Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard
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Use the closure requests noticeboard to ask an uninvolved editor to assess, summarize, and formally close a Wikipedia discussion. Do so when consensus appears unclear, it is a contentious issue, or where there are wiki-wide implications (e.g. any change to our policies or guidelines).
Do not list discussions where consensus is clear. If you feel the need to close them, do it yourself.
Move on – do not wait for someone to state the obvious. In some cases, it is appropriate to close a discussion with a clear outcome early to save our time.
Do not post here to rush the closure. Also, only do so when the discussion has stabilised.
On the other hand, if the discussion has much activity and the outcome isn't very obvious, you should let it play out by itself. We want issues to be discussed well. Do not continue the discussion here.
There is no fixed length for a formal request for comment (RfC). Typically 7 days is a minimum, and after 30 days the discussion is ripe for closure. The best way to tell is when there is little or no activity in the discussion, or further activity is unlikely to change its result.
When the discussion is ready to be closed and the outcome is not obvious, you can submit a brief and neutrally worded request for closure.
Include a link to the discussion itself and the {{Initiated}} template at the beginning of the request. A helper script can make listing easier. Move discussions go in the 'other types' section.
Any uninvolved editor may close most discussions, so long as they are prepared to discuss and justify their closing rationale.
Closing discussions carries responsibility, doubly so if the area is contentious. You should be familiar with all policies and guidelines that could apply to the given discussion (consult your draft closure at the discussions for discussion page if unsure). Be prepared to fully answer questions about the closure or the underlying policies, and to provide advice about where to discuss any remaining concerns that editors may have.
Non-admins can close most discussions. Admins may not overturn your non-admin closures just because you are not an admin, and this is not normally in itself a problem at reviews. Still, there are caveats. You may not close discussions as an unregistered user, or where implementing the closure would need tools or edit permissions you do not have access to. Articles for deletion and move discussion processes have more rules for non-admins to follow.
Technical instructions for closers
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If you want to formally challenge and appeal the closure, do not start the discussion here. Instead follow advice at WP:CLOSECHALLENGE.
Other areas tracking old discussions
- Wikipedia:Requested moves#Elapsed listings
- Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Old
- Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion
- Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Awaiting closure
- Wikipedia:Templates for discussion#Old discussions
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion#Old business
- Wikipedia:Proposed mergers/Log
- Wikipedia:Proposed article splits
Administrative discussions
(Initiated 28 days ago on 18 October 2024) This shouldn't have been archived by a bot without closure. Heartfox (talk) 02:55, 3 November 2024 (UTC)
- @Heartfox: The page is archived by lowercase sigmabot III (talk · contribs), which gets its configuration frum the
{{User:MiszaBot/config}}at the top of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard. Crucially, this has the parameter|algo=old(7d)which means that any thread with no comments for seven days is eligible for archiving. At the time that the IBAN appeal thread was archived, the time was 00:00, 2 November 2024 - seven days back from that is 00:00, 26 October 2024, and the most recent comment to the thread concerned was made at 22:50, 25 October 2024 (UTC). This was more than seven days earlier: the archiving was carried out correctly. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:16, 3 November 2024 (UTC) - There was no need for this because archived threads can be closed too. It is not necessary for them to remain on noticeboard. Capitals00 (talk) 03:28, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks for letting me know. It is back in the archive, and hopefully someone can close it there. Heartfox (talk) 05:23, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
(Initiated 17 days ago on 28 October 2024) Discussion has slowed for the last week. I think the consensus is pretty clear, but I'm involved. – Joe (talk) 17:24, 11 November 2024 (UTC)
Place new administrative discussions above this line using a level 3 heading
Requests for comment
(Initiated 97 days ago on 9 August 2024)
Wikipedia talk:Notability (species)#Proposal to adopt this guideline is WP:PROPOSAL for a new WP:SNG. The discussion currently stands at 503 comments from 78 editors or 1.8 tomats of text, so please accept the hot beverage of your choice ☕️ and settle in to read for a while. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:22, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
(Initiated 56 days ago on 19 September 2024) Legobot removed the RFC template on 20/10/2024. Discussoin has slowed. Can we please have a independent close. TarnishedPathtalk 23:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Doing... I've read the whole discussion, but this one is complex enough that I need to digest it and reread it later now that I have a clear framing of all the issues in my mind. Ideally, I'll close this sometime this week. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 20:23, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks. This issue has been going on in various discussions on the talk page for a while so there is no rush. TarnishedPathtalk 03:26, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
(Initiated 47 days ago on 28 September 2024) Discussion has died down and last vote was over a week ago. CNC (talk) 17:31, 2 November 2024 (UTC)
- Archived. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. put'er there 20:53, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
(Initiated 38 days ago on 7 October 2024) Tough one, died down, will expire tomorrow. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:58, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
(Initiated 12 days ago on 3 November 2024) The amount of no !votes relative to yes !votes coupled with the several comments arguing it's premature suggests this should probably be SNOW closed. Sincerely, Dilettante 16:53, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
(Initiated 0 days ago on 14 November 2024) Anyone up for a barnstar? This one's long, difficult, and new. If no-one wants to close it, that's fine. However, it's clearly not reaching the super-consensus required. It should probably be closed so that we can stop wasting editor time and/or apply ourselves to proposals that have a better chance of passing. Sincerely, Dilettante 01:28, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
(Initiated 37 days ago on 8 October 2024) Expired tag, no new comments in more than a week. KhndzorUtogh (talk) 21:48, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
Place new discussions concerning RfCs above this line using a level 3 heading
Deletion discussions
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(Initiated 27 days ago on 19 October 2024) HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 03:27, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
Place new discussions concerning XfDs above this line using a level 3 heading
Other types of closing requests
(Initiated 303 days ago on 16 January 2024) It would be helpful for an uninvolved editor to close this discussion on a merge from Feminist art to Feminist art movement; there have been no new comments in more than 2 months. Klbrain (talk) 13:52, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
- Doing... may take a crack at this close, if no one objects. Allan Nonymous (talk) 17:47, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
(Initiated 14 days ago on 31 October 2024) Discussion only occurred on the day of proposal, and since then no further argument has been made. I don't think this discussion is going anywhere, so a close may be in order here. Wolverine X-eye (talk to me) 07:03, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
- I'm reluctant to close this so soon. Merge proposals often drag on for months, and sometimes will receive comments from new participants only everything couple weeks. I think it's too early to say whether a consensus will emerge. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 14:52, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
- @Compassionate727: OK, so what are you suggesting? Will the discussion remain open if no further comments are received in, say, two weeks? I also doubt that merge discussions take months to conclude. I think that such discussions should take no more than 20 days, unless it's of course, a very contentious topic, which is not the case here. Taken that you've shown interest in this request, you should be able to tell that no form of consensus has taken place, so I think you can let it sit for a while to see if additional comments come in before inevitably closing it. I mean, there is no use in continuing a discussion that hasn't progressed in weeks. Wolverine X-eye (talk to me) 15:52, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
- @Wolverine X-eye, I don't think thats what they are saying. Like RfC's, any proposals should be opened for more than 7 days. This one has only been open for 4 days. This doesn't give enough time to get enough WP:CONSENSUS on the merge, even if everyone agreed to it. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 21:24, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
- @Cowboygilbert: So what should I do now? Wait until the discussion is a week old? Wolverine X-eye (talk to me) 11:14, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
- @Wolverine X-eye:, Yes. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 17:04, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
- @Cowboygilbert: It's now 7 days... Wolverine X-eye (talk to me) 14:09, 7 November 2024 (UTC)
- @Compassionate727: You still interested in closing this? Wolverine X-eye (talk to me) 04:04, 8 November 2024 (UTC)
- This isn't a priority, given all the much older discussions here. I'll get to this eventually, or maybe someone else before me. In the meantime, please be patient. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 13:34, 11 November 2024 (UTC)
- @Compassionate727: You still interested in closing this? Wolverine X-eye (talk to me) 04:04, 8 November 2024 (UTC)
- @Cowboygilbert: It's now 7 days... Wolverine X-eye (talk to me) 14:09, 7 November 2024 (UTC)
- @Wolverine X-eye:, Yes. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 17:04, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
- @Cowboygilbert: So what should I do now? Wait until the discussion is a week old? Wolverine X-eye (talk to me) 11:14, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
- @Wolverine X-eye, I don't think thats what they are saying. Like RfC's, any proposals should be opened for more than 7 days. This one has only been open for 4 days. This doesn't give enough time to get enough WP:CONSENSUS on the merge, even if everyone agreed to it. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 21:24, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
- @Compassionate727: OK, so what are you suggesting? Will the discussion remain open if no further comments are received in, say, two weeks? I also doubt that merge discussions take months to conclude. I think that such discussions should take no more than 20 days, unless it's of course, a very contentious topic, which is not the case here. Taken that you've shown interest in this request, you should be able to tell that no form of consensus has taken place, so I think you can let it sit for a while to see if additional comments come in before inevitably closing it. I mean, there is no use in continuing a discussion that hasn't progressed in weeks. Wolverine X-eye (talk to me) 15:52, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
Place new discussions concerning other types of closing requests above this line using a level 3 heading
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Wikidata Infoboxes RfC closure request
Since the ANRFC request hasn't attracted much attention and this is quite an important, complex, and controversial RfC, requesting an admin, hopefully three, to fully assess and close RfC on the use of Wikidata in infoboxes. Galobtter (pingó mió) 13:48, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
- I agree with a closure by a committee of three uninvolved editors. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:13, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
- It seems problematic to me that we cannot find candidates to close this... I mean, i understand why people are hesitant and that many of the familiar faces are in the discussion themselves, but somehow, we have to close this right. suggestions ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:46, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
- I don't regularly patrol ANRFC, though I probably should... but don't take a lack of closure as automatic "hesitation" on anyone's part. Sometimes big discussions just are a hurdle to get stuck into. Primefac (talk) 13:18, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
- It seems problematic to me that we cannot find candidates to close this... I mean, i understand why people are hesitant and that many of the familiar faces are in the discussion themselves, but somehow, we have to close this right. suggestions ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:46, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
- I'll be on the panel, as long as someone else does all the work. Swarm ♠ 20:37, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
- Isn't that always the goal of group projects :) Galobtter (pingó mió) 13:07, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
- I don't mind taking a stab at writing a closing statement; I almost did that a few weeks ago, but decided it might not be the wise thing to do alone. As long as there are at least 2 other volunteers willing to review my statement before I add it & close the RfC, I'm fine with taking my share of the heat. (I figure after 15-16 years of watching stuff unfold at Wikipedia, I know something about the issues involved & can make a plausible closing statement. Especially about an issue I have no real interest in.) Is there someone besides Swarm willing to help bell the cat? -- llywrch (talk) 20:48, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
- I've started drafting a closing statement, but have seen no interest from anyone else to assist me in this. While I consider the result fairly straightforward, & am willing to issue it alone if need be, any decision would be much more acceptable to all involved if it were not the opinion of a single person. (And if I encounter too much blowback over a solo decision, that may lead me to stop offering to close further RfC. That's not a threat, just an admission I'm not much of a hard ass.) -- llywrch (talk) 17:35, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
- I'd look at it, but I opined in the discussion, and made a comment in a related one, so that wouldn't work. Sorry. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:43, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
- I've started drafting a closing statement, but have seen no interest from anyone else to assist me in this. While I consider the result fairly straightforward, & am willing to issue it alone if need be, any decision would be much more acceptable to all involved if it were not the opinion of a single person. (And if I encounter too much blowback over a solo decision, that may lead me to stop offering to close further RfC. That's not a threat, just an admission I'm not much of a hard ass.) -- llywrch (talk) 17:35, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
- I'd offer to help, but I don't think I can be sufficiently objective, since I have a rather strong opinion on the topic. Deor (talk) 17:46, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
Next cryptocurrency topicban
Ladislav Mecir (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
- edit count
- related: Shiftchange TBAN
Shiftchange's comrade, Ladislav Mecir, is the next cryptoadvocate for your consideration.
Per their editcount they have ~8.700 edits; ~8,300 of them in the last four years, almost entirely focused on crytocurrencies. Here are their top edits:
- 2,565 Bitcoin
- 564 Blockchain
- 429 Legality of bitcoin by country or territory
- 286 Cryptocurrency
- 279 Bitcoin Cash
- 207 Rebol
- 184 Bitcoin scalability problem
- 168 History of bitcoin
- 103 Satoshi Nakamoto
- On the talk page
What brings us here today is this comment on Talk:Bitcoin Cash: Bcash is not a derogatory term. As said by the sources, it is a failed rebranding attempt. Having failed to rebrand Bitcoin Cash to Bcash in case of the Bitstamp and Bitfinex exchanges or to convince wallet providers or significantly many journalists to push their agenda, the proponents of the rebranding are now trying to use the Wikipedia for the purpose. While it is not in their power to use the Wikipedia to rebrand Bitcoin Cash, they are at least trying to pretend that the failed Bcash rebranding has got the same notability as the original and widely used Bitcoin Cash name.
which they have restored twice, despite my warning to them at their talk page, first here with the doubling-down-on-the-crazy edit note rv., this is confirmed by the cited sources
and again here.
There is of course no source on the Talk page or in the article, that says that "proponents ...are now trying to use the Wikipedia for the purpose".
(The alt name, "BCash", for the crytpocurrency, is something that its advocates find actually insulting. Vehemently so. Shiftchange for example, had !voted at the Rfc on mentioning BCash" in the lead as follows: Oppose Its a derogatory slur used against Bitcoin Cash for the purpose of propaganda. Its not a description or common name. No software developers or exchanges refer to it that way.
)
The comment above was an addendum to Ladislav Mecir's earlier !vote, here (sorry, that is four diffs separated by some diffs from others) which is too long to copy here, but makes the same argument as Shiftchange, albeit "supported" by citations. I use the scare quotes because their summary of what those sources say is often not supported by the source cited.
Their comment in another RfC on the talk page about about removing a blatant POV testimonial section sticks out like a source thumb among the "deletes".
- at the article
- This recent diff series is typical. Looking through that, they added"
- before then, added this source to the first sentence, with "bad news" about Bitcoin.
- before that, added a big bolus of badly sourced content about "wallets" (the software where you keep your cryptocurency).
and there is plenty more. This person is an advocate who is not here to build an encyclopedia. Jytdog (talk) 03:46, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
- "Shiftchange's comrade, Ladislav Mecir"—note this edit proving the claim is unfounded. Ladislav Mecir (talk) 04:00, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
- "comrade" in the sense of editing promotionally and aggressively in favor of Bitcoin Cash. This is not even a little ambiguous. Being aware that Shiftchange was worse than you is no sign that you see how badly you are editing and behaving. Jytdog (talk) 04:21, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
- Jytdog wrote: "The alt name, BCash, for the crytpocurrency, is something that its advocates find actually insulting."—Note that in my comment cited above I actually wrote that "Bcash is not a derogatory term."
- Here Jytdog wrote: "The comment you made here ... amounted to personal attacks on other editors."—There are several reasons why this is unfounded:
- Here is an edit made by Jytdog claiming that there have been attempts to recruit users with specific viewpoints to edit the article.
- There have been attempts by proponents of said specific viewpoints such as this, this and many others, actually leading to page protection.
- In my response to Jytdog's claim at my talk page, I also wrote:
- Let's consider a Wikipedian XY that is not a proponent of rebranding of the Bitcoin Cash to Bcash. Then, maybe surprisingly for you, the comment I made, speaking about "proponents of the rebranding" does not concern XY at all. Thus, logically, it could not amount to "personal attack" on her.
- Now let's consider a Wikipedian XZ that is a proponent of rebranding of the Bitcoin Cash to Bcash. Then, maybe surprisingly for you, the comment I made is not a personal attack on her either, since it just claims that XZ wants to claim that the Bcash name is at least as notable as the Bitcoin Cash name, which is exactly what the "proponent of rebranding" implies.
- Jytdog should be more careful when accusing anybody of wrongdoing and deleting their comment based on unfounded accusations. Ladislav Mecir (talk) 05:12, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks for your help here. I will leave it to others to evaluate your rhetoric and respond.Jytdog (talk) 05:15, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
- Jytdog wrote: "Their comment in another RfC on the talk page about about removing a blatant POV testimonial section sticks out like a source thumb among the "deletes"." - note that I just made a comment not claiming that the section should be kept, but claiming that the contents of the section does not correspond to its title. If that is a reason why I am a "Shiftchange's comrade" remains to be judged by somebody else than Jytdog, as it looks. Ladislav Mecir (talk) 05:21, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
- Jytdog wrote: "almost entirely focused on crytocurrencies"—note that, e.g. the statistics of the Cox's theorem page mentions my authorship to be 3'677 bytes and my authorship of the Bayesian probability article to be 2'865 bytes. Ladislav Mecir (talk) 10:16, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
- I'll just note that I've noticed Ladislav Mecir trying to own a page or dominating discussion on a talk page, see e.g. Talk:Cryptocurrency#Controversial in cryptocurrency articles. I suspect that many of the articles noted at the top of this thread would fit into that class of articles being owned or dominated by LM. Smallbones(smalltalk) 17:02, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
- Support topic ban for any WP:SPA focused on cryptocurrency. It's exactly like creationism, climate change denial or homeopathy. These are quasi-religious cultists and the wider Wikipedia community lacks the time and the patience to continue to argue with them. Guy (Help!) 17:49, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose lots of areas have WP:SPA editors, that's no reason to enact a TBAN here. If you really feel that is necessary, let's invoke General Sanctions in the area first. I do agree with the comment at [1] that the Bitcoin/Bitcoin Cash feud has spilled onto Wikipedia, based on my own editing experience and the diffs in this thread. power~enwiki (π, ν) 18:03, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
- Yeah, it is, because the SPAs have an absolutely homogeneous agenda, promoting crypto. SPA religious editors may be from different sects, but SPA crypto editors are almost all members of the crypto cult. Guy (Help!) 18:45, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
- It's not quite homogeneous; the specific dispute here is that certain Bitcoin Cash supporters feel that is the one true Bitcoin, and opponents feel that it's some form of scam. A lot of the other crypto-currencies have no wide-spread interest, importance, or significance, and are edited merely by people who stand to profit from promoting them. Those articles are overwhelmed with promotional material from "the trade-press" (as a charitable description of what others would simply call "unreliable sources" and "blogs", i.e [2]). power~enwiki (π, ν) 19:14, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
- User:power~enwiki this is not a content dispute, and no, it is a not a binary thing. Generally for each one of these currencies there are fierce advocates for it, and most everybody else (inside the crypto-communities and outside) looks at the currency/project with some interest, or perhaps some skepticism, or maybe doesn't look at all and is just bored by the whole thing. There are a few of these currencies that have been outright scams. I haven't read anything that said that Bitcoin Cash is illegit or a scam per se.
- The issue here is the behavior of this advocate, as it has been for each other advocate I have brought here. The issue is the advocacy.
- You know as well as I do that that Wikipedia is always vulnerable to activists, due to our open nature. This vulnerability sharpens, if there are online communities of activists. This vulnerability sharpens to the point of bloody hell, when there are online activists with financial interests in their object of advocacy. There is almost nobody involved in the online communities around these cryptocurrencies, who doesn't hold the currency and believe that they are going to change the world through the technology. This is like (not exactly like, but like) some kind of prosperity religion thing, and it is all happening online.
- Wikipedia is not an extension of the blogosphere -- not a place for people to come here and preach their currency-religion and state their paranoias like they are facts. LM's statement of "fact" (on which they have by now not just doubled down, but quintupled down) that
the proponents of the rebranding are now trying to use the Wikipedia for the purpose
is not a statement of fact but rather an expression of the paranoia of the Bitcoin Cash community. He has no self-insight into how unacceptable that statement is, here in WP. - This is a symptom of the underlying approach to WP. Fortmit.
