatedly attempted to block in the inclusion of such information, while contributing only material that is critical of the discipline. A search of his username, and mine, on the Talk page, and in the archived Talk pages, will document this. I will be happy to provide specific links if requested. Memills (talk) 22:02, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

It appears that there may be issues of WP:COI/WP:SELFPUB with respect to Memills editing of this article. Memills is a professor of psychology. Note that one point of the current conflict relates to a table [10] originally introduced by memills, which he credited to himself [11]: "Table from Mills, M.E. (2004). Evolution and motivation. Symposium paper presented at the Western Psychological Association Conference, Phoenix, AZ. April, 2004." aprock (talk) 22:12, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The table in question is not my personal research -- this has been discussed previously on the Talk page. These references were added at the request of other editors. The "Overview of theoretical foundations" table is a summary of theories based on content from multiple evolutionary psychology textbook sources (as noted by editor Leadwind on the Talk page). The organization of the table by systems level was noted in the Mills (2004) reference, as well as in the following reference listed for the table (see Bernard, et al., 2005, Figure 2). Again, the content of the table is not my research (darn -- as if I could lay claim to theories by Darwin, Hamilton, Trivers, Dawkins, etc.), although I might claim a tad bit of the systems level organization of the table, but even that is based on Systems theory for which I cannot take credit. Memills (talk) 23:45, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

A style guideline that's been around a long time and is quite influential in our Good Article nominations process is WP:Embedded lists, which talks about some of the problems of using a list format in what is otherwise a prose context (and the same objections are made to tables). Tables are great at showing box scores of games, and other black/white, incontrovertible data that would be tedious as prose, but they have a habit of interfering with Wikipedia's collaborative process, in part because they exude an aura of "truthiness". If someone wants to make a tweak that doesn't exactly fit with the defined rows and columns of the table, it's harder to do so than if the information were presented as prose.

Also, I have a question ... basically, the most common question we ask about any edit: do you have authoritative secondary sources that say that that breakdown is a better way to summmarize evolutionary psychology than other ways? - Dank (push to talk) 00:57, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

HBES is the largest and most prestigious organization of academic evolutionary psychologists. An earlier version of the table was included at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES) "Introduction to the Field" webapge for many years (see the archived version here). The current version of the HBES.com website does not include the table because the website was redesigned to include only professional business items, rather than material to help to educate laypeople about the field (WP would be a more appropriate place for that). I was a member of the HBES committee involved with the website, and I was privy to these decisions. There were no objections made by anyone regarding the table, and HBES certainly would not have retained the table for many years had evolutionary psychologists found it inaccurate. Memills (talk) 01:07, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

HBES is not in the business of writing encyclopedias. This is an encyclopedia article not a textbook or an affiliate website of EP's promotional organization.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:57, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Irrelevant to this discussion. The issue was whether experts found the table accurate -- they did. Memills (talk) 18:45, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Who was the author of the table on that HBES web page? aprock (talk) 02:22, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Obviously, someone who was very, very knowledgeable. Memills (talk) 03:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't see any need for admin action here, but the involved editors do need to WP:AGF and talk to each other more about how to collaborate better. Memills exemplifies the problem of an expert working too closely with an article that involves his own work. He can hardly accuse anyone of WP:OUTING him if he used his own name as username and cited a bunch of work by himself to cement the obvious. His table is WP:SYN even if the items it contains are not WP:OR, unless he provides a good source for this way of organizing the material. When he gets over these problems he will be in a better position to collaborate, and then if there are still problems with the other editors pushing a POV, he'll be in a better position to seek help on that. He should ideally not add material sourced to his own work without at least discussing it on the talk page first to see if there are objections or better way to keep it neutral, to prevent edit warring that might look like WP:COI. It seems likely that all points of view can be fairly represented in this article without anyone getting too tweaked about it. If problems persist, give him a warning referencing this advice, and if that doesn't clear it up, then ask for admin action. I see he was blocked for edit warring already last month, so one warning should be enough for him to get the point. Dicklyon (talk) 01:20, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Re WP:OUTING I did not provide my full name, nor reference to my place of employment, or my professional webpage. In fact, as noted above, I removed this information after a personal threat was made.

I did not reference a bunch of my own articles -- I have referenced two.

As noted above, WP:SYN, the synthesis represented by the table was published at the professional website of evolutionary psychologists. If they accepted it, I see that as a "good source for this way of organizing the material."

Finally, I believe the core issue here has been brushed aside a bit. Take some time to read though the Talk page. We have a few editors who have engaged in WP:GAMING, WP:CENSOR, and WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT, and who have consistently worked to prevent sourced notable material from being presented, who have repeatedly deleted such material, who have plainly admitted a bias, have not contributed prose except that which negatively portrays the discipline, and have resisted requests to be more civil and truly collaborate. I really believe that they are not editing in good faith - to make the article an accurate representation of the discipline.

Are these editors' actions being examined as well here? This would take a bit of time reviewing archived Talk pages, and I imagine there is not too much time here for that. To have these issues examined, do I need to file a separate complaint? Memills (talk) 01:40, 5 May 2011 (UTC)Memills (talk) 01:40, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

You have done nothing to show that you have any interest in collaborating, you consistently demonize those of your cooeditors who disagree with you, you polarize every debate into pro-/AntiEP camps even in discussions about completely editorial decisions such as wehter to present information in table form or prose, or whether a section is giving unnecessary details about circumstantial information. As for WP:OUT you can't have your cake and eat it: you consistently pull the professor card in debates, refer to your own expertise etc, but when we mention it it is outing?·Maunus·ƛ· 14:08, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

False -- the only time that I have done so is when an editor mentioned that a expert would be needed to determine if the table was an accurate representation of the discipline, and I then indicated that I was a professor who regularly teaches evolutionary psychology. That was the only time that I have "pulled out the prof card." I have suggested that editors turn to evolutionary psychology textbooks to review what should / should not be included on the page, and, use them as a reference to help to resolve disputes. Memills (talk) 18:37, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

You volunteered quite a while ago. The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 01:50, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Correct, and, as I noted above, I deleted that material after a personal threat was made against me. Memills (talk) 01:56, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Volunteered it man, its reality. There is a reason I dont post my vita here The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 01:58, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

So much for the Delete button on Wikipedia... Memills (talk) 02:08, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Maunus and Aprock are both known for advancing an anti bio-whatever explanations to many things. On some issues I agree with them, but they seem to be pushing fringe ideas themselves on this one. Maunus also has a potential, but less evident WP:COI here, being a professional in a competing discipline. Tijfo098 (talk) 02:25, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Note Tijfo098 provides no evidence for this statement vis-a-vis Aprock and choses not to reply to queries to do so. [[12]]. Gerardw (talk) 19:54, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

So anthropologists have an COI in relation to EP but Ep'ers don't? Interesting suggestion.·Maunus·ƛ· 14:09, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Right of course! Anthropologists have COI when commenting on Evolutionary Psychology! So Logical! The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 02:33, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Academic turf wars are unheard of [13]. Tijfo098 (talk) 03:17, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

As this is the first time I've seen this brought up by you (and honestly the first time I recall you ever addressing me), I'll ask that if you feel that there is a problem with any of the edits I make to please provide diffs, pursue the usual dispute resolution, and/or bring the issue to the appropriate noticeboard. In the absence of any of the above, I will ask you to strike the above personal attack. aprock (talk) 02:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

And, Aprock, I would ask you to strike the links to my personal/professional websites that you included your post above. Memills (talk) 02:59, 5 May 2011 (UTC)2

done. aprock (talk) 03:05, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks, I feel safe now. Memills (talk) 03:25, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Now this is an interesting premiss - that being a 'professional in a competing discipline' creates a COI. Presumably working within the discipline creates a COI too (actually, a much more obvious one), so nobody with any academic credentials should be allowed to contribute to articles? The mind boggles! (though whether it does so because this was advantageous to my hunter-gatherer ancestors, I'll not hazard a guess) AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:01, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh, go ahead, guess. Here are the rules. Actually, it is a competing theoretical paradigm, thus the rancor. Memills (talk) 03:25, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

"Most anthropologists are unenthusiastic about evolutionary psychology" from What is Anthropology?, ISBN 0745323197, p. 138; on the next page, 139, you can read about the "academic turf wars". Tijfo098 (talk) 03:48, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I am well aware that evolutionary psychology is a 'competing theoretical paradigm' to anthropology. So what? Homepathy is a 'competing theoretical paradigm' to orthodox medicine. Does that make the criticisms of practitioners of orthodox medicine less valid? AndyTheGrump (talk) 11:03, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

As someone who has opposed both Memills and his many detractors, I occupy something of a middle ground on the page. When I started editing the page, Memills resisted adding appropriate coverage of EP criticisms, but I successfully got the criticisms added to the page (esp. the lead). He wasn't easy to work with, but he conceded when confronted with WP policy. Meanwhile, the various anti-EP editors have waged a strange campaign to distance EP from evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory gets a lot of credit, so the anti-EP crowd doesn't want to emphasize the roots that EP has in evolutionary theory. They say that EP isn't the only way to apply evolutionary theory to psychology, so we shouldn't let the article give the impression that evolutionary thinking leads to EP. (It turns out that the "other" way to apply evolutionary theory to psychology is also called "evolutionary psychology," so it's all very confusing.) Anyway, a bunch of people who oppose EP are piling on Memills because he's the number-one proponent of EP on the page, and it isn't pretty. Everyone should settle down and just stick to WP policy and to what our best sources say. We have some recent EP textbooks to use as sources, so we shouldn't have any problem agreeing what to put on the page. It looked for while that people were cooling off, but you can see that the lull was temporary. Nobody who disagrees with Memills treats EP as a legitimate field of study. If editors think that EP is illegitimate, of course they'll want to gang up on an EP professor. It's impossible to think that all this hostility derives from a difference of opinion about the use of tables. We should just get back to reporting on what our best sources say about EP instead of fighting all the time. Leadwind (talk) 03:56, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

(ec) From a quick read-through of recent talk page sections in the article in question, it appears that Maunus and others seem to be trying to use their own opinion on what modern EP means in order to change the information covered in the articles. Coupling this with liberal usage of strawman arguments and other fallacies in order to prove that they are correct, they appear to be, essentially, shouting down Memills and the sources he is presenting. If there is any owning going on here, then it is by Maunus and others who are attempting to drive Memills off the page and are offhandedly disregarding the sources that Memills is presenting (when it has already been proven through revelation of Memills identity that he would know far more about the topic than them and has given sources to prove as such). Silverseren^C 03:59, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Leadwind's comment is a good summary above. Silverseren^C 03:59, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Leadwind's claim to occupy the 'middle ground' on the article talk page is somewhat disengenuous. He/she has instead used the talk page to promote a bizarre view of what the 'standard social sciences model' (a fictitious construct invented by EP) is in order to demonstrate the 'superiority' of evolutionary psychology - see Talk:Evolutionary psychology/Archive 4#Standard social sciences model. Ignoring the fact that Leadwind seems to have learned about the so-called SSSM from a biology professor, it rapidly becomes apparent that he/she considers the whole thing to be some sort of Marxist-dominated plot to deny human nature. Nonsense like this is supposed to be the 'middle ground'? I think not... AndyTheGrump (talk) 11:19, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Andy is half right. Please note that I claimed to occupy "something" of a middle ground, not "the" middle ground. I'm closer to Memills than to Andy, but then so is Encyclopedia Britannica. I know the SSSM quite well, having majored in psychology and sociology before EP was established. I'll allow his caricature of my opinions pass without comment. Unlike Andy, I have added both criticisms of EP to the page and positive elements, opposing Memills on one hand and the EP detractors on the other. That qualifies as something of a middle ground. Check the page's history since January, and you'll see for yourself the quality of my additions and of my sources. Anyway, Andy's "grumpy" charges against me are unfortunately a fine example of what we've come to expect on the EP talk page. People can be so mean. Leadwind (talk) 13:23, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I see you are back to your old schtick of pretending the Encyclopedia Britannica has a positive view on EP when in fact it has only two sentences about it one of which is mildly positve the other of which is critical.·Maunus·ƛ· 14:12, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I like Encyclopedia Britannica, as should every supporter of majority viewpoints. Curious editors are directed to the social behavior article, where we learn that EP's findings have been "impressive" and that they don't represent a "real danger" to liberal ideals. (I also count more than two sentences.) EBO also ventures certain criticisms of EP, which I dutifully cited on the EP page, because I believe in including both sides of the issue. I've gotten resistance from both sides when I have tried to cite EBO, so that suggests that the coverage in EBO must represent some sort of middle ground. If only we could just stick to what our best sources say, maybe there'd be less fighting. Leadwind (talk) 15:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes you have been met with resistance because EBO does not have an article about EP but only mentions it in passing - in the article about social behavior in animals written by an ethologist who is not a specialist in EP or in anthropology. Great source, great middle ground. You also didn't cite EBO but claimed it said a lot fo things that it didn't claim and I had to bring the cites to the talk page so other editors could see that there was indeed no independent coverage of Ep in the EBO.·Maunus·ƛ· 16:28, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The problem again comes back to sources. I like EBO because it's a great source for the majority viewpoint, and anyone can read it themselves. If you don't like EBO, please name a better source and tell us what that source says about EP. Let's just find good sources and report what they say. It should be simple. Leadwind (talk) 00:05, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

The apparently the Majority Viewpiont is that Evolutionary Psychology does not deserve an encyclopedic article. You know full well that I have produced source upon source at the talkpage, textbooks, articles and monographs published by university presses, none of which have been deemed worthy of inclusion by Memills who reserves the right of decision on pain of being ridiculed and battered if one disagrees with him.·Maunus·ƛ· 00:10, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Nobody 'knows the SSSM quite well', for the simple reason that it only exists in the mind of evolutionary psychologists. And that you claimed that 'the SSSM' was dominated by Marxism is easily verified: "The connection between Marxist intellectuals and the SSSM isn't really in dispute, is it?" [14]. I note also that you seem to think that Socialist Worker is somehow a reliable source for assertions about the politics of Stephen Jay Gould (not that he was a social scientist in any case, but whatever...). Such half-baked conspiracy theories have no place in any scholarly context. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:52, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Andy, as fun as it would be to talk about Gould's Marxist motivations for opposing evolutionary explanations of human behavior, we're off-topic, and I'll let you have the last word. Leadwind (talk) 13:58, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

This dispute might be a good time for a knowledgeable, patient admin to explain whether the tables are WP:SYNTH. Memills' detractors say they are, but they don't explain what novel conclusion Memills is promoting through this supposed synthesis. Leadwind (talk) 13:35, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Regardless of whether the tables are a synthesis or not, Maunus's original objection stands: that they are not about evolutionary psychology, but are instead an 'Overview of theoretical foundations' of evolutionary science in general - they are also inappropriate from a WP:MOS perspective, as they are presenting evidence better covered as conventional text. The difficulty seems to be that Memills is trying to write a textbook, rather than an encyclopaedia entry, and thus feels obliged to include 'everything' needed to understand the subject, whereas it would be better to direct questions about more general evolutionary science elsewhere. The snag with that of course is that he will not have the same control over the content that he hopes to achieve in this article. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:05, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

There is an agenda here. Leadwind caught it pretty well: "...the various anti-EP editors have waged a strange campaign to distance EP from evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory gets a lot of credit, so the anti-EP crowd doesn't want to emphasize the roots that EP has in evolutionary theory." The key here is what evolutionary psychologists believe are the essential theories to understand, not what you think is or is not essential. And, to determine what they think is essential, we can look to the evolutionary psychology textbooks -- and there the answer is clear: Darwin, Hamilton, Trivers, etc. EP cannot be understood without it. Memills (talk) 17:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump has stated that he believes that evolutionary psychology is "bollocks", Maunus refers to it as "the EP cult". Their arguments here are just an extension of what goes on constantly on the EP Talk page.

An reviewer uninvolved in the dispute, Tijfo098, above notes that "Maunus and Aprock are both known for advancing an anti bio-whatever explanations to many things." Another uninvolved reviewer above notes that "it appears that Maunus and others seem to be trying to use their own opinion on what modern EP means in order to change the information covered in the articles." There is an agenda here by these editors. I have lost faith that their agenda is to improve the EP page so that it accurately represents the discipline. Instead, by deleting material and blocking new material, they are attempting to hamstring the article.

