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Barbara (WVS)'s editing of medical and anatomy articles

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

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Let me start by stating that although Barbara (WVS) (talk · contribs) and I have a tempestuous history, as seen here, here and here, and she began editing medical and anatomy articles because of me (as that history shows), this report is not about that. This report is about about our health articles being some of our most important articles and Barbara (WVS) having repeatedly been a detriment to these articles. The fact that she is a part of WP:Visiting Scholar (although she's not a scholar) makes it even more essential that she not be a detriment to our health articles or topics (some of which she creates) because students are sometimes referred to her or look to her edits to learn. We cannot have editors learning and taking on this style of irresponsible and error-proned editing. Below are examples of Barbara (WVS)'s editing, from most serious to least serious, that really do show that more competence is required to edit in these areas. It also shows that even when challenged on errors, it is common for Barbara (WVS) to stick to her guns and insist that she is correct. Also keep in mind that our anatomy articles fall under "medical" as well.

Problematic editing by Barbara (WVS) at anatomy and medical articles.

As seen at Talk:Vulva/Archive 4, Barbara (WVS) added that the anus is a part of the vulva and stubbornly insisted that it is a part of vulva. She got defensive when others (me included) challenged her on that assertion. It took several editors pointing out that she was wrong just to get her to stop pushing content in this regard. She refused to accept or acknowledge that she was wrong. At the List of vaginal tumors article, Barbara (WVS) heavily used a reference that was a book on domestic animals before being pointed to this error. The List of vaginal tumors article is mostly about humans. Simply paying better attention to the source she was using could have prevented this error. As seen here, despite a number of reliable sources (and the literature at large) stating otherwise, Barbara (WVS) stubbornly insisted on having the Vagina article state that the vaginal epithelium is keratinized. She became defensive, stating, "All I can say is that the relatively recent review article I have states that the top epethelial layer is keratinized. [...]. I can't see how anyone else would even want to comment on this. This is not a hill to die on, at least not for me." I questioned whether or not Barbara (WVS) was misinterpreting the source, given that she had misinterpreted the vulva and anus matter, and other things. An editor eventually made it clear that she was misinterpreting the source. As seen here, Barbara (WVS) removed "mucous membrane," stating, "The vaginal epithelium is not a mucous membrane. See Vaginal epithelium for references." By contrast, as that talk page section shows, many reliable sources state that the vagina is lined with a mucous membrane or they state "vaginal mucosa." Many, but not all, mucous membranes secrete mucus. Judging by Vaginal epithelium#Mucous, it was clear that Barbara (WVS) confused mucous membrane with mucous gland. As seen here, Barbara (WVS) proposed to have the Persistent genital arousal disorder article deleted. She did this without doing a WP:BEFORE job. And she took a hatchet to the article despite what WP:Preserve makes clear. All it took was some looking on Google Books, and the article was significantly improved/saved. As seen here, Barbara (WVS) recently proposed content for the Vagina article that had a host of problems. And this is not the first time she has proposed content for that article in this way. Because of the issues pointed out on the matter, editors considered having, or asked that, Barbara (WVS) step away from editing the article. Do see SilkTork's response in particular. He stated, in part, "some of the edits by Barbara that I see concern me as they may be either removing correct information or inserting dubious or incorrect material. While in the totally of Barbara's edits there is some positive, the time taken to examine her edits to check what she has done, and to correct her mistakes, and to discuss this with her, is disproportionate to the benefits she is able to bring. My feeling at this stage is that the article would progress better without her presence." Barbara (WVS) response was to state "this was a very 'crappy' draft to submit for consideration. I could give all sorts of excuses but will not." She then listed a bullet-point response. As seen here, Barbara (WVS) removed valuable content from the Vaginoplasty article and did not replace it despite being pointed to the WP:Preserve policy. I noted to her that this material was important because those who get the surgery to construct a vagina, meaning to create an entire vagina, need to dilate the vagina. Solid sources in the section show this. As seen here at Talk:Nipple, Barbara (WVS) stubbornly refused to listen on matters regarding purported orgasms from breast/nipple stimulation. She got defensive and ended up stating, "ok....umm wow. You spend too much time on talk pages. It takes me ten minutes to go through your essay. I'm not even going to read them any more. I find your edit summaries more useful. You have got to relax a bit. Both of us could probably bring this article to good status if you would like." Guidelines and sources were provided showing why there were issues with Barbara (WVS)'s edits. As seen here at Talk:Endometriosis, Barbara (WVS) again neglected WP:Preserve and misapplied WP:MEDDATE, as she has a number of times before. References and content she removed was restored by another editor. As seen here, Barbara (WVS) insisted that sourced material was unsourced. As seen here, Barbara (WVS) insisted that we must use WP:PAYWALL sources because they are of higher quality, and because "the whole purpose of the Visiting Scholar program is to provide access to content that is not available through Google Books. Links to the University of Pittsburgh Library holdings would be useless in a reference." This was challenged by editors (me included) on the talk page and contradicted by a Wiki Education Foundation editor.

Now I understand that people make mistakes, but the mistakes by Barbara (WVS) are too often and sometimes too serious to reasonably allow her to continue to edit medical and anatomy articles. The above are just examples. There is also the fact that Barbara (WVS) has a tendency to defend her mistakes as correct. Again, these our health articles. So I ask that the community consider restricting editing her of these topics indefinitely. I am asking for an indefinite topic ban, broadly construed. She has recently banned herself from editing the Vagina article, but this is not enough since that is just one article and (as stated there) she does not see a pattern in her problematic editing and has plans to return to that article after six months. The same issues will be happening with other articles, and with that article once she returns to it. We should not continue to allow an editor with issues such as these to continue to edit in these fields simply because she is with the Visiting Scholar program and creates a lot of medical articles. How many of these articles have serious issues? Pinging Jytdog, Rivertorch, SilkTork, Tom (LT), Johnuniq and SandyGeorgia, who have all expressed concerns about Barbara (WVS) editing these areas. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:17, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Pinging Doc_James, as he might want to say something as well. Classicwiki (talk) 20:47, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Pinging Gandydancer who edits in similar areas. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:06, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

I manage the Visiting Scholars program for Wiki Education. As such, I have a COI with regards to Barbara's edits as a Visiting Scholar. Here are a few clarifying comments you can take as you will:

• The Visiting Scholars program aims to support Wikipedians by providing access to academic resources through a university library. The comment that "she's not a scholar," presumably a comparison to the academic definition of 'scholar', misunderstands the purpose of the program. Participation in the program shouldn't affect editing habits except to equip editors with more research resources.
• Regarding the last bulletpoint (use of paywalled sources), which refers to something I said: When the Visiting Scholars program began, many of the goals/responsibilities of the Scholars were left up to the institutional sponsors to decide. We had not yet developed our current best practices. Back then, part of the way the program was presented to sponsors was to talk about how it could increase traffic to their collections. That doesn't happen anymore. We changed the way we engage with sponsors around the same time Barbara was getting involved. Since then, this is the program in a nutshell: "a Wikipedian who wants to contribute to a particular topic area receives a university login and keeps track of the articles they improve along the way." I.e. editing as normal, with access to better sources, and no responsibility to use them or link to them in any particular way. So I would believe it if Barbara felt like she was supposed to do just that, and I apologize to her and to the community for not doing more to ensure the expectations of early program participants complied with community expectations and standards.
• Regarding "students are sometimes referred to her" - This is untrue. We do not refer students to Visiting Scholars, as we have Wikipedians on staff who support students. Recently, I did connect a Wikipedia Fellow (an academic, not a student) interested in women's health topics to Barbara, but that is the only instance.
• Moving on to more general comments about this proposal: First, pinging only people likely to agree with you in an ANI report strikes me as problematic. Given this the topic of this thread is about a topic ban rather than user conduct issues, it seems more appropriate to ping all editors active on those pages and/or WikiProject Women's Health.
• Most to the point: The list above indeed includes some examples of when Barbara has been wrong. It gives an example like list of vaginal tumors, pointing to Barbara's overuse of a problematic reference. But anyone who doesn't click through to the page before judging on a topic ban wouldn't see that it was Barbara that created the page, with 33 references. The same is true for some others. Barbara has created and improved a huge number of medical articles. I would encourage any editor who intends to opine here to take a look through an Xtools report of her most edited articles to evaluate her general ability to contribute to the topic area in addition to looking at the list above. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:22, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

As Ryan suggested, I am pinging members of Wikipedia:WikiProject Women's Health. Doc James (already done), CFCF, Clayoquot, D.c.camero, FloNight, Fluffernutter, Foxtreetop, Hmlarson, Kaldari, Keilana, Little_pob, Michael_Goodyear, Mvolz, Netha Hussain, Thsmi002, and Whispyhistory. Classicwiki (talk) 22:09, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

I have only had minimal interactions with this editor. She offered to help with Women's health but stated she did not understand the citation style. I offered to help her, but heard nothing more. A blanket ban seems a bit drastic. Do we know what her qualifications are? Is there a role for mentoring? --Michael Goodyear (talk) 22:54, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Ryan (Wiki Ed), the reason that I noted that Barbara (WVS) is not a scholar is so that editors here would know that she is not one. It was not about confusion on my part. I pinged editors who know of Barbara (WVS)'s problematic editing. Her problematic editing is what is under scrutiny here. Most of the editors I pinged have worked with her and/or tried to work with her. Tom (LT) in particular, who is our top anatomy editor, was indifferent to her until assessing a proposal she made at Talk:Vagina. If I was aware of all of the editors who see Barbara (WVS)'s editing as a net positive, I would have pinged them. But I am not aware of many or even a few who do, except for you. Furthermore, here at WP:ANI, pinging every editor of WikiProject Women's Health and/or WP:Med is not required. It also skews the matter because what one can wind up with is editors opposing to restrict Barbara (WVS)'s editing simply because they think she's nice, like her, and/or because she edits a lot of medical topics. It's well known that Barbara (WVS) is often polite. But politeness and editing/creating a lot of medical articles does not equate to competence. Plus, there are people who are a part of WikiProjects who are not on an official WikiProject list. I am a part of WP:Med, but I am not on a list there. Like SilkTork, who was also indifferent to Barbara (WVS) until assessing her problematic editing, I do not see that whatever benefits exist regarding Barbara (WVS)'s editing outweigh the negatives. SandyGeorgia was also indifferent to Barbara (WVS)'s editing until seeing her in action after she (SandyGeorgia) posted this section at WP:Med. And I made it very clear that Barbara (WVS) churning out medical article after medical article (a number of which are not needed and end up merged and/or should be merged) does not mean that she should continue to be allowed to edit in, and create articles for, these areas. If you are willing to put the Wiki Education Foundation above the accuracy and quality of our health articles, then I must disagree with you. I would rather have no article than an article potentially full of errors and sloppy editing. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:55, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Flyer22 Reborn Can you succinctly provide a list of 1-5 links that you are labelling problematic editing? Hmlarson (talk) 23:04, 16 March 2018 (UTC) I've gone through the edits provided - and I'm not seeing many diffs - just your repeated talk page interactions with this editor, which seem fine and allow other editors to provide input to garner WP:CONCENSUS. Without knowing every detail of your previous interactions, I will say my first impressions with the way this is presented reads more like a smear campaign to me with very little stickiness. I agree with Michael Goodyear that a blanket ban is drastic. I also agree more attention needs to be paid to the fact that "Barbara has created and improved a huge number of medical articles" per Ryan (Wiki Ed). Hmlarson (talk) 23:20, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Hmlarson, is the list in the collapse box not enough? Do you think any of what I listed there is not problematic? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:09, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Hmlarson, no, not a smear campaign. Jytdog, Doc James and I have had to fix Barbara's errors and/or otherwise clean up after her a number of times. One article where Doc James has consistently corrected her is Cystocele (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). Doc is more content than some of us when it comes to fixing Barbara's content. Barbara edits some of the same areas that I edit in, and began editing these articles after interacting with me. Any diff and/or linked discussion involving me is merely because of that. But enough of the issues I linked to do show egregious errors and editors (sometimes me included) trying to explain to her that these are errors. The diffs are there in the talk page discussions. I'm sure that others can provide more diffs showing issues. Often, Barbara's initial response is to be defensive rather than listen. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:26, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

• It may be helpful to clarify that some of the problematic edits were made with Barbara's personal account (User:Bfpage), not her WVS account (User:Barbara (WVS)). Since part of the complaint is that she has set a bad example to those following her semi-official(?) work, it would be helpful to show diffs from mistakes made while using her WVS account, or explain why it does not make a difference which account she uses. Prince of Thieves (talk) 23:20, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Some of the examples definitely involve her Barbara (WVS) account. On her Barbara (WVS) user page, she notes the difference between the accounts. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:26, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the ping. I will weigh in with my own observations:

1. Prior to this issue being raised, I had independently noticed some edits made to women's health articles by B that were of low quality, and this surprised me, enough so that I did briefly investigate B's user page and editing history because of this.
2. I was also surprised to see "scholar" there, so the point about it being slightly misleading I also agree with. I'm not sure if there are any practical concerns with this however.
3. Prior to this issue being raised, I had also independently noticed one of the initially pinged users egregiously attacking B for really no good reason at all in a talk page and found it a bit shocking.
4. Pursuant to #3, I observed that B did not back down. In my opinion, because in this issue they were correct, I had considered this a good quality. However, in reading what you posted above, it appears that this is common behaviour and is done every time regardless of whether B is in the wrong.
5. I concur with Ryan (Wiki Ed)'s observation that the addition of volumes of material is overall of a beneficial nature, because we have plenty of missing content in this project.

Although I agree that B sometimes demonstrates a lower level of competence in these areas than I would ideally like, on the other hand I believe that the community is still able to improve upon these new articles and that the addition of this content is overall, a benefit to our coverage. The key point is that these articles are fixable, and that they wouldn't exist without B. This would not be the case if the articles were not salvageable or if the articles' existence wasn't useful. Damaging articles that are already of high quality however is more worrisome, however, it seems like in these cases mentioned the issue was satisfactorily resolved (although this may be selection bias), albeit perhaps with more conflict than was necessary.

Since being notified of this, I have also looked at User:Barbara_(WVS)/articles_created and I was very excited to see what B had accomplished in a short amount of time. I especially liked seeing Template:Breastfeeding and Breastfeeding and medications as I had actually noticed that content in this area was not great a few years ago and never got around to doing it myself. I would be sad to see one of the very few editors adding needed content in these neglected areas be topic banned.

I agree that there are definitely some issues here, but I think a topic ban (on both accounts) is far too aggressive at this point in time. I fine with it if it was decided that B should edit with the Bfpage account on women's health topics instead of the Barabara (WVS) account. Mvolz (talk) 23:59, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Mvolz, in this discussion, it seems that some editors may be underestimating the effort and strain it puts on others to fix these kinds of errors, or to review Barabara (WVS)'s edits because of the errors they are likely to contain and to then have to fix and/or to discuss the matter unless we are to leave the errors in. If you have not yet done so, see what Tom (LT) and SilkTork recently stated. Part of the strain comes from Barabara (WVS) refusing to acknowledge that she is wrong. With Tom (LT), she recently acknowledged some faults, but that is not standard for her. As for creating new articles, there is no deadline. We don't need Barabara (WVS) to create all of these articles. And why should we allow errors to remain in an article even for a day? Are we saying that it's okay for Barabara (WVS) to edit with the lack of care she so often exhibits because the article will eventually be fixed? Errors can stay in articles for years. And as noted before, a lot of articles Barabara (WVS) creates are not needed and can fit in existing articles or be merged with them. See this discussion, where she notes that a number of her articles have been merged and that she "usually [...] can turn four sentences into a brand new article that has enough references to stand on its own." Thing is...she never takes WP:No page into consideration. I don't understand this "quantity over quality" viewpoint I am seeing right now. I could create a whole bunch of articles as well, but I actually care about the content I put out there. I'm not going to sloppily throw together an article with possible errors in them and hope that others fix/clean up the content for me. When I see Barbara (WVS) churning out these articles, I don't see that she actually cares about what she is adding. If she did, she would take the time to proofread all of it and ensure the accuracy of it. All I see is an editor more concerned about her article count (in order to look more prolific than she is) than someone who is actually passionate about any of this. How can an editor reasonably be passionate about content and not do their best to ensure the accuracy of the content? There's a reason that SilkTork, one of our most prolific reviewers, has been clear that although he is interested in working with Barbara (WVS), he does not want to work with her on a medical article because he does not trust her editing medical articles.

Also, regarding "noticed one of the initially pinged users egregiously attacking B for really no good reason at all in a talk page and found it a bit shocking," do you mean Jytdog? I ask because he is the only editor I pinged that has had a tempestuous history with Barbara (WVS). I haven't seen him attack her for no reason, though. If you mean me, I haven't attacked her for no reason either. Also, I would classify my interactions with her more as concerns than attacks. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:26, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

To be brief, the more I look into Barbara's edits, the more concerned I am. I am concerned that

• Barbara has a lot of issues with verifiability, one of our core principles.
• Barbara uses close paraphrasing, and in an attempt to avoid this, alters facts
• A not insignificant portion of Barbara's edits are incorrect
• A number of other editors share these views.
• The time required to track and discuss Barbara's edits is great

Content addition is not an excuse, our information is reposted throughout the internet and our core mission is to be an encyclopedia, ie. give readers accurate an encyclopedic content that is verified. An editor that contributes lots of content has a higher burden to make sure that content is accurate. If it is not, it is just taking away the time of another content editor to track and fix said edits, or worse, disseminating wrong information. I would like to see:

1. A mentor appointed, to help Barbara and also to have someone supervise and monitor her edits
2. Barbara follow through with her commitment to check edits she has made over the last 6 months
3. A commitment to slower editing of articles, with the understanding that mainspace is for finalised content additions --Tom (LT) (talk) 01:13, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Addit.

• As an example, see the lead of List of vaginal tumors. This still contains close paraphrasing, and is so grossly incorrect that I think speaks to the gravity of this situation. "The terms mass and nodule are synonymous with tumor". "Vaginal cancers are malignant neoplasms that originate from vaginal epithelium,"; "Cancer that has spread from the colon, bladder, and stomach is far more common than cancer that originates in the vagina itself" (probably correct, included twice; but - not found in source??)
• Vaginal epithelium: For the sake of demonstration,

1. " Hafez ES, Kenemans P (2012-12-06). Atlas of Human Reproduction: By Scanning Electron Microscopy. Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 1–6. ISBN 9789401181402." not on page 1-6.
2. USMLE Lecture notes is not a reliable source.
3. "The cells of the vaginal epithelium retain an usually high level of glycogen compared to other epithelial tissue in the body" is not present on p154 of stated reference
4. Where is anything related to "Vaginal epithelium forms transverse ridges or rugae that are most prominent in the lower third of the vagina. This structure of the epithelium results in an increased surface area that allows for stretching" in its supporting three references
5. Where is the claim to uniqueness or permeability in the two references for "This layer of epithelium is protective and its uppermost "?
6. Three references for "stratum spinosum is part of the parabasal layer". I can't find this in the first two references I can access?
7. Where is this claim "Intermediate cells make abundant glycogen and store it" in this source: "5 minute clinical consult"?
8. "Estrogen induces the intermediate and superficial cells to fill with glycogen" where is this in the sources? source 2 doesn't mention intermediate or superficial cells. Source 1 says estorgen stimulates cells to mature, which is characterised by filling with estrogen

I would like to ask some other medical editors to contribute here. These authoritative-looking sourced edits are not uncommonly both incorrect and incorrectly sourced. --Tom (LT) (talk) 04:07, 17 March 2018 (UTC):::I would like to begin to respond to Tom (LT)

• Much of the content you use to demonstrate my problematic edits as being examples of close paraphrasing in the lead of the article List of vaginal tumors is in the public domain and published by the US govt with no copyright restrictions except for attribution.
• The content is not grossly incorrect. The terms mass, tumor, neoplasm, and nodule are synonyms or at least have significant overlap according to the National Cancer Institute:

“Tumor - An abnormal mass of tissue that results when cells divide more than they should or do not die when they should. Tumors may be benign (not cancer), or malignant (cancer). Also called neoplasm.” National Cancer Institute public domain content, no need to paraphrase.

“Mass - In medicine, a lump in the body. It may be caused by the abnormal growth of cells, a cyst, hormonal changes, or an immune reaction. A mass may be benign (not cancer) or malignant (cancer).” National Cancer Institute public domain content, no need to paraphrase.

“Nodule - A growth or lump that may be malignant (cancer) or benign (not cancer).” National Cancer Institute public domain content, no need to paraphrase

“Neoplasm - An abnormal mass of tissue that results when cells divide more than they should or do not die when they should. Neoplasms may be benign (not cancer), or malignant (cancer). Also called tumor.” National Cancer Institute, public domain content, no need to paraphrase.

• Vaginal cancers are malignant neoplasms that originate from vaginal epithelium.

“Carcinomas start in epithelial tissues.” Cancer Research UK

“About 70 of every 100 cases of vaginal cancer are squamous cell carcinomas. These cancers begin in the squamous cells that make up the epithelial lining of the vagina.” From the American Cancer Society

“Melanomas are tumors that arise from melanocytes or the pigment cells. A common form of melanoma [is foundin the]…lining of the urogenital tract, respiratory tract and the gastrointestinal tract. In 3% of healthy women, melanocytes can be found in the basal portion of the vaginal epidermis…”Primary Vaginal Melanoma, A Rare and Aggressive Entity. A Case Report and Review of the Literature

Barbara ✐  ✉ 11:57, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

After informing the editors on the talk page of the Vagina article that I was in the midst of some serious family and personal issues, which I would have preferred to communicate via email but was informed that was unacceptable, it may have been seen as an opportune time to appear here on ANI to level these 'charges'. This effectively removes me from significant participation in this discussion as the editors monitoring the talk page of the Vagina article have noted. I understand the reasoning behind initiating this discussion but question the timing. I'm not sure this figures into this discussion at all, but it might be possible to delay the closure of this discussion to accommodate the difficulties I am experiencing right not. If an administrator would like to contact me by email I would be happy to discuss this. Best Regards, Barbara ✐  ✉ 12:06, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Your real-life circumstances were not taken into account because this is something that needed addressing now instead of months from now, when the recent stuff regarding the Vagina article and other stuff would be considered old news. It's not something that should simply have been restricted to the Vagina talk page. I don't see that we needed to hold off on this because you said you've had a death in the family. We don't know what is going on in your personal life. And I'm not stating that you are being dishonest, but this wouldn't be the first time that an editor has said that they are dealing with personal issues (including a death in the family) after their editing has been highlighted as problematic. I am dealing with significant health issues. It's yet another reason that I've wanted to work with SilkTork again and go ahead and get the Vagina article where it needs to be. But I don't want sympathy, and so I keep my real-life issues to myself. I didn't even express this to him. I understand that telling fellow editors can simply be about ensuring that they are more understanding of what is going on with an editor, but it's still something I usually keep to myself. As you know, SandyGeorgia is also going through health issues regarding her husband, but she still took the time to weigh in here. And the reason we know about her husband's health issues is, in part, because she cares about what we put into our medical articles. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:28, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

My condolences, Barbara. You only disclosed this information after emailing users involved and after I had expressed my concerns. In addition you are still making large amounts of edits. If this is a difficult time, it may be best to take a short wikibreak so that the stress of Wikipedia isn't contributing to what must already be a difficult period. --Tom (LT) (talk) 00:13, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

I share many of the concerns raised by Flyer22 Reborn, Tom (LT), and others. My experience with Barbara (WVS) stems entirely from my recent work to help prepare Vagina for GA review. I have noticed what appear to be competency issues, as well as behavioral issues, with her participation there. I am anything but an expert on the topic, so I don't feel comfortable commenting on the basic merit of her contributions, but I will say that more than a few of her edits have been hasty and poorly executed. If this happened only rarely, I'd be inclined to dismiss it as an aberration—everyone has off days, after all—but it has happened multiple times in the several weeks that I've been actively involved with the article.

When the problem edits have been brought to her attention, her responses have been less than ideal. While invariably remaining perfectly civil and often even friendly (for instance, she left an award on my talk page—a kind gesture), she tends to get quite defensive, insisting that she is acting in good faith even when no one has suggested anything to the contrary. She has also demonstrated a propensity for endorsing a consensus reached on the talk page but then making edits contrary to that consensus. And she has repeatedly alluded to more work needing to be done on the article and suggested that it will be a lengthy process, an approach which effectively puts any ideas of moving forward with the GA review in limbo; this seems quite unfair to editors such as Flyer who have shown enormous diligence in their work to improve the article and would clearly like to see it promoted and move on. Taken as a whole, such behaviors have caused considerable consternation among other editors and contributed to what has become an atmosphere on the talk page that for all its civility is best described as toxic. This needs to stop.

Most recently, at Talk:Vagina, Barbara (WVS) laid out two hypothetical scenarios about editors making errors. I'm not entirely sure what her point was, but I have to say that either scenario would indicate a major problem: whether an editor is making ten errors per month or only three, it's way too many, at least if we're talking about important articles about anatomical or medical topics. Such articles demand extra care, and on Vagina at least, Barbara hasn't shown that. Nobody expects perfection, but if one is repeatedly showing an inability or unwillingness to slow down and take great care before clicking on "Publish changes", then it would be better to avoid editing such articles entirely. I understand that she adds a lot of content on topics where our coverage may be skimpy, but I don't buy the argument that that somehow compensates for making careless mistakes; the seriousness of an error isn't mitigated by its relative infrequency or by any number of unproblematic edits made elsewhere. (Maybe the situation was different ten years ago, when WP was still something of a novelty and desperately lacking content, but now that we're invariably at the top of the search results and millions of readers are depending on us, accuracy must be prioritized over comprehensiveness.) Personally, if it were demonstrated that I was making repeated content or sourcing errors in a particular topic area—or indeed doing anything to needlessly cause serious concern among several of my fellow editors—I'd be inclined to back off and go do something else. I think it would be most helpful at this point if Barbara were to agree to desist from editing articles on medicine or anatomy. Rivertorch^FIRE_WATER 11:05, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Barbara pinged me about this discussion a few hours ago and I've just noticed it. I've been on a wikibreak for a little over a year but have now decided to step back into editing. I've never worked on content with Barbara but we do get on well and I'd be happy to take on mentorship if that would suit her and those above expressing concerns about her work. I'm well across Wikipedia's editing policies and guidelines and have a lot of experience in medical content. I was a founding board member of WikiProject Med Foundation, and I'm probably more concerned about the accuracy of our medical content than most. (I'm signing off for the night now and should be back online in about ten hours.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 12:01, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you Anthony. When I proposed my mentorship on the talk page of the Vagina article I was hoping you would be agreeable. Thank you for your help. I certainly agree that I will be able to better see my errors, admit my mistakes and move forward with your sound advice. Best Regards, Barbara ✐  ✉ 23:18, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Since Anothonyhcole, a knowledgeable editor, has offered to mentor Barbara and because it does seem Barbara does produce good content alongside some bad judgements, I feel a topic ban is probably premature. I support mentorship under anthonyhcole and oppose, at this stage, a topic ban. If the mentorship does not resolve the problem then a topic ban could be revisited.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 12:45, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Not so fast! No one pinged Wikipedia:WikiProject Men's Health ... oops, never mind.

I was actually brought into this when this unnecessary and out-of-the-blue meanness occurred on my talk page. Seeing no context for that kind of post, it raised red flags, and I thought maybe it was being suggested that I needed to do some sock checking for You Know Who. After reviewing considerable edits from both of Barbara's accounts, the conclusion was no need for an SPI. There are behavioral and personality similarities, mostly that both are very thin-skinned and when they get defensive, talk discussion is derailed, but there are significant differences in editing style and competence.

I have been at a loss about what to do about this situation, because mentoring of the similar account never worked. I am also concerned about a double standard in restricting one medical editor, when equally dangerous and egregious editing has occurred in the last month on the prostate suite of articles by three male medical editors, who are generally held in high regard, and have not been called to task for a pattern of much-too-hurried and at times inaccurate editing. One editor reinstated outdated medical info after I replaced it with current information, with no explanation or discussion. I have pointed out these edits on article talk and my talk, and notice that we haven't heard from those editors in this discussion. I hope they are realizing that another medical editor is being called to task for exactly what they have done. Yes, Barbara deleted accurate text from prostate articles rather than tag text that needed better sourcing, but other editors have added worse text, outdated text, and left the articles with grammatical errors-- errors of the type that lead to more egregious inaccuracies in the articles than what Barbara did. Nonetheless, four wrongs don't make a right, and this situation needs a solution on its own merits.

I think Anthonyhcole would be an excellent mentor, and believe that to be a good route to go, but because we have been down the mentoring path (unsuccessfully) before with a similar editor, I suggest we impose a couple of conditions before jumping to a conclusion:

1. Something outlining when the Bfpage vs the Barbara account is to be used.
2. History of mentoring an editor with a similar behavioral profile shows that mentorship won't work without an acknowledgement from Barbara that her editing is a problem-- no excuses, no thin-skinned defense. She has to acknowledge the problem, and agree to go along with Anthonyhcole's mentorship.
3. Something about how to allow Flyer (who edits with competence) to pursue GA or FA without interference from these accounts.
4. Some way to address the unnecessary meanness aimed at Barbara I mentioned above should it occur agaiin-- that sort of behavior is spread all over medical editing, and Anthonyhcole is not an admin, so how will he be able to deal with that if it occurs?

With some conditions in place, I believe we can avoid losing an editor in an area where we have too few, and hopefully help Barbara edit well within her competency. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:24, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

PS, because @SilkTork: was a mentor to the other editor I mention, I defer to his judgment and suggestions. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:58, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Replying here directly to Sandy's comments above. Mentoring Mattisse was very demanding, and there were several of us doing it. Mentoring in this case would work better if Barbara herself wanted it rather than merely accepted it as a condition to allow her to continue editing medical articles. I would be happy to work with Barbara on non-medical articles, but only if she gave up editing on medical articles voluntarily. I think Barbara is already an asset to the project, and would be an even greater one if she applied herself positively to areas where she can work without conflict. If she continued to edit medical articles, with or without a mentor, I fear there would be continuing strife and non-productive problem solving, and the de-motivation of at least one of our known good medical contributors. SilkTork (talk) 15:56, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia, I thought you meant that it was Barbara who made the grammatical mistakes. That's another aspect of her editing. Either way, I agree that Anthonyhcole, who I'm familiar with, could be a great mentor. I'm unconvinced that mentoring would work in this case since Barbara's behavior and style of editing is her own and is something unlikely to change. It's not just verifiability we are concerned about, after all. But if that is what editors want to give a shot first instead of a topic ban or some other type of editing restriction, there isn't anything I can do about that. I was going to leave the idea for what type of an editing restriction to go with for someone else to suggest. For example, a temporary editing restriction with conditions. I wondered if requesting an indefinite topic ban might seem heavy-handed to some, but I was/am that concerned. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:28, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

There were so many grammatical errors left on the prostate articles, that I stopped trying to figure out which of the editors had introduced which errors, although I am fairly certain it was not only Barbara. I posted about just a few on talk, asking other (not Barbara) editors to please slow down and take more care with their edits. Yes, I see the problems with Barbara relative to Verifiability, and I saw that she deleted accurate content that only needed better sourcing. I wish I could say she was the only editor who was not demonstrating sufficient care with a topic (prostate cancer and screening) that will affect one in six men, but unfortunately, I have seen at least four medical editors making serious errors in that suite of articles. Who knew that women's health issues were more important on Wikipedia than men's? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:42, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

• This is a subtle and delicate situation. When Flyer asked me if I was interested in doing a GA review of Vagina she alerted me to the tension on that article between herself and Barbara. My response was that I welcomed editing tension between two strong editors on such a complex article, as it generally encourages robust editing when editors have to argue for and justify their edits, so I wasn't concerned. I was a little unclear on Barbara's use of two accounts, and the use of WVS in the name of her Barbara account; however, the usage is for record keeping, as explained here.

