Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard: Difference between revisions

Template:Active editnotice

This page has an no admin backlog }} when the backlog is cleared.

You may want to increment {{Archive basics}} to |counter= 38 as Wikipedia:Closure requests/Archive 37 is larger than the recommended 150Kb.

Archives

Index no archives yet (create)

This page has archives. Sections older than 6 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 3 sections are present.

Use the closure requests noticeboard to ask an uninvolved editor to

Do not list discussions where consensus is clear. If you feel the need to close them, do it yourself.

Move on – do not wait for someone to state the obvious. In some cases,

Do not post here to rush the closure. Also, only do so when the discussion has stabilised.

On the other hand, if the discussion has much activity and the outcome isn't very obvious, you should let it play out by itself. We want issues to be discussed well. Do not continue the discussion here.

There is no fixed length for a formal

When the discussion is ready to be closed and the outcome is not obvious, you can submit a brief and neutrally worded request for closure.

Be sure to include a link to the discussion itself and the {{Initiated}} template at the beginning of the request. A helper script can make listing discussions easier.

Any

Closing discussions carries responsibility, doubly so if

Non-admins can close most discussions.

If you want to formally challenge and appeal the closure, do not start the discussion here. Instead follow advice at

• Wikipedia:Requested moves#Elapsed listings
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Old
• Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion
• Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Awaiting closure
• Wikipedia:Templates for discussion#Old discussions
• Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion#Old business
• Wikipedia:Proposed mergers/Log
• Wikipedia:Proposed article splits

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#RfC closure review request at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 433#Closing (archived) RfC: Mondoweiss

(Initiated 17 days ago on 16 April 2024) - already the oldest thread on the page. starship.paint (RUN) 14:43, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Place new administrative discussions above this line using a level 3 heading

Talk:Indo-Pakistani_war_of_1947–1948#RfC_on_what_result_is_to_be_entered_against_the_result_parameter_of_the_infobox

(Initiated 133 days ago on 22 December 2023) No new comments for over 45 days. Ratnahastin (talk) 07:24, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Awdal#RFC - Habr Awal/Isaaq clan

(Initiated 130 days ago on 24 December 2023) ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 21:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:International Churches of Christ#RfC on Singapore court case

(Initiated 113 days ago on 10 January 2024) RfC template expired on the 10th of February 2024. TarnishedPath^talk 13:15, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Tasnim News Agency

(Initiated 80 days ago on 12 February 2024)

Closure request for this

Talk: Interstate 90#RFC: Infobox junctions

(Initiated 63 days ago on 29 February 2024) Discussion is about to expire and will need closure. RoadFan294857 (talk) 15:37, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:2024 United States presidential election#RFC: What should the criteria of inclusion be for the infobox? (Question 1)

(Initiated 50 days ago on 14 March 2024) It's been about two weeks, since the RFC tag expired. GoodDay (talk) 14:07, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Change INFOBOXUSE to recommend the use of infoboxes?

(Initiated 48 days ago on 15 March 2024) Ready to be closed. Charcoal feather (talk) 17:02, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Russo-Ukrainian War#RFC on Listing of Belarus

(Initiated 48 days ago on 16 March 2024) Hello, this RFC was started on 16 March 2024 and as of now was active for more than a month (nearly 1,5 month to be exact). I think a month is enough for every interested user to express their opinion and to vote at RFC and the last vote at this RFC was made by user Mellk on 15 April 2024 (nearly two weeks ago and within a month since the start of this RFC). The question because of which this RFC was started previously resulted in quite strong disagreements between multiple users, but I think there already is a

Will an experienced uninvolved editor please close this RFC. If there is a consensus that Belarus should be listed, but not as to how it should be listed, please close with the least strong choice, Robert McClenon (talk) 17:08, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think it should not be closed with the "least strong choice", but instead with a choice which received the most votes (the strongest choice). The most users chose C variant (in total 6 users: My very best wishes, Pofka, Gödel2200, ManyAreasExpert, Licks-rocks, CVDX), while the second strongest choice was A variant (in total 5 users). So I think the

WP:CONS of this RFC question is C variant. -- Pofka (talk) 18:33, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply

]

Talk:SpaceX Starship#RfC on IFT-3

(Initiated 42 days ago on 21 March 2024) This is a contentious issue with accusations of tendentious editing, so the RfC would benefit from a formal closure. Redraiderengineer (talk) 14:48, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A note for the closing editor... an inexperienced editor attempted to close this discussion and didn't really address the arguments. There's been some edit warring over the close, but it should be resolved by an experienced, uninvolved editor. Nemov (talk) 19:28, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another note for the closing editor: beware the related discussion at Talk:SpaceX Starship#Do not classify IFT-1, 2 and 3 as success or failure. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 00:44, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That discussion has only been going for two weeks and closing the RfC will not preclude editors from coming to a consensus on whether or not to remove the categorization entirely. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:28, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Libertarian Party (Australia)#Conservatism

(Initiated 34 days ago on 29 March 2024) RfC template expired. TarnishedPath^talk 01:22, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk: Elissa Slotkin#Labor Positions and the 2023 UAW Strike

(Initiated 34 days ago on 30 March 2024) RfC expired, no clear consensus. andrew.robbins (talk) 04:05, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Brothers of Italy#RfC on neo-fascism in info box 3 (Effectively option 4 from RfC2)

(Initiated 24 days ago on 8 April 2024) Clear consensus for change but not what to change to. I've handled this RfC very badly imo. User:Alexanderkowal — Preceding undated comment added 11:50, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Place new discussions concerning RfCs above this line using a level 3 heading

Place new discussions concerning XfDs above this line using a level 3 heading

Talk:Killing of journalists in the Israel–Hamas war#Merge proposal (5 January 2024)

(Initiated 118 days ago on 5 January 2024) The discussion has been inactive for two weeks, with a preference against the merge proposal. CarmenEsparzaAmoux (talk) 19:39, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Eat_Bulaga!#Merger_of_Eat_Bulaga!_and_E.A.T.

(Initiated 118 days ago on 6 January 2024) The discussion wasn't inactive for 7 days. It seems there's no clear consensus on merging those two articles into one. 107.185.128.255 (talk) 18:16, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's been over a month. So, it could be a good time to close that discussion. 107.185.128.255 (talk) 17:55, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Saleh al-Arouri#Merge proposal

(Initiated 112 days ago on 11 January 2024) Discussion has stalled since March with no new comments. It appears that there is no clear consensus. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aviationwikiflight (talk • contribs) 11:06, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Frederik_IX_of_Denmark#Requested_move_15_January_2024

(Initiated 109 days ago on 15 January 2024) – Requested move open for 2 months, needs closure.98.228.137.44 (talk) 18:36, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Now has been open for three months. 170.76.231.175 (talk) 15:17, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Maersk Hangzhou#Second merge proposal

(Initiated 99 days ago on 24 January 2024) Merge discussion involving CTOPS that has been open for 2 weeks now. Needs closure. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 04:46, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@WeatherWriter: I would give it a few days as the discussion is now active with new comments. GoldenBootWizard276 (talk) 00:00, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As nominator, I support a non consensus closure of this discussion so we can create an RFC to discuss how

WP:ONEEVENT applies in this situation. GoldenBootWizard276 (talk) 21:56, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply

]

Talk:1985_Pacific_hurricane_season#Proposed_merge_of_Hurricane_Ignacio_(1985)_into_1985_Pacific_hurricane_season

(Initiated 93 days ago on 30 January 2024) Listing multiple non-unanimous merge discussions from January that have run their course.