Instead, it would be helpful if additional, uninvolved reviewers can take some time to review the Talk pages (the current one, as well as several recently archived ones) and help out by providing independent evaluations of the situation. Memills (talk) 16:16, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

And you have referred to Anthropologists as cultural determinists and Leadwind has referred to them as Marxists - so where does that leave us. Tijfo098 is not a neutral observer, nor is silver seren - both have had personal disputes with both of them over other issues in the past. You are clearly the one trying to OWN wp's coverage of wikipedia, you had had disputes with Viriditas for the same reasons the long before I even realized that the page on EP was more of an advertisement than an ecncyclopedia article. This is not your personal venue for promoting your discipline - you can do that at the HBES webpage or wherever else people will allo you to do EP lobby work. This is not the place.·Maunus·ƛ· 16:36, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The above reinforces my point about the need for neutral reviewers.

Many anthropologists self-identify as "cultural determinists" and the Cultural determinism page notes that it is "...is the belief that the culture in which we are raised determines who we are at emotional and behavioral level ... instead of biologically inherited traits" which I believe accurately characterizes your perspective. Leadwind has not referred to anthropologists as Marxists to my knowledge -- you added material to the EP page about claims of Marxism. My goal is not to "promote" my discipline, it is to insure that the article is an accurate overview of the discipline. Your goal apparently is to prevent that from happening since, after all, you believe it is a "cult." Memills (talk) 17:19, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

No, no anthropologists have identified as cultural determinists for the past 50 years. You have been told so by several anthropologists already. I am getting sick and tired about you telling me what my goals and opinions are, especially since you contradict my own statements about them. That is a violation of WP:TALK and WP:CIVIL. I encourage you to stop it and if you don't I do expect some of the administrators to take action against you. I do regret having referred to EP as a cult, I should know better. You are however exhibiting the extreme incapacity to see things from another viewpoint that is characteristic usually associated with the pejorative use of the word "cult", and that was what my statement implied. I said that out of frustration with your continued personal attacks and speculations about and characterizations of my motives, goals and opinions that you know nothing about. I apologize for having referred to you as behaving as if "brainwashed by the EP cult", that was uncivil and out of line. ·Maunus·ƛ· 17:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Leadwind and I have suggested several times that the way to go forward is to rely on evolutionary psychology textbooks to resolve any disagreements about what should / should not be included on the page. You have consistently ignored that suggestion. Instead you have your own ideas about the field, which you believe trump what is actually presented in the textbooks. Your own ideas and perspectives don't trump the textbooks. Memills (talk) 17:56, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

This is not the first time you decide to make flat out lies about my edits to the article, I have consistently used textbook sources, also while you were still citing your own conference papers. LEadwind had no acces to any textbooks himself and was begging me to write in lenghty quotes on the talkpage which I did untill I got tired of being his secretary. You are now again in violation of WP:TALK and WP:CIVIL. And for the second time I kindly ask you to retract your lies and accusations about me or I will have to seek stronger sanctions against you.·Maunus·ƛ· 19:43, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Making claims that other editors are "lying" isn't helpful. You have done this before to me, and to other editors on the Talk page. You have also moved and deleted my, and other editors', comments on the Talk page without our permission in clear violation of WP:TPO. Leadwind does own several evolutionary psychology textbooks. How many evolutionary psychology textbooks do you own? Memills (talk) 19:49, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes I have accused you of lying before, because you lied. Now you are doing it again, you can avoid the accusation if you stop lying about me. Leadwind owns textbooks now because you sent them to him. I own three and one of which I have cited from them on the page (workman and reader), which you should know because we have disccused them. Your only excuse if you have a medical condition affecting your longterm memory, if you can provide proof of this then I will retract my accusations of your lying about my edits, but not my accusations of you lying about my motivations and goals which you know nothing about. ·Maunus·ƛ· 20:27, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

People infer motivations and goals by your comments and your edits. Tell me where my inferences are wrong: You dislike evolutionary psychology. You believe that the field is based on false assumptions (such as a modular mind, etc.). You believe that EP leads to erroneous conclusions about human nature and human behavior, and that some of these are dangerous (or, if misused, could be dangerous). You feel that EP could be used to support right-wing or conservative political policies. You feel that it is very important that the issues be presented not just on the Evolutionary psychology controversy page, but throughout the Evolutionary psychology main page as well.

I'm all ears. Memills (talk) 20:50, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The fact that you are a professional psychologist does not give you the right to infer motivations or political viewpoints that I have note stated myself (such as my supposed fear of using EP to justify right wing viewpoints which I have explicitly denied on several occasions). I ask you to now a third time to retract you "inferences" or corroborate them with diffs. I state again that I have no strong feelings regarding evolutionary psychology as a discipline, although I must admit that I have not been favorably impressed with the few evolutionary psychologists I have had the (mis)fortune to interact with.·Maunus·ƛ· 23:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Everyone has a right to make their own inference -- in fact, they cannot help but do so. Thanks for the clarifications re your opinions. Memills (talk) 23:39, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes you can make your inferences but please keep them to yourself. We have policies such as WP:CIVIL and WP:TALK that clearly state that it is not permissible to use "inferences" about other editors as ad hominem arguments in discussions, or in order to disqualify people's arguments out of hand. You are consistently violating these policies and being nonchalant about it.·Maunus·ƛ· 23:54, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Per WP:CIVIL Note that "the Assume Good Faith guideline does not require that editors continue to assume good faith in the presence of obvious contrary evidence." In my opinion, as evidenced by the long history on the Talk page and your edits, I am afraid that I have lost faith that you are an unbiased editor on the EP page, because of the pattern of actions I referred to in my opening comment above. Memills (talk) 00:14, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Please document that "pattern" by diffs or retract your personal attacks. (fourth request). Also are you seriously accusing me of editing in bad faith? Do you realize the gravity of such an accusation? Being biased does not mean acting in bad faith - you are biased, but I do believe you are acting in good, if misguided, faith. In anycase even if it were the case that I was a bad faith editor that would not excuse you from observing basic principles of civilty. ·Maunus·ƛ· 00:22, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

You opened this case. I said that I have "lost faith" that you are an unbiased editor, based on continual patterns of edits, and comments on the talk page. Whether you are editing in bad faith (or whether I am) is for others to judge now. Memills (talk) 02:21, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Once again I note that Memills is grossly misrepresenting my views. As is blindingly obvious from the context, I wasn't referring to EP as a whole as 'bollocks', but rather the suggestion that "large, tree-climbing apes evolved consciousness to take into account one's own mass when moving safely among tree branches". As I said at the time, "if this is the best that EP can say on consciousness, I'm going to propose we add it to the 'pseudoscience' category (or possibly 'fiction')." Now if anyone wishes defend this ludicrous 'explanation' for the evolution of consciousness as anything other than pseudoscience/bollocks, I will be most surprised. Prove me wrong... AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:58, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump -- your own opinions (and mine too) about whether something is true or false are irrelevant to the content of the article. What is relevant is the sourced and notable material. The easiest place to find material relevant to EP are the evolutionary psychology textbooks. Memills (talk) 20:15, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

How exactly does that justify you making false claims about my beliefs? Or can you find evidence for these in your textbooks too? AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:19, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Yep, there it is. On page 93. Memills (talk) 20:23, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Infantile... AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:30, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Grumpy. Memills (talk) 20:33, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

A few quotes (below) exemplify Maunus' continued incivility to an editor, all taken from just one recent brief post:

• You don't know what you are talking about.
• You also have no business coming here just to slander me and side anyone with whom I happen to be in disagreement just because I happen to have chastised you for making antisemitic generalizations a month ago.
• You clearly know nothing about what is going on at this page and you are not being helpful to anyone.
• So please back off Seren and go do some reading before mouthing off here.

'nuff said. Memills (talk) 02:07, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

·Maunus·Θ· has now blocked himself for 3 months. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.116.41.96 (talk) 10:46, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

True. Maunus has blocked himself for 3 months - he is preparing to do fieldwork, as he has already noted elsewhere, and needs to be free from the distractions of Wikipedia. His self-imposed block cannot in any way be taken as an indication of anything else - though whether this was intended by the IP above, I cannot say. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:01, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

WP:BATTLEGROUND WP:COI behavior?

Admin User:JzG has blocked User:James Cantor (who identifies himself as James Cantor) for repeatedly editing the biographies of some professionals that disagree with him in real life on professional issues (disagreements recorded in print academic publications). The block has now expired. Admin User:DGG however seems to think that the block was unjustified and that Cantor tagging with {{notability}} the biographies of people with whom he has had real-life disagreements is not a problem but a way to improve Wikipedia. I have asked DGG to reconsider his position on his talk page, but he asked that the discussion not be continued there. Since DGG is an admin, I thought this would be the proper venue to continue the discussion. Tijfo098 (talk) 21:08, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

how the heck is DGG encouraging battleground tactics, or have a conflict of interest, here? he said that he didn't think the article tagging was justified, but that tagging the articles was not disruptive. How does that indicate that he's encouraging battleground tactics or that he himself has some sort of conflict of interest?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 21:21, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Where did I say DGG has a conflict of interest? Tijfo098 (talk) 21:43, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

It's not terribly clear, to me, exactly what you're asking for, or who has done what. Are you seeking some sort of action against User:DGG, or against User:James Cantor? How did you come to the conclusiong that DGG "seems to think that the block was unjustified", and why is that relevant? This report is confusing.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 21:48, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Frankly, I thought the block was also unjustified. It looks to me that James Cantor was blocked for having a COI, and not any actual disruption. Does James Cantor have a topic ban that I'm unaware of? I've already commented at Cantor's talk page to explain further. -- Atama頭 22:37, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

It's perfectly correct to say that I thought the block unjustified, because I said so in just those terms on the user talk page. I prefer not to block or unblock in a situation that involves things I've worked on, or I would have unblocked. I have frequently said here before that admins should avoid anything at all that might possibly be interpreted as over-involvement, true or false,& I try to follow my own advice. I gather the block is still in effect for a few hours, and I very strongly urge somebody to lift it. I would certainly unblock in a similar situation where I had no prior contact with the people. As for battleground behavior, it's pretty clear who I think is currently engaged in it. DGG ( talk ) 23:25, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The block ended about 5 hours ago. I tried to unblock when James made his most recent unblock request and couldn't because a block was no longer in effect. -- Atama頭 23:29, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I believe that MuZemike and Atama tried unblocking me at about the same time and "unblock-conflicted".

My remaining concern, for which I would appreciate input, is whether I am supposed to follow JzG's restrictions on threat of more blocking (which amounts to a topic ban) despite that the other admins who have so far commented said that I have been acting within the relevant guidelines. My original (and unanswered) response to JzG is on my userpage here, and the subsequent block discussion is here.

— James Cantor (talk) 00:04, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

James Cantor was autoblocked when he shouldn't have been (which I don't know why the autoblock was still up). –MuZemike 04:07, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The way I see it, this is green light for the following involvement of experts in Wikipedia. Expert 1 writes a paper, proposal, whatever, in some academic publishing venue. Expert 2 publishes a rebuttal or a paper disagreeing with expert 1, again in an academic venue. Expert 1, who is also a Wikipedia editor, tags the WP:BLP Wikipedia biography of expert 2 with {{notablity}}, meaning non-notability of course. Tijfo098 (talk) 23:35, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

And what if Expert 2 has a valid reason for the tag? I don't see a problem here. -- Atama頭 00:16, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Just for the record: The first thing I did was to state the issue on the talk page here, and the other editor in the discussion suggested the tag here, which I then enacted here.

If there is anything else I could have done to make the issue more explicit for other interested editors, I don't know what it is.

— James Cantor (talk) 00:47, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Expert 2 doesn't edit Wikipedia to begin with. Do we want experts tagging each others' biographies here when they have a real-life conflict? Is that the new purpose of Wikipedia? Tijfo098 (talk) 00:24, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Linking WP:BATTLEGROUND is a senseless non sequitur. If you want to know what the Wikipedia guidelines are for a situation like this, read WP:COI. If you have a problem with our guidelines, start a discussion on the talk page there. There is also WP:COIN (where I tend to hang out). But basically what you're describing isn't explicitly disallowed on Wikipedia. -- Atama頭 00:30, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I might also add that there is a very relevant line in BATTLEGROUND you should consider, "Assume good faith that every editor and group is here to improve Wikipedia—especially if they hold a point of view with which you disagree." -- Atama頭 00:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

On a side note, Guy was never informed that someone had started a discussion here that included him, I've now informed him. -- Atama頭 00:21, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

• I would like to be entirely clear here: I have no objection to Cantor editing in his field of expertise, I do object to to his editing of articles on living individuals with whom he has off-wiki disputes. His reaction to a warning on this was to repudiate the basis of the warning: [15] - this is, I think pretty uncontroversial. An individual with real-world conflicts editing the biographies of those with whom he is in conflict and asserting that there is no reaosn why he should not, that warnings are invalid? That is an unequivocal rejection of WP:COI and not acceptable. Hence the shot across the bows. Guy (Help!) 00:31, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

• So his rejection of the COI guideline that makes suggestions about how an editor can edit Wikipedia without causing problems is a justification for blocking? COI is not a policy, and isn't enforceable without a community ban. When did admins get the unilateral right to block someone for having a COI? The diff you provided looked like you were single-handedly placing a topic ban on an editor, which admins don't have the ability to do. I had hoped there was some blatant disruption on James Cantor's part that I had missed but it looks like I was incorrect. So again, tell me, what discretionary sanction were you operating under? -- Atama頭 00:37, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Funny, DGG had threatened to block another editor over COI/DE for simply commenting on a talk page. What changed in the policies since then? Tijfo098 (talk) 01:24, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

It was a borderline legal threat. Did Cantor do something similar? As I've said repeatedly, there needs to be disruption along with the COI before a block can be levied. Even WP:COI states as much, to prevent the kind of block that happened against James Cantor. Guy attempted to place a topic ban on James Cantor, which is completely in conflict with the banning policy. "Except as noted above, individual editors, including administrators, may not directly impose bans." The exception is when discretionary sanctions apply, which is why I asked about it before. Frankly, Guy's directive to James Cantor was unenforceable. If you wish for there to be a topic ban against James Cantor, however, this board we're posting on is the perfect place to initiate it. Just make your argument as to why the ban is necessary and ask for community input. You can't, however, ask an admin to ban someone for you, we can't do that. -- Atama頭 02:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

How was it a legal threat? The editor threatened with a block there by DGG seems to have simply written that he had been sued already, which created the COI. Tijfo098 (talk) 02:53, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

And if you and DGG are concerned about expert retention, you may want to pay some attention to the thread just above this one, where an expert is being accused of the utmost impropriety of wanting to include an overview table of the field previously written by him but which has apparently been published by the foremost professional organization in the field on their web site. James Cantor has also added a number of external links to his personal website to various articles, which has created a ruckus in itself—there's a thread in the EL/N archives— but I am not complaining about stuff like that, I'm only concerned about his editing of his opponents' biographies to disparage them, and the encouragement he now receives from some administrators in that direction. Tijfo098 (talk) 03:11, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Tijfo's comment is rather a half truth. Missing from his (?) opinion are this COI guideline:

Using material you yourself have written or published is allowed within reason, but only if it is relevant and conforms to the content policies.

Remember: an editor with a self-evident interest in the matter turning up on the talk page is an indication that they are playing it straight.

and my many, many, many talkpage entries doing exactly that: [16], [17], [18], [19], etc., etc., ...

Well okay, I guess that makes Tijfo's comment somewhat less than a half, but I think the point is clear. I have every desire and every conceivable demonstration of following WP:COI, including even its optional recommendations. The only, and I mean only dissatisfied editors are those with whom I have had one or another content dispute, typically because the scientific POV I added to a page disagrees with their own POVs.

