Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive137

Davkal again

I blocked Davkal (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) for a week on September 9 for outrageous personal attacks. Please see this brief ANI discussion, which fully endorsed my action. Now the block has expired, and Davkal, though he has not posted any more personal attacks, is making disruptive POV edits on the CSICOP page, which enjoyed a rare week of harmony and consensus while he was gone. Please see Talk:CSICOP for the patient mediator User:Mike Christie giving up on the job, as all the other editors declare that discussing with Davkal is just too frustrating. I have been asked by other editors to intervene again, but I don't feel I ought to become Davkal's personal nemesis, especially as the acute problem is of a different character this time (edit warring as against personal attacks). See User talk:Davkal for our interchanges, and please glance at the recent history for the warnings posted by other CSICOP editors. (I've told him myself that he's allowed to remove them; of course it remains rude to consistently do so without replying.) If somebody would like to review the complaints against Davkal and take some action (like warning him?) if you feel it appropriate, it would be appreciated. Bishonen | talk 16:29, 18 September 2006 (UTC).

What am I supposed to have done now. Despite being warned to stay off my talk page, Askolnick has immediately posted a bogus warning threatening me with a block for edit-warring when all I did was perform a serious piece of editing on an article I have worked on far longer, and harder, than he has. The previous block was for abuse that was the result of the constant abuse I have had to suffer at askolnick's hands (i.e., having my sobriety questioned and being called a liar on numerous occassions, attacks which you, Bishonen, refused to acknowledge existed even though I provided links). I have served my ban and I take it I am now allowed to continue editing Wiki. If you look at my edits since the ban you will see that I have made several excellent contributions to a number of featured articles - if askolnick has not engaged in any more wikistalking they might even still be there now. I regard the constant posting of warnings on my talk page by askolnick, and the constant claims that I am merely being disruptive rather than (for the majority of time before snapping under the harrassment, stalking and abuse) genuinely trying to improve the articles on Wiki.

The fact is that Askolnick is abusing almost everyone who disgrees with him on almost every page he is editing, and you seem to be doing little more than simply backing him up.Davkal 20:19, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

So, would somebody like to click on the links and evaluate my claims and those of Davkal? The claim that Askolnick is "abusing almost everyone who disagrees with him on almost every page he is editing" ought to be easy, for instance--here are Askolnick's contributions. Bishonen | talk 20:51, 18 September 2006 (UTC).

Davkal says, "Askolnick has immediately posted a bogus warning threatening me with a block for edit-warring when all I did was perform a serious piece of editing on CSICOP..." All Davkal did was to resume the edit war he was conducting before his week-long block. After he reverted the same material he disagrees with two or three times in the same day, I posted a warning on his talk page. That so-called "bogus" warning apparently worked: He stopped before making a fourth reversion and getting himself blocked again. Askolnick 14:24, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

You should probably also note that the outcome of one of my outrageous, edit-warring, disruptive edits on the CSICOP page (I only made two changes) has been retained by Askolnick virtually intact. Perhaps Bishonen could also explain why she felt it was OK for Askolnick to say:

"Lincoln implied that the whisky Gen. Grant drank gave him a winning general. Perhaps it will also improve Davkal's arguments. I doubt it could make them much worse. How could any sober person read what I've written above and claim that…", and

“In this statement, Davkal crosses the bondary [sic] between mistatement and outright lie.”

The NPA rules stating clearly that comments should be on content rather than the editor. Perhaps if askolnick had been told to desist or tone down, or at least not encouraged to continue, making such comments then the whole business could have been averted.Davkal 21:24, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Davkal, please show where Bishonen said she "felt it was OK for Askolnick to say" that. I never saw such a statement from her. Are you making this up, or did I miss it? BTW, you keep quoting this out of context. That was my reply to your announcement that you were "off to the pub" for the evening. You brought your going drinking into the discussion. Even if my attempt at humor was over the line, you can hardly use it to justify your own frequent and egregious misconduct - such as calling editors and administrators "Fuckos, "pricks and prickesses," calling an administrator someone's "meatpuppet" and suggesting that she get herself sexually serviced for her meatpuppeting. Nor can you use it to justify your repeated edit wars. You have been blocked three times for violating 3RR. And if you hadn't heeded my "bogus warning" on your talk page, it would likely be four blocks now.Askolnick 14:24, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

She made it clear she thought it was OK by first claiming the warnings were bogus and unsubstantiated. When I provided the direct quotes (above) and others, she asked for context, and when context was provided she said "feel free to remove" the warnings. The simple fact is that you implied I was a drunk and stated clearly that no sober person could think what I thought (this is abuse) and you called me a liar on several occassions (that is also abuse). The fact that despite knowing all this, Bishonen simply said you could remove the warnings, in that respect she is clearly supporting what you said. That is what led me to claim that in some respects she is your administrative meatpuppet.Davkal 17:16, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Davkal. I knew you couldn't show where Bishonen said she "felt it was OK for Askolnick to say" personal attacks. I knew you made up that accusation. Thanks for the confirmation. Askolnick 03:43, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I just have shown it clearly. The fact that you are inserting quotation marks and asking me to find just those words (the quotation marks are yours and yours alone!) is neither here nor there. It is a perfectly straightforward point that in saying "feel free to remove the warnings" Bishonen is saying that you are entitled to call me a drunk and a liar - she is wrong, you are not! Davkal 11:45, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Davkal; new stuff

If anyone cares, I'd like to point out this vis a vis this warning. KarlBunker 19:49, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

And this. KarlBunker 22:16, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

And this KarlBunker 22:19, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

New stuff to bottom doesnt mean continuations of current issues here, just entire new issues. If you want to continue the previous posting with new information you can tack this onto there. If the previous message isnt there anymore then this is the correct place. --NuclearUmpf 10:06, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I've put it back here. I was wondering, since no one's commented on the entry. KarlBunker 14:17, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Hold up,

Anybody wanna explain to me how DieYuppieScum (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) isn't an inapropriate username? I'm missing the logic here. If I made my username Die-You-Iraqi-Bastards, and made good contributions, there'd be no problem? I'm sure if he was insulting an admin in his username and made good contribs, he would still be blocked.--KojiDude ^{(viva la BAM!)} 03:11, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Are you claiming that the cultural reference "yuppie" is equivalent to a race, religion, nationality, gender, or other group that should be protected from discrimination? I think your comparison is an unfair distortion. Also, I find it hard to believe that there's a plot cooking here to do something nasty to yuppies - like rip off all the alligators from their sport shirts - let alone murder them. BTW, the verb "die" does not mean "kill." People who tell others to die may not be nice people, but they aren't making death threats. While I wouldn't care to defend this username against charges of bad taste, I don't think it is overly offensive or a threat. I know it may kill some people here to know that not every reference to killing or dying is meant to be taking literally. I'm deadly serious about this. I'm dying to know what other editors think. Askolnick 16:52, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps it's German for The Yuppie Scum. Seriously, it's not really that offensive, and he's been here for over a year. Ral315 (talk) 06:12, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree, it's a death threat. And death threats are generally seen as inappropriate. Guettarda 12:42, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

A death threat against whom?

--Charlesknight 12:47, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I think it is a pop-culture referrence but I don't remember to what. I left a short note on his page asking him to consider changing it. JoshuaZ 15:30, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

It's a pop-culture reference from the mid-1980s, referring to Young Urban Professionals (who were childless but had a lot of disposable income). "Die Yuppie Scum" was a backlash to the phenomenon. Eventually, the stock market went downhill and all the disposable income didn't matter all that much any more. See this link at nostalgiacentral.com for some more background. --Elkman - (Elkspeak) 16:53, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Am I missing something? He's been blocked for over a year. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 18:53, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I was missing the fact that he's been editing for days. The block log doesn't show any unblocks - the two indefinite blocks must have conflicted. Yes, it's an obviously inappropriate username, and he should be blocked if he doesn't request a username change within 48 hours. "Yuppie" is a pejorative term for a significant section of the middle class. Would we allow "DieProleScum"? No. Pop-culture reference my foot. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 18:55, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

On further examination I was missing the fact that I misread the block log. Would use the 'need more caffeine' excuse but it's 8pm and I had a cup of tea only 2 hours ago :-D. My opinion on the username stands. This equivocation is even worse then when people tried to claim User:UpTheRa wasn't inappropriate ('Ra' stands for 'IRA' and the name is equivalent to 'HoorayForAlQaeda'). --Sam Blanning^(talk) 18:58, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

It's not inappropriate; it's just silly. That was a classic punk slogan in the 1980s. You can still order the T-shirt from Amazon. (I feel so dated now.) --John Nagle 21:21, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Punk slogan or not, it directly violates "Names that promote or imply hatred or violence", "Names that are recognised as slurs or insults" and "Names that promote a controversial or potentially inflammatory point of view" (Wikipedia:Username). That's an impressive hat-trick. Maybe it would be merely "silly" on a Counter-Strike forum, but this is an encyclopaedia, and we have - rightly - a more stringent username policy than most of the Induhnet. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 22:22, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

It might be different in that no one who used the phrase "Die Yuppy Scum" ever meant it in an at all literal fashion. This is in contrast to a username which promotes a terrosist group. However, it would probably be best if the user changed their username. JoshuaZ 16:36, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

This sort of discussion should be held at WP:RFC/NAME, not here. JYolkowski // talk 22:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Indef block and user page erasure of User:Tao Ching

Unblock-en-l received a complaint from the owner of Tao Ching (talk · contribs) regarding User:Kelly Martin having indef blocked his account and deleted his homepage with the reasoning that Wikipedia is not a Blog. The owner is complaining that they received no warning and intended no violation of Wikipedia rules, and that they lost a large quantity of notes for article work they intend to do in the future.

See: User:Tao Ching, User talk:Tao Ching, Tao Ching's block log See also Kelly's comment: Kelly Martin's talk page

As I am not an administrator, I have no ability to review the contents of the now-former user page to see if they were inappropriate. I would like to request independent administrator review of the former contents of the userpage, which I cannot see, and comments on whether an indef block without warning was appropriate response for this user.

Thanks. Georgewilliamherbert 23:31, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I replied on the mailing list. As Kelly Martin indicated on Tao Ching's talk page, the user has been here for two years but his only edits are to his User page. In fact, he has made one edit to a User's Talk page, two vandalistic edits, and one addition of an external link to articles in those two years. But in the meantime, he's made over 500 edits to his User page. I think the block and blanking are appropriate. User:Zoe|(talk) 23:43, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

The blanking may be appropriate, although the ban could be lifted if the user expresses an interest in contributing, and a warning certainly wouldn't have done any harm (I can't see the deleted material either so I have no idea whether one was given or not). However, as I understand it the deleted material is available to administrators, so perhaps it should be restored for a couple of days or otherwise made available to the user so that he has an opportunity to print it out or copy it before he loses a large quantity of work, whether for articles here or anything else. Newyorkbrad 23:48, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I would be willing to email the contents of the latest revision of the page to the individual in question. Kelly Martin (talk) 23:50, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I think an offer to do that posted on the user's talk page (or e-mailed to him if e-mail is enabled) would be appropriate. If the deleted material is at all reasonable (of course I haven't seen it), that might be coupled with an offer to lift the ban if the user committed to doing some work on the encyclopedia, which I agree 100% is what the project is about. I also suggest that if this situation arises in the future, a warning be given -- if only to give the user an opportunity to download or print out the material himself or herself, thus saving an admin the trouble of doing so. Newyorkbrad 00:00, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Kelly, if you don't have their email / aren't on unblock-en-l (I can't recall who's there and not), I can forward you the address. Georgewilliamherbert 00:08, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I am not on unblock-en-l. The content is not really problematic, but it is chock loaded with external links and content which borders on copyvio; in any case totally inappropriate for a user page. I am email-enabled within the wiki, and being blocked doesn't preclude using Special:Emailuser. Kelly Martin (talk) 00:17, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I reviewed this content and concur it has no encyclopedic value and was worthy of deletion. I might not necessarily have indef blocked myself but barring some assurance from the user they are going to actually contribute instead of use this as hosting space, I see no reason to lift, and thus support the block as well. ++Lar: t/c 01:01, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

• Having looked at the deleted material, it didn't strike me as remotely bloglike. Most of it seemed to be the common sort of stuff one finds on most user pages: quotes, opinions, links, a self-description, a list of articles to edit and/or read. The only possibly objectionable aspect is simply that there's so much of it, far more than would be found on most user pages. It's a bit of a toss-up whether this violates user page policy or not (as I said, it's essentially typical user page stuff, just in greater quantity), but in any case I don't think it warrants a block. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 01:39, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

It's a freaking link farm. Link farms are unacceptable anyone on Wikipedia. Kelly Martin (talk) 04:14, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

It's not the content of the user page in and of itself that's problematic, but the attention paid to it over two years (500 edits) compared to attention paid to the encyclopedia (five edits, one of them useful). That ratio needs to be reversed and the likelihood of that happening is low. The block was therefore appropriate. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 04:21, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Concur with both Kelly and Slim - the page was a link farm, a soapbox, a personal webpage; the user was not contributing to the encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not a linkfarm nor a blog host; strongly support this action. KillerChihuahua^?!? 10:32, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

• I agree with the block, although in my opinion the user page should have been blanked and protected rather than deleted. --Ryan Delaney ^talk 17:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Removal of "outings" from the database history

The real Barbara Schwarz (talk · contribs) and AI (talk · contribs) are both banned users of Wikipedia. Both of them have attempted to reveal what they believe to be the private real life identities of pseudo-anonymous editors on Wikipedia. Now, during an ArbCom proceeding at Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Vivaldi/Evidence, an editor, Arbustoo (talk · contribs), that has been in a disagreement with me for a while over other issues, is now putting out diffs to history where Schwarz and/or AI guessed at my real name and posted links to a defamation website, supposedly about me.

I would ask that the admins remove the history where people have guessed at my real name. I find it highly objectionable that an editor would bring out the specific accusations of my real name during a process in which he is trying to stifle my editing on Wikipedia. I believe his only motivation for doing so was to intimidate and harass me even further. I tried asking one admin, but was advised that his privileges did not extend far enough to handle this request.

In any case, the specific histories that should be removed are available here

As you can see the user was banned for creating an account that was meant to do nothing more than to harass me and to attempt to guess at my real name yet again as they have done in other forums. Can you please just remove all of [User:KJKruse|that users] contributions, talk page, user page, and protect them? It's pretty clear that the only reason they exist in the first place is to harass. Thanks for your time. Vivaldi (talk) 09:44, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Individual contributions are a lot of work, please cite individual diffs outside of their user and talk pages that you feel should be deleted (email me if you would rather keep them off this page). I have deleted the user and talk pages. Guy 11:54, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Alternatively (and possibly more appropriately), individual revisions which reveal personal information may be eligable for the oversight treatment. Please see that page and, when ready, visit WP:RFO to request it. Please do not post on WP:RFO. ~Kylu (u|t) 04:33, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Voting is evil

There is presently a dispute over this page (and a few related ones) between a group of people who think voting is inappropriate on Wikipedia and, well, evil, and a group who believe voting is an essential part of our community and a prime way of gauging consensus.

Being part of the former group, I believe we should make very clear that voting is not a good way to resolve (most) things (e.g. AFD/RFA is not vote). A good way to do that seems to be to mark WP:VIE as {{guideline}} or even {{policy}} and possibly making it less tongue-in-cheek; in my experience novice editors are not generally swayed by pages not perceived as "official" (which is another can of worms, but anyway).

The "other" party appears to be pushing for votes on a variety of proposed guidelines, and seems to be under the impression that AFD is in fact a vote - but I may be misunderstanding them, of course. I'm mentioning this here because this seems the best way of reaching a group of experienced users familiar with "the wiki way". I would appreciate reactions on Wikipedia talk:Voting is evil. >Radiant< 16:29, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

At least rename it... calling concepts you don't like (and by extension, the people who support them) evil as a policy is horrible. Though personally I think voting scales a lot better than the vague concept of whoever wins the discussion is right, since that often just comes down to who has more political leverage and friends in high places. --W.marsh 17:46, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

The problem with converting Wikipedia:Voting is evil into a guideline is that this essay doesn't actually reflect consensus -- it promotes the fairly uncommon view that votes are almost always a bad idea in nearly every situation, and that the number of editors endorsing various views should almost never be a consideration in determining the existence of consensus. Actually, we have enacted policies as a result of votes -- see Wikipedia:Arbitration policy ratification vote and Wikipedia:Three revert rule enforcement. Requests for adminship may not be votes in a formal sense; however, the RFA page does state that

The numbers of people supporting, opposing, or expressing another opinion on a candidacy are a significant factor in determining consensus (few RFAs succeed with less than 75% support)...

XFD discussions are almost always votes in practice -- very rarely are pages deleted against the wishes of a majority of established editors who recommend keeping them. Instead of adopting blanket pronouncements like "voting is evil" as guidelines or policy, we should rely on the more nuanced, more balanced description of consensus in Wikipedia:Consensus to define consensus. One important consideration that is missing from Wikipedia:Consensus, however, is that to the extent that supermajority opinion is used as a measure of consensus, we are only concerned with the opinions of established editors -- considering comments by new and unregistered users in determining a supermajority would create an unacceptable risk of sockpuppetry. John254 18:19, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Discussion on this is kind of hopeless though... one camp has decided that the other's position is "evil"! Compromise seems unlikely when you have convinced yourself the other option is pure evil. Which is the whole problem. --W.marsh 18:32, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

• I agree that the name would be too tongue-in-cheek. Renaming the page to something like "No voting" would be a good idea. By the way it should be noted that John254's opposition to this page stems from the erroneous belief that it was used to delete the counter-vandalism unit, of which he is a member link. >Radiant< 18:57, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

The Counter-Vandalism Unit was deleted on the basis of a WP:VIE argument -- the closing administrator in Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit (second nomination) stated "This is not a vote. Arguments do count." and proceeded to speedily delete the page on the basis of arguments offered by an indefinitely banned vandal -- see Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/Dr_Chatterjee. The fact that the speedy closure of the discussion was based on a misapplication of WP:IAR does not negate the importance of WP:VIE in the closing administrator's reasoning. If the outcome of the MFD discussion had been determined by quantifying the votes of established users, there wouldn't have been a snowball's chance in heck of having the Counter-Vandalism Unit deleted. The fact that we allowed an indefinitely banned vandal to nominate the Counter-Vandalism Unit for deletion in a deliberate attempt to disrupt Wikipedia by weakening its defenses against vandalism [1], and actually deleted the Counter-Vandalism Unit briefly as a result of an indefinitely banned vandal's trolling, seems to illustrate a major failure of WP:VIE. John254 19:26, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

• • I think you heavily overestimate the impact that that individual had. Read over the discussion ... there were lots of other, non-vandal, people who were for deletion, so it doesn't particularly matter that one of them was. And besides, giving that one person so much credit on 'almost destroying our ability to defend ourselves against vandalism by removing the CVU' is more glorification than anything else. --Cyde Weys 23:33, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
  • And if it had been a vote in favor of deleting the CVU page rather than evaluating the arguments for keeping it, you would undoubtedly now be clamoring against the use of straight votes. —Centrx→talk • 23:42, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I do not know if we'll be able to come to an agreement on whether decisions should be made, by voting, consensus, determining the best argument or any other method. The main problem with voting is that a position that is clearly wrong by those who are informed about the issue and/or wrong according to policy/guidelines can come out on top. Other problems are the use of sockpuppets, meatpuppets and vote stacking.

Consensus is no better, as we often do not come to consensus, so either nothing gets done or someone (or a couple of people) forces the issue without a consensus. Sometimes it does not matter much if anything gets decided, but sometimes it is an important issue that needs to be settled. I think the things that are the greatest causes of the failure to gain consensus are editors' perfectionism (they will not agree to a plan that is not perfect) and inability to compromise. Finally, there is the problem with determining a consensus, which in practice is usually voting with reasoning given, like AfD, RM, RfA and arbitrator elections. This gives consensus the same problems as voting. On talk pages, it is even worse. A few people have an argument, often not coming to a consensus despite claims to the contrary, and the policy, article or whatever gets changed on the basis of a few people who did not even agree on a course of action.

Determining the best argument is also problematic, as it is not always clear which one is the best and their are other factors that are important. A bigger problem is that the closer often has a bias, sometimes an extreme one. This is a big problem for all forms of decision making, but it is devastating when using the best argument method. Some admins have such strong feelings on how things should be, and inabilities to put them aside, that they should not be closing any discussions. Good admins go against consensus or act when there is no consensus when necessary, but these admins do it frequently. Also, they get into frequent, heated arguments on their talk page, the talk pages of other users, the Administrators Noticeboard and this page. Finally, you'll find uncivil remarks and sometimes even swearing in their comments and especially in their edit summaries. Unfortunately, some of the worst admins have been around for a long time, making the amount of damage they've done and the high-placed supporters they have greater. Perhaps RfA was less rigorous than in the last 18 months or so or they have gotten frustrated and/or crazy over the years, although some bad ones still slip through these days (many long-time admins are exemplary, too). Some new and old ones may have just behaved themselves until they became admins, as well.

My suggestion is to consider everything that you can. Use a poll with reasoning given for votes, check out the relevant policies and guidelines, read any discussions that have taken place, weigh the arguments on each side and do additional research if necessary. Then, put your own feelings aside and make the best decision that you can. -- Kjkolb 10:59, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Voting is evil is evil

• Support

1. 'Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 04:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose

1. Gives us more things to argue about and create monotonous multi-page threads all over the place rather than waste our precious flame-warring time on improving this thing by clearing backlogs and writing articles.--Konstable 13:59, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

• Voting is evil

1. Yes. Ral315 (talk) 23:28, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

• Sockpuppetry

1. Rawr u r sux kekeke Luigi30 (Taλk) 14:45, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Voting is evil is evil is evil

• Comments:
• What he said. Ral315 (talk) 23:28, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
• Don't vote on everything. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:27, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

• Undoubtedly. -- nae'blis 19:16, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Another User:Pnatt sock

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

User is community-banned and creating socks to avoid the ban. The edit style, name choice, and so on are distinctual. Please indef this sock as well. Thanks. ju66l3r 20:47, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Hockeystick is taken care of. New sock, same story:

• Wpaddict (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) ju66l3r 22:04, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

blocked. Naconkantari 22:31, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

• Randomtoys (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - not as obvious at first, except for his desire to edit a protected article on Victoria in Australia (a Pnatt favorite) and then the reference in this edit summary saying "the wild card freak" (in reference to my catching him vandalizing Wild card (sports)). Please add to the growing pile of indef blocks for Pnatt socks. ju66l3r 02:43, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

• It's probably a good idea to go to WP:RFCU to get the underlying IP blocked. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:18, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Really strange contrib lists

Through my RC patrolling, I found these two user's contribs:

• Clinevol98 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
• BigT27 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

It appears that the primacy of their edits are to each other's user talk page. I can say that there are some problems in this. Clinevol98's last article edit was in August and BigT27 has only made one article space edit in September; and before that it was only in July. Ryūlóng 21:30, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

So what? 152.3.245.178 23:06, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I find it odd that one can have only 1000 edits, nearly 600 of which are solely user talk space edits (Clinevol98), while the other has nearly 900 user talk edits out of 2500, all of which are to each other. Ryūlóng 23:11, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I also find it odd that the above IP claims to be Cute 1 4 u, as stated on what will once be the user talk page. Ryūlóng 23:13, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Seriously creepy stuff. Makes me think of Markovian Parallax Denigrate and Numbers station. I can't believe the contents have anything to do with either wikipedia or their surface meaning. WAS 4.250 23:18, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Looks like they found each other after an editor noticed a good article on a subject he's interested in and contacted the other editor to congratulate. Is there anything weird about that? Of course, the ultimate goal of talk pages is to facilitate the building of the encyclopedia, but social interaction is part of that. --GunnarRene 23:32, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

But when the majority of each of their edits are merely social interractions? 571 user talk edits out of barely 1000 total edits is a bit out there. Ryūlóng 23:43, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Let's ban them. 152.3.65.172 01:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

In the past I have temp blocked and deleted the talk pages of a group of users who were doing a similar thing, however they had zero good edits. What should be done here is that the talk pages shoukd be nuked, and stern warnings left. If activities recommence, block accordingly. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 01:25, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

In fact, I'm doing that right now. If there are serious objections, drop me a note. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 01:27, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Done. Talk pages and the archives have been deleted for both users; warnings left, along with a policy explination. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 01:44, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

LactoseTI

Just looking for additional eyes here before I make a decision.

Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/LactoseTI

The result of the RFCU was "Likely", but I want to get a few more eyes looking over the vidence before I decide one way or the other on blocking both accounts. Please reply here with your comments. Thanks! •••日本穣^{? • Talk to Nihonjoe} 23:09, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but I note that there is only one time one of them has edited the other's talk page [2]. This might make it seem like sockpuppeting is going on and they neglected to realize that two independent editors who had this much similarity would talk to each other more often. On the other hand, that one dif shows that if they are socks they realized that at minimum in which case that would mean the user realized they would need to talk to each other but only did it with precisely one dif? This seems unlikely to me. Sorry I couldn't give anything more definite. JoshuaZ 03:37, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

You may also want to inquire with the checkuser person how likely he means by likely. They will sometimes give some rough estimate. JoshuaZ 03:38, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

World Champion(ship) (North American sports term)

• This article is continually recreated by a user who claims on his talk page that he'll keep recreating it because it deserves an article. My memory is fuzzy, but I seem to remember an article with this title being brought up on WP:AN/I before; something about this guy being a sockpuppet of a banned user. IMO, this should probably be dealt with swiftly. Danny Lilithborne 00:50, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Deleted and salted. User is a sockpuppet of banned user Pnatt. Naconkantari 00:55, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Prohibiting all references to hate-sites

Stormfront is an article about a neo-nazi hate iste. We have an admin who is enforcing a absolute ban on referencing the site in question. It's not a question of reliability, the text and the reference aren't themselves being disputed by anyone. Instead, the references are being commented out, so that Wikipedia doesn't inadvertantly promote the hate-site or increase its Google pagerank.

This troubles me for a couple of reasons. For one, it seems like we're only doing this because we on Wikipedia don't like the content of the speech that is contained on the hate cite. For two, it seems like this is a tad beyond the powers of an admin-- even if commenting out controversial references SHOULD be policy, as of now, it ISN'T policy. The admin doesn't cite any precedent for this sort of "accept the validity of the reference, but insisting on commenting it out" policy. In contrast, it seems to contradict the section of Reliable Sources which explicitly allows citing hate groups in some cases, and Wikipedia is not censored also seems to imply we shouldn't comment out citations, so long as we don't have any reliability or other concerns about the citation.

The discussions on-going about this [3] [4] tend to be generally disapproving of this policy, but since most of the commentors aren't admins, perhaps our opinions carry less weight. What do people think? Is it currently / should it be Wikipedia policy to accept hate site citations but comment them out? --Alecmconroy 04:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm confused. If the problem is pagerank inflation, why not just leave the URLs in the references as plain text? Opabinia regalis 04:33, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

An excellent question. But more than that-- since when do we care what effect our articles have on pageranks? Obviously, we should guard against the intentional manipulation of articles explicitly for the purpose of pagerank inflation, but we shouldn't prohibit references when they are valid. --Alecmconroy 05:23, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

• Let's keep this discussion in one place; [5] seems to be working fine. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 05:33, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Using my ISP address to do Vandalism

Hi, someone used my ISP address to do some vandalism to the "Forever 21" page -- which I had never visited until now to see why I was listed on there! What do I do???! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.175.80.54 (talk • contribs) 04:12, 20 September 2006.

Sign up for an account. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 04:20, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I just did! But how do I get those false comments off the "Forever 21" page?? (LD)

They're warnings for whoever uses your IP address. They're not on the page "Forever 21", they're on "User talk:216.175.80.54" which is a talk page - for communicating with users. Now that you've registered an account, you can safely ignore those comments - they're not associated with you anymore. james^(talk) 09:55, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi James (UTC), many thanks! (LD)

Is this vandalism or just bad judgement?

An anonIP, 59.95.105.68 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log), has spent the last couple of hours writing plot summaries for various Bollywood films. This editor seems to speak English as a second language, and is oblivious of niceties such as punctuation and capitalization. He (or she) is replacing coherent grammatical synopses with misspelled garble. I've been trying to clean up after this editor, and leaving a series of increasingly desperate notes on his user page, which he doesn't seem to be reading. This is not obvious vandalism; it's clearly well-intentioned. What is to be done? Just keep following after him/her/it with a broom? Zora 09:34, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

• Unless they're copyright violations or bad machine translations, which are forbidden, I would say bad judgement. Keep cleaning and keep trying to talk to him. Make sure you are especially encouraging about their enthusiasm to contribute. They may be more open to criticism if you find more positive points about their contributions. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:07, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Let me add that you don't need to feel like you MUST clean up after them. Articles don't have to be perfect, and the onus certainly doesn't fall on you just because you know about it. Mangojuice^talk 13:55, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Criticism of the Bible

This is not obvious vandalism (by Kdbuffalo (talk · contribs)), so it may be 3RR-violation (by me, Pjacobi (talk · contribs)). Can just please someone have some looks on the situation? I've put up content RfCs for the content issues. --Pjacobi 10:56, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Kdbuffalo has been removing content from the article. The content that is contested could use a little work in a few areas, but it is not too biased or obviously nonsensical. The only significant problem I see is a lack of sources other than Bible verses. However, some things are just common sense or clear from the Bible passage and citing them would clog the article. For example, we do not need a source to tell us that California is part of the United States. However, only things that are universally believed, with the exception of crackpots, should be uncited. I think that people should stop reverting and take it to the talk page. Also, reliable sources should be found for the controversial stuff. -- Kjkolb 13:38, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

If the editors will not stop the revert war, you might ask for protection to freeze the page until the editors can resolve their differences on the Talk Page. --Richard 16:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Is User:Sound and Fury a sock of recently banned user User:Triumph's Hour?