Talk:2003_Pacific_hurricane_season#Proposed_merge_of_Hurricane_Nora_(2003)_into_2003_Pacific_hurricane_season

(Initiated 93 days ago on 30 January 2024)

Talk:Pharnavaz_I_of_Iberia#Requested_move_6_February_2024

(Initiated 87 days ago on 6 February 2024) Requested move open for nearly 2 months. Natg 19 (talk) 17:46, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:12 February 2024 Rafah strikes#Merge proposal to Rafah offensive

(Initiated 80 days ago on 13 February 2024) The discussion has been inactive for over a month, with a clear preference against the merge proposal. CarmenEsparzaAmoux (talk) 19:35, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Genital_modification_and_mutilation#Requested_move_26_February_2024

(Initiated 67 days ago on 26 February 2024) – Requested move open several months, needs closure. Natg 19 (talk) 22:29, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Afrophobia#Requested_move_4_March_2024

(Initiated 59 days ago on 4 March 2024) – Requested move open nearly 2 months, needs closure. Natg 19 (talk) 05:03, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Novogrudok#Navahrudak_is_the_right_transliteration_from_the_native_languge_of_Belarus

(Initiated 57 days ago on 6 March 2024) – Requested move open for nearly 2 months, needs closure. Natg 19 (talk) 05:00, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Alexander,_Prince_of_Schaumburg-Lippe#Requested_move_10_March_2024

(Initiated 53 days ago on 10 March 2024) – Requested move open for nearly 2 months, needs closure. Natg 19 (talk) 04:55, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:2018–2019_Gaza_border_protests#Requested_move_24_March_2024

(Initiated 39 days ago on 24 March 2024) – Requested move open for over a month, needs closure. Natg 19 (talk) 04:55, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Arthur Morgan (Red Dead)#Requested move 15 April 2024

(Initiated 18 days ago on 15 April 2024) I felt like its been a while now. 🥒Greenish Pickle!🥒 (🔔) 07:13, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Rupert_Sheldrake#Talkpage_"This_article_has_been_mentioned_by_a_media_organization:"_BRD

(Initiated 16 days ago on 16 April 2024) - Discussion on a talkpage template, Last comment 6 days ago, 10 comments, 4 people in discussion. Not unanimous, but perhaps there is consensus-ish or strength of argument-ish closure possible. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:24, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Place new discussions concerning other types of closing requests above this line using a level 3 heading

Administrator Log

• See also: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review

This discussion has gotten very large, to see the entire discussion please see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT. Sections that are resolved or already enacted have been noincluded.

Machine translation gadget

There is currently a gadget called GoogleTrans which allows the straight dropping of google translate into the content translation tool. (See here). I just did a test, and I was able to produce a machine translated article into english without leaving wikipedia using this gadget. Pinging the creator of the gadget: @Endo999:. I do not think this gadget should be present on the English wikipedia, and certainly not when it seems to explicitly endorse machine translations. Fortunately, it doesn't get around the edit filter, but it still sends a terrible message. Tazerdadog (talk) 09:02, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, I didn't remember about that gadget; I surely can make good use of it. That's the kind of tools that may be invaluable time savers in the hands of us who know how to use them, making the difference between translating a stub right now when you first stumble upon it (thanks to the kick-start of having part of the work already done), or leaving it for another day (and never coming back to it).

Given that the CTX tool has been restricted to experienced editors, and that the GoogleTrans gadget needs to be explicitly activated, the combination of the two won't be at the hands unexperienced newbies in the way that created the current backlog. The GoogleTrans doesn't insert translated content into text fields, it merely shows the translation in a pop-up; so I don't agree that it "explicitly endorses machine translations". Any editor with your experience should know better than copy-paste machine translated text unedited into an article. Diego (talk) 10:39, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am the creator of the GoogleTrans gadget and it does do Machine Translation Under The HTML Markup when used in the Content Translation system. I have used this to translate 226 articles from the frwiki to the enwiki and got all of them reviewed okay. The Machine Translation is a starting point. You still have to manually change each and every sentence to get the grammar and meaning right. It's not very sensible to ban it because, without human followup, it produces a bad article. The point is that it is a tool to quicken the translation of easy to medium difficulty articles, especially for good language pairs like English-French. Wikipedia, itself, uses both Apertium and Yandex translation engines to do machine translation and these have been used to good effect in the Catalan and Spanish wikipedias. GoogleTrans does the same thing as Apertium in the Content Translation system, except it uses Google Translate, which most people feel is a better translation engine. As Diego says this needs to be explicitly turned on, so it tends to restrict usage to competent editors. To stress the point, Machine Translation, as done by GoogleTrans gadget, is a starting point, it is not the end product. Human intervention is required to massage the MT into decent destination language text and grammar, but Machine Translation can help start the translation quite a bit. Wikipedia feels that Machine Translation is worth doing, because it has it as a feature (using both Yandex and Apertium machine translation engines) Endo999 (talk) 11:45, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Except that we have a policy against machine translation on en.wikipedia, because the requirements for correcting its output are far higher than users tend to realise; in fact it is easier and faster to translate from scratch than to spend the necessary time and effort comparing the original with the translation to find the errors. Hence the whole long discussion above and the agreement that machine translations can be deleted as such. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:13, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There is no policy against Machine Translation on the enwiki. That would have to be posted on the Content Translation blog, and it isn't. I've done 226 of these articles successfully and I can tell you there is more editing for non text issues, like links around dates coming from the frwiki, editing getting references right, manual changing of TAGS because their parameter headings are in the origin language. The actual translation work postprocessing, when polished up by a person competent in the destination language is far less than you say. But style differences between the wikis take more of the editors time. Endo999 (talk) 19:44, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The policy is at

Iridescent 19:49, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

The policy is against unedited machine translation. It doesn't apply to using machine translation as a starting point to be cleaned up by hand. Diego (talk) 20:12, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