— James Cantor (talk) 04:17, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I do not recall the two of us having something that can be really called a content dispute here. And I probably agree with you on most sexuality-related topics—"probably" because I don't know your position on everything. The closest thing that comes to a content dispute between us (that I can remember) is this thread, where you asked for sources justifying the discussion of homosexuality on the paraphilia page. Are you saying that I have a grudge on you for that? Tijfo098 (talk) 01:05, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I think James Cantor's behavior on wikipedia has been way over the top since the beginning, with various bits of WP:COI driving most of it; and his putting a notability tag on the bio of a person that he has an off-wiki dispute with is certainly unacceptable. Maybe a warning would have been better than a block, though, as he does tend to toe the line when it's pointed out to him. Dicklyon (talk) 01:28, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I think we need to accept that there are situations when people can put notability tags on the biographies of someone they have an off-wiki dispute with - eg, in cases where the person may not be notable and tagging for notability is objectively justified. To argue otherwise is simply to suppose that people can't behave responsibly or like grown-ups on Wikipedia. Assuming that won't encourage responsible behavior or editing; just the opposite. 203.118.184.13 (talk) 03:18, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

"won't encourage responsible behavior or editing; just the opposite" like not signing in to your account before commenting at ANI? Tijfo098 (talk) 03:31, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

More like assuming bad faith and making an accusation like the above. 203.118.184.13 (talk) 03:35, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

So not letting him tag articles of his opponents is an assumption of bad faith? How about you nominate WP:COI for deletion then? Because it's all an assumption of bad faith in the same vein. Tijfo098 (talk) 04:13, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia operates by consensus, and it's really not up to individual editors to "let" other editors do or not do particular things. More to the point, it is indeed assuming bad faith to suppose that someone cannot possibly be permitted to edit an article about an opponent, if his edits seem unproblematic in themselves and other editors might have made them in good faith. 203.118.185.58 (talk) 04:38, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually, 203.118.185.58, I think the consensus is that the notability tag on the rival's BLP was _not_ objectively justified. As I recall, not even DGG supported it. BitterGrey (talk) 05:11, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I was commenting on the general principle at stake rather than the rights or wrongs of this particular case. But see WhatamIdoing's comments, about the lack of evidence for both Cantor's supposed rivalry with Moser and for Moser's notability. 203.118.185.151 (talk) 19:58, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

(←) Let me put it in simple terms. Administrators can't place bans on editors without having a discretionary sanction first. That's pretty much the end of the discussion. Nobody has refuted this, or can refute it. If you don't like it, start an RFC. If you want a ban on a particular person, propose one and see what the community thinks. Otherwise this is all just noise. -- Atama頭 06:09, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

User:JzG didn't ban James Cantor, he blocked him for disruptive editing. An he'll probably block him again next time Cantor does something like that. If you disagree, you can unblock Cantor, because you're an admin too, I gather. Tijfo098 (talk) 06:40, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Telling someone they cannot edit an article is a ban. Ignore that all you want, but that's a fact. I'm assuming it was done in error, but if I see it again, I'll have to start an RFC. Administrators cannot ban editors unilaterally, and an attempt to do so is a claim of authority an administrator doesn't have. -- Atama頭 06:58, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Lots of edits to read. I do not see grounds for asserting that James Cantor rather more likely, however, that consensus would be reached for a ban on WP:BLP articles in the field, given his numerous documented real-world disputes. from any material I read, and, in fact, that COI is a straw man argument here. Nor did I see his edits as "disruptive" to the point where a block would be preventative. They certainly did not reach any stage where they made untrue claims about any person, and WP:BLP still applies to any contentious edits in them. If he violated WP:BLP and consensus were reached on a block, that would be an entirely different issue. BTW, the COI argument would imply that no expert could ever edit in their own field, as every expert has presumably had interactions with others in the field. I do not think such an extention of COI is wise. Collect (talk) 11:30, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Two points on my mind:

• I'm the editor who suggested tagging Charles Allen Moser with {{Notability}}. Why? Because editors are supposed to tag articles if they have BLP-related notability concerns. You're not supposed to let them sit and rot in the hopes that maybe, someday, we'll have sources, and maybe, possibly, if we all cross our fingers, no harm will come to the subject in the meantime.
  In case someone's interested in the details, at that time, there were a whopping four (4) sources cited in the article that weren't co-authored by Moser, and their contents were as trivial as "[Footnote] 10. Charles Allen Moser, unpublished doctoral dissertation for the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, completed August 1979". That's 100% of the material about Moser in one of those four sources, and it is not even close to what we mean by "significant coverage".
  Since then, the professional trans activist who encouraged JzG to block Cantor, Jokestress (talk · contribs), whose own website has many pages attacking Cantor, e.g., for "notably virulent" transphobia[20]—has found a handful of additional independent sources. However, my spot check of these sources hasn't turned up a single one with true "in-depth coverage" about the person we've inflicted this article on. We've got a longer string of single-sentence sources, e.g., WP:INTEXT attributions like "According to several researchers, notably Charles Moser and JJ Madeson in their book...", or uncritical, unanalyzed direct quotations from works the subject co-authored. This is what the folks at AFD usually call the "passing mention", which is a distinctly poor indication of notability, especially for a living person. If this were a company or a product, we'd all be at AFD right now, and you'd all be screaming delete, rather than trying to punish someone for correctly flagging a possible problem for attention from the community exactly as recommended by our policies.
• I see that a couple of people have asserted here and elsewhere that Cantor—who does actually count as a living person under our policies, even on this page—has treated Moser badly by wondering aloud whether the apparent lack of "significant coverage" means that Wikipedia shouldn't inflict a badly sourced article on Moser. There are have been explicit claims that Cantor and Moser are in some sort of rivalry or academic feud. I want to know: Where are your sources for that contentious claim about these two BLPs? Perhaps some folks are simply showing how gullible they are by repeating Jokestress' assertion that they're rivals, but I've never yet seen the smallest evidence that this alleged rivalry actually exists in the real world, or even a credible explanation of why such a rivalry would prompt Cantor to promote Moser's papers on Wikipedia. I've provided sources proving that Jokestress has a real-world feud with Cantor; it didn't even take two minutes to find them. So where are yours to show that Cantor and Moser have a real-world rivalry? (Hint: Merely failing to agree 100% on a given academic point isn't the same thing as having a "rivalry" or "feud".) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:24, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
  • I'm going to notify User:Jokestress that you are discussing her statements here. Tijfo098 (talk) 17:32, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Oh, and if you think that Moser guy is not notable WP:AFD or {{prod}} his bio. ANI is not the place to decide that. Tijfo098 (talk) 17:40, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
    • ANI is, however, the ideal forum for deciding whether any editor should be blocked for expressing concern about the notability of a BLP. That's why you started this discussion here, isn't it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:33, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Orrather, whether an editor who has numerous off-wiki disputes should be permitted to edit the Wikipedia articles on individuals with whom he is in dispute. To which the answer is, in general, no. It's not like this is the first time someone has been told to lay off articles on people with whom they have off-wiki disputes. Cantor seems happy to undertake not to edit some articles directly, according to his user page, so I don't even see why this is a problem for him let alone anyone else. Commenting on the talk page is fine. Guy (Help!) 18:54, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Full support for the block - No editor should edit the article of living people they have citable off wiki disputes with - User:James Cantor either needs to back off or we need to consider a topic ban. There are a couple of others that also would benefit from a topic ban, its not just James, user:Jokestress is another, Cantor is highlighted because of his real life name - the whole area is overloaded with over involved contributors. Off2riorob (talk) 19:07, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

@Guy: Orrather, whether an editor who has numerous off-wiki disputes should be permitted to edit the Wikipedia articles on individuals with whom he is in dispute. That's a reasonable suggestion, but that would require either a policy change or perhaps arbitration. What you're suggesting is a change to what is considered a blockable offense on Wikipedia. Right now, there is no such thing as a blockable offense for COI outside of discretionary sanctions. That discussion can happen, and might be a good one to have. But I'll caution you, we couldn't even decide on whether or not we should consider being paid to edit an article to be a blockable offense, which is a far more blatant form of COI, I don't have a lot of hope to get a policy change for an even greyer area like this.

@Off2riorob: Full support for the block - No editor should edit the article of living people they have citable off wiki disputes with - User:James Cantor either needs to back off or we need to consider a topic ban. It sounds like you're saying two contradictory things. Should there be a topic ban, or can James Cantor be blocked without a topic ban? I'm sure anyone would be hard-pressed to find a way to support the latter. Anyone who is an administrator should know very well that we can't initiate topic bans on our own, heck, just about every RfA I've seen in the past couple of years includes the question "what is the difference between a block and a ban" for a good reason. As to the former, I think it's reasonable to suggest a ban for one or more people involved in this dispute, I'll leave it up to someone more familiar with the history here than me to draft such a suggestion. -- Atama頭 19:40, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't completely disagree with Off2riorob's principle, but I'm still waiting for someone to provide name a reliable source that shows this alleged "citable off-wiki disputes" involving Cantor and Moser. I've been having trouble finding reliable sources that even name both of them on the same page, but perhaps someone else's search skills are better than mine.

We are making accusations about real people here, folks. This affects more than the editors: This affects Moser, too. Wikipedia hits high in the search engine rankings. A relatively obscure researcher (Moser) shouldn't have the world told that he's in an academic feud with a somewhat better-known researcher just so that one or more of us can gain an upper hand in a pretty simple content dispute. We need to either cough up some citations to support these allegations of an academic dispute, or we need to start striking comments and quit making administrative decisions based on unsupported and possibly false allegations of an off-wiki dispute. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:53, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

@Atama - I don't support restrictions at all really - I support the involved users getting the idea and moving away from editing in their involved sector - if they don't do that - I support restricting them via topic bans - wikipedia is not benefiting at all from them attempting to insert their strongly held involved opinions into articles, this is especially important in relation to articles about living opponents of theirs ...about living people. Off2riorob (talk) 22:00, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I totally agree with you there, Off2riorob, on a case-by-case basis of course, if their edits violate WP:NPOV that can't be allowed. -- Atama頭 22:35, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, try this (doi:10.1007/s10508-008-9436-8), and note that Cantor is coauthor to the Blanchard 2008 paper (DSM-5 proposal) as noted in his bio here. He somehow took interest in the bio of Karen Franklin as well; do I have to spell it out how that is a COI as well? Tijfo098 (talk) 23:46, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

WTF? Moser contradicted a paper of which Cantor was an author? That's all you have, and you present it as if it was a smoking gun? I really don't see what's wrong in general with academics editing their colleagues' articles so long as they do it fairly. If you want to make a case against Cantor you must (1) prove that he is so irate about the people whose biographies he edited that even though his edits may look innocuous, we must assume that he did it for some secret dark motives, or (2) prove that there was something wrong, or at the very least tendentious, with his edits.

Now the field of sexology may cause strong feelings in those who have personal problems related to this field. But when you assume that therefore academics working in the field who disagree with each other must automatically be enemies, then that's pure projection. A proper academic feels passionately about his or her field, but not in the same way as someone whose aberration/lifestyle/whatever is under examination. That's not to say that there is never fighting between academics working in the same field, but the normal assumption is that they get along with each other rather well, even where they disagree. And it would be absolutely stupid for an academic editing under his real name to do anything controversial concerning a colleague. This kind of thing always comes out and causes a bad reputation. That's practically a guarantee that there will no improper edits by Cantor. If we ever get hard evidence that in fact he doesn't care about his reputation and edits improperly, then we can still look at this again, but so far absolutely no such evidence has been presented. Hans Adler 00:01, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I assume you want the animosities to rise to the level similar to that in thread above this one (on EP) where self-identified anthropologists were in bash mode on an EP prof before something is done? Also, it's best to wait for Jokestress to reply, because I'm hardly familiar with Moser's work. I just pointed out what I could find in a few minutes. Tijfo098 (talk) 00:51, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Also, you essentially say that "sexual minorities" have more of a conflict of interest in editing sexology articles than sexologists themselves have describing their own work in Wikipedia, or that of those other sexologists they disagree with. Interesting line of thought. Can we extend that to ethnicity for instance? It's also a core part of many editors' identity. Tijfo098 (talk) 01:12, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

May I suggest that this entire thread is getting seriously tendentious and is not actually accomplishing anything? It might be a good idea to have the whole thing shut down as pointless, and the thread archived. 203.118.184.9 (talk) 02:08, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I said no such thing. I said they are more likely to be pissed when someone characterises their lifestyle as an aberration that needs treatment, or when someone characterises the uncurable condition that has destroyed their life as a mere lifestyle choice – whichever applies from the POV of the respective individual. In addition, there are also editors who get involved to prevent damage to society – which may be a perfectly legitimate reaction, or an instance of moral panic, but in either case will also tend to make conflicts acrimonious. Both types of editor are likely to blow normal, civilised academic disputes way out of proportion, and as far as I can tell that is precisely what has happened here.

The same principle does apply to ethnicities. An actual, bona fide scientific researcher in a field related to ethnicity, editing the articles of his colleagues whom he regularly meets at conferences and exchanges emails with in between, is likely to be more self-restrained and therefore more neutral, and also to be much more knowledgeable about the subjects, than an lay editor who edits such an article because he or she feels that the subject's research is all wrong or offensive.

The only way someone can do real research is by being sufficiently detached from their field to notice contradictions to their own theories. In science there is (supposed to be) a strong culture of openness to all forms of criticism, which must be dealt with constructively. It's not enough to hypothesise that in the case of a specific researcher and editor this culture may have broken down, and something may have been a motive for improper behaviour, when there is no evidence that improper behaviour ever occurred. Maybe your instincts are right, and maybe there is proof for this, but you haven't made a convincing case, or in fact any case at all. It looks just like a witch hunt. At some point this pounding on vague suspicions with no evidence and no disruption other than that caused by an overreacting admin really has to stop, as it's already in the territory of unsubstantiated personal attacks.

(Please note that I am taking no position whatsoever on the science here. I have no experience whatsoever with unusual sexual interests beyond having a few homo- or bisexuals among my friends. I am not interested in these topics, but on the other hand I am not damaged by a hypocritical upbringing. I have no strong or unusual positions either way. But I do have strong positions on the ability of academics to contribute to Wikipedia in their field unless and until they are actually breaking the rules.) Hans Adler 12:46, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Incivilities by Pmanderson

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

---

Pmanderson (talk · contribs · logs · block log), who has (again) what appears to be a philosophical difference of opinion with me, launched a surprising and unprovoked attack against me that I would consider racist. Not only did he reinstate it after I had removed it, he justified it saying he was paraphrasing me. Upon my removal of it for a second time, citing WP:RPA, he complained about its removal but actually refrained from reinstating the aforementioned offending text. Now Pmanderson have crossed paths many times before, but never has the conflict descended to this low level. What upsets me is that just I had thought things had quietened down between us for some time. I tried to offer my opinion whilst keeping things impersonal. He is an intelligent and educated individual, and yet he chose to launch his latest attack with such serious racist undertones that I am wondering whether the recent string of blocks has begun having an adverse effect on his psyche. As he is no stranger to Personal attacks or harassment, and has upped my request for him to consider formally withdrawing his attack with semantics. A clear message should be sent to him that such behaviour is unacceptable. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:58, 5 May 2011 (UTC) notification.

That doesn't seem racist to me. Am I missing something?Heiro 05:10, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

It isn't. The alleged instance of racism is that I have used the word "anglophone", which means (to quote the OED), "An English-speaking person." Two editors have explained this to him, in response to his original complaint, here and here.

If Ohconfucius simply had no idea what the word meant, this should have dealt with it; so I must ask if this is another spurious accusation intended to win a discussion by getting another person blocked.

