Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive400

User:Realist2

Realist2 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) is blocked, and the block extended, for referring to another user as a bigot. It looks to me as if this was exactly correct: the other user, Bsrboy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log), who he had previuosly considered a friend, made several grossly inappropriate racist edits to his talk page.

• A - This shows 86.29.141.188 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) calling Realist2 a black bastard and adding porn to his page.
• B - shows the same ip adress calling Realist2 a nigger and telling us his "secret" to getting new IPs when they are blocked.
• One of these ip's request for unblock was "I should be unblocked because im white, why are you treating the nigger so nice, you should be hung. Seen here CC.
• A friend of Realist2, "The Elfoid", reported the ip adresses. This has been archived at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive396#Problem with IP address user- has dynamic IP so editing from constantly changing address
• [1] confirms this is Bsrboy
• See also User talk:Bsrboy. Note that he completely confesses and admits to his racism.

Under the circumstances, calling Bsrboy a bigot does not seem unreasonable, and Realist's exasperation at being sanctioned for doing so is not surprising. I think we should consider unblocking Realist2 and unlocking his talk page. Guy (Help!) 07:57, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree. I think rather too much is made of WP:CIV, sanctions should be imposed on those who habitually disrupt the project with gratuitous incivility, but to slap blocks on someone who is responding to extreme provocation just by calling a spade a spade? I don't think this is helpful, we should not be punishing contributors who appear to be in good standing just for an occasional intemperate comment. Gatoclass (talk) 09:08, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Good Lord, someone is subjected to a slew of racist vitriol, and we then block that person for saying the one who made the remarks was a bigot? What is this place coming to? Raymond Arritt (talk) 09:18, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Looks like it's time to 'unblock' to me. R. Baley (talk) 09:23, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Extremely bad block, both the original, but much more the extension. Also a procedural error, in that User:Golbez denied two separate unblock requests. I strongly suggest unblock - indeed, I was on the unblock page, but, given the amount of discussion, I decided to wait for a bit more exposure. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:27, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I responded to the 2nd and 3rd responses; my feelings were, unblock is not for admin-shopping, and he had been denied by two admins already at that point, there was no harm in responding again. When he asked for another admin, I remained silent. --Golbez (talk) 19:52, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

And actually, in retrospect, in that regard I apologize for my actions. --Golbez (talk) 20:17, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm tired of this shit. Incivility is grossly misunderstood. We are not obligated to act as British nobility at all times. Accusations are not incivility. Thicker skin. In addition, civility is not one's 'right to be unoffended.' Call me a bigot and I'll defend it, but I won't block. He's unblocked, because I'm not going to allow another MONGO situation occur. People should not be blocked pending outcomes; they should remain 'free' so they can express their concerns, and then action can be taken. I have never understood the 'block until terms are met' philosophy. He's unblocked. Feel free to drop me a line or take it up here or at RfC. the_undertow ^talk 09:31, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Realist2 reacted sloppily and emotionally to blockable, hateful taunting and baiting. No way did his response call for a block. Rather I think, some kind words and a broad, friendly hint to hold off on hurling back at the bullying would have done. Gwen Gale (talk) 09:44, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

There's absolutely no parallel between this open-and-shut unblock based on an obvious misapplication of WP:CIVIL and the MONGO problem. Neither should this justifiable outrage be used as a stick with which to beat civility. What I'm tired of is this continual ranting about how its mis-applied. I see it mis-applied no more often than notability at AfDs or naming conventions at WP:N, so lets retain a sense of proportion. --Relata refero (disp.) 10:18, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Then feel free to take me up on it, as we have obvious differences in the MONGO case. It is a parallel. Civility, as a reason to complain, has been taken too far, as has personal attacks. I will say it again, because it is important to me, but there is nothing about this wiki that says a person has the right to feel unoffended, unaccosted, or unhurt. People are too often hiding behind incivility when something upsets them. If someone pisses you off, it's not incivility, but that is the majority interpretation. That needs to end. There are 17 ways to call someone a dick, but we allow it to proceed as long as people hide behind the essay. Civility needs some serious revisions, as does the essay. If someone is an ass, call them on it. That's real life. If they are offended, they either need to defend or get over it. the_undertow ^talk 10:37, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Excellent. Let's take it off the board, and take it to WT:CIVIL. We actually do care that people by and large feel unoffended, unaccosted and unhurt, because that creates an atmosphere in which collegial disussion is impossible. So, by all means, lets have this discussion. While I agree that people "hide behind incivility" to win content disputes, and argued at length that that was so during the Dbachmann arbitration, that's got nothing to do with what you are claiming is also a mis-application of civility. I look forward to hearing your opinions on Jehochman's complaint there, which has been discussed since 3 April without any of the people complaining about over-enforcement or mis-application here turning up.

I note that I will personally be quite relieved if some of the rules are relaxed, as it is difficult sometimes to keep my temper in check, especially when everybody else seems to be letting theirs go. So let's at it. --Relata refero (disp.) 10:48, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Blocking a user for calling a bigot, a bigot? It's time to ignore mushy-headed civility that some administrators are trying to impose on editors and actually tackle the problem users, otherwise it will spell the end of this site. — Κaiba 10:08, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

(ec)I am greatly in favour of increased civility on the Wikipedia, and I also think that both the original block and especially the extension were bad. Blocking someone for trying to defend themself from a racist attack is about as low as a person can go. Far better to have offered Realist2 support in dealing with the bigot (I think that offering support to editors who are having difficulties should be seen as one of the duties of admins). DuncanHill (talk) 10:22, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• I did discuss this with the blocking admin on IRC last night, and to be clear I do not think that the blocking admin did anything wrong or evil, I just think that on reflection a mistake was made in good faith. I hope we can fix the mistake. I've talked to the user by email, English is not his first language so some small allowances must be made. On the AN thread about civility, Rspeer said something about nobody noticing is a relative newbie gets hit with a block - this guy is not even a newbie, he's got a decent number of edits, and he was viciously attacked by a bigot (there, I said it again). I think we should try to fix the damage. Guy (Help!) 11:36, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I really really doubt that a native or near-native fluency in English is needed for comparing the potential offensiveness of the word "bigot" (or almost any other word) with that of "nigger". I'm hoping the real factor was a lack of familiarity with the whole situation. That said, I am completely dumbfounded by the number of declined unblock requests. — CharlotteWebb 12:50, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd just like to say I can begin to sympathize with Realist2 after he had explained the problems he has been having, and am comfortable with this unblock at the moment. However, being personally attacked does not, and should not, give you license to attack others. I cannot believe that people actually think it does. Also, you all might want to change WP:NPA which is policy, and remove the part that says "It is as unacceptable to attack a user with a history of foolish or boorish behavior, or even one who has been subject to disciplinary action by the Arbitration Committee, as it is to attack any other user. " if we're not going to stick by that; which it does not appear that we are. - Rjd0060 (talk) 15:15, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

The user in question has not simply acted "foolish or boorish", he has viciously attacked Realist2 in a fucking racist asshole way. And Realist2 has not "attacked others", but rather lashed out only against the original attacker. That was not particularly wise, but understandable, and in no way a sign that the user has general tendencies to problematic behavior. I would have expected an admin who looked into the issue to offer some sympathetic advice, not final warnings and blocks. I think that was a serious lapse of judgement and would encourage you to look a little bit deeper and to act more considerate in the future. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:25, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I just managed to get my ip block thing removed to have the chance to say thankyou for looking at my case with a little compassion, but i wont be coming back to wikipedia, im retiring, im grossly unhappy with the way wikipedia reacts to these things. You follow these rules like robots not realising there is a person suffering. I have a few things to tie up and then im gone. You were prepared to pay the other guy more attention than myself, you have now lost a person who makes 2200 positive edits a month. I hope this case will make things change, i wish the next guy who is betrayed by a racist friend on wikipedia all the best, i know from my experience that there is no1 out there lokking after him. Still this block will remain on my record and i will be viewed in the same light as the other person involved. Realist2 (talk) 16:10, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

It is an accepted part of policy and our best practices that we do not engage in personal attacks even against trolls, racists, and even spammers. While I sympathize, I cannot condone that sort of behavior. I am sorry you are retiring, perhaps in the future you can deal with this. _(1 == 2)^Until 17:39, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and folks please note that this user was not blocked for calling a bigot a bigot, but for calling a bigot "You fucking bitch...". Much of what is said above seems to be unaware of that. When you leap to someones defense it often helps to do some independent research on the matter instead of just reading what was said about the situation. _(1 == 2)^Until 19:41, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

The user was taunted and baited. His highly emotional response was not at all acceptable but it was understandable. Rather than a block, a friendly warning to not let loose with any more outbursts would have been enough. Then, after two or three warnings, if he had carried on with it, a block would have been called for but this is not what happened. Gwen Gale (talk) 19:48, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Ah, like this one? The user was warned before the block. As for two or three warnings, that would be a matter of discretion. The user was not carted out of the kingdom, it was a short block. The fact is when people get highly emotional they sometimes need to be temporarily removed from Wikipedia. _(1 == 2)^Until 19:56, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

The pith is, they don't look like friendly warnings to me. To an emotionally upset editor reeling from a hateful, race-based baiting spree, I don't think they came off as you intended, but upset him even more. You clearly meant to be helpful, but some editors won't be thinking clearly after being dumped on with hate like those taunts. Gwen Gale (talk) 20:08, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

A hell of a lot more friendly than "Get a life you racist twat". Frankly I don't see anything wrong with the warning. Wikipedia is not therapy and when people are emotionally upset and not thinking clearly they sometimes act in a way that requires them to take some time out from the project. Reasoning with the user did not get a response, so the user was blocked. If you don't like that try to propose a change to our policies. _(1 == 2)^Until 20:10, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I understand what you mean. No need for therapy, but maybe a shred of WP:wikilove? The warnings were neutral, bureaucratic. The user was wailing, crying. This is a community of people behind these usernames. I don't think the blocking admin did anything wrong, I think the user lost his head (so to speak), way, but our approach to targets of these extreme attacks in the aftermath could use some tweaking, maybe. Gwen Gale (talk) 20:17, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Getting kicked in the head doesn't give you the right to kick them back. Responding to a personal attack with another personal attack is pointless and only works against you. HalfShadow (talk) 20:18, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Yep, I agree all the way with you. I'm only talking about how the block itself was handled. On the other hand, he was indeed unblocked in the end, so I wouldn't rush to say the policy is botched either. Gwen Gale (talk) 20:23, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• The real problem as I see it was that the block review did not really address the (admittedly poorly stated) unblock rationale. It would be a mistake to make a Fedeeral case of this, but it would also be a mistake to miss an opportunity to learn something. My interactions with the user showed someone hurt and angry but quite reasonable, and the block message on the user page of the person baiting him was something of a clue. I am not a great thinker of deep thoughts, I tend to believe that people who get blocked by admins who engage in civil debate (as Rjd was on IRC) have generally done something to deserve blocking. But when I looked at the talk page and the unblock requests and the user page of the harassing user, something did not look quite right. I think what we got wrong was to fail to properly, independently assess the background. It was an easy mistake to make, and I am sure I have made the same mistake myself in the past, so it's a learning opportunity. Guy (Help!) 21:39, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Most definitely was a learning experience, however, I feel we are sending a message here that we really shouldn't be, and that is: Its okay to call somebody a "sick fuck" as long as they call you a "black bastard" first. Not good. - Rjd0060 (talk) 21:53, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, spot on, let's not send that message. Gwen Gale (talk) 22:09, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with that. The initial outburst needed to be contained, and was, and that seems reasonable. The issue here is how we handled the situation after that, and also how we informed the user about the issues, the block on the other account, and the fact that, regardless of his outburst, the other user's quite unacceptable behaviour was also being addressed. Realist's problem was that he saw himself as being treated more harshly than his aggressor, who was of demonstrably less value to the project. This was a valid concern. I have learned fomr this, that long-standing contributors have earned a little more explanation and a little more in the way of updates - much as we handle OTRS cases, in fact. Guy (Help!) 22:41, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• In general, understanding of this case has been hampered by a lack of knowledge about the full scope of Bsrboy's racist vandalism. I felt constrained by the privacy policy not to reveal his IP addresses; however I did not realize that he had admitted his own IP on User talk:Realist2, which would have removed those constraints. Although it is possibly too late to help Realist2, perhaps the admin community should be apprised of the full scope of Bsrboy's logged out editing, including sustained racist and bigoted attacks on both Realist2 and articles he was working on.
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/86.29.133.181
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/86.29.132.129
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/86.29.132.151
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/86.29.136.132
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/86.29.134.157
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/86.29.143.168
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/86.29.141.188
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/86.29.133.152
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/86.29.143.36
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/86.29.142.171
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/86.29.132.226
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/86.29.132.151

I am also sorry I was out yesterday as I very likely would have lifted the block, or at least joined the conversation here. Rjd0060 and other unblock-reviewing admins did not know what I knew. Sorry about that. Thatcher 23:23, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Are these blocked? As a rangeblock it would only be 4096 users. Is it worth checking to prevent further recurrence of this nonsense? --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 23:31, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

The range is blocked for 2 weeks and Bsrboy (talk · contribs) is indefinitely blocked, having been offered the chance to come back after a month of good behavior. However, he does not seem to grasp this, and the application of a cluestick at User talk:86.29.129.106 would be appreciated. Thatcher 23:37, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Mass deletion outside of RfD or CSD

Something just doesn't sit right with me on this. Apparently we have some admins who are mass deleting "orphaned talk page redirects", for some unknown reason, and without a CSD or an RfD. [2] [3]. One of the big reasons we have RfD is because there are often incoming links on other websites that use these redirects, and there are probably other reasons why this shouldn't be done. So why is such a mass deletion (no matter how minor some might see it as) happening? Some of these talk pages once contained content, even if it was something as simple as a WikiProject rating, or a couple of comments. -- Ned Scott 02:49, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I've noticed some of these deletions. I agree it seems like a bad idea. Aleta ^Sing 02:51, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

There's a massive discussion going on above on this page Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^{(talk / cont)} 02:52, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

ok, i think i can clear some of this up seeing as how i used to work with redirects (apologies for the ip, but i locked myself out of my account in 2007). it appears that none of these talk pages ever had any content at any point, so that's not in the wrong... your point about external links seems to be a good one. 195.242.221.60 (talk) 02:55, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

There seems to be at least one mistaken deletion noted at User talk:MZMcBride#Sydney Suburb talk page deleted, and I'm 90% sure that at least some of them did contain some content other than a redirect edit. -- Ned Scott 03:49, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

The talk page noted in that thread had no history other than a redirect from a page move in January and has no incoming links. Mr.Z-man 04:16, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. MZMcBride's deletions are also a lot slower. I presume he is manually reviewing them. The activity is ongoing, so I will drop him another talk page message. Carcharoth (talk) 04:41, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

He replied at my talk page and wants to discuss it there instead of here. Carcharoth (talk) 05:18, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

There is also a thread about this further up the page. Might be an idea to merge them. I've randomly checked some of the deletions by MZMcBride (someone should tell him about these threads), and he seems to be using a different script, as unlike East718's deletions, they are genuinely orphaned in all namespaces (East's script ignored backlinks from Wikipedia and User namespaces). Carcharoth (talk) 02:54, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

The thread above seems to be more about an admin-bot issue, rather than the deletion itself, so I'm not sure about that. -- Ned Scott 03:49, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Note left for MZM. -- Ned Scott 03:51, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

User:CarlosRodriguez continuted disruption

This user was recently blocked for 24 hours for "Edit-warring and disruption" by User:Jossi. I was told to come here if the behavior continued, and here I am. Since returning, he has continuted his disruptive behavior in the form of POV edits that he is constantly warned against making, and edit wars to get them in (though he may not have broken WP:3RR this time, yet). These diffs [4], [5] are identical to the edits he was warned against and blocked for. These diffs [6], [7], [8] are the same thing, only done individually over the course of 3 edits, one after the other. Thanks, Grsz11 05:38, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

He made four edits to Jeremiah Wright sermon controversy on April 11. I could be wrong, but I think they were all reverts because they restored edits he made to Jeremiah Wright before the controversy page existed (It was created on the 10th.) and the material was located there. But this happened a few days ago now, so I don't know if a block is still in order. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 05:54, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, those edits were edits he had previously made at the Jeremiah Wright article, but were rejected as POV by others. The edits he's been making at Jeremiah Wright sermon controversy are identical to those at Jeremiah Wright that got him blocked the first time. Grsz11 05:59, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

In that case, it looks like a clear-cut case of WP:3RR violation. But it's a few days old already, so I don't know if the admins will block. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 06:05, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Gave final warning, especially in regards to two talk page comments and his edit warring. I will proceed to block if the disruption continues. seicer | talk | contribs 06:04, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

X for Dummies fork

Browsing some random articles, I came across M-theory, which has a note on the top directing people to Introduction to M-theory, a "generally accessible and less technical introduction to the topic". The introduction article cites not a single source, which aroused suspicion. As we are not the Simple English wikipedia (that's over at http://simple.wikipedia.org) the page seemed to stray somewhat close to a semblance of a POV fork, or at least something that can be explained at the main article. Just posting here to gather some opinions. -M^ask? 05:41, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, the note at the top is a template, which would mean it's used elsewhere as well. But i'm still iffy about it. Grsz11 05:47, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

At least part of the article appears to have been copied from the book Turn of the Century. See [9] at Google Books. JBFrenchhorn (talk) 05:51, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Indeed it does. Good catch. -M^ask? 05:57, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

The edit introducing the copyvio is here. It dates to 2004, and text after that is a derivitive, so this will have to be culled back to its state as of then. -M^ask? 06:25, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

As Grsz notes, the article is one of several of its sort, one of which is a featured article (the talk page of its FAC features a discussion of the propriety of our maintaining "introduction to" articles). The format is counseled by the Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible#"Introduction to..." articles style guideline, a proposed justification for which may be found, at least in part, in the "Many things..." essay. I, for one, have long thought we might do well to part with these articles, but a discussion about the underlying practice is best held at VPP or (with a link from VPP) Wikipedia talk:Make technical articles accessible. Joe 06:47, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Introduction to XXX articles are quite common and they are quite different to articles on the Simple English wikipedia, where the limited vocabulary of simple English is used. Intro articles just help to explain a topic in an introductory fashion in standard English. --Bduke (talk) 06:16, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I disagree that they're common. They don't fit into summary style, and should be used rarely if at all. Superm401 - Talk 06:35, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I hardly ever see them and they cause worries. Gwen Gale (talk) 06:44, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

These are definitely important, and serve a valuable purpose. On many subjects there is an endless argument between people who want Wikipedia to be a General Purpose encyclopedia and a technical one and there is simply no good way to divy these up. By removing material of a technical nature to a more technical article this plays an important role in helping users understand the topic, while still providing a valuable resource for those who want more than what a normal encyclopedia would offer. --Haemo (talk) 07:48, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Copyvio repair

I've reverted to the january 2004 version (the last one before the verbatim book text was introduced) as a quick measure. Someone needs to clear out the page history to that point to kill the copyvio and its derivatives. -M^ask? 07:07, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I've removed the copyrighted revisions and restored the infobox and a few other non coyrighted bits --Chris 07:29, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Completed AFD nomination on behalf of User:Gwen Gale

It seems that Gwen Gale started to nominate this page for deletion but didn't finish the job; I just completed it. If anyone disagrees feel free to revert. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 09:15, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Someone was clearing out the page history because of the copyvio and the article itself disappeared for a few minutes, leaving things in the lurch. A couple of editors have since argued that an introductory article on this topic could be helpful. If anyone wants to simply revert the AfD now, I'm ok with that. I'll have another look at things tonight and if it's still there, may or may not want to go forward with it. Strike that, someone has already commented to delete so I'd rather it stayed. Gwen Gale (talk) 10:04, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

User:67.165.106.235 being disruptive

Resolved.

This anonymous IP is one of several sock puppets of Edward G. Nilges, who's main account spinoza1111 has been blocked indefinitely for being disruptive. Mr. Nilges has used his sock puppets to post extremely long, disruptive, and unproductive rants on the talk page of the Ayn Rand article and when these rants were deleted he proceeded to vandalize the article itself calling her an "ugly cunt" and calling the editors "aspergerian retards". Since Mr. Nilges has obviously failed to learn his lesson about being disruptive, it is requested that his sock puppet accounts also be blocked indefinitely. His known sock puppet IPs are 219.78.60.96, 202.82.33.202, and 67.165.106.235 Idag (talk) 09:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

IPs are never blocked indefinitely, unless they're open proxies. I blocked the IP for two weeks, in the hope that he'll lose interest in the meantime. Daniel Case (talk) 09:30, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

User:RobJ1981's disputes with various editors

Every since he has had a problem with me here: List of characters in Bully, he has been uncivil and shown a lot of bad faith. A few recent examples: [10] (first time he blanked my comment on the talk page). I reverted it, and told him about Template:Notyours. Later, he once again blanked my comment out: [11]. Then there is this: [12], which I see also as bad faith. It should be noted I hadn't edited that Bully list page (or it's talk) for a while, so his original attack (found here: [13], wasn't necessary at all. There was no need to drag past editors into the discussion, and basically drag their name in the mud because of past disputes. Then he butted into this alert: Wikipedia:Wikiquette_alerts#User:Angrymansr, due to past issues with me. I also posted this at Wikiquette alerts, the issue with him seems to fit both pages in my view. RobJ1981 (talk) 05:07, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Rob posted this exact same thing on Wikiquette Alerts already.

Not to mention he has been reported on wikiquette alerts by me about a week ago, where he was told by an administrator to knock it off. Exact quote. McJeff (talk) 06:32, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

• Recommend you avoid each other. Stifle (talk) 10:58, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

• • I don't think that's fair to be quite honest - why should my wikipedia editing be constrained because he won't quit harassing me after having been told to knock it off? McJeff (talk) 17:24, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

It's a bit hard to avoid him, when he follows me around on Wikipedia and posts on a majority of the same talk pages I do. RobJ1981 (talk) 20:44, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

We've been involved in a grand total of three articles. One of them was your bad faith AfD on Vicious and Delicious. Another was the List of Characters in Bully. The only article you were working on that I later stepped into is Smackdown vs Raw 2008, and that was after Angrymansr brought your behavior on that article to my attention on your warning at Wikiquette alerts.

