Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard: Difference between revisions

General Discussion

As the dust settles from [1], something has been nagging at me: There are now about 1,000 blocks and 1,000 deletions, plus some other admin actions, that were performed in violation of an ArbComBan. To my knowledge, this is the first time this has happened in the modern era of Wikipedia adminning (i.e. since c. 2012). Now, editors have broad discretion to

Should there be some kind of review, particularly of the blocks? I could put together a list of outstanding tempblocks and p-blocks, plus indefs of any established users, and admins could reblock in cases where we're willing to assume responsibility. Maybe that's too much, and I'm aware of the

Are there any actions that stand out to be particularly egregious after a cursory glance?

The Night Watch (talk) 17:53, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

1. Probably, most of the admin actions she did are ones that no admin would have declined. Such actions should be left alone.
2. You probably won't get admins to mass-review her actions. Even her deletions, which non-admins can't.
3. If you believe any specific action she did was incorrect, feel free to request admin review.
4. Any admin may undo her actions without it being wheel-warring.

Animal lover |666| 18:36, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Reblocking will just give the user a longer block log, which they might not appreciate. I think it would be better to just list the blocks on a page somewhere (akin to a CCI), and have admins tick "yes, reviewed, I would have made that block". The willingness to assume bad faith shown in this thread suggests that yes, there might be some blocks which need to be undone. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:05, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Generally agree with above that we should 1) apply the reasonable admin standard and 2) not change blocks or other actions unless they don't meet that standard, which I think leads to 3) probably should only list the "currently active" things, whether deletion, block, or protection (or other action).

WP:VOLUNTEER as to the utility/necessity of such work. Izno (talk) 22:27, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

• If someone wants to do the hard work of going through 2,000 actions and bring them up for community review, I guess I can't stop them. But I don't think its necessary. The right thing is to do what we would do with any action committed by an admin removed for cause: review it when it comes up, and add that admin's conduct as a factor to be weighed. For example, ArbCom already does that. We occasionally get appeals from users who were blocked by now banned or otherwise disgraced users. We don't automatically undo the block because of who made it. But we do investigate more deeply than we usually would into whether the block was right in the first place. I would be opposed to unblocking or reblocking accounts sua sponte. For unblocking, we don't allow third party unblocks. Why unblock an account banned 5 years ago if the user is long gone? For reblocking, not only does that consideration apply, but further, reblocking after a long time is inadvisable because you weren't there when the inciting incident happened, and thus might miss something. That would also serve to obfuscate who got blocked by Lourdes in the first place, which might make undoing a bad Lourdes block harder. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 22:36, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• I don't know how this slipped through my radar, but that is an absolutely stunning turn of events. My jaw literally dropped reading that diff. It might be worth looking through anything active, but that is a lot of work that might not have much benefit. If there was ever consensus to undo actions en masse, bot ops with admin bots (like myself) could be pinged/contacted to assist. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 23:15, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Isn't this the posterboy for a legitimate
  WP:XRV use? jp×g🗯️ 23:54, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• I would oppose a blanket reversal (which I don't think anyone has suggested yet, but it seems inevitable) but don't have an issue with more contentious blocks being listed for review. If someone is willing to do the excruciatingly boring work of compiling those, they have my thanks in advance. Vanamonde (Talk) 00:01, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't envy the work. This is like when a crooked cop gets caught and then all of the arrests the cop made need to be looked at. Lightburst (talk) 00:50, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• I don't envy the work, and I've been involved in some of these mass review projects, from GNIS (still ongoing) to the one with all of the sportspeople. This seems worse. CaptainEek, I have sympathies for someone who might have been illegitimately blocked and as a result just walked away thinking that Wikipedia was run by idiots. We cannot necessarily rely on people coming to complain as a driving force. We should at least look. And we should differentiate between blocks to enforce bans (Are there even any?) and blocks that are not part of banning. Uncle G (talk) 03:35, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Marking this with future timestamp (2 weeks) to stop bot from automatically archiving sections that still needs actions. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 16:43, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I think that anyone who wants to say anything on the blocks has more or less done so. Are there any other things we need to review? Fermiboson (talk) 18:36, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Three blocks that still have "unfinished business" (Darshan Kavadi, Omer123hussain and Timfoley50). OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 03:36, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Here's my blessing on whatever is needed for the Foley potential unblock. They asked me to stay off their page and happy to oblige while simultaneously not obstructing you or any other admin @OhanaUnited Star Mississippi 03:47, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

AN/I boards

As Lourdes herself noted, comments given on AN/I also carry admin authority, and randomly scrolling through archives I do see that she was quite active in terms of participating in discussions, threatening (or recommending) admin actions, or closing threads and sending people elsewhere. Is there a point in looking at those actions as well? Fermiboson (talk) 21:54, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

IP Blocks to review

ipb_address	actor_name	disposition
Special:Contributions/65.28.77.182	Lourdes	removed — xaosflux Talk 00:01, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/136.34.132.39	Lourdes	removed — xaosflux Talk 00:01, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/172.58.63.16	Lourdes	removed — xaosflux Talk 00:01, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/2600:1007:B03E:3864:0:0:0:0/64	Lourdes	removed — xaosflux Talk 00:01, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/2600:1007:B000:0:0:0:0:0/40	Lourdes	removed — xaosflux Talk 00:01, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/2804:1054:3010:0:0:0:0:0/44	Lourdes	Y OK - there's an LTA sitting on this range and major disruption re-occurred immediately that a previous 1-year block expired. Black Kite (talk) 10:01, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/49.145.0.0/20	Lourdes	Y Only a partial block on four articles, and appeared to be justified. Black Kite (talk) 10:04, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/2600:4040:AA53:F500:0:0:0:0/64	Lourdes	removed — xaosflux Talk 00:01, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/104.226.30.18	Lourdes	removed — xaosflux Talk 00:01, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/86.157.242.237	Lourdes	removed — xaosflux Talk 00:01, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/2603:9009:800:B1A7:0:0:0:0/64	Lourdes	removed — xaosflux Talk 00:01, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/2600:1700:10E1:1D20:0:0:0:0/64	Lourdes	Y This one is good - persistent falsifying of BLP birthdates over a period of months. Black Kite (talk) 09:59, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/172.97.45.5	Lourdes	? This is the Martin Bayerle spammer, also User:Imagixx. Could probably be dealt with via a few pblocks from particular articles. Black Kite (talk) 10:24, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/1.152.104.0/21	Lourdes	Y Persistent disruption and vandalism over many months, previous blocks. Black Kite (talk) 10:11, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/1.136.104.0/21	Lourdes	Y As per the entry immediately above. Black Kite (talk) 10:11, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/45.237.49.1	Lourdes	Y Absolutely good - admins can see why. Black Kite (talk) 10:16, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/109.228.71.226	Lourdes	Probably OK, expires in a couple of days anyway. Black Kite (talk) 10:16, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/109.101.69.23	Lourdes	removed - Black Kite (talk) 10:16, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/182.228.179.154	Lourdes	removed, and then restored after they began vandalising again. Black Kite (talk) 10:30, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/154.180.107.122	Lourdes	Block evasion, expires in a couple of days. Black Kite (talk) 10:30, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/62.4.55.186	Lourdes	Same user as 109.228.71.226 above, expires shortly - Black Kite (talk) 10:30, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

These are the IP blocks made by Lourdes that are still active as of today. I suggest that an admin review each one and decide if it should be removed or kept (I've done some already). This is a very small subset of the above. There were no indefinite IP blocks. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:03, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

For anyone interested, here are the username blocks (most are indef): Special:PermaLink/1183546654. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:09, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I looked at two random username blocks. I suppose that a reasonably thorough administrator would not overlook deleting the page User:Journal of BIoresources and Bioproducts (obvious copyvio etc.) when blocking for the very reason of creating such pages. There may be omissions of this type or of some other type. —Alalch E. 00:34, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Blocks of users with 100+ edits

Without prejudice against looking at the full ~900 account blocks, I've triaged this to a list of users with at least 100 edits. My reasoning is that blocks of low-editcount users are much more likely to be routine vandal/spam blocks, and that a brand-new editor who was wrongly blocked will probably have either just created a new account,

Username	Expiry	Disposition
Amitamitdd (talk · contribs)	infinity	Y Reasonable failure-to-respond block. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|she) 01:35, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Dieter Mueller (talk · contribs)	infinity	Y Reasonable failure-to-respond block. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|she) 01:35, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Kthxbay (talk · contribs)	infinity	Y Sockpuppetry confirmed (although not necessarily to master) @ Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Nangparbat/Archive § 08 May 2020. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|she) 01:35, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Jib Yamazaki (talk · contribs)	infinity	Y Reasonable failure-to-respond block. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|she) 01:35, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Nlivataye (talk · contribs)	infinity	Y User talk:Nlivataye#June 2023 is not inspiring. Izno (talk) 05:31, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
AlhyarJy (talk · contribs)	infinity	Y Reasonable failure-to-respond block. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|she) 01:45, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Saucysalsa30 (talk · contribs)	infinity	Y Had community support at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1130#Block consideration for Saucysalsa30. Mackensen (talk) 02:01, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Wallacevio (talk · contribs)	infinity	Y Reasonable failure-to-respond block. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|she) 01:45, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
GRanemos1 (talk · contribs)	infinity	Y Reasonable failure-to-respond block. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|she) 01:45, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Donovyegg (talk · contribs)	infinity	Y Reasonable failure-to-respond block. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|she) 01:45, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Chamaemelum (talk · contribs)	infinity	Y Validly-enacted siteban. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|she) 01:45, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Gbe Dutu (talk · contribs)	infinity	Y Reasonable failure-to-respond block. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|she) 01:45, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Abdel hamid67 (talk · contribs)	infinity	Y Had community support @ Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1134 § Unreferenced articles by User:Abdel hamid67. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|she) 00:57, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
DaleEarnhardt292001 (talk · contribs)	infinity	Y Discussed at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1134#User:DaleEarnhardt292001; user did not request an unblock. Mackensen (talk) 02:01, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Darshan Kavadi (talk · contribs)	infinity	See below. OhanaUnitedTalk page 05:27, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply] Unblocked, see below. OhanaUnitedTalk page 17:08, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A E WORLD (talk · contribs)	infinity	? Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1137#Mass overlinking and poor grammar 'corrections' by relatively new editor was the report. Whilst I am not convinced that the accountholder can write, at User talk:A E WORLD#August 2023 2, Lourdes and others seem to be putting up more and more hoops for the accountholder to jump through. Exactly how is the person supposed to prove that xe will do something that xe has stated xe will do? Uncle G (talk) 06:03, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Chuachenchie (talk · contribs)	infinity	See below. OhanaUnitedTalk page 05:27, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Golden Mage (talk · contribs)	infinity	Not confirmed at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Datu Hulyo/Archive, and although the block was for disruption it was for disruption that was the same pattern as that sockpuppteer. Tamzin? Uncle G (talk) 03:50, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply] Knew there was a reason this one rang a bell. I was quite confident on Golden Mage being Datu Hulyo at the SPI, and Courcelles backed that up on technical evidence. I might have waited a bit longer for an answer on why they were running three accounts, had Lourdes not blocked GM, but 2+1⁄2 months later GM/DH/John still hasn't explained what they were doing, so this block Y should probably stand. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|she) 04:20, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply] Ah! Special:Diff/1171455039 is a non-confirmation of something else. Uncle G (talk) 09:22, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ptb1997 (talk · contribs)	infinity	N Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1139#User:Ptb1997 might have been a trigger-happy block, but the rest of the community shares in the shame of this given Special:Diff/1176584689. The accountholder promised to do better back in September, and our collective response to this for two months has been massively bureaucratic, including ignoring that diff twice over simply because it wasn't put in an unblock request box. Uncle G (talk) 05:30, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply] Unblocked, see below. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|she) 16:01, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Egerer12 (talk · contribs)	infinity	? This was discounted as a sockpuppet by Draft:Mozambique at the 2024 Summer Olympics. This is a massive waste of AFC reviewers' time, especially as there's a backlog of several thousand drafts to review, and would that there were a speedy deletion criterion for getting rid of all of the duplicate drafts! Uncle G (talk) 05:19, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply ] A full block for WP:Communication is required may be warranted here rather than the article space block. This editor has literally never edited user talk namespace. Izno (talk) 06:06, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
574X (talk · contribs)	infinity	Y Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1140#574X already had support from ScottishFinnishRadish. Uncle G (talk) 04:58, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yafie Achmad Raihan (talk · contribs)	infinity	? Non-English speaker blocked for not communicating at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1140#Concerning page moves by Yafie Achmad Raihan. Account's Indonesian Wikipedia block log is clean for that and more page moves. Uncle G (talk) 04:28, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply] Unblocked by Mackensen. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|she) 01:10, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Silveresc (talk · contribs)	20231105051320	Y Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1141 § Long term POV disruptive editing at Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Not sure the situation was handled optimally, but it's a p-block and expires imminently, so meh. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|she) 00:57, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sinwiki12 (talk · contribs)	infinity	Not a sockpuppeteer per Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Sinwiki12/Archive, but the block was for repeated whitewashing of Chinese topic articles and diffs such as Special:Diff/1138585762 (Hello, Bbb23!) do indicate that there was a problem here. The account definitely had an article editing agenda that what Wikipedia said about China was all lies put about by American newspapers, and edited several articles in that vein (e.g. Special:Diff/1175736935). See also Special:Diff/1019125984. I suspect that this account would have ended up being blocked in the long run. Uncle G (talk) 04:48, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
AbrahamCat (talk · contribs)	infinity	Incivility block at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1141#User:AbrahamCat at Choke (sports). Worth a quick peer-review by someone here, but on its face it's likely good. Uncle G (talk) 04:01, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Omer123hussain (talk · contribs)	infinity	* Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1141#Omer123hussain: persistent sourcing issues definitely needs peer review. It's in the Indian topics area that Wifione was restricted from. Uncle G (talk) 04:07, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

-- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 00:48, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

User:Darshan Kavadi

Resolved

• I would say that the block on User:Darshan Kavadi (DK) deserves a second look (and possibly reversed for being a bad block). DK was first warned of their disruptive editing behaviour on July 26. DK disengaged and edited other articles on August 1. No other edits were made by DK after August 2. ANI report was filed on August 8 but closed because Lourdes went straight for indef block on first instance. The appearance of non-communication by DK was a self-fulfilling prophecy because DK never had a chance to reply (or saw it too late). It's almost like DK was punished for disengaging from the disputed page in question. No admin would have issued a indef block on a single warning on an account who hasn't edited for a week, which makes Lourdes's actions punitive instead of preventative. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:10, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Plus, Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1136#Requesting advice and suitable resolution was in the area of single-purpose account Indian promotional editing, which Wifione should not have been touching at all. Uncle G (talk) 05:45, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Shall we unblock this account as time served and remind them about

    WP:ROPE? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 16:50, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply

    ]

    • Unblocked with a stern warning for last chance and communication expectation. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 20:18, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

User:Chuachenchie

• Here's another questionable block. User:Chuachenchie has been editing since November 2020 and had 9k edits. Edits are a mixture of bad (OR, BLP) and good (ITN noms). Lourdes once again went right to indef block and not start off with short blocks and escalate from there. Editor remains active on zh.wp. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:17, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• That block was made as a result of this report. That editor managed to make over 9k edits without once talking to anybody or even leaving an edit summary. Communicating with other editors isn't really optional. Lourdes did leave a warning, which was ignored, and there were numerous previous attempts by other people to talk to this editor, which were also ignored. The block doesn't look unreasonable. Hut 8.5 14:33, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  The fact that Lourdes went for an indef block as the first block shows a series of trigger-happy blocks that dish out maximum sentence from the get-go (at least I wouldn't in that circumstance). OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 19:06, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  For a lack of communication I would generally go with an indef since editors who don't communicate will usually ignore a short term block - an indefinite block forces communication. I don't really see an indef as a maximum sentence here, just "blocked until they communicate". Galobtter (talk) 04:33, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Has anyone tried contacting them on zhwiki in Chinese? I may be able to if someone tells me what to say. As far as I can tell the issue here is language proficiency and CIR, which can be discussed with the editor. Fermiboson (talk) 22:40, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Well, looking at their edits on zhwiki, they have no edits outside of template and mainspace there either.. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 17:10, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I warned them with {{Uw-editsummary}} on zhwiki. Got ignored there too. NM 02:04, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  @OhanaUnited, an indef for refusing to communicate is not a "maximum sentence". It's IMO a completely reasonable way to require communication commence rather than simply allowing someone to wait it out. An indef can be lifted five minutes later by any admin. Many admins are reluctant to lift a timed block, so an indef can actually be much shorter. All it takes is convincing someone the person is able and sincerely willling to address the issue. Valereee (talk) 11:19, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  This exercise is to review the indef-trigger-happiness by Loudres. We already have two indef-block accounts overturned by other admins (and another two accounts that has the potential to be overturned) because the block length is not in proportion to the severity. And in my opinion, this is more borderline than those cases. But this user continues to edit in zh.wp, which makes a stronger case that we should review the possibility to reattract this editor back into the en.wp project (unlike other dormant accounts) with a clear explanation of communication expectation by the community before being unblocked. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 17:03, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I'd be willing to consider a conditional unblock: the editor agrees to respond to messages on their user talk (which they've never done, not even once, literally zero edits to any talk page including their own, and if I'm reading it right, has also never done on zh.wiki) and to start using edit summaries (which they've done once in 9000+ edits). Valereee (talk) 10:41, 19 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I've left a message at their talk. Valereee (talk) 10:51, 19 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I am the original author of the ANI discussion. Just for the record, the editor still continues to exhibit the exact same behavior (OR, BLP, no edit summary, never respond to TP messages) on zhwiki that should have got them banned there a long time ago. NM 02:10, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

User:Omer123hussain

• I made the report on Omer123hussain that led to the block above. I think it's justified; there's serious OR issues there; but nobody else seems to want to engage with it. I will not be taking any admin action, though I'm not necessarily capital-I Involved. Vanamonde (Talk) 05:38, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yeah, I saw that ANI report and didn't have time to look into it, but I was glad someone did and took action (those kind of ANI reports get very little attention). I checked Talk:Hyderabad#Dubious which Lourdes linked to and Omer123hussain's use of a 100 year old source and simple refusal to provide the quote from the source that supports their material looks very problematic. I can look into this more and take over the block if needed, but I don't think this block should be overturned simply because of the situation with Lourdes.
  • It seems these block reviews are less "that was a bad block" but more some admins think Lourdes should've been more lenient, 🤷🏾‍♀️. Galobtter (talk) 04:38, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think the block needs to be looked at. I've raised it with Omer123hussain and I'll see if the is an option that doesn't involve going straight to an indefinite ban from mainspace. I agree that there is an issue with their editing, but with 9000+ edits and multiple GAs I'd like to look for an alternative solution. - Bilby (talk) 05:22, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • On the contrary, Lourdes was Wifione and per Wifione's Arbitration Committee restrictions should not have been involving xyrself in this at all. They were Indian topics and at least one was a biography of a living Indian person. This was most definitely bad. Uncle G (talk) 11:43, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Uncle G:, I believe what Galobtter is saying is that the block stands on its merits. We're not planning (I assume) to revert every one of Lourdes's ~24k contributions; by the same logic we shouldn't reverse a block that another admin endorses. Your logic is applicable to any block Lourdes made, including the obvious vandals, because Wifione didn't have any restrictions that were ARBIPA-wide; just Indian BLPs and educational institutions. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:01, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        • No, it clearly only extends to topic that Wifione was prohibited from, not any blocks. This block is squarely an administrative action in the prohibited topic area. At least one of the articles in the complaint about Omer123hussain was a biography of a living Indian person, and as it was about more than the specific edits cited but about Omer123hussain's editing history in general, which extends to a lot of India-related stuff, that would have likely touched upon more prohibited Indian topics. Lourdes should never have touched this. Xe was prohibited from it as an editor, let alone as an administrator. Uncle G (talk) 21:28, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