Please deal with Ohconfucius appropriately. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:20, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Gotcha, was wondering if there was another meaning of anglophone I was heretofore unaware of. Heiro 05:24, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

What sort of administrative action would you suggest? Have you read WP:TPO? "The basic rule is, that you should not edit or delete the comments of other editors without their permission." Refactoring once is fine, if you think it could be a personal attack, but rather than escalating the issue you should have at least made an attempt to communicate to the user on his/her talkpage commenting that you find his comments incivil, rather than merely reverting back and forth. :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 05:29, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

He did calmly address the offender on his talk page here and subsequently. Dicklyon (talk) 05:42, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

How about a 30-day block? That was the duration of his block of misrepresenting another editor which was shortened after 3 weeks because he saw "the error of his ways". It would appear that he does not, by once again misrepresenting (or "paraphrasing" to use his own words). --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:33, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

As stated above, I don't find the word "anglophone" to be much of a personal attack, but YMMV. :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 05:29, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Can I give my interpretation? Pmanderson frequently uses personal attacks, like when he called me a liar, and mocked me by crediting me with inventing the rules of dash usage, and impugns the motives of people he disagrees with, often by mocking them, as in his mocking "quote" of Ohconfucious's opinion as "Don't do what reliable sources do; do what OhConfucius wants. Who cares if anglophones understand us?" in which he seems to contrast "anglophones" with the orient-related username of the editor; this is I believe why the personal attack was perceived as rascist. I hope OhConfucius will say if I understood him correctly. Dicklyon (talk) 05:38, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Perhaps Anderson thought "Ohconfucius" was Chinese because of his name and therefore could not be a speaker of English. That's presumably what Ohconfucius thought, and I agree that would be racist. (Your grandparents came from China, therefore your opinion is worthless.) But Anderson routinely claims that people who disagree with him don't speak English, even if it's their native language, and that phrasings he disagrees with are not in English, even if they have been demonstrated to be. The idea that only his POV is "English" is a frequent argument of his, so it may well be that this is just an example of Anderson's reflexive incivility rather than racism. — kwami (talk) 05:46, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

• I would characterise Pmanderson as sly, intelligent, snide; his mastery of the language allows him to tread the fine subjective line between the perceived insult and the actual insult. We have had to live with one another enough for him to know that I am oriental. The quote I removed was a bad faith attempt to "paraphrase" me with a "me no speakee Engrish" type jibe was clearly calculated to wind me up. I pointed out to him that I took offense, and he launches into his habitual semantic contortions. His attempting to turn the tables and ask me for an apology in turn for the offence he allegedly suffered is feigned and a piss-take. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:22, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

(ec) Ah. The dash enthusiasts from the #Move war over typography of en dash versus hyphen, closed and lame as it is. (Remarkable of them to show up so fast.)

I regret that they join Ohconfucius in misrepresenting what I have said: I have not, I believe, called Dicklyon a liar; I have said - and will prove, if an uninvolved party cares - that he repeats false statements, like calling an 8-2 RM. closed as consensus, non-consensus.

I use "English" to mean - and always have - what the overwhelming majority of English sources use. Dicklyon and Kwamikagami are opposed to following such overwhelming majorities - and have engaged in revert-wars and wheel-wars to make sure Wikipedia doesn't either. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:57, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The last time you said you didn't call me a liar, someone posted the diff; you actually used the verb "lied" since we're being precise. And don't mischaracterize my position. I have never argued against following overwhelming majorities of English sources; I just argue that we can follow them and still use the styling specified in our MOS. So, you misrepresent, and you mock, and you sound racist to some; can you offer to do something about it? Dicklyon (talk) 06:31, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

It's worth noticing that I support Pmandersons point of view in the dash-hyphen war, and hence can not be called a "dash"-enthusiast, and still think that he shouldn't be allowed to insult others. This is not, despite Pmanderson attempts to characterize it as such, a content dispute, but a discussion on Pmandersons insult of Ohconfusius. Pmanderson does *not* have the right to insult someone just because they disagree. It matters not that Ohconfusius and Dicklyon are incorrect, that is not an excuse. --OpenFuture (talk) 08:40, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

From his comments, I had the distinct impression that his xenophobia was not English based, but more American based. He even mocked the guide to American style and usage (whatever the exact title was) because it was published by Oxford. Dicklyon (talk) 05:50, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

To be more accurate than this falsehood, I described it as Oxford English - a dialect of doubtful relevance to an article about the United States. But some people see mockery whenever someone presumes to disagree with them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 06:00, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The book was about American English. Where is my falsehood now? Dicklyon (talk) 06:35, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

None of this merits administrative action and therefore I recommend closing the discussion thread. TFD (talk) 06:09, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

How much repeated violation of WP:NPA and WP:CIVILITY and WP:AGF does warrant admin action? Would you recommend an RFC/U, or what? Dicklyon (talk) 06:33, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Agree that none of this merits administrative action. I don't know whether User:Pmanderson has been uncivil. He clearly has not been racist - the word "Anglophone" refers to the language spoken, not to ethnicity, nationality or location. I often find what User:Pmanderson writes unclear; I guess that other people do too. Please can we just put this down as a misunderstanding.--Toddy1 (talk) 07:24, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Nobody has suggested that the word "anglophone" is racist or is the problem; indeed, all have said otherwise. The insult was in implying that Ohconfusious is not one, via a mocking "quote". Dicklyon (talk) 07:37, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The personal attack was not racist. However, he is implying that OhConfucius doesn't know English, which is an insult, and one that Pmanderson like to use often. Note that he already has been blocked for personal attacks twice. See also Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Pmanderson --OpenFuture (talk) 06:56, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Anyone reading the link you provided will see that User:Pmanderson was accused of calling User:Marknutley a sockpuppet. User:Marknutley has since been blocked and is listed as a suspected sockpuppet/sockpuppeteer. As for some User:Marknutley's edits that User:Pmanderson called lies - calling them lies would seem to have been fair comment.--Toddy1 (talk) 07:45, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and Cuba is a democracy having free elections [21]. Tijfo098 (talk) 07:47, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I did not know that, but:

1. That was only *one* of the insults of Pmanderson mentioned in that RFC.
2. In fact he accused Marknutley of being a sockpuppet of *me*, some 18 months before the actual sockpuppets of Marknutley was created.
3. How does Marknutleys sockpuppets give Pmanderson the right to insult OhConfusius? Right, it doesn't. This happens everytime Pmanderson is being discussed. Someone pops up and starts talking about someone else in an effort to derail the discussion. --OpenFuture (talk) 08:34, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

OpenFuture - You brought up the RFC as further "evidence" against Pmanderson - that was why I commented on it.--Toddy1 (talk) 11:07, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Watch the shifting sands of Manderson trying to dodge the central issue of my complaint by throwing up chaff. I don't think I was being accused of being a sockpuppet, and just because Manderson was correct on one count proves now't in this current debate. It certainly doesn't prove he's always right or has monopoly of The Truth™©. The issue here is whether you people agree he insulted or attacked me. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:31, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Ohconfucius - you said that Pmanderson made a racist attack on you - he did not. Even Dicklyon and OpenFuture agree on that.

Even me??? Please don't put words in my mouth; I didn't say it was or wasn't racist; I explained why I thought it was taken as racist. Dicklyon (talk) 04:16, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Please can we just drop it. You are assuming bad faith by people you disagree with. Please stop it.--Toddy1 (talk) 11:07, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

No administrative action required. It's distasteful to see old enemies of PManderson take the opportunity to air various ancient grudges which have no relevance to Ohconfucius' complaint. Please ponder the instructions at the top of the page: "Please do not clutter this page with accusations or side-discussions within a discussion". @Ohconfucious: even if you're offended, you are by no means required to "characterise" PManderson, as you do above ("I would characterise Pmanderson as sly, intelligent, snide"). ANI is not a free forum for personal attacks and character assassination. Time to close this thread. Bishonen | talk 11:14, 5 May 2011 (UTC).

Old RFC's on the topic are relevant, indeed that is the whole purpose of the RFC as I understand it. I do agree that Toddy1 bringing up Marknutleys sockpuppets is completely irrelevant, but I don't think you can characterize Toddy1 as an "old enemy of PManderson". Noting that PManderson has a history of insults is hardly irrelevant, not an old grudge. This is just once again an attempt to move focus from PManderson actions to the actions of others. That said you are of course entitled to your opinion that no administrative action is required. --OpenFuture (talk) 11:23, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

OpenFuture - you are misrepresenting the situation. You brought up to old RFC as "evidence"; I commented on the RFC.--Toddy1 (talk) 12:10, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I never claimed anything else, so I don't know how I misrepresented anything, sorry. I'm with Bishonen on this: "Please do not clutter this page with accusations or side-discussions within a discussion". --OpenFuture (talk) 12:37, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

(od) No administrative action is required here. I see no personal attack in [this whatsoever. May I also suggest that bringing up old RfCs when a particular charge is not getting the traction that you think it deserves is both unfair as well as unwarranted. --rgpk (comment) 13:49, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean with "Not getting the traction", that seems to assume and imply loads of things that is incorrect.

Anyway, I've seen admins bring up RFC/U's, and been told that one of the purposes with them is to act as a permanent record of the discussion and outcome, precisely to do exactly that so as to act as guidance in the future. If you mean that old behavior shouldn't be brought up, I don't see how that is any more unfair or unwarranted than having a link to the users block log. And previous behavior *do* influence decisions of admins and this is in general the consensus of how it should be. So I guess this is yet another case of where different admins have different viewpoints and practices, and yet another space to get lost in dispute resolution quagmires of wikilwyering. :) But OK, I won't do it again then. No big deal. --OpenFuture (talk) 15:38, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd close this thread, since it's generating more heat & smoke than light, but the only conclusion I can come up with would be along the lines of, "If the parties involved still want to debate this issue, they are encouraged to meet somewhere offline & engage in ten rounds of bare-knuckle boxing, either in pairs or as a battle royale. The survivor gets to decide who was right; in the case there is more than one survivor, the individual with the least brain damage makes the decision." (And I suspect many disputes on Wikipedia should be resolved in this manner.) -- llywrch (talk) 23:28, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree with that sentiment. Perhaps Wikipedia needs some flaming forum where people can engage in the mental equivalent of that until they tire of it. Tijfo098 (talk) 00:02, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

One already exists. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 06:31, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I have Trouted both PMA (for insensitive comments, and continued insensitive responses to reactions to the insensitive comments) and Ohconfuscius (for not making nearly clear enough complaints and edit summaries and so forth to understand what the perceived issue is).

Other than that, this is not actionable, and (another) uninvolved admin should probably close / resolve this. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 18:27, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

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

Xiatica and www.artabase.net

Could someone take a look at Special:Contributions/Xiatica edits please ? They appear to be a single purpose account adding links to www.artabase.net which describes itself as "an online marketing channel for the fine art market". On the one hand it looks like external link spamming, on the other I'm biased so I don't have the heart to remove the links. Sean.hoyland - talk 12:15, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Xiatica has very kindly stopped adding links for the time being pending clarification here. Sean.hoyland - talk 12:51, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

• Hmm. Interesting. I think, considering Xiatica's willingness to play by the rules, that no administrative action is required. Sean, would you agree that this discussion can be moved to the EL noticeboard? That's where it seems to belong. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 00:00, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds like a plan. I'll move it over there. Sean.hoyland - talk 07:56, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia:External_links/Noticeboard#Xiatica_and_www.artabase.net. Sean.hoyland - talk 08:15, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

User:Maheshkumaryadav

Maheshkumaryadav (talk · contribs) Maheshkumaryadav is making a slew of articles, all with the same purpose (anti-Pakistan). From this version of his talk page you can see he's been repeatedly told of inappropriate pages he's created, and warned not to make more. --Rob (talk) 17:40, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

• user notified. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 17:54, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure if this offers any help but the above user seems to have been blocked on more than one occation before [22] though im not sure they are related offences however I am sure that he/she has blatant pov against Pakistan as his articles and its tone illustrates this Ichigo0987765 (talk) 19:08, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The stuff about Pakistan's apparent duplicity in regard to OBL needs to have at least one article, given the presence of a U.S. conspiracy theories artice. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:12, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

There is already an article based on this alleged duplicity I think it goes by the name of support networks of obl something along the lines of that but swamping wiki with articles of regurgitated information is just silly in my opinion and only serves to satisfy ones pov Ichigo0987765 (talk) 19:18, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

One article should suffice. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:22, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The article is Allegations of support system in Pakistan for Osama bin Laden. Guoguo12--Talk--  21:16, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

It seems the user isn't just critical of Pakistan. He made Anti-corruption initiatives by civil society in India, Corruption in Indian politics, and then Effects of corruption in India. Again, all pushing a similar POV. He also made Judicial reforms in India, which isn't just POV, but is saying what the judiciary in India "needs". I think a block is needed until the user at least acknowledges the problem, which he's not doing by blanking his talk page. --Rob (talk) 21:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I've worked "with" (near? against?) this editor a bit, primarily in India/corruption topics. While I can't really point to a single specific incident, my feeling is that, overall, Maheshkumaryadav's editing pattern is influenced a lot more by his own goals than by a sincere desire to build a neutral encyclopedia. One thing worth looking at is the list of new pages xe has created. Now, there's nothing wrong with an editor having a narrow field of focus; but if you look into each of the articles on "Corruption in Indian X", you'll see that they're mostly unsourced, always assert that there is a major problem with corruption in that particular field, and are light on any kind of details. In other words, I see in Maheshkumaryadav an editor who has a very strong POV regarding high levels of corruption in India (and, now, it seems, high levels of Pakistani involvement in terrorism), and who believes it is xyr "mission" to make sure that this topic is covered as widely and extensively as possible. This has taken the form of creating multiple articles to cover several very closely related topics, adding the same See Also link to multiple different articles which it had no connection to, and creating a Template (see Template: Scandals in India) of which 24 of the 26 links were redlinks. In fairness, on the latter issue, he has since withdrawn opposition to deleting the template. Finally, all of this is compounded by the fact that Maheshkumaryadav very rarely communicates on talk pages, and, in particular, responds to concerns on xyr own talk page via blanking. Each of the actions of Maheshkumaryadav are individually defensible and often on the "right side" of the rules, and are in many instances the marks of an inexperienced editor. Taken as a whole, though I see someone here primarily to Right Great Wrongs, an attitude which will make it quite difficult for xem to be successful on the project. Now, to be fair, I don't actually know that there's any admin action to be taken here--it seems to me that we generally don't do anything to stop even blatant POV pushing until after its gone much farther along than Maheshkumaryadav's has. But if there is anyone that can think of a way to talk to xem, though, to help "bring xem into the fold", as it were, it would be appreciated. I've tried a few times, both nicely and strictly, but, for the most part, my comments have generally just been removed without comment. Qwyrxian (talk) 04:48, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, i Mahesh Kumar Yadav (talk) 07:20, 6 May 2011 (UTC) have read the above comments and i respect the view of other contributors and administrators. Let me put my POV. Corruption in India and Pakistan and state terrorism, both are true things and there are facts in media about those. As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a knowledge source, If the things are true and we can give solid references, if they are suitable enough to have an article , we must try to have an article on that, Changing the name, content, removing POV from articles is welcome, but removing complete articles because they are not the best articles is not correct. It takes 20 minutes to create a small article ( for me), but the deletionist it takes 10 seconds to remove article. It discourages the article or Wikipedia expanders. I am against corruption and role of Pakistan in terrorism. But i don't write my POV in articles, i provide data and references what other prominent personalities and media have data and take on these issues. I am not against Pakistan, Pakistan is also being affected by terrorism, Creating articles supporting state sponsored terrorism by Pakistan should be viewed as work against terrorism not against Pakistan. A stable and terrorism less Pakistan is in interests of Pakistan, Asia region and whole world, including other members here. My articles are not against particular person our country. They are against social problems and in interest of humanity.

