Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive258

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jennifer Wong was closed (a non-admin closure) as delete, but Jennifer Wong has not been deleted—is this the right place to report this?

Thanks!

הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 04:02, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

No, the article was deleted at AFD over 3 years ago, recreated earlier this year, and an IP editor has put up an AFD template with a link to the old discussion. Since this version of the article is substantially different from the deleted version (mainly it contains many sources that appear reliable at face value), it would have to go through a new AFD to be deleted. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:15, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Also, to clarify: the editor who closed that 2010 AfD was an admin at the time. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 04:50, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Good point. It never occured to me that ghosts of departed AfD's might come wafting by at

WP:AFD/T. How odd. הסרפד (call me Hasirpad

) 05:02, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Sorry guys, saw this a couple of hours late. I saw the old discussion in the log and removed it. I also removed the template from the article and left a note with the new editor who tried to nominate it. I've offered to log a second nomination if anyone so wishes. Apologies for any confusion. Stalwart111 10:50, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

User:Smartguy1413 has had no constructive edits as far as I can tell: [1] as such, I suggest that a ban would make a lot of sense. **** you, you ******* ****. (talk) 22:17, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I think what you mean is a block. The typical process is to give escalating warnings until level 4, and then report to ARV. He's only received a level 1 and level 2 warning so far, so I gave him a level 4. His recent contribs (midget, dwarf, little person) I guess could maybe be argued to be made in good faith. The rest are obvious vandalism. It doesn't look like we'd be losing anything with an indef. However, please be careful about your language as well; some of your comments have been a little abrasive. It's best to try to stay as dispassionate as possible, even in cases of vandalism. Thanks!   — Jess· Δ♥ 23:02, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I couldn't actually discover what is really meant by ban on Wikipedia, but it's the term used almost everywhere else on the web for what I was thinking. The level 4 warning should be enough I guess. I understand your comments about language, though I disagree that it really matters. Cheers. **** you, you ******* ****. (talk) 08:31, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

WP:BLOCK are the easy ways to find out the details :-) ES&L

11:22, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Can an administrator somewhat familiar to DYK process this request? Ideally it could be replaced with a hook from one of the prep areas. Thanks, Gilderien Chat|Contributions 19:50, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

 Done by Victuallers.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 20:22, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, I was wondering that the warning templates are pretty rough. I prepared a rough draft of a template in my userspace and moved it to Template:Vandal-rc. It is to be used as in {{subst:Vandal-rc}} ~~~~. Any comments on this? I mean, adding it to Twinkle and other vandalism removal tools may be beneficial as many may just flip back their decision to vandalize. Criticism as well as suggestions are most welcome. Ethically ^(Yours) 17:06, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

You may want to visit

good faith attempt soon being deleted. :( Rgrds. --64.85.216.158 (talk

) 18:20, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I would say that the draft is condescending and patronising. I would also say that the existing warning templates aren't tough enough and that we certainly don't need 4 of them. (all IMO, of course). Leaky Caldron 18:40, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I would never say "Let me share the truth with you", tell an editor how the entire Wikipedia community regards their edit or venture such patronising advice, or then invite the recipient to visit my talk page to tell me what they now thought of me, even though I might learn some new words. If Twinkle imposed such phrasing on me then I would stop using Twinkle to warn vandals. NebY (talk) 18:58, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Not an admin, but I don't believe the warning you've created will have a net-positive effect, in part because of the reasons summarized in above posts. I may be willing to offer editorial advice if you're serious about this, but I think it might be better to start with the standard warnings we have and modify them to make them kinder and gentler. Cheers. DonIago (talk) 19:34, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I've given the template a substantial copyedit to smooth out the prose. I think there might be something to the kernel of an idea of "Let's talk to new users and try to explain to them why vandalism doesn't help and editing can be fun", but I don't really think this template is going to do the job. Ethically Yours, you may want to start a discussion on the

WP:Village Pump about creating a template or set of templates that adopts this mindset - that way people can help you shape what it says - but I don't think this version is adoptable. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk

) 20:14, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Also, if you think the process of getting the template officially adopted would be too much of a headache, there is nothing to stop you from using it yourself. You can keep it on a subpage of your user page and set up Twinkle so that it appears on your Twinkle menu, and then it will work just like the other Twinkle warnings do. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 04:06, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to cast another note of dissent here, but having taken another look, this really is so obsequiously fawning it is actually dishonest and we should have no part of it. I have added my personal thoughts in bold.