User:Ptb1997

Resolved

• I'm on the fence about Ptb1997. As is sadly often the case when an admin places a block "Until user resolves issue X", the implied promise there hasn't been upheld in subsequent unblock proceedings. Sadly the accept/decline-focused nature of unblock requests leads to a lot of situations like this, where a user has said most of what they need to say but maybe needs to go into a bit more detail, and instead just gets declined on with little explanation. So with all that in mind I'd tend toward an unblock, with a warning about communication. However, there's also the matter of Ptb19975555, their sock. Evading a block imposed by someone who was in turn evading a ban is not something that
  WP:SOCK as a policy has ever contemplated, but either way, first offense for socking by an otherwise constructive user is normally 1-4 weeks, so I think commuting to time served, with warnings about communication and socking, would still be reasonable. Or at least I've mostly convinced myself of that in the course of writing this comment. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 06:24, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • Personally, I'm in favour of forgiving the sockpuppetry (which was also handled bureaucratically, with its edits reverted because it was a sockpuppet), unblocking, with a statement that the community expects Special:Diff/1176584689 to be made good on, and will be found a more welcoming place for editors who talk to other editors. Especially as the warnings going back "8 years" turn out to be disambiguation 'bots, bracket 'bots, people talking about where punctuation goes in lists, why not to boldface things, birthdates in biographies, and which sportsperson gets player statistics. Only 7 of the warnings/requests were over the whole of 2023, and 3 of those were 'bots. And clearly the accountholder does communicate on occasion: Special:Diff/841858412. Hence why I think that it was a trigger-happy block. Uncle G (talk) 08:50, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • This seems a case of someone who genuinely wants to contribute but made some communication errors. I'd favour unblocking, at least as a trial. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:35, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with Espresso Addict. I think we can unblock and keep an eye. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:52, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Unblocked with warnings for non-communication and sockpuppetry. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 16:01, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

User:Yafie Achmad Raihan

Resolved

• I am involved with this in the sense that I raised the initial discussion about this user. Luck has it that they have just requested an unblock on promise that they will not do any more wrong page moves. There is something weird with their usage of the unblock template so it may not have turned up on any admin's radar yet. – robertsky (talk) 16:22, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  The problem was that it was in a <nowiki> section. Animal lover |666| 19:20, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Restricting someone editing from article space just because they messed up on moving articles appear to be unproportional response. This is another case of using the sledgehammer-size block on something minor. Could have simply impose a "don't do any more moves or you will be blocked" warning. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 19:20, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  The block served its purpose; the editor has acknowledged it and promises to avoid the disputed behavior. I'll unblock. Mackensen (talk) 20:03, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I realise I'm not an admin, but would it be of help if I was the one to go through the 900+ other account bans and raise anything that I find here? I want to help to clean up the mess in any way possible. Fermiboson (talk) 19:11, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Fermiboson Yes please. That will be appreciated. Most of the activities that resulted in blocks can be viewed by anyone. It'll benefit from more lights shining onto this issue. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 00:40, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Blocked accounts with 100- edits

A non-admin review of the rest of the blocks which could potentially be mistakes. The log has been reviewed up to the date of 19 March 2019. There are also a number of promotional userspaces which were not deleted, which I have CSD tagged on my own.

Anything beyond that is probably very, very moot. Fermiboson (talk) 10:41, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

TheSharpBlade

I don't see how [2] counts as an attack page or is a negative unsourced BLP. Perhaps I'm missing some context here, though I'm also not sure if this user should be unblocked. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 07:54, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I wouldn't have deleted that as a G10 either. That said, it appears to be a hoax (unless anyone else can find evidence of a landscape architect named Donald J. Guest), and with the account's only other edit being this, I'd say it'd be best to let sleeping dogs lie at this point. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 08:08, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't have deleted it G10, but I see what Lourdes meant in terms of the tone of the second paragraph. I sometimes delete things G11/G10 where there's a mix of adulation with "struggled with drug abuse"/similar without any reliable sources. Espresso Addict (talk) 22:53, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This may be borderline on the attack aspect, but it's very clearly not a serious attempt at an encyclopedia article; it's a joke at best and is probably trolling. I might not have blocked immediately, but I'd have given a 4im warning at the very least. There are multiple real-world people named Donald Guest, FWIW. I would not reverse this block. Vanamonde (Talk) 18:00, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

+1, not an obvious attack page afaics; block can stand. Lectonar (talk) 12:40, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thegreatbooboo!

The deleted edit, from 18 October, is basically identical to

I have deleted the sandbox too; block can stand. Lectonar (talk) 12:41, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A Big Cold Moon

The account's sole comment can be read here (it was just caught up in oversight collateral): Support Clearly a bad actor bad faith etc. Does this ring any bells in terms of sockpuppetry? Extraordinary Writ (talk) 08:25, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say almost definitely. I've done a CU and it's exclusively on proxies with another single edit account that's been blocked by another admin. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 08:54, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse, received email harassment from the account. Not sure if that appears in the CU logs, but the block is good. Jip Orlando (talk) 15:40, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

KG IT 7143

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

That's where three single-purpose accounts intersect, only one of which was blocked. The second is named after the article subject, and is a very clear conflict of interest editor. The third is a simple partial-blanking vandal. There's an acknowledgement of multiple accounts on one of the first two's user talk page.

Draft:Himalaya Jet is a different situation, and clearly the single-purpose account that did it, taking over almost immediately (which is highly suspect), is far more experienced with editing a wiki. The edit summary (non-)usage is very different, too. A cynic would no doubt say, given how quickly the second single-purpose account took over, that someone else picked up the undisclosed paid editing gig. ☺

Uncle G (talk) 21:23, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wfynde

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

This might well be one for the Project:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard. This is one of those what-you-are-saying-about-me-without-any-sources-is-wrong-but-I-cannot-edit-a-wiki-for-toffee situations. The article discusses 2020 and one of its only two sources pre-dates that by quarter of a century.

It's also one of those which-band-members-are-the-"real"-band situations. ☺ Clearly the account is named after the band. We should regard this as an attempt to challenge unverifiable content, for which the rationale on User talk:Wfynde should not be overlooked, and the onus is on the people wanting to claim events happening in 2020 to provide some actual sources from the current century.

Uncle G (talk) 21:53, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Timfoley50

Thanks for the heads up @Fermiboson:. While I stand by my initial block and don't think he'll be a net positive, I reiterate what I said then, that I welcomed any additional input. If editors, admin or otherwise, feel it should be lifted, that's fine with me especially with so much time passed. That talk page got unecessarily ugly and I'm not going to engage with Foley directly as he asked me to stay off his Talk, and I'm happy to respect that. His immolation was a good example of why it's hard for editors to work in areas with which they have a COI. Star Mississippi 14:13, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• I find BrownHairedGirl (BHG)'s initial complaint on ANI that led to Timfoley50's block flawed at best, disinformation and misleading at worst. So many things were wrong in the initial report (characterizing someone as SPA, making it sound like someone with COI didn't declare), spinning "part truth" into a narrative that suits her goal (suggesting that Tim was forumshopping when it was spread out over 5 years) or coming up with her own metrics about talk page discussion length which is not backed by any policy (very similar to ArbCom's portal case). IMO this looks like a bad newbie-biting block. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 14:54, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • My first-impression 0.2c is that, while the editor in question is clearly incivil, the BDP issue could very much hvae been resolved with methods other than a block. No comments or opinions on BHG's behaviour, and I haven't delved into the content dispute itself. Is reopening the AN/I thread a good idea? My main concern here in the context of this mass review is the fact that Lourdes stepped in in the middle and cut short a developing AN/I discussion, even if there is a case for NLT, and had Lourdes not done that AN/I may have reached a different conclusion. Fermiboson (talk) 15:14, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • Having seen no end of this sort of stuff over the years, that has escalated to Arbitration, full-blown user RFCs, and banning discussions, this does seem to have all of the makings of yet more of the same, and I echo Star Mississippi's prediction that this will not go well. Would Star Mississippi's block have been overturned had discussion progressed further? It possibly would have, although that's not a certainty. There's not much to fault about Star Mississippi's offer at the end of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1132#User:Timfoley50 and the explorer Tom Crean and it might have been taken up.

      Wifione/Lourdes's legal threat block did rather curtail that possibility. I agree with you that it's a bit borderline. I don't think that we need to re-open AN/I, though. After all, here is the Administrators' Noticeboard. ☺

      Uncle G (talk) 20:22, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm probably not going to have much on wiki time this week so if you (collectively: @Fermiboson @OhanaUnited @Uncle G) think an unblock is the best way forward, feel free to do so. I'm never attached to blocks should they no longer prove necessary. Whether it needs to be here & ANI, I agree with UncleG. I feel like it can be handled here after or in conjunction with extending an offer of unblock to Timfoley50 and semi independent of the Lourdes block since mine was the basis. Star Mississippi 03:28, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  What about status quo ante? We can restore TP access, and if the user continues down the path they are continuing down, we can reblock per NLT or civility; and if they don't, we continue the conversation as a standard unblock appeal. If they don't say anything, they don't say anything. Fermiboson (talk) 12:47, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I suggest to leave a note on Timfoley50's user talk page to see if we can reconcile and move beyond that. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 18:19, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I've left a message on his usertalk and lifted the block on editing his usertalk page so that he can participate in the discussion. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 20:36, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Riteinit

There are warnings on this user's talk page, albeit relating to edit warring not incivility (which is what the block was for). The incivility in question was very mild, so I agree it should have been met with a (further) warning instead of a block. However it's from so long ago that I suspect their interest in Wikipedia has long since waned. If they request an unblock I think it would be looked upon favourably but I don't see much merit in unblocking an account that's going to remain dormant anyway. WaggersTALK 11:24, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the account is a suspected sock, which would make an normal unblock moot. – robertsky (talk) 15:01, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I was topic banned from deletion related discussions in April of last year. While I have no urge to get back into doing or participating in deletion requests at this time I was still wondering if the topic ban could be lifted since a year has passed and my editing has been unproblematic since then. Although admittedly I haven't been editing that much to begin with, but I'm hopping that will change once the topic is ban lifted. As I have haven't been super motivated to participating in the project with the restrictions.

As to the behavior that originally got me topic banned, I'm not going to relitigate the ANU complaint since a lot of it was extremely spurious and I don't plan on editing in the area much to begin with. Nor do I remember many of the specifics at this point anyway. But if anyone has anything that they think I should have done differently or should do differently in the future then I'm more then willing to hear them out. Mostly I'd just like to have the topic ban lifted since my behavior hasn't been an issue in the past year though. Thanks. Adamant1 (talk) 05:26, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Convenience link to the topic ban discussion.—S Marshall T/C 09:47, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• In Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Combermere School, what should you have done differently? Please tell us what you've learned and how your behaviour will be different going forward.—S Marshall T/C 07:58, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I probably should have not responded to SeoR or Jacona as many times as I did since it was clear the conversations with them were going nowhere. I was also thinking about having the deletion request be procedurally closed, but then I changed my mind after the ANU complaint. I should have done it anyway though. Although It's not really something that I ever had an issue with doing before, but it probably would have at least been a good faith gesture in that case if nothing else. As far as what I'll do differently going forward, I just won't repeatedly respond to people who clearly aren't listening or where the conversation otherwise isn't productive. It's always been hard for me to know the line is when it comes to what is bludgeoning or arguing versus just vigorously debating a topic though. But that's definitely something I plan to work on and improve. Plus just not taking things so personal to begin with so I don't have to defend myself or my edits in the first place. --Adamant1 (talk) 08:26, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, that's reassuring. And now moving away from your behaviour to think about policy and sources -- with the benefit of hindsight, do you feel that SeoR and/or Jacona might have had a point, at all? Or are you still of the view that, considering the sources and the policy, it would be right to delete the article?—S Marshall T/C 08:53, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

With SeoR specifically I thought at the time and still think we were reading different books, which is why I said it was weird that their book sounded different then the one on Google Books and asked them for a page number I could read. It also never made sense to me that they ordered the book from their local library when it was free on Google. So I don't think they had a point, or maybe they did, but it was just one that had nothing to do with the book I was talking about. I could have made it clearer that I thought they had the wrong book though. With Jacona, I should have just taken them at their word that the sources were in-depth since I couldn't access the full versions and it didn't matter anyway. I was being more skeptical about then I probably would have been otherwise though because of the whole thing with SeoR. As to if it would be right to delete the article, that really depends. Based on their opinions no and I guess that's really all that matters. I can't really give a fair analysis either way though since I never read the sources. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:17, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If you go back and read the ANI thread, it rapidly becomes clear that you were not discussing a different book to the one everyone else was talking about. Looking at the book again with fresh eyes (for the avoidance of doubt, it is Sandiford & Newton, Combermere School and the Barbadian Society 1995, available on Google Books here and archive.org here), do you still think that your analysis that In fact 99% of it is about "Barbadian Society" and less then 1% directly relates to the school is correct? Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 14:30, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a little bit hazy on the details at this point, but the book you linked to doesn't look like the one I read or was referring to at the time. Nor was it even brought up in the DR until the second to last comment, which I think was after the ANU complaint got opened. So either there was a different book about Combermere School school by the same publisher or I was reading something different and thought it was by them. Neither SeoR or I ever brought up Combermere School and the Barbadian Society to begin with and that isn't the book I was talking about regardless though. At least not from what I remember. Although looking at the book now it does seem to be about the school. Although what I read and was discussing at the time wasn't. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:05, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The book I linked is the same one you linked in the ANI thread and describe as "wasn't even substantially about the school" [emphasis original], and its chapter titles match the ones listed by SeoR in the AfD discussion. I'm glad that you recognise now that the book is about the school, but very concerned about what this says about your approach to those discussions. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 16:51, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Support (uninvolved) reducing the topic ban to a less restrictive alternative (such as a limit of one comment per deletion discussion in a rolling 24 hour period). In his original post Adamant1 does rather worryingly call the original complaint "extremely spurious", which it wasn't, but his subsequent replies show his ability to reflect on what happened. I'm happy to assume that he's learned.—S Marshall T/C 09:41, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just to clarify that if you'll allow me to. When I said the original complaint was spurious I was mainly referring to some of the comments made by people who supported the topic ban. For instance the accusations of lying and racism. Plus someone supported the topic ban because I supposedly refused to withdraw the deletion request, which never happened. I'll also point out that the original complaint was opened by an IP editor who was connected to the school. So in any other instance it would have been closed with no action. That's not to say Girth Summit's topic ban proposal wasn't justified though. I said at the time, and will repeat again, that I think it was totally valid. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:52, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • Years ago I suggested to you, Adamant1, that when you're in a hole you should stop digging. I wish you'd listened. Calling others' comments in the thread that lead to your topic ban "spurious" is the last think you should want to do. Even if they were spurious (which they were not), you shouldn't call them that. Drmies (talk) 14:38, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Following up more specifically to S Marshall's line of questioning, I notice that several deletion discussions were mentioned in your topic ban discussion; among these were
  policy on treating Wikipedia like a battleground, can you briefly suggest how you could respond more constructively in the future when faced with opposition to your proposals? Remember that the goal of these discussions is to find consensus, not to win. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:39, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • I don't want to go into to much, but I was being pretty viciously attacked by multiple users at that point, including Necrothesp. Which is why we got into the back and forth in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/St. Augustine's College (Malta). It had nothing to do with taking it personally and lashing out whenever someone presents a different view. I had just already been arguing with Necrothesp in other places and we continued it in the DR when we shouldn't have. As to the other DRs, there was clearly a miscommunication in the DR about Combermere School somewhere and I should have been clearer about what exactly I was talking about. Since me and SeoR were clearly talking about things. Regardless, I think it mostly comes down to being clearer about things and not engaging in or continuing unproductive discussions. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:05, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • Sorry, but vague aspersions won't do. Provide a link to these vicious attacks or withdraw your accusation. Also the only book published by the University of the West Indies cited in the article at the time of the AfD discussion was Combermere School and the Barbadian Society, and SeoR brought it up in the very first reply to your deletion nomination.
      Phil Bridger (talk) 16:41, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply
      ]
    • (
      attacking the person and not the comment, having not participated in the discussion at all up to that point. The two of you then went off on a wall of text tangent attacking each other and not really discussing the article at all. To a new user, it now looks like that sort of vicious abuse is to be expected from participating in a deletion discussion. Can you explain why that sort of thing is detrimental to a collaborative project like Wikipedia? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:57, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply
      ]
      • I'm not holding a grudge. I was merely explaining to you why I acted the way I did at the time because you asked. I have no ill will toward Necrothesp or anyone else for how I was treated though. I'd just like to be un-topic banned and move on from this whole thing. As to why that sort of thing is detrimental to a collaborative project like Wikipedia, it creates a hostile, toxic environment that people don't want to contribute to. @
        Phil Bridger: You can read through the DR that I linked to. There's plenty of the behavior I'm talking about in it. I'm not here to axe grind or relitigate anyone else's behavior though. Just explain mine. As to the book, all SeoR said was it was published by the University of the West Indies. He never said the title though and there's multiple books by the same publisher and author that discuss the school. So I probably just mixed them up in the back and forth. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:19, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply
        ]
        • You talk about "the DR that I linked to". What do you mean by that? If you have been the target of vicious attacks then we need to be told clearly about them so the perpetrator(s) can be blocked.
          Phil Bridger (talk) 21:38, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply
          ]
    • My "vicious attacks" on Adamant1 apparently involved not agreeing with them and objecting to their comments about my integrity. You've got to laugh! Incidentally, if they "had just already been arguing with Necrothesp in other places" I neither remember it nor can find it. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:21, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Support, tentatively. Be advised, I do close a lot of AfDs, and if I see any walls of text from Adamant1, I'll be quick to suggest re-instating the topic ban. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:36, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Suppurt - We'll never know whether or not Adamant1 has amended their ways in this area, if we don't give them a chance to prove they have. GoodDay (talk) 16:08, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Support, also tentative (basically per Ritchie333). I'm not really satisfied by the responses to the questions I asked above, I get the sense that they're more defensive than responsive. But the responses are in the right direction when they get around to it, they have been civil in this discussion even when defensive, and I appreciate the introspection with respect to toxicity here, so I'm satisfied enough to support lifting the restriction. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:33, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Support with a short piece of rope, if that make sense - like Ritchie333, I tend to also read a lot of AfD's (and also close some now and then), and I'd be disappointed to see a reversion to the behaviours that led to the topic ban being implemented in the first place. Daniel (talk) 22:28, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose, "I'm not going to relitigate the ANU complaint since a lot of it was extremely spurious" gives me the impression that nothing has changed at all, as do the very dubious comments about them looking at a different book somehow (what, throughout the AfD and the ANI discussion, where you pointed to actual pages of the very same book?). "I just won't repeatedly respond to people who clearly aren't listening"? Everything points to a lack of awareness of the actual reasons for the ban, and nothing gives me confidence that their behaviour will be any different, or that they will not just stop the basgering, but actually be able to accept good sources presented by others. Lifting the ban would be a bad idea.
  Fram (talk) 09:23, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]

  I see that as

  WP:EHP. We don't need him to admit he was wrong in the past. We need him to learn to take Wikipedia less personally and to disengage from confrontation. There's clear commitment to that in what he says to me.—S Marshall T/C 13:04, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  • I do need to see him recognise that at least on the factual basis for AfDs, things like being able to fairly consider the sources presented by others, he was wrong in these instances. If he now will be less confrontational but still fundamentally wrong about things which are essential for AfD discussions (and completely unwilling to acknowledge that he was obviously discussing the same book, making fanciful excuses instead), then why would it be beneficial for enwiki to let him loose at AfD again?