And might I remind you that you were instructed to stop the bad faith attacks on me, and that accusing me of wikistalking is bad faith, especially since it's not just a false accusation but a blatant attempt at smearing me? McJeff (talk) 23:58, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Don't talk about smearing: when you do that to me on the alerts page, and everywhere else where you mention my name. I wouldn't have such a problem, if you didn't drag me into the Bully talk page again. Just because my name was mentioned, didn't mean you needed to respond in the way you did. I clearly wasn't editing the talk or article, so my name didn't need to be mentioned (except for the fact that I didn't edit there anymore). Then all the removing of my comment (that you finally realized wasn't the correct thing to do), didn't help matters. Don't get me started on the AFD. I had every right to nominate it, and it wasn't in bad faith. You and Dan took it personal, that's not my problem. Don't make up things (and/or twist things around) to make me look bad, so you look good to the editors that read this. RobJ1981 (talk) 06:29, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

What makes you think I took the AFD to Vicious and Delicious personal then? I didn't know the article was up for deletion until McJeff asked me to join the debate. He asked me that since he knows I'm a wrestling fan. Secondly your comments there at the debate, You say there thats it's likely that he told me to join the debate, which isn't true, then you stated that I didn't make any edits to wrestling articles, which is true yes, but that does not mean that I can't voice my opinions on a wrestling subject, or if wrestling article should stay. Dan the Man1983 (talk) 10:03, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

You are acting as if he was the one who mentioned your name first out of the blue on the discussion page. Dan the Man1983 (talk) 09:21, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

You had a right to AfD Vicious and Delicious. That doesn't mean you did it for the right reason. For that matter, I had every right to participate in the Angrymansr user alert, so maybe you should stop bringing that up like it matters. McJeff (talk) 07:38, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

• Have to agree with User:Stifle on this one. If you guys can't make an actual effort to "just get along" than you should both make the effort to avoid each other. It isn't down to either one of you. My suggestion is for you both to stay away from any articles currently in the middle of your dispute and to double check your own civility on talk pages, edit summaries, etc. to help make sure these sort of issues don't occur again. Jasynnash2 (talk) 08:12, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I tried my best to leave the article we both have edited (the Bully list), but he didn't want to leave things alone. Now, it's Jeff, Dan and Angrymansr ganging up on me... just to cause problems and harass me. RobJ1981 (talk) 21:20, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

So of course the appropriate reaction is to [14] wikistalk me]. McJeff (talk) 17:02, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

For the past couple of months, I have tried avoiding RobJ1981; after purposely not participating in various XfDs he started, today however he nominated an article for deletion that I was the last editor to edit prior to its nomination. In my keep argument in the MfD, I did not insult Rob or chastise him. And because this article concerns "in popular culture", which has a Wikiproject for which I am a member, I listed it there, but Rob is starting an edit war with the members of the group over its being listed there. As you can see from my talk page, another member of the group strongly disagrees with what Rob has done. Rob has castigated that editor on his talk page. Until now, I have avoided jumping in on Rob's disputes with Angrymansr, Dan, and McJeff, because I do not like piling on someone and I thought we had in effect avoided each other effectively for a couple of months now; I guess that hope was wrong. And so, for it's worth, these problems indicated above have occured with a large number of editors and over much of Rob's Wikipedia-history. Eyrian was one of only three editors to persistently go after me since my return to Wikipedia in the summer. Dannycali was blocked as a sock puppet after a check user and a different check user turned up multiple socks of Eyrian. That leaves RobJ1981 who like Dannycali and Eyrian has a staunch anti-in popular culture mentality and a concerted aggression against myself. I strongly urge you to consider the evidence I have submitted in the Alkivar case as well as that submitted below. Anyway, now RobJ1981 is removing my rescue tags to articles! Please see [15], [16], and [17]. These articles are not ones that he nominated for deletion and I limit my use of the rescue tag to maybe one or two articles at most a day and only for articles that I also make an effort to improve. I am avoiding reverting his latest edit, but I think his removal of the tag is in bad faith. He has been cautioned about this behavior: [18], [19], [20], and [21]. He even admits that he will follow me around: [22] and [23]. And admins are not taking kindly to his edits about me: [24] and [25]. I suppose I am just a little concerned that I will not be able to participate in any AfDs that he nominates without him posting after me or commenting about me. Here are just some of RobJ1981's recent edits after or about me (notice the one on January 2nd, i.e. his first post since not posting for a few days in about me): [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36], [37], [38], [39], [40], [41], [42], [43], [44], [45], [46], [47], [48], [49], [50], [51], [52], and [53]. Please note that I even stayed out of this "in popular culture" AfD he started: [54]. I also avoided this AfD: [55]. And I avoided these ones as well: [56] and [57]. I did, however, participate in this one discussion: [58]. So, of the various AfDs he started or participated in the duration of those weeks, I initially only participated in one, whereas he had posted in nearly every one after me, removed my rescue tag from an article, and even left comments in AfDs hoping admins would disregard my arguments. Finally, it seemed as if we had left each other alone for a couple months then until today. Please also consider this: [59]. Please also see [60]. The category is not exactly flooded and those that I did not myself tag, I also attempted to improve. He STILL even after another admin's comment to him about his commenting on my posts did so anyway: [61]. I gave a few reasons why I thought the article should be saved, but he fixates on one aspect of my remark. Can we not participate in the same AfDs, even ones that he did not nominate, without him leaving notes to or about me rather than about the article? DGG cautioned Rob about doing this: [62]. Yet, Rob kept doing so. If I tried avoiding AfDs Rob started or posted in, why was it so hard for him to do the same for me? Also, please note that RobJ1981 is also edit warring with and getting into conflict with many other users: [63], [64], [65], [66], [67], [68], [69], [70], [71], [72], [73], [74], [75], [76], [77], [78], [79], [80], [81], [82], [83], [84], [85], [86], [87], [88], [89], etc. Notice here: [90], [91], and [92]. He writes: “the consensus is to merge” and insults Smile Lee. 6 for merge, 4 for keep is hardly “consensus.” He writes: “Smile Lee is the only one that refuses to accept the consensus.” Uh, myself and others wanting to keep do not want to merge either. And even with Kyaa the Catlord acknowledging that it was no discussion, Rob just went ahead and redirected anyway. See also this discussion: [93]. Notice the final person to post says the decision is to have a table and earlier in the discussion all those who disagree with Rob. How does Rob react? [94]. Is he just ignoring the same talk page?! Rob has also been warned for false accusations post-Thanksgiving: [95]. If you scroll through RobJ1981's talk page history, you’ll also see that RobJ1981 even disagreed to an offer at mediation in one of the disputes. I especially find JzG’s comments to RobJ1981 compelling: “Having proven beyond reasonable doubt that they are separate accounts, creating a second sockpuppetry case against them looks a lot like harassment. I have deleted it. Do not pursue that line again.” In other words, his aggressiveness toward me, McJeff, Angrymansr, and Dan the man and now ErgoSum is hardly new as he has done so with others even after well-established admins told him otherwise. Please consider the above in conjunction with all the other evidence I presented of Rob's incivility and assumption of bad faith. I do not get why he still will not leave certain editors alone and why he keeps getting into conflict with others as well. It would be nice to be able to edit without Dannycali, Eyrian, and/or RobJ1981 hovering over me when I have sought mentorship and frequently ask admins for advice and help with editing. Thank you for your time and efforts! Sincerely, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 20:56, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles: it's unreasonable to tell an active member of a Wikiproject to stop participating at AFDs for that project's articles just because another editor is a rude and overly aggressive deletionist. This has already been through a wikiquette alert and an independent observer determined it was RobJ1981 who needed to cool down. Roi has been consistently polite, and as far as I can tell nobody is ganging up against or wikistalking RobJ1981. When several people acting independently all see the same problems with the one editor's behavior it's time for self-examination; there's a chance the consensus is right. Durova^Charge! 01:57, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

He makes claims of me stalking him: (here as one example: [96], but he does the same thing here: [97]: I created a MFD and he commented in it. Being a hypocrite isn't the answer. RobJ1981 (talk) 16:04, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

You guys are both edit warring (here, here, here, and here) at the moment and you were edit-warring with a wiki-project the other day. Sincerely, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 17:33, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

More stalking by McJeff: [98]. 7 minutes later he posts in it: [99]. I asked for outside opinions on the matter, not his view (which is already clear on the talk page of the article that I mentioned). Watch, in a matter of minutes he will reply here because he checks my contributions regularly it seems. Perhaps it might be bad faith to call it stalking, but frankly if he wants to end it: he can ignore sections instead of posting in them to add fuel to this conflict. Then there is his sneaky behavior: (a revert with no explanation: [100]. Then there is this: [101], he's removing maintenance tags that don't have the problems fixed. From the history of it: he's been edit warring with me (along with others) about the notability tag, and now he's been bold enough to remove all the tags for no good reason. It takes two people to have a conflict. He needs to stop worrying about other's actions, if his behavior is just as bad. RobJ1981 (talk) 18:10, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

You see, the thing that bothers me most about this whole incident is I know my reputation is getting smeared because of the incidiousness of Rob's attacks on me. They're not really the kind of thing you can ignore, but responding to all of the things he's accused me of makes me look like a bickering prat. And of course I'm not blameless myself, but it's hard to be 100% reasonable and even handed when you have another editor who's going over everything you do with a fine tooth comb, waiting for you do anything that could even remotely be interpreted as a slip up, so he has more ammunition to use in his crusade against your general existence on wikipedia.

In regards to the Smackdown vs Raw article, I'd like to direct people to the discussion I started, where his defense for himself was to accuse me of wikilawyering while refusing to defend his own position. Edit warring? I guess, but when you have one person who believes that they and they alone control the wikipedia policy and attempts to push that into the article, I'd call it a violation of WP:OWN, and borderline vandalism on the grounds that he knows he's aggrivating just about everyone and continuing to make his edits anyway.

I will not discuss the Dungeons & Dragons stuff unless an administrator requests me to, because I don't believe it has any relevance here. McJeff (talk) 18:31, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

McJeff continues his uncivil ways: [102]. His newest claim is I'm rounding up "anti-roster list buddies". I contacted one user about it, and I did the mature thing by listing the issue on the video game project talk page. There is NO doubt, you are edit warring. Don't thrown ownership on me, when that's the attitude you've had since Angrymansr told you about the article in the first place. RobJ1981 (talk) 04:42, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Time to open an RFC/U then

OK, now that some of the evidence has been aired above, I suspect now is the time to open an RFC/U case regarding Robj1981's harassment of other users. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:19, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't know how to do this. Maybe Le Grande Roi would like to start? He seems a highly competant wikipedian. McJeff (talk) 23:18, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the compliment; however, it is worth it for you to gain your own experience with such aspects of Wikipedia and all you need to do is follow the instructions at WP:RFC/U. You might want to check with User:Mangojuice first about how to go about starting a new one since he deleted an old one a day ago. Sincerely, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 23:25, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I can handle creating a new one I think. But to do so I need evidence that at least two users have tried to civilly work things out with Rob to no avail. I've done so myself, but I don't think Angrymansr or DanTheMan have tried. Have you? McJeff (talk) 01:57, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, please see my post in the above section and check his and my talk page histories for evidence. Best, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 03:27, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Here we go. [103] Posting it here so I don't lose it while writing this bad boy up. McJeff (talk) 04:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, like that. Ideally, I wish we could all just edit civily and agree to disagree when we reach an impasse and I urge you to be careful not to also engage in any edit-warring or make any regrettable remarks (if you think it might possibly be construed as incivil, don't write it). If you haven't done so, be sure to make an attempt to resolve any differences peacefully. Anyway, though, perhaps more importantly than the section you link to is the administrator's warning below against making further stalking accusations against various users, which could result in a block: see here. Sincerely, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 04:13, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I see that McJeff has in fact started an RFC/U at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/RobJ1981. Regards, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 17:33, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

User:Vonita

He canvassed once.[104] I warned him to stop it.[105] He blanked it.[106]

He sent me an attacking message "You are a page blanking vandal. That is all you are and all you ever will be." But what disturbs me the most is that a user who has not made even 50 edits yet tells me to read WP:MOS.[107] I find it futile to warn him again as he has blanked one. Ultra! 14:02, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

First of all, it is she not he. Secondly, I am taking my time to read all Wikipedia policies before I make substantive edits. It's a pity he does not since he manages to annoy. It is deplorable that he comes running to WP:ANI. As for the comment about him being a Page Blanking Vandal, that is a true statement of fact. Look here [noticeboard/IncidentArchive246#Vikrant Phadkay]. He has been blocked twice from Wikipedia for being a page blanking vandal. That all came out in his humilliating attempt to become a Wikipedia Admin. Read the RfA to see how united people were against his application. It was not canvassing to inform User:Maddyfan about this [for adminship/Vikrant Phadkay]. Note the comments made by User:hbdragon88 about Vikrant Phadkay's outbursts of temper and acts of vandalism that led him twice to being blocked from Wikipedia. (he changed his screen name to Ultraviolet scissor flame). Maddyfan at that point was in dispute with him and had warned him about being blocked again. Look here User talk:Ultraviolet scissor flame/Archive 3#Madonna. I warned Vikrant Phadkay not to leave rude messages on my Talk Page again as did user:emerson 7, look here User talk:Ultraviolet scissor flame/Archive 4#i have been warned?. He was the one who first left an attack message on my page, on 3 March 2008 [108], and I only replied when I logged on Wikipedia again on 7 April 2008 - more than a month later. As for "blanking", he removed my message from his talk page and it was only afterwards that I removed his message from mine. You will see he removed my message at 23.12, 7 April 2008 [109] and I removed his message from my Talk Page at 07.48, 8 April 2008 - the morning after. [110].

Look at his Talk Page User talk:Ultraviolet scissor flame/Archive 4 to see how many warnings he has received from other editors and how many photos, he uploaded, have been deleted from Wikipedia because of copyright violations. As there is no basis for his complaint against me, other than his hurt feelings, I hope you will dismiss this "incident". I hope you will tell him that if he is nice to others then others will be nice to him and if he is rude to others then others will be rude to him. That is how life is.

Vonita (talk) 17:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Other incidents have already been dealt with. Can a Wikipedia Admin just deal with this "incident", I have replied in great depth.

Thanks,

Vonita (talk) 20:28, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

(moved from section posted at end of page)

Can a Wikipedia Admin just deal with this please and close it ? Incidents, that were listed later, have already been dealt with and closed. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. It is very stressful.

Vonita (talk) 20:32, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I will have a look and see what I can do. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:13, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I have looked through, and am uncertain exactly what it is that you want "closed". Is it this section? If it is, then it appears that there is nothing to be done here and the section will be archived in due course. Adding a resolved box to the top, much like me responding here, simply means that the bot will archive it later rather than sooner. It may then be best to allow this to be archived, and we all move on. If it is another matter, I should be grateful if you could provide a link and/or diff so I (or others) can investigate further. Thanks. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:24, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Vonita, you still continue to use the word vandal. Ultra! 15:57, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

So we've killed linux

Resolved

 – User was blocked indef for threatening to out users identities, article is undergoing AfD. I think this is settled. _(1 == 2)^Until 17:11, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Or a distribution at least. Zomg, hyperbole, i know. Check out http://www.myah.org/, I noticed it when cleaning up a rather lengthy rant against wikipedia on the Myah OS article, and noticed that a few searches establish notability, but no references are cited and the editor/principal contributor to the article, who is also Myah's creator, states that he finds it absurd (or similiar, im quoting from memory) that he has to find other sources for things he knows. I'm going to spend a while fixing the article up, but as the notice on the site linked strikes me like the rant about wikipedia the overstock.com guy had on some of his checkout pages last fall, thought I'd throw it up here. -M^ask? 21:06, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Everytime you ask for a reliable source, a cute penguin logo cries. This OS seems barely notable, but I think it's worth an article. I'll pitch in. Gwen Gale (talk) 21:12, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Beta software that's no longer being developed? The Myah forum has 152 registered users. Dan Beale-Cocks 21:41, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

ehh, 32k hits for "Myah OS" -wikipedia plus some attention on XFCE's website make me think this might have a chance. -M^ask? 21:51, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. It might be an idea to scrape as much as possible from the Google cache of the site if he really is halting development. OF the 48k G hits I got about 5.5k from the myah forum. I'm not a deletionist, but it does seem weird that a beta software (that doesn't seem to have any unique features) with 150 registered forum users gets an article when 20th century Olympic athletes get BALEETED. Dan Beale-Cocks 10:15, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

For further understanding, so to speak, if you haven't done, take a look at the self-identified developer's many comments (and 3rr block yesterday) on the article's and his talk pages. Gwen Gale (talk) 10:22, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Ahh, yes. I've just done that. Comments like (paraphrased) 'you quote a source that I wrote, for an old verion, and it's wrong, so stop using it' will make getting any kind of sensible article very hard. I've just put some friendly welcome text on the users talk page but I don't know if it'll make any difference at all. (There is that whole 'ECONOMIST - new editors quickly hit confusing policies' thing.) Dan Beale-Cocks 10:54, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes and I truly think he doesn't think it's worth understanding what we try to explain to him because he has a notion he'll edit the article as he thinks he "must," rather than through Wikipedia policies (he often characterizes Wikipedia as being run by "kids" who like pushing others around by posting "lies" about his OS and so on). Gwen Gale (talk) 11:02, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

This summary looks pretty much accurate. Basically, the article created, then the creator of this distribution began editing it, and removing sourcing tags. This persisted for quite some time, with a slow-motion edit war over the unsourced statements and whether the current version was "outdated". At one point, he just gave up and began trying to get it deleted citing "harassment" and the fact that it contains false information. It seems borderline non-notable, and I lean toward deleting. --Haemo (talk) 21:23, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it's borderline. I'm having a go, don't know how it will come out though. Gwen Gale (talk) 21:53, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok, nifty little distro but scant evidence of any user base and the developer does seem to have been trying to use the article as a promotional tool. Gwen Gale (talk) 22:58, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

"The Myah OS project has been halted due to continual harassment by wikipeda." Seriously? Even assuming that Wikipedia was capable of harassing a project, you've got problems if you can't stand criticism. I won't comment on the article itself, but the statement on the Myah OS web page makes the guy behind it look a little thin-skinned. --clpo13_(talk) 08:38, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Myah OS. --Relata refero (disp.) 09:44, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

User talk:Jeremiah Cheatham

Meanwhile he's telling us all where to go and kinda threatening to reveal editor identities. Gwen Gale (talk) 15:20, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I think an indefinite block is needed for that. Threating to reveal identities is a strong concern for those here on en.wp. Rudget (review) 15:25, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh ya, for sure. In fact, in order to prevent the user from making good on his threat I have blocked him indef and protected his talk page. We can't tolerate that type of intimidation and potential instigation of harassment. _(1 == 2)^Until 16:21, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

User:Chaldean and his anti syriacs campaign.

Hi, User:Chaldean keeps vandalize articles, that not suits him. For example: [of the Syriac people&diff=205380283&oldid=205380144]. He first blanked the page then he blanked it again after revert from admin HalfShadow . He runs an assyrian propaganda and thinks that all people are assyrians. the syriacs are an ethnic group with different history, langague, culture etc. The history of the syriac people is way different with the history of the assyrian people. he removes population numbers like this one [people&diff=205325810&oldid=205325601] beacuse he thinks that the source is not realiable. instead of that, he could just place a tag. he also removed in article Aramaic language links and informatoin who speaks the aramean language > [language&diff=205330081&oldid=205329537]. In the article the sentence were Modern Aramaic is spoken today as a first language by numerous, scattered communities, most significantly by Assyrians, Syriacs, and Chaldeans. That sentence was written for a long time until Chaldean came with his assyrian propaganda and removed Syriacs, and Chaldeans from that sentence because it does not fit him. There are more syriacs than assyrians that talks the language neo aramaic, but user Chaldean does not care about that. He also made a threat against me, to bring in a person that could "blow up" the article Syriac people > [talk:VegardNorman&diff=next&oldid=205331812]. He thinks that all people are assyrians and chainging what the sources says. Look at this edit [Assyrians&diff=205334796&oldid=205334488]. The source said 18.500 assyrians. but user Chaldean thinks that also iraqi christians are assyrians. The iraqi christians is iraqis and christians, not assyrians. He also removed the "3RR" template in his discussion, maybe he wants to hide the proof that he are breaking the three-revert rule [talk:Chaldean&diff=205437126&oldid=205436313]. How can we stop this assyrian propaganda? VegardNorman (talk) 21:43, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not an admin. I also have no interest in the subject matter at all; I was simply reverting an 'incorrect' edit (blanking the page as opposed to creating a redirect or whatever). HalfShadow (talk) 22:06, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

. the syriacs are an ethnic group with different history, langague, culture etc - right you claim this when you have admit at your own talk page that you are just starting to read on the subject. Per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac), we have agreed that Assyrian is the most common used refence in the English language to define this group. Chaldean (talk) 22:59, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

"In the article the sentence were Modern Aramaic is spoken today as a first language by numeros, scattered communities, most significantly by Assyrians, Syriacs, and Chaldeans. That sentence was written for a long: - you added that in March. As agreed at the Wikipedia:Assyrian-Syriac wikipedia cooperation board, we will not drag politics in all other pages, except desribe the issue in the Assyrian naming dispute page. Chaldean (talk) 23:00, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

"Look at this edit 168. The source said 18.500 assyrians. but user Chaldean thinks that also iraqi christians are assyrians." - that is the general acceptance. 95% of Iraqi Christians are Assyrian, with 5% Armenian. Armenians declare Armenian in the census because they don't have a naming issue. "Iraqi Christian" is what some Chaldean Christians prefer instead of Assyrian, but that doesn't change their ethnicity. Chaldean (talk) 23:03, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

"" when you have admit at your own talk page that you are just starting to read on the subject "" .. no i did not say that, ive just started to read new books. i have read alot of books . "" we have agreed that Assyrian is the most common... "".. We? YOU are the only one that has agreed, not me or any other user like "the triz"," benne" etc. " that is the general acceptance. 95% of Iraqi Christians are Assyrian, ".. User:Chaldean, trust me i have ALOT of iraqi christian friends and NONE of them call them self for assyrian or that their are descnendats to assyrians. they are iraqis, not assyrian. that just prooves how much you want to assyrianiate everyone with your assyrian propaganda. VegardNorman (talk) 23:17, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I have moved the issue to WP:FT. Chaldean (talk) 23:27, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

For those looking ,here's the actual link Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Syriac_people_and_newly_created_pages_by_the_minute, with an entirely different presentation of the dispute. ThuranX (talk) 02:26, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

No the issue is not moved. The issue stays here because i have complaints on a user, not about an article. VegardNorman (talk) 09:36, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

{exdent for convenience] User:VegardNorman has attempted to enlist my interest in this matter on my talk page, which I think may fall under the rules about "trolling" to enlist support. At any rate, I have no interest in adjudicating this matter or even offering an opinion, which seems to be being handled by competent individuals having a rational discussion here and elsewhere. I have no idea why User:VegardNorman thought I might want to weigh in on this issue since it is entirely outside any area of competence I might possess and, to the best of my knowledge, I've never encountered any of the participants before. Good luck with resolving this issue and, if there's anything within my limited realm of competence with which I can assist, let me know. Accounting4Taste:talk 14:37, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Since no admin answered on this issue i contacted an administrator. I checked the list for administrators and just picked out you. Im not in any interest that you join my "side". VegardNorman (talk) 15:33, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I recognize that to be the case. You may wish to look at the Wikipedia policy at Wikipedia:Canvassing for future reference, although I don't suggest you have infringed it. Thanks for your clarification. Accounting4Taste:talk 17:27, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

User talk:Kurtlockwood

Resolved

Not 100% sure this is the correct place but, the above user has committed an abuse of WP:Civil on another user's talk page. I went to his talk page to place a gentle warning and found the page protected so, am bringing it here. Thanks Jasynnash2 (talk) 11:41, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Try WP:WQA. That is the appropriate place to bring civility concerns. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 11:44, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

• Thanks. Will take it there now. Jasynnash2 (talk) 12:46, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Persistent vandals, 14 april 2008

Resolved

Two IP only account names I've tracked down: User:209.216.70.237 User:209.216.70.237

Both need blocking. Thanks. Sojourner001 (talk) 14:58, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

The one you listed (twice) has been blocked. Thanks for pointing out the problem! Next time, WP:AIV is a better place for this. Tan | 39 15:03, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism

Hello to everyone! I want to tell you one case of vandalism [[111]]. The user Niko Silver is vandalizing my page and my staffs. Since it is a user page he is not allowed to delete my staffs. Please can you block him or warn him somehow. Thanks --MacedonianBoy (talk) 11:32, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