Hello Vandal-rc! The Wikipedia community considers your recent edits to be vandalism. [but you already know that] Let me tell you a little bit more about Wikipedia so you understand why your edit was undone. Wikipedia is built by people like you and me [actually, it is built by people like me and harmed by people like you], for the betterment [??] of the people all over the world. Wikipedia's goal is to make information freely accessible. I understand that it can be a lot of fun to edit Wikipedia pages to include nonsense or silly things,[I, for one, have never understand the fun in vandalising public works but maybe I just see things differently to you] but before you do it again, wait a second and think: what if you could share your knowledge - true knowledge - with the rest of the world? [we don't share personal knowledge, we carefully aggregate other people's knowledge and I doubt whether your knowledge could actually cover the size of a pinhead] By taking a moment to create an account [as an aside, I understand that it can take ages to create an account] and contribute positively, you can not only make the encyclopedia a better one, but drastically improve your knowledge, too. [a highly questionable concept in your case] A positive contributor is appreciated by the community [but not always universally so and you can be blocked for speaking you mind or criticising others] and we're always in need of someone like that. We don't like to see people be blocked for being vandals,[actually some of us really do like to see vandals such as you blocked, preferably indefinitely. Indeed, if it were possible I would like to zombify your computer or render it unbootable] so perhaps you can think on this [if you can manage to do that] and maybe even create an account [duplication] to edit constructively. If you need any help whatsoever, feel free to approach me on my talk page. [please understand, the template requires me to say this but in truth, I really hope you don't, you vandalising troll] Thank you,. Leaky Caldron 14:44, 20 December 2013 (UTC) [Happy Christmas, Scrooge's little helper]

In principle it's not a bad idea, as most of the template are far too big and unwieldy, which contributes to the increasing trend of driving away new editors. These templates are way too big - just say what you need to say. For things I say a lot to new accounts, I keep a couple one/two sentence templates User:WilyD/whydeleted - anything more than that isn't informative, it's serves only to discourage new editors from joining the project. But if you're using twinkle, there's probably no hope for you to welcome potential new editors into the project successfully anyhow. WilyD 14:52, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

I've noticed a general lack of interest in notifying vandals (and I'm talking vandals, not misguided new editors or people trying out the editing interface) that their actions have been noted and reverted. In most cases, a level 1 or level 2 warning is enough to serve notice that Wikipedia editors are paying attention to one's edits, and that vandals can't get away with much. This is often startling enough that the vandalism stops. If it continues after warnings, we're dealing with someone who will probably need to be blocked. A more diligent effort at notifying people in the first place that their edits are being scrutinized is a key to reducing vandalism. I can't tell you how many times I've seen persistent vandals who never get warned at all. Our existing templates do a pretty good job, especially since the level 2 warnings were toughened and given an orange icon. If we want to be kind and un-bitey, the level 1 warning is pretty good as it is, and is suitable for use where you can't tell if the edits are experimentation or a warm-up to vandalism. Acroterion (talk) 15:03, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

On the occasions that I encounter a vandal who has some sign of intelligence and clue (not the same thing...), I'll put a personalised message on their talk page. If it's really a minor vandalism, I'll use Level 1 - but I rarely use any of the Level 1s as they're a bit wishy-washy. (I've got to keep getting the panto allusions in - haven't scripted one this year...) I like to be personal if there's a hope. Look like a bot, and they won't respect you. Peridon (talk) 20:06, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

• Wikiupedia is built by people like you and me.. I understand it can be a lot of fun... We don't like to see... The list of euphemisms and condescending statements go on and on. What is this,
  Dr. Phil? KonveyorBelt
  23:51, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

  Actually... actually, I have a hunch that might be the most annoying to a visigoth. Imagine attila the hun, or conan the barbarian ("what is best in life? to crush your enemies, see them flee before you, and hear the lamentations of their children"). What angers them, disgusts them? Stern talking-to? Or gag-me-with-a-spoon luuuuvvvvv? I'm thinking it might counter-intuitively be the latter. We should not make decisions about template-language based on our feelings, and our reactions... we should do A/B testing, against *actual* visigoths, and see what sort of language gets the best results. If we use nice lovey-dovey language, that tends to help soften the false-poz, too. I'd really prefer funny-goofy messages for that purpose, actually... and goofy gets tiring after the hundredth time, so maybe *that* will turn out to be the key to de-motivating the LULZ-seekers. In any case, my sincere congratulations to Ethically Yours for really really assuming good faith. I'm not too hopeful that visigoths can be turned from the dark side of the force... but maybe we can lovey-dovey them into getting so sick of it they go away? Hope this helps. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 04:36, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

I think that A/B testing would be a good idea.