    Fram (talk) 17:16, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

    ]

I said I was confused about what book it was at the time and that looking into it now Combermere School and the Barbadian Society is actually about the school. The confusion was why I linked to the wrong book in the ANU complaint though. If I'm remembering correctly I copied the links from someone else's comment and didn't bother to check them because I just didn't care about it at that point. Since I assumed I'd be blocked either way. I think the keep to delete ratio for AFDs I've opened is on par with the normal average though. So it's not like I have a history of opening spurious AFDs or there's anything else that would be an issue if I just don't bludgeon discussions anymore. I'm more then willing to say that I screwed up in how I handled Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Combermere School though. If I could do it over I would have just had it procedurally kept after Jacona provided the articles instead of continuing to argue about it. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:50, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You were well aware about what book everyone else was talking about during the ANI discussion, just look at your 20:18, 31 March 2022 (UTC) comment[3].

Fram (talk) 18:10, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

You can say that, but your the one who had brought up the name of the book at the beginning of the ANU complaint and I never read your comment. Also, if you look at the first point when I replied to complaint I was focusing on the articles and Jacona's behavior, not the book or the back and forth about it with SeoR. So I wasn't really paying attention to which book we were talking about. Girth Summit brought up the book later, but never said which one he was talking about. Your the only who said the title, and again I didn't read your comment. BTW, I said as much in my first comment "unfortunately I'm busy with other stuff right now so I don't have time to read through this discussion." --Adamant1 (talk) 18:46, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. I get that it's hard to say you fucked up, but the fact that Adamant is doubling down now, eighteen months later, does not give me confidence. If Adamant was so focused on winning the argument that they didn't notice that the book being discussed was not the one they meant, even to the point where they linked to the Google book page for the book that everyone else was discussing, that's a major issue and one which I would need to see them addressing convincingly to support this appeal. I'm not seeing that here. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:53, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Being confused because I didn't take the time to completely read through the discussion when I should have is a fuck up. I should have read people's comments, including Frams, before leaving a message or discussing it and not linked to the wrong book. They aren't mutually exclusive. The confusion and mix up caused by not reading the discussion before I commented on it was a large part of the issue though. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:19, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. In this very thread Adamant1 casts very serious unsubstantiated aspersions against one named and an undetermined number of unnamed editors (I was being pretty viciously attacked by multiple users at that point, including Necrothesp). If he behaves like that when all eyes are on him so he is on his best behaviour how can we expect him to behave if he is let loose on AfD discussions again? Then there is the issue of the book, about which he is either not telling the truth or did not read or could not understand the simple English in the AfD discussion. I'm sure that he believes that he is right, but unfortunately he is not.
  Phil Bridger (talk) 10:04, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Oppose, since being topic banned here Adamant basically semi-retired here and moved to Commons, being 99% active in images for deletion discussions, and there he has showed the same problematic, confrontational and bludgeoning tenure that led to his block here. I suggest to read this very recent Commons AN discussion, which ironically was started by him himself, and all the related links. So, while Commons is a different project with different rules, I don't really think anything has changed. --Cavarrone 09:06, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for that. I see e.g. this very recent discussion[4] which shows basically the exact same issues which lead to the ban here.
    Fram (talk) 10:00, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply
    ]
• Oppose I'm very uninvolved and I didn't plan to comment here, but Cavarrone's links to the Commons discussion with another example on Commons from just two weeks ago brought up by Fram are very concerning. This comment on Ritchie's talk page is what ultimately led me here, since it directly contradicted people's AGF comments above: characterizing opposers as holding grudges (axe grinding; opposed [..] by the same couple of people who I've had past issues with) doesn't seem to suggest learn[ing] to take Wikipedia less personally and to disengage from confrontation (S Marshall's comment above), and then asking how to get around that next time ("that" referring to the supposed axe-grinding by people who opposed) doesn't match what Ivanvector has said above about discussions as to find consensus, not to win. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 13:13, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose: what
  Fram and others said. I could have supported lifting the sanction with a contribution limit, maybe, if they'd just stopped talking, but they didn't, and so they had to rehash, a time or two, things that were already covered last time. No, Adamant wasn't "viciously attacked" by Necrothesp and others. No, there were no "spurious" comments or attacks in the AfD, the ANI thread, or wherever--besides those by Adamant, and this thread (and Ritchie's talk page) are full of spuriosities by the editor. No, that book was indeed the book...etc., I don't need to type it out again. This is quite disappointing because I'm all for second chances. Drmies (talk) 14:42, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• I'm rather concerned by "I'll also point out that the original complaint was opened by an IP editor who was connected to school, which in any other instance would have led to the complaint being closed on it's face with no action."

  It's not my experience that we dismiss complaints on this noticeboard out of hand simply on the grounds that they are made by people who do not have accounts.

  Uncle G (talk) 23:51, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • I should also mention that all of this "As to the book, all SeoR said was it was published by the University of the West Indies. He never said the title though and there's multiple books by the same publisher and author that discuss the school. So I probably just mixed them up in the back and forth." discussion rings a bit hollow. There wasn't a choice of University of West Indies books until I mentioned the 2nd one in the noticeboard discussion 3 days later.

    I find that if one totally mis-reads something, acknowledging the mistake doesn't seem to cause anywhere near as much kerfuffle as 18 months of noticeboard discussions.

    Uncle G (talk) 08:59, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Uncle G: Not that it matters at this point anyway, but the other University of West Indies book comes up if you click the Google Books link in the "Find sources" section of the original deletion request. So it was in fact a choice before you mentioned it. It was also published in 1998 and is by the same author as "Combermere School and the Barbadian Society." So it's not like I wouldn't have known about it before you brought it up even if it wasn't on Google Books anyway. That's kind of the problem with this whole thing. It must be that I'm being dishonest. Not just that we had different experiences and information at the time. I can kind of understand it, but the whole thing really just seems like punishing me for past behavior more then anything else. And just to clarify, by that I specifically mean the disagreement over the books. Not the appeal more broadly. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:41, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose As tone and notifications make it pretty clear you don't understand why the restriction was put in place to begin with. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 08:30, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Distasteful? (in re death of Kissinger)

This isn't a concern about the editor whose page this is (although I'll notify her anyways), but I'm a bit concerned about how some other editors are conducting themselves at

WP:UPNOT (you may not include in your user space material that is likely to bring the project into disrepute), I have half a mind to blank the page and leave a note directing well-wishers(?) back to their social network of choice. But given the presence of several usernames I recognize on that page, I thought I would ask for second/etc. opinions first. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 18:29, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

I saw Asticky's comment on the Depths of Wikipedia Twitter account last night. I'm reminded of one of my all-time favorite Onion articles, "Area Man Honored To Be One Who Added Death Date To Heath Ledger's Wikipedia Page". I agree that it's in poor taste, and overinflates our self-importance of editors. Many of the

WP:ITN/C comments were also inappropriate (like the nominator adding the unneeded comment "Been waiting for this day"). I consider celebrating anyone's death disreputable and would not oppose some actions taken to tamp this impulse down. – Muboshgu (talk) 18:34, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

And holy shit I just looked at her user talk page. I am really trying to remain civil right now, but, seriously, what the fuck? Everybody offering praise or a barnstar for changing "is" to "was" deserves a

WP:TROUT at the least. – Muboshgu (talk) 18:37, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

Kissinger probably earned the hatred being expressed in the celebrations of his death, but Wikipedia is not the place for it.

WP:BDP clearly applies here, and the page is clearly being used as an attack page, and should be blanked. I would make the warning that anyone who subsequently leaves a similar gravedancing comment will be blocked from editing. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:43, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

But also I wouldn't trout anyone who's already commented per

WP:STREISAND. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:45, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

Aye. See also Margaret Thatcher, though I'm unaware that Kissinger's death provoked spontaneous street parties. It was probably lucky that I was offline for most of that day! Black Kite (talk) 18:47, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

On that note I've blanked and sysop-protected the page to stop the flood of inappropriate comments. Anyone is free to modify if they have a better idea. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:50, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine with me (given that it only runs 48h), although if Asticky objects to not having access to her talkpage in this time, we could bump down to ECP or semi and add a note to the page for those editors who ought to know better but don't. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 18:53, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No it’s all good. I really didn’t mean to invite the incivility here, I figured barely anyone would see my user page until the depthsofwiki post blew up. Asticky (talk) 19:27, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I’m also sorry if my conduct on Twitter has invited some of this, if you want me to take any measures to mitigate that please let me know. Asticky (talk) 19:33, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's not your conduct, it was the gravedancing on the talk page overall by other users. If it's done on social media that's one thing, but not here. RickinBaltimore (talk) 19:35, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@

harassing people or canvassing (inviting brigading). But this may serve as a cautionary tale about how when you talk about Wikipedia edits off-wiki, you never know what kind of attention that will draw. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 19:41, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

Bravo. – Muboshgu (talk) 18:56, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, decent plan. Black Kite (talk) 18:58, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Good call. Regardless of how you feel, Wikipedia isn't the place for gravedancing. RickinBaltimore (talk) 18:59, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt that Asticky will object since the page was created with the first Kissinger comment, but yes I'm fine with reducing or even removing the protection if we add a warning that Wikipedia is not a platform for celebrating any person's death. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:01, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@

[OMT] 19:24, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

They can disagree with it all they want, it's Wikipedia's user page, not theirs. They were notified of this discussion and can comment if they're around, but I don't think anyone here would disagree that urgent action was warranted per the second paragraph of that guideline. But I will find a way to leave a note. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:32, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Ivanvector: She's commented a few levels up. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 19:33, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@

[OMT] 19:38, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

Christ, that's stupid. Well, whatever. I guess there is not much we can really do about it. jp×g🗯️ 19:10, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Disappointing that none of those congratulatory comments pointed out that we don't change "is" to "was" without citing a reliable source. Fortunately another editor stepped in a few minutes later to add a source. Since the talk page is fully protected, perhaps an admin could post a gentle reminder to include a source the next time that new editor makes such a change? Schazjmd (talk) 19:27, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Probably easier to talk to her in this thread, or by pinging from one's own usertalk, since if any of us post on her talk, she won't be able to reply there. (There's no own-usertalk exception for protections like with blocks.) -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 19:35, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. @Asticky, if you ever need to update an article for someone's death again, please be sure you cite your reliable source in the same edit. Thanks. Schazjmd (talk) 19:41, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• I've replaced the blank notice with a customized notice warning users not to leave any more gravedancing comments, and a note to Asticky that she can modify it or remove it as she sees fit, or where to ask for help. I think enough of us are watching the page now that reducing to semiprotection is good enough, but anyone can modify that if there's more disruption. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:55, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Clear devil's advocate who has heard Kissinger's name, knew he was SoS, and left a barnstar, but nothing else: I don't see why the grave-dancing was so bad that this had to be blanked and fully protected (this was reduced while I was writing). Hell, most of the comments weren't even gravedancing, they were just wikilove for being the first to report a somewhat major event (albeit without sources), which is something wikilove-worthy because this encyclopedia is built on people like this who update articles. Of course, any wikilove that is gravedancing should be removed and their posters warned, but the vast majority of the wikilove was not gravedancing, genuinely thanking her in
  Queen of Hearts ❤️ (no relation) 20:07, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • These are fair and thoughtful points. In my mind the context of the comments is important: the influx didn't really start until there was off-wiki coverage of the edit, and that coverage was pretty clearly celebrating Kissinger's death first, and the edit that recorded it second. There were a number of accounts in this mix which clearly were created just for this "party" as one of them put it, and it's inappropriate for Wikipedia to be used for any celebration of someone's death, whether or not those comments are given in the frame of celebrating the edit. I don't have a better word for it than Tamzin's: distasteful. Maybe blanking was not the right tool for the job, but it seemed urgent at the time. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 20:48, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • Beyond the specific nature of this situation, I do think it gets to an ongoing problem of people wanting to be "first" to edit something when there's
      WP:BREAKING news. I get it, it's a human pursuit of sorts. But, it is out of line with the purpose of Wikipedia. – Muboshgu (talk) 21:40, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply
      ]
      • I was about to say much the same thing. We've had many AFD discussions of hastily written biographies of people only covered for 1 news cycle. Uncle G (talk) 21:51, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      • I disagree. It may be inappropriate in particular cases, but it's not fundamentally opposed to the basic purpose of building an encyclopedia. There's a difference between the arguably suboptimal (e.g., starting a new page because of a news event instead of inserting a brief comment in an existing article) and material that is fundamentally inimical to a reference work. Don't want people adding things on the spur of the moment? Then don't ask volunteers to write your encyclopedia.
        talk) 22:08, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply
        ]
• Seems in the spirit of WP:DENY even if nothing was outright vandalism. Sennalen (talk) 21:32, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• It's an interesting illumination of priorities. Twitter people pile on to a verb change. I'm currently wondering why our Nobel Peace Prize article has two different SEK amounts, and no third-party source for either, when it seems that there's a rather complex tale to tell, involving exchange rates. Alas, this is paywalled for me.

  Morris, Chris (2022-10-05). "Nobel Peace Prize winners actually get a lot of money. Here's how much they can expect". Fortune.

  Uncle G (talk) 21:51, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• The current wording of the alert (Please do not leave messages here about the death of Henry Kissinger) is way overbroad. At face value, it means that I could be blocked for saying, e.g., "In the future, make sure to cite
  talk) 22:29, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]

  Yes, that is a rather obnoxious pointed way to phrase it rather than just speaking generally about people who just died. The immediate threat of blocking also seems wildly out of touch with the usual gentle warning system for those engaging in antics such as page vandalism. They have the courtesy of making three violations in a row before any moderation action is taken. Apparently Henry Kissinger is some sort of special case, for some inexplicable reason? Pericles of Athens^Talk 18:00, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Vice article, Daily Dot article, who's going to turn Changing of "is" to "was" in Henry Kissinger's Wikipedia article blue? jp×g🗯️ 00:11, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Saw a random reel on instagram from Vice about this whole ordeal. Iamreallygoodatcheckers ^talk 01:51, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Surely this topic should just be a section in

  talk) 05:41, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

  ]

• I do hope we're not setting a precedent here that we're going to police user talk pages based on some people's interpretation of what "brings the project into disrepute." We have always given considerable latitude to the sorts of conversations people are allowed to have on their user talk pages, and I've certainly never seen this level of fun police kiboshing barnstars and other light-hearted messages. I hope this doesn't become a trend. – bradv 02:07, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  This whole thread is fairly absurd, honestly. There was absolutely nothing urgent here that required an emergency courtesy blanking of someone's talk page. What exactly did doing that accomplish? What would've happened had we not? Parabolist (talk) 02:26, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Good questions.

  talk) 05:32, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  A noted, serial war criminal may not have been adequately white knighted for and come into marginal disrepute, I guess. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 05:42, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Wow, such a brave comment -- epic updoots for you, magnificent gentlesir, I'll see your cakeday and raise you a karma train! 🙄 Come on now, seriously though: there's no other circumstance in which a parade of seventy people throwing up random goofy shitposts on a person's talk page would pass without comment. Henry Kissinger being a douche has got basically nothing to do with it. I don't necessarily think that all of the stuff there has to be removed, but there's a point at which we have to consider the actual benefits obtained from uncritically indulging an epic le reddit social media mockery carnival, which seem pretty slim. Honestly, the way I see it, there are two possibilities:

  1. Somebody sees that giant walltext, on the user talk page, of people vigorously (and, it cannot be stressed enough: redditously) high-fiving each other about how epic it was that some old guy died, and concludes that Wikipedians are a bunch of idiot 12-year-olds.
  2. Somebody sees this giant walltext, on
     WP:AN
     , of people vigorously (although, at the very least, not redditously) arguing about whether to remove a bunch of smartass talk page comments, and concludes that Wikipedians are a bunch of idiot 12-year-olds.

  I think the solution is that we all go touch grass. jp×g🗯️ 07:26, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  "Henry Kissinger was a douche" reflects either such a shocking lack of understanding or such a deliberate oversimplification that it's to the point of nonsense. Also, as a counterpoint to some alleged reputational damage this will cause: the prevailing attitude I've heard off-site is that Wikipedia is governed by power-tripping "jannies" (often called "moderators" by people who don't know the terminology) who go largely unchecked in stamping out any contributions they personally don't like, and thus it's not even worth trying to get involved here. Obviously I don't believe that or I wouldn't be here, but this thread would strongly reinforce that belief as a perfect, high-profile example.TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 08:10, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  The purpose of the administrators' noticeboard is not to accurately reckon out moral culpability for war crimes, nor to host public competitions for who can give the most morally righteous diatribe against the people who carry them out. I can assure you I've given truly brutal vituperations on any variety of political subjects, including this one, in places where it was appropriate and useful for me to do so. jp×g🗯️ 09:51, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  To be fair, not much can be done about the public perception that Wikipedians are a bunch of idiot 12-year-olds governed by power-tripping "jannies" who go largely unchecked. Levivich (talk) 01:27, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

grandstand + streisand + L + ratio jp×g🗯️ 04:23, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Proud to do it for free. jp×g🗯️ 04:26, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Well, there is the matter of our reputation, I suppose. My off-wiki social circles are 100% "rot in Hell, war criminal" right now, and yet I can step away from that echo chamber and see that it is not a good look for us to be hosting a gravedancing party about a very divisive figure, especially when we're already getting media coverage over this exact edit. This is why, pace Bradv, removing userspace content that bring[s] the project into disrepute has been policy since 2007. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 06:31, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I did not want to, but I just raised protection on the talk page back to full. A bunch more reveling in this situation, including by ECP editors, led me to that. – Muboshgu (talk) 04:15, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Again, why are you micromanaging a user's talk page over edits congratulating them on appearing in news articles? What's even going on here? Parabolist (talk) 04:45, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

i see we have our priorities straight. ltbdl (talk) 04:53, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not exactly sure why you're removing everything. Like if some people are gravedancing then remove the rulebreaking posts, but i mean, it is a significant edit and at the very least I think the press Barnstar is warranted. Agree with Parabolist here. Asticky (talk) 04:55, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Along with everyone else here, I think it's unjust to state that awarding The Press Barnstar to someone who's been cited in at least two new services (at the time of writing) off Wikipedia is somehow "against policy" solely because of the content of said edit (again, the primary criterion was met). As I said in my initial message in your talk page, I was merely congratulating Asticky for being cited in the news with the appropriate barnstar. If you interpret this as gravedancing then I would like to question your own neutrality of the situation. Sauriazoicillus (talk) 05:20, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, this is not "reveling" or "gravedancing". Fully protecting a User talk page for two weeks over something that will blow over once it scrolls off people's Twitter feeds is an excessive measure. In this case, it's getting in the way of helping someone who hasn't made many edits become a more active participant in the community. What gives?

talk) 05:21, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

Two weeks is a mistake. I thought it was still two days. Ivanvector is right about the Streisand Effect. I lowered it down to auto again. – Muboshgu (talk) 05:24, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think the whole idea of protecting a user talk page for any of the reasons listed is absurd. I'm very tempted to reinstate the deleted comments as well, as it appears to be the clear consensus of this discussion that deleting them was inappropriate.