- I'll add that our content about each one of these currencies is going to be paltry and slim in the eyes of these people. WP is a lagging indicator of notability by design; we are not going to have the level of detail they want for a long long time, if ever; we are not going to track the roller coaster of valuations as the coin markets gyrate. Not what we do here. Not what WP is for. These crytocurrency people do not understand this. Jytdog (talk) 19:46, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
- I still think you're reading too much into the specific diff of
the proponents of the rebranding are now trying to use the Wikipedia for the purpose
. I take it to simply mean that there is POV-pushing in this area (which everyone agrees is happening), and not an accusation of canvassing. There's definitely some biased editing here by Ladislav, if General Sanctions were in place and he had been warned about them, I would support sanctions. I don't currently feel they are necessary. power~enwiki (π, ν) 19:55, 15 May 2018 (UTC)- It is a direct claim about what other people are actually doing here in WP. Reading it as anything else is reading against its very plain meaning. I get it that Bitcoin Cash advocates in their reddit forums are all paranoid. Edit warring to retain that level of paranoid attack on other editors here in WP - to revert with an edit note that
this is confirmed by the cited sources
is just... bizarre. There are no cited sources that say that people are coming to Wikipedia to try to rebrand the currency. None. This is paranoid crap that Ladovic obviously cannot restrain himself from. So we need to restrain him. Jytdog (talk) 03:56, 16 May 2018 (UTC)- I'm pretty sure that Mecir's comment about being sourced was in regard to the "Bcash is not a derogatory term. As said by the sources, it is a failed rebranding attempt." rather than any other claim. - Bilby (talk) 05:57, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
- That is obvious. And that is not why the comment was removed. Which is also obvious. The edit note was a twisting nonresponse to what was (and still is) problematic. Jytdog (talk) 08:09, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
- I'm pretty sure that Mecir's comment about being sourced was in regard to the "Bcash is not a derogatory term. As said by the sources, it is a failed rebranding attempt." rather than any other claim. - Bilby (talk) 05:57, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
- It is a direct claim about what other people are actually doing here in WP. Reading it as anything else is reading against its very plain meaning. I get it that Bitcoin Cash advocates in their reddit forums are all paranoid. Edit warring to retain that level of paranoid attack on other editors here in WP - to revert with an edit note that
- I still think you're reading too much into the specific diff of
- It's not quite homogeneous; the specific dispute here is that certain Bitcoin Cash supporters feel that is the one true Bitcoin, and opponents feel that it's some form of scam. A lot of the other crypto-currencies have no wide-spread interest, importance, or significance, and are edited merely by people who stand to profit from promoting them. Those articles are overwhelmed with promotional material from "the trade-press" (as a charitable description of what others would simply call "unreliable sources" and "blogs", i.e [2]). power~enwiki (π, ν) 19:14, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
- Yeah, it is, because the SPAs have an absolutely homogeneous agenda, promoting crypto. SPA religious editors may be from different sects, but SPA crypto editors are almost all members of the crypto cult. Guy (Help!) 18:45, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
- Support TBAN and support general sanctions for cryptocurrency per Guy and Power. We are currently getting flooded with crap about crypto, and I think this editor is being disruptive, but I don't think Jytdog and Guy should have to get a topic ban discussion going every time we need one. Let's streamline dealing with the stuff, please. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:05, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
- No comment on the topic ban, but I agree that cryptocurrencies should be under discretionary sanctions. I'll make a formal proposal below. MER-C 20:18, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose For a topic ban I'd want to see ongoing disruption that haven't been managed via other means. I can;t see any other means having been tried, but then I can't see evidence of long term disruption - after years of editing on these topics, no ANI threads about the editor (noting that there was one in 2014 which briefly included discussion about his editing, but that was a) 4 years ago, and b) not the focus of the discussion), a clean block log, no history of 3RR violations, and going through his talk page for the last two years I can find no formal warnings, with the occasional concerns seemingly met with discussion and at times compromise or agreement. There may be more elsewhere, but it isn't obvious, and hasn't been presented here. What has been presented here is enough to say that a warning is appropriate, but jumping to a topic ban for a few recent edits of varying quality is a big step. With all that said, if we end up with general sanctions, then all editors would be aware of the limits for their behaviour, so stepping out of line could reasonably warrant tbans for anyone, and that would be fair enough. - Bilby (talk) 12:53, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
- Support given his recent edits to cryptocurrency (e.g. [3] reverting the word "controversial" in the lede) @Ladislav Mecir: is up to his old article ownership again. Smallbones(smalltalk) 13:41, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
- For article ownership, note this, this and this. Ladislav Mecir (talk) 14:01, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
Leftover goaste vandalism
I recently stumbled upon the contributions of this vandal here [NSFW, extremely graphic], and I'm wondering if an admin could search for the string "Goatse in Wiki Table format" in all the revisions of Wikipedia and revdel that stuff. Or if there's a tool out there that facilitates deep revision history search on Wikipedia. It probably needs to be something WP:DUMP based. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:03, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
- @Headbomb: that sounds like something that the folks at WP:VPT could help with. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:46, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
Philip Cross
- Philip Cross (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
There's a lot of noise about Philip Cross (PC) on the internet, with implausible claims of COI and such, and it is pretty clear that he's engaged in a Twitter spat with some of the subjects of articles he's edited. That may well not be a problem at all - I have sparred with Dana Ullman online, that dispute originated with his POV-pushing here, it's not an off-wiki dispute imported to Wikipedia, it's a Wikipedia dispute that attracted off-wiki activism from people dissatisfied with our reflection of an entirely mainstream view, and the same seems to me on the face of it to be true with PC.
The characterisation of PC's targets as "anti-war" is framed to invoke sympathy from a typically small-l liberal project, but is problematic. George Galloway is not "anti-war", he's an activist for Palestine and supports Russia's involvement in Syria - he may be anti some wars but the claim of "anti-war" is at best questionable. He is without question a controversial figure, and not in a good way. It's also worth noting that the three main sources for criticism of PC are George Galloway, Sputnik (where Galloway is a presenter), and the Russian state media conglomerate RT (which is the parent network of Sputnik).
Given the off-wiki profile of this, and the to me obvious involvement of non-public information in assessing whether any of the claims made by Galloway (e.g. that PC is an account shared by a network of paid individuals) are actually true, should we refer this to ArbCom to ensure transparency and allow PC to definitively clear his name? Or is it a nothingburger? I'm rather leaning to the latter but I honestly don't know. Guy (Help!) 11:17, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Support referral to ArbCom to ensure transparency and allow Philip Cross to definitively clear his name. The proposer has related some context, but from a point of view that clearly indicates, as he concedes, that he considers this "a nothingburger." I believe it's a something burger, and offer the following additional background.
- With 1,797 edits, User:Philip Cross ranks #1 among editors to George Galloway. His first edit to that page was on September 15, 2005. Six and a half years later, on March 31, 2012, Philip Cross began trolling George Galloway on Twitter. Finally, on May 1, 2018, George Galloway struck back, calling Philip Cross "a gutless coward."
- There ensued a lopsided exchange, with Galloway tweeting to or about Cross nine times, and Cross tweeting to or about Galloway 75 times. (Sorry, but the following link triggered a page protection filter, so I could not embed it properly. To actuate raw URL, please remove space between " https://" and "bit"–> https:// bit.ly/2rS4cWB
- On May 12, 2018, Galloway offered a reward of £1k for the positive identification of "the sinister Mr. Philip Cross", whom he six days later called "an unhinged stalker".
- On May 14, 2018, Cross tweeted to Galloway, "George, I'm talking to you punk." He also acknowledged Galloway as one of "the goons" with whom he is feuding, and 41 minutes later admitted, "Well I have a big COI now, so I probably won't edit their articles very much in future." Nevertheless, four days later, Cross again edited Wikipedia's BLP of George Galloway.
- Also on May 14, the conflict spilled over into wider media. RT published "Mystery figure targets anti-war pundits and politicians by prolifically editing Wikipedia" and two days later Sputnik followed with an interview of George Galloway, "Who's Philip Cross: 'Either a Mad Obsessionist or State Operative' – Galloway". I cite these not as WP:RS, but to illustrate that the Cross-Galloway fracas has spread from Twitter and is damaging the credibility of Wikipedia.
- In my opinion, Philip Cross has violated WP:BLPCOI, which mandates that "…an editor who is involved in a significant controversy or dispute with another individual—whether on- or off-wiki—or who is an avowed rival of that individual, should not edit that person's biography or other material about that person, given the potential conflict of interest." This applies not only to George Galloway, but to the other subjects of Wikipedia BLPs whom Cross has called "goons"—Matthew Gordon Banks, Craig Murray, Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Tim Hayward (academic), Piers Robinson, and Media Lens—all of whose Wikipedia pages Cross has frequently edited.
- But far worse, Philip Cross has disgraced Wikipedia in the public eye. KalHolmann (talk) 16:29, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Support referral to ArbCom, Good resume. Philip Cross (talk) 16:49, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- I'm inclined to agree that the conspiracy theories themselves are a 'nothingburger' that probably do not need an ArbCom case to "clear his name" (though if he really feels the need to clear his name, it should be allowed). That said, that doesn't mean there's no problems that need to be addressed. When your editing behavior causes controversy in the media, there's most likely some problem. In this instance, I think this for sure satisfies "significant controversy or dispute" with an article subject, an obviously-important stipulation of BLP that the user in question has acknowledged when confronted about it on Twitter, but has ignored in practice, as is evidenced above. This type of violation should uncontroversially result in a AE TBAN from the article at the minimum (especially if the user in question is the article's largest influencer, this obviously damages the credibility of our supposed NPOV), but if the user has additional COIs that they're editing articles in spite of, additional discretionary sanctions might be necessary. Is there some reason admins haven't addressed this yet? Seems like something that should have at least been reported by now. Support referral to AE to address the BLP considerations. Swarm ♠ 17:03, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Swarm, I first raised this issue on 18 May 2018. The discussion was closed before it could begin by User:NeilN, who advised "Go to WP:ANI, not here." On 20 May 2018 User:Drmies hatted —effectively disappeared— the section from Talk:George Galloway.
- Next on 18 May, I filed a report at COI Noticeboard. It was closed within literally two minutes, with the explanation: "Galloway has picked a fight with Cross, not the other way around." (User:JzG determined this in the span of 120 seconds. Amazing!)
- Later that day, I filed a report at ANI. It was closed five minutes later by the same Admin, with the explanation: "WP:FORUMSHOP." Forum shopping is defined at the relevant page as "raising the same issue on multiple noticeboards and talk pages," and is forbidden because it "does not help develop consensus." Duh! How can editors arrive at consensus if my every attempt to stimulate a discussion is instantly quashed? KalHolmann (talk) 17:36, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Would an RFC be a good first step? --Kim Bruning (talk) 17:05, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- We need to look at actual edits, not at off-wiki garbage. If editors can be run off controversial topics by media mentions then various special interest groups will have a field day. On Wikipedia, we have a sock farm targeting Cross, KalHolmann who inappropriately canvassed before I told him to stop, and attacks by usually-dormant accounts [4] and IPs [5]. What I haven't seen yet is a veteran, experienced editor expressing serious concerns about Cross's edits. --NeilN talk to me 17:36, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
User:NeilN, I found three veteran, experienced editors expressing serious concerns about Philip Cross's edits. In December 2015, User:John (207,744 edits since 2006-01-08) wrote, "Tentatively endorse a topic ban on the basis of the talk page comment, and more especially on the apparent inability to see that comments like this will be seen as problematic." He later added, "Count me as a 'support' topic ban." That same month, User:Guerillero (18,031 edits since 2009-11-07) wrote, "I support a topic ban after this revert. Philip Cross seems to be focused on coatracking as much negative information about Sr Mariam as possible into the article." In February 2016, User:AusLondonder (24,968 edits since 2015-04-17) wrote, "I have noticed myself an inappropriate pattern of editing by Philip Cross relating to left-wing British organisations and individuals. That needs to stop." KalHolmann (talk) 20:29, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- User:NeilN takes a cheap shot, coming here to accuse me of canvassing. As I explained to him on 18 May 2018, I posted a notice to each of six BLPs directly related to my newly opened section at Talk:George Galloway. I did so to comply with COI Noticeboard instructions, which state: "This page should only be used when ordinary talk page discussion has been attempted and failed to resolve the issue." (Emphasis added.) I sought to follow, in good faith, the procedure as I understood it preparatory to filing a COI Noticeboard report. Now, NeilN tries to shift the focus of this latest discussion from the behavior of Philip Cross, where it properly belongs, onto me, a "sock farm," and "usually-dormant accounts." I encourage other editors to examine the underlying issues, not the various personalities involved. KalHolmann (talk) 18:00, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- @KalHolmann: Canvassing [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11] to get a mob of involved editors calling for a topic ban. And you haven't presented any examples of problematic Wikipedia edits, only asserted that "Philip Cross has disgraced Wikipedia in the public eye." How is that examining "the underlying issues, not the various personalities involved"? Pretty sure various editors have "disgraced" Wikipedia according to public special interest groups. --NeilN talk to me 18:14, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- User:NeilN, thanks for providing diffs of my notifications to each of the six BLPs directly related to my newly opened section at Talk:George Galloway. I tried to follow the rules as I understood them, and made no attempt "to get a mob of involved editors calling for a topic ban." As for your other point, I do not regard the proposal on which we are commenting to be about "problematic Wikipedia edits." Rather, it's about the spectacle of a conflicted editor waging war on Twitter against the "punks" and "goons" whose BLPs he has frequently edited and with whom he has admitted, "Well I have a big COI now." This is not about edits. It's about the integrity of Wikipedia as perceived by the public at large. KalHolmann (talk) 18:30, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- It might be nice then to see some examples of this public at large, rather then the like of gorgeous George.Slatersteven (talk) 18:36, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Slatersteven, Wikipedia page protection filters prevent me from providing a direct hyperlink to Twitter search results, which show exhaustively the ongoing public debate on this issue. However, as a workaround, please navigate in your browser to any Twitter page, and paste the following into the Search box at upper right: (Wikipedianhidin OR philipcross63 OR "Philip Cross" OR "Phillip Cross"). When results display, click "Latest" for full list. KalHolmann (talk) 18:48, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- For the sake of completeness, here's a recent hacker news (news.ycombinator.com) discussion on the topic. --Kim Bruning (talk) 21:18, 20 May 2018 (UTC) I'm a bit dismayed that people are not getting a good impression of WP :-/
- For the third time (and more bluntly), subjects of articles are not the "public at large". Parties interested in influencing our coverage about them or their causes are not the "public at large". If you can't produces examples of problematic editing then this is a nothingburger as JzG says. --NeilN talk to me 18:40, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- It might be nice then to see some examples of this public at large, rather then the like of gorgeous George.Slatersteven (talk) 18:36, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- User:NeilN, thanks for providing diffs of my notifications to each of the six BLPs directly related to my newly opened section at Talk:George Galloway. I tried to follow the rules as I understood them, and made no attempt "to get a mob of involved editors calling for a topic ban." As for your other point, I do not regard the proposal on which we are commenting to be about "problematic Wikipedia edits." Rather, it's about the spectacle of a conflicted editor waging war on Twitter against the "punks" and "goons" whose BLPs he has frequently edited and with whom he has admitted, "Well I have a big COI now." This is not about edits. It's about the integrity of Wikipedia as perceived by the public at large. KalHolmann (talk) 18:30, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- @KalHolmann: Canvassing [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11] to get a mob of involved editors calling for a topic ban. And you haven't presented any examples of problematic Wikipedia edits, only asserted that "Philip Cross has disgraced Wikipedia in the public eye." How is that examining "the underlying issues, not the various personalities involved"? Pretty sure various editors have "disgraced" Wikipedia according to public special interest groups. --NeilN talk to me 18:14, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- User:NeilN takes a cheap shot, coming here to accuse me of canvassing. As I explained to him on 18 May 2018, I posted a notice to each of six BLPs directly related to my newly opened section at Talk:George Galloway. I did so to comply with COI Noticeboard instructions, which state: "This page should only be used when ordinary talk page discussion has been attempted and failed to resolve the issue." (Emphasis added.) I sought to follow, in good faith, the procedure as I understood it preparatory to filing a COI Noticeboard report. Now, NeilN tries to shift the focus of this latest discussion from the behavior of Philip Cross, where it properly belongs, onto me, a "sock farm," and "usually-dormant accounts." I encourage other editors to examine the underlying issues, not the various personalities involved. KalHolmann (talk) 18:00, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- ArbCom does not exist to review conspiracy theories on off-wiki websites. If anyone has actual evidence, they can file a case. If they do not, then we move on. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:38, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- KalHolmann, you clearly violated the guideline against canvassing because your notifications were not neutral. I recommend that you apologize for that infraction. You are also wrong when you write "This is not about edits." It is always about the edits here, first and foremost. So, if he is the most active editor working on the Galloway BLP, but all of his edits accurately summarize what reliable sources say, then there is nothing at all wrong with that. Almost every developed article has a most active editor, unless two or three happened to be tied in the edit count at a moment in time. So, your task is to show, with diffs, that the editor is misrepresenting sources or violating BLP policy or core content policies. The self-admitted Twitter squabbling is a problem, in my mind. Personally, I consider that behavior to be very unwise and unseemly, and I am very interested in what other uninvolved editors have to say about it. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 18:49, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- User:Cullen328, thank you for this opportunity. I do indeed apologize for notifications that were not neutral. KalHolmann (talk) 18:58, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- KalHolmann, you clearly violated the guideline against canvassing because your notifications were not neutral. I recommend that you apologize for that infraction. You are also wrong when you write "This is not about edits." It is always about the edits here, first and foremost. So, if he is the most active editor working on the Galloway BLP, but all of his edits accurately summarize what reliable sources say, then there is nothing at all wrong with that. Almost every developed article has a most active editor, unless two or three happened to be tied in the edit count at a moment in time. So, your task is to show, with diffs, that the editor is misrepresenting sources or violating BLP policy or core content policies. The self-admitted Twitter squabbling is a problem, in my mind. Personally, I consider that behavior to be very unwise and unseemly, and I am very interested in what other uninvolved editors have to say about it. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 18:49, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Nothingburger. If anyone has policy-violating bad diffs please present them, but the diffs seen here don't seem to support a conflict of interest claim. I'm really not seeing evidence that this user is a "stalker-troll." But, if anyone has diffs of that, pony up. Andrevan@ 18:56, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Comment this looks to be a well-organized attack campaign run by "the Russians". WP:RBI probably applies to their on-wiki activities. Separately, while Philip Cross probably could use a short vacation from a "quality-of-life" perspective, I haven't seen a single diff that justifies any action against him. power~enwiki (π, ν) 19:02, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Looking at the off-wiki site linked by Andrevan, the content at Piers Robinson actually is problematic; Cross's preferred version borders on an attack page. power~enwiki (π, ν) 19:24, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- If you think Piers Robinson's was bad, go and look at Tim Hayward (academic) immediately after Philip Cross had finished with it. Ludemate —Preceding undated comment added 19:59, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Blocked as a sock. --NeilN talk to me 20:07, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Unclear to me from this that there is a COI or POV pushing. This person certainly seems politically controversial. It seems the article has been cleaned per BLP, and I don't see Philip Cross revert warring to insert his content. Perhaps he could comment. Andrevan@ 19:52, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- If you think Piers Robinson's was bad, go and look at Tim Hayward (academic) immediately after Philip Cross had finished with it. Ludemate —Preceding undated comment added 19:59, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Looking at the off-wiki site linked by Andrevan, the content at Piers Robinson actually is problematic; Cross's preferred version borders on an attack page. power~enwiki (π, ν) 19:24, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
Unexplained removal of content
I request that User:Andrevan explain his removal of content from this section. KalHolmann (talk) 19:13, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Going to the IP's talk page would have told you it's a sock puppet. --NeilN talk to me 19:15, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Yes, content was added by a block evading anon who is now blocked, and consisted of copypasta from 2015 and 2016 of dubious provenance, structured to look like users supporting a topic ban in this thread. Misleading at best. Andrevan@ 19:16, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- User:NeilN, well, wasn't that convenient? Four minutes after the IP posted his comment, you just happened to block him. I gotta hand it to you, Wikipedia admins sure know how to run (or is it ruin?) a discussion. KalHolmann (talk) 19:24, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Kal, if you'd like, I can reblock the IP instead. Dumping comments here from a discussion years ago, and conveniently fitting them smoothly into this discussion, is not a good-faith contribution to the discussion — it's an attempt to skew the discussion a specific direction by making it look like these comments were made in this discussion, not a separate one. No comment on whether it's a sockpuppet or not, but the person behind this IP is significantly disrupting things, and as this IP's following project conventions (e.g. {{od}}) in an internal project discussion, we give a good deal less leeway than with an IP tweaking a few things improperly in an article. Nyttend (talk) 20:25, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- @Nyttend: Not sure why a reblock is needed. I've blocked them before as a sock of Hillbillyholiday. --NeilN talk to me 20:52, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- I don't think it is. Kal was complaining that you're using the tools inappropriately, blocking someone on the other side of this discussion in which you've involved yourself. My point is that if he really thinks it's wrong, I'll happily reblock, and he'd better be satisfied because I've not offered any opinions (and haven't formed any) on the merits of the complaint. In other words, I'm the "any reasonable administrator" of WP:INVOLVED. Nyttend (talk) 21:01, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- @Nyttend: Not sure why a reblock is needed. I've blocked them before as a sock of Hillbillyholiday. --NeilN talk to me 20:52, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Kal, if you'd like, I can reblock the IP instead. Dumping comments here from a discussion years ago, and conveniently fitting them smoothly into this discussion, is not a good-faith contribution to the discussion — it's an attempt to skew the discussion a specific direction by making it look like these comments were made in this discussion, not a separate one. No comment on whether it's a sockpuppet or not, but the person behind this IP is significantly disrupting things, and as this IP's following project conventions (e.g. {{od}}) in an internal project discussion, we give a good deal less leeway than with an IP tweaking a few things improperly in an article. Nyttend (talk) 20:25, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Comment The quotations included in the reverted edit included timestamps that clearly placed them in 2016. I don't see any attempt to pretend they were more recent. Rather they demonstrated that people had been having trouble with Philip Cross's editing as far back as 2 years ago. NeilN really did write[12] "What I haven't seen yet is a veteran, experienced editor expressing serious concerns about Cross's edits." and the reverted post purported to show examples of exactly that (I don't know how experienced those editors were though). KalHolmann provided more examples, going back even farther,[13] and I do recognize at least one of the editors in KalHolmann's post as a sensible editor of very long standing. NeilN reverted KalHolmann's post[14] calling it "proxying". But it instead comes across as an attempt on NeilN's part to cover up evidence in a dispute.