In an unrelated recent discussion, one of the WMF's lawyers said that their cease-and-desist letters tend to be very pleasant and polite, and that the results appear to be the same as if they sent out nasty ones. I wouldn't be surprised if the results were the same here.

And if the results are the same, then I think we should go with the pleasant version. Those messages are sometimes handed out by inexperienced editors who can't quite figure out what "vandalism" is. I had a long chat with someone last month who told me that he thought it totally appropriate for him to formally warn a new editor for "unintentionally" (his word) vandalizing an article, i.e., not knowing how to add a proper ==Level 2== section heading. This kid's invincible belief that "editing after a revert" (actual edit summary) was automatically "vandalism" may have cost us a subject-matter expert. (Just ignore the idiocy of saying that no article may ever be edited after someone has reverted an edit.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:45, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Just Google the name. Or go to Twitter & look for #HasJustineLandedYet. Need I say more?

Someone want to block creation of any article about this woman for a week or more? -- llywrch (talk) 06:53, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Hate to ask, because yeah, I get it, but: Why would we? She is now--Heaven help us--notable. GJC 05:46, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Because she fails

Being notable solely for one event. SirFozzie (talk

) 06:21, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Precisely. If she is truly notable now, then she'll still be notable in a week or two for reasons other than performing the most spectacular career suicide yet on the Internet. -- llywrch (talk) 21:49, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Hello everyone. In light of some concerns that have been brought to my attention about some

The first article is Duck Attack!, about a video game I wrote in 2009. I wrote the Wikipedia article myself in 2010, which, it's safe to say, is against current best practices. I was a relatively new editor at the time (about 100 edits) but I have been regularly maintaining and updating the article with new sources since then.

In accordance with the current best practices, I have tagged the article's talk page with the {{connected contributor}} template, and have updated my userpage to indicate that I am the author of that game.

Could any interested editors please take a look at that article, and vet it for any signs of overly promotional language, puffery, or POV-pushing on my part? I have tried to keep the content neutral and close to what the reliable sources say about it, but of course I am not the best judge of my own neutrality. Please take a look at the sources and help make sure I am not quoting them in an unfair or biased way. If you can add to the article additional or better reliable sources, please, by all means do so, whether they review the game positively or negatively. It is important to me that the article is an accurate reflection of what the reliable sources say, good or bad.

Please also check the "what links here" for the article to make that any references to the game from other articles are appropriate to those pages. Most of the articles linking to it are as a result of its presence in Template:Homebrew, which other homebrew articles include as a NavBox.

The second article is Digimarc, a company I worked for from 2001–2008. I made these three edits to the article, and this edit to the article of the company's CEO, after I left the company. The company did not solicit me to make these edits or (as far as I know) know I had done so; I just happened to be reading the article and noticed the wikilinks weren't pointing to the right place. Given the minor nature of the edits and the fact that it's been years since I worked there, I did not add a {{connected contributor}} to that talk page, but I will be happy to do so if other editors feel it would be appropriate.

I will post a link to this discussion on the COI noticeboard so that the editors who watch that board can comment here as well. 28bytes (talk) 09:00, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) I'm confused; who started this thread? Erpert ^{WHAT DO YOU WANT???} 09:27, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

The person who signed it! -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:58, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

28bytes did.

[•]

10:24, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Tell us, 28bytes — did someone really complain about the three Digimarc edits that you made? No comment about anything else (I've not checked any other links or diffs or whatever else), but as far as these three, you...just added and fixed links. If the other edits are comparable and you're still getting complaints, someone needs to be pointed to

WP:BURO and told to stop complaining. Nyttend (talk

) 12:32, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Following the recent ArbCom elections, some folks have been fairly... thorough in their analysis of the incoming arbitrators' editing histories, so I figured that addressing their concerns directly, on this noticeboard, would be the best way to handle it. 28bytes (talk) 22:51, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