There's very little, in my view, that's actually inappropriate to post on a user's talk page, especially if the user themself is okay with it. I don't care that people are gravedancing about Kissinger on Asticky's talk page. It's Asticky's talk page and, barring something obviously illegal, it's ultimately up to her what goes there. Loki (talk) 05:34, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, I would like them reinstated if the admins deem that okay. I’m not really sure how much of a dog i have in this fight as a rando with like 20 edits who just happened to get lucky, but I think the decision to blanket wipe everything and lock the page seems excessive. Asticky (talk) 06:12, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

barring something obviously illegal, it's ultimately up to her what goes there That is

objectively incorrect, although maybe not as incorrect as the idea that there's clear consensus of this discussion that deleting them was inappropriate. But how about we say this: Asticky can restore any messages that she feels worth restoring and aren't clearly distasteful, and we play it by ear from there. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 06:24, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

Maybe just restore the entire page, instead of putting the onus on Asticky to decide what you mean by "clearly distasteful"? What's the line here? If she restores something you think "brings Wikipedia into disrepute", what happens then? Generally we've allowed an extremely large latitude to what's allowable on user talk pages, so it's extremely weird that we're suddenly so concerned about this. Parabolist (talk) 06:32, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

what happens then? That's what I was referring to by play it by ear from there. There can be a dialogue. I don't think anyone's looking to block a new user who's wound up suddenly in the spotlight and has acted completely reasonably here. And no, we don't allow extremely large latitude. We allow a lot, but it has its limits, and misusing Wikipedia as a webhost for politically sensitive material that may bring the project into disrepute is one of those limits. This isn't special treatment for Kissinger. I've removed grave-dancing in the past against everyone from Shinzo Abe to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 06:38, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have no delusions that this is special treatment for Kissinger, I'm familiar enough with the you and the other admins enough to give you that respect, I simply think this is the lot of you getting out over your skis. This required admin intervention? Politically sensitive libel like For breaking the news of an immortal being mortal. and I just wanna say that you're doing numbers on tumblr, hope you're having a fantastic fucking day? This is what's bringing Wikipedia into disrepute? My point is that if you think the content was removed inappropriately, which if you think it should be restored then it was, then the admins should have the courtesy and self reflection to do the damn deed themselves, rather than ask the new user they're embarrassing with a thread an AN to clean up after them. Parabolist (talk) 06:50, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There's only so much I can say or do when most/all other admins from the initial discussion are asleep. I've made my opinion clear. Asticky has shown reasonable judgment so far and I don't see a reason that would change now, which is why I'd personally be fine letting her pick out certain comments to restore. That's just one admin's opinion. The world will not end if we wait for sunrise and get some more perspectives. (UK admins just waking up around now...) -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 06:59, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You've linked the completely wrong guideline. The one that governs a user _talk_ page is

WP:OWNTALK

, which is substantially more permissive. Especially considering that congratulations over an edit pretty clearly are related to Wikipedia.

And incidentally, the guideline about editing another user's page is

WP:TPO, which strongly discourages removing other people's comments except in a handful of situations which don't apply here. Notably, incivility is specifically not an exception, so on-topic comments that are uncivil _still_ should not be removed. Loki (talk) 15:00, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

If you're going to wikilawyer, make sure you're actually right. The user page policy explicitly applies to Pages in the User and User talk namespaces. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 17:22, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, you're right. I missed that.

That being said, the vast majority of the messages removed were "notes related to your Wikipedia work and activities" which is explicitly allowed, and the removals were still not allowed under

WP:TPO

even of the gravedancing comments.

While this call is admittedly subjective, nothing I've seen so far has been "extremely offensive" to the degree it could be removed immediately under the user page policy. If the removal is more likely to bring Wikipedia into disrepute than the inclusion (which is objectively what's happened) then it's clearly not covered by the policy. And in general I object both to editing comments and to editing another person's page against their wishes. The gun was clearly jumped here and none of the removals should have happened when they did. Loki (talk) 18:20, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've gone ahead and

boldly restored all of these previous barnstars (minus the ones that could actually be seen as gravedancing), since Asticky themselves wants them restored and we shouldn't be policing what should and should not go on a user's talk page against their own wishes. SkyWarrior 14:03, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

Again, user talk pages are not the property of users, they are community pages just like any other and subject to policies and guidelines just like any other; a user's desire to have or not have particular content on their talk page is a factor in what can be on the page, but not the whole story. I saw your edit, and I've just restored the notice at the top of the page, with slightly modified wording which I hope satisfies some of the concerns expressed here about its content. @

instructions here, or feel free to ask for help) or else manually archive the messages to a subpage once in a while, otherwise your page might get too long and hamper communicating with you about other Wikipedia business. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:40, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

I've reverted @

WP:UPNOT, neither by the numbers nor on the strength of the arguments. (A number of arguments are just the same misunderstandings of how Wikipedia policies apply to user talk pages.) There is no rush. We can wait for a clear consensus one way or the other, and in the mean time we should err on the side of caution. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 17:39, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

If you're going to wikilawyer, make sure you're actually right. BRD is an essay, neither a policy or guideline, and is clearly about article content. UPNOT allows editors to immediately remove content without consensus when it is Extremely offensive, which barnstars that simply say Congratulations! clearly are. Was this removal an admin action, or was it part of the extremely offensive clause allowed to all users? Why are you doing this? What is the caution for? What harm are you preventing? This is quickly veering into Streisand territory, good god. Parabolist (talk) 17:48, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have repeatedly said which part of UPNOT applies: you may not include in your user space material that is likely to bring the project into disrepute (emphasis original). And content wasn't immediately removed. It was removed after discussion. Why am I doing this? Because, despite spending a large portion of my time in a far-left extremely-online bubble, I also know a lot of people from outside of that bubble, and I care about Wikipedia's reputation among them. This is an own goal. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 17:58, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

To be clear, that clause and the clause about removal of "extremely offensive" material are separate clauses. You cannot unilaterally remove any material that is "likely to bring the project into disrepute". Please stop edit-warring. Loki (talk) 18:23, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The implication of dozens of people gathering around to congratulate someone for changing "is" to "was" is obvious unless you deliberately ignore it. – Am I interpreting this correctly: you think the several editors here who do not object to the content in question are acting in bad faith? Furthermore, assuming for the sake of argument that BRD is applicable here, it was the reinstatement that was the revert here. What you're applying here is BRRD. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 17:51, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There was rough consensus to remove, so that's D. SkyWarrior called their action a bold one, so that's the start of a new BRD cycle. We're now back at D. And I have no idea where you're getting that implication of bad faith, Maddy. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 17:55, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"deliberately ignoring" something would in my mind always be bad-faith behaviour. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 17:56, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Bad-faith? No. Naïve, a bit recklessly so. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 18:02, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Have you considered backing off? Edit warring over a user talk page seems absolutely ridiculous to me. You've boldly/super boldly reverted and been reverted. Is it worth the hassle? This isn't indexed - it's not a BLP violation. There's no blatant celebration. You claim it's not an admin action yet repeatedly revert bold edits, not to mention the hypocrisy of receiving barnstars, while deleting others is...petty, at best. GRINCHIDICAE🎄 18:23, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, I don't have a lot of time right now but I'll look into that when I have a minute.

In the meantime, it seems like they were removed again, and I guess if this adds to the calculus, I don't really want people posting like "RIP Bozo" and stuff on my talk page, especially in light of all this, so that kind of risque/objectionable stuff that's beyond like "congrats on getting there first" will be removed by me. Asticky (talk) 18:22, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Asticky: I believe you now have the highest ratio of barnstars to edits of anyone in the history of the project. I'm confident that someone with that kind of record can manage their own talk page, just like the rest of us do. – bradv 18:30, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• (
  to step away. I'll just say this, with whatever credibility my status as a Noted Controversial Anarchist Wikipedian gets me: I've always tried to be an editor who's a leftist, not a leftist editor. It saddens me that some others are seemingly unable to draw that distinction for themselves. The best of luck to whoever tries to sort this mess. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 18:26, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]

  I really question your judgement if you think my single edit, save for a response to Parabolist to be edit warring. GRINCHIDICAE🎄 18:28, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  And even if we are, and we aren't, her edit doesn't also count? Because she quoted an essay about editing article space? Ridiculous. Removing talk page comments in userspace is not to be done lightly, and we don't need consensus to undo something done out of process. Parabolist (talk) 18:31, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Yeah, per

  WP:TPO: Cautiously editing or removing another editor's comments is sometimes allowed, but normally you should stop if there is any objection. (Emphasis mine.) The standard for restoring comments on a talk page is not "consensus" it is "any objection", because the assumption is that you should usually not edit comments without a good reason. Loki (talk) 18:35, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  I think this is grandstanding and I think it's clear that you are the one who's edit warring. I see a clear consensus here to restore the comments that are not gravedancing, and most importantly Asticky also wants the material restored. As far as I can tell you're the only one who's objected to the restoration of those comments, actually: the other admins involved in the original removal either haven't commented or are explicitly neutral. Loki (talk) 18:31, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• What the hell? I'm not super familiar with Kissinger, but 30+ congratulations messages for making an unsourced edit saying he died? BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:54, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• There is no policy-based reason to forcibly remove material from Asticky's talk page. There is no policy-based purpose in forcibly removing material from Asticky's talk page. There is no policy-based encyclopedic benefit in forcibly removing material from Asticky's talk page. And there is no policy-based consensus to forcibly remove material from Asticky's talk page. ——Serial 19:06, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  This. -- ferret (talk) 19:32, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  No, but there is a clear policy against edit warring, the aptly-named

  edit warring policy. Praxidicae, Parabolist, AND Tamzin: consider yourselves warned, I will block you if you keep this up. None of this is urgent. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 20:09, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  I'm sorry, can you please explain how I edit warred with a single edit to a talk page? I'll gladly take a block, even idenfinitely if something has somehow changed in my absence. This admonishment is absolutely ridiculous though. GRINCHIDICAE🎄 20:17, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  PS: This is why editor retention sucks. You threaten people without looking at any type of history, apparently. Go ahead and indef me, @Ivanvector 😘 GRINCHIDICAE🎄 20:21, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Sorry, @Serial Number 54129 you're too guilty to comment here. Judge has ruled. Bring in the lobsters. 🦞 This applies to you too, Ferret, you heathen. GRINCHIDICAE🎄 20:51, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Look, this is all getting blown way out of proportion. I get that it's a sensitive issue and emotions are thick here, but please, everyone, take a step back before you say something (or something more) that you regret. I am the one who originally removed the comments, if you have an issue with that then direct your ire at me, not anyone else who has commented here.

Regarding the original removal, there were comments among those I mass-removed which were unacceptable, and in what seemed to be an urgent situation it seemed better to me to remove them all then to selectively review and wait for discussion, as

the policy suggests

. The removed comments were available in the history, and subsequent to my action there have been many eyes on them and more rational (and some irrational) discussion here about what policy compels to be removed without discussion. While I would not have restored them at the point in the discussion where they were restored, there's also no compelling reason to urgently remove them again, nor is edit warring ever allowed, period. The discussion is trending in the other direction, by my reading, but some other unfortunate soul will have the burden of closing this.

I happen to strongly agree with Tamzin and some other administrators here who find this whole course of events to have been in exceedingly poor taste. However, taste is not a policy on Wikipedia, and administrators are not above consensus. None of us gets to remove material just because we don't like it, and we have a whole policy subsection on not removing material just because it

might be considered offensive. If there isn't a clear affirmative consensus here that the remaining comments should be removed, then they shouldn't be. Someone can feel free to make that proposal with a policy-backed rationale any time, but it's certainly not improving the situation at all that we all keep sniping at each other about it. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 20:54, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

Accusing people of being emotional after your comments is like some serious A+ Wikipedian shit. Bravo. And writing paragraphs about why everyone else is wrong. Well, mwah. 👌 GRINCHIDICAE🎄 21:03, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I mostly agree with you here, excepting that I think it's a good idea to spend a little more time in the future to consider if what seems like an urgent situation is really so urgent. Hasty decisions are usually not good ones, and the process of writing an encyclopedia contains very few situations that truly require an urgent reaction. Loki (talk) 21:27, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

While I agree with Loki above that this was never actually an urgent situation, the fact is that the situation as it stands (the talkpage is nearly fully restored, barring some of the worst comments) is roughly the correct one, so I'm fine with this. Parabolist (talk) 22:32, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate the criticism. All I can say about the perceived urgency is that it's perhaps easy to say that a situation is not urgent when you are not in the middle of it and have the benefit of retrospect. I'm definitely not saying that makes it right, only that that's where I was coming from at the time. Looking back on everything a day or so later, I agree that it probably was not urgent, and this thread here probably made a bigger mess of things than if we had just let the talk page be, but none of us can fix any of that now so let's just try to get it right going forward. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 00:04, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Ivanvector, full disclosure: I certainly INVOLVED when it comes to Praxidicae but I am a bit sad you've ignored the question she's asked about why her engaging in the second step of BRD merits a blocking threat for edit warring. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:46, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• We shouldn't be policing harmless comments on user talk pages like this; blatant BLP violations should be removed, however BLP requires neutrality and it seems that perceived negative comments about a deceased person are being treated far more harshly than condolences would be. Editors should be given leeway to react to a death as they see fit, not restricted to mourning only. I would also add that the Vice and Daily Dot articles are silly throwaway pieces that will be quickly forgotten. Doubling down and banning these barnstars is a great way to appear in additional news cycles and be seen as an officially pro-Kissinger community, which may be even more damaging to our reputation than a bunch of thank-yous on some random user talk page. –dlthewave ☎ 23:28, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Now that I'm off of work, I'll comment further on this.

  Yes, I'm aware that users don't "own" their user talk page, however it is my opinion that we should not remove comments from user's talk pages, unless it's blatant vandalism or

  BLP violations, which most of the barnstars aren't; especially so if the user in question objects to removal. I also object to the re-addition of the banner at top, though I will not remove it and will leave it to Asticky

  to decide if she wants it or not. I will also concede that maybe my restoration of the barnstars may have been done a bit hastily, but to be fair so was the removal in the first place. (And for the love of god the "Press Barnstar" is not gravedancing, the initial notice was not meant to be "broadly construed" (at least it shouldn't have been), and Asticky's user talk should not have been put back to full protection).

  Contrary to what

  involved

  in? You may be right but please leave that to someone uninvolved in this whole mess to do.

• All in all, I believe everyone, including myself, could have behaved a little better, and I think we should use this as a learning experience. SkyWarrior 01:26, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  +1 regarding the blocking threat - reading that in the thread above left a sour taste in my mouth to say the least. Best, ^user:A smart kitten_meow 08:12, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• we have a new candidate for the
  lamest edit war. ltbdl (talk) 03:02, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• WP:BLPTALK - ie. something actually capable of harming a recently-deceased person's reputation - but to be a violation that would have to be contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced, ie. actually making some sort of claim; and I don't think that that applies to barnstars and the like. You can't blank most of an editor's talk page just because you think it's in poor taste, and if the goal is to avoid harm to Wikipedia's reputation then continuing to push the issue once the removal has been contested is only going to make things worse per the Streisand effect. --Aquillion (talk) 10:34, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Makes me wonder exactly how much reputational damage some of you think WP's going to suffer because we have this stuff on the Main Page the Kissinger article some mainspace article? oh a random User talk that now has less than 300 views a day and will probably go to 0 in a week. The reputational damage of all of us looking like constipated micromanaging megalomaniacs drunk on our own power seems a bit larger imo. AryKun (talk) 20:23, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Other user pages

We're also seeing this grave dancing behaviour on the user pages of other editors; for example, on the user page of an editor who vandalised the article. BilledMammal (talk) 05:23, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Random aside

@

Death and Wikipedia article in your original post; I just removed a blatant falsehood from it in the English version and all of the article's translations. (Graham87 (talk) 05:58, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

For the interested, the Kissinger-thing has some media-coverage:[5][6] Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:52, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Awkward. Kissinger was a very divisive figure, seen negatively by large numbers outside the US. And I understand that the "recently dead until 6 months or so later" extension of

WP:BLP was quietly changed a couple of years ago, and the discussion on whether to reinstate the former rules is only just getting started. I suspect many admins still operate under the old rules; but anyone looking for the policy will currently see The only exception would be for people who have recently died, in which case the policy can extend based on editorial consensus for an indeterminate period beyond the date of death—six months, one year, two years at the outside.—a requirement to achieve consensus before applying BLP rules to, say, Kissinger. As Gråbergs Gråa Sång has just noted, we're getting press for what's happened here. And from where I stand, we've bitten a load of newbies who were not (so far as I've seen) gravedancing about Kissinger's death; they had discovered via social media that Wikipedia has a community of editors, and discovered we have talk pages, and discovered there's a barnstar generator. The term "party" used by some on Asticky's talk page may make some of us wince—particularly in the context of the celebrated edit being to change someone from "is" to "was"—but what we've effectively done here is tell a whole bunch of interested new editors that we have byzantine rules and hate fun. I've half a mind to welcome em all, but it's probably too late. (And that would use up most of my edits for this month.) Please. Put a friendly note at the top of the user talk page, or let Asticky write one herself, restore the barnstars, wikilurve, and other effusions, leave it unprotected, and let's all go worry about more important things than whether it's nice to want to be first. Yngvadottir (talk) 10:13, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

Definitely tangentially related, but having the Hong Kong 97 music in the background while reading this thread was a very strange experience. DrowssapSMM (talk) (contributions) 00:07, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Backlog at SPI

Kindly participate to clear the backlog of Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations. Aman Kumar Goel ^(Talk) 12:36, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've pushed through the majority of the "endorsed for checkuser" cases, which did not really help the backlog. A large proportion of cases are the "open" set, which any administrator with a reasonable handle on the

WT:SPI/C is the application page. We are actively discussing applications on the functionaries' mailing list. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 22:00, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

I bet he wished he hadn't asked now. Asks for the SPI backlog to be cleared, 1 December; checkuser blocked two days later. Blimey. ——Serial 15:54, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Closing the RfC question

I would ask the interested admin to close RfC question in the Christopher Columbus article. Thank you. Talk:Christopher_Columbus#RfC:_Should_Columbus_be_described_as_an_Italian_or_Genoese_explorer_in_the_introduction_part? Mikola22 (talk) 14:54, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@

close request noticeboard. Nemov (talk) 15:16, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

FYI, I closed the RFC last night, mentioning IMHO User:Mikola22's efforts on that article's talk page were pushing the envelope. This morning, they've started another RFC with similar focus. I'm almost ready to file something at ANI. BusterD (talk) 14:52, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

BusterD thanks for closing the RFC. As for the new RFC, it concerns information that was not in question in the old RFC. Previous RFC had a question based on sources(RS) Italian/Genoese, since I can't open RFC with a non-source based question. That RFC cannot give legitimacy to some information from Columbus article (in Italian note) which is possible without any confirmation in the sources(RS). Nor was my intention to legitimize some information(in Italian note) with previous RFC, which may or may not be in accordance with the rules. When in previous RFC I initiated a discussion in that direction because I did not want that my RFC legitimize this information, no one joined discussion. Now this RFC is an official discussion about this information. As an editor, I have to make sure that every piece of information is in accordance with the source. And this is my intention with the first RFC and with the second RFC. Unfortunately, in 40 days, not a single editor explained from where information (from Italian note) came from. The only thing is that one editor said that it was information from Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 – AD 79), called Pliny the Elder. I've been researching that information for about twenty days, but I haven't found a single RS that contains that information. Mikola22 (talk) 15:56, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Please keep your discussion about content on the CC talk page. My comment here is about your behavior. BusterD (talk) 15:58, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I've explained my position and if I broke some rules you don't have to wait for anything. File something at ANI and I will answer there in a similar context. If the initiation of RFC is for ANI, then I can't do anything against it. Mikola22 (talk) 16:27, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Functionary candidates: December 2023 community consultation open

The Arbitration Committee has received applications for functionary permissions from several editors, consistent with its previous announcement that applications for CheckUser and/or Oversight permissions will be accepted at any point in the year. The following editors have applied for the CheckUser permission and have subsequently been reviewed and vetted by the functionary team, and the community is invited to comment on the associated consultation pages:

• Spicy (talk · contribs) (consultation)
• Vanamonde93 (talk · contribs) (consultation)

The community consultations will remain open through 11 December 2023.