I placed this on the 'Requests for Investigation' page, but it might be more appropriate here. Based on a common 'anon' account (67.42.218.153 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) and a review of this user's editing style and range of articles (and the use of classic literary references for both names (Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' and 'Agamemnon'), I believe Sound and Fury (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is a likely sock of the indef-banned user Triumph's Hour (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), who was indef banned for violations of WP:NPA in the midst of recent conflicts related to Encyclopedia Dramatica.

He/she has not responded to my direct question to that effect on his talk page since I notifiied him/her, and so I bring the issue here. Please see the contribs and the RfI entry for more info and feel free to move that information here if it is more appropriate. Thank you. -- User:RyanFreisling @ 12:25, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

My hunch-o-meter also strongly suggests that this this the same editor. Regardless, the IP edited Sound and Fury's userpage without being reverted[6] and gave Willy on Wheels a barnstar[7]. I strongly suspect that these editors are all one and the same. Checkuser?--MONGO 21:11, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd be glad to submit it for a CU, if it's not too peremptory of a step. I'm trying to err on the side of calm dispassion and avoid CLS (Chicken Little Syndrome) :) -- User:RyanFreisling @ 21:18, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I took care it it. Both Sound and Fury and Triumph's Hour both seem to like the edit summary "talkin'" as well.--MONGO 21:26, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[8]--MONGO 21:27, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Glossyn (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Having just spent the better part of an hour cleaning up the mess made by this vandal claiming to be the original WOW, may I take this moment to renew the call that page moves become an admin-only action? This type of vandalism is incredibly time-consuming to revert, and page moves should rarely be done without a consensus anyway. RadioKirk (u|t|c) 14:15, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

No need to make page moves an admin only thing. Whoa, what an over-reaction! --Balmayres 15:33, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I do not find this an overreaction in any way; nor would you if you've ever been through the process of cleaning up the mess... RadioKirk (u|t|c) 16:56, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Balmayres identified himself as a sock of User:MilkMan -- a user banned indef for WOW like editing. I think the vandal was just taunting us. Geedubber 18:20, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, should've seen that one... ;) RadioKirk (u|t|c) 19:18, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I have to question why the vandal wasn't banned from the outset with edit summaries like "pagemove...". No need to over-react although putting article moves on permanent semiprotection might be an idea. – Chacor 15:42, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I think a software limitation on the number of pagemoves allowed per minute by non-admins and non-bots would be useful. --Cyde Weys 18:16, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd be a little worried about the effect on longstanding non-admins reverting page move vandalism. Semi-protection, however, IMHO, would be a great idea. Most new users have no idea that the move button even exists, let alone use for it. alphaChimp^(talk) 18:21, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

page moves are already covered by semi protection. Requests for the softwear to have a page move rate throtel were made a long time ago. nothing came of them.Geni 18:25, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

If so, it's ineffective. Does that protection work on sleepers? If not, a minimum-edit restriction needs to be established. :) RadioKirk (u|t|c) 19:16, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Single-Purpose User Malmedy Massacre/Bill O'Reilly

Contributions all in August 2006, all on either Bill O'Reilly or Malmedy massacre. See 74.106.228.253 (talk · contribs) Joe 16:38, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I dont really see anything wrong with some of the edits, though the insult in one edit was a BLP violation. Since the account was used in August and never again, I dont really see what the issue is. --NuclearUmpf 16:56, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

82.134.90.244 (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log) sneaking spam into articles

82.134.90.244 (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log) is inserting spam into all sort of articles, mostly media-related. [9] I'm in the middle of reverting, but the IP needs to be blocked. --Aaron 16:58, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Note: Also using 149.9.0.56 (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log). --Aaron 17:01, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

User:Leading Authorities

Leading Authorities (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) places links to a leadingauthorities website on a number of peoples bios. It seems that it is a "adding of links to own website". I reverted one, but don't have the time to untue the whole contribution. In fact consensus here might be to leave it as it is. Or not ... up to you. Agathoclea 17:24, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

205.244.101.194

User:205.244.101.194 appears to be inserting random profanities into lots of different articles. arj 19:11, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Reverted; also, please use WP:AIV for reports like this one, thanks. :) RadioKirk (u|t|c) 19:22, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

212.199.22.131 and 212.199.22.208

This Goldenlines anon (apparently geolocated somewhere in Israel) dropped by my user talk page apparently to repeat his claim at Wikipedia:Help desk that he has inserted the word "p***s" in (apparently ) Hebrew into a "technical term" in an (un-named) article on philosophy which he boasts has gone unreverted for months. At least that is how I interpret this, since he has pointedly refused to name the article in question and now he explicitly refuses to revert this silly vandalism, saying that he wants to see how long it takes the WP community to find it! Sorry I can't tell you more, just thought you all should know. I've asked this anon (vandal?) not to return to my user talk pages and would appreciate some help if he should ignore this request.---CH 19:34, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Careful examination of user contributions says you are a liar.

1. At no point did I claim that I had inserted the word 'penis' in any article, contrary to your assertions. And to say that I repeated this claim is a double lie.

2. By using the word 'boast' you imply that I am the vandal. That is a lie - I am not the vandal and I did not boast.

3. Since when refusal to edit an article is a crime? Does it go against any rules?

4. You have wrongly interpreted my refusal to name the article in question. The real reason is clear - you would immediately edit the article and spoil my watching it for a natural correction span.

So, to sum it up - your report is abusive (there is nothing to report), insultive (you actually called me a vandal by saying that I made claims of inserting an obscenity in unknown article) and hysterical (you call for help in defending your user page before anything bad was done to it. I respect your wish to ban me from your talk page. I hope you will excuse me for placing one last notice on it pointing to this answer. 212.199.22.28 04:57, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

User:MaCaCa

MaCaCa (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is a sockpuppet of perma banned user Macaca (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). Still doing the same junk trying to put "Macaca" in to George Allen's name. --StuffOfInterest 20:12, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Kt66 repeated copyright violation on Talk:Michael Roach

Kt66 (talk · contribs) insists on repeatedly posting copyrighted material from the subject's website on the talk page of Michael Roach (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). He seems to think that lack of a copyright notice permits him to do this. I have attempted to explain that this is not the case, but he will not listen. Ekajati 20:34, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I've provided Kt66 with links to the specific policy on copyrights, as well as a short summary. The user has answered back on my talk page that he/she will abide by policy. Please report again if this continues to be a problem. — ERcheck (talk) 21:35, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! He also seems to have a problem with understanding WP:LIVING and WP:3RR. I've been trying to remove poorly sourced negative info about living persons, but he keeps putting it back and has broken 3RR on three different articles. I have reported on WP:AN/3RR but am nervous about removing the negative information again. Could you take a look? He (or the other editors) have been sourcing personal Geocities sites, Google groups, and a partisan attack site as sources! Not good. Ekajati 21:51, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I've reiterated WP:Living, 3RR, and WP:Verify. It appears that the editor is will try to make a good faith effort to understand — though has mentioned taking a wikibreak. — ERcheck (talk) 22:48, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Please block user 209.158.111.131

User 209.158.111.131 has repeatedly posted non-sensical items to both Lou Costell and Bud Abbott over the past 2 days. Items posted include things like "I was here", "Jess Loves Dylan", "Rebecca was here", etc. There have been over 25+ accounts of vandalism by them in the past 48 hours. Please either block them or protect those 2 pages. Thanks! Donaldd23 22:04, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

The user was already blocked, but for future cases of clear vandalism, please use WP:AIV. Cowman109^Talk 22:06, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Hogeye

His ban has ended, and I'm not sure where he stands in terms of probation, but activity like this, cleary needs to stop. --AaronS 01:37, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Not to mention he's trying to start an edit war. [10]. Why wasn't he indef blocked long ago anyways? He's incredibly disruptive, has made numerous personal attacks and has been caught using socks against policy more times than I can count. He give thewolfstar a run for their money when it comes to sock puppets. Ungovernable Force^{Got something to say?} 06:31, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

The gaming of the system that is going on, combined with his viewing Wikipedia as a battleground, are indeed a bit disturbing. --AaronS 20:21, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

More edit warring is happening here, at Template:Anarchism sidebar. --AaronS 22:07, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

He's also counting his reverts, as if 3RR is a license. *sigh* I'm e-acquainted with him, so I'd rather not be the one to ban him, but I support a ban. The diff you linked was simply stupid. "Let's make a copy of Anarchism that gives Anarcho-capitalism undue weight, and doesn't even mention socialism!" Makes no sense. There are serious, serious POV issues, not to mention a simple and complete disrespect for wikipedia. --Golbez 00:22, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

The Anarchism talk page is full of his POV nonsense. We were getting somewhere with the compromises until he and the range of Wolf-socks arrived and disrupted the whole thing again. Enough is enough. Donnacha 22:54, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

He also seems to have removed his sock puppeteer tag with a misleading edit summary.[11] --AaronS 01:52, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

And now he's doing it with more direct edit summaries: "stay off my page, asshole".[12] --AaronS 02:30, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

He is also removing Aaron's attempt to discuss the situation from his talk page. [13] This user is incredibly bad faith, makes serious personal attacks, and is incredibly disruptive. I strongly, strongly, strongly urge an indefinite block, which is long overdue. Ungovernable Force^{Got something to say?} 02:47, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Hogeye warns of future "tit-for-tat edit warring" that he will provoke and engage in here. --AaronS 21:26, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Is something going to happen? His constant POV-pushing is making any attempts to reach agreement impossible. Donnacha 16:53, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Here Hogeye blanks his discussion page immediately after another editor asks him to stop removing warnings and attempts at discussion from it. He has also removed his sock puppeteer template, again. --AaronS 21:08, 21 September 2006 (UTC) Has anybody examined this issue, or does anybody want to? --AaronS 20:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Talk page abuse

Serial sockpuppeteer Mallimak (talk · contribs) is using sockpuppet account User:Orkadian to spam multiple Talk pages. The {{talkheader}} template has been removed and the spam repeatedly re-added. I request admin intervention:

• Orkadian (talk · contribs)

--Mais oui! 12:11, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Example diff: [14]. --Mais oui! 12:15, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Provide evidence that Orkadian is a sockpuppet of Mallimak, please. It seems to me that Orkadian has become rather upset by your persistent accusations that he/she is a sockpuppet, and I can't see any evidence for that. --ajn (talk) 12:19, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Mallimak. --Mais oui! 12:32, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

That's hardly the most convincing checkuser result I have ever seen. It's equally likely that they happen to be editing from the same geographical area, and object to your stance on Orkney (oddly, quite different from your usual stance on regional and nationalist issues). --ajn (talk) 14:43, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Please also see: [15]. There is a multitude of evidence. But that is not the point: what are you going to do about the Talk page abuse? --Mais oui! 12:39, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

A suggestion, why not protect the talk page to [edit=sysop move=sysop] to prevent him from adding spam?? --LiverpoolCommander 12:41, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

This is part of a long standing conflict between the users and a more in depth look at the conduct of Mallimak, Orkadian and Mais oui! is in order.Inge 12:41, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Is a Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Mallimak a suitable thing to proceed with?? --LiverpoolCommander 12:43, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, to be fair I would suggest a simultaneous Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Mais oui! or a combined one. The bits and pieces of the conflict I have seen lead me to believe that both these users could do with some helpfull hints. It seems IMHO that this is part of a complexe content dispute where one user is good at utilising wiki rules and the other is not. Inge 12:49, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

• A combined RFC seems like a good idea. Can anyone give me a brief overview of what the cause of the dispute is, what lead to it, and what the ongoing situation is - so that I have a clearer idea of it?? --LiverpoolCommander 12:50, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

User:Wangi is very well-informed on this topic, although he has just had a Wikibreak, and so missed the last episode about a week ago. --Mais oui! 12:53, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

One user is trying to insert the notion that Orkney has a special identity separate from the Scottish one and has been adding information regarding that to relevant articles. The user has also created stubs, categories and a portal to deal with Orkney subjects. The other user is asserting that Orkney is not any more different from the rest of Scotland than any other part of Scotland and has been removing such information from relevant articles and requesting the stub-templates and so on to be deleted. I think that is the core of this problem. In the process both users may have stepped over the line. The hows, ifs and whens need to be determined, proper guidance need to be given to the users and a permanent solution to the core dispute needs to be found. The articles involved are so low profile that it seems to be very difficult for the few users involved to get there on their own. Inge 13:07, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that overview, Inge. I think that Orkney should be counted as Scotland, as it is technically Scottish and not a sovereign state. This content dispute should be taken to a WikiProject who could assist with this incident. --LiverpoolCommander|Commander' 13:15, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the Orcadian users are claiming that Orkney is not a part of Scotland, but that the people who live there share an identity as Orcadians and that that identity is more or less considered separate from being Scottish. I don't think I am quite able to convey that situation acurately, but I would like to inform that I have the personal opinion that Orkney (and Shetland) claims of being different does have some creedence. They are not just another area of Scotland (allthough they are very much politically and legally part of that country) and history, geneaology and (former) linguistics back that up. But that really isn't the issue right now :) Inge 22:48, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Comming back to the immediate issue, rather than the underlying problem...

One thing that needs to stop is the constant reverting an readding of Orkadian's comment on various talk pages. While the comment is not about the articles themself it's not worth getting into an edit war about. However the comment needs to be kept out of the article and category namespace and Orkadian has not readded them since I pointed this out. I'll pass on commenting on the comment itself...

I'm disappointed that Orkadian/Maillimak are not making any constructive edits. After this is an encyclopedia - and writting it is our goal, if you're just here to dick around with turf wars then...

I'm not convinced Orkadian and Maillimak are a single person, but if it is two people they're acting in close cooperation. I'll keep an eye on things, but i'm as busy as ever and back travelling tomorrow... Thanks/wangi 13:31, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the user(s) were initially trying to make constructive edits, but were over-enthusiastic and were then frustrated by Mais Oui!'s uncharacteristic objection to petty regionalism. I spotted this dispute a while ago, when MO listed the Orkney portal for deletion. Orkney does have a quite different history to the rest of Scotland, and Mais Oui!'s "just a council area" stance really doesn't do that justice. --ajn (talk) 14:49, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I support that view. I believe if a couple of outside editors would like to involve themselves more in depth the articles affected could be very much improved and the users in conflict could be guided back on track to the future benefit of Wikipedia. If we let this issue go now we will just find it again on a later date and/or loose valuable contributions. I see these request for help pages as somewhat of a jungle so if someone knows a more appropriate place to take this issue, please do so and give a link here. Inge 12:34, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Mallimak is not blocked, I am at a looss to understand why he would use sockpuppets, but there is not much doubt in my mind that Orkadian and Gruelliebelkie are either sockpuppets or meatpuppets. That said, Mais Oui! is unquestionably prone to strong opinions and there is not a great deal of evidence of these disputants making any real attempt to find common ground. Any RfC should be a joint one, and should be called something like "Orkneys islands" rather than singling out one side or the other, there being evident fault on both. On the practical level I don't see that there are so many articles on the Orkneys as to make a separate portal necessary or desirable, but if people want to have one and link it from the Scotland portal then I don't really see how that would violate policy, since Orkadians unquestionably do have a separate identity at some level. Not that we are here to Right Great Wrongs, but I don't see any neutrality issue in dealing with the Orkneys as thematic set of articles. This is, of course, a superficial view. Guy 12:11, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I am glad to see that there are some people here who have recognised what is going on. At the beginning I had so much to offer Wikipedia, and I made a start on contributing Orkney-related articles, an area of knowledge I know a great deal about. But then I encountered Mais oui!

I think it all started with his objection to the use of the term “Orcadian”, and he started replacing it everywhere with “Scottish”. Now let’s get this straight once and for all, “Orcadian” is an accepted term used to describe somebody from Orkney, and it is widely used – and for good reason, it pin-points the origin and culture of the person so described much more precisely than the term “Scottish”. (Furthermore, there are many in Orkney (and indeed Shetland) who object to being described as “Scottish”.) I have never claimed that “Orcadian” is a nationality, but neither, note, is “Scottish” a nationality. If Wikipedia is going to be consistent, the correct nationality is “British”! (I’ve not looked into it, but there must be analogous situations like Frankish/Bavarian/German or Frisian/Dutch.) I have never claimed that Orkney is a “sovereign state”, but note, Scotland is also not a “sovereign state”.

Anyway, it seems that I had inadvertently strayed into a territory that Mais oui! claims for his own. For example, it was he that set up the Portal:Scotland – but would he allow me to set up a Portal:Orkney – oh no! Incidentally, there is a Portal:Cornwall, and nobody seems to object to that.

Everything on Orkney that I contributed to Wikipedia had to be part of Mais oui’s domain, and he edited my articles in such a way to make sure that they were. Talk about WP:OWN.

I have plenty of encyclopaedic Orkney-related articles to contribute to Wikipedia, but what’s the point when Mais oui twists them and uses them as fodder to feed his own POV agenda. Personally, I feel Mais oui! should be banned from Wikipedia – he is distorting the project and putting off other contributors. He violently attacks users who disagree with him – sockpuppet allegations seeming to be his favourite form of attack. (Yes, shortly after Orkadian came onto the scene I did get in touch with him, and yes I am now in regular contact with him - but he is not me.) Out of frustration I have tried to retaliate against Mais oui!, but as accurately observed by Inge “one user is good at utilising wiki rules and the other is not”, and I am the one who is not - and why should I be? I didn’t come here to have my time and effort wasted by this kind of nonsense.

I have given up in despair. Until Mais oui! is banned (or at least banned from editing any article I contribute), there is absolutely no point in my contributing any further articles to Wikipedia. If you want to read NPOV encyclopaedic articles about Orkney, written by people who live here or have a close association with the islands and therefore know what they are talking about, I suggest you look out for our independent site.

Writing is my goal, not (as wangi puts it) “to dick around with turf wars“ – that’s Mais oui!’s specialism.

Mallimak 21:09, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

World Innovation Foundation

It appears to me that there is something appears a bit odd about this article. According to the WIF website, it claims to have dozens of Nobel laureates as members, and is planning to build the "ORE Complex", a multi-billion dollar global centre for scientific research: "the World's Largest Open Research Establishment. Equipped and Operational for 20,000 leading-edge scientists, engineers, technologists and innovators", as well as 1000 local research centres around the world. [16]

It also claims to have been founded by Glenn Seaborg, with its current president being Jerome Karle: pretty impressive people. Indeed, many Nobel laureates are listed as "honorary consulting members" of the WIF on Wikipedia. [17]

By all accounts, the WIF appears to be an organization of global importance.

And yet:

• I cannot find any mention of the WIF, or its claimed predecessor the Institute of National Economic Enrichment and Development, in any mainstream news sources
• I cannot find any mention of the WIF or its predecessor "I.N.E.E.D." on Glenn Seaborg's biographical memorial site, or in his entry on the Nobel site [18]
• the WIF appears to be run from a P.O. box in Huddersfield [19]
• I cannot find any reports of it in mainstream media
• and the "letters" section of its website appears mostly to be people writing back politely to letters inviting them to become honorary members
• most of the mentions of these notable people being members of the WIF appear to have been entered into Wikipedia on the 16th and 17th of this month by User:Drdavidhill, who is listed as the WIF's contact on its own website -- this user has been blocked for adding their website to many articles all at once, and appears to have repeatedly E-mailed Zoe to be unblocked, and has now escalated to petitioning Jimbo [20]
• and the remainder seem to be press releases by academics gladly accepting invitations to become honorary fellows of the WIF

And yet:

• "INEED" appears to have used an Easynet E-mail account [21]
• the WIF also appears to run a website at http://www.ineed.easynet.co.uk/, and http://www.ineed.easynet.co.uk/wif/joinb.html asks for cheques to be made payable to "The Institute of Sub-contractors", which is described as "the corporate trading company of the W.I.F." at "The W.I.F., P.O. Box A60, Huddersfield, HD1 1XJ, ENGLAND." -- which is the same address as given at http://www.thewif.org.uk/contact.php?xy=1920&pl=linux%20i686
• which is odd, because you might expect them to at least have a bank account in their own name, particularly since the article claims that their main organization is a Swiss charity.
• and I can't find any mention of "The Institute of Sub-contractors" on Google, or on several sites containng lists of limited companies (Companies House search goes down overnight, so I can't yet give an authoritative answer to this), or on the Charity Commission's website

And yet:

• the phone number (01484) 300 606 and fax number (01484) 300 606 given for the WIF are also the same as that displayed for "Geo-Design Associates" of Huddersfield [22]

Now, of course, I sure that there are perfectly good reasons for a global think-tank planning billion-dollar projects to share phone numbers and to have a mailing address in the same town as a business run from a shop. But it would be interesting to have a little bit more in the way of verifiable confirmation from mainstream sources about the WIF before we go any further. -- The Anome 01:45, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

-- The Anome 01:52, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

• Mmmm.... hoax. Danny Lilithborne 01:47, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

If this is a hoax its probably the most wide spread one ever created and someone should write a news story. Hvae you tried a google search, its outrageous how many people state they are fellows and their positions. Tons of edu sites have listings of their professors as WIF fellows. [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] --NuclearUmpf 02:46, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I just wonder, if you sent a letter out to a hundred academics asking them to become honorary fellows of an organization set up by Glenn Seaborg and featuring a host of Nobel laureates, what fraction of them might (a) write a nice letter back, accepting your kind offer and offering to help in any way they can, and (b) put out a release announcing their membership of this august group? -- The Anome 12:24, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I've done a LexisNexis seach on this and what I've found is even more mysterious. While the article and the site claim Glenn Seaborg as the founder, an article I found in The Yorkshire Post from 2003 tells the story of Dr. David Hill, who after "his construction company went bust" created the Foundation, whose "boldest idea is the creation of Open Research Establishments, so-called People's Creative Thought Incubators, where individuals would have their ideas and inventions analysed and developed." When one of these incubators, described as a "£50-billion scientific super city" was proposed to be built in North Lincolnshire in 2005, the local media at first reacted with breathless excitement, but in a later story said "... since speaking to one of the organisation's founder members, Dr David Hill, the Telegraph has contacted a number of organisations which claim they know nothing about the project." After that date I can find no more articles about the Foundation. There is definitely something amiss here, and the fact that so many scholars have accepted membership, yet no major news source has explained what this group actually does, is bizarre. I really am at a loss as to how to proceed. —Nate Scheffey 08:15, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've now done a company search, and found a company, WORLD INNOVATION FOUNDATION (FOR ECONOMIC ENRICHMENT & DEVELOPMENT), company number 03539608. It's listed as a "non-trading company", and its most recent set of accounts are marked "dormant". There is no "World Innovation Foundation", or anything with a similar name, listed in the Charity Commissions register of charities.

I cannot find a Companies House listing for any company called "The Institute of Sub-Contractors", nor does there appear to be any charity of that, or a similar name.

Does anyone have access to the Swiss equivalent of the UK register of charities? -- The Anome 12:18, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Does a .org.uk need to be registered in the UK as a charity? This can become quite a search if this "group" can be technically registered anywhere as a charity. Another problem is, it doesn't have to be a charity, meaning no-profit, it seems to be more of a think tank then anything else. Kind of like if Einstein and his buddies got together and made a group, are they required to make it a formal company/charity? I do not know enough about domain registration requirements, but I am almost sure a .org doesnt mean the group has to be registered as a charity. --NuclearUmpf 12:45, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if it has to be, but a whois has the company listed as "UK Entity", based in Sheffield (instead of Huddersfield. Aecis ^{Appleknocker Flophouse} 12:55, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

There are no restrictions on registering .org or .org.uk (I have domains in both groups). I suspect The Anome's explanation above is the correct one, I've known academics who will join almost any organisation with a couple of big names on board which offers to make them a Distinguished Research Fellow or something equally grand-sounding. The Moonies used to run similar organisations, if I remember correctly. --ajn (talk) 12:53, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I understand, I just wish there was a way to verify this, outside our own research which may be possibly flawed. As I said, if its a think tank I do not believe they are required to register anything at all. Is it possible to contact some of these professors and ask them if they have indeed even heard of anything from WIF since their joining? Or is this outside our scope? --NuclearUmpf 12:56, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Indeed: anyone can get together, and call themselves anything. There's no requirement for a .org.uk to be a charity, either: anyone can apply for a .org.uk domain. However, so many of the details about this organization feel peculiar to me -- most notably the gap between their presentation of themselves as a huge organization of thousands of distinguished scientists, run by Swiss charitable foundation, and planning to build a science city for 20,000 researchers, and their being run out of a P.O. box in Huddersfield, apparently sharing their phone lines with a small business being run from a shop. It seems to me that extraordiary claims require extraordiary proof, and there's very little of that, other than that a number of scientists, when offered honorary fellowships, appear to have accepted.

Perhaps the WIF could help us validate its claims -- for example by providing details of:

• The name, address, registration date and registration number of the Swiss charity that is claimed to be the umbrella organization for the WIF
• A (verifiable) list of the members of its Board of Directors
• Where and when its Nobel-prizewinning members, and its other 3000 members, have met to transact WIF business

-- The Anome

I think it was the WIF's top banana who was sending stuff to the unblocking list this morning, threatening to sue everyone in sight if "their" information wasn't removed from Wikipedia (one of the many who doesn't read or understand "You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL." before hitting the save page button). Looking at the WIF website, I recall the picture of the "Open Research Establishment" from a few years ago, and I thought it smelled funny then. The portrait of its recently-deceased deputy director seems to be taken in the beer garden of a pub. I'd suggest we speedy-delete everything related to the WIF until its notability can be properly established. --ajn (talk) 13:28, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I've now put it up for AfD: see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/World Innovation Foundation. If the WIF's claims are real, and it is an organization of the size and importance it claims, it should easily be able to furnish proof of its assertions. -- The Anome 13:42, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

On second thoughts, given the E-mails above, I think we would probably be justified in speedy deleting it as "deletion requested by article author", and marking it as ineligible for recreation. -- The Anome 13:52, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

You're suggesting salting a G7? I thought salting was only done in cases of repeated recreations, and G7 is about the most inappropriate type of speedy I can think of for salting. --ais523 13:52, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

It is probably best to let the AfD run its course. If the organization is everything it presents itself to be, then appropriate references are bound to turn up. If things are not as they appear then the existence of a proper AfD will provide a paper trail to help prevent the organization from coming back and recreating the article after people's attention has turned to other efforts. --Allen3 ^talk 14:11, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

While we're at it, shouldn't the Xanthos Menelaou article go to the same bag (AfD)? He is arguably famous because he's former WIF chief executive, and WIF is arguably famous because (among other things) Menelaou was its chief executive. Duja 14:16, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I've stuck a speedy template on it. Deletions are really not something I'm familiar with (either requesting or performing), so if I've added an inappropriate tag please change it. --ajn (talk) 14:55, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I'll admit I'm the newbie here..but geez, there seems to be a huge rush to get rid of an article when there really is no evidence that it ISN'T true. Seems to me that if the World Federation of Engineering Organizations has the president of the WIF speaking at their 2003 symposium (it's ref #60 above), there is evidence that this organization really does exist. There are ways to do research that don't directly involve the internet...like a telephone call to ask anyone of these august individuals if they could provide some documentary evidence of the organization and its accomplishments. And no, that is NOT original research, it is seeking supportive documentation. Risker 15:38, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm quite willing to believe that some or all of the WIF's claims might actually be true, if verifiable evidence can be presented from multiple reputable sources to back up these claims. However, in the absence of this, the circumstantial evidence does not look encouraging, and the burden of proof still lies with the WIF to prove their claims to the Wikipedia community, rather than vice versa.