I looked over the Duck Attack! page earlier, and there's certainly no POV or OR issues. Presumably no actual ducks were harmed in the creation of the game, so no need for a "controversies" section. Same goes for his edits to Digimarc, nothing fluffy or inappropriate. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 14:22, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

I also checked over Duck Attack!, and found nothing untoward. -- Diannaa (talk) 17:14, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

To 28bytes (talk) : I see you have started many articles; are there any of the other of these articles where you could possibly have a COI? Huldra (talk) 20:06, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

I've interviewed some interesting people and used the interviews as a reliable source to create or expand the articles for them, for example musician

WP:SELFCITE, but I'll obviously let others judge that. I also created Carla Meninsky and later interviewed her on my website, and added a reference to that interview to the article of a game she created and discussed in the interview, Warlords (1980 video game). Another editor later expanded the Meninsky article with additional content from that interview. Racing the Beam has a link to an interview I did to reference one of the statements. I think those are all kosher, but two articles that I created 3 years ago about college newspapers I volunteered for in the 1990s do need COI tags, since I'm discussed in the article rather than just used as a reference. I'll add those tags shortly. They are The Independent Collegian and Spectrum (newspaper). I think that's everything that could be either a clear COI or a grey area, but I will take another look through my edits to see if I missed anything. 28bytes (talk

) 22:39, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your answer. I have placed a {{coi}} on Digimarc, but not because of you: see Talk:Digimarc#COI. For the rest, I´ll look at it. Cheers, Huldra (talk) 00:00, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) having looked at the articles in question, I find no undue POV-pushing or COI violations. Go out and edit 2 other articles that have a COI tag and edit them so that the COI tag can be removed to put forth a demonstration of good will. Hasteur (talk) 14:49, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

• Minor good faith well-intentioned COI editing is getting too much attention by editors without real things to do around this project who would like to make names for themselves. Don't concern yourself with their dribble, 28bytes, like I did. They made a big case out of my editing with little or no attention from others, but when I asked a more general audience, it turned out to not be as big of a concern as these few time-wasters made it out to be. They can hold an RFC/U on you if they have a problem with it. And as Jayen466 notes below, they can also open one on Jimmy and Sue at the same time. COI disclosure for the time-wasting whiners who should concern themselves more with viewpoint-advocacy and copyright violations: I've editing with a COI before.--v/r - TP 22:11, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

More general discussion not directly related to 28bytes request for folks to review his content

One problem with the edits is that they violate Jimmy Wales' "Bright Line Rule". Or, maybe the problem is Jimmy Wales' "Bright Line Rule". - 72.238.62.174 (talk) 13:33, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

The number of people who violate Jimmy Wales' "Bright Line Rule" in their first edits to Wikipedia is legion. They include Sue Gardner, FFS, who has spoken about how she used to edit articles related to CBC before she became the WMF executive director, and Wales himself. And really, Wikipedia wants it that way, because the ability to violate the "Bright Line Rule" granted by anonymity and the "Anyone can edit" dictum is the bait Wikipedia puts out there to draw people in. Isn't it time Wikipedia and Wales gave up their double-think around this issue? It's undignified. Andreas JN466 15:15, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

No. Undignified would be doing what one does, just because that's the way it has been done. It's much more dignified to engage in reflection and critical thinking about past and present practice. Sure the barriers of entry are low, and those unused to thinking about COI in written work may not think about COI. Especially, people who think about the merits and demerits of COI writing should include those who have innocently or not done it. Because writing with COI is a responsibility-to-the-reader issue, efforts to educate editors about such a mature responsibility, and address it, should be welcome. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:40, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't see any sincere effort to educate the public, i.e. those who might become editors, about refraining from COI edits. It's all, "Just click edit! It's so easy!" What I do see is knee-jerk responses to bad press, as in the case of Wiki-PR. The Foundation did nothing about that until the Daily Dot and then others wrote about it, even though the investigation was months old by then, and a checkuser and bureaucrat had resigned over it. And what they do only ever addresses PR agents, because, ironically, it's a PR issue for Wikipedia. I don't see any Foundation action to discourage paid or unpaid activists, and that is because the Foundation knows that if they told activists not to edit here and meant it, half the people would disappear. The Wikipedia model is not about getting disinterested people to write about stuff, because they wouldn't do it for free. It's about leveraging self-interest, in the hope that the messy clash of conflicting interests in the Wikipedia melting pot will result in something reasonable at the end of the day. Andreas JN466 17:02, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Sometimes the more innocent first step leads to going off the cliff. In that situation, it makes sense to retrace the steps and examine ways of avoiding it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:22, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi,