For the Arbitration Committee, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 04:15, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard § Functionary candidates: December 2023 community consultation open

Arbitration motion regarding Ireland article names - required location of move discussions rescinded

The Arbitration Committee has resolved by motion that:

The two Ireland page name move discussion restrictions enacted in June 2009 are rescinded.

For the Arbitration Committee, firefly ( t · c ) 17:59, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard § Arbitration motion regarding Ireland article names - required location of move discussions rescinded

Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#WP:ECR

The OP would read:

Hi, while WP:ECR has recently been amended to specifically restrict interactions of non-ECP users on protected talk pages, pages such as WP:GS/RUSUKR have not been amended to reflect this change. Is there a process for these pages to be updated? Cinderella157 (talk) 05:43, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Please comment at VP. Cinderella157 (talk) 05:47, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Why I am blocked for Vandalism

Please administrators, why you blocked my account named Wilhelm the bad 2001:D08:229B:3F9E:90D7:A090:C79B:52D6 (talk) 09:47, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Your account is blocked as a sockpuppet. Log in to your account to request unblocking, do not further evade your block. 331dot (talk) 10:00, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Appealing a temporary block on a page, as well as requesting more severe action against User:QuestFour

Following my report against

Wikipedia:Administrators noticeboard/Edit warring#User:QuestFour reported by User:Theknine2 (Result: Both users blocked from page for three months)

). I find this block to be unfair for me, as QuestFour continuously rejected the rationales we have listed on why the US/international single cover is more appropriate, instead of the UK single cover that QuestFour uploaded.

There is significant evidence that QuestFour has a history of inciting edit wars (User talk:QuestFour), including regarding album/single covers. Additionally, there is now a consensus on the article talk page (Talk:Honey_(Mariah_Carey_song)#File:Honey_Mariah_Carey_Single.png) that now supports my initial proposal to use the US/international single cover, which was distrupted by the edit war that QuestFour incited. Hence, I request that my temporary block be reassessed, as well as to impose a more serious block against QuestFour.

Theknine2 (talk) 10:14, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• The blocks, which are after all only on a single image page, do not seem unreasonable as neither party appeared to wish to stop their slow-moving edit war. As an aside, what a ridiculous thing to edit-war over, though - does anyone really care which of two very similar images which perform the same task are used in the infobox? Black Kite (talk) 11:36, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Touché. Makes it even more frustrating for me, wasting time in talk page discussions with QuestFour, and I assume the past users who have been in disputes with this user would feel the same too. Theknine2 (talk) 12:27, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  So why did you then? 17:23, 3 December 2023 (UTC) Nil Einne (talk) 17:23, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Just one point, Theknine2, which you sound like you might have misunderstood. Who is right and who is wrong in an edit war is *not* decided by who the consensus eventually agrees with. If two of you edit war (no matter who started it), you are *both* equally wrong. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:58, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• If consensus has been reached then surely one of the others who agrees with you can change the image file? After that there will be no reason to edit it, so it doesn't matter that you are blocked from it.
  Phil Bridger (talk) 13:06, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• They already have. Black Kite (talk) 13:08, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Fair point, I'll just let the block expire by itself then. Thanks. Theknine2 (talk) 13:52, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have closed the case at

RFC. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:38, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

As Black Kite says, the images of Ms. Carey are not different enough to have been worth edit-warring about. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:38, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Serious question. Why is QuestFour still on the site? His talk page shows he's been being disruptive and edit warring since he joined Wikipedia. The term "edit war" is mentioned on his talk page 96 times. Qwexcxewq (talk) 03:01, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think raw counts like that can easily be misleading. QuestFour seems to have made just under 9000 edits since the beginning of 2021 which is a decent chunk. In that time there seems to have been 4 separate notices about edit warring including this one which while arguably still too high, is way less than 96 would suggest. Looking at the other comments from 2021 onwards, there are a few more which could related to problematic behaviour but frankly not that many, most of the stuff seems to be about orphan non free images.

Further there are 122 matches for revert in their most recent 3000 edits, 292 in their second most recent 3000 and 483 in their third most recent 3000. Note that this will include stuff like reverted tags i.e. cases where they were reverted and potentially some edits may be counted twice or more. But it will exclude any reverts that missed any automatic tagging or edit summaries and where they didn't use revert in the edit summary.

If all these reverts were edit warring, it would be way too many but this is unlikely and it's difficult to know what percentage without further analysis e.g. random sampling. E.g. a RC patroler would likely have a edit history full of reverts without problem and while I'm fairly sure QuestFour isn't one it does show why raw counts aren't that useful on their own.

Note it may be that QuestFour was more problematic in the past but we don't punish editors for a troubled past. Nor for not archiving their talk page.

Nil Einne (talk) 07:43, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. A quick look at the specific edits suggests to me most of their most recent edits seem to be gnomish ones to articles on Japanese people. While I'm a bit surprised some of these edits are necessary especially the removal of unused fields from infoboxes since it seems to me a task better suited to an actual bot. Especially since these edits aren't made as part of wider edits. But they don't seem to fall into the clear disruptive category. And it doesn't look like anyone has talked to them about these changes.

Also the main recent concern about edit warring or disruption seems to have been them replacing album artworks with ones felt less suited either without ever offering an explanation or like here where they did but people didn't agree with it.

So IMO, if some sort of action were warranted it would make more sense for this to be something like a topic ban on replacing album artworks. If it's felt some of their gnomish edits aren't productive they should be spoken to about this first.

I will say beyond the album artwork issue, several people have spoken to them about edit summaries and their use of summaries is arguably still low which may not be a good sign. Still they should be given the chance if there is some problem.

Nil Einne (talk) 08:14, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Request for review of editing restrictions

I have had several editing restrictions in place since march.

• Immanuelle is limited to one user account.
• Immanuelle is prohibited from using any AI-assisted editing tools, or machine translation from any language, in any article or draft. They must also ensure that no content added to articles violates copyright.
• Immanuelle is prohibited from self-publishing articles to mainspace or reverting draftification. Any new articles must be submitted via Wikipedia:Articles for creation.
• Immanuelle must not merge content into other articles as a response to having a draft declined or an article nominated for deletion.

I have been having a lot of success with making high quality articles recently.

I want them to be reviewed and possibly loosened now.

I have two main requests

1. Some kind of review of the merging restriction. I do not believe it is fulfilling its purpose
2. The opportunity to attempt to prove my translation competence

Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 20:28, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Merging

• Immanuelle must not merge content into other articles as a response to having a draft declined or an article nominated for deletion.

This one causes a lot of problems because a lot of draft declines are done with explicit requests to merge the content into articles, or are declined because the article already exists under a different name. I want some kind of a system in place to allow for the merging from a declined draft, or the lifting of the restriction altogether. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 20:28, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I want to clarify here that I have violated and received a 24 hour block in the past over this. @Galobtter can speak more on it and how I have found this one particularly obtrusive. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 21:13, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Proving translation competence

• Immanuelle is prohibited from using any AI-assisted editing tools, or machine translation from any language, in any article or draft. They must also ensure that no content added to articles violates copyright.

I want to have an exemption to this restriction for

Draft:Horaisan Kofun to attempt to prove I am competent. I want that draft to be reviewed with a lot more scrutiny than a typical submission so people can judge my competence with it, because I believe I am more competent than people have thought I was, and want to attempt to prove that to the community. This was suggested by @Knowledgekid87 who has also agreed to help with looking over my translation, and who already established the notability and good sourcing of the Japanese article.Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 20:28, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

Knowledgekid87's userpage lists their level of competence in Japanese as 0.5 (i.e. between "none" and "basic"). I don't think they would be the best person to verify the accuracy of Japanese translations. Spicy (talk) 20:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Spicy ideally I would want either @Eirikr or @Dekimasu to do the reviewing. They are the people I personally trust the most in this area. But KnowledgeKid87 is the only person who has volunteered so far. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 20:59, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

My time is limited of late, and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. That said, if a review is either short, or can take place over an extended period, I am happy to help as best I can. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:59, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Clarifications

• Immanuelle is prohibited from self-publishing articles to mainspace or reverting draftification. Any new articles must be submitted via Wikipedia:Articles for creation.

I want to clarify whether I am allowed to create disambiguation pages without going through AFC

• Immanuelle is limited to one user account.

I want to clarify whether I am allowed to ip editImmanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 20:28, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

• Immanuelle is prohibited from self-publishing articles to mainspace or reverting draftification. Any new articles must be submitted via Wikipedia:Articles for creation.

The AFC restriction used to cause me a lot of issues, but since the backlog drive, I have been receiving timely reviews for all my submissions. I am happy with this and do not want to appeal it now. But I have had some comments from AFC reviewers saying my submissions seemed like they shouldn't have to go through AFC. So long as the backlog does not become massive again, I do not have much desire to get this lifted.

Tagging @Galobtter the restriction imposing admin. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 20:27, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@

WP:GAB for some help with what makes a good request. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:44, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

@Femke I apologize for that. However I did tag the admin involved with the block.

This particular violated restriction is one I believe no longer serves the purpose it was imposed for. It was put in place to prevent me from merging in content from articles rejected due to bad translation or ai generated content. As I am not producing said content it now generally has played the role of preventing me from merging not independently notable content into articles. @Asilvering and @Galobtter have both experienced situations of ambiguity where I was really unable to do simple requested merges or partial merges from such drafts. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 20:55, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The block occurred when I attempted to merge

Draft:Content I want to merge into Mechanical and organic solidarity into Mechanical and organic solidarity as it was an already existing article and the draft declined on the basis of not establishing notability. This is an example of a situation where I have no way of actually getting permission to merge the content. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 21:03, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

@Immanuelle, thanks for tagging me here for clarification. I'm glad you've been focusing more on quality recently and have made efforts to find better sources. Your success rate at AfC is going up, and that is very good to see too. But I don't think you are ready for any of these restrictions to be removed yet. For clarity, it is my understanding of your restrictions that you are allowed to edit in mainspace, and that there is nothing preventing you from editing a mainspace article in response to a draft decline at AfC; what you can't do is directly merge declined content into an extant article. I have not yet declined a draft of yours that has made me think "this should go as-is into mainspace, just in a different article", so I don't see any reason why you would need a restriction lifted that would allow you to do that. Moreoever, if you want to lift editing restrictions that were applied after consensus on an ANI thread, you're going to have to show people that you have been editing successfully with those restrictions. You were only just at ANI a month ago for the issues with your drafts, so I don't think you're going to be able to do that. Please - you need to be patient, and you need to slow down. -- asilvering (talk) 22:46, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Asilvering Yeah it might be prudent to be a bit more patient

At the same time though I am made a bit afraid of lots of edits. I feel I'd like at least something of the form where I can ask for approval from an AFC reviewer or admin or similar to get an exemption for the first restriction. Such as being able to rewrite a declined draft into a paragraph or section and ask for approval. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 00:05, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose as not ready yet, and I still have concerns about hat collecting and needing credit for creations. This is an example of a situation where I have no way of actually getting permission to merge the content. if someone else thinks it's necessary, they'll do so. There is no reason you need to be the one doing the merge. Focus on quality over quantity and also maybe do something about the sig? Not a policy issue, but doesn't seem appropriate for an encyclopedia. Just my 02. Star Mississippi 02:46, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  @Star Mississippi you make a good point about that tbh. Would you consider it against policy for me to post on the talk pages of articles that I want to merge these paragraphs from the draft but have the restriction in place, or to ask other users to do it? I am concerned that declined drafts will just end up being never seen. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 03:36, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I believe that would fall afoul of

  WP:PROXYING. What's the concern about them never being seen? That's the case for many drafts. YOu might be able to leave the suggestion as a comment for an AfC reviewer but that's a question for @Asilvering Star Mississippi 03:55, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  It looks like

  WP:PROXYING has an exception for content that is verifiable and productive, with the proviso that whatever editor does the edit takes full responsibility for it. I can't speak for anyone other than myself, but I wouldn't want to do that. -- asilvering (talk) 04:39, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

  ]

A lengthy observation that might clarify some otherwise strange-seeming claims above: Immanuelle seems to create content like someone creates a scrapbook: assembled from pieces they've taken from elsewhere. I don't mean (necessarily) plagiarizing. I mean more fundamentally that if they don't already have a sentence in front of them to shuffle/reorganize, they are effectively unable to produce content at a pace faster than a slow crawl. That's why so many of their 50k edits are just shuffling sentences and paragraphs from other articles and other wikis into different arrangements. That's also why they've introduced copyright/close paraphrasing problems, and why some of their recent AfC successes contain basically the same structure and statements as entire passages of cited sources, just with simplified vocabulary and grammar.

I think this observation explains two otherwise inexplicable things about this request. First, to Star Mississippi's point, why bother copy/pasting rejected content wholesale into an article rather than just writing new content directly into mainspace? Because they can't, at least without slowing waaaaaay down. To go fast, they have to assemble content from other bits. But the bits are in the rejected drafts, you see, so they're basically stuck, from their perspective. Second, to Ivanvector's point, why use machine translation if you're sufficiently capable in the language that you can verify the sources anyway? Because they can't quickly or easily produce new sentences/paragraphs that summarize claims in their own words. That's why they "need" machine translation: to generate the pieces that they can rearrange/rewrite. If they have to actually slow down and manually translate into their own words, their productivity will greatly decrease. In my opinion that's good for the encyclopedia, but I can also see how it's frustrating for Immanuelle personally. Indignant Flamingo (talk) 00:16, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Indignant Flamingo with AFC as it stands right now I'd be happy to adhere to your older proposed restriction of only 20 drafts at a time, and really put high levels of effort into them and spend long periods on them. That was not a feasible restriction back when every draft took 4 months to get reviewed, but now that it is more like a week, it is quite feasible, although I am afraid it will rise up to a 4 month wait period again.

I am currently at 2,491 drafts now, down from a high of 3,946 drafts so almost a 40% reduction in the count, and I have no doubt that I will be able to get the count down a lot lower in the future. There's a lot more pages out there that I am not bumping.

My ideal workflow on

Draft:Horaisan Kofun

if the request were accepted would likely go something like this

• Make a machine translation of the Japanese article and have the original text
• Go through each sentence painstakingly correcting and writing comment notes about how I interpreted each part, and in edit histories
• Once that is finished go through all the claims, try to find English language sources and compare what they say. Maybe try to find Japanese language sources myself, but stay on the simpler side for Japanese language sources
• Then add any new information I think is missing or necessary in the article.
• Ask someone like @Eirikr or @Dekimasu to look over everything I did
• Submit to AFC if they think it was well done

This would take a long time to do. But I'd be very happy to do it. It's an area I'm passionate about, and I believe I have the specific competency for this, but just as with earlier, last year I needed to slow down to actually do it well.

I think your heart is really in the right place with the appeals to slow down, but I feel without being given the opportunity to edit more freely, it won't let me improve as much as you are hoping.

Among my drafts I am through a lot of the drafts that I considered my best ones or the ones most likely to prove notability. And I am also not under the pressure to rush everything through that ANI gave. I also don't feel the strong temptation to attempt to get everything through the short AFC queue because although it is lengthening. It looks like it will long term be more like this, and the ones I was most concerned with are already through. I currently have only one active draft submission Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 02:48, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

But why would you do this, and use up a lot of another editor's time checking your work, when you could write articles for which sufficient English-language sources exist? There's no shortage of these topics. -- asilvering (talk) 04:55, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Asilvering ideally I would be able to gain enough trust to not need my work checked long term, only short term, and I feel if I manage to achieve this, then I will be able to offer something to wikipedia that I couldn't otherwise.

An example is my attempts at investigating this quote

In

Ame-no-hohi, and Amanomichine, together with the descendants of Amenohoakari are referred to as Tenson-zoku. The Tenson-zoku descended from Takamagahara (Plain of High Heaven) to Owari and Tanba provinces, and are considered to be the ancestors of Owari, Tsumori, Amabe, and Tanba clans.^[1]

However, it is clear that Amabe-shi Keizu, which records these four clans as descendants of Amenohoakari, is a forged document,[2] and that these clans actually descended from the sea deity Watatsumi. In addition, Owari clan's genealogy includes the great-grandson of Watatsumi, Takakuraji, as their ancestor, and this is considered to be the original genealogy.^[3]

— 太西, ^[4]

Which revealed a lot of interesting context I believe I could add to it if I was allowed to use Japanese sources. This is a topic that I do not think any English publications have been written on yet.

There are definitely a lot of areas that I could help with that I think would be worth at least giving me a shot for. In the end I am just requesting to do something in draftspace that won't be overwhelming editors. It isn't like I'll submit 200 such articles all at once to AFC or anything. I'll be taking my time with this to be especially careful I get everything right. Eirikr said he'd be willing to help and he is really competent with Japanese.

This won't be disruptive if done at a small scale in draftspace, even if I end up completely failing at it. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 07:35, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If you machine translate an article, then you would not be interpreting any of the parts. Your point 3 is also highly worrying, why would you not go directly to sources instead of having prior steps? CMD (talk) 06:07, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Chipmunkdavis I would be interpreting parts because I would not be doing a pure machine translation, I'd just be using it as one of many components in my translation efforts.

It would be probably more useful for me to directly interpret Japanese sources for a lot of situations. But I cannot offer as much transparency about what I am doing there since it would involve hosting copyrighted materials on wikipedia

As far as english language sources go, I could definitely make an article on Horaisan/Horaiyama Kofun entirely with English sources. But the problem is that it will not accomplish this goal of demonstrating competency. In reality the steps will be mixed together and not always firmly differentiated, but I generally believe this will be able to demonstrate competency and help create articles which are better than ones that would be made otherwise. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 06:30, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Immanuelle, you say But I cannot offer as much transparency about what I am doing there since it would involve hosting copyrighted materials on wikipedia. This sounds very much like you're planning to violate the WP:User pages guideline. Why would you do this? You could 'host copyrighted materials' on your own device. Or if you haven't space there, in cloud storage. Why must everything be stored on Wikipedia servers? (See also my unanswered question from last month about the possibility of Immanuelle's keeping drafts on her own computer.) BlackcurrantTea (talk) 07:42, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@BlackcurrantTea I think you are misunderstanding

Translating wikipedia article content due to the licensing is something I could easily show transparently through edit history what I am doing and my thought proces for it.