Some examples of this might be: independent reports of WIF conferences, personal testimony from some of the listed Nobelists that they have attended WIF meetings, full details of the alleged Swiss charity... However, the Lexis-Nexis search reported by one of the commenters above does not encouraging.-- The Anome 15:58, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

By the way, I've now unblocked User:Drdavidhill, and I've put a note on his userpage inviting him to comment on this AfD. I look forward to him providing independent evidence to support his claims. -- The Anome 16:32, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

There is a link providing just one of those grounds you are asking for "independent reports of WIF conferences" unless we are now stating "World Federation of Engineering Organizations" is also part of the hoax. --NuclearUmpf 16:36, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

No, the WFEO's activities appear to be completely real and verifiable. However, attending a WFEO conference is not the same thing as holding a WIF conference. -- The Anome 16:46, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

The actual quote from the webpage states that Dr Karle was speaking on behalf of WIF and was guest of honour and keynote speaker. That is a bit more than just attending the conference. Risker 16:50, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Indeed it is; I am perfectly willing to believe that Dr Karle might have accepted an invitation to talk on that basis. Perhaps someone should check with him for some more details of the WIF; as President, he must surely have attended many of their board meetings, and know the main players in the WIF, unless, of course, the position is purely honorary. -- The Anome 16:56, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Delete - it seems to be a mix between a hoax and a scam. --Charlesknight 16:56, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I got mixed up in all this mess when I responded to the good Doctor on the unblock-l mailing list, explaining to him that several users had protested his spamming on Wikipedia, and that he had been blocked for repeatedly having continued to spam. He immediately went on attack mode (in private emails, no longer on the mailing list), saying that I was blocking his legitimate right to discuss his charity with over 3000 members. When I finally got tired of repeating that he had not addressed the spamming, I stopped responding. At that point, he said that he was going to petition Jimbo. I at that point explained that he might want to address the users who had actually contacted and blocked him, not me, since I hadn't been involved until he posted to the mailing list. At that point, he accused me of "dishonesty" for not having told him from the very beginning that *I* hadn't been the one to block him. I didn't know that he didn't know who had blocked him, since it's pretty obvious in the block message who had done the blocking. He is now claiming that he is going to sue Wikipedia and post on his website how evil Wikipedia is, and will contact all of the other people we have wronged to get them to add such information. Since he's threatening lawsuits, he should not be unblocked. User:Zoe|(talk) 01:51, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, was he actually blocked at the time of this exchange? Anome has stated above that he was unblocked specifically so he could participate in the discussion, and his block log shows that he was not, indeed blocked at 01:51 on 21 September; Anome reblocked him six hours later. Please note that I absolutely agree with blocking anyone making legal threats. Risker 12:58, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, he was still blocked at the time of our exchange. He was only unblocked on the 20th. But The Anome has reblocked him, I assume due to the legal threats. User:Zoe|(talk) 02:03, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I did rather enjoy pruning the article down to its verifiable core, perhaps some others would like to have at it as well.... Guy 12:33, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Persistent personal attacks and spamming - and now violating 3RR

Despite being asked to stop on both the telepathy talk page and his own talk page, editor THB continues to spam personal attacks against two editors he is edit warring with. This is the message he has already posted five or times within the past hour:

"I do not believe that the tone of the above comments is appropriate and, in my opinion,this demonstrates Askolnik's unfitness to take part in this discussion.-THB 15:42, 20 September 2006 (UTC)"

I've posted warnings asking him to stop both on the telepathy talk page[29] and THB's talk page[30]. Here are the diffs for the spam:

[31] [32] [33] [34] [35]

The last was posted after I had posted warnings on both the article talk page and his personal talk page. Askolnick 17:22, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Askolnik is harrassing not only me, but also Davkal, and admin assistance would be appreciated. -THB 18:02, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

THB, if you would like administrator assistance, you need to provide them with evidence of this alleged "harrassment." No administrator is either going to just take your word for it or read though hundreds of edits to see if there is any substance to your complaint. Askolnick 18:17, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

To whoever decided to look into this: please note that it appears that both of these users will need a talking to (again). --InShaneee 18:32, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

To whoever decided to look into this: please note that InShaneee is not a neutral party, and has had several conflicts with Askolnick. KarlBunker 18:52, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

O.K. InShaneee, I got it. You don't like me. You say I'm sarcastic and that I'm not polite. However, if you have a legitimate complaint, why not make it public rather than posting swipes and innuendos? Askolnick 16:27, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I am a 'neutral party', thank you very much. People need to learn that diciplining a user for incivil conduct does not mean that you are now 'involved in a dispute' with them. --InShaneee 17:01, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

In addition to the above disruptive conduct, THB has not violated WP:3RR, with five revisions to Natasha Demkina article in the past few hours. Askolnick 16:27, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, Askolnik has violated the 3RR rule on that article, not me, and joins with KarlBunker in reverting that page to technically avoid the 3RR rule. This behavior should be adressed. Askolnik seems to think that every edit is a reversion. Please check the facts--Askolnik is going out of his way to push POV and to be disruptive of Wikipedia. Thanks. -THB 16:32, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Askolnik also removed a copy vio tag from Skeptic's Dictionary which clearly uses wording from the site itself without quotes or attribution. This is a clear violation of Wikipedia policy and should be addressed. -THB 16:38, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

The dif in question to the above is [36] I have to say though the link the copyright tag uses is not specific and I didnt notice a direct copyright violation in the article description to the websites "FAQ", "Introduction" or "What is" section. I believe the issue is specifically the stories being used, however we have to assertain who does own those stories. If they are ghost stories and wise tales from a time past then I do not believe they need to be attributed. If they are taken word for word but Sceptic Dictionary doesnt own it either, then the real owner needs to be found, or its copy right status obtained. --NuclearUmpf 17:07, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

User:THB has recently engaged in Wikistalking against Askolnick, as evidenced by his suddenly involving himself in a variety of articles that Askolnick has contributed to. See here, here, here, here, here, and just for good measure, he did it once with me: here. KarlBunker 19:17, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, KarlBunker and Askolnick have taken it upon themselves to revert any changes I have made in articles in trying to remove POV. They have worked in tandem to avoid the 3RR rule, which KarlBunker has violated multiple times. See Natasha Demkina for an example, which KarlBunker deliberately fails to mention. I have tried not to complain about it because the behaviour they exhibit speaks for itself, especially on the talk page for Telepathy which has been blocked for several days because of their disruptive behaviour. -THB 19:36, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks THB, I did forget to mention Natasha Demkina; that's another article where Askolnick has been a long-time contributor, and you, as of today, decided to start making edits too. That makes a total of 7 incidents of Wikistalking. KarlBunker 19:46, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Please review my block in this matter

I'm not the ideal admin to look into this, as I'm on friendly terms with Askolnick, but I took a look anyway, as it's been sitting here without admin attention for pretty long. I ask other admins to please review my actions. I agree with Askolnick and Karl Bunker that User:THB has been unwarrantably stalking and goading a fellow editor. (But he hasn't violated 3RR, not even close.) I consider this a fairly heinous offence, and have blocked for 48 hours. Please see my block message here for rationale. Bishonen | talk 22:07, 21 September 2006 (UTC).

I had been looking at this trying to sort it out. I think Bishonen's block is appropriate. Tom Harrison ^Talk 22:13, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Two admins + two other editors vs.....me

Hi, I believe that I've been the victim of a Wikibullying (for lack of a better word). To make a long story short: Somehow, within the span of 10 minutes after I had posted a comment on user:Konstable's talk page and deleted his comments from my talk page, three separate users singled out my talk page (out of a few hundred thousand talk pages and 1.3 million articles on WP, somehow all three users just happened to hone in on mine), reverted my edits, and aggresively threatened to assess various penalties against me, barely explaining themselves, if at all.

For the long story (necessary to understand what I'm talking about), featuring the names of those involved, relevant links -- my AMA request for assistance talks about it in detail.

I wanted to bring the case to the attention of other Wiki admins, get their feedback on the matter, their opinions, etc. Tell me if I'm wrong, if the other people are wrong, if both of us are wrong, etc. J.R. Hercules 08:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Side note - previously brought up here. – Chacor 08:25, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I do not understand why people come here complaining about talk page removal. The person obviously got your message if they deleted it, especially since they replied, so what is their to complain about? The issue was the Lenin article, which they acknowledged that post, deleted it, and responded on the Lenin article over. To keep adding tags when the person has already removed one seems like unnecessary escalation of the issue. Adding tags so they get removed so more tags can be added really serves no point. --NuclearUmpf 08:42, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

People come here to complain about it because it is routinely used to harass them. There is a line in Wikipedia:Vandalism which says that users are not allowed to remove "valid warnings" from their talk pages. It was added without consensus about nine months ago, has been removed repeatedly ever since, but just as frequently restored. It's a wonderful practice ostensibly intended to make it easier to see past warnings (because page histories are just too darned tricky) whose sole actual purpose seems to be to facilitate harassment of users. In the above case, Konstable placed a message (regular discussion) on Hercules's talk page and Hercules removed it. Konstable then restored the message with a new one warning him that people aren't supposed to remove things from their talk page - which was of course not true, it is sometimes seen as incivil but not prohibitted. Hercules removed it again, Chacor restored and added a warning against removing warnings (which was also invalid since Hercules had done nothing against policy in the first place), Hercules removed again, Glen S restored again with another stern warning, Hercules complained, Konstable added a new warning against being incivil in complaining about their actions, et cetera. Blatant harassment and I'm gonna block the lot of them if they don't cut it out. That 'no removing warnings' concept is bad enough when it is applied 'correctly', but when it is used as a pretext to enforce false warnings it is atrocious and nothing short of deliberate harassment. --CBD 12:18, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Correction - The first reversion was Hello32020 restoring comments made by Konstable - rather than Konstable doing so himself as I originally thought. Apologies for the mixup, but... same problem. --CBD 12:56, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

This does not have to be deliberate harassment, could just be an overinterpretation of policy and a failure to assume good faith on all sides, including, suprisingly, you, CBD. The "don't remove warnings" makes perfect sense used against standard IP vandalism, but is stupid when used against good faith users where it only helps to inflame the situation. Kusma (討論) 12:30, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it is possible that this is just 'overinterpretation of policy'... but in application that is still harassment. And it gets used this way far more often than 'against standard IP vandalism' in my experience. IP vandals rarely bother to remove warnings... and when they do it is easily visible in the page history. This is a practice which routinely serves to aggravate contributors and provides no benefit except saving the need to click on 'page history' to see if an IP vandal has been warned before. --CBD 12:56, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Umm hello. I have never removed any content from Herucle's talk page. I have put a note asking him to respond to them rather than just remove them, but that was not even a "warning", they were my own words asking him for collaboration. Neither have I ever collaborated with the other people who are also "harrassing" him. Enough accusations? Let's look at the page history before throwing words? I think I assumed enough good faith when I tried to talk to him after he called a bunch of editors "idiots" and tagged their article {{NPOV}} without much decent explanation other than asking them to "ban Lenin fan editors". Eventually he participated in discussion on the page in question, to some extent, which is what I was asking for all along! I am not "out to get him". I don't know why the other editors/admins were reverting him, ask them, don't accuse me.--Konstable 12:59, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

See correction/apology from earlier above. I attributed the action to the wrong person. --CBD 13:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Just a note on what the last warning on his page was referring to - things like accusations of "us" targetting him, asking Chacor to "stop pretending to be an admin", accusing Hello32020 of VP abuse, more accusations of sock/meat puppetry and asking me not to edit "other peoples'" pages.--Konstable 13:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

The first and third are completely civil and accurate complaints about mis-treatment he had received, the second and fifth contain minor incivility in asking people to leave him alone, and the fourth is politely worded but assumes bad faith in suggesting that the reason for the sudden innundation of users to his page were some kind of puppetry. You'd have a better case for an incivility warning with some of his earlier statements and actions, but the multiple false warnings/threats he received were every bit as bad. --CBD 13:30, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I support blocking the harassing parties for 24 hours, doubling each time they repeat their actions. There is a centralized discussion on this matter. People should use common sense when multiple guidelines overlap. I haven't looked at the actions of J.R.Hercules yet, those are separate and may still need reviewing. Kim Bruning 15:27, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't consider warning someone over WP:OWN (in relation to WP:USER, and not in the article sense) harassment; has that changed? – Chacor 15:30, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Several people were engaged in an edit war with J.R. Hercules on his own talk page. In edit wars in user space, the user does own his page, and always gets the benefit of the doubt. Other parties get blocked for 24 hours. Kim Bruning 15:36, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

At best the issue here is overenforcement of policy. I see no reason to presume that anyone was intending to harasse anyone else and in any event blocks should be preventative not punitive. And no there is in no way shape or form any policy that edit warring on someone's own talk page somehow gives them a benefit of the doubt and somehow requires us to block the involved users. This has neither a policy nor a common sense basis. Everyone should just go back to editing. JoshuaZ 15:39, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Policy is no excuse. No one has successfully used the "befehl ist befehl" defence in the last 60 years or so.

If the rules contradict proper human decency, then human decency wins.

Of course, in this case the editors in question also simply violated our no edit warring policy. This was never repealed, though an additional electric fence has been added at WP:3RR. I don't know if 3 reverts have been reached yet, but it should still be quite alright to block people earlier, especially now they're aware of the fact.

So there you go, block them for either or both, I don't mind. Perhaps 48 hours is more appropriate, because they used "policy" as an excuse? Kim Bruning 15:53, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Kim a) as to your referrence to befehl ist befehl are you trying to be uncivil or are deliberately invoking Godwin's law and/or the Reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy? To be blunt, if I weren't an involved user I'd be considering blocking you for that completely inappropriate comment. We don't block people for trying to enforce policy- it doesn't accomplish anything. If soemeone committs genocide and claims they are following Wiki policy maybe then you might have a point. b) A handful of edits don't constitute an edit war and again it has stopped and blocks are better preventative than punitive. c) So now you are advocating increasing block time for people since they thought they can plausibly say they were following policy? This is the most inverted application of WP:AGF I have ever seen. JoshuaZ 16:05, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Errr, the gentleman with the funny moustache never actually tried that defence. He committed suicide, remember? (leaving you holding the godwin reference.)

The nuremburg defence is a particular defence that was at first attempted by both sides in the trials following the 2nd world war, and is still important today. Judges have consistently ruled that it's not a valid defence.

People in countries like Germany and Holland still occaisionally quote those decisions to people who have become blinded by bureaucracy.

What I'm trying to say is "I was just following policy" is never a valid defence for any action. This is one of my core beliefs, and I base it on the history of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Even so, that may well be moot. These users were not following guidelines at all. They were edit warring, after all. I'm pretty sure there are no current guidelines that permit edit warring. If the edit war had been continuing at this time, I believe the users should have been blocked. Kim Bruning 16:23, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Godwin's law refers to references to Nazis in general and argumentum ad hitlerum is often used to have that more general meaning as well (Godwin's law is explicit in that regard, read the page). You are also confusing "I was just following orders" when that result has an immoral or radically harmful aftereffect with good faith editors causing a minor inconvenience. To even see them in the same category as all is simply ridiculous and offensive. JoshuaZ 20:48, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Goodness, I really seem to have offended you. Where I live it's a common saying "we've done away with befehl ist befehl you know", when someone is overapplying the rules. I really wasn't thinking in any overblown sense <blink>. I'd better leave you a note on your talk page too. Kim Bruning 12:01, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Please stop fanning the flames here. Blcoking is preventative, not punitive. Kusma (討論) 15:58, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Sure, but we can block next time, right? Kim Bruning 16:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC) that, and shhh, you're ruining the whole good_cop/bad_cop thing here. ;-)

User talk ≠ user page. No one owns one's own user talk, and saying "please don't edit other peoples talk pages" and "do not edit my page again" should not be accepted. JoshuaZ hit the nail on the head. – Chacor 15:40, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreeing also with Chacor here and Kim if you think people do own their talk pages I strongly suggest you review the associated policy pages. JoshuaZ 16:05, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

You own your user talk, it is a page in your own user space. You may even choose not to use it or to redirect it, though people might find you somewhat uncommunicative if you do.Kim Bruning 15:53, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

You do not own your user or user talk page, it is still freely editable (this is a wiki) and policy can be enforced there if people abuse the page (for example by using copyrighted images there in violation of WP:FU). Kusma (討論) 15:58, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Sure, if you look at it that way. But in general the pages are for use by the user. Kim Bruning 16:05, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

"look at it that way" in this context seems to mean "if you care about commonsense and/or policy" Kim, making comments on ANI where you don't know or don't care about the accepted practice and/or the relevant policies really isn't helpful. The signal to noise ratio here is already poor. JoshuaZ 16:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this is a wiki... but if I tried to redesign your user page or even your user talk page the way >I< wanted it and kept reverting your attempts to restore it I would get blocked for harassment. That is 'common sense' and/or policy. It has always been that way. --CBD 16:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Do you dsee a distinction at all between redesigning someone's user page and leaving a message on the talk page just maybe? And note that in fact we willfully redesign problematic user pages all the time that are attack pages or have fair use images on them or a few different things. JoshuaZ 20:48, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I'll call. :-) Could you reference the pages in question? I do know I was recently looking in on the centralized discussion where this is being discussed, and I don't think final conclusions have been drawn on this issue. You now know my own position, in any case. If you like, I invite you to participate in that discussion and convince people of your own position. Kim Bruning 16:36, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

The relevant section on not owning user pages is Wikipedia:Talk#User_talk_pages (although now that I look at it again, it doesn't look as unambiguous as I remembered it). JoshuaZ 20:48, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Comment: J. R. Hercules expresses astonishment (and possibly suspicion and/or sarcasm) about three users who "singled out my talk page (out of a few hundred thousand talk pages and 1.3 million articles on WP, somehow all three users just happened to hone in on mine)" - This is actually quite usual and ordinary on Wikipedia. It is very likely the users in question had Konstable's talk page watchlisted. I have a couple hundred user talk pages watchlisted myself.

Puppy also concurs with JoshuaZ. This is a tempest in a teapot. KillerChihuahua^?!? 15:44, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

(multiple edit conflicts) So long as it stops I don't think anyone needs to get blocked. But we have to do something to prevent this from happening over and over again. There is a different case of the same thing further up the page here. Any practice which encourages users to engage in harassment and edit-warring just can't be a good thing. Even when used 'right'. In this case... Chacor, look at what you restored [37]. A week old request that the user respond, which they had actually done by then, and an incorrect warning that they aren't allowed to remove discussion from their page. What need was there for that? How does forcing the user to keep that stuff on his talk page do anything except annoy him? --CBD 15:48, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Comment. Then clarify the policy that it only applies to vandalism warnigns maybe? JoshuaZ 16:05, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Limiting it to vandalism warnings, if you could get the people who keep inserting it into WP:VAND to agree, would vastly reduce the frequency that this gets used to antagonize people, but there are still going to be tons of cases where people mis-label NPOV issues and other content disputes as 'vandalism' and then enforce display of those false warnings. Better to just remove the practice of encouraging edit-warring entirely. It's just a really bad idea. --CBD 16:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Awww, we get to block them next time though, right? Kim Bruning 16:00, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Heh. :] --CBD 16:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Comment: Thanks to all who've provided feedback here. I appreciate the time you've taken to review and discuss my request.

A couple things I'd like to clarify here. One, though I probably should have made my sarcasm more clear, I did not mean to imply that sockpuppets were actually being used. I did, however, intend to convey my impression that some "ganging-up" and singling-out against me was taking place. If I am wrong on that, I apologize. But it struck me as an odd coincidence that the reversions on my talk page happened one right-after-the other within the span of ten or so minutes...

Second, from my end, I've always thought that Wikipedia "warnings" were warning banners, and I'm confused (as I was during the time of the edit war) by Chacor's characterization of his and the other non-banner edits as "warnings". Konstable did eventually put an actual warning banner on my page (which I'd like to archive or delete, if permitted), but that was after the initial edit sparring.

Last, though I know that users don't really "own" their talk pages, I was under the impression there's an understanding among Wikipedians that editing user talk pages (excluding adding comments; I mean specifically moving things around, deleting things, etc.) was the province of the user in question, and not other editors (except in extreme cases). I had once edited an admin's talk page to separate from my comments those of an anon user who added comments right after mine; he added his comments in a way that made it appear that I had made those extra comments. The admin messaged me to say he didn't appreciate me editing his talk page, and that it was his place to edit his own talk page. Hence, the comments I placed on Chacor and Konstable's pages. (Incidentally, Chacor just happens to have a disclaimer on his own talk page stating his prerogative to delete unfriendly comments...)

Again, though, thanks for the feedback. Points taken and lesson learned from my end. J.R. Hercules 18:03, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Responding to some of J.R. Hercules's comments above:

"it struck me as an odd coincidence that the reversions on my talk page happened one right-after-the other within the span of ten or so minutes"

I'm not going to speculate too much, but one possibility may have been the users being on recent changes patrol. However, that's only a theory, and may be totally wrong...

"...actual warning ... (which I'd like to archive or delete, if permitted)"

I think archiving would be best in this situation, taking into account the above free-for-all. Instructions can be found by following that link.

"Last, though I know that users don't really "own" their talk pages ... [insert the example here, removed for reduction of quoted material] ... prerogative to delete unfriendly comments)"

Generally, only vandalism is removed from talk pages. There is another free-for-all raging over the removal of personal attacks and blatant incivility on talk pages, and currently it is accepted that it is the perogutive (sp?) of the user, within reason, to remove such comments. Hence the disclaimer on Chacor's page. Unless added in a totally incorrect situation (ie. the user has never actually edited the page which they "vandalised" - it happened to me once...), it is my interpretation that warnings don't fall under this "personal attack/civility removal thing. I may be wrong, and it is simply my interpretation. Cheers, Daniel.Bryant 03:39, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Stop this discussion now

I will not participate in this discussion where two users have harrassed and threatened me over things I have never done! Forgive me if this font looks a bit over the top, but I have had enough of people not reading my comments and harrassing me with fabricated accusations of incivil behaviour, threats and edit wars on Hercules' page, and this is the only way I can think of to get everyone to actually look at what happened rather than read CPD's false accusations: I have NEVER reverted Hercules' page, not once, 0 revert rule; I have NEVER made any incivil comments against Hercules; I have NEVER told him he is not allowed to edit his talk page and remove content from it - I have informed him that it is "not courteous" (my exact words) to clear his talk page without responding, and asked him to participate in discussion rather than clear his talk page ("Please" is not the same as "you must or you will be blocked" nor is it the same as "this is against policy") and I never reverted him or even asked him to revert it. If someone disagrees with ANY of these, wants to throw accusations or threaten blocks: provide diffs, read and comment on them. Otherwise I consider these unfounded accusations to be harrassment. WP:AGF.--Konstable 20:32, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Um... you might consider the possibility that when people don't use your name... they maybe aren't talking about you. :] --CBD 20:49, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Asdf, yes, CBD is right. Sorry for that above post which is spurred by a 90% misunderstanding, I withdraw any comments regarding CBD harrassing me. With a huge load of work in real life which is only piling up and just 4 hours of sleep I am a bit stressed off-wiki (hence my supposed wiki-break). I had only skipped through the discussion this (GMT+12 for me) morning and saw a couple more accusations of me putting bad warnings on keeping content on his talk page, plus Kim there saying: "I support blocking the harassing parties for 24 hours" and some other uninformed and provocative comments such as: "Awww, we get to block them next time though, right?"--130.216.191.184 22:55, 21 September 2006 (UTC) (Konstable not signed in)

Awww :-( No of course not you, if you weren't edit warring, it doesn't apply to you. Sorry if that added even more stress to your otherwise stressful day. Certain other people do deserve to be told off though. Kim Bruning 11:54, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Can we please try and be civil and not get into a discussion about one another?? User:LiverpoolCommander (not logged in) --82.42.237.173 12:04, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Blanking talk pages

hi - is it ok for users to blank their talk pages? Illwauk did: [38]. Not a dog 16:36, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes it is, its preffered they archive it for ease of reading, but its not required. You can always find where they blanked it and just look at the dif to see how it was just before the blanking. A link is an example [39] though I believe you already know your way through difs by your own edit. --NuclearUmpf 16:58, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

The blanking and deleting of talk pages has gotten more liberal recently. If people make enough of a fuss or have powerful connections, it will usually be deleted. However, there is a good chance that another admin will undelete the page, especially if the other admin is an enemy, the admin is absolutist about keeping talk pages or the person whose talk page is being deleted is not well connected. If a user really wants his or her talk page deleted, they could politely ask Jimbo to do it (he's busy, so ask someone else first). He does not see it as a big deal since the editors who want their talk pages deleted are usually not very good contributors (if I remember correctly) and (I suspect) because the value of the talk pages are less than the ill will that keeping them generates. Also, admins are unlikely to undelete pages deleted by Jimbo.

I think the policy on the talk pages should be changed to make it more fair for the people who are not well connected or complainers. I suggest giving users three choices in decreasing desirability. The first option would be to archive everything on their talk page and just leave links to the archives and, if they want, a note asking people not to post additional messages. Having the page protected to prevent additional messages would also be an option. This option would leave contents of the talk page intact and in an easy to read form. The second option would be to blank their talk page and talk page archives and either leave a note or have the page(s) protected. The old versions of the page could still be seen in the history by all users, but it is not as convenient as archiving. The third option would be to have the talk page and archives deleted. Only admins would be able to see the old versions and the convenience for them is less than blanking, since you either have to read the source or use the preview button, which does not always work. However, the page could be restored if needed, as long as there is not another crash that wipes out the deleted pages. The value of an intact talk page would be explained on the policy page and editors would be encouraged to simply archive them, but they would be able to choose which one of the three options they would like. -- Kjkolb 04:34, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I am very much against blanking/deleting of talk pages for active users, as there are many reasons why one might want to look at past conduct. I think they should be archived. If the user leaves the project, then that is a different matter. Tyrenius 20:48, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Another Tonetare identity

Is it possible to shift up the temporary block on this IP to indefinite? It's just another IP associated with the banned User Tonetare/Taretone - a good list of his activities can be found [40] here when he was using a sock to carry off abuse. It's a static IP so the innocent should be unharmed. Otherwise as soon as the temporary ban is lifted he's be straight back to his ranting abusive ways. --Charlesknight 18:54, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

He's not banned. Sarah Ewart (the blocking admin) and I (an involved admin) agreed, following his 2 week block, that she would instate a month block, which has been applied to his 3 accounts. If he returns and continues abuse, then he should be quickly blocked again for, I would say, 3 months. There has not been any significant attempt to disguise the fact that he was running these 3 accounts. Basically he stopped using one and switched to another with a similar name, and his IP had previously been revealed to me anyway. Tyrenius 20:45, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Privacy protection

Once more there is a dispute over proposed policy that I think would benefit from the vision of admins, especially as they're the ones who would be enforcing it. The issue is protecting children's privacy, and there are two drafts on the table.

The original draft is based on the U.S. COPPA law and makes it illegal for editors to state they're <13 years old under 13 to list personal details, and any information indicating such should be summarily removed, and editors who repeatedly state their young age should be blocked. Opponents claim that this does not actually protect children due to the arbitrary limit, is easily gamable by lying about your age, and has the side effect of blocking potentially good editors, and that legal issues should be deferred to the Board.

The newer draft is based on common sense and advises people not to post personal information because it may be abused, and recommends people to contact Oversight if they want information on themselves removed. Opponents claim that this wrongly puts the responsibility with young editors who should be held incapable of judging for themselves, it lacks "teeth" since it doesn't call for blocks, and has the side effect of subjecting Wikipedia to expensive lawsuits like the Xanga case.

Comments on Wikipedia talk:Protecting children's privacy please. Of course everyone agrees that people who post personal information on others should be banned, that's not the issue. Other than that, there appears to be some sort of vote going on between the two versions. So far, no attempt has been made to reconcile the two, but that may be an option. >Radiant< 22:34, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Radiant, you have been persistently misstating the proposal. The draft you point to does not prohibit users from stating they are under 13. It merely says that any user who chooses to do so, is prohibited from also posting personal information such as real name, phone number, home address. It is not about preventing children from being children, but merely about preventing them from being victimized in real life by people who might use personally identifying information from Wikipedia against them. An alternate version that would have prevented people from declaring they are under 13 has been discarded. Dragons flight 22:43, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

• Sorry, DF, I must have had the older version in mind, and I have amended my words above. >Radiant< 23:03, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Just to point out, the new draft was put in place in the middle of an attempt to clarify positions on the old draft. I will keep my opinions as to the ethics of that to myself. Captainktainer * Talk 22:39, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

• It's not really an attempt to clarify - the main proponent of the proposal made misleading and obfuscatory summaries of everybody else's opinion, then asked everyone to comment again, in effect leading to the same debate once more. >Radiant< 23:03, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Discussion can and should continue, of course, but wasn't this issue presented to the Office for a legal review? Have we heard anything? Newyorkbrad 04:03, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Summarizing opinions and asking people to provide an easily-scannable opinion so as to better judge opinion is a form of straw poll. Yes, that doest qualify as clarification. Captainktainer * Talk 13:48, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

• I have not heard of anyone asking Office, Brad Patrick or Jimbo about this. It would be a good idea though. >Radiant< 21:42, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

User:Rule by Secrecy = User:Thewolfstar

Look at the recent user contributions. I'd post a link, but I'm on the run. --AaronS 23:50, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Wow. I assumed good faith on WhiskeyRebellion, but this is a bit much. The two unrelated edits to throw us off the scent and an immediate throw-in on Anarchism are some of the clearest evidence of a sock I've ever seen. I'd recommend a CheckUser and block. Captainktainer * Talk 01:14, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

As soon as one is banned, another one appears User:Andromeda466, see [41]. Donnacha 10:50, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Both blocked. I hereby announce that I will no longer bother CheckUser with the wolfster sock-oh-rama at Anarchism. Just drop a note on my page. Well, not more than three a day, please. Bishonen | talk 12:23, 22 September 2006 (UTC).

User:Forestbot

As ForestH2 has been blocked; his bot should be blocked too, shouldn't it? Aquafish talk 23:55, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Blocked. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 00:10, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Isn't Aquafish clearly a sock as well? look at the edit history! --Charlesknight 00:18, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Nope, I'm no sock of ForestH2. I'm interested in Politics and SpongeBob, not like him. Aquafish talk 00:21, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Backlog on Category:Candidates for speedy deletion

The number of articles for speedy deletion is almost 200. Admin help appreciated. — ERcheck (talk) 01:11, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Bah. There are times I wish I was an admin so I could help out with that particular task. Out of curiosity, why is there a backlog of that size? I was under the impression that everyone and his brother promised to help clear CSD in their RFAs. Captainktainer * Talk 01:19, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

You can't keep watch over it 24/7, and every so often someone goes on a tagging (or vandalism!) spree, inflating it. --InShaneee 01:23, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Also a lot of those listed are listed for reasons of needing to do history mergers which can be complicated and confusing and a lot of admins (by a lot I mean me) don't like doing it. JoshuaZ 01:34, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

That makes sense and has banished some of my ignorance related to the topic. Hmm... how does one get practice with those sorts of tasks without having admin tools, I wonder? Captainktainer * Talk 01:36, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, if you know anything about IRC, you can use the Anti-Vandalism IRC channel to help identify and tag vandalism in the recent changes. That way, as an admin, you can more easily find and delete it yourself. --InShaneee 01:39, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm working on the backlog now. 86 pages left as of now hoopydink^{Conas tá tú?} 01:41, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

You can always go through and remove stuff that aren't really valid candidates, if you're a non-admin. Probably will get grief for doing that from people, but I know when I'm going through the CAT:CSD it seems like there are quite a few where I just remove the tags and suggest prod/afd, but it's not a good idea to speedy. Or you could notify page creators on their talk pages (especially of speedy copyvios). Really tedius stuff, but it sure would look good on your RfA! Yeah... --W.marsh 02:10, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, and that work would be appreciated since this crap takes forever. (Looks like we're almost done now, I'm amazed at how much faster some people are at this than I am). Although to be clear, if you do that you should be doing that to get useful experience and to help out not to pad your RfA resume. JoshuaZ 02:13, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not interested in padding my RfA resume, believe me. I'm still not certain if I ever want to go through the rigors of an RfA - nasty stuff happens there, and the consequences from one recent RfA ended up driving one valued if controversial contributor from the project, and another valued if acerbic contributor to temporarily leave, then come back filled with anger. I don't envy admins one bit. However, I do think I'll keep an eye on CSD and try to identify non-speedy candidates in the future - I hadn't thought about that particular way to help the project. Captainktainer * Talk 02:31, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I guarantee your RfA wouldn't be anywhere near that controversial. We could always use more good admins. :-) Grandmasterka 02:49, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Yesterday when I decided to check it there were only 10 entries! It can go up fairly quickly. Grandmasterka 02:30, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

The magic monitor has seen anywhere between 0 and 1291 entries, with an average of 121. Dragons flight 02:57, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Random thought. Would people like an automated notice posted here when CSD gets big? Dragons flight 06:55, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Good idea! Especially if it could also be removed automatically when the backlog's cleared up. Grandmasterka 07:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Only if it can be removed per GMka, and probably at WP:AN rather than "here". Maybe give it its own floating templatebox that can be pasted in/removed when the danger is past? I'm worried that it'll cycle in-and-out too fast, though... -- nae'blis 07:04, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

That in-and-out thing is known as flapping (probably from Route flapping), and it isn't too hard to suppress. Dragons flight, if you need anti-flapping code, drop me a line. Ditto if you aren't likely to get to this. I've been meaning to build a Wikipedia bot, and this seems like a nice, simple starting point. Thanks, William Pietri 10:02, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Need help with socks of banned user Cretanpride

Can someone please have a look at Homosexuality in ancient Greece? I've decided to only revert twice and wanted to know what other people think I should do. Thanks. —Khoikhoi 01:22, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

This page has been protected for now, work out the content dispute on the talk page. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:33, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Is it considered a content dispute when dealing with permabanned users? —Khoikhoi 01:35, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

No. It isn't. I'm unprotecting. Feel free to revert as many times as necessary and report any socks here for banning if they are obvious or report to checkuser if you have any doubts. JoshuaZ 02:01, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. Cheers. —Khoikhoi 02:14, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

User:Duskanddawn

Duskanddawn (talk · contribs) has uploaded three identical copies of some guy's flaccid johnson. The filenames are:

(Apparently I am also unversed in how to make image file names show up as links instead of the actual image...)