As an outside observer, if someone like User:John makes a comment on a dispute, I'd consider his viewpoint to probably be credible and so I want to hear what he has to say. I don't care if John's comment is shown to me by a banned user: I want to see it anyway, and now that I've seen it, I think it is relevant. The rule about banned user edits (at least as I used to understand it) was that they MAY be reverted, not that they MUST be reverted, and in this case I think they should have been left to stand. In any case I see no evidence of KalHolmann proxying (acting under a banned user's direction) although the diffs might have originated with a banned user.
I would *really* like if those reversions were to stop. Wikipedia doesn't have an exclusionary rule and in any case we engage in some minor terminological abuse when we refer to diffs as evidence. The evidence is actually in the publicly accessible revision history of the wiki, and diffs are just revision numbers (formatted a particular way to tell the wiki software what content to retrieve) indicating where in the history the evidence can be found. It would make Wikipedia dispute resolution look pretty stupid if any user could destroy a case by getting themselves banned, then posting all the diffs favoring one side of the case, so that they would have to be reverted and nobody else could use the evidence that they point to.
I don't know the exact source of KalHolmann's diffs or what his thoughts were in presenting them, but if they originated with another editor (banned or otherwise) and KalHolmann wants to post them again explicitly taking responsibility himself for their contents, I'd be very opposed to anyone reverting them again. I haven't examined the AN page history for more such reversions but maybe it's worth it for somebody to do so, if we are to get a complete account of what's been going on. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 10:05, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
- If you're asking me to stop reverting the posts of block-evaders and those who proxy-edit for them, that's not going to happen (note that Andrevan removed the initial post). Article space is one thing - editors can take responsibility for edits they think improves the article - but blocked editors don't get to participate in discussions, either directly or by proxy. The diff is still in history if the post content needs to be referred to. --NeilN talk to me 02:32, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
You need to substantiate your accusation that KalHolmann was proxying, or else withdraw it. He looked in a spot that the other person pointed to, and reported what he found there. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 18:51, 25 May 2018 (UTC)Struckout because it's up to KalHolmann (not me) to pursue the accusation if he wishes. But WP:PROXYING is clear, it says "Wikipedians in turn are not permitted to post or edit material at the direction of a banned or blocked editor..." where direction is italicized for emphasis. That happens when (e.g.) a blocked editor posts on their talk page asking for someone else to make a certain edit, or it can happen off-wiki. If you have evidence that KalHolmann did that, I'd like to see it. If you don't have such evidence then it's a baseless aspersion. You wrote "the diff is still in history if the post content needs to be referred to" and it seems to me that KalHolmann did exactly that. As for your reversions, keep in mind that you are abetting what some people including news outlets are calling a nasty and protracted BLP attack (whether it actually is one is still under discussion). So the BLP attack (if that's what it is) becomes partly your responsibility if your efforts result in prolonging it. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 19:16, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
BLP
So, ignoring all of the other crap above, we do still have the most prolific editor of a BLP directly feuding with the subject of said BLP, and continuing to edit the article, in contravention of clear BLP guidance on this specific situation. That concern, to me, comes across as a legitimate one, even if everything else about the situation is complete BS. Are we going to address this or just look the other way on this one? Swarm ♠ 19:38, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- I'm not sure. The feud seems to be that the subjects of the articles don't like what has been written about them on-wiki, right? Is there an indication of non-neutral editing that we can pick apart? Andrevan@ 19:46, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- power~enwiki presented this. --NeilN talk to me 19:50, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- To expand: the
The Guardian, Robinson has said, should employ Beeley and another blogger, Eva Bartlett (who reputedly wears an “I ♥ Bashar” bracelet). In so doing, it would become more "ethical, independent and glamorous" by doing so.
sentence was mentioned in the off-wiki site (amidst other, perfectly good edits). I'm not sure if www.opendemocracy .net is a reliable source, but that entire sentence reads a lot into a tweet, and I feel it's deliberately intended to mock the subject. When Tibloc suggested its removal, Cross implied that Tibloc was a Russian agent. The current version of the article (after removals by Drmies) reads fine to me. power~enwiki (π, ν) 19:56, 20 May 2018 (UTC) - Power, what about that website would give you any reason to think that it might be reliable? See their about page; they're activists, and their significant figures formerly included Anthony Barnett (writer) and Tony Curzon Price — just average journalists, with no evidence of scholarly review or expertise in anything except news reporting and (in the case of former editor Price) an unspecified area of economics. Unless I've missed something significant, if anyone used a source like this in a literature review, his committee would quickly begin raising questions about his competency. Nyttend (talk) 20:12, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- I'm not entirely sure how to respond here. Newspapers with "average journalists" can be reliable sources, especially for fact-based claims. That said, I'm not claiming it's reliable, I'm just noting that Philip Cross used it as a reference. I have concerns, but haven't investigated it enough to claim it's not reliable. [15] is the specific article, which looks to be a contributed piece. power~enwiki (π, ν) 20:46, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- No, they're almost never reliable secondary sources. You can often trust them with simple facts about recent events (e.g. "During yesterday's Question Time, MP George Galloway questioned the government's policy on X"), but there they're primary sources because their writing comes at the time of the event; they're not summarizing and distilling at-the-time-of-the-event sources from a chronological distance. We mustn't use them significantly, because we risk placing undue weight on something that doesn't get covered by reliable secondary sources — WP:BALL, we can't know whether yesterday's Question Time will get mentioned in the secondary sources, since they can't exist yet? And when they're writing about past events, yes they're secondary, but journalists' credentials are typically restricted to covering the news, not providing solid retrospective coverage of something. You have to limit it to simple stuff (e.g. "Twenty years ago, MP George Galloway questioned the government's policy on X") unless it's written by someone with credentials in that field, or unless it's reviewed by someone with credentials in that field, e.g. a retrospective on economics reviewed by the editor with the economics Ph.D. Nyttend (talk) 20:56, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Care to tell some of the editors on Trump-Russia related topics that? power~enwiki (π, ν) 00:03, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
- No, they're almost never reliable secondary sources. You can often trust them with simple facts about recent events (e.g. "During yesterday's Question Time, MP George Galloway questioned the government's policy on X"), but there they're primary sources because their writing comes at the time of the event; they're not summarizing and distilling at-the-time-of-the-event sources from a chronological distance. We mustn't use them significantly, because we risk placing undue weight on something that doesn't get covered by reliable secondary sources — WP:BALL, we can't know whether yesterday's Question Time will get mentioned in the secondary sources, since they can't exist yet? And when they're writing about past events, yes they're secondary, but journalists' credentials are typically restricted to covering the news, not providing solid retrospective coverage of something. You have to limit it to simple stuff (e.g. "Twenty years ago, MP George Galloway questioned the government's policy on X") unless it's written by someone with credentials in that field, or unless it's reviewed by someone with credentials in that field, e.g. a retrospective on economics reviewed by the editor with the economics Ph.D. Nyttend (talk) 20:56, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- I'm not entirely sure how to respond here. Newspapers with "average journalists" can be reliable sources, especially for fact-based claims. That said, I'm not claiming it's reliable, I'm just noting that Philip Cross used it as a reference. I have concerns, but haven't investigated it enough to claim it's not reliable. [15] is the specific article, which looks to be a contributed piece. power~enwiki (π, ν) 20:46, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Power, what about that website would give you any reason to think that it might be reliable? See their about page; they're activists, and their significant figures formerly included Anthony Barnett (writer) and Tony Curzon Price — just average journalists, with no evidence of scholarly review or expertise in anything except news reporting and (in the case of former editor Price) an unspecified area of economics. Unless I've missed something significant, if anyone used a source like this in a literature review, his committee would quickly begin raising questions about his competency. Nyttend (talk) 20:12, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- [ec] NeilN, you linked to a revision, not a diff. Here is the edit resulting in that revision (a bot could do that), and while I've checked several edits before that, all I'm seeing is adding links, changing "he" to "Robinson", adding relative pronouns, moving content from one paragraph to another, etc. — nothing potentially problematic. What could possibly be wrong? Did you provide the wrong link by mistake? Nyttend (talk) 20:01, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- I deliberately linked to the revision. This would be the diff, almost all (if not all) the content changes in the 53 edits are by Philip Cross. power~enwiki (π, ν) 20:03, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Ah, okay; thank you for the clarification. Nyttend (talk) 20:14, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- I deliberately linked to the revision. This would be the diff, almost all (if not all) the content changes in the 53 edits are by Philip Cross. power~enwiki (π, ν) 20:03, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- To expand: the
- Andrevan, no, the feud is not solely that the article's subject does not like what is being written about him in good faith. The editor is directly attacking the subject off-wiki. It's a direct interpersonal dispute, and diffs are not needed when the existence of the COI has been self-acknowledged by the editor. BLP policy specifically addresses this situation, and as of now, it is not being followed. The policy does not tell us to "examine the diffs" and determine whether there is actually non-neutral editing going on. It explicitly preempts the potential of problematic editing, by prohibiting editing during a direct dispute with a BLP subject. If someone's advocating that Cross should be allowed to ignore the specific BLP guidance on the situation, I find it hard to believe that his participation on the article is that essential. Swarm ♠ 20:15, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- OK, I agree with your estimation of the situation, but if Philip Cross has self-acknowledged the COI and has indicated he will no longer be editing there as he now has a COI, do we need to enforce that through a sanction or a referral to ArbCom? Maybe we do - but it seems like there is a well-organized sockpuppet opposition pushing for such an action, which makes me suspicious. My cursory analysis of Philip Cross is that he is largely a well-intentioned editor who may have let his political POV creep into a few of his edits, but I don't see a sustained practice of POV pushing. Has he been continuously editing after he said he wouldn't? Andrevan@ 20:23, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- @Swarm: No, the policy actually says, "Therefore, an editor who is involved in a significant controversy or dispute with another individual—whether on- or off-wiki—or who is an avowed rival of that individual, should not edit that person's biography or other material about that person, given the potential conflict of interest. More generally, editors who have a strongly negative or positive view of the subject of a biographical article should be especially careful to edit that article neutrally, if they choose to edit it at all." It does not prohibit editing (your emphasis) with good reason as there have been times in the past where editors have been targeted off-wiki and have defended themselves. Not saying that's what's happening here but saying policy mandates prohibition is reaching too far. --NeilN talk to me 20:25, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- @Andrevan: I'm not saying we need to enforce it with a sanction (though a discretionary sanctions TBAN would be the most obvious way of enforcing it). The ideal scenario would be for Philip Cross to simply acknowledge the policy guidance on this issue and agree to abide by it. @NeilN: point conceded, it's not a hard prohibition, and it theoretically allows for the possibility of continued editing with good reason. But it is straightforward guidance from a policy that we generally take pretty seriously. So, that's fundamentally what I'm getting at. Is there a good reason for Cross to be ignoring the clear policy guidance on this situation? If not, he should understand why it's not ideal and agree to stop, at least until his issues with the subject die down. Swarm ♠ 20:42, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- @Andrevan: Sorry, I didn't answer your question. Yes, he actually has edited the article since he acknowledged his COI, as evidenced by KH in his first comment. That's why I'm bringing this up. It's not a sustained problem, just something that I think should be addressed. Swarm ♠ 20:53, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- @Swarm: I agree that Cross should voluntarily stop editing the affected articles. I suggest he use edit-request templates if he has content changes to propose. --NeilN talk to me 20:47, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- That's all I'm looking for from him as well. Swarm ♠ 20:53, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- User:NeilN, please specify the "affected articles" to which you allude. I would list George Galloway, Matthew Gordon Banks, Craig Murray, Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Tim Hayward (academic), Piers Robinson, and Media Lens. But there may be others. KalHolmann (talk) 20:56, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Okay, so folks will need to watchlist those and make sure they are not disrupted. Just in case someone was waiting until Philip was out of the way so they could insert their POV. --Kim Bruning (talk) 21:01, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- @KalHolmann: This is not a formal restriction. Cross needs to use his common sense and stay away from editing the articles he believes he has a COI with. --NeilN talk to me 21:06, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- The primary concern is the George Calloway article, because he's directly in a dispute with George Calloway, and the policy guidance on that situation is clear. That's a valid concern. We're not going to start imposing blanket restrictions strictly because of opinions expressed on Twitter. Swarm ♠ 21:18, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- @Swarm: I agree that Cross should voluntarily stop editing the affected articles. I suggest he use edit-request templates if he has content changes to propose. --NeilN talk to me 20:47, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- power~enwiki presented this. --NeilN talk to me 19:50, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- User:Swarm I agree with your OP completely. I want to emphasize that we don't know (and cannot know) if the real person operating the Philip Cross Wikipedia account and the real person operating the Twitter account is the same person. If it is, in my view this would be very problematic with regard to BLPCOI, if the twitter account is actually interacting with the article subject on twitter. (Giving opinions is one thing; actual interpersonal conflict is another). I looked and have not seen if Philip Cross has disclosed here on WP if that is their tweeting or an imposter. (I know about twitter imposters -- i had one).
- I think that editing on any of these Russia-related-populist subjects is very hard and I am glad we have people like Philip Cross doing it. But if it is the same person on twitter and here, and if the twitter interactions are actually interpersonal, then we are not in a good place. I think this should be referred to Arbcom so the issues of whether it is the same person, can be clarified. What remedies Arbcom would choose, I don't know. As I understand it this is not the same issue that KalHolmann has been raising. This is quite narrowly focused on carrying out a real world dispute here on WP, too. It may be that Philip Cross' edits are perfect, but if the same person is operating that twitter account, the optics are reproachable. Jytdog (talk) 23:06, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- ArbCom. If the person operating the Twitter account and the one operating the Wikipedia account are the same person, then we need - at the very least - topic bans for Philip Cross on cerain BLPs here. I don't think this is even arguable. Black Kite (talk) 23:19, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Jytdog & Black Kite, as shown in a now-deleted version of his Wikipedia user page, Philip Cross advised (¶3): "You can contact me via the user talk page, email (see the toolbox on the left), or via twitter @philipcross63." As preserved in a Wayback Machine snapshot of one of his Wikipedia-related tweets dated 7 May 2018, his Twitter profile bio then read, "My main published outlet is via my Wikipedia account as Philip Cross." On May 16, 2018, he changed his Twitter handle to @Wikipedianhidin and removed Wikipedia from his bio, but otherwise his account remains, in all essential aspects, identical. KalHolmann (talk) 23:59, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Do not ping me. Do not write on my talk page. If you reply to this, I will not reply. I want nothing to do with you. You were advised below to drop this, and you absolutely should. Jytdog (talk) 01:25, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
- Comment if Philip Cross wants an ARBCOM case, it's reasonable, but I think that enacting a topic-ban here is both reasonable and sufficient. I'm not sure of the scope, but I agree with Black Kite that PC editing George Galloway is too problematic to allow. power~enwiki (π, ν) 00:03, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
- I got pinged here as a courtesy, but while I'm here I might as well say that I see no reason to allow Philip Cross to engage with this subject any further. I think it's NeilN above who is very curt on the topic ("unacceptable COI" or something like that), and I agree. And at the same time, of course, we should extend them all the protection we can: editors who jump on Cross one way or another should be dealt with. Drmies (talk) 01:26, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
- I agree Philip Cross should not edit George Galloway anymore. I noticed the COIN case and at that time since I didn't look in the details, assumed Guy's summation was reasonable. But having read in more depth here, I agree there's a clear problem. Even if GG is the one who initiated the 'feud', it seems clear PC responded in kind. Once you're as involved in a dispute with someone as PC appears to be here, it at a minimum causes major perception problems if you're continuing to edit their article. And more than that, there's a reason why we strongly discourage direct COI editing. It's very difficult to be neutral when you have strong feelings and having a major dispute with someone is likely to generate those feelings. When it's a BLP involved whatever 'fault' the subject may in starting the dispute we can't allow them to be punished for it. I can understand why PC may have wanted to push back if they felt the way they were being treated was unfair. And I do have concerns that subjects can pick a fight with editors who are potentially editing perfectly fine and try and goad them into a response to stop their editing. But we have to deal with these situations when they arise. And I see some signs it may have been PC who initiated the offsite dispute anyway. (Haven't looked at the timeline in detail since ultimately it's irrelevant.) Nil Einne (talk) 16:32, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
- I agree that Philip Cross has knowingly violated WP:BLPCOI on several occasions, jeopardising Wikipedia's reputation. That said, I'd prefer for him to voluntarily recuse himself, perhaps accompanied by a formal pledge here, from editing articles on UK political activitists and similar with whom he knows he has a profound disagreement, to put it this way. A tban would perhaps go too far as first punishment as I am not aware of any previous formal proceedings against this editor. — kashmīrī TALK 21:06, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
- I'm not convinced that Philip Cross can write on these BLP subjects from the disinterested/dispassionate angle that is required of BLP editors. So I agree that Philip Cross should stay away from these articles, especially the George Galloway one as the two are engaged in an escalating public spat. I'd like it to be a voluntary recusal. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:13, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
- I find it wholly unacceptable that someone having a real life disagreement with a subject should edit about the subject. While I'd prefer Philip Cross step away on his own, the community might need to step between him and the article.-- Dlohcierekim (talk) 12:26, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
- Philip Cross needs to stop editing George Galloway immediately, along with any other articles about people whom he is hurling abuse at. You can't be publically labelling someone a 'punk' and a 'goon' and expect people to see you as capable of editing disinterestedly with your Wikipedia hat on. If he can't do it informally then a formal topic ban needs to be imposed. Fish+Karate 12:35, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
- The above (about BLPCOI regarding Galloway) makes good sense. I'm not formally endorsing a topic ban because I've had only a superficial look at the happenings, but ZOMG, how is this even possible. Beyond that I think it warrants checking into whether there's a wider problem. I'm offline tomorrow but might look some more in a few days. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 06:53, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
KalHolmann
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Regardless of the merits of anything else here, I think KalHolmann should be topic banned from any further mention of user:Philip Cross, other than in the context of any potential ArbCom case. He is not helping. Guy (Help!) 21:10, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Fixed link to KalHolmann. Nyttend (talk) 21:11, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Support unless there's a voluntary recusal from matters related to Cross going forward. He's derailing the process with his zeal here. Swarm ♠ 21:21, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose at this time. When I pointed out a specific error that KalHolman made, the editor apologized. Although much of this incident may be based on baloney or worse, I am convinced that Philip Cross has shown extremely poor judgment by taunting BLP subjects as a self-identified Wikipedia editor on Twitter for years, while actively editing their biographies. I simply cannot see that as acceptable behavior, and I am surprised to see editors I respect make light of it. Though there have been some fumbles, I for one thank KalHolman for bringing this to our attention. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 21:26, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Wait Issue brought to our attention - good. Unable to realize that people/organizations with vested interests are not "the public eye" - not so good (otherwise, according to The Daily Mail, we're all completely useless, biased, etc.). I'd like to see how KalHolmann interacts with Cross in the future after this matter is settled. --NeilN talk to me 21:45, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose I have been co-editing (and arguing) with KalHolmann for a month or more at Joy Ann Reid. My strong opinion is that he/she cares about our Wikipedia project and puts effort into making this great encyclopedia better. You might disagree with his/her opinions (snd I often do) but their seriousness and good intentions should not (IMO) be doubted. HouseOfChange (talk) 22:02, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- support and strongly. I find their constant pounding with the likes of RT and Sputnik so formalistic as to be approaching the Theater of the Absurd. Jytdog (talk) 22:31, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose for now. I fully agree with what Cullen328 wrote above: taunting BLP subjects as a self-identified Wikipedia editor on Twitter...is simply totally unacceptable behaviour, IMO. Huldra (talk) 22:37, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose though I note that their further participation in this thread is unlikely to benefit to anyone. power~enwiki (π, ν) 22:40, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
- Support. If asking the one editor to stay away from an article (or a set of articles) is not a big deal, it's also not a big deal for the other--per Jytdog, really. Drmies (talk) 01:23, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
- Support per Drmies, if any restriction be applied to Philip Cross, Kal Holmann also seems to naturally fall under said editing restriction. However, if both are to be warned to voluntarily not involve themselves with COIs and/or sensitive, politically charged topics and to use their best judgment, that also seems fair at this juncture, absent more current diffs of problematic editing. Philip Cross obviously knew he shouldn't have been Tweeting at article subjects and editing them, so I doubt he would have any problem with toning that down, considering he's a very prolific editor on many other pages that need work. Andrevan@ 02:49, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose - an editor should not be restricted merely because it is perceived that they are "not helping" (explicit evidence is needed) and a topic ban is not merely "asking [an] editor" to do something but mandating they do so or face punishment. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 04:56, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
- Support - this is getting ridiculous, although I agree with Andrevan (and others) regarding the need for both editors stepping as far away from any potential COI editing as possible, this is an editor facing severe harassment off-site. The least we can do is deal with their behaviour on-site following the rules of Wikipedia as opposed to "George Galloway said Phil was mean to him on Twitter therefor". If there are things to be answered for then let's deal with them and not get distracted/side-tracked by RT and a twitter-spat. PanydThe muffin is not subtle 14:59, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose for now. If KH continues to have problems with PC then it's worth reconsidering. But even if their approach wasn't the best KH had a very relevant point namely that there were significant problems with PC editing GG given their apparent feud (whoever initiated it). It's unfortunate it took us this long to deal with it. I do agree now that this has our attention KH needs to step away. Nil Einne (talk) 16:20, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose on policy grounds
but issue a formal warning to KH. We don't normally impose such sanctions for GF actions, whereas breaches of CIV or STALKING should normally require at least one warning before any bans. Additionally, I fear a penalty may also be seen as punishing an editor for bringing up valid issues with other editors' editing (even if we agree the manner WH did this was inappropriate).Should a warning not work, a ban would be an option.— kashmīrī TALK 18:02, 21 May 2018 (UTC) - Oppose: I do not see any proof submitted that this editor has been repeatedly disruptive WP:CBAN. And vis-a-vis his comment about Kal I agree with Cullen WP:AGF.– Lionel(talk) 05:56, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose: The proposal is bizarre - I see no evidence of disruption, merely the odd mistake any of us might make. I agree with Cullen above. --NSH001 (talk) 08:17, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose: per others above. The allegations made by said user and elsewhere in the media are highly serious, and threaten the integrity of the encyclopaedia. If it is found that they are untrue then fine, but the user shouldn't be chastised for making other editors taking them seriously. User:Jdcooper (posting from IP address cos I'm at work) 46.227.13.24 (talk) 15:43, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose - per Cullen328 and other opposers. Cross is the problem here. Jusdafax (talk) 15:13, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose - per the above opposers, which is all I can really say. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:21, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Off-wiki mentions
I saw this issue come up (having never heard of it before) on Hacker News here and later here. The first of those has a long comment thread and links to a "Five Filters" article "Time to ditch Wikipedia?"[16] that looks like a transplanted Wikipedia dispute (full of diffs etc.). I didn't look at it closely. The second links to a post by Craig Murray called "The Philip Cross Affair"[17] which has a time-of-day analysis of Philip Cross's posts and argues that Cross either spends ridiculous amounts of time editing or else is more than one person. Leftwing author Caitlin Johstone also has an article[18] and audio podcast[19] "Wikipedia is an establishment psyop" about the matter. I can't make much sense of the article and haven't listened to the audio, but they are there for those interested.
