Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive311

Prior recent/relevant discussions

• User talk:MJL#Council proposals (permalink)
• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring#User:Netoholic_reported_by_User:Bilorv_(Result:_24_hours)
• User talk:Netoholic#Blocked (permalink)
• Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Men
• Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Men
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Men
• Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Men

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

Netoholic has (in several words) challenged my close of

I am submitting this closure for self-review since Neto is blocked. It's not that I don't stand by my close at this point. It's that Netoholic has flat out stated that nothing less than this proposal being up for several years would be sufficient to them.[15] I feel that is an absurd request to make from an editor who seems to be demonstrating clear

Should I be reverted and what is to be said of the actions concerning Netoholic? –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 14:52, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

• Endorse per the deletion of
  WP:FORUMSHOP by making a council proposal page, and there were no (other) supporters of the project despite widespread discussion about it so it's clearly not a productive area to keep discussing over and over again. — Bilorv (he/him) _(talk) 15:01, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
• I don’t really see much of anything to close. It had three participants. Wikiprojects on the whole are dead (with a few notable exceptions such as MILHIST) and I honestly had no clue that the “WikiProject Council” even existed beyond a weird logo on talk pages that we’d never bothered to get rid of. Pointless close because a three person discussion about a loosely/not at all regulated part of Wikipedia doesn’t consensus make. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:07, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
• Endorse - project was clearly a duplicate or fork of
  WP:MEN if that's their interest. Maybe they didn't intend their project proposal to be pointy, but it became pointy anyway. Might I also suggest marking the WikiProject Council proposals process historic if it's so poorly attended? Expecting things to wait years for approval indicates a process that has outlived its usefulness. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 15:11, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Yeah, I’d agree with this. I’m not exactly thrilled with Netoholic’s behaviour here and don’t really think the close should be “overturned” but I also don’t really see much of a point to it since that can hardly be called a discussion. If people want to create a WikiProject, let them and then sort it out at MfD if it causes issues. Most of them no one will even notice. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:15, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
• ... sort it out at MfD if it causes issues. At the MfD of the proposal page, three editors !voted close and the closer wrote "Closing/archiving the proposal should not require MfD intervention." [16] Looks to me like consensus to close. Endorse. – Levivich 15:47, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
• Reclose with an uninvolved closer This is a mess all around. I don't quite see how
  WP:RFC calls for an uninvolved editor is precisely so that accusations of bad faith on the closer's part are harder to level. And while this isn't the forum for it I would support efforts to mark the WikiProject Council as historical. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:56, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Endorse This is typical IDHT territory and Netoholic needs to be probably TBanned from these spheres, because because his arguments seem to be approaching MRA-esque stuff very rapidly. But, MJL, you were not the best-placed editor to close this. ∯WBG^converse 16:00, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
    • @Barkeep49 and Winged Blades of Godric: I would agree that I may not have been the best person to close this, but that is why I made my offer to discuss this out first with Neto.^[17] I was rather shocked that they chose to edit war over it rather than actually just be cordial and polite. I'm not unreasonable, and I generally revert when asked for the right reasons.^[18] I'd like to additionally discuss the topic ban that WBG mentioned. It might be overdue here. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 16:48, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
• Since I was pinged: I have no opinion about whether or not this proposal should be closed, but I hope that I was clear that the result at the Miscellany for deletion (writing that out in full as a reminder that "deletion" is part of the name) discussion about the proposal was only that the proposal page should not be deleted, not that it shouldn't be closed. Closing or not closing proposals isn't the focus of MfD as a forum. If the participants on the page can't resolve it there (which it seems they can't), then a dispute resolution venue such as this one is the right place for that to be decided. --RL0919 (talk) 16:13, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

  As the person who pinged you, I think your close was clear. I just don't see how you reached a consensus of keep from that discussion especially as only a couple months before a different MfD came to a delete decision. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:58, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

  One MfD was about an actual WikiProject and the other MfD was about a proposal for a possible WikiProject, so I don't see different results as that surprising. In the discussion I closed, out of eight participants only the nominator and one other flatly favored deletion, with a third being open to deletion as an option. Most of the rest wanted the page kept but the proposal closed. I think it is very reasonable to ask why the author of the proposal would look at that MfD and think it was appropriate to revert the subsequent closure of the project proposal, but in the MfD close itself I was trying to stick to only addressing the normal remit of MfD. --RL0919 (talk) 18:21, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

• Well given the pretty strong consensus against the project's existence at
  WP:MEN and there wasn't any articulated benefit for having a project to improve biographies of men. Hut 8.5 20:24, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
• I'm looking at Netoholic's block log. A lot of it is irrelevant ancient history, but two 24-hour blocks in the last three months suggest there is still a problem with unnecessary edit warring. The entries in the block log suggest that Netoholic was under a 1RR restriction at some point. Is now a good time to re-impose it? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:15, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
• IMO the problematic recent history extends beyond just the edit warring blocks:
  • Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1009#User:Netoholic and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1009#Deletion TBAN
  • The WT:Notability (academics) RfCs [19] [20]
  • Created
    WP:MEN), then Category:Men's history (deleted), then WP:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Men (no consensus
    ), and then edit warred over the close of the proposal page (subject of this thread)
  • Repeated reversions at...
    • Chairman (1, 2
      )
    • Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television) (1, 2, 3)
    • Steven Crowder (1, 2, 3, 4)
    • Chairperson (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
      )
    • Template:Masculinism (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
    • Template:Masculism sidebar (1, 2, 3)
    • Masculism (see the history in May) – Levivich 16:49, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
      • I agree with this assessment -- edit warring is actually a fairly minor aspect of the whole story. --
        talk) 17:59, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
      • See also: reverts at The Wachowskis article: 1, 2, 3. Also: I was made very uncomfortable by this comment regarding an article about a murdered trans woman. Here is my reply that notes how off-base that comment was. WanderingWanda (talk) 06:20, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
• Reclose with an uninvolved closer. This may have been the correct outcome of the discussion (given Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Men). However, the close does not reflect the actual discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Men (3 comments - Netholic + 2 others) - there's certainly no consensus for opening the WikiProject (or, given 3 participants, for much of anything) - however the only talk of a redirect is by the closer. Furthermore, MJL is clearly involved given their numerous comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Men. Icewhiz (talk) 09:43, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

  @Icewhiz: It's pretty established I was involved despite my initial protest and grumblings to such. The redirect portion of the close was brought by Jo-Jo Eumerus's initial close of MFD:WP:MEN and then UnitedStatesian's first close of WP:COUNCIL/P/Men (the latter who've I pinged before regarding this issue but doesn't seem to want to get involved further). Either way, if whoever closes this thread wants to reclose mine, then that's fine with me.
  I'd just prefer to see this matter conclusively resolved, though. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 18:17, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