• 02:38, September 22, 2006 (hist) (diff) Image:Male Pubic Hair2.jpg (top) [rollback]
• 01:54, September 22, 2006 (hist) (diff) Image:Male Pubic Hair 1.jpg (top) [rollback]
• 01:34, September 22, 2006 (hist) (diff) Image:Male Pubic Hair.jpg (top) [rollback]

He's also edited Pubic hair to include one of these pictures. These are his only contributions.

While I am more than happy to assume good faith, I suspect we don't need three identical copies of the same guy's weiner. However, I am unversed in image deletion policy. So I solicit the help of my fellow admins, who may know more about image deletion policy than I do.

All the best,
Ξxtreme Unction|_{yakkity yak}
02:47, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

FYI, syntax for linking images is adding a colon before the page name [[:Image:MusicalnotesUK.svg]]-> Image:MusicalnotesUK.svg Naconkantari 02:58, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I think WP:IFD is your solution... you could ask for deletion on the grounds that its a picture of some guy's schlong with no known encyclopedic value. Herostratus 03:31, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

There are several such pics on the Pubic hair article, so I suspect any assertion that these pics are unencyclopedic would swiftly be met with the usual round of debate centered around the "Wikipedia is not censored" premise. Ξxtreme Unction|_{yakkity yak} 03:34, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Might be related to this warning. CovenantD 04:52, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

• Since I doubt the article is worksafe, I won't check, but if it already has similar images, then this one won't add anything the other images didn't already show. And 2 of the 3 images he uploaded can be deleted as obsolete. - Mgm|^(talk) 07:29, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Harrassment by Timmy12

I have asked Timmy12 to stop posting to my talk page. I have stopped posting to his, but since that time he has repeatly posted uncivil messages, at current count, seven times. Please intervene. —Hanuman Das 03:26, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

• But you only stopped posting today. Give him a little time, maybe. In the meantime, you can delete uncivil comments if you like. I'd bet he'll give up real soon. Herostratus 03:45, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

You wonder that I am irritated at Hanuman Das? And that makes a complaint to you? He has put the following on my user page (which is still there and I will probably get blocked or something if I remove it):

It is suspected that this user may be a sock puppet, meat puppet or impersonator of Mattisse. Please refer to Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Mattisse (3rd) for evidence. See block log Notes for the suspect Notes for the accuser

And the following on my talk page:

--Sockpuppetry case--

You have been accused of sockpuppetry. Please refer to Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Mattisse (3rd) for evidence. Please make sure you make yourself familiar with notes for the suspect before editing the evidence page. Hanuman Das 13:37, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Then he makes an administrative complaint you you about me because I get a little upset? What is going on? He has singled me out for some reason to harass. Why? I have never done anything to him and don't know why he has it in for me. I would like to complain about him and his behavior.

This Wikipedia is a rough place and not very nice to people who don't know all the ropes. Yes, I am beginning to feel hostile and not very friendly. No one has been friendly towards me here since day one. Timmy12 12:19, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

P.S. Am I allowed to remove any of this abuse from my pages, or will this result in further accussations from Hanuman Das and attempts to get me discipled or banned? Timmy12 12:19, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

P.S. again. He also put this on my talk page some days ago so you see his harassment of me is ongoing:

-- Sockpuppetry --

Hello, Mattisse. Looks like I'll have to open another sockpuppetry case when I have time. Ciao. —Hanuman Das 13:08, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Please get him to lay off me and stop calling me names. Timmy12 12:35, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

P.S.S. And this from my talk page earlier:

-- You again? --

Hello, Mattisse! -999 (Talk) 17:35, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

This is why I don't read my talk page. Everything is unfriendly and/or doesn't make sense. Calling someone Mattisse is a slur at Wikipedia I can see that.

Please get these people to lay off. Take a look at my talk page. I can't even read it. Are Hanuman Das and Hanuman Das sockpuppets? Timmy12 12:59, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Dealing with violations

Accounts operating in violation of this policy should be blocked indefinitely; the main account may be blocked at the discretion of any administrator. Non-administrators may list the accounts at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism or Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents, as befits the case.

Difficult cases where the nature and extent of sockpuppetry is unclear and where there is an ongoing problem may be listed at Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser for investigation. Please see that page for detailed policy. As the admins block with no evidence now at all and as you are an obvious sock, 69.164.74.68 of AaronS, who is on probation, you should be blocked indefinitely now. Or is it preferred we can just do an WP:RFCU. Andromeda466 09:05, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Can someone please take a look at Andromeda466 (talk · contribs) activities; he chiefly engages in wikistalking AaronS (talk · contribs) and Donnachadelong (talk · contribs) and it's likely a sockpuppet of someone; seems fairly knowledgeable about sockpuppets and tags for someone who arrived just today. Duja 10:59, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Just blocked for good...nothing but attacks for the most part...see[42]--MONGO 11:03, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Not 100% but it's probably another User:Thewolfstar puppet. --Woohookitty^(meow) 11:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I blocked Nrick indefinetely

Nrick (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log)

I noticed this user's talk page was full of orphanBot warnings going back several months, as well as a couple of "last warnings" both about removing {{tone}} tags from articles and unsourced uploads, so I blocked him for 24 hours on 20 September and asked him to please go over the relevant policy pages. This aparently had no effect as he today uploaded 3 more unsourced and untagged images and again removed several {{tone}} tags. The user have never made any talk or user talk edits to try and explain or excuse himself so I saw no reason to try increasingly long blocks and went straight to an indef blocked, he is obviously not interested in cooperation.

I don't often block people so I'm posting this here for review. If anyone can actualy establish communication with him I won't mind him beeing unblocked at some point if he makes it clear he understand what he has been doing wrong. --Sherool (talk) 11:25, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

• You gave them ample chance to correct their behavior on the 20th. If they don't heed your advice, I'm happy to support the block. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:54, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

• I am not opposing anything just pointing out that the articles that had the tone tag, when the tag is removed the formatting goes back to its correct setup. The tone tag on those pages is actually destroying the layout of the page. Also most of the images he uploaded are artist related. I am not sure how much experience the user had with responding to talk page etc. But some of the images being uploaded are perfectly legit album covers. Oddly it woul dhave taken less time to review the images and see they are fair use album covers, perhaps this is where a bot fails. --NuclearUmpf 12:24, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

  I went and tagged the appropriate ones as album covers. any were already deleted so i do not know what they were. Perhaps an admin can undelete them and see, and if they are album covers then tag them as such. --NuclearUmpf 12:31, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Bogus password reminders

Have now repeatedly received password reminders for my wikipedia account that I did not request myself. This is beginning to have all the hallmarks of spam.

Feeding the last such mail to spamcop, the originating IP address of the mail itself is identified as: 66.230.200.221 When I look this up with:

nslookup -type=ptr 66.230.200.221

It would appear to come from wikimedia.org:

Non-authoritative answer:

221.200.230.66.in-addr.arpa canonical name = 221.200.230.66.rev.wikimedia.org

221.200.230.66.rev.wikimedia.org name = mail.wikimedia.org

I assume this means it is sent genuinely by your systems and the contents of the mail is generated using your systems?

List of IP-addresses listed in the "(probably you, from IP address *)" clauses:

• 64.178.166.154 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
• 213.215.76.84 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
• 62.205.187.6 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
• 219.93.174.108 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

Notification: Starting with the next such mail I will start reporting these as spam. This may lead to blacklisting of your mail server and cancelation of your account with you ISP. You can prevent this by configuring your systems differently. The most obvious way to do this would seem to be to request a user to provide the correct password before it can be changed. (If you want to accomodate people who have forgotten their password by sending e-mail to them, why not ask for their e-mail address before you send the mail? A legitimate user must know her own mail address. Otherwise: how is she going to receive it anyway? A non legitimate user will no longer be able to bother other people with bogus password reminders. (Of course no feedback should be provided on the correctness of the e-mail address or this could be abused to discover e-mail addresses.))

Question: Am I right in guessing this is done in order to gain access to my account so as to be able to spam the wikipedia using my user name? Or would it just be someone trying to harass me? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 145.97.221.117 (talk • contribs) .

While this is a legitimate cause for concern, please see WP:NLT. – Chacor 12:41, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Wow slow down there is no legal threat there. I think he has a legitamate complaint and while I dont think the process will be changed over it, its obvious no legal action is being thrown around. Reporting SPAM as SPAM is not a legal action. --NuclearUmpf 12:45, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Good heavens, slow down sir. It is a feature of Wikipedia that anyone can type in a user name and click on "I forgot my password", in which case Wikipedia will mail a new one to your registered e-mail address. It seems you are being targeted for harrassment by someone else. Oddly, these IPs are from all over the world, which makes me think they may be open proxies. (One is Hearst Television in NYC. Does that ring a bell for you?) If you go into your preferences and remove your e-mail account for a few days the messages will stop. Also, you can ignore the messages and your current password will still work fine and the individual behind this is not receiving a copy of the messages or access to your account. Hope this helps. Thatcher131 13:53, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

See also: bugzilla:6427

—freak(talk) 18:12, Sep. 22, 2006 (UTC)

WITHDRAWN -- A number of StarHub IPs keep vandalising Microsoft articles in order to make a point

For a couple of days now, a user apparently working at StarHub has taken it upon himself to vandalise a number of Microsoft-related articles (including Windows Vista, Microsoft Office, MSN Messenger, and many more articles) in order to make some obscure point. One of there IPs, 218.186.8.10 explained the intention thusly:

• Wikipedia must help stop users from getting cheated by Microsoft.
• Wikipedia needs to stop anonymous editing.

Just in case you're wondering: I used to contribute to Wikipedia under an account, but I quit because I realized how much damage is done by allowing anonymous editing. And how unwilling admins were to deal with it.

And yes, I'm lucky. The last time I tried this, I got blocked after 1 round. This time, it took 6 rounds of vandalism to get blocked. Since you're an admin, why didn't you block? Actually, you should block all IPs for 61 years.

Right now, reverting his frequent vandalisms on the articles in question is keeping a considerable number of people on their toes, a situation which I personally find intolerable. Since blocking his IPs won't do him any good (he'll just reappear under another StarHub IP), I suggest the articles in question (see IPs' contrib lists) be temporarily blocked from anonymous edits, at least until he loses interest in this. Reasoning with him, I believe would not be effective, since he seems convinced that he is making a point. He is by some standards a kind of "open source terrorist", and I think the burdon is on Wikipedia to prove him wrong.

Some IP he has used in the past to vandalise Microaoft articles were: 218.186.9.2, 218.186.8.10, 218.186.9.4, 218.186.8.11.

Investigating their contributions shows, that they are mostly making helpful contributions — except to Microsoft articles.

Thank you for your Time, — Mütze 14:29, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

He's guilty of intentionally disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. I wouldn't be surprised if anywhere between an eighth to a quarter of Wikipedia's serious vandalism - if not more - is done by people trying to prove that anonymous editing is a terrible thing. Why don't they just go over to Citizendium, where their elitist attitude would fit in better? That being said, requests for page protection would be the appropriate place to go - that's where requests for semiprotection go. You're much more likely to get a fast response there. Captainktainer * Talk 15:03, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, his goal is prevent anonymous editing, which is a foundation issue. Just re-revert over and over. Sprotecting will give him what he wants. --Kevin_b_er 15:31, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I think you are right. If we forbid anonymous edits, he will simply create account after account. this would be moving in the wrong direction. The hassle of reverting him again and again is not that bad, and I think it really does prove him wrong. I withdraw my request, reverting him his the right thing to do. And thanks for this link CaptainKTaine, I did not know that page. — Mütze 19:09, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Spamming by User:Curiousfactory

User:Curiousfactory is a single-purpose account, all of whose edits have been to insert external links to websites which coincidentally happen to be run by a company called CuriousFactory Inc. The user has now been warned four times with the appropriate spam warning templates; s/he has ignored these warnings completely, neither responding with comments nor altering his/her behaviour.

It appears therefore that User:Curiousfactory is highly likely to be an agent or employee of CuriousFactory Inc. who is attempting to use Wikipedia to promote their products and websites. Any chance a friendly admin would be kind enough to take appropriate action? — Haeleth Talk 14:43, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Blocked indefinitely by Ashibaka. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 14:56, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Willingsworth High School

Can someone check what's going on on this page? The edits seem to be vandalism-like, but not obvious vandalism, and I've already reverted it 3 times today. --ais523 14:51, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Looks vandalism like to me as well. Taken care of.  :-) Can't sleep, clown will eat me 14:58, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Antisemitic nonsense links

See contribs of this user. Repeatedly adding nonsense links to Talk:Israel and Talk:Iraq War and again and again adding antisemitic material on other pages. note: I am off until sunday night because of Rosh Hashana --Daniel575 | (talk) 15:08, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Coordinated harassment by -999 ,;Hanuman Das and Ekajati

The following message calling me Mattisse was left on my talk page:

---

Hello, Mattisse! -999 (Talk) 17:35, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

---

Hello, Mattisse. Looks like I'll have to open another sockpuppetry case when I have time. Ciao. —Hanuman Das 13:08, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

---

You have been accused of sockpuppetry. Please refer to Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Mattisse (3rd) for evidence. Please make sure you make yourself familiar with notes for the suspect before editing the evidence page. Hanuman Das 13:37, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

---

The results of the sockpuppet accussations are at the link below in which I was found justified in my tagging of articles and not a sockpuppet. Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Mattisse (3rd)

Of the 5 articles mentioned in the complaint, four had been edited by 999 (Talk, three by Hanuman Das and four by Ekajati who has been using reverting to remove my tags extensively lately.

Ekajati is currently blocked for 8 hours for violating the 3 revert rule, but the last two messages on his talk page are from Hanuman Das. All of the articles in the complaint were edited by at least one of the above editors. Four were edited by more than one.

I believe the above three users are either the same person or working in concert to harass me and trying to drive me away from Wikipedia. There may be others involved, as all the messages on my talk page are extensively negative and lengthy ones. And most appeared in the last few days after 999 left his message. All the eccessively long ones were after his. I don't believe this is a coincidence, especially given that the finding of the sockpuppet mediator were that he agreed with my tags and the extensive negativity on my talk page seems unwarranted.

Please help me by stopping the harassment, unless you really do want me to leave Wikipedia, which I am beginning to think the powers that be do want. What should I do? Timmy12 15:24, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I would advise all parties to cool it, and make no more sockpuppet accusations until there is available Checkuser evidence. In exchange, Timmy12, I'd recommend leaving no further messages on Hanuman Das' page. The best solution to this dispute is for all parties to disengage. Captainktainer * Talk 17:16, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Using a User page for advertising

A new user, User:Cpf, appears to have created a user page dedicated to advertising a real estate venture/agency. Looking through Wikipedia:User page, there does not appear to be any guideline being explicitly violated but advertising does seem to violate the spirit of the guideline. Any other admins have recommendations on what actions, if any, are needed to best handle this type of situation? --Allen3 ^talk 15:56, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

• Eliminating these is one of the principal activities of Wikipedia:Miscellany for Deletion. Notify the user about WP:SPAM, and if they don't respond, place {{subst:md1}} on their userpage and take it from there. (Filing an MfD is like filing an AfD, only without the category.) I wouldn't suggest taking action without debating it there first. --ais523 16:06, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
• Talk to the user about contributing. Suggest that Yellowikis is the place for this sort of thing, and that a Wikipedia user page should relate to one's activities as an encyclopaedist. (At Yellowikis, this business would warrant a main namespace article, although Yellowikis doesn't want straight copies and pastes, either.) If the user shows no interest in contributing, nominate the user page for deletion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion. Uncle G 16:18, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
• Just blank it and leave them a note telling them why. Deleting it is overkill, and takes too long for an action that's pretty clearly the right thing to do. --Improv 16:31, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Disputed territory

What is the policy on disputed territory with regard to official size statistics? Antartica is disputed territory. Taiwan is disputed territory. Is there a quick and easy way to deal with whether the US or China is number three in total area? See [43] and List of countries and outlying territories by total area. WAS 4.250 16:46, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Can someone close an AfD?

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Footmen Wars
I nominated two articles a day or two ago except it now turns out they've already been through the deletion process (which I didn't notice at the time) and are eligible for speedying under CSD G4. Normally I'd do it myself but since I'm the nominator I thought someone else better do it. -- Steel 16:53, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Article name changes can make old AFD discussions hard to find. If you tag the articles with {{db-g4}} (I just did, for these two) and they are speedied, then the AFDs can be closed as moot by pretty much anyone. Cheers. -- nae'blis 17:22, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Usman Hashmi (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Keeps creating non-notable articles about his family. ~ Flameviper 17:09, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

72.10.107.101

This user has been warned multiple times of vandalism. I found another instance not noted: Censor I suggest perm ban. He has done nothing constructive.

Thanks. -Domiko 17:24, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

This looks like a case of simple vandalism, and because it is potentially a shared IP, and the vandalism has been isolated edits stretched over several months, a ban/block/etc. is really overkill. If such vandalism becomes problematic in the short term (i.e., multiple vandal edits in a matter of minutes/hours) then in the future, such reports should be made to WP:AIV. Cheers. --PeruvianLlama^(spit) 17:56, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

User talk:AlexWilkes

Please would an experienced admin run an eye over the contributions and the talk page for this editor. A flurry of articles with no obvious notability recently, a set of talk page warnings over that behaviour in the past, and a load of wasted time with AfD (etc) nominations. Of course, you may think differently. I don't want to go the request for comment route and waste yet more time if this can be solved easily. Fiddle Faddle 17:21, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Can I second this - take a look at his history, he's creating a lot of work for people and REFUSES to communicate with other editors. I really think he should be blocked until he agrees to at least talk to other editors! --Charlesknight 00:02, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Another User:Pnatt sock

• Superju6 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

I would like this sock indef blocked for its obvious attempt to mock/mimic my user name. Thanks. ju66l3r 17:42, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Indefblocked by User:Naconkantari. --PeruvianLlama^(spit) 17:59, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Possible threat

I found this possible threat against Tawker (talk · contribs) on Tawkerbot4's talk page: [44]

That edit is about a week old, and while we can indef block the IP, I don't know what good it will do. Captainktainer * Talk 18:51, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry too much about that, I think it's just trolling. Also, we generally don't indef blocke IPs, since even if they're not AOL or something like that, they can still be used by multiple people. --Mr. Lefty _{Talk to me!} 21:19, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

AIAV is chock full of vandals to be checked

As at 19:28 UTC --Anchoress 19:30, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

As of then two of us were busy blocking ;) Petros471 19:36, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Some classic Thewolfstar

This anonymous IP sock of User:Thewolfstar should be blocked. [45] It's a classic example. --AaronS 21:38, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Done. --InShaneee 21:45, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. --AaronS 22:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Cruddler

Cruddler (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) appears to be a vandalism only account. Created and immediately started messing up articles. Please just put him out of our missery. Thanks. --StuffOfInterest 22:47, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Blocked. Please use WP:AIV in the future for cases like these. Naconkantari 22:49, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

User:Greg Bear

I noticed we have a user named User:Greg Bear who has edited the Greg Bear article. How does Wiki confirm or deny that this is the real Greg Bear? And if it is the real Bear, should he be editing his own bio?

Reported by: Atlant 19:06, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I asked. We'll see where it goes from there. KillerChihuahua^?!? 20:20, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks!

Atlant 00:32, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I've sent a message to Greg Bear through private channels. He should know the difficulties that people can get into when editing their own articles, and if it isn't Greg, then I figure he should be aware that some third party is using his name in vain, as it were.

Not that we need to compromise any of our principles, but I think it is worth a reminder, as Jimbo noted, that these things often turn into a bad experience for the subject. Instead, we should see it as an opportunity to gain the confidence, trust, and friendship of an respected and influential writer. Of course, that applies to all such contributors, whether they be famous or not; it's just that if we get someone with an audience fired up, it just creates a lot of work for us all. Look at Stephen Colbert and his elephants! --Jumbo 00:50, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Word back is that it was indeed Greg Bear, and my email sparked some interesting conversations in the Bear household, the younger Bears appalled that Dad would consider editing his own Wikipedia article! --Jumbo 00:14, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for checking!

Atlant 13:06, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what might have been happening on the greag bear page, but getting the actual subject of an article involved in editing is potentially extremely useful. Who knows the subject better? Sandpiper 10:16, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Weeeeell, yes, but it's hard to have WP:NOR and WP:NPOV in hand if you are editing your own article. If I had a WP article on myself, I might be tempted to downplay my youthful but drunken escapades, and focus instead on my more laudatory achievements. We've seen a bit of this sort of thing going on with articles on politicians here and there, with campaign pledges conveniently "whited-out". I'd also be able to add in information that is true, but either difficult or impossible for anyone else to check. In both cases, these are things we tend to frown on. I'm not for a moment suggesting that Greg Bear is doing this, but as the old Chinese proverb goes, the wise man does not bend down to tie his shoelaces in his neighbour's watermelon patch. --Jumbo 11:12, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

The key problem is balancing between introducing such newcomers to WP:AUTO and what Wikipedia is (we should remember few newcomers know what we really are, notable Wikipedians being no exceptions), while not coming through as insinuating that we don't want them here or we suspect they want to advertise themselves. I think most such people come here with good intentions, but they misinterpret our notices - or stumble upon somebody who is not very diplomatic - and think they are not welcomed here, or at least that they are committing a gross 'faux pas' and should go away - which I am pretty certain was never the intention of WP:AUTO. Perhaps some sort of standarized diplomatic boilerplate/welcome notice for such newcomers could be created?-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  03:22, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Good thinking. I've mocked up something along those lines below:

Sweet zombie jesus, you're famous! - zomg!!!11!! please can I have your autograph!!???!?!?? Oh please sign my talk page and visit me at myspace.com/chairboyslair. I think I just peed a little, I'm so excited.

- CHAIRBOY (☎) 03:39, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Template:Notable Welcome. Comments? — Werdna talk criticism 11:08, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I see you added the following statement to the standard welcome: We notice that you may be the notable person {{{1}}}. We recommend you view our policy on editing your own biography. Perhaps some tweaking or rewording may be in order, but I think this is a good start.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  20:16, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

List of tallest buildings and structures in Paris and other pages

There is an ongoing dispute about the definition of "Paris". One side says that "Paris" can only means the relatively small administratively-defined City of Paris embedded in the larger conurbation (so, for example, excluding the suburbs of Paris, including the central business district of La Défense); another says that the larger entity is called "Paris" in general English usage. This started as an edit/move war at the list, both before and after multiple votes on the talk page demonstrated that there was little consensus either way. There is now an ongoing Mediation case, but edit warring has broken out again on the list and related pages.

Yes, it is a content dispute, but a cursory look at the mediation page, or the talk page of the article, or the talk pages of any involved participants, will show that this is just not getting solved any time soon, and vitriolic accusations and counter-accusations are flying left and right.

Please would an uninvolved admin take a look. I am entirely fed up with this whole issue (and also too involved to take any administrative action). -- ALoan (Talk) 16:23, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

It's a Parisian issue. France has revolved around Paris for centuries, and there's a big social distinction between living inside the city limits and outside them. The city of Paris discourages building large skyscrapers, which would overwhelm the traditional architecture of the city. So they're being built outside the city limits, mostly at La Defense, which was established as a sort of "skyscraper zone". The resulting tall building boom at La Defense is gradually moving the center of business activity outside Paris proper. This has some Parisians very upset. Don't worry about it. --John Nagle 16:55, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

La Défense is the business district of Paris. I don't see how Parisians could be upset by having a world-class business district being built up in their very own urban area. It's like saying that Londoners are upset because businesses are moving to Canary Wharf. In case you don't know, residents of the City of Paris do not need a work visa to go work in La Défense or other suburban areas. In any case, the point raised by ALoan is that some editors (User:Grcampbell and User:ThePromenader) are bypassing the mediation going on at Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-09-10 List of Tallest buildings and structures in Paris and are editing the La Défense article as well as about 20 La Défense skyscrapers articles (such as Tour AXA, Tour EDF, Tour Total, and so on) despite lack of consensus on the mediation page. That's what should be stopped. The mediator (User:GofG) seems to be gone on vacation, so some other admins should step in. Hardouin 17:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

This is one of those disputes with the Fealress Crusader on one side and the rest of the world on the other. Promenader is asking for trouble, I'm afraid. The fact is that, pedantry aside, there is nothing wrong with the current title; the fact that one user obdurately refuses to accept this will never be solved by any process other than giving up or slapping him with a wet trout, I fear. Guy 17:39, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi. Guy, I left a message on your talk page about this.

There's actually four of us trying to make two Wikipedians see reason/publish fact, and few of us are Parisian.

Hardouin's accusations are completely baseless - the pages he is complaining are not at all in any mediation. The situation is quite the opposite as painted by him, as his constant reverts are opposed by three editors.

The "in Paris" situation is actually very black and white and widely referenced, which of course makes the warring seem all the more ridiculous. Only one side of the argument has every been able to provide any reference in this, and overwhelmingly so. Isn't this supposed to be an encyclopaedia? Just because a very few publishing theory put up a huge fuss to protect it doesn't mean those interested in fact should just give up and leave. What would be wiki then?

If anyone wants to look further into this, please do, as our mediator seems to have gone AWOL. THEPROMENADER 19:17, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

When deciding on this issue, please be aware of WP:NOR, in particular this phrase: An edit counts as original research if it proposes ideas or arguments. That is, if it....(It) provides or presumes new definitions of pre-existing terms. Quite simply the boundaries of Paris are well known and published (no less than by the French government who you'd think know what they are talking about (at least I hope)) and User:Hardouin wants to invent new definitions. Also, there was some consensus about correctly referencing the towers correctly on individual pages, with people from both sides agreeing, the only one in disagreement out of >6 participating is again this user. He insists on listing the towers locations at the French equivalent of a PO Box number! For some reason, it seems to irk him that Paris has boundaries. What he fails to understand is that in France, when you exit a commune, you are no longer in that commune. --Bob 20:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

User:Hardouin has just ended another baseless, anti-consensus revert spree. THEPROMENADER 11:28, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

User:Hardouin is now trying to state that the official name of the département of Paris is "City of Paris" (or "Ville de Paris" in French) in the Île-de-France (région) article, which is quite simply false. ref 1, ref 2. I no longer believe that this user is editing in good faith. --Bob 18:56, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I have just blocked Netscott for a week for moving the page against consensus, and I have also deleted a forked version of the article created by (and named after) Grcampbell ("Bob"). The edit warring on this, and related articles, has to stop. --ajn (talk) 06:38, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Improper full protection of Wikipedia:Vandalism

Radiant! has just been involved in a content dispute over Wikipedia:Vandalism as shown in this edit. Recently, Radiant! reverted the page to Radiant!'s preferred version [46], fully protected the page [47], and threatened to block me if I posted any information about this content dispute on the Counter-Vandalism Unit's project page [48]. These actions violate the letter and the spirit of the protection policy, which states that

Admins should not protect pages in which they are involved. Involvement includes making substantive edits to the page (fixing vandalism does not count), or expressing opinions about the article on the talk page before the protection. Admin powers are not editor privileges — admins should only act as servants to the user community at large. If you are an admin and you want a page in an edit war in which you are somehow involved to be protected, you should contact another admin and ask them to protect the page for you. Not only is this the preferable method, it is also considered more ethical to do so as it helps reduce any perceived conflict of interest.