I can definitely copy the text of a website I find into a word document, write my own translation with notes and such and send it to another editor for review. But that is harder and requires me to actively send it

This is why I believe for proving my competence, wikipedia pages are preferable. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 08:03, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I read this yesterday, and thought I'd come back to it with fresh eyes today and it would make more sense. It sounds as if you're saying that it's preferable to keep copyrighted material in your user pages because that way it's easier for another editor to compare the copyrighted material with your translation of it. Is this what you mean? Please explain if I've got the wrong end of the stick, because there aren't any exceptions listed for keeping copyrighted material in WP:User pages. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 12:35, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks @Indignant Flamingo: I think this observation explains two otherwise inexplicable things about this request. is absolutely true. @Immanuelle:, you've made it clear why you want to do these things, but not why the project needs them. AfC review time is low now, but it will go back up. It always does after a backlog drive. You're going to need to learn to be patient, as there is no rush to create content. Several thousand drafts is not necessarily a good thing. Improve those you have, and then maybe worry about the restrictions. Things will get to mainspace eventually. Star Mississippi 15:03, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal

I'd propose that the following occur, perhaps as a way to give a little rope while still keeping the restrictions basically in place:

• The first restriction, titled Immanuelle is limited to one user account. is interpreted to prevent the intentional usage by Immanuelle of an IP address rather than their user account, as this would prevent transparency regarding their editing and compliance with the restrictions placed on them.
• The second restriction, titled Immanuelle is prohibited from using any AI-assisted editing tools, or machine translation from any language, in any article or draft. They must also ensure that no content added to articles violates copyright. is modified to read, "Immanuelle is prohibited from using any AI-assisted editing tools, or machine translation from any language, in any article or draft. They must also ensure that no content added to articles violates copyright. This restriction may be lifted on individual drafts by any administrator, so long as an experienced translator, in the opinion of the administrator, is actively working with Immanuelle on the draft in question."
• The third restriction, titled Immanuelle is prohibited from self-publishing articles to mainspace or reverting draftification. Any new articles must be submitted via Wikipedia:Articles for creation. is interpreted to include disambiguation pages.
• The fourth restriction, titled Immanuelle must not merge content into other articles as a response to having a draft declined or an article nominated for deletion. remains in effect. Any uninvolved editor remains able to merge content for Immanuelle, in accordance with
  WP:PROXYING
  .

The basic summary of the proposal above:

• Immanuelle cannot edit from an IP to conceal their contributions. (Pretty much covered by
  WP:LOGOUT
  anyways.)
• Immanuelle can only utilize AI-assisted editing tools/machine translation under the supervision of an experienced translator, and must gain permission from an administrator prior to doing so.
• The restriction against self-publishing to mainspace or reverting drafticiation shall include disambiguation pages.
• The restriction against merging content remains.
  WP:PROXYING
  already covers any merging that needs to take place, and I don't see any way that the community would consider lifting this restriction given the block not even a full month ago for violating the restriction.

EggRoll97 ^(talk) 08:03, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If you're under a restriction that you must use one account, then editing while logged out is

evading the restriction. Fine to clarify that here but the restriction doesn't need to be amended. The second restriction, that they may not use AI assistance or machine translation, does not restrict them from manually translating an article (with the proper attribution please) and having an editor experienced in both languages review it, and copyright violations are not allowed anyway; that restriction also needs no amendment but I oppose the amendment proposed, since nobody should be publishing AI- or machine-assisted translations anyway. The rest I have no comment on. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:13, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

@Ivanvector machine translation is allowed on wikipedia if you properly verify it with your own knowledge. My intention would be to mostly rely on English sources to verify things, but occasionally cite Japanese sourcs. I do believe I have the required knowledge, but was being negligent earlier. I wouldn't be doing raw content Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 23:09, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

1. OCLC 959773242
   .
2. ^ Hoga, Toshio (2006). Kokuho「Amabe-shi Keizu」he no gimon, Kokigi no Heya (国宝「海部氏系図」への疑問 古樹紀之房間). Japan.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
3. ^ Hoga, Toshio (2006). Tango no Amabe-shi no Shutsuji to sono ichizoku, Kokigi no Heya (丹後の海部氏の出自とその一族). Japan.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
4. ^ "Amenohoakari", Wikipedia, 2021-03-24, retrieved 2023-12-05

Disruptive, bigoted editing by IP likely still under admin block

Divisive,

WP:NOTHERE

and suggest indef.

• [7] In response to block, calls Acroterion "an overfed pig"
• [8] Doubles down on Acroterion in response to block, calling them a "dupe of an Israeli operative" and a "goof"
• [9] Triples down, calling Acroterion a "pig", calling users "Nazis" and telling them to "go back to Germany." (I guess referring to the Jews?)
• [10] Calls article lede "bullshit" and to "just rename it Israpedia already, goofs"
• [11] Removing sourced material, uses edit summary to dismiss "Zionists"
• [12] Removed more sourced mateiral

Longhornsg (talk) 23:44, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Blocked, page ecp'd. Let me know when they pop back up. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 23:56, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Dealing with WikiEdu editors adding complete junk to articles.

Over at Rabbit, WikiEdu student Asi102 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has been adding completely unsourced, unencyclopedic junk [13] [14]. Given that they are are a WikiEdu student, what am I supposed to do in this situation? Am I just supposed to let them add it for the duration of the class? Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:23, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Considering you're the vastly experienced editor and this student has made a grand total of 19 contributions, I'd hope you could avoid shouting at the student (in edit summary) as if they're totally responsible for your apparent resentment against the program. Adding feedback as opposed to merely reverting the entire work would be the preferred behavior. BusterD (talk) 00:41, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well, no, this was pretty much a

WP:TNT case if I've ever seen one. However, the edit summaries were way out of line, Hemi. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 00:45, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

I agree. If you see a student editor adding unencyclopedic content to articles, you should give them some feedback and encouragement, rather than a cryptic warning and then bringing them to ANI and calling their work "junk". Please show some respect for editors who are learning. — Ingenuity (talk • contribs) 00:47, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The one at fault here is WikiEdu, who compels these students to add poor work like this as part of college courses. People just want to pass the class, and I understand that, but it puts burdens on real Wikipedia contributors. WikiEdu editors should not be allowed to put content into mainspace unless it has been approved by volunteers. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:55, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Student editors basically never go on to become long-term contributors, so there's no reason to encourage them, especially if there initial work is very bad like in this case. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:54, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The above may be the single worst take on

WP:AGF I've ever read on this board. BusterD (talk) 00:58, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

My nineteeth edit. Hemiauchenia's nineteenth. I give the student editor full credit for their boldness. BusterD (talk) 01:10, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

As I have stated earlier, the problem here is WikiEdu compelling people to do add stuff like this for college credit without there being any quality control by the instructors before the content is added, not the individual students themselves. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:14, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I also note over on the Wikipedia:Wiki_Ed/Western_Illinois_University/Teaching_Writing_in_Middle_and_High_School_(Fall_2023) page that one of the other WikiEdu students is apparently assigned the task of creating an article at Patrol Base Abate -- I've never heard of this, and a quick Google search turns up almost nothing -- setting aside videos and images or the "did you mean" suggested alternative spellings, there are only five hits, one of which is the WikiEdu page I just linked above.

I might be mistaken and Patrol Base Abate might actually be a noteworthy topic. If it isn't, however, this causes me to worry that the WikiEdu program coordinators might not be sufficiently familiar with Wikipedia norms to be coaching others on how best to write Wikipedia articles... ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:45, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Eirikr, it seems to be some type of veteran organization. (Spelled Abbate, not Abate) Schazjmd (talk) 00:48, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I tried to fix that for them. Let's see if it will take.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 00:56, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Schazjmd, @SarekOfVulcan, thank you both. 😄 ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 01:38, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, thanks SarekOfVulcan, I've watchlisted the page. ——Serial 17:09, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

On what talk page did you engage with this editor before dragging them to AN? Shells-shells (talk) 01:06, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Student editors in my experience basically never directly respond to attempts to try to talk to them. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:07, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Did you engage them with the professor or Wiki Ed staff then? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:14, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I honestly do not know how that process works and did not really know the formal process for drawing up a complaint. I wanted to go to AN for advice. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:16, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This might be a good time to review

WP:HOLES. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 01:18, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

Treat a student edit like any other newbie edit. They don't deserve any special treatment, and likewise don't deserve to have to put up with Hemiauchenia's ranting in edit summaries just for the fact of being a student while making a bad edit. Here are the differences between a student editor and any other new editor: (1) when it comes to how to apply policy, there is no difference. Revert, warn, block, etc. exactly as much as you would any other new user; (2) student editors have to go through some basic training that other newbies do not have to go through, ideally making problematic edits (which these edits to rabbit certainly are) less common than your average new user's; (3) there are three people you can ping/nag/poke to deal with problematic student edits. In this case, that would be the student, the professor (BuchananR, and the Wiki Ed staff person (Brianda (Wiki Ed). Rather than complain loudly about how all students are terrible, why not take advantage of the support system that exists specifically to help you deal with this, which doesn't exist for other new users? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 01:16, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see how Jesus christ the complete crap put into Wikipedia by WikiEdu students never ceases to amaze me. Zero sources whatsoever or don't care about you being a student editor. This is crap. There's zero sources, a basic requirement of Wikipedai editing, see Wikipedia:Reliable sources are appropriate edit summaries at all. Silverseren^C 01:24, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I equally would

WP:BITING. I'm more inclined at this venue to ask if I've missed some reason why the filer at this rate hasn't been blocked for biting the newbies, other than that the other editor involved just so happens to be a student. Likewise, much praise is in order to, for example, BusterD, seen here engaging with a new editor appropriately. EggRoll97 ^(talk) 02:20, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

I'm no angel myself and I don't need to see User:Hemiauchenia grovel. They said something suboptimal. I have confidence they'll remember this AN thread they started. Every one of us is liable to misspeak occasionally. Hemiauchenia is quite correct in saying we don't normally get good communications, useful wikipedians or great work from these WikiEd students. I have zero disagreement with that frustration. For my part, I just wish there was a way we could take this thread and help move THAT effort forward. BusterD (talk) 02:56, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, and I don't expect perfection, but generalizing all student editors as only adding "crap" is a brazen attack, and filer's communication here has been heavily lackluster, especially prior to bringing it to a noticeboard intended for severe problems, not two reverted edits. EggRoll97 ^(talk) 03:05, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I never said that all of what WikiEdu students add is crap. I have seen some genuinely good contributions. The problem is that of lot it is bad and that there is no proper vetting by instructors before the material is added, and ultimately that mess is something that regular Wikipedia editors have to clean up. As I have previously stated I am frustrated with the WikiEdu process, not this particular student, who is a symptom rather than a cause. Hemiauchenia (talk) 03:09, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we get great work from most editors. Instead I think WikiEd editors often give us work that ranges from serviceable to good as with another student's efforts from this class at Concrete mixer. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 07:12, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we get great work from most editors Concur. Sad, but true. This is true even among prolific editors in my experience. Hemiauchenia (talk) 07:47, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's too bad WikiEdu doesn't have some sort of vetting process for the instructors beyond their completing some module or whatever. Someone with 16 mainspace edits, 15 of them to Western Illinois Leatherbacks sports teams or coaches (and including a season article on the women's basketball team sourced solely to non-independent websites), done strictly between 2017 and 2020, is not even close to experienced enough with Wikipedia to be guiding new editors on proper Wikipedia editing...

Honestly I find it baffling why professors would even want to run a course using a system they have essentially zero background in. It just seems like it would be frustrating and unproductive for both instructor and students to be at basically the same level of skill in the subject with evidently no desire to actually improve in or engage with the subject outside of class. This is like a marketing prof deciding that the semester project will require collaborating on GitHub, a tool no one, including the professor, has used, plus every time the students submit something it bypasses pull requests and just gets merged directly into whichever random person's external repo it forked from. JoelleJay (talk) 03:03, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, another of this instructor's students managed to contribute 2200 edit-summaried bytes of seemingly DUE material, including mostly-well-formatted grouped references, to their chosen editing subject, "concrete mixer". So who knows, maybe the class is actually effective overall... JoelleJay (talk) 03:13, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah I looked at that one after this thread was filed and saw nothing problematic. While it's true that WikiEd professors could often correspond / teach Wikipedia better, we can't blame them or the general program for every student who does a bad job. Folly Mox (talk) 14:18, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Okay, clearly Hemi is being kind of a dick here, but it's kind of flabbergasting that we have to do this stuff in the first place. Keep in mind that college professors get paid money -- a lot of money usually -- what we're being asked to do is do their job (i.e. evaluating and guiding the students) for free. Which we're happy to do, but on the other hand, some effort is required on the other end. How about this: every time someone has to copyedit, verify, trim or otherwise mess around with poor-quality student writing, we let them send the university an invoice? (Not to speak for other editors, but I'd also accept a non-paying faculty position, an honorary degree, and a .edu email address in lieu of cash). jp×g🗯️ 09:19, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Having previously taught briefly in higher education, I think if I were held personally responsible for every bad behaviour any of my students engaged in, I'd be in jail for plagiarism. Folly Mox (talk) 14:40, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  a lot of money usually - lol. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:21, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  sob. -- asilvering (talk) 23:21, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  The amount of cluelessness packed into this short paragraph is impressive. --JBL (talk) 17:48, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Okay, a "lol" I will suffer gladly, but for "cluelessness" I have to offer a response. For the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics gives an annual mean wage of $87,960 for college/university/professional school instructors, which is about $42/hr. University graduates and programmers and such are disproportionally represented among Wikipedians, so this may not feel like a lot, but for reference, the last time I worked in a plant (as a fabricator with a few years of experience) it paid $18/hr, and the minimum wage in the US is $7.25/hr. Of course, professor salaries are a rather small component of overall spending by colleges (less than a third). Still, it is a lot more money than most normal people make (10th percentile hourly wage is $13.14, 25th is $16.03, 50th is $22.26, 75th is $35.32 and 90th is $53.03). But regardless: if college tuition costs, on average, between $10k and $42k per year, it's hard for me to really get on board with doing free labor for the sake of companies that already receive substantial funding (from both students and the government, i.e. taxes, i.e. everyone). It's one thing to put work into assisting other editors, even inexperienced ones, who are volunteers who contribute here out of a desire to improve the project. But, I think, it's a different thing to assist inexperienced editors who are being directed here by an organization they paid $30,000 to give them experience. jp×g🗯️ 01:11, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I agree with your sentiment that we aren't being paid so the student editors aren't our concern. However most academic staff in the United States are on insecure temporary contracts working as Adjunct professors which have much lower pay. Some of the WikiEdu staff are paid quite generously though, over $100,000 per annum. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:28, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Today, these itinerant teachers make up a whopping 75 percent of college instructors, with their average pay between $20,000 and $25,000 annually. (USA [15])

  University staff who can’t afford to eat ask for campus food banks (UK [16])

  The first article deals with a case well-known enough that the instructor in question has a Wikipedia article: Margaret Mary Vojtko. -- asilvering (talk) 03:42, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  The cluelessness is not limited to the assertion about faculty salaries (about which others have responded; I was not able in 10 minutes to figure out the BLS methodology, and the numbers you quoted are perhaps conceivable for tenured/tenure-track faculty but certainly not for people who perform the bulk of post-secondary education) but also every other part of the paragraph: the bizarre idea that fixing poor student contributions to Wikipedia is "do[ing] the job" of a college instructor, the incoherent grouping "non-paying faculty position, an honorary degree, and a .edu email address in lieu of cash", .... No part of it appears grounded in anything beyond a feeling of indignation. --JBL (talk) 19:47, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Invoicing when you clear up other editors mistakes? There's a couple of long-term editors I could make bankrupt. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:31, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  And if I screw up smth in my editing something should contact my dean to let her know. (I am actually surprised nobody had done this yet given that I get death threats for my Wikipedia editing on a weekly basis, and just some shit on a daily basis). Ymblanter (talk) 21:40, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I got someone threatening this in one of my first months here. Sure made me glad I have a pseudonymous account! (Not that my dean would care. She's seen worse.) -- asilvering (talk) 23:16, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Yeah OpIndia started harassing me on Twitter after my edits to Ayurveda lol. JoelleJay (talk) 02:15, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  If we are looking in this direction, my Facebook account was disabled after three false copyright complains, then I had to make my Instagram account non-public after two complaints (the third one would lead to shutting it down as well), and then the same person send e-mails to me and my family members with such content that we had to report to the police. Ymblanter (talk) 06:38, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've personally had mixed experiences with student assignments, but there's always the education noticeboard for issues with a class; I don't think the original post would've gone down well there either though. Graham87 (talk) 11:49, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• I concur with others that say that Hemiauchenia made the right point the wrong way. Calling a new editor's contributions "crap" flies in the face of several core policies that we all know about; however I have seen problematic edits from instructors eg: User talk:Tesleemah#Solomon Oladunni moved to draftspace that makes me question what the qualification requirements are to be one. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:50, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Responding to the comments about vetting professors and their motivation. I'll give my personal take, having taught with Wikipedia before WikiEdu existed and later being involved with WikiEdu (call that bias or insight or both, I guess). I started teaching with Wikipedia because I was responsible for teaching students about digital media studies, media/information literacy, online rhetoric, etc. and here was this website they all used every day, even while teachers told them not to use it, and none of them knew how it really worked. Turns out, the best way to actually communicate all the lessons Wikipedia has to offer is by having students engage with it directly as editors. It can also be an effective way to teach about course subjects via an alternative writing genre that requires summarizing a bunch of literature. The moment I knew I was onto something was when I overheard one student tell another about how they'd been bragging about the article they wrote at a party. Students who do it well take pride in contributing to this resource that helps the public, as opposed to a term paper that just gets thrown away as soon as the class is over. And I took pride in their contributions, as someone who cares very much for Wikipedia. In general, professors who teach with Wikipedia are doing so because they care about this site, not because they hate it, and see it as a great way for students to learn.
  Here's the thing, though: students probably won't have a great learning experience if they contribute junk and just get reverted/scolded. Nobody wins in that scenario. Tons of instructors, especially those teaching around the time I was, learned the hard way that running a Wikipedia assignment can be a downright miserable experience for everyone involved if done poorly.
  So the question is how do you give them the best chance to succeed? That's what the whole Education Program, and later WikiEdu, was/is intended to figure out. When I started, it was really hard for anyone who didn't invest an unreasonable amount of time to understanding how it all works. There were help pages, sure, but they were scattered all over and often outdated. There was no teahouse. I had a leg up in that while I wasn't an active contributor yet, I'd been researching/lurking/hanging around for a while, but still struggled to find good resources for students and wound up making some of my own. The value of the Education Program/WikiEdu isn't that they bring lots of classes to Wikipedia but that they form a support system for those professors/students. It's not reasonable to expect that only professors with tons of experience can do this, and it would do a disservice to both students and our project. So there's a system where the instructor gets some training, but it's more about how to run this assignment rather than how to edit; students get editing training; and paid staff jump in when there are problems.
  It's far from a foolproof system. Anyone who's ever taught a class can tell you there are some students who manage to ignore all of the instructions. That seems like what happened here. It doesn't take a 15-year veteran with 100,000 edits to say "include citations". That kind of thing is in the training students and teachers both get and isn't exactly difficult to understand. It's a "students don't always follow directions" situation not "who's vetting these professors" situation. If there are course-wide problems, which happens maybe once in a while, that's another matter.
  I still say we should much prefer student editors to typical newbies. They come here with some training and motivation to do the right thing (even if it's extrinsic rather than intrinsic, many non-student new editors don't seem to have either), and they have not just a professor but paid staff who can respond to problems. What I really don't get is why some people seem to think student editors are somehow less deserving of basic decency than a typical new editor. Oof, this went long, sorry. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:21, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  While I'm not defending Hemi's comments, I think the issue is student and paid editors are alike in that they can be a drain on volunteer resources while drawing external benefit (payment, a grade, etc.)