• Reverse close. Netoholic and I do not always see eye to eye (to put it mildly), but I don't see the harm in this proposal being left open. (Disclosure: I was, briefly, a member of Netoholic's original WikiProject Men.) WanderingWanda (talk) 06:20, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
• Why did the proposal get closed at all? Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals do not normally get "closed". It's usually pointless to start a WikiProject page when you only have three possible participants (I ran the numbers years ago; you need a lot more than three people to keep the group going for even one year), but there's no bureaucracy over there. I've wondered, in fact, whether the proposal process ought to be shut down, or replaced by hard requirements that are designed to minimize the risk of creating a soon-to-be-inactive WikiProject (e.g., "Get six active participants to sign up, not counting any newbies, or we'll delete your WikiProject page"). But pages like Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Men don't need to be closed, and since nobody is required to make a proposal to create a WikiProject page, it seems particularly strange to have a formal closure. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:52, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

  @WhatamIdoing: In this case, the relevant WikiProject page was deleted. Neto needs consensus to bring it back, but that hasn't happened here. idk if this is the best place to discuss the WikiProject Council system or not. I just know that this discussion, like all discussion pages there, need to come to a close eventually. That's just at least according to the page itself. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 05:35, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

  It's perfectly normal for Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Men to get closed; it's closing Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Men that's unusual. If you meant "He created it, and then we deleted it at MFD", then the message should probably say that, with a link to the MFD discussion, rather than saying that it was "not created", which (it sounds like) isn't actually true. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:33, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

• Revert close, and TBAN Netoholic. The close by @MJL was broadly correct in substance, but MJL was involved so should have recused themselves. The close should be reverted so that someone else can close it.

That's a small detail, easily sorted.

The real big issue here is that

WP:IDHT

problem. The core of it is very very simple: WikiProjects are venues for editors to collaborate, but there is almost nobody who wants to collaborate with Netoholic on this topic. So at this time there is no case for making a WikiProject Men.

Sadly, Netoholic's response has come perilously close to

full spiderman. We have had the same basic issue sprawling over into multiple venues, always with the same outcome, but Netoholic ploughs on regardless. It's time to topic ban Netoholic from anything related to gender. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:44, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) I think this is a very reasonable suggestion. --

talk) 18:25, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Fram case opened

Is there any indication that this might plausibly be a good faith nomination, maybe by the subject themselves or their proxy? Setting up AFDs can be hard, so unless it's blatantly some sort of attack I'd say just reformat the AFD with the proper templates and see what happens. Primefac (talk) 18:25, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

EDIT: I'll leave the first half for discussion, but I've fixed the formatting in the meantime. If people !vote before this gets decided here I say we just leave well enough alone. Primefac (talk) 18:28, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

I was IRL busy - did I miss much? Guy (Help!) 20:32, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Big

drama was missed. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:55, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

You could retroactively claim your absence as a dramatic resignation ;) Nosebagbear (talk)

I saw a bit of that on teh Facebooks, but I struggle to understand the full extent of it. Reading the page you link, my money is, as always, with Newyorkbrad, as reliably thoughtful and nuanced as ever. Guy (Help!) 10:00, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Nah, just the usual. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:10, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

@Guy: Welcome back! Just more backlogs to get to.. RIP. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 01:46, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

I started a post Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard#NAMBLA content on Harry Hay about NPOV concerns on Harry Hay. It’s a bit long with lots of repeated content but the proposed content section at the end has the sources included.

It was very helpful in dismissing some sources, and suggestions of better ones.

I’ve read every reliable source available and presented proposed content for inside the article—which in many ways contradicts what is in the lead and article presently—but it’s been crickets to get feedback or review for including it.

Personally I doubt any of it is weighty enough to be included in the lead; or that category pedophile advocacy is appropriate. I was hoping that would be the natural conclusion once others were able to see how little there is in reliable sources on this.

I ran across

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Oversight permission restored to Beeblebrox

User has a potted history with contributions including

User has now been notified of this discussion. Primefac (talk) 12:48, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

ec with you on that. Nthep (talk) 12:52, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

JoshuaistheFalco reply: You accuse me of being disruptive and potty. You and Redrose do not allow me to contribute or edit an article without it being called out. You accuse me of original research yet a news article is valid. You then say a potted history with disruptive behaviour. How about the anonymous editor who called Pelsall a town and it is not. Also you take photos down I contribute and yet any copyrighted photos are allowed like from Burslem station. I took that down as it was copyright. I create articles but of course others are then removing my edits.

Wiki is a one rule for admin and another for non admin. Tyranny imo.

JoshuaistheFalco reply finished: — Preceding

FWIW, some of JoshuaistheFalco's recent edits are blatant vandalism (here and here, for example). Peacock (talk) 14:13, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I called them out for

WP:SYNTH, among other things. They will take a local authority's feasibility study or long-term transport strategy plan and use it as a source for a claim that there is an actual ongoing project to reopen a long-closed railway line. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:50, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

For the record I haven't called you potty. I didn't raise this report because of differences of opinion I have with you about

MOS:IMAGELEAD. My concerns are over the recent edits to Pelsall and Brownhills in the face of sourced information and then descending into vandalism -"to see who the main admin are who keep bugging me" - isn't a justification or excuse. As for the image point, if that was you who removed the image from Burslem railway station then you're failing to recognize an image freely licenced by the copyright holder over copyright violation when images taken by others are uploaded with the uploader claiming them as their own work. Nthep (talk) 15:19, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Blocked them 24 hours for the vandalism. No objections if any other admin wants to extend the block or indef etc. Galobtter (pingó mió) 04:13, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

[23]

If someone could revdel the old version, that would be peachy. Thanks.

Headbomb, I have tagged the with {{copyvio-revdel}}. --MrClog (talk) 05:37, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

 Done Enterprisey (talk!) 05:40, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

@

b} 05:42, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Headbomb, "Although holy hell is it obtrusive. That should be a talk page template.". You are not entirely alone in that sentiment. See Template talk:Copyvio-revdel#A concern with Template:Copyvio-revdel. -- Begoon 09:54, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi, I created

M.k.m2003, they are recorded as the creator because they created it is a redirect. You simply converted it from a redirect to an article. In general, it doesn't really matter who created an article, so don't worry too much about it. StudiesWorld (talk) 15:31, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

StudiesWorld, OK. Thank you M.k.m2003 (talk) 15:33, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm opposed to

What does this have to do with administrators? This sounds like a content dispute. If it is not a content dispute, note that you are required to notify the other party. The instructions at the top of this page tell you how to do this. --Yamla (talk) 22:36, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Yamla, I received notification through ping so I'd say there's no need for further notification in this case. That having been said, as you noted this is a content dispute, and not even one I was planning on actively pursuing, so there's really no need for this discussion. At most, there's a case for boomerang for mild edit warring, but 3RR hasn't been violated yet. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 22:38, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm Sorry for but I did not know what to do .Thank you M.k.m2003 (talk) 22:42, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

notability guidelines

and should be included in the encyclopedia.

For general instructions on how to handle content disputes, see

WP:BRD. Bringing disputes to the administrators noticeboard is only for when users are violating policy or otherwise being problematically uncivil, neither of which are the case in this situation in my opinion. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 22:54, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

More references? How about more text? M.K.m2003's "article" consisted of an infobox, a single sentence of text, 9 photographs and 1 reference. It seems to be essentially an excuse for a photo gallery. Unless it can be fleshed out into something at least the size of a sub-stub (it's pretty much a sub-sub-stub), I think the redirect is better. Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:21, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

The redirect is much better as it places the tomb in its context. Having a separate article which barely qualifies as a stub does our readers a disservice at this time. The redirect gives readers the information they need, and we should be about our readers. Doug Weller talk 11:58, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

The Arbitration Committee is pleased to announce that Liz (talk · contribs) has been reappointed to the clerk team as a full clerk, effective immediately.