The articles are not advertisement and the motto is to have a good and neutral article on that particular area. But I single person cannot create a perfect article alone. Those against my point of view, should improve articles or take steps to improve articles. Very less as a % of people coming to Wikipedia contribute to it. But the acts of deletion work as demotivation and work in a way to discourage the newcomers. We all own Wikipedia equally. Its our knowledge. After 2000 edits ,seeing all my edits i don't think my acts can be considered vandalism. I will be bold in creating things, but will be using talk pages more and will try to keep things neutral. I will learn more how to use Wikipedia and how to create better articles. Thanks again.{Mahesh Kumar Yadav (talk) 07:20, 6 May 2011 (UTC))

No one is (I think) claiming your edits are vandalism. I do believe that you're trying in good faith to improve the encyclopedia, but the problem is that I think you don't actually understand how the encyclopedia works. You said above that you "don't write [your] POV in articles." Let me show you a simple example where that's not true, from Judicial reforms in India, which I just started an AfD on. The first sentence of that article, which you wrote, is, "Judiciary of India needs judicial reforms for speedy disposal of cases and ensuring accountability." That is a clear statement of a POV. It is not a neutral statement about judicial reforms that already have been passed (which is what an article of this title should be about). Per my comments on the AfD, there is actually nothing neutral that is salvageable from that article. This is the problem that concerns me and others above. Do you see why that article, at least, does not meet WP:NPOV? Qwyrxian (talk) 09:08, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Comment: Does Wikipedia expects adults to be born instead of babies ? My personal experience is that, at present on Wikipedia it is more difficult to create content than to delete it. A baby is not born as a productive citizen. But on Wikipedia an article is expected to be good quality when created. Wikipedia expects adults to be born instead of babies. And mostly they(the articles) are killed, because they are not good. Instead of feeding and improving the article, deleting or merging is decided, because it is easier. This discourages the content creators and the result they are forced to leave Wikipedia.Mahesh Yadav (talk) 09:32, 6 May 2011 (UTC) http://strategy.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:May_2011_Update&offset=20110506092709#Wikipedia_expects_adults_to_be_born_instead_of_babies_8578

The problem here is that the articles you have been creating are fundamentally flawed because they reflect your and only your view, and even have titles reflecting your view. They are as such nearly impossible to improve into good articles at all. Therefore they get deleted. --OpenFuture (talk) 10:10, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Maheshkumaryadav, part of the problem is the rate you've been making articles. People can fix one or a few. But, you're creating numerous articles, often on the same topic. You keep slightly changing the name, to re-create essentially the same article. It appears you're doing this to get around other editors, and keep content that fits your POV. You say your articles " are against social problems and in interest of humanity.". Well, that's a noble goal, but unrelated to Wikipedia. This is not a resource for you to pursue you political ambitions. You say you welcome others to fix the POV of the articles, but this is like a whack-a-mole game, where one is put down, and another pops up immediately. Also, you've been edit warring to stop redirects of some of these articles, which is very disruptive and may warrant a block. This is a growing problem, which is getting harder and harder to fix, if we leave it alone. I have tried PRODing and they've been removed, with others. Redirects are reverted. So, I don't see what non-admins can do. --Rob (talk) 11:55, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Just a thought, which I hope keeps this matter in perspective: all countries have a problem with corruption. Any time there is a situation where someone in authority is willing to bend the rules for some cash -- even if "nobody" would be hurt by this action -- that's corruption. We could create (& probably should) an article "Corruption in X", where X is every country existing or historical. However, corruption in, say, Sweden, is far different than corruption in the United States, & both are far different than corruption in India or Pakistan. Without detailed & verifiable sources, any "Corruption in X" article would say little more than "Corruption is an acknowledged problem in X." And that's about as useful as saying "The sun rises every day in X." -- llywrch (talk) 19:47, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Accusations of bad faith

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Snowball close per request of initator TenPoundHammer and comments from those that participated that there's nothing here that requires an administrator's attention. AFD has also been withdrawn

---

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Laura Bryna (2nd nomination) — I get the feeling that Off2riorob (talk · contribs) is making some WP:POINTy edits in this discussion. Some history:

• Laura Bryna got deleted at AFD because the article was a copyvio and spam.
• Just a few minutes ago, I rebuilt the article from scratch, using several reliable, third-party sources not present in the original.
• Off2riorob slaps it with an A10, which I decline since it clearly doesn't fit.
• Off2riorob restores the A10, then replaces it with an AFD.
• In the AFD, he says that she's not noable because she didn't chart.
• I asked him several times if he had read the article and noticed the sources, and he remained silent.
• When another user and I both !vote keep in the AFD, he says, "Digging up a few trivial reports and bloating a not notable singers life story when they haven't ever charted falsely represents them to the reader." This is the most wrongheaded argument I've ever seen in an AFD.

Can someone set this guy straight? And maybe close the AFD because it's so obviously WP:POINTy? I get the feeling that this isn't Rio's first time stirring shit up, because I see he got into an argument with an admin only one post upward on his talk page. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 20:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Honestly I don't see a problem with AfD'ing a previously deleted and recreated article. If you have done your work well enough in recreating it it will be kept, but you should expect that the work will be put to the test if you decide to recreate an article that has been deleted previously. I don't know much about the notability criteria for music, but I would suggest that in the AfD you try to demonstrate that the article meets those criteria. The argument that digging up a small number of online mentions and writing a long biosection doesn't guarantee notability in itself - I don't see a problem with this argument. Just stay calm and argue your case, and if the article is deleted then take that as a sign you didn't argue well enough.·Maunus·ƛ· 20:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I didn't replace the A10 a bot did it, the bot said as you were the creator you shouldn't have removed it. After the recent deletion a recreation of the same low notable singer and her uncharted album are imo even with eight country music promo articles that mention her, not notable, its a good faith nomination. IMO its clear that a singer who has never charted is not worthy of an article - her music is what she is notable for and her music is not notable. Off2riorob (talk) 20:37, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

That's not what A10 is for, you know. 28bytes (talk) 20:55, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I was looking for a recreation template - - WP:A10 seemed the closest relevant. - I am no speedy deletion template expert. Off2riorob (talk) 20:58, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

G4 would have been closer but if the article was completely different from the deleted one as TPH claims then it does not qualify under that criterion. —KuyaBriBri^Talk 20:59, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, G4 doesn't qualify unless there was a deletion discussion. If an article's speedied for some other reason, you can't G4 a recreation. In this case, there was a deletion discussion, but the article had been substantially improved, so the version written by TPH was not eligible to be speedy-deleted under any of the CSD criteria. 28bytes (talk) 21:02, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)2 - the album content was at least exactly the same as what was deleted a couple of days ago. - and the singer has not become more notable since last week even if you scour databases and add eight or nine citations that mention her. WP:GNG is imo an all to oft used reason to keep content that is not truly notable. A singer should have a least some notable music. Off2riorob (talk) 21:03, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Anyways... - this thread is titled - accusations of bad faith - I don't feel I have accused anyone of bad faith, so ... I am also not being pointy - I nominated the recently deleted article and strongly supported its deletion at AFD and her album. I am also happy to accept whatever the consensus is at the AFD and if its kept it will strengthen the articles right to exist here. - Is there any administrative action required here? I don't see any - move to close. Off2riorob (talk) 21:08, 5 May 2011 (UTC) Off2riorob (talk) 21:05, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I think it's a poor AfD nomination (and I voted to keep) but I don't think a poor AfD nomination is a blockable offense, so I agree with Off2riorob that this can probably be closed. The AfD will probably snow keep before long anyway. A medium-sized trout to Off2riorob for misusing CSD and a miniature trout to TPH for "declining" a CSD of his own article are probably all that's merited in the way of administrative action. 28bytes (talk) 21:19, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I accept the medium trout for the CSD and any AFD that results in keep keep keep, likely shouldn't have been made and I'll take that on board. Regards. Off2riorob (talk) 21:30, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

• Anyone wanna snowball close this? Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 21:39, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

• I wish I could but Off2riorob would need to withdraw the nomination for it to qualify for a speedy keep. If he doesn't withdraw, you'd have to show that the nomination was meant purely as disruption and wasn't sincere. I think it was a sincere nomination even if it doesn't seem to stand a snowball's chance of deletion at this time. -- Atama頭 22:38, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

• My presumption is when TPH said this he/she means this discussion and so I'll act accordingly. Nil Einne (talk) 13:43, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

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

Pippa Middleton... again

There was a discussion at Talk:Pippa Middleton#Should Coat of Arms be removed? as to whether the coat of arms info on the page should be removed. Now, I didn't think the discussion had achieved consensus, but the info had been removed with comments like "talk page consensus is clearly against this." Is that right? Was consensus achieved in that discussion? StAnselm (talk) 22:25, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

It's a moot point whether it's in or out (it's out) right now as Floquenbeam has said "I'll block the next person who reverts that particular section back in, and/or back out, until consensus is reached." Exxolon (talk) 14:43, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

The discussion should get an admin closure, to make it an "official" consensus, but it is only one day old. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:18, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

User:Fazm1bico copyright violations

User:Fazm1bico has a history of adding unsourced game engines on video game articles. After many warnings, the user has been mute. Today I went through the editor's contributions and have found, already 3 articles that are a direct copies of copyrighted websites. [see the list here]. I'm pretty sure the article Aura II: The Sacred Rings is also a copyright violation (I haven't searched for it yet). Given the user's past of being mute, I'm afraid they may not acknowledge that these copyright violations are serious and may continue to create more. —Mike Allen 01:47, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• There are plenty of efforts and warnings by a number of editors on that editor's talk page. It is impossible they didn't see any of it, and an indef block at the next occurrence seems reasonable to me if no response is received. Drmies (talk) 03:07, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
• I'm not sure it would be fair to say the user has a history when the account is only a week old. Although the user has created many copy-written articles recently, they have gone back and at least attempted to remove the copy-written material. I have posted on their talk page to provide further information to the situation in addition to the generic templates, although I'm not sure they are reading any of it, as there has not been any response. Simply put, despite the lack of written response, I feel the user has made a good-faith attempt to fix their mistakes, and a block at this point would be uncalled for. The question is how you tell a user to respond to their talkpage... MrKIA11 (talk) 10:37, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

History as in a few days with no response from the user, but yet they kept reverting the changes back. Not years. Sorry for using a vague term. Copyvios are serious and when you don't have a user that responds, what else are you supposed to do? Also, shouldn't the old revisions of the article be removed since they still hold the copyrighted versions? —Mike Allen 21:33, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

This user has now edited out at least 3 copyright problems, so I think no extra admin action is needed. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:10, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Apparently I shouldn't have really used the speedy deletion tag for copyvio, I should have used the copyvio template so it would have been placed on the copyright violation noticeboard. Lesson learned. Thanks. —Mike Allen 04:04, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Continuation of Editing from 125.162.150.88 (Jack Merridew)

While there was an active ANI thread about the behaviour of 125.162.150.88 (talk), Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive692#Editing_from_125.162.150.88_.28Jack_Merridew.29, the IP was blocked for edit warring on Template talk:Rescue [23]. After not editing for a few days, the IP has gone back to similar behaviour:

• 4RR on Template talk:Rescue [24]
• See also: [25] [26]

This IP is apparently an editor who was previously banned by arbcom for harassing editors Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Moby_Dick and for socking Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Moby_Dick#Request_for_clarification_and_indefinite_block_of_Moby_Dick.2C_April-May_2007. The user was unbanned Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Jack_Merridew_ban_review_motion under an agreement. The IP withdrew that agreement [27]. (Under the agreement he was allowed to edit from only one account, User:Jack Merridew. See also [28].)

This editor attempts to cloud the issues by claiming everyone else is harassing him, eg Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive692#Sortable_tables_RFC and [29]. Pursuant to [30] I have not notified the IP of this particular thread; the previous thread was only recently archived [31].

Although ArbCom is discussing this User_talk:Risker#User:125.162.150.88, User_talk:John_Vandenberg#Jack_.3B.29, enough is enough. Propose community ban. Gimmetoo (talk) 04:40, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• WP:BOOMERANG for all the insistent detractors would be the proper outcome for this. Gimme should be de-sysoped as unfit. 125.162.150.88 (talk) 11:18, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose community ban. From what I've seen Merridew is more hasslee than hassler. Reyk _YO! 04:42, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
• See also Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Jack Merridew Let arbcom handle it, they unbanned Merridew, and imposed the account restriction he now seems to be disregarding. They get to clean up the mess. Chester Markel (talk) 04:52, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
• I don't claim that stuff like [32] is acceptable behavior, though. Chester Markel (talk) 04:58, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• Support ban. Some examples of his comments include:

as an unhelpful idiot; further rationale on my talk. Vulcans are supposed to have some sense, and SoV wadded-in on the side of teh toxic trolls infesting this site.

rv fuckwit; ya, you trolls have outted me)

His comments are not helpful toward building the encyclopedia and he appears to be trying to be semi-anonymous when acting as an IP, making inside jokes with his friends and then loudly claiming outing when anyone points out his publically known identity. Silverseren^C 04:59, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

As noted above by Chester, Jack has also willingly decided to over-rule the Arbcom restriction, by his own words. Silverseren^C 04:59, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• Comment: Without going into the specifics of this particular case, the Arbitration Committee will rarely stand in the way of a community decision to remove an editor from the project. Risker (talk) 05:12, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

  But you'll stand in the way of a cluful editor who called you on your bad block of GregJackP and make a plain allusion to privileged information while warning me off. Jack 09:02, 6 May 2011 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.162.150.88 (talk)

• Regardless of the ban proposal though, what is Arbcom's response to Jack saying that he won't be following the restriction? Silverseren^C 05:15, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• Support, as he's evading his ban. GoodDay (talk) 05:16, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• He can't be evading a ban, as he isn't banned. He is merely restricted to editing from one account. Silverseren^C 05:37, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh, well then, ban him for continuing disruptive behaviour. GoodDay (talk) 20:18, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• Support community ban per Silver seren, subject to reversal if checkuser indicates this isn't him. No need to allow Merridew to continue his attacks. Chester Markel (talk) 05:17, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
• Comment As far as I am aware, User:Jack Merridew is not banned. His main account is indeffed because it was compromised, so even if it is him it is impossible for him to comply with the arbcom restriction to edit from "Jack Merridew" only. N419BH 05:27, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• The edit restriction is to edit from a single account, not the Jack Merridew one. So, thus far, in editing just from his static IP, he has been following the restrictions. But now he made a comment to the case section that he is refusing to follow them, which presumably means he is now making other accounts. Silverseren^C 05:35, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• The restriction limits him to the account Jack Merridew by name, with the exception of an approved bot account. His main account was editing on March 26, so checkuser might be able to determine if it was really compromised, or just assumed to be because of extremely disruptive editing. But if a compromised account were the only issue, he could have created a new one such as "Jack Merridew II" to comply with the arbcom decision to the best of his ability, and refrained from characterising editors as "fuckwits"[33] and such. His recent contributions have been most unhelpful. Chester Markel (talk) 05:39, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• This is a sad situation where an intelligent and potentially valuable editor with truly disruptive tendencies has managed to garner a lot of friends in high places due to his good aspects; which can be quite excellent. Those that have experienced and know his bad aspects are often at odds with his supporters: like we're talking about two different people . But there's no separating the good from the bad; and multiple editors have not been "harassing" him - that's absurd. It is ultimately ArbCom's call at this point, so I personally think a community ban proposal here is doomed. His increased negativity, game playing and marked incivility, especially over the last several months, has been unfortunate indeed. Doc talk 05:34, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

  "sad"? "unfortunate"? Bullshit, you want more than anything to get me. 125.162.150.88 (talk) 11:18, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