You might try asking this user about why he removed your userboxes first - we generally don't block users for a single edit, and he appeared to feel there was some reason those boxes wouldn't be allowed, judging by his edit summary. Usually discussion is preferred to administrative action. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 12:10, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I see at least one userbox that might be considered extremely offensive --"I don't believe in Greek culture or Civilization". Admittedly, I'm not sure what this is in reference to or its basis in political beliefs. Macedonia, I suggest you read this guideline on innapropriate content for userpages. It might be best to remove such a userbox as many might be offended. Gwynand | Talk•Contribs 12:58, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Anyhow he cannot remove it just like that. Typical vandalism. MacedonianBoy (talk) 13:06, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, assuming it is not considered "extremely offensive material", then yes, you are right, he shouldn't have removed it (although he may have been extremely offended by it). I would suggest you personally remove that userbox from your page. If he continues to edit your user space after that then of course he may be blocked. Agreed? Gwynand | Talk•Contribs 13:31, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

He's obviously not the only user to be offended. User:Black Kite removed the aforementioned box recently, the most recent edit to the page (currently). George D. Watson (Dendodge).Talk^Help 19:21, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Black kite likely saw this thread here and removed it, but that was after my edit. I'm not sure if MacedoniaBoy is attempting to defend the use of such a box, but rather another editor removing it without his permission. Maybe this can be marked as resolved, I don't see any continuing dispute here. Gwynand | Talk•Contribs 19:26, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Bad-mouthing

Please look at this and then this; I am concerned that I am now going to be bad-mouthed off-wiki, and that the points I raised in the first diff are being over-trodden. Any thoughts (preferably about this issue rather than the topics referenced in the diffs)? —TreasuryTag—t—c 15:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

This one was my mistake; I saw an editor being (in my opinion) harrassed. I wrote a suggestion for him on his talk page, to prevent him from being sucked into a fight, but decided it would be wiser to email instead. However, I cleverly saved it to the talk page instead of the email by accident. I deleted it about 10 seconds later, but too late. I stand by my opinion, but regret that I posted it on the talk page. --barneca (talk) 15:12, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm still upset that if you have concerns, you didn't raise them with me or the community, but instead privately communicated them to a user with whom you don't seem to have ever interacted before. So there's now going to be some off-wiki chat about me which isn't going to serve Wikipedia at all. As I said, there are processes for complaining about users' behaviour, and messaging another isn't one of them. —TreasuryTag—t—c 15:14, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

So now we're going to try to regulate the off-Wiki behavior and actions of users? Tan | 39 15:29, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I can see how Barneca may have just wanted to advise the user directly involved with you and not get drawn into it himself. You can't force someone to discuss anything with you if they don't want to. --Kbdank71 15:56, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't see anything untowards here. Gwen Gale (talk) 16:02, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

My point was that if Barneca had the interests of Wikipedia at heart, s/he would utilise dispute resolution. But if, as I fear, s/he doesn't, then that is a matter that needs attention. Wikipedia is not served by underhand tactics, and is served by open public discussion. —TreasuryTag—t—c 16:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree that Barneca uses underhand tactics in his day to day business on WP. Check out User talk:Dark3345. I believe this account may have been created as a clone by Barneca to try and dig a grave for David and Sammy, 2 of the most outspoken critics of Barneca's admin sytle, but by no means the only critics, there are hundreds of them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.77.199.61 (talk) 16:17, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

If Barneca created the account, why did he block it? George D. Watson (Dendodge).Talk^Help 19:04, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

162.127.23.84 (talk · contribs) blocked

The above IP address has just been blocked for vandalism. I'm reporting it here as it's registered to the State of Nebraska. While it's not a "sensitive IP", per WP:SIP, I'm still reporting it here and to the Foundation just in case. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 16:48, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

It's just a school IP, part of NEK12NET, Nebraska's public school network. Kww (talk) 18:28, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I've tagged it with sharedIPedu instead of the standard sharedIP template to make it clearer. George D. Watson (Dendodge).Talk^Help 19:11, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh. Funny, so what's the "Office of the CIO" stuff about, then? Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 20:12, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

strange soapbox/coatracky disruption

I brought this to the attention of the BLP noticeboard earlier, but as there has been no feedback from there, and the issue has escalated somewhat, here goes.

An anon has been trying to use the George Weigel article as a soapbox, in particular, as a coatrack for their opinion of the Iraq war. Following the history of the article and talkpage should make that apparent; I have provided a more detailed timeline below.

Without editwarring, I would like to be able to do something about the article. I encourage the appropriate attention to the page, the anons, or both, and certainly will not disregard any constructive suggestions as to how I could have handled the situation better. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 17:34, 14 April 2008 (UTC) I have not notified User:J.delanoy of this discussion to avoid the appearance of canvassing, but I would think it appropriate to do so, if someone else decides to. The latest IP has been notified, indeed warned. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 17:43, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

If they're anons, would semi-protection suffice? George D. Watson (Dendodge).Talk^Help 19:07, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

It would certainly be sufficient, however it might be a little strong, as apparently unrelated IPs have made constructive edits (for example) during this silliness. However, if the community deems it appropriate per discussion here or elsewhere, so be it. I note that other uninvolved established users have already dropped by to help maintain the article, so this discussion is helping. Thanks. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 19:27, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Admin assistance requested at anon's talkpage

At User_talk:75.57.196.81, the anon keeps blanking the IP banner from the page which identifies a host of other IP addresses that contain pertinent usertalk complaints. Other editors have added it back, but he's well past 3RR (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, [] and notified of 3RR vio here) at this point.

The user (essentially an SPA in the Fitna and related articles) refuses to create an account and the numerous accounts, each contain edit histories of escalating incivility, towards both myself (1 2, 3 4) and others (1, 2). As the anon switches between IPs, the edit history is lost, as well as any complaints voiced on the anon usertalk page. I attempted to add an IP banner in three of the IPs that have sprung up over the past day or so. The 3RR is the anon attempting to remove the banner (which cannot be removed).
Please help. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 20:58, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

This is my solution to the question of an ip removing the header and ip ident - and I don't mind if any other admin executes it. I would just remind whomever not to allow cascading protection, as the subpage will be caught (I think - best be safe anyway!) Cheers. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:22, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

This user has already formally charged me with "Ongoing, serious pattern vandalism involving dozens of incidents" and "3RR violation using socks" his charge was baseless and without any evidence he is MORE THAN WELL AWARE THAT THIS IS ONE USER AND HAS BEEN TOLD THIS.[112] This user is manipulating the system to use as a weapon against another user.75.57.196.81 (talk) 21:30, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

It's possible. Still, you oughtn't to remove the banner from your talkpage. —TreasuryTag—t—c 21:34, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

The banner was placed there by Arcayne - I initially resented having him follow me around Wiki reverting me and undercutting me at his every opportunity. I am not comfortable with this obsession he appears to have with me.

It was not a formal banner - Arcayne took it upon himself to place it there. He then gathered up all his comments about me and added those. Those comments I read and left in the "History", it was those edits I objected to - Arcayne was simply colonizing my user page and edited it as he saw fit - and then reverting any changes I made to my own user page.75.57.196.81 (talk) 21:38, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

• It is a one use banner, and one appropriate to identify the differing ip's from the same range that are editing the same article so that contrib histories can be compared. As such it benefits the discussion and there should be consensus if it were to be removed. I agree that it is appropriate for the purpose, and would not wish to see it removed presently. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:45, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Several of my edits retained the banner and simply dropped Arcaynes conquest of my user page in the history - additionally this not only stopped but was discussed hours ago when the first neutral third party stepped in. It was a dead issue that lasted 5 minutes and occurred on my personal talk page.. 75.57.196.81 (talk) 21:56, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

From what I can see, your accusations that Arcayne "colonized" and "conquered" your userpage are unfounded. As far as I can tell, he legitimately added warnings to your page. As you said, there could be numerous editors at this address. If you are worried about misdirected warnings, create an account. With regard to the banner on top, there is absolutely no reason that it should be removed. It is there to enable administrators to contact the owner of the IP address to report abuse. It also serves as a warning to potential problem editors, stating that is possible to trace their contributions, so they may want to be careful what they do. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 22:07, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I misunderstood what you were talking about, but my opinion remains the same. There is no reason to remove the banner, as it could be useful if a range block ever became necessary. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 22:09, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Pointing out that I did added instances of the behavioral issues after the initial posting. and that I wasn't trying to populate the anon's usertalk page with my posts (others had complained there as well). I would submit that the behavioral problems exhibited by the anon are far from a dead issue - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 22:22, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Repeated addition of copyright violation in Abbas Kiarostami article

User:BehnamFarid added youtube link to Abbas Kiarostami which i felt was copyright violation. I reverted it (see diff but he added it back. The issue was raised at talk page where i elaborated WP:COPYRIGHT#Linking to copyrighted works but Behnam is in no mood to listen. 1, 2 and 3 and the respective edit summaries smack of personal attack. I posted a query abt this at Wikipedia:MCQ#Youtube_link_to_a_video_in_Abbas_Kiarostami and the response was to delete it. His message on MECU's talk page states that I "suffer from the mental ailment of intolerance" and that I "may be a fundamentalist", which i feel is a personal attack on me. I posted a warning message on Behnam's talk page which he deleted (see this. Finally the discussions at my talk page, MECU's talk page, article talk page will show that Behnam doesnt seem to be constructive editor and despite my repeated explanations of wikipedia policies on article talk page, he is indulging in personal attacks and addition of youtube link in a Featured article. I request and admin to look into this and take necessary action against User:BehnamFarid....thanx...Gprince007 (talk) 18:10, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

In the course of the past two days User:Gprince007 has been pursuing an utterly senseless undertaking with obsession, the like of which I have rarely, if at all, witnessed elsewhere. Regarding the things that I have already written on this issue, I refer the interested reader to (1), (2), and (3).

I draw attention to User:Gprince007's explicit statement in the above text: "which i felt was copyright violation" (note the word "felt"). It appears therefore that User:Gprince007 takes action on the basis of what s/he feels, and not of demonstrable facts. S/he has been a cause for nuisance despite my repeated requests that s/he communicate her/his concerns with YouTube. Evidently, since the material to which I had linked is located on YouTube, which is a reputable site, and by no means uploaded to Wikipedia, either by me or by any other person known to me, it is not my responsibility to take action on account of the feelings of some individual, in particular when that individual turns out to be an obsessive one.

I feel compelled to mention that yesterday User:Gprince007 deleted my singed comment on the talk page of the entry on Abbas Kiarostami on account of my comment containing original research material and that, according to some Wikipedia guideline, no such talks were permitted on Wikipedia. The available evidence will unequivocally prove that my language became abrasive (and I do not regret that) when User:Gprince007 proved to stop at nothing; someone who feels entitled to remove someone else's intellectual contribution to a talk page, on account of the dubious argument that the text contained original research material, is to my best understanding a bigoted person. I admit that it is painful to be told that one is bigoted, but I strongly believe that at least sometimes calling a spade a spade is one's moral responsibility; one simply cannot be so hypocrite as giving a person like User:Gprince007 the false impression that her/his doings on Wikipedia were alright. S/he must be made to understand that there are limits, also on Wikipedia; one cannot continue acting on one's impulses and expect that people will keep their heads down. If User:Gprince007 expected differently, it goes a long way to showing that this person's contact with the real world is either non-existent or at best very tenuous.

One last point. It appears that User:Gprince007 not only is impulsive, but has a strange relationship with truth. By reading the contents of the talk page of Kiarostami's entry, one will realise that the above statement by User:Gprince007, that "and the response was to delete it" is an outright lie. All individuals, with the exception of one (see later), voted for maintaining the link. The exception is User:Hux. Two comments are in order. Firstly, User:Hux came in after User:Gprince007 had deleted the YouTube link already for a number of times (as can be verified, Hux's comment dates from yesterday night, just before 9 O'clock). It follows that User:Gprince007 had been carrying out with her/his nuisance during the time that all people involved had been against her/his actions. Secondly, reading Hux's comment, one will realise that Hux had been unduly influenced by the false assertion of User:Gprince007's that the video at issue violated copyright laws. As should be evident, to this date User:Gprince007 has failed to clarify where her/his assertion is based on; we now know for certain that s/he only feels that something were amiss with the copyright of the video at issue. I rest my case here. --BF 21:26, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

ps) One last thing concerning the charge that I deleted a specific message placed on my talk page. Any person who has ever visited my talk page will testify that I never keep a message on my talk page that no longer is in need of responding to; I consider my talk page as a kind of desk, and thus keep it clean at all times. The accusation that I might have deleted User:Gprince007's message on my talk page for some specific reason bearing on User:Gprince007 has therefore no relevance here. It can be easily verified that I deleted the message in question after having responded to it. --BF 21:59, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Your case fails. That youtube account has 410 videos of different tv clips from different channels. It is absolutely clear that this is a copyright violation. On Wikipedia, linking to copyright violation is your responsibility, not youtube's. This is not my opinion, this is policy, and you have been furnished with it. Stop being dishonest. 86.44.28.245 (talk) 22:03, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it would seem your case fails - A search of Wiki policy concerning YouTube shows no blanket ban or any policy stating that if falls upon the Wiki editor to verify copyright on YouTube (which can be found here) YouTube has a policy in place for anyone with a complaint regarding material they hold the copyright to. At which point whomever posted the video is liable.SteveCoppock (talk) 22:44, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

If you believe that I am acting dishonestly, which you are entitled to, then it must reflect something of your inner being, for I have not been acting dishonestly. I do not know where the number "410" comes from for instance. I have only known one version on YouTube of the video at issue and that had already been viewed by more than 4000 viewers (I am entirely unaware whether this video is to be seen elsewhere; I only know of one version, to which I have made a link, on the official YouTube website in the USA). To my best knowledge, something that is illegal never gets as far as of the order of 100 views before it is taken down. You owe me therefore an apology for accusing me of being guilty of something that I could not have been. Further, you have badly failed to give attention to what I have been telling: I have repeatedly told, and politely, to Gprince007 that s/he should address her/his concerns to YouTube rather than acting like a police on behalf of others; I have never condoned use of material here or elsewhere whose use violated copyright laws. --BF 22:35, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

ps) Oh, now I understand the significance of that number. Well, that may be the case, however if the person uploading the video at issue is guilty of violation of copyright laws on such a massive scale (as you seem to be suggesting), then how comes that her/his membership of YouTube is tolerated? Why does YouTube allow this person to carry on with what you suggest to amount to illegal activities on a massive scale? If you are so certain of your case, why don't you write to YouTube? But I am digressing, the relevant fact is that Gprince007 has never given any reason why s/he thinks that the video should be illegal; s/he has even not once made mention of that number "410". --BF 22:48, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok, proof the video is a copyright violation? The opening credits name Farabi Cinema Foundation as the production company. Unless Farabi has a habbit of publishing on YouTube, which I highly doubt, it's a copyright violation. And all this about YouTube dealing with copyright violations, or whose responsibility anything is...it's all utterly irrelevant. Articles do not include links to copyright violations. Anyone who knowingly places such a link is in violation of Wikipedia's copyright policy. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:55, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Your statement does not hold water. It is predicated on the assumption "Unless Farabi ...". You have not shown that they do not do. Since the quality of the video is inferior, releasing it on YouTube might actually boost the sales of its high-quality version, or attract more people to movie theatres showing the film. But of course, I am only speculating. --BF 23:20, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you are speculating, and dangerously so. This is all for the same reason we don't give image uploaders the benefit of the doubt when they upload demonstrably copyrighted images; we actually have a Foundation-established method the uploaders must use to prove they are not in violation of the copyright. Just the same, we don't link to copyrighted information unless there is reasonable proof the host is not violating the copyright. This is usually established naturally as the host is usually the original publisher; when that host is, instead, YouTube, and the upload was made by some random person with a YouTube account, we assume he is in violation of the copyright. Someguy1221 (talk) 00:17, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I dislike dramatic language as substitute for reasoning. What was so "dangerous" about my "speculation"? How many lives were lost, and how many people became homeless through my "speculation", one might wonder. As it happens, none. Also I dislike your use of "we", as if I were an outsider and intent on abuse; I am as much part of Wikipedia as you may believe you are. Using my own words and turning them against me, is another conspicuous aspect of your text. May I therefore request you kindly to remain neutral and to the point? The point I made, and you did not shine any light on with so many words, was that in a discussion such as the present one, one cannot predicate a statement on issues that are not a priori true. Otherwise, by making an argument long enough, one can prove everything and disprove everything. Sophistry is the name of this game. --BF 01:25, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

You're missing the issue, BF. Someguy put it better than I could ... we can't assume good faith on copyright, for good reason. Blueboy96 01:31, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

You are also using that detested word "we". May I respectfully ask who you think you are and who you think I am? Further, as testified by all that I have written on the present issue, I have never advocated use of illegal material, not here on Wikipedia, not anywhere! The issue under discussion consists of one thing, namely: Has Gprince007 been justified in deleting a link made by me to a video hosted by YouTube prior to ascertaining that the video at issue were illegal? My answer to this question has been and remains to be NO! I cannot act on the mere suspicion of an individual; as should be evident, to this very moment the only thing that we know for certain is that Gprince007 had only felt the video to be illegal. This cannot be a cause for action, especially when I have repeatedly asked Gprince007 to write about her/his concerns to YouTube. If you, i.e. all of you who have made a habit of calling yourselves "we", cannot assume good faith, that is your problem; insofar as I am concerned, YouTube is run by a reputed organisation and I have not the slightest reason to believe that they may be acting against law. When, if at all, they unplug the video at issue, I will also remove the Wikipedia link to that video. If you wish to accuse YouTube and thus Google of dishonesty, then please put that in writing, and I shall pass the document to them for consideration. Please ask yourself the following question: will I be able and willing to testify against Google and Youtube under oath in a court of law? If the answer to this question is in the negative, then your present accusations legally amount to libel, for which you can be sued. --BF 03:55, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

If only an excerpt of that film was posted, it could be claimed under fair use (someone correct me if I'm wrong). As it presumably includes the whole film, it's a copyright violation. Even linking to works that violate copyright could expose the Wikimedia Foundation to serious legal danger. If you continue to post this link, you will be blocked. Blueboy96 04:01, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Why this threatening language? My link has been to a site registered in the USA and one that is not known for illegal activities. In other words, I cannot be held responsible when the link made is not to an illegal site. Or are you suggesting that you will take action against me on account of a material offered by YouTube?! Why don't you address the problem to YouTube itself which has made the video clip available? As I have said elsewhere, when I made the link, the video had already been viewed by more than 4000 viewers; to my experience, illegal videos never reach above 100 viewings before they are taken down. You also seem to disregard the fact that I have repeatedly asked Gprince007 that he report the issue to YouTube, yet I never received a word from him why he felt the video were illegal. You further disregard the opinion of the people who initially voted for keeping the link intact (consult the talk page, and you will see that they overwhelmingly were in support of the link --- incidentally, the talk on this subject matter was not even initiated by me); the only opposing view came in yesterday night, just before 9 O'clock (all of these details are already mentioned above). --BF 04:44, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

There are certain instances where consensus has to be trumped. Copyright is one of them. If you don't understand that by now ... Blueboy96 04:51, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Then put a blanket ban on YouTube and save all of us the trouble. Also could you consider to be more respectful when addressing others? What is "If you don't understand ...", if not hubris? --BF 04:57, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Someone at YouTube may or may not have deemed the video is viewable there under circumstances which do not put YouTube itself at risk for copyright violation, but the uploader still could be liable. Either way, copyright status (or exemption) can't be inferred by the presence of a video on YouTube. Even so, the pith is that without a clear path to either a copy authorized by the copyright holder, fair use or public domain, WP:COPYRIGHT#Linking to copyrighted works clearly does not allow linking to content, since doing this could be taken as contributory infringement. Hence this link can't be lobbied for at all, it could be (and likely is) a copyvio and must be gone. Gwen Gale (talk) 05:10, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Not only that, but if this were just an excerpt, fair use could be claimed. But since BF clearly stated in the provided diff that this was the entire film, it has no place here. Blueboy96 05:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Watching the above heated debates taking place, i feel my stand has been vindicated. BehnamFarid keeps telling me to take this issue with youtube. Well Behnam...the thing is i am a wikipedia editor and my loyalties lie with wikipedia. It is a wikipedia policy to not to link to copyrighted works and i am just ensuring that it is enforced. If tommorrow there are 1000 sites posting copyrighted works illegally and some editor links to them in an wikipedia article, do u expect people to write letters and send notices to those 1000 websites??....No, they'll just remove the links at our end (ie in wikipedia article). If youtube or any other website carries copyright violation, they may or may not take action, but we shd make sure that we at our end dont be a party to this crime by linking to it. You seem to be a fan of Kiarostami's works but u dont realise that by posting a link to the video, u a harming his interests in more ways than one. Many movies are available on internet in violation of copyright laws and what if everybody links to those works in their respective wikipedia article??? the purpose of copyright will be defeated and it would fail to serve it purpose. In view of the above discussions, i hope u will see reason and desist from personal attacks and stop linking to copyrighted works.... Thanks Gprince007 (talk) 07:14, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Gprince007, you are using hyperbole. I did not link to an illegal site (call YouTube an illegal site frequently enough, and you are likely to be sued for libel), and certainly not to 1000 of them, and you never said, neither here nor in our earlier communications leading to the present public discussion, why you felt that the video were in violation of copyright laws. A number of things. The video shows some digital clock in the lower part of the frame, suggesting that it is most likely a recording of a television broadcasting in Iran (the numerals are in Farsi script). Both television and Farabi Film Foundation are owned by the public in Iran; they get their budget for 100% from the treasury. It may be, and I don't know it for certain, that the mere fact that the film has been shown on Iranian Television, has made it public property (this logic does not apply to, for instance, BBC, since despite being a public broadcasting company, it is financed by the fees paid by individuals). The scenario would be that Kiarostami and his associates have been commissioned by Farabi Film Foundation to make this film, and have received a certain amount for the commission and thus transferred their copyrights to Farabi Film Foundation. The latter being fully financed by the public, the work now legally belongs to the public. A case in point is the National Portrait Gallery of the United Kingdom. Sometimes ago I was negotiating with them for getting one of their photographs transferred to Wikipedia. What they told me was that although they are a national institution, since (and this is the most relevant aspect) they had to earn part of their running costs from leasing photographs to the rest of the world, they were not in a position to permit use of their photographs on Wikipedia (although they wrote me that they were in serious negotiations with Wikipedia for arriving at a mutually acceptable agreement, since they were regularly receiving similar requests as mine). This shows that if National Portrait Gallery were fully financed by the state, the photographs in their collection belonged to the public. As I said, to my best knowledge Farabi Film Foundation is fully financed by the Iranian state (the foundation is one of the things that the reformist president Mr Khatami bequeathed to the nation) so that even if the video were on YouTube without a written declaration of consent on the part of Farabi Film Foundation, in principle its exposure on YouTube does not constitute an illegal act. I see this as a possible reason for the video having stayed on YouTube for so long. A somewhat related point, insofar as I am aware, copyright laws in Iran are far more relaxed than in the West; for instance, in the West (at least in the USA) a photograph becomes public property 100 years after its publication; in Iran the period is just 30 years.