The arbitration clerk team is often in need of new members, and any editor who would like to join the clerk team is welcome to apply by e-mail to clerks-llists.wikimedia.org.

For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 14:40, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Liz reappointed full clerk

This account created in 2008 with no edits apparently exists solely for making content available in userspace that is not available in mainspace. -- GreenC 16:39, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Seems like a straightforward case for

WP:FAKEARTICLE suggests when dealing with article-like user pages that haven't been edited in an extended period of time; deletion isn't strictly necessary in a case like this. I doubt anything else needs to be done given that the user in question only made two edits, both over ten years ago. --Aquillion (talk) 16:46, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

I've nominated it at MfD. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:00, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

• I do not know whether to be amused or saddened at what User:LordSwad (MfD discussion) tells us about established editors. It was obvious what the editor was doing to make a draft about a building close to Swadlincote, which is the post town address that turned up when I put the name and the village into Google Web. One can point this out, as well as pointing out that the page has just been edited several times; and still one editor will look at this page, edited a mere 5 hours earlier, and immediately beneath that proclaim the page stale, and two other editors will argue about a subject that is not the building close to Swadlincote that User:LordSwad in fact drafted a 2 sentence stub on. Uncle G (talk) 08:38, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

• How about being neither amused nor saddened, but chalking it up to different people think differently? This is neither a big deal, nor is it in some way the big problems of Wikipedia writ small. It hardly merits a finger-wagging comment here. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:35, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

• I have just deleted all the files listed in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion, and then called purge on it. But its "how many files in each class" showed this hereinunder. "G6: Housekeeping" showed 110 members when it actually had no members, and calling "purge" on Category:Candidates for uncontroversial speedy deletion alias G6: Housekeeping did not change this. I have often noticed this fault.

Anthony Appleyard (talk) 15:32, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Cryptic 15:50, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

I think this category-count issue needs to be explained in some prominent place like VPT's top header; it's been unreliable for well over a decade and will not likely be solved in the offing. – Ammarpad (talk) 19:25, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Unsurprisingly, the WMF's developers aren't convinced this is an issue. Would suggest voicing your concerns at T221795. -FASTILY 23:56, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

• I have just deleted all the files listed in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion, and then called purge on it. But its "how many files in each class" showed this hereinunder. "G6: Housekeeping" showed 110 members when it actually had no members, and calling "purge" on Category:Candidates for uncontroversial speedy deletion alias G6: Housekeeping did not change this. I have often noticed this fault.

Anthony Appleyard (talk) 15:32, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Cryptic 15:50, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

I think this category-count issue needs to be explained in some prominent place like VPT's top header; it's been unreliable for well over a decade and will not likely be solved in the offing. – Ammarpad (talk) 19:25, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Unsurprisingly, the WMF's developers aren't convinced this is an issue. Would suggest voicing your concerns at T221795. -FASTILY 23:56, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi! This is a notice that I have

Hi all. Could an uninvolved admin take a look at this afd please, I am not sure as to where the nominator is going, or is confused re the AfD process. It appears they want a move as opposed to deletion, looking at their talkpage they opened a section at the teahouse, to which the reply looks to have been missed by the OP. Thanks Nightfury 10:02, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

What an absolute mess. Here is what he wanted to do, but was advised against it: [24]. All of his contribs are regarding this article. He may even have a COI regarding the unrelated nonprofit of the same name. Softlavender (talk) 10:26, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

May I also say the IP address is dynamic. The user can simply change IP by simply resetting their router. A rangeblock may be warranted. Nightfury 14:11, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

There is currently an open discussion on the

Have you listed the discussion at

WP:ANRFC? That will get more attention. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:14, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Another editor listed it there

a month ago. Bus stop (talk) 16:24, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Please see here and comment. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:16, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Another editor renamed several pages related to the

@

WP:RM/TR, where someone with the right permissions can revert these moves. Iffy★Chat -- 21:49, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

RM always has a backlog (or, it has historically.) I've been trying to get back into it more recently. I'll try to take a look. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:18, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Thank you.

Calidum 12:25, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

I closed 4 easy ones. There are a lot I participated in, and a lot I won't touch due to controversy, but hopefully this helps. I'll try to look again later. Dicklyon (talk) 14:55, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Disposed of 4 more. This is not rocket science. If people like me will chip in on the easy ones, the harder ones are more likely to come to the attention of admins to work on. Dicklyon (talk) 19:25, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Done 7 more. Someone click the "Thank" button and maybe I'll do more. Dicklyon (talk) 03:31, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the thanks. 7 more done, making 22 today. Enough for me. There are still lots to do. Dicklyon (talk) 05:35, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Please note that the now pretty old multi-RM on

This has been fixed. I was wrong about its maturity; not ready for closing just yet. Dicklyon (talk) 05:40, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Effective immediately, RickinBaltimore (talk · contribs) has resigned from the Arbitration Committee. He has also relinquished the CheckUser and Oversight permissions. The Committee sincerely thanks Rick for his service and wishes him well.

For the Arbitration Committee,

Katie^talk 19:38, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#resignation of RickInBaltimore

~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 11:08, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2019).

Administrator changes Johnuniq • Kosack • Valereee Ad Orientem • Ched • Gadfium • Jonathunder • Nick • Yelyos Bald Zebra • Beetstra • Doug Bell • Journalist • Ruud Koot • Splash • Voice of Clam Interface administrator changes Dinoguy1000

CheckUser changes RickinBaltimore Oversight changes Beeblebrox RickinBaltimore

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, the page Wikipedia:Office actions has been changed from a policy page to an information page.
• A
  administrator inactivity policy
  .

Arbitration

• Editors
  alert
  them.

Miscellaneous

• Following a research project on masking IP addresses, the Foundation is starting a new project to improve the privacy of IP editors. The result of this project may significantly change administrative and counter-vandalism workflows. The project is in the very early stages of discussions and there is no concrete plan yet. Admins and the broader community are encouraged to leave feedback on the talk page.
• The
  removal for inactivity
  at a later stage and enables a review of their work before according the right on a permanent basis.