I kept at a distance, then Barbara asked me to take a look. I didn't like what I saw from either Flyer or Barbara, as edit warring had occurred. We prefer talked through solutions to editing disagreements, especially between experienced editors. However, in this instance it was clear that Barbara had initiated the conflict by inserting substantial text against the consensus arrived at on the article talkpage. It was a surprisingly unwise move to make in the circumstances. I glanced at some of Barbara's recent edits, and noted this and this, which didn't strike me as helpful, and seemed to be oddly "pointy" in that it seemed as though Barbara was keen to discover errors in the article - yet in doing so, she was altering acceptable content and either replacing it with dubious content, or none at all. In short, it appeared that she was making mistakes, and making mistakes based not on attempting to improve the article, but on attempting to score points (as suggested by her edit summaries). It seemed to me that she was editing on the Vagina article just a little beyond her skill set, and was not behaving collegiately.

I asked a few medical editors to look into her contributions, and everyone had the same conclusion. Barbara is an enthusiastic and hard working editor who has access to sources, and who can be an asset to Wikipedia, but she doesn't always understand the sources she reads, and is often unable to put what she reads into a wider context. It was proposed during discussions that the matter be brought here, but I advised against that as she is not doing anything against Wikipedia policy, and her editing and behaviour problems are low key, and can be corrected, and she was engaging in discussions. My feeling was that any approach made here would be met with: "she wants to help, she can help, she just needs to be guided: give her time and see how it works out - perhaps try mentoring". The name Mattisse came to mind. Not that I thought Barbara and Mattisse are the same person, but more that they share the same behaviour pattern, and cause the same problems. Both were enthusiastic and hard-working contributors who could offer so much to the project; but both created a lot of stress and time-consumption for other editors. I am very familiar with the Mattisse connection as I was one of Mattisse's mentors and I have the same empathy for Barbara as I did for Mattisse.

I pondered if asking Barbara to stop editing on Vagina, and offering to help her edit elsewhere would solve the issue. She has created some decent articles which could be brought to GA standard. But I decided not to interfere so strongly, hoping instead that matters would be resolved on Vagina, especially after another talkpage consensus on how to edit the article seemed to have everyone's agreement. But then she did this (removed sourced content with another pointy comment that needed substantiating), and I began to wonder if it was time to tempt her away. So I made my offer, which she refused. I still hold out hope that she will see sense herself, and stop editing in an area where she creates stress for herself and others. I am concerned that, like Mattisse, Barbara brings unnecessary toxicity to Wikipedia, and wears out editors who are doing good work. I have huge respect for Flyer, and I know she suffers under such editing conditions. I am unclear through all the months of struggle what positive contributions Barbara has brought to the Vagina article, but they have come at a disproportionate cost, and I fear we are wearing out a very good contributor in Flyer. My preference would be for Barbara to accept that she is creating more problems than solutions at Vagina, and quite possibly at other medical articles, and to edit in other areas where there is no conflict, and where she can do some good. SilkTork (talk) 15:47, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

This is all highly unfortunate for all. Anatomy should not really be that controversial. I approached this from a neutral point of view, and as one with training in conflict management. I took a look at the lead on List of vaginal tumors and was dismayed at the standard. I spent the morning trying to clean it up, but it requires far more than I have time for just now. So if that is representative, there is a problem. I still support mentoring but with feedback to the group as to whether it is showing any progress. Michael Goodyear (talk) 17:38, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Copyvio problems

In at least 5 times, spaced over a year, editors have picked up and reported to Barbara re. either copying or close paraphrasing. --Tom (LT) (talk) 00:13, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

• Diannaa in March 2017 (response: "I will be more careful") here.
• Doc James in December 2017 (response: "Yikes! I will remember that"). link
• Shalor (Wiki Ed) in February 2018 (response: "I will... figure out what I did wrong"). User_talk:Barbara_(WVS)#Vaginal_support_structures
• Diannaa again in February 2018, same link as above
• Me in March 2018 at Talk:Vagina proposed and copied without attribution from List of vaginal tumors which is close paraphrasing from source page [1], Talk:Vagina#Concerns

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Tom (LT) (talk • contribs) 00:15, March 18, 2018 (UTC)

More data points

I have never had a direct conflict with Barbara, and I see a lot of goodness in what she does for Wikipedia. I think she really wants to improve articles on women’s health. However, and with sadness, I have to agree with the above sentiments that it would be better for her to direct her efforts elsewhere.

A few months ago while reading the Breastfeeding article, I came across a passage that contained significant errors. As this is a Featured Article former Featured Article, I wondered if the passage had been recently vandalized, so I searched through the article history to see when it had changed. I discovered that the errors were introduced in this edit by Barbara (she copied the passage from another article that she had written).

The errors in this edit include:

• "About 2 to 3 days (72 to 96 hours) before the birth the breasts begin to produce the fore milk or colostrum.” This happens at mid-pregnancy, not 2-3 days before birth. Also, foremilk is not colostrum. Foremilk is the milk released in the beginning of every feed. Colostrum is the milk produced in the first days of breastfeeding.

• “...This sometimes described as "the milk coming in”.” No. The term “milk coming in” refers to the increase in milk production that occurs after delivery, not before delivery.

• "In about three days to five days the normal and expected milk forms.” The milk that is produced at days 0, 1, and 2, i.e. colostrum, is also perfectly normal and expected. This wording is not harmless — one of the reasons for low breastfeeding rates in some communities is the erroneous belief that colostrum is inadequate or bad food for babies.[2]

• "Engorgement of the breast is a normal development at this time. The breast changes and can become red.” Redness is not a normal feature of engorgement. Redness is a possible sign of infection (mastitis) in the breast.

Barbara's edit summary said that the content she was replacing was “outdated”. OK, the refs in the older content were from 2005, but I can see nothing outdated in the facts in it. It was a well-written, factually accurate passage that she replaced by a passage with a lot of problems.

Yesterday, after being pinged into this thread, I spot-checked Barbara’s other edits to Breastfeeding and found another significantly problematic edit. In this edit, she removed good content that describes the process of latching on, and also removed the important fact that a good latch is needed for the baby to get enough milk. Overall her edit also made the section less clear, in my opinion.

Looking at the pattern that’s emerging, my fear is that Barbara’s past contributions to medical topics will need to be systematically re-verified by other editors who have expertise in these topics and access to her sources. I think we are all in agreement that Wikipedia is short of editors on women’s health topics. If we don’t have enough people volunteering to edit in this area, where are we going to find the people to check and fix Barbara’s work?

Barbara, I hope you will continue to be active in the Wikipedia community. I love your sense of humour and your dedication. Nobody is good at everything, and that’s OK. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:57, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

@Clayoquot:, just noting that breastfeeding is not a featured article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:18, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Oh right. It's a former featured article. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 06:24, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Mentorship

I've followed all the links above, I think, and am seeing problems with

• instances of poor prose - unclear expression, typo's, inadvertant repetition of ideas or text, etc. - all of which speak to a failure to double-check work before moving on;
• insufficient care with verifiability - such as attributing claims to sources that do not make those claims;
• some misreading;
• some close paraphrasing;
• some resistance when being challenged or corrected.

If I've missed some important areas of concern in my bullet list, please let me know.

Some of the examples cited in the evidence above are errors that all active medical editors make from time to time, and her talk page demeanour is better than that of several of Wikipedia's most active and appreciated medical editors. That said, however, I think an intervention is needed. I'd like to see Barbara taking more time with her editing, with particular focus on the above points: producing less text, perhaps, but producing much more polished and rigorous work.

What I'd like to do, if she's amenable, and others are agreeable, is actively mentor her: daily critiquing her performance in article- and talk-space. I'll be particularly checking that her sources support her interpretation (as well as a non-specialist can), but will also oversee expression, paraphrasing and talk page performance. We're 12 hours apart so she can ping me at the end of her day and I can review her work while she sleeps and have a critique ready for her when she's back online. I'd like to come back here with a progress report after a month and we can decide then if it's working and whether or not to continue.

If you can think of another, better approach, I'm all ears. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 08:10, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for that Anthony; I think that is a good offer. I think it is agreed that Barbara has much to offer Wikipedia in general, but that there are some problems with Barbara's editing of medical articles, and with her reluctance to accept advice, so your assistance might hopefully guide her towards improvement in those areas. Could I suggest that until the community sees that improvement that Barbara restricts herself to non-medical articles? Allow Barbara to build up her confidence and skills, and allow the community to regain some trust in her editing. If she continued to edit medical articles, even under your guidance, before she was ready, and she made a mistake, it would likely be picked up quite quickly, and an incident made out of it, which might bring us back here for another discussion. Of course this all depends on Barbara herself. Unless Barbara willingly accepts you as mentor, and listens carefully to you, there will be no improvement. So my feeling is that the mentoring solution needs Barbara's own willingness and commitment, and would need a period of say six months of (non-problematic) non-medical editing to ensure we don't rapidly return to ANI for minor mistakes. SilkTork (talk) 09:34, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

SilkTork, I agree Barbara should not be editing biology or medicine articles for the time being. Once I'm confident she's ready, I'll ask her to begin editing medical content in user- or draft-space and, only when I'm confident she's mastered the bullet-list issues in that very difficult and complex topic, I'll propose a lifting of the restriction here. I'd rather not impose an arbitrary time limit, and promise not to waste the community's time by bringing her back here prematurely. It's just that, if she's clearly mastered those bullet points, above, in a shorter timeframe than 6 months, arbitrarily extending it to the 6 months would seem punitive to me. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 11:04, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes, you're right. I agree. I also think that this should be dependent on Barbara herself, and that it would be better if we are not imposing formal limitations or conditions on her. This should be entirely at her choice, and on the understanding that this is being done to enable us to assist her in editing Wikipedia without stress and conflict so that we can continue benefiting from her enthusiasm and hard work. SilkTork (talk) 11:53, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

I just rang Barbara. She's got a lot on this morning but will respond later today or this evening. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:39, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

I should add she reached out to me for help with her work, yesterday, specifically citation style. I was amenable to this.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 14:15, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree with the proposed restrictions on my editing, and actually consider them valid and believe it or not I thank everyone for taking the time to respond. Some of this was hard to hear, admittedly. If it is okay, I would like to continue working on microbiology articles. There are gaps that I found that I can fill in with little 'trouble' or controversy.The only other thing I would like to do is have the opportunity to go back and correct the errors that where described in this ANI discussion. If I can do this, I will be able to clean up my 'messes' and make the content more accurate. I started doing this about two days ago, anyway and I am eager to keep doing it. I will add the phrase in my edit summary: "corrected previous error" and if Anthony doesn't think it was valid, it can be reverted by him (or anyone, really). Thank you to Michael Goodyear for helping with referencing. Thank you to Anthony for taking on this burden (!!) (While looking for references, I deleted this piece of vandalism in a medical article, this was not meant to 'test' my restrictions but is reflexive on my part. apologies) Best Regards, Barbara ✐  ✉ 18:45, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Anthonyhcole, per what SandyGeorgia, Clayoquot and I have stated above, there is also an issue of misunderstanding WP:MEDDATE (or viewing it differently) and neglecting WP:Preserve. In the collapse box, I already linked to this example. Here is an example of me trying to explain WP:MEDDATE. Similar about WP:MEDDATE was stated to an editor during the Cervix GA nomination. Anatomy or other medical material being supported by sources older than five years, or even significantly older than five years, does not mean that the material is outdated.

Thanks for taking this on. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:50, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Good catch, Flyer. I shall discuss MEDDATE and PRESERVE with Barbara until I'm comfortable she's got it, and until I see PRESERVE routinely demonstrated in non-med topics. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:49, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

I've proposed to Barbara that she drop translation, and avoid all health-related articles (psychology, medicine and biology, including microbiology.) We agree her rigor needs perfecting and she won't be coming back to medicine until her prose, formatting and grasp of her material are perfect. Barbara will immediately begin exercising rigor and AGF in any other knowledge domains she feels like embracing . She will work on article drafts covering any topic she chooses, including medicine. Can I get back to you when she and I think she's ready for medicine? I have no idea how long that will take. We haven't spoken about an interaction ban, but I support it and expect she will, too. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:05, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

I've just spoken to Barbara and, yes, she's fine with a one-way interaction ban. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 09:43, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for that Anthony. Given the sensitive nature of the health, sexuality and anatomy topic areas, and the evidence put forward in this discussion regarding Barbara's poor level of competence in those areas, combined with her long-term reluctance to accept that there was a problem, I would think it unlikely that the community would lift a topic ban without some extended and convincing evidence of improved competence. With your help she might be able to achieve that; though another option, and one that I think Barbara should give serious consideration to, is that Barbara decides that editing in health, sexuality and anatomy is too problematic for her and the project as a whole, and concentrates her energies on helping out on Wikipedia in other topic areas. I think Snowy Owl (Audubon), and Darlington Collection, show what she can do, and she helped out on referencing in Whiskey Rebellion during its successful GA review. There is so much positive she can do without venturing back into a area of known stress and difficulty. SilkTork (talk) 12:17, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

• Comment - I am not one of the involved editors here, but I will say that I thank User:Anthonyhcole for anything that can be done to improve this situation. I personally do not think that mentorship is promising for an experienced editor who doesn't seem to learn from her experience, but I would prefer to see efforts at solutions that minimize penalties. If not, not. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:45, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Some more data points

I have held off from commenting thus far, to ensure that the original semi-canvassing ping to me was well balanced by pinging others, and it has been. The problem of Barbara is a hard one. She has apparently been a very productive contributor to the translation task force. I cannot speak to how good her edits have been in Creole, but I have seen her praised for her work there. And she seems in some ways to be well-intentioned. She also has an ugly side, and when she lets that take her, she does disruptive and POINTy things.

• Obstinate, sometimes vindictive behavior This is the most troubling behavioral thing. Her original conflict with Flyer back in 2015 came from Barbara editing in an anti-feminist and pro-men's rights fashion, and led Barbara to start HOUNDING Flyer and led Barbara give barnstars to editors who were wishing nasty things on Flyer - people who come here to promote men's rights or denigrate women or write creepy stuff about sex. She got a 6 month block that was later reduced. (see this ANI and this one. That behavior was just ugly as hell, and Barbara never acknowledged it. She was unblocked only because she promised to steer clear of Flyer in certain ways and for a limited time per these conditions); she never acknowledged following or the ugly barnstarring. (unblock request, discussion, and unblock)

This is the kind of ugly behavior that has cropped up from time to time. I tried to let Barbara know that this was not OK, and that led to her filing this ANI asking for an IBAN with me. Which got no traction. If you look at the diffs that she provided (!) you will see the kind of behaviors in which she was engaging, that I was trying to warn her away from. This sort of behavior has continued. We had an academic spam article created at Culinary coaching which we deleted via an AfD. Barbara decided this was a "women's issues" thing (which is pretty sexist but whatever) and she tried like crazy to save it as admins can see from the history of that page, using poor quality refs and academic spam refs. When she realized that the AfD remained solidly against her, she went and created Sexism in medicine (creating diff - this was very clear in her contribs from that time, but the diffs at "Culinary coaching" are gone due its being deleted, so it is not clear now to non-admins). Sexism in medicine is a fine article to have btw, but its creation was POINTY and...bizarre as there is nothing particularly "women's issues" about teaching people to cook food that is good for them. This sort of thing.

Barbara and I got into a conflict at Ketorolac in March 2017 where she was trying to force in content that violated WP:NOTHOWTO, which MEDMOS also specifically warns against. She was just not hearing it at the talk page, and I ended up filing at EWN case. Her response to the whole thing, btw, was ~apparently~ this, including the image posted here. This is the kind of thing I mean above about behavior. That is just ...twisted and actually disdainful. Kind of funny, yes. But disdainful.

Kind of related to that disdainful humor thing, see this mockery of the DS notice that she created in December 2016 after I gave her a real one. Please see the comments from guy just below the mock-DS notice.

(and this, User:SandyGeorgia, is what my remark at your talk page was about - Barbara is attracted to behavior like your hollering bias on the prostate stuff as "harming men" -- it brings out the worst in her and she encourages people in bad ways, like when she barnstarred Flyers' hounders).

• Content and sourcing In terms of content, this is the most troubling thing. For some reason, Barbara has refused to engage with MEDRS (this is getting better but is not there yet), and keeps adding content about health based on non-MEDRS sources. The earliest direct discussion I could find with her about this was back in the summer of 2015, in this section and the one below it, where Doc James was trying to teach her. I had a clash with her on some microbiome stuff that i posted about here in June 2016. She claims it is "confusing" but after two years of people trying to teach her, this is either simply obstinate or incompetence. That is a blunt thing to say, I know.
  • See Pain management in children as it stood when she built it up in August 2017. One of the most cited sources is this page from Stanford. We have said over and over that university/hospital websites are not OK per MEDRS. But there it is cited 9 times. A ref from 1989, another from 1998, 2 refs from 2001, others from 2003, 2004, 2007... this is just hard to watch - new articles being built up with already-outdated sources.

See this mess from the PTSD article in October 2017, where Barbara was edit warring in content based on press releases and a university/hospital website.

• COPYVIO - others have mentioned this, and this continues. this diff from 2 weeks ago, is a copy/paste from here, with the original inline citations left in place. That was at one of the prostate articles, which she ran right on over to in response to SandyGeorgia.

• Other stuff. Last fall Barbara was working on miscarriage-related topics and created Miscarriage and grief and Miscarriage and mental illness (which remain a bit of a mess in relation to each other, and with respect to each one's sourcing, content, and structure) and in the course of that, was really working the line that abortion (induced miscarriage) causes PTSD, which is straight up anti-abortion activist crap, which in light of her original mens rights activism/anti-feminism editing when she first got here, was disturbing. I opened a section about the sourcing she was using at WT:MED here which Barbara brought up again here. (that was part of the conflict at PTSD I mentioned above, as she wanted add it there as well)

Old issue now not continuing, but the traces remain: For a while she was adding a tag to refs that she got through her relationship with Pitt, as in this diff, where she was including "Access provided by the University of Pittsburgh" to citations she added. This was very inappropriate in my view (relevant to her initial access, but not to anyone else's subsequently, and promotional for Pitt). She stopped doing it but there are still about 70 pages with that tag still present.

She does have a sense of humor which I am sure many people appreciate, like the "revert me why" thing above. She made an article about Squirrel-sponsored cyberterrorism (which was inappropriate humor in mainspace and was renamed and very much revised after an AfD... but was funny!) and she has been contributing humor to Signpost for a while now. But that humor can be ugly/disdainful and misplaced.

This is a hard thing. She can be a good contributor, but there is this obstinate and even nasty side of her as well. I see above the proposal to mentor, and I hope that goes well. To be honest when her name comes up on my watch list I groan, as the content is likely to be badly sourced and not accurately summarizing the sources, and I would have to deal with the obstinate stuff trying to get it fixed. Most times I just ignore it as I try to avoid her. Jytdog (talk) 22:54, 18 March 2018 (UTC) (tweaked a bit Jytdog (talk) 00:16, 19 March 2018 (UTC))

Thank you, @Jytdog:, for the context; it is helpful to be made aware of this, and if it is gender-based activism bologna, I am sorry I added to and furthered that behavior with my concern about a men's health topic that is affecting my life right now.

So, I now have three new concerns:

• Creole translation. Since I speak fluent Spanish and often check DYKs, GAs and FAs for translation, I know that translation is almost always problematic even in the best of circumstances, as well as being a frequent source of copyvio. DYKs, GAs and FAs are often sailing through until I come in and can read the sources, and say ... whoa, there! Not in the sources, not what the sources say, not a reliable source, or copyvio via direct translation. So, here we have an editor who has already demonstrated weak knowledge of copyvio and close paraphrasing, along with a problem in competency in interpreting sources, along with difficulty in understanding the medical concepts she is writing about, and YET we have her translating medical content to a language that perhaps no one else is fluent in or can double-check? If we are concerned about her work in English, we should be triply concerned about having her translating medical content then. I believe she should not be translating. If we have bad editing, why should we allow bad editing in a language few can check? (This is a problem throughout translations on Wikipedia, and why I am against the headlong rush into it ... we have poor medical content across the English project, and we are going to use the precious few resources we have to spread our poor content to other languages, making it possibly even poorer in the process? <scratching my head>
• Jytdog said: "She was unblocked only because she promised to steer clear of Flyer; she never acknowledged following or the ugly barnstarring. (unblock request, discussion, and unblock)". (emphasis mine) That is a long discussion; could one of you (Flyer or Jytdog) point out a specific diff where she "promised to steer clear of Flyer"? Because if we have that, and Barbara has indeed already gone back on that promise in her interaction with Flyer in this ANI, we have a good indication already that mentoring is not going to work. This is reading more and more like Mattisse Mentoring 101, and by allowing the Mattisse situation to go on for years, we just got more and more conflict, taking more and more time from good-faith editors who only wanted to help. If she has already broken a promise, we should see the diff (if possible), and call the game now.
• COPYVIO. We see a DIDNTHEARTHAT problem with understanding of copyright. It seems that various editors have told Barbara over and over what she can and cannot do vis-a-vis copyright, yet she indicates above that she still thinks it's OK to just plop public domain text into articles. Again, this is sounding too familiar.

Seeing the whole picture now from multiple editors, I am quite concerned we are heading down the same path that did not work with Mattisse. We did it there for the same reason here-- we wanted to retain the value of sometimes good edits. It didn't work. Again, though, I defer to @SilkTork:-- he was the one who did the hard mentoring work. I'm remembering we also clobbered @Deathphoenix: by putting him into a difficult mentoring situation in 2007. If it is still decided to go with mentoring, much tighter parameters could be called for. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:43, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

User:SandyGeorgia the unblock conditions were more nuanced than what I wrote above, sorry. (have redacted). The unblock conditions were here and expired Dec 2015, I believe. Jytdog (talk) 00:16, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, struck my second point, then. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:23, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Visiting Corn Flakes Eater issue

Allowing an editor who is not a scholar to use an account named user:Barbara (WVS), i.e. Wikipedia Visiting Scholar is a shame by itself. The result is to give an undue weight to someone without a reasonable screening process... and to extend this undue weight to what could be written by this person. Now, some problems have appeared and we are searching for remedies. Since WE are at fault, WE should try the following remedy, called Rectification of names: the said user should use an account named user:Barbara (WVCFE) i.e. Wikipedia Visiting Corn Flakes Eater. With such a reminder of her duties, perhaps this user will find her way back to modesty and efficiency. Pldx1 (talk) 20:25, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Topic ban / IBAN

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

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The unblock conditions are at User_talk:Bfpage/guidelines, and according to the conditions, they expired "December 1st, 2015 unless someone seeks and reaches community consensus that they are still needed". The conditions were all to do with Barbara's interactions with Flyer and Jytdog, and were not to do with her general editing competence. Despite being blocked for hounding and agreeing to those conditions, Barbara's unblock request was : "I would like to request that I be unblocked. I am not hounding anyone and I am only trying to improve the encyclopedia. You may want to consider the possibility that the other editor may be mistaken and that the perception of being hounded may not be valid." That past history, and the ongoing problems that Jytdog points out, make for sobering reading.

My personal feeling while noting Barbara's behaviour at the Vagina article, and the wording of her email to me declining my offer to assist her on editing non-medical articles, is that she had an issue with Flyer. Her bizarre pointy editing on that article, and her apparent crusade to personally improve sexuality articles on Wikipedia (ie - replace Flyer's content with her own), coupled with what Jytdog has just produced for us, which shows that this is an issue which appears to stretch back years, indicates that this is a situation we need to address more seriously than to leave it to Barbara's own good will and common sense, which is what I hoped we could do. Part of the problem is that Barbara is very reluctant to see that she is causing a problem.

In summary, I think everyone agrees that Barbara has something of value to contribute to Wikipedia, and everyone agrees that her editing of medical articles is problematic, and we have a history going back to 2015 of her problematic interactions with Flyer who is a known good contributor to medical articles. As Barbara is causing problems in medical articles, and is displaying some of the same behaviours in her interactions with Flyer that caused her to be banned in 2015, I think - reluctantly - we do need to impose a formal topic ban on Barbara from editing medical articles. This would not restrict her from editing elsewhere on Wikipedia, nor would it significantly interfere with Anthonyhcole's mentoring, except in that when Anthony felt Barbara was ready to return to editing medical articles, there would need to be a community agreement to do so, and to undo the topic ban. SilkTork (talk) 00:44, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support a formal topic ban on Barbara from editing medical articles, and also a one-way interaction ban with Flyer22, a highly productive editor that Barbara seems obsessed with. I have been observing Barbara's behavior with concern for several years, and that plus the evidence presented above makes it clear to me that her problematic behavior needs to be restrained. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:41, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support a topic ban on Barbara from editing medical articles, and a one-way interaction ban with Flyer22. Some of the articles concerned are on my watchlist and I have seen some of the never-ending good-faith-but-not-quite-right contributions. It has to stop. Johnuniq (talk) 08:50, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm going to read deeper into the background. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 11:58, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

I will defer to those who will or have taken on the mentoring burden (SilkTork and Anthonyhcole), with two caveats:

• How will "medical articles" be defined?
• I should disclose that I am a volunteer Spanish interpreter in a medical clinic, so I have to be up on the ethics and standards. I am concerned about the translation issue I mentioned above,[3] and would prefer to see the ban, if there is one, extended to translating. If we have someone we do not allow to edit medical articles in English, neither should they be translating them to another language. Good judgment, nuance, and knowing when to stop and explain an interpreting/translating bump to both parties present (patient, doctor) are of critical importance when interpreting. I am getting the picture that Barbara may not recognize the limits of her own medical knowledge enough to know when she needs to consult a medical professional before assigning a word in another language. It is not often straightforward. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:39, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

I noticed your comment about translation and I share not only your concern about Barbara's translation work - but also your attitude toward the general idea that we should foist translations of English Wikipedia medical articles on other language encyclopedias. We both know how bad Wikipedia medical articles can be.

I like and respect Barbara very muuch, and I think if she can slow down and apply rigor, she'll be a fine editor.

As for the anti-feminist and pro-life positions (if, indeed, these are her positions), I have no problem with those. She's entitled to her views.

The idea that she is stalking Flyer22 is concerning. It's that that I want to read into. Could someone please link me to the beginning of the discord between Bfpage and Flyer? Barbara, ring me any time, and chime in here if you want to. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:14, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

See the ANIs linked in the very first line of this whole thread where Flyer laid out the background very clearly. I linked to them near the top of my post as well. That level of non-reading is disturbing, as is your comment about views. Yes everybody has views - the problem is that Barbara has been pushing them into articles and this is not OK for anybody to do. And the key behavioral issue is not something that needs "slowing down" as much as it needs a fundamental change in orientation to others; her obstinacy (refusing to listen to others and even derisively dismissing them) has kept her from engaging with the basic guidelines like MEDRS and MEDMOS and has made conflicts over specific content a time sink. That is unfortunately a character thing (like bluntness is a character thing for me) that will be very hard to mentor away. Yes "slowing down" would help but a fundamental turn needs to take place. I am, bluntly, concerned about you mentoring her now. How can you mentor to address what you will not see, even after this long thread? (that is not a rhetorical question) Jytdog (talk) 18:02, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

I have followed all the links above, I think. I want to know whether there were any instances of discord between Bfpage and Flyer22, prior to this ANI thread, that did not bubble up onto a noticeboard.

As for Barbara's views, they, in themselves, are not the issue. The issue is whether her views cloud her ability to edit neutrally. I'm still reading, trying to get a bigger picture of her editing history beyond the links provided above. It seems to me, though, that some obvious problems are insufficient rigor generally, insufficient committment to core policies and guidelines, and a tendency toward snark.

It would help matters enormously if you would refrain from snark yourself and not bring false evidence to this discussion. The latter undermines my confidence in anything you say here and the former undermines my respect for you. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:25, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying that you were looking for stuff prior to the first ANI. That was not at all clear from your post. When Flyer comes to ANI it tends to be very thorough, and her first ANI starts out with "I first addressed Bfpage about WP:Harassment..." and that includes links from 20 Feb 2015. Here is the interaction analyzer for the period from 1 Dec 2014 to 8 March 2015 when Flyer filed that ANI. Looks to me like they first clashed at Sexism - see this part of its history on 19 Feb, the day before Flyer gave Barbara the harassment warning.

I am sorry you found my note snarky; i was reading your post (and others in this thread) at their face value. You had no where addressed the "dark side" - the hounding and the surface-friendly-but-actually-ugly grooming of the "enemies of my enemy" which was really bad, since Flyer deals with so many nasty characters... and led to the 6 month block. If you word search both ANIs for "barnstar" (they are here: first one and 2nd one) you will see diffs of that behavior.