All the above contributors have merely speculated as to the suitability of linking the video to Wikipedia, and all on the conservative side; they all seem to wish to err on the safe side. Therefore my original suggestion that you write to YouTube remains, even though I shall no longer insist on the link. One should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. You talk about your loyalties to Wikipedia, but why should you not be loyal to the best interests of the humanity? As I wrote extensively about on Kiarostami's talk page, the video at issue contains almost all aspects of Kiarostami's creations in a way that only those who know the cultural background within which the work has been created can fully appreciate. As someone who knows this cultural background, I saw it as part of my loyalty to humanity (not to Wikipedia which is but a medium) to tell the rest of the world of the hidden treasures inside that short video; what I wrote on the video was only a fraction of what is contained in it. In my opinion (and this is very personal), cutting out that video link can be likened with aborting an unborn child on account of the possibility that that child might become a criminal later in life. In the case at hand, no one has thus far come with a convincing argument why the video on YouTube were illegal. You may feel vindicated, but to my best judgement, your apparent vindication will be at a cultural expense. I invested a great deal of effort in this enterprise just for salvaging a most valuable addition to the Wikipedia entry of Kiarostami. I stop here. --BF 15:38, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Removing messages from talkpage is unacceptable if there is no harm or intent towards anyone. As I understand it, Youtube itself is responsible for removing copy-righted material. So unless it is proven that youtube's video is violating copyright (by contacting them), then I do not think it is valid to remove it from Wikipedia. --alidoostzadeh (talk) 20:20, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, that's not acceptable. There are all sorts of sites that contain copyright violations. We do not link to them. Period. We do not wait for the site we link to to see the error of their ways and remove the copyright violations for us. We do not link to copyright violations. Period. Corvus cornix_talk 21:05, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

You may be on the wrong page; the discussion here is not about "all sorts of sites", but about one specific site, namely YouTube. --BF 23:32, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with User:BehnamFarid. The issue is just one site who by its nature checks against copyright violation. If the youtube video is copyrighted, then it is their job to remove it. But the video has remained for more than a year. --alidoostzadeh (talk) 04:24, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if we're talking about YouTube in particular. Wikipedia cannot rely on an outside site to manage copyright violations. Wikipedia must assume good faith, and that there has been an explicit release of copyright. Unless the person who uploaded the video that is being linked to has an explicit release of copyright from the copyright holder, and has displayed that explicit release on their Youtube upload page (the image page), we must assume that the image is copyrighted and that the upload is a copyright violation. Corvus cornix_talk 17:06, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I would persume by your statement: "Wikipedia must assume good faith" that it is the other way around. We should assume good faith with regards to the fact that the video is posted on a site that takes copyright violations into consideration. --alidoostzadeh (talk) 20:16, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Whatever. If I encounter links to YouTube, I remove them, and I expect them to remain removed until such time as the person providing the link proves that the person who uploaded the video to YouTube had permission to do so from the copyright holder. Any edit warring over the link should lead to the person adding it to be blocked until they acknowledge that Wikipedia doesn't play around with copyright violations. Corvus cornix_talk 20:32, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Corvus is pretty much correct here. There is no blanket ban, per se, on Youtube links. However, the only allowed links would be those that document a release of copyright. Assume good faith merely requires that we assume that the person posting the links didn't know that they were violating policy (if this was the first occurrence), and warn them from doing it again. --Bfigura ^(talk) 20:42, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Well I don't think threatening blocks is the correct action. Probably a discussion on the actual video is merited. I think it depends on the site. If the site deletes copyrighted material, then I do not think it is the responsibility of the user in Wikipedia to worry about that site. Afterall, they are not viewing the video in Wikipedia. I could understand it if the video or image was uploaded to Wikipedia and was viewed within Wikipedia from Wikipedia. But if it is just an external link to a site whose responsibility is to insure free material, then we should WP:AGF. Basically the approach being suggested is "Guilty until proven innocent" whereas it should be "Innocent till proven guilty". --alidoostzadeh (talk) 22:16, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I think Material that violates the copyrights of others per contributors' rights and obligations should not be linked. Linking to websites that display copyrighted works is acceptable as long as the website has licensed the work. Knowingly directing others to material that violates copyright may be considered contributory infringement. If you know that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work. Linking to a page that illegally distributes someone else's work sheds a bad light on Wikipedia and its editors. This is particularly relevant when linking to sites such as YouTube, where due care should be taken to avoid linking to material that violates its creator's copyright. is pretty clear. Corvus cornix_talk 22:33, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

From what I gather, it says: "if you know that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work. Correct me if I am wrong, but it does not say if you guess. --alidoostzadeh (talk) 22:53, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

<-undent: There is no need to repeat the arguments ad nauseum. Links to copyright violations will be removed. If they are restored, the person doing the restoring will be blocked. End of discussion. Corvus cornix_talk 23:20, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Phone number in article

A recent edit added a person's name and telephone number into an article (not a notable person or wikipedia user that I am aware of - or any connection with the article). I have reverted but should the revision be deleted? --Snigbrook ^(talk) 17:34, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:OVERSIGHT -MBK₀₀₄ 17:36, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Not really, if its not specified who it belongs to, or is incorrect. Rudget (review) 17:36, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

In this case, I would request oversight. Rudget (review) 17:38, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I requested oversight, and the edit has now been removed. --Snigbrook ^(talk) 23:54, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

It is specified who it belongs to; there's no real reason not to oversight it, is there? —TreasuryTag—t—c 17:37, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Is oversight necessary? I would imagine deleting the revision would suffice for this sort of thing. Neıl ☎ 18:45, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

This is basically what oversight exists for, not to mention that it is much easier to use oversight for this than regular deletion. Mr.Z-man 18:50, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

(ec) It has, in fact, been our general practice to suggest that oversight be requested for revisions that reveal a telephone number, especially those that mean to associate a name with that number, consistent with the first of the two reasons for oversight enumerated at RFO. I continue to fail to understand why revision deletion does not suffice for situations like this—oversight is, IMHO, grossly overused (and almost certainly need not to exist at all), although that overuse is not particularly problematic as regards the removal of personal information—but that ship seems to have sailed. Joe 18:57, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Persistent vandalism at The Used and The Used discography

The following users (also suspected sockpuppets) User:USEDfan and User:Booowooo are persistently reverting appropriate edits to the above pages. Please excuse the lack of diffs, there are so many. A simple check of the history of both users shows they refuse to discuss their changes. Could we get a temporary ban until they cool down, maybe they will then engage in discussion then....Nouse4aname (talk) 19:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

So far two are blocked. The only question is whether Booowooo ought to be blocked as well. I'm conflicted based on the article history.--chaser - t 19:40, 14 April 2008 (UTC) All blocked, including Nouse4aname.--chaser - t 19:44, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

It would be nice if I could understand USEDfan and Booowooo's edit summaries and comments. Their English comprehension is downright awful. seicer | talk | contribs 19:46, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Nouse4aname has been unblocked. Corvus cornix_talk 20:44, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

BTW, this is an interesting edit summary. Corvus cornix_talk 20:47, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I think I can glean enough out of that to say it was meant to be nettlesome. Gwen Gale (talk) 01:27, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Extra helpings of Crazy in the Fitna article

Resolved

 – Protection request filed —TreasuryTag—t—c 21:23, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I am requesting admin attention at Talk:Fitna (film). We have a controversial topic there, and several anon accounts have been jumping in with uncivil comments. This is leading to a Wild West atmosphere amongst the other editors, and some edit-warring has been occurring. I think that the anons are all the same person but I'm not sure. Whoever they are though, the rudeness is not helping us to reach consensus. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 20:58, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

This user is attempting to use the system to harm another user - I may be the only anonymous account in the discussion and this user is well aware of this. Please ask the user Arcayne to post "Diffs" to support his accusation. Arcayne has prviously filed formal charges against me accusing me of "Ongoing, serious pattern vandalism involving dozens of incidents" and "3RR violation using socks". without a single "Diff" cited. There is no basis to support his allegations. [113] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.57.196.81 (talk • contribs)

With respect, you were but part of the problem, anon. Here I asked for some eyes on the article, as other editors are getting a bit too revert-y in the article page. Some of the calming influence of an admin might settle folk down there.

The diffs you requested are below, in the complaint concerning you. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 21:42, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick action. The article is now dispute-locked, which will bring folk to the table, so to speak. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 22:15, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, in point of fact - The article has been semi-protected for several day's now. Your charge is baseless and false - NO Anon has edited the article for several days.75.57.196.81 (talk) 22:31, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

My apologies for not spelling it out clearer, anon. The hostile environment fostered in the article discussion page led to the revert war in the article. Please do not pretend that you didn't enlist folk to make edits on your behalf (1 2). The article is protected now from anyone making changes until we have some agreement. Be happy with that. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 23:03, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I did not "Enlist Folk" - Is there no end to this McCarthyism? An edit was made per the clear instruction of the Reliable Source Notice Board - It was specifically stated by them to use the Credits in the InfoBox - it was on that basis that the change was made.75.57.196.81 (talk) 23:47, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Here is the exact quote:

The answer stays the same. The film credits are a perfectly acceptable source for film articles, and should be the preferred source for listing in the infobox.

Clear, concise, reasonable. 75.57.196.81 (talk) 23:51, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Suspected Sockpuppetry

Resolved

 – No case of sockpuppetry per RFCU ;seicer | talk | contribs 04:08, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

On 22 January 2007 at 23:38, SqueakBox (talk · contribs) (who has a history of socking; see 10:37, 22 August 2006 block) was blocked for one week.[114] Approximately one day later, on 23 January 2007 at 22:08, Ztep (talk · contribs) was created. [115] Ztep immediantly began editing articles frequented by SqueakBox, including Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, List of Rastafarians, the talk page Joseph Hill, and a redirect to Rastafarian vocabulary (check the history for any of these articles and you'll see SqueakBox's name in abundance). He also edited ETA to delete a reference to terrorism,[116] a POV pushed by Squeak as well.[117] Ztep stopped editing on 28 January 2007 at 17:56, just as Squeak's block was about to expire. The time frame of his editing was Squeak-typical -- around 17 or 21 hours, depending on the day.

Yesterday, Ztep popped back up after a year of inactivity to join in in a revert war on Pro-paedophile activism, after SqueakBox violated 3RR. (Absolutely no one else supported SB's revision, and the protected version has since been changed back to consensus at the request of several editors and administrators[118])) He reverted the article 3 times, at which point it was protected. He also left a note on the talk page, strikingly Squeakboxian in its civilty and sense: "I have been watching for 3 days now and all you have done is told paedophiles where to abuse children,. You clearly have no conscience but you also appear to have no sense either."[119]

In the interest of full disclosure, SqueakBox claims that Ztep is a conspiracy to frame him (see discussion at Wikipedia:Pedophile_topic_mentorship#Recent_Edits). He's also implied a checkuser would clear his name. I'm not sure if this is reverse psychology or if he's confident in his proxy, but I'm certain that he's been abusing multiple accounts. --AnotherSolipsist (talk) 00:40, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I fully agree that there has been trolling and sockpuppetry goping on there, the worst case being User:laceibahonduras which was a stalkling account against me, and User:ztep. Thanks, SqueakBox 00:52, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I have blocked Ztep as a disruptive single-purpose account. No judgement on who (if anyone) Ztep is a sock of; this is based purely on Ztep's editing (or rather, edit-warring). Neıl ☎ 00:46, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I appreciate that, having called for it elsewhere and see my above comment. Thanks, SqueakBox 00:52, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

No problem. Marked as resolved. User:Bmj4 also appears suspiciously SPA-ey - I will keep an eye on that one. Neıl ☎ 01:00, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

And I thought SqueakBox would be asking us to send Lawyers, Guns and Money to Honduras (sing it!). — CharlotteWebb 01:03, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, but the issue I raised hasn't been resolved: SqueakBox obviously abused multiple accounts. His conspiracy theory is ridiculous, and could be applied to any other socking situation. I think it's important that SB is reprimanded for this because his behavior at Pro-paedophile activism has been unacceptable for some time. --AnotherSolipsist (talk) 01:04, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The usual procedure in a situation like this is to request a checkuser first using the rationale you stated above. Once done, if it were positive, then you would bring it here for action. Since that didn't happen, I think this incident is closed for now. Cla68 (talk) 01:14, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd be very happy with an RCU as long as it involved all involved editors and the 2 indef blocked users, all including both AnotherSolipsist and me. Thanks, SqueakBox 01:22, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Eh, well, we've got our would be Van Owen. John Nevard (talk) 01:12, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

AnotherSolipsist, there isn't particularly compelling (or indeed, any) evidence that Squeakbox is "obviously abusing multiple accounts". Ztep has been blocked as a clear single-purpose account, and failing any further information turning up, there's nothing more that could - or should - be done. Neıl ☎ 01:15, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The evidence presented in my OP seems compelling enough. Are you suggesting it's all just a coincidence? --AnotherSolipsist (talk) 01:19, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Then checkuser' it. If you don't, then this matter will be marked as resolved. Nothing else can be done. seicer | talk | contribs 01:22, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I felt the evidence was conclusive enough to skip CheckUser. SB could have used a proxy, after all, and his confidence that CU will vindicate him make that likely. If it's agreed that my evidence is insufficient, though, I will file a CheckUser. --AnotherSolipsist (talk) 01:27, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

In case this is tainted by the implication the Squeak was countering an editor who was telling "paedophiles where to abuse children" (a claim repeated by Ztep and made by SB before ad nauseam), the comment pertains to a factual correction by Jovin Lambton. He changed an assertion that "no country's age of consent is below 12" to "no country's age of consent is below 12, barring Namibia, where a boy of 7 can consent with a female," citing Interpol. After Jack-A-Roe pointed out that the information was irrelevant, Jovin Lambton agreed and it was removed. Squeak remains fixated on it, and brings it up on totally irrelevant discussions. --AnotherSolipsist (talk) 01:17, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Squeakbox wants to prevent people who want to have SEX WITH CHILDREN from using the project for their own ends and shaming us in the process. This makes Squeakbox a Haille praiseworthy user. Our policies may be good for the project but he is fighting against people who want to have SEX WITH CHILDREN. Squeak, take a bow man. You are the greatest! ThoughUnlessUntilWhether (talk) 01:24, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if that was satire, but if not: the people who disagree with SB don't want to have SEX WITH CHILDREN. Most Wikipedians disagree with his kind of "NPOV," as can be seen from this RFC which garnered 13 outside opinions unanimously contra Squeak. --AnotherSolipsist (talk) 01:30, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Not satire. The REAL world watches us. In the real world these people want to have SEX WITH CHILDREN. Squeakbox is against that. These are all facts. If you want to say that you are NOT in favor of that, okay. But you are helping the cause of people who want to have SEX WITH CHILDREN whether you realize it or not.ThoughUnlessUntilWhether (talk) 01:37, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

That was uncalled for. Gwen Gale (talk) 01:42, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

There was no shot or insult and how dare you turn it into one. These people want to have SEX WITH CHILDREN. Providing them with an entry to promote that helps them promote SEX WITH CHILDREN. There is no other way to see it .ThoughUnlessUntilWhether (talk) 01:46, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

By SqueakBox's logic, the fact that you're using saying "sex with children" rather than "sexually abuse children" makes you a "pro-paedophile troll." (Sorry if that seems uncivil -- I'm only trying to illustrate that disagreement with Squeak's ridiculous opinions does not a paedophile make.) --AnotherSolipsist (talk) 01:51, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with squeakbox 100% and it is the pro-paedos who end up being blocked in various spates, as happened with at least one who was dedicated to the adult-child sex article.Merkin's mum 01:44, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Bmj4 (talk · contribs)

On a related issue, Neil expressed concern about Bmj4 (talk · contribs) - rightly so: that account and the now indef blocked account Laceibahonduras (talk · contribs) were both created on the same day: Laceibahonduras 18:06, 15 February 2008 & Bmj4 03:18, 14 February 2008. Both accounts were mostly inactive until April 13 when they engaged in tag-team reverting and other pedophilia-related edit-warring. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 01:26, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Although I don't doubt he's a sock, your evidence is on the same level as mine, which has been dismissed as unconvincing and even not evidence at all. --AnotherSolipsist (talk) 01:32, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

AnotherSolipsist , your comment is not helpful and is simply a distraction. First, User:Ztep has been blocked by Neil. Second, you have been pushing your theories regarding a long-established highly productive editor, not a short-term troll-account, that's a completely different situation. Third, the two accounts I listed have only one day of editing, all of it clearly trolling and and edit-warring, again, a different situation.

I request and recommend that you drop your campaign to cause trouble for Squeakbox, that you have been pushing relentlessly on several pages over some time. It's disruptive and nothing positive can come from it. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 01:41, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

To refocus back on the issue at hand regarding Bmj4 (talk · contribs), would an administrator please look into the actions of that account and its relation to the indef blocked account Laceibahonduras (talk · contribs) that was created on the same day? Thanks a lot. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 01:41, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I've blocked that account indefinitely. east.718 at 01:47, April 15, 2008

Can't help but notice that no invilved party has linked to a filed RFCU. I suggest strongly that instead of handwringing histrionics, the appropriate report/request be filed there, and the outcome used as the basis for further discussion. I also suggest, given the inflammatory nature of the user's comments here despite no apparent edits to the relevant topics, user's short presence on Wikipedia, and immediate use of 'wiki-lingo' in first edit summaries, "BLP concerns", that ThoughUnlessUntilWhether be included in any such CU request. ThuranX (talk) 01:51, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Because of course if you oppose SEX with CHILDREN in all forms there must be some reason to ban you. I will withstand any RFCU Thuran X. ThoughUnlessUntilWhether (talk) 01:54, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

At the risk of being accused of being in favor of SEX WITH CHILDREN, I concur with ThuranX. "Severe BLP concerns" in first edit summary, "Take it to the talk page" on the fourth. This person's been around. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^{(talk / cont)} 01:58, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I have been around enough to know that SEX WITH CHILDREN is a bad thing. I don't know if you are in favor of it or not. I am not and it is a bad thing to have the project reflect.ThoughUnlessUntilWhether (talk) 02:00, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Then why are you advertising it? Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^{(talk / cont)} 02:01, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

That's what I was wondering. Gwen Gale (talk) 02:03, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Contrary to popuplar belief, you do not win an argument by including "SEX WITH CHILDREN" in all your comments. --Conti|✉ 02:07, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

This is officially INCIVIL behavior. Attacking everyone around who notices anything as a pedophile or pro-pedophile grounds for blocking under ARBcom, isn't it? I'm asking for such a block. All I said was that TUUW appears to be SOMEONE'S sock. there were multiple RFCU suggestions above, and I think TUUW should be in all of them till we get a hit, because he's quacking when he's not attacking. The indiscriminate personal attacks smack of an agenda warrior. Sex with children is bad, and so's painting anyone who won't lockstep with you with one brush. ThuranX (talk) 02:35, 15 April 2008 (UTC}

Where has ThoughUnlessUntilWhether made any personal attack? I think the use of caps makes him look like he is, but he is capitalising those words wherever he puts them at the mo, and he's not having a go at any particular person. His posts are a social commentary (perhaps?) rather than an attack. Merkin's mum 02:50, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

His posts were dripping with the same, capitalized, discussion-smothering and disruptive, sweeping insinuation and as was said, clearly he's someone's sock. Gwen Gale (talk) 02:57, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Filed: Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/SqueakBox --AnotherSolipsist (talk) 02:04, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

(ec)The implication that as an AntiPedophile warrior, he's likely to be a victim of our mob mentality blocking means that we, the 'mob', must be pro-pedophile, andthus, it's an attack. that he shouts down all who aren't lauding him with the same screaming catch-phrase makes it a repeated attack.ThuranX (talk) 03:09, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Is wikipedia a social commentary though? If not, why would he be shouting those provocative and emotion wrenching words in caps repeatedly? (...and if it is, why didn't somebody tell me?) Crimsone (talk) 03:03, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

'Most' people (without necessarily implying what 'some' people are) find pedophilia repugnant. I'd rather 'most' people didn't get too emotionally disconnected from the issues involved -- and of course the vast increase in signal/noise ratio that we'd get on Criticism of Wikipedia if there was a media investigation of the dynamic on the pedophilia articles. John Nevard (talk) 03:15, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict)If you look at his comments such as "Squeakbox wants to prevent people who want to have SEX WITH CHILDREN from using the project for their own ends and shaming us in the process. This makes Squeakbox a Haille praiseworthy user. Our policies may be good for the project but he is fighting against people who want to have SEX WITH CHILDREN. Squeak, take a bow man. You are the greatest!" I would say his satire cuts both ways and he's providing a commentary upon both sides of the argument (I see that and others as a tongue in cheek comment, and others above thought it might be satire. He has made edits to I think, not just engaged in this. Either way, if a comedy account, a moderately amusing one in the style of Brass Eye.Merkin's mum 03:17, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The sock-garden has been shaken loose on the checkuser case, and blocks handed out liberally. I think we can say this is closed. --Haemo (talk) 07:20, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Disruptive User - constant vandalism of pages

It has come to my attention that a user with the IP-adress User:207.165.137.250 has not done nothing but vandalize Wikipedia. In the user contributions from the IP -address there is sufficient evidence that this person has made a significant number of edits that are not only irrelevant, but also in some cases, derogatory and abusive. For example, a recent edit to the Marshalltown, Iowa page where information was changed with a very racist tone. I'am requesting a ban of the user, or at the very least a block and a notice that such behavior will not be tolerated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arroyjose (talk • contribs) 05:45, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I would suggest using the warning templates and then reporting him to WP:AIV. The IP addresses has been blocked numerous times, but our policy is against long-term blocks because IP addresses tend to rotate among individuals (and that's not fair to an innocent bystander). He seems to have stopped, by the way. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:16, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

user:Marechiel

I accept fact that this user is angry on me because I have thinked that he is new puppet of banned user. Because of that I have not started action first time when he has called me idiot on 13 March [120] . My thinking has been he will calm down and everything will go away but he has not stoped but started to call me idiot again and again . In calling me idiot he use Serbian word budalcina but this is not changing facts--Rjecina (talk) 07:06, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Assassination? Geez Louise

Resolved

 – Indef block, we do not advocate assassination as a general rule Herostratus (talk) 08:11, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

166quite166 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) This user created the soon-to-be deleted article, Adam Gummer Assassination Fund with an e-mail address listed. Calling for the assassination of someone (I assume Adam pissed off someone and this user did the typical vandal creates WP article as a means of "getting back" at him) is unacceptable behavior. Asking for indef block. I'm not sure if this belongs on AIV, but I figured it would be better to post here since the user isn't repeatedly vandalizing. AgnosticPreachersKid (talk) 08:01, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Has been indefblocked by User:Herostratus and page speedy deleted by User:Pedro. 52 Pickup (deal) 08:12, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Joy of Joys. I just e-mailed Mike Godwin on this, as I deleted the article, having stated I'd keep it away from ANI. Obviously not. Anyhow, blocked and legal counsel advised so job done. Pedro :  Chat  08:14, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

APK be confused. Did I do something wrong by posting it here? AgnosticPreachersKid (talk) 08:22, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

No, not at all. You did exactly the right thing. As a non-admin you were right to bring it here for immediate attention. It's just with stuff like this it's so much easier if a passing admin can block, delete, notify legal counsel and not have a thread at ANI which highlights the issue even more. Of course that's whay we ....need more admins APK...... :) Pedro :  Chat  08:26, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok, if I see something like that in the future I'll just message one of the admins I know. Cheers. AgnosticPreachersKid (talk) 08:31, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

User:Blnguyen

Resolved

 – Tiptoety ^talk 03:38, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

User Blnguyen is abusing authority by locking pages for long time see article Sreesanth this user locked the article for more than 1 Month so nobody could contribute to it. Request to check user:Blnguyen and inform about abusing authority. --99.238.149.76 (talk) 03:27, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Um, have you asked Blnguyen why he semiprotected the article or whether he would consider unprotecting it? That would be the best step for you to take before bringing your concern here. An unprotection request on Wikipedia:Requests for page protection would also allow others to comment on this issue. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:31, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

(ec)You mention page's... plural... are you referring to others too? The thing with semi-protection, is that a page is still editable... just not by IP's or particularly new editors. The reason is that most vandalism comes from editors in these categories. Unless I'm imagining it though, the locking of the page was for protection from vandalism, and now unlocked, there's evidence of more vandalism (didn't look at the dates - just the edit summaries) Crimsone (talk) 03:36, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

(ec)Please take up your concerns first with the admin in question. AN/I should be your last resort when all else fails. Tiptoety ^talk 03:32, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

This is banned user DWhiskaZ (talk · contribs). I'll take care of his newest sockpuppets on the IP he has so kindly supplied us with. Dmcdevit·t 03:34, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Without commenting on any procedure that should have followed before coming to AN/I (and/or any sock issues), am I missing something? Has this page been semi-protected indefinitely after a total of about 50 edits in the 3 months before protection? --Onorem♠Dil 03:42, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Thats kinda what it looks like. Maybe we should ask Blnguyen if there was a reason for this. Tiptoety ^talk 03:48, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

It looks to have semi-protected after one particular IP keep vandalizing it. The IP was THEN blocked. I've seen it before and I think we should be blocking the vandal instead of protect the page to stop a single IP vandal. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:10, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Have to agree there. Tiptoety ^talk 14:16, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I went ahead and removed the protection for now. If the vandalism continues he can re-protect it. Tiptoety ^talk 14:20, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Jose Quitongo's Father

Resolved

 – Nonsense removed and page semi-protected

The second sentence in the first paragraph of this article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Quitongo) is being repeatedly edited to be nonsensical, and is somehow not being picked up by the patrollers.