MACHINETRANSLATION isn't a policy. It isn't even a guideline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:14, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have never claimed that Machine Translation first drafts are good enough for articles on the enwiki. They aren't, but responsible use of Machine Translation, as a first draft, that is then worked on to become readable and accurate in the destination language is quite okay and even helpful. Endo999 (talk) 20:40, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The consensus is pretty clear that unless you are translating at a professional level, machine translation is a trap. It looks good at first glance, but often introduces bad and difficult to detect errors, such as missed negations or cultural differences. Even if a human caught 9 out of 10 of these errors, the translation would be grossly unacceptable and inaccurate. I'd request that this gadget be disabled, or at minimum, de-integrated from the content translation tool. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:33, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well. I'm pretty far from being a fan of machine translations, but it's always been possible to copy/paste from Google Translate. Anyone autoconfirmed can do that without going to all the trouble of finding and enabling this gadget. The problem is fundamentally behavioural rather than technological. The specific problem behaviour is putting incomprehensible or misleading information in the mainspace. Over-reliance on machine translation is a cause of this, but we can't prevent or disable machine translation entirely, and there's not much point trying. I think the position we should adopt is that it is okay to use machine-aided translations provided you don't put them in the mainspace until they've been thoroughly checked by someone who reads the source language and writes the target language fluently. I suggest the approach we take to Endo999's tool is to add some warnings and instructions rather than try to disable it.—S Marshall T/C 23:51, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Don't forget that the use of Machine Translation in the Content Translation system is expanding all the time, and I'm am pretty much the only regular user of my GoogleTrans gadget for translation purposes. Why is the gadget being singled out? Yandex machine translation is being turned on by the Content Translation people all the time for various languages, like Ukranian and Russian. The Catalan and Spanish wikipedias are at the forefront of machine translation for article creation and they are not being flamed like this. I reiterate that the majority of edits per my frwiki-to-enwiki articles are over differences in the frwiki for an article than for articles in the enwiki. The treatment of dates and athletic times is one such difference. You need to do postediting after the document has been published in order to please the editors of the destination wiki. This usually has nothing to do with the translated text but is actually the treatment of links, the treatment of dates, the removal of underlines in links, the adding of categories, the transfer of infoboxes, the addition of references (the fiwiki is particularly good for references of track and field athletes), and other wiki standards (that are different from the origin wiki). There's always going to be some postediting of translated articles because of these nontranslation specific items. It's just inherent in wiki to wiki article movement. Endo999 (talk) 00:24, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We don't care about what happens on other wikipedia language versions, basically. Some are happy to have 99% bot-created articles, some hate bot-created articles. Some are happy with machine-translated articles, some don't. It may be true that "the use of Machine Translation in the Content Translation system is expanding all the time", but at enwiki, such a recent "expansion" started all this as the results were mostly dreadful. "Why is the gadget being singled out? Yandex machine translation is being turned on by the Content Translation people all the time for various languages, like Ukranian and Russian." Your gadget is in use on enwiki, what gadgets they use on ruwiki or the like is of no concern to us. We "single out" tools in use on enwiki, since this is an enwiki-only discussion. And this discussion is not about the long list of more cosmetic things you give at the end (or else I would start a rant about your many faux-bluelinks to frwiki articles in enwiki articles, a practice I truly dislike), it is (mostly) about quality of translation, comprehensability and accuracy. Yours are a lot better than most articles created with ContentTranslation, luckily.

Fram (talk) 07:07, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

• @Endo999: I just happened to check Odette Ducas, one of your translations from French. You had Lille piped to read "Little". This is a good illustration of how easy it is to miss errors, and it's not fair, in fact counterproductive, to encourage machine-based translation and depend on other editors to do the necessary painstaking checking. Yngvadottir (talk) 17:20, 6 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for catching that error (Lille translated at Little). I had seen and corrected that problem in a later article on a french female track athlete from Lille, but didn't correct the earlier translated article. Don't forget that Wikipedia is about ordinary people creating Wikipedia articles and through the ARGUS (many eyes) phenonmenon having many people correct articles so they become good articles. This is one example of that. Wikipedia is not about translation being restricted to language experts or simply experts for article creation. Your argument does tend towards that line of thought. Endo999 (talk) 18:56, 6 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it does (for one thing, all you can know of my level of expertise is what I demonstrate). The wiki method is about trusting the wisdom of the crowd: this tool hoodwinks people. It's led you to make a silly error you wouldn't have otherwise made, and it's led to at least one eager new editor being indeffed on en.wikipedia. It rests on condescending assumptions that the editing community can't be left to decide what to work on, in what order. (Not to mention the assumptions about how other Wikipedias must be delighted to get imported content just because.) Yngvadottir (talk) 19:04, 6 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'ld like to retract my compliment about Endo999's use of his translation tool. I have just speedy deleted his machine translation of

Almost everyone of the articles I have translated, using the GoogleTrans gadget, has already been reviewed by other editors and passed. I can only translate the existing French, which is sometimes not well written. In Fatima Yvelain's case I transferred over all the sources from the frwiki article. Can you tell me which reference didn't work out. You've deleted the article, without the ordinary seven day deletion period, so you deleted the article without any challenges. Are you and a few other reviewers systematically going through every article I have translated looking for things to criticize? Endo999 (talk) 01:54, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That's how Wikipedia rolls; it's the easiest way to demonstrate supposed incompetence, and since incompetence on the part of the creator reflects on the tool, it is therefore the easiest way in which to get the tool removed (along with phrases such as "I'd like to retract my compliment", which I hate as much as Fram hates faux-bluelinks). Simples. jcc (tea and biscuits) 11:00, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Having just checked the article for myself, if it was really "reviewed by other editors and passed" it reflects just as badly on those other editors as it does on you, given that it contained an entire paragraph of grossly libellous comments sourced entirely to an alleged reference which is on a completely unrelated topic and doesn't mention the subject once. (

Iridescent 15:46, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

I realise this isn't a vote, but I agree with Tazerdadog that having such a tool easily available is sending the wrong message. It needs to be restricted to experienced users, with plenty of warnings around it. Deb (talk) 13:28, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You are all panicking. There's nothing wrong with using the GoogleTrans gadget with the Content Translation system if the appropriate editing happens alongside it. The ordinary review process can uncover articles that are not translated well enought. I'm being punished for showing ingenuity here. Punishing innovation is a modern trait I find. Endo999 (talk) 07:31, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No, our reveiw processes are not adequate for this. Both the problems with translated articles, and the unrelated but similar problems with tool created articles (now discussed at

Fram (talk) 09:19, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

We, on enwiki, don't care about what happens at other language versions: such discussions belong either at that specific language or at a general site (Wikimedia). These may involve the same people of course. 19:45, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Do people feel that a RFC on this topic would be appropriate/helpful? The discussion seems to have fixated on minute analyses of Endo999's editing, which is not the point. The discussion should be on whether the presence of the gadget is an implicit endorsement of machine translated materials, and whether its continued presence sends the wrong message. Tazerdadog (talk) 22:33, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I believe an RfC would be helpful assuming it is well prepared.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:49, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The GoogleTrans gadget has been running on the enwiki for the last 7 years and has 29,000 people who load the gadget when they sign into Wikipedia. It's quite a successful gadget and certainly, wiki to wiki translators have concentrated on the gadget because while they may know English (when they are translating articles between the enwiki and their home wikis) they like to get the translation of a word every once in a while. Endo999 (talk) 17:05, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion on this matter seems to have mostly died down, but I was unaware of this discussion until now and I feel the need to speak up on behalf of translation tools. I don't believe the tool being discussed here is the one I am using, since *it* does not provide a machine translation into english. However. I do put english into French based on the machine translation. I repeat, *based on*. Many of my edits to date have been translation and cleanup after translation, so I am probably close to an ideal use case. The tool, Yandex.Translate, appeared on my French wikipedia account and I do find it useful, although it produces text that needs to be gone over 4-5 times, as, yes, it sometimes creates inappropriate wikilinks, often in the case where a word can mean a couple of different things and the tool picks the wrong one. And it consistently translates word by word. I have submitted a feature request for implementation of some basic rules -- for example in German the verb is always the last word in the sentence and in French the word order is almost always "dress blue" not "blue dress". But there are many many MANY articles with word order problems on Wikipedia; it's just usually more subtle that that when the originating editor was human but not a native English speaker. So it's a little like fixing up the stilted unreferenced prose of someone who can't write but yea verily does know MUCH more about the topic than I do. And has produced a set of ideas, possibly inelegantly expressed, I would not have conceived of. The inelegant writing is why we have all this text in a *wiki*