  • Look at the links to the off-wiki stuff. There's definite harassment and attempted, detailed outing there. N419BH 05:45, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
    • Then he should have privately contacted arbcom, if the material could have been shown to originate from present editors. There's no justification for swearing at and insulting everyone. This needs to stop. Chester Markel (talk) 05:51, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
    • (edit conflict)What off-wiki stuff? Are you referring to the link to a webpage made 6 months ago that he mentions himself [34] as a smear? He has posted on the Wikipedia the claim that his real name is "David", that part of one of the names of one of his socks even. And does anyone believe that's a real picture of him? Where would they find it at? Did he create that "smear" page himself, to then blame others for making it? Dream Focus 05:53, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
      • Agree that the IP is running afoul of WP:NPA. No comment on the rest of it. A checkuser is not going to confirm whether or not an IP and a named account are related, as that would be a form of outing. I'm having a hard time judging this whole situation. N419BH 05:57, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
        • In that case, almost every participant in this thread would have to be blocked for "outing". The policy does not support such a spurious result: Merridew does not get to edit via IP, then claim that any linkage of the IP and his account via checkuser violates his privacy. The privilege of concealing one's IP address only applies to editors who take measures to avoid public disclosure, by editing through named accounts only. Chester Markel (talk) 06:04, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
        • He has openly admitted that it's him several times: this is not an imposter. Doc talk 06:00, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
          • I cannot comment on that. Although any IP can say they're anyone; it's a frequent tactic used by trolls. N419BH 06:04, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
            • I agree. Let's block the IP now for either being Jack Merridew, and disruptively editing, or impersonating an editor. The remainder of the issue can be sorted out when the accounts are linked via checkuser, great similarity in editing styles, or some other means. Chester Markel (talk) 06:09, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
              • It is the same person. He admits it. His close friends and non-friends alike know that it's him. The IP is in freaking Bali. Mystery solved. Doc talk 06:11, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
                • I'm fairly certain it's him based on behavior pattern. Just playing devil's advocate for the rest. Nothing is confirmed here, we're still basing everything on speculation. N419BH 06:16, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
                  • I realized who he was after his 26th edit and told him so. This was inspired by this, BTW. And, as I pointed out on another page, "See also: Lord of teh Flies"[35] on the RfA reform board isn't exactly hiding in plain sight. To claim "outing" after you said that, well... Doc talk 06:32, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
                    • That one's in the checkuser policies. They won't publicly connect a specific IP to a named account. They might connect a large range, an ISP, or a geographic range. But revealing a specific IP could be used to determine the person's real life identity. N419BH 06:43, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
                      • This situation does not require CU assistance. Doc talk 07:00, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
                        • But what if it did? Is this the new way to sock Wikipedia: edit from an IP, secure in the knowledge that Checkusers will never connect it to a named account, notwithstanding that the IP is already disclosed when one is editing with it? Then such cases might have to be referred to arbcom, and the IP/accounts blocked with "please contact the Arbitration Committee" to avoid publicly associating the sock with the sockmaster. That sort of thing foists an impossible workload upon the arbitrators. If the privacy policy really is so twisted, which I doubt, then it urgently needs to be changed. Chester Markel (talk) 08:41, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Please see this recent statement from the AUSC. Risker (talk) 12:37, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

This is a whole lot more complicated than some guy editing from his IP. If you really want to get the full perspective you'd better start looking through all the arbitration proceedings and ANI threads that have affected Jack and his sock drawer over the years. You'll also need to look through the contributions of the IP. For admins, this will be a bit easier as Jack had links to them in his now deleted userpage. There is a ton of information to digest. Some of it is good, some of it is bad. The whole thing makes me believe that this particular thread is missing the boat. There's a whole lot more going on here, both good and bad, that the regular ANI reader doesn't know. This is really one for the Arbitration Committee to handle. N419BH 08:57, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• Support His recent actions alone are justification for his banning. Dream Focus 05:42, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
• Ban evasion isn't an issue here, as none of his accounts was banned, and the decision to limit him to one account is not really being violated in spirit, if perhaps it is in letter (per those above). It's his behaviour right now that's the real issue, with his outpouring of profanity directed at others, and this is going to eventually net him a ban if he keeps it up. I'm not in favour of a ban for the time being, since the normal results of this sort of incivility would be a short block, but I'm quite sure he will get banned if he keeps this up. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 05:47, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Merridew's incivility does not occur on a blank slate. It needs to be considered in the context of the prior history of disruption which required Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jack Merridew ban review motion to be decided at all. Chester Markel (talk) 05:56, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

But isn't deceiving the community via dodging scrutiny by using IPs an issue? How can WP:CLEANSTART apply here when we well know who this is? The only other question is, why is this being done? I am not going to pry, but I can see why this is irking quite a few people. –MuZemike 06:17, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

"Scuttled" is listed as the userpage for the accounts. And clean start doesn't appear to be being invoked as the IP claims to be Jack. N419BH 06:31, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

He claims to be Jack only when it suits him: otherwise it's off to the false outing/harassment claims. Who removes a SPI notification with, "rm wp:hounding"? Are editors supposed to know it's him, and not to "hound" him with standard notifications? Or what? Doc talk 08:21, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

MuZemike, I'd have the same thought except that he's self-identified as Jack Merridew, which means no deception. If he's previously been less than upfront about it, as some here have suggested (I haven't seen the whole history), then yes, that's a definite strike against him. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 10:15, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Jack's been very open about his past. N419BH 10:20, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• Seeing as the committee is discussing this, is there an urgent need for admin action right now? Let Arbcom earn their inflated salaries. pablo 11:21, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

  See also

  {{stuck}}: teh ac doesn't usually resolve disputes, it prolongs them. The emergence of the ARS is due to the failure of the two E&C cases. The 2005-ac borked my initial case with white cat. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.162.150.88 (talk) 11:35, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• Propose a temporary prohibition on his unregistered editing to go along with the one-account restriction. Should put a dampner on all this is-he-isn't-he disruption. Pick an account and stick to it, and let it be a record of your actions that you may be held accountable by, like the rest of us. Skomorokh 12:42, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Support community ban explicitly set to terminate if ArbComm determines new conditions under which the individual involved is allowed to edit and the individual complies with all initial conditions set by ArbComm. This more or less resets the situation to where it was before he was previously unbanned by ArbComm, since his own actions to compromise his own account made the previous ruling nonfunctional. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 15:44, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Oppose ban. A little recent history here. Recently David applied to have the last of his Arbcom restrictions lifted Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Jack Merridew ban review motion#Further discussion and was treated rather poorly. Note in particular Coren's remarks. After this he decided to withdraw his services, a la John Galt. He quit using the Jack acct, switched to the Gold Hat account. No one blocked him for doing this. People on the arbitration committee knew that Gold Hat was David; I told Elen so myself. Fast forward a bit, to the discussion on My76Strat's talk page after his failed RFA. David makes a pointy edit that not only is RFA "borked", so is Arbcom. Elen eventually blocks him for repeatedly re-inserting this post. Apparently she thought it was just some random troll. Had she already forgotten who Gold Hat is? This was a bad block because the post was not vanalism or a personal attack. Meanwhile no decision is forthcoming as to whether David is to be permanently tied to the Jack Merridew account. Why on earth would he want to be tied to that account, when there are at least two libellous pages tying the Jack Merridew account to his real life identity elsewhere on the web? I would swear a bit too if that happened to me, trust me on this. But recent threads have proven though that swearing alone is not a blockable offense, much less reason for a ban. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 16:48, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Support ban. I don't know Jack very well but I'm well aware of who he is. If he had come to Wikipedia with the expressed intent to restart his Wikipedia activity in a civil manner, from a new registered account (and only one account) I'd support that. But he's being openly defiant, he doesn't want to abide by the terms set when his previous ban was lifted even in spirit, let alone by the letter. His present behavior does more harm to Wikipedia than good. Much of what he's doing right now just boils down to a violation of WP:POINT, specifically where he says, "The Wikimedia Foundation, which oversees all WMF projects including Wikipedia, has declared open editing to be a founding principle." While the statement is true, this kind of activism isn't going to help anything. -- Atama頭 16:55, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Support ban He is again, or is it still, thumbing his nose at everyone. He purposefully killed his two accounts and now he is playing games with everyone. This is ridiculous already, enough is enough, CrohnieGal^Talk 17:06, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose As per my usual position about draconian solutions. A "ban" is precisely the wrong sort of way to handle Merridew at best. Collect (talk) 22:02, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose and immediately overturn block. Read the Arbcom restriction again. Jack is restricted to one named account "Jack Merridew". There is no restriction regarding editing "anonymously" from IPs. He's not socking if he isn't editing from named accounts. Furthermore, Jack has no access to "Jack Merridew" as he scrambled the password to it. All this was done as a result of an Arbcom decision to keep his editing restrictions in place indefinitely. Those restrictions stem from a 2005 arbcom case which was later proven to be messed up. Jack's been fighting his way back ever since. I think in light of these circumstances the fact that the committee hasn't accepted over two years of mostly stellar editing and has kept him restricted would make one just a wee bit upset, no? Civility issues yes, but nothing to warrant an indef. block. And he isn't violating any restrictions by editing from the IP. And we don't block IPs indefinitely. And he's stated that IP is a public wifi hotspot. So he's not the only one who might try to edit from it. Unblock the IP and let arbcom handle it. N419BH 19:51, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

See below, Arbcom have dealt with it; they unbanned him under an agreement he explicitly broke. IP editing has nothing to do with it – he is community banned. Skomorokh 23:27, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose ban, per Diannaa and Arbcom's general ongoing mishandling/ignoring of this situation  pablo 00:25, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support ban - It seems as if Jack Merridew has decided that rules don't apply to him, that's the subtext not only of this particular set of incidents, but of his long editing career under previous IDs. I understand that some folks think that he is a good, or even excellent, content provider. I cannot gainsay them, since I've never looked into his contributions in that way, but I have no reason to believe that they're not correct. If so, then it's a shame that an editor who is otherwise such a benefit to the project seems to be constitutionally unable to act within the confines of the boundaries that the community has set up for itself, either directly or through their elected representatives. Jack has been given many chances to show that he wants to be a viable part of the community, and his ultimate response has been to thumb his nose at us each time. I don't believe it's any longer worthwhile to continue to give him the benefit of the doubt. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:21, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
• support ban Jack doesn't play well with others. There was an attempted deal that might have maybe had a chance to work. He's stated explicitly that he's not interested in that. This is enough already. JoshuaZ (talk) 04:17, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

• Support ban. Enough BS already; I've read the sub-threads below as well. Tijfo098 (talk) 07:49, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose ban - and I agree with User:Diannaa's comments above. One of the terms of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jack Merridew ban review motion#Indefinite block lifted with editing restrictions was "2. User:Jack Merridew is to seek out advisers to assist him in transitioning from a formal mentorship to unrestricted editing" which he complied with, and over the course of more than a year made thousands of edits that benefited the project. Then when he sought to have his restrictions lifted, he was treated shabbily and it seemed to me that reference to the Gold Hat account was flimsy and opportunistic. If he was, at that point, such a threat to the project, there should have been something stronger to point at than Gold Hat; Gold Hat's contributions were minor and innocuous, but rather than look at the good Jack Merridew had done, Gold Hat was the focus. If Arbcom was aware of the Gold Hat account and did nothing, couldn't that be interpreted as not opposing it? It would have been fairer on Jack if Gold Hat had not been permitted to edit from the start. If I was in his situation I'd feel angry and betrayed, and if that's what he's feeling, that's what's being seen in his recent edits. Rossrs (talk) 08:19, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support ban Jack has wilfully defied what he agreed to with the Arbitration Committee. The restriction is incredibly clear- one account and one account only. No Gold Hat, no IP editing. One account, and the name of that account must be Jack Merridew. Given his knowing disregard of that restriction, there is no other option- if you agree to clear set of unban conditions with the ArbCom, you must either keep them or be rebanned. --Courcelles 08:22, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

  it is inappropriate to tie me to things such as http://www.pissitupthewall.com/2010/11/wikipedia-lock-your-kids-up.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.162.150.88 (talk) 08:38, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose ban per N419BH and Diannaa, but implore Jack to stop the outbursts before he digs himself into an even deeper hole. -- œ^™ 08:47, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support ban Just the past week's pattern of grotesque incivility and personal attacks on other users and even an admin should be enough for a ban. However based on his history of wikihounding other editors with whom he has issues with, massive sockpuppetry, and routine incivility in edit summaries and talk page comments, it's mind-boggling to me that he's getting any support whatsoever. At no point has he been apologetic about past or current actions, and he seems to believe that the rules that apply to everyone else don't apply to him. It's time to end this toxicity.Shemeska (talk) 11:51, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose community ban. (@Shemeska: and you seem to believe that there's a special rule about the heinousness of being rude to admins. "Massive" sockpuppetry? Oh, get a grip.) I expect it's too late: a new Peter Damian case (and what a waste was that?) seems to be already taking shape. The "Jack Merridew" case is all about timing: with exceptionally poor timing at the ban review motion, as if expressly chosen to humiliate a proud user, Risker and Coren expressed intolerant resentment of Jack's "defiance", of "thumbing one's nose", and "horsing around with collections of accounts" (yes? so? would you like to look Bishzilla in the eye and repeat that?).[36][37] I notice Atama and ChronieGal happily adopting these expressions above — altogether, this poll reminds me of the IRC discussions amongst poorly informed users I've listened to, of all the triumphs we can easily and cheaply enjoy against Peter Damian, heh heh. Risker's point that she would have been prepared to lift Jack's remaining restrictions if only it weren't for his "defiance" is downright depressing.[38] What kind of time was the ban review "Jack" had requested to say that? It was too late, as Elen of the Roads pointed out: "Jack" was already expecting the sanctions to be lifted, he had no reason not to expect it.[39] Because those sanctions were vestigial, they seemed to have no other purpose than to humiliate an annoyingly non-humble editor. So is that what the arbcom is about: humiliation? No, I don't think that. I think they do their best. Some of them merely suffered a disastrous failure of imagination in this case. :-( "Jack"'s anger and disappointment at this point is understandable; and, sadly, having been fucked over, he went on to angrily misbehave. He's doing the digging himself, which is why I fear a continued downward spiral, but certainly it was arbcom that handed him a spade and encouraged him to use it. P.S. I would take it as a personal favour if the users who are all over this thread — you know who you are — would rein themselves in a little. Do you really have the impression that your input here is winning hearts and minds by sheer vindictive repetition? Bishonen | talk 14:14, 7 May 2011 (UTC).

In violation of unbanning conditions?

The history is a little convoluted, but Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jack Merridew ban review motion seems to indicate that Jack Merridew's original ban was lifted with this condition:

User:Jack Merridew agrees to edit from one account only "Jack Merridew" on all WMF wikis and unifies that account.

The amendment to this augmented the condition as follows:

User:Jack Merridew agrees to edit from one account only "Jack Merridew" on all WMF wikis with the exception of an additional bot account approved through the regular process, and agrees to not edit using open proxies.

As his February 2011 request for amendment failed, and he subsequently withdrew agreement to the above conditions, it seems to me as if he is editing in violation of the unbanning conditions and therefore banned. Am I missing something? Skomorokh 14:03, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Exactly; that's why I was confused when I started reading this ANI. Why are these motions being tried again here when a ban is already in force? Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:29, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

He posted his password, thereby corrupting the Jack Merridew account. Nobody put a gun to his head. People don't do that by accident - it's your password. By doing that he willfully broke the binding agreement to edit only under the Jack Merridew account on March 25, well before his declaration of withdrawal as an IP. Is the AC agreement binding? Doc talk 15:31, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

It was a ArbCom motion which was passed by 9 arbitrators at the time, so yes. An indefinite block would be replaced on the main account, but obviously, that's a bit confusing given it wasn't the main account which prompted this. (Additionally, main account was blocked in March as "compromised account"). Ncmvocalist (talk) 16:18, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Request for clarification filed on this point. Skomorokh 12:18, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Indefinite block

I have indefinitely blocked for several reasons - recent disruptive behavior, personal attacks [40], the likelyhood that he's now violating the prior arbcom findings, the apparent likelyhood that he's going to be community banned in the section above.