I'm not endorsing any of the writings cited above, but am posting the links here in case they are useful for further analysis. This sounds messy and even ignoring the political bias allegations, the level of editing activity attributed to Philip Cross is IMHO already a bad sign (people who edit nonstop tend to do more harm than good). The Wikimedia UK response was also unconvincing to say the least. So I agree with people above saying that it might take an arbcom case to figure out what is going on. I haven't looked into it enough (and probably won't) to say whether it's already time to file one. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 06:25, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
- Comment Thanks for links. I saw Murray's article earlier and I am baffled with his use of aggregate statistics which unfortunately feels rather of the type, statistically, a man with his dog have three legs each. The chart might equally well show PC editing only one day a week on different days each year over seven years. PC's average 27 edits daily of an average of 52 characters each (62% being below 20 characters!) equals to some 30-60 minutes spent on WP a day. I see no statistical grounds for Murray's suggestions that this is an institutional account which edits round the clock 365 days a year. So, I propose we stick with considering PC as a single person (unless CheckUser tells us otherwise). (This of course has no relevance to PC's violations discussed above). — kashmīrī TALK 09:38, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
- Comment: The idea that Philip Cross edits 'nonstop' may be based on a misinterpretation of the timecard section in the user's editcount summary. The circles are of even, maximum size because the user's edits are pretty randomly distributed 9-5 Monday to Friday. The fact that the circles effectively fill the daytime weekday space doesn't indicate constant editing. George Galloway piggybacked the theory that the account is run out of GCHQ or the like on this 'nonstop editing' notion. William Avery (talk) 09:44, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
- Kasmiri and William Avery, thanks, that's a good point about the timestamps and I now realize the claim shouldn't be taken at face value, though ISTM that it's still worth checking out. There have definitely been cases in the past of people making apparently ridiculous numbers of edits with no breaks (in those cases it was imho bloody obvious that the people in question were actually running bots) but in this case it sounds like the numbers aren't that extreme. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 10:30, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
- I think the stats end up being something like 30 edits/day for the past several years, which for reasonably motivated Wikipedians is not hard to achieve at all. nneonneo talk 16:38, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- Editing every day with zero breaks for N years was pretty impressive. Does the guy have no life? Never travels, doesn't get sick of Wikipedia, no time crunches at work, spouse never wants him to go kayaking, etc? But yeah 30 edits in a single day is not much, depending on your style. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 03:34, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- I think the stats end up being something like 30 edits/day for the past several years, which for reasonably motivated Wikipedians is not hard to achieve at all. nneonneo talk 16:38, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- Kasmiri and William Avery, thanks, that's a good point about the timestamps and I now realize the claim shouldn't be taken at face value, though ISTM that it's still worth checking out. There have definitely been cases in the past of people making apparently ridiculous numbers of edits with no breaks (in those cases it was imho bloody obvious that the people in question were actually running bots) but in this case it sounds like the numbers aren't that extreme. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 10:30, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
Ongoing
- More recently, this showed up , which also mentions JzG: https://wikipedia.fivefilters.org/agenda.html ; Note responses on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17162057
--Kim Bruning (talk) 23:24, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
An outsider's perspective
Alright, I am hardly a prolific WP user, having been inactive for 5+ years. However, I wholeheartedly, as a complete outsider to this case, support a topic ban for user:Philip Cross. There can be no mistake here; Cross IS exhibiting a COI and has admitted so publicly. Whether he/she did on-wiki or NOT, or regardless of the machinations of interest groups, there can be no denying the credibility of the articles has been compromised. If we ignore this, we might set a bad precedent for WP Cocoliras (talk) 15:02, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
Philip Cross continues to edit George Galloway BLP
Despite acknowledging on the article's talk page that we have an "active discussion here: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Philip Cross" User:Philip Cross continues to edit George Galloway, explaining, "Old habits linger and so on." This strikes me as a middle-finger salute to the Administrators' Noticeboard process. KalHolmann (talk) 14:48, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- I don't see why this is a problem. He *should* stop editing, but he also carefully explained why they were uncontroversial edits, and they are. Please stop making a fuss out of this. nneonneo talk 16:37, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- Cross and any editor supporting his continuing contributions to his involved BLP articles needs restricting.Cross needs banning from all wp:blp articles Govindaharihari (talk) 17:53, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
Propose topic ban
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Due to the overhwelming support for the suggestion that User:Philip Cross should not edit on the subject of George Galloway due to his real-life spat with him (and inevitable COI), and due to User:Philip Cross's apparent contempt for the opinions of the community, I propose that User:Philip Cross be topic banned from the subject of George Galloway, broadly construed. I'll just note that the latest edits do appear to be uncontroversial, but an editor with a clear COI regarding a subject should not be the one to decide if something is controversial. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:19, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- Support as proposer. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:14, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- Actually, I'm not sure "broadly construed" is needed at the moment, so I've struck that - but if others think it's needed, obviously feel free to add it to your comments. I'll also add that had this simply been George Galloway attacking Philip Cross in public, I would not be calling for a topic ban. But the attacks and insults have been going the other way too, and Philip Cross has got himself too deeply entrenched in a fight with George Galloway for it to be in any way appropriate for him to edit the article. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:41, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- And just a comment for whoever assesses the consensus and closes this, Wikipedia has a clear policy which says "Therefore, an editor who is involved in a significant controversy or dispute with another individual—whether on- or off-wiki—or who is an avowed rival of that individual, should not edit that person's biography or other material about that person, given the potential conflict of interest", at WP:BLPCOI. I assume the closer will take this into account, and will apply due weighting to oppose !votes which are not policy-based. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:25, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose Caving to off-site pressure sets a bad precedent. If someone doesn't like their WP coverage, all they'd need to do is amp up a "spat" with editors of the article to disqualify them. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 15:20, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- And all an editor in such a situation needs to do is not respond in kind and continue to maintain a neutral approach. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:46, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- Support - Nearly two thousand edits and he’s still at it after repeated taunting? Enough is enough. I say a full block if this keeps up. Jusdafax (talk) 15:25, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose SBHB puts it well. The amount of unsubstantiated guff that has been posted about Philip (on wikiP and off) is a clue to why this would be a bad precedent. MarnetteD|Talk 15:27, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- Support but topic ban should not be limited to George Galloway, whom User:Philip Cross has publicly addressed as "punk." The ban should also include the other subjects of Wikipedia articles whom Cross has likewise called "goons"—Matthew Gordon Banks, Craig Murray, Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Tim Hayward (academic), Piers Robinson, and Media Lens. KalHolmann (talk) 15:29, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- Strong support. Earlier above, I suggested to be lenient. But as Philip Cross is now showing his middle finger to all who are discussing him here, instead of offering an apology and recusal, I see it as a lost WP:SECONDCHANCE. It doesn't matter whether his COI edits are controversial; suffice that the community has requested him to stop editing. I will support a tban covering UK left-wing politicians and journalists broadly construed, i.e., to include political commentators, activitists, councillors, and similar. — kashmīrī TALK 16:18, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- Curious what the "middle finger" is - is he continuing to comment publicly about this? nneonneo talk 16:34, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- You are free to subsitute "middle finger" with "contempt". — kashmīrī TALK 17:34, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- Curious what the "middle finger" is - is he continuing to comment publicly about this? nneonneo talk 16:34, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- Comment I still haven't looked at the edits enough to independently support a sanction, and I note that there are some good editors opposing. But I couldn't imagine this pattern of editing being allowed in a US politics article, under the AMPOL-based discretionary sanctions affecting all of those articles. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 16:27, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose - PC is the subject of an off-wiki harassment campaign. His opponents do not have a wiki presence, so there's no one from "the other side" to censure, yet they are POV pushers of the highest degree. Repeated edits by anonymous users, sockpuppets, etc. to these articles push the same POV as PC's accusers (see the page history for Oliver Kamm - dozens of IPs, then autoconfirm protection, then edits from a half dozen users with 10 nonsense edits, then 30-500 protection, then an edit from a user who made 200+ extremely minor edits in a day after a long period of inactivity, all pushing the same text). The vast majority of PC's edits have been to clean up this crap and push proper RS material into the related articles. If you TBAN PC, please carefully consider who is going to step up to assure the quality of the articles - because I can guarantee you that the "other side" will gleefully start pushing their POV once "the malign presence of Philip Cross is no more" [20]. nneonneo talk 16:34, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- This is literally not in response to anything except PC's own behavior, which has crossed into violating BLP policy. It's that simple. You're ignoring that, completely, while implying that off-wiki harassment is pressuring us into silencing him. That's such a ridiculous allegation. I sympathize with PC getting caught up in off-wiki drama, but that has nothing to do with the fact that he shouldn't be editing a BLP while in an active dispute with the subject of said BLP. That's just policy. Swarm ♠ 08:24, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Support Philip Cross should not be editing any biographies of people he is insulting in public as a self-identified Wikipedia editor. Anyone who thinks that is acceptable behavior should re-examine their position. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 17:16, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- Support, it is clear that the user is incapable of editing that page objectively. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 21:57, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose because the edits are uncontroversial, WP:IAR, and the fact that COIBLP is not a hard and fast policy but more of a strongly worded suggestion. If he makes controversial edits, and there are diffs, I will change my opinion. Andrevan@
- User:Andrevan, are you saying don't ban because PC's most recent edits to GG are uncontroversial, even if earlier ones were controversial? Or do you mean all of his edits to the GG article have uncontroversial? Did you look at the Five Filters page?[21] It does have some ugly diffs, and looks to have been written by someone who knows their way around Wikipedia DR. If that person is here, can they speak up? 173.228.123.166 (talk) 02:16, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Support Long overdue. We should consider a ban from a few other BLPs, too, Huldra (talk) 23:16, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose. Off-wiki harassment shouldn't be endorsed. If George Galloway doesn't like it, I invite him to go piss up a rope. --Calton | Talk 01:59, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- I suggest you read once again what the question is all about. FYI, this section is not about off-wiki harassment but about PC flouting the community's advice yesterday. — kashmīrī TALK 07:35, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- I HAVE read it, genius. Why do you assume I haven't? Again, I reiterate my invitation to Mr. Galloway. --Calton | Talk 03:09, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Calton, you're not looking good here. Did you really write that off-wiki harassment shouldn't be endorsed, while endorsing Cross's off-wiki harassment of Galloway? BLPCOI is very clear, you shouldn't battle someone off-wiki and then attack their WP biography. Are you really saying it is ok as long as you do it in the reverse order? That makes no sense to me. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 03:18, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- I have a suggestion for you, Mr. Anonymous IP: don't put words in my mouth. It's dishonest. Unsurprising, but dishonest. --Calton | Talk 03:30, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- I'm not anonymous so maybe you'll answer the question from me. Does your statement "Off-wiki harassment shouldn't be endorsed" apply to all, or just selectively to those you disagree with? Little Professor (talk) 06:51, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Support per my extensive reasoning already-given above. This is a clear cut violation of BLP policy guidance. We need to enforce BLP policy, not fabricate reasons to ignore it, or pretend it's just a "suggestion". Framing PC as a victim who's being punished is also completely ridiculous. PC engaged the article's subject in an off-wiki dispute directly. Whether Calloway's actually in the wrong is irrelevant. The editor has a COI, and per BLP policy should not be editing the article, and this needs to be enforced. Swarm ♠ 05:32, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Also ridiculous is contorting the meaning of COI into pretzel shapes to get a result, hey, you be you. --Calton | Talk 05:52, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Wait, did you seriously just say that? There's no COI? Seriously? The editor admitted to there being a COI, Calton, that's why I'm saying there's a COI. If you had actually read the thread you're participating in, you'd know that, and perhaps you wouldn't be misrepresenting the situation as "harassment" that we're giving into either. It's literally like you have no idea what's going on here, you're just shooting in the dark. Swarm ♠ 06:07, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Why yes I did seriously fucking say that. Do you need new reading glasses?
- And why yes, I actually did read the actual fucking thread: other than my failure to toe the line, what gives you reason to think otherwise? --Calton | Talk 03:09, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose per concerns that this opens up other editors to increased off-wiki harassment. Lepricavark (talk) 06:09, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- That's an incredibly vague statement that doesn't even make sense. This proposal has nothing to do with harassment. Where are you getting that? Did you actually read the thread? Swarm ♠ 08:07, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- I see no point in explaining my position to someone who has already decided that I'm wrong. Lepricavark (talk) 13:11, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Support Per above, Phillip Cross didn't have to fling attacks the other way, and we have WP:BLP for a reason Galobtter (pingó mió) 06:17, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Support There would need to be an astonishingly good reason for someone engaged in an off-wiki feud to edit topics related to their opponent. I see no attempt by Philip Cross to supply that reason. It doesn't matter if a topic ban appears as caving to off-site pressure and the only precedent set would be to confirm the obvious fact that those engaged in public brawls have a strong COI that disqualifies them from editing in related areas. Johnuniq (talk) 10:57, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Support per Swarm. Some of the oppose votes do not seem to be addressing the actual issue. Mr Ernie (talk) 14:24, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Support w/caveat It does not matter who is right and who is wrong. PC compromised himself as a neutral editor the moment he engaged the subject off-wiki. If he were merely being attacked off-wiki without responding I do not think I would support a TBAN, nor do I believe there would be a consensus for one. Because of this I do not think the arguements which claim this would encourage bad actors to harass editors off-wiki to force them off a subject due to 'conflict with subject' hold much water. I support s TBAN only on those BLP who PC has engaged/commented on off-wiki. If one can not restrain one's passions suficienty to avoid calling someone a 'punk' on a public platform then it is not reasonable to expect an ability to hold oneself 'above the fray' and maintain NPOV on that subject. There has, however, been no evidence I am aware of that PC has been making inappropriate edits so I see no need to restrict his editing on subjects other than those he is in direct off-wiki conflict with. Jbh Talk 14:43, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- JBH, when you say "no evidence I am aware of", do you mean you examined the available evidence enough to say there's probably nothing convincing there, or do you mean you didn't look? Not a rhetorical question, just seeking clarification. Thanks. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 17:08, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- 173.228.123.166 (talk) More the later. I browsed quickly through the thread did not notice anyone systematically bringing up concerns to spark a discussion saying he was making BLP violating edits and considered that this proposal was made because of the off-wiki conflict rather than for BLP violation. If there is evidence he is making bad edits on the other articles I am willing to strike that portion. Jbh Talk 18:52, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks. The Five Filters page (wikipedia.fivefilters.org) does have some diffs from other articles, though of course whether they're convincing is subjective. There's also been some posted on article talk pages. I feel like we all have "dispute fatigue" here since none of us want to go digging for them. Of course I don't blame anyone for that. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 22:02, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Comment I've seen a reasonable number of diffs by now that indicate Cross has been editing Galloway's biography and other articles tendentiously enough to possibly justify a topic ban in its own right. The obvious next step is to tediously examine a bunch more diffs to get a clearer reading. That happens all the time in other WP disputes but doesn't seem to be happening here, and I find that a little bit perplexing. It leaves a significant unresolved question. On the other hand I don't have the energy to do much of digging myself, so I can't get after other people to do it. Question: does anyone here think Cross would be allowed to edit a biography of an American politician the same way that he's editing Galloway's biography? That is, I'm asking whether the AMPOL discretionary sanctions and the general enforcement regime around US politics would make the case get handled differently in practice. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 15:15, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- True, if somebody had a public spat with, say, Hillary Clinton, especially one that would have lasted for many years, I imagine that that person should not be allowed by the Community to edit the related Wikipedia article. Not sure why this such COI is not always perceived this way in the UK. — kashmīrī TALK 18:00, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- I don't see any need to examine edits in detail, as WP:BLPCOI policy is nothing to do with the quality of edits - it requires that an editor who is engaged in a public spat with a BLP subject not edit their biography at all. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:22, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Kashmiri, US politics is treated differently (it's under DS from two(?) arb cases) because of its history of long-term agenda pushers messing up its articles and editing environment. It's like sending more police into perennial high crime areas, pouncing on infractions (not good but sometimes necessary). The UK politics editors are apparently more
civilizedcivilised than we here in the States, so the project can maintain a more normal level of AGF towards them and handle DR through customary processes. Philip Cross is accused of being a long term agenda pusher like we sometimes get in the US. So I'm asking how he would look under the AMPOL lens.Boing, BLPCOI says if you're fighting someone off-wiki you shouldn't then start also attacking their Wikipedia biography. That leaves open an argument that it's ok if you do it the other way around (attack them on-wiki first and off-wiki later). I find that ridiculous but it seems to be what some of the TBAN opposing rationales amount to. And PC's editing is being painted off-wiki, with some plausibility, as a deeper problem than a personal spat between PC and GG. That's what only a pile of diffs can answer. BLPCOI is an easier way out but it leaves unanswered questions and keeps the door open for crappy editing in other articles. It leaves us still looking like we don't keep our house in order. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 21:05, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- I don't read "an editor who is involved in a significant controversy or dispute with another individual—whether on- or off-wiki—or who is an avowed rival of that individual, should not edit that person's biography or other material about that person" as implying any chronological condition. It really wouldn't make sense that way. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 06:17, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- I think it's a stupid reading too, but you know what this place is like. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 08:28, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Kashmiri, US politics is treated differently (it's under DS from two(?) arb cases) because of its history of long-term agenda pushers messing up its articles and editing environment. It's like sending more police into perennial high crime areas, pouncing on infractions (not good but sometimes necessary). The UK politics editors are apparently more
- OK, support and keep investigating I'm convinced by Boing that PC should stop editing the GG article per BLPCOI (enough acronyms here?). BLPCOI should and does leave a little bit of wiggle room for scrupulously neutral editing, but that's not what we've been seeing taken as a whole (maybe the last few days of edits have been neutral). I'm not worried about the GG biography falling under the depredations of international communism without PC to defend it. Somehow I think enough other editors can keep an eye on a prominent article like that. There is also the unresolved question of possible wider agenda pushing affecting other articles, so discussion should stay open about that. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 03:39, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
How deep could COI run here?