Barbara has something like a rebel streak that can be dark sometimes like with the grooming; sometimes it comes out as a delayed derisive gesture; quite often she says something nice and then does something different that she wanted to do anyway; more rarely she is directly confrontational. "Snark" is not really the word for that passel of stuff, which is going to be your biggest challenge, behavior wise, in my view. Jytdog (talk) 06:05, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

• For clarity, I am not making a offer to mentor Barbara. I suggested to her in an email that because there was stress and tension involved in her editing the Vagina article, I would be prepared to work with her to bring some non-medical articles she had created to GA level, in order to assist her to voluntarily move away from the Vagina article. I am keeping that offer open.
• Though a medical topic ban should be enough, I support a one-way interaction ban with Flyer22 in order to reduce the possibility of friction down the line if Barbara decides to follow Flyer into non-medical areas.
• If Barbara is doing poor translation for other projects, that is beyond our scope to remedy here on the English Wikipedia as we have no jurisdiction on other projects. A discussion would need to be set up on each of the projects for which she is doing the translation, or a global ban set up on WikiMedia. Approaching those projects for which she is doing translation would seem to be the best approach at this stage, and they would be able to investigate themselves. I doubt if a global ban would be acceptable without first consulting with the other projects involved and establishing that there is a problem. SilkTork (talk) 16:53, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support a topic ban on Barbara from editing medical articles, and a one-way interaction ban with Flyer22. IMO Barbara's edits can be a WP editor's worst nightmare. It's not easy to say that because criticism of another editor does not come easy to most of us. But in this case where we must weigh the hundreds of hours that Flyer and others have spent in correcting Barbara's edits, I could not be more sure that she should no longer be editing medical articles. Barbara's edits to articles related to sexuality have been especially problematic; for example she has said that she has a COI when it comes to rape and yet she has gone right ahead and edited the most delicate aspects of rape, for example deleting a section relating to the (rare) victim's experience of pleasure, calling it "nauseating" in her edit summary[4]. What this suggests to me is that perhaps Barbara's WP editing of medical articles may improve with mentoring but her COI regarding sexuality should bar her from editing in these areas. Gandydancer (talk) 17:34, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support topic ban on medical articles, broadly construed, and a one-way interaction ban with Flyer22 Reborn. The troubling behavior and substandard edits I've seen were apparently only the tip of the iceberg. As more information continues to come to light, it seems as if a considerable amount of checking will need to be done on her contributions. Perhaps knowing that her edits will be more closely scrutinized will lead her to slow down and be careful and also to rethink the way she interacts with some of her fellow editors. I wish her the best. Rivertorch^FIRE_WATER 03:20, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support a topic ban on Barbara from editing medical articles as there's a long history of problems from her in that subject area. I've experienced it more than once in the past.

and

• Object to a one-way interaction ban. Never liked the idea as it's unfair - interaction issues between editors are rarely so one-sided that they would merit such a lopsided sanction. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 03:31, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support a topic ban from medical articles and a one-way interaction ban with Flyer22. Flyer22 has suffered enough, and kept her cool amazingly well. W.r.t. competence, of the evidence presented above, the part that I find most persuasive was presented by Barbara herself, in which she defended "Vaginal cancers... originate from vaginal epithelium" as being a decent summary of sources that say most vaginal cancers originate from the vaginal epithelium. This shows that after slowing down and being asked to re-scrutinize her work, she still believes her summary is OK. So I doubt that the technical errors we've been seeing are simply the result of working too fast or prioritizing quantity over quality. In response to Barbara's question regarding whether we think it is OK for her to edit microbiology articles, I would also ask her to voluntarily refrain from further editing in technical areas such as microbiology unless the edit is really a no-brainer. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:21, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
• It's late here and I haven't read this carefully enough to formally support a TBAN, but it sure sounds like the right idea from a distance. Why is she so determined to edit medical articles? I don't like how freaky the custodians of those articles sometimes get, but it's part of how things de facto work here. Can't she do something else for a while? I'm not bothered by occasional crappy prose and typos in articles but it's best that they be in places where they can't actually harm people. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 10:19, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support a formal topic ban and a 1-way i-ban. There have been far more than enough opportunities for improvement and yet we have seen none. Natureium (talk) 15:15, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

• Neutral. Bring this issue to ArbCom, and let them decide what to do. KMF (talk) 19:09, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

ArbCom would only take such a case if the community was unable to handle the matter at noticeboards such as this one, KATMAKROFAN. It looks to me like the community is handling it just fine right here. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:57, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

• Comment - In my opinion, the real question is one that isn't being considered. In my opinion, the real question is whether to impose a Site Ban for a combination of a long history of vindictive conduct by Barbara against Flyer and stubbornly bad edits after many many cautions about bad edits, or whether to impose lesser sanctions. Since a Site Ban isn't under consideration, the question is what lesser remedy to impose. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:22, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support a formal topic-ban, and a one-way interaction ban. We know that one-way interaction bans are extreme, but extreme action is needed in this case, and this is an alternative to a Site Ban. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:22, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
• Comment - We know that both one-way IBANS and two-way IBANS can be troublesome because of baiting when we have two editors who don't like each other, but here we have one editor who has a long history against another, for some reason that the rest of us don't know, and Flyer has done their best to avoid the mess. So this really is a case for a one-way IBAN. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:22, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support a site ban for Bfpage and her alt account Barbara (WVS) per "WWACD? (What Would ArbCom Do?)" lo prenu .katmakrofan. (talk) 17:01, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support after considering some of the other things editors have said, including the diffs that they have presented, I support a one way interaction ban and at least a (broadly construed) topic ban, including medicine, anatomy and sexuality articles. Flyer22 is a hardworking, diligent editor and doesn't deserve to be the subject of a user following them around and making either deliberately troublesome or incompetent edits. We need a topic ban at the very least to take stock and have a look at this editor's edits. Given the long, drawn out and fruitless discussions that have been had with this editor in the past, and rapid editing style, and the fact that we haven't had a discussion like this about this editor before and there seems to be quite a lot of different articles involved (and we have only had a look at a few here), I don't see how else we can proceed. --Tom (LT) (talk) 09:41, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

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

Is It Time for a Close?

Is it time to close this thread with a conclusion, or should alternate proposals be considered? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:44, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

When closing, both of Barbara's accounts should be mentioned: User:Bfpage and User:Barbara (WVS). SilkTork (talk) 09:07, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

• I've made a mentorship proposal, above, and would appreciate feedback from those involved before this thread is closed. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 09:43, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

I don't think mentorship is likely to solve the problem in this case. It's not that she doesn't know that she's doing something wrong. She's been informed many, many times. Natureium (talk) 15:56, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

I really believe that she doesn't know that she is doing anything wrong. If someone has been informed as many times as she has, and doesn't change their behavior, then she really isn't receiving the message. It isn't a case of I didn't hear that; she really didn't hear that. I think that she has a different thought process than some of us do, or a different perceptual mode, and really can't process negative feedback. However, it is worth trying if it is understood that it might not work. My own guess is that it won't, and we will have to decide whether she is a net negative. There are a few editors where everyone really hopes they will change their conduct because they make significant positive contributions, but also make significant negative contributions, and sometimes there is no sorting the two out. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:00, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

It's very good of Anthony to offer mentorship. The arrangement that he and Barbara have worked out is as good as I can imagine. I too have doubts about the degree to which it will change things but it can't see how it would hurt. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:23, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Another thought for the close: It might be best to explicitly say that anatomy content is included in the topic ban from medical articles. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:46, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

I have commented above on the mentorship offer. In summary, my thoughts are that it's worth trying, though it might be more beneficial for Barbara to concentrate on working in other areas of Wikipedia than on attempting to return to an area of known stress, conflict and difficulty, which the community might be unwilling to let her back into, even with some evidence of good work in the sandbox. @ Clayoquot - I think sexuality would also need to be included. Health, medicine, anatomy, and sexuality seem to be the areas of concern. Would Category:Health cover all those aspects? SilkTork (talk) 18:02, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

I have faith in Anthonyhcole and believe it to be worth a try, but in the event mentorship fails, I hope we do not let this turn into a years-long protracted mess as did the Mattisse situation. Hope for success, but call it fast if it doesn't work. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:16, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Category:Health actually covers very few of these things at the moment. I think your list, i.e. health, medicine, anatomy, and sexuality, better captures the scope we're looking for. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:05, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

I recommend that the word "sexuality" be included in any editing restriction. Flyer22 is, in my opinion, our best and most consistent long term editor in the essential topic area of sexuality. Barbara's problematic behavior is often related to articles about sexuality. I hope that the closing administrator will bring this particular disruption to an end. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 04:43, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

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

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

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Proposal for clarification of scope of topic ban

Following discussion with Sandstein regarding the scope of the topic ban (User_talk:Sandstein#What_the_topic_ban_covers), it is felt we need to add further wording. Therefore it is proposed that the wording of the topic ban is amended to read:

By consensus of the community, Barbara (WVS) (talk · contribs), also editing as Bfpage (talk · contribs), is topic-banned (WP:TBAN) from health and medical topics, including anatomy and sexuality, broadly construed, and is also banned from interacting with Flyer22 (talk · contribs) (WP:IBAN).

• Support SilkTork (talk) 08:13, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support Johnuniq (talk) 08:59, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support Swarm ♠ 09:19, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support --Tom (LT) (talk) 09:45, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support Bishonen | talk 10:38, 26 March 2018 (UTC).
• Support Rivertorch^FIRE_WATER 13:01, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support, appears to address the concerns above better. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 13:15, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support Natureium (talk) 13:46, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 15:06, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support --Iztwoz (talk) 15:18, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
• Reluctant support. I indicated in the discussion above that I deferred to SilkTork and Anthonyhcole on this matter. Bfpage was very helpful to me on the systemic problems I had with the Education Project (or whatever that particular debacle is calling itself these days), so I was reluctant to support the ban, even though I see the problems. I now lodge a reluctant support because of the incomplete closing of the discussion. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:33, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support –Davey2010^Talk 16:24, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:08, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support . Gandydancer (talk) 17:28, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support - clarifies well. D4iNa4 (talk) 17:51, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support/tugni lo prenu .katmakrofan. (talk) 18:05, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:02, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Q for clarification

I believe I understand the process and the request for this topic-ban. What is unclear to me at this point is if there a ban on contributing to the WikiProject Medicine talk page and the talk pages of medical, health and anatomy articles. For an example, I often post possible sources that help other editors on the talk page of articles, especially if they are new. Here are other example of my talk page posts:here and here, here That's all I need to know. Complying with the rest of the restrictions is acceptable at this time. Best Regards, Barbara ✐  ✉ 13:11, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Topic banned from topics, not just articles/pages, means don't post on the topic anywhere, including suggesting sources to other editors. If someone asks you for help, you'll have to say "I'm sorry, but I'm restricted from participating in that area", or something like that. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 13:40, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) User:Barbara (WVS), please do read WP:TBAN. If you do, you will see that what you are proposing is not OK. You should probably read WP:IBAN as well with regard to Flyer. Jytdog (talk) 13:45, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

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

Range block

Would a range block be useful for this vandal? In the last month and a half, he has used about 53 IPv6 addresses from 2600:1001:b000: ... to 2600:1001:b128: ... He has also used 25 IPv4 addresses that unfortunately don't fit into ranges very well. Semi-protection has been tried on several members of Category:Cleveland Browns seasons and some unrelated articles like Indian and Homeschooling, but he moves on to other articles and anyway, nobody wants to protect the whole category. Art LaPella (talk) 23:39, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Blocking Special:Contributions/2600:1001:b000:0:0:0:0:0/39 would get all of the IP addresses, but that's probably wider than necessary. From poking around, it looks like JamesBWatson already range blocked Special:Contributions/2600:1001:b000:0:0:0:0:0/42. Special:Contributions/2600:1001:b100:0:0:0:0:0/42 seems to be where the the user is currently editing. I'll block that for two weeks. We can look at wider range blocks if these fail to stop the disruption. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 09:32, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. Whatever /39 and /42 may mean, there has been no more of that vandalism so far. Art LaPella (talk) 13:56, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

"Whatever /39 and /42 may mean..." High-tech voodoo. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:30, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Now he's back. Oh well, thanks for trying. Art LaPella (talk) 00:54, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

I did a couple more range blocks (Special:Contributions/64.134.120.0/21, Special:Contributions/64.134.196.0/23, and Special:Contributions/64.134.160.0/20), each for two weeks. I tried to keep the range blocks reasonable, but the disruption is spread out across this network. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 11:22, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

The vandalism has stopped again, since this. Art LaPella (talk) 13:55, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Started again. Art LaPella (talk) 18:57, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

This person is really persistent. These IP addresses are spread out pretty wide, so I'm not sure if range blocks would accomplish much except inconveniencing innocent IP editors; more data (such as a list of IP addresses recently used) might be useful. If he keeps coming back on different IP ranges, page protection on a large scale might be the only way to really stop him. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 19:52, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I think page protection should be considered at this point. Significant disruption over the last few days. Classicwiki (talk) If you reply here, please ping me. 03:09, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

And already protected over the last few days (Indian people and List of Family Guy episodes aren't protected yet.) OK, keep protecting, provided you realize that has been used for months; he just goes on to other pages. Wikipedia:Edit filter might help against some repeated memes like the Cleveland Show theme song. Art LaPella (talk) 04:06, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Assumptions of bad faith?

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

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I've not edited Wikipedia in... three or four years? Something like that. But today I started adding some content to the current events portal and, for my efforts, have had my edits summarily removed without explanation and received a threatening talk page message telling me "Please, consider making good faith edits before you indulge in vandalism. I wouldn't vandalize Wikipedia if I were you." If this is the welcome editors expect now, then WP:AGF and WP:BITE must have fallen by the wayside. 2.28.13.202 (talk) 01:47, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Can you provide diffs of what you added and what was subsequently removed? 2601:401:500:5D25:F8EE:FAB1:7C4D:FBA2 (talk) 01:53, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes. addition, revert without explanation, readdition, next item added, summary revert, and then an accusation of vandalism and the additional threat "I had to revert two of your edits (I would've reverted a third, but that was impossible)". I assume the third was the readdition of the previously removed material. 2.28.13.202 (talk) 01:57, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

You are dangerously close to violating 3RR 2601:401:500:5D25:F8EE:FAB1:7C4D:FBA2 (talk) 02:01, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Don't worry, I've been keeping count. In any event I don't intend any additional reverts now there are uninvolved eyes involved. Would much rather leave it up to experienced editors now to do (or not do) whatever they deem correct. 2.28.13.202 (talk) 02:04, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Call me when you get the chance is, however, quite out of bounds making unfounded accusations of vandalism for what appear to be clearly good faith additions. Jbh ^Talk 02:08, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm sorry, it won't happen again. Call me when you get the chance (We need to talk) 02:09, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Good. Few things irritate me (and many others) more than the unexplained reverts of IP edits and the subsequent warnings. And 2601:401:500:5D25:F8EE:FAB1:7C4D:FBA2, please don't fetishize 3R. If anyone was going to get blocked there, it wouldn't have been the IP--assuming the admin on call knew what they were doing. Drmies (talk) 02:45, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

This was so weird, and so obviously not vandalism, that I've started looking over this user's contributions and I've found this exchange which is troubling: "Your "trying to help out" was not what it seems. Please reconsider passing off vandalism as "un-vandalizing." If you wish to make more useful contributions, you should create an account. I think one account is enough for you as it is for me. Maybe you can come up with a catchy name instead of impersonating other Wikipedians[...] Now, please, stop trying to fake innocence when you are vandalizing the wiki, which could get you blocked for doing so, ya hear?" That was also targetted at an IP making good faith edits to the article. 2.28.13.202 (talk) 03:11, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

And a(n admittedly weak) personal attack here. 2.28.13.202 (talk) 03:15, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

And a weak PA here too. I'm gonna leave it there as I don't want the user to feel harassed and they obviously have passion. 2.28.13.202 (talk) 03:22, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) x2 They are a relatively new editor and I have not noticed that this issue has been addressed with them before. I have 'counseled' them on their talk page. If they go after an IP again I would support admin intervention (and I have no doubt Drmies would come down on them like a ton of bricks if they do it again) but, as things stand, they have apologized which is more than many do when they screw up. Jbh ^Talk 03:25, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

  I've just read your note and it seems very fair and reasonable. Like you said, 'fessing up to one's mistakes is a very positive character trait. 2.28.13.202 (talk) 03:28, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

• It is now happening again. Is it now considered normal to wholesale delete contributions by newcomers without explanation? 2.28.13.202 (talk) 05:13, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

• Can you provide a WP:Diff to the specific edit(s) you're talking about? Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:31, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

• There is an unexplained wholesale deetion of sourced content here, another here, and a third here. I'm going to restore them all citing this thread. 92.10.184.187 (talk) 16:10, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

• Those were all good deletions, all trivial events. Beyond My Ken (talk) 15:55, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

• Our ethos and guidelines are that unregistered editors are treated the same. The reality is they are not. As an IP editor you have restricted use of the site, and certain personal details about you are revealed through your IP address (there should be more warning about this in the software, but there isn't). In addition, because the bulk of inappropriate edits are made by unregistered accounts, some users tend to be more dubious about contributions by IP editors than by registered users. See Wikipedia:Tutorial/Registration for more information; and for a smoother experience when editing Wikipedia, give some consideration to registering. SilkTork (talk) 11:36, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

A nice idea in theory; however years of experience have told me that IPs are sometimes editors who have retired and just want to dip their toe back into the place while also having their edits judged purely on their own merits (which I believe is the case here), or editors who left after harassment and don't want to be treated like crap (not that IPs don't get treated like crap already, as I can testify from personal experience). Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:13, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

If an IP has edited on Wikipedia before, as a registered account. Then he/she should reveal that old account or create a new account. I'm not a fan of mysteries. GoodDay (talk) 16:17, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

That flies in the face of policy and ethos on this site, surely? Can you please link me a policy to support your demands? 92.10.184.187 (talk) 16:22, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

So long as the IP is not editing in violation of WP:BADSOCK there is no requirement for an IP, or any account, to disclose. An IP user whose IP address changes should make it clear they are not different people ie there needs to be continuity of identity in situations where confusion could occur. SOCK does not quite go this far but rather says "Editors who are not logged in must not actively try to deceive other editors" ^{(emp mine)} Jbh ^Talk 16:44, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

• This is a textbook example of how an ANI works. IP editor comes with valid complaint and proof. That gets warped into claims that they are socks or bad actors. Is Drmies the only rational editor here?104.163.147.121 (talk) 22:20, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, Drmies is the only rational editor here ... except for all the others. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:20, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
• But, actually, your explication of how AN/I works is missing some steps: IP editor comes with valid complaint, complaint is dealt with, IP editor continues to complain, IP's story starts to show inconsistencies, mention is made of socks and bad actors, IP is determined to be sock of blocked editor. That happens more times then would be expected by randomness. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:24, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

• I'm sorry, exactly who are you accusing me of being a sock of? The last three days, on the IPs listed here, are my only contributions in years. So go ahead, show me your evidence I'm a "bad actor". 92.10.188.218 (talk) 17:36, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

• Maybe you should lose the chip on your shoulder, and ratchet up your reading comprehension a bit: no accusation was made against you, just a general statement about a scenario which happens at AN/I quite frequently. Beyond My Ken (talk) 13:21, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

• Sigh. Why can't you be nice, like everyone else here? User:Jbhunley, User:Drmies, User:Ritchie333, and even user:Call me when you get the chance have all posted here respectfully and worked towards quietly getting this sorted. I don't understand how this discussion has morphed or even what it has become. Maybe it would be best just to close it? 89.240.132.177 (talk) 17:31, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

• If your IP didn't keep jumping around, I think contributors would be more charitable. The initial reverts were questionable, but not to the point that I support administrative action; and the OP's additions appear to all be included on Portal:Current events/2018 March 20 at this time. I do suggest you register an account if you don't want further complaints to be ignored through bureaucratic inefficiency. power~enwiki (π, ν) 02:48, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

• Well, how do I stop my IP from changing? It's not like I ask it to. I wake up and it's different each day. 92.10.177.190 (talk) 14:45, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

• There is not much you can do to stop it. DHCP, a method of provisioning IP addresses, has a 'lease' time. If you are connected when it expires you will usually get the same IP back but if you are not someone else often will have been assigned the one you had and you will get another address. One thing I have seen other long term IP editors do is add something like --IP9210, --BobTheIP, or something similar before signing with ~~~~. Not as convenient as having an account but it gives some continuity of identity and many would see it as a nice gesture. Jbh ^Talk 16:41, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

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

RfC and edit war at Useful idiot

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

---

My apologies for the complexity of this. In December, I started an RfC about using the Oxford English Dictionary at the Useful idiot article, the quotation in question being "The phrase does not seem to reflect any expression used within the Soviet Union". As you can see, SPECIFICO immediately said that the RfC might not resolve the issue. The RfC ensued. Apparently getting approval for my proposed sentence, I inserted it in the article. My very best wishes promptly removed it. After being requested by me, the closer Fish and karate clarified the closure. As you can see, SPECIFICO complained about the clarification and "My very best wishes" disputed the meaning of the closing statement. "My very best wishes" then moved the sentence in contention away from the section dealing with etymology and edited it to say that the OED "erroneously tells..." I subsequently moved it back to the appropriate paragraph. Some time later, "My very best wishes" removed it again. Thucydides411 restored it, while SPECIFICO undid his revision, with the edit summary "Remove edit-war against consensus". An edit war ensued, leading to the intervention of Drmies, with the apparent perverse result that we are blocked from carrying out the consensus of the RfC. The whole point of the RfC was to resolve edit warring and endless argument. Meanwhile, SPECIFICO has started a new section on the Talk page, Screw Saffire, suggesting that William Safire is not a reliable source. The cycle seems to be repeating. If I start an RfC, will I eventually be blocked for carrying out the consensus of the RfC???--Jack Upland (talk) 09:52, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

• Huh? I warned General Goldwater about edit warring, so I don't know what I did to you. The reverts you linked to, the earlier ones, are clearly in line with the RfC. The Goldwater reverts are much broader than the RfC, and their behavior was clearly that of an edit warrior: there are no explanations and no contributions to the talk page, so I have no idea what you're complaining about. As for "perverse"--the only perversion here, besides this twisted complaint, is that ridiculously long talk page. Drmies (talk) 12:08, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

• OK so I'm trying to catch up here. Drmies correctly reversed the edit-warrior Goldwater. Then Darouet came in and reverted Drmies and Darouet claims that Drmies said his intervention applies only when Goldwater makes the edit? Darouet's edit seems like a problem. SPECIFICO talk 00:59, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

• Christ, is the content on this page still in dispute? Is this a really contentious and disputed topic, or is there some time-wasting going on? talk to !dave 19:01, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

@My name is not dave: "Content dispute" would be a very charitable description. The phrase is demonstrated in academic sources to be another famous misquotation, but this runs against powerfully entrenched ideological prejudices. So most of the talk page is an effort to ignore real content and make it up with WP:OR. -Darouet (talk) 20:36, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

The latter: wasting time of other contributors. My very best wishes (talk) 04:36, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

The issue is not about Drmies's intervention, but about the editors who keep overriding the RfC. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear. I was not edit warring and I don't want to be edit warring. I just want the RfC to stand. I don't really understand the eruption of passion on the page, which has been quiet for years. However, at an attempt at DRN last year SPECIFICO and "My very best wishes" argued the issue was not about Communism, even though they had been arguing about Lenin for weeks. From the evidence on the Talk page, it seems they think the issue is about Donald Trump. However, I don't see how attacking the OED helps the cause. From the Talk page, many people are very fond of the idea that Lenin coined the phrase "useful idiot", even though this seems to be just a common misconception. In any case, there is a clear agenda to eliminate sources that dispute the Lenin origin...--Jack Upland (talk) 20:12, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

• "Issue" really means "outcome", and I'm not even at a beginning in this dispute, but that's by the by. Jack Upland, kindly stop pinging me; I got nothing to do with this business, not until there's some blocking to be done, in which case I will do what I can to get that $5 check for an EW block. Drmies (talk) 17:05, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Issue doesn't mean outcome according to the Oxford Dictionary!--Jack Upland (talk) 09:02, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

The discussion of Lenin was simply about flawed and poorly-sourced article text -- tendentiously pushed by Jack, Thuc, and Darouet -- that claimed to declare in WP's voice that Lenin never used the term. It had nothing to do with communism any more than song lyrics by Lady Gaga have to do with feminism. SPECIFICO talk 13:19, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Another cryptic comment by SPECIFICO purporting to explain a five month campaign against an innocuous sentence! Perhaps some limited enlightenment can be gained from the statement on SPECIFICO's talk page: The problem with "useful idiot" has nothing to do with the Soviet Union. In my opinion it's that a diverse bunch of current-day folks are determined to avoid being seen as "useful idiots" of Russia, domestic American political activists, and other perceived oligarchies. That's the dog in the closet. The problem with this is that I don't understand what this is about. I don't accept that the reputation of the OED should be trashed and that an American catchphrase should be wrongly attributed to Lenin just because of some editor's perception (or fantasy) of a shadowy contemporary war against mysterious bogeymen. Wikipedia is a collaborative project, not a blank canvas for eccentric imaginings. This is a dog that doesn't bark.--Jack Upland (talk) 09:02, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

• The problem is easily solved by redirecting to Donald Trump. EEng 21:14, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

My sense is that there's a linguistic battle between people who want to tie Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin and both to Soviet Russia, and people who want to avoid that tie at all costs. The actual etymology and historical usage of useful idiot (and also whataboutism) are merely a place for that argument. power~enwiki (π, ν) 21:36, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

I do not think so. The ties are very much real and described in a lot of other pages. My very best wishes (talk) 04:36, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

@Power~enwiki: Many people have been called "useful idiots," and Trump is undeniably one of them. I'm not against him being labeled so there as long as that label is balanced by other historically pertinent examples. My objection OR that is being spewed into the article by My very best wishes that is meant to prove that various scholars around the world — who have shown "Useful idiot" to be a misquotation — are wrong. -Darouet (talk) 20:45, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

@Power~enwiki: Strong words to call someone a Trump supporter! I really could not give a damn whether the article calls Trump a useful idiot or not (or a useless idiot). My sole issue is that I think very bad logic is being employed by people who think there is evidence that the term originated in the Soviet Union rather than the west, rather than that it has been traditionally attributed to Lenin without any good evidence. My very best wishes seems to think that an example from a Russian exile in the 80s trumps many prior references that use the term in English well before that, and the OED which contradicts his claims and is a very reputable source for etymology. Further, any source saying that the term was attributed to Lenin is not logically a statement that it actually came from Lenin. Also MVBW seems to have a great deal of trouble understanding what "reflects" means in English despite it being explained many times. —DIYeditor (talk) 03:00, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

I don't think that's quite accurate. I agree that the problems on the page stem from people trying to use quotes (and their etymologies) politically, but I think it's more one-sided than you depict. As far as I can tell, no editors have argued for removing all mention of Donald Trump. For example, I have no problem with the inclusion of Madeleine Albright and Michael Hayden's statements about Donald Trump being a "useful idiot." I've only argued against the inclusion of Michael Morell's quote, because he doesn't even use the term "useful idiot." The "battle" is between people who want to tie Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin and Soviet Russia, and people who don't want the article being used for political purposes. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:55, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Oh my God, you mean the page really does talk about Trump? I didn't even know. I guess great minds think alike. EEng 14:07, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

For me, the issue has never been about Trump and I don't see the relevance of Trump to the etymology issue. However, that does seem to be part of the motivation for some editors.--Jack Upland (talk) 19:28, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

@EEng: with or without Trump, a lot of linguistic and historical research is spent correcting pervasive misquotations. Wikipedia's mission is not to undo that work on behalf of the latest political fad. -Darouet (talk) 20:41, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Um, sure, yeah -- though I don't see what I said to prompt that particular principle being expounded at me. EEng 20:51, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

@EEng: I'm saying that while I enjoy your humor here [5][6] or elsewhere, the issue that Jack has raised here needs attention and has been annoying AF to deal with. -Darouet (talk) 21:08, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Definitely agree, and as you'll see on the TP I've offered to obtain obscure sources if that's part of the problem. EEng 21:34, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

@Jack Upland:You wrote For me, the issue has never been about Trump... This is odd. Because in the garbled DR last year, you said it was only about Trump and also you acknowledged that I said it's not about Communism. What has changed, Jack? SPECIFICO talk 13:29, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

I never said it was only about Trump! In fact, I think Trump should be irrelevant. I don't understand your point on "communism", but it wasn't a very helpful contribution to dispute resolution, as far as I can see.--Jack Upland (talk) 20:54, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Somebody want to explain why I and others didn't receive talk page notices of this mess? SPECIFICO talk 00:06, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

What's the justification for Darouet continuing to edit war this stuff after this ANI thread was opened? How could that possibly be constructive? And I went to @Drmies: and @My very best wishes: talk pages in stupefied disbelief at Darouet's revert -- not knowing about this thread. Looks like bad form to me. SPECIFICO talk 00:10, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Jack Upland pinged you in their original post here. -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:10, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

False. No ping. Try again. SPECIFICO talk 00:39, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

When you start a discussion about an editor, you must notify them on their user talk page.

The use of ping or the notification system is not sufficient for this purpose.