Subject to usual community review etc. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 18:52, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Seems like the right call. JoshuaZ (talk) 19:36, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

He has specifically stated that he will no longer be following the restriction. For all we know, he could already have another account up and running, if not more. Furthermore, it is a common fact that we generally block people when they made statements saying that they plan on making disruptive actions in the future and Jack has specifically stated that he has decided not to follow the restriction anymore, thus this, combined with his other recent actions, show that he has become overly disruptive. And an indefinite block is not forever, GWH specifically stated that it is until Arbcom makes a decision or until this community ban proposal is decided. This is to mitigate the disruption that Jack has already been showing. Silverseren^C 20:03, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

An appropriate block. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:24, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually, it's not appropriate. At best it's incompetent. Please read WP:IPBLENGTH. Any administrator worth their salt knows that we only indefinitely block IP addresses in extreme circumstances. Perhaps a block was warranted, but this isn't the way to do it. Even should the community decide the public hot spot IP Jack is using needs to be indefinitely blocked, there are templates that should be placed so it can be tracked because indefinitely blocking IPs is so rare. That didn't happen either. Even rookie admins know better. AniMate 02:13, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Then can you fix the block so that it's still a block, but in the proper format for IP addresses? That shouldn't be too difficult to do. Silverseren^C 02:38, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

It's not the format, it's the length (or lack thereof) that's the problem. We only indefinitely block IPs in extreme circumstances, usually because they're an open proxy. Also, I don't think I should be the admin to deal with this block. I've had too many negative experiences with most of the complainers above and agree with too many of jack's positions. If anything, I'd prefer to give him a warning or block for a month. AniMate 02:50, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

• I have unblocked the IP. Firstly civility blocks don't work and the length is way inappropriate to the offence. Secondly an indef block for a public ip is not an acceptable policy based action, thirdly I am not seeing a clear consensus to ban Jack above so blocking the ip for that reason at this stage is inappropriate. Spartaz ^Humbug! 03:36, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I note that you did not, as required, discuss the unblock with the blocking admin before undoing it, rather unblocked first and then told him that you had done it. Bad form, very bad form. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:50, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

George hasn't responded to the comments on his talk so it clearly offline. We shouldn't ready do controversial blocks if we are not here to discuss them afterwards so I didn't feel that leaving a token message or waiting for him to come back was appropriate. Spartaz ^Humbug! 03:53, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

So, in your opinion, no one can ever do a "controversial block" if they aren't planning on being online for the next 12 hours or so?

Further, unblocking on the basis that "Civility blocks don't work" has nothing whatsoever to do with policy, and everything to do with your own personal opinion. You are free to have that opinion, and to avoid making civility blocks because of it, but it's not policy, and it's certainly not a reason to overturn another admin's block, especially without discussing it first. Your action was neither collegial nor appropriate. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:57, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Neither was the original block but we can leave a public ip blocked while we sit around waiting for George to come on line shall we? I'd be less inclined to unblock if it was a user account block but for an indef of an ip? No that's perfectly justifiable to act without waiting. Spartaz ^Humbug! 04:10, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm encouraged that you investigated and determined that others beside Jack have been using this IP lately, and so are acting to protect their access to Wikipeia.

You did do that, didn't you? Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:07, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

• Good unblock. Clearly the right thing to do. Reyk _YO! 04:00, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Is he or is he not in violation of the AC agreement? Has it expired? Is it being ignored by the AC as well as Jack? We all have to follow rules around here, despite what IAR is often misinterpreted to mean. When you're on a restriction you abide by it, you don't play pointy games and make up your own version of the rules. Doc talk 04:02, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

No, I do not agree that he is. Reyk _YO! 04:06, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Can you please elaborate? I know that you've defended Jack in the past (from a quick search I just did), so without any explanation for your current comments, it looks as if you are just repeating over and over that Jack didn't do anything wrong without actually looking at or considering exactly what he has done wrong. Silverseren^C 04:31, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

(ec)How do you figure? He deliberately corrupted the accounts after his bid for a sock cavalcade fell through. Mind you, he said just two months ago, "These accounts are my history, and I'm not seeking to walk away from them."[41] Then he found out he couldn't have his socks. This horseplop about him being ashamed of what others say about him off-wiki is just ridiculous. His ED page has been up for ages. Doc talk 04:17, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

He's stated that he's not going to comply with the unban conditions, and he's engaged in extreme uncivility. This shouldn't be that complicated. JoshuaZ (talk) 04:15, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Unblock confusion

I am somewhat confused on the unblock here.

I was online for some hours after issuing the block, contrary to Spartaz' comments. N419BH asked me to consider reversal and I did not respond to him, but that does not mean that I didn't read or consider his comment. N419BH made similar ANI comments before regarding Jack and they had been addressed in the discussion about the ban (and otherwise) above already. Nothing novel was in the unblock request other than that this was "Unblock him" rather than "Don't ban him". Admins are required to be engaged, but we're not required to respond to *everything*...

The unblock was apparently 9 hrs later. No, I wasn't online for 9 hrs after issuing it. Not a reasonable expectation.

The unblock seems to have hinged on three alleged flaws; one, that there was no consensus to ban Jack, two, that this was alledgedly a civility block, and three, that this was a permanent block on an IP. None of these was true.

This was a block for all of:

1. No personal attacks
2. Disruption
3. Violation of editing restrictions

The personal attack was clearly a personal attack - the exact phrase was "Oppose as an unhelpful idiot". This is not a civility issue, it's a personal attack. NPA is NPA.

A very large number of editors and admins have commented that his recent behavior was disruptive.

While there is still active debate about whether he's violating the editing restrictions, there is a majority opinion that he was. I don't know that it rises to the level of consensus, but it clearly has more "He's violating" than the alternative.

Regarding the unblock reasons -

1. There was an 8-2 expressed support-oppose opinion balance at the time of block, with significant additional discussion that by editor count was similiarly 75% plus supporting ban.
2. I used the phrase "personal attack" in the block message [42]. Civility was not mentioned once.
3. This was not a permanent block on an IP. It was an indefinite block, and I quote, "Until the situation is clarified with regards to a community ban, Arbcom decides to do something, or another administrator decides to override based on their review of the situation.". It was indefinite to indicate that it was not a short-term bandaid, not to violate our permanent blocks on IP addresses policy. In cases where IPs are effectively uniquely identified to a known problem user we're allowed to bend the IP block policy in any case, but in this one it was certainly acceptable to leave it "To be determined" while the rest of the above were sorted out. If you feel that it's grossly inappropriate to do so under the IP blocking policy, I ask that you explain how you think we're going to enact a ban if one is consensused-upon above? Do you think we can't ban him if he only uses IPs now?

Spartaz - The best practice here is to try to discuss with the blocking admin, or if that fails to get consensus on a noticeboard that the block was improper. We don't mandate that, but we do ask for admins to use due care and good judgement when acting otherwise. It does not appear to me that you used due care and judgement here.

I appreciate Jack's long constructive history as much as anyone else, but bending the rules to let him keep abusing people when he's clearly started doing so and indicated he has no interest in stopping was not a good call. Had the block actually clearly violated policy you could have gotten a solid consensus on that here within minutes. That the opposite happened should be an indication that this was a bad unblock. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 06:53, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

• It was a bad block for a start. You don't indef people while a ban discussion is in place and you should know by now that we don't indef IPs without a very good reason and calling Sarek an idiot is far from a good enough reason for that. Your whole argument presupposes that there is widespread support for a block and there wasn't. Blocking while there is an ongoing discussion is just bad manners and substitutes your opinion for a forming consensus.We already know that you are pretty much the most extreme proponent of the civility block here and that your opinion does not therefore represent a community consensus. You should have proposed the block before enacting it and then listening to consensus on it. There was no justification for acting unilaterally when there was already a discussion in place. I don't see a consensus to ban and 70-80% including a number of very involved editors is far from a consensus for a community ban. Spartaz ^Humbug! 07:04, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

There's no way to avoid "very involved editors" - the closing admin is supposed to factor in prior entanglements, but that does not mean or equate to disenfranchising those with prior negative interactions with the potential banee.

Blocking while a community discussion is in place is like blocking while an arbcom case is in discussion - unusual, but not unheard of. Both happen. I have done both, without any being challenged that I can recall. Being the subject of an arbcom case or a community ban discussion is in no way a get out of jail free card that allows people to disrupt or make personal attacks or violate existing sanctions or other policy. We are obviously and carefully conscious of not keeping people from participating in discussions on their own fate, but that doesn't mean they can do anything they want and get away with it.

I do not understand how you can look at the discussion above and feel that I am adopting a particularly extreme position with regards to Jack here. There's clearly a consensus that Jack's being abusive and has violated policy in several ways. Whether that results in a ban or not is up to the community, who are still arguing over it. Many of those advocating not banning have advocated blocking for the recent events.

Again - You're making up straw man arguments that you allege are why I blocked, which are not what I blocked for, and not what I said I blocked for. You seem to be the only person disputing that the stated arguments are valid. A number of persons disagree with banning him for them, but you seem to be saying "No, they don't count at all", which does not seem at all reasonable.

I'm all for having uninvolved admins review and use their judgement, but there's something wrong here. I am not going to do any wheel-warring of any sort. Would you please disqualify yourself as well from any further action and step back, and let others handle this? Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 07:44, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Are we indefinitely blocking IPs now?

This is an astonishing bit of overkill. We don't block IPs indefinitely, especially when they've stated they're editing from a public hot spot. AniMate 01:11, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, apparently we do. Not open editing's finest hour. pablo 01:15, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

A one year block on the IP would probably be sufficient. Chester Markel (talk) 01:16, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Some IPs are static enough in that they could be indefinitely blocked. Other reasons may be that the owner requests as such. Finally, we have some open proxies which must be indefinitely blocked. Please see Category:Indefinitely blocked IP addresses and Category:Open proxies blocked on Wikipedia for details. That is not to say that the indefinite IP block was appropriate, but I just want to point out that some IPs are indefinitely blocked and why. –MuZemike 08:00, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

On the other hand, I'd point out that most of the tens of thousands of IPs in CAT:OP are no longer open proxies and should be unblocked. Indefinite blocks for IP addresses are only OK when they are kept under review. It is often too easy for the blocks to remain unreviewed. A fixed expiry, even if it's years ahead, prevents this kind of oversight. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 08:07, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Note about this IP

I have asked a steward to check IP 125.162.150.88, and he has verified that it is an open proxy with three ports open. It is also on several blacklists. Given the discussion in this section, I will not automatically reblock this IP but will await some other thoughts; however, on this project we normally block open proxies for a year. If there are no specific, policy-based objections to my doing so in the next 3 hours, I will block it at the end of that time per our usual process for blocking open proxies. Risker (talk) 04:33, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Wasn't "and agrees to not edit using open proxies" part of the unban agreement as well? What does that mean? Doc talk 04:45, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not disputing that at all. However, the IP was already blocked once today, and then unblocked. It would be poor form for an arbitrator to wheel-war; hence the advance notice with the detailed reason why I intend to reblock this IP address. This is an IP that would normally be blocked by any administrator who identified that it was an open proxy, whether or not a troubled editor was using it. Risker (talk) 04:50, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Quite frankly, it's time to shut this door, and shut it tight. There is a clear restriction on the books that this individual can only edit using the "Jack Merridew" account. No exceptions. It's time to block this IP, and actually enforce the ArbCom's ruling. Courcelles 04:52, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Please. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:04, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree there is no problem blocking an open proxy. If this doesn't wind up being the final answer, I note that Arbcom provided a sanction provision in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jack Merridew ban review motion: "Should Jack Merridew violate the restrictions imposed upon him in this decision, he may be blocked for one year by any uninvolved administrator, with any blocks to be logged at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jack Merridew ban review motion#Log of blocks and bans". This would allow the matter to be raised at WP:Arbitration enforcement for a full discussion. If a block was issued, it would be a {{uw-aeblock}}, which would in theory give it more finality than a regular ANI block. If even this prospect is too divisive, the matter could be handed to Arbcom for them to consider a motion. EdJohnston (talk) 05:24, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

the year-block clause was lifted by the 2009 motion further down (when I was commended for a clear return, yet still saddled with a few restrictions). The ac need to pass a motion; they've been stuck on this since January. 125.162.150.88 (talk) 06:24, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh, you mean the section which says:

After reviewing User:Jack Merridew's ban at his request, the Arbitration Committee agreed to unblock his account on December 9th, 2008 with the above conditions.

Jack Merridew is to be commended for making a clean return from an indefinite ban. On review of the past year, the Arbitration Committee replaces the previous motion with the following conditions:

1. User:Jack Merridew agrees to edit from one account only "Jack Merridew" on all WMF wikis with the exception of an additional bot account approved through the regular process, and agrees to not edit using open proxies.

2. User:Jack Merridew is to seek out advisers to assist him in transitioning from a formal mentorship to unrestricted editing.

3. User:Jack Merridew agrees that the same as any other editor, he is to follow Wikipedia policy and guidelines, and follow dispute resolution processes to resolve editing conflicts with the understanding that misconduct could result in blocks or Community editing restrictions.

4. User:Jack Merridew will note his agreement with the terms of this motion on this page.

Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:43, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

...So are all publicly accessible networks open proxies now? If they are we'd better start blocking every single school, university, company, and private unsecured WiFi network in existence. We'll also have to block every cell phone network. Get busy. N419BH 05:50, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

This IP is a public hotspot offered by a restaurant to patrons. A few people even know the restaurant. The IP is the Indonesian national phone company's, one of their 'Speedy' (DSL) connections. Such connections are the norm here and the Jack account edited for years on the prior IP that was serving this restaurant (which was 125.162.164.51). I also informed John Vandenberg that I was on this IP a month ago ;) 125.162.150.88 (talk) 05:41, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I interpret Risker's comment as stating that the open proxy determination was based on a port scan, not local accessibility through a wireless network. If this is the case, then the IP can be used by anyone on the internet, from any location. It's not our fault that the computer isn't properly secured. Chester Markel (talk) 06:29, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Well if this is true, and Jack's comment that such connections are "the norm" in Indonesia, then are you saying we'll have to block the entire country from editing? N419BH 06:33, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

By "the norm", he seemed to mean wireless connections with local public access, not actual open proxies. Chester Markel (talk) 06:35, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to remind people that scanning IP addresses, and finding open or closed ports, can never confirm whether an IP is an open proxy. So many bad proxy blocks are based on finding open ports. Blacklists are even less trustworthy. If this is an open proxy, someone else should be able to prove it by using it. I think that's quite unlikely. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 07:16, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

The steward has given a wrong assessment of this IP. How about he creates an account, and it is block for a week for the various incivilities, and then he come back and resumes where he left off, given he loves us so much and couldnt quit ;-) John Vandenberg ^(chat) 06:51, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

And how exactly do you know that the steward is wrong about the IP address being an open proxy? Silverseren^C 07:08, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

doubleplus-clue. 125.162.150.88 (talk) 07:13, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Stewards are often wrong about open proxies :p There is no evidence that this is an open proxy. Please ask the steward to use it for editing, in order to be convincing. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 07:16, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Nobody has provided a shred of evidence to support the theory that it is an open proxy, and Occam told me it wasn't. Based on purely technical information, that IP is extremely unlikely to an open proxy, and the steward should be trouted. Additional information which can be obtained very easily corroborates the story given by Jack. Of course it could be an elaborate trick, .. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:25, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

• I read the the statement from an arb that this was a proxy and blocked it per policy so I'm slightly embarrassed to finish reading the section to see its proxy statement is in doubt so I unblocked it again.. Just to be clear as the unblocking admin I have no problems with an open proxy being blocked - if that is the consensus of what we are dealing with. I'm hardly covering myself in glory today so I'm going to bow out and take my kids shopping for the rest of the day. Spartaz ^Humbug! 07:27, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Ah Spartaz. Good decision to take some time with your family. Perhaps not moving ahead on something that is still under discussion might be a good idea in the future.

As for me, I noted that I was intending to make a policy-based open proxy block, but further evidence has persuaded me that there is not universal agreement in interpreting the data I'd been provided; John Vandenberg, who is also an experienced checkuser, has more familiarity with open proxies than do I and I will defer to him. (This is the kind of policy-based reason not to block that justified my not immediately blocking.) This discussion can resume on the topic of whether or not the community has found Jack's/the IP's behaviour disruptive to the point that it feels he should be removed from the project. Risker (talk) 07:40, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

fwiw, I've glossed over this IPs contribs and believe I've made every one of the edits so far this year. The ones in 2009 are not me (some vandal at a nice restaurant, or the IP was assigned elsewhere then... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.162.150.88 (talk) 07:38, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

As this is a bit of a train wreck

Anyone got an executive summary of the situation? My understanding of the above is:

1. user:Jack Merridew is participating from 125.162.150.88.
2. Under the terms of the original ArbCom unban, he was limited to editing only under user:Jack Merridew.
3. On 25 April, he withdrew from that agreement with this edit. The purpose would seem to be to be able to adopt a new pseudonym which didn't carry the baggage (i.e. years of being used an a boogieman) of the JM account.

