User talk:SandyGeorgia/sandbox9/archive 1

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Myself and Gusfriend have put some of his train-related stuff through GAR and it was all delisted, but there hasn't been a sustained effort. Also pinging User:Sammi Brie as another editor who may be interested. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 14:56, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hog Farm do you want in on this, or too busy? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:15, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'll at least follow along, although I don't know how much I'll be able to help out. I was the reviewer of some of his GANs back in 2020 and 2021 for background, although I did fail a few. FWIW, the CCI is longer than what you thought - there's also Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20210315 02. Hog Farm _Talk 15:42, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well, fiddlesticks ... I entered info on the wrong CCI. Why oh why was this not stopped sooner <sigh>. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:01, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Because of excessive deference to someone assumed to be one of the website's best and most prolific contributors (as you can see from the history of the ANIs, people flipped their shit when the full extent of Doug's wrongdoing became clear, crying that the community was trying to punish a prolific and "skilled" editor). I was attacked by at least one of his defenders, despite saying multiple times I preferred to resolve the issue without a block. Even when people occasionally spotted issues before all of this came to light, they were unwilling to investigate further, assuming that someone of Coldwell's stature would not be making systematic errors such as copyvio, excessive reliance on very old and/or primary sources, and factual inaccuracies. That attitude of deference and hand-waving his stuff through GAN with minimal scrutiny is how we got here. It's no surprise Coldwell never engaged with FA; his shoddy editing would certainly have been exposed there. The good news is this seems to have prompted a reckoning and much greater emphasis on spot-checking at GAN. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 16:25, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I might as well say that the attacks on you (and now me) are probably part of what has motivated my interest. What an abject failure of ANI to act when it should have. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:41, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm having a hard time finding the past similar occurrences at DYK, so may have to let that go, but no one in the thread I started at DYK picked up on or addressed the issue of how to prevent same going forward. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:42, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone know who has been the main CCI admin on this case? I don't want to ping all of them and wear out my welcome. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:06, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know that there's been a main one. The nature of the case leads to a lot of it either being things nobody can access or unsourced text from who-knows-where that can't be tracked down. It's kinda fizzled out because nobody's wanted to just start presumptively removing swathes of stuff. Hog Farm _Talk 16:08, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Sennecaster: do you want to follow the proposals I've listed here? Should I ping in other CCI regulars? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:15, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@SandyGeorgia: Sorry for the late reply; I'm currently very busy, but if other CCI editors say it's good I'm fine with it. Sennecaster (Chat) 14:46, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well, we should "start presumptively removing swathes of stuff", because it's all bad enough to warrant that, and most of it is not in topics the average reader cares about. Does anyone know where to follow up on the notion that we did the same with Neelix? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:18, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm of the opinion that it makes precisely zero difference how many readers care about the stuff he writes about in any given article. If it's inaccurate and/or copyvio, it must be removed with extreme prejudice. We owe it to our readers. At least for his train-related stuff, as one of the most prolific editors on train-related matters in the Eastern U.S., I fully endorse presumptive removals and stubbification of his articles as needed. I don't really have the time or energy to rewrite these articles (my to-do list is already massive), but if anyone ever has interest they certainly can start from a basic stub. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 16:30, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

My reference point on this is User:Oanabay04, who was prolific on railroad articles, particularly those around the Philadelphia area. He also committed massive serial copyright violations, socked, wrote things that citations didn't support, and injected his own personal opinion as though it were fact. After a while I took the line that anything he contributed was presumptively bad--if it was prose and we didn't find the source, it was probably a copyvio regardless. If he claimed he took the picture and it wasn't something from the last two years with an EXIF date, it was a copyvio even if we never found the original. This resulted in whole articles getting deleted or stubbed, even on notable topics. Articles on Class I railroads were rolled back years to remove his copyvios from the history. This was terrible and disruptive and I think the best option available. If you don't trust what a contributor was doing, then you should remove their contributions.

I agree with the areas that Sandy has singled out. We need to delist his GAs; that's a badge of quality we as a project can't endorse. That discussion is in progress. With the CCIs, I think we're aggressive about deleting or stubbing articles where he was the primary contributor. That's work and it's tiresome. I'll volunteer for some of it and I'm happy to play bad cop. One final thing: Doug's blocked indefinitely and he's socking. We should formalize a community ban so that further socking can be reverted and deleted on sight. That can probably happen in the existing ANI thread. Mackensen (talk) 17:23, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm unsure what step to take next then. Do you have a link that I can use to summarize the Oanabay04 situation? Of do I just post my Sandbox content to the ANI? Prob is the community ban discussion can happen at ANI, but the rest needs to go elsewhere ... not sure what process to use going forward on the whole picture, but I can see I'm likely to end up attacked at ANI as was Trainsandotherthings, so want to do this right. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:30, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Here are the links; it helped that this was a narrower problem:

• Posting to WP:Trains: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Trains/Archive:_2015#Major copyright problem
• Block discussion: User_talk:Oanabay04#Block_extended
• Sockpuppet discussions: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Oanabay04/Archive
• Sample notice I used when reverting articles: Talk:Pennsylvania_Railroad#Copyright_problem_removed
• Sample AfD of article I didn't trust: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fox Chase Rapid Transit Line

Mackensen (talk) 17:41, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oanabay04 is familiar to me, as in October 2021 I found that much of both Pan Am Railways and Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway were copyvios from books added by him. I and others rewrote the affected portions of Pan Am, but ATSF is still gutted, the first 100 years of its history is completely missing. Mackensen has a subpage dedicated to cataloguing the extent of copyvio from one of George Drury's books added by Oanabay. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 17:39, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]