For the record, I popped onto a publicly shared document[22] that matches Philip Cross's Wikipedia edits to tweets from Oliver Kamm's Twitter account. The document suggests that PC's edits to WP articles on various public figures were closely timed with Oliver Kamm's public spats with them. By the way, this coincidence was puzzling to an editor as far as 11 years ago.[23] I am as distant as possible from drawing any conclusions on anyone's RL identity (as there might be many explanations for this coincidence). However, if we had a situation that OK and PC were indeed somehow linked (through meatpuppetry, etc.), we would be looking at an entirely different level of COI.
I am not sure how much we should concern ourselves with such deep-going investigations of possible COI in Wikipedia editing, so thank you to share your thoughts. — kashmīrī TALK 00:50, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Although that document is interesting, deep off-wiki investigations are usually frowned upon. If there's an arb case it becomes possible to submit evidence to arbcom privately when stuff like real identities are involved. PC and OK have definitely communicated in the past.[24] If you have some thoughts or info that you can't post openly, you can send it to arbcom at any time (WP:ARB#Contacting_the_Committee). 173.228.123.166 (talk) 04:00, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Yeah, that's why I suggested punting it over there. I file this as "above our pay grade". Guy (Help!) 08:38, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Yes, agree, I had same doubts. I won't pursue this up as my primary objective is to stop/prevent bias/COI in WP editing, for which a tban will be sufficient. I am not here to research people's indentities, especially that I have already received a formal warning from an overzealous admin for outing out a PR agency who did paid editing; so I need to stay on the safe side. But I will support the idea of investigating the matter further should anyone be willing to do it. — kashmīrī TALK 11:10, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Yeah, that's why I suggested punting it over there. I file this as "above our pay grade". Guy (Help!) 08:38, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
In my defence, pointing to the "(Philip) Cross-Referencing" document, I should note that Diane Abbott, Ken Loach, Seumas Milne, Max Mosley, Alex Salmond, Nick Timothy and Mark Wadsworth were very much in the news when Oliver Kamm's tweets either preceded or followed my edits to Wikipedia. My diffs should be compared directly with Oliver Kamm's tweets and it may be noticeable that the viewpoints expressed are not necessarily in agreement. An exception does apply to my edits to certain articles, such as Edward S. Herman, where I generally share mainstream opinion expressed by opinion formers like Mr Kamm. Philip Cross (talk) 18:41, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Fwiw I'm not terribly concerned about the presence or absence of connections between Philip Cross and Oliver Kamm, so I see the stuff in that document as of at most peripheral interest in a possible arb case and here. It's an almost-irrelevant detail. Something like that came up in the World War II case but it just didn't matter and it might as well have been completely ignored.
If Philip Cross is multiple people as Craig Murray suggests (or even a GCHQ spy operation per some of Murray's followers), that would be much more alarming, but I can't take that theory seriously without stronger evidence than Murray gave (and if the GCHQ part is true, then I want Philip's help in getting James Bond's autograph). It's more a question of whether systematically biased editing (WP:TE) is going on, distorting our coverage of important topic areas (less ideologically obnoxiously than in the Noleander case, but far worse than that case in the aspect of how BLP's are affected). If that is happening, then Murray and others were right to call us out on it, even if the way they did so was not very nice.
Philip, I know you spend a lot of time editing, so on the theory that Wikipedia is important to you for reasons beyond how it presents current UK politics: are there other subjects you are interested in--art, history, architecture, or whatever--and could you be a happy editor working in those subjects instead? That might be a reasonable compromise, saving us from losing a good writer while getting rid of a bunch of conflict in the currently disputed areas. An arbitration case (if one occurs) might converge on something like that either way.
If anyone cares, https://www.google.com/search?q=craig+murray+philip+cross currently has 825,000 hits. :O 173.228.123.166 (talk) 20:19, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- 173.228.123.166, I care, and you've badly misused Google search. Change it to q="craig murray" + "philip cross" Voilà about 9,510 results. KalHolmann (talk) 20:36, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks, that's a less scary number. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 21:00, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- 173.228.123.166, also, if you go to the last page of Google's 9,510 hits, you'll find that there were only 128 "relevant results," meaning 9,382 were likely duplicates. So this search is a useless gauge of interest in the topic. KalHolmann (talk) 21:09, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Hmm, the duplicates may still mean something, unless they're literally multiple hits on the same page. If they are separate pages with the same stuff on them, they can have separate viewerships so they still affect the audience size. The 27 Reddit threads in different topic areas also basically duplicate each other, but they are seen by separate groups of people. Do you want to try similar checks for the Five Filters page? I'm about to step out but can run a search like that in a little while, if you're not up for it. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 21:33, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- 173.228.123.166, I'll leave further research along these lines to you. I honestly don't think this is a productive approach, since it is superficial and unscientific. KalHolmann (talk) 21:39, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Fair enough. Note that you don't need to link my contrib page, and if you're trying to ping me it won't work. One of the blessings of IP editing is that you don't receive pings. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 23:23, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- 173.228.123.166, I'll leave further research along these lines to you. I honestly don't think this is a productive approach, since it is superficial and unscientific. KalHolmann (talk) 21:39, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Hmm, the duplicates may still mean something, unless they're literally multiple hits on the same page. If they are separate pages with the same stuff on them, they can have separate viewerships so they still affect the audience size. The 27 Reddit threads in different topic areas also basically duplicate each other, but they are seen by separate groups of people. Do you want to try similar checks for the Five Filters page? I'm about to step out but can run a search like that in a little while, if you're not up for it. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 21:33, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- 173.228.123.166, also, if you go to the last page of Google's 9,510 hits, you'll find that there were only 128 "relevant results," meaning 9,382 were likely duplicates. So this search is a useless gauge of interest in the topic. KalHolmann (talk) 21:09, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks, that's a less scary number. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 21:00, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- 173.228.123.166, I care, and you've badly misused Google search. Change it to q="craig murray" + "philip cross" Voilà about 9,510 results. KalHolmann (talk) 20:36, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
ArbCom
Filed: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case § George Galloway. Guy (Help!) 09:53, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Procedural question: does the fact that Arbitrators have declined to hear this matter render the present AN moot? Specifically, does the eventual closing reviewer here retain the option of topic-banning Philip Cross? KalHolmann (talk) 17:10, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- The Arbitration Committee has not declined to hear the matter (only one Arb has, but it needs a majority). Any decision by the committee does not stop the community continuing to seek a consensus for the current proposal. The closer here has only one option, that of evaluating the consensus, and has no power to do anything else. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:16, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Boing! said Zebedee, thank you for explaining that. I misunderstood the process, and will await votes by additional Arbiters. KalHolmann (talk) 17:21, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) I was thinking that a community topic ban would be sufficient, but the way discussion has been moving towards suggestions of things that should not be aired in public, I agree it's a good idea to at least run this past ArbCom. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:13, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- My statement for the case request is currently on hold here (permalink) if anyone wants to see it. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 01:06, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- 173.228.123.166, since you have apparently been cleared as a suspected sockpuppet, I presume it's safe to respond to your statement. At first I wrote off you as a fool because you misspelled my name 17 different ways before finally getting it right. But here you make an important point that merits discussion. "Wikipedia doing nothing about this," you write, "gives the impression we're not keeping our house in order. Jimbo and WMUK reinforced that impression by brushing off concerns (Streisand effect). So now there's a lot of internet outrage directed at us, maybe driven by an anti-Philip Cross propaganda operation in its own right, but people are finding it convincing." You then cite 27 Reddit threads and three Hacker News threads, rightly observing that "Wikipedia is taking a beating in all of them." Of course, 30 threads are not representative of public opinion. It would take a rigorous statistical study to demonstrate the extent to which Philip Cross has harmed Wikipedia's credibility and reputation. My intuitive sense, having closely followed the outrage on Twitter, is that Cross has hurt us immensely. If I'm right (and I pray I'm not), it will take years to repair the damage. And the longer Wikipedia dawdles, the worse it gets. You are absolutely right in concluding, "What people outside want most is for us to take the concerns seriously, check them out carefully and openly, and come to some reasonable conclusion. They mostly don't give a rip about left-wing UK politics … but they don't like the idea of Wikipedia ignoring long-running content manipulation from any corner." KalHolmann (talk) 19:21, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- It's perfectly fine to reply to me in the presence of an open SPI report: you didn't have to wait for it to close. I'm sorry about the misspellings and I think I've fixed them all now. It looks like George Galloway is after us[25] and I don't especially blame him. Overall though, we can handle this, and even if our reputation slips a notch, that might be a good thing. Too many people treat us as infallible and we don't pretend to be that and we don't come anywhere close to it. It's better if they view us with their eyes open. If we're as good as the major traditional encyclopedias (which are not infallible either) and we're perceived that way, I'm satisfied. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 20:43, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- 173.228.123.166, since you have apparently been cleared as a suspected sockpuppet, I presume it's safe to respond to your statement. At first I wrote off you as a fool because you misspelled my name 17 different ways before finally getting it right. But here you make an important point that merits discussion. "Wikipedia doing nothing about this," you write, "gives the impression we're not keeping our house in order. Jimbo and WMUK reinforced that impression by brushing off concerns (Streisand effect). So now there's a lot of internet outrage directed at us, maybe driven by an anti-Philip Cross propaganda operation in its own right, but people are finding it convincing." You then cite 27 Reddit threads and three Hacker News threads, rightly observing that "Wikipedia is taking a beating in all of them." Of course, 30 threads are not representative of public opinion. It would take a rigorous statistical study to demonstrate the extent to which Philip Cross has harmed Wikipedia's credibility and reputation. My intuitive sense, having closely followed the outrage on Twitter, is that Cross has hurt us immensely. If I'm right (and I pray I'm not), it will take years to repair the damage. And the longer Wikipedia dawdles, the worse it gets. You are absolutely right in concluding, "What people outside want most is for us to take the concerns seriously, check them out carefully and openly, and come to some reasonable conclusion. They mostly don't give a rip about left-wing UK politics … but they don't like the idea of Wikipedia ignoring long-running content manipulation from any corner." KalHolmann (talk) 19:21, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
File:Native Design Limited logo and registered trademark.png
File:Native Design Limited logo and registered trademark.png has got a {{PD-ineligible-USonly|United Kingdom}}, but I think this is a PD-texlogo. No problem with transfer to Commons. Or not? Regards. Ganímedes (talk) 11:56, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
- Not necessarily, because the logo is of a British company and British copyright law has a much lower treshold of copyright than the US. A textlogo that isn't copyrightable in the US may be copyrightable in the UK and thus ineligible for Commons. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 13:10, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
Admin dashboard count oddities
Template:Admin dashboard - As I'm looking at the count for CSD, it says 133. I manually counted 43 and found no others listed. Likewise, Open SPI investigations says 156 - I didn't manually count them, but 156 seems high even for SPI. Why it is over counting on CSD, and possibly on SPI? — Maile (talk) 19:35, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
- There were quite a few G13's that were deleted earlier. Sometimes it takes a bit for the count to catch up. RickinBaltimore (talk) 19:39, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
- For CSD yeah it takes time to update, for SPI Category:Open_SPI_cases does have 156 members, though ~50 are awaiting archival and ~50 are CU complete; the code was subtracting a category that has been deleted since 2014 to calculate open cases; I made it now subtract those awaiting archival (though with the number so high does it matter..) Galobtter (pingó mió) 19:53, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
- A day later, we still have a greatly inflated count on the number of CSD. It's worse than yesterday. As I write this, we have 37 actual items at CSD, but the Dashboard count says it's 176. — Maile (talk) 11:15, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
- See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#CSD_backlog? (better place to discuss this), something strange with pagesincategory for the csd category. Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:57, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks. — Maile (talk) 14:36, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
- See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#CSD_backlog? (better place to discuss this), something strange with pagesincategory for the csd category. Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:57, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
- Regarding the high SPI count, as of this edit there are 4 cases only waiting for an administrator (this status means any administrator, not just an admin SPI clerk). That number is pleasantly low at the moment but is sometimes quite high. As a clerk I tend to avoid those cases because there are others that need attention from a clerk specifically, while any administrator can act on this set - the requests are typically from a non-admin clerk asking for an admin to review deleted edits or block an obvious sock, and they explain exactly what it is they need an admin to do. If someone interested would like to take a look at Category:SPI cases needing an Administrator from time to time (or watchlist it?) your efforts would be appreciated. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:00, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
Phabricator login broken?
Moved to WP:VPT— Preceding unsigned comment added by GoldenRing (talk • contribs) 13:05, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
Closure Review of Talk:Nicholas Hoult#Infobox
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The RfC of Talk:Nicholas Hoult#Infobox wasn't done in accordance with WP:RFC or WP:THIRDOPINION as four editors were WP:CANVASSED into commenting by the requestor here.
In addition, invalid arguments were made in favour of the requestor that because requestor had done most of the work on this particular article the editors sided with his preference for the article to use the image rather than the infobox. I believe this is also contrary to WP:OWN and a discussion isn't a WP:VOTE.
Based on the above, I believe the closure should be overturned. Tanbircdq (talk) 19:32, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
- Perhaps, you should wait a month, then (if you wish) open another Rfc. Not that I'd be looking forward to it. GoodDay (talk) 20:16, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
- @Tanbircdq: So what? The RfC you're talking about was closed on 30 April. Another infobox RfC, which looks likely to end in consensus for an infobox in the article, is now in full swing, as you well know, since you yourself started it on May 1. An infobox in the article is what you want. So why are you here, and why now? Please recollect that Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. IMO you were pretty lucky not to be sanctioned for immediately starting a new RfC, and even more for putting the infobox back in the middle of it. User:Fish and Karate, who closed the RfC you're talking about, and myself, decided instead it would be less disruptive, and lead to less alarms and excursions, to let the new RfC run. Discussion here. In seven days it can be closed and consensus assessed. I expect everybody to then live with the new consensus and stop it with the incessant RfCs, or I will put the page under a similar sanction as the one I implemented at Stanley Kubrick.[26] Well, similar except that the Kubrick sanction was that people are not allowed to add an infobox to the article for the next four months, while a sanction for Nicholas Hoult would be more likely to read "you are not allowed to remove the infobox from the article for the next four months" — all in the interest of respecting consensus as well as stopping the infobox wars on these articles. Bishonen | talk 21:08, 23 May 2018 (UTC).
- Re-pinging: it's Fish and karate. Grrr. Bishonen | talk 21:12, 23 May 2018 (UTC).
- I "immediately" started another RfC because the correct the procedure and rules of consensus weren't followed as the requestor clearly canvassed other editors to game the system which skewed the discussion in their favour as you can see from this diff. The fact that all editors sided with Numerounovedant without any reference to any guidelines whereas the RfC is clearly going significantly differently says a lot.
- I'm acting on the advice of another editor here (it's a shame an admin couldn't have given me this information in the first place).
- Not my fault that main opposing editor changed his mind from conceding that the article can have an infobox which is why I readded the infobox here. All done in good faith. Tanbircdq (talk) 21:35, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
- Are you saying that the editors have no brains of their own? Or are they all quasi-socks? Well, all of them have been around for way than myself and have rarely (in my knowledge) discussed info-boxes. I invited then because they were all more than familiar with BLPs and nothing more. I am sorry but you have to stop with the canvassing allegations, it is turning into a yawnfest. Discredit it first. There are people at the new RfC who have fairly vague opposes, but you don't see people running around accusing them if siding with you as a part of larger conspiracy against anyone right? I'll give you that everything has been done in good faith except for your constant canvassing rants. VedantTalk 21:45, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
- Not my fault that main opposing editor changed his mind from conceding that the article can have an infobox which is why I readded the infobox here. All done in good faith. Tanbircdq (talk) 21:35, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) @Tanbircdq: I still don't see the point of coming here now, when only a week remains of the new RfC's runtime. You weren't exactly advised to do that, you know. The other user was talking about what to do in a similar situation "in the future". In this situation, the closure review train has already left the station, and will soon be arriving in the heavenly City of Consensus. Just wait a little, please. Bishonen | talk 21:48, 23 May 2018 (UTC).