For the record, I agree that machine-translated text is an anathema and have spent way too many hours rescuing articles from its weirdnesses, such as "altar" coming through as "furnace branch" in Notre-Dame de la Garde. BUT. Used properly, machine translation is useful. For one thing it is often correct about the translation for specific obscure words. I deeply appreciated this when, for example, I was doing English into French on a bio of a marauding Ottoman corsair who, at one point or another, invaded most of the Mediterranean. I am an English speaker who was educated in French and has spent years operating in French, but the equivalent terms for galleon, caravel, Papal States, apse and nave, for example, not to mention Crusader castles and Aegean islands, weren't at the tip of my tongue. Its suggestions needed to be verified, but so do Google Search results. I could look these words up, sure, and do anyway, but Yandex gives my carpal tendons a break, in that I can do one thing at a time, ie translate a bit of text like "he said" then check to make sure that wikilink is correct, move down to the next paragraph and do some other simple task like correcting word order while I mull why it is that the suggested translation sounds awkward, walk away and come back... All of this is possible without the tool, but more difficult, and takes much longer. I have translated more articles in the past month, at least to a 0.95 version, that I had in the entire previous several years I've been editing wikipedia. Since the tool suggests articles that exist on one wikipedia but not the other, I am also embarking on translations I otherwise would not, because of length or sheer number of lookups needed to refresh my memory on French names for 16th-century Turkish or Albanian settlements or for product differentiation or demand curve or whatever. Or simply because while the topic may be important it's fundamentally tedious and needs to be taken in small doses, like some of the stuff I've been doing with French jurisprudence and which is carefully labeled, btw, as a translation in progress on those published articles that are still approaching completion.

I agree that such tools should not be available to people who don't have the vocabulary to use them. I don't really have suggestions as to what the criteria should be, but there is a good use for them. They -- or at least this tool -- do however make it possible to publish a fully-formed article, which reduces the odds of cranky people doing a speedy delete while you are pondering French template syntax for {{cn}} or whatever. This has happened to me. The tool is all still kinda beta and the algorithm does ignore special characters, which I hope they remedy soon. (In other words ê becomes e and ç becomes c etc.) Also, template syntax differs from one wiki to another so infoboxes and references often error out when the article is first published. Rule of thumb, possibly: don't publish until you can spend the hour or so chasing this sort of thing down down. And the second draft is usually still a bit stilted and in need of an edit for idiom. But the flip side of that is that until you do publish, the tool keeps your work safe from cranky people and in one place, as opposed to having to reinvent the version management wheel or wonder whether the draft is in Documents or on the desktop. Some people complain within 3 minutes of publication that the article has no references without taking the time to realize that the article is a translation of text that has no references. As the other editor said above, translation tools aren't magic and won't provide a reference that isn't there or fix a slightly editorial or GUIDEBOOK tang to language -- this needs to come next as a separate step. When references are present the results are uneven, but I understand that this issue *is* on the other hand on the to-do list. Anyway, these are my thoughts on the subject; as you can see I have thunk quite a few of them and incidentally have reported more than one bug. But we are all better off if people like me do have these tools, assuming that there is value in French wikipedia finding out about trade theory and ottoman naval campaigns, and English wikipedia learning about the French court system. Elinruby (talk) 08:39, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Articles created by block-evading sock using the WMF translation tool

My attention was drawn at a site I should not link to and therefore will not name (however, the thread title is "The WMF gives volunteers another 100K articles to check") to the fact that Duckduckstop created several articles using the WMF translation tool. They were blocked on 5 April as a sock of a blocked user, and their edits are thus revertable. I checked one translated article as a test, John of Neumarkt, and I've seen worse, but it is clearly based on a machine translation and contains at least one inaccurate and potentially misleading passage: "Auch in Olmütz hielt sich Johannes nur selten auf" does not mean "Also in Olomouc, John held only rarely"; it means he rarely spent any time there, but a reader might either not understand that or think it meant he rarely claimed the title. Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review contains thousands of pages, the vast majority still to be checked. Only a few of us are working there. I feel guilty having taken a few days off to write 2 new articles. I haven't looked through Duckduckstop's page creations to see what proportion were created with the translation tool, but that one has not been substantially edited by anyone else. I suggest that in this emergency situation, it and others that fall into both categories—translation tool, and no substantial improvements by other editors—be deleted under the provision for creations by a blocked/banned user. Yngvadottir (talk) 17:42, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there. I have had a look today at that list, but haven't really been posting comments since as far as I could see nobody else has been there in several days. I do not know what happened with duckduckstop but as to the articles on the list

- I do not understand why an article about a French general who invaded several countries under Napoleon is nominated for deletion as far as I can tell solely on based on authorship? Do we not trust the content because of the person who wrote it? Can someone explain this to me? I glanced at the article quickly and the English seems fine. This is a serious question; I don't get it. Also, why did we delete Genocide in Guatemala? It was already redlinked when I noticed it, but unless the article was truly astonishing bad, I would have made an effort to clean that one up. Personally. Considering that some of the stuff that's been on the "cleanup after translation" list the past few years --- we have had articles on individual addresses in Paris. We have lists of say, songs on a 1990s album in Indonesian, sheriffs of individual municipalities in Wales (one list per century), and government hierarchies in well, pretty much everywhere.

- I have a suggestion: The person who decides that we need a set of articles for each madrasa in Tunis, water tower in Holland or mountain in Corsica is responsible for finishing the work on the articles in the set to a certain standard. Which can be quite low, incidentally. I have no objection to some of the association football and track and field articles that are being nominated for deletion. They may not be sparking entralling prose but they are there and tell you, should you want to know, who that person is. Similarly the articles about figures in the literature of Quebec, while only placeholders, do contain information and are preferable to nothing. Although I don't see machine translation as the huge problem some people apparently do, the translation tool also does need work. It might be nice if it sent articles to user space by default, and the articles could then be published from there there after polishing. Elinruby (talk) 14:26, 8 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Fram (talk) 08:56, 12 September 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

Heh. That's not unusual. But see there *is* an article, which was my primary concern. I should have checked before using it as an example. Here is the point I was trying to make. Since apparently I didn't, let me spell it out. -- I have put in a considerable amount of time on the "cleanup after translation" list so yes, I absolutely agree that horrible machine translations exist. I have cleaned many of them up. But. Many of the articles we keep are extremely trivial. Many get deleted that seem somewhat important, actually, just not to the particular person who AfD's them. I have seen articles on US topics get kept because of a link to Zazzle. (!) Perhaps my POV is warped by the current mess I am trying to straighten out in the articles on the French court system, but it seems to me that the english wiki is rather dismissive of other cultures. (Cour d'assises != Assizes, just saying; this is what we call a cognate.) That is all; just something that has been bothering me. Elinruby (talk) 05:59, 13 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

But most articles have not been reviewed--it will apparently take many months. Of the ones still on the list that I have reviewed, I am able to find at least one-third which are worth rescuing and which I am able to rescue. We need a long continuation.If this is not agreed here, we will need to discuss it on

My understanding was that we were still working out how to begin the vaccination process. I'm happy if we simply moved to draft space instead of deleting at the end of the two weeks, but I'm not sure if that would address your concern. Tazerdadog (talk) 22:15, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@

No such user, Atlantic306, DGG, Acer, Graeme Bartlett, Mortee, Xaosflux, HyperGaruda, Ymblanter, BrightR, and Tazerdadog

:

I call "

reltime

" on the section title! ;-) But seriously, it does end in a few days, and although I've been active in pushing to stick with the current date (June 6) to finalize this, so I almost hate to say this, but I'd like to ask for a short postponement, for good cause. This is due to two different things that have happened in the last few days, that materially change the picture, imho:

• CXT Overwrites - this issue about CXT clobbering good articles of long-standing, was
  WP:CXT/PTR/Clobbers
  for details.
• Asian language review - this was stalled for lack of skilled translator/proofreaders in these and other languages. In response to a
  WP:CXT/PTR/By language. In just three days^[a]
  this has started to bear fruit, with editors working on articles in Gujarati, Hindi, Hungarian, Farsi, Romanian and Arabic; with over 50 or 60 analyzed. I'm ready to ramp up the recruitment effort on Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and more European languages (hopefully with the help of others here) but this does need some time as it's only got started literally in the last few days.