I just made a non-admin closure of the move request at

• ISO/IEC JTC1/SC36 → ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36
• ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 → ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22
• ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34 → ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34

Thanks!  — Amakuru (talk) 22:57, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

 Done by Nyttend--Ymblanter (talk) 08:28, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that @Nyttend:, and also for clearing up the reason for the blacklist at MediaWiki talk:Titleblacklist#Spaces causing problems.  — Amakuru (talk) 10:27, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

24.207.107.93 appears to have aggressive reaction to collaboration: please take a quick look at the talk page history. Upon IRC complaint from a contributor who was a victim of aggressive reaction to a welcome template, I had approached 24.207.107.93 with a legitimate question about his edits.

That was also rejected and the reaction was profanity. Such behaviour does not appear appropriate for an environment where ability to work with feedback on talk pages plays a key role. Gryllida (talk) 06:36, 22 December 2013 (UTC) Hold off here, I may have provided a wrong username. I'm re-reading the histories. Gryllida (talk) 06:38, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

This was at the same time as 76.250.44.96 placed a warning template on 24.207.107.93's talk page, asking to stop harassment, and got harassed on his own talk page in reply. Such behaviour does not appear appropriate for an environment where ability to work with feedback on talk pages plays a key role. Gryllida (talk) 06:41, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Right, so I had mentioned the user the purpose of talk pages about 5 times during our discussion and managed to only get a «talk to someone else», without cursing, in return. I will keep this section updated if the contributor keeps being aggressive in the future. Gryllida (talk) 07:13, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

They may remove warnings from their own talk page, but if the problematic behavior in the articles and talk pages of other users continues please report them at

WP:ANI or one of the specialized noticeboards.--Ymblanter (talk

) 08:32, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Another thing is that we may mention Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not therapy. Maybe he has difficulty socially interacting with others, but if that is the case it's possible the community cannot accommodate that, and may have to block him. Both Gryllida and I are aware that a user may remove talk page messages from his/her page, but the entire "don't post on my talk page, fuck off" attitude is highly inappropriate for a collaborative encyclopedia. WhisperToMe (talk) 10:20, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree that this is highly inappropriate, and my forecast is indeed that we will need to block them, however, I am very hesitant (a) to block them just for posting trash on their talk page as response to warnings; (b) to post further warnings at their talk page since this can only escalate the situation. They have been warned very thoroughly, let us wait now. If they continue to misbehave in the article namespace or on the talk pages of other users we can indeed block them.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:13, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Btw it looks like they have not been made aware of this discussion. I will tell them now.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:15, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

He was made aware here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:24.207.107.93&diff=587195601&oldid=587193285 - The user in question removed the notice from his user talk page WhisperToMe (talk) 16:59, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

I note that {{

Thanks for telling me about that. I didn't know "welcome-anon" and "welcome-t-anon" existed. WhisperToMe (talk) 16:59, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that a different template would make a difference for this anonymous user, does not seem to respond in a good faith manner, and refuses to use some common decency in their interactions with other users. Just my observation. — Preceding

talk • contribs

) 23:19, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

• Comment. There are mitigating circumstances here. First edit by 24 was in response to 2500-byte deletion of a subsection in an article about Houston rap musician Chamillionaire. The deletion itself was sparked by a reddit interview of former arb Wizardman, in which one of the commenters pointed to the Chamillionaire article as an example of bad stuff on wikipedia. I'm not sure whether 24 knew about the reddit thread, or just happened to see the 2500 bytes disappear, but this was 24's edit-summary of their revert of Wizardman's deletion:

17:26, 21 December 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+2,503)‎ . . Chamillionaire ‎ (rv. you're powertripping. if you want to change it, fix it. people put a lot of work into this. show some respect.)

Agree that

WP:NOTFACEBOOK is the unwritten sixth pillar.  :-)   Anyhoo, don't think anybody here in this thread is doing anything improper, and I also don't think Wizardman or the other folks over at Chamillionaire did anything wrong (there was copyvio as well as youtube-cites apparently... so it had to go and that right quickly). Point is, just wanted to make sure the folks here know why 24 might be extra unhappy this weekend. They seem adept with edit-summaries as a means of communication, so as long as their behavior chills out with time, they might end up a constructive contributor. 74.192.84.101 (talk

) 03:59, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Have you read the posts on WhisperToMe's talk page? That's not very "sociable". "Why" never gives someone a reason to "speak" like that.