I am led to believe that a link to it has been posted on several Scottish Football related websites, leading to further vandalism by multiple people. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.153.147.134 (talk) 11:38, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Nonsense removed and page semi-protected. I'll ramp it up to full protection if the vandalism continues. пﮟოьεԻ 57 11:45, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

User:BudgieMikeInAmerica

Special:Contributions/BudgieMikeInAmerica. Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 13:04, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what's required here, can you explain? What are you looking for the admins to do? Wildthing61476 (talk) 13:17, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Looks like it's not a valid/serious account. Vandalism, nonsense, and he's already running an RFA after 30~ edits. Lawrence § t/e 13:30, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The account's been indef blocked for vandalism now as well. Wildthing61476 (talk) 13:47, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

User:Moreschi and User: Dbachmann - new section rather than subsection

Resolved

 – We don't need two sections for one thing. Sceptre ^(talk) 14:11, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

ESCStudent774441 and legal threats

Yesterday I blocked ESCStudent774441 (talk · contribs) for legal threats. He was blocked in the past for disruptions including accusing people of taking away his "legal rights to free speech" (see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive389#ESCStudent774441). I just received an email from him (that I will happily provide to whoever) saying that he will not seek unblock "within" Wikipedia but that he will appeal to a legal system to have them reserve my block (through court order) and have the court enjoin me and everyone else from blocking him in the future. Do I just ignore this kind of behavior? Do I pass it on to anyone in the Foundation? Metros (talk) 17:48, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

You could pass it on to Mike Godwin, the foundation's legal counsel, but I don't know what he would do with it. Hut 8.5 17:52, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Discussion over at WP:NLT emphasized that such incidents are channeled through the Foundation. However, it is normally the one who issues the threat as needing to channel the threat. If he follows through with the threat, he would need to contact Wikimedia to find out who you are, so they will find out eventually. However, I doubt that will be the case. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:54, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

No, let him do his thing. He has no legal basis for that request anyway, but if he wants to punt his head into a brick wall, he's more than welcome to email OTRS. I'm tweaking the block to prevent email (if it hasn't already been done)⇒SWATJester ^{Son of the Defender} 17:56, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I would pass it onto Godwin just so he is aware in case anything ever does come of it, and then ignore the user. KnightLago (talk) 18:07, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

We can't pass every single worthless legal threat on to him, otherwise he'd be overwhelmed. That's what we have a legal-en queue on OTRS for. Especially when there's no actual suit either, or an official letter from an attorney. ⇒SWATJester ^{Son of the Defender} 19:14, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok, then send it to OTRS, I was just saying send it to someone related to the foundation so they have it. KnightLago (talk) 19:34, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:RBI... He's not taking this to court. Really, he's not. He's just puffing and being a general PITA... Block email access and move on... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 19:56, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• Not in the least bit surprised. He will be sorely missed by almost nobody. Guy (Help!) 20:12, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Those who feel an "I told you so" directed to me is appropriate are now free to do so :) ++Lar: t/c 18:12, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

• For those unaware, he returned as User:RogueKnight774441. I notifed the blocking admin and he's been blocked, but as an FYI. There's also an IP he's using. This one was an easy spot with the screen name similarity but it's worth keeping an eye out for further incarnations TRAVELLINGCARI^{My story}_{Tell me yours} 15:02, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Request for more eyes

Resolved

 – While I'm still not thrilled with/understanding the accusations, the passage has been changed, so the issue has been avoided. Dispute is moot. Mahalo. --Ali'i 14:21, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Can some un-involved admins help (perhaps explain what I am missing) over at Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and it's talk page. I'm being accused of Point of View violations, but I am lost. Assistance would be greatly appreciated... even if it means telling me I'm wrong (with a better explanation). Mahalo. --Ali'i 19:01, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Holy shit, that's possibly the worst article I've ever seen in terms of blatant POV violations (not referring to your edits, I'm referring to whatever the version I just viewed 5 minutes ago was). ⇒SWATJester ^{Son of the Defender} 19:19, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Which specific parts do you have a problem with? FeloniousMonk (talk) 19:25, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I was called to take a look at this article over concerns by a number of others about what appeared to be tag teaming and POV promotion by Ali'i and Ferrylodge. In my view Ali'i has been ignoring consensus and edit warring to promote the intelligent design POV and then rules lawyering over quoting the source when his reverts don't stick. This taken with what appears to be a POV campaign to whitewash the article, I've informed him there that 3 reverts in 30 minutes while ignoring consensus and POV deletions are likely to be seen as disruptive editing per WP:DE. Add to that now campaigning to drive away productive contributors through forum shopping, and now you have the complete picture. FeloniousMonk (talk) 19:23, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Not forum shopping... this is the only place I asked for more eyes. I am not tag teaming with anyone... I disliked Ferrylodge's edit as much as the others. If you look at my edits and see me trying to "whitewash" towards a certain point of view (especially the pro-intelligent design view), then I have no idea what is going on. I didn't come here asking for back up (in fact, if I was wrong, then I requested uninvolved admins to assist me in understanding how I was violating our core principles). Rules lawyering is trying to have a quote state what was actually said??? Now I think I've heard everything. --Ali'i 19:29, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

You do seem to be edit warring, I suggest you hold off on any further back and forth. Gwen Gale (talk) 19:34, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Trust me... I'm done. I was only trying to copyedit an article and now I've been accused of neutrality violations, personal attacks, tag-team editing, forum shopping, driving other editors away from Wikipedia, and disruptive editing. I'm wary to get back into that article now. --Ali'i 19:40, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

It appeared to me that Ali'i's revert warring was solely to correct a misquotation, that others kept reinserting. It shouldn't have amounted to a revert war, but I'm not sure Ali'i is at all to blame. Otherwise I tend to agree with Swatjester and Relata refero, that the article has significant problems, and that this persists largely because of incivility on the page. Mackan79 (talk) 20:37, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

The primary source looks a bit unreliable either way, as has been pointed out here and on the talk page. Gwen Gale (talk) 20:42, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough, I think that was decided afterwards, however. In replacing it, some appeared to argue that changing the quote was ok as long as it was generally representative. I think possibly several people just weren't aware it was actually placed in quotes. Mackan79 (talk) 20:48, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

And were less likely to notice, maybe, because of all the incivility and edit warring. Gwen Gale (talk) 20:52, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I've never seen it help to argue that something could be considered vandalism, to the extent that was a part of it. Mackan79 (talk) 20:56, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• I gave up on Expelled long ago, the subject of the article is something that would be laughed out by any rational audience and the whole history of the article has been of ever-increasing bloat as the warring factions try to gain an advantage by having more of their sources quoted. I also find it offensive that blatant propaganda like this and "what the bleep" is called "documentary". I would call Michael Moore's films satire, and these propaganda, but neither is a documentary as I would understand it. Guy (Help!) 19:41, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

The problematic section was introduced in a worthy effort to cut down on the bloat and streamline the structure, but unfortunately it introduced a situation where the views of the film producers and their backers were reported uncritically with the context of third party analysis being separated away to later in the section. Ali'i made a good point in that the film producers' statement could not be sourced by the link given, the continually changing news page of the promotional website. Whether the statement had changed on that site or had been modified when inserted in the WP article is unclear, but to me that reflects an underlying problem of an unreliable primary source being used rather than reliable outside expert opinion. .. dave souza, talk 20:35, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• I'd love to help, but the constant incivility from all sides in that environment has driven me and editors like me away. No, wait, apparently that never happens, at least when we're discussing whether to enforce WP:CIVIL when people are fighting off trolls. --Relata refero (disp.) 19:54, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• I think you've mis-identified the problem. The problem is the trolls, and the need to fight them off al the time, plus the long-term trench warfare on some articles. Take away the trolls and the trenches and I don't think there would be a "civility problem". Guy (Help!) 22:38, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Guy, I think I can identify the reason why I am not editing an article, thanks. --Relata refero (disp.) 08:28, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

• My point is that I believe you are confusing cause and effect. Guy (Help!) 11:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

• No. The cause is incivility (block threats, accusations of disruption, etc.) of the type Ali'i describes; the effect is I'm not going to edit there and fix the problems SwatJester describes. The cause is our firm belief that our articles must remain free of pseudoscience; the effect is that extraordinary soapboxing and viciousnes is permitted by those we believe are doing that. Neither cause needs to lead to the corresponding effect, but they do. We need to fix this. --Relata refero (disp.) 12:49, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed - is a controversial documentary film and It is due to be released on April 18, 2008. This page is 109 kilobytes long. There are 146 footnotes and the film has not been released yet. [121] --Newbyguesses (talk) 05:44, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

The article is a truly awful POV screed. I tried editing it some months ago, but was forced to withdraw after being reverted and heavily criticised on the talk page. Comparatively little of the article is even about the film; it's just basically one long anti-intelligent design rant.

I am a little fed up with the way articles on the evolutionism-creationism controversy are treated. The fact is that there is a genuine controversy, and as an encyclopedia committed to the goal of NPOV, we should not paint one side of the controversy as undisputed scientific fact and the other as pseudoscience. And an article on a film should be about the film, presenting the facts and giving all points of view in a balanced way. It does not need to be a detailed discussion of the film's topic, and it should not be a detailed scientific rebuttal of every claim made in the film, or an attempt to discredit intelligent design. The article really needs to be stubified and restarted from scratch, and it should be nowhere near its current length.

I am not a scientist, and I'm not the best person to deal with this topic. But I think we need to have a sensible discussion about this. We need to stop automatically labelling creationist editors as trolls, and we need to stop making block threats. Walton^One 12:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Not all creationist editors are trolls, of course. However, the "controversy" should not be permitted to permeate into our science-related articles. That there is a "controversy" is a political artefact, and should be treated neutrally as such. To say that this is a science-related article is a bit much. Its an article about a polemical film, and needs to be treated on par with all other such. As Moreschi says about What the Bleep's problems, what we are faced with here is a category error. Which is, of course, ironic. --Relata refero (disp.) 12:55, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

The fact is, one side of the controversy is undisputed scientific fact and the other side pseudoscience. The scientists have spoken definitively on the matter; when asking about the history of life from a scientific perspective, Reliable Sources agree on evolution.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:34, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

You're quite possibly right (and I'm not qualified to argue with you about science in any case). However, this article is not a science article; it's an article about a film. Therefore, it is original research for Wikipedia editors to use scientific sources to criticise the film - and this is what most of the article currently consists of. Most of the sources cited have nothing to do with Expelled; they are about intelligent design in general. It is OR by synthesis. Basically, it's constructed in this way:

The film makes claims X and Y.[cites source] However, this is not consistent with the view held by the overwhelming majority of the scientific community.[cites various scientific journal articles which have nothing to do with the film]

Certainly, the article should contain criticism. But it should be criticism of the film, not intelligent design in general. Walton^One 15:16, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Please reinsert that New York Times article to every point it supports

I found a New York Times article supporting four points of the Treaty of Trianon. Two users decided to delete it from two points without acceptable reason given on the talk page while keeping the text of the Treaty which is obviously not a third party source (even if it's OK, that's no reason to remove better sources). As I don't want to break rules, I would ask an administrator to reinsert the reference to all four points of the article that it supports.
The NYT is reliable, neutral, English language reference, most of the times requested for Featured Article Candidates. Squash Racket (talk) 12:22, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Done. Thank you. Squash Racket (talk) 12:54, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Please take further/future questions of this sort to WP:RS/N. There is a reason why you might have been reverted in this case: a recent newspaper article, even if in the most highly-regarded newspaper I know of, is not preferred sourcing for a major historical article, especially as compared to peer-reviewed scholarly work. I doubt the NYT is used in historical FAs; if it is, it says less about the NYT and more about some FARs. --Relata refero (disp.) 13:00, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

It simply got removed. If peer-reviewed, possibly English language academic sources will be added with inline citations, it's OK. Even then I wouldn't remove a NYT article, leaving it as a complementary source. Right now the article is full of citation tags and a bunch of sources of different qualities are mentioned only at the end.

Also don't forget The New York Times was founded seven decades before this "historical event". Squash Racket (talk) 13:27, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Provided the content accurately reflects the source it is citing, it seems clear that no one should object to the use of The New York Times as a source. The one possible exception I could see would be if there were already two or three sources supporting a fact that were of an even higher quality than the NYT article, in which case it might be deemed superfluous to use the article as an additional source, but that doesn't appear to be the case here. Everyking (talk) 03:50, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I've only seen now the discussion from here. I'm one of the two users that thought that the NYT article is not an appropriate reference for some of the 4 points that was initially used for by the user Squash Racket. I'm not going to repeat in here everything I've already said on the talk page of the article. Please just have a look in there. No, it's not true that the citation simply got removed. Everything was done only after giving reasons on the talk page. And, at least in my opinion, these were valid reasons. Anyway, after a short trip to the library, I found 4 English-language books (2 by American writers and 2 by British writers) that at least for me look a lot more appropriate to cite (in support of the fact the Treaty of Trianon was concluded at the end of WWI) than a 2008 newspaper article that actually talks about something else (and not the Treaty itself). And in any case, the NYT article was not entirely deleted as a reference. It's still in there to support other statements from the article. Alexrap (talk) 13:31, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

[122], [123], [124], [125]. No valid reason was given on the talk page for the removal. Squash Racket (talk) 13:41, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

That seems fine to me. It's not necessary to include such a reference, as long as you're willing to do the research and find even better references. Everyking (talk) 15:12, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

It appears that several not-otherwise-involved admins have added the article to their watchlists. This is probably a good thing since this deletion has an edit summary of "Wikipedia is not a linkfarm." I do not recall ever hearing a New York Times citation described as being a "linkfarm," which is all that much more suspect when you see that the reference was replaced with nothing at all. I am not saying that POV-pushing is happening here, but when citations to a reliable, third-party, published source are apparently deleted out of hand, it certainly makes one wonder what is going on. Or put another way, how is leaving something completely uncited better than citing the statement to what is widely regarded as one of the leading newspapers in the United States? --Kralizec! (talk) 15:18, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

User:Vintagekits and the blanked userpage

{{archivetop}} Page protection permits the retrieval of useful material from the page history, which would not be possible if the page was deleted. Page protection prevents unhelpful edit-warring, and renders blocking of editors perceived to be disruptive as unnecessary. The consensus favors protection as the solution least damaging to the project as a whole. DrKiernan (talk) 08:18, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi all. As this was archived before it could be resolved, can I ask an uninvolved, non-"Troubles" admin to review this archived ANI thread, make any decision they deem appropriate per discussion and close this issue before it comes back again! - Alison ^❤ 07:12, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Leave it the way it is, that's what we do for other blocked/banned users. John Reaves 08:15, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah. What exactly do you want us to do, Alison? Herostratus (talk) 08:16, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

{{archivebottom}}

(edit conflict) There's been an ongoing battle over that page and its contents since VK was indefblocked. As this isn't covered by policy (show me where), I'd like this issue resolved once and for all, or the matter will recur. I've no interest in this myself but would like the issue closed fairly so everyone can move on - Alison ^❤ 08:19, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Resolve a matter on wikipedia? When we can have perpetual drama? That would be new. Generally, the only resolutions of an issue is where one side gets exhausted by the war of attrition.--Doc^g 12:00, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

• The content Giano wants is now at User:Vintagekits/projects. I hope this is a compromise acceptable to everyone. Guy (Help!) 11:58, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

No, not really. Personally, I think that it would be better to discuss the matter first, and then go with the consensus and normal practice rather than impose your own preferred solution. --Major Bonkers (talk) 12:46, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I am in complete agreement with Guy on this. It is a good compromise. It acknowledges VK's use as an editor without in any way condoning some of his more regrettable actions. Giano (talk) 12:50, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Looks like a reasonable compromise, Guy; a nice bit of thinking out of the box. Normal practice wasn't working because, as Alison points out, there is no genuine normal practice. It's very rare that a prolific contributor is banned, so this is pretty well a one-off situation. This is Wikipedia, and we don't need to be unnecessarily hidebound. It seems silly to limit creative thought to bot and content development when it can also resolve something as simple as this. Risker (talk) 12:57, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm unhappy at the way this is being dealt with. Leaving aside the (considerable) issues involving this editor and the way in which this 'compromise' has been imposed against the emerging consensus, I raise the following questions: (1) in what way is this page notable (in fact, it's just a list); and, (2) in what way is this page not a memorial?

The end result of allowing this page to stand will be for every banned User to demand similar 'rights' (and I see from a discussion on Alison's Talk page that one banned user has around 400 sock-puppets). It's common knowledge that this page belongs to the community (see: WP:UP#OWN). With the departure of Vintagekits the question should be: does the content that he has left behind advance the cause of the encyclopaedia sufficient to warrant its retention. No, alas, in this case it doesn't. Avid readers can easily access the page through the 'History' tag and there is insufficient reason to make an exception to various policies, guidelines, and norms, even if he was, in his own way, one of Wikipedia's more - extraordinary - editors. --Major Bonkers (talk) 17:19, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

wargs.com

Wikipedia has 84 or so links to wargs.com for ancestry. An example of this is the article on John Kerry, which links to here. In every case I have checked, the wargs.com content says, "The following material [...] should not be considered either exhaustive or definitive, but rather as a first draft." As such, I believe it fails WP:RS and so should not be used to cite information. What are other people's thoughts on this? What's the best way to prevent this being added in the future, if people agree? --Yamla (talk) 14:13, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Seems correct, it's not reliable. Expunge links with the Special: tool and add it to the spam-blacklist... —TreasuryTag—t—c 14:16, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

It looks self-published; we should probably assume that whomever is adding the links is related to the web site owner and leave a very polite note about reliable sources and that we would welcome his contributions once they have been independently reviewed and published. Thatcher 14:29, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

If there will be no objections, I'll remove all such links with my bot. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 16:12, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

No objections to removal but I don't see at this point a compelling reason to add this to the spamblacklist. JoshuaZ (talk) 17:22, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Comment: You mentioned 84 or so links, but Special:Linksearch shows over 300 links; or are some of those okay (I honestly haven't checked them all - but the ones I have viewed have the same issues outlined above). --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:30, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Template:European Americans

I do not know if this is the right place to post this, but there is an edit war, of which I am not a part but a mere observer, in Template:European Americans. I believe and administrator should look into it. Thank you. The Ogre (talk) 14:15, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

• I've watchlisted. I'm not quite ready to act yet, but there is quite a bit of editing/reverting there lately, just not all on the same points. For some but not all of it, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Armenia-Azerbaijan 2 applies. GRBerry 14:39, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Violation of Wikipedia's NPOV policy

User 140.129.62.51 keeps on adding that same weasel paragraph on the LJN article despite been warned to stop doing so.

Anybody who' ve heard of LJN already know the company had a repulation of making bad video games. Putting such statement in the article doesn't bring anything informative since this is something everybody already knows and it adds no value to the article. Plus it violates Wikipedia's Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view policies. I'm requesting for the account to be indefinetely blocked. Farine 12:28, 15 April 2008

Checking - there are no warnings on the user page. You should add those from user template messages when you identify vandalism. Then the matter can be taken to vandalism reporting. I think most admins would not accept warnings in the history as sufficient. There's nothing on the talk page either. I would put a note on the talk page, template the IP user page and see if you can engage them in not doing it again.

The IP is registered to the Taiwan Ministry of Education computer center (sic). An indefinite block would not be justified without a consistent record of vandalism. At this stage, I'd say, they're just doing it to annoy you - so, go through the process and if it continues, go to the vandalism forum. HTH Kbthompson (talk) 16:47, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The fact that "everybody already knows it" is not a good reason for not including a fact - in fact, if everybody agrees, the fact is undisputed and neutral. But such a fact, like the whole article, needs verifiable sources. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:02, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Just because the company developed a bad reputation for making video games, it doesn't mean that they indisputely made bad video games. Some people could just say that they love their games and not agreeing with a paragraph flaming the company. That's why, unless the paragraph can include something which is balanced in both sides, such statements should not be mentionned in the article because it would reflect POV.

Farine 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Oversight Needed

This user appears to of released personal information in his 2 edits, including a telephone number. I think it may need to be oversighted. D.M.N. (talk) 17:54, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I emailed Oversight right after I removed the section. Aecis^Brievenbus 17:55, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Accusations related to Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Poyoyloar

If someone could go and have a look at Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Poyoyloar (and if necessary the related case Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/ArchieHall)? Normally, I'd be perfectly happy to let these work themselves out, but we're getting to the point where I'm being accused of making legal threats and failing to assume good faith. I think/hope I haven't, but a neutral disinterested voice here would be great, and I won't consider myself above reproach at all, if that turns out to be the case. Thanks in advance, Nsevs • Talk 18:05, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

So, I just received my very first death threat via WP's email system...