A postponement would give us the time to save all the clobbers, and make a significant dent in the articles from Asian and other languages for which we don't have a lot of expertise. Mathglot (talk) 06:19, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that the clobbers have all been taken care of. This leaves the Asian language articles. I'm sure that if someone with the needed language skills comes along in the future, admins would be more than happy to mass-undelete the drafts so that they could be reviewed. However, I don't see a reason to postpone in the hope that this will occur. Tazerdadog (talk) 18:45, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Clobbers *are* taken care of, because we (two of us) have been taking care of them. Asian (and other) languages have plenty of translators td.hat could take care of them, it's not a matter of "hoping" for anything in the future, they exist now, so all we have to do is continue the effort begun only a few (5) days ago

Cryptic and Elinruby:. Mathglot (talk) 07:52, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

Still need to recruit de, bg and ru. Also still very distracted by real life -- I have had one parent die and another go into hospice in the course of this project, and we have still gotten all this done, so it's not like we are dragging this out into never-never land. A majority of these articles are rescuable, esp as we bring in new editors who are not burned out by re-arranging the word order of the sentences for the 10,000 time. I think the really stellar articles have all been flagged now, but we have still found some very recently and I have said this before. Beyond the really stellar though are the many many not-bad articles and the more mediocre ones that are nonetheless easier to fix than to do over.I am in favor of an extension, personally, though as we all know I would not have started this at all if it were up to me. Many of the really bad articles were already at PNT.

I will be flying almost all day today but will check into wikipedia tonight. Elinruby (talk) 16:19, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm involved in many other things, and get here as I can, and each time I do, I find more than can and should be rescued. There are whole classes of articles, like those of small towns or sports stadiums, which have merely been assumed to be of secondary importance and not actually looked at. If we delete now, we will be judging article by the title. It is very tempting to easily remove all the junk by removing everything, but that;'s the opposite of sensibler ,and the opposite of WP:PRESERVE/ DGG ( talk ) 09:45, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I found a couple today that kind of amazed me, they were so good. But let's play out the chinese fire drill. I'm afraid we're going to find out that we've all done a huge amount of work to delete 30 articles that need to be deleted and 350 whose authors will will not contribute again. Anyway. I have not touched stadiums, personally, because I suspect they will be deleted for notability so why? Ditto all these people with Olympic gold medals because I already have plenty to do without getting involved with articles that are certain to be deleted, not to mention all the argentinian actresses and whatnot.... grumble. Gonna go recruit some chinese and norwegians, because the articles are just going into some other namespace we can still send links to right? Elinruby (talk) 02:14, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The plan is to draftify the articles prior to deletion, but I think deletion can be postponed basically indefinitely once they are draftified Tazerdadog (talk) 02:31, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tazerdadog: I'd like to be sure of that. This is why you lose editors, wikipedia... anyway. Am cranky at the moment. Let me get done what I can with this and then I'll have some things to say. Hopefully some intelligent and civil things. Are we really getting articles from PootisHeavy still? Elinruby (talk) 02:46, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Elinruby: Fixing pings like you just did doesn't work. Pings only work if you sign your post in the same edit and do nothing but add content. Pppery 02:49, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Elinruby: The second part statement I made above is a departure from the established consensus as I understand it. The plan which achieved consensus was to draftify, hold in draft for just long enough to check for massive clerical errors, and then delete. I floated the above statement to try to gain consensus to hold the articles in draft space for longer (or indefinitely). While it is important to get potential BLP violations and gross inaccuracies out of mainspace in a timely manner, i don't think it is nearly so important to delete the drafts, especially if salvageable to good articles are regularly being pulled out of them. Tazerdadog (talk) 03:06, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tazerdadog: Thanks for the suggestion. I think that would help limit the potential for damage and it would alleviate some of my concerns. My assessment differs widely from what I keep reading on this board, but, hey. If anyone cares I would say that 10% of these articles are stellar and very advanced and sophisticated translations. Don't need a thing. Another 10% are full or partial translations, quite correct, of articles that do not meet en.wiki standards for references or tone but do faithfully reflect the translated article. Many of these are extremely boring unless you are doing nitty-gritty research into something like energy policy in Equatorial Guinea, but they then become important... About another 5% I cannot read at all and let's say another 10% are heavy going and require referencing one or more equivalent articles in other languages. Say 5% if anyone ever gets around to dealing with PootisHeavy. The rest are... sloppy english but accurate, unclear but wikilinked, or some other intermediate or mixed level. This has not, in my opinion, been a good use of my time and I have stopped doing any translations, personally, until we get some sanity here. The whole process, it seems to me, simultaneously assumes that translation is easy and also that it is of no value. If wikipedia does not value translation then -- argh. It just makes me to see a good organization eat its own foot this way, is all. Off to see if I can catch us a nepali speaker ;) Elinruby (talk) 03:26, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@

no Nepali articles in the batch, afaict. Also, Pootis stopped translating

following a March 23 addition to his talk page, currently at #53 on the page.

@

there if anyone wants to volunteer). I'll want to modify the editor recruitment template so that it can blue-link articles in whatever new location they reside in, so hopefully it will be a nice, systematic mapping of some sort so a dumb template can easily be coded to figure out the new location, given the old one. Just wanted to mention that, so that you can keep it in mind when you come up with the move schema. Naturally, if it's just a move to Draft

namespace, then it will be an easy fix to the template.

There is one article in Nepali. I have not invited anyone for it yet, though I did do some of the less populated languages like latvian, indonesian and polish. I have several answers (da, es, pt as I recall) and most articles passed. I will put translated templates and strike those articles shortly. And yes, I just now struck one today. Anything about 3-d modeling is notable imho and I will work on it as long as I can read it at all. Also some of the bad translations about historical documents may be fixable given the response we are getting. If either of you gets enough help/time there are quite a few es/pt/de articles that I did that I believe to be correct but cannot myself certify in terms of the translated template Elinruby (talk) 00:29, 8 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@DGG: I withdraw my aspersions on the section title name. This offer valid for twenty-four hours. Mathglot (talk) 08:24, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I do not understandd what you mean by this. I assume you mean you are withdrawing the attempt to start mass deletions immediately. If not, please let me know--for I will then proceed to do what I can to prevent them--and , if possible to try to change policy so that no X- speedy criteria can ever again be suggested. The more of these translations I look at, them ore I find that should be rescued. DGG ( talk ) 23:59, 7 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• No comment on whether the close itself was apt: but stylistically, you were perhaps just a trifle poetical- unnecessarily so, since a close should really sum up the main points upon which there is a consensus, or otherwise. Just an opinion though.
  Pocketed 04:54, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • Not something like, "Go back to doing something useful FFS"? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 04:59, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • It certainly makes a change ;)
      Pocketed 05:01, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
      ]