  If there were a better system for managing either of those, it would be less problematic. However, there aren't enough WikiEdu staff to handle the pressure that students are under to publish content leaving the cleanup work to us. With fewer active, experienced editors-it's a lot of work for zero reward while seeing content degraded. It's a broken system where no one benefits and everyone gets frustrated. Star Mississippi 16:57, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Why is a student being assigned to edit a high-level article like Rabbit in the first place? And does anyone else think those diffs smell like the content has been copied and pasted from somewhere? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:29, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Absolutely copy pasta, and because the system as a whole is broken. Are there areas where students could improve our content? Almost certainly. Are articles about basic subjects that are well covered and maintained it? Nope. Star Mississippi 17:44, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  As far as I can tell, articles are self assigned by students. This has often led to absurd choices, like a student choosing Hamas right at the start of the current conflict even though they did not have ECP, or picking one of the main COVID-19 articles right at the start of the pandemic. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:00, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  They have to be self assigned, if the instructor assigns topics and edits thats

  WP:MEATPUPPETry which wiki-ed is not an exception from. What the instructor should be doing is telling their students how to pick an appropriate page for their first edits (avoiding controversial topics or feature articles for example). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:10, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  That seems to stretch the definition of meatpuppetry beyond our typical meaning. If I tell a friend, "Hey, the Wikipedia article about that TV show you like could stand some fixing up," and they go and create an account and start editing it, is that meatpuppetry? I'm not recruiting them to create spurious support for my side of an argument; I'm just giving them something specific to get excited about. If a professor, say, assembles a list of articles needing attention and lets their students pick desired topics from that list, I don't see how that would automatically be unethical. Where's the actual puppeteering? Of course, it could in practice cross a line, but that could happen even without the professor assigning specific articles; e.g., if Prof. Smith tells their students to add citations to the groundbreaking works of Prof. Smith, and the students go and do that across pages they find themselves. The issue of whether the conduct is ethical is orthogonal to the question of whether specific articles have been chosen.

  talk) 20:12, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  That seems like a classic Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest? which is outside of our understanding of meatpuppetry. This would be the equivalent of telling your babysitter that as a condition of employment she had to fix up the wikipedia page of the show you liked. Making a list of suitable topics (but also allowing students to pick their own) is a completely different thing which I don't mean to disparage at all, IMO that is best practice and is not normally an issue as long as students are not restricted to the list. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:23, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  But even if the professor picks a specific topic, I'm hard pressed to think of how that would be intrinsically unethical. Yes, if the professor tells the student to push a particular POV, that would be bad, but again, that could happen without the professor pointing to a specific article. Yes, it would be bad for a teacher to say, "As a condition of getting a passing grade, make me look good on Wikipedia." However, that's not the same as a teacher saying, "The Wikipedia article on

  talk) 20:45, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  I agree that this is a separate topic, I don't think our two positions are all that far apart but this might be a good topic of conversation for later. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:20, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  If it's a copyvio or ChatGPT product then they're both degrading the encyclopedia and cheating on their school assignment and so deserve much worse than BITEy edit summaries. JoelleJay (talk) 03:48, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  It would be great if instructors really were choosing to run WikiEd courses because they care about Wikipedia, because that would suggest they care about doing it right when it comes to contributing and they would put in the time and effort to actually learn at least the surface level of our P&Gs. Like, enough to be able to recognize the problems with editing CTOPs or high-level articles, or creating BLPs (or really creating a new article at all). Or to notice when a student adds 3 kb of unreferenced COI trivia, or to intervene when they see several of their students' "peer reviews" contain recommendations[17][18] to take screenshots of (potentially) copyrighted videos and add them to their articles. And if they legitimately cared about improving the encyclopedia, wouldn't you expect them to edit themselves, even if merely to give their students some examples of good edits? JoelleJay (talk) 03:38, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• I'd like to interject that the Western Illinois University class being taught "Teaching Writing in Middle and High School (Fall 2023)" is not about writing on Wikipedia, but does have a writing on Wikipedia component. I can only imagine what it takes to teach writing in such an environment (or to subject oneself to take a class on such a topic). I wish we could help more with that effort. Teachers and wikipedians should be natural allies... BusterD (talk) 17:54, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Don't bite newcomers... They should be treated with every kindness and patience than any other new editor would be. But I would suggest giving the instructor a short sharp shock. Perhaps we need a multi-level template for "Your wiki-ed student isn't doing great" Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:07, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Thanks for the ping
  WP:ENB that’s on our radar, where you can drop a note for us.

  If anyone's interested to see/learn more about the wide breadth of student work, you can check out all the articles being edited by the 6,000+ students currently enrolled in our program here: https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/campaigns/fall_2023/articles. Brianda (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:15, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]

  @Brianda (Wiki Ed): we all appreciate the work of wiki-ed, but when I followed the given link and clicked on a random article in the article creation list I got Ang Casein, which as you will note has already been removed from main space. Draft:Ang Casein bears reviewing, its a mangled translation into Cebuano (maybe?) which was created in main space on en-wiki. It would not be unfair or inaccurate to characterize the presence of this sort of thing on en-wiki as "complete junk" even if I would probably be more diplomatic. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:34, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  It has been on Cebuano Wikipedia since 28 November. Whether or not it is a mangled translation is something not worth speculating about unless someone here can read Cebuano, though Google Translate seems to understand it pretty well. I don't see how anyone could fairly characterize this as complete junk. It was just put in the wrong place at first—a situation that seems to have been resolved quickly and with little fuss. Shells-shells (talk) 18:53, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  So something being somewhere it shouldn't be and serving no purpose where it is and has been discarded... What is the definition of junk[19][20] if not that? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:57, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I guess it's just that, in the spirit of fairness, I wouldn't want my own work to be called complete junk simply because I put it in the wrong place at first.

  And, I mean, your definition seems a bit strange to me. If someone puts the Mona Lisa in a dumpster I don't feel that it suddenly becomes complete junk just because it's somewhere it shouldn't be and serving no purpose where it is and has been discarded. Shells-shells (talk) 19:21, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  But the Mona Lisa doesn't fulfill the standard, it would still have value and purpose even in a dumpster. A Mona Lisa in this scenario would be an article which actually is notable and does have a place on our wall so to speak. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:30, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Precisely. So, in our analogy, remove the Mona Lisa (ceb:Ang Casein) from the dumpster (enwiki) and put it in an art gallery (cebwiki). It's not complete junk. Shells-shells (talk) 21:55, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  One wiki's junk may be another wiki's treasure, but that doesn't mean it isn't junk here on enwiki. If you would like to make a policy and guideline based argument that it isn't complete junk here do so now. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:37, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

One key concept for me around this topic is "induced editing" and "mitigated editing". What I mean by that is that by its very existance WikiEd causes some editing that was going to be happening regardless - because the teacher wants to use Wikipedia for whatever reason - to be more productive htan it would have been without its existance. That is some amount of bad edits turn into neutral (e.g. happen in Sandboxes rather than live articles) or good edits thanks to the training and support WikiEd provides. The existance of WikiEd also means that professors who would never have wanted to teach with Wikipedia now do so and so bad edits happen that if WikiEd weren't around wouldn't happen. I think it's the sense of problems being created that wouldn't otherwise that really create frustration among volunteers. I know I've experienced that frustration when dealing with some classes. This is especially acute because when something's not a problem, we're just not seeing it or at least not feeling it in the same way. So WikiEd gets dinged a lot for the induced problems it casues, doesn't get much credit among volunteers for the positive edits it induces among students, and gets no credit (because how would we even measure it?) for the problems that its training mitigates but which would have happened otherwise. Barkeep49 (talk) 19:27, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I would add that they also get little credit for the positive edits of student veterans (especially those who chose to

WP:CLEANSTART because they were instructed to include personal identification information in their student editing name). They might be under wiki-ed's purview for a semester but they could edit for years and years to come and if they would not have been exposed to wikipedia editing otherwise to me thats a more impressive figure than the ones for student edits while within the student editing program above. A single prolific editor can do what those thousands of students did in a semester over a career. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:40, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

Other than identifying them as a newbie and as somebody who might be under pressure to edit (both of which call for extra empathy and helpfulness if only to compensate for the roughness of our environment) why should someone in a such a program be treated differently based on one's opinion of the program? The program itself is a separate issue. North8000 (talk) 20:22, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• I've had a cheerfully shameless request on my talk, after my changes at Pisa Griffin were reverted, to please lay off until today, when his "project is due". Then I can do as I like. Pragmatic, anyway. Johnbod (talk) 01:35, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Two things: (1) Shakedownstreet120, please go through the training again and find slides like this one. If your professor is grading you based on what "sticks" in the article, they're doing it wrong (professors are explicitly told not to do this). If contributions are graded, it would be based on evidence of what was added (even if it was removed). I'd recommend giving it another shot, though, perhaps asking Johnbod for advice on some draft text before implementing it. It's hard to see what the purpose of the changes to the lead were -- they seem to reword/condense things, but the reason for that is unclear. You changed the translation but didn't provide an alternative citation (and removed the one that was there). Adding the original Arabic text may be useful, but probably as a footnote if anything. Would be good to open discussion of the changes on the article talk page. Asking for special favors because of an assignment is a sure-fire way to generate resentment from volunteers, as you may have noticed. :) (2) Hemiauchenia decided to swoop in and plop down According to [this thread], your school project doesn't matter to Wikipedia, and you still need to get consensus for your edits. If there is a consensus in this thread for anything, it is that your approach to students is needlessly hostile and doesn't help anything. Of course the project "matters" to Wikipedia -- it's a new user making changes to the article, and we all want it to go well. If what you meant was more or less what I said above, the precision got lost in the antagonism. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 02:20, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That edit summary is definitely newbie biting at best, incivil at worst. And just published less than 24 hours ago, this peer reviewed paper's title is "Toxic comments are associated with reduced activity of volunteer editors on Wikipedia". Bit of an irony when Hemiauchenia claimed "Student editors basically never go on to become long-term contributors" while generating that type of toxic environment. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:43, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't been able to confirm this yet (I need to apply for API access to the classifier program), but the dataset indicated by this article seems like it may categorize vandalism warnings as "toxic comments", and the methodology seems to categorize indefinitely-blocked users as having "abandoned the project". jp×g🗯️ 06:37, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Examples of comments and their toxicity ratings are provided in Supplementary Table S4 (they are quite enlightening). A boilerplate notice of speedy deletion for vandalism gets a toxicity score of 0.21. Note that We define a toxic comment as a comment that has a score of at least 0.8 on any of the six dimensions provided by Perspective API. The 0.8 score means that on average 8 out of 10 raters would mark it as toxic. Shells-shells (talk) 07:42, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) The state that the main results are based on comments with a "toxicity score" of 80%+. Based on Table S4, a standard G3 CSD notice (vandalism or hoax) clocks in at 21%, so that would suggest that this is not a driver. However, it would be nice to see what a direct block notice, received after inserting "poop" into five articles, would score at - because those could well account for a bunch of those day 1 full stops show in Fig. 1. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 07:59, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Out of curiosity, I got myself developer access to the API they mentioned in the paper -- {{Uw-own3}} does indeed give 0.8039029 for ATTACK_ON_AUTHOR -- but at this point I fear we may be getting somewhat far afield of the AN thread (I would be happy to continue discussing wherever else). jp×g🗯️ 08:35, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Topic Unban Appeal

Consensus exists to lift the topic ban on Syria-related articles. Single-account restriction still applies as this was not raised in the appeal. -- Euryalus (talk) 14:41, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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

---

I'm asking the admins to please consider removing my Syria topic ban. I know what I was banned for, edit warring, causing disruption, not using a civil language with other users, sockpuppetry, and failing to reach an agreement through discussions. and I apologise to all of the Wikipedia community and promise that I will never engage any any disruptive activity again. During my topic ban ( more than 1 year ), I contributed so much to the community portal by fixing hundreds and hundreds of grammar, punctuation and spelling mistakes across many articles Whatsupkarren (talk) 13:48, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The topic ban was applied here on 2022-08-11 and reads, "The community imposes an indefinite topic ban from Syria-related topics, broadly construed; this ban may be appealed after 6 months (and every 6 months thereafter)." This ban was logged at Wikipedia:Editing_restrictions#Active_editing_restrictions. I have not verified that Whatsupkarren has avoided editing about Syria-related topics. --Yamla(talk) 14:10, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

From what I found, it seems that, at least on this wiki (hint), they didn't edit Syria-related topics. Nobody (talk) 14:48, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

They seem to have skirted the edges with a series of edits on people of Kurdish ancestry in October last year (example) but appear to have stayed very clear on en:wp since. ~~ AirshipJungleman29(talk) 16:32, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just to add to the info, the topic ban was a step-down restriction from a full block/ban as a condition of a successful unban request. I've looked through their contributions and agree with the others, they seem to have abided by the terms of the ban and have edited constructively and without controversy. I'm all for rehabilitation so I'm minded to support the request. I'd be interested to know what kind of editing they plan to now do within the Syria topic area, but my support isn't conditional on an answer to that. WaggersTALK 15:50, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Waggers There are so many notable Syrian figures that do not have articles on English Wikipedia, to name a few: Paul Daher, Farid Boulad Bey, Benedicto Chuaqui. I’ll work on creating many of these.

I will also work on expanding articles such as, palmyra, Ebla, Ugarit, Umm el-Marra, and Tell Abu Hureyra

Wikipedia doesn’t have a lot of active users interested in Syria, I believe I can add so much value Whatsupkarren (talk) 14:12, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support They seem genuinely constructive, and I don't see any further disruption their ban would prevent. EggRoll97 ^(talk) 06:11, 24 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

My topic unban request was removed by a bot before being closed 2X. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/1187091102 Whatsupkarren (talk) 15:04, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed malformed copy and paste. QoH's dirty sock(talk) 15:28, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Whatsupkarren (talk) 07:08, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Since the topic ban includes a single-account restriction I ran a check; checkuser cannot prove a negative but I found nothing to suggest that the restriction has been violated. Support based on the other endorsements here. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:42, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Whatsupkarren (talk) 04:29, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This appeal has been archived a number of times without a conclusion. I've added a "do not archive" tag to hopefully prevent that from happening again. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:39, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for doing that. The discussion seems very slow for some reason but we have three admins favouring support and no opposes, after 18 days. Is that sufficient to close and remove the ban? WaggersTALK 15:23, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• support based on the above. A quick look shows nothing troubling. Most recent contributions are Gnomish. Larger contributions involve Turkey, but that's fine. Hobit (talk) 14:25, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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

Category that can only be created by an admin

I don't see why Category:Pedophiles is so controversial. There are clearcut examples, including world-renowned physicist Erwin Schrödinger to my shock and disgust. Some of them are already listed in Category:Pedophilia. So I would like to request its creation. Clarityfiend (talk) 13:07, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Because once it is created, it can be added to any article including BLPs. It adds more pain and work than benefit. I swear I remember this discussion a few years/decade ago. spryde | talk 13:14, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt that the issue is with 'clear cut examples'. The category seems to have been deleted 8 times so far. Almost certainly because of its potential for misuse. [21] AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:15, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair, most of those deletions are because people recreated it with vandalism, or

WP:G4s. The last actual discussion appears to have been in 2009: Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_January_15#Category:Pedophiles. – Joe (talk) 13:23, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

Protecting admin here. The final deletion actually involved a credible threat to misuse the category (from the person who brought you Category:Pervs and Category:Shitbags). It does have a great potential for misapplication, discussed in the CfDs, which I don't see addressed here. There's a risk of creating a category for either 'people someone said was a pedophile' or 'people who abused children'. In the case of Schrödinger, after reading the article and doing a quick scan for sources, it seems we're relying on either User:Clarityfiend or a journo at the Irish Times to make the determination. Actually I think the Irish Times merely says "[someone] whose behaviour fitted the profile of a paedophile", which is not a strong basis for a category. That said, if another admin wants to go ahead over my protection, after hearing about how it won't be misapplied, knock yourself out. Personally I think it should be only be used with an accompanying edit filter limiting additions somewhat higher than EC level, if it's to be used at all. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 14:30, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the closing statement, this category is probably a BLP issue, unless some edit filter can be written/modified to prevent this. Animal lover |666| 14:38, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

And thus the oft-requested "'watchlist' a category for add/removal" feature. 'Related changes' does catch additions. DMacks (talk) 16:43, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You can do that now, just watch the category. – 

talk) 18:22, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

My understanding is that the watch category function often misses edits for some reason. Maybe it has improved since the last time that was discussed, though. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 19:03, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It does look more reliable now than when last I stress-tested it. DMacks (talk) 19:28, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There are also issues with inclusion criteria with this category, as the medical definition is different from the variety of common (mis)conceptions of the term. Also this involves the jurisdictional issue of age of consent, age of majority, statutory rape, age of agency, and whether actions are required or just thoughts or fictional creations. And of course, whether Elvis or Jerry Lee Lewis or Muhammad, etc, will repeatedly be editwarred over. Any such category should only be for people convicted of a specific offense with the age criterion in the statue of law, thus the proposed name is not a good one. Category:Adults convicted of sexual offenses against minors would probably be a more objective categorization. There have been many convictions of 18-year olds concerning their 17-year old fiancees/girlfriends, so even with an object categorization, there are problems. -- 65.92.247.90 (talk) 04:59, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• I really do think the creation of this category is a bad idea with a strong potential for BLP violations. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:48, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• See WP:Deletion review.—Alalch E. 01:30, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Declined request at WP:AFC/R as pending further discussion. NotAGenious (talk) 12:40, 7 December 2023 (UTC)(Non-administrator comment)[reply]

Withdrawal of my deletion request

Wondering if a administrator could help with the withdrawal of my deletion request here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2023_December_5#Untitled_Grand_Theft_Auto_game per

Wikipedia:WITHDRAWN its allowed if all the votes or opinions were keep and i think it qualifies as i dont see anyone support the deletion of it Isla 🏳️‍⚧ 00:48, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

 Done – bradv 00:54, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Creator of a competing wiki with advanced user rights

A conflict exists that the creator of a competing wiki that is extremely critical of enwiki has a number of advanced user rights on this site. Justapedia's slogan, repeated consistently throughout their marketing, is: "With the benefit of hindsight, Justapedia is restoring the spirit of objectivity and neutrality Wikipedia has long since lost." Juspapedia is seeking donations and promising their editors that they are "getting closer to attracting big donors". It would be in the interests of Justapedia for sub-par articles to be published on Wikipedia. It would be easier if the creator would voluntarily resign their NPP or autopatrolled rights, but if not it seems they should be removed. 163.182.131.62 (talk) 12:25, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

We generally don't ding editors for their off-wiki projects if these do not affect their on-wiki behavior. Can you provide any diffs suggesting that the editor in question is causing "sub-par articles to be published on Wikipedia"? I see no evidence of this. BD2412 T 13:49, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the OP is saying that this is affecting their on-wiki behavior, that they are deliberately sabotaging Wikipedia by introducing sub-par articles in order to build a case that their own personal project is superior and worthy of "big donors" contributing. Not saying I agree, just summarizing their argument. 331dot (talk) 13:51, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Now that the complaint has been specified, we can agree this is silly. We don't believe that our content can easliy be sabotaged by a small number of villains, do we? SPECIFICO talk 14:13, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have no opinion here, but I'll just mention that Atsme — I don't know why people are pussyfooting around saying the name, it's surely not a secret? — was asked by Doug Weller in September to resign from the VRT, a request which she declined. Bishonen | tålk 14:15, 6 December 2023 (UTC).[reply]

IMHO, I should think Atsme is a less than ideal voice of Wikipedia irrespective of this subject. O3000, Ret. (talk) 14:39, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Objective3000 my concern is that a competitor has access to what should be confidential information and which could, hypothetically, be used in ways not helpful to Wikipedia. And do we really want a competitor responding to messages on VRT?