So, what's the normal procedure for dealing with this kind of situation? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 09:44, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

• Well, according to WP:TOV, you should consider posting at WP:ANI. Oh. Was it from a recognised account? Black Kite 09:58, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Yep. Someone I blocked recently who isn't too pleased with me, by the sound of it. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 10:01, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Just delete the email and reblock them with email block enabled. That's what I always do. Neıl ☎ 10:04, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
      • Yup, agreed. Black Kite 10:24, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
        • Done. Thanks for the input, guys. :) --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 10:51, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
          • No problem. That usually resolves things - if a user is particularly incensed and starts creating new accounts solely to send more emails, you can always contact a checkuser and get their IP blocked. Neıl ☎ 11:04, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Death threats are illegal in most jurisdictions, and in most communities you would be strongly advised to report the fact that you got one to your local law enforcement agency. Why Wikipedia treats them so lightly is beyond me. Hesperian 11:59, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Probably because we really can't do anything about them. Since we generally don't know the user's actual name, we have absolutely nothing to give law enforcement officials to go on; and even then, you'd need a checkuser's help to make sure the report went to the right place, and that's assuming it's not some horrible ISP that can't be easily traced. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 12:14, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Interesting though, a legal threat gets an indef block and a death threat gets....Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:18, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

A death threat would get the user banned, forever and ever. A legal threat would see the user indefinitely blocked as if they are pursuing legal action relating to Wikipedia, they cannot continue to edit Wikipedia - if the user retracts it, they are frequently unblocked. Neıl ☎ 12:37, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Well that's what I would have thought but yer note above suggested merely reblocking...Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:44, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

See below - an indefinite block nobody would ever consider undoing is the same, for all intents and purposes, as a ban. Neıl ☎ 12:55, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

It is just not true that there is nothing can be done. Law enforcement can request IP information. I don't think Wikipedia can volunteer it. Death threats are ... not okay! And they do create a hazard to Wikipedia, even more serious than legal threats. At least legal threats will presumably be followed through in the arena of law, which is designed for that. --Abd (talk) 12:35, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Casliber is right, its appaling that legal threats and BLP violations are treated with upmost speed and force and death threats are all the fun of the fair. A Death threat should get a perm ban full stop. ^{(Hypnosadist)} 12:48, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't think there is a single administrator who would consider unblocking an account that had made a death threat - an indefinite block that nobody is willing to undo is, de facto, a permanent ban. Neıl ☎ 12:55, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

If its is "de facto, a permanent ban." why not just be done with it and go the whole hog. ^{(Hypnosadist)} 14:24, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, 100% of my numerous death threats (and, I suggest, the majority of most of them) come from throwaway dynamic IP addresses. Black Kite 12:57, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

"come from throwaway dynamic IP addresses" Hence why we need to get law enforcement involved. I can only talk about the UK but the police take online threats very seriously and convictions have resulted. ISP's in the UK are required to keep information on their traffic for 6months including emails, as such if your dynamic IP was from the UK wikipedia can't do anything but the police can. ^{(Hypnosadist)} 14:35, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm in the UK (I'm pretty sure that anyone would be able to find that out by looking through my contribs or seeing the style of English I use) but I'm pretty sure that the user who sent the threat isn't. Not on the basis of the other IP addresses he's been using onsite, at least. If I *was* to report it to my local pollis (whether they'd take a threat from another country seriously or not), would WP be prepared to release the relevant logs if requested? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 17:10, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

This is why I urge all admins, or any user who edits controversial areas or even just fights vandalism not to reveal any identifying information about themselves. If you already have just remove it, only about 4% of crazy people bother searching one's history. It does not take much, I was once harassed over the phone at work and home for two weeks because I would not let some punk spam his blog all over. You will be more effective if people cannot resort to attack against your true person.

Also, if you call the police and tell them you have an internet stalker but don't have any actual information about who they are, then they will open a file, take your statement, then do exactly nothing. _(1 == 2)^Until 14:28, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Exactly why the Foundation should fulfill its Duty of Care and get its Lawyers to do the contacting the police. ^{(Hypnosadist)} 14:39, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Uhh, the police don't do nothing because of who called them, it is because you can't track people through the internet practically. I know from first hand experience that the Foundation works with the police the best they can in situation like this, it it is not their place to make the complaint. _(1 == 2)^Until 17:05, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

"Uhh, the police don't do nothing because of who called them" Yes, a call from a $1000 an hour lawyer has more what the police call "Stingers" ie ways it can hurt you, than that of an average joe. ^{(Hypnosadist)} 21:56, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Since you have received a death threat, I would HIGHLY suggest you contact your local police informing them of it and the police where the IP is located. I am certain a checkuser can assist you in revealing the IP. Bstone (talk) 16:12, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

In addition to my comment above - if a checkuser was preformed, would WP be able to release the relevant information to me in order that I might make the report? I'm thinking that his ISP should probably be informed too (it was a particularly nasty threat - against myself *and* my family and would almost certainly be a violation of the TOS of any ISP I've ever had dealings with) - would WP be prepared to do that on my behalf? Thanks. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 17:10, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Not without the approval of Mike Godwin, the Foundation attorney. Thatcher 17:22, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

So, how might I go about contacting Mr. Godwin? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 20:41, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Isn't there a way to extract the IP from the e-mail details? John Reaves 20:46, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The mail headers don't seem to contain the IP of the original sender - just references to WPs servers. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 20:53, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

FYI Kurt, you can contact Mike via the instructions on his user page. Pedro :  Chat  20:59, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much, guys. I've just emailed Mike Godwin to inform him of the situation. I'll see what he has to say before I do anything else. It would certainly be easier if I were able to provide my local police with the sender's IP when I make the report. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 21:25, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Racist Comments

I have removed racist comments here by Gibnews. What is the procedure for dealing with racist remarks? And is it a blocking offence?BigDunc (talk) 13:53, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

A lot of Welsh people are called 'Taffy', Scottish people 'Jock', and Englishmen 'John'. It's a cruel world out there. --Major Bonkers (talk) 14:17, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Put another way, I am not sure that referring to nationalities by common first names there is generally considered to be racism? --BozMo talk 14:19, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

So the whole of Algeria are potential terrorists. And the use of derogatory terms to describe people should not be accepted anywhere.BigDunc (talk) 14:33, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok; treating this complaint at face value: firstly; how do the remarks that you complain of actually fall within the definition of racism (see here): secondly; we've been here before, with an editor trying to promote his own view and shut down discussion by claiming racism. I don't mean to be rude, but most of us survived childhood despite worse insults than this. Wouldn't all our time be better spent if you and Gibnews actually tried to reach a consensus over the Mairéad Farrell article? --Major Bonkers (talk) 15:03, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

What consensus would Gibnews and I need to reach as I have no dispute with this editor. Maybe it's an attempt to deflect away from the matter at hand by suggesting I am in a content dispute hey major.BigDunc (talk) 15:20, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I came here after a message on my talk page from BigDunc, and I'm kind-of-in-the-middle on this one. Gibnews appears to have been making a point about perceived threats of terrorism, and whether or not any of us agrees with that point or even with the way that the concept of "terrorism" has been constructed to apply only to non-state actors, in substance it's the sort of comment which can be found in many places. However, the glib use of the stereotypical labels "Paddy" and "Mohammed" is unneccessary and will be offensive to many people. I'm not sure whether it's actually racist to use that sort language, but it's certainly unhelpful because the offence it may cause can raise tempers. Those tags make for easy glib phrasing, but editors who actually want to reach consensus shouldn't use lazy glib labels like that, because they can raise tempers and impede dialogue.

However, a polite request to desist would be quite sufficient unless this sort of thing is persistent. At this stage, I see no need need for admin intervention, and would suggest that all the editors involved try to de-escalate the dispute, and to try to build a climate where they might reach consenus. Perhaps taking a short break from the subject might help? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:21, 14 April 2008 (UTC) --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:21, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

The remarks were deliberately designed to be provocative, therefore WP:AGF need not apply. While offensive they are also I suggest illustrative. They point to low intellect and ignorance, usually derived from dependency, or being a dependant i.e. colonist. That they lack self esteem, is obvious, having to adopt the colonial mentality, not being seen as native in the first insistent, they adopt comfort in the term subject. A subject not being a citizen they ape the ways and customs of another nation, further strengthening the ignorance and retarded intelligence. Common sense would dictate that this type of attitude should not be encouraged or dismissed but challenged. Which can be difficult when dealing with the intellectually challenged within our community.--Domer48 (talk) 16:56, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

"Low intellect", "ignorance", "colonial mentality", "retarded", intellectually challenged". Have you ever actually read WP:CIVIL?. Regardless of the provocative nature of Gibnews' comments, please don't post anything like that again. Black Kite 18:15, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

The remarks I made were not 'designed to be provocative' simply to reflect a geographical shift in the perceived threat of terrorism. The over reaction looks to me like an excuse to censor other valid points made. I have reverted that taking out any generic references. My IQ has been above average on all tests since the age of 11 and I do not live in a colony. On balance the comments and actions from Domer48 seem to be much more offensive than anything else. Nobody mentioned this to me before complaining here. --Gibnews (talk) 19:40, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Major Bonkers informed you 30 mins or so after I posted here. I was about to but he had done so.BigDunc (talk) 19:45, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I believe the procedure would be to mention it first before here rather than relying on someone to tell me. Reading the highly abusive posting by Domer48 he seems to have some issue about my nationality, which is for the record a British Citizen the apes live up the rock. In respect of Algeria, prospective visitors should read this --Gibnews (talk) 20:07, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

In reply to Black Kite, I was putting forward my view in relation to Racist Comments, if it is not correct I'm open to alternatives. Maybe you could suggest something. Now I have no time for Racist Comments, or those who make them. I have not addressed my remarks to anyone, other that to state quite clearly that the remarks were deliberately designed to be provocative. I get the impression that you view the comments as being of a provocative nature, and I sure you would not like anyone to post anything like that again, but just forgot to mention that? You may not agree with my view of a Racist, but we both agree they have no place in our community. --Domer48 (talk) 21:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Your comments here seem to be more offensive than anything I have innocently said - your reference to apes does seem to be a specific racial slur of the worst kind. Anyway I have removed any of my contentious remarks and restored the part censored under the pretext of 'racism'. A simple request on my user page would have been enough. --Gibnews (talk) 21:50, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

If I offend people who make Racist Comments frankly I could not give a toss. Since you are offended by my view of them says more about you than me. As to ape or put another way mimic, obvious in the context it was used, displays your poor attempt at misdirection. I'm saying out stright that your remarks were not "innocently said," but were deliberately designed to be provocative, therefore WP:AGF need not apply. So cop onto yourself, now have I made myself clear. --Domer48 (talk) 22:01, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I suggest you read

• WP:FAITH
• WP:CIVIL
• British Citizen
• Censorship

And desist from trying to insult people because its not nice. --Gibnews (talk) 01:20, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the {{resolved}} tag which I added earlier, evidently prematurely. I'm very disappointed that to see how this has escalated, quite unnecessarily. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:49, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

This seems an overblown complaint to me, and I say that as an Irishman. Points off Gibnews for sounding like Kipling crossed with Colonel Blimp, but really, grow a thicker skin. The dude is oblivious to the finer points of your delicate sensibilities and is being generic about a generic shift. That he is doing so in a style more suited to one or two centuries ago should be deserving only of your gentle pity. 86.44.28.245 (talk) 05:35, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Grow a thicker skin thats is BS, that attitude is what helps racists prevail. It must be stopped and challenged at every turn. Would you say that to a an African, Mexican, or any other person who has had to endure racist quips. The apologists IMO are as bad if not worse than idiots who use such words.BigDunc (talk) 08:57, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Sir, I have marched against racism in the streets of this country. Doubtless you can say the same. I haven't protested against an archaic use of a generic proper name to stand in for a country's peoples. It wouldn't fit on the placard, for one thing. 86.44.28.245 (talk) 20:02, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Well thats where you are wrong I have protested against racists in Ireland when there was a big march all around the country in April 25 1998 and lately protested against racist deportations from Ireland, and I have marched in England with the Anti Nazi league too, so unless you have something to say without making assumptions about people you dont know dont say anything. BigDunc (talk) 20:19, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Read my comment again. I assumed the opposite of what you think I assumed. I meant to make it clear that I did not expect that this put me in a separate category to you. 86.44.28.245 (talk) 20:34, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I my be wrong on what I assume a Racist to be, I would not mind being informed. I have not called anyone a rasist, what I have said twice now is that your remarks were not "innocently said," but were deliberately designed to be provocative, therefore WP:AGF need not apply. Now that is the issue! We have had the Troubles ArbCom, and comment like the one that created this issue are at the hart of it. Now we can bury our head in the sand and hope it goes away, or address it, simple really. One question to the great and the good, if any on us involved in the Arbcom said it were would we be now? --Domer48 (talk) 08:09, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Domer, sadly your remarks were hardly as innocuous as you say they were. To label someone as exemplifying "low intellect and ignorance" amongst an assortment of other slurs is grossly uncivil and has taken WP:NPA one step too far. Just for the record, WP:AGF always applies. We are here to build an encyclopedia, not wage war. Your bad faith accusations are without substance. Comment on the content, not the contributors. Chris.B (talk) 10:04, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

This is being sidetracked the issue at hand is Gibnews using racist comments not on Domer. Domers comments were not directed at any editor they are IMO his attitude to people who make these comments. Gibnews ludicrous assertion that it was an attempt to censor him is laughable. Could I point editors to WP:AAGF. BigDunc (talk) 12:15, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Dunc they know full well what I WAS SAYING, but its more fun to carry on. What I do know, is that the next time they try this crap on and the remarks were deliberately designed to be provocative, something will have to be done. NO EXCUSES next time. So I happy that they backed themselves into a corner, and claim they are innocent. All good IMO. Will it be addressed as part of the Troubles ArbCom, because I think it should. --Domer48 (talk) 12:40, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The comments from talk were clearly directed at me and were designed to be offensive. There are more productive things to do than this. --Gibnews (talk) 14:39, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Domer48, what Gibnews wrote was certainly in bad taste, and this kind of thing can make me angry as well. However. You said the remarks were "deliberately designed to be offensive." Then Gibnews denied it, and you repeated it four more times. Please read WP:AGF and make sure you understand what it means. It's about enabling communication, by not saying "You are a bad person, and you know it." Nobody thinks of themselves as a bad person, so at least the second part of that sentence is always wrong and makes constructive debate impossible. Several times when I was myself in a situation where I could hardly restrain myself and thought something can only be explained with bad faith, eventually, I had to thank AGF for preventing me from making a fool of myself. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:36, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

And again more castigation of Domer but what of the racist remarks he still does not think [he has done wrong] and again claims that the Irish are all terrorists.BigDunc (talk) 15:54, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

He does not claim that "the Irish are all terrorists". It would be closer to the truth if you said he claims "the Irish once were all terrorists", but still completely wrong. Even "the Irish are no longer all terrorists" is not what he said. Unfortunately we have to live with socially constructed nonsense such as "nations", "races" etc. We can't ignore these ideas when talking about terrorism that is motivated by them. The way Gibnews is talking about these things now is perhaps not optimal, but it looks to me as if he is expressing himself if a normal and socially accepted way. When you attack him for that, it's similar to accusing someone of sexism for using "he" as a gender-neutral pronoun.

As far as I can tell, Gibnews has replaced the racist language with a considerably less offensive version and is not using racist language any more. So what else do you want? A formal apology? I think you are extremely unlikely to get a block at this point. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:04, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

While Dunc may have confidence in BHG, on this issue I must disagree. First of, it was pegged as resolved way to early. Second, the editor claims they innocently used those comments, and then says they removed their contentious remarks, but we see them continue to maintain the comments are not contentious or offensive, illustrated by Dunc in the link above, despite this discussion. Now their latest pearl of wisdom is “I said that the Irish were no longer a concern.”? If we are not in Troubles related ArbCom jurisdiction here, there is definitely something amiss. The glib use of the stereotypical labels "Paddy" and “Mohammed" is unnecessary and will be offensive to many people, and unless it is resolved it will persist. As illustrated by this editor. --Domer48 (talk) 17:37, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

...the Irish were no longer a concern im Irish am I a concern to the people of that colonial outpost? Also he still feels and has stated that it is ok to use as he says ...common forenames are not seen as any kind of racial insult He is totally wrong in this assumption the use of Paddy to discribe an Irish person or Muhammad a muslim is wrong. An apology and acknowlegement from this editor would be helpfulBigDunc (talk) 17:49, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

He didn't quite do that, he used them as generic proper nouns. Yes, it smacks of the colonialist mentality to me, but on reflection he has removed them. I expect no repetition. 86.44.28.245 (talk) 20:47, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

User:Jeremiah Cheatham outing users on outside page

Resolved

 – Page deleted. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk ♦ contribs) 19:13, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The initials of this were discussed further up the page, but the user in question is now 'outing' various users at the front page of [myah.org]. I dont mind for my details up there, mostly because he got a bunch of it wrong (I am an actor, but thats not my profession) but also because im open with all of that on my userpage. The other users mentioned, well, maybe them notsomuch as I. -M^ask? 06:26, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Is it time to tell the foundation? This is fast getting out of hand and we need to act careful so as not to set a precedent. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:22, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

He's just getting pissed. His article is going to be deleted, which is what he wants, so all will be well. --Haemo (talk) 07:33, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

And I have sped the process up. Myah OS is no longer on Wikipedia. It seems that should solve all of the problems presented here. Cheers! « Gonzo fan2007 (talk ♦ contribs) 07:38, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

While I agree in principle, I just hope we haven't created a precedent that these kinds of actions will be rewarded in the future. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:44, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I dont think any precedent was created here, I deleted the article because it was a completely non-notable entity, not because someone requested it. I also took into consideration the ongoing deletion discussion which was overwhelmingly delete, and what I felt were the best interests of the project. And I am sure that if a situation like this ever arises again, that it will be judged by itself, not on this discussion. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk ♦ contribs) 07:57, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes and for what it's worth, I was starting to nom the article for AfD myself when I saw Fredrick Dayton had already done. Gwen Gale (talk) 08:01, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

No precedent. It was non-notable, and he only wanted it deleted after he wasn't allowed to use it in the manner he wanted — which some felt was promotional in tone. --Haemo (talk) 08:04, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

This is just one of many (and one of the more pathetic attempts I've seen) "outing" pages people have created. There's nothing we can do about them. John Reaves 08:10, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

(reset indent)

Pathetic it may be, but it's serious nonetheless... I won't ask how he found out all that stuff, but is it not worth running a WHOIS query, tracing the ISP and complaining to them? It's illegal under most jurisdictions, I'm guessing... and the chances of the website-owner being in a country where open harassment is legal (Sudan? Zimbabwe?!) are minimal. —TreasuryTag—t—c 08:15, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't see how it's illegal. If you want to complain, go ahead, but this has no on-wiki relevance. It'd be best handle this as clandestinely as possible if you are truly concerned for people's privacy. John Reaves 08:19, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I mostly see it as an odd yet rather fit heads up to whatever's left of his user base. Gwen Gale (talk) 11:27, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Oversight not done yet...

Resolved

I reported a couple of diffs for oversight yesterday via the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Emailuser/Oversight link. Just checked now and the edits containing someone's phone number ('for phone sex ring...', yada yada) are still visible. Is there currently a problem with submitting reports via that method or some other backlog? Cheers. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 20:48, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Send another e-mail to oversight-l@lists.wikimedia.org, and ask for an update. It may be that someone decided it wasn't worthy of oversight, or they could have just missed the e-mail. Avruch ^T 20:50, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, emailed them again... Thanks. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 20:57, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

East718 is running an adminbot

[Discussion moved here from elsewhere]

I just tried to post a message here laying out irrefutable evidence that you're running an adminbot on this account. Ended up in an edit conflict with mrg3105. Following the thread led me to where you openly state on mrg3105's talk page that you're running a bot on your account to delete pages.

I don't understand. When last I checked, running an unauthorised adminbot on your admin account was about as forbidden as it gets. Grounds for an emergency desysop even. Has the bot policy changed? Have you actually been given permission to run an adminbot on your account?

Hesperian 12:52, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I frankly don't see what the problem is. I know this is verging dangerously close to rules-lawyering, but if your definition of "unapproved" is "approved by BRFA and RFA", then no, this robot is not approved. That said, there are circumstances under which normally untoward behavior may be acceptable, but only when the full implications are understood and considered carefully. This is exactly what I've done - this bot has been vetted and run by several other admins in the past to the tune of over 130,000 deletions with absolutely no error rate. Considering that removing useless pages is a reasonable thing to do in my eyes, I figured since the job can be done and there's no reasonable process within which to do it (an adminbot policy), I might as well go ahead. I also don't see why running this robot is inherently evil; I have been trusted by the community to use my buttons and I'm making a good use of them - I take full responsibility for my actions and am prepared to face the consequences should something mess up. Lastly, it's not as if I write adminbots with some devious intent to damage Wikipedia - quite the contrary. It's performing a task that I'd do manually anyway with an accuracy most flesh-and-blood administrators would envy.

That said, here's why I'm deleting all these pages: being orphaned, they serve absolutely no internal value, as nobody will ever arrive at it from a link and being how we don't search in the Talk: namespace. They only amount to clutter that is prone to all sorts of foolishness - I recently went through all Image talk: pages and found tons of vandalism; those I passed off to another administrator to delete. More unwanted effects of these pages existing is that they may prevent future pagemoves, and also waste resources in fixing whenever the target changes. Also, since these pages have no history, no discussion ever took place on them at any time.

I welcome whatever other comments you have, provided they don't contains threats of emergency desysopping, something we reserve only for compromised or vandalizing accounts. :-) east.718 at 13:08, April 13, 2008

More and more it seems that people here actively seek to read benign comments as threats or personal attacks. Perhaps we should give this trend a name: "The Mikkalai effect" has a nice ring to it.

I have no opinion or comment on this issue except that if it is now considered acceptable to run an unauthorised adminbot, then community standards on this point have altered beyond recognition in the last year or so.

This requires wider discussion. I'll move this discussion to AN/I.