---

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:24, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

What should we do to 2607:fb90::/32 (moved from VPPR)

Moved from

WP:VPPR § What should we do to 2607:fb90::/32

 – Enterprisey (talk!) 08:54, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Original post, from 2600:1702:38D0:E70:B4CD:9550:507:3ED1: Whoa, this range is affecting billions of T-Mobile users. The block is too long, what should we do? Should we shorten it or extend it? Enterprisey (talk!) 08:54, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

It's globally locked by the stewards and with a block log like this, I doubt anyone will agree to locally unblock. DrKay (talk) 09:12, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Well no wonder it has a big block log; this is a /32 rangeblock, and according to mw:Help:Range blocks/IPv6, this size is typically given to an ISP or large organization. Why would we want to rangeblock something as big as an ISP? You're naturally going to get a lot of vandalism out of an ISP. With IPv4s, we don't rangeblock entire elementary schools for routine vandalism (which this looks to be): we block individual addresses. This range has been used by a long-term vandal, but according to Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Dog and rapper vandal, this person has been investigated in real life. I don't see the need of continuing such a large rangeblock, especially since one recent block was self-contradictory: it prevented account creation despite saying "good-faith editors on this range are encouraged to get an account". Nyttend (talk) 12:11, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Just as a note, we do block entire schools (and sometimes entire school districts) if there is persistent vandalism. Heck, sometimes they ask us to do it. Primefac (talk) 12:36, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

And's what worse is that they can't edit their talk pages! This is the worst thing I've ever seen! 2600:1702:38D0:E70:FD25:732E:F177:1A07 (talk) 14:50, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Well, one year doesn't mean anything! What'll happen next year and in 2021? Are there gonna be more vandalism?! I think we should extend the global block to six months or maybe extend the block further more? 2600:1702:38D0:E70:FD25:732E:F177:1A07 (talk) 14:55, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

• Sigh. This is not new news, guys. It has been unblocked for a total of 4 days since April 2017. Before the most recent 3 month block, which was put on it after ~24 hours of it being unblocked, it had been blocked for ~2 years by Graham87. It was unblocked for 3 days in July, and instantly started causing disruption. I blocked it again for a year, because if you want to go back to 2016, it's been unblocked for all of ~2 weeks. The talk page revocation is because they abuse the talk page if it isn't set that way. The reason for the global block is because whenever we block it locally, they immediately go cross-wiki and start harassing people over it.
  ACC ignore is set because this is such a wide range that CU will not be useful to ACC and the majority of people requesting accounts on it will not be the LTA. All the IP users who as of 1 month ago think that this block that has been in place for 2 years is the worst thing on the planet, have never been able to edit consistently from this range, and that fact that they have access to other IP ranges now shows that if they want to edit from their T-Mobile mobile network, this block really will not impact them if they are good faith and want to create an account since they can create an account right now if they wanted to.
  I do not like range blocks of /32s and will very rarely make them, but we have a persistent cross-wiki LTA that abuses the entirety of this range and abuses user talks if TPA is enabled. This block very likely will be extended for another year by another admin come July 2020, but I set it to that length so we would have a chance to review when the time comes. If someone wants to make a special block template for this specific range I'd be fine with it to explain to any users what was going on, but if we unblock now or even shorten it, the disruption will immediately resume and we'd just have to block again with the same settings. I also suspect that whomever the IP that is complaining here is the same person behind IP that's been complaining about it for the last month, which means they have had ample opportunity to create an account and edit in good faith if they want to. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:13, 3 August 2019 (UTC)
  • I found a template, Template:TMOblock. How about we change the reason to that? That's a good idea! 2600:1702:38D0:E70:B4CD:9550:507:3ED1 (talk) 15:27, 3 August 2019 (UTC)
    • Sure. I'll do that now. I just matched the last block settings which used {{rangeblock}}. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:29, 3 August 2019 (UTC)
      • We should also make an edit filter to prevent these kinds of blocks from happening again. 2600:1702:38D0:E70:FD25:732E:F177:1A07 (talk) 22:56, 3 August 2019 (UTC)
        • Considering that many technically savvy admins are familiar with this range, I think that’s unlikely. If as I suspect you’ve been the same person complaining about this for a month, please stop. You can easily create an account right now and never have to worry about it again. The answer to “this range is very problematic and is unlikely to be unblocked for more than a few days at a time in the foreseeable future.” is not going to change just because you keep asking. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:04, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

What to do... what to do

Is it a BLP violation for people’s financial details (excruciating might I add) to be posted when they’ve file for bankruptcy? Even if the source is “reliable” it seems invasive for this website. Trillfendi (talk) 15:52, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Depends what the source is. If it's a news article reporting that John Smith is in debt of $50million then it's probably fine; if it's intimate financial details taken from a primary source then it's not, per

WP:BLPN. GiantSnowman 16:03, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

If this is brought to

WP:BLPN the sources and well as the content they are being used to support will need to be identified to know whether or not the sources are reliable for the content in question.--64.229.166.98 (talk) 05:25, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Someone remind me why news reports are fine? This is an encyclopedia that relies on secondary sources, not primary sources like news reports. "What have historians written about X" is what matters. "Have historians who rely on the primary sources paid attention to the amount?" is the question to ask. And until those secondary sources write about the subject, don't include the content. Nyttend (talk) 12:15, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

I think you've misunderstood, Nyttend. News reports are secondary sources, not primary. Primary source documents for financial data would be things like tax returns, bank statements, credit card statements, things like that. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 12:39, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

AIUI, historians tend to refer to secondary sources as those removed almost-entirely from the event--i.e. some decades after the event in question. Such a definition as-used there rarely matches what we mean here, which is usually closer to the plain-English meaning of a secondary source. See also Secondary source. --Izno (talk) 18:49, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Please find me any professional historians who define a news report as secondary. Are contemporary news reports included in the literature review of a dissertation, or are they among the primary sources upon which the research is based? Once your theoretical approach is accepted by the American Historical Review or the Journal of American History or any journal of comparable quality in another country, Wikipedia needs to acknowledge it, but until then, it's a

fringe theory. Until then, "an idea that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight in an article about a mainstream idea", and treating sources contemporary with an event as secondary for that event is distinctly not broadly supported by scholarship in this field. Nyttend (talk) 22:19, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Wikipeda is not an academic publication. It is a popular encyclopedia, and it quite properly uses secondary sources as defined not by academics, but by the world in general. Beyond My Ken (talk) 10:04, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Context, please? Sometimes the size of the bankruptcy or the impact on its victims makes it notable. Here's a thing on secondary sources: [34]. Guy (Help!) 22:35, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment)

talk) 03:18, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

An admin who sometimes refuses to communicate

There's one admin, who performs a very large number of speedy deletions but who doesn't always respond when users come with questions following up on these deletions. I remember there were several occasions when I've asked him to restore drafts he'd deleted per G13, and these requests have always been ignored. In the current version of their talk page I see seven deletion-related queries, and three of them have been left unanswered. Is this acceptable? I did bring it up with him [35], but I might have been too brusque, I guess, so he's taken offence and asked me to stay off his talk page. Could somebody else have a look? It might be that I'm overblowing it and that he's got good reasons for not replying to me or to the others. But if not, then maybe somebody could explain to him the expectation of accountability in a way that he will find acceptable? Thanks! – Uanfala (talk) 11:56, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Meh. They use the d-batch, which is why every single user page deletion is, e. g.,

54129 12:01, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Ah yes, I had missed the editnotice: I had half expected I'd just be told everything's fine and there'd be no need for drama, but in hindsight, of course that's the sensible thing to do: I've informed them just now. – Uanfala (talk) 12:15, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

boomerang in the air here. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 18:13, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

When you read previous discussions such as this and this it certainly puts things into perspective, Also worth noting you've made over 28 edits to his page in a year which all consists of requesting undeletion ..... Has it not occurred to you you can simply ask at REFUND instead of bugging an admin every day of the week?,

I myself have requested draft undeletions but these have always been at REFUND as I never want to pester someone over it (and plus 9/10 it's quicker).