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Page moved, auto archiving not updated
Can someone check and see if I got this fixed correctly. I was using OneClickArchiver on Talk:Alex Jones, but the page had been moved in January but the auto archiving settings were not updated, the page name was not changed. The script put the archives at Talk:Alex Jones (radio host)/Archive 13 and Talk:Alex Jones (radio host)/Archive 14 which I moved the contents to Talk:Alex Jones/Archive 14 I think everything is OK but Talk:Alex Jones (radio host)/Archive 14 will need to be deleted. Thanx, - FlightTime (open channel) 17:07, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- Note - The moving admin is away til June. - FlightTime (open channel) 17:17, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- Well, there's a first time for everything. I'm actually not "away" until June, but I have limited availability. This is within my bandwidth, though. bd2412 T 20:23, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- @BD2412: Sorry
- FlightTime (open channel) 20:28, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
- @BD2412: Sorry
- Well, there's a first time for everything. I'm actually not "away" until June, but I have limited availability. This is within my bandwidth, though. bd2412 T 20:23, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
A number of right-wing POV pushing users are engaged in tendentious editing to maintain a whitewashed status quo version of the article that avoids coverage of numerous scandals, specifically the Mueller investigation, instead following a line that more or less reads: "it's a witch hunt, no collusion!". Yes this article is a BLP, yes this topic is covered elsewhere in greater depth, but the Russia scandal and the issues surrounding numerous members of Trump's campaign, are some of the most significant things about Donald Trump, covered massively in RS, and will only become more significant over time. I suspect at least some of these users to be paid Russian/GOP/NRA advocacy agents -- Trump World PR reps. Others may simply be partisans. Sure there are issues with trolls and socks, but some are wikilawyering. Some, I assume, are good faith editors. At this point I have spent some time engaging in the discussion, and I am ready to disengage and file some RFCs and probably an ArbCom case. As a first step, here I am. Also, in before someone says that I'm the one engaging in POV pushing: the vast majority of RS have covered Trump in great depth including his scandals. I may have given up my impartiality to engage on the page over the last few days, but I submit I was doing so in the interest of ultimately making progress in the dispute. I won't hide my own POV about Mr. Trump and I don't intend to act as an admin on that page, just an interested editor. Andrevan@ 03:29, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- See [27] Andrevan@ 03:38, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Non-content comment:
I suspect at least some of these users to be paid Russian/GOP/NRA advocacy agents
. POV pusher? nah mate, you're a conspiracy theorist. Just ... and you said it all serious. Alright, line up here if you're a Russian spy. Vlad will take down your names. Mr rnddude (talk) 03:42, 25 May 2018 (UTC)- I'm just upset Putin hasn't paid me this month and my rent is due soon!--MONGO 03:44, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- I know! My paycheck is late as well. Kim Jong-un and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi always pay on time. Don't be a deadbeat Vlad! --Guy Macon (talk) 05:17, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- I'm just upset Putin hasn't paid me this month and my rent is due soon!--MONGO 03:44, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- And here I thought today was May 24th, not April 1st. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 03:45, 25 May 2018 (UTC):
- Kind of wish I was a Russian spy, I hear the pay is not to bad. But in all seriousness, I have been mentioned in this as well. You can take a look at my talk page for some discussion on this. It sounds like a take a break and reassess yourself type situation. PackMecEng (talk) 03:47, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- One has to love it when he opens a question out of the blue on your talkpage with a harassing comment:[28] "Pleasure to make your acquaintance. I am guessing you are a right wing American politics editor and supporter of blocked user who I warned about the username policy just now." This was right after he harassed a blocked editor about their long established username which gets zero traction from other commentators [29] and above he calls out others as POV pushers when he just got through posting he plans on violating WP:SYNTH by stating: [30] "What I'd like to ultimately add to the lede is the idea that Donald Trump is the most scandal-ridden president in recent history." There are a few more issues of POV pushing to be sure like his refusal to budge on his DS violation of a challenged edit.--MONGO 03:57, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- It's a simple fact that there have been more Trump scandals in the last year than there were for 8 years under Obama. Yet our article is whitewashed and held hostage by tendentious partisans such as yourself and PackMecEng and others. I edited the article for a couple days and I'm more or less done finding out what I wanted to find out, so feel free to make this about me if you like, but that's not a very productive use of time. Andrevan@ 04:03, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- If I was a tendentious partisan I'd be over at the Hillary Clinton article outlining her transgressions, but I supported that article for FA when it was at FAC and the last thing I did was try and muff up the works. You on the other hand have deliberately tried to provoke those you call partisans because they don't agree with your edits. You've gone to the talkpages and harassed them. And right here you're stating: "I suspect at least some of these users to be paid Russian/GOP/NRA advocacy agents -- Trump World PR reps." Wow.--MONGO 04:15, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- (edit conflict)"Wow" is right. For me, personally, I'm most shocked by all this in combination with Andrevan being an administrator. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 04:19, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- You already admitted in the linked diff that you are a partisan. Andrevan@ 04:17, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- He made no such admission. You made an interpretation. Lepricavark (talk) 05:15, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- I'm still not sure why Hillary Clinton contains so much more information about Travelgate and Whitewater than Bill Clinton does. And there's 7 paragraphs about "her emails". There's neither need nor motivation to outline transgressions more at Hillary Clinton, even for a "partisan" editor. power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:21, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- I have not look at that page for some time and its possible much of that was added after the FAC. I do not recollect the article had that much coverage on the issues you mention. If Andrevan feels so strongly about the Trump article lacks adequate details then he can fix that by making sound arguments that do not attack other editors nonstop. I strongly urge him to review BLP and AGF at this point because he is starting to look unhinged.--MONGO 04:27, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- If I was a tendentious partisan I'd be over at the Hillary Clinton article outlining her transgressions, but I supported that article for FA when it was at FAC and the last thing I did was try and muff up the works. You on the other hand have deliberately tried to provoke those you call partisans because they don't agree with your edits. You've gone to the talkpages and harassed them. And right here you're stating: "I suspect at least some of these users to be paid Russian/GOP/NRA advocacy agents -- Trump World PR reps." Wow.--MONGO 04:15, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- It's a simple fact that there have been more Trump scandals in the last year than there were for 8 years under Obama. Yet our article is whitewashed and held hostage by tendentious partisans such as yourself and PackMecEng and others. I edited the article for a couple days and I'm more or less done finding out what I wanted to find out, so feel free to make this about me if you like, but that's not a very productive use of time. Andrevan@ 04:03, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- One has to love it when he opens a question out of the blue on your talkpage with a harassing comment:[28] "Pleasure to make your acquaintance. I am guessing you are a right wing American politics editor and supporter of blocked user who I warned about the username policy just now." This was right after he harassed a blocked editor about their long established username which gets zero traction from other commentators [29] and above he calls out others as POV pushers when he just got through posting he plans on violating WP:SYNTH by stating: [30] "What I'd like to ultimately add to the lede is the idea that Donald Trump is the most scandal-ridden president in recent history." There are a few more issues of POV pushing to be sure like his refusal to budge on his DS violation of a challenged edit.--MONGO 03:57, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Kind of wish I was a Russian spy, I hear the pay is not to bad. But in all seriousness, I have been mentioned in this as well. You can take a look at my talk page for some discussion on this. It sounds like a take a break and reassess yourself type situation. PackMecEng (talk) 03:47, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Secret paid editing rings are a reality, see: Orangemoody editing of Wikipedia, [31]. We also know Russians were paying social media users on Reddit, Facebook, and other places[32][33] Andrevan@ 03:47, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Yeah it is a thing, but to make those types of serious accusations requires serious proof. PackMecEng (talk) 03:48, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- I'll be interested to see this proof. Whatever it is. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 03:51, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- I told you at User talk:PackMecEng that POV-pushing must be demonstrated, not just alleged. Apparently you didn't believe me, because here we've seen a lot of alleging and no demonstrating. The only thing you've demonstrated so far is how to violate WP:AGF. AGF violation is rampant among the general editing population but unacceptable from an admin, who is expected to set an example of proper behavior. My considered and humble advice is to withdraw this before your adminship becomes a real issue, and, optionally, start building AE cases against the editors of your choice. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:21, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- The recent diffs with respect to User:MONGO are [34] [35] -- it's going to take me a long time to put together cases for user behavior going back some months. I was hoping by starting the discussion here, people might help me out. Andrevan@ 04:30, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Andrevan, while I believe that some of these editors are partisan and their edits show it, I very much doubt you'll find evidence of collusion between them. For instance, I feel secure enough about MONGO and Winkelvi that I will vouch for them. And even if they were colluding, it would be happening off-wiki and you'd have a hell of a time proving it. In other words--OMG I can't believe I'm using this term--it may well be that you're on a you-know-what hunt... This is not to say that all of them, or some or all of them together, are productive in this regard, but I do not believe they're collaborating in some nefarious way. Drmies (talk) 04:36, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Perhaps, if you have a good reason to know that MONGO and Winkelvi are good faith editors, you could send me some information about via email so that I focus my attention at the proper editors. Andrevan@ 04:40, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Is this really happening? -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 04:43, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- You're certain something nefarious is going on there but you need help identifying the perpetrators? This is approaching the comical. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:46, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- It is already pretty obvious from this thread alone who I need to look at. Perhaps my pending investigation will act as a deterrent in the meantime. Andrevan@ 04:51, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
"Perhaps my pending investigation will act as a deterrent in the meantime."
Well, that was pretty chilling. Talk about an editing and commenting killer. Yikes. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 04:53, 25 May 2018 (UTC)- Andrevan: Are you familiar with xtools? particularly, are you familiar with the one that gives you any editor's entire editing history to peruse? Let's take MONGO's xtools stats: 13 years, 70k edits, and a bunch of featured articles (e.g. Retreat of glaciers since 1850 or Shoshone National Forest). Winklevi's go back six years, 27k edits, no FA/GA's but significant contributions to article like Billy the Kid and Robin Williams. I wonder why the KGB would have considered these to be necessary contributions. In any case, thanks Putin, we have some great articles on parks and forests thanks to your agent MONGO. Mr rnddude (talk) 04:56, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- I wrote the Retreat of glaciers article along with my comrades before Putin put me on his payroll, but Putin pays us to maintain it because we want global warming!!!--MONGO 05:00, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Mr rnddude, you forgot to mention that I just wrote the Dell Bull article and significantly improved the Lyle F. Bull article. They are about two U.S. Navy Admirals, father and son, with the son have recently been the Chief of Naval Air Training. Perhaps someone now needs to get in touch with the Pentagon to have him investigated. Since I'm Russian Wikipedia Spy and Infiltrator, and all. Could be I'm trying to promote the Admiral's Navy career because he's actually a mole? (this is all tongue-in-cheek, of course...no BLP violations here!). -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 05:06, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Come on, rnddude. The Russians aren't stupid, they know how to create a convincing cover. They sure fooled you! ―Mandruss ☎ 05:08, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Yes, apparently Andrevan has caught onto that possibility too. Sleeper agents, but of course... how could I have been so blind? Mr rnddude (talk) 05:16, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- It is already pretty obvious from this thread alone who I need to look at. Perhaps my pending investigation will act as a deterrent in the meantime. Andrevan@ 04:51, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Perhaps, if you have a good reason to know that MONGO and Winkelvi are good faith editors, you could send me some information about via email so that I focus my attention at the proper editors. Andrevan@ 04:40, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Andrevan, while I believe that some of these editors are partisan and their edits show it, I very much doubt you'll find evidence of collusion between them. For instance, I feel secure enough about MONGO and Winkelvi that I will vouch for them. And even if they were colluding, it would be happening off-wiki and you'd have a hell of a time proving it. In other words--OMG I can't believe I'm using this term--it may well be that you're on a you-know-what hunt... This is not to say that all of them, or some or all of them together, are productive in this regard, but I do not believe they're collaborating in some nefarious way. Drmies (talk) 04:36, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- The recent diffs with respect to User:MONGO are [34] [35] -- it's going to take me a long time to put together cases for user behavior going back some months. I was hoping by starting the discussion here, people might help me out. Andrevan@ 04:30, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Yeah it is a thing, but to make those types of serious accusations requires serious proof. PackMecEng (talk) 03:48, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- With this thread and his behavior at FCAYS's talk, Andrevan's not having a great day. How many more of us need to point that out before he starts listening? Lepricavark (talk) 04:57, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
Call for WP:BOOMERANG for Andrevan
Looking over Talk:Donald Trump, I am seeing what appears to me to be Andrevan doing what he accuses others of doing: POV pushing and engaging in tendentious editing. (Note that this does not imply that those he oppose are or are not doing the same sort of thing). I think ANI should take a close look at Andrevan's posting history and perhaps issue some warnings. Again, this does not exclude dealing with other troublesome users.
I am willing to take the time to prepare a detailed case with diffs, but for now I just want to start the conversation.
Because Andrevan has a habit of accusing those who have a problem with his behavior of being partisan, let me make my position clear: I have an equally strong dislike for Trump and Clinton, for Democrats and Republicans. This is based upon my opinion that the ability of politicians to deceive us far exceeds our ability to detect deception, and I reject all claims that "MY politician is different!" as being signs of successful deception. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:59, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Not sure if we are in Boomerang territory yet, but this post certainly appeared to be disingenuous. It's not okay to go to another editor's talk page, accuse them of being partisan, and then further accuse them of escalating the discussion. Lepricavark (talk) 05:02, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Amen on a lack of a decent candidates to vote for in 2016. I voted for my write in Bigfoot.--MONGO 05:05, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Hopefully someone will WP:TROUT Andrevan and close this thread, which is (at best) a waste of time, and may get one or more editors sanctioned if it keeps going for another day. to be clear; the top thread is the waste of time, not Macon's boomerang suggestion) power~enwiki (π, ν) 05:08, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Now I'm interested to know what editors would get sanctioned and for what, power~enwiki. Care to enlighten? -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 05:11, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Primarily Andrevan. If anyone wants to discuss this with me further, please do so on a user talk page and not here. power~enwiki (π, ν) 05:20, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Now I'm interested to know what editors would get sanctioned and for what, power~enwiki. Care to enlighten? -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 05:11, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- Boomerang me if you must, but Wikipedia is under attack by Russian/GOP agents and partisans. FCAYS is probably one of them, and I would not assume that just because there is a lengthy history going back years that the user cannot also be a paid editor. We know that the Russians spent time building profiles and activating them later.[36][37][38] This campaign started in 2008 or 2009. Andrevan@ 05:10, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- The above seals the deal for me. Andrevan should be topic banned from all articles involving post-1932 American politics, broadly construed. We don't need a disruptive editor accusing veteran editors of being paid by the Russians without providing any evidence. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:27, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- At first I thought your suggestion too harsh, however, it occurs to me that there's no way out of this and if he's going to continue to edit such articles, how can he have that kind of view regarding other editors and edit collegially? His attitude has to be the worst case of WP:BATTLE I've ever seen in a veteran editor, let alone an administrator. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 05:34, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- The above seals the deal for me. Andrevan should be topic banned from all articles involving post-1932 American politics, broadly construed. We don't need a disruptive editor accusing veteran editors of being paid by the Russians without providing any evidence. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:27, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- e/c Andrevan, is there some concrete discussion or a specific edit you can point to? I looked at the talk page and see the usual back-and-forth of contentious political articles. I'm not saying "diffs or gtfo", but more like "it would help to know if you're saying that editor so-and-so is trying to cover up Russian influence by removing references to Mike Pence's balalaika playing, or whatever". Yeah there's partisan editing going on, but we don't need paid editors or Russians for that. Our partisans are selfless enough to do it for free. MONGO and Winklevi have been around forever (probably before 2008) and Drmies' advice about them is sound. Maybe the article can get better once there are more secondary sources. The stuff currently in the newspapers generally is too recent and frantic to be much of a reference for assessing due weight. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 05:15, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- It's been going on since at least Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Ghouta chemical attack, see indeffed User:Erlbaeko, in which Russian users pushed the idea that the chemical attack was a false flag, there is also User:Trust Is All You Need who was on a crusade to convert all socialism articles to the Soviet line. Andrevan@ 05:21, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
"We know that the Russians spent time building profiles and activating them later."
I think I saw this plot in a 1980s Kevin Costner movie. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 05:26, 25 May 2018 (UTC)- • And the chance of anyone here who is not a counterintelligence professional ferreting out long term clean skin accounts of state actors is pretty slim and, based on your edits here, your chance is exactly zero. Please drop this. If you feel Wikipedia is a playground for professional POV pushers then go work constructively on the article to balance the POV. Use the SOCK and COI procedures we have to get the low hanging fruit and dispute resolution to manage POV. Hell, for all we know this whole thread you started could be a Russian effort to discredit the non-pro-Trump position with your initial salvo at FCAS about his username ploy to establish yourself. Yeah... that's bullshit but it is just as likely as the claims you are throwing about. Entering the hall of mirrors is seldom fulfilling and can lead to even pros barking at reflections. Jbh Talk 05:32, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- (Wow, much e/c) Andrevan: yeah there was also the Russia vs Poland wikidrama (government payments probably not involved, but the EEML was real). I don't see any allegation of Russian government involvement in that Ghouta mediation page. The usual partisan nationalists, sure, that's like death and taxes, but we're used to it. Let me ask a different question: what do you want the readers of this thread to do? We can't sanction anyone for COI or collusion without solid evidence. The Trump article is already under the usual BLP, DS, page protection, and constant intense scrutiny from all sides. Everyone in the world has an opinion about Trump that the Wikipedia article won't affect. Even if there is some weird manipulation happening (and ok, even if it's impossible to pinpoint specific instances, maybe you can detect its presence by smell), do you have reason to think it's worse for the Trump article than the general run of politics articles, or for that matter celebrity articles tended by their publicists? This is Wikipedia and a super high profile article like Trump is going to be crap no matter what. I wouldn't freak out about it. If you haven't been around long, you'll get used to it. The Galloway/Philip Cross thing is probably more significant because it's much easier to exert influence when the readers aren't already polarized. Nobody cares what the "other side" (whichever one that is) says about Trump. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 05:38, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- I'm not asking for any action, I'm trying to have a discussion and solicit opinions. Maybe some people have been seeing what I've seen, with that Philip Cross dispute and others, that there's been a sharp rise in recent activation of Russian social media accounts, and attempts to control information. Andrevan@ 05:41, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- (Wow, much e/c) Andrevan: yeah there was also the Russia vs Poland wikidrama (government payments probably not involved, but the EEML was real). I don't see any allegation of Russian government involvement in that Ghouta mediation page. The usual partisan nationalists, sure, that's like death and taxes, but we're used to it. Let me ask a different question: what do you want the readers of this thread to do? We can't sanction anyone for COI or collusion without solid evidence. The Trump article is already under the usual BLP, DS, page protection, and constant intense scrutiny from all sides. Everyone in the world has an opinion about Trump that the Wikipedia article won't affect. Even if there is some weird manipulation happening (and ok, even if it's impossible to pinpoint specific instances, maybe you can detect its presence by smell), do you have reason to think it's worse for the Trump article than the general run of politics articles, or for that matter celebrity articles tended by their publicists? This is Wikipedia and a super high profile article like Trump is going to be crap no matter what. I wouldn't freak out about it. If you haven't been around long, you'll get used to it. The Galloway/Philip Cross thing is probably more significant because it's much easier to exert influence when the readers aren't already polarized. Nobody cares what the "other side" (whichever one that is) says about Trump. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 05:38, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
Please see Jytdog's recent comment at [[39]] which supports the idea of FCAYS being a Russian agent, as well as the timing and connection to Sarah Palin as discussed in the sources I linked above.[40] Andrevan@ 05:34, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
- (ec) Jytdog is a very outspoken editor, and if they thought that Factchecker was a Russian agent (or was being paid by anyone for their editing) I am certain they would not shy away from saying so, if they had the evidence to back up hat contention. Jytdog said nothing of the sort, so it is not appropriate for you to assume that your conclusion from Jytdog's data is also their conclusion, especially as they did not specifically say so.As for the general question of Russian agents infiltrating Wikipedia, it is, of course, not impossible for the Russian government to attempt to influence American culture by skewing articles in the Internet's primary English-language source of instant information, but the editors you have chosen to select as possible agents are, frankly, absurd choices, people who have been here for a long time and shown their allegiance to the Wikipedia model of editing.I have absolutely no doubt that there are editors in the American politics subject area who are pushing their points of view, but that in itself proves nothing, and since you have provided no hard evidence to support your particular theory, I'm inclined to believe that those editors do so because those are their personal points of view, and that they are not editing on assignment from elsewhere. Frankly, I don't know how you would go about proving someone is a Russian agent, but I do know that you can't just cast aspersions left and right without backing it up with sufficient evidence. I think you need to stop, now, because if you don't a topic ban or a block is almost certainly headed your way, and it will be supported by editors of all sorts of different political views. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:54, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Violetriga
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
- Violetriga (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
- Young blood transfusion (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
This person created a horrible article about a medical procedure under development that is being hyped as snake oil, with no MEDRS sources, bad sources, and some things that were not true or gossip. They nominated it for DYK and it was approved and was queued, but happily this was noted at WT:MED, and I posted at TW DYK here and it was yanked by User:Black Kite, for which I remain grateful. We are discussing how to improve the review process so this doesn't happen again.
I and others worked over the page and got it to a decent stage, like here. (My cursing edit note in that diff is because of "help" from Littleoilive oil, who has taken to following me around these days. That is another story.)
Violetriga has been peppering the talk page with personal attacks and comments like this (after I said i wasn't responding to a rhetorical question) I'm guessing you're not able to understand the question then. Want to try and answer them rather than taking the simple way out?
and in response to my effort to discuss and eliminate the gossip in the page on the Talk page, they wrote this: Or you are operating outside of your zone of knowledge
Here they support keeping a FRINGE, shilling claim about health effects in the article, writing So "Karmazin claims ..." doesn't make it clear enough, give me strength. None of this was reported as factual, all was clearly "claimed".
The disputed content was Karmazin claims in an interview with New Scientist that "Whatever is in young blood is causing changes that appear to make the ageing process reverse". He pointed to how carcinoembryonic antigens fell by around 20 per cent and stated that most participants showed improvements within a month.[4][5]
When someone pointed out that we don't amplify FRINGE claims that way, the response was Daft. So we can't report claims even when they are clearly and unambiguously written as claims? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. We can't even use New Scientist and The Economist as sources. Hmm.
They have no understanding that this would open the door to all kinds of lunatic charlatan claims in WP.
They wrote here Yep. Everything was accurate. And properly sourced. I look forward to the new version of this article completed by those who have ripped everything else out of it.
and wrote this: We're supposed to be building an encyclopaedia not wholesale deleting content. How pathetic.
.
They have no conception of what MEDRS calls for, nor the broad and deep consensus in the community over this and have ignored any effort to explain. (eg the diffs above, this earlier one, this later one, here,
About their constant claims that "everything is sourced and accurate", the article included from the beginning that Peter Thiel was a "prominent investor". This was not supported by the source provided, as I pointed out here -- Please read their responses in that short section. After I removed that incorrect claim, they restored it. I and others kept trying to remove this and other gossip, and Violetriga restored it e.g here.
The kicker here was that after I brought the Theil stuff to BLPN, they finally acknowledged that this is gossip about Theil and should not be in the article, and write here to someone else: Agreed, which is why I removed it and similar on Peter Thiel.
Argh.
Again, this is the person who wrote, vehemently and dismissively to every one else just yesterday: I still maintain that secondary sources are used, that nothing unprovable is claimed, and that the article does not contravene policy. My examples are given.
(diff)
The lack of basic competence - of the ability to read a source and summarize it, is clear in the initial example of Thiel being described as a prominent investor
when the source doesn't say that, and just today when they removed content with edit note more incorrectly sourced claims
then removed it again after it was restored, here, with an an edit note Removed because it is not what the source says!!
when the source says:
Interest in parabiosis, however, is now coming back. A recent article on Inc.com is sure to spawn interest and another cycle of snake oil promises....
What is the current state of the science in terms of parabiosis and anti-aging effects? Any specific health claims for humans is definitely unproven at this time, but the research is intriguing (i.e., perfect for snake oil)....
Given history, however, it is likely that young transfusions, or even some form of parabiosis, will now also take on a life of its own as the latest snake oil product. Already there is a company called Ambrosia who is running a “study,” and as Inc.com reports....
Hopefully I will be able to tell you in 10-20 years if transfusions of plasma from young donors is of any clinical benefit. Until then the treatment will likely have a second life on the fringe as snake oil. Given that this is likely to be a very expensive treatment, it will probably be elite snake oil for the wealthy. What was that edit note again? Oh,
Removed because it is not what the source says!!
.
People they reverted have included me, User:Natureium, User:Seraphimblade, User:Winged Blades of Godric, and User:Doc James. People whose input they have ignored have included all those as well as User:RexxS. Yet they keep harping on the talk page about "collaboration".
This person is a former admin (log), which is ... mind-boggling.