Hesperian 13:33, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can see, all that are being deleted are orphaned talk pages. This is utterly uncontroversial maintenance, and I'm glad someone is doing it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:37, 13 April 2008 (UTC) I was mistaken. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:14, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

(ec)I have a small problem with it, though. Images that have been moved to commons shouldn't have their local talkpages deleted, because they sometimes contain important information and discussions. If bots are doing it, later, when asked, the deleting admin has no idea what happened. That's happened to me twice. (If East's bot only deletes pages with no history, that's not a problem.) e--Relata refero (disp.) 13:44, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

They are not all orphaned. Carcharoth (talk) 13:41, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

He seems to have defined "orphaned redirect talk page" as the talk page of a redirect. They are not orphans and we normally leave (want) these so I don't understand why these are being deleted. -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:44, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I'll need to look into this more. I was under the impression they were all orphaned pages with no edit history. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:48, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

No, these are not orphaned talk pages in the sense that the "front page" has been deleted, but orphaned in the sense that very little points towards them ("what links here"). I suspect a confusion in terminology here. Carcharoth (talk) 13:51, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I was asking questions on Hesperian's talk page, but I'll ask them here instead. I did ask East to stop the bot when objections were raised, and he did so. Thanks to East for doing that. I personally have no problems with the "not-so-open-secret" adminbots, but only when there are no objections, and only when they are needed. My main concern though is the lack of discussion. If this had had the stamp of approval at WP:RfD, then fine, but it seems that adminbots can't be discussed openly, and so they end up doing things that cause objections due to lack of advertisement and discussion. Carcharoth (talk) 13:41, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

You know, I just don't really see the huge issue. He's only helping Wikipedia and doing tedious work (regardless whether or not it's being done by a bot) that most admins wouldn't feel like doing, while refraining from producing errors. I'd rather thank him than expect an explanation, at this point. However, I'd ideally prefer all who use bots in general to make sure it's known to the community & make sure there's no opposition, and make it known a bot's being used on his/her userpage if it's not on a seperate account. нмŵוτнτ 15:29, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I have no problems with the adminbots doing stuff that has approval. I have seen no sign that this has approval, and JLaTondre who, unlike me, is active at WP:RFD, has objected, and so have I. Carl first said he has no objection, then realised he had misunderstood what was happening here. My wider concern is that Misza, who wrote the original script, added a line or two to exclude backlinks from Wikipedia: and User: namespaces when considering whether a talk page was orphaned, and seemed to think he could do that without needing to discuss that anywhere. He effectively redefined what "orphaned" means, and that is over-reaching. Carcharoth (talk) 15:35, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

As far as I am concerned, if JLaTondre is of the opinion that a redirect's deletion requires discussion, it requires discussion. His expertise on redirects predates mine and his judgment is sound. I am frankly annoyed by the view that deleting stuff is helping Wikipedia by doing tedious work. Some seem to have expressed that view without giving any thought to what exactly is being deleted. Deleting the right thing is valuable work, deleting the wrong things is not... WjBscribe 02:42, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Some questions

• "this bot has been vetted and run by several other admins in the past to the tune of over 130,000 deletions" - could you expand on that bit. Carcharoth (talk) 13:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Misza13 created a bunch of bots. They're open source. Other admins use them... --Maxim_(talk) 14:31, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Should the actions of such adminbots be discussed before they are used? Carcharoth (talk) 15:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
      • If you use an adminbot, the admin in question knows what he's doing. I think discussion is unnecessary bureaucracy and waste of time. I prefer not to have long, circular discussions. Maxim_(talk) 15:22, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
        • That's a fairly horrible argument to make - "it must be okay, if he knows enough to use it, he knows what he's doing, so lets let him as he will". I really hope "we're going to presume you know what you're doing" is never adopted as policy in something like this. Achromatic (talk) 19:22, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
• Do you check that there are no redirects pointing at the redirects (ie. double redirects)? If there are, then you are creating work for User:RedirectCleanupBot, and if one of your deletions is incorrect, then the subsequent deletion by RedirectCleanupBot will be wrong as well. Carcharoth (talk) 13:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Aren't double-redirects bad and are usually fixed? Secondly, won't creating work for RCbot be a good thing? It's a program designed for that use. A few dead redirects in Talk: namespace don't hurt anyone that urgently. --Maxim_(talk) 14:31, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Are double redirects usually fixed? I don't know. RCBot assumes that the deletions creating the dead redirects were correct. Your line of argument is "not relevant here", which may be correct. "A few dead redirects in Talk: namespace don't hurt anyone that urgently." - so why do this at all then? Weigh the pros and cons, but to do that you need to openly discuss things first. Carcharoth (talk) 15:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
• The talk page redirects are not all orphaned. The majority are links to WP1.0 assessment pages (which update themselves) or other bot-generated {{log}}s (which don't always update themselves), but there are other lists (manual ones) and other pages linked as well. It would be better to fix those links before or just after deleting the redirects. Carcharoth (talk) 13:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  • I don't understand you... how can a talk: page be both a redirect and one that has useful information? :-/ Maxim_(talk) 14:31, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
    • It takes people from an old link to the correct location. The information contained in the redirect (indeed in any redirect) is the correct location. If the correct location still exists as a page, the redirect may be needed. Misza, as can be seen below, saw that many "Wikipedia:" and "User:" links are not very useful, or are from bot-generated lists, and then extended from that to assume that all such links are not needed. Many are not, but not all. Carcharoth (talk) 15:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
• "since these pages have no history, no discussion ever took place on them at any time" - um, these are redirects left behind by page moves. The reason they don't have history is because the pages got moved and the edit history is in a new location! <takes deep breath> Maybe you mean redirects that were edited and then turned back into a redirect? Carcharoth (talk) 13:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  • The redirects as a result of pagemove are redirects that are deleted. Such redirects are completely useless. Maxim_(talk) 14:31, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
    • You are completely and utterly wrong. Read Wikipedia:Redirect. Carcharoth (talk) 15:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
    • The community has repeatedly shown at WP:RFD that your statement is incorrect and against consensus. In most cases, pagemove redirects meet all the criteria of when not to delete a redirect. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:30, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
• "I recently went through all Image talk: pages and found tons of vandalism; those I passed off to another administrator to delete." - could you provide examples and more details? Carcharoth (talk) 13:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Random vandals see an image, go to its talkpage and post random comments. A bot that has a strict set of conditions, like for example (Anonymous users only edited that page, contains a filtered word, and has one edit) can clean these up easily.
    • Thank you. I asume they blank the page, rather than deleting the page? Just in case they make a mistake, you know? Carcharoth (talk) 15:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
• "More unwanted effects of these pages existing is that they may prevent future pagemoves" - really? How? (I genuinely don't know what you mean here). Carcharoth (talk) 13:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Non-admins can't move a page to a page with an edit, even a redirect, unless it's a revert. For example, I tried to move User:Maxim's JS test account/t to User:Maxim's JS test account/s using that account. It didn't work. Maxim_(talk) 14:31, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Yes. And this is standard knowledge. What I question is whether they really prevent future page moves. That is actually highly unlikely in my opinion, and should be dealt with at the time of the initial move, or when the problem arises. Carcharoth (talk) 15:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
• "and also waste resources in fixing whenever the target changes." - I agree with this - you are referring to double redirects, right? I have a horrible feeling I have only ever fixed article double redirects when moving, and have never checked for talk page double redirects... Carcharoth (talk) 13:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  • If the page the talkpage redirects to gets move, double redirects may ensue. You got this right. Maxim_(talk) 14:31, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Does the page that asks us to check for and fix double redirects, after we do page moves, also ask us the the same for the talk page? Carcharoth (talk) 15:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
• Finally, where has this been discussed before? This is the most important of the questions! Carcharoth (talk) 13:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  • See my comment right below. Maxim_(talk) 14:31, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Which one? This is an important question, so please try and provide a sensible answer and not "not everything needs to be discussed", which is a complete non-answer. Carcharoth (talk) 15:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Carcharoth, why do you think that everything needs to be discussed? East's only helping the project. Many other admins run adminbots (MZMcBride, DerHexer, Quadell, Misza13), to name a few. I don't officially run an adminbot, as javascript isn't considered to be a bot, for all intents and purposes, it is one. It's never been bureaucratically approved or anything, yet it causes no harm and only helps. Maxim_(talk) 13:57, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Completely agree with Maxim.--Phoenix-wiki 14:05, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Me too. Oh, wait, me too answers have no content. Strike that. Carcharoth (talk) 14:14, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Get some class, Carcharoth. Srsly. Maxim_(talk) 14:50, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Hesperian objected to the adminbot, not me. I've actually made an admin bot request on East's talk page. This sort of thing is precisely why admin bots should be brought out into the open. Sometimes, regardless of the merits of this case, adminbot actions do need to be discussed. Carcharoth (talk) 14:14, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't have problems with the bot issue. I do, however, see that pages were deleted that shouldn't have been. While deleting the talk page of a redirect is not really harmful, it is our normal standard to leave these and consolidate the discussion at the target article. I don't think these should have been deleted. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:09, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I've never run an admin bot. I've used a JavaScript code and a bookmarklet. Regards, —DerHexer (Talk) 22:37, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The pages that should be deleted are discussion pages with one edit, which aren't needed for redirects. Maxim_(talk) 14:12, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

They only have one edit because they are redirects!! Did you not read the qusetions you objected to? Carcharoth (talk) 14:15, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Examples

• [126] - includes Wikipedia:WikiProject Pseudoscience/Articles attracting pseudoscientific edits/publicwatchlist - the talk page now no longer shows up on the watchlist (it didn't when it was a redirect either, but that's not the point here).
• [127] - includes Wikipedia:WikiProject Ice Hockey/Articles/Page3 - automatically regenerated list, so no problem.
• [128] - includes Wikipedia:WikiProject Films/Articles/Page6 - used to be maintained by User:WatchlistBot, but now an archive.
• [129] - includes User:Joan-of-arc - an old warning linking the user to the talk page.
• [130] - includes User:Will Beback/Things - could be being used as a watchlist, but regardless, the appearance is that Talk:Island Oak got deleted, when in fact it is alive and well at Talk:Quercus tomentella.

More available on request. Nothing really major so far, but redirects are cheap and this is not really needed. Carcharoth (talk) 14:06, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Redirects are cheap. But they also should some use. Discussion pages with one edit, aren't needed for redirects, they're wholly useless. And for example, with the Island Oak example, you seem to be implying it's a vandal target. That's quite a good reason to delete, as it has no use but being a vandal target, no? Maxim_(talk) 14:10, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Talk page redirects do have value. The consolidate discussions and avoid someone inadvertently placing a conversation on the redirect's talk page (where it will probably languish unnoticed) when it should have been on the target's talk page. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

In this case, as talk page redirects created following page moves, that shouldn't be a problem, I don't think. Carcharoth (talk) 14:19, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Incorrect. People do not always get to talk pages by clicking the "discussion" button. Sometimes the bookmark it or manually type the "Talk:" in front of the article name if they want to go there directly. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:48, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

You are right. Anyone who wants to test this, click on Island Oak (10 links from other articles), and then look at the URL in the browser bar. It says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_Oak. Now type "Talk:" in front of that and hit return. Oops! Not very likely, but because redirects are cheap we tend to leave them in place unless there is good reason to delete them. See, I told you that JLaTondre knew about redirects. :-) Carcharoth (talk) 17:04, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Maxim, what are you talking about? I'm not talking about vandal targets at all. Could you please get the distinction clear between a talk page redirect created following a move (these redirects have "one edit" by definition) and a normal redirect created from scratch. Redirects are complex things sometimes. That's why we have WP:RfD. Carcharoth (talk) 14:19, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

That's the point of these deletions... to alleviate more bureaucracy. Maxim_(talk) 14:20, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

We alleviate bureaucracy by deleting pages that shouldn't be deleted? I don't follow... -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:23, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Just a note. Dunno what's the exact code that east718 is running, but the one I wrote has an explicit exclusion in line 55 that ignores backlinks from User: and Wikipedia: namespaces. Why? Because when I was writing it I noticed nearly all of these are lists of articles (more often than not automatically generated reports, rarely user lists) and as such can safely be discarded from the count. Миша13 14:48, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

That is exactly the sort of thing that should have been discussed somewhere first! "I noticed nearly all of these..." That is the sort of over-reaching that happens if things are not openly discussed. And no, publishing the bot code doesn't count. There is no way I would have known what that bot code meant. Carcharoth (talk) 15:29, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I beg to differ here. You don't discuss ever single deletion you perform, do you? You rather apply your best judgment, some common sense and perform the action. And that's exactly what I do when writing adminbots - analyze a broad set of examples, determine what I'd do in each case (the tell-tale admin judgment plays its role here), then translate those rules and patterns into a machine readable code. At this point I might rule that the task is not applicable to a bot and drop it or narrow its range. If it's done however, I just make triply sure that everything behaves as expected and let it loose. As a result of this careful design cycle, I don't have many complaints to handle on my talk page. Миша13 15:43, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

True, but the idea of "99% is OK" kind of falls down when you are talking thousands of edits. 1% of 10,000 is 100. You are also assuming that 100% of the errors are detected. Let me put this bluntly - are you prepared to start a discussion on Wikipedia to get approval for your "exclusion in line 55" in your code? Carcharoth (talk) 15:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Srsly, UN:N much? Where did I say 99%? It was so long ago I don't even remember if there were any non-lists in those backlinks (remember that templates like {{article}} add backlinks too, which are entirely useless when the article itself has been moved). This might've been as high as 99.99% but again, who cares? By doing what I did I understand that I'm personally accountable for all and any of those 40K+ deletions I did back then. Did I get any specific and substantiated complains to any of the deleted redirects? Not to my memory. If it were "oficially approved" and stuff, would it be any different? Not really; the operator is still held accountable for his bot - responsibility doesn't get diluted just because the bot was widely discussed. What follows from this reasoning is the current status quo of adminbots (operated secretly, discussed privately among trusted tech folks). Миша13 16:10, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

As I said to Maxim, it looks like no-one cares because you are using bots to take actions on obscure pages that no-one cares much about. Try and do this to redirects to articles in main namespace and you would get a different reaction. If you would discuss the one first, why do you not feel any need to discuss the other? The 99% was me hypothesising a quote, not directly quoting you - sorry about that. As for official approval, I read somehere recently that you are the archetypical example of the kind of bot operator that doesn't need to go through WP:BRFA because your bots are so good. Well, I'm not so sure any more. What I would like to do, as a test, is to generate a "what links here" list for the 40K+ "talk page redirect" deletions you carried out, and see what percentage of those links are to WP1.0 pages (many of which will have updated now and no longer be a problem), how many are to other lists, and how many are legitimate links from the Wikipedia and User namespaces that should have been updated before the redirect was deleted. Carcharoth (talk) 16:33, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Have you noticed you seem to be one of the only ones that want to discuss this on and on and on? No one has displayed such an acute desire for such discussion. Maxim_(talk) 15:36, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, that is more because redirects are boring. Very boring. Have you ever been to WP:RFD? Misunderstanding has always bee rife about redirects and what they do and why we need them and why they are cheap. My jaw literally dropped when I saw that you had written: "The redirects as a result of pagemove are redirects that are deleted. Such redirects are completely useless." I see you haven't responded yet to what I wrote up above: "You are completely and utterly wrong. Read Wikipedia:Redirect." I can't drop this while people (in this case you) say things that are completely wrong and misleading. Carcharoth (talk) 15:53, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

It's a simple page in projectspace, it can be broken. Please point out why my statement is illogical, and not sending to read some guideline that half of us have never read nor consciously follow anyhow. Maxim_(talk) 15:58, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Maybe Wikipedia:Candidates for speedy deletion#Redirects and WP:RFD will be more helpful? I'm sorry if I was a bit sharp earlier, but there are some basic misunderstandings being made here: (1) That redirects created following a page move are not needed (that is only the case if they are orphaned, and not always even then); and (2) These redirects have "no history" - well of course they don't! They are redirects left behind after a page move - the edit history has moved. These two misunderstandings are so basic that I find it alarming that people are writing bots to deal with redirects without knowing this. Carcharoth (talk) 16:12, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm only saying that discussion pages aren't really needed. Maxim_(talk) 16:15, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Redirects point people to the correct page. Page locations are not only captured in internal links, but also in bookmarks, external links, search results, etc. Counting internal links in no way determines the real usage of any redirect. Redirecting talk pages serves a purpose and they should not be arbitrarily deleted. If some think they should, then they should recommend a change to our CSD policy vs. applying IAR across this many pages. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:23, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Is this the "no history" thing again? The talk pages do exist. The articles do exist. What has been deleted here is the redirects to the talk pages (I presume the redirects to the articles are still intact). I still think this might be a misunderstanding here, does this make it any clearer? Carcharoth (talk) 16:33, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Policy

I think it is clear from User:WJBscribe's redirect bot's RFA that the community wants adminbots to be run on a separate account, and that each adminbot has to go through RFA. What's going on here seems to be problematic and should stop until things are clarified. I suggest discussing this at WP:BN. If it is determined that a broad community discussion is required to change policy, then we can come back here. Jehochman ^Talk 15:25, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that the community is paranoid of adminbots. For example, I once tried to get a separate account at Commons; I was denied, and the reasons included just the fact of what it is. Maxim_(talk) 15:30, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

It looks like East decided to ignore our rules about admin bots when they prevented him from maintaining Wikipedia. The rules really do get in the way of maintaining Wikipedia's administrative requirements in the specific area of automation. Perhaps we should ask ourselves, how can the rules be changed so that using IAR to do this is not needed? _(1 == 2)^Until 15:34, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Please stop characterising this as "he was doing the right thing". There are clear, logical points made above, by me and others, that these are not orphaned talk page redirects (redirects with nothing linking to them), but are redirects where there are incoming links from Wikipedia and User namespace that were ignored due to the code being written to ignore links from those namespaces. Misza (who wrote the original code) and all the other admins who ran the code, deleted pages that they had redefined as orphaned when they in fact were not. I do realise what Misza means by WP 1.0 assessment pages, and other bot-generated lists, but I disagree with the assumption that "nearly all" such links in those namespaces (Wikipedia and User) are from such "list" pages. And even if it was nearly all, the presence of other links means that a bot is not suitable for the task, much as I'm sure that people will sleep easier in their beds tonight because 35,000 redirects are gone. It may not matter an awful amount in this case, but it is the attitude of "I know best and I'll write the code and do it without discussion (or only with a few people)" attitude that really gets me. It goes against the whole Wikipedia ethos. Carcharoth (talk) 15:44, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

In your opinion, this might go against the whole Wikipedia ethos. I disagree. And few agree with you here. If it were such a big deal, it would be a. raised earlier and b. many more people would be discussing this. Maxim_(talk) 15:48, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I fancy as people catch on that what we have here is a case of ignore-all-consensus-that-adminbots-require-RfA there will be a little more concern expressed. --Relata refero (disp.) 15:55, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

In this case the community has approved an adminbot for redirect work - User:RedirectCleanupBot. If its role is to be expanded, the community should be involved. Some time ago, I asked East718 to cease the use of his account for the deletion of redirects but it seems my request fell on deaf ears. That is disappointing. I have long felt that the goal of having repetitive tasks automated is a good one - but some sensitivity is required. Finding out what tasks require human feedback and evaluation requires consultation. That has been sadly lacking in this case. Where the community has clearly delimited a task, going behind its back in this way undermined trust in the approval of adminbots. It is completely contrary to the goals I had in mind when I openly proposed an adminbot and received the community's blessing at RfA. I am saddened to find that a redirect deletion script has been run in such a cavalier manner without consultation with people like JLaTondre or Rossami - admins heavily involved in redirect discussions. Expediency in deletions is not necessarily progress. WjBscribe 02:29, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

What's the point of this thread?

Honestly, what is it? Carcharoth, what are you aiming for? Maxim_(talk) 15:52, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

To get you to understand what a redirect is? Look, I've said above, most people don't really deal with redirects. That is why it looks like it's only you and me here. My main points so far are:

• Misza should either discuss or remove undiscussed "namespace exclusions" like the one he described above.
• All admin bots should have their source openly discussed to avoid future problems like this.
• People should read Wikipedia:Redirect.

Is that short enough? Carcharoth (talk) 15:57, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

The title of the thread is East718 is running an adminbot, not "Carcharoth's private playground for acting like a condescending know-it-all using the excuse of an admin invoking IAR to do some good". Maxim_(talk) 16:00, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

a condescending know-it-all?? Please try and keep your comments civil and focused on the subject at hand. We've had users blocked recently for less incivility than that. RxS (talk) 16:41, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Maxim, do you really think it is acceptable to say that? Did I deserve that from you? Carcharoth (talk) 16:03, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Your comments above haven't exactly been very angelic-like, either. But I hope I have somehow made my point here. Maxim_(talk) 16:11, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the more I read it, the worse it makes you look. You are free to retract it at any time. I hope the summary I just wrote is enough evidence for you of my good faith in all this. I'm trying to improve things around here as well, you know? Maybe think about that next time, hmm? Carcharoth (talk) 18:24, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

In my humble opinion, this is one of the better cases for ignore all rules. WP:BRFA and WP:RFA on a bot is, at least from what I've seen, rarely a completely rational discussion about the bot and/or its owner, but rather turns into a long, drawn out referendum on trusting technology as a whole. That said, the benefit of successfully passing both is that doing so provides the operator with "legal cover" should something go horribly wrong with the bot's operation; for, the community would have presumably said, by approving the bot, that "we'll explicitly take the risk." So, while running a bot on a sysopped account is highly discouraged due to likely ineptitude in coding (e.g., take a look at quite a few scripts on the tool server that needlessly bring it to a screeching halt), if, on the other hand, a particularly skilled coder is convinced that an incident is unlikely to occur due to implementing extremely good checks to prevent them from happening, then it's within the realm of ignoring all rules to run one in order to clearly make the encyclopedia better.

That said, it's still risky for a bot owner to run a bot on an admin account unless he's/she's 100% percent certain how it works, why it works, and if/how badly it can go wrong as well as how often. However, since both misza and east don't usually need to be beaten with the proverbial cluestick when it comes to coding, I'd say it's okay to simply "let it slide" until something demonstrably causes damage or disruption to a significant degree, again, per WP:IAR. After all, this thread was started because someone found it— not because it was actually causing problems. --slakr^\ talk / 15:55, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't mind adminbots if, like all bots, their actions are discussed. I have objections to the specific actions of this bot (see above) and it seems there is precious little I can do about it because people are ignoring that and focusing on the general adminbot issue. Carcharoth (talk) 16:01, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Yup, East isn't actively harming the project. Go make ANI theads about those who do, like nationalist trolls. Sceptre ^(talk) 15:58, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Among the pages he's deleted are ones that shouldn't have been. I hardly see this as helping the project. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:25, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I've got nothing against his adminbot, and I'm speaking as someone who's been blocked by it - the advantages of it outweigh the disadvantages vastly. Sceptre ^(talk) 17:02, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

has anyone ever brought 40K+ redirects to DRV in one go before? Carcharoth (talk) 17:07, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't believe a DRV is necessary. The value of the talk page redirects outweighs their deletion, but I don't believe their value outweighs the hassle of restoring them. I think a discontinuing of the deletions is sufficient. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:22, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

You've lost me. It's irrelevant to me how the talk page redirects were deleted. I just don't want to see any more deleted. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:13, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, if the developers hadn't changed the logs recently so that deletions show up in the watchlists, no-one would have spotted this. I expect a lot more "adminbot deletions" threads to show up in future because people will now see the deletions on their watchlists. Carcharoth (talk) 16:01, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Indeed more people will notice what has been going on for a rather long time now, due to a change in how the same information is presented to them. Go dig through the logs and you will see this is not an uncommon practice. The rules should describe not prescribe our best practices, and IAR is a safety measure to make sure that happens. Right now the rules prevent automated maintenance of even the most non-controversial admin act. This is a tempest in a teapot. _(1 == 2)^Until 16:05, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

If it is, I fail to understand why there's a problem in changing the rules. --Relata refero (disp.) 16:08, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that what people are doing right now, out there, is not always best practice. There is a tension between describing what is "current practice" and correcting what is wrong about "current practice". It is my assertion that Misza dropping the "backlinks from Wikipedia and User pages" from his adminbot's definition of an "orphaned talk page redirect" is an example of an under-discussed practice that went under the radar mainly because most people don't care about redirects, and because deletions didn't show up in watchlists until recently. And if anyone reading that didn't understand it, that is why it needs to be discussed, not left to a group of bot operators to make edge decisions about obscure pages. Carcharoth (talk) 16:19, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

With all sincerity, it is because people act like skynet is going to take over Wikipedia. That is not hyperbole, they use those very words when the idea is brought up. The rules will catch up with practice eventually though. _(1 == 2)^Until 16:19, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

And the specific question of redirects? What about them? Hmph. Only Spiderman cares about redirects. Carcharoth (talk) 16:21, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Spiderman is a very caring person. _(1 == 2)^Until 16:22, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I completely agree with Maxim and Until here. I participated in the discussions for the last couple adminbot RFAs and the discussion to give the anti-vandal bots rollback. Many of the reasons for opposing are downright paranoid, pure policy wonking, or other complete nonsense like the belief that any action that requires admin tools requires a full manual review. I'm still amazed that RedirectCleanupBot was able to pass an RFA. Mr.Z-man 18:15, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps one of the reasons admin bots get a bad name is because of (in my opinion) pointless and not-clearly-defined tasks like this, where backlinks from Wikipedia/User namespaces are ignored (still not convinced by the explanation), and from which one might assume bots are simply not capable of doing admin tasks. I'm quite fine with adminbot tasks, even without a bot flag – but when one has a history of not-too-thought-out unilateral admin actions and desysopping suggestions from a Wikimedia system admin, I'd expect that IAR might be applied a little less quixotically. Gracenotes^T § 19:29, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I've got to agree here that East is guilty of the crime of trying to improve the encyclopedia. This issue of admin bots has been brought up so many times in the past, and looking at admin action statistics, its obvious that many admins use such things. When there have been issues with deletions, East is usually the first person to undelete any pages and if you look at his talk page, goes out of his way to help recover images and what not. I think this current run was a good idea and only attracted attention since it happened to watch page's talk pages. So lets move on and keep writing please? MBisanz ^talk 23:55, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