If the user empties his talk page repeatedly checking its history is a good idea. (And it was also mentioned that his reactions appear on other contributors' talk pages as well, so (a) from Ymblanter's summary is not accurate.) Thanks to everyone for the detailed insight nevertheless. I did waste a fair amount of time on this one, by raising it here right at the moment the trouble stopped, for which I apologize. Gryllida (talk) 07:32, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

I have been nominated for BAG membership. Input is invited. The request can be found at

An arbitration case about the behaviour of RoslynSKP (talk · contribs) with regards to the use of the terms 'Turkish' to 'Ottoman', has now closed and the final decision is available at the link above. The following remedies have been enacted:

1. RoslynSKP (talk · contribs) is indefinitely prohibited from changing 'Turkey' or 'Turkish' to 'Ottoman' on any article.
2. RoslynSKP (talk · contribs)'s topic ban from "editing any article relating to Turkish military history in and predating World War I" is suspended and will be unsuspended (and the prohibition will take effect) if any uninvolved administrator blocks RoslynSKP for misconduct relating to Turkish military history. If the block is reversed or repealed by any of the usual community channels of appeal, the topic ban will lapse back into suspension.
3. RoslynSKP is prohibited from making any more than one revert on any one page in any 72-hour period.
4. For a period of one year, RoslynSKP is prohibited from adding maintenance tags, such as {{POV}}, to any article or section of an article without first raising her concern on the talkpage and obtaining the agreement of at least one other editor that the tag is appropriate.
5. Jim Sweeney (talk · contribs) is reminded to avoid edit warring, and to use dispute resolution to assist in resolving disputes.

For the Arbitration Committee, —

Archived discussion

Okay, I created the Team Trophy page for the Olympics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure_skating_at_the_2014_Winter_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Team_trophy

However, as you can see, the team event page doesn't link to it and I cannot change it. Would someone be kind of enough to link this page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Figure_skating_at_the_2014_Winter_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Team_event&action=edit&redlink=1

to the one above that I have already created? I tried myself, and it says it's for administrators only. Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gia Sesshoumaru (talk • contribs) 01:48, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Ok, I've redirected "... Team event" to "... Team trophy". Mark Arsten (talk) 03:05, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

What is it with all this stifling discussion with an archive box. The discussion about what to do with these IPs will continue at

WT:OP. Your help would be appreciated. Thanks. -- zzuuzz ^(talk)

08:51, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

The encyclopedia anyone can edit. LOL - Who is John Galt? ✉ 18:09, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Can an admin add an entry for /wiki/Wikipedia%3AArticles_for_deletion%2F to the robots.txt per village pump discussion? NE Ent 19:24, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Admins don't have access to that (a request could be filed at

bugzilla), and I'm not sure it's good to add a whole bunch of extra character-encoding combinations when we can use other methods like {{NOINDEX}}. PrimeHunter (talk

) 19:38, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Actually they do, give me a minute and Ill dig up the MediaWiki message. Werieth (talk) 19:44, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Easier than I expected to find: MediaWiki:Robots.txt Werieth (talk) 19:45, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't know it copied some of the content from wiki pages at different languages. Now I see https://en.wikipedia.org/robots.txt has a comment saying "Edit at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Robots.txt&action=edit". PrimeHunter (talk) 20:05, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea in principle, but in practice we will need to think carefully about what exactly we want to block. If we were to go through MediaWiki:Robots.txt and add an entry ending in %2F for every current entry ending in a slash, we would almost double the size of the list. And after a few minutes searching, I found a link to an AfD discussion from Google that used the URL https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Slovio_%282nd_nomination%29. If we were to add an entry for both the %2F issue and the ?title= issue, the list would be roughly four times the size it is currently. And there are probably other tricks out there as well. I worry that increasing the size of robots.txt by 4x or more might affect site performance, but I'm not really very knowledgeable about such things. Can anyone who knows MediaWiki and/or robots.txt fill me in? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 10:00, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance. There may be other issues from adding to the robots.txt that we may not have foreseen, but it's overall a negligible addition to Wikipedia's overhead, and there's lots of entries on that page already. As well, most of MediaWiki is generated on demand or queried from the database, so that's not important either. The issues we should be focusing really is any future management of robots.txt, which is currently on the decline because of low technically-savvy admin retention as well as editor retention. TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 11:19, 24 December 2013 (UTC)Just because a janitor can do his job properly doesn't mean you should make it harder for him though.