This was the first time I have encountered this person on a health topic, and I would like it to be the last. Violetriga has wasted the time of several people over the past three days, insulted us, edit warred, and misrepresented what they have done. Please ban them from editing about health and medicine, including research.Jytdog (talk) 02:55, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Even as I waa writing this, they went back to DYK and suggested a new hook: [Did you know ...]
that ‘’’young blood transfusions’’’ can be bought?
. Unbelievable. I don't think there will be consensus to use the front page of WP to advertise for a company selling snake oil through an unethical clinical trial and I cannot believe this was even proposed. Look at the first hook they proposed:that the blood of young people may extend your life?
Jytdog (talk) 03:07, 26 May 2018 (UTC)- It was that insane DYK hook that led me to bringing the article to WT:MED in the first place. I can't think of any reason this article should be featured on the front page. Natureium (talk) 03:16, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Thank you for bringing this to WT:MED, if I didn't say it before, and for all your work on this. You found the best sources we have used thus far. Jytdog (talk) 04:18, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- It was that insane DYK hook that led me to bringing the article to WT:MED in the first place. I can't think of any reason this article should be featured on the front page. Natureium (talk) 03:16, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Comment the general WP:DYK concerns are unlikely to be resolved in any way other than a full ARBCOM case. As far as the other concerns: for persons of a certain generation, "former admin" is not entirely a badge of honor; I'd like to hear what defense they have before supporting a TBAN but the evidence Jytdog presents (and comments on Talk:Young blood transfusion) looks pretty damning. power~enwiki (π, ν) 03:10, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- I wouldn't suggest "former admin" is a badge of honor, but more the opposite. I take it to mean that you have no excuse for not knowing/following wikipedia policies. (Also applies to current admins, as seen above) Natureium (talk) 03:14, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- The BN thread shows this to be a routine desysop for lack of use of the tools, Violetriga can get the tools back any time just by asking. There is absolutely no shame in this. Guy (Help!) 09:48, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- I wouldn't suggest "former admin" is a badge of honor, but more the opposite. I take it to mean that you have no excuse for not knowing/following wikipedia policies. (Also applies to current admins, as seen above) Natureium (talk) 03:14, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Definitely bizarre. This user also edits articles about Nazi gold train, Cockroach farming, Bisexual lighting and other unusual turns of phrase. I remember seeing their name around some years ago but not why or in what context. Andrevan@ 03:17, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Talk:Young blood transfusion looks to me like a standard (cough) content discussion for that type of subject. There's a legitimate debate in Wikipedia about perceived MEDRS expansionism and violet/riga looks to be on the side favoring a narrower approach, no big deal. I don't see admin involvement being needed here now that the DYK is handled. DYK itself should die, but that's a separate matter. I did see a bunch of creepy news stories about young blood transfusion a while back, so I'm glad to have seen updated info in that article just now. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 04:20, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- This is what Jytdog is doing rather than collaborating? I’ve responded many times in many places and I’m not about to spend hours going through diffs. Jytdog has obviously put a slant on this report, leaving out their behaviour which is uncivil and unhelpful. I’ve been trying to improve the article but they don’t engage properly in discussion. violet/riga [talk] 08:02, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Comment Last month at WP:ANI, violet/riga did say
I clearly have WP:OWN issues on articles that I have just created
.[41] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.19.25.65 (talk) 09:42, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
Close
I think this discussion is likely to shed more heat than light. There's active discussion of the content at talk:Young blood transfusion and the DYK discussion is unlikely to promote the article with a hook flattering of obvious quackery. Violetriga and Jytdog are both inclined to be obsessive, absolutely not like me in any way at all, I might add (cough), and just need to chill. Guy (Help!) 09:51, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
This article has not crossed my radar until now. I would like some opinions on this. The company seems notable but the main poster is the creator and main subject itself. I have tagged the article with COI and warned the user. The editor, Dr. Jean-Pol Martin, has also written an autobiography (Jean-Pol Martin) and has used two accounts User:Jeanpol and User:Jeanpol~enwiki. The accounts and the articles have been in WP for a long time, therefore I did not nominate for deletion, but came here instead to get some eyes and opinions on the issue, as it is outside of the subjects I normally work on. This seems to me a clear conflict of interest, socking, and advertising. Can some experienced eyes take a look and decide what to do/take it from here? -- Alexf(talk) 10:43, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- I am the editor. My addition was just in order to complete the bibliography with the newest article published on this topic. It is not an advertising. The same discussion about the COI-conflict was going on at the beginning in Germany and in France. But the Wikipediaadmins in Germany and in France confirm that this topic is notable and that it is legitim that I write about this, because I write neutral and obejctive. By the way: I can't understand why you mean, that I am "socking". I allways edit with my real name! Jeanpol (talk) 11:12, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- If you look at the History, you will see that I didn't create the article "Learning by teaching". https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Learning_by_teaching&offset=&limit=500&action=history I know Wikipedia very well (the German one) and the rules of this project. The English-article was translated from the German one. And a lot of people worked on it. Please don't destroy knowledge. Perhaps you can read the article I wanted to link with the page: https://jeanpol.wordpress.com/2018/04/17/learning-by-teaching-conzeptualization-as-a-source-of-happiness/ Jeanpol (talk) 11:24, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Here you can read the discussion about my biography in the Talk-Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jean-Pol_Martin Jeanpol (talk) 11:27, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- If you look at the History, you will see that I didn't create the article "Learning by teaching". https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Learning_by_teaching&offset=&limit=500&action=history I know Wikipedia very well (the German one) and the rules of this project. The English-article was translated from the German one. And a lot of people worked on it. Please don't destroy knowledge. Perhaps you can read the article I wanted to link with the page: https://jeanpol.wordpress.com/2018/04/17/learning-by-teaching-conzeptualization-as-a-source-of-happiness/ Jeanpol (talk) 11:24, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
Perhaps helpfull: https://www.google.de/search?ei=pGmnWsy7CcOB6QTn-oLwBA&q=%22jean-pol+martin%22+%2B+%22Learning+by+teaching%22&oq=%22jean-pol+martin%22+%2B+%22Learning+by+teaching%22&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i22i30k1l2.3236.28261.0.30014.29.28.1.0.0.0.230.3878.0j15j8.23.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..5.23.3727...35i39k1j0i22i10i30k1j0i8i13i30k1.0.QRegg52xqO8 Jeanpol (talk) 05:13, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- I nominated the "learning" page for deletion and have speedy-tagged the article about the person, and have left JeanPol a message about managing COI on one of their talk pages. Somebody has shown up on the AfD talk page (!), complete with their twitter handle, to try to keep the page; apparently User:Jeanpol has made the tragic error of asking people off-WP to save the page, which will result in the usual backlash from the community. So many problems with social media lately. Jytdog (talk) 21:54, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- @Jytdog "made the tragic error"? Who is able to discuss on this topic and on the COI here? Are you able to get some scholars willing to help in this situation? Of course a lot of people know "Learning by teaching" and are able to discuss on that subject! I want to do erverything public! Jeanpol (talk) 22:22, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- @Jytdog I'm absolutly willing to cooperate. But there is no sens to delete pages containing huge science-knowledge just because COI. I don't need Wikipedia to be famouse. But Wikipedia needs scholar in order to generate valuable knowledge. If there is no article in Wikipedia about "Learning by teaching", there are a lot of articles about this topic outside from Wikipedia. It makes no sense to Wikipedia if this encyclopedie deletes his own knowledge, I think.Jeanpol (talk) 22:30, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- User:Jeanpol, about the "tragic mistake", as I said, when people try to recruit friends to come save a page, the result is usually a stronger and more definitive consensus to delete. This happened for example with the biography of a German scientist, Günter Bechly. There is a good writeup about what happened here. The editing community has "antibodies" that react to this kind of thing. You should also be aware of the WP:MEAT policy. Please read that. I believe you may have violated it.
- I an not sure you understand how English Wikipedia actually works. I left you a message on your talk page and we can continue there. Jytdog (talk) 22:38, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- @Jytdog "made the tragic error"? Who is able to discuss on this topic and on the COI here? Are you able to get some scholars willing to help in this situation? Of course a lot of people know "Learning by teaching" and are able to discuss on that subject! I want to do erverything public! Jeanpol (talk) 22:22, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
Backlog at WP:RPP
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Hi there, just a heads up that there seems to be a 20+ page backlog at WP:RPP. Thanks. ... CJ [a Kiwi] in Oz 12:17, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
WP:RPP is now very backlog again!
There are 27+ remaining request. Can some admins deal with it? Hhkohh (talk) 14:06, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Unenforceable consensus to revert Jimbo's unilateral page move
On 19 May, Jimbo Wales moved Meghan Markle to Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. He did so without any explanation and against the consensus reached on the talk page, while the page was under move protection in an effort to prevent undiscussed moves. There was, of course, immmediate objection to this move. A move back was requested within minutes and was recently closed. Jimbo Wales said that he had made the move because "it was fun to do so", adding: "In similar circumstances in the future, I hope to do it again." Several administrators have already weighed in on the issue on the article talk page. Dekimasu said that the "move should never have taken place per the procedure explained at Wikipedia:Requested moves", that it "should have been reverted", and that the outcome of the move discussion "most consistent with normal operating procedure at WP:RM would be to move the page back to the stable title." DrKay closed the move discussion, saying that Jimbo Wales's move was "performed outwith the normal processes of Wikipedia" and that the "logic of the arguments below favors the common name, Meghan Markle", but that he could not "reverse a decision of the founder". NeilN's prediction was accurate.
I am not here to seek any sanctions. I only have a few questions for administrators:
- Is this really a matter in which two community decisions, based on Wikipedia policy, should be ignored? Are regular Wikipedia users voluntary slaves who produce the content but do not get to decide about it?
- Does Jimbo Wales own the content of Wikipedia after all? I am aware that WP:Ownership of content suggests not, but this charade has proven that policy amounts to nothing.
- Why was the move discussion allowed to proceed if (as NeilN had predicted) the article was to remain at the new title regardless of its outcome? I suspect it was because a) there was a hope that the community would support the decision of Jimbo Wales, thus sparing Wikipedia the embarrassment his action had caused, b) forbidding the discussion would have seemed tyrannical. Instead of closing it right away, the discussion was allowed to drag on, eventually reaching the monstrous 150000 character count and leading to (in the words of Dekimasu) a "diversion of a large number of hours of a significant cross-section of editors that could have been better spent elsewhere." Put simply, we discussed for nothing and reached a decision that meant nothing.
- Now what?
I implore everyone not to discuss the title of the article here. That has been discussed ad nauseam. What I would like to know is what this all means in terms of policy, procedure, and precedent. Surtsicna (talk) 14:23, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- I mean, I don't see why we can't move the page back. At-least, if we have a discussion here first with a consensus to do that per policy guideline etc, then it is less likely to cause a disturbance. Keeping the page there would completely accede that we the community are less than Jimbo/undermine community processes which I don't think would be a good outcome. Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:45, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- JW is almost irrelevant here as an editor; his value is as a figurehead, a go-to guy for the press. But he certainly has no superior position, and, indeed past events have suggested a lack of suitability for adminship. This was an egregious move, outside all process, making a laughing stock of the community, consensus and procedure. What is the point in putting time and labour into this thing—the two most important commodities we possess—if they can just be overturned on a whim? The word is—ironically considering the original question was one of royalty—absolutism, and that was got rid of in 1647, 176 or 1848 depending on your very western historical experience. It has no place here, and nor is it a "bit of fun." —SerialNumber54129 paranoia /cheap sh*t room 14:53, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Re: "against the consensus reached on the talk page": Evidence, please. I see a strong consensus in favor of moving Meghan Markle to Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. Any editor would have been free to make that move. Yes, Jimbo is getting special treatment here; we are being asked to undo a page move that nobody would have complained about if someone else had made the page move. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:59, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- "That nobody would have complained about"—moving through protection while a discussion was taking place? Correct about special treatment: any other admin would have been hauled in front of the beak and defrocked. —SerialNumber54129 paranoia /cheap sh*t room 15:03, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- (edit conflict)The argument and discussion about not moving the page to Duchess of Sussex started weeks before the move was even made, so I find "nobody would have complained about if someone else had made the page move" to be utterly meritless. And WP:NOTVOTE, most of the support !votes were not policy based. Anyhow, as Surtsicna said, there is no reason to rehash the move here - the close was done, per our community processes, and unless that is contested, we should follow and move the page back to Meghan Markle. Galobtter (pingó mió) 15:07, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Had I been following the page I would have made the same move. This is whining for the fun of whining because he is Jimbo. Legacypac (talk) 15:02, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- No, I don't think you would have made the same move. The page was move protected in deference to talk page discussions regarding the title. And Jimbo unilaterally moved the page anyway for the fun of it, by his own admission. This has already been explained above, so there is really no excuse for your careless casting of aspersions. Lepricavark (talk) 15:43, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Wow! Legacypac is a liar regarding what he would do! Who knew? Oh, wait. There is another explanation which I won't get into because it contains words like "jerk" and "posting accusations of casting aspersions while casting aspersions". --Guy Macon (talk) 17:31, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- No, I don't think you would have made the same move. The page was move protected in deference to talk page discussions regarding the title. And Jimbo unilaterally moved the page anyway for the fun of it, by his own admission. This has already been explained above, so there is really no excuse for your careless casting of aspersions. Lepricavark (talk) 15:43, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- I'm a bit more concerned about how an admin interpreted a discussion that was 110-60 in support of the move as a consensus to overturn the move. He's damn right that move would cause further disruption, but it's not because Jimbo has "special powers". DrKay, that was an abusive close IMO and would have been an absolute shitshow if you actioned it. You can't just vaguely say that the minority view is stronger and thus they have the consensus. That's a supervote. The point of WP:NOTVOTE is to clarify that we do not have a system of rule by simple majority. It's not to enable closers to arbitrarily throw out an overwhelming majority view just because they feel the other side made their case "more strongly". To toss a supermajority view like that, you'd have to thoroughly and convincingly make a case explaining how the minority view reflects an overarching consensus that overrides the local consensus view. And that's not even getting into the fact that you double-supervoted by blocking your own reading of consensus based on the fact that 'the community can't override Jimbo', which, AFAIK, is not rooted in anything whatsoever. Swarm ♠ 15:13, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- @Dekimasu: interpreted it in the same vein (though maybe thinking no consensus). A consensus against may be too much to say, but a no consensus result would be extremely reasonable as a large portion of the support was not in the realm of being policy based. And most importantly, no consensus would mean a move back too. Galobtter (pingó mió) 15:18, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- The propsosal was to overturn Jimbo’s move. A “no consensus” would mean maintaining the status quo and not overturning the move without consensus. Swarm ♠ 15:44, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- That's it not how requested moves work, (see here, "However, sometimes a requested move is filed in response to a recent move from a long existing name that cannot be undone without administrative help. Therefore, if no consensus has been reached, the closer should move the article back to the most recent stable title.", which is in accordance with WP:NOCONSENSUS too, "When actions by administrators are contested and the discussion results in no consensus either for the action or for reverting the action, the action is normally reverted."), that is not how consensus works in general - in general, no consensus means back to the stable version. Galobtter (pingó mió) 15:48, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- @Galobtter, Surtsicna, and DrKay: If I had seen the request for reversion at WP:RMTR, before there had been significant contributions to the discussion, I would have reverted it immediately regardless of who performed the move. Then a normal move discussion could have taken place with the proposed target as Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. I do not believe this should have been considered wheel warring, nor do I believe that a close that moved the page back to the stable title as a result of the move discussion would have been wheel warring–it would have been based both upon standard procedure and (lack of) community consensus. I did not go back to see how or why the WP:RMTR request was turned down, and did not take note of the discussion at all until several days into the process, at which point it seemed clear that closing the move request would be more disruptive than allowing it to continue. (To be clear, the move of Prince Harry should also have been reverted immediately, because the title was the result of a previous consensus in favor of a move to that title, and there were no less than five previous move requests on the page. That move, too, was made out of process to little benefit.) However, as I implied in my comments at the bottom of the move request, there is a chance that I would have closed the discussion as "no consensus, revert to stable title" were I both awake at the time the period was up and willing/able to spend the next week in an extended dispute; the "numerical vote" being cited here does not take into account comments that should have been discounted for lack of rationale or outright disregard for the way titles are determined on Wikipedia, and the contents of the discussion itself do not appear to show a policy-based consensus in favor of the new title. In this case, I am most disappointed that the discussions on moving the pages should have been positive ones, with editors both new and old understanding that they were contributing to decisions about making a change; instead, the move requests were about procedure and reversion, showing off our internecine side. ...relinking my comments at Talk:Meghan, Duchess of Sussex#Question for administrator for those who may not have seen it. Dekimasuよ! 16:51, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- (ec) The WP:RMTR history from May 19 is also disappointing. There was a request in to revert the undiscussed move before anyone had commented in the open move request–the move should have been reverted immediately. Instead, the contestation was itself "contested" by an IP editor, another action that is not within the normal WP:RM process. Technical requests to revert recent, undiscussed moves to the stable title should always go through. The IP editor reinstated a reversion of this edit, and by this time, with several editors having commented in the talk page discussion, the request was turned down by an uninvolved patroller with the edit summary "Active RM in place; please wait for it to concluded." I note that the patroller was not an admin, and so could not have reverted through protection. I do not mean to call out the experienced editor who turned down the request, but having not yet been open for an hour, the move should also have been reverted at that point instead of being turned down. Dekimasuよ! 18:49, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Dekimasu, are non-closing administrators unable to enforce the consensus determined by the closing administrator or are they afraid of repercussions? Surtsicna (talk) 18:41, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- I would expect that a non-closing administrator would consult with the closing administrator before taking that sort of step. Otherwise, that would seem to be closer to wheel warring than the reversion of Jimbo. Also, as pointed out by Galobtter, it appears that this would not be enforcing consensus, but enforcing "no consensus," despite the title you've given this section. If there is a simple way to rephrase the title, it might be good to do so. Dekimasuよ! 18:49, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- The propsosal was to overturn Jimbo’s move. A “no consensus” would mean maintaining the status quo and not overturning the move without consensus. Swarm ♠ 15:44, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- @Dekimasu: interpreted it in the same vein (though maybe thinking no consensus). A consensus against may be too much to say, but a no consensus result would be extremely reasonable as a large portion of the support was not in the realm of being policy based. And most importantly, no consensus would mean a move back too. Galobtter (pingó mió) 15:18, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- My suggestion: 1) respectfully open a new section on Jimbo's talk page; citing the AN close (if memory serves the AN close said something like 'constitutional crises') and the Move close 2) Make it clear that the focus is what his editing/admin "powers" are and how he views they should be treated and his plans for them with respect to the future (please do not allow others to sidetrack to the WMF, where he is a board member and thus has complex fiduciary duties, keep it focused on editor/admin here and try to not have it be distracted with rearguing the move). 3) Directly but again respectfully, put to him, his thoughts on a WP:Arbitration case to clarify. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:30, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) I think the close was quite accurate. Arguments which were not policy-based (many of them listed no real basis at all, many others fell into the classic "Official name" fallacy) were properly discounted. Of course I may be biased because the close was in accord with the view I expressed during the discussion. I do not see why this should be unenforcable. Community consensus has resulted in overruling unilateral actions by Jimbo in the past, particularly in the case of WP:CSD#T1 which the CSD page now describes as:
T1. Divisive and inflammatory templates: Enacted by Jimmy Wales without formally assessing consensus during the userbox wars. Was repealed in February 2009 (discussion). Instead, "attack pages" (G10) may be applicable in some cases; otherwise, use Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion for userboxes and Wikipedia:Templates for discussion for all other templates.