These actions are also inconsistent with the intent of the blocking policy which states that

Use of blocks to gain an advantage in a content dispute is strictly prohibited. That is, sysops must not block editors with whom they are currently engaged in a content dispute.

and implies that sysops shouldn't threaten to block editors with whom they are currently engaged in a content dispute, either. I request that Radiant!'s improper reversion and protection of Wikipedia:Vandalism be reversed. Thank you. John254 00:26, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

It does look like Radiant may have been too involved here. I suggest it would have been more appropriate to ask for another admin, on this noticeboard even, rather than doing it himself. It also looks like you've been edit warring on policy pages, and spamming other pages soliciting support to your edit war. Consequently, the page is now protected in my, uninvolved name, [49], and you are warned that if you continue either edit warring or soliciting you will be blocked by me. Dmcdevit·t 00:37, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Ignoring Radiant's actions for a bit, I don't see the point of basically saying that people are never allowed to remove stuff from their talk page. The repeated reinsertion of a warning (especially a stupid warning) already admits that it has been received and read, so what is the point of edit-warring over it other than causing disruption and agitation? --Cyde Weys 00:38, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Sigh. The part on removing warnings from your own talk page is quite possibly the most frequently disputed sentence on any policy page anywhere on Wikipedia. Can we some how, some way please come to final resolution to the removing warnings wars. I'm not even sure I care about the result any more, just that question is settled one way or the other. For anyone that has missed it, this has been a perpetual topic of edit wars and disputes for something like 9 months now, flaring up every few weeks. It has already been subject to at least two polls, including Wikipedia:Removing warnings poll, and many pages of largely unproductive discussion at Wikipedia talk:Vandalism. Dragons flight 00:43, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

It is useful to ensure that a warning remains on the page for other users to see if the person's disruptive behavior continues, so that there is an obvious record of recent problems. What needs to be changed is to explicitly allow established users to remove warnings after a reasonable period of time, and to discourage the use of any pro forma warnings on established users. —Centrx→talk • 00:50, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

It also needs to be changed to point out that newcomers do not know that rule, and are likely to see replacement of warnings as harassment. --Carnildo 02:30, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

There was edit warring, so protecting it is appropriate, but if it be reverted it would make sense to revert to 21:12, 18 September 2006 Zazpot, distinctly before any edit warring or contested changes, rather than to the new change favored by the involved admin protecting it. Also, the CVU page is not your personal propaganda tool for hysterically summoning help in a dispute, which you did before with WP:VIE, and its talk page is not yours to remove any discussions you don't like, which you have also done before; you were edit warring, which is not permitted; and Radiant did not threaten to block you. —Centrx→talk • 00:45, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Three-revert rule states that "the policy specifically does not apply to groups." The spam guideline only prohibits repeated posting across multiple editors talk pages or project pages -- it doesn't prohibit posting information on a single project's pages. Indeed, Wikipedia:WikiProject Inclusion frequently contains boldface announcements about ongoing AFD discussions, such as those seen in the example here -- and it doesn't appear that the involved editors have ever been warned that they must not engage in this practice. Furthermore, Radiant! has been engaging in genuine internal spamming to solicit support for the protected version of Wikipedia:Vandalism by contacting four different editors who oppose the warning removal language on their talk pages: [50] [51] [52] [53], but not contacting Blue Tie, who restored the warning removal language. In any event, I would request that if the page is to remain protected, a full protection template be placed on it. Additionally, as Centrx observed

If... [Wikipedia:Vandalism] be reverted it would make sense to revert to 21:12, 18 September 2006 Zazpot, distinctly before any edit warring or contested changes, rather than to the new change favored by the involved admin protecting it.

. John254 01:19, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Also, some comments here relate to the merits of whether the removal of legitimate warnings should be prohibited. I explained the justification for prohibiting the removal of legitimate warnings at Wikipedia:Removing_warnings_poll#Deleting_valid_vandalism_warnings_is_always_wrong. John254 02:55, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, first the claim that there was no dispute/the policy was stable prior to Radiant's getting involved (involved again actually - he disputed it nine months ago too) is just false. This practice has been disputed since day one and only the willingness of its proponents to edit war and 'call for backup' (as in this case) in greater degree than its opponents has kept it on the policy page. There are two cases on this page currently where users complained about harassment because this practice was used to repeatedly re-add 'warnings' which were at best questionable if not completely false. I've cited half a dozen other, often worse, cases in past discussions on the topic. The claim that these warnings must be displayed so that past activity can be easily seen has always struck me as painfully weak. We have the user's contribution list. We have their talk page history. There is nothing preventing vandalism patrollers coming up with standardized edit summaries which would stand out in the history and work every bit as well as the standardized templates do currently. Providing a minor convenience for vandal fighters cannot be a good reason for maintaining a practice which inherently breeds harassment and conflict. And that's what this comes down to. This practice does vastly more harm than good and the 'good' it does do could be accomplished every bit as easily... indeed, even better, with edit summaries that the user can't remove. --CBD 11:03, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Amen. Warnings are useful, but edit warring to force people to display them is too much Scarlet Letter for me. A standardized edit summary sounds like a useful idea. Thatcher131 11:48, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

• I should point out that John's legalistic accusations are incorrect; it is plain from the edit history that I did not revert to my version, and neither did I threaten to block him. However, as I was pointed to earlier debate on the issue, I just found out that an edit war has been repeatedly flaring up on that page for over a month now, and there are several lengthy discussion pages on the subject. Ignoring issues of m:the wrong version for a minute, if there's such a lengthy edit war I think the page should be protected for some time more while we figure out what exactly has consensus here, and preferably reach a compromise on the issue. >Radiant< 13:29, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

  Actually, far more than a month. This dispute began here... last December. It has been edit warred into and out of the policy ever since. --CBD 15:35, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

That's not an edit war. —Centrx→talk • 20:49, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Improper discussion and argument

The argument about the removal or warnings does not belong here. There is a talk page and discussion about that. The issue that was reported here was an admin's actions. I believe these actions are contrary to official policy and good practice.

I also think it would have been better to handle this directly with the admin and give the admin time to respond. It's just a matter of politeness and kindness! However, this notice is here, and I feel obliged to provide some input since I was the person that the admin reverted. i want to add: I do not have a problem with this admin in general or with any of the participants in what was considered an "edit war".

I requested that the admin rethink his or her actions. [Here] is my request on that admin's talk page. In essence I make these following points:

• I agree that stopping edit wars is a good thing. (I generally think that even if my view does not "win").
• I was not intentionally edit warring. I was participating with sincere and good intent. The page is on my watch list and I only made one edit.
• I am not a vandal fighter.
• The administrator was one of the participants in what he or she called an edit war.
• The administrator did not just protect the page in order to stop edit warring. Had he or she done that, there would be no problem. But the administrator reverted to a position he or she favored and then protected.
• The position reverted to, is not the position that existed before the edit war as the admin claimed. It is the position that started the "edit war".

I note that the admin notified many people of his or her action but did not notify me... the person reverted. Perhaps it was an oversight, but, along with the involvement in the discussion and the revert followed by a protect, it gives the appearance of partiality.

I request that the admin revert his or her own revert. I also request that the discussion here be limited to the actions of the admin. Let's not turn this into a "meta" discussion about the content of the dispute. I think that distracts. There is a talk page for that purpose anyway. --Blue Tie 13:07, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

No, admins should generally not protect a page they have been involved in dispute on... which indeed is the only reason I had not protected the page to prevent what I consider the incorrect re-insertion of this practice. The original complaint was a technicality (Radiant's involvement was minimal, there was and edit war going on, and the version he protected on was not his own) and now obsolete because the page has been protected by an admin who was not involved in the dispute. I don't see much left to 'discuss' on that issue. The larger problem is the lack of consensus on the 'removing warnings' issue behind the edit war. Further discussion of that issue is needed and as it has come up three times (each completely unrelated to the others) on this noticeboard in as many days this doesn't seem an unreasonable venue. --CBD 15:20, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

• This is quite a lengthy discussion that has been going on for some time. Upon analyzing the situation, I think the main issue for the policy is not what we think should happen, but what in fact does happen. Do people in fact get blocked or otherwise sanctioned for removing warnings? If so, policy should reflect that; if not, policy shouldn't forbid it. See also Wikipedia talk:Vandalism#Removing warnings, once more. >Radiant< 10:07, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Speaking only for myself, I cannot imagine a circumstance where I would block someone for removing a dead vandalism warning from their talk page. Ξxtreme Unction|_{yakkity yak} 17:25, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Help!

This user, Abu badali (talk · contribs), keeps on trying to delete fair use images that I've uploaded, especially Image:Allison Mack1.jpg and Image:Kristinkreuk1.jpg. I have gotten permission from the websites owners to use these images, and I have written a detailed fair use rationale for both of them, and they both have the fair use tag on them. Even after a lengthy discussion, he still will not accept that they are fair use and he keeps trying to delete them! Loooking at his talk page and his contributions, he seems to think that he is the highest authority on all things "fair use", but he obviously is not. Can you please help me, or get some other administrators to help me, convince him that they are in fact fair use images and should not be deleted? It would be greatly appreciated, and he must be stopped before he lists every single fair use image for deletion. Than you. - Ivan Kricancic 03:34, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Your rationales are missing one critical thing: there's no explanation as to why it's impossible to make or find a free-license replacement? Are the people in question dead or fameously hard to photograph? If not, there's no reason to use a non-free image. The images aren't fair use under Wikipedia policy unless they meet all the criteria at WP:FUC. --Carnildo 03:55, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

If you think a free license versrion is available then upload it. I honstly just don't care anymore. Delete the images if you want to. - Ivan Kricancic 04:28, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I do not understand what fair use has to do with it. If you have permission to use the pictures, you can use them as agreed to (unfortunately, they must be released under the GFDL or public domain for use on Wikipedia, though). On the other hand, if the people you got permission from do not own the pictures and do not have permission to use them (although permission might not be transferred to you, anyway), then their permission is meaningless. -- Kjkolb 04:54, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

That is: GFDL, Public domain, or an accepted Creative commons licence IIRC :-) Michael Billington (talk • contribs) 05:59, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Usually when someone says "permission" they don't mean GFDL, they mean to use the image on Wikipedia only, or for non-commercial use only, etc. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-09-22 06:36Z

I'd like to report a personal attack from User:Ivan Kricancic against me in my talk page. This is 'not the way to go, Ivan. Any polite discussion on the image issue is wellcome. But your opinion about me is not relevant to the question, and your tone was innapropriate to Wikipedia community as a whole. --Abu Badali 10:41, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

If you look at our talk pages from the last few days, you will see I was being civil. However, he seemed to think this gave him the right to keep listing fair use images for deletion. Anyway, that "personal attack" was completely true. I aplogise if people find teh truth offensive. - Ivan Kricancic 10:50, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Not the sincerest apology but I am sure we are all allowed a blow up now and then in a highly frustrating situation. Just remember to try to keep your cool and see my message below. --NuclearUmpf 10:53, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Saying "that personal attack was completely true" is not an apology at all. --Abu Badali 13:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Just post the email so an admin can follow up and this will all be put to an end. Or give an admin the name of the person you contacted. --NuclearUmpf 10:51, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know the name of the contact. When i asked for permission, I clicked on the link on the Kryptonsite website that said to "click here to ask permission." This can be seen at Kryptonsite.com - Ivan Kricancic 11:19, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Where and how do I upload teh email granting permission? - Ivan Kricancic 12:08, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I would just paste it in this thread, or if its too large then put it in your userspace and give the people here a link. That way the issue will be resolved. --NuclearUmpf 12:16, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

This is the text from the email, it says what I said and what they said. I also uploaded a screenshot of the email. -

Could I please have permission to use one image of Kristin Kreuk and one image of Allison Mack for their respective articles on Wikipedia? It would be greatly appreciated. Also, can you please tell me who the copyright holder is of these images, or where to get free license images of teh actresses if I can't use the ones from your site? Can you also please respond quickly, as it is urgent. Thank You.

Sure, use what you like.. I do ask, if at all possible, that you have a link someplace to KryptonSite.com if you can...

Thank you so much for having the decency to ask! - Ivan Kricancic 12:29, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I would like to add that Ivan and many other people have had there images unfairly deleted by Abu badali and that he will most likely complain about me to soon. But i would ask before any action is taken that you actuall check his deletions and his edits as they are most likely uneeded. Though i will say that he probably has a case against me he has no case against any others. Daniel Johnson

Abu dabali has not made any useful or meaningful contributions to wikipedia. His only edits seem to be tagging images for deletion. He doesn't seem to actually contribute by writing an article or by uploading a picture he deems worthy. You can see how a person can get frustrated when things like this happen. - Ivan Kricancic 11:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Count me as yet another user who is highly irritated by Abu's actions. He removes main images from articles without discussing. Dionyseus 11:31, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I consider removing unsource material a useful contribution. Anyone interested can see my image uploads at my commons page. --Abu Badali 13:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Oddly enough pictures taken off Flickr contain little proof they are owned by that person who owns the Flickr account. Also the person at least one of the photographers doesnt seem to be releasing the pictures for use under the condition you credit them, they dont seem to be releasing the pictures for use at all, at least in the case of Tiago Chediak. --NuclearUmpf 13:21, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean? His images are marked as "Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike 2.0" on flickr, and that's the license I used on Commons. In the case that some of the images I've uploaded have a problem, it should be fixed or, if not possible, deleted. I for one have nominated for deletion two of mine uploads after noticing that they had been removed from flickr (and I could no longer give evidence of it's licensing) [54] and [55]. Please, tell me what is the problem with Tiago Chediak's images and I will try to fix it or delete them. --Abu Badali 16:35, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Then I believe we are all set here, since Ivan has recieved and proven that he recieved permission to use these pictures from the person claiming ownership of the copyright. Thank you for pointing to the copyright on the Flickr website, I didnt not see where it was located, sorry for the confusion. --NuclearUmpf 16:41, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Doubts about the fan site's ownership aside, we do not include images based solely on permission for their use in Wikipedia. As noted above, these images do not meet the criteria for fair use, and therefore we can only use them if they are released under a free license so that they can follow their articles' text and be used anywhere, by anyone. This is the project's goal, not to simply collect content that's bound to the Wikipedia web site. There's much information about how to ask copyright holders to relicense their material on Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission and Wikipedia:Example requests for permission. ×Meegs 19:28, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

If you have such a big problem with these images, why don't just go delete every image in the "fair use in" category? They are all just the same, yet these have been singled out. On Kryptonsite's website, it states that all content belongs to Kryptonsite, unless otherwise noted; and these images were not noted as belonging to someone else, so Kryptonsite owns the copyright. I have provided proof that the copyright holder (Kryptonsite) has allowed these images to be used for Wikipedia - that could also mean that if Wikipedia ever was released in print form, the images could be used there too. I just don't see what your problem is with using these images on Wikipedia, as they obviously don't violate copyright. But, as I've stated in some other places, I just don't care anymore, and I'm tired of fighting for these images. I'll just never upload an image again so I don't have to go through all this crap again. - Ivan Kricancic 02:51, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

herd mentality -> Herd behavior, that is blank

Hola Admins,

I wanted to tell my friend that accepting microsoft is adapting to herd mentality, but when I looked it up there was only "blank stangeness".

It seems herd mentality redirects to Herd behavior, that is blank. I know I've seen this or some similar article some month ago so I am confused.

Thought I should cry out for help and I hope this is the correct forum. /PER9000 08:58, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

It was probably something weird that happened with the server or your browser. The article was not blanked in the history of the page, which you can see here. When stuff like that happens, try bypassing your cache. If that does not work, try it again later (this is assuming you have checked the history for vandalism already). You could also try another browser if you have more than one. I have to use four of them (Mac Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Netscape), as they all suck at certain things and are incompatible with a lot of sites. -- Kjkolb

• As far as I can tell, Herd behavior is a normal article. Maybe it just didn't load correctly when you tried it. If it persists, try emptying your browser cache and then reloading it. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 09:55, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

It didn't work for me either until I edited it and then reverted my edit. I saw mention of a bug like this on the talk page of an article I no longer remember. WAS 4.250 16:18, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Technically, the article seems to be working properly. The name and content are somewhat inconsistent, the content is uncited, the writing is poor, and some of the uncited claims seems bogus. But none of those issues require administrator action. I added {{verify}} and {{cleanup}} tags. --John Nagle 17:20, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Hoax vandal

There seems to be a new hoax vandal creating nonsense articles relating to underwear, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Royal Theatretime Briefs Company which may have been created by a sockpuppet of Kenwood 3000 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log).

Also note the above AFD seems to be full of single-purpose accounts too. --LiverpoolCommander 10:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

It was previously deleted, so now has been deleted again.--MONGO 11:08, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

• Not with the same title, it wasn't. Where was the previously deleted version located? - Mgm|^(talk) 12:02, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

  Dunno, the post on the Afd cited a blog posting from 6 days before this article was created and the cite had the same wording. It may not be a copyvio, but definitely a hoax.--MONGO 12:23, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

  The blog says it was created on the simple Wikipedia. Can somebody with admin privileges over there go and check if it's still there and take care of it? User:Zoe|(talk) 21:44, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

LiverpoolCommander

I have indefinitely blocked LiverpoolCommander (talk · contribs) as a sockpuppet of TheM62Manchester (talk · contribs) due to a bit of 'investigating' which I carried out earlier on today. Details can be seen here. I am pretty sure there was enough evidence to support the block without a checkuser so I hope it was the right thing to do. I have also closed Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/TheM62Manchester as speedy keep due to this sockpuppetry etc. — FireFox ^(talk) _{20:29, 22 September 2006}

Looks reasonable, especially considering the activity on their user talk page today. --pgk 21:01, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I did have my suspicions about this user. He posted on ANI a few times in the middle of several heated discussions, something that is very uncharacteristic of a new user. Looks like a good block to me. --Mr. Lefty _{Talk to me!} 21:03, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

<removed trolling - User:Zoe|(talk) 21:48, 23 September 2006 (UTC)>

User:WrestlingGod

Hey. I am convinced that this user is a sockpuppet of User:OzWrestlemaniac, User:3 Brands and User:Venables001, all of which were confirmed to be the same person stringing from a harassment issue that happened in June this year. Can someone help me out? Normy132 01:05, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Look Guys, There are over 60 of us from the same Multi-User IP Address. Why is it that when someone creates an acccount from our Multi-User IP Address, they are accused of Sockpuppetry. I am aware of the harassment issue that happened in June this year because it affected everyone at our Multi-User IP Address. 3 Brands is gone and you can ask him yourself at venables001_extreme_machine@hotmail.com. Brisbane Sports Entertainments address can be accessed by leaving a message on my Talk Page. 3 Brands is banned from using Wiki. BSE has seen to that. We are not his sockpuppets and never will be.

Is it just me, or does this sound an aweful lot like admitting to having...some sort of weird multi-user account? --InShaneee 01:41, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Well from memory I think he told either me or User:Moe Epsilon that he had access to some sort of computer lab and that he'll just move onto the next one if he gets blocked, which so far has been the case. Normy132 02:31, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Huh...alright. I'm going to go ahead and indef block, then. --InShaneee 02:39, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Much thanks. Normy132 02:47, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

It's true, Venables001 has said to me that he comes from a computer lab that has about 100 differant computers in it, and they have a static-IP range, so whenever he is blocked, he just moves along to the next computer. That IP range has been active tonight in the sockpuppets's comments today as seen on User talk:DVD R W. Venables has been indefblocked from this site because of his persistant harassment on me and Normy132. Thanks InShaneee for the block. — Moe Epsilon 04:16 September 23 '06

B&W Anime Fan

B&W Anime Fan (talk · contribs) is repeatedly removing the {{splitlong}} tag from the Fist of the North Star page (the page is 83kb long) despite several reverts and an attempt to communicate. He has also made these comments (or reverted an admin to endorse that message). He has also showed incivility in this edit. I don't know what else to do. _dk 01:07, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Looks lik he started trolling after that, as well. I've given him a little time out to cool off. --InShaneee 01:39, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism from 204.98.2.17 (talk · contribs)

Noting here the edits by 204.98.2.17 (talk · contribs) here, here, here, here, here, here and here are blatant vandalism, and I have left the "test4" template on the Talk page. Orsini 03:21, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

The quickest way to get these blatant vandals blocked is by listing them on WP:AIV. MER-C 03:23, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

There's no vandalism within the last 6 hours. Perhaps the warning had its intended effect. Regardless, this is an AIV issue. alphaChimp^(talk) 03:24, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I might be misinterpreting policy, as I didn't think I could list this user on AIV before a "test4" template or a similar warning was noted on the user's Talk page before the current round of vandalism, and there wasn't one till I added it. If I'm wrong, please set me straight so I don't repeat this mistake. Orsini 04:08, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you are quite correct. What generally happens is, if a user has recently recieved a {{test4}} or {{bv}} (or other, more-specific "Level 4" vandal templates, as viewed in the table here), and then commit another vandal act after recieving the Level 4 warning, then you report to AIV. Cheers, Daniel.Bryant 04:40, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism from 65.222.236.25 (talk · contribs)

65.222.236.25 (talk · contribs) is vandalising, even after warning him on the talk page. - Vijaykumar 04:29, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I moved this to WP:AIV, where you may, and probably will, recieve a more speedy response. Just a note for the future :D Cheers, Daniel.Bryant 04:37, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Yep, that user was blocked in a very speedy fashion 1 2 Daniel.Bryant 04:56, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Personal information was posted to my user page

Somebody didn't like an edit I made to their file (a file which violates wikipedia policy by the way) and they posted a whole bunch of my personal information up on my user talk page. I want Danny or whoever to office that stuff away, permanently thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.30.152.217 (talk • contribs)

Reading your edit summaries and some of your posts I think you need to read Wikipedia:No legal threats. –– Lid^(Talk) 04:52, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict, still going to post it anyways) Someone who has the appropriate knowledge/power will come by and review this, hopefully soon. In the meantime, please aviod making legal threats towards Wikipedia (1 2). Although your actions are understandable considering the situation regarding personal information and your anger at this being posted, please make a note not to do this in the future. I think we can assume good faith in this instance, but just remember this to aviod future problems. Cheers, Daniel.Bryant 04:54, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

PS the person who did this is called "Ima_Learning" but they also left an ip address if that helps it is 68.19.47.12

I don't want to make legal threats or break your rules but it is not right to have that information put up on there and I want it permanently gone ok? thanks.

How can you "assume good faith" when someone is trying to have my house burned down or give out my address or whatever? I am not trying to break any of your policies but there is a family here to protect and so forth please thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.30.152.217 (talk • contribs)

How do you know it was Ima_Learning (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)? Is this just a suspicion, or is there any proof - your talk page history shows no editor of this name editing it, or adding personal details. By the way, please sign your name using four tidles ~~~~ in future on talk pages. Oh, and I was assuming good faith that you didn't realise that Wikipedia doesn't appreciate legal threats, and because of this ignorance no action might be taken against you - IP's and users have been blocked for legal threats in the past. Believe me, there is little room in the assuming good faith policy for users who post personal details. Cheers, Daniel.Bryant 05:02, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I know it was that user because that was the user of the file that I edited and in the history of my page, they signed that name and their IP address next to it. PS it is the edit that says vandalism in all caps, that is the person who added it and also wrote their name in before the address of it. 65.30.152.217 05:05, 23 September 2006 (UTC) PPS - Sorry I am just upset I am sure you understand

Ah, I see - my apologies for missing this. Daniel.Bryant 05:09, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) This is the relevant quote from the talk page Anyway, to get to the point, you are a VANDAL as you have VANDALIZED my video file page ( Ejaculation_Educational_Demonstration.ogg )by removing my Authentication Summary of this video file that I MADE ON 26 JULY 2006 and UPLOADED ON 27 JULY 2006 ... Have A Nice Day, Ima_Learning 68.19.47.12 06:18, 17 September 2006 (UTC). –– Lid^(Talk) 05:10, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Also after I tried to erase/blank it out from there, some guy named Atomaton came in an un-erased it so now it is in the history in multiple places :( 65.30.152.217 05:12, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Legal threats and such aside - i think the user has a valid point about some personal info being remove from their talk page. I'll remove it unless somebody jumps up and down in the next ten minutes or so. Thanks/wangi 05:13, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Dont just move it, drop some sort of edit admin bomb on it. --I already forgot 05:15, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

The personal info needs to be permanently deleted ASAP. It still can be looked up in the page archive. I'm pretty sure admins have a new feature to delete archive edits??? --I already forgot 05:14, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

It's gone. Daniel.Bryant 05:16, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

POOF!...Nice work :)--I already forgot 05:18, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Posted a {{subst:pinfo4}} ~~~~ on the offending IP's talk page. Daniel.Bryant 05:20, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I was so worried about it. It is permanently gone right like nobody can look it up somewhere, right? Thanks. I maybe won't edit things anymore I hope that's ok. 65.30.152.217 05:21, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Only an admin can view it, and I think you can trust them not to hunt you down or anything of the like. Daniel.Bryant 05:23, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Just a note the user who, allegedly, posted the personal info was Ima learning (talk · contribs) not Ima_Learning (talk · contribs) who has zero contributions. –– Lid^(Talk) 05:24, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Anyone want to whip up an WP:RFCU? Daniel.Bryant 05:29, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I am not sure how to do it so I will let someone else do it ok? thanks. 65.30.152.217 06:00, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Moved from RFCU, too blatant to require Checkuser

• Ima learning (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• 68.19.47.12 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RBLs · proxy check · block user · block log · cross-wiki contribs · CheckUser (log))

(related to the comments directly above)

The IP above, 68.19.47.12 (the poster of personal details), was involved in an incident where he/she posted personal information on the talk page of 65.30.152.217. The diff has since been disabled for viewing (see here), as the talk page was deleted and all the other revisions restored excluding this one. Obviously, admins can still view it thru the Undelete feature.

The last part of the message which contained personal details are published below:

“ Anyway, to get to the point, you are a VANDAL as you have VANDALIZED my video file page ( Ejaculation_Educational_Demonstration.ogg )by removing my Authentication Summary of this video file that I MADE ON 26 JULY 2006 and UPLOADED ON 27 JULY 2006 ... Have A Nice Day, Ima_Learning 68.19.47.12 06:18, 17 September 2006 (UTC) ”

The above was referring to this edit, made by the victim to the users' image upload. Interestingly, the IP who posted the personal details reverted the source change (see here)

The signing of the name "Ima Learning" initated my suspicions. Prior to the message being hidden via deletion, it contained numerous references to the 65.30.152.217 (the victim) "commiting vandalism" to certain articles, many of which this user has edited (see Special:Contributions/Ima learning).

I think that, considering the .ogg reference in the quote and the username's log (look at the uploads), there is very minimal doubt about whether the user is the IP who posted the personal details.

Any doubt I had was eliminated by this diff - notice the edit summary, and the person who he is reverting. Then, not very long after, 68.19.47.12 (the poster of the personal details) posts on the talk page of 65.30.152.217 (the victim), making numerous references to this vandalism revert that Ima learning made only 10-or-so minutes before.

Really, with the logs and then the reverting diff to squash any thought of an imposter, this user should be blocked indefinitely for maliciously posting personal details of a Wikipedia editor. Daniel.Bryant 06:44, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I've blocked Ima learning (talk • contribs) indefinitely and 68.19.47.12 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) for 6 months. --  Netsnipe  ►  07:18, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Seems fair. User's main activity was vanity spamming anyway. Guy 16:03, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

User:Pammylove

Pammylove (talk · contribs) has been very busy, creating dozens of articles on likely non-notable Australian models. Many of the articles are link heavy, full of badly formatted wikilinks (common magazine titles in ALL CAPS for example) and lots of dubious external links. It's late for me and I'm out of town for two days. Anyone feel like they need a new project? Thatcher131 05:49, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm tagging the ones I find, but there's a lot. –– Lid^(Talk) 05:59, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Spamming by Dondavid

Dondavid (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) seems to be a single-purpose account for adding external links to greatertalent.com . I think the account should be blocked (at least temporarily), reverted and investigated. Andjam 07:31, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Seems to have stopped after he/she was given a Level 4 warning. Daniel.Bryant 08:25, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Slow anon-IP vandalism at WYSIWYG

Over the last few months, WYSIWYG has been vandalised by anonymous editors roughly once every 2-3 days. I was wondering if semi-protection would be suitable to prevent this problem? The article is also currently in a fairly stable state, and hasn't changed substantially for a while, so it shouldn't get in the way of improving the article. JulesH 08:20, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Just so you know, requests for page protection is one board over; they tend to respond a lot faster there. Also, in general, vandalism that occurs that infrequently generally doesn't call for a semiprotection; I'll watchlist it and help revert vandalism, but I doubt that the tag will be put on the article. Page protection, even semi-protection, is a pretty big deal; it temporarily puts the lie to our statement that "anyone can edit." Captainktainer * Talk 13:41, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Repeated re-adding of speedy deletion tag by DrBat

User:DrBat talk is repeatedly re-adding a speedy deletion tag to Oscar Nuñez, even though the removal of such tags is an explicitly endorsed method (stated in the template itself) to end the speedy deletion process, and require going through normal channels. Gene Nygaard 16:07, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

The article was to simply reverse a redirect. It was a noncontroversal move, and Nygaard gave no valid reason for repeatedly removing it .