It's not false - you were pinged. Okay, you're unhappy that there wasn't a post left on your user talk page. Jack Upland will know to do that next time. Now you clearly know about the thread, so there's no problem. -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:50, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Show me the ping? Are you claiming a software malfunction? Cut and paste the ping. SPECIFICO talk 00:52, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

[7]. -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:55, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

1) You've been on WP a long time. That's not a ping, it's a link to my user page. 2) Many editors do not enable pings. 3) The instructions for this page clearly state that a ping is not OK and that talk page is notification is required. Your responses are an appalling example of your willingness to deny and deflect without any effort to check facts or to listen to the concerns of your fellow editors. SPECIFICO talk 01:31, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

I got a ping - that's what that template does. The rest of your post is just unbelievably hostile. -Thucydides411 (talk) 01:36, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

That template is a link to User Page. Of course if you took my words seriously, you could easily have checked that by going to the documentation page Nice job ignoring points 2 and 3 and thanks for the personal smear in lieu of response. On a larger issue, you rushed back from your 3-month Russia TBAN to this Russia-related article with walls of POV and personal opinion on the talk page. The result is that all the progress the rest of us made in your absence has devolved into a multi-front edit war based on deflection and WP:IDHT. @My very best wishes: and others have done tons of careful research and clearly presented their results on the talk page. For the most part these findings have been accepted before you and your friend Darouet mushroomed the talk page into a WW1 battlefield. SPECIFICO talk 01:40, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

From the documentation you linked to: "This template is commonly used to ping a user to a discussion". Looking back at the original diff, it seems like Jack Upland misspelled your username, which is why you didn't get a ping. They corrected your username afterwards, but the template doesn't ping when you correct a username - it has to be correct on the first go. I'm sure Jack Upland will know next time (should there be a next time) to post on your user page, but since you know about the thread here now, everything should be okay. Again, I really don't understand your hostility towards me. -Thucydides411 (talk) 02:36, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

For the third time that's all deflection, Thucydides411, because Ping is not acceptable notification and no user is required to activate ping. You didn't think my concern was software-related, did you? SPECIFICO talk 02:40, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Look, I give up. I feel sorry for the people who will try to read through this sub-thread. Have a nice day. -Thucydides411 (talk) 02:47, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

• Comment: I'm not sure what state the article is in now concerning this subject, but in December 2017 I pointed out that The OED says "The phrase does not seem to reflect any expression used within the Soviet Union" and in the same entry quotes "described by the KGB as 'useful idiots'" -- a clear contradiction, one which is unexplained and unclarified, and thus confused and confusing. Moreover, the OED is not an authority on Russian or Russian usage or the USSR. It cannot be used as an authority on Wikipedia as such." [8] and We know for a fact that the term was used by the KGB (please consult the Shultz and Mitrokhin references I referred to earlier in this thread); the KGB was the main security agency for the Soviet Union from 1954 until its break-up in 1991; therefore the peculiar assertion that "The phrase does not seem to reflect any expression used within the Soviet Union" is incorrect. [9] I'm not sure why this is still an ongoing dispute. Softlavender (talk) 02:55, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Sorry Softlavender, "reflects" involves something occurring before that which reflects. 1954 (earliest possible date for use by the KGB) is after the use in English. And there is no harm in mentioning what a usually reliable source on etymology says - we are not stating it as a plain fact, just attributing it. To repeat, for the use in English to reflect a use in the Soviet Union we must have evidence that there was use before the use in English. —DIYeditor (talk) 03:07, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
    • No, "reflect" is simply a synonym for "be" or "denote"; it means "embody or represent (something) in a faithful or appropriate way". The Soviet Union began in 1922. There are numerous well-researched volumes which are analyses of Soviet Chekist operations and terminology which identify the term (I've listed some on the talkpage). Softlavender (talk) 03:28, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
      • "Reflect" is not a direct synonym for "mirror" or "correspond to". In the context of an etymology the question was where does the term originate. Reflects in this sense is equivalent to "comes from" or "originates in". The OED is not stating the term was never used in the Soviet Union. Maybe they could've chosen better wording but it seems clear to me what they intended to say - I could be wrong though. I have to this point not seen anyone provide evidence that it was definitely used in Russian before in English. I will look at your sources. But really are we here because some people are not honoring the results of an already closed RfC which said to include the OED quote. Even if it is false it is relevant to quote what the OED says. —DIYeditor (talk) 03:36, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
        • What dictionary are you using? Could you please provide a link to your definition of "reflect"? I quoted the dictionary verbatim. Softlavender (talk) 03:41, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
          • What you quoted seems to be saying what I'm saying. You don't embody or represent something that only exists after the embodiment or representation. —DIYeditor (talk) 03:54, 23 March 2018 (UTC) Edited 23:52, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
            • The Soviet Union began in 1920. So whatever you are trying to say, the OED is saying that the English phrase "useful idiot" does not seem to correspond to any Russian expression used 1920–1991 (i.e., in the Soviet Union) -- which, according to Chekist experts, is incorrect. Softlavender (talk) 04:06, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
              • No, I am sorry, the nuanced and logical meaning of "reflect" per the definition you quoted is not a synonym for correspond. If the use in English in the 1940s embodies or represents a use in the Soviet Union that must have occurred beforehand. Afterward is not relevant to the statement. —DIYeditor (talk) 04:16, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

The OED does not contradict itself at all. The OED gives a definition of the term, has a note about the etymology ("The phrase does not seem to reflect any expression used within the Soviet Union"), and then gives example usages of the term, drawn from the literature. The quote, "described by the KGB as 'useful idiots'" is an example usage drawn from a 1985 Washington Post article. The OED does not endorse the veracity of that line from the Washington Post - it's simply an example usage. In fact, not even the Washington Post endorses the veracity of that line. I tracked down the reference, and it turns out that the WaPo is actually mockingly quoting someone who's claiming the KGB calls various people "useful idiots."

I explained this on the talk page: Talk:Useful idiot#OED contradicting itself?. -Thucydides411 (talk) 03:07, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

People are going out of their way to insist that the OED is infallible (a stance I find incomprehensible, since nothing is infallible, and the OED is frequently easily contradicted in the internet age and GoogleBooks), when the OED itself is tentative: it says "does not seem to reflect", not "is not", and provides a quote which contradicts itself. The OED is not an authority on Chekism and Chekist terminology. Only an authority on Chekism in my view would be the final authority on this, and I've listed several sources on the talkpage. Softlavender (talk) 03:38, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Even if the OED is contradicted by other sources 1) The RfC was already concluded on this to include it 2) It is relevant and interesting to the reader that a usually very reliable source says something on the topic 3) It seems like a form of original research to conclude that another source seems to say something different so the OED is wrong - you would need a source that directly says the OED is wrong, not to draw that conclusion yourself. Analyzing or filtering reliable sources is not the place of Wikipedia editors. If the OED says "does not seem to" it is entirely relevant to quote what it says. The reader can draw their own conclusions whether the source is making a weak statement or if the other sources are more reliable. We are not stating what the OED says as a fact. —DIYeditor (talk) 04:14, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

That's not how Wikipedia works. If a source, even a venerable one, is provably wrong, we don't use the source, we use the reliable correct source that has more thorough and accurate and better-researched and better-cited information. Softlavender (talk) 04:19, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

"If a source, even a venerable one, is provably wrong" I don't see anything new on Talk:Useful idiot that proves the OED is wrong in saying the use in English is not predated by any verifiable use in the Soviet Union. —DIYeditor (talk) 04:29, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

For the last time, please stop saying the OED is provably wrong. It's not. I explained this at Talk:Useful idiot#OED contradicting itself? -Thucydides411 (talk) 04:48, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

"and provides a quote which contradicts itself." No it does not. Please read what I wrote here: Talk:Useful idiot#OED contradicting itself?. You can't keep making this claim, after I've shown it to be false (complete with the relevant passage from the original Washington Post article that the OED got its snippet from). -Thucydides411 (talk) 04:17, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

• Apologies to everyone for not notifying them on their talk pages.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:19, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Request for close / suggestions of a more appropriate forum

Nobody at ANI has time for this, and apart from the procedural bickering of whether people were notified correctly, this appears to be entirely a content dispute. I request that the thread here be closed and a discussion be opened at the correct forum; presumably WP:DRN or possibly WP:MEDCOM. Assistance from community members who haven't edited the page significantly may be needed. power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:22, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

I think it was brought here because people are ignoring an RfC which was already recently decided in favor of including the OED quote. That's disruptive editing. —DIYeditor (talk) 04:27, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

That's right. Unfortunately the point has quickly been lost. I think if this was closed, I (or someone else) would have to reintroduce it, and try to do it properly. I started the RfC to stop the endless arguments, but here and now the arguments are being rerun. We need to accept the decision and move on, not continue debating it.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:31, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Did you bother to read the close of the RfC? It does not require the disputed reference to be used. It simply limits the claims that can be attributed to it. This is what @My very best wishes: and others have followed. Meanwhile the editors who have edit-warred to misuse the source are misrepresenting the RfC close. SPECIFICO talk 13:33, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

@SPECIFICO: The RfC very much does require the OED to be cited. The RfC closer, Fish and Karate, clarified their closure of the RfC, making this explicit: "In closing, the consensus seemed to me to be that the reference to the OED should be included" ([10]). I know you're aware of this, because you expressed disappointment at Fish and Karate's clarification of the RfC closure: "But you had it right the first time..." ([11]).

This gets to the behavioral issue that Jack Upland and DIYeditor talk about above - the refusal to accept the outcome of the RfC. You've been claiming consensus favors your removal of the OED's statement on etymology ("Remove edit-war against consensus" - note that you remove the RfC-compliant OED statement), even though that removal goes against an RfC. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:46, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Using the talk page to point out editors' overreaching the close of the RfC to go beyond what its statement does not seem like any sort of "behavioral issue" worth mentioning here. Anyway, I'm in awe of your telepathic abilities that enable you to inform the internet concerning my awareness. The fact is that everyone can read the rest of the thread from which you plucked my words and see where the conversation has stood over the month since then. [12] SPECIFICO talk 17:24, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Are you saying that because I stopped arguing in that thread on 15 February that you had the consensus??? The whole point of the RfC was to decide the debate, not to launch a fresh — or rather stale — round of arguments about the meaning of the RfC. Especially as there were multiple other threads running on the page. I think this is disruptive editing.--Jack Upland (talk) 19:14, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Why no, I said nothing of the kind. Not sure where you're going with after the first sentence. SPECIFICO talk 19:31, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Let me put it simply. You are (apparently willfully) being obstinate and disruptive by ignoring a recently closed RfC. Please stop. —DIYeditor (talk) 21:19, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Could you explain why I address a question to Upland Jack about his statement and I get a quick reply from DIYeditor? Pleased to meet you, anyway. SPECIFICO talk 22:52, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

You didn't ask a question, the reply was 2 hours later, to my knowledge anyone is free to chime in on Wikipedia, and it seems like you are being deliberately difficult. Abide by the RfC or start another one. —DIYeditor (talk) 23:45, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Going back to Jack Upland's initial statement in this thread: It looks as if my initial assessment was correct. That RfC, (like this ANI btw) was poorly formed so that his vague and non-instrumental way of framing his question was unlikely to lead to the clear resolution he sought. And that's what happened. We have MVBW, whose view is apparently shared by 1/2 dozen editors, reading the close as supporting a certain article text. And then we have roughly the same number claiming that the RfC close does not support MVBW's way of framing the content. At any rate, you seem to be saying there are 1/2 dozen editors who share your view as to the meaning of the RfC close but wish to ignore or deny it to by inserting article text that contradicts it. But that's not the problem here. The problem is muddle-flagon language and upside-out narratives that are leading to two opposite versions of article text. SPECIFICO talk 00:26, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Well to be honest I haven't been closely tracking the bickering, I only noticed the OED citation be deleted then restored. —DIYeditor (talk) 03:40, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

There has been a LOT of bickering. Thucydides introduced the OED citation back in 2 November. SPECIFICO and MVBW immediately started arguing the point. Then on 10 December I launched the RfC, which was closed on 7 February, with the closure clarified on 12 February. I don't think anyone who was in the debate from the start could have any confusion about what the issue was. The same points have been dealt with multiple times. Though there have been communication problems, there has been ample opportunity for discussion and clarification. Five months on one sentence is ridiculous. Now SPECIFICO appears to be trying to pick a fight with me on the talk page, parallel to this discussion. We all need to abide by the RfC and move on.--Jack Upland (talk) 04:58, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Jack Upland, when you are asked for a diff to support your assertion on WP, it is not "picking a fight" -- Diffs are how we share information and keep things clear and try to sort out complicated issues. I asked you for the diff because, like others, I cannot figure out what this thread is about, why you came to ANI with content concerns, what you're asking for and who you think needs to be involved or to explain their views or behavior. To me, it looks like you're complaining about "edit-warring" when the culprit is an editor with whom you agree who resumed blind reverting. But then you have lots of aspersions about bad guys like me who happen to understand and accept MVBW's resoned and well-founded explaination of the text he wrote. So this thread, like your pointless vague RfC that remained unclear even after the close, is going nowhere. Too bad for you, I guess, but when you start making a mess and then blaming everyone else for it that's really no goodsky. SPECIFICO talk 12:32, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

The result of the RfC was very clear: the OED's statement on etymology should be referenced, with attribution, alongside other opinions. Fish and Karate clarified exactly what they meant: "I should have said 'WHEN the OED's discussion of the phrase is referenced within this article', not 'IF'" [13]. Throughout this thread, SPECIFICO has been denying the outcome of the RfC:

• "Did you bother to read the close of the RfC? It does not require the disputed reference to be used. It simply limits the claims that can be attributed to it." [14] - this is just wrong.
• I've pointed out this misrepresentation to SPECIFICO ([15]), but they continue to imply that the RfC came to a different conclusion than it did, as the next bullet point indicates.
• "We have MVBW, whose view is apparently shared by 1/2 dozen editors, reading the close as supporting a certain article text." [16] - the article text that SPECIFICO is referencing here actually removes the OED discussion ([17]). That's not a possible reading of the RfC close.

This denial of the outcome of the RfC result is a real problem. If an editor is arguing so vociferously that an RfC turned out in the complete opposite way to how it actually turned out, imagine how difficult it is to deal with more complex issues in the article. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:12, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

• I am not sure why you guys started this thread in relation to the RfC. Is it a complaint about me? I can not tell for other contributors, but I do not mind including the reference to OED (as closing of the RfC suggest). I only think it should be in included in appropriate section, for example as I moved it in this edit. I event agree to soften the language [18]. If by any reason I temporarily removed this phrase later, along with other changes, that was unintentional. Sorry. Once again, I do not mind including this. There were other disagreements, but they were not related to the RfC.My very best wishes (talk) 23:36, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

It isn't an complaint about any particular editor. It is about the fact that, more than a month after the RfC, arguments and edit warring have continued to rage. I don't understand how you could not be aware of the issue as you have been arguing continuously about it since 2 November. After the RfC closed, I tried to insert the OED's statement into the article. You immediately reverted it, saying RfC closing does not tell it must be used on the page. It tells: "IF it is referenced within this article" - I do not think it should be used/referenced at all - as explained on talk page. I don't think that's unintentional. After the closer clarified the closing statement, you continued to argue, saying I do not think there was a consensus on the RfC to include that phrase. As recently as 17 March, you removed the OED's statement again. As I said, this is not about one editor. It is about the fact that we have had five months' debate about one sentence and that some editors have refused to accept the RfC and move on.--Jack Upland (talk) 01:46, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

This is still a content dispute that nobody at ANI has time for. power~enwiki (π, ν) 01:23, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

No, it's not. It's about editors not abiding by an RfC.--Jack Upland (talk) 01:47, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

An RfC about a content dispute. I appeal to the deafening silence of the void. power~enwiki (π, ν) 01:49, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I asked at the Help Desk what to do if other editors didn't abide by an RfC and I was told to come here. Is that wrong? I thought RfCs were binding. We have already tried DRN and it failed dismally, so I don't think that's a particularly helpful suggestion.--Jack Upland (talk) 01:54, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Normally probably yes, but on a heated WP:ARBAPDS article no. You're best to either pray for the blessings of Divine Providence, contact a friendly admin directly, or attempt to invoke Discretionary Sanctions at WP:AE. Or, edit other parts of the project until the other editors lose interest (note: that will likely not happen while Donald Trump lives at the White House). This may also interest MEDCOM if it still functions. power~enwiki (π, ν) 02:05, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

"When it is raining, you should wear galoshes" does not imply "it is raining" -- "When you use OED you should attribute its statement" does not mean "you should use OED". The cure for what ails you is to launch an RfC with a yes or no poll on explicit article text or other binary choice. You didn't get the close you were expecting or hoping for because the RfC (as I said at the outset) was malformed. Just like this ANI. Just like you didn't follow instructions on your notifications. It's rather extraordinary to post all this BS at ANI and basically nobody cares. Usually almost anything attracts a circular firing squad, marching band, and cavalry. figure out what your heart tells you is the appropriate article text and propose it on talk or in a new RfC. As MVBW says, that OED bit is the least of the problems. SPECIFICO talk 02:20, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

@SPECIFICO: "'When you use OED you should attribute its statement' does not mean 'you should use OED'". It's getting extremely difficult to continue assuming good faith here. You know that Fish and Karate explicitly said that the RfC result was that the OED should be included. I've linked to Fish and Karate's statement two times above: "In closing, the consensus seemed to me to be that the reference to the OED should be included. I should have said 'WHEN the OED's discussion of the phrase is referenced within this article', not 'IF'" [19]. You're deliberately misrepresenting the outcome of the RfC. We really need an admin in here to direct SPECIFICO to accept the RfC result and stop misrepresenting it. -Thucydides411 (talk) 02:54, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Please be nice. You are not being polite. The RfC didn't even say what the article text should be. MVBW has explained all this many times. Start a clear well-formed RfC and settle the issue. ANI is not the place to sort out your confusion about whatever content you would like see somewhere or other in the article. SPECIFICO talk 03:06, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

The RfC did present a "binary choice". Most people answered yes or no, including you. Please accept the RfC and move on.--Jack Upland (talk) 04:36, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

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

Addressing the complaint

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

---

• There was a disagreement over whether to include this.
• There was an RfC about it.
• The RfC said that it should be included but should also note that other sources disagree.
• Any confusion about what the RfC said was clarified on Feb 12. SPECIFICO disagreed with the reading of consensus.[20]
• After the clarification was provided, Jack Upland correctly reinserted the disputed content.[21]
• Neither SPECIFICO or MVBW removed it until March 16, when My very best wishes incorrectly removed it without explanation.
• The removed content was restored, but in the context of reverting unrelated content.
• A severe edit war broke out over unrelated content, and the small bit of content that was enacted via RfC was merely caught up in the revert-warring. No editor attempted to remove or reinstate Oxford outside of the unrelated edit war.
• No reason was given for the original removal, and it should have been uncontroversially reinstated, separate from the ongoing content dispute.
• Drmies intervention was obviously a check on the edit war over the unrelated content dispute. It only erroneously removed Oxford as a side effect, as all the other reverters had done, and cast no judgment on the RfC content.
• Jack Upland incorrectly interpreted and accused Drmies's edit as attempting to override the decision of the RfC.
• Jack Upland assigned a large deal of complexity to his report of this incident, when in reality it was merely caught up in unrelated conflict and could have been restored uncontroversially. This was never attempted. Every restoration of the content was done so in a controversial, edit warring manner.
• Darouet restored the RfC content via unrelated revert. The restoration of the RfC content is correct, the rest of the revert is neither "right" or "wrong".
• Regardless of how that dispute plays out, the RfC content should not be removed again short of a new formal consensus.
• Fundamentally, this complaint was simple and has been resolved, with the RfC content restored back to the article. Users who remove that content, even unintentionally, will be warned for disruptive removal of content and blocked if necessary. Is there any reason for this thread to remain open? Swarm ♠ 23:10, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for trying to sort this out. I'm not sure that everything in this sequence is correct, but it's the best we have for now. My impression was that one source of confusion was that the putative RfC-ratified text was bundled with other POV text that needed to be removed and had not been decided by RfC. Also, isn't it the case that on your second-last bullet point above that Darouet not only reinstated the "RfC content" but also reinstated the controversial unrelated content that, as you say, should have been separated to avoid the trainwreck? SPECIFICO talk 23:46, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

@SPECIFICO: That is absolutely correct, and is indeed exactly what I meant by "unrelated revert" and "rest of the revert". I believe the fundamental points in my summary are correct, if heavily simplified. Swarm ♠ 01:31, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you User:Swarm. Drmies (talk) 01:20, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

So to wrap this up, if MVBW now wishes to propose what he believes is improved article text and location, would it be OK to start a new RfC concerning that specific proposal? I presume that nothing short of a new RfC would work at this point. SPECIFICO talk 01:55, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I strongly reject that summary as false and unfair, but that's irrelevant. If the RfC is upheld, that's what I came here for. Except that summary minimises the fact that there has been an ongoing debate about that sentence since 2 November. It was not removed unintentionally as part of an unrelated revert. SPECIFICO's comment above indicates the intention of launching a fresh debate about the same sentence, attempting to move it out of the etymology section, as has been done and discussed before. How many more months do we have to debate the one sentence? So, please close this thread, but keep the article locked down too. Give everyone time to cool off and focus on something else.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:32, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, any debate prior to February 12 can go out the window. The dispute was settled at that point, and was uncontested until the recent edit warring, which was unrelated. There was quite literally no reasoning given for reverting the RfC content with the rest of the edit war. Perhaps it was especially convenient for those who wanted removal, but neither side behaved any different. Also, I don't know why you're defensive, I'm just pointing out that this whole thing is unnecessary. You could have just reinserted it by itself the whole time. Anyone could have. You presented it as some complex issue here, when in reality no one even noticed it. Not even the admin who intervened. No one was actually trying to overrule the consensus (apart from the original removal, which never could have actually stood). C'mon. You have a formal RfC consensus supporting the closure. It was you yourself who played in to the legitimacy of the RfC being challenged. It's been settled. They can't overrule a formal consensus. I assumed this was an honest mistake on your part, apparently influenced by what you felt was admin intervention for the wrong side. Why you would fail to reinsert the content uncontroversially otherwise would seem questionable. Swarm ♠ 10:44, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

@Swarm: It's not so simple as that: it probably wouldn't have been possible to simply reinstate the OED content. In the above thread, SPECIFICO has repeatedly denied that the result of the RfC was to include the OED content (see my posts above, and this quote from SPECIFICO: "Did you bother to read the close of the RfC? It does not require the disputed reference to be used. It simply limits the claims that can be attributed to it."). This revert prominently removes the OED content, despite my note in the previous revert that "it was decided earlier to include OED." The OED content wasn't just being removed by accident as part of a larger content dispute. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:14, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

It clearly was no accident. No one who had debated the issue since 2 November and heavily participated in the RfC and subsequent discussions could have forgotten about it. Clearly SPECIFICO and "My very best wishes" did not accept the clarification of the RfC on 12 February. In fact MVBW removed the sentence on the same day [22]. Earlier this month, SPECIFICO repeatedly removed the RfC content, along with related material, claiming "consensus". If you make your edits in the name of "consensus", you are saying that you are bearing in mind previous discussions and the contributions of other editors. Clearly, you would have to be mindful of a recent RfC. As we know, SPECIFICO had not forgotten the RfC at all. He simply took a different view of what the consensus was and made this abundantly clear.--Jack Upland (talk) 19:32, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

The purpose of my edit was to fix misinterpretation of the source by Safire - as explained in the edit summary. Leaving second phrase in place ("Similarly...") would then appear as a contradiction. It had to be replaced by "However...", or the phrase had to be moved elsewhere on the page, as I previously did this edit, [23]. Removing this phrase was a mistake on my part. It could be easily resolved by simply placing this specific phrase back to the page, instead of making edit war and reporting it on the ANI. Once again, I agree with including this phrase (in appropriate context!) - as follows from the closing of the RfC and my own previous edits on the page (diffs above). My very best wishes (talk) 14:09, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I have found that MVBW has deeply researched understanding and careful adherence to WP policy and guidelines with respect to this article. I think he has proposed Verified and NPOV ways to cite the dicey OED source. As Swarm notes, this content dispute was settled prior to February, when Thucydides411's ANI/AE TBAN expired, and if he so chooses, MVBW can easily correct the article text once again. SPECIFICO talk 14:28, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

There's no "correction" required regarding Safire's article - it's accurately summarized in the current version of the article. The "correction" that MVBW and you have been pushing is based on a very simple misinterpretation of Safire's article. This is explained very clearly here. Please don't take this AN/I as giving justification for another unilateral "correction" of the Safire content. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:19, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

This thread had nothing to do with Safire. I've already stated "screw safire" on the article talk page. it's a pithy little vintage bit of nothing that, in WP terms, is WP:UNDUE. You may be able to push an OED-affiliated reference solely on the branding and pedigree of its publisher. Not so an daily press Op-Ed by Safire. SPECIFICO talk 17:31, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

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

Topic ban proposal - LoveVanPersie

I have just blocked LoveVanPersie (talk · contribs) for repeatedly adding unsourced IPA pronunciations to articles. This seems to be an ongoing and long-term problem - see #Long-term disruptive editing by LoveVanPersie above (I'm starting a new discussion here so it doesn't get lost - feel free to move/merge if you deem it necessary). I therefore propose that LoveVanPersie is indefinitely topic banned from adding IPA pronunciations, even if they are sourced, to all articles. I would also propose a mass rollback of all of his edits related to IPA. GiantSnowman 10:56, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

No comment on the ban idea, but why would you rollback every edit by someone who's temporarily blocked? Or in other words, why wouldn't you propose a full siteban for someone if all his edits need to be rolled back? I can imagine either ("roll back everything" and "remove permanently") or ("temporary block" and "topic ban") making sense, but someone who needs to have all his edits removed isn't someone who ought to be contributing at all. Nyttend (talk) 11:47, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

@Nyttend: I've clarified that I meant rollback edits related to this topic. GiantSnowman 12:31, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

@Nyttend: I've reviewed this editor's edits in more detail, and am struggling to find anything that isn't IPA related - perhaps a site ban is justified, and a mass rollback is (IMHO) certainly is, given the concerns shared by multiple editors about this editor's editing and sourcing. GiantSnowman 13:53, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Also no comment on the ban idea, but User:LoveVanPersie in the last edit provided references (and provided references increasingly, though arguably not sufficient in the first edits). I don't think it is a good idea to block an editor who you are reverting and who is trying to address your concerns - and I get the feeling from the above discussion that the concerns are controversial in the first place. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:53, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

@Beetstra: he's not trying to address any concerns, he is trying to add IPA based on some mis-belief that that a language's "standard" pronunciation applies to everyone, regardless of where they are from. Would you give someone from Texas a New York IPA? They repeatedly added the same material, first unsourced, then sourced to random Wikipedia articles, then sourced to a website which gives 38 (!!!) different pronunciations of the same word... GiantSnowman 12:31, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

@GiantSnowman: so you basically confirm that IPA is a controversial topic??? So I still think it is a bad idea to block an editor with whom you are editwarring over such a controversial subject, who is trying to address your concerns (but clearly not to your liking of addressing). —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:47, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

@Beetstra: no, I blocked an editor with a long history of adding un-sourced and poorly sourced content to BLPs (that happens to be IPA) and ignoring warnings. BTW if you want to accuse me of being WP:INVOLVED then just come out and say it...FWIW two admins (@Yamla and Yunshui:) have already reviewed the block. GiantSnowman 15:18, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

@GiantSnowman: I am not accusing you of being 8nvolved, because that is a too strong a word. I see an editor who is trying to improve (see also thread above), but gets reverted and reverted without an attempt to work together to solve the problem, and without a clear indication on how to use IPA (that is how I digest the above thread). Many throughout Wikipedia are unsourced, but apparently this editor is forced to properly source because other people, apparently, have said sources to show he is wrong. All I see is people stating LVP is wrong because LVP cannot source, without sources to show what is right. And yes, I know my WP:V and WP:RS. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:09, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

@Beetstra: I'm not required to teach phonetics to him. WP:COMPETENCE is required to edit Wikipedia. I've already spent hours and hours helping him - see my talk page. Even if that weren't the case, I still feel that my message would be justified. Mr KEBAB (talk) 05:45, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB: I know you are not required. But I still have the feeling that this whole bickering is about something that is not an editor problem per sé (as also noted in above thread), but a lack of guidance and direction (but that is not strange to Wikipedia - we tie things to the editor, not necessarily to the problem). This situation is very similar to what we once ran into at the chemicals/chemistry WikiProject, and it is in the grey area between '1 + 1 = 2' and '0.999999999... = 1' .. both are 'simple mathematics' (agreed, the latter controversial) - but where do you draw a line between the two, do you mention them with a SYNTHESIS-source, do you mention them without a source, or do you chose to omit them completely. And I have been, in that case, close to bringing the editor to ANI over it. Here it is the same - do we need a source on it in the first place (WP:MOS/Pronunciation does not mention it - David Aardsma .. originally Dutch surname from the same area in NL where I am from, I would not pronounce that a z as in zoom, but an s as in sun - it lacks a reference since it addition in 2010/2012), where nearly every source amounts to (a certain amount of) synthesis (the number of ways people pronounce my given name and my surname .. ), or should we not mention them at all? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:45, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

@Beetstra: See [24] and User talk:LoveVanPersie#Miloslav Mečíř Jr. and judge for yourself whether LVP was guided properly.

The reason he's making so many mistakes in his transcriptions is that he's overvaluing his listening skills and because he doesn't read specialized literature, which he doesn't read because his English isn't good enough. In such situations you don't really guide people as much as you just do their job for them. We both know what tends to happen to people who do that in real world, don't we? :)

Transcriptions linking to Help:IPA/X guides generally should always follow said guides which always (well, nearly always) follow reputable sources. When you transcribe something into IPA it doesn't mean that every symbol has to be taken completely literally. I mean, look at Help:IPA/Danish and Danish phonology - most symbols for the unrounded front vowels are seriously wrong when taken literally. The name of Hans Jørgen Uldall isn't really pronounced [hans jɶɐ̯n̩ ˈuldæːˀl] but [hæns jœɒ̯n̩ ˈultɛːˀl] (or even [hɛns -]). There are levels of narrowness to IPA transcriptions. Phonemic transcriptions (those enclosed within slashes /.../) are almost always broad, but phonetic transcriptions (enclosed within square brackets [...]) may be narrow, broad, or anything in between ("semi-narrow"). Mr KEBAB (talk) 07:09, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB: Sorry, I was slightly unclear. My 'guidance and direction' was more Wikipedia-wide, not to the people trying to guide/direct. The bickering is about the person, while Wikipedia does not have proper IPA guidance for the names of persons (where two Dirks in one street may have different pronounciations). It works for 'banana', it does not work for 'Dirk' (the given name). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:00, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

His transcriptions have a rather high margin of error, especially when it comes to correctly identifying stressed syllables in Spanish. I don't think there's anything controversial in my original post. Maybe I should've omitted more trivial mistakes, but then again - he's making lots of them.

There also are French, Portuguese and Basque transcriptions of his that I'm unable to check. The issue could be even bigger than we think. Mr KEBAB (talk) 12:11, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

His edits are all either unsourced or poorly sourced, and all relate to IPA, particularly for BLPs. This is seriously concerning. GiantSnowman 14:08, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support Tban 6 months or indef for all IPAs, or just BLP IPAs, until they can demonstrate they know how to proerly add and source IPAs. L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 16:05, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support topic ban (disclaimer: I was pinged above, but I've only been in casual contact with LVP). I think it's fairly obvious action – when someone shows they're unable to get it despite repeated and kind appeals and error-pointing, forcefully stopping them seems to be the only answer.
  As a side issue, in practice we have rather lax requirements for sourcing of pronunciations: any native speaker in the know or a trained linguist can write them based on a sound record or regularity of orthography (so I don't think WP:CRYBLP is in order), but LVP has soundly demonstrated a lack of competence in the area and should be stopped for that reason only. No such user (talk) 16:19, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support TBan, 6 months or indef for all IPAs. This comment ("Every IPA I added has been confirmed on YouTube and Forvo.") combined with claiming Wikipedia articles count as reliable sources, indicates to me this user hasn't read or doesn't understand WP:RS. I tried pointing them to WP:RS, apparently at least the fourth time they've been pointed to that policy. But they don't appear to have noticed yet. --Yamla (talk) 19:11, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose (at least for now). Mainly per above thread and common practice. —Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:10, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
• Support topic ban but oppose block rationale even though I don't mind the block itself. I defer to Mr KEBAB about whether LVP's IPA edits should be rolled back en masse.

  Blocking a disruptive SPA on competence grounds is fine. But unsourced? Give me a break, IPA is just a written transcription of how words are pronounced. LVP's IPA problem wasn't that his transcriptions were unsourced, it's that they were wrong.