After a brief skim, the close seemed fundamentally fine. I could have missed something, but I wouldn't worry too much about it.Tazerdadog (talk) 05:06, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"Aggrieved" is too strong a word. The discussion was a mix of (1) the usual unproductive, combative bickering, which will always be present in any discussion that is open to anyone, and (2) constructive discussion of what I feel is one of the most pressing core issues facing us today. (Strongly disagree with NeilN's "something useful" assessment, as there is nothing more useful than constructive debate of foundational issues.) It was closed apparently on the basis of the former, and I felt it should have been left open on the basis of the latter. That's it. I was and am prepared to move on rather than make a big issue of it. ―Mandruss ☎ 05:14, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'd also note that, for future reference, discussions on someone's user talk page should generally be left to that user to close if they want to, unless for some reason they request an outside editor close it. I'd probably be a little irritated if someone started closing discussions on my talk page. That being said, unless Jimbo objects or reopens it, we may as well leave it lie. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 05:20, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate this feedback; it is helpful and I will abide by its good counsel. It is not my normal manner to non-admin close a discussion and I don't know why I felt in this case that I should. I followed an impulse and soon began feeling like I had overstepped propriety. I am glad that I've not earned a sanction and give my assurance that I won't repeat this again. Sometimes I feel like a fool and it happens that this became one of those times; I apologize. I sincerely thank everyone who gave of their time to help me with such thoughtful advice. Best regards.--

John Cline (talk) 08:09, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

Jimbo has, in the past, been absent for extended periods, and has welcomed rational moderation at his talk page. There is no doubt that the discussion had gone well beyond a reasonable length, and closing such discussions on Jimbo's talk page has been the rule rather than the exception. In the case at hand, I would have suggested that it too far too long for someone to close that discussion" which had reached quite unreasonable length. 6000 words is far too long, and this went far beyond that lenient value. Collect (talk) 14:31, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Again, I've moved on from that particular discussion, but the preceding comment is worth a response.
An arbitrary word limit is all well and good for the average everyday discussion. For discussions that have some potential for improvement on core issues, not so much. Solutions to these problems are very difficult, but they are impossible if constructive discussion of them is shut down on grounds of length. These are highly complex issues that can't be resolved in 5,000 words. The question we should ask is whether or not the discussion has completely devolved into pointless argument, and that one had not. As long as there is something constructive going on, and the talk page's owner doesn't object, no number of words is too many.
It would have been helpful to take action to end the unproductive part of the thread, but there is apparently no way to do that (there is a very wide gap between pointless bickering and actionable disruption). ―Mandruss ☎ 21:20, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Look at it this way. Want to shut down a good discussion? Start a fight. Someone will be along shortly to nac it. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:37, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

John Cline, your first link is dead. Would you mind going into the archives and finding the thread and linking it from there? (BTW, this is why it's best to provide a perma-link from an iteration of a page rather than from the live page.) Softlavender (talk) 14:41, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

@Softlavender: Permalink to archived thread: [10] ―Mandruss ☎ 22:22, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm aware of that,

John Cline (or you if you like) to fix his link in his OP. Softlavender (talk) 00:36, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

LOL. Or you if you like! I am converting both opening links to permalinks—to their respective original locations, for consistency. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:53, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Bad Dryer has initiated a block appeal on his talk page and requested input here. See: User talk:Bad Dryer#Block review discussion at WP:AN. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 16:03, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• For reference, here is the previous block review that took place in February. Katie^talk 19:08, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• unblock with the conditions stated I'll admit I've not looked closely, but A) it's been a while and B) it sounds like there is a good understanding of the issues and C) the interaction ban and topic ban should cover most of the problems. And of course,
  WP:ROPE... Hobit (talk) 20:30, 22 August 2016 (UTC) (also posted this to his talk page, not sure where the discussion would be held, I'd think his talk page would be ideal as he can post there, but eh...)[reply
  ]
  • I'm perfectly fine with a broader topic ban of all I/P issues. Hobit (talk) 22:21, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment is an AN request the way to go? Why can't a standard unblock request be good enough? Merely having the block endorsed at AN doesn't mean it's a community block, just that the admin block was affirmed. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 20:35, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  As the admin who recommended a second discussion here, I was working off the second point of

  WP:CBAN. That, and given the extensive background (the ARBCOM case mentioned below) I figured that the case merited wider discussion - I know from offwiki experience that "time passed" does not by default equal "issue gone". Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:56, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  Because the AN discussion endorsing the block was so emphatic that it cannot be overriden by one administrator, though if you're happy I'm quite willing to reject the unblock request for the reasons given below. I think it's better if it comes here though. Black Kite (talk) 22:37, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Bad Dryer is an expert in goading editors who he considers not pro-Israeli enough. (Have you forgotten the User:Malik Shabazz brahooha?) If he is allowed back, then please at least topic ban him from the Israel/Palestine area, (only an interaction ban with User:Nishidani is simply not enough, IMO), Huldra (talk) 20:40, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose unblock. BD's unblock request says "I do want to return to editing in a constructive manner", but when has he edited in a constructive manner? In his block review six months ago [21], more than a dozen highly experienced editors, many of them admins, made it clear that BD is anything but a constructive editor or asset to the encyclopedia. It was a nearly unanimous ruling. Softlavender (talk) 21:49, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose Unblock but... would also accept a topic ban from the whole I/P area. This is the area where his previous issues have occurred (let's not forget this includes two indefs), and I have no confidence whatsoever that they would not recur. I am also not convinced that he is not a sock of User:NoCal100; behaviour has a number of similarities both in interests and attitude, and previous Checkusers returned "Possible". Black Kite (talk) 22:36, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose unblock (Non-administrator comment) - as I said in the previous unblock request, this user's unique awfulness manages to stand out in a topic area plagued by general awfulness. Multiple blocks for racially-charged personal attacks; one should be enough for a siteban but here we are. There are a rare few users who should never be allowed back; Bad Dryer is one of them. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 23:21, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose I can only agree with Softlavender and others. In my 8+ years here, I have never seen anything approaching the rancor of 6 months ago. DoctorJoeE ^{review transgressions}/_{talk to me!} 00:20, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Support unblock, at the very least
  WP:SO applies here. I would be ok with an IBAN for BD and Nishidani. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 13:39, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Oppose IMO the only thing "rope" does is allow the ghastly behavior to happen again. Other editors should not have to go through the things that this editor will put them through. MarnetteD|Talk 22:33, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment and proposal: In the earlier
  WP:AN request, which I had initiated, I had opposed the indef block. My viewpoint is the same, but that argument probably isn't going to fly; so the proposed solution of unblocking them and simultaneously issuing a topic-ban from Israel-Palestine seems fine to me. I don't really see any downside to this solution. Two points about the above comments, especially by Black Kite and Ivanvector. Firstly, there was no conclusive SPI (I had initiated one myself, which went nowhere), so sockpuppet allegations are at best, unproven. The SPI here was never cleared up one way or another, and fell through the cracks. It has been a long time since then, so any CU evidence would probably be stale now. Secondly, there were no "multiple blocks for racially-charged personal attacks". There was one incident which could be deemed racially charged. The other had nothing to do with race - other than the general fact that anything dealing with Israel-Palestine does have something to do with religion or race. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 23:55, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]

As I said, one should be enough, and I disagree that others were not more of the same. I have made no comment on the SPI. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 14:50, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am wondering if we should move this account to decrease confusion.[22]

They seem to be editing well. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:21, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Softblocked. Katie^talk 22:35, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There is also a User:Docjames Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:22, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Do you have control of that account? It shouldn't redirect to your user space unless you do. Katie^talk 22:38, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@DocJames:, @Docjames:, would you consider a change of username to help reduce confusion? Failing that, would you be willing to change your signature to a different color/style from Doc James's which is close to the default?