Google currently has a 500 kB limit on robots.txt. Everything after the limit is ignored. Other search engines may have other limits. http://wikipedia.org/robots.txt redirects to http://en.wikipedia.org/robots.txt which is shared by all Wikipedia languages. It is currently 28 kB in total. Around 14 kB is specific to the English Wikipedia. Most languages have few or no entries. We have room for expansion but probably shouldn't list a large number of url variations for every entry. Other languages may also want more space in the future. Adding {{NOINDEX}} in addition to using robots.txt has some advantages. It automatically noindexes any url variation. I don't know but there may be search engines which respect one of robots.txt and noindex but not the other. There are probably mirrors which include AfD pages and copy noindex from us (for example when using MediaWiki to display their mirror) but don't copy our robots.txt. There are also live mirrors which appear likely to copy noindex but not robots.txt. A title search indicates we have around 300000 AfD pages. The only template transcluded on a majority is probably {{la}} which was added systematically since around 2006. {{Find sources}} was added more recently. Many AfD pages before 2006 transclude no templates at all. Should we edit {{la}} to test the page name and add {{NOINDEX}} if it's an AfD page? We could also consider a bot to go through pre-2006 pages and add {{NOINDEX}} directly. Doing so for more than 200000 more recent AfD pages using {{la}} may be excessive. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:28, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

We have a simple problem. Wikipedia is telling google et. al to index discussions of things we often decided do not belong in the encyclopedia, sometimes for BLP-ish reasons.

It has a simple solution. 28 / 500 = 0.056; overflowing a robots.txt limit will not be an issue anytime soon. robots.txt is a static blob of text that's only served up to webcrawlers that ask for it and requires no server side resources to assemble into client side HTML. All that's need is one of the 861 editors with sysop bits to click the edit tab at MediaWiki:Robots.txt and copy paste the line atop this thread. NE Ent 13:58, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

The suggested line would only block one url pattern for one type of page we don't want indexed. Here are 8 working url's for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/ (same for subpages of that):

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion%2f
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion%2F
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki%2fWikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki%2FWikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki%2fWikipedia:Articles_for_deletion%2f
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki%2fWikipedia:Articles_for_deletion%2F
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki%2FWikipedia:Articles_for_deletion%2f
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki%2FWikipedia:Articles_for_deletion%2F

The above only replaces / with %2f or %2F. I don't know how many of these url patterns are realistic to be used by somebody and found by Google but if we combine them with other changes like replacing ':' by %3A as in your request, or use ?title=, then the number of combinations can grow exponentially. 500 kB can quickly become an issue if we try to catch all url combinations where MediaWiki produces a page. I'm trying to think of better methods and see two main options if MediaWiki continues to present pages at different url's instead of redirecting. 1) Add {{NOINDEX}} to the wiki code so MediaWiki automatically noindexes the page regardless of the url it's displayed at. 2) Modify MediaWiki so it automatically noindexes non-canonical url's, either always or if MediaWiki detects they match a robots.txt entry. MediaWiki already knows some url's are non-canonical and for example adds this code to the html header of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AArticles_for_deletion: <link rel="canonical" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion" />. This tells search engines that our preferred url for this content is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion. But if the canonical url is blocked by robots.txt then Google may think we goofed up, and instead index the non-canonical url which isn't blocked. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/rel-canonical-html-head/ by Matt Cutts says: "Okay, I sometimes get a question about whether Google will always use the url from rel=canonical as the preferred url. The answer is that we take rel=canonical urls as a strong hint, but in some cases we won’t use them: - For example, if we think you’re shooting yourself in the foot by accident (pointing a rel=canonical toward a non-existent/404 page), we’d reserve the right not to use the destination url you specify with rel=canonical." I guess pointing to a page blocked by robots.txt is treated the same way. If MediaWiki was changed so pages with link rel="canonical" were also noindexed automatically then we would avoid the problem, but I don't know what the consequences could be when we want the canonical page to be indexed and have a high page rank. Anyway, such a change would require developers. Admins can only edit MediaWiki:Robots.txt or add {{NOINDEX}} to some high-use templates when they are used on certain pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:24, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's the one line I know is a problem and am asking to get fixed, preferably this week. Is there an admin in the house?NE Ent 02:42, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps I'm missing something but hasn't there already been at least 2 administrators participatring in this discussion including the one you're replying to above. And is the reason why they're perhaps not adding the line because it hasn't really been explained why you believe or 'know' that one is a problem but not the rest? Or if you don't know that but only know one specific line is a problem but have no idea if the rest could be even worse problems, why you feel it's urgent to add it without discussing whether to add the rest which are potentially worse problems, or whether there might be a better solution to adding them? Definitely if I were an admin, I probably wouldn't be adding it based on this discussion so far. You could of course simply file an edit request on the talk page, that seems to have normally worked in simpler cases. Nil Einne (talk) 05:57, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the night,