I believe this is all hypothetical as I think she is inactive. In which case there is no reason not to remove her rights but that can only be done by a VRT admin. Doug Weller talk 14:43, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes to the concern. I additionally think that an editor with a history of disagreement with some of our most active articles and about whom DrMies once said exhibits “cynicism toward reliable sources and reputable media” is not a good face of Wikipedia. Just my opinion. O3000, Ret. (talk) 15:45, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand the concern around "a competitor". Forking and reuse of Wikimedia content is encouraged, so long as proper attribution is in place. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 15:49, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Proper attribution is not in place. Take, for instance, [22] which is copied content from Wikipedia of a now deleted page. The only attribution given is "This page may contain content developed from Wikipedia." There is nothing in the page history. As the page cannot even be found on Wikipedia this is no way compliant with the Wikipedia CC-BY-SA license. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 16:15, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is somewhat of a separate topic, but regardless: the content there is licensed under CC-BY-SA as required, and the attribution text you mention links back to the corresponding Wikipedia article. That seems acceptable per Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks#License. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 16:31, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

But it doesn't, does it? Can you tell from that page who wrote the content? I can't. So no, it does not meet CC-BY-SA. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 16:39, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia's main license, the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (CC-BY-SA), requires that any derivative of works from Wikipedia must be released under that same license, must state that it is released under that license, and must acknowledge the contributors (which can be accomplished with a link back to that article on Wikipedia). GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 16:54, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The problem that Sirfurboy is raising is that the original

researchers can actually view who created the content. In this circumstance, the requirement to acknowledge the contributors seems to be unfulfillable. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:03, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

Ah, thank you for explaining that. That would seem to be an issue for any fork, though, no? Surely wikis that fork Wikipedia content are not required to delete any article that is deleted back on Wikipedia. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 17:15, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, I suspect it would depend on whether or not they imported just the latest revision (as Justapedia did), or all of the revisions. Special:Export allows for you to export the full history of a page, but defaults (at least on enwiki) to only exporting the current revision. If a fork imported every revision, then us deleting the page they imported wouldn't matter, as they would still have a full copy of the contributor log locally.

But if the fork is only importing the most recent revision...I don't know. Wikipedia:Copyrights#Re-use of text gives three possible ways to provide attribution history; link to the original, or link to another copy of the original that conforms to the license and provides credit in an equivalent manner, or provide a list of the authors of the original. You could maybe achieve the second way, if you provided a link to an archived copy of the Special:History page of the original on the Wayback Machine or archive.today, made at or shortly after the export. But I'm not fully up to date with the intricacies of how CC-BY-SA works in this scenario more generally. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:30, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, so I asked the lovely folks at

WP:RUD

. An example of this in practice can be seen with EverybodyWiki, like Justapedia they forked the Welsh crown jewels article prior to its deletion, but they also have a separate namespace (Edithistory, note can't link this because that Wiki is on our local spam blocklist), which contains a local copy of the page history that we've now deleted.

If Justapedia don't do something like this, and provide attribution to the original enwiki authors in some form, then they'll be in breach of the content license. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:20, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

But would the WMF pursue legal action to enforce the content license in this case? 331dot (talk) 20:24, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That would be a question for the Foundation's legal department I'd assume. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:25, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

IIRC no, as the copyright lies with the contributors. Good luck tracking down the author of Welsh crown jewels and getting them to take action. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 20:27, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to Sideswipe9th for following that up. No, I don't suppose anyone will take action. Why would they? There is no recoverable loss, and that site is justanotherfork. But they are not compliant with the license, and that's the point. Incidentally, I know who wrote that article but it was just an example. All the deleted articles have this issue, and it is possible to find others too (for instance, any move without a redirect) Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 20:43, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Maddy is right. The guidance at Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks#Non-compliance process lays out the process an aggrieved editor can take, if they so desire, up to the point of issuing a DMCA takedown against Justapedia's hosting provider. I'm not sure the DMCA requires there to be a recoverable loss however, just a breach of copyright. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:01, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject Editors of deleted articles or those moved without leaving a redirect sending DMCA notices to Justapedia? -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 21:09, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Sideswipe9th: Thanks for hunting that down. (I'm replying to the CCI comment if that's not clear in this jumble of replies). This seems very much like an edge case Justapedia didn't consider, rather than an intentional flouting of Wikipedia's licensing requirements, given that most of us didn't really know what's required in this case. It'd probably be best to just notify the folks over at Justapedia so they can handle it, since they seem to be trying in good faith to follow the forking and licensure requirements. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 23:01, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

[Heck if I know where to indent to in this maze either.] The WMF does publish - very inconveniently - the list of editors of deleted titles. See for example

Cryptic 08:23, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

+1 to GorillaWarfare's comment. --JBL (talk) 19:50, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@JayBeeEll sorry, I can’t figure out what you replied to. Doug Weller talk 20:26, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Doug Weller: No kidding, impossible to make out with the tower of comments in between, sorry -- I have clarified. --JBL (talk) 21:04, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• I see no issue with forking and reuse in general. If a fork is created because a group of people have an ideological problem with Wikipedia (which in and of itself is fine), that group then has a vested interest in shifting traffic from Wikipedia to their fork, and as such are not well-placed to be handling VRTS tickets that are asking for help or sharing confidential information. This is particularly true when the fork was created for political reasons; I'd be concerned, but much less so, if the fork being discussed was from the roads wikiproject, or the film and television one. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:28, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  "With the understanding that Justapedia's content was forked from the vast corpus of Wikipedia, which includes over 6.5 million articles, and numerous templates, projects, categories, and other freely licensed content, we face an equally large task in adapting and refining or completely changing this content to comply with Justapedia's five fundamental principles and core content policies. Many of the Wikipedia articles that have received widespread criticism from academics and the mainstream media have been forked to Justapedia, where they will be rewritten by volunteers who (a) share our mission and goals of preserving and protecting history, (b) want to restore the spirit of neutrality and objectivity, and (c) believe in the power of diverse perspectives. Happy editing!"[23]

  Breitbart as described in Justapedia (which does say that some content may be from Wikipedia) "Breitbart News Network (commonly known as Breitbart News, Breitbart, or Breitbart.com) is an American tabloid-style news and opinion website co-founded in 2007 by the late Andrew Breitbart and Larry Solov during their trip to Israel. They founded Breitbart News based on their beliefs that a strong democracy depends on accurate reporting and the free and open exchange of ideas. After Andrew's death on March 1, 2012, co-founder/CEO Larry Solov, along with Andrew's widow Susie Breitbart, and the Mercer family retained ownership of the company.The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, with bureaus in Texas, London, and Jerusalem.[24]

  Our article:"Breitbart News Network (known commonly as Breitbart News, Breitbart, or Breitbart.com) is an American far-right syndicated news, opinion, and commentary website founded in mid-2007 by American conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart. Its content has been described as misogynistic, xenophobic, and racist by academics and journalists. The site has published a number of conspiracy theories and intentionally misleading stories. Posts originating from the Breitbart News Facebook page are among the most widely shared political content on Facebook." Doug Weller talk 16:52, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Don't get me wrong, I don't think the site's content is an improvement. But forking an encyclopedia — even if motivated by the desire to divert traffic — is hardly a reason to yank NPP/autopatrolled. I'm also skeptical that it's a reason to remove VTRS access, without any evidence that that access is being misused, though I do understand the reasoning behind it. That said, if Atsme has indeed been on an indefinite break since June, it would seem her VRT account will be disabled shortly for inactivity anyway. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 17:02, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Atsme is active. O3000, Ret. (talk) 17:08, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  On VRTS? GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 17:17, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Ahh, got an EC trying to clarify that I don't know about VRT activity. But she is active on the project despite the edit on her UTP saying she is on indefinite break. O3000, Ret. (talk) 17:21, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  For me, the crux of the matter is in the VRTS activity policy. The VRTS admins only select the VRTS agents that they have the utmost trust in to represent the Wikimedia projects. While Atsme met that requirement when she was granted the permission, is that still the case when she's the founder and key driving force of a forked project that actively disparages Wikipedia (a Wikimedia project)? This is different from holding the other advanced permissions she currently holds, because they don't have that same requirement of being trusted to represent Wikimedia projects. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:11, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Per Doug Weller, the VRT issue seems like a valid concern, easily resolved. All the otherstuff is classic Otherstuff, (not our special OTHERSTUFF} and can be addressed apart from any behavioural questions concerning our friend and longtime colleague, Atsme. SPECIFICO talk 17:48, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't know that forks included non-mainspace pages such as List of administrators/Timezones and a table of admin numbers (complete with table heading 'Average number of active English Wikipedia administrators per month (January 2001 – present)'. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 18:10, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Or that, for instance, User:Acroterion and User:331dot were Admins there. Doug Weller talk 18:36, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That must be the other me(j/k). 331dot (talk) 18:48, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, RfA must be a lot easier over there. Acroterion (talk) 23:41, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ping Emufarmers and Matthewrb as the current English-speaking VRT admins, given VRT membership is discussed above. My $0.02 - as an OTRS admin from what feels like decades ago (probably is actually a decade ago now), potential removal is definitely something that would have been considered based on these facts back then, but would naturally be a judgement call as to whether removal is appropriate or not. Daniel (talk) 21:39, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• This entire discussion saddens me, but it doesn't surprise me. FYI, Justapedia supports 99% of Wikimedia Foundation projects, and that includes Commons, Phabricator (and when we can, we work with mediawiki techs), and other projects that are either dependent on or independent of the WMF. I don't know why there is even a discussion here about Commons or my work as a VRT volunteer, but quite frankly, what I do on Commons is not Wikipedia's concern. Commons is completely separate from Wikipeda, and Justapedia uses and contributes to Commons. Wikipedia does not have an exclusive. Perhaps the time has come for you to come to that realization. I have contributed over a decade of my time and efforts to help build Wikipedia, and while I may completely disagree with editors who use WP as a weapon to further their own agendas and biases, I have not broken any policies or guidelines relative to my work here as an editor, or NPP reviewer. Yes, there have been times that I was embarrassed by some of the criticism of WP launched by others, but the criticism was justified. What I consider even worse is the criticism of the WMF and Jimmy Wales by WP editors, as it brings to mind biting the hand that feeds you. As for proper attribution, I am not aware of any practicing copyright attorneys in this discussion, but be aware that our attorneys have already advised us that our method of attribution aligns with the licensing requirements of the WMF. As GorillaWarfare kindly pointed out, the link back to the article attributes the origins which provides access to the complete editing history including the psuedonyms/IP addresses etc. of whoever added the material, unless that material has been removed. If the material is no longer available, or has been deleted by WP, then those with a complaint about their material being missing resulting in it not being attributed properly need to take it up with the WMF. IOW, WP erased the attribution, we did not. Happy editing. Atsme 💬 📧 22:39, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  @Atsme: If the material is no longer available, or has been deleted by WP, then those with a complaint about their material being missing resulting in it not being attributed properly need to take it up with the WMF. I'm not sure that's the case, specifically for pages that have been deleted after Justapedia (or any other mirror or fork) has imported them. The Reusing Wikipedia content policy puts the requirements for demonstrating attribution on the part of the re-user, and gives three options for proper attribution on re-distribution; provide a hyperlink or URL (where possible) to the page you're re-using, or provide a hyperlink or URL (where possible) to an alternative stable online copy that conforms with the license, or to include a list of all of the authors of the original work. In this circumstance, it is no longer possible for Justapedia to provide a hyperlink to the original article, because it has been deleted, so in order for your site to be compliant it seems as though you must either provide a hyperlink to an alternative stable online copy that conforms to the license, or you must have a local copy of the list of original authors.

  Could I suggest that you please re-check with your legal team on this specific set of circumstances, where a page that Justapedia has imported has since been deleted by Wikipedia and the attribution method you had previously chosen is no longer available, as it is an edge case that they or yourselves may not have considered? As I mentioned above, one other site that forks enwiki (EverybodyWiki) includes a local copy of an imported page's history on a separate namespace, to avoid the break in attribution issue where an imported page was deleted after it was imported. For everything else, I would agree that you are in compliance with the relevant policies surrounding content reuse, it's just this edge case that you might not have considered or been aware of. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:34, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Intellectual property attorney hat on. It cannot possibly be the case that making a legally sufficient copy of content on Wikipedia imposes upon the copier a permanent duty of continually checking as to whether Wikipedia has chosen to delete the original and its attribution. If this were the case, it would require even printed copies to be updated to reflect such changes, and even if the change was made decades later. I would submit that referring readers of the copy to Wikipedia remains sufficient even if Wikipedia deletes the content, because there are custodians of Wikipedia's data who are able to retrieve and provide the deleted data if needed. Intellectual property attorney hat off. BD2412 T 03:33, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• it is no secret that Atsme and I tend to be polar opposites on a lot of things but CC by SA is what it is and while my political ideology is vastly different, well, again CC by SA. I don't see any evidence that her editing have changed to promote this, so I am unsure what the point of this being posted at AN of all places is.GRINCHIDICAE🎄 23:00, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Because it's highly effective advertising to disaffected editors on en.wiki. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 23:40, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Random two cents: (1) there seems to be no actual evidence that Atsme has vandalised Wikipedia by publishing "subpar articles" as suggested above. Without evidence this allegation goes nowhere. (2) Anyone unhappy with VRT team membership they should follow the instructions at Wikipedia:Volunteer_Response_Team#Dispute_resolution. Debates about VRT membership can't be resolved at this noticeboard. (3) People who fork Wikipedia articles are required to follow the attribution requirements, but they surely can't be expected to watch every single WP article forever and repeatedly update their attribution if the original source material is deleted or moved. Someone might perhaps email the WMF for a view, but resolution of this issue is off topic in a thread about one specific editor who contributes to both wikis. (4) More generally, why should we care if Atsme or anyone else also edits at some no-name wiki fork? If they're not doing any harm to en-WP then it doesn't seem like any of our business. -- Euryalus (talk) 23:36, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• I agree entirely with Euryalus, just above me. If someone has any diffs of Atsme making bad edits here in order to damage en-Wiki's reputation, then please post those diffs. Otherwise, there is nothing to deal with here at AN. (And if you don't want anyone to fork your contributions here, don't hit the save button.) --Tryptofish (talk) 00:07, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  +1. I am also reminded of Veropedia, another unsuccessful fork where many admins and other people with higher permissions (more significant than VRT if you ask me) were involved. —Kusma (talk) 09:37, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I have no problem with Atsme editing Wikipedia, so long as it is not in the political arena. My concern is only with VRT. I think she is a poor choice for VRT irrespective of Justapedia given her disdain for reliable sources and acceptance of poor sources. O3000, Ret. (talk) 12:49, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Caroline Karason

Could an admin take a look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Caroline Karason? It's gradually being turned into a wall of text that includes the article under discussion being copied and pasted into the AfD. -- Marchjuly (talk) 13:36, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

LadyofShalott removed the copied-and-pasted content so probably nothing more needs to be done here. -- Marchjuly (talk) 13:55, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree but that user is yet to repost the article again on the AfD. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 14:04, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, I suspect the only way that discussion is going to get back on track is the editor being partially blocked from that page for the next ~156 hours. ——Serial 14:21, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

They have ignored links to pages they should read. They have ignored requests to stop voting everytime they post. They have been told to stop replying to everyone with the same walls of text. They have been advised that their behavior is verging on WP:DE. They have ignored the advice of multiple editors. Yet they still continue. Why is this? ——Serial 15:49, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

As I was writing up a p-block for the AfD, Valeriee beat me to the punch. RickinBaltimore (talk) 15:55, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Great minds think alike, RickinBaltimore :) ——Serial 15:59, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Special:Diff/1101473126 The indefinite block is the right action. Uncle G (talk) 22:11, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Block needed

Blocked by Canterbury Tail for 31 hours. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:12, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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

---

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

IP needs a webhostblock. Also possible block evasion from User:104.253.213.87. Nobody (talk) 15:07, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

WP:AIV is good for such requests. ArvindPalaskar (talk) 16:44, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

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

block enforced without providing an indication of the problem: I made necessary changes as was indicated by the previous complaints

I can't provide the talk page notification as the editor has caused a block on the talk page. The administrator enforced the block without providing any warning.

Could someone review the problem please

The 1st complaint was made against: https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Schizophrenia&oldid=9206006 version 21 November 2023 at https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Simple_talk#User:Simpul_skitsofreeneea during 22 November 2023. I made the necessary improvements as was indicated by the details of the complaint (which was complexity, by adhering to the Flesch-Kincaid scores). I have been working with editors subsequently on the Talk page and the Flesch-Kincaid is greatly improved. The adminstrator didn't indicate there was any additional problem Talk:Schizophrenia#It's_not_working so I couldn't provide any response. The reasons he gave in the Talk page aren't true. "As it stands this article totally fails WP:SI." please view the copypasted scores for the article which evidently don't indicate failure at all (the expected range is "70+" @ Talk:Schizophrenia#Readability The Flesch-Kincaid in the version 14:46, 10 October 2023 before I began to make changes for the intro was 58.5 the current intro is 84.8, before: the whole article (which the administrator was involved in): 48.6, the current version is 75.7. (using https://goodcalculators.com/flesch-kincaid-calculator/) these scores don't indicate the administrator has used a legitimate reason for blocking. Simpul skitsofreeneea (talk) 00:59, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You're on the wrong Wikipedia - this is the English Wikipedia, your issue is on the Simple Wikipedia. Nobody here can do anything. Acroterion (talk) 01:01, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot access the notice board there because of the block. If the block is for no legitimate reason this means I am blocked without recourse to unblocking without adminstration oversight (considering the block automatically blocked the adminstration noticeoard at Simple). Simpul skitsofreeneea (talk) 01:56, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This has nothing to do with en.wikipedia. You are complaining about a different project. We can't help you with that. --Yamla (talk) 01:59, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

And I note that having been blocked at Simple for disruption at their article on passive smoking schizophrenia, you're over here and making undiscussed page moves and a lot of edits to terminology, after other editors have disputed your edits to passive smoking on both en wiki and Simple. I've warned you for using the talkpage as a soapbox and move-protected the article. Please slow down and find consensus for your edits. Acroterion (talk) 03:24, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

On Simple Wikipedia, there's a guide for how to appeal blocks. The beginning tells you the technical method, and the rest is a guide on how to make the request convincing. Please follow the instructions there (as far as I can tell, you can edit your own talk page there). Each Wikipedia is independent; no Wikipedia tells any other Wikipedia who they may or may not block. While one of the Simple admins may happen to also read this noticeboard, it's unlikely that you will get any help here. Animal lover |666| 09:49, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]