Nonethless, the page was locked so I have formally requested a move, though why Nygaard had make such a big deal about a simple move of Oscar Nunez to Oscar Nuñez (simply changing the n to an ñ, as that is how his name is properly spelled) is beyond me. --DrBat 16:18, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

DrBat has now taken it to WP:RM, as he should have when the "speedy" was first removed, and the template has been removed from the redirect page. The incident appears to be resolved. Gene Nygaard 16:44, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikinamespace potential attack page

I recommended several times that Shortfuse (talk · contribs) move Wikipedia:Association of 9/11 All Sides Editors to his userspace. I previously nominated it for deletion since the goal of the "association" is to fight attempts to delete articles that have been nominated for deletion based on them being either not notable or POV pushing of 9/11 related material that is outside the mainstream viewpoint (better known as conspiracy theories). In wikinamespace, Shorfuse has declared that he is going to both watchlist articles and editors that he and whoever joins his association are in disagrreement with. I would have no problem with this if he did so in his own userspace, but surely, creating an association in wikispace is simply a poor namespace for such an effort. I recognize other editors use their own userspace to monitor articles and sometimes also editors, but this is the first time I have seen it done in wikispace. I can't even see how this would qualify as a WikiProject, as the purpose of the association appears to be an advocacy platform for vote stacking. I have also firmly told Shortfuse that if he starts adding names of editors, (which is pretty lousy with the article currently at Mfd) the article should be speedied as an attack page and he may end up being blocked. I can't imagine that this effort by Shortfuse can possibly be one of good faith. The talkpage at Mfd[56] clearly indicates this editor is going to add names, and has has already done so[57] and even reverted my removal of the name with the edit summary of vandalism[58]. It's bad enough some of us get harassed off-wiki...do we have to tolerate it on wiki as well?--MONGO 18:02, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

...the stated purpose on the MfD/project is to ensure 9/11 articles remain NPOV. That means neither pro nor con for any related articles. Including CTs, whose articles are to be neither pro nor con. Like every other article. Per policy. So the stated aim of this group is to protect NPOV, ergo their aim is to uphold policy. Kind of RC Patrol, but NPOV Patrol. Maybe the user section should be dropped, but everything else seems appropriate. · XP · 18:10, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Kevinprior

Kevinprior (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) has made no constructive edits to Wikipedia. The only use he has had was advertising his company, and then moving the page around so much that it was impossible to userfy it, and he even removed the warnings on his talk page to get himself unblocked. He has recently made an article about himself that I listed for speedy deletion, and now he continues to just edit his user page, and use it as free hosting. I think that some sort of indefinite block should be put in place for violating guidelines at WP:NOT and WP:U and his user page deleted for those guidelines. Ryūlóng 19:55, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

user:JayW and Radiant! (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Last night, user:JayW left a message on the talk page of WP:COPPA which appeared to be a personal attack; he vehemently opposes the proposed policy. His comment contained phrases like "shut the fuck up, thanks," " I believe I already asked you to stop lying, sir," "Nice try," "Why don't you answer the goddamn question", etc. full comment here. I removed the post and blocked the user for 24 hours. He had already been blocked 24 hours earlier for (apparently unrelated) incivility by another administrator. Admin Radiant!, who also vehemently opposes the policy, replaced the comment today, in the edit summary stating "Replace comments by JayW that were removed by Firsron. I agree they're not very nice comments, but they aren't meaningless either, and removing part of a discussion is not good." I've had no contact with Radiant! before this, and his talk page is full of nice compliments from people glad to see he's back, but I don't believe reverting to a "shut the fuck up"-type comment is in the best interest of the encyclopedia, and can only cause a disturbance. JayW is free to make his point, but there was no need for that. I seek feedback regarding this incident. For the record, I generally supported the proposed policy, but haven't written there much, and I would have removed an offensive post like that no matter what the position. Firsfron of Ronchester 20:04, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

• A subject like "children's privacy" is bound to raise tempers with people on both sides. JayW's comment was phrased rather nastily, I agree; however, part of it was a valid argument, pointing to psychological studies in rebuttal of an earlier argument by Captaintanker. It seems JayW feels Tanker is evading the issue, which would explain (though certainly not excuse) him being angry. Thus, calling the entire comment a personal attack is throwing the baby out with the proverbial bathwater. It would be more conductive to discussion to remove or strike the offending parts per WP:RPA, rather than removing all of it. >Radiant< 20:20, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Since the comments were written througout the message, removing them would leave the message somewhat unintelligible. While I strongly agree with you that a subject like "children's privacy" is bound to raise tempers with people on both sides, I've only seen user:JayW resort to swearing and personal attacks. Replacing a comment like that only encourages users to think that sort of activity is appropriate, and as he's been blocked twice within 48 hours now, that's not the message administrators should be sending. Further, if you felt part of the message was constructive, why didn't you yourself replace the non-offensive parts, instead of restoring the full message, including personal attacks? Firsfron of Ronchester 20:36, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

• Well, I had noticed the block, and have no objection to it (although if this is about messages admins should be sending, one could argue that you're not a neutral party because you and Jay are involved on opposite sides of an emotionally heated issue). I didn't do a partial restoration of the message because I don't feel particularly offended by what he says and I have no way of knowing which parts were offensive to you. In my opinion someone who makes personal attacks stands condemned by his own words, and there is no need to hide those words. >Radiant< 20:51, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I am a neutral party because I have barely participated in the discussion (four posts in a month), never spoke to JayW on this discussion, and only generally supported the ploicy. As I stated above, I would have blocked anyone who left that type of message. It is unfortunate that you cannot tell what parts of a message which contains "shut the fuck up" might be considered offensive, and there's no need to "play dumb". Firsfron of Ronchester 21:10, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

The "play dumb" comment borders on incivility. That said, the amount of effort required to refactor, strike, or clean up the profane/abusive comments in the original messages should be less than what you've expended here in the complaints. I can see that you had a point that maybe Radiant should have cleaned them up, but this is a wiki... you can clean them up too. Please drop this pointless to and fro argument and just fix it... Thanks. Georgewilliamherbert 21:17, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

You misunderstand, George: I did fix it. And then it was reverted by Radiant. Hence this discussion. And anyone who says they're not sure what part of a message that contains "shut the fuck up" is offensive is "playing dumb". Firsfron of Ronchester 21:34, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I am going to assume good faith. You did not fix the specific rude comments; you reverted everything he'd said. You are free to go in and edit the specific rudeness out but leave the rest of the comment. Though it's relatively rare to edit other people's talk contributions, this would be a reasonable exception. Georgewilliamherbert 22:55, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for assuming good faith, George. According to the WP:RPA guidelines, refactoring can be done to remove the personal attacks while retaining the good, useful parts of the comment. We'd be left with something like: "No, it doesn't; and the substanceless hate speech following this claim doesn't attempt to provide evidence. [...] Thousands, in fact, according to the studies reviewed in Green (2002) and Hunter (1999). [...] What is your agenda? I appreciate your answer in advance." As that would hopelessly destroy the context of JayW's message, it just didn't make sense to me to retain that little bit that was left, although I do appreciate your view (I really do). I am not free of error, I make mistakes, but I feel restoring a personal attack like that, in a place already frought with tension, didn't make much (or any) sense. Firsfron of Ronchester 23:36, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Being the person to whom the messages are addressed, I'll admit I do find them very hostile, incivil, and a personal attack. However, I am a large, semi-muscular man; I'm not going to be driven off the project by comments written in anger, and I don't have a particular opinion either way as to whether they should be removed or stay in place. What I've chosen to do is simply disengage from the conversation; I've realized that it's unhealthy to continue with it, neither of us is going to convince the other, and it's somewhat the wrong forum for a discussion of the subject. JayW appears to consider my conception of pedophiles ungrounded and offensive; I can certainly understand why he would lash out. Were I an impartial observer, I would recommend that the block be served out fully (I have strong feelings about incivility on Wikipedia) and then have everyone get on with their lives.

I'd also like to take a moment to thank Firsfron and Radiant for contributing to the discussion on the policy page, and for being willing to publicly address the disagreements we have instead of allowing it to degenerate. Captainktainer * Talk 21:02, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for having a thick skin, Captainktainer, and for your willingness to just disengage. Firsfron of Ronchester 21:16, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Personal info again

• [59] here. Someone's phone number, suggest deletion of that revision, etc. Thanx 68.39.174.238 23:56, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Suggestions to die, personal attacks, and GNAA-style spam

A user, Daniel 123, after complaining about my sig and my suggestion that he focus on more important aspects of the encyclopedia or file an RfC, became extremely controntational, tell me to "die", "The image that broke my monitor was the one of your face, not your pathetic little oil pit." and then GNAA-style picture spam, including the charecteristic captions. total diff is here. It's kinda funny this user has a Esperanza link in his sig. Anyway, Im requesting an admin look into this and possibly issue a block of a day or two. -M^ask 02:06, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Blocked 1 day. However, saying "Back off the psuedo-policing and start contributing some real content to the encyclopedia, we'll all be better off for it." troubles me. There are many people who spend a majority of their time reverting vandalism. The way I see it, Wikipedia needs editors that are devoted to improving the project, whether it be reverting vandalism or writing content. Naconkantari 02:30, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

To clarify, the psuedo-policing refferred to the notice about my sig, not reverting vandalism. I referred to that by name. -M^ask 03:16, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

In fairness to the issue, if not the complainer, signatures are not supposed to contain images becxause of transclusion loads and "undue weight". The issue may have been handled very poorly, but there is a certain point here. Also, since the other user professes to be part of Esperanza, someone from that organization may wish to have a little coaching with him about civility. Four total pictures (well, two, twice) seems more like making a point than true GNAA harassment. YMMV. -- nae'blis 15:58, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Legal threat/harassment over New Creation Church (Singapore)

User: Holland6 just posted this edit summary: "(Members of city havest church has been vandalising this article. IP adresses has been forwarded to local authority and the church for action to be taken.)" [[60]]. City Harvest Church is another church in Singapore. Does anyone want to follow up? Kla'quot 07:42, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, not much we can do. We can't stop them doing anything (I personally think it's an empty threat), but I guess we could tell him/her to stop threatening other Wikipedia editors. I'll leave him/her a message. Cheers, Daniel.Bryant 08:19, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Daniel. Kla'quot 04:41, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

1 month block of 67.163.90.218

After reviewing the contribution history of 67.163.90.218 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log), I have decided to block the IP for one month. This IP has been engaging in persistent, though low-volume, vandalism for quite some time, and has made zero useful edits during this year. The user has been warned repeatedly, but has only been issued a single 24-hour block in May this year. The consistency of the contributions strongly suggest that this is a semi-static broadband IP which is likely, though not certain, to remain assigned to a single user for quite some time. As such, I feel that the prevention of further vandalism while the block is in place, and the possibility of sending the user the message that such vandalism is not tolerated, outweigh the risk that the IP will be reassigned to an innocent contributor who would have to either wait until the block expires or to request that it be lifted before being able to edit Wikipedia. As this is, nonetheless, an unusually long block for an IP address, I am announcing it here so that other may review it. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:33, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

• One month seems like a relatively cautious approach, given the case. I encourage others to similarly stick to a month at the outside for IP's, even stable ones, and to be ready to lift such blocks the moment there is even the appearance of collateral damage. (I'm not sure we can conclude that it's stable, I'm afraid, as I have seen an IP that had garbage only for 8 months and then an academically astute question, and then more giggling vandalism -- suggesting that it was a university library point.) Geogre 23:40, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
• I have to admit that I've been known to give longer blocks, like six months, in similar circumstances. One month does seem to be cautious - but on reflection it is probably wise not to go longer than that. Metamagician3000 03:40, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

User:Bokpasa tendious editing and personal attacks

After a relatively long time in Wikipedia, this is my first ANI report. I was proud of that but patience got its limits. This user is not a user who can discuss or understand matters easily. Their userpage is an attack on my person. He's got into a lot of troubles in the es and the fr wikis. Only gods know what he's into in other wikis. I accuse them of tendentious editing and personal attacks.

English language wiki

• Calling me a racist, Hitler, and an interist-morroccan censurer
• Lack of knowledge. Refer to Talk:Saadi Dynasty.
• Between this and that i blocked them twice. 3 different admins (User:Redvers, User:Pgk, User:JzG) declined their unblocking request. [61]
• Never brought any single affirmative source or reference.
• Creating a new article which i deleted according to WP:POINT.
• Never sign their comments. He's using a Moi signature which can be confused w/ User:MOI.
• A total non-respect of WP:MoS. Their edits are a total mess, yes!. A poor mastering of English.
• This behaviour reminds me of the banned User:Gibraltarian; an infamous Gibraltar-related articles POV pusher.
• The only good thing here is that he never used any sockpuppet.

Other wikis

Please note that i got accounts at both the French and the Spanish wikis but i rarely edit them. I never interacted w/ this editor there anyway.

• User:Ecemaml (administrator in es:) categorizing Bokpasa's accusations as lies (mentiras). Ecemaml was referring to this edition. In it, Bokpasa states that "Escribo aquí, porque en las versiones tanto inglesas como francesas administradores pro-Marruecos, no sólo han censurado mis escritos, sino me han bloqueado. Esos administradores pro-Marruecos y en contra del Sáhara Occidental son fr:Utilisateur:Pontauxchats y en:User:FayssalF" (rough translation: "I'm writing here because in both en: and fr: pro-Moroccan administrators not only have censored my editions but also have blocked me. These pro-Moroccan and anti-Western Sahara administrators are fr:Utilisateur:Pontauxchats and en:User:FayssalF) (in Spanish)
• Spanish version user Tomatejc notify them of Wikipetiqueta (in Spanish)
• Spanish version admin Javier Carro blocks his account for (recreating a uncyclopaedic article). The article in question was called Derechos históricos españoles sobre Marruecos. (in Spanish)
• Blocked twice in the French wiki for the same reasons he was blocked here. (in French) -- Szvest 21:54, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I fully support Szvest's block. He has endured personal attacks from this user in the past and never took any action, hoping that she/he would change his manners. Unfortunately, I really believe that Bokpasa is here simply for the wrong reasons: To engage on disruptive edit wars and trollish behaviour in order to use wikipedia as a soapbox. He also fails to assume good faith, she/he insults other wikipedians and uses racist-like language. On top of this, she/he is not a newbie and knows the rules and policies, and had been warned to that effect a few times before. As for previous precedents, I would ask other administrators to consider the possibility of a Community Ban. Regards, Asterion^talk 22:29, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

The diffs provided seem to show a pattern of abuse. It does appear to be similar to the Gibraltar case. At any rate, I, too, support the block, and community patience appears exhausted. Firsfron of Ronchester 23:52, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I strongly support Szvest's block. Even if some of the arguments by Bokpasa are sensible (and I could even agree with them), his behaviour pattern is quite similar to that of Gibraltarian and nothing can be done to make him comply with wikipedia's policies. The fact that he can barely write English makes the discusions he's involved even worse to moderate. --Ecemaml 12:37, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I've just left a message to the user in question at their talk page and made clear to them that we want to make sure he/she promisses to respect the policies and guidelines of this place. Failing to answer positively to that, i must support a community ban. -- Szvest 21:53, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I have indeed found that the abusing user has a static IP. In other words, their ip changes constantly. I know this because my own laptop has a real IP or a nonchanging ip and has the exact same ip as 67.163.90.218. If I were to use this laptop for this site, I would probably not be able to. ;(

Personal info followup

I don't know what happened to all the stuff that was here a couple hours ago regarding the problem you guys fixed, but I wanted to ask if anything was going to be done for Atomaton - after I tried to erase the personal info from my talk page he brought it back, I don't see how that could be an accident. Well I was just wondering. Thanks :) 65.30.152.217 00:46, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

What they did was they deleted the page, then restored all the versions except the one with the personal details. No-one except administrators can view it. Daniel.Bryant 01:07, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for everyone assistance, I will consider it all taken care of :) 65.30.152.217 16:44, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Mass password requests from 69.50.208.4

Someone from the IP 69.50.208.4 has been flooding me with password reminders. I've been getting several per minute (with some intervals) since Sun, 24 Sep 2006 00:19:25 GMT. Please block this IP immediately. —Psychonaut 03:22, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Blocking prevents editing. I don't believe it would solve your problem. You could temporarily remove your e-mail address to stop the flood. - Nunh-huh 03:26, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Offensive username

User:Fuck卍卍卍卍卍卍, enough said. The account was just created so I'm not sure if there are contribs yet, otherwise I'd take it to the intervention against vandalism page. Crystallina 03:40, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

You should report these as WP:AIV for a faster response. --pgk 08:40, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Attempted Account Theft

I have 2 IP's who attempted to take my account. Please see further detail at User:Ed/Attempted Password Change. Is there a chance these IP's can be banned?--Ed^{talk c E} 14:27, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Looks like they are using different IPs addresses to do this, which means a block would not be effective. Just to be safe, I'd suggest changing your password on your account AND e-mail system. Otherwise, there doesn't appear to be much we can do.--Alabamaboy 14:54, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

But with these emails that came to me, is it possible that my account has already been hacked?--Ed^{talk c E} 15:53, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

If you look at the emails I received, it just says to enter whatever the password says and to change my password once I log on.--Ed^{talk c E} 15:59, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Your old password continues to be usable if you don't log in with the new one. – Chacor 16:06, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

It's an oldish tactic. You're pretty much safe, although quite annoyed. Geogre 16:10, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Are you saying this is common?--Ed^{talk c E} 17:49, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

It's...not common, but it's not new. I've had it happen to me, although my vandal ran out of steam after a few. It's one of those WP:BEANS things, though: best not to talk about it too, too much. Unless you act on a password change, the password won't be changed: this particular annoyance campaign has been anticipated already. Geogre 18:34, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Incivility from User Opiner (talk · contribs)

User:Opiner has been engaging in what i believe is constant incivility:

• his edit history is filled with aggressive remarks where he is trying to force his opinion across through caps[62][63][64][65].

• User:Opiner constantly disrupts wikipedia even though he visibly does not understand the rules he claims to uphold [66]. the most notable incidents of this include his tendentious edits which he justifies under the edit summary "neutral point of view, please"[67] [68] even though such wholesale changes had no basis and no citations.

• User:Opiner has taken a liking to hounding myself in particular, being extremely unco-operative when attempting to resolve image issues and preferring to assume bad faith (one time accusing me of abusing popups with no AGF in sight) any time i make an open and explained alteration, attempting to use it as a scandalous exposition (eg. his response to my edit, was this[69] [70] even though i had fully clarified this previously; his response to my correction, was this).

• User:Opiner has also been lacing his contributions with conspiracy theories and accusing editors of deliberate and organised POV-pushing (per [71] [72] [73] [74] and previous diffs given) or repeatedly proclaiming "censorship" in edit summaries and on the talk page in the light of legitimate image disputes[75][76][77].

i have notified him several times on either article talk pages or his own user page to cease this incivility, one occasion due to his posting an unsuitable comment on my talk page [78]. i am finding it increasingly difficult to ignore this editor's blatantly provocative behaviour and trolling. please can somebody step in? ITAQALLAH 14:46, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

• 1) Using caps for emphasis is not incivil; it's just an alternative to bolding or italics (although overuse is shouting and is disruptive)
• 2) Your second bullet point doesn't really support your views; there is a definite case for a 3RR violation in the first link in this section, and the rest are a content dispute, which doesn't belong here.
• 3) You uploaded a dubious image and Opiner questioned you.
• 4) In this case, you have a case for incivility. Mocking an editor's grasp of English is inexcusable and you deserve a full and fair apology. A flaring up of temper is not an excuse for attacking an editor who is struggling with a language.
• 5) For the images portion of this section, you and other editors have been attempting to censor the images at hand, based on your point of view that they're "irrelevant" or "useless" or "offensive.". The rest (particularly the intro section, which keeps getting edit warred over) is a content dispute, which admins shouldn't be stepping into.
• 6) The "unsuitable" edit seems to be a discussion of a purportedly questionable edit.
• My suggestion to you would be to open a request for comment or a request for mediation; there is a legitimate dispute on the Muhammad page over POV and the suitability of images, and nobody involved has clean hands. This isn't a matter that requires administrator attention at this time. Captainktainer * Talk 19:01, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

this is not regarding any content dispute, this is regarding User:Opiner's generally incivil behaviour, which is totally counter-productive to the project. you have not addressed all of the concerns.

• 1) it is against good practice, and is certainly aggressive if used repeatedly, especially when used in the way it has been above.
• 2) making wholesale, contentious changes under the guise of an inaccurate edit summary is nothing to do with content dispute. it has everything to do with wikilawyering when you seemingly don't understand the policy.
• 3) legitimate concerns are always entertained. scandel-mongering, and most probably violations of WP:DBAD, are things i am simply not prepared to tolerate when there was no basis for claiming dubiosity, where all one needed to do was study the source URL given.
• 4) you are mistaken, i am a native english speaker. that i may be pre-occupied or tired such that i make a mistake does not necessitate that i be pounced upon or "exposed" via childish games.
• 5) there have been legitimate reasons for opposition to some of the images, as you yourself confirm. please do not generalise, i personally do not recall being significantly involved in the image debate, which is a content dispute. i only recall removing an image once, with the justification that the grounds for its inclusion should be first discussed on talk. to resort to continuous allegations of censorship upon those who may object is a disappointing lack of good faith, as are accusations of POV-pushing and "alliances".
• 6) there are guidelines for using user talk pages. i find such remarks unwelcome to say the least. ITAQALLAH 19:51, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Sockpuppets being used concerning Gabrielangel

I recently deleted Gabrielangel after it had been deleted twice before. Relevant pages are my user talk page, User:Gabrielangel's contributions consisting of two requests to the mediation cabal (here and here), and GamingScholar's user talk page. GamingScholar's talk page mentions that the article had been deleted "over and over" by a "crazy administrator" when he has only created the article once and each administrator that deleted the article only deleted it once. This leads me to believe GamingScholar is a sockpuppet of User:Gabrielangel.

GamingScholar has also threatened me in the quote, "I have recorded the details of this event and am prepared to bring it to higher attention if you continue to harass me," where he states to be quite willing to take the issue to "higher attention." Before this gets out of control, I'd like a fellow administrator to evaluate this claim of sockpuppetry. Thanks, Zsinj^Talk 16:13, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Anon user vandalizing and then gaming 3RR for POV purposes

65.208.144.67 (talk · contribs) has been causing trouble at the Salman Pak facility article; beginning with blatant vandalism (also here and here and here). I reverted these attacks, which have an obvious POV component, and the vandal has now resorted to making this change, which is a lot better, but is still an obvious attempt to distort the article by diminishing the content of the quoted material under the heading. (To explain - he changed the heading "Consensus view" to "Columbia Journalism Review." While it is accurate that the quote comes from CJR, it is only notable insofar as it reports the consensus view regarding the topic. I have explained on his talk page what is wrong with his change (albeit a bit angrily at first when his actions were pure vandalism, but I tried to engage in dialogue over the CJR change). He continues to make the change despite the discussion there, and he has been gaming the 3RR, making 4 reverts in 25 hours (see history, 04:29, 23 September 2006 to 05:53, 24 September 2006). He refuses to engage in dialogue on the talk section of the page and refuses to compromise. I feel he should be blocked for gaming the 3RR and for prior vandalism, or at least an admin should explain to him why his actions are uncivil and disruptive to wikipedia.--csloat 17:12, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I've left 3RR warnings on both usertalk pages. Naconkantari 17:20, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Abusive admins at Front organization

Several admins have been taking their time to revert good, solid edits at Front rganization; they've now found a convenient proxy by which to lock it to their version.

They also left direct threats on the user page of one editor.

Please rectify this, it is exactly this sort of behavior that makes people leave Wikipedia instead of contributing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.114.239.116 (talk • contribs)

Second post: following up, user Naconkantari is trying to hide his involvement by deleting responses left on talk pages. Please rectify this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.114.239.116 (talk • contribs)

How about you try being civil in your edit summaries? This is absolutely not acceptable. Naconkantari 20:33, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

70.114.239.116, you have thrown about personal attacks on editors and edit warred despite the reversions of multiple users. Please become familiar with WP:3RR and use the talk page to discuss such edits instead of edit warring. There appears to be nothing wrong done by the administrators in this issue. Cowman109^Talk 20:35, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

The admin being complained about would be me. Please enjoy the stream of WP:POV-pushing and personal attacks that earned User:70.114.233.87 a block. Presumably User:70.114.239.116 is the same user who has switched IPs to evade that block. I'm not sure what "they've now found a convenient proxy by which to lock it to their version" means. If anyone wants to look into this further, they're welcome. Best, Gwernol 20:38, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I am not the person that posted those, but the threats left on talk pages by Computerjoe are ridiculous, and it is obvious you are not reading the edits being made. I was working on expanding and fixing the language in the Communist section when it was locked.

This is ridiculous, the POV pushing by admins is ridiculous, and your attempts to hide your abuses are also ridiculous.

It's a big conspiracy, oh noez! Danny Lilithborne 21:44, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Rouge Admin coverup shadow government! --InShaneee 21:50, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

vandalism

User:Justino2578 vandalized Hertz page, see history of the page --Jaapkroe 21:24, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia, would you like your tylenol for here or to go? Yanksox 21:31, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Now, now, don't medicate the newbies... --InShaneee 22:19, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

These two mean to say that Justino2578 has been blocked. Good catch! :) For future reference, though, try reporting this type of activity to Administrator intervention against vandalism. :) Srose (talk) 23:23, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Can I drop a sockpuppet report even if I still suspect it's true, or is it out of my hands?

Briefly as possible: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The RCP (Red Car Posse) (a rather unsavory article) became a series of new user votes to save, plus other single purpose accounts vandalizing the user pages and "articles I've created" articles listed on the user pages of those who had voted to delete. It seemed to be getting out of hand so I created this suspected sockpuppet report for the most likely culprit. I was not, at the time, totally convinced that it was just that one user. The article is a vanity article about a group of three friends, and 2 user names and one anon IP have been used to edit it.

User:Zoso2005 responded to the accusation by saying first "it wasn't me" [79]after which I explained how check user works. He then responded that "hackers could have stolen my IP" [80]. After I further explained how unlikely that was, pointed out that one of the three full names listed in the article was probably his and that his school's IT admin could certainly use his IP and a choice of three full names to identify him without a doubt, he agreed to delete the article.[81].

My assumption is that he did this because he realized that it contained personal information that could identify him as a vandal. After some help from me with speedy tags, the article was speedied as {{db-author}}. The other part of my comment was that if he wanted to avoid trouble, he needed to own up to his vandalism and apologize which resulted in this and this. In spite of his refusal to own up and apologize, I no longer think the sockpuppet issue is that important -- and I am open to the possibility, that I pointed out to him, that if he lives in a dorm or something (which I think he does) one or more of his friends could have perpetrated the vandalism on his IP. I'm not totally sold, but it's a possibility. Either way, I suspect if a checkuser goes through, he will be blocked, and as he seems (somewhat) mollified by the trouble he got himself into, I don't really think he'll be trouble anymore. However, I'd really like some admins opinions.

Also, even if I wanted to (and I'm not sure I do), I'm not sure if its okay to just delete my own suspected sock puppet report. (particularly as I think it's pretty open-and-shut) Thanks for your time. Dina 23:22, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

WP:BLP Concern - Wrestler's Real Name

Per discussion with several users, I'd encourage you to comment on Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Nigel_McGuinness. Nigel McGuinness is the trademarked stage name of a professional wrestler (his real name is publically available in USPTO filings). "Nigel" does not want his real name to be disclosed on Wikipedia.