admins were keeping order throughout the site.

Blocking trolls here, blocking vandals there,

they came to an agreement that was both sound and fair.

One day a year, we all take a break,

and stop doing the things that make admins ache.

Instead we will work on spreading holiday cheer,

and spend time with our loved ones, and those we hold dear.

For tomorrow is Christmas, it's a time of delight,

It's not a time to be around here and fight.

So make the decision that you feel is right,

And to all the editors here, I wish a good night.

Merry Christmas everybody, I hope you like my poem.

Cheers—

And now you've released it under CC-BY-SA 3.0 :) Good poem, it was really funny.--v/r - TP 22:01, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Bah Humbug! I suppose this means you will want tomorrow off. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:16, 24 December 2013 (UTC)(Now, go report me for too close paraphrasing, or something.)

The Spirit of Christmas Present will show Alanscottwalker a few parties. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:26, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Wait, that's a serious concern. Just because Dickens is out of copyright doesn't mean it's any the less plagiarism. At least insert a hidden comment. There, I've taken the liberty.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:28, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

The old-timers will remember the annual talkpage visits from User:Santa on Sleigh. Where is he when we need him? Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:14, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Wow, I vaguely remember the username, but haven't thought of him in years. Nyttend (talk) 05:45, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

I too remember Santa on Sleigh back in the day. It's pretty bad when Santa has retired.. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 00:47, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Nice poem! Ansh666 02:22, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Happy Holidays everyone! :) œ^™ 21:45, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

I have recently noticed some editors using "null edits" for the express purpose of making conversational edit summaries. In the past, I have seen null edits used to add on an edit summary where the prior edit did not have one -- to help people see the reason for the prior edit, but this system of using a null edit for the specific purpose of having an unsearchable (through normal search box) series of posts seems, to me, unusual. Do others feel it is proper or improper for such to occur? Cheers. Collect (talk) 13:43, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

The oops I forgot to type edit summary null edit is long established practice. Edit summary in lieu of talk page should be discouraged. NE Ent 13:49, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

See Help:Dummy edit. --John (talk) 13:56, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Collect - Do you have any diffs showing examples of conversational edit summaries? -- Jreferee (talk) 14:11, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

See your talk page. Collect (talk) 14:17, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Help talk:Dummy edit has a recent discussion on this (last post 10 December 2013). This null edit, noted in that discussion, was made by adding one space, so that }}</ref> became }} </ref>, which allowed for the edit summary without affecting the appearance of the article. Anyone interested can add to the discussion a Help talk:Dummy edit. -- Jreferee (talk) 14:30, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Howdy. I am User:Mitchazenia, the other judge of the Stub Contest with User: Casliber. We are in need of some people who can check the entries of Snowmanradio, who has over 6,000 entries and Casliber and I are only human and have 39 other contestants to score for the day. If some people would be interested, please message here and on my talk page (especially the latter so I know). It would do us a lot of good if some people can make sure all of them are legit. We are making changes for the next Stub Contest so people aren't interested in doing 6000+ entries. However, the users have to be uninvolved. Mitch32^{(New digs, new life, same old stubborn.)} 04:08, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

I should add, that the job would be to check the diffs to make sure that a) they were redirects mismarked as stubs and rightly changed to redirect, or b) making sure that the mismarked stubs are actually start or higher quality. When choosing that, you'd mark it on one of the three sub-pages with Template:Aye. It's a pretty easy job, we just need help doing it due to the size. Mitch32^{(New digs, new life, same old stubborn.)} 04:14, 26 December 2013 (UTC)