I'm not seeing any admin intervention needed and I'm not seeing anything wrong with Fastilys interaction with you. –Davey2010^Talk 19:51, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

I don't think this is relevant here, but of the 28 edits you link to, only five are requests for undeletion. – Uanfala (talk) 21:35, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Struck as you are indeed corrent, Thanks. –Davey2010^Talk 11:37, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm sure that moving forward,

will leave Fastily alone and follow instructions. One question though? Did Uanfala go on to improve said articles or will we be G13ing them in 6 months, again? My point being, what is the point of undeleting G13's if not to bring them up to article status? -- Dlohcierekim (talk) 19:59, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

So far as I can tell, exactly once from the requests made to Fastily, specifically Type theory with records. Looks like the rest Uanfala never even touched, and on one occasion seemed to want a page undeleted simply to see what it contained. Someguy1221 (talk) 23:43, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Well, in the links above what I see is Fastily making statements that are incompatible with the observed reality, but if what other people see instead is me making baseless accusations, fine; this is not relevant here anyway. And again, I wouldn't mind it if aspects of my past behaviour is examined in greater detail. However, I really can't say I'm satisfied with the way the question of what tone I used on that occasion last year, or what I've done to the six or so drafts I've had restored since then, has been completely substituted for the issue of a potentially problematic long-term behavioural pattern of an active admin. – Uanfala (talk) 13:01, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

I'll be the first to admit that I approached last year's interaction with Fastily in the worst way possible. I shouldn't have made any accusations, regardless of the perceived merits of the situation. And yes, I normally ask the deleting admin if I want a page restored, even for drafts: as I understand it, REFUND isn't obligatory, it's there for convenience because undeletion of G13'ed drafts is entirely uncontroversial, not because it's a bad idea to ask the admin. And I've thought it's generally a good idea for an admin to have an idea of how many of their deleted pages get restored. Now, if people would like to examine my behaviour here, then by all means go ahead. But couldn't we at least get an opinion on the matter that I brought up in the first place? If Fastily hasn't respond to my queries because I'm apparently annoying, then fine. But that's not about me, almost half of the people who approach him with questions regarding his deletions have been ignored. Is that acceptable? If it is, then I would appreciate it if I'm told so, so that I could adjust my expectations accordingly. Thanks. – Uanfala (talk) 20:48, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

I'll be the first to admit that I approached last year's interaction with Fastily in the worst way possible. I shouldn't have made any accusations, regardless of the perceived merits of the situation.

Oh really? If you had thought about that before

accusing me of bad faith

, then we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place.

I normally ask the deleting admin if I want a page restored, even for drafts: as I understand it, REFUND isn't obligatory

My edit notice points users to

WP:REFUND

because a) they'll receive faster service, and b) I perform many deletions, and strongly prefer that they are peer-reviewed. I am happy to service polite requests, but that meaning is clearly lost on you.

If Fastily hasn't respond to my queries because I'm apparently annoying, then fine.

"annoying" is a mischaracterization. The term you're looking for is "rude".

But that's not about me, almost half of the people who approach him with questions regarding his deletions have been ignored.

Um, half? Diffs please, or

COI editors is almost always a waste of time. I prioritize my time to help editors that genuinely need it. -FASTILY 23:05, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

This was in reference to what I wrote as the beginning of this thread: in the version of your talk page at the time, there were seven users other than myself who ask about deletions you've performed, and three of them don't appear to have received an answer. Of course I don't know the particulars: at the very least I can't see the content of the pages in question. Also, that's not a big sample at all, but as far as I remember, unanswered questions are a familiar sight on your talk page. Of course, it could be that all these users are obvious NOTHERE's, but my impression was that even then it's best to give them an explanation, even if a short one, so that they can see what they're getting wrong and go away instead of potentially making the same mistakes again). – Uanfala (talk) 00:51, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have been more specific. The three unanswered queries on your talk page are:

• [37]: the page at the time of deletion looked like this: it had been tagged for G11, and you had deleted it as U5, both were clearly mistakes. The user recreated their page shortly after, so I it might be that you haven't felt the need to take any further action (although given how understandably frustrated they were, something as simple as "Ooops, my bad!" would have gone a long way). You did eventually restore the page, a few hours ago [38].
• [39]. A user page deleted as U5. I can't see its contents.
• [40] The pages deleted were a user page and a sandbox, both as U5. I can't see the deleted revisions. The latter page was later recreated as a draft article. – Uanfala (talk) 10:50, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Request to override Global range block

I was suggested to make this request here

The ip range 151.48.0.0/17 was globally blocked by a steward because a user from this ip range used it to create several fake accounts and spam messages accross wikipedia

Anachronist who is a sysop changed the local settings for en.wikipedia.org to give the possibility to create accounts from this ip range

But there must be a glitch or a bug because if i try creating an account from the blocked ip range the same error message appears

'Editing from your IP address range (151.48.0.0/17) has been blocked (disabled) on all Wikimedia wikis until 19:38, 13 December 2019 by Masti (meta.wikimedia.org) for the following reason:

Cross-wiki spam: spambot

This block began on 19:38, 13 June 2019'

I would like someone to fix this error please

It is stange that a global block can not be overridden by local settings because this is what normally happens

Anyway if the cause of the block was an abuser who created too many accounts to spam messages i wonder why it was not chosen the most logical solution that is keeping the creation of accounts blocked and letting edits from normal ip addresses unblocked but exactly the opposite

Semplicemente Agghiacciante Semplicemente Agghiacciante (talk) 09:11, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

A global block can be overridden by normal settings, but it has not been in this case. See Special:Contributions/151.48.0.0/17. The block is not locally disabled, and placing a new local block is not sufficient to do that. Neither the global block nor the local block is currently marked as Account Creation Blocked. That said, you clearly aready have an account, so why do you need to create more? We would need some justification to release the spambot block, and "I want to create more spambots" isn't very convincing. ST47 (talk) 15:41, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

As we noted at VPT, this is not a glitch or bug it is working correctly. Also, it does not appear you have contacted @Anachronist: as required for this discussion, I've done that for you. If Anachronist means to override the global block, they certainly can. If not, we'd need a reasonable argument for someone else to do so. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:45, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: The history of this started with a query to OTRS, in which this editor could not edit as an IP address or create an account because of the global block. There was no disagreement that the block was necessary. I encouraged the person to try to create an account from an IP address outside, and that was successful. At the time I thought it unusual to block account creation for a spambot, so I set up a local block on the same IP range with IP editing still blocked but account creation not disabled. When that didn't allow for accounts to be created, it became a technical question about whether local settings override global settings, so I encouraged the editor to ask about it over at village pump. Evidently I can't override the "account creation" flag if it's blocked globally. I consider the matter closed. ~Anachronist (talk) 18:43, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