  I trust Wikipedia editors to know how words in their native languages are pronounced (except in rare cases of genuine doubt) just like I trust them to be able to distinguish grammatical sentences in their native languages from ungrammatical ones, a task historically very difficult for grammarians to explicate precisely, and which is still beyond the reach of computers. And I trust our resident IPA weenies to be able to check transcriptions of spoken pronunciation into IPA orthography just like I trust our content contributors to spell words correctly (even if there's an occasional error).

  The last thing I want is Wikipedia's WP:RS goon squads tag bombing IPA transcriptions all over the project. Next we'll get a tag next to every sentence in every article asking for citations that that the sentence is grammatical, and a tag next to every word asking for a link to an external RS saying that the word is spelled correctly. Stop this, just stop it, IPA is (usually) part of the presentation and not part of the content, and as such it's something that we have to get right on our own.

  Also, Youtube is a perfectly good and useful RS for pronunciations. I've used it a few times to cite how people pronounce their own names: see Ronda Rousey as an example of this. The IPA in her biography lede links to a Youtube video of her introducing herself by name at the beginning of a TV show. We're in a mad bureaucracy if we think a video of her pronouncing her own name in a TV studio is unreliable. The subtlety that Dirk Beetstra ran into is about regional pronunciations: e.g., if we want an IPA transcription of a German word, we'd normally want Standard German (the dialect of Northern Germany) so we shouldn't transcribe it from a video of Arnold Schwarzenegger saying the word even though he has a cool accent, because his native dialect is Austrian. It's all contextual. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 06:10, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support indefinite topic ban. If LVP's past behavior is any indication, he/she won't learn from any of this and will continue making sloppy transcriptions the moment we lift a ban. I wouldn't be surprised if LVP ignores the topic ban and gets an indef block as a result. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 18:20, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• Unless we find people who can check all the transcriptions he's put into WP articles, then rolling them back is the only alternative. LVP has proven not to care about quality but quantity.

I also mostly agree with the rest of your post, I just didn't say it because I didn't want to start an argument (and I'm not saying that's what you're doing). But I also understand when someone considers WP:RS to be more important. I don't find this an easy issue. Mr KEBAB (talk) 06:28, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm saying RS should be an issue iff there's real significant doubt, which is usually not the case. We should otherwise rely on our editors' linguistic competence, at least for their own languages. This particular incident was because of LVP trying to write IPA for languages in which he wasn't competent. Most editors aren't silly enough to attempt things like that, at least after they've been called on mistakes a few times. So this was unusual and we shouldn't go into an RS tizzy over it. I hope that makes sense. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 07:03, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

This is roughly what I mean above. IPA's seem to be poorly sourced, controversial, and often amount to synthesis. WP:MOS/Pronunciation is not mentioning sourcing requirements, WP:IPA does not mention sourcing requirements. Does this require sourcing in the first place, or does this amount to a high level of WP:SYNTHESIS by definition and therefor it should neither be sourced, nor mentioned unless there is a direct, independent source for the specific case (my name, Dirk, is pronounced in different ways depending on the mother tongue of the person pronouncing it (or even, 'mother dialect'), and there is no set pronunciation). It simply doesn't work, and there are hardly any proper references that do not amount to synthesis in most cases. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:21, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

I can't remember other controversies/disputes like this one. There's nationalistic disputes like Kiev vs Kyiv (same name in two dialects), but there's no disagreement about how to pronounce either version. No US English speaker will have trouble figuring out "Donald Trump"'s pronunciation from its spelling (even if they'd never heard someone else pronounce it), so the idea that the IPA for it should have to be externally sourced is absurd. For a Dutch name like yours, I don't have reason to doubt (unless you say otherwise) that I can trust Dutch-speaking Wikipedians to either confidently get it right, or recognize that there is uncertainty and look for a source (like the contributors to Ronda Rousey's biography weren't sure if the s in her last name was voiced or unvoiced, thus the link to the youtube clip).

Omitting the pronunciation info altogether is terrible too. It damages the encyclopedia's usefulness for the sake of bureaucracy. It might not matter for Trump, but for articles like Zbigniew Brzezinski or Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy the pronunciation info is very helpful. Those articles have audio clips of Wikipedian speakers of the relevant languages saying the names. Are you telling me those audios are SYNTH, and if I made an audio pronouncing "Donald Trump" or "California" (the state where I live) it would similarly be SYNTH? If we rejected Wikipedian pronunciations of "California" and wanted genuine RS for it, where would we even look? How about an authority like the top leader of the state government? Oh whoops, until recently that would have been former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and (trust me) a clip from him would have been less encyclopedically sound than a clip from me (though it would have been badass).

In some hairsplitting philosophical sense the editor pronunciations might be SYNTH, but pursuing the SYNTH concept that far would be bureaucracy gone nuts. We're trying to write a practical encyclopedia and our sourcing practices are supposed to serve that goal, not give it hoops to jump through. So I always want there to be more of those audios (and IPA is just transcription of audio) and I'm glad when Wikipedians make them. If you were to do some Dutch ones I'd be delighted.

We should not be looking for more places to turn our bureaucracy loose. We should be looking for ways to stuff it back into the can. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 08:51, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

@173.228.123.121: The SYNTH argument is why we more-or-less dropped systematic naming in chemical compounds - it is mathematically straightforward .. and not. And this is more fragile than that, as I say above, my name is pronounced slightly different depending on the mother tongue of the pronouncer. I agree, for Donald that is not going to change too much, though even there the length of the o and a could change. Anyway, the first revert says 'unsourced'. That suggests that the original is controversial, and needs a proper WP:RS (or is it a my synth against your synth?). I would ask the same for the surname of David Aardsma - a clear North-Dutch-origin surname, where I would pronounce an 's' sound (as in sun), but the article puts a 'z' sound (as in zoom). There are a lot of cases there where I think the pronunciation is controversial. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:45, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

And I would argue that the revert based solely on sourcing grounds was a very WP:DICKish thing to do. It does not suggest that the original is controversial, but merely that the reverter is a member of, quote, WP:RS goon squads tag bombing IPA transcriptions all over the project. Bizarrely enough, that particular IPA by LVP seem to have been correct. But we're straying off-topic for ANI now, I would support anyone hatting this subthread. No such user (talk) 17:00, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

The IPA was correct. Mr KEBAB (talk) 12:58, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

He is currently spamming various talk pages with threads about IPA transcriptions and how they should be fixed. He already made two mistakes: [25], [26]. Should that be viewed as ignoring the topic ban? Mr KEBAB (talk) 18:51, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

The topic ban has not been formerly introduced - can an uninvolved admin please review and close? GiantSnowman 08:37, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

...that's true. My bad. Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:39, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Still needs closing... GiantSnowman 07:44, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Mass rollback

• @Mr KEBAB: you're the editor who originally raised this IPA issue a week ago - what are your views on a mass rollback? GiantSnowman 08:39, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
  • @GiantSnowman:As I said above, Unless we find people who can check all the transcriptions he's put into WP articles, then rolling them back is the only alternative.

I'll also note that LVP said on his talk page that I corrected all of his transcriptions, which is obviously untrue. Mr KEBAB (talk) 09:18, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Stalking, or appropriate use of edit history?

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• SarekOfVulcan (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Soilentred (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Soilentred is changing various software articles to indicate that a certain version of Windows is required, such as Windows 7, even for software that ran under other versions of Windows in earlier releases. I noticed this on Opera (web browser), and fixed it there, and proceeded to make the same revert for other software that I knew ran on earlier versions of Windows. Soilentred reverted me, with edit summaries such as Stop following me and reverting all my edits. I attempted to engage on their talkpage, but it wasn't very useful. So, what now? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:58, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

IMO: (1) Soilentred seems to be making obviously incorrect changes. In the examples I looked at, when the product was released the claimed minimum required version of Windows was not even available ; (2) if an editor makes a bad edit, of course you check whether or not it was an isolated case. I have notified the editor of this discussion. Dorsetonian (talk) 18:41, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Drat. Thanks very much for passing on the notification, I know I have to do that myself, and I thought about it while I was typing... --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:44, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

• (Non-administrator comment) If you notice a problem with another user's edits, it is a completely acceptable use of edit history to check if they've made the same mistake multiple times. See this statement by ArbCom, in particular DMM's additional comment. Moreover, if they tell you to "stop following them", that is an assumption of bad faith and is actually an inversion of the WP:HOUND policy, and Soilentred (talk · contribs) should be told unambiguously to (a) knock it off with the bad-faith hounding accusations and (b) stop making problematic content edits or risk a TBAN or block. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:06, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

• Their snarkiness aside, but if a software article is stating that the current stable version is X.X.X which is only compatible from a particular version of Windows, or whatever OS, is that wrong? I think Soilentred has a point. In the Opera example, would the article really be correct in saying the current stable version, 51.0.2830.55, is compatible with pre-7 Windows? Blackmane (talk) 00:37, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

• I don't think it's intended to refer only to the current version, but I've raised the question at the Infobox Software talk page.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 00:56, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

I'd say that WP:NOTMANUAL, at the very least the earlier versions should be covered as well. Wikipedia is also supposed to have articles on fully defunct software that is no longer supported, some of which works on newer OSes by means of unofficial patches of questionable legality -- what would Soilentred's solution for those articles be? But it doesn't really matter, since even if Sarek was 100% wrong on the content, he clearly had reason to be wrong, so "Stop following me and reverting all my edits" was out-of-line.

It should also be noted that in the diffs about Soilentred appears to be directly admitting to engaging in OR by saying "I ran this software on several computers with different versions of Windows installed and found that Windows 7 or later worked"; Sarek did not misread that comment, as it looks exactly the same to me. If Soilent continues engaging in OR, they will need to be TBANned or blocked.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:43, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

• I see Soilent commented at WT:SOFTWARE and has not edited since. That's a good sign, perhaps. If he doesn't stick to discussion, though, "what now" is going to be a block. He's making contested edits, so he can either follow WP:BRD or accept some sort of editing restriction in exchange for a conditional unblock, IMO. Swarm ♠ 00:40, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

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

Shenanigans at Daniele Bonaviri

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5.236.185.145 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)

5.236.164.226 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)

These IPs are repeatedly removing the maintenance tags (notability, need for third party sources, and BLP sourcing) as well as Category:Living people from Daniele Bonaviri. The article is referenced solely to the subject's website. I've reverted twice, so won't touch it again, but had left a message on Talk:Daniele Bonaviri about it. Could an admin look at this?

The article has a very murky contribution history to say the least. It was rev-deleted for blatant copyvio yesterday. It's original creator (Rashtooiy) re-added the copyvio today as well as removing the maintenance tags and Category:Living people. It's been rev-deleted again. Another user (Designcore) had repeatedly created the now-salted Draft:Daniele Bonaviri with the same copyvio. The copyvio material was also created in User:Designcore/sandbox (now deleted). Oddly, Designcore's only other contribution was to submit the rejected Draft:Joel Vicent Joseph for AfC review [27] despite not appearing anywhere else in the contribution history. Designcore also appears to have registered two accounts [28]. The second account is named Vinart.promo (now blocked for spam user name). Their only edit here (I think) was to paste the copyvio into the community sandbox [29]. Vinart Promo is the company that built and maintains Bonaviri's website. It's based in Iran as are the IPs. The IPs have taken over after Designcore and Rashtooiy received warnings about their behaviour. Voceditenore (talk) 17:12, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Many thanks to CambridgeBayWeather who has now semi-protected the article. Fast service! :) Voceditenore (talk) 17:29, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

• I can't find any secondary sources by googling either. I've PRODded the article. It's not sticky PROD for BLPs, since there is a source, such as it is (the discography on the subjects own site), but ordinary PROD, so it will no doubt be removed as soon as the IP person gets autoconfirmed. (Cynical? Me?) Bishonen | talk 18:15, 22 March 2018 (UTC).

The irony of all this, Bish, is that he performs a lot in Italy and does appear the news there. It night even be capable of saving with a lot of work, but I'm certainly not going to do it after the shenanigans. Voceditenore (talk) 18:28, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

@Bishonen: I call blocking them when it happens! :P Swarm ♠ 00:53, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

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

User:Spintendo and the {{request edit}} queue

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Since late 2017, Spintendo has become the most frequent answerer of COI requests generated by the {{request edit}} template, by far. This is a process encouraged by the community and endorsed by the WP:COI guideline (for those unfamiliar, the requests themselves can be found via AnomieBOT/EDITREQTable and also Category:Requested edits). At first this seemed a blessing, as a serious backlog had developed over time; within weeks, Spintendo had reduced it nearly to zero. Since then, they have continued responding so quickly as to become, in effect, the only volunteer editor working the queue. For others aware of this fact, I have to assume they've been grateful that someone else is handling this sometimes thankless task.

But the question of whether Spintendo is actually doing the community a favor is worthy of closer examination. In recent months, I have seen how Spintendo's monopolization of edit requests, unhelpful and sometimes hostile attitude, and idiosyncratic interpretation of policies and guidelines have harmed the process. Before getting too far into this, I want to be clear about what I am not saying: I am not saying Spintendo is always wrong to reject requests; indeed not all are worthy. Nor am I saying Spintendo rejects them 100% of the time: in fact Spintendo has implemented requests that I have made. Initially I viewed these conflicts as content disputes, as the cautious reader might. However, Spintendo's judgment has been repeatedly called into question at WP:3O, WP:DRN, WP:BLP/N, and via WP:RfC, and it is possible to demonstrate a pattern of conduct that I believe rises to the level of AN/I.

Regardless of one's opinion of paid editing or paid editors, I hope readers here would agree that the COI request process is an important one, a necessary supplement to the efforts at WP:AfC and WP:COI/N. My goal here is to make others aware of this issue, to bring some sanity to the COI request process, and perhaps even encourage other volunteers to pitch in more often. That said, in order to demonstrate that there is a problem, here are some recent examples of Spintendo's disagreeable reviewing style, citing matters both resolved and unresolved. I have limited my examples to those I have participated in or investigated and where I have confidence in the quality of the requests made:

• Michael J. Saylor (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I recently asked to include a noteworthy detail about Mr. Saylor's college education, cited to the Washington Post. Spintendo responded by casting doubt on the Post story, offering a puzzling rationale based on guesses about the college administration to justify this position. Soon, Drmies and Cullen328 joined the discussion to say the detail was germane and the source reliable, so Drmies made the edit, and Spintendo did not respond again.

• MicroStrategy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I have suggested replacing a poorly referenced awards section with one I believe is better sourced. Spintendo declined the request within two hours, arguing variously that the recognition was based on "subjective metrics" and the source publications had "deep connections" to the industry. I explained why I thought these criticisms were misapplied, but upon subsequent reply Spintendo offered a different set of grounds for objection, also not based on content guidelines. As of this writing, I consider the matter unresolved.

• Broadridge Financial Solutions (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

A colleague, Danilo Two, has been offering suggested additions for this very short, multiply-tagged article, for several months now. In a discussion stretching back to late January, Spintendo has opposed the inclusion of a proposed "History" section, focusing exclusively on a single Forbes magazine article they claim is WP:OR. Due to the lack of input from other volunteers, and following Spintendo's suggestion, Danilo brought the matter to DRN, where it remains unresolved.

• Iteris (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

A very similar situation involves my colleague Inkian Jason proposing a "Products and services" section to this likewise underwritten article, where Spintendo has, since January, declined requests to add at least three different versions of seemingly uncomplicated and well-referenced information. After Jason made edits based on feedback, Spintendo would move the goalposts, sometimes agreeing to add the odd bullet point or two to the live article but offering inscrutable reasons to oppose the rest, meanwhile using an elaborate "reply quotebox" format which makes the conversation extremely difficult to follow. The matter is currently also at DRN, and so is unresolved.

• New York Life Insurance Company (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Here, 16912 Rhiannon spent several months going back and forth with Spintendo, who insisted on including a section sourced only to a single report by a NJ state agency. (There are no other sources; it generated no news.) When she posted an RfC seeking others' input, Spintendo responded with a long and condescending "survey" that Rhiannon was expected to answer to demonstrate her understanding of "secondary" sources. After she withdrew and rephrased the RfC, Icewhiz showed up and removed the section, following which other editors commented in basic agreement. As of this writing, Spintendo has not responded.

My observations regarding patterns in Spintendo's interactions with COI editors; some of these examples necessarily make reference to content disagreements, but are focused on repetitions amounting to AN/I-worthy behavior:

• Closes requests too quickly, not allowing time for any other editors who may also be watching the request edit queue. This is apparent on the Broadridge talk page, where Spintendo three times declined separate requests within a couple of hours each, effectively discouraging follow-up questions. Moreover, by acting in such haste, Spintendo makes snap judgments which other editors have sometimes had to address later. (For example, this happened to Rhiannon in December on the talk page for HubSpot, where Kvng and Keithbob eventually got involved.)

• Repeatedly questions the validity of reliable secondary sources, and asks instead for primary sources contemporary with the events themselves. This is especially apparent on the Broadridge article where Spintendo rejected the Forbes piece while asking for "primary sources published at the time", and the Saylor article where they rejected the Washington Post and asked for substantiation by "someone in the registrars office" at MIT. See also Spintendo's extensive wikilawyering about what constitutes a "secondary source" in order to justify basing a whole section on a NJ state government report at New York Life.

• Otherwise misinterprets rules to stymie COI requests, for example asserting the essay WP:NUMBER1, which is very clearly about AfD and Notability, applies to the inclusion of information within articles. In another circumstance, claiming passages are "insufficiently paraphrased" and therefore WP:COPYVIO even where the proposed language contained details not in the identified source passage (look for "ListHub" in this discussion on the article for Move (company)). From a MOS perspective, Spintendo sometimes replaces or substitutes prose paragraphs with lists, especially in "History" sections, currently at MicroStrategy and formerly at Realtor.com (a situation later resolved by SMcCandlish), although Wikipedia conventions and MOS:LISTBASICS specifically discourage this practice.

• Opposes COI requests only until another volunteer editor takes action, and then disappears from the conversation, suggesting they care more about frustrating COI editors than the article content itself. See discussions abandoned at Michael J. Saylor, New York Life, and HubSpot once others intervened.

A case could be made that this amounts to targeted harassment of disclosed COI contributors and, for anyone who has experienced it, it certainly feels like gaslighting. But that judgment call need not be made to see there is a problem here. It's enough to observe that Spintendo has become a bottleneck for COI requests: this pattern of opposing well-intentioned and carefully-constructed content proposals with lengthy, confusing, argumentative objections based on novel interpretations of guidelines or expedient standards entirely of their own invention has become a major challenge for those of us who are trying to follow the rules and work through the {{request edit}} process. That is not just myself and my colleagues, but anyone following the advice to use this template as given at WP:COIEDIT.

Until such time as this changes, I cannot recommend to any company or organization that they use the {{request edit}} template. Meanwhile, I fear that the breakdown of this process will embolden others who would edit without disclosure. The queue needs other voices, and Spintendo must either follow the accepted guidelines in reviewing requests or cease doing so altogether. Community oversight, and some common sense, is badly needed here. Thanks for reading—I realize it's a lot to consider on a subject most are content to ignore—and I'll be happy to answer any questions that I can. WWB Too (Talk · COI) 18:45, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

The box that you claim to be extensive wikilawyering is a fine example of defining primary, secondary, and tertiary sourcing, as you would learn in any historiography course. I've never heard of Spintendo before, and I've not checked any of your other links, but if this is his style, we need him to keep going. [Update] I have checked Saylor, and he's absolutely right: the Washington Post is relying on faulty information, because like all other newspapers, it's an expert at publishing new stuff, not an expert at scholarly-level research. This is not speculation: it's exactly what you're expected to do in evaluating sources, and if you think that we can trust a source when its sources are faulty, you need to go to your local college and speak with the reference librarian. Nyttend (talk) 21:52, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

At New York Life, the source in dispute was a state government report, easily recognizable as a WP:PRIMARY source, later adjudicated to be so by editors participating in an RfC. Re: Saylor, the objection was entirely based on speculation. The Post is not in the habit of reporting things it believes to be false, and there was no reasonable cause to doubt it. WWB Too (Talk · COI) 22:03, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Hello, actual college librarian here. We instruct students that the Washington Post and newspapers of similar caliber are generally considered reliable sources appropriate for their use in assignments, just as they are appropriate for use in Wikipedia articles. Of course scholarly peer-reviewed resources are preferable, but they are generally unnecessary for basic, non-controversial biographical facts. We teach students to think critically about sources, but we do not teach them to engage in belligerent groundless nitpicking nor do we encourage them to present others with condescending quizzes. There's nothing here that I would consider consistent with an appropriate approach to critically evaluating sources, these examples are instead consistent with the actions of an wikilawyering ideologue determined to get their way regardless of the content of those sources. It is disappointing that you do not distinguish between the two in this case. Gamaliel (talk) 22:29, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

I was just about to comment on this when you basically took the words out of my mouth. There is no way I'm going to look at all of the links provided, nor read through all of the above complaint. (TLDR) However, looking at the talk page and seeing the chart in question, that is definitely not describing primary, secondary, or tertiary sources. It's like saying, "A pilot writes information about flying a plane (primary source). A writer turns that information into a draft of a flight manual (secondary source). A publisher turns that into an actual flight manual for the public to read (tertiary source)." No, the flight manual is still a primary source. A primary source is one which is directly related or involved with to the issue or item discussed, and does the original research themselves. A secondary source is a source unaffiliated with the original source, but uses the primary sources for research, is qualified to interpret them, and is under editorial (and often peer reviewed) oversight. (ie: journalism) A tertiary source is one that relies on secondary sources (like Wikipedia does), does no original research of its own, and does not offer interpretations of primary sources. The PDF WWB Too listed above needs a lawyer to interpret it and is definitely a primary source. Zaereth (talk) 22:50, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

The community has done an excellent job of correcting me in the past where that has been needed, and I put my faith in that community now to do the same. The concerns which arise from this, most active group of COI editors is not too surprising, in that they submit a good amount of edit requests overall. And while the complaint about being served "too quickly" is perhaps a new one as far as COI edit requests go, it is nevertheless, understandable that declining these requests is something they find troubling. However, the belief that this is a targeted action of stonewalling or else incompetence, I don't agree with.

1. In the case of Michael J Saylor, Drmies was quite right in asking why a grown man would pay to see to it that this detail ends up in his bio. It's a good question, but Drmies thought better of going round after round arguing the triviality of the claim, and ultimately decided, based on policy, to approve the addition. Drmies is a peacemaker, and I completely respect that.
2. With respect to MicroStrategy, the inclusion of these awards which the editor desires to place there are examples of WP:PEACOCK. We all know that these awards, while indicating important aspects of the article's subject, are difficult to rank objectively,. Additionally these awards may be intended as information for the publication's audiences, and not Wikipedia's (my reasoning being that not everyone will know what it means to be ranked as overall number 1 in industry ontime accrual rating procedures.) My actions here declining these additions align with other editors actions and are not too revolutionary.
3. Broadridge concerns actions which another legal entity - ADP - was responsible for. Broadridge was incorporated in 2007, which raised concerns in my mind over who rightfully owns a company's past actions. I believe that these claims belong in the ADP article. Because of mine and the COI' editor's tardiness in replying at a mediated dispute forum, the COI editor's dispute request was closed. The COI editor was told their appeal could take months. It was my urging of the case to be reopened that it continues now. This would appear to be an instance where I helped them to continue an action against myself. Why? For me, it just felt like the closing was my fault, and that they deserved a full chance to be heard.
4. Iteris has been addressed at DRN. The words of Robert McClenon can speak for themselves in that case. 1., 2.
5. Finally there is New York Life Insurance company, where the editor would like to remove information regarding a market response report prepared by the NJ Department of Banking and Insurance. These market reports are fairly regular (in that many banks and insurance companies in that state undergo them). They are begun in response to complaints from consumers. The report on NYLIC is significant because it is the only one in recent history that NJ DOBI has had to do for that company. The COI editor was concerned with how the report looked in the article. I reworded it by highlighting the investigation as a net gain for the company, in that it heralded customer improvements (which was stated in the report's opening paragraphs) I also made sure page numbers were ascribed where necessary. In response to an edit request, I placed the claim in the main body of text, and not its own section. The COI editor understandably now would like all of it removed, but as I understood the rules, removing bad information because it was bad was not a good idea. That process is still ongoing. Spintendo      23:05, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

For those wanting to know about the chart I got that from Wikipedia's party and person page located here, with slight modification as you can see, to the examples. The statement that "A secondary source is a source 1) unaffiliated with the original source, but 2) uses the primary sources for research, 3) is qualified to interpret them, and 4) is under editorial (and often peer reviewed) oversight." is just how I see it as well. I believe that NJDOBI falls under this rubric as:

1. The NJDOBI is professionally unaffiliated with NYLIC, in that one entity is a government regulator specializing in government regulations and enforcement while NYLIC specializes in offering insurance.
2. NJ DOBI made their examinations of primary source documents provided by NYLIC
3. As attorneys, the officials at NJ DOBI were qualified to examine the documents and to interpret them.
4. The editorial oversight of the NJ DOBI comes from the NJ State Legislature, which regulates ond oversees the DOBI

Spintendo      00:23, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

• I've only looked at the Saylor saga, "Request to re-include mention graduation ranking". If I had been dealing with it (and everyone's lucky I didn't!) I wouldn't have gone anywhere near a discussion about whether the source was primary, or reliable, or erroneous, or anything else. I would have just have said, no, I don't feel like making this edit: it is not appropriate to a brief biography of someone's life and it does not improve the encyclopedia article. If anyone else had felt like making the edit I would have thought they were a bit misguided but I wouldn't have objected or reverted. Thincat (talk) 08:41, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
• Chiming in as I was mentioned vis-a-vis New York Life. While I think it was correct to remove the section, and I BOLDly did so (and indeed there is consensus at the RfC presently to do so), I do not think it was unreasonable for Spintendo to object. In my view this is a situation that many editors would remove after examining (and even more would remove given a reasoned short UNDUE arguement based on a single primary source) - but Spintendo's rejection of the edit request was within the norm of Wikipedia editors and was reasonable.Icewhiz (talk) 09:55, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

And I thank you for acting BOLDly. The frustrating thing about that darned claim was that I could not locate anything else mentioning it wherever I looked. I had to tell myself that at the end of the day, if it's that routine where the only people talking about it are the ones doing the investigating, then it probably should have been removed eventually. And while I still believe it to be a very problematic secondary source, I'm satisfied with the outcome. Spintendo      12:45, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Suggest That Policy Issue Be Taken to VPP

Well, well. This is really very much a case of biting the hand that feeds one. The request-edit queue is a means for paid editors to request that volunteer editors do them a service that they are not required to do. User:Spintendo is being reported here for not being a good enough clerk-typist in working off the queue of COI request edits. I have just responded to the two issues that are at the dispute resolution noticeboard, and in both cases it appears that the paid editor is requesting the services of a second volunteer editor because the first volunteer editor, Spintendo, isn't rewriting the articles as requested. My first thought is that if paid editors want Wikipedia articles rewritten to their specifications, they can rewrite the article themselves and host it on their corporate web site (either with full attribution, or with no attribution by completely rewriting it and putting it under corporate copyright).

I agree with the filing party, User:WWB Too, as to not recommending to companies that they use the request edit queue, but not as to blaming either Spintendo or the volunteer community.

I see a policy issue that needs to be addressed, which is that the request-edit queue has become an attractive nuisance and needs to be rethought.

However, this thread is a conduct complaint at WP:ANI. I certainly do not see any valid basis for a conduct complaint against User:Spintendo or any other volunteer editor. Can we close this and take it to Village pump? Robert McClenon (talk) 22:27, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Oppose. Clearly the behavior of Spintendo is at issue here, not just the queue. Gamaliel (talk) 22:30, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

User:Gamaliel - Yes, they have made it the issue here. It shouldn't be. My first argument is essentially that they have no right to make it into an issue, because Spintendo is providing a voluntary service, and they are complaining that the service isn't good enough. However, second, as a conduct issue, what do they want? The only remedy that we can provide here at WP:ANI would be to topic-ban Spintendo from working the queue. Is that what they want? Robert McClenon (talk) 23:11, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Certainly, I would like to find a solution short of a topic ban, and it's no accident that I did not ask for one. A preferable outcome would be greater participation in this process, so that when Spintendo offers a response that does not comply with content guidelines—which, as I have demonstrated, is too frequent an occurrence to be ignored—that others may weigh in short of having to seek redress at 3O or DRN. Additionally, I'm surprised at your suggestion that {{request edit}} is the problem here. It's a flawed tool, difficult to use and harder to find, but seeking to have it closed down would only drive more COI activity underground. It serves a purpose, but it's not working well. WWB Too (Talk · COI) 03:06, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

User:WWB Too - First, I know that you aren't asking for a topic-ban, because I know that you know that if you have User:Spintendo topic-banned, no one else will be working the queue. Second, I am not sure how likely you are to get greater participation in the process when you have made participation in the process unpleasant for Spintendo, and have shown other editors who might consider helping out that what they will get is buffets and spitting. Third, I wasn't suggesting that the request-edit tool be shut down, only that it be rethought, but by dragging the editor who provides you with assistance here, you are making a case that perhaps the tool should be shut down. It's a flawed tool, and it's not working well, partly because you paid editors are just using the tool to pile on increasingly burdensome and complex edit requests to rewrite Wikipedia articles to your own specifications. If you want articles that meet your specifications, you have your own web sites. Spintendo is voluntarily providing you with a service that neither he nor Wikipedia is required to provide you with, and you are making things unpleasant. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:54, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Robert McClenon, as I believe the diffs above verify, my colleagues and I have been unfailingly polite to Spintendo, and always aim to be concise and careful in our content proposals when using {{request edit}}. I never want to be at AN/I, but given the above I felt I had no other recourse. As Mary Gaulke states below, it is Spintendo who is frequently unpleasant, condescending, and resentful in tone. Likewise, as she observes, Spintendo's feedback is "dramatically different" from other volunteer respondents. This has been my experience, too.