Furthermore, there's another tangent regarding the nature of the IP:

1. 125.162.150.88 is apparently an unsecured public wifi hotspot.
2. It has been argued that this constitutes the use of an open proxy.
3. That would violate the unban agreement even if it were accepted that JM were free to start a new pseudonymous account.

I consider this one to be a red herring given the above facts.

Is there more to it than this?

Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 08:44, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Jack cannot edit from "Jack Merridew" as the account is scrambled and compromised. There is also a question as to whether or not the restriction limits him to "one named account" or "one, named account" (the former would restrict Jack to "Jack Merridew" but possibly allow IP editing subject to compliance with the sockpuppetry policy, the latter would presumably not allow ip editing; the wording of the restriction uses the former). The "Open Proxy" question is a red herring in my opinion. Arbcom is apparently also discussing the present situation privately as noted from a couple postings by at least one of them on their talk pages. Think that's most of it...agree it's a bit of a train wreck. N419BH 08:50, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand how it's totally lost on many that he was just asking for all his accounts to be unblocked. Is that "shame" of being Jack Merridew? His last post seems to indicate that we must let him edit anonymously in order to protect him from off-wiki attacks. Am I reading this right? Doc talk 08:56, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Don't forget to add his actions over the past few days, which are also a part of the report. This includes edit warring and going over the 3RR limit (twice, I believe, or once and then going right back to exactly 3RR after his 24 hours block ended), not to mention the massive amounts of incivility and the recent personal attack made against SoV. Silverseren^C 10:24, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Chris, I think there's disagreement over your initial point 2 above; some read the condition as "he may only edit using the account Jack Merridew" and others as "the only account he may edit under is Jack Merridew". Jack seems to have adopted the loophole in the second reading in editing as an IP. Skomorokh 12:21, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the edit warring, the user formerly known as Jack repeatedly removed this post, part of which constitutes a personal attack. I removed it twice myself on that basis. I am unclear why people would edit war to keep such a post on the page when the post is offensive and derogatory (IMHO). I would like to remind people that the same folks posting here over and over again does not constitute consensus. Skomorokh has posted eight times to this discussion, Silver Seren eleven times to last week's discussion and nine times to this one, and Doc9871 has posted twelve times to the discussion. It is hardly surprising that the IP feels like he is being railroaded. Sincerely, --Diannaa ^(Talk) 13:36, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Excuse me? I have no horse in this race. Explain yourself please. Skomorokh 13:51, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

There's nothing to explain, really. I was just counting the posts. I agree you and the IP do not seem to have any prior history. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 13:59, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I apologise for listing you. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 14:04, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Personal attacks

Resolved

 – Blocked. -- Ed (Edgar181) 14:48, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Could an admin have a word with User talk:194.66.216.40 and ask them to cease their personal attacks against me here, here and here. I have asked them to stop but to no avail. Mo ainm~Talk 14:37, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Mo ainm has participated in an edit war and started slapping tags on my talk page and then didn't like it when it was suggested that he was taking the piss and continued to slap tags, pathetic stuff from a pathetic user. 194.66.216.40 (talk) 14:40, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Blocked due to the ongoing inapproriate behavior. -- Ed (Edgar181) 14:48, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I know you have closed this Edgar but I think that it is worth mentioning that this IP's editing bears the hallmarks of KnowIG (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) who was blocked with talk page access removed and Apr Mar 28. First this IP is predominantly editing tennis articles which was KnowIG's bailiwick. The abuse of other editors is the same kind that KnowIG spews. I acknowledge that the IP has been editing since before K's block but this would not be the first editor who has operated as both a user and an IP at the same time. Most telling is that with this edit [43] (made before K's block) the IP answers a question posed to KnowIG. Now, as the IP has been blocked for a month I don't think that there is anything else to do at this moment but I thought that this should be on the record as we may be heading down the road of having to discuss a community ban of KnowIG. MarnetteD | Talk 15:30, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the update. I think you're right. Also, KnowIG followed editors to other projects such as Commons to continue to attack them, and this IP is behaving the same way. -- Ed (Edgar181) 17:46, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

User:Little Cambridge

Resolved

 – Done. Favonian (talk) 16:34, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Hello! Would someone with Twinkle please take a look at the contribs? I've been going through this guy's edit history for the past twenty minutes clearing out his stuff with no end in sight. This user is a blocked sock of User:LouisPhilippeCharles and went through his favorite subjects with nearly bot-like speed, creating such memorable one-page categories as "First Ladies of Burkina Faso." I'm looking at a good thirty minutes or more if I roll back the changes he'd made and to delete the categories manually; I don't have the time right now. Thanks. --PMDrive1061 (talk) 15:26, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Talk:51st Australian Film Institute Awards

Moved from WP:AN by Skomorokh

I am wondering if anyone would be able to action the proposed move that I requested a month ago for the 48th - 51st Australian Film Institute Award pages. It was previously listed on Wikipedia that the first awards were presented in 1959 when they were really presented in 1958. Therefore the ordinal numbers for each year are incorrect.
Sources:
Shining a Light: 50 Years of the Australian Film Institute. Australian Teachers of Media. 2009. ISBN 1876467207.
"IMDb Australian Film Institute Awards". The Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2011-01-19. DonEd (talk) 06:43, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

50th Australian Film Institute Awards → 51st Australian Film Institute Awards
49th Australian Film Institute Awards → 50th Australian Film Institute Awards
48th Australian Film Institute Awards → 49th Australian Film Institute Awards

DonEd (talk) 02:03, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Could you please link to the discussion about this issue? (By the way, would it be easier just to use the year rather than ordinals, e.g. 49th Australian Film Institute Awards → 2007 Australian Film Institute Awards?) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:27, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Why not just call it whatever it's called in the reliable sources that verify the content of the article and demonstrate notability of the topic? If no sources call it the 50th or 51st whatever, then surely giving it that name is original research? Sergeant Cribb (talk) 06:40, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Dave Snowden

Moved from WP:AN by Skomorokh

Is it possible to put an article on permanent protection? A banned sock-master continues to obsess over that article, due to his anger with the article's subject. GoodDay (talk) 04:34, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Simpler just to block if it is a single editor causing problems, which I have now done. I have also applied semi-protection to make it harder for sock puppets. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:23, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Personal attacks by Barnstarbob, formerly Vegavairbob

Moved from WP:AN by Skomorokh

Barnstarbob had been warned recently here about that he could be blocked if he continued to attack other editors. He has recently been extremely attacking, again. He has a tendency to edit in a machine gun style, with lots and lots of edits... and he often archives attacks shortly after making them. Here is a relevant recent diff. Please lend a hand if possible. 842U (talk) 11:32, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Well there are two warnings on his talk page now (yours and one from Beeblebrox). Let's see how things progress. One more tirade or personal attack will likely see this editor blocked for a while. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:24, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Esad Mekuli

Moved from WP:AN by Skomorokh

Does anybody know when this guy really died? There are two different death dates in the lead paragraph and in the infobox. B-Machine (talk) 14:50, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

You should be putting this on the article's talk page (it's not like admins know everything), but a quick Google search turns up this, which says 1993 is the correct year. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 15:32, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Benjiboi

Resolved

We need a couple of Admins and/or editors to help look into Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Benjiboi. MuZemike found a huge sockfarm here and needs people to review the edits. Anyone who has some time to stop by, the help would be appreciated. -- DQ (t) (e) 16:27, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Off-wiki harassment by Jaredgk2008

Following blocking of Theyallbewhales (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Theyallbewhales) for sockpuppetry, I received the following email via my personal website. I want to bring it to administrators' attention no only to tie the two sockpuppetry/vandalism cases together, but also to let you know about this user's off-wiki harassment and expressed intent to continue vandalizing. Thank you. Kevin Forsyth (talk) 18:02, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Not only did i use these sock puppet accounts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Theyallbewhales I also used these sock puppet accounts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Jaredgk2008/Archive

[cut-and-paste of contents of those two investigations]

I plan to use an internet cafe computer to vandalize more accounts.

I think the best course of action here is block the accounts as they appear. Eventually they'll get bored. If more problems arise, please file another SPI or let me know on my talk page and I'll take a look. Thanks for bringing this up. TNXMan 18:41, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good, thanks for the help. Kevin Forsyth (talk) 19:54, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Permanent vandalism on the page Geography of Spain

This page is regularly vandalized by the same Turkish user, an anon IP who is no-one else but Menikure, with references removed. He has also spread on the French wiki, with an anon IP too, sometimes with the name Saguamundi. I will ask the protection of the page, but I think that additionnally, a check user is essential.--92.161.48.209 (talk) 19:29, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

If he removed references, why does your revert of him not restore any references? Why is the entire climate section of this article supported by so few references? There are whole paragraphs claiming climate zones, temperatures, and so forth, with no supporting reference at all. You're calling his removal of File:Climates of Spain.png vandalism, but it has no references either. Why not? If I were to reduce the climate section now to material that's supported by reliable sources it would be two sentences long. Why should any of this unreferenced stuff be trusted? -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 20:05, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Blocking of obvious sock puppets

Do we really need to go through the motions of identifying the master of an obvious sockpuppet? Or is it enough that a "new" user shows up making, as their only edits, a serious of reverts of edits made by a specific set of editors? nableezy - 19:29, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd say it would be easier than AN/I, unless you think you can get the quick attention of a specific admin who is familiar with the sockmaster. Much of Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Grundle2600 is filled with quick duck-blocks, for example. Whenever I filed one, the turnaround time was pretty swift. Tarc (talk) 19:35, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Typically, if it passes the "duck test", the SPI will be declined. So if it passes the duck test, it should be indef'd immediately and skip the middle man. Or, an admin/checkuser can decided to take the obvious action, as below. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:36, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Proxy blocked. If they resume editing, please let me know so I can either a) check their connection to previous accounts or b) block another proxy. TNXMan 19:42, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Just to correct BB: the SPI won't be declined, but an associated checkuser request generally will be. Many a sock is blocked based on an SPI request where it was determined to be unnecessary to run a checkuser.—Kww(talk) 19:50, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I'm talking about. In the case of an obvious sock, there's no point in going through the bother of creating an SPI. Just block the bozo and be done with it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:24, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I wear socks on my feet.BarkingMoon (talk) 21:50, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Where they tend to collect hair shed by Manx cats. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:42, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

So I'm a "sockpuppet"? On what evidence? That I edited a bunch of articles you don't want anyone to edit? Is that how this works? As soon as I start editing, you and your friends undo all my edits and get my IP blocked? Real "collegiate" Wikipedia. Nice going. AmiAyalon1969 (talk) 08:12, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Blackamoors (decorative arts)

An editor appears to be using sockpuppets to repeated add th fact that his non-notable self has a coat of arms including a "blackamoor". I gather that this editor has a history of self-promotion. Paul B (talk) 20:05, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Daniel C. Boyer was blocked in 2007 for the exact same behavior; self-promotion and using a sockpuppet. In that case it was only for 24 hours, then extended another 24 hours for editing as an IP during the block. The editor Samuel O'Malley is obviously a sockpuppet and I'm blocking it as such. The only question is what to do with Daniel. Clearly his self-promotion is pretty blatant, and he didn't learn his lesson the last time about sockpuppetry. Is it time to consider a permanent site ban? -- Atama頭 20:27, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

(I also just left Daniel a note about this discussion.) -- Atama頭 20:30, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Legal threat

A new user account has raised a copyright issue on a couple of photos I've uploaded. See [44] I.e., "Publishers from whom you'll probably hear from soon here, as they've decided to take matters into their own hands including legal options. Believe me, publishers do know how the law works." I've advised this person of WP:LEGAL to no effect.("If law were as simple as reading a brief documentation such as "WP.LEGAL", we wouldn't need attorneys to handle legal affairs.") Also he's published on my user page the text of a supposed letter from a publisher, replete with phone numbers, which I'm not sure what to do with. ScottyBerg (talk) 22:37, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Can you provide links to the images? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:41, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

See [45] and [46], both on Commons. I've nominated the first for deletion as a question was raised as to whether it was published prior to 1923. However, the second one is an 1898 postcard, and therefore was definitely published (as a postcard) in 1898. ScottyBerg (talk) 22:52, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) With respect to the letter from the publisher, I would recommend that you do nothing with it. In such a case I'd simply point out Commons:Commons:Contact us. If the publisher wants to assert copyright, they can contact the Wikimedia Foundation. Meanwhile, the image (File:Doyers Street - postcard - 1898.jpg) is hosted on Commons; removing the image from the article here is pointless; it is still in publication. If he continues to make legal threats (whether he asserts that these actions are his or some vague other party) to support his removal of the content, we will have no choice but to follow WP:NLT. You've already nominated the other one for deletion as reasonable concerns were raised. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:56, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. You know, it's ironic as this involves the same issue (publication of pre-1923 images) that arose in a PUF discussion recently that I contributed to, as you know. ScottyBerg (talk) 23:01, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• Hold on just a minute here - the source of one of these images is a link to a Google Books page. The other appears to come from a web page wherein the image has the a credit "courtesy of www.arcadiapublishing.com, from 'Manhattan's Chinatown' (2008)". These are not scans of a postcard or photo that were uploaded to Commons, these are images that came from a copyrighted work. I do not think it is up to Wikipedia or Commons editors and admins to play lawyer and decide that they are not under copyright protection. Is this type of thing common? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 13:13, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

TheProSamurai's block evasion

Resolved

 – Blocked indef for continued socking and block evasion via IP.  Sandstein  06:32, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

TheProSamurai (talk · contribs) is currently blocked for two weeks for sockpuppetry and edit waring on at Samurai X: Trust & Betrayal. Now he is back using his IP address 122.151.252.213 (talk), which appears to be static and on the same articles he was edit waring on with this other accounts. (previous SPI case) —Farix (t | c) 00:45, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism

Resolved

 – Backlog processed

Eyes and fingers on buttons, please? Drmies (talk) 02:54, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

• Try this one, for new admin practice: 68.99.226.127 (talk · contribs · WHOIS). Drmies (talk) 02:55, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
• Looks like everyone but ClueBot and me are watching the Lakers game. ClueBot, I leave the ship in your hands. Drmies (talk) 03:03, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

What, we can't bite the newbie administrators and violate WP:BITEADMINS? –MuZemike 07:48, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

• It is far more effective to bite the older admins WP:EXPLODEFARTS - they tend to reach higher orbits of indignation, with more colourful displays... LessHeard vanU (talk) 12:14, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Doctor Who images

I'm bringing this here because I'm not sure where else to take it, and because some uninvolved admin intervention may be necessary, either to enforce the NFCC, or to prevent process gaming or edit waring.

The article is The Impossible Astronaut‎ (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). There have been repeated attempts to put an image in the infobox. On each occasion, so far, the uploaded image has been discussed and after the appropriate time deleted or removed as not meeting the NFCC. People then hunt for another image to decorate the box, offer some weak justification, and insist that the image remains until the debate is concluded. Rinse and repeat. The result is we pretty constantly have violating images on the article until the latest debate concludes. In such cases, should the onus not be on the uploader to make the case and a challenged image remain off until/unless there's a consensus it meets the criteria? Or better, people shouldn't decide they want a decoration and then keep trying their luck with the NFCC until they get one past it.

Images in question so far have been:

• Current image File:Doctor Who The Impossible Astronaut.jpg currently on FFD here.
• File:The Silent.tif (currently legitimately used on another article), edit warred on this article until its failing NFCC finally established (see the history of the file to see the edit warring over its NFCC justification for this article). See the discussion leading to removal [47]
• File:Doctor Who Impossible Astronaut.jpg deleted for illegitimate NFCC justification.

Anyway, I removed the most recent image, only to have it replaced. So, I'm going to bow out and leave this to others. The basic problem is non-free content being driven by a desire to fill and infobox and then people seek for a content justification, rather than the other way about.--Scott Mac 13:36, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Henry Cavill and Ellen Whitaker

Sourced info about their engagement is being repeatedly deleted. It originally seemed to be from User:2.91.25.12 (who's been warned, to no effect), but other IPs (possible sockpuppets) have joined in. I reported it here, since it involves edit-warring and sockpuppetry, and didn't know whether article protection or blocking the IPs was the solution. Thanks. --Ebyabe (talk) 13:49, 7 May 2011 (UTC)