@Anachronist: if you think it's appropriate you can override the global block at Special:GlobalBlockWhitelist - is that still preventing account creation here after you do it? — xaosflux ^Talk 19:24, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: I was unaware of that whitelist. Thanks, I'll remember that in the future. I'm sure that will work, although now that I know the global blocking of account creation was deliberate due to the spambot being involved in actually creating accounts, I'm reluctant to whitelist the range for the account creation function. ~Anachronist (talk) 21:13, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

There is one thing i would like to specify

My very first request was not about account creation but about normal editing from ip

Anachronist accorded very gently the possibility to create an account from the globally blocked ip range but this did not work so i had to create an account from another ip and asked him to fix this technical issue about account creations

But i kept saying that in my opinion allowing account creation for an ip range that was used by an abuser to spam accounts was not the most correct solution which instead would be disallowing account creation and allowing editing from ip

I do concur with all of you when you say that asking to allow users to create accounts from this ip range is not reasonable and if i requested it was just because allowing account creation was the concession i had from Anachronist

Now that the full story was cleared up i would like to go back to my initial request and ask for unblocking this ip range in en.wikipedia.org only for anonymous users while keeping blocked the possibility to create accounts

In this way the abuser will still be prevented from spamming new accounts but nomal users will be free to contribute again and it will be even easier controlling their contributions and possible abuses by watching the ip range 151.48.0.0/17

Semplicemente Agghiacciante Semplicemente Agghiacciante (talk) 12:12, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

All global blocks disable account creation by default, and there is unfortunately no way for us to change that when making the block. If this is impacting multiple people here, then I would recommend whitelisting the block locally and then issuing a local block with more appropriate settings. I'll look and see if that global block is still necessary. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 15:04, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Ajraddatz

Semplicemente Agghiacciante Semplicemente Agghiacciante (talk) 18:09, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

WP:ADOPT

backlogged

Interested editors may like noted that

CAT:WSA is backlogged with ~30 users seeking adoption (including the user who filed the above report). If more experienced users and admins could add themselves to the list of potential adopters and ensure the page is updated, it'd go a long way with sharing institutional knowledge about Wikipedia and promoting editor retention. Cheers! –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 20:35, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Close review - Village Pump discussion on spelling of category names

There seems to be a consensus on a number of points here:

• There is consensus that the closure by User:Cinderella157 was unclear, didn't adequately summarize the discussion, and didn't attempt to take the allegations of votestacking into consideration.
• There is consensus that, at the time that Cinderella157 closed the RfC, there was no clear consensus to be found in the RfC discussion.
• There is consensus that the notification of select Wikiprojects by User:Number 57 prompted participation by a disproportionately biased set of editors. However, there isn't strong consensus on whether Number 57 acted in bad faith when he notified these Wikiprojects. In the end, it can't be denied that these notifications introduced a bias in the editors that participated in the RfC. As an illustration, imagine you're hosting a vote on the question: "should peanuts be banned from airplanes?" At first, you have a set of 1000 random people that are asked to vote, and the results are not in favor of banning peanuts. But then, someone invites 1000 additional people (all of whom have a severe peanut allergy) to the vote because they are the people that are "most affected" by it. The results of the vote will obviously change, because the participants have become biased.

There doesn't, however, seem to be a consensus on what to do about the RfC. Overturning the RfC by rolling the clock back to before the Wikiprojects were notified does not seem to be an agreeable solution. There's certainly no consensus on changing the end result of the otherwise insufficient closure. My advice (and to be clear, this last part is not intended to be an interpretation of the consensus of this review) would be to consider the RfC closed as no consensus, with no prejudice against speedy renomination. Re-run the RfC again, advertise it widely throughout WP (but in a neutral way that doesn't disproportionately notify a biased audience), and see if a proper consensus can be found. ‑Scottywong| prattle _ 06:17, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

• Discussion: WP:Village pump (policy)#RFC: spelling of "organisation"/"organization" in descriptive category names
• Close: [41]
• Closer: Cinderella157
• Discussion of the close: WP:Village pump (policy)#Post closure discussion
• Closer notified of this review: [42]

I have not been involved in this issue, other than responding to the RFC. I rarely touch categories, and I don't much care what the final outcome is here. However I strongly object to canvassing, and I very much dislike bad closures.

Grounds for overturn:

• A closer's job is to assess community consensus and apply policies and guidelines. The closer acknowledges that they did not even attempt to do so in their closing statement and in the post closure discussion. The simply disregarded WP:Canvassing, and they blindly assessed consensus of the canvassed participants in front of them. I believe a reasonable closer could have accounted for the canvassing. If a closer finds that canvassing has irredeemably corrupted the process, they can void the discussion. They can direct that the RFC restart from scratch. It is within reasonable discretion for a closer to be unable to resolve a case of gross canvassing, however it is not within discretion to willfully ignore gross canvassing.
• I fully agree that a closer can disregard votecount and close on the basis of policy, or close on the basis of weight of argument. I have personally closed a 20 vs 10 RFC in favor of the 10. However a policy based close needs to cite a solid policy basis, and a "weight of argument" close needs to cite a solid and respectable explanation. One of my main goals when closing is to ensure that the "losing side" receives a rationale which they can (unhappily) respect. We do not have that here. The closer declared an overriding "weight of argument" for "The most compelling arguments are to embrace our differences". Huh? I don't recall ever seeing such a strange or hollow basis for closure. I am also puzzled how that has clear overriding weight against concerns of disruption-of-work.
• (edit: This is a supporting/explanatory factor, not a fundamental basis for overturn:) The closer has an unusually strong personal minority-bias on the language issue. A causal inspection of their usertalk reveals an exceptional personal inclination towards 's' over 'z'. In fact Google reports that "winterised" (with an s) is a borderline-fringe usage by 6.8% of the world. This evident personal bias, combined with a disregard for the blatant canvassing issue, combined with the fluffy-puffy "embrace our differences" rationale, creates an overriding impression of a Supervote.

I'm fine with however this ends up. But this close erodes confidence in our system of closures. Can we please get something respectable? A respectable outcome if possible, or a costly repeat-RFC if necessary. Alsee (talk) 17:58, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Supplementary information: This is the state of the RFC at the time of canvassing. It had been closed as The proposal has gained consensus to pass. The RFC was reopened and hit with a surge of opposes after the canvassing. Alsee (talk) 08:05, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

I don't want to get into the merits of the debate itself (fwiw, I supported standardisation) but I am really uncomfortable with the last objection here. When the question is a binary "do A or do B", everyone is going to look like a partisan if you approach it with this mindset. If you're going to challenge the closer for their use of a language variant, when they've expressed no opinion on the matter, who would be allowed to close the next one? Andrew Gray (talk) 19:09, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Andrew Gray I wouldn't have looked at their personal inclination, if not for the first two points. The first two points establish the problem with the close. I said that the third point combined with the first two create an overriding impression of a supervote. I consider it a supportive/explanatory factor. Alsee (talk) 07:49, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

It's a rather strange closing statement but from a brief look I'm not seeing a consensus for much in that discussion. The discussion did establish that the relevant policies/guidelines can be read as supporting either option, and that opinion on the subject is pretty divided. That largely takes care of the main reasons for closing either way. Given that all English speakers use one of the two variants exclusively, every single possible closer would have the "bias" that's being claimed here. Hut 8.5 21:17, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