Additionally: I am open to a re-imagining of the process; it so happens it's a topic I'd raised with Doc James, Harej, DGG, Smallbones, Fuzheado and others at Wikimania Montreal. I think a queue that is easier to read, with instructions for both requesting editors and moderators to make things easy to follow would be great. There's too much misunderstanding in this topic area, and I'd support anything that makes it run better. WWB Too (Talk · COI) 12:43, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm hesitant to respond here, precisely because of the "biting the hand that feeds" point that Robert McClenon made. I'm very grateful for Spintendo's work reducing the edit request backlog, and I've told them as much. And while I'm a fairly infrequent user of the process (Wikipedia is a pretty minor part of my job), I must note that some of the feedback I've received from Spintendo is dramatically different from my experience with other editors and my understanding of Wikipedia's guidelines. The ongoing discussions here are a fairly good representation of my two primary observations:

1. Spintendo requests primary sources for information that isn't particularly biased and is well documented in secondary sources (in this case, the identity of the subject's alma mater). This isn't particularly cumbersome, but is a little peculiar.
2. Spintendo seems to resent being asked, even implicitly, to address these requests at all. They do not appear to read very closely, and are dismissive of any moderately nuanced request. (In this case, I proposed moving some information from a very long lead into a new section in the body of the article for the sake of organization, and Spintendo interpreted this as adding completely new information. When I attempted to clarify, Spintendo replied with a somewhat condescending tone.) When Spintendo stopped replying to my clarifications, I proposed that I could re-open the edit request and give another editor a chance to review my requests, since it was clear they were tired of dealing with me. Spintendo interpreted this as me threatening to quit Wikipedia, a misreading which may or may not have been intentional. I'm grateful for all the volunteers who work on edit requests, and I understand that these requests are an imposition. But I'd rather wait out a longer edit request queue than bother someone who seems to dislike this work quite strongly.

I've been an active Wikipedia editor for about four years, but I'm aware I'm still not an expert on some of the finer points of the guidelines. It's possible none of this is unusual or out of bounds. But if nothing else I'd certainly appreciate clarification of where the goalposts are so I can make sure I'm providing straightforward, well-crafted edit requests. Mary Gaulke (talk) 04:38, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

• It's unfortunate that Spintendo has ended up at the complaints board. Can someone check over Talk:Michael Izza to see if there are any wild interpretations of policy? Cheers. talk to !dave 07:30, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Since someone is asking, I'll bite: the responses in Note 1 and Note 3 are good examples of how, when asked to make a simple factual change with a reliable secondary source to support it, Spintendo then asks for additional detail that isn't strictly necessary. As demonstrated in my first post above, this happened at Talk:Iteris, and each time the draft was updated, Spintendo subsequently offered new reasons to object.

That said, this is also a good example of two problems I noted in my comment just a few minutes ago: a) the COI contributor clearly knows little about Wikipedia conventions, and so has written a request that is poorly organized and asks too much of the volunteer reviewer, while b) Spintendo's reply is difficult to parse and made all the worse for the terrible "quotebox" format. As a result, they are talking past each other, and the tools aren't helping. WWB Too (Talk · COI) 12:53, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

In response to Mary's post, I honestly have no resentful feelings for Mary. She is constantly mentioned by other editors as being an exemplar for COI editing, - kind, concise, and not wasting of time. I can say that I've definately seen the first two. But I have to admit Mary, that the particular request you mentioned was not worded by you very well at all. It did not state overall, that what you wanted was merely to move one thing from one location to another. I am a visual learner, which is a big reason why I use quoteboxes. In that way I can explain actions using shortcuts like color and placement to indicate to the requesting editors my decisions more easily. If Mary had marked the text that she wanted moved in a bright color, say Blue, and underneath it placed a bolded statement that said something like Text to be moved, she and others would see instantly what it is she wanted done and which text she wanted it done to. When I hear people talking about the problems with COI edit requests, Im not thinking of the requests themselves as the problem, I believe the problem is communicating in a more standardized way, using scripts that make use of color and position, that would go a long way towards streamlining requests.

But back to Mary. Her request was very poorly worded, and left me confused about what she wanted. And I do appreciate Mary's candor here, but Mary — you've forgotten to mention how you gave me, in that same request, a 14 page document with the instructions similar to "You find the page. I'm busy. Just look it up on Google." .... Mary — you actually said that last part to me — that I could find the reference for myself on google. How do you expect a person who is doing your paid work for you to respond to that type of behavior. Those words and those actions are not using honey to catch flies Mary, they're using vinegar. So when you said that "perhaps we needed some new eyes on this" but didnt specify whose eyes needed replacing, I mentioned how you would be missed and that I wished you'd reconsider. While the first part was in jest, the second part was not. Mary, I remember one of the first interactions I had with you, back in the not soo long days ago of the 100+ COI edit request queue. I remember you being worried and discussing your plight with editors....what had happened is for whatever reason you were bumped from your place at number 15 I believe, bumped down to number 134. You were concerned about being forgotten, as all that time you had waited patiently to get to number 15 and now here you were all the way back at 134. Would anyone remember you were there waiting? I remember thinking "Dont worry Mary, we're not going to forget about you. I'm not going to forget about you. And I told you as much. I've made a point on occassions to come back to check on your requests to make sure everything was ok and that you weren't alone or forgotten That is the COI edit request reviewer I am deep down inside, and I know you are that same COI edit requester deep down inside as well. I hope that we can both continue to work on COI things together. I know that we can see eye to eye and work out any communication difficulties along the way. Spintendo      13:33, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

As far as the Michael Izza request, those claims have Mr. Izza offering, lending, calling upon, encouraging, and being vocal about a great many things.... But not much doing of anything. Is it notable when one person encourages someone else? Is the simple fact of calling upon something now so importantly notable that it must be mentioned in every article where it occurs? I'm sorry, but this looks a lot like garden variety name-dropping to me. Spintendo      13:55, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

• I have neither the time nor the energy to read over all this and respond in detail (and so I will try to refrain from generalizing about the two editors), but I urge editors not to be too quickly in dismissing WWB's complaints. Those of you who know me know I have little patience with those who abuse Wikipedia for financial purposes (witness my response to the edit request mentioned in this thread), but WWB, for a COI editor, seems to play it straight--though I will admit that my experience with them is somewhat limited. I was also a bit disappointed in some of Spintendo's remarks pertaining to those articles and found them, hmm, exaggeratedly pointed. Casting doubt on RS is fine and acceptable but there is a time and a place for those things--article talk pages should feature (hate that word) such discussions if there are practical, applicable concerns about specific articles and bits of information; general questions and grievances should be brought up elsewhere. I found WWB to be reasonable and an asset, certainly in comparison to other COI editors. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm in a hotel lobby where a Lawrence Welk-type orchestra (is it Herb Alpert?) is heard playing "Blue Moon" over the stereo, so you understand I gots to get up and dance. Drmies (talk) 17:17, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

More Thoughts and Questions

I have a few thoughts and questions.

First, I have a two-part question for User:Spintendo, or for any other volunteer editor who has been working the queue. The first part of the question is: Have some of the edit requests been lengthy or complex? The second part is: Have the edit requests tended to become more lengthy and complex in the past few months? My ulterior motive for asking this is that I wonder whether Spintendo, by addressing simple requests ably, is essentially setting up high expectations that they can work wonders in carrying out complex requests.

Second, I wonder whether there is a cognitive disconnect between what the paid editors and their corporate managers want and what they can get and ask in a volunteer organization. Demands that someone do their job better in various ways (more quickly, more pleasantly, more proficiently, etc.) make sense in an employee content, because the manager has the ultimate option, which they would prefer not to use, to fire the employee, so that the employee really has an incentive to heed the advice to do a better job. However, volunteers are working the edit-request queue, and the corporate managers don’t really have an alternative, other than to put the articles up on the corporate web site. It isn’t realistic to expect that the use of a complaint mechanism such as WP:ANI will result in better volunteer service. As I said yesterday, the only real question is whether the paid editors would prefer to rely entirely on other volunteers without Spintendo. (Also, the fact that the paid editors are rewarding a service with buffets and spitting is a reason why other volunteer editors may prefer not to work the queue.) I am wondering whether the paid editors are using a thought process that is more appropriate to employment than to receiving a voluntary service.

Third, there seems to be agreement that the tool is flawed and can use improvement. Can the paid editors, who are the beneficiaries of the tool, assist in improving the tool to serve them better?

Fourth, and this may be minor but is a persistent subtheme, the paid editors keep saying that they do not want to demand a lot of time, but they are demanding a lot of time. For instance, there have been several requests filed by paid editors at the dispute resolution noticeboard (DRN) recently. Most recently two of them asked for additional voices or additional volunteer input or review. They wanted a neutral editor to review their requests based on policies and guidelines, that is, one more volunteer after Spintendo, and more time. That is a request for yet more volunteer time after a volunteer has already provided their time in working the edit request queue. They say that they don’t want to demand a lot of time, but they are demanding a lot of time.

Fifth, perhaps the request edit queue needs to be rethought in either of two ways, because it is becoming an unlimited demand for the time of volunteer editors. The first way, the more radical, might be to do away with the request edit queue and instead to allow them to edit the articles, with their edits declared as COI in edit summaries, subject to 1RR, and to impose very strict limits on their use of dispute resolution mechanisms. The second way, the less radical, might be simply to impose very strict, probably zero, limits on their use of dispute resolution mechanisms. That is, since they are requesting a voluntary service from the volunteer editors, stop re-litigating the requests.

Sixth, I come back to where I started, with a question for the paid editors. It is unrealistic to expect that Spintendo will be a different editor than Spintendo is, and it seems that is what they are asking. This noticeboard isn’t meant to sound out vague policy complaints; it is meant to request administrative action. The only administrative action that can be provided is some restriction on Spintendo working the edit queue. Is that really what the paid editors want? If so, I suggest that Spintendo simply leave the request edit queue, proudly, knowing that he has done his job as well as he could, and got buffets and spitting. If not, maybe the paid editors should thank Spintendo rather than complaining. — — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robert McClenon (talk • contribs) 23:23, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Isaiah 50:6. Read on Palm Sunday, which in Gregorian Year 2018 CE is 25 March. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:45, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I don't know if they've been getting longer, I've only been editing COI edit requests since last year, so I can't say for sure. One thing I do know is a particular group tends to submit requests which can be described as challenging, and they require a bit more attention than others I've seen. Those requests are from Beutler editors. I think one edit request in particular encapsulates a common thread with Beutler requests, the one where they wanted a claim added to the Saylor page that the subject graduated at the top of his class. This claim is an easy one to deconstruct, because it is what it purports to be: Mr Saylor telling the world that he is number one. There isn't any other interpretation for this type of request. It is bold, and it is brash. This request thrust the conversation over the merits of including these types of claims to the forefront. Some of these reasons for inclusion were unique, such as Drmies: ("He was a professor at MIT" — which left me wondering, if he had been a professor at Provo Community College, would Drmies have felt differently). In the end, these discussions were informative and appreciated. But unfortunately not by everyone. Beutler's reaction to discovering that the world might not learn that Mr. Saylor was number one sparked a reaction. There soon became a necessary evil which Beutler needed to vanquish, and I guess that evil became me. It goes without saying that Beutler dislikes all my editing — except in cases where he does like it, and even seeks it out. When my edits are useful to Beutler, there is no problem. Beutler is indignant because I didn't think that the world had to know that Mr. Saylor was number one. Now I know Beutler would beg to differ, but I'm pretty sure that was its essence. I stood here and said No to Beutler, something they may not hear very well. A few of their claims were eventually approved in the well-worn process of consensus building, and no harm was done. If anything, those discussions over whether certain claims warranted inclusion in certain articles, as I said before, strengthened those articles. But for Beutler, that path took longer than the normal path. You could even say that we're here now because their path to Yes wasn't short enough, cause it's curious that these problem edits of mine all seem to be Beutler related. These are 4 different editors: Jason Inkian, Danilo, Rheannon, and WWB — but these individuals are all informed by, and follow in the footsteps of, one editing philosophy — Beutlers. Perhaps the common thread here is the type of information which Beutler is trying to add to the articles, information which sometimes leans in the direction of trivial, and with a lesser quality — a point which I tried making with Beutler just over a month ago. What I'm hearing from them now is that they would like to receive responses from a variety of editors, and less challenging input from me. No one likes to be force fed anything, I agree — so I think its a reasonable request. I certainly don't want them feeling uncomfortable making requests, because at the end of the day that would affect their business, and it's important that I consider that, and I will. Spintendo      13:58, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Maybe it would be useful if they did feel uncomfortable in making requests. At least, maybe it would useful if they did feel uncomfortable about thinking that they have a right to be tendentious about making their requests and about forumshopping to get their requests approved. That is just my opinion. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:49, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm happy to respond to all these questions above, and I have revised this reply to make it shorter… but alas it's still not short. One point to make first: I realize that bringing up this issue exposes me to criticism. No one ever wants to be at AN/I, me included. Still, I strongly dispute that this simply amounts to "buffets and spitting". I am trying to raise awareness of what I see as a real problem—for myself in the specifics, and for Wikipedia in general—so I consider it worth the negative feedback regardless. Anyway, the questions:

1. Have requests become more complex? I don't think so; I do acknowledge that "Beutler editor" requests are more involved than the outside editor, but there's a tradeoff to consider: is it better for the PR consultant to ask for a few changes with links to sources, as some do, or to present finished prose with formatted citations and a clear explanation of how the material is intended to benefit the reader? The latter is our approach, and I think it actually saves time for volunteers, if the volunteers are receptive. (Related: if Spintendo believes I am "seeking out" their feedback, this is not so; once they have involved themselves on a given article, I generally feel obligated to cooperate with them, if possible. We're here because eventually I decided it was not.)

1. Are there mismatched expectations from a corporate vs. volunteer perspective? Potentially yes, but it's not insurmountable. I spend a lot of time explaining Wikipedia's community expectations to people who work in corporate settings, because they both tend to have very different experiences. My efforts have always been about bridging this gap. In any case, Wikipedia is too important for brands to not care what is said about them here. But Wikipedia should also care about these articles being worthwhile overviews of companies deemed Notable for Wikipedia's own sake.

1. Can the {{request edit}} tool be improved? Absolutely. It's difficult to find and use, even from a volunteer perspective. And once one has discovered it, there is scant advice to volunteers on how to consider requests, and how to respond. I am sure even Spintendo would agree they are making it up as they go along; where we differ is that I think the results have been wildly mixed, and eventually too problematic to ignore. Obviously, I think it would be better if more editors were involved. It's something I'd be happy to work on, if there might be community support for the undertaking.

1. Are paid editors demanding too much time? Wikipedia guidelines instruct us to ask for volunteer time. We realize this is a precious resource, so in our edit requests we're careful in what we ask for and try to make it easy to agree with us. We also try not to present too much at once. All that any of us are asking for is fair adjudication; Danilo and Jason have asked for more volunteer time only because this has not happened. As demonstrated above, we believe Spintendo is making judgment calls based on personal preference that sometimes contravenes our understanding of accepted content guidelines.

1. How might the process be changed? Limiting COI contributors' access to dispute resolution is a terrible idea: to do otherwise is to grant too much power to the first person who happens to reply. In theory I am not opposed to allowing direct editing with close oversight, but there is not and likely never will be support for this from the community. It's funny, though: this is pretty much how all the other Wikipedia language editions work. English is the outlier in this way.

That was a two-part brainstorm, and was made partly because I see the demands of the COI editors, which were already burdensome to the editors working the edit-request queue, also becoming burdensome to the dispute resolution process. I may be in a minority, especially among editors who very strongly oppose COI editing, in thinking that COI editors should be allowed to edit directly, subject to draconian restrictions, rather than being allowed only to request edits, and then having unlimited second-shot and third-short opportunities to continue demanding that volunteer editors dance to their music. I was suggesting that if COI editors were allowed to make the edits themselves and be reverted and then go to dispute resolution, they wouldn't be clogging the after-queues of dispute resolution. Oh well, I am in a minority, and I am inclined to guess that one subsequent step in this process is that the COI editors, who say that limiting their access to dispute resolution is a terrible idea, will start dragging the dispute resolution volunteers to WP:ANI. I would prefer direct editing with 0RR, and one shot at DR, but that is only my opinion. What we currently have is a process in which the COI editors have multiple stages of begging and claiming, and re-wikilawyering. Maybe that is the inevitable result of prohibiting the COI editors from doing the dirty work of editing, and maybe we should just be their slaves. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:08, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

1. What am I really asking for? I am not asking for a topic-ban. I would however ask Spintendo not to close out requests without allowing for a discussion to take place, and perhaps even to leave alone requests from my team. We have made effective use of this queue for several years prior to Spintendo's arrival, and it can work again if Spintendo does not make it their mission to keep it at "request zero" all the time. The backlog was a problem, yes, but so are the rapid-fire closeouts and rejections we see now.

Finally, to Spintendo's problems being Beutler-related: it so happens the Beutler editors are sophisticated enough to use the dispute resolution processes, including this one here. Most COI accounts are not longtime community members like some of us are. In my initial post, I had included links to other examples that I think bear closer scrutiny. Here they are again: [30][31][32][33] This issue is larger than just us, and I'll gladly accept the backlash if it starts to change how Wikipedia looks at this problem. WWB Too (Talk · COI) 15:33, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Again - Time to Close?

Again, since no one has suggested any sort of administrative action against Spintendo, and since the purpose of this noticeboard is for requests for administrative action, not for vague complaints with no real basis, and since, as Gamaliel said, this is about Spintendo, but there is no substantive conduct issue against Spintendo, I will suggest that it is time to close this thread. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:53, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

If any sort of administrative action is proposed, I will probably oppose it. Otherwise, the filing paid editors have said more than enough. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:53, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I won't be suggesting any specific administrative actions. As a trial balloon, I think it has largely served its purpose. However, I would be interested in Spintendo's willingness to consider modifying their interactions with the queue as suggested (see #6) in my longer reply just now. WWB Too (Talk · COI) 15:35, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

User:WWB Too - What are you asking about User:Spintendo's interactions? For them to be a better servant? For them to stop servicing the queue? I don't see what this "trial balloon" has accomplished, except to establish that when COI editors are given some inches, they complain because they didn't get a mile. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:57, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Frankly, I feel the filing here was out of line. Spintendo has certainly been far more patient with the paid editors than most any editor I have ever met would have been, and I do not see any significant breach of Wikipedia policy. I would argue that the problem here is the COI editors; making an ANI request as a "trial balloon" feels dangerously WP:POINT-y to me. Icarosaurvus (talk) 23:16, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

What User:Icarosaurvus is saying is exactly what I said above. The filing here was, in my opinion, out of line. It appears to have been a "trial balloon" to see to what extent they could bully User:Spintendo and other editors. This "trial balloon" should be closed because any administrative action would be wrong and inappropriate. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:57, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• I'm the big thread closer here, but I don't see any reason to rush to close this thread in particular. This is a legitimate place to raise this kind of complaint, and the user is inviting discussion and seeking a resolution, even if they don't want admin intervention specifically. I know paid editors are unpopular but I would echo the above sentiment not to rush into hostile action. We can at least wait for Spintendo to respond to the most recent messages. Let's save the meta-commentary for now. Swarm ♠ 01:39, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Well, I respectfully may partly agree and partly disagree with User:Swarm, who says, "This is a legitimate place to raise this kind of complaint". I consider this particular complaint, as being about being inadequately servile on a category of request that is begging for assistance, to be inherently less than legitimate. I don't think that it is fair to drag a volunteer editor here because they did a satisfactory job as a volunteer rather than a perfect job as a slave. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:54, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

The meta-commentary can also go here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Request-Edit_Queue_for_Paid_Editors_-_Policy_Issue Robert McClenon (talk) 03:13, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

As I mentioned earlier, what I hear from Mr. Beutler is that he would like a more variegated response to his proposals, and I'm more than willing to agree to that. I will go one step further and offer to implement requests from any one of his accounts which I come across and review as being approvable. I offer this because on some occassions I may be the quickest one to respond, and I don't think Beutler would disapprove of my implementing those he wished implemented. If any one of the Beutler account's requests involve claims which I wouldn't approve, or else involve a multi-part request where only some parts of it I would approve, I will leave the entire request untouched on the queue. Spintendo 06:20, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Spintendo, I appreciate your reply here and I am amenable to this. Thank you for participating here; while we may not always agree on the content guidelines, I respect your willingness to talk this through. WWB Too (Talk · COI) 12:27, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

While you may be amenable to this that is not how this process should work... If a non-conflicted Wikipedia editor feels the material should not be in the article then the material should not be in the article. Think of the edit request as the first step in the WP:BRD cycle. If it is declined as an edit request take it to talk. If no one is interested in the discussion and the editor who turned down the request can not be convinced, after a brief discussion, then you must accept that the content will not be added.

We are not here to support your business. You, and all paid editors, have a financial incentive to keep pushing. We, volunteers, can counter that by stating that no means no. If that does not work, there is another essay out there for dealing with overly pushy editors, they are simply ignored. I am all for that tactic should a paid editor or groups of editors forget that we are here to build an encyclopedia not service their needs and help them profit off the time we donate to the project. Servicing edit requests is a courtesy and a favor, not a requirement or duty. I strongly suggest that this group of paid editors shift their perspective from being frustrated with the requests which are declined to being thankful for the requests which are implemented. Jbh ^Talk 19:54, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I completely agree with User:Jbhunley - We are not here to support your business, and we are not here to be pushed and pulled because your concept of fairness is not neutral. You complained above that all that you wanted was fair adjudication, and that you were only here because you did not get it. No, no, no. You are here because your concept of fair adjudication is not the same as the concept of fair adjudication of neutral editors, and neutral point of view is non-negotiable. The non-negotiability of neutral point of view is, by the way, I am proposing strict limits on access to dispute resolution by paid editors. Unrestricted access by paid editors to dispute resolution allows you to overtax the volunteers in order to tire them into acquiescing into sacrificing neutrality. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:15, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Well, I understand how you feel and I'm sorry we have to disagree here. As a longtime volunteer contributor myself, I am confident in my understanding of how Wikipedia should work. As a paid contributor, I spend a lot of time creating encyclopedic content that I believe is WP:NPOV, well-sourced, and even fairly conservative, so it's very frustrating when the answer is "no" even though Wikipedia's guidelines suggest the answer should be "yes". Hence my concern that all COI requests lately have been reviewed by just one editor, and I would be more concerned still if the guidelines were to state that any single editor's view must be taken as the final answer. WWB Too (Talk · COI) 20:49, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I myself have worked in marketing and public relations, and, frankly, it feels like you are treating Spintendo as an employee doing an unsatisfactory job. I feel JBHunley's point is valid, and even strong. Spintendo is not your employee, and a financial incentive to push edits is completely against the idea of a free encyclopedia. Further, please note that one's interpretations of text may differ from someone else's. Indeed, I've had long, drawn out conversations with editors who, for example, interpreted the fact that something had been "Observed Twice" as meaning it had only "happened twice." Icarosaurvus (talk) 22:02, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

@WWB Too: The point you are missing is that you think the answer should be 'yes' based on your understanding and interpretation of policies and guidelines. Yet an editor without a financial incentive to publish the material feels it does not. If paid editors could be depended on not to read the guidelines in the best interest of accomplishing what they were paid for then we would not have WP:PAID and the ToU would not specifically require paid editors to disclose their edits.

You complain that only one editor spends their own time to allow you to make money??!!?? I put it to you that one of the options the community has is to call bullshit on that and each of us, independently and on our own initiative decide that if one is not good enough for you and your compatriots maybe it would be better for the project that no one answer those requests or maybe simply take two or three months to get to them like before that one editor started clearing things out.

Please remember that while you are motivated to get your edits in to make money the rest of us are strongly motivated to see that Wikipedia's core content policies are not subverted by commercial interests. Taking a voluntary service for granted and abusing goodwill is a great way to loose access to that service. Jbh ^Talk 22:30, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support closure: I don’t work the COI queue but my initial reaction was that the original request should have been brought up at WP:COIN or its Talk page, not ANI. ANI seemed inappropriate given that COI queue is a volunteer project. If the recipients are not satisfied with the “service” (WWB Too’s language) then it’s what it is. Singling out a particular editor seemed inappropriate as well. --K.e.coffman (talk) 00:19, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

The stats

Robert McClenon asked whether edit requests have become lengthier and more complex. I cannot answer that question directly, but I can confirm that edit request filings have become much more numerous since Spintendo took on the thankless task of clearing the queue. PR departments keeping an eye on the backlog have realized that now is the time to file an edit request if they want an immediate response. By looking at the history of AnomieBOT's edit request queue and doing some offline spreadsheeting, I used AnomieBOT's edit summaries to roughly approximate how many edit requests were filed each month.

I can't get the x-axis labels to render correctly. But the large hump on the right side of the graph corresponds to the period November 2017 through March 2018 (five data points). Spintendo began clearing the backlog around December 1, 2017, and edit request filings have rapidly increased because Spintendo has responded much faster than prior editors.

Note that the edit request backlog has stayed clear thus far, most likely because of Spintendo. The following graph averages the number of edit requests outstanding in all of AnomieBOT's edit summaries for each calendar month, from the creation of EDITREQTable in July 2012 to the present.

The graph above shows that the edit request backlog currently sits at a low not seen since the edit request queue was created in July 2012. The backlog has a tendency to grow rapidly until an editor spends a few weeks clearing it out. But these editors typically do not return to keep the backlog small after they have drastically reduced the number of entries, probably because answering edit requests is exhausting; hence the backlog quickly returns to its original levels. January 2018 through March 2018 marks the first three month period in several years where the backlog has been cleared and has stayed cleared. I have no doubt this is due to Spintendo's efforts. Altamel (talk) 05:36, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I rotated the x-axis labels. Johnuniq (talk) 00:56, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

This is amazing data and I thank you very much for posting it. I sense that the Beutler response would be, what good is it having the edit requests go out quicker if he's denying all of them? To counter that, we'd need to see a graph of every one of my edit requests, implemented versus declined, to see what the trend looked like, which is something I think would be worthwhile to see. Thank you again Altamel for compiling this! Spintendo      06:45, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree this is all really interesting. I would also be curious how many of these are the "Beutler requests" over time, as myself and my colleagues have been regular users. My guess is we are fairly consistent, however it's certainly possible we may have been more active in recent months. And Spintendo is correct about my take: while it's generally a good thing that the queue is manageable, I think it is coming at the expense of decent outcomes. Unfortunately, no chart will be able to show that. WWB Too (Talk · COI) 12:24, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

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

Stubborn edit-warrior and POV-pusher

I am fed-up of allways having to go trough edit-wars with Director. This is the last case: Yugoslav Air Force edit history. As anyone can clearly see at the article infobox Yugoslav Air Force, the amblem of the air force contains the insignia RV PVO (for Ratno vazduhoplovstvo Protivvazdušna odbrana). That was the official name of the Yugoslav Air Force and Air Defense in Serbo-Croatian. Now, the issue is that during Yugoslavia, Serbian version of Serbo-Croatian was prefered over Croatian one and used officially (like Russian was in USSR over other languages). However, Croatian user Director insists in deleting the Serbian version corresponding to the official name, and inseting the not used Croatian version which obviously doesnt match the initials (Ratno zrakoplovstvo i protuzračna obrana. As anyone can see, the official name was RV PVO and not RZ PZO. Director removed the official name and replaced it with a Croatian name version in a place where official name stands in the infobox with this ridiculous excuse: Rv. This is a TRANSLATION, FkpCascais. When I left his "translation" but reinserted the official name, he reverted me again. He is obviously using all excuses just to have the Croatian version as official, which is wrong and awfull nationalistic POV-pushing.

So, I am fed-up of this petty nationalistic POV-pushing, removing official name just because it is in another language that not in his one is a no-no. Then further edit-waring over it, this editor does this constantly, please condemn this negative nationalistic behaviour. FkpCascais (talk) 13:36, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree with you on this one. The Serbian language uses both latin and cyrilic script, while the Croatian language uses latin script only. Both are de facto post-war standardized varieties of of the Serbo-Croatian language. I have reverted his edit.--AirWolf ^talk 14:17, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

OK, that was the issue in the article, however, the issue here is really about Director´s behavior. He knows perfectly well that in Yugoslavia all national institutions were named in its official Serbian variant of Serbo-Croatian. As in USSR all were in Russian, and not Kyrgyz. Obviously that in countries with more than one official language, every other language had its corresponding name in that language for the institution, I agree that it should be mentioned as well, but this user is removing the official version of the name just because it doesnt correspond to his prefered one, and he does this often using all excuses he can and reverting agressivelly. This was just another exemple of his behavior, not even the clear initials from the official amblem served, he reverted with excuse of Croatian being "a translation" (if just a translation, does it even deserves a place in infobox then? And he want to put a translation as official name?). The point here is Direktors nationalistic POV-pushing where he does all he can to present the Croatian version as official and remove the Serbian one (OK, leaves the Cyrillic version, knowing 99% of en.wiki readers dont understands it, and ignores on purpose Serbian Latin version is official). FkpCascais (talk) 14:53, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

These reverts are not right and are bad-intentioned:

• Revert 1
• Revert 2

We should not face the stress of dealing with this behavior. Removing the official naming and replacing it by his prefered Croatian version is just low nationalistic POV-pushing which should not be tolerated here. FkpCascais (talk) 15:35, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Firstly, this is no place to discuss a content dispute. Secondly, the brackets in the lead have nothing to do with historical usage, but are modern-day translations in the relevant language(s). Thirdly "RV PVO" is just the acronym on the logo. You know full well that Serbo-Croatian in Yugoslavia had two variants... Serbian and Croatian... I can easily present sources indicating the contemporary (Yugoslav-era) use of the Croatian version ("Jugoslavensko ratno zrakoplovstvo"). If anyone is pushing a history-distorting Serbian-nationalist POV - it is precisely you. You are excluding the Croatian variant. And hardly for the first time, either...