@Doc James:, could you consider creating doppelganger accounts on any other permutation of your name that would be likely to cause confusion? Tazerdadog (talk) 22:42, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It was a redirect [23] but than someone created it. As the account is now blocked. Once that user makes a new account I can than replace it again with a redirect. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:44, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Doc James: I believe the question is now about User:Docjames, which is another redirect to your userspace, and another user (although long inactive user). -- The Voidwalker ^Discuss 22:54, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes not sure what people wish to do. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:30, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

While I don't believe they do renames anymore (unless they're wearing additional hats), I think they're the ones most likely to help point you in the right direction, so you may wish to drop a note at

WP:BN. - jc37 12:05, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

Can someone please delete Martin May (disambiguartion). It was created in error while creating Martin May (disambiguation). Thank you! -O.R.^Comms 16:21, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

 Done 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 16:25, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@

db-author}}. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 05:33, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

I've lifted the salting as it's evidently moot now and so that regular editors can do the move if it is agreed upon. The topic of the previous article is indeed the same as of

The Rebel Legion, but I am not seeing similarity in the text so I'd say the old history is useless. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:12, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

Thanks Jo-Jo Eumerus. -- Marchjuly (talk) 10:11, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

At Talk:Murder of Seth Rich there is a lively discussion about how to apply BLP to a bare mention that Wikileaks offered a $25,000 reward with no additional speculation allowed. There are multiple veteran Wikipedia editors who have offered good-faith opinion on both sides of this issue.

At Talk:Murder of Seth Rich#Administrative reminder re: BLP policy, administrator MastCell has made a declairation[24] in his official capacity as an administrator that many have interpreted as stating that one side of this policy-based content dispute is is right and the other side is wrong, and multiple editors on the side MastCell favored have pointed to this as if it settles the matter.[25][26][27][28][29]

I don't think Mastcell did anything wrong at all (please read the preceding nine words three times before dragging out the flamethrowers -- this is a good-faith discussion of a problem and how to fix it) and in no way intended to use the the admin bit is being a supervote in this way, but it is clear that some participants saw it as official admin support of their side of the content dispute.

So how do we fix this? --Guy Macon (talk) 05:48, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Best practice in general for any admin actions which seem to decide an editorial issue on any topic whatsoever is

Don't.

No matter how pure the motives, Wikipedia commends us to seek consensus from the editors, not an administrative ukase on any issues at all. Collect (talk) 07:26, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

 Comment: My interpretation is that all that the references cited above imply is that the editors that wrote them (including myself) agree with the interpretation of our policy done by MastCell. I don´t see any reference in any of them to the fact that he is an administrator or any claim that just because the policy in question was cited by and administrator it meant that the issue was settled. We cited his comment because we feel it is a strong and valid argument. If the same comment would have been made by a regular editor I would have still have referred to it in the exact same way, and probably the rest of the editors cited above would have as well.--Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 09:58, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• (1) You are the only person who has used the term "supervote", and only in or in regards to this AN filing, so I fail to see the problem. (2) MastCell's comment was not a !vote, it was a reminder of BLP policy, so again, I fail to see the problem, or why you are bringing this to AN. Softlavender (talk) 10:02, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Weasel me this... Why are "some" going to such great lengths to derail normal editing processes on this and other election-related articles? There's no basis to this concern. MastCell has been very clear and has been trying to keep the talk page focused on policy. SPECIFICO talk 11:34, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Fix? If there is a fix needed. Then start a proper content RfC with a specific content proposal (within the care required by BLP) and then people can make their policy based and reasoned arguments and it can be closed by an uninvolved as proposal enacted or not (and no consensus would likely also result in not). Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:43, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Alanscottwalker, you have raised the more important concern. We can't have an RfC that proposes to ratify a BLP violation. The proposed content is clearly such a violation. SPECIFICO talk 13:24, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Adding the phrase "WikiLeaks offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to a conviction" does not violate BLP. Not even close. "BLP" isn't a

magic word that allows you to always get your way in any content dispute. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:56, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

An example that shows the problem can be found in the second !vote of the RfC at Talk:Murder of Seth Rich: " We have an official announcement above from a Wikipedia administrator acting in his administrative capacity". That's one example of someone (wrongly) thinking that Mastcell made a ruling on the content dispute. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:06, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There is no stricture against citing policy in an RfC !vote, whether ad hoc or in reference to an admin's reminder; there is also no indication that that or any other voter took it as a "ruling". If you think there is something to "fix", would that for instance be MastCell removing all mention of his status as an administrator from his reminder? Softlavender (talk) 14:24, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I would chime in and say that there are two clearly opposing sides to this dispute, both citing policy (correctly and incorrectly), and wielding said policy as it were helpful to the content dispute, instead of working on the content. My .2 would be that it is NOT a BLP violation to simply say that wikileaks has offered a reward for information regarding the murder, but some editors are saying that this itself implies a deeper link that is inappropriate to write about. I don't know how to proceed. Mr Ernie (talk) 14:56, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but look. As a thought experiment, Ernie: Why do you think Wikileaks offered a reward and then when questioned by a reporter why did Assange make a statement about "our sources take risks" in the context of this reward? I'm just asking for your personal take on that. It was televised, citation on the talk page so you can view it if you wish. SPECIFICO talk 15:38, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly have my opinion as to why they offered the reward, but it would be

WP:OR to add my speculation to the article. Mr Ernie (talk) 16:31, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

I know you're capable of understanding my question, so your (non-)response sounds like a coy evasion. I didn't ask you to put it in the article. I asked for your evaluation of the sourced material. We constantly evaluate material from all kinds of sources as part of our responsibility to present sourced material in context, with due weight, on-topic, etc. So batter-up. What say you? SPECIFICO talk 17:47, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, my personal opinion would be that Wikileaks offered a reward to either grab some headlines or somehow imply that Rich was their source for the DNC leak. But please note that this opinion, if included in our wikipedia article (which no one is trying to do), would be a violation of

WP:BLP since everyone else is. My personal opinion has no place in the article; only reliably sourced and notable facts do. Mr Ernie (talk) 18:15, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

Thanks, Mr Ernie. The problem is that your opinion, though it's just a suspicion and not proven and perhaps even an idle thought, is reasonable reaction. If we put the reward story in the article other readers can be expected to have the same reaction. That would be

WP:SYNTH and the conclusion that many readers would draw -- their reasonable inference -- would be a BLP violation, and a serious one suggesting unethical and/or criminal behavior. SPECIFICO talk 20:48, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

• I'll post the same thing here that I did at the RfC, where Guy Macon also posted his original comment: What MastCell did, was provide a
  clueful and therefore authoritative perspective on how BLP reads on the decision. !votes that fail to take BLP into account at all as many of them do, are likely to be given less weight by a clueful closer and if the closer doesn't take BLP into account, the close will be liable to be overturned (not necessarily overturned, but open to be overturned). Other clueful admins have also weighed in on how BLP applies to this issue, see here, and came to different conclusions about how BLP applies (but directly addressed BLP) so anyone who takes MastCell's view as The Only Possible View is out to lunch. Jytdog (talk) 19:36, 25 August 2016 (UTC) ((add clarification since there is apparent confusion about what I meant Jytdog (talk) 20:25, 25 August 2016 (UTC))[reply
  ]

• This being AN, I would at this time like to formally request a closer or closers who is an uninvolved admin with a lot of experience closing contentious RfCs. If possible, more than one: a little extra time spent now coming up with two or three admins who agree on what to exclude and who carefully word the closing statement will avoid a boatload of time later as the losing side tries to relitigate the RfC. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:45, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I presume you mean for a month from now. The RfC was just opened yesterday. Softlavender (talk) 19:51, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think an experienced admin should close it sooner than later to prevent disruption, as I doubt we'll get any new insight. Maybe not today, but probably not after a month. Per

WP:RFC the process doesn't have to run the full 30 days. Mr Ernie (talk) 20:05, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

I note the conspicuous absence of admins commenting here; there is nothing actionable in the OP. And there is no reason to close the RfC early. The question is difficult and the more clueful input that is given, the better. Jytdog (talk) 20:27, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, having looked at that RfC, it's rather likely to be useless probably because the proposal is not in the form to propose the precise words and source(s): "example"[cite]. Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:37, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes the trigger was pulled without proposing it to make sure everybody was OK with how it was posed. hell is other people; par for the wikipedia course, limping along as best we can. .Jytdog (talk) 21:22, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2014_January_27#C:WPCATSUP

Ok, so I was going through some old edit histories (as I am sometimes wont to do : ) - and I came across this.