The close needs to be re-done--it was an atrocious, wandering, closing statement that didn't actually summarize the discussion. --Izno (talk) 21:30, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

• I have rarely seen a clearer case of no consensus than that discussion. Opinions are hopelessly split, everyone is talking across each other, no solid arguments made to persuade anyone. Seems like a solid close to me,and one that needed to be made because it looks like the whole thing was a huge time drain. Wikipedia's ENGVAR split is always going to be a somewhat tricky issue, but by and large we get through it without dispute. Suggest people drop the stick and move on.  — Amakuru (talk) 21:56, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Amakuru, 3-to-1 support isn't usually considered a clear case of no consensus. Especially when opposes give no rationale that their position is in any way superior.
    (For those who missed my point, my reference to 3-to-1 support is before the RFC was re-opened and one disruptive individual selectively canvassed 11 wikiprojects 13 national wikiprojects and noticeboards to manufacture a surge of opposes.) Alsee (talk) 07:27, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
    • If you're going to make accusations of disruption, at least have the decency to notify me. As for the accusation of "selective canvassing", this was a proposal to mandate that an English word had to be spelt in a way different to that used in several countries or regions. Therefore it seems eminently reasonable that editors from those countries or regions should be alerted to a discussion that would specifically affect them with a neutral notification (there was little or no point in posting it to American/Canadian etc WikiProjects as the proposal would not affect their categories. I really don't understand why anyone has a problem with this, unless they have a case of sour grapes over the fact that a large numebr of editors from said countries were opposed to the change. Number 57 13:35, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

I have responded in part to Alsee (the OP of this thread) in the post-close discussion here.

• I have not "ignored" the matter of VOTESTACKING.
• I have found "no consensus" (as distinct from "consensus against"). I am happy to amend if this needs to be made clearer. It is similar to the outcome of directing that the RfC start from scratch - an outcome acceptable to Alsee? If this represents the substantive reason for contesting the close, then I suggest there is "no reason".
• The most compelling arguments are to embrace our differences ≠ The closer declared an overriding "weight of argument" for ... - particularly in the context of a "no consensus" close.
  WP:IAR
  . The principle of ENGVAR etc is to "embrace our differences", rather than argue about them when they are if little consequence (to understanding). COMMONALITY applies where understanding may be compromised. The former is therefore more compelling, since this here, is not a matter of "understanding". This is a matter of identifying the underpinning principles of policy and guidelines (as I believe the OP has implored me to do) since the guidelines cited do not specifically address the issue. However, in the circumstances, this was an observation of the discussion and not a finding of "consensus".
• If I was brief in my close, and subsequently unclear, I apologise to the extent that the close template is a restriction. I believe it is reasonable to seek clarification of a close. I have responded to clarify. However, it is not appropriate to assume "bad faith", to misrepresent matters or to be uncivil in the process (see post close comments).
• I think that Amakuru's comments are particularly pertinent.

Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 12:27, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

• I wouldn't recommend starting the RFC from scratch, at least not now. No consensus is a valid close of any discussion, and it means that at this time there is no agreement, and often a fair bit of dispute too. The result of such a discussion is to retain the status quo, whatever that is, and move on. Restarting is likely to just see the same participants come back and make the same points. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 14:20, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

• Comment - the views of the proposer @
  Oculi (talk) 00:22, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
• Overturn. The close was exceptionally poor and fluffy, and gives no appearance of even attempting to actually weight the discussion in light of the votestacking.

It is utterly disgraceful that Number 57 continues to deny that they engaged in votestacking. After numerous expalanations by numerous editors at several venues, Number 57 still has the gall to say I really don't understand why anyone has a problem with this, unless they have a case of sour grapes over the fact that a large numebr of editors from said countries were opposed to the change.

It's very simple:

1. Number 57 engaged in blatant votestacking by notifying only sets of editors who he considered most likely to agree with his view. Categories relating to nearly all countries may be renamed by this proposal, and editors from all countries may have views on this ... but Number 57 chose to notify only those who he believed would support his view.
2. This was done stealthily, without any notification to the RFC that the notifications have been made.

Number 57 has been admin for nearly 12 years, and a prolific contributor (over 190K edits). He has participated in enough discussions over the years to know exactly what he was doing here, so the despicable manipulativeness of his conduct has no defence of ignorance or error. Any remaining shred of good faith I might assume in N57's conduct has been destroyed by his vile attempt to claim that objections are a case of sour grapes. This doubling-down on his highly disruptive misconduct makes Number 57 completely unfit to be an editor, let alone an admin. If I have the time and energy to pursue the case for a desysopping of Number 57, I will do so ... and I will do it with great sadness, because I previously had high regard for Number 57's work.

The whole process of consensus-formation breaks if an editor (and esp a highly-experienced admin) betrays the community's trust in this way. Regardless of whether the community proceeds to give Number 57 a well-deserved desysopping and/or CBAN, the result of that duplicity should not stand. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:56, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

• Comment I won't be endorsing the close, but I came here after BrownHairedGirl pinged me in a separate but related discussion mentioning Number 57, which confused me, so I followed the breadcrumbs back up the trail and came here. I have no idea how I stumbled upon that RfC, whether I was "canvassed" there, but I think it's an assumption of bad faith to assume Number 57 votestacked. I don't see any problem with notifying users of non-American English about this RfC, since it would disproportionately impact them. Those voting from non-zed using countries were not persuaded to vote in any way by Number 57, and the suggestion Number 57 changed the outcome of the discussion by notifying users tells me there wasn't going to be consensus for this anyways. SportingFlyer T·C 16:39, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

  Canvassing to selectively notify likely-allies, then I am concerned that it may be necessary to look for any past or future pattern of canvassing. We generally let individual instances of canvassing off with a warning, but I believe 57 is experienced enough to know better. I believe any pattern of canvassing would be grounds for a topic ban against publicizing any RFC anywhere, to prevent future disruption caused by similar problems understanding or applying appropriate notification vs inappropriate notification. Alsee (talk) 21:04, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

• I still disagree, and I think you proved your point here - you're assuming "many people would benefit from the proposal," but there's clearly a large group of people who oppose, and they are the very people who are disproportionately impacted by the change. I think this is the one which I was shocked to see it was closed in favour of standardisation, since it's a big change and one that goes against our current rules. Plus, we're both biased. The three users who have chimed in who weren't involved have either said there's no consensus anyways, or the close should be overturned on purely procedural grounds, but King O'Malley lived a long time ago and I would be shocked if you got support even if arguendo all projects had been notified "equally". SportingFlyer T·C 00:40, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