No, this last run was not a good idea. It deleted things that should not have been deleted. I also agree that he was trying to improve the encyclopedia, but that was not the result with these particular deletions. If anyone believes talk page redirects should be speedy deleted, then they should be seeking community consensus for that. Hopefully, when East is next active, he will agree with my request to not continue in this practice. -- JLaTondre (talk) 01:42, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Also not seeing the problem. If people can find cases where East is wrong (and they will be fairly isolated), I would trust him to revert himself on those. There really is nothing for anyone to do here - a whole stack of the deletions appeared on my watchlist but they were all correct ones. Orderinchaos 02:23, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. I'm not sure what your basis is for deciding that the incidents where he has been wrong are isolated. Neither he not you have reviewed the deletions in question. A lot of them contained only one revision - in due course those redirects to deleted pages with only one revision clarifed... WjBscribe 03:57, 14 April 2008 (UTC) would have been deleted by RedirectCleanupBot. A bot approved by the community for that purpose. The one revision limit was because it was felt other such redirects deserved human review. Deletions do not appear on watchlists, they go largely unchecked. I think it is time the extend of East718's script aided deletions is properly scrutinised. Redirects are on a cursory inspection the tip of the iceberg. WjBscribe 02:34, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't believe RCB deletes talk pages. And deletions do show up on watchlists now. seresin ( ¡? ) 02:57, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Deletions now show up on watchlists? What a lot changes when one goes away for a bit... And RCB does delete talkpages that point to deleted pages. If their destination hasn't been deleted, well "redirects are cheap" or we have RfD... WjBscribe 03:02, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

All logs do. But East is deleting the talk page of redirects, not the redirects themselves. seresin ( ¡? ) 03:05, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Uh, no. He is (or was) deleting talk pages that have become redirects. I admit this is confusing, so will post a quick guide to terminology below. Carcharoth (talk) 03:10, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

(ec) I think we're talking at crossed purposes here. The problem is that these talkpages (whether presently redirects or not) may contain useful material that should be moved/merged to the correct place - that automated deletion is inappropriate and that human review should have taken place. WjBscribe 03:13, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, no talk page content got deleted. These all seem to be redirects created by pagemoves, rather than redirects created by blanking the page and inserting the redirect markup, thus the content end up at the new destination. What did get lost was the information linking the old title to the new one - what we call a redirect. Carcharoth (talk) 03:28, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. It is taking me a little time to catch up - I've been tracking a few related issues... WjBscribe

there seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding... your bot deletes only broken redirects, not useless ones. 195.242.221.60 (talk) 02:59, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

You seem to have forgotten to log into your account... WjBscribe 03:04, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

No-one has bothered to comment on the specific examples I provided earlier. Maybe you would like to comment on them? They are not the best examples, and it is rather difficult to find good examples when clicking at random among 10,000 redirects, but I would point out that around 10 of the redirects have already been restored or otherwise turned 'blue' again, for various reasons. I posted these to East's talk page, but I think it will be useful to post them here as well:

• Talk:Axis powers talk page reconnected with its page
• Talk:IKEA Ampere Way tram stop moved and then moved back
• Talk:Hetmans of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth you restored this one
• Talk:Grand Duchy of Lithuania talk page reconnected with its redirect
• Talk:Fort William, Highland you got someone very confused
• Talk:Father Divine moved back over redirect
• Talk:Brookfield High School (Ottawa) article moved back over redirect
• Talk:Bleimor (Breton Scouting organization) restored by another admin
• Talk:Ajax (automobile) strange...
• Talk:Kiev tumbler recreated followed by me doing this

Some of these were correct, but some are debatable. The point is that no debate took place. Carcharoth (talk) 02:31, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Summary (so far)

I think this is an accurate and fair summary, please correct anything I get wrong.

• Various admin bots exist, and are operated by various admins to clean up various areas of the encyclopedia where admins tools are needed, usually areas that are too mundane for mere humans to bother with. The existence of admin bots is to some an open secret. To others it is a surprise.
• User:Misza13 has written and openly published the code for several of these admin bots.
• Others also use the code published by Misza13, such as (it seem) in this case, by User:East718.
• Following the example set by previous deletion runs (I'm not sure of the date or extent of these), East718, using a list obtained from a toolserver request, initiated a run of deletions of talk page redirects using the adminbot code. Most of these talk page redirects appear to have been created following the move of a page and its associated talk page. The edit summary used was: "orphaned redirect talk page (x days old)" (where x was presumably how old it was). These orphaned talk page redirects should not be confused with orphaned redirects (that is dealt with by User:RedirectCleanupBot) or 'orphaned' talk pages (a sloppy but common way to refer to WP:CSD#G8 deletions of talk pages without an associated page).
• Between 03:22 and 12:57, 13 April 2008, East718 deleted around 10,213 such redirects (the total on the list was apparently around 35,000 but he stopped before the list was complete). The list can be seen at the following log links in reverse order (warning, pages may load slowly): first 5000; second 5000, last 213). This list includes various image deletions as well, and a run of deletions and restorations where the bot seems to have made a mistake and self-corrected? There are also currently 10 talk pages that are blue links - I'll take those to East718's talk page.
• Exact details are not clear because I don't have a clue how to interpret the bot code, but it seems that various checks were carried out to see whether the redirects are suitable for deletion. One of these was to check for incoming links (backlinks, which can be seen by using "what links here"). An "orphaned" redirect is one that has no incoming links
• However, many such incoming links are to manually or (more commonly) bot-generated article lists or logs (WatchListBot and the WP 1.0 Bot). These lists are usually placed in either the Wikipedia namespace, or the User namespace. When writing or updating the code, Misza13 decided (with some justification) that these links were not sufficient reason to keep the redirects, and that other links from these two namespaces were too few to worry about. It now turns out that others disagree, but, because this was an admin bot, it was not discussed widely enough for this sort of counter-opinion to be expressed.
• During East718's latest maintenance run, these deletions suddenly started appearing on people's watchlists, as can be seen by the responses on his talk page. This is because the developers recently changed the software so that deletions show up on people's watchlists.
• I asked East718 to stop the bot to allow discussion. Hesperian started the ANI thread. This is the result so far, with opinion divided (as far as I can tell), and people arguing over what exactly has been going on.

What needs to happen next (if anything)? The two main questions that need answering concern: (1) how to handle the redirects in future and what to do with the deleted redirects; (2) whether admin bots need to be more widely discussed to avoid issues like this in future? My views should be clear so far, including my prediction that now deletions show up on watchlists, the actions of adminbots will be subjected to more scrutiny than in the past, but I'm going to step back now and let others say stuff. Carcharoth (talk) 18:17, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• Sorry to be a pain, but I've not come across this before. What's the 'list'? Could anyone link me to it (if applicable). Thank you. Regards, Rudget (review) 20:12, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• The clearest explanation seems to be here:

  "Hi, Mrg3105! I'm using a robot to delete these pages; 35000 deletions straight probably wouldn't be too good for my mental health. :-) Thanks for the heads-up anyway. [...] First, I had a friend with access to the toolserver generate a list of all redirect talk pages for me. When I run the bot, it systematically goes through the list of pages, testing each to see whether it has no history, no incoming links, and is more than a week old. If all of these criteria are met, the page gets deleted, otherwise, nothing happens." - User:East718 - 12:33, 13 April 2008

  It was this open admission of using an admin bot (which I'm not opposed to in principle - it is doing tasks without discussion that I oppose) that attracted Hesperian's attention and led him to eventually (after some talk page discussion) to say he was moving it to ANI, which he did here. Getting lists from toolserver queries is not controversial. Doing redirects deletions like this is (and should have been in the past as well, if anyone had spotted it back then). But it looks like most people are too busy discussing the Tango-MONGO drama above to care much about this. Carcharoth (talk) 20:31, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Ugh

East is clearly in the wrong here. If this were Betacommand, this thread would be ten times longer. The fact of the matter is, admins have to follow policies and procedures, just like everyone else. They don't get to ignore them because they find them inconvenient.

Turn off the bot, submit it to the BAC folks, and then if they approve it for the tasks you want, turn it back on. That's how the rest of us peons have to do it and that's how you have to do it too. Jtrainor (talk) 01:51, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

The impression I am getting is that there are quite high volumes of such deletion (or other maintenance) runs, and most of them are fine because they don't appear to cause any problems or objections. When they do, though, or they become more visible because of changes in the way watchlists work (unsurprisingly, people don't actually hover over Special:Log/delete - though maybe that might not have been such a bad idea in the past), then people do raise objections. What I do feel the bot operating community need to do is get a handle on admin bots, and for admin bot operators and their supporters not to react so defensively. It is exactly the same reaction as seen with Betacommand, though East, to be fair, has generally been much more responsive to questions. It is indisputable that, with the volume of mundane maintenance required, admin bots are needed to do this work. But, as with ANY bot operation, there is a need to change and adapt to the wishes of the community, rather than using bots to force a default result. That may not be the intention, but it is rare for people to be bothered to contest borderline cases, and so bit-by-bit admin bot operation seems to have expanded its role, and inevitably this will lead to questions and objections. What is not acceptable is to try and suppress or divert such discussions with the cry of "we can't discuss admin bots because the community will reject them". I stand by my claim that with deletions more visible on watchlists, we will see more threads like this unless the bot operating community actually bring admin bots within the bot policy and begin to set limits and oversee open on-wiki discussions about them. At the same time, the wider community should probably try, once again, to get the issue of admin bots settled once and for all. It is not helpful to have them being "open secrets". User:RedirectCleanupBot managed it. Some of the more mundane admin tasks could similarly succeed as well. Carcharoth (talk) 02:14, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I am also concerned by the situation here. About a month ago I asked East718 privately to stop the automated deletion of redirects. I felt that the community's views on the RedirectCleanupBot RfA were clear as to the circumstances in which redirects were to be deleted. East718's script in my opinion deletes redirects which should be evaluated by hand. WjBscribe 02:21, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

There are only limited times fully automated bots should be used, especially with admin rights. This isn't one of them, imo. It should go to RfA really, if anything. And I supported the RCB RfA because it's a bot that really can't go wrong at all. This one can, and has done. Majorly (talk) 02:34, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Now would be an excellent time for East718 to state that they will not run the script again without community approval. This is not a situation where WP:IAR can be applied, because there was a long and thorough discussion of what would be needed to run a redirect deletion bot. That consensus was fairly recent and needs to be respected. If necessary, we can have another RFA for a new bot. Jehochman ^Talk 02:51, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately it is not limited to East718. MZMcBride runs a similar script for genuinely internally-orphaned redirects (though this doesn't avoid the issue that links from outside will break). There are many admin bot scripts running, and I saw a comment somewhere that Misza13 has written the script for many of them. The sources are publically available. Some quotes from elsewhere in this thread: "Misza13 created a bunch of bots. They're open source. Other admins use them...", "Many other admins run adminbots (MZMcBride, DerHexer, Quadell, Misza13), to name a few. I don't officially run an adminbot, as javascript isn't considered to be a bot, for all intents and purposes, it is one. It's never been bureaucratically approved or anything". So this needs a much wider discussion. Carcharoth (talk) 03:02, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

As a member of the bot approvals group, I must state unequivocally that all bots must be approved by the proper process, which is that way. I am disappointed that this is not the first time east718 has abused an unapproved bot for what he considered a case of ignore all rules, but actually ended up requiring half an hour of developer time to fix up the mess he made. [131] Might I suggest that we have an approvals mechanism for bots for a good reason, and, in both situations, east718 has circumvented this approvals mechanism, and, consequently, caused damage to the encyclopedia.

I recognise that there are issues in approving adminbots because some people have silly ideas about them, but a culture of quietly running them, and turning a blind eye to them is not the way to resolve these issues, and probably serve to detriment the cause of adminbots. — Werdna talk 03:07, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Werdna makes a good point - this is not an isolated incident of misjudgment on east718's part (yet another springs easily to mind [132]). East's mistakes are starting to outnumber his correct decisions... WjBscribe 03:25, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm gonna go with Werdna here, as another member of the bot approvals group. If this had been an unapproved editing bot, making 10,000+ edits in 8 hours (about 20epm), it probably would have been blocked long ago. The delete and block buttons have the potential to be far more destructive than the edit button, and far harder to clean up in such massive numbers. Performance wise, a deletion "costs" a lot more than an edit. Adminbots should, in my opinion, need to be at least documented, and discussed with the community. SQL^{Query me!} 11:29, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Werdna, Majorly, SQL and WJBScribe. The approval process exists for a reason. I don't think these redirects ought to be deleted in the first place, and I'm not seeing the process for cleaning mistakes up (one of my beefs with bots, especially unauthorised bots, is that their operators tend not to clean up the messes made) when discovered. ++Lar: t/c 14:02, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I'll be blunt. I don't see the problem with what he's doing. Seems like maintenance to me. If the redirects aren't needed, then they're not needed. If he touched mainspace to mainspace redirects, that's one thing. But he just got rid of talk page clutter that is never needed and was never going to be useful. If there were problems, then let's try and fix them in order to be able to do what he did more effectively rather than bashing him unjustifiably. Wizardman 03:11, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

What was on the talk page was moved to the new location when the pagemove took place. Thus what is being deleted here is not what was on the talk page, but the redirect. In other words, this is "redirect clutter", not "talk page clutter". Whether orphaned redirects should be deleted is a matter for WP:RFD, and is not covered by WP:CSD. That is long-standing practice, and it is increasingly clear that some admins did an end-run around that. Maybe with the best of intentions, but still an end-run around redirect deletion policy. Carcharoth (talk) 03:24, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

So, the right thing to do would've been to bombard RfD with this orphaned redirects? It is a run around it, but with the sheer number of ones to be dealt with I can see why they did so. Wizardman 03:41, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

The right thing would have been to leave them alone. Redirects are cheap and I've yet to see a convincing argument that they were causing any harm. 35,000 versus 2,500,000? Maybe someone could give figures for the total number of redirects we have, and whether deleting 35,000 of them really would have helped. In the end, only 10,000 or so got deleted, but tens of thousands were deleted previously. Carcharoth (talk) 03:45, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

True, the redirects weren't harmful, yet them being "cheap" isn't necessarily a reason to keep them. If no one's going to see them, then why have them? Wizardman 04:02, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Good. We are getting somewhere. Now, where is the right place to discuss this? WP:RfD, WT:CSD or a discussion within a small group of bot operators? Carcharoth (talk) 04:05, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Tough to say. Could an extra CSD criterion be added for instances such as this? Would such an option be a problem? That would be a good discussion to have, I think. Wizardman 04:32, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

There are presently 1,857,524 redirects, according to the toolserver, whomever asked. SQL^{Query me!} 11:35, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't matter how purportedly useful the bot is. The facts are, East has no authority to run it and hasn't submitted it to BAC for approval, as is required. The policies are really quite clear on this. "It's useful" or "It doesn't seem to be doing anything harmful" are not valid reasons to ignore the rules we all have to follow. My concern is with the violation of process more than with what the bot itself is doing. Jtrainor (talk) 06:37, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Terminology confusion

Some people are getting very confused over terminology, so a quick refresher might be in order:

• (1) "Orphaned" talk pages (CSD#G8) are talk pages where the corresponding page does not exist or was deleted. This is an imprecise use of the phrase "orphaned".
• (2) Broken redirects are redirects pointing at deleted or never-created titles. Sometimes these are called "orphaned" redirects. As for type (1), this is an imprecise use of the phrase "orphaned". User:RedirectCleanupBot deals with these providing they have no edit history beyond creation (see type C).
• (3) True orphaned pages are pages not linked to from anywhere else (ie. "what links here" shows nothing). This usually refers to articles not linked from other articles, but can refer to other namespace pages as well. These links from somewhere else are also called backlinks. Redirects can be orphaned in this sense (looking backwards at what connects to it) as well as in the other sense (looking forward at what it connects to, though this is more commonly called a "broken redirect").
  • (3a) Sometimes orphan status can be delimited by namespace. Thus it is possible for a page to be orphaned with respect to several namespaces, but still be linked from other namespaces. This is relevant here because some namespaces (in this case Wikipedia and User namespaces) are densely populated with links from article lists, such as the various bot-generated watchlists, wikiproject article lists, user lists, and the WP 1.0 assessment lists.

Also, redirects can be created in several ways and have a varied history.

• (A) Redirects can be created from scratch. These generally never have a talk page, and the edit history usually only shows creation, but in theory a talk page could be created for such redirects.
• (B) Redirects are created by the pagemove function. If the page has a talk page and the talk page is also moved, a redirect is created for the talk page as well. The edit history will only show creation of the redirect at the time of the page move.
• (C) Redirects can also be created by blanking a page and inserting the redirect markup. This is known as "redirecting" and is also a step seen in merging. This can also work the other way round, with a redirect being turned into a normal page, usually when undoing a merge, creating a disambiguation page following a page move, or just creating new content where previously only a redirect existed. These redirects are easily distinguished from others because they have an edit history that is more than just the creation of the redirect. When talk pages exist for these type of redirects, they are sometimes left alone, and sometimes redirected or merged to the talk page of the redirect destination.

Thus you can have a talk page for a created redirect, a pagemove talk page redirect, and either of these types can be orphaned or broken, and talk pages, as always, can lack the corresponding page. I think that covers the basics. Carcharoth (talk) 03:18, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

• So which one was he deleting? Q ^{T C} 03:25, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

• A variant of Type 3a-B. Carcharoth (talk) 03:32, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I would argue that A and C should generally not be done in "talk" namespaces except for obvious shortcuts such as WT:RFA or maybe Talk:USPS to Talk:United States Postal Service would be reasonable but the red link and the emptiness of the deletion log suggests that this isn't often done deliberately. — CharlotteWebb 14:29, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps "widowed talk page" would be a better name for type 1. Bovlb (talk) 00:11, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Bot or no bot, why were these being deleted?

See #Mass deletion outside of RfD or CSD. In all the talk about an admin bot, we seem to have overlooked something.. the deletion itself. -- Ned Scott 03:54, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree the deletions are really the topic of interest. If an admin makes a list of pages and then uses an automated tool to avoid clicking 'delete' a thousand times, that isn't a "bot" in the ordinary sense of the word, it's just a loop around a deletion button. Bot approval would only be needed for scripts that edit in an ongoing way and make decisions on their own.

I find myself very neutral about the deletions. On one hand, I don't see any strong argument for keeping these redirects (I have both read the above conversation and thought about it myself). On the other hand, I don't see a real need to delete them, although I understand the desire to keep things tidy. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:07, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I think the opposite is true. I opened this thread to get community input on whether it has now become acceptable for admins to run unauthorised adminbots on their account; but the bulk of the discussion has been about whether we like what the adminbot was doing. Hesperian 04:11, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I have been convinced by the comments of primarily Carcharoth that these deletions are not all appropriate. I notice that MZMcBride is making similar ones. Aleta ^Sing 04:15, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

So, if I make a list of pages, and use an automated tool to avoid clicking 'save page' a thousand times, that wouldn't be a bot either right? It's really just a loop around the edit button. IMO, if you're performing an action at a high rate of speed, without looking at the current content of the page you are performing the action on, you are running a bot, at least as I know it. SQL^{Query me!} 11:20, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I've left him another message. Carcharoth (talk) 04:48, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

He replied at my talk page and wants to discuss it there instead of here. Carcharoth (talk) 05:19, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

That might be my fault. It was my impression that people were saying (at least at first) that "there's nothing wrong with admin bots", and were not focusing on whether the deletions were appropriate. I agree the two issues (admin bots vs the deletions) should have been separated. I apologise for that, and would suggest trying to separate the debates or restarting them away from ANI. Carcharoth (talk) 04:37, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I think the proper purpose of the talk page of a redirect would be to discuss issues regarding the redirect. Let's suppose that due to some (possibly long-forgotten) page-move, "A" redirects to "B" and "Talk:A" redirects to "Talk:B". If somebody wanted to say "Maybe A should redirect to C instead, what do you think? ~~~~" they would probably post it at "Talk:A", thereby removing (or otherwise breaking) the "#REDIRECT [[Talk:B]]" code, seriously. Deleting (or at least blanking) the talk-page redirect saves such commenters the one step of clicking on the "redirected from Talk:A" link to get to the "title=Talk:A&redirect=no" address before editing. Arguably not really worth the trouble of doing this en masse due to the sub-triviality of it all, and definitely not worth undoing. — CharlotteWebb 14:13, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Before doing the "breaking the redirect" step you mention above, it is polite to click "what links here" and repair any links to the old talk page so that they point to the new talk page. This is a large part of what the above mess is about - the talk page redirects East718 deleted were not fully orphaned - they still had links from Wikipedia and User namespaces. In contrast, MZMcBride's deletions were of fully orphaned redirects, and that is why I discussed at his and my talk pages, whereas with East I asked him to stop until it was discussed (though it was Hesparian who brought it here). In hindsight, I should have taken the redirect-specific issues elsewhere, and let Hesperian's thread concentrate on the admin bot business (which while it can't be resolved here, is still relevant). A subtle nuance to the above "not fully orphaned" point, is that the original writer of the code (Misza13) deliberately excluded the Wikipedia and User namespaces when checking for backlinks, because he (correctly) observed that most of these links are from article lists that include talk pages links (eg. WikiProject lists, user lists, WP 1.0 lists). However, "most" is not "all", and it was this silent extension of the definition of "orphaned" that I objected to most strongly. How many people, when they see "orphaned redirect talk page" in the deletion log entry actually bother to check that it really is orphaned? Carcharoth (talk) 06:50, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and a more logical place to discuss a redirect is the talk page of the destination page (or the destination if it is a talk page). In other words, "do we want this redirect pointing here?". Carcharoth (talk) 09:25, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

What is this about??

There are so many issues being discussed in parallel here, this whole section is almost worthless, because no one knows who is talking about what and many of the discussions don't belong here. As far as I can tell, there are at least 4 issues here, only one of which is really appropriate for this board.

Adminbots in general

This is a discussion for a different board, one more suited to long term discussions.

Deleting redirects

Again, far too broad for this board to address. The general topic of deleting redirects is not an incident requiring immediate admin attention.

East718's adminbot

As much as I hate the user-conduct-RFC format, its still better than this mess for discussing long-term issues with a user.

East718 deleting redirects

This is really the only topic I can identify that is appropriate for this board and for a short-term discussion.

If we want to get anything remotely close to a resolution, can we stick to discussing things that can actually be resolved here? Mr.Z-man 16:46, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, I've been adding some points above, but you are quite right. This has too unwieldy to deal with here. I freely admit I was the "prime mover" at the start the thread (with a bit of help from Maxim), though Hesparian started it (I was happy to discuss on talk pages, but that gets difficult after a while). My summary section above was an attempt to keep things under control, but didn't really work. I am prepared to start moving the discussions out to other places, if people will suggest suitable locations. Any suggestions? Carcharoth (talk) 09:29, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

One such discussion started at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#CSD G6 clause "cleaning up redirects". I've also proposed that anyone who wants to expand the current criteria for speedy deletion of redirects do so over there. Carcharoth (talk) 10:23, 15 April 2008 (UTC)