For those interested in a quick summary: We were contacted yesterday by his webmistress, requesting that his name be removed. After a revert war with several users, she filed an OTRS complaint, the pages were locked, and the revisions deleted. Nigel McGuinness remains fully protected. alphaChimp^(talk) 01:12, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

There is no need for further discussion as far as I can see; the users involved have acted apropriately, and the resulting actions are correct for the situation. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 01:18, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I suppose I will point out what is, to me, the crux of the issue - the fact that this man's real name is not published anywhere else. A Google search for the man's real name + wrestling came up with zero hits outside of Wikipedia. That means Wikipedia was being used as the primary point of dissemination for previously private information - which is something we are not. I will continue the conversation on the BLP noticeboard as necessary. FCYTravis 01:22, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any real issue in putting someone's name in their article, particularly given the public nature of that information. This really isn't so much about Nigel McGuinness, but the precedent we're setting in regard to real names and stage names (see Criss Angel for a very similar situation). alphaChimp^(talk) 01:24, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

The situations are not similar at all. The very first Google result for "Christopher Sarantakos" is this Forbes article on Mr. Sarantakos' life. The link between the real name and the stage name is widely known. I would not uphold any OTRS complaint about the use of this man's real name because it is well and truly public. In Mr. McGuinness' case, there is no such public knowledge and the only source citeable is a trademark database. FCYTravis 01:36, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Mr Sarantakos name isn't on the public record, as far as I know, and his proponents try at all stops to remove his name. That case is the same vein in that, assuming in the Sarantakos case his name is known but not of public record while the McGuinness case has the name of public record but "unknown", they both have to do with wanting secrecy/privacy in their stage identities. We're an encyclopedia so I do not understand why factual and supported additions are to be removed at the whims of people involved - do we rate the level of publicness as the time when we start to include facts that are already listed such as real names? Are we starting to invent a point of publicity before information has been added or do we follow wikipedia is not censored? –– Lid^(Talk) 01:44, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

We follow the idea that Wikipedia is not the first place anything should be published. Mr. Sarantakos' name is published in multiple mass media sources, hence there is no reason we should not publish it, because it is already widely known public information. Mr. McGuinness' name has not been published in any mass media sources and hence we should not be the first to open that door. FCYTravis 01:56, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

This is quite a slippery slope in that we can't post sourced information because wikipedia has to regurgitate the information of media outlets. Why media outlets? The fact of the matter is this debate is about a complaint that has no real basis of opposition due to the information being in the public domain. Even though I can find zero full wikipedia policies that specifically deny his name to be placed here, and I've read through WP:NOT trying to find one and keep coming up with the "is not censored" part supporting keeping the name in, it could still be argued that it falls under WP:Ignore all rules and WP:BOLD as keeping it out interferes with improving the information of wikipedia. –– Lid^(Talk) 02:48, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

WP:BLP#Public_figures emphasizes that basic facts should be published in reliable secondary sources (such as a newspaper or magazine article) before being included in our articles. A USPTO filing is primary source. Dragons flight 03:05, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Touchè, but I believe the second part, ignore all rules, still applies as this is specifically lessening the information of wikipedia and setting an extremely dangerous precedent (see Daniel Bryant's comments). –– Lid^(Talk) 03:09, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

This is not unprecedented. We treat porn stars the same way. If it is not already out in the real media then Wikipedia is not in the business of revealing it. Though this case is more verifiable than the cases I've dealt with since the USPTO is presumably beyond reproach. Dragons flight 01:39, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

The USPTO is a reliable source. It's relevant to the article. That's all there is to it - it should clearly be included. --Improv 01:41, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

It's not all that relevant since knowing his real name tells you nothing about the character he plays (I'm assuming that the actor is not notable aside from the character.) But mostly I agree with FCYTravis, being the first mass media to expose a secret identity is not the kind of thing Wikipedia is intended to be used for. Dragons flight 02:03, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'd suggest that the USPTO is a significantly more notable source that Forbes. If the fact was not verifiable, we'd obviously remove it per WP:BLP, but it is verifiable, and is in no way defamatory. alphaChimp^(talk) 01:46, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

The USPTO is a reliable source, but is it notable? How is a trademark filing notable? Everyone who ever files for a trademark should be on Wikipedia? FCYTravis 02:00, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

This isn't a chicken or egg debate, the article existed long before the trademark was discovered so the point of trademark filing leading to articles is not part of the debate at hand. –– Lid^(Talk) 02:12, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps I used the wrong term. Obviously we don't have to make an article for every patent holder. But, the fact that that information is made publically available in said patent should allow it to be included. alphaChimp^(talk) 02:20, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

The talk page of the Buckethead article may be of interest to participants in this conversation. Buckethead has taken great pains to keep his real name private. Ξxtreme Unction|_{yakkity yak} 01:51, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Of course, since MTV and Rolling Stone published his name, he apparently wasn't all that effective. Dragons flight 01:59, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Great work, guys. Daniel Brandt now has some more ammunition to have his whole article removed, because of this. If all it takes is to send an OTRS to WMF to censor information you don't want written about you, then WP:NPOV may need to be re-written. Daniel.Bryant 02:55, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah yes, the Daniel Brandt card. Regularly and blatantly misused to justify the inclusion of anything we want about living people simply because screw them, who cares, we can do it, so we're going to do it. The question has been repeatedly asked - What relevancy does his real name have to his wrestling career? Where is his real name used other than Wikipedia and a trademark filing? Why should we countenance the use of Wikipedia as an investigatory tool about people's lives, rather than a means of encyclopedically summarizing their life and career based on reliable published sources? None of those questions have been satisfactorily answered. Instead, we get the same he doesn't want it in, thus we should put it in just because we can, and he can't do anything about it, neener neener neener nonsense over and over again. Ridiculous. FCYTravis 03:20, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Isn't the trademark filing a reliable source? I'm pretty sure it is. Or don't you trust the US Government agencies to get his name right...? Wait a minute! "Wikipedia may contain content that some readers consider objectionable..." - amazing! Oh, and "In its ambitious mission of documenting all human knowledge" (existing emphasis on Wikipedia:Content disclaimer) Amazing! Daniel.Bryant 03:28, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

It's not about "Because we can", but rather because it's relevant. For articles about people, their name is pertinent. People's preferences should have no bearing, positive or negative, on what's in an article about them -- we're an encyclopedia, not a PR firm. If it makes it a better article, and it's based on a verifiable source, we should include it. I don't see any reason we should try for a sympathetic treatment of subjects. --Improv 20:45, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

From the previous examples of Buckethead and Criss Angel to every single character profile ever on wikipedia the real name is listed in the article, usually in the first line, even if that person doesn't want their real identity to be revealed to the public. Wikipedia is about facts, not ommitting them. The reason the published elsewhere question has been ignored is because it has no bearing on the debate, if it had been published elsewhere we wouldn't even be having this debate. The biggest issue is the precedent it sets, removing publically available facts because of a complaint when the facts are neither negative nor libel. Your ending line of "neener neener" is especially odd considering everyone here is keeping a level head and debating the topic fairly. If this passes does it mean that there is a level of public identity until which facts that are already known can be posted? It's a question that has huge ramifications in where do we draw the line? It's the precedent this sets that's the debate, not the individual. –– Lid^(Talk) 03:32, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

His real name (which I just found and started searching around for on search engines) is nothing but a marker in a governent database. For this, while his information is in the "public record", I think it would be well afforded that since his real name exists nowhere outside of said government database it should be kept private. The logic has already been cleanly applied to birthdays (yes, everyone has a birthday, and if I go through enough trouble, I can find someone's birthday and other information, and all stage names have a birth name assigned onto them), but it doesn't need to be instantly included into an article. Its dregging up private information that should've stayed private. Now, if the media comes out and writes about his real name, as in several other cases, the cat's out of the bag. Its not like critism, though. Critism is a whole new ballgame to contend with, and I'd trust that the OTRS people would think very hard about well-sourced critism material being demanded for removal before compling with any such demands. But its not, its private information, and the right thing was probably done to remove it considering the quiet nature of his real name. Now, who wants to improve some sourcing with me? Kevin_b_er 04:16, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Once again we're back at "private information" in the public domain and how that makes it still private. The case still stands in the literally tens of thousands of other character/stage name articles and their real names being listed, where do we draw the line? Many of those articles also list birthdates, in fact the vast majority seem to, where's the line? If secondary source reported the name they would be reposting the same content as the primary source, there's no difference in the context and the source is actually further back than when it needs to be thus adding additional steps to the detriment source of knowledge that is wikipedia. Public, not private, sourced information being removed on whims should not be what wikipedia is about. –– Lid^(Talk) 04:40, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I had decided, after my last comment, not to take any further partin this discussion; I have lifted my self-imposed parole just for this comment. Firstly, Kevin, I totally agree with you, and express my hope that the OTRS people would strongly consider whether to delete well-sourced criticism from a request. I was personally involved in something which was the exact definition of the aforementioned situation, and I was aggrieved to realise that Wikipedia had, in fact, deleted sourced criticism from an article. But that's the past, this is the present, and hopefully in the future WMF will consider their position more closely.

In this instance, I think the decision has to be made here is whether a state-actors real name is personal/private info, or is it public/needed. In most cases, a name would be public/needed, and hence includedin the article. However, the question is do many people know this person/actor by his real name, and if they do, is there enough to deem it notable? I have already expressed my opinion in this case, and won't just repeat it again for repeating's sake. So, if you ever see me posting on this issue again, give me a slap over the wrists at my talk page, and I wish everyone else good luck in this discussion, and lets hope that this discussion doesn't degenerate into incivility, insult throwing and name-calling. Cheers, Daniel.Bryant 04:35, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to comment on something posted above: It's not all that relevant since knowing his real name tells you nothing about the character he plays (I'm assuming that the actor is not notable aside from the character.) (by Dragons flight). If we're going to follow this, we'd have to remove pretty much every single professional wrestler's real name, regardless of whether it's verifiable, public information, or whatnot. This can't happen. McGuinness' real name does belong in the article. -->So sayeth Methnor^{Sayeth back}|_{Other sayethings}

We are here to synthesise information, not to be investigative journalists or to "out" people. On the particular facts of this case, I favour keeping the info out of the article. On a very slightly different set of facts I'd take a different view. I don't think this is much of a precedent. Metamagician3000 03:58, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

This whole issue has piqued my interest, perhaps due to FCYTravis's question above whether the USPTO is a "reliable" or a "notable" source. Can we rely on the USPTO to give us the real name of this Nigel McGuiness? I took at the Trademark database, & found the name in question (I'll call him Smith in order to keep this discussion from being redacted), & all it states is that Smith is the owner of the trademark -- not Smith is the real-life name of McGuiness. Now anyone can own a trademark: the actor, his agent, his lawyer or accountant, or a suit in the Professional Wrestling business who has no other relationship to the person who performs under that name. It's clear that Smith has some kind of relationship to the character Nigel McGuiness, but to explain what that relationship is would be original research (which is the point I suspect Metamagician3000 is arguing) -- unless someone can cite a published source that explains it. This line of reasoning is good enough for me to exclude this source -- although it does not settle the question people are arguing over above. Does it convince anyone else? -- llywrch 06:36, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

As per the USPTO's website if it were an attorney the trademark would list the applicant as "representative". It's listed as a "principal" meaning the person who registered it is the individual using it. –– Lid^(Talk) 09:45, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Isn't the principal the owner of the trademark, rather than the necessarily the person acting as a character with a trademarked name? For example, who is listed as principal for trademarks like "superman" or "batman" or "spiderman"? WAS 4.250 12:27, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

The principal for each is their parent companies, namely DC and marvel comics, however looking at those trademarks illuminated something to me about trademark formats . When a lawyer gets the trademark for another the trademark lists a section for "Attorney of Record" which the McGuinness trademark lacks. In addition the trademarks of those are listed next to type of mark as TRADEMARK while McGuinness is listed as SERVICE MARK, which under glossary is "to indicate the source of the services and to distinguish them from the services of others. A service mark is the same as a trademark except that it identifies and distinguishes the source of a service rather than a product." As the McGuinness trademark is for "Sports and Entertainment Services, namely, live and televised performances by a professional wrestler/entertainer." this categorically proves the person who submitted the trademark is the real name of McGuinness. –– Lid^(Talk) 12:48, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I think your explanation above has simply underlined my point: if you have to interpret or furnish a lengthy explanation for a source, then you are getting close to the No original research ban. Normally, I wouldn't consider this a reason to invoke this guideline, but the fact that WP:OFFICE was involved puts the burden of proof on us: unless someone has investigated this matter & published her or his claim that the owner of the trademark (or service mark) is Nigel McGuinness, we can't use this source as independant proof -- only as a confirmation of what someoen else claims.

There are a lot of sources that fall into the same category as the USPTO database in this regard: for example, A. B. had to make an extensive argument here to prove that there was a flaw in the information at the GeoNames server, & that a certain village did not exist in Nigeria. Another are the real estate databases maintained by local governments: can you always be certain that if Smith is recorded as the owner of a certain piece of land that it is where he lives? Allowing these publically-accessible sources to be used to prove points opens a path that I, for one, am uncomfortable going down; this is a good case where we should be content to wait for someone else to prove this connection first. -- llywrch 01:11, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

This interview, which I'm sure you're going to remove from this page, gives the same name as the trademark search and other details that match McGuinness exactly; English professional wrestler training in the American midwest under Les Thatcher in the HWA. The interview was conducted before he was ever known as McGuinness. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.17.182.252 (talk • contribs)

I think this discussion is missing the main points of having a BLP policy. The underlying idea is "do no harm". How does the inclusion/exclusion of his real name affect article quality? Does any benefit outweigh the harm we are doing by including the name? If the benefit clearly outweighs the harm, then by all means, include it. If the harm clearly outweighs the benefit, then leave it out. If you aren't sure, then figure it out. Why does he not want his real name plastered all over the internet? How would those of us to choose to edit under pseudonyms feel if ED tracked down our real names from, say a 15-year-old usenet posting, and publicised it? Now remember than we are one of the top-ranked websites, and everything that gets published here is mirrored in dozens of places. We can't work on the principle of "you can't stop me, so there!" We don't operate under the ethics of 12-year-olds. Figure out the costs and the benefits of including this information. And then argue about costs and benefits, not about what we can and can't do. Guettarda 14:17, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

User:Santorummm

He has the {{protected}} tag on his userpage. When I removed it, he was incivil. Looking at his contributions is rather interesting. TimBentley (talk) 04:32, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think Wikipedia will be hurt if he isn't dealt with in some sort of way. Ryūlóng 04:37, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I blocked him indefinitely for extremely innapropriate personal attacks. It is fine that he is upset with the wikimedia foundation and to express his opinion, but making such a scene and going on with personal attacks is completely innapropriate. Cowman109^Talk 04:44, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

IMHO, this could blocked under username violation (US Senator Rick Santorum comes to my mind). User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 09:17, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Haven't looked, and I'm not going to be speaking in favor of anyone wanting to shadow that evil senator, but indefinite for NPA is pretty extreme. I urge you, Cowman, to lower it to a reasonable time. Let's try a week, eh? One does not go from unblocked to eternity. Geogre 13:15, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't look like the user will be back any time soon, blocked or not. I think they made it clear they have no further desire to contribute to the encyclopedia by the long diatribe explaining his lack of trust in the Wikimedia foundation - if he does come back, he can always request to be unblocked, but I don't see this user improving the encyclopedia in the near future at this rate. The user basically stated that they were leaving and never intended to come back, and then went on to make a scene and swear at quite a few people in anger. If anyone wants to reduce the block, by all means go ahead, but I won't be doing so myself unless it turns out they were drunk or something of the sort and simply got carried away. Cowman109^Talk 18:04, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I would prefer it if you did it, as the principle is more important than the personalities. We, individually, don't decide whether or not someone will ever be productive or not. A pure vandal is a special case, but someone hurling poop and swearing is a problem that needs multiple sets of eyes to assess. Part of the problem causing such rancor right now is that some administrators have been personalizing everything, deciding that they, personally, can block someone else for being angry, etc. If you won't shorten the block, then I suppose I will have to. A month's block is usually plenty to defuse a vandal, and, if he's gone away, then he's gone away. If he hasn't, a week or month's block is better than indefinite and still shows up on his or her record. Geogre 18:38, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

This is an offensive slang term derived from the senator's name, and thus is not allowed by WP:USERNAME. Indef blocked for inappropriate username. See the rfc also for discussion. pschemp | talk 20:07, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I have no objection to an indefinite block for the user name. (I'm not sure how it's a particular slang term as much as it's a pretense to being at the Senator's office.) I remain adamant, however, that personal attacks not be used as justification for long blocks, or even short blocks if there is any ambiguity. Geogre 00:55, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Personal attacks of any kind are not acceptable, and I support the same blocking terms as Geogre. When he returns from his block, I am willing to help mentor him as he has seemed to make valid contributions prior to this episode. Yamaguchi先生 01:03, 25 September 2006

NPOV violations

User:Harlequin212121 (contribs) has repeatedly added NPOV violations and original research to the article Boy Meets World, despite discussion and receiving the full range of warnings. The user also reverted the page more than once with blatant disregard to any other editors' helpful additions or edits just to re-add their commentary. -Shannernanner 08:51, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I've pointed out in the discussion that the Harlequin is engaging in original research. No policy violation has occurred. Let's hope it stays at that. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 13:38, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. -Shannernanner 00:49, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

The user is continuing to re-add his or her edits, dismissing relevant contributions by other users, including significant additions and copyedits. The user also accuses me or "threatening" him or her with banning for using the warning templates, telling me to "never do that again" as I "am not an administrator." -Shannernanner 20:11, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I think this is more of a mentoring issue at this stage. Before anyone brings the hammer down, let's see if we can try to build some consensus at Talk:Boy Meets World. I've already started on this effort. -- ShinmaWa^(talk) 22:22, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Jack Sarfatti

...is on another one his tears, railing against his many enemies and trying to "out" anyone who displeases him, succh as myself. Would some admin mind going in and deleting some recent edits where he tries this stunt, namely [82], [83], [84], and [85] -- though you could probably also lose [86] and [87], too, just on general principle. --Calton | Talk 14:03, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Death threat by Cretanpride

Hi all. I've just received a death threat from the banned User:Cretanpride:

HI Khoikoi, perhaps you have not realized how serious I am about adding my previous edit to that article(homosexuality in ancient Greece). Perhaps you have not realized the length I will go to get it. I will present to you an ultimatum now. Either my last edit stays. The one which shows Bruce Thornton's argument, or a young girl named Emily dies because of your unfairness. Am I bluffing? That's not the question. The question is whether you are willing to take that chance. Do you want this with you the rest of your life? You have 48 hours for the article to change to my previous edit or you can hear about this on the news. I am not asking for much. Just two paragraphs which encompass the truth. I hoped it wouldn't come to this. I have wasted two months of my time, I think I should be rewarded. Its your call.

This is your fault for ignoring me and never considering my edit. You brought this girls death and you are responsible. But you can still save her by simply restoring me edit on homosexuality in ancient Greece. Not too much to ask. Bye. Bye.

This seems pretty serious—can anyone tell me what I should do? Thanks... —Khoikhoi 18:46, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

This seems to require a serious effort on the part of wikipedia sysops and higher authorities to track this individual and send the police there. Even if there is no "emily" this threat is probably a federal crime. And if there is an emily immediate action is required. In the meantime, I would let the edit remain until the police deal with it. --Blue Tie 18:51, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

How did User:Cretanpride send you this message, since he is banned? Did he contact you by e-mail? What evidence do you have that the message was written by User:Cretanpride? —Psychonaut 18:53, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it was an email. The evidence is because I got into a conflict with his socks Steve88 (talk · contribs) and James577 (talk · contribs) on Homosexuality in ancient Greece. —Khoikhoi 18:57, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Assumming you are concerned enough to believe this might have some shred of a credible threat. Call the office (1-727-231-0101) and hope that someone is reachable on a weekend. Dragons flight 19:08, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, I've aleady reverted to his version...isn't that enough? —Khoikhoi 19:09, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

No. Not enough. Make the call. Try hard. (I do not think anyone can appropriately judge the credibility of such a threat without investigation.) --Blue Tie 19:13, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

No, if the threat is real then there is some girl named Emily that is in danger (if not now, then probably in the future). Dragons flight 19:15, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I've forwarded the email. —Khoikhoi 19:29, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Several people have the email. I hope that some of you are doing more than "Forwarding" the email. --Blue Tie 19:35, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

If this was sent via email, perhaps the email headers will have the senders IP, which can be traced. --Ragib 19:18, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

The email should have a full set of header information available to view. Depending on your mail client and your settings, you may have to jump through one or more hoops to see these headers. (In Microsoft Outlook, for example, I believe you can right-click on the email subject as it shows up in your list of emails, and select "Properties".)

In any case, the headers you are looking for will start off with the word "Received:" There will generally be 3 or 4 of these.

These headers will allow you to trace the origin of the email. The last one, reading from the top down, will usually contain the IP address used to actually send the email. This will give you the ISP used to send the email. After that, it's a phone call to the cops in the jurisdiction of the IP address. In the case of a direct physical threat of death, as in this case, most ISPs will waive the requirement for the cops to provide a subpoena, and will provide the subscriber info in short order.

Hope this helps,

Ξxtreme Unction|_{yakkity yak}

19:24, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Other editors received a similar email: see Talk:Homosexuality_in_ancient_Greece#Disturbed_individual_persists_on_imposing_nationalistic_and_homophobic_views_and_resorts_to_blackmail. The email came from Sam328 (talk · contribs), who's been blocked as a sock of Cretanpride (talk · contribs).

The appropriate authorities have been contacted; in the meanwhile, I don't think we should give in to this guy by including his edits in Homosexuality in ancient Greece. The editor has been engaged in rampant sockpuppetry from the moment he found Wikipedia, and putting in his changes is just telling him that he can get what he wants through disruption. --Akhilleus (talk) 19:38, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict with Akhilleus)

Akhilleus (talk · contribs), Haiduc (talk · contribs), CaveatLector (talk · contribs) and I all received the same message. I've been working on this off-wiki today; I had not planned to reveal this publicly, but Akhilleus and I have a good idea who the individual behind this is, and I have contacted the police department at his university. They are investigating. If anyone wants details on this, please email me; I'd rather not show my full hand in public.

Incidentally, I agree that it's not appropriate to give in to this sort of blackmail. Our moral responsibility goes as far as contacting the police. If we start changing Wikipedia articles based on death threats, that could be a very bad precedent. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:43, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Uhh.. if you think your moral responsibility goes only that far and no further, you are in error. Its ok to wait a bit while the investigation goes on. There are no huge problems that will crush us while we wait. It is just an encyclopedia. It is not a life. There may be nothing to the threat, but it does not hurt to wait. Relax. Do the right thing. --Blue Tie 19:54, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. Threats or no, we can't allow ourselves to be intimidated. --InShaneee 19:47, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, you have not provided any proof that this is from Cretanpride or if the message even exists. How can you prove you are not making this up? Lapinmies 19:45, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I can forward you the email if you want... —Khoikhoi 19:48, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I assume you're referring to the legal ramifications, since Khoikhoi is a reliable user. --InShaneee 19:51, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I am referring to both, e-mails are very dubious evidence, I usually get spam from fake addresses and IPs. It would be a completely different case if there was a edit in wikipedia with the threat. Lapinmies 19:54, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Why would five editors invent a story like this? The email is real. I received it, and have forwarded it, with full headers, to the police. They're handling it. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:55, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

If the matter is being handled by the police, they probably would appreciate if there weren't much more on-Wiki discussion until they've finished investigating. I also suggest that you make sure the Office knows exactly what you've done and why. (edit conflict with below: I agree with the page protection also) Newyorkbrad 20:02, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

You may believe me when I say that they don't care. If they have the threat itself and the full set of headers, they have all they need. This discussion won't even ping their radar. Ξxtreme Unction|_{yakkity yak} 20:05, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, I've left a message with the office (using the Danny Wool phone number on the "press contact" page). I'll email Jimbo as well, just so he's informed. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:14, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Making a belated and, at this point, mostly useless clarification to my statement above. In my preceeding statement "they" == "the police". Thank you for allowing me to indulge my anal-retentive nature. Your forebearance is appreciated. Ξxtreme Unction|_{yakkity yak} 23:07, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Whatever, I have full-protected the page to avoid edit warring on whether to give in to a thread or not, and I suggest it does not get unprotected until this is resolved. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 20:00, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the protection. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:14, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree as well. —Khoikhoi 20:17, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Me too: it's the right thing to do.--Aldux 20:20, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Even when you all had not agreed, I would have done it. The police will tell you that rule number one IRL is that you NEVER EVER give in to blackmail. This regardless the threat, as it will just fuel further blackmail. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 20:29, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

As an aside, police will not always tell you this. It would depend upon the circumstances and in particular the legal and social systems available in the location of the threat. Indeed, there are many instances internationally where the only safe procedure is to submit to demands, and the law enforcement officers will tell you that very quickly. Trite "rules" of conduct, repeated in a safe environment are unhelpful in many real world situations. If any one of you ever has a spouse or child kidnapped by Central American gangs, you had better pay up or your loved one will almost certainly die and the kidnappers/killers will never be caught. This is so true that sometimes a kidnapping does not have to take place, simply a threat of a kidnapping is sufficient to obtain payment and payment is sufficient to avoid kidnapping and the loss of fingers or ears or eyes and such. This is so prevalent that you can purchase Kidnapp and Extortion insurance for overseas travel. The record for return of hostages is quite good... if the payment is made.

Ok, so this was not a real kidnapping and not a real threat to murder. I would not go so far as to say we got lucky because the likelihood of danger was small. Things transpired as probability would have dictated. Kooks abound and are mostly harmless. But I am glad that we did not get an unlucky roll of the cosmic dice. I am glad that we did not face the problem of dealing with the rare case where a kook moves to defcon 5. It feels really satisfying to be all tough and macho -- all the way right up until you actually have to pay the piper.

Oh...wait... what am I thinking? That could never happen.[88] [89] [90] [91] [92]

[93] Never mind. --Blue Tie 00:06, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there are exceptions. But we are not in Central America. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 00:28, 25 September 2006 (UTC) (BTW, have you ever negotiated with guerilla's?)

Yeah. It's the exceptions that get ya in trouble though. As far as guerillas... not exactly. But does negotiating with armed Saudi tribesmen to stop beating a person and return him to me count for something like that? --Blue Tie 01:22, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it counts. If this was a case with say Columbian para-militairy, I would have reacted differently, but we are dealing with a student in the US, which makes things slightly different. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 01:52, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

At least it's a creative way to reinterpret "NEVER EVER". --66.101.59.18 06:43, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Colombian :) - FrancisTyers · 10:48, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I know, just one of those darned non-native English speaking dyslectic's :-) -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 13:43, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Update

I've just received another email from Cretanpride. Here it is:

You guys win. I give up. That last email was a joke. You win. I'm never going to edit on that article again.

My guess is that the police found the individual and made him realize how inappropriate the "joke" was.

I've forwarded this message to the police as well. I tried to call them, but the officer who's handling the case isn't available. I left him a message, and will let you all know what I hear. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:33, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I've just received a call from the police officer; it turns out that he wasn't able to verify the identity that I gave him, so the timing of Cretanpride's second email was a coincidence. Given that email, it seems extremely probable that this was a hoax; while making a hoax death threat is still a serious matter, I think that we can all relax a bit now. I'm going to continue to pursue the investigation, but the urgency has diminished. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:34, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Can I suggest that if an editor thinks that it's funny or a "joke" to make death threats (however false) that they are not mentally stable enough to be an editor or even own a computer. --Charlesknight 22:39, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I couldn't possibly concur more. Luckily, he's already indef blocked. --InShaneee 22:51, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

It might be appropriate to update the block log with a more specific block reason, in case anyone ever later thought about unblocking. Also, has a checkuser been run? Newyorkbrad 23:17, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Done, and I have put a notice at the user page. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 00:41, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd assume so from Khoikhoi's second comment, but a new one may be in order. --InShaneee 23:21, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Has a checkuser been run? Read and weep, my children (and don't forget to scroll down, to see the full litany of horrors). The matter currently being discussed is whether a range block is possible. Unfortunately, Mackensen is the checkuser who knows most about the case, and he's on a wikibreak until Thursday. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 23:46, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, maybe today's events will put a different spin on the matter. If it really has been brought home to this user that his recent communications crossed the line and sufficiently worried people here that the police were contacted, then he might now be more receptive to a strongly worded suggestion that under any name, he's not welcome to post here any more. Newyorkbrad 23:51, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps that strongly worded suggestion should be left by someone other than me, since I was a recipient of the email. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 00:03, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

(Unindent) I have not had the experiences you guys have had, so I might not have the right idea. But I sort of hope this fellow recovers and could return with a good heart and wiser edits. I apologize in advance if this offends anyone. --Blue Tie 00:11, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Legal context

I am just back from a friend who is a law enforcment officer, and I asked him to have a look at the e-mail and this tread. Based on that:

1. A threat like this is at least a misdemeanor.
2. Do not give in to it.
3. Take it serious and contact the police.

In most cases, this is just a frustrated person who does not think and tries something, in rare cases, this is serious stuff. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 00:28, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Cretanpride was already banned before this latest fiasco. If you look at his talk page, you'll see that he was given many chances to do the right thing before I eventually gave him an indefinite block; even before this weekend, that block had morphed into a community ban because of his incessant sockpuppetry and POV-pushing. I'm not offended by your suggestion — indeed, other editors may tell you that I'm sometimes too willing to give abusive editors second chances and the benefit of the tiniest doubt — but it really doesn't apply in this case. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 00:22, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I saw it, and I have confirmed the indef block for his blackmail attempt by treatening to murder an innocent girl. This is just not ok. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 00:49, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm completely uninvolved in this but I wanted to compliment everyone involved. Yes, it was 99.9% a fake threat from a little kid who couldn't get his way - but that doesn't mean he doesn't need to be thoroughly beaten with a clue stick. Contacting the police was exactly the right thing to do, if only to get him on their radar when he inevitably begins killing small woodland animals. --Golbez 04:34, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Ditto. Well done for being cool, calm, collected – and practical. JackyR | Talk 10:04, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Perverted-Justice.com

There have been a series of edits to the article, where the editor edits for the first time, or an anon IP, or where there have only been a few edits and all are of this site. I am suspicious that these are edits from a person, or persons working for the Perverted-Justice.com. I'm not sure if ther IP addresses are genuine, spoofed, or using a proxy server. I don't have much to go on other than the odd feeling. Perhaps admins here may know a way to look into this further? Please see:

• Squaresville
• 221.153.56.253 (Korea)
• 71.206.224.250 (Mt. Laurel, New Jersey)
• 219.32.18.62 (Tokyo, Japan)
• 66.252.253.81 (Alexandria, Minnesota)
• 83.132.162.110 (Lisbon, Portugal)
• 64.223.120.132 (Burlington, Vermont)
• 66.252.250.171 (Alexandria, Minnesota)
• 151.205.53.80 (Morgantown, West Virginia)
• 151.205.40.203 (West Virginia)
• 24.85.0.108 (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
• 4.157.53.66 (Unknown, US)
• 4.157.53.101 (Unknown, US)
• 65.68.74.240 (Houston, Texas)
• 4.157.29.225 (Unknown, US)
• 4.157.29.234 (Unknown, US)
• 4.156.3.197 (Unknown, US)
• 24.181.233.64 (Worcester, Massachusetts)
• 69.239.140.140 (San Luis Obispo, California)
• 63.224.57.186 (Seattle, Washington)

• Not much co-relation on location
• All of them have one, or only a few edits, only to this article, and then never revist it, or wikipedia.
• Some of the comments make it appear that the user has used Wikipedia before ("copyedit", "rv, edit detracts from quality of wiki", "rem. poorly placed and unneeded phrase re interstate commerce", "reduced number of run-on sentences, used more specific legal terminology, edited some phrases for NPOV".)
• Edits seem to be for benefit of "perverted-justic.com", or "Von Ercke", none negative.

Atom 20:39, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

List at WP:OPP Thatcher131 07:36, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

On a related note, has anyone seen this page? It markes WP as a "Category 2: Passive Corporate Sex Offender". --Ragib 08:05, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Being harrassed.

User Havoc is posting on my talk page as if he was a moderator or admin of Wikipedia. I am not complaining about content of any edited article but I do not believe it is appropriate for someone who is not a moderator or admin to punish or inform other users of not meeting criteria as if they were in charge. Employees do not punish other employees. That is what the boss is for. I have deleted his "friendly warnings" and advised him to stop on his talk page but he continued to do so. Hyde v 22:21, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

It's actually entirely appropriate - I've handed out hundreds of warnings and I'm just an editor (1st class lightlap division). You seem to misunderstand the relationship of people here. Administrators are not the "boss", the different between them and normal editors is that they can act upon the warnings that normal editors put on other editor's pages or decide that they have been used incorrectly. As for your particular case, it appears that that Havoc has left two polite and to the point notes informing you that Wikipedia is not a games guide. I have not yet checked the edits and therefore cannot comment upon them (but that's my next action..). --Charlesknight 22:27, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I did. He is, in fact, correct. --InShaneee 22:29, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I concur - however I would note that maybe Havoc could have taken a little more time to explain policy to a new editor (and I'll hold my hand up for taking the same road on a number of occassions. --Charlesknight 22:34, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I guess I just will not post to World of Warcraft articles. Just about everything I have added to Wikipedia has been edited to the point that there was little left of my additions and it is always considered "cruft" or whatever the heck it is called. I do not feel it is my place to admonish other posters for what I perceive is wrong but it appears to be within the rules to do so. I think it would be best if I stopped being so public from now on. Hyde v 22:58, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

No one's 'admonishing' you, nor is this about perceptions. He was simply informing you of a policy you most likely weren't aware of in an attempt to explain why your content was being removed. --InShaneee 23:00, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Further to the above comments. Don't be too hasty, you clearly know your stuff and could make a positive contribution to the project. Let me make a suggestion, take a few days off or maybe a week. When you get back, discuss the edits you want to make on the talkpage with your fellow editors. Once you have been brainwashed... em.. get a bit more use to the policies and practices of Wikipedia, it all gets a bit more straight forward. Please feel free to drop by my talkpage if you want to discuss this further. --Charlesknight 23:06, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I do apologize for being blunt, but this is not the first instance of game guide information I have removed, and as such I have become somewhat harsh in my way of handling it. Specially when it comes to the Warcraft articles, and especially Classes in World of Warcraft as it all started with me merging nine articles into one. And right after that a merger happened with talents from WoW aswell, making the article even more of a game guide then before. I have also explained not only to hyde v, but numerous other editors about the inclusion of game guide trivia and information, which in turn has lead me to believe that this has in fact been understod as nobody has voiced any opinion on the contrary. I could have toned down my warning, but as I saw it I had given him a fair amount of chance to object to my deletions of said information. Again, my appolagises for being blunt, my intent was never to make you feel harassed, but please do understand my position on this as many articles have been deleted because of the inclusion of this type of information. Thank you. Havok (T/C/c) 06:09, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Sam Harris (singer)

The Sam Harris (singer) article is being used for advertising. 24.60.26.138 repeatedly put in content from [94] which is a blatant copyright violation. He claimed to be affiliated with the site, which is even worse because at that point it becomes vanity. He has since been given a 48 hour block, but has returned with a new IP, 66.212.134.173, and added in the same copyrighted material. Can the page be protected or something? I feel that this user is going to keep coming back and using Wikipedia for promotional means. IrishGuy ^talk 01:27, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Page temporarily sprotected. Please correct the article to conform to established guidelines and policies. Thanks. ~Kylu (u|t) 01:32, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. IrishGuy ^talk 01:38, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

User:Glengordon01

His user page looks to me like a violation of WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL, specifically at [[User:Glengordon01#Wikipedia as a social experiment#Troll wins at Charun]]. I requested that he tone it down and he refused User talk:Glengordon01#Please change your user page.