Seems innocuous at first glance.

However, read the discussion and then try to click on the link of the redirect in question.

Surprised?

It seems that C: is now the interwiki link for the Commons. (See this discussion.)

So just for housekeeping, I thought I'd speedy the redirect, as it clearly doesn't now get anyone anywhere (and so isn't aiding navigation in any way).

But here's the thing... I can't actually get to that redirect : )

I think we have a page that is trapped in the system which can't be accessed through typical means.

Now it shouldn't be a big deal, as I doubt the commons will ever need that page, but it's interesting enough that I wanted to share with all of you : )

Oh, and going through allpages, I found the following as well (though they do not appear to have this issue):

• C：
• C：/Program Files
• C：KND
• C：N ratio
• C：Real
• C：\
• C：\Program Files
• C：\WINDOWS
• C： The Contra Adventure
• C： The Money of Soul and Possibility Control

(And now I'll wait as someone will come along to tell me how it's actually simple to get to, "like this" : ) - jc37 12:38, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Jc37, it's actually simple to get to if you know how to use the API to get these pages; there was an incident some time back in which the software momentarily permitted the creation of an article beginning with "de:", which of course quickly became inaccessible, undeleteable, and unmoveable, so we had to wait until someone familiar with API-based work was able to handle it. I'm not one of those someones. Nyttend (talk) 13:33, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

<applause> Congratulations on having tea and no tea at the same time! : ) - jc37 13:40, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

[edit conflict with the applause] PS, I thought perhaps I'd get it by going through John Vandenberg's contributions for January 2014 (he sent it to RFD, so presumably he added the RFD template to the page), but it's not there. Deleted contributions? There's a relevant line:

(change visibility) 00:26, 11 January 2014 (diff | deletion log | view) . . C:WPCATSUP (Listed for discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2014 January 11#C:WPCATSUP. (TW))

So the revision has been deleted. But click the (diff) link, and you get a message I've never seen before, MediaWiki:Undeleterevision-missing. Or go to Special:Undelete/C:WPCATSUP, and you discover that there are no deleted revisions in the database. I'm guessing that the process of turning C: into a crosswiki prefix caused all revisions of all C: pages to be deleted and then "really" deleted those revisions entirely. You know how computer experts can often recover files that you've deleted from your hard drive, but it's much harder (or impossible?) to recover old revisions of files if you've saved a newer revision on top of it. I think this is the same situation: causing "C:" to be an entirely different kind of topic caused the wholesale destruction of everything previously at that location, but since the deletion logs and the stuff that appears at Special:Undelete is probably stored separately, there's no technical reason that it can't appear there: the software can tell that a page previously existed at this title, and it knows that John Vandenberg made an edit to it, but there's no live revision of such a page, so it should be listed in Special:Deletedcontributions. So overall, it's the bizarre effect of a rare developer intervention in the revision database. Nyttend (talk) 13:47, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

PPS, </applause>. jc37, you ruined the HTML validation by not closing your tag :-) Nyttend (talk) 13:51, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please consider it ongoing applause : )

And yes, my guess was and is that this may very well require someone with that magical

shell access to resolve : ) - jc37 13:59, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

If nobody can get to it, why does it need to be deleted? --Floquenbeam (talk) 14:32, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure it actually exists. For example, c:ThisIsOnlyATest. You can create any link to commons you want, and it doesn't appear to check to see if it exists before making it a blue link. Kbdank71 16:06, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• The redirect was revisited in a following month of 2014 and it was deleted, see Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2014_March_5#C:WPCATSUP. -- The Voidwalker ^Discuss 16:30, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

again for Wikipedia:Files for discussion#Old discussions, which has a ~500 item backlog dating back to May. Most of these are very easy closures; any help is appreciated! -FASTILY 18:26, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please see

Isn't bold editing how the main page's content pages (noticeably ITN) are typically handled? My impression was that most people don't care about involvement there. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:24, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Please, you guys (/gals), is this really ANI-worthy? Can you just take 24 hours and talk about it again over at Talk:DYK? EEng 20:27, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Wow. An
  distraction to drivers." And, who knows, even EngVar might have motivated Ritchie here. The Main Page can be such a dangerous place, these days. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:42, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • The problem for here is not with the meaning of the hook (and let's be clear, removed vs carried is quite different), but with the involvement (it wasa hook he had nominated in the first place, not some random hook). 22:21, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
    • If they mean the same thing, any involvement is irrelevant. So is the meaning relevant, or not?. I trust you've asked Ritchie to fully explain his motivation before inviting him here. And that his explanation was somehow lacking. Editors who take articles to GA status are sometimes regarded as subject matter experts, allegedly. Perhaps we ought to look at "
      carrying"? Or maybe even "timebomb"? Martinevans123 (talk) 22:41, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
      ]
• I agree that this is something of a storm in a teacup: neither of the hooks was very good. Ritchie333 is probably in line for a
  WP:TROUT for re-adding a mistake to the main page, and Gatoclass might also warrant one for what I think is dubious grammar in their corrected version of the hook. But I share Jo-Jo's understanding that in general it's OK for admins to jump in and adjust stuff they have a connection to on the main page in the interest of quickly fixing errors here. When I've done so I, from memory, have always posted a note at WP:ERRORS for transparency. But the short version is that everyone seems to have been acting in good faith. Nick-D (talk) 22:57, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]

I was patrolling the expired PRODs and found a user that is using a deceitful practice to ensure the article's they PROD are deleted. Sixth of March has been adding PRODs to articles. Then they comment out the PROD so it does not show up when someone views the article. They then come back 7 days later and remove the comment so it does up and gets deleted. I have gone back to 7 July and found instances of this practice. I have restored many that were deleted this way. I figured it out after deleting two articles. On the third article there were intervening edits and reverts by Sixth of March. I started to look to see if the ip had removed the PROD and if it had been restored. I looked at intervening edits, where it hasn't been removed but it wasn't showing up either. Initially I assumed the best and thought it was a mistake. I decided the best course was to reset the click on the PROD. Then I looked at the fourth and found the same thing. I also went back and looked at the two I had deleted and found the same thing. I restored those two, declined all 4 PRODs and warned Sixth of March if I saw this ever happen again that I would block them. I then started looking through contributions and deleted edits and found more of the same. This isn't an isolated event. My main reason to bring this here it's to notify other admins to be on the look out for this tactic. -- GB fan 23:09, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]