You introduced edits, I reverted them as misinformed and inappropriate... I suppose trying to get me blocked is your best argument? or is it the inevitable edit-warring you will initiate once this angle fails...? -- Director (talk) 16:01, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

P.s. In an ideal world this shouldn't matter, but I will point out that AirWolf is another Serbian editor... a friend, perhaps? Either way they may be looking to edit-war their exclusion of the Croatian version into the article, by means of WP:GAMING the 3RR... Neither have as yet condescended to post a thread on the talkpage to discuss their (new, opposed) edit. -- Director (talk) 16:18, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Please, leave aside ad hominem attacks in discussions. I hope that both of you agree with the current state of "translations" on the article - [34]. It uses both language variants of Serbo-Croatian, in total two official scripts of the Serbian language and latin script in Croatian language. The relevant discussion if some of you do not agree, is placed at the article's TP - Talk:Yugoslav_Air_Force#Use_of_Serbo-Croatian_variants.--AirWolf ^talk 17:07, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Response to Direktors claims: It is me who actually DIDN´T exclude any variant (diff]) but Direktor who insisted in excluding twice (Revert 1 and Revert 2) the Serbian Latin variant (used officially by the institution) and replacing it by his prefered Croatian one. It is just silly nationalistic POV-pushing followed by regular stubborn edit-warring too much frequent in this editors behavior and as such becomes really disruptive. One should not have to deal with this disruption always when edits an article this user does as well and considers its own. FkpCascais (talk) 19:01, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

FkpCascais is a well known POV pusher who was reported many times and warned against such behavior. I personally had to open several RfCs because of his behavior. 141.136.192.69 (talk) 20:04, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Just a few days ago I had to revert his deeds again. You know, no one has time to watch over him. 141.136.192.69 (talk) 20:31, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Keep aside from ad hominem attacks, and in case you have a registered account, please log in. I don't see how in this case FkpCascais pushed his POV. He also insisted on both languages, and use of all three scripts.--AirWolf ^talk 20:43, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Sorry. I'm just sick of having to deal with this guy all the time. [35] is just from 2 days ago. And he constantly goes around Croatian articles inserting such POV. 141.136.192.69 (talk) 21:43, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

I am such an obstacle to nationalist POV-pushing, am I IP (most probable cmtsock)? FkpCascais (talk) 00:05, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Here he goes again [36]. I was participating in that discussion a year ago. He refused to discuss when I presented sources. Instead he waited and then he went to introduce his POV. I can't watch over him. This kind of behavior is disruptive. Here's the discussion from a year ago [2].141.136.219.182 (talk) 23:49, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Portal talk:Current events/2018 March 23 and User talk:FreedomJoe

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

---

There's a whole mess here that's getting ugly. It started with this revert of an item I posted. I don't agree but it was well-reasoned and clearly arguable, so I left it be. FreedomJoe, however, did not. An edit war has followed: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. There had been an earlier removal here inviting talk page contributions and revert here. Looking at the edit summaries accusations of socking and being "unverified IP addresses" have been flying back and forth, so I asked everybody to play nice and reminded IPs are editors like everyone else. Joe then brought attention to their user talk and it's grim. Examples of accusations flying back and forth are "just the latest sockpuppet of some banned user" and "bugger off to whatever hole you came from". Finally, also of note are these edits to an IP's talk page: one, two, three. After reflection, it seems best I post this here and let editors with much more experience than me try to diffuse the situation. Now... I have a bunch of notifications to send out. 89.240.132.177 (talk) 17:48, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Clarify. Were you a registered editor in the past? GoodDay (talk) 17:53, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Years ago, but I don't recall the name I used, just that it was something generic so it would be fairly low-profile and anonymous. I did more lurking than editing tbh. It's definitely coming back to me how things work here but I've a ways to go yet. 89.240.132.177 (talk) 17:57, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

My 12+ years on Wikipedia, makes me suspect that you're probably a banned editor, who's evading that ban, via multiple IP addresses. GoodDay (talk) 17:59, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Why, exactly? I'm not even involved in this dispute, and believe me, I don't want to be. 89.240.132.177 (talk) 18:02, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm also suspicious of who the unregistered Mobile editor is. Not interested in pursing any sock investigations, so I'll leave it up to others. GoodDay (talk) 18:06, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

FreedomJoe has elected to continue their edit war. Looks like I was right to come here, since the edit war seems like it's going to carry on. 89.240.132.177 (talk) 18:43, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Since my name is brought up, I would like to add a few things regarding this discussion. There are a couple of posts which I have made in regards to the Current Events section. Every time I make a post, there are a couple of editors who aggressively remove or edit the posts, some without reason or some with the flimsy excuses that these posts are not noteworthy/notable or the references are not reliable. For me I just reinstate the posts and add more references or new sources irregardless. Now I clearly am being ganged upon by 1 or 2 editors, which I suspect are the same person or a banned editor as you suggested. Always is a anon IP or mobile address - both making false accusations that I am biased or that I am a sockpuppet. I have challenged these individuals to post with a proper Wiki account. But these individuals seem to have their own agenda and refuse to do so. I am not going to sit still and take this lying down. FreedomJoe (talk) 18:47, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

It's not just IP editors. While I have disagreed with Wingwraith on certain issues in the past, both they and I seem to agree that this matter is not newsworthy. I can also confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that they and I are not the same person. While some of the IPs are most certainly out of line (with the 2600-whatnot IP being outright rude), Wikipedia is not about "Being right" or "righting great wrongs"; it's about consensus.

When several editors seem to feel that an edit made by a user is incorrect, it is not proper to simply revert again and again; instead, you should almost always try to hash things out on the talk page. In this case, I would argue this has not yet been done, as no strong argument has yet been made for its inclusion on the talk page. You stated you would fight for its inclusion, but the battle is being fought incorrectly. I'd recommend writing on the talk page about why you feel it is so noteworthy, rather than simply reverting. With a strong argument, you may find people agreeing with you; I've had my mind changed over inclusion of news items more than once. Reverting repeatedly, however, simply causes others to view one as disruptive. Icarosaurvus (talk) 20:57, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

• User:FreedomJoe has been blocked for sockpuppetry, which I guess resolves this incident? --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 03:18, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Aye, seems he's gone; I believe that means this can be closed. Icarosaurvus (talk) 04:29, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

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

Anonymous IP editor to CBS Sports and NBC Sports

An anonymous IP address (50.101.89.176) has been making repeated and disruptive edits to several articles, including CBS Sports and NBC Sports. In particular, said IP address has been repeatedly claiming that both networks hold broadcast rights to the NBA, without any source (going as far as to copy and paste CBS's current college basketball coverage team into both articles and claiming it is their NBA broadcast team); CBS has not held NBA rights since 1990, and NBC hasn't had them since 2002. Version of CBS Sports without disruptive and false edits, Version of CBS Sports with disruptive and false edits... Version of NBC Sports without disruptive and false edits, Version of NBC Sports with disruptive and false edits. J. Myrle Fuller (talk) 18:03, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

User:Jack Sebastian

For months now I have been verbally abused and harassed by this user across several different articles. It all came to a head again today when they made a bold edit to an article I watch which I reverted, and then refused to follow WP:BRD or WP:STATUSQUO and allow the article to remain in its original form while we discussed it. They also went to my talk page and threatened to have me blocked if I did not restore the article to their preferred version within an hour, while over at the article's talk page they decided it would be a good time to talk like this to me rather than have a discussion about the issue. I decided to come here when he threatened me.

This is not the first time this user has insisted on an article remaining as their preferred version after making bold edits, for example I restored this article to the status quo while a discussion took place last September, and it was reverted within 20 minutes without explanation. Or here, where I made an edit based on talk page consensus and was reverted again; another user got involved, and they were reverted because Jack Sebastian wouldn't accept a version of the article that he did not 100% approve of. Here he tried to use BRD against me when he was the first one to make a bold edit, as was pointed out in the next edit by another user.

The discussions that did take place at Talk:The Gifted (TV series) made it worse, as can be seen at Talk:The Gifted (TV series)/Archive 1, particularly throughout the "Fan Bingbing as Blink" discussion where the user continuously accused several editors, but mostly me, of racism which the majority of editors thought was completely unfounded. I could understand if he just misunderstood something I said, but after having it explained and cleared up by several people he continued to insist on labeling us racist as a way to continue his argument. He also made up other things to try and discredit me and my arguments, such as saying I was only motivated by a "fanboy crush" rather than trying to seriously improve the article. Rubbing salt in this wound, in the "Sentinel Services subsection" further down the user implied that my knowledge of English must be lesser than his because of my nationality, which I took offence to but he showed no remorse. It was also in that discussion that he decided that I don't know what I am doing because I am "a fairly new writer" (which is not true) and that this makes him superior to me. Throughout these discussions, the editor consistently uses language that I consider to be inappropriate, and it is often directed at me.

The issues at The Gifted led to administrator action previously: Jack Sebastien reported me at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RRArchive351#User:Adamstom.97 reported by User:Jack Sebastian (Result: Protected) for my behaviour in response to his, which led to the page being protected and Jack Sebastian's aggressive behaviour calming down for a bit, but it did not take long for him to get going again. The next time, Jack was reported by another user at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive972#Jack Sebastian's edit-warring, personal attacks and hounding/stalking. That led to an IBAN between those two editors, but did not stop the way Jack treats me or his behaviour around Wikipedia. I know that I don't help myself sometimes with continuing to revert one or two more times before discussing, but that is always with the intention of stabilizing the article before sorting out the issue at the talk page, not enforcing my will on everyone else.

Dealing with all of this for months wore me down, and led to me leaving Wikipedia for a significant period of time over the holiday break. I thought this was all behind me, but now I have been thrown right back into it. I edit Wikipedia because I enjoy it, and because there is a small group of articles that I am invested in and put a lot of work into. I have a good working relationship with most of the editors that regular work on those articles, and enjoy making it part of my day. But whenever Jack Sebastian shows up, I know that I am going to be treated with contempt, sworn at, and reverted without good reason, including in the face of things like BRD and STATUSQUO which help everybody get along better and make the right decisions. I'm just sick of the aggression and threats, but have decided that I am not going to run away this time. I don't know what the best cause of action is here, I just don't want to see him get away scot-free while others like me stop doing what we love to accommodate him. - adamstom97 (talk) 00:43, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

• Comment - I am not familiar with either editor here. Threats violate WP:CIVIL. Jack Sebastian has a previous history of light-weight blocks for edit warring. Light-weight, in the fact that the longest one (1 week) was lifted after only a few hours on a promise not to edit war again. He later got blocked again for edit warring. This is a pattern. Maybe it's time to consider some stronger restrictions here. — Maile (talk) 01:07, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I find it interesting (read: offensive) how Adamston seems to have take to heart the saying, "A good defense is a good offense." After all, I asked him to self-revert after reverting three times in very quick succession (1, 2, 3). I went to his page to let him know that a) Edit-warring is a stupid way to build consensus, and b) that our EW blocking policy isn't an electric fence - you can get blocked for less than three edits if you are using it incorrectly to force your POV on others. Clearly, his take-away from that discussion was to report me before I could report him.

I gave him an hour to self-revert and use the discussion page instead. Because of our previous interactions, he knows full well that I meant what I said, and so thus decided to post about my "behavior" instead: this complaint is cynical attempt to muddy the waters of the AN:3R complaint that was coming. This is what Adam does; he's done it before at least twice. And yeah, he was called out on a racist edit, suggesting that all Asians ewre essentially interchangeable. Uncool doesn't even begin to fill that gap of AGF, deepened by the fact that not only did the user fail to apologize for it, but claims still that they were utterly innocent.

Despite this not being the place for content issues, I'd point out that my revert simply asked for sources that supported a statement (knowing that any in support were likely outlier opinions). After the revert, I initiated discussion, not Adamston. He replied once and then reverted again. As per his usual behavior.

Lastly @Maile66:, I'd point out that up until 7 months ago, I had not been blocked in 4 years. Maybe that shouldn't serve as a "pattern" of my behavior. While it is absolutely true that I do not suffer edit-warriors with anything resembling grace, I never call anyone on their bullshit unless they were absolutely deserving of it. So I respectfully submit that you are being subjected to some passive aggressive dancing by Adamstom. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 01:56, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

These editors were both involved in an ANI thread recently, with archives at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive972#Jack_Sebastian's_edit-warring,_personal_attacks_and_hounding/stalking. While I'd prefer that the editors involved could agree to disagree in a civil manner, that appears to be unlikely, and I don't plan on commenting as to the disciplinary sanctions necessary on any of the involved parties. power~enwiki (π, ν) 01:58, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I think you are linking the wrong AN/I threat, power-enwiki. I think you meant to link to an AN/3R: oopsie. I guess it might seem Machiavellian to point out that Adamstom's typical behavior of walking right up to the 3RR electric fence is pretty much his thing. He does it all the time, and others have commented on it s well. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 02:13, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

The one I link contains (in its voluminousness) a proposal of an IBAN between "Jack Sebastian and Adamstom.97", and the history there will be of interest to ANI participants. power~enwiki (π, ν) 02:16, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Oh my goodness, you are right; Adamstom did have a small part to play in that. And it looks like you were part of it, too. Interesting that you would just "happen" to stop by, whenever Adamstom ends up in the thick of things. Hmmm. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 03:03, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I comment on many ANI threads, for reasons yet to be determined. I'm not sure whether I was on your side or AlexTheWhovian's in that thread, though I suspect I was on the side of "can't you all get along or else let's TBAN the lot of you to save some time". power~enwiki (π, ν) 03:06, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Dude, first you misrepresent the previous AN/I as being about Adamstom and I, and then pretend that you were nothing but a hapless passerby. Do you really need someone to point out your apparent lack of integrity here, and post your less-than-neutral remarks from that page and elsewhere? Come on, son; don't piss on our legs and tell us its raining. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 03:15, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Do you want me to support some kind of ban for you (when it inevitably comes up; I don't have the slightest idea why you should be banned from anything right now, other than your aspersions)? You're campaigning pretty hard for it. Just because I remember your ANI history better than you do doesn't make me biased against you, unless you ask me to be biased against you. power~enwiki (π, ν) 03:20, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Of course not, but you're the one who added a fairly prejudicial link, intimating that it has everything to do with this discussion. I'll point out that Adamstom was the one who started reverting here, and didn't stop until he came up to the electric fence. I initiated dialogue. I even warned the other user to self-revert and participate more fully in discussion. Their respnse? Report me to AN/I. The way I see it, I have a small but dedicated group of ego-driven editors who OWN articles and engage in petty edit-wars. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 03:40, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I've had the missfortune of being on the receiving end of Jack Sabastian's abuse. He's a Grade A douce who has been warned to knock it off on my talk where he opins of my editing while banning me from his talk. Lots of people are banned from his talk it seems. Anyone is welcome to use my talk page to work themselves into trouble. Legacypac (talk) 03:17, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

It's spelled "douche", as in harsh douche-canoe. It's nice to know that my adoring fanclub takes time out of their "edits" to come and say hi. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 03:27, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

After chastising Jack Sebastian repeatedly, I'm now going to (roughly) defend him. Many of the diffs here are stale. Talk:The Gifted (TV series) hasn't been edited since January. The content dispute/edit war at The New Mutants (film) and its talk page makes neither of you look good, but it's not a blockable offense just yet. Deal with it at WP:3O or WP:DRN, unless you both feel a mutual block is the best solution. power~enwiki (π, ν) 03:48, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I raised this issue because of Jack's general behaviour and patterns of harrassment, not the specific editing issues in the diffs provided. Those can be discussed in more appropriate places such as the respective article talk pages. - adamstom97 (talk) 03:56, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

The content area of "new/upcoming films/TV shows" isn't that large; if you can't work together one (or both) of you is going to end up with a TBAN which will make you avoid that area. power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:10, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

This isn't about being able to work together, I have no problem working with Jack when he treats me appropriately. But those moments are fleeting, and it always goes straight back to the swearing and the personal attacks at my talk page, and now threatening me is the next step. I don't want to stop editing these articles again, which is why I came here instead of taking another Wikibreak like I did last time. - adamstom97 (talk) 04:23, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I personally find it difficult to edit collaboratively when you prefer to edit-war instad of talk: that is pretty much the sum total of my issue with you, Adamstom. Well, that, and your assumption that my salty language is directed at you. It is not about you; its the way I talk. When I ask you to revert, it isn't becaus ei am threatening to go all Verbal Fisticuffs™ on you, but because your (imo) OWNy behavior is corrosive to collaborative editing. I absolutely despise editors who discuss via edit summary instead of, you know, actually discussing.

When reverted, go to the talk page, and stay there until you find a solution; don't throw acronyms, use reasoned discussion. Do that, and 98% of our problems vanish like a fart in the wind (well, that and not make ill-advised comments about race). - Jack Sebastian (talk) 04:31, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

• To avoid this turning into an even greater wall of text I suggest that Jack Sebastian and Adamstom.97 stop the back-and-forth and pretend that, here, they have a limited IBAN and may not post any comment about one another without supporting diffs. This will make it more likely for them to get issues addressed. I generally dislike IBANs but, unless you two can demonstrate some minimal ability to discuss things politely and concisely, I think, based on behavior here and at the linked ANI, that is the way to go. Jbh ^Talk 12:42, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

It isn't like I go looking for the user. I just do my Editing Thang in a fairly limited scope of articles,a and didn't participate in edit-warring. It may seem like a minor distinction, but an important one. It isn't unreasonable to expect discussion in place of edit-warring. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 00:17, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• (Non-administrator comment) Not this again!? I have found the OP, adamstom.97, to be a very uncooperative editor, who frequently auto-reverts edits without attempting to discuss first (putting the "status quo" as determined arbitrarily by him above reasoned arguments for changes), expresses a poor understanding of our content policies (particular NOR and V) and behaves in an extremely uncivil manner to anyone who disagrees with him. Jack Sebastian, on the other hand, has a good grasp on policy (even if I don't agree with him a lot of the time) only behaves in a questionable manner when repeatedly pushed and goaded. To the best of my knowledge, the conflict between the two began when adamstom.97 made a remark that could very easily be read as at the very least racially insensitive, and when Jack pointed this out Adam became extremely defensive, insisting multiple times over e course of several months that he "is not a racist", without once considering that perhaps his style of rhetoric could be easily misinterpreted and perhaps he should reform. I have thought for a long time that something would eventually need to be done about adamstom.97's behaviour, but a mutual IBAN with one of the editors whom he has targeted is definitely not the solution. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:45, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• Comment: Although I must complement Mr. Sebastian for teaching me a lot about citing sources when I was a new redlink user, I have to say that he can often go way overboard when it comes to deciding what does and doesn't need to be cited in articles and this isn't even the most extreme example (And keep in mind that this is coming from me, someone who is rather strict in enforcing WP:CS and WP:RS myself). You can see our many lengthy debates on Talk Pages related to Gotham (TV series), because in all comic-based movie and TV series articles (such as Amygdala (comics)), he has insisted that every character has to have a reliable source attached to it directly stating that they are the same character from the source material. In his mind, you need a source to directly state that the Batman in Batman Begins is the same Batman from the Batman comic books. I can understand if there was some actual ambiguity as to whether or not a character is the same as a comic character (for instance, a character named John Doe in a DC movie is not an automatic reference to Copperhead), but some things are just common sense. We don't need a source to tell us that Robocop in Robocop 2 is the same character from the original film, now do we? Jack Sebastian is also quick to edit war and can sometimes jump the gun when it comes to threatening WP:ANI. I know that he was warned a long while back by an administrator to beware the BOOMERANG after filing such a report and his heated arguments with users such as AlexTheWhovian (Update - iBAN in progress between the users DarkKnight2149 06:00, 26 March 2018 (UTC)) at one point extended to one of them insulting his child, before the conversation poored over to my Talk Page after I intervened. DarkKnight2149 05:31, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

@Darkknight2149: You may not be aware, but Jack Sebastian and an editor you pinged in the above comment are subject to a two-way interaction ban.[37][38] If the editor you pinged were to comment here, he would likely be blocked, and if Jack replied to you he would run the risk of being accused of skirting the boundaries of the ban, and while I don't doubt that it was a good-faith mistake on your part, it might be a good idea to blank or strike the last sentence of your comment to avoid giving the appearance of trying to bait Jack into violating his IBAN. I looked into the dispute between the users in question back in December, and while there was certainly mudslinging on both sides I found Jack to be generally the less aggressive of the two, so he should not be expected to stand by while something he supposedly said about another editor's child (!?) is relitigated on ANI months after he agreed not to interact with that editor again. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:53, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I was aware of their many conflicts (a couple of which I tried to derail as a neutral party), but not the iBAN. I have delinked his name and crossed out the mentioning. DarkKnight2149 06:00, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Jack Sebastian, you make excellent points in a combative and confrontational fashion. I suggest that you make your excellent points in a friendly, collaborative fashion instead. Try it. That approach works wonders. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:27, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

@Cullen328: I agree with you in general, but I'm really not sure that that approach "works wonders" in the specific topic area of "films and television based on American superhero comics". I've taken it quite a few times (every time I've bothered venturing into that minefield), and met with either so much IDHT and "consensus" (among the same 2-4 editors every time) that I walked away in frustration without accomplishing anything or the same editors jumping out the gate with guns blazing and walked away immediately in disgust. The one exception is when suggestions are made while the articles in question are under GA review. Every time I've seen the problem show up on ANI, the editors at fault filibustered the discussion with massive walls of text. If more admin eyes were watching the articles and their talk pages (or if the community didn't tacitly support the idea that GAISASHIELD) that might force into place a situation where the normal civil cooperative approach worked wonders as it normally does elsewhere on the project, but... Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:17, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Sometimes even solutions proposed during a GA review are dismissed with "it's not OR; it's taken from the primary source", even though "the primary source" is an original combination of mutually contradictory throw-away lines in the film and its direct prequel, and completely different information gleaned from the source material from which the two films were loosely adapted. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:53, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• Potential solution: I'm not taking anyone's side here, but I think a reasonable resolution to this discussion (and a way to end it without blocking anyone) would be a temporary TBAN for Jack Sebastian from Marvel-related film and television articles. This wouldn't be punitive nor a declaration that either user is THE one to blame (or that either one is in the right), but here's my reasoning:

1. Most of the major articles and disputes that Sebastian has been involved in that I have observed have mostly been from comic-related TV and film articles (especially Marvel adaptations), or they have been with users that mainly edit such articles like Adamstom, the iBANNED AlexTheWhovian (Do NOT reply, for your sake; no one has accused you of anything here), Favre1fan93, ETC. The problem with a simple iBAN is that Sebastian has done this with multiple users over time, and it could cause frustrations if Sebastian were to edit an article that Adamstom would normally edit first. Sebastian also seems to edit a wider range of topics than these users do. This would not be a full-on WP:COMICS ban, just a temporary Marvel TV and film ban. Articles pertaining to Marvel Comics, comics, or comic-adapations in general would still be completely on the table. DarkKnight2149 22:35, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

@Darkknight2149: But Adamstom.97 and co. are the ones behaving disruptively and violating our content policies on those articles, not Jack Sebastian; TBANning the latter would only make the problem worse as then they would be motivated to request TBANs for everyone who points out that they are wrong on the policy. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:53, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

@Hijiri88: Respectfully, it doesn't matter who started it and this isn't about the content itself. Not only have I not seen Adamstom and the others violate anything myself (though I would be 100% open to looking at any diffs sent my way), but there really isn't an excuse for getting into constant battles and being uncivil with other users. Nearly all of these battles have started at these article and with users that edit such articles, and Sebastian has a larger editing range than just Marvel TV/film. Given that the others have contributed moreso to most of these articles, and that Sebastian has been quick to edit war and initiate disagreement in a confrontational manner, it would be far more reasonable (in my opinion) to ban him from these articles than every other editor he has come into contact with. He has also been warned in the past by administrators about using ANI threats as a more of a sword than a shield from disruptive behaviour. The TBAN that I suggested wouldn't be anything substantial (perhaps merely a month or so, depending on what administrators see fit) and would only include Marvel TV and film articles and absolutely nothing else. ANI doesn't deal with content disputes, it deals with incidents of incivility and disruption. With the constant Sebastian/Whovian wars, the situation was settled with a mutual interaction ban. But if Sebastian is continuing to initiate or participate in fights with other users even after, this seems like a viable option. DarkKnight2149 23:42, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

@Darkknight2149: You need only read any of the articles he works on to see SYNTH, inappropriate use of dated/unreliable sources and other problems rampant, and if you try to fix them you will be met outrageous incivility like this. When one raises a legitimate concern that presenting the Chinese reaction to a film as the one represented by racist internet trolls is inappropriate, he randomly makes it about "liberal vs. conservative".[39] Nearly all of these battles have started at these article and with users that edit such articles, and Sebastian has a larger editing range than just Marvel TV/film. Given that the others have contributed moreso to most of these articles, and that Sebastian has been quick to edit war and initiate disagreement in a confrontational manner, it would be far more reasonable (in my opinion) to ban him from these articles than every other editor he has come into contact with. You should read WP:LOCALCONSENSUS; certain editors in an echo chamber have been forcing out the opinions of the wider project, writing articles based on their own poor sourcing standards, pushing them through GAN (which, I can attest as the nominator of a bunch of GAs myself, is not a very scrutinizing process -- most of my reviewers have not even been able to read the sources, but didn't even bring that up), and then using the GA status of the articles to auto-revert edits they don't like. ANI doesn't deal with content disputes, it deals with incidents of incivility and disruption. Actually, ANI doesn't deal with content disputes when all there is is a good-faith content dispute; it deals with edit-warring, violation of content policies and the like all the time, and in fact TBANs are hardly ever placed solely for "incivility" without even looking at the content, as this would be a very bad precedent. And you don't seem to have understood the circumstances that led to the IBAN you have now brought up for the third time (again, this is looking increasingly like baiting) -- it was an unfortunate compromise to get the filibustering to stop, and I know because I was the one who spearheaded it, and it actually spun out of the same Adamstom/Jack dispute as this, which Adam initiated by making a comment that anyone who lives in Asia would very likely interpret as racist, and then ragging on Jack for months with the "I'm not a racist" non-response. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:58, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

BTW, I'm sorry if the parenthetical "baiting" bit looks like an assumption of bad faith, but I was the one who convinced Jack to take the voluntary mutual IBAN because I saw him as being harassed, and bringing up another editor's voluntary mutual IBANs as "precedent" for further one-way sanctions is a pretty low-blow. I've had it done to me in the past, and I don't see why Jack should have to put up with it, especially when he is unable to defend himself as this discussion is not about the user with whom he is IBANned. If you do not stop bringing it up having now been warned, I think a one-way sanction of some sort should be put in place for you. Again, you admitted that you didn't even know about the IBAN until yesterday, and you clearly haven't read through the long discussion that led to it in the mean time, as you are saying you have not seen any of the diffs that were presented there, as you said above I [have] not seen Adamstom and the others violate anything myself (though I would be 100% open to looking at any diffs sent my way). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:15, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

@Hijiri88: Did you just threaten me? Because it sounds to me that you are using ANI more to promote your WikiProject goals and your issues against Adamstom than anything else. I have known Sebastian a lot longer than I have known you, and you may recall that he was one of the users that you accused me of canvassing. If you begin WP:SANCTIONGAMING again, I will be more than happy to take you to the Arbitration Committee, because I still have evidence on you collated from the last incident and it's pretty damning (along with the four other users that assisted you). We're not going to have a repeat of the last incident. If you don't like what I have to say, I suggest that you do not reply to me at all. The last thing we need our past dispute being dragged into the middle of this.

"And you don't seem to have understood the circumstances that led to the IBAN you have now brought up for the third time" - Actually, I am well aware of the heated wars and personal attacks that went on for months between Alex and Sebastian. Not only have I observed several of these instances but, as previously pointed out, they at one point spilled over onto my Talk Page when I calmly intervened. I have also personally observed the behaviour I named from him, such as him being quick to edit war, quick to threaten ANI, making unreasonable demands when it comes to citing sources (some of which I have named above) in an overtly confrontational manner, him constantly getting into fights with other users, and multiple users on this thread have pointed out very similar behaviour. Not only that but, in the diffs you just showed me, Adam is clearly peeved but I would hardly call them uncivil enough to warrant sanctions. In fact, I'd say your assumption of WP:BADFAITH is easily more disruptive than Adam's words in those diffs, which you probably put forth to spark another dispute in hopes of inviting Drmies to help you drive me out of the discussion (and, trust me, there will be no dispute between us here; either you ignore what I have to say, we reply to each other civilly, or it's off to ArbCom the moment you attempt something). I'm not taking the bait.

I'm not using the IBAN as a precedent for anything. I'm using Jack Sebastian's past behaviour as precedent for this. And reading the comments of other users on this post, including administrators, it's clear that I'm not the only one who has observed this behaviour from him for the past few years. Show me some genuinely undeniable disruptive and uncivil behaviour from Adamstom, and maybe I will drop my proposal. But even then, getting into constant fights with people who edit a very specific topic (in this case, Marvel TV/film) definitely warrants the question of a TBAN. Whereas you are more concerned about content differences, I am more concerned about genuine disruption. DarkKnight2149 01:29, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Wait, what? You're the one who brought up Alex three times in a row, twice after I told you not to. The fact is that the IBan between the two was mutual and voluntary on both editors' parts, so trying to bring it up as a precedent for a further one-way sanction is inappropriate, and putting Jack in a position where he is unable to respond to your comments because they relate to an unrelated sanction that he subjected himself to but he is unable to discuss without potentially getting blocked is at the very best highly inappropriate, and is looking increasingly like deliberate WP:SANCTIONGAMING. (Might as well ping User:Black Kite to back up my assertion that the Alex/Jack IBAN was voluntary and mutual, and so should not be used as a precedent for "Jack is a bad boy who should be further sanctioned"; I've seen Alex engage in some pretty disruptive behaviour since the ban, but it never occurred to me to randomly throw Jack's name into the discussion and present it as though Alex had been sanctioned for his incivility.) Given that you are only allowed post here because a gracious and merciful admin decided to overrule consensus for a TBAN of unspecified (i.e., indefinite) length (an appeal of which would have required you to acknowledge some degree of wrongdoing rather simply waiting it out and then pretending nothing had happened) with one with a fixed term, you are really playing with fire making partisan, one-sided proposals while ignoring the diffs of disruption on the part of the other side. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:47, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

FTR, I did not read most of DK's long post above beyond the edit summary and the first sentence, and was not aware that he'd already pinged Drmies -- ironically with the claim that Drmies is some kind of shill for me, even though he's blocked me more than anyone else and ... some other stuff that I'm really not happy talking about. If anything, the fact that I was not the first to invoke DK's previous sanctions in the relevant topic area demonstrates that I am not the one holding a grudge here. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:21, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Firstly, you are not the boss of me. Second, by continuing to state "The fact is that the IBan between the two was mutual and voluntary on both editors' parts, so trying to bring it up as a precedent for a further one-way sanction is inappropriate" demonstrates that you clearly didn't read half of what I said. I also never implied that Sebastian is the only person in the wrong in all of this. Until you can be more appropriate, I'm afraid I have said all I have to say to you. I know what you are attempting and my warning is final. If you expect me to argue with you here or dive into the past, we most certainly won't be doing so here. I won't be surprised if this little encounter of ours doesn't get hatted off by someone who is probably wondering what the heck we're even talking about. Such a threat and assumption of bad faith was clearly very deliberate, inappropriate and, given our history, biased - "And you don't seem to have understood the circumstances that led to the IBAN you have now brought up for the third time (again, this is looking increasingly like baiting)... If you do not stop bringing it up having now been warned, I think a one-way sanction of some sort should be put in place for you." DarkKnight2149 02:00, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

No, I read your first several comments from start to finish before replying, but the last was mostly a response to your edit summary and opening sentence; I have no further desire to read your off-topic attacks on me. You cannot invoke a mutual, voluntary IBAN as evidence for further one-way sanctions (I know this from experience -- I've been the subject of three mutual, voluntary IBANs in the past, and two of them have been used in attempts to get further sanctions on me in unrelated disputes). And you definitely did propose a one-way sanction for Jack, regardless of whether you implied that Sebastian is the only person in the wrong in all of this (something I never accused you of implying). Please stop lashing out at me for politely telling you to stop, like you have just done above (and on my talk page); it can almost be guaranteed that it will not end well for you, even if I myself would much rather this whole thread were closed as a trainwreck and everyone went their separate ways with no sanctions. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:12, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

• Sigh. Jack, I don't even remember what we were once in a dispute about, but you really need to chill out man. I wish you would take some advice and agree to do so, and show a little personal perspective on the issue. GMG^talk 00:20, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

If we had a dispute, GreenMeansGo it must have either been so long ago or something so small that I don't recall, either.