This is an outgrowth of a dispute at Talk:Charun that went through WP:3O and Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Glengordon01. After I opened the user conduct RfC Glengordon01 became hostile toward me (I'm one of the people named on his talk page) so I've about run out of options. I'd like to request special care in this instance: while this editor's conduct steps over the line, his scholarship seems to be quite good - it's the sort of interpretive reading that would be fine in a university term paper but falls on the wrong side of WP:NOR. Would an administrator lend a hand, please? Regards, Durova 02:40, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Other than the personal attacks, I think his essay is pretty good. --Blue Tie 03:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Would an administrator address the personal attacks, please? I don't view myself as particularly attacked, but Scottandrewhutchins was distressed and wrote to my talk page. I agreed this steps over the line and asked him to let third parties handle this. Durova 05:20, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Disruptive editing..?

Can an admin take a look at edits from KrishnaVindaloo and have an opinion on his "collaborative process"..? I think it borders on "disruptive editing"... I am also wondering if it's a sockpuppet, the user only edits one topic. Thanks!--Travisthurston 03:50, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

User:Morton devonshire

I warned User:Morton devonshire for vandalism for this edit where he had inserted the same (potentially defamatory and unreferenced) statement 7 times in the article. He denied this was vandalism and made a personal attack, accusing me of having a grudge against him.[95] I had also left a request for him to leave an edit summary,[96] and he accused me of intimidation.[97] I've edited some of the same articles, so I feel someone else should take a look.

His user page and sub page User:Morton devonshire/conspiracy theory is used for polemic with photos ridiculing 9/11 researchers. This is clearly provocative, trolling and counter-productive to collegiality over a subject which is already fraught. Guinnog asked him to remove such material three days ago, but it has not been changed (apart from a Che Guevara image). User:Morton devonshire/todo also contains a personal attack not appropriate for wiki.

Although it is a different issue, I consider that Morton's POV agenda extends, to the detriment of wiki, into his editing practice. Furthermore, there is either a serious failure to AGF here or a need for some admins to be called to task.

Tyrenius 08:07, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Given that the edit appears to be, you know, true, as this extract from the Steven E. Jones shows:

On September 7, 2006, he was placed on paid leave while his university reviewed the scientific basis of his work in this area.<ref name=DMorning_pleave>Walch, Tad. "BYU places '9/11 truth' professor on paid leave", Deseret Morning News, September 8, 2006.</ref><ref name=USNW_BYUtakes>{{cite news |first=Will |last=Sullivan|title=BYU takes on a 9/11 conspiracy professor|url=http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060911/11conspiracy.htm|work=U.S.News & World Report |publisher=www.usnews.com|date=2006-09-11}}</ref>

it's hard to understand where the "potentially defamatory" comes in. --Calton | Talk 08:23, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Potentially defamatory is the difference between:

1. he was placed on paid leave while his university reviewed the scientific basis of his work in this area
2. who is on paid academic leave due to his apparent misrepresentation that his work had been properly vetted

The first statement is neutral. The second states impropriety ("apparent" is no defence). There is no suggestion in the article that he misrepresented anything. See similar discussion here Tyrenius 09:09, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Uh huh.

Besides worries about his accusations, Carri Jenkins, a spokesman for the university, said BYU was also concerned that Jones's work on September 11 had not been published in credible peer-reviewed journals. Jones edits the Journal of 9/11 Studies, an online collection of articles that has included his work. From U.S. News & World Report [98]

Which means that the second statement is, you know, true. Which means what you're arguing about is spin, not neutrality. --Calton | Talk 09:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

There is nothing to say he misrepresented anything in your quote. Besides which, this issue of potential defamation has become a red herring, so I've struck it, as the other points above are being ignored. Tyrenius 16:23, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to second this motion. This user has been involved in an attempt to push POV on all 9/11 articles. His talk page makes both his position and his intent clearly evident for all to see, so I don’t think there is a need to link evidence but I will if requested. An editor who cannot avoid allowing his personal feelings to override good judgment and respect for and compliance with policies should not be an editor any longer. Shortfuse 09:39, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Funny, I looked at Morton's edits and saw him as pushing NPOV. The mainstream view is not usually regarded as POV. Guy 11:55, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Pushing any viewpoint at the expense of any other viewpoint is POV. Please read WP:NPOV again. It's unequivocal that all points of view should be presented fairly, including non-mainstream views, and in proportion to their importance. They should certainly not be ridiculed. Also "None of this is to say that tiny-minority views cannot receive as much attention as we can give them on pages specifically devoted to them'". Tyrenius 16:23, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I am pretty familiar with that policy, thanks. The relevant part here is "undue weight". The dominant view point - accepted by all but a tiny minority - does not qualify as a POV as such in this instance, any more than a tacit acceptance of evolution qualifies as POV just because some folks refuse to accept it. Not a very good example of course - the 9/11 conspiracy theories have massively less basis than intelligent design. Guy 23:50, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Morton's use of userspace is hostile, inflammatory, and uncivil. His use of the {{vandal}} template for established editors, as well as categorizing editors into friendly and unfriendly camps is definitely a violation of WP:CIVIL. His contributions show an intermittent use of edit summaries; he is especially prone to not use edit summaries when he is making controversial edits. So far, I'm with you, except for the incident which you brought to the board: the edit in question wasn't vandalism, and you diminished yourself by making that accusation immediately (Morton isn't the only one to violate WP:AGF). However, there's one more thing that you're missing, and that is... this is not the appropriate forum. There's nothing that needs administrator attention as of this point. Requests for Comment and Requests for Mediation is thataway; there are plenty of other forums you could have made use of that don't result in overwork of our already extremely busy admins. Captainktainer * Talk 14:15, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

The key point is not just the content of the edit. It is the fact that the same sentence was instated 7 times, i.e. each time Jones' name appeared. This is a deliberately inflammatory bad faith edit. I think you've missed the fact that I am one of our already extremely busy admins, and have posted here for confirmation that there are serious points to be addressed with this user, as he is claiming I have a grudge (I didn't know anything about him till a few days ago). You have confirmed this, and I am quite happy to proceed on this basis (or for another admin to intervene), so it need take up no more of anyone else's time. Tyrenius 16:23, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

This seems to be focusing more on people than edits. It might be better to avoid each other for a while, or try mediation if you have to. Don't let this become some kind of personal thing between the two of you. Tom Harrison ^Talk 16:51, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I am not sure why anyone is even bringing up his user page, that space really has no bearing on the issue of the repeated insertion of the line in question. The issue here is his edits, while I think what he inserted is correct, it does not need to be put in 7 times. I think a simple warning that over use of that line is a problem. Jones has claimed that his work was peer reviewed. A college does not put its professors on leave simply because they want to check their work ... I mean seriously ... So the real issue seems to be the over use of the line in question. Again I reccomend a simple warning stating that it does not need to be included numerous times and possibly can be rephrased to an exact quote from a source, to prevent POV issues and rewording problems. --NuclearUmpf 16:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I think this will stumble into a larger issue after doing a little research. We have Jones used as a source of information in numerous articles and it turns out his work was not peer reviewed as per WP:RS in scientific articles or claims. I also want to point out that it seems everyone has been on the verge of WP:AGF here [99] and perhaps everyone just needs to take a step back and relax a moment. I am not advocating for Morton because I think there is a general over use of that sentence that was attempting to be used, but I think a review of what we use here on Wikipedia from Jones should be considered and the line or mention of his schools lack of faith in his work should be made in a quotation form. --NuclearUmpf 16:45, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

First off, if Morton Devonshire has stated that you (Tyrenius) has a grude against him, that's not a personal attack, but his opinion and we don't stiffle opinions in routine conversations. Secondly, the facts are that nothing Steven Jones has stated about his beliefs on the reasons why the world trade center collapsed has appeared in a single engineering journal or a reliable source because he hasn't had it properly vetted. In fact there isn't anything, aside from opinions, that support the idea that the world trade center buildings were brought down by explosives. No one is POV pushing if they are fighting to only use reliable sources and factual evidence when discussing these affairs. If folks want to believe, just as some do in UFO's and Bigfoot, that something so ridiculous as controlled demolition brought down the twin towers and otrher buildings, go right ahead. Morton shouldn't be (and I don't think anyone really should be) listing other wikipedians that he feels may or may not be "problem users" or cranks, but he certainly can list articles that have been deleted and others that should be if he so chooses. Furthermore, images of folks with tin-foil hats that are free use is a violation of nothing. My basic observation is that folks that believe in the controlled demolition theory of the WTC are either uneducated in the facts, have a strong anti-American bias or a political leaning strongly in opposition to the current American administration, or they are simply trying to disrupt Wikipedia when they create POV fork articles such as the Controlled demolition hypothesis for the collapse of the World Trade Center, which has information that failed to meet consensus for inclusion in the main article which is Collapse of the World Trade Center. This kind of misuse of Wikipedia to advocate or counterbalance factual encyclopedic content is definitely a POV push. Lastly, Steven E. Jones is kind of the poster-boy of the controlled demolition advocates. He has, however recently been placed on paid academic leave from his university so that they can decide if his work has indeed been properly vetted, as he claims[100]--MONGO 17:13, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Start again

This is not a thread for a discussion about conspiracy theories or Steven E Jones. It has been turned into that, and it is an irrelevance. It is about admin and user conduct.

Very simple points:

• Morton Devonshire complained that I improperly warned him for inserting the same line 7 times (forget what's actually in the line - that's not the point!). This is a deliberatively disruptive edit, and the warning was in line with wiki policy.
• He has been asked by an admin (Guinnog) to clean up his user space and not use it for polemic and provocation. These are attack pages against a large number of people. This is against wiki policy. It is irrelevant what anyone's view is of the people attacked. Wiki is not the place to express it. We are writing an encyclopedia, not carrying out a political campaign.
• He has accused me of acting from a personal grudge. This is an attack on my integrity, and violates WP:AGF. I have had very limited interaction with this user.

I have only posted here for the sake of transparency. Tyrenius 17:31, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

• If the edit is in fact factual, and true, and sourced by WP:RS and WP:V standards. Then wouldnt the removal of the statement be the disruption and not his inclusion. Wouldnt hiding this fact in a case where he is being used as a source, which in itself might fail WP:RS if it wasnt peer reviews, be pushing POV? I think MONGO has a point that if Jones isnt peer reviewed after all then Morton's edits were in fact for the bettermeant and actually a suitable middleground instead of removing Jones all together as failing WP:RS.
• His attack pages are not relevant to this discussion if your complaint is the insertion of the quotation, much like anything you might have done elsewhere or in the past is the subject.
• I dont see someone stating they think you have a grudge on them as a personal attack.

The subject of Jones is important because it determines who is pushing POV and who is removing cited information. --NuclearUmpf 17:48, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

What justification is there for inserting an identical 25 word setence as a footnoot after every single reference of Jones's name? I can see no policy based reason to do that. Once is fine. We do not Wikilink every instance of a word; only the first. His edit was to literally insert the identical line of text after all 7 instances of Professor Jones's name. What justification is there for that? The user was asked as well why he did it on his user page but had not answered. If such an edit was justified, I would appreciate to see what policy justified it. · XP · 20:06, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

The edit in question. I see in his user space he has been previously warned many times for this sort of vandalism on politically charged/911 related articles by both admins and regular users. · XP · 20:07, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I can't see it as a political campaign if Morton Devonshire is working to ensure NPOV is being followed. That sounds like he is trying to defend policy, in fact. NPOV is non-negotiable and the undue weight clause of that policy is being misread by many. Undue weight applies to reliable sources, not personal opinions. Thus, while we can say lots of people believe "A", if we can't find reliable sources that support this belief in "A" from a scientific or engineering background, then it is a extreme minority viewpoint that deserves only a passing mention or no mention at all. This is an encyclopedia project, not a platform for advocacy of an extreme minority viewpoint. Morton may feel you have a personal grudge against him because he is possibly on the opposite side of the argument from him, and your request that he make major changes to his userpage is being done so because you feel insulted? I'm reaching here. I feel that if he doesn't point directly at any editor, but at the opposition in general, he is in violation of nothing...at least he is open and honest with where he stands in the argument.--MONGO 18:33, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

You are indeed reaching, and I would be grateful if you would kindly retract. I have no idea why you should feel that I am personally insulted by people in tin foil hats. I am not a 9/11 conspiracy theorist/researcher, and I am on neither "side" (though I note you consider that there are "sides", which I have also observed) of this 9/11 conspiracy debate. It is unfortunate that anyone editing an article about this topic is now automatically branded as on one "side" or the other. That is not how wiki works. The topic has very little interest for me. What does interest me is maintaining wikipedia policy and objectivity. I see very little evidence that Morton Devonshire is committed to NPOV, but rather more that he is on a campaign against 9/11 "conspiracy theories". That is not exactly the point. The case is rather:

1. Inserting the same line 7 times in an article is a blatant violation of WP:POINT, deliberately provocative and hence vandalism.
2. Misuse of user page for polemic and deliberate provocation. If the same thing were done to, for example, "Republicans" or "Democrats" instead of "conspiracy theorists" it would not be tolerated.
3. An accusation that my actions are not based on my commitment to the best interests of wikipedia, but because of a personal grudge, is a direct personal attack.

These are three different items that happen to have coincided. 1 and 2 are unrelated issues. With 2 I am simply following up for another admin who's on hols at the moment. Tyrenius 19:00, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Wouldnt the people removing a clearly sourced and relevant piece of information be commiting the vandalism. Jones is being used as a source of information on a scientific topic he reported on, his work is being questioned by his own employers. This is directly relevant to WP:RS. There are two sides to this debate, the people constantly removing the information may be seen as provoking Morton. --

NuclearUmpf 19:18, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

You've misunderstood. There weren't 7 edits. There was one edit, where the same text was inserted in 7 different places.[101] Tyrenius 19:55, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, geez...he made one edit...I see it was reverted, so I see no edit war. He didn't provide a cite to support his comment, but that article is more than 50% just a random collection from unreliable websites anyway, and is a POV fork to boot. From my standpoint, there is no reason to even edit that article unless one wants to waste their time. I don't contibute to articles that are platforms of advocacy for people's opinions.--MONGO 20:02, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I also think we should limit this to the current topic of the quote or instead direct you to RfC if you have a laundry list of complaints. You dont want Morton to think you have a grudge but you are taking up complaints of other admins instead of addressing your issue ... As I said I think we should keep this discussion focused on the original topic or move it to where its more relevant, RfC. --NuclearUmpf 19:21, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

RfC is not required and would take up a huge amount of productive time. The "laundry list" is simply so that others can keep an eye out here. Guinnog asked me to follow up, as he was travelling. It was something I was going to address anyway, but he got there first. Admins work co-operatively, not in isolation from each other. If it's in the interests of wikipedia, it is a communal responsibility. Tyrenius 19:55, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, I cannot see that his statement that you holding a grudge aginst him is a personal attack. I understand that you may feel his comment undermines your integrity, but that doesn't make it a personal attack, but an observation. I have left a note for him on his talkpage to make sure he follows Wikipedia:User page. I will also look at these 7 edits he made and if I find them to be excessive, I won't hesitate to let him know. His userpage may be possibly be polemic and provocative, but so long as he follows the policy, he would not be the first editor to post polemic or provocative commentary in his userspace. Some find an American flag or the Hammer and Sickle polemic...so this is a matter of opinion.--MONGO 19:21, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Study WP:NPA. A personal attack is a negative comment about the person. It's not an "observation", unless there is any objective evidence to show that I hold a personal grudge against Morton, and I assure you I do not. It is blatant failure to AGF. As I have said, I have had very little interaction with him and that only recently. There is nothing in my history on wikipedia to indicate that I act out vendettas. Morton has now followed up with some more unfounded observations; see my reply. I expect support in maintaining standards. I am not particularly interested in pursuing the PA business right now, but I am interested in getting rid of blatant provocation on his user pages. It is completely inappropriate for a user to choose a group of people they dislike and use wiki space to ridicule them. It is divisive and completely counter to building a harmonious community. I expect your support on insisting that user space is not abused in this fashion. Tyrenius 20:08, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

He appears to be removing potentially offenive commentary [102].--MONGO 20:45, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

So he made an edit that was true but uncited, and included it everywhere Jones' qualifications as a BYU physics professor were mentioned. You post on the notice board saying this was vandalism, plus his user page is disrespectful to conspiracists and the memory of Che Guevara. And on top of that, Morton fails to assume good faith about your actions. Did you post here to have your admin actions reviewed, or to request some admin action against Morton?

I am on a campaign against conspiracy theories myself; I actively oppose conspiracy theorists using Wikipedia to boot-strap themselves to legitimacy. Conspiracists use a flawed methodology to arrive at their conclusions(at best; often they just spew innuendo). Saying so, and saying so in article space, makes Wikipedia a better encyclopedia. This can be done because there is an extensive academic literature on the subject. Presenting this nonsense as just another legitimate point of view that any reasonable man might hold is like defending sophists, or marketeers, or deconstructionists. Tom Harrison ^Talk 20:25, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

As Morton felt persecuted by me, I didn't think it was fair to carry on engaging directly with him at that point, and wished to give him the benefit of wider discussion. I posted both so that my actions could be discussed and also for admin action to address anything necessary.

I am sure that maintaining adherence to wiki policies of NPOV and VERIFY will allow readers to gain the facts to make their own judgement. The less involved an editor is with the issues, the better this can be achieved. Pejorative language and a priori attitudes towards any subject are best avoided as much as possible. It also makes collegiality hard to achieve. We have to respect that people hold beliefs sincerely, even if we disagree with them or are sure they are flawed. There is no harm in being polite and refraining from being openly contemptuous to others or using scornful language. The truth will out in these matters.

Morton is showing goodwill by removing the photo captions, and I think this is a good solution. I have made my points, and have no wish to take the matter further.

Tyrenius 21:04, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi. I suppose I feel compelled to respond here, although I really hate these things. I’ve seen the edits that Tom Harrison made to Controlled demolition hypothesis for the collapse of the World Trade Center with respect to Steven Jones, and I like his version much better. Thanks. Also, I have taken into account the suggestions some of you have made, and have altered my user and sub-user pages accordingly. I decline to get into a content war with Admins. I apologize for being direct, but being an American, that’s my way: I don’t wish to be involved in continued sessions of dialogue, and choose to disengage to calm things. I hope that you will respect that. Cheers, and happy editing! Morton devonshire 21:33, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Massive IP spambot attack

Per all of the wonders of RC Patrolling, I managed to gather up this list of an active dynamic spambot. There is obviously something else at work here, than the simple spambot if it went across that many ranges in less than one hour. Ryūlóng 08:30, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I would also like to note that one of them did turn out to be an open proxy (according to CSCWEM's block summary); perhaps the others are as well? Ryūlóng 08:34, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

A partially complete list is as follows:

• 68.3.184.185 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 69.223.144.41 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 71.233.7.55 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 24.46.117.2 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 68.226.184.19 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 69.232.175.98 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 69.223.144.41 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 67.38.244.244 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 68.102.71.108 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 24.111.81.246 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 172.180.99.13 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 67.168.96.59 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

--Ryūlóng 08:39, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I've also tried to list the domain of the spambot to the Meta-Wiki blacklist. Ryūlóng 08:46, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Blacklisted allln.com. MaxSem 11:20, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Happens frequently. I overheard that certain things like using a div of display=none is actually blocked off, to cut down on the number of spambots hitting stuff. These things hit sites all over the internet, and wikipedia's just the lateast one. Most of them are probably zombie computers too. Ever searched google for a particular phrase involving sseason in 2005? Kevin_b_er 15:41, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

User:FCYTravis

This administrator is abusing his privileges and using his status to advance his own POV. For example, if you go to Advocates For Children in Therapy you will see he continues to change the edits of others. In that dispute, he has be uncivil, edited the page when it was blocked, ignored two polls in which he was the only one opposed to the changes, and 'refused' mediation. This is not the example that an administrator should set! If you check his talk page you will find may complaints by many others regarding a variety of pages on which he has acted without regard to Wikipedia policy...or claims to act in accord with it, but a reading of the poliy shows that he is only enforcing his biased interpretation. If you need specific page and other citations, let me know and I will provide those. For example, if you go to the talk page for SamDavidson you will see that FCYTravis calls him a meat puppet and claims Wikipedia policy in support of that; despite the fact that a reading of the policy shows that to be in accurate. RalphLender^talk 13:48, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

This should go to dispute resolution, not here. I'm going to move this thread somewhere else if no one screams in the next five minutes. - brenneman ^{L} 14:29, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I support the claim that user FCYTravis has been most difficult and has even created edit wars. Where is "dispute resolution?" I'd like to follow this. DPeterson^talk 20:04, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Requests for Comment/Administrators (the first step) is thataway. FCYTravis 20:09, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

User:65.35.27.83

65.35.27.83 (talk • contribs • WHOIS) appears from editing history to be User:Edward Saint-Ivan who is currently indefinitely blocked for using sock puppets and adding irrelevant information about himself to articles that are tangentially connected to himself, which he's up to again. Looking back, I'd say the entire edit history of this IP is the same person. JulesH 16:02, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

User:203.219.181.10

203.219.181.10 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

This IP appears to be a static IP that has been used nearly exclusively over the course of several years for vandalism, nonsense edits, and grafitti. This IP should be blocked, and in any case shouldn't be receiving test1 and test0 warnings. In August, I added the vandalism watch template to the top of the talk page in the hopes that editors reverting vandalism would notice that it is a persistent case of vandalism, but the user continues to receive "don't do it again or else" warnings, which are of course ignored. Neil916 (Talk) 17:25, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I added the {{repeat vandal}} template to the page, for what it's worth, at least people can't miss it. Equendil Talk 18:10, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Legal threats

Are regular users allowed to remove legal threats from the talk pages per WP:LEGAL? There's an IP address editor throwing around legal threats[103] on the Talk: St Christopher Iba Mar Diop College of Medicine page -- can I just delete them, or does an admin need to do it? Thanks, TheronJ 16:38, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Best leave it there, it's not technically legal threat, and it'll die on its own. Equendil Talk 17:41, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Blocking policy/Simplified

Please look over Wikipedia:Blocking policy/Simplified. It should have pretty much the content of the present blocking policy, refactored to be more readable and usable as a practical guide to admins, particularly new ones. Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Blocking policy#Refactored_blocking_policy - David Gerard 16:41, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Edits on Front organization

We've recently had some problems on Front organization, where an anon user edited the article and almost turned the ensuing revert war into a 3RR violation, leaving personal attacks in their edit summaries. The user's motives were then supported by a newly-created account (User:NoLongerScieno), who was immediately blocked by Naconkantari for sockpuppetry. The user then came onto the #wikipedia IRC channel, yelling about the block and saying that he wasn't guilty of any sockpuppetry, despite the fact that his IP was in the same subnet as the anonymous editor. The user was then kickbanned from the channel, then immediately messaged me (I had been trying to resolve the problem), lying about the kick reason and forging messages from the channel operator who banned the user. No harm came out of this, but now the page in question has been protected, and I'm concerned that the user might be using User:Blainetologist to evade the block. Any ideas? Shadow1 17:54, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd suggest a WP:RFCU. Naconkantari 18:39, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

To be fair, I don't think an anon user getting an account really counts as sockpuppetry. Unless he then denies it.

Anon vandalism at Qur'an desecration controversy of 2005

An anonymous user keeps inserting "Piss Christ" at the above page. He makes no attempt to justify its relevance in talk, and I have removed it several times. He is operating as 67.175.216.90 (talk · contribs) and 66.209.214.23 (talk · contribs); according to the talk page for the second IP he has done this to numerous other pages too. Samples of his vandalism are here and here. There does not appear to be anyone else using the IP address.--csloat 20:01, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Try posting this to Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism instead. --InShaneee 20:12, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Suspicious uploads by Alex43223

I stumbled across the contributions of Alex43223 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) while clearing out CAT:CSD (seems to be a good way to find these cases). He's been around for a while, and has uploaded quite a few images. Many have been deleted, for various reasons, mostly just for being orphaned fair use images. Several have also had their status questioned for various reasons, such as for lacking sources or for having unlikely license claims or otherwise being suspicous, but have been kept after an explanation has been provided.

However, the more I look into the situation, the fishier it all looks to me. Here are some examples of his uploads that seem particularly odd, in rough chronological order:

• Image:Jgarner9.jpg: First uploaded with a {{NoRightsReserved}} tag and the summary "Jennifer Garner in Daredevil". After tagging was disputed by Yamla, Alex43223 reuploaded a different photo over it, stating "There was a mistake in the original copy of this photo. I acquired it from a source that claimed all rights had been released. I found out that this was not true, therefore I changed the file to a press release photo." and changed the tag to {{PromoPhoto}}. In fact, he uploaded two new versions — the first one having the text "www.comicscontinuum.com" on it, while the second one had the text cropped off. Despite this, he later changed the image description to read "Press release photo of Jennifer Garner at an awards show. It was given to me while on the red carpet at the Golden Globe Awards 2005. It was given out freely." (Compare with Alexavega1.jpg below!) The image was later deleted as an orphan fair use image.

• Image:Jerryyang.JPG: Uploaded with a {{PD}} tag. When the copyright status is questioned by Water Bottle, an anon pops up on the talk page with the statement "hey alex43223 i kno i told u in da letter dat da pic wuz not copyrightted, but i lied!!!!" Picture is then deleted. (I suppose I should assume good faith here, but it does feel a bit suspicious given the other cases.)

• Image:Prisonbars.PNG: First uploaded in 30 December 2005 as {{CopyrightedFreeUse}}. After source was requested by Admrboltz, retagged as {{GFDL-self}} with the comment "I created this on my home computer". (Note: The image has since been moved to Commons and deleted locally.) Nothing particularly suspicious here, except that none of the user's other uploads show such artistic skills, and that I can find several quite similar images on the web, all clearly derived from a common source, presumably from a clip art package somewhere.

• Image:Muirfield cap1.jpg: Claimed to be own work, but first version has "Photo by Jim Mandeville" written on it. Second version uploaded with the summary "First image was copyrighted and wrong one. This is the correct one which I took myself." — but it's the exact same image, cropped to hide the text. You can even see the bottom of the letter "y" at the top of the cropped version. (If Alex43223 is in fact Jim Mandeville, who seems to be a professional photographer, I can't find any evidence for it. If he was, you'd think he'd mention it on his user page, given what a useful venue for promoting his work it'd be.)

Image was taken from nicklaus.com, reported with {{imagevio}}. Equendil Talk 22:48, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

• Image:Alexavega1.jpg: Originally uploaded with the summary "This was a photo taken at the Teen Choice Awards - 7/2/2003. It was recieved openly as part of a press kit (taken by the press), and was included in the advertising for the event afterwards." After Abu badali pointed out that it was taken from [104] (page number corrected in link), Alex43223 responds with "The one on the stated website is obviously taken by a different camera or was given as a violation of copyright." — despite the fact that the third image on the page (thumbnail; the 400px version is no longer avaliable for free) is the exact same shot. Deleted after languishing on WP:CP.

• Image:072406111853 vcsboxart.jpg: Originally uploaded by OSX and credited to GTAPortable.com. Reuploaded by Alex43223 with the summary "Scanned this in myself". However, the two versions are pixel-to-pixel identical except that the latter has a different rating label photoshopped onto it. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you — but why lie in the upload summary, then? This one's just weird.

There are also some more straighforward copyvio cases (like Image:Aps1.JPG) in the user's upload history. Any advice on how I should proceed with this? I'm not quite sure where the best place to discuss such cases is, so I'm posting this here, in the hope that it'll get at least some attention from people with more experience with such things than I am. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:55, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

It is hard to tell if this user is deliberately inserting false information or just simply does not understand what is required. The best way to deal with this is with warnings (many have been already given) and then an escalating series of blocks. 24 hours, 48 hours, a week, etc. --Yamla 21:16, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Kehrli ban enforcement

The recently closed arbitration case Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Kehrli found that "1.1) Kehrli (talk · contribs) is banned for one year from articles which relate to m/z." It has come to my attention that Kehrli has violated the ban. Since enforcement is an administrative process, and not an arbitrator one, can I ask for some admins to look into this? Thanks. Dmcdevit·t 22:58, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Blocked for 24 hours for violating article ban by editing Mass-to-charge ratio [105] and M/z [106] --FloNight 23:15, 25 September 2006 (UTC)