In line with that precedent, and the close of the RM, I call on an agreement here for an uninvolved admin to undo the move, and return the page to the stable name. I am not uninvolved, or I would be willing to do the move back. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 15:33, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- DES, your involvement in the discussion is not an obstacle to enforcing the consensus determined by another administrator. Per Wikipedia:Requested moves/Closing instructions, the closure should be made by an uninvolved administrator. DrKay closed the discussion but, in a very unusual twist, declared himself unable to act upon the consensus. I realize that this is a difficult situation. You say that administrators are allowed to revert Jimbo but nobody wants to do that. Surtsicna (talk) 18:41, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- As I said when I closed the last discussion, it's going to be tough to go against Jimbo without help of the ArbCom. That's what I suggest to get a ruling on this. It's unlikely to be solved on AN. Andrevan@ 18:52, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Because it is Jimbo or because of first mover advantage? If the former, well, it shouldn't matter and indeed given his comment about it being a bit of fun, I'd expect him to self-revert. Or ditch the tools. - Sitush (talk) 19:52, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- As I said when I closed the last discussion, it's going to be tough to go against Jimbo without help of the ArbCom. That's what I suggest to get a ruling on this. It's unlikely to be solved on AN. Andrevan@ 18:52, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- The closing comments were quite fair, although an argument could be made that because DrKay had expressed a strong opinion in the related discussion at Talk:Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, it should have been left to someone else to close. In DrKay's defense, the opinion on Harry was not identical to the interpretation of the discussion at Talk:Meghan, Duchess of Sussex; there he appears to advocate retaining Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex rather than reverting to the stable title Prince Harry. In the end, however, both of these positions would result in retaining the titles instituted by fiat. As far as Jimbo is concerned, there is ArbCom precedent (though it shouldn't be necessary to refer to ArbCom for this) affirming that "Any page move that is or is likely to be controversial should be discussed beforehand on the page's talk page, and/or at any other pertinent location. The methods outlined at Wikipedia:Requested moves represent a best practice approach for such circumstances." Of course that should apply to Jimbo. Dekimasuよ! 20:12, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- DES, your involvement in the discussion is not an obstacle to enforcing the consensus determined by another administrator. Per Wikipedia:Requested moves/Closing instructions, the closure should be made by an uninvolved administrator. DrKay closed the discussion but, in a very unusual twist, declared himself unable to act upon the consensus. I realize that this is a difficult situation. You say that administrators are allowed to revert Jimbo but nobody wants to do that. Surtsicna (talk) 18:41, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
Her husband gets the title Duke of Sussex, which make her Duchess of Sussex. Why is that so complicated? to have these in their article titles? GoodDay (talk) 19:48, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Well, if you read the close and the discussion, it partly had to do with women we cover in our encyclopedia who married a king, or married a titled prince, or married a British duke, so sure, disagree, but those women and those article titles still exist. Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:07, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Please do not discuss the page title here. It has been discussed enough at the appropriate venue. Surtsicna (talk) 22:13, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- If there is no clear consensus for the move, the title should be moved back, and the situation can be looked at again in a few months. That's the usual procedure. SarahSV (talk) 19:57, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- That's what every administrator here has said, SarahSV. The closing administrator said the same. Yet we are now in an embarrassing position where no administrator wants to implement the outcome of a move discussion. Why is that? Surtsicna (talk) 22:13, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Surtsicna, I can't explain why DrKay acted as he did. If he didn't want to close it (and we always know that closing an RM might mean having to move or undo a move), he should have left it alone. Moving this back is not wheel-warring, because it was moved out of process. However, as a move review has started, it would not be appropriate to move it now, unless Jimbo is willing to revert himself. I've left a comment to that effect in the move review, and pinged him. SarahSV (talk) 15:57, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- That's what every administrator here has said, SarahSV. The closing administrator said the same. Yet we are now in an embarrassing position where no administrator wants to implement the outcome of a move discussion. Why is that? Surtsicna (talk) 22:13, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- I don't think it matters that much as far as Wikipedia's service to the English speakers of the world is concerned, because a Google search for "Meghan Markle" goes to the renamed article. So, no emergency here. As a matter of policy, however, Jimbo was very wrong. For a precedent, we have the biography of Princess Grace of Monaco under her professional name, Grace Kelly. Why not do the same with the Meghan Markle article? YoPienso (talk) 20:02, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- I know the OP was not asking for any sanctions, but I think there does need to be one: desysop User:Jimbo Wales on the basis that he unconscionably over-rode a move protection just because he thought it would be fun to do so. Founder or not, we cannot have admins acting like that here. StAnselm (talk) 20:22, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Jimbo is not an admin, he has a different flag that gives him infinite power. That's partly why I say this can't be handled through a simple community consensus. Edited: actually, I'm wrong, per Wikipedia:Role_of_Jimmy_Wales#Founder_flag Andrevan@ 20:45, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Nice link; it takes one directly to an example of where JW wheel-warred . Worth considering, any admins who are afraid of doing the same. —SerialNumber54129 paranoia /cheap sh*t room 20:57, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- I mean considering a desysop obviously has to go to ARBCOM, but we should be able to handle the reversion of the move here. Galobtter (pingó mió) 20:50, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- StAnselm, perhaps you think that repeating the " just because he thought it would be fun to do so" lie often enough it will be accepted as truth, but here in the real world it is possible to do something that is supported by the consensus of the community and because it is fun to do. So please knock it off. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:50, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- How was there WP:CONSENSUS when he took his admin action? Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:55, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Well; I suppose there was not. If JW had waited for a consensus to emerge, he would have had the high ground. He didn't, and has not. Shame. —SerialNumber54129 paranoia /cheap sh*t room 20:58, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Then arbcom seems the way to go, because if admins are making arguments with different claims about a fundamental policy like WP:CONSENSUS on the same set of facts, we should have it settled. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:10, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Absolutely. —SerialNumber54129 paranoia /cheap sh*t room 21:54, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- I see no volunteers. This is one of those battles where everyone will fight to the last drop of some other guy's blood—which is quite wise since ArbCom would not do a thing and there would be a mordant hurricane of flying feces until 8 or whatever it is of them got around to declining. Jbh Talk 02:35, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- I'll run for admin on a platform of reverting the move and immediately resigning the tools. I really don't care less about the admin role but I do care that Jimbo created this mess and that he has created others in the past. Those admins who think he is somehow special need to consider where their loyalties lie because the community should come first, not him. - Sitush (talk) 03:05, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- I will stand behind you 100% – right behind… you know… for cover
. But seriously, I agree completely with your sentiment. Personally I think Jimbo should loose his admin bit or, at the very lease, be put on formal notice that a repeat abuse will get his bit yanked. Again, I know that will not happen but it should.. I am so disappointed with DrKay. If they did not have the fortitude to enact the consensus they found then they had no business closing it. They made the tough call on the consensus they read and I do respect them for that. Now though, the proper thing would be for them to finish what they started. Jbh Talk 05:22, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- FYI: A move review of Dr. Kay's close has been started: Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2018 May Alanscottwalker (talk) 05:27, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Doesn't alter anything, nor do the comments here by people trying to relitigate or interpret. The issue is Jimbo acting as a dictator, which is annoying enough on his own talk page but should not be allowed to infest the rest of the project. - Sitush (talk) 06:29, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Well, it will obviously be used in these discussions, so I am less convinced that it won't matter but you are correct, it should not matter to a separate inquiry on Jimbo's actions/power, which probably now has to take place at arbcom, but do you have a separate proposal? -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 06:49, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Doesn't alter anything, nor do the comments here by people trying to relitigate or interpret. The issue is Jimbo acting as a dictator, which is annoying enough on his own talk page but should not be allowed to infest the rest of the project. - Sitush (talk) 06:29, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- FYI: A move review of Dr. Kay's close has been started: Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2018 May Alanscottwalker (talk) 05:27, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- I will stand behind you 100% – right behind… you know… for cover
- I'll run for admin on a platform of reverting the move and immediately resigning the tools. I really don't care less about the admin role but I do care that Jimbo created this mess and that he has created others in the past. Those admins who think he is somehow special need to consider where their loyalties lie because the community should come first, not him. - Sitush (talk) 03:05, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- I see no volunteers. This is one of those battles where everyone will fight to the last drop of some other guy's blood—which is quite wise since ArbCom would not do a thing and there would be a mordant hurricane of flying feces until 8 or whatever it is of them got around to declining. Jbh Talk 02:35, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Absolutely. —SerialNumber54129 paranoia /cheap sh*t room 21:54, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Then arbcom seems the way to go, because if admins are making arguments with different claims about a fundamental policy like WP:CONSENSUS on the same set of facts, we should have it settled. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:10, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Well; I suppose there was not. If JW had waited for a consensus to emerge, he would have had the high ground. He didn't, and has not. Shame. —SerialNumber54129 paranoia /cheap sh*t room 20:58, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- How was there WP:CONSENSUS when he took his admin action? Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:55, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- I'm uncertain about the rest of this, but my reading of the situation is that Jimbo is unlikely to object if reversed with a clear consensus (he didn't indicate he was acting in any official capacity, and hasn't objected to the discussion of reversing him despite being aware of it.) That said, I think that the more important issue is that DrKay's closure was also improper. Admins should never close a discussion with an outcome they're unwilling to implement, and his close effectively sought to create a precedent of "Jimbo is above the rules, even when not acting in an official capacity", which is a serious mistake when Jimbo is taking about hoping to do things like this again. Having the move stay open for a while wouldn't have done any harm. (Given the ambiguous nature of the consensus, even waiting until someone closed it with a consensus to endorse the move would have done less harm - I would argue that DrKay's closure was actually the worst possible outcome he could have given us. Jimbo choosing to IAR and then having his action endorsed by the community wouldn't have been such a big deal, since it happens even with other admins. Having DrKay unambiguously say, in his role as an admin, that Jimbo's move is not endorsed and yet still cannot be reversed is what caused this problem.) --Aquillion (talk) 05:57, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Jimbo has exactly as much power as the community gives him. This community governs itself. Enact the close like normal. If Jimbo reverts, he gets desyssoped for wheelwarring like any other admin. Not complicated. Jytdog (talk) 08:39, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- The close is currently at move review. I intend to close the move review and enact the resulting close, whatever it may be, after the move review has persisted for an acceptable period of time, assuming no-one else does so first. Commenting very narrowly on whether an admin can reverse an action by Jimbo: As Jimbo's move was not marked as an office action, it holds none of the authority associated with the WMF acting unilaterally. See WP:CONEXCEPT. None of the bullet points are met, so I see no reason not to enact a consensus that Jimbo's move was mistaken (or a lack of consensus for Jimbo's move), if that's what emerges. ~ Rob13Talk 16:34, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Per Special:UserRights/Jimbo Wales he holds the sysop, CU/OS, and founder permissions. So he is an admin. The founder permission gives him the ability to add/remove all permissions, but this can be removed by a steward if necessary as with all above-sysop permissions. I think that any such discussion is premature, however, and that this can probably be resolved by talking with him and enforcing whatever the community consensus ends up being for the page's title. Also worth noting that office actions are performed, these days, by staff and not board members. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 16:53, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Surtsicna wrote above, in response to my comment, that my involvement in the RM discussion should be no bar to enacting the move in accord with the consensus as determined by the closer of the RM discussion. There should be no question: I expressed a strongly worded opinion during the RM, and during the spin-off RfC about changing WP:COMMONNAME to defer to the naming convention for royalty. If there was support from several admins, amounting to a consensus here, I would be willing to do the move and take any heat for it. However, I for one believe strongly that Process is Important. This is part of why I objected to the out-of-process move. But it also means that I am reluctant to short-circuit the Move Review now in progress, where I have also expressed a view. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 17:14, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- (edit conflict × several) I haven't really been following this situation, although it's been popping up on pretty much every noticeboard I do follow, so consider these general comments. If Jimbo is using his powers to enact an interpretation of consensus in a muddy situation, or enacting an obvious consensus in the spirit of WP:SNOW, this is what we expect of administrators. On the other hand, if Jimbo is poking his way into controversial situations where administrators have already placed restrictions, and is forcing his own supervote through those restrictions using his peculiar set of userrights when a consensus is not clear because he thinks things should be a certain way, well, he's using administrative rights to gain an advantage in a dispute, and that's a thing that we remove admin rights for.
- The worse part of the whole thing is that, when asked about it, Jimbo could very easily have explained his rationale, that the move to a new title (or whatever) was probably inevitable and he was short-cutting the discussion. That would be less than ideal, but it would have been much less arrogant and disrespectful then saying it was because it was fun. If Jimbo has the attitude that it's "fun" to do controversial things that divide the community (c.f. the many discussions resulting directly from his action) then we have a word for that: trolling. There's enough division here without the founder of Wikipedia trolling his own project and starting fights for the lulz, and it makes me not want to bother participating here any more. I know it won't happen because Wikipedia is not a whatever, but I would support removing Jimbo's special userrights if such a discussion occurred. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:17, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- The "because it was fun" meme has been overdone by those who disagreed with the Jimbo. Here is Jimbo's explanation in the move discussion. -- zzuuzz (talk) 17:32, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- He did give additional reasons, but they were opinions he should have expressed in a move request, not attempt to present as a defense of making a controversial move through protection unilaterally. As we all know, the explanation should precede the move when it is clear that some editors will object. In his comment, Jimbo seems interested in pointing to WP:NAMECHANGES and WP:NCROY. As far as WP:NAMECHANGES is concerned, his Google Trends search is based upon a misspelling, and ignores the more relevant data, which would be a comparison of the two possibilities (something like this, perhaps). This problem with his argument would have been pointed out in a normal move request, and discussion could have moved on to the relative merits of naming the discussion according to WP:NCROY or WP:COMMONNAME, etc. Dekimasuよ! 17:50, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- The "because it was fun" meme has been overdone by those who disagreed with the Jimbo. Here is Jimbo's explanation in the move discussion. -- zzuuzz (talk) 17:32, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
If some of ya are really that upset about Jimbo as an administrator? Then seek getting his administrative tools removed. Regardless of the result, the attempt itself would certainly find its place on the next edition of Signpost. GoodDay (talk) 17:25, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Really upset? It's just for any admin to plunk down their tools in enforcing their content edits is bad ad-mining (if we don't say what is bad admining, admins might continue on, bad-admining) - and admins should know this - not only does this bad admiring lead to discussions like this, but for goodness sake just let the content discussion go-on (participate as an editor if you want) and everything rolls along with nary a distraction or board-talk. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:40, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Jimbo tends to go inactive until the crap blows over in situations like this. - Sitush (talk) 19:17, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
Moving articles to draft space without discussion
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I saw something that concerned me. It may very well be fine under policy, I'm just not sure. Here's a diff of moves by Bradv (log). He's just the person I noticed, there may be others that do this. I'm not after sanctions, just wanting to know if this is kosher or not.
The question is about moving articles to draft space without any discussion or any admin bits. Because this removes it from searches, this is effectively deleting the article, and effectively the same as userfying an article. It would seem that this is something that should either require a discussion at an XfD board, or at least the admin bit and accountability under WP:ADMINACCT. Is this the accepted way to deal with what he is calling "undersourced articles"? Since I'm not sure, I wanted a broader discussion re: the appropriateness of this. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 16:08, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Mop-holding or not, I think it's generally accepted that if someone makes an "administrative edit," they are still subject to ADMINACCT (NAC is probably the best example). But this whole question of draftyfying (how the heck do we spell that?!) has come up somewhere else recently; I'm sure there's a discussion on another board but I can't for the life of me recall where. —SerialNumber54129 paranoia /cheap sh*t room 16:16, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Hence my mention of ADMINACCT. —SerialNumber54129 paranoia /cheap sh*t room 18:37, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- WP:DRAFTIFY does say that "To unilaterally move an article to draft space, you should: [...] be accountable for your draftification decisions per the standard described at Wikipedia:Administrators#Accountability." Natureium (talk) 18:34, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- It's a fairly widespread practice, not limited to just one or a handful of users, and is aided by some userscripts that make it somewhat automated. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 18:21, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Draftifying articles is standard practice at NPP. See WP:NPPDRAFT. Natureium (talk) 18:30, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- I agree with Dennis Brown that users draftifying articles with no oversight seems a bit concerning because it does seem comparable to deletion. Could something similar to WP:PROD with its corresponding Category:Proposed deletion be created so there would be a Category:Proposed draft for oversight? Serial Number 54129, you might be thinking of this recent discussion on Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion [42] regarding using RM discussion in place of AfD, with some raising the concern that this hid the discussion from AfD regulars. WP:DRAFTIFY seems like a useful thing but could maybe use some clarifying and oversight. DynaGirl (talk) 22:57, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- This has been discussed by the community in several different ways, and it is allowable. The most recent discussion directly affecting this was in September 2017 and closed with clear consensus in favour of maintaining the practice (or, if you want to split hairs, clear consensus against a proposal prohibiting it, but reading the discussion shows very strong support for it.) There is consensus in favour of this practice, and that discussion was pretty heavily attended. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:06, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Is there a way to view a list of articles recently moved to draft? I see this regarding finding drafts [43] but seems these include articles which originated as drafts. Is there a way to only view articles moved to draft as a means of oversight? DynaGirl (talk) 00:22, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- I took a look at Special:Log/move and there isn't much in the way of finding this info easily. It seems like a filter could be set up to track moves from the mainspace to either userspace or the Draft: namespace. Killiondude (talk) 00:40, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- I have reports setup on the subpages of User:JJMC89 bot/report/Draftifications. — JJMC89 (T·C) 00:55, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- I took a look at Special:Log/move and there isn't much in the way of finding this info easily. It seems like a filter could be set up to track moves from the mainspace to either userspace or the Draft: namespace. Killiondude (talk) 00:40, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Is there a way to view a list of articles recently moved to draft? I see this regarding finding drafts [43] but seems these include articles which originated as drafts. Is there a way to only view articles moved to draft as a means of oversight? DynaGirl (talk) 00:22, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- If people want to delete articles without scrutiny there are cleverer ways of doing it than moving to draft. Thincat (talk) 01:03, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
Most get sent to AfC as far as I know. The ones I see often get fixed up and returned to mainspace. In one case recently I disagreed with the draftification so strongly I returned it to mainspace and sent to AfD, but that is really unusual. Most draftifications I see make good sense. New page creators should watch their creations anyway. Legacypac (talk) 03:22, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- I appreciate the feedback. Again, I had never really ventured into moves and these discussions aren't easy to find (not even linked here but I trust the parties making the claims here). Since there isn't a system log that tracks this, I see oversight is a challenge, but that is just how it is. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 07:33, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- I believe the majority of NPP editors use the MoveToDraft script (don't quote me on that) which does keep a log on user subpages. I assume it might be simple enough for the script's author to set up a global log more amenable to oversight. So that might be an option for a little more transparency. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 07:54, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- As JJMC89 notes above, his bot logs draftifications here Galobtter (pingó mió) 07:58, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- It's a lawless area but I have found only a trickle of abuse. Sorting by creation date shows up the dubious ones. Thincat (talk) 11:34, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- I see several that are moved back, a couple socks, etc. so I'm no less concerned now. I've bookmarked the bot page, but imho, this should have a system log, searchable by date or user. Same as our other logs. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 12:40, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- It's a lawless area but I have found only a trickle of abuse. Sorting by creation date shows up the dubious ones. Thincat (talk) 11:34, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- As JJMC89 notes above, his bot logs draftifications here Galobtter (pingó mió) 07:58, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- I believe the majority of NPP editors use the MoveToDraft script (don't quote me on that) which does keep a log on user subpages. I assume it might be simple enough for the script's author to set up a global log more amenable to oversight. So that might be an option for a little more transparency. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 07:54, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- It is my view that draftification is often a good response to an article on a probably notable topic which is not currently in good shape to remain in mainspace, particularly when it does not currently demonstrate notability clearly. I have done it on a number of occasions. I don't see why it should require admin rights, or any special permission beyond auto-confimed, which is required for any move, although I could see requiring extended confirmed. I dfo that that moving a draft to mainspace for the3 purpose of sending it to WP:AFD is a form of gaming the system and should be subject to sanction. This is true in my view whether the page had previously been in mainspace or not. I would favor a log of pages moved from mainspace to draft, including one maintained by bot. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 17:29, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- This behavior by Bradv is an extremely disturbing breach of our deletion policy. He needs to cut that shit out or to lose tools. Carrite (talk) 19:03, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- No, it’s normal practice that the community has approved of (see my link to the village pump RfC/discussion above). Use of page mover in this way is actually one of the most common reasons for requesting the flag. It’s why I requested it before I got my sysop bit, and plenty of NPP regulars request it for the same reason. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:10, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Sockmaster trying to hide their activities by having the user pages of their blocked socks deleted
Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Najaf ali bhayo is repeatedly trying to get the talk pages of their old socks deleted, being active on User talk:Sikander Adam as we speak, so could someone please remove TPA? - Tom | Thomas.W talk 16:22, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
Done along with a couple of others. —DoRD (talk) 16:40, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks. He did the exact same thing with a bunch of other blocked socks a few weeks ago, so it's not the first time he has tried it. - Tom | Thomas.W talk 16:47, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
- @DoRD: And a new one: Krivotie (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), a new account, is trying to do the same on another Najaf ali bhayo-sock today, User:FOTIA EINAI MAI PAREI..., so would someone mind blocking the obvious sock? Also please look at Krivotie's deleted contributions (9 edits are missing from their contributions page), in case he has managed to get one or more other sock pages deleted... - Tom | Thomas.W talk 16:28, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- That one has been dealt with by a couple of other admins while I wasn't looking. As for their missing contribs, they were to their own user page prior to being tagged as a sock. —DoRD (talk) 21:36, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
Possible bug
Kelly Gordon has been R2ed for several hours but CAT:R2 is empty. Is there a bug somewhere? L293D (☎ • ✎) 01:06, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Probably an issue with the job queue, I fixed it with a null edit and then deleted. ansh666 01:23, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
- Note to anyone wondering — it still appears blue because someone's now moved a draft to this title. Nyttend (talk) 11:47, 27 May 2018 (UTC)