It's totally true that I could probably be a lot less snippy with others when dissent arises. I utterly despise OWN-y behavior, and do see a lot of that in comic-book related articles. When editing there, I am - 9 times out of 10 - tagging uncited material (as an aside, DK made a snarky comment about how I'd ask for a citation of Batman Beyond to the Batman; that isn't true, but it does bear pointing out that the Batman depicted in BB is not the Batman from the comic books). Entertainment-related articles very often get crufty with fan forum stuff, so they need the extra attention.

Since I don't have a lot of time to devote to Wikipedia, I focus on putting out the little fires and making the little course corrections that I can. DK opined that I am always the edit-warrior here is at best missing recent history as well as the point: I am almost always the one who initiates discussion, or suggests widening the loop via RfC when problems cannot get sorted out between two editors.

While I have interests outside comic book and comic book film- and tv-adaptations, I enjoy cleaning those up. I am not interested in a topic ban that removes half of my reason for editing.

I am not blameless in this; I have admitted that I am 'God's Little Unfinished Art Project', and often have trouble suffering unpleasant people. But I will make more of an effort to do so. If they get to out of hand, I will just widen the observational loop so that others can weigh in on what I think is poopy-head behavior. No more calling anyone a "harsh douche-canoe" unless a consensus opinion emerges that they are indeed such.

Does that solve the problem? - Jack Sebastian (talk) 04:40, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

To be fair, I said Batman Begins and not Beyond, and the comment wasn't intended to be snarky as much as it was to point out that you can be a bit too extreme at times when it comes to citing sources. However, with that aside, everything else you said does sound somewhat understandable and my only concern here is the edit warring, incivility, ETC, which has also been mutual at times and not 100% just you. I am willing to drop my proposal on the terms that you make more of an effort to be less confrontational and try to deal with the incivility of others better. When you return insults and whatnot, administrators will see it as equally disruptive, even if you didn't start it. DarkKnight2149 05:13, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

On a side note, I can't speak for Hijiri88, but do feel obligated to apologise that our little encounter interrupted this discussion, especially considering that this discussion is about avoiding confrontations. DarkKnight2149 05:23, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Blocked sock abusing talk page

Ms Sarah Welch (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

Can some admin revoke talk page access of this disruptive sock, Ms Sarah Welch, who is abusing talk page for claiming other editors in good standing to be engaging in sock puppetry? Talk page for a blocked sock is for requesting unblock, not for trolling and falsely accusing people of sock puppetry. Capitals00 (talk) 03:11, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

The only disruption here is Capitals00 trying to disrupt a legitimate unblock request with name calling and accusations. Ms Sarah Welch has the right to request to be unblocked and to provide evidence in her defense. First Light (talk) 14:46, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Why you edit ANI mostly when it concerns misconduct of Ms Sarah Welch?[40] That's not an unblock request. Starting battles is not a "defense", but harassment and rehashing false sock puppetry allegations is not going to contribute in an unblock request. Capitals00 (talk) 15:45, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I probably have some few hundred edits at ANI among my 22,000 plus edits, but who's counting, and why is that suddenly your business? Sarah Welch has been an extremely productive editor in some of the areas that I edit, so I hope to see her back to editing soon. There is no evidence of her being disruptive, and no evidence that her alleged socking from a few years back is currently disruptive. Her unblock request is a legitimate one, and she has every right to provide evidence in her defense. It looks to be a complex case she is presenting. Let it proceed without drama and accusations, or simply have an admin unblock her. First Light (talk) 16:01, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Because you are defending Ms Sarah Welch's disruption. I have already made it evident how disruptive MSW is[41] and I dont have to do it again. MSW still restored his sock's edits before getting blocked, that's how the convicted sock puppetry is "currently disruptive". Since MSW is only abusing talk page, the access needs to be revoked. Can't agree with terms of sock, that's not how we do it here. Capitals00 (talk) 05:27, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• I fail to see how throwing false accusations of socking against other established editors constitute "evidence in her defense". That's clear abuse of talk page editing privileges. —MBL ^talk 16:04, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Her "evidence" that others are socking is a reductio ad absurdum argument that similar evidence against herself is invalid. So that is evidence in her defense. Art LaPella (talk) 16:34, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Technically, the use of their talk page by blocked editors is for the posting of unblock requests, period. Any other usage is by the sufferance of the community, and does not include WP:Casting aspersions, even in the form of a reductio ad absurdum argument. If MSW doesn't stop, immediately, TPA should be revoked. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:31, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

• Update - Still rehashing same false allegations of sock puppetry against established editors while admitting that his frivolous revenge SPI discovered no sock puppetry but still he is claiming that "behavioral review has not been done".[42] This harassment is not stopping even after a warning.[43] Talk page access needs to be revoked now since this sock is only focusing on falsely alleging others to be socking instead of showing remorse for his own long term sock puppetry. Capitals00 (talk) 05:44, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
  • I will wait to see, if she resumes her behavior.If, in affirmative, we have to go down the path of revoking TPA but now is not the precise moment to do so, given that she has quasi-promised to not resume such activities.Best,~ Winged Blades^Godric 08:53, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
    • He has been doing this since before he was blocked. Despite he is around for a long time enough that he must already know about the proper use of talk page as a blocked sock, we are still giving way too many ropes. Recent message came[44] after the warning[45] and since we are dealing with a disruptive sock, it makes no sense to allow more harassment. Capitals00 (talk) 09:17, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
      • A minor point, but why do you continue to refer to this editor as a he, when everyone else is using she? It does strike others as unnecessarily combative and rude...Ealdgyth - Talk 12:10, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
        • ApostleVonColorado was always referred as a "he".[46][[47][48] ApostleVonColorado is the main account, while Ms Sarah Welch is just another sock created after 2 other socks of this sockfarm. Capitals00 (talk) 15:00, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Pro-burmese, nationalist, disruptive editing, copyvios and spam (I shouldn't have to repost this)

Special:Contributions/103.233.205.57 seems to be here to promote the country of Burma and its military, or various websites, removing human rights abuses in the country from an article [49], posting many copyvios that seem to be pure spam, or posting spammy external links. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 05:30, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

The last diff from that IP appears to be nearly 10 days old. A lot of their recent diffs are revdel-ed so I can't review them, but that's not a point in their defense. The diffs I can view aren't great, but I doubt they're enough for any action at this time. power~enwiki (π, ν) 05:34, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Whatever happened to "assume good faith"? why do you think anyone who post facts concerning a country's military is here for promoting? How is it pure spam when it was facts and specification about locally manufactured assault rifles? Where does it include any reference to any type of spam? Spammy external links? Did you actually follow the links and looked at the photos? The link to photos are posted here as Wikipedia allow users to link externally hosted images, and the images are of military nature and related to the article. There's nothing spammy about these pictures. You need to stope being overzealous with your accusations as you are pushing away people who just want to contribute to wikipedia with your silly assertions without any solid proof.103.233.205.57 (talk) 09:23, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

The removal of content regarding human rights abuses in Burma tipped me off. I may have been wrong about spam, but what of the copyvios and revdel-ed revisions? Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 09:38, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

User:7bench496 WP:OWNing an article

User:7bench496 has re-added uncited material to Tony Vaccaro, who he claims is his father. He has made bad faith allegations against me, including "Has a competitor to Mr. Vaccaro employed you to delete Mr. Vaccaro's achievements?" I am requesting assistance.--TM 01:43, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

@Namiba: Maybe point to our COI guidelines and why you think the material doesn't belong instead of making the very first post to their talk page a notice that they've been reported to an admin board? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 03:23, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Incompetent en.wiki admin no good on Commons

Apparently I don't know how to nominate vandalism for speedy deletion on Commons. Somebody take care of File:Addtext com MDIzMTU3MTA2NjQ.png, please? I've blocked the user on Wikipedia, for username vio + vandalism only; they might could best be blocked on Commons as well. Bishonen | talk 02:15, 26 March 2018 (UTC).

TonyBallioni, thank you for tagging it, but it's not so much a copyvio, since File:Bishop Angaelos, 26 April 2015.JPG exists. The vandal version was created and uploaded to Commons by User:DaddyBigDoinks and then added to the article Anba Angaelos, here. It would be better if the tampered-with version were clearly marked for deletion as vandalism. I tried to find Commons's speedy templates, and then I tried to use ours, and failed abjectly each time. Bishonen | talk 02:51, 26 March 2018 (UTC).

Bishonen, fixed. It wasn't tagged as a derivative, so since it was also vandalism and clearly wasn't own work, I used their automated tagging feature for copyvio with comments as it would likely get the fastest views and they could also see it is obvious vandalism. As it's a derivative work, I've changed it to their default speedy template. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:57, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• For reference, {{SD|G3}} would be the standardized template, without having to write out the rationale. Thanks for taking care of it though. Swarm ♠ 03:08, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

183.171.94.169

• 183.171.94.169 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)

Not sure if this is a legitimate bot or just a run-of-the-mill troll. Can someone look into this? Thanks. 184.22.20.78 (talk) 05:28, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Seem to have stopped.--Dlohcierekim (talk) 07:16, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Repeated BLP violations at Sabrina Schloss

Advice, please. I've twice removed an unsourced date of birth from Sabrina Schloss, and it has twice been restored by Makro. I thought of asking for page protection to prevent a recurrence, but full protection seems excessive and I don't think anything else would work. I'm also not prepared to edit-war with the user.

Background: I nominated the page for deletion, and have also removed various other inappropriate stuff from it. I've since been accused of copyright violation, vandalism and (with Chris troutman) of bullying. I've left Makro two warnings against disruptive editing. The unsourced birth-date is also in User:Makro/sandbox2; I've removed it on Wikidata, where it was sourced to English Wikipedia (that's a problem in itself). Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:10, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

The article I nominated by the user was a violation of copyright. It was a clear copy paste. Since I reported it I have received abuse and bully tactics from both of the above mentioned users. They have gone on to indiscriminately nominate multiple articles I have created. I feel bullied by them and have received no help from Wiki when reported. I followed advice and added new sources to verify information which they ignored.Makro (talk) 12:44, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Where from, and with which edit exactly, Makro? I have now actually checked the edits made to that page after my own, and I'm pretty confident that there's no copyvio; but if you have convincing evidence otherwise, please present it. About Sabrina Schloss, exactly which independent reliable source did you add to support her date of birth? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:42, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

JustlettersandnumbersThe entire page was a copy paste from another website. One which you are not the owner of. In regards to the Sabrina Schloss article I said I added a reliable source. One from the BFI.Makro (talk) 18:54, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Makro needs a block per WP:CIR. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:04, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Odd IP behaviour

We may want to keep an eye on 50.111.3.17. He's been leaving rather strange posts on Wikipedia, including my talkpage. I suspect an evade situation. GoodDay (talk) 12:21, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Maybe, but it doesn't ring any bells for me. Editing in article space looks fine, mostly good work, copyediting and sourcing. If he's someone who's been banned, I don't recognize him. --Jayron32 15:15, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Possible AFD or soapbox?

I recently came across an article that seemed very peculiar to me. One which I think may be WP:FRINGE, and would appreciate an admin to have a look.

Aleviler was created on April 2009 as a redirect to Alevism. However, on November 2013, edits began by an anonymous IP [50] that had created an article with nothing more than a list, a categorization of multiple sects and faiths. What is the purpose of it or the message the subject conveys? Who knows. I've just tagged it with a {context} template.

Another burst of edits was made on February 2014,[51] this time adding a "Further reading" section full of books to do with each of these religions (which all have their own articles, mind you). Then another burst on 3-7 March 2018, changing the list and adding more sects to it [52].

There are inline citations besides each line, but they are either inaccessible or the ones which are seem to have nothing to do with the topic itself (if there even is a topic, as the lede is vague). It'll reference an inline citation next to a sect name, and the link is mentioning the name of that sect, but what that's supposed to mean is unclear. It merely gives the appearance of a "well cited" article. DA1 (talk) 14:45, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Elmidae is treating AfD as Notability tag

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

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I would like to raise a concern that Elmidae is treating AofD as Notability tag.

Elmidae flagged Wei Dai for AfD without going though the AofD policy in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion#Before nominating: checks and alternatives required steps including

1. C.2. If an article has issues try first raising your concerns on the article's talk page, with the main contributors, or an associated WikiProject, and/or adding a cleanup tag, such as {{notability}}, {{hoax}}, {{original research}}, or {{advert}}; this ensures readers are aware of the problem and may act to remedy it.
2. D. Search for additional sources, if the main concern is notability
3. 1. The minimum search expected is a normal Google search, a Google Books search, a Google News search, and a Google News archive search; Google Scholar is suggested for academic subjects.

And to my understanding Elmidae has not been actively contributing this topic area (cryptocurrency) to be qualified as an "Editor familiar with the field."

He said in the Wei Dai AofD:

 I'll readily own to being ignorant about the topic, and having no respect whatsoever for your idols. It's for you to show their notability to people like me by referencing sources that clearly demonstrate that assessment. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 07:05, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

 Suffice to say that it seems well understood in the NPP crowd that notability tagging in most cases is just equivalent to passing the buck to an empty place at the table - the related maintenance queues are vast and growing, and chances are that nothing will be done about any specific article any time soon. If a check of provided sources raises reasonable doubt about nthe notability(which I believe to be the case here), I prefer to call for a discussion and get decisive input. I don't buy any accusations about "forcing people to respond" - we are all volunteers that do as much as we want to; the final metric is article quality, not how much or how little work any editor was able to get away with; and if there is need for more expansive comments in an AfD, then the likelihood is that there was need for work on the article. - But let's not turn this into too much of a meta-discussion on notability tags vs AfD nominations, please. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 09:44, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I am convinced that Elmidae is using AofD as Notability tag because he believes a Notability tag is not as effective(as he said ). I disagree with this approach. Instead of keeping flagging new article for AofD, I'd suggested him to take a different approach:

1. Raise his concern if he believes the Notability tag is ineffective, and suggest the community to collaboratively make a decision to change the policy in his favored direction.
2. Prioritize flag AofD the articles which have had Notability tag for a while.

I would like to raise awareness and start a discussion here.

Xinbenlv (talk) 16:23, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Xinbenlv, you need to notify Elmidae on their talk page that you are discussing them here. ~ GB fan 16:30, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

GB fan, sure. Xinbenlv (talk) 16:32, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• In general, when reviewing a page for notability one should make a good-faith search for source material and if you do not find sufficient material it should be kicked to one of the deletion processes. In some cases the reviewer will use their own judgement to say 'I can't find anything but someone more familiar with the subject probably can' – that is when it is appropriate to tag for notability. Elmidae is correct that most maintenance tagging is unlikely to result in the issue being addressed.
  Sometimes one gets it wrong and it becomes apparent at AfD. In that case the proper thing to do is Withdraw and, if there are no other Delete !votes close the AfD as Speedy Keep. Live and learn, figure out what you missed and work not to make the same kind of error again.
  What should never be done is for an editor who opposes the AfD to go off-site, gather a mob of brand new accounts and long dormant accounts and brigade the AfD to force the result. That, if shown to be true, is in my rather strong and inflexible opinion strong evidence that the responsible editor is a poor fit for Wikipedia. Jbh ^Talk 17:09, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm surprised this article was only recently created. While I've voted to keep it, there's nothing unreasonable about nominating it based on the state of the article (the refs are weak). Due to Wei Dai's generally private nature there's less readily-accessible information than would be expected. I don't think ANI needs to do anything here. power~enwiki (π, ν) 16:54, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Umm, just as a note, but a notability tag means I suspect this is non-notable, but I don't have time or access to verify at the moment. Here's a notice for someone else who does. It doesn't mean This subject is non-notable. Here's a note for someone to fix the notability of the subject. You can't "fix" notability like you can tone or the presence of original research. It either is or ain't notable. If someone has time and access and verifies the subject is non-notable, the correct step is to nominate for AfD (or another form of deletion if appropriate), not to tag for notability and move on, and there is no requirement to tag for notability first prior to going to AfD. GMG^talk 17:20, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• I don't think there's anything wrong with nominating an article for deletion if you come across an article at NPP that doesn't seem to have any evidence of notability. Putting a notability tag on an article may be helpful (but probably still not) if you are unable to determine if a subject is notable, but if you do a couple of google searches and come up with nothing, there's no point in slapping on a notability tag when you are relatively confident that the article should be deleted. (And even if you aren't relatively confident, it's actually doing something, as opposed to tagging and hoping someday someone will do something about it.) Natureium (talk) 19:03, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• Comment I'd need to see thet the user has a bad track record of AfDs which they don't [53]. Tagging is nearly pointless. This should be closed as baseless. Legacypac (talk) 19:12, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

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

Requesting an indefinite block of ShareMan 15

ShareMan 15 was blocked originally here temporarily due to bot issues but also spamming. He has repeatedly created content related to Lucky Afaratu across several wikis, including spamming en.wp. Originally the content was under Malik Makmur and his original account, Malik GME (Originally Malikmakmur before name change) was blocked in 2015. This was followed by temporary blocks of Xulturid, Malmu15 and an indefinite block of his last bot account, Shareobot whose soul purpose was to remove deletion tags placed on his spam creations and has now created Xulbot.

I'll note that under various names, the following articles have been created all about the same individual (the user in question):

• Malik Makmur (deleted 3 times, salted)
• Malikmakmur
• Malmu (deleted twice)
• Malik M
• Malmu Xultur
• Lucky Afaratu

There are also several dozen other related creations about their band, but not worth noting at this point given all of this

Fresh off a 2 week block, ShareMan 15 creates Afaratu in yet another attempt to spam himself under Lucky Afaratu.

Several other accounts attempted (unsuccessfully, thankfully) to add more spam about Malik Makmur:

• Nako tik (talk · contribs · logs) (here)
• Timokedaung (talk · contribs · logs) (here)

I'll also note, their original account is also blocked on id wiki for socking as well as Kerimajh. There are several other accounts and incidents of socking, spamming and cross-wiki spamming but I think it's fairly obvious what is happening. I'm requesting their block be reinstated and they are indeffed as they clearly have no interest in doing anything other than spamming. I realize many of these accounts are older but I've brought them up as it's been nearly 3 years and the behavior continues. Notified user hereCHRISSYMAD ❯❯❯¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 16:39, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Probably worth noting the significant x-wiki abuse too: ru, id, id 2, tr, ms and this is only under the current names. CHRISSYMAD ❯❯❯¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 16:54, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

And it appears there was some meat puppetry/ip socking per this edit which is a SM characteristic as they like to rename Noah (band) to NOAH/Sahabat (see also their deleted contribs). CHRISSYMAD ❯❯❯¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 17:03, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

70.91.221.157

Would someone mind removing the crap from this IP's talk page and revoke their access to edit it? Thanks. 172.58.46.235 (talk) 17:16, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Looks as though it’s been cleaned up. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 17:33, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Osirisosiris and logical quotation

• Osirisosiris (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Osirisosiris is a fairly new editor who mainly works through articles fixing grammar and punctuation. Most of this work is correct and beneficial to Wikipedia, but unfortunately he is presistently removing logical quotation, as mandated by MOS:LQ. Here are just a few examples:

• [54]
• [55]
• [56]
• [57]
• [58]
• [59]

I have attempted to engage him on his talk page but he is not responding either there or via edit summaries. I don't think the editor is deliberately ignoring the talk page messages because there have been no reverts (a tell-tale sign that the editor knows somebody is challenging their edits). I believe this is simply a good faith editor not familiar with the house style, so has anyone got any ideas about how to approach this? Betty Logan (talk) 17:35, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Bulk revert needed

Between approx 23:15 yesterday and 12:20 today, UTC, today, User:Rathfelder removed the |country= from a great number of instances of {{Infobox law enforcement agency}} on articles about police forces; like this example, apparently because they do not like the way the template categorises articles. In many cases, this leave the displayed text like (same example) "in the country of England, [[|UK]]", "State of Alabama, [[|US]]" or "State of Victoria, [[]]". I have asked them to urgently revert these edits, and they have refused, claiming that "If the article is in an appropriate category it doesn't seem terribly important to have the country in the infobox". This is despite there clearly being consensus to include |country= in articles.

Please can someone use their mop to mass-revert (or roll-back) the relevant edits, and thus fix the text displayed in the affected articles. Note that I am not seeking any action against Rathfelder, provided the edits are not repeated; and the further 500 they hint at do not take place without prior consensus. (The template has over 1,600 transclusions and most would seem to be affected)) Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:33, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

In all fairness that template is ridiculous. The amount of automated categorization and automated text assembly going on makes it a complete nightmare of a template. Most of that garbage should be stripped out. A better solution than mass rollback here would be to fix the template so it doesn't add unnecessary text building and poorly judged categorization which would solve the problem. Canterbury Tail talk 18:01, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• Once the template is mended - I think ideally by removing all its automated categorisation - I would be quite happy for my edits to be reverted. But as it stands it makes proper categorisation of law enforcement articles impossible. Rathfelder (talk) 18:11, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I concur, I've had dangerous run ins with that infobox before myself, took me hours to figure out why some articles were inaccurately categorized. Canterbury Tail talk 18:19, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Diffs? Andy Dingley (talk) 18:48, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I couldn't do it. I spent ages trying to figure out why some articles were being incorrectly categorised in the Category:Non-government law enforcement agencies. Eventually I reached out to Necrothesp who spotted the issues down in an included template of Template:Infobox law enforcement agency/autocat diff. It's a ridiculously complex mess of inclusions and autopopulation that is often as wrong as it is right and makes assumptions that are undocumented. In my case apparently if you didn't enter anything for the ‘Legal personality’ it added it to the Non-government law enforcement agency category. Canterbury Tail talk 21:00, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Let's suppose that this template is "ridiculous". However it's also there, and it's in use across 1500 articles. So what the hell is anyone doing making a change like this, which breaks its use, and then refusing to rollback themselves? If _you_ break it, the onus is on _you_ to fix it. If that involves a bulk revert of your changes, then so be it. Why wasn't (at the very least) this bulk change stopped after a handful of edits, when it became obvious that it was breaking things? Andy Dingley (talk) 18:50, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

It's the infobox that's broken in the first place. If it wasn't so poorly designed then the edits wouldn't have been necessary in the first place. There have been calls in the past (from me, for a start) for it to be fixed, to which no response was forthcoming. I can entirely understand why someone would want to ditch this appalling thing. Frankly, I think the onus is on the people who designed the infobox to fix it when it clearly doesn't work properly. -- Necrothesp (talk) 21:09, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• This template breaks things too. I am attempting to categorise articles and it prevents that. It's badly designed. Rathfelder (talk) 20:47, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I think you should revert your changes, then we can fix the infobox to not do the categorization and autotext. Canterbury Tail talk 20:55, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I concur with Canterbury Tail and others. It is terribly designed and very, very hard to fix unless you're an absolute infobox whizz. All automatic categorisation should be stripped out of it, which would for a start stop articles being added to general cats as well as more specific cats (e.g. no articles should be directly in the top-level Category:Law enforcement agencies, yet this template has currently stuck nearly 500 articles in there). In general, automatic categorisation is an awful idea. We are perfectly capable of categorising articles ourselves without needing an infobox to do it for us and putting articles in incorrect categories or multiple unnecessary categories. Let editors do their own categorisation and stop this obsession with templates. They frequently don't work properly and not being able to edit categories is incredibly frustrating. -- Necrothesp (talk) 21:05, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

That's all well and good, but the disputed edits affect content displayed visibly on the page, which is a more serious concern than categories not being editable. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:12, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Is it now? As I said, maybe if this was sorted out (or just maybe, if it hadn't been implemented in the first place) then all the problems would be solved! -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:14, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

A problem with infoboxes? I'm running away before we start another RFC. --Tarage (talk) 22:29, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Anonymous IP address user is an open proxy...

The anonymous IP address user User:192.169.226.73 has been traced back to an open proxy called alter-ip.com. They have been vandalizing the article Unknown Hinson on three occassions removing information from the discography section, see here, here and here. I made a report on Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism but the request to have their editing privileges revoked was declined by User:Amorymeltzer because "Wikipedia doesn't permanently ban vandals", I responded on their Userpage (see here) stating that maybe the case for vandals but for open proxies they are banned, as of this post I have not yet received a response from User:Amorymeltzer. I'd like to request that an Wikipedia Administrator look into this. Thank you. YborCityJohn (talk) 18:13, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

 Range blocked Special:Contributions/192.169.128.0/17 as a webhost. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 18:40, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

YborCityJohn, sorry for completely missing your message, it came in as we were heading to bed and got muddled in with the Legotbot RfC notification this morning. Just to clarify, I said "IPs", not "vandals;" I hesitated as, despite the two warnings you gave, it was last used for seemingly benign purposes. At any rate, thanks NRP for cleaning up. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 18:51, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Can someone please have a word with Nick845?

Nick845 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

I noticed this user after I was pinged on Talk:George H. W. Bush. The user in question is editwarring in several articles, such as Rex Tillerson, George H. W. Bush, James Comey. He's been warned twice (1, 2). His reaction to the last warning was "I suggest that you stop policing other people's pages, stop making empty threats, and start being smart." and he stuck with it. All in all he's well into WP:ARBAP territory. Although Nick845 seems to be here to contribute, he displays all the signs of habitual WP:IDHT and an apparent unwillingness to use talk pages or to seek and abide by consensus. Kleuske (talk) 21:55, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• Well, Tillerson is under 1RR, and anyone would be within their rights to pass out a short involuntary break during which they could... familiarize themselves with our policies, after having been given both the bureaucratically required notice as well as a follow up reminder. If they're amenable to some friendly but stern advice, we can probably chalk it up to inexperience, but their response on my talk gives me doubts that they're open to constructive criticism. For my own part, I figured I'd wait to see what they did next. The restored text at Tillerson is at least arguably a fair-ish summary, which before it was...something, but wasn't exactly that, and on a BLP that's getting an (admittedly highly skewed) ~23k page views per day (but honestly more around 4k). GMG^talk 22:11, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

You know what? GMG, I'm starting to like you. I take back my admittedly harsh and undue reaction. Instead, I'm going to transfer it to Kleuske. Nick845 (talk) 22:32, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Blocked 72 hours. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 23:09, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Would someone be so kind as to restore the James Comey article back to the consensus version after Nick845's 1RR violation? His slow edit warring on this content started back in February. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 23:23, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

 Done Without prejudice to any other editor who disagrees. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:44, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

New Legal Threat at Talk:Gary Null

It's a long threat. Well I think its a threat. -Roxy, the dog. barcus 21:56, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I could be wrong, but I get the feeling that Null's self-proclaimed attorney doesn't like the article.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:10, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Indeffed. Our editors can examine the article without dealing with someone who seems to get paid by the word. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 22:16, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Took all four paws to work it out, but a response time of twenty minutes is a bit tawdry, if I may say so. Could do better. -Roxy, the dog. barcus 22:27, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Falsely disparage, slander, and libel me and I'll su... hey, where'd my buttons go? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 22:33, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

^^^ THIS IS A JOKE. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 22:33, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I directed them to Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Gary_Null and Wikipedia:Libel. If they wish to bluster, they can do so to the FOundation.--Dlohcierekim (talk) 22:38, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Possible student meatpuppets putting hoaxes on Wikipedia

Wikipedia:Help desk#Hoax?

DDCS (talk · contribs)

User:DDCS/sandbox is a lengthy article about a TV show that doesn't exist. Elsewhere he said:

"I've noticed that you've marked my photos, as copyright. I can understand, so please let me explain. I am doing a project for my school, (I know) weird way of doing a project, and this is the way my professor asked me to do it. I must keep all the photos in, I've uploaded the photos through the public view thing on Wiki, and your the only thing stopping me from completing this project on time."

And the deleted photos were related to the bullshit article. So it looks like the professor is using their students as meatpuppets to get hoaxes on Wikipedia. Assuming I'm right, their classmates need to be tracked down.

As for DDCS, well I guess what I've done here already means DDCS has failed this class. Alexis Jazz (talk) 00:14, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

If the "professor" himself is not a hoax, he needs a good talking to. Any leads on what class this is or the name of the alleged prof? Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 00:38, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Look at Devereaux0772 (talk · contribs · count) and Jayydeeeen (talk · contribs · count). I seriously doubt there's a teacher. This is just run-of-the-mill school kid vandalism.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:40, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:DDCS/sandbox&oldid=798770754 shows a fake school. Edward M. Felegy does exist though so the article may give some hints anyway. seems to be based on College Park Academy Public Charter School.

It seems like a lot of work for run-of-the-mill vandalism. Alexis Jazz (talk) 00:48, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Serious blow to DeVos and her charter school claims.104.163.147.121 (talk) 01:55, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

User:BEAR1488

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

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This user keeps spamming my talk page with information about their contact information and a company that apparently this user owns. Could you please ban BEAR1488 from editing my talk page or just temporarily block the user altogether? Thank you.--SkyGazer 512 ^{talk / contributions / subpages} 00:50, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Indeffed -Ad Orientem (talk) 00:55, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

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

Jesse Waugh AfD

The editor Jessewaugh has been disrupting the Afd of the same name with persistent personal attacks. "You’re just another bandwagon leftist [[User:Binksternet|Binksternet]] - when they’re finished with me who do you think they’re coming after? You’re the wrong gender, buddy - also the wrong race - so it’s only a matter of time before they purge you too." (diff) and also "Note to [[User:Theredproject|Theredproject]]: This whole kangaroo court we're suffering is you and your man-hating minions launching an ad-hominem attack against me for being a White male artist. You'll of course claim otherwise and try to gaslight me for stating the obvious, but we all know the truth: Your entire paradigm is failing, and like jackals, you feminazis gang up on any subject you perceive to have a weakness in your quest to purge Wikipedia of men. That and you're personally frustrated that your non-art gets exhibited but no recognition because it is meaningless, Michael Mandiberg. Let it be known that the previous sentence is no more a personal attack than is this whole Kafkaesque stoning of me." (diff) There are apparently others in the edit history. He was warned on his user page. So, personal attacks and also a blatant attempt to disrupt the AfD.104.163.147.121 (talk) 01:22, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

I've issued a strongly worded Final Warning. If this continues ping me and I will drop the hammer. -Ad Orientem (talk) 01:29, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

thanks.104.163.147.121 (talk) 01:30, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

His rants (some of which were directed at me) are definitely something that makes Wikipedia feel more unwelcoming and not an inclusive environment. – Jooojay (talk) 03:07, 27 March 2018 (UTC)