• Overturn - given that Australia/New Zealand seem to be particularly and vehemently opposed to 'ize' (all from Aus/NZ opposed, mostly post-canvas), I expected that an Australian would rule themselves out as a potential closer (
  Oculi (talk) 18:07, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
• Note: the closer, Cinderella157, has now been blocked for violating an ArbCom topic ban from World War II. See Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Cinderella157. Sandstein 21:20, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
• Overturn and restore Lourdes's original close per Oculi and BHG's reasoning above. Lourdes's first close was a correct assessment of consensus. The subsequent unclose-plus-canvassing/votestacking was disappointing. The second close was more or less a punt. Not sure what the best way forward is; perhaps just restore Lourdes's original close. (non-admin, voted z in RfC) – Levivich 18:45, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
• Endorse per Amakuru. Sure, the closing statement could have been worded better, but I can't see how this could have been closed as anything other than no consensus. Iffy★Chat -- 16:12, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
• Endorse as per Amakuru and Iffy. I came from the Village Pump to see what the outcome of the discussion was. I think the topic is so divisive that there is no option but to state that there is 'no consensus'. I note the accusations of vote stacking, but if this is the case, the accusations should be brought to a formal process. A further point is that if there was "vote stacking" to people opposed to the proposal, could it not be argued that the original discussion was perhaps also "selectively canvassed" to people who were biased towards the proposal? This suggests that any request for discussion was not properly signposted to the people / teams / communities that would be affected: I am not sure that I can support the original close on this basis. I also don't think it's a wise idea to set precedent as someone had suggested on the original page to ignore the objections. I again state that I think going with "no consensus" is the best idea with this topic where it will be difficult to get agreement. Master Of Ninja (talk) 05:51, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
  • "could it not be argued that the original discussion was perhaps also "selectively canvassed" to people who were biased towards the proposal?" No, you can't. Policy No personal attacks defines personal attacks to include Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence. The RFC was run at Village Pump and advertised on Central Notice. This is normally the highest and most unbiased level of advertisement we give for RFCs. If you are going to make accusations that one-or-more person(s) canvassed on the support side then you are required to present evidence of canvassing. Alsee (talk) 15:29, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
    • Do note I am note making a personal attack at all - I am making a comment on policy. I note that it was "advertised" - however I feel the topic was not promoted widely enough, especially for something that does not seem to respect
      WP:CANVASSING as this needs investigative skills beyond me and is best addressed by someone else. However if we do re-open or re-close the debate who as a community should close this - it just seems from reading the comments that potentially anyone could be accused of bias on some of the criteria discussed? I do not know the answers to these questions, I just mulling them over. We should try and get some closure to this as the the original debate looks like it was started in April. - Master Of Ninja (talk) 17:39, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
• Overturn. I voted in that RfC in support of the change, but a few things in the process really don't sit well with me. First, I agree that there was a very one-sided notification post original closure. Not understanding why that can stack votes to one side is pretty astonishing. Since this isn't a "lets decide for Australia what goes in an Australia article", but a "How does en.wiki handle a category style", either you notify everyone, or no one. The other 75% of the community has the same rights and same vote weight as do the other 25%. Another issue I have it with the actual close. What the hell did all those words even say? Perhaps this might be done in a more formal way and make this explicit to categories (CREEP to avoid CREEP - irony) - a more formal way than an RfC? Can this even get any more evasive? Also, if you don't care to investigate allegations of vote stacking, then maybe closing RfCs isn't for you. I expect someone that closes any discussions to check any allegation brought up, understand guidelines and not cite an essay in their close, which itself has no place even in the discussion. --Gonnym (talk) 10:47, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
• Endorse no consensus per Amakuru. The truth is no one wanted to close this RfC and it effectively sat dormant for a month (after another had started a close but decided against exposing themselves by doing so) before Cinderella had the courage to do the job. On a side note, I find Alsee’s third argument above particularly galling, their bias against anyone who does not use American spelling is clear, declaring Cinderella incapable of making an impartial decision for spelling a word (that is completely unrelated to this RFC) in a way that they do not consider correct.
  talk) 09:01, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
  .
• Overturn, with no prejudice against either Cinderella157 or Number 57. Cinderella claims not to have considered canvassing at all, and despite this being an important part of a closer's responsibilities, they appear to suggest that doing so effectively is not possible (bullet point #2). Their responses are also hostile to the idea of a challenge, which suggests a lack of neutrality - as seen in bullet point #3 from the same diff, which appears to claim that either Alsee's challenge or those who supported the proposal are involved in "vilifying groups of editors" for following different spelling conventions. I'm not sure that Number 57 was necessarily wrong given their stated reasoning, but the allegations still need to be accounted for. As always, reclosing could very well produce the same outcome, but the existing close does not meet the expected standards. Sunrise (talk) 05:42, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
• Overturn, though I agree that there is no consensus, the RFC should have lasted longer and be closed by someone more neutral. -- Rockstonetalk to me! 03:31, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
• {{Do not archive until}} added. Please remove the {{Do not archive until}} tag after the review is closed. (I am adding this because RfC closure reviews frequently have been archived prematurely without being resolved.) Cunard (talk) 09:41, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
• More evidence of biased notification canvassing by Number 57: This edit selectively pinged several allies to the RFC. However Number57 did not include a ping to Jayron32, who also participated in the discussion[43] and who had defended the original consensus close. It looks like Number57 felt that only people who agree with them deserved to participate in the RFC. Alsee (talk) 14:40, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I assume that was probably an oversight on my part, as I also failed to ping Bermicourt (who was clearly opposed to the original close). Also, it's odd to describe Euryalus as an ally, given that their interjection did not reveal their leaning in the matter. Number 57 15:04, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

• talk) 02:21, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
  .

• Absolutely not true, @
  Cavalryman V31
  . That's most kindly described as a highly creative and imaginative account of my actions, but more accurately as a severe misrepresentation.

The fact is that the range of affected categories is global. It includes all non-English-speaking-countries, so the idea that this proposal is somehow targeted at one particular set of countries is simply false. On the contrary, one of my main reasons for making the nomination in the first place is the number of sterile CFD discussions about which format to use for some country X which isn't even English-speaking. (If I recall correctly, the two discussions which prompted me yo finally open an RFC which I had been considering for years were discussions relating to the Netherlands, and to Qatar).

If, as Cavalryman posits, all of the affected categories had been presented at CfD for renaming, and all related Wikiprojects had been notified, the result would have been that probably every single Wikiproject would have been notified, regardless of its topics or location. That's because the range of categories involved is so vast, and most national WikiProjects have interests in topics beyond their own boundaries.

So the claim that it was somehow remiss not to notify a particular set of countries is utterly false. A global proposal needs global notification ... so instead of spamming a message to 1000 WikiProjects, I placed the proposal at most central location, and notified it on

WP:CENT. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:32, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

talk) 08:15, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

.

If, by 'page appearance for readers', you are referring to categories at the bottom of the page, there is no chance of any sort of uniformity.

Oculi (talk) 09:58, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

@

Cavalryman V31

, you continue to miss the two core simple points:

1. this proposal could be be controversial or acclaimed or whatever in nearly every country.
2. per
   WP:CANVASS
   Notifications should be non-partisan both in content and in selected audience

So notifying only WikiProjects of countries likely to oppose the change is every bit as partisan as notifying those likely to support it.

The solution is simple: notify all, or notify none. I didn't think this was a sufficiently controversial issue to justify cross-posting to ~220 country-specific WikiProjects, and that doing so would look like spamming; so I used

WP:CENT

.

In hindsight, it was more controversial that I initially thought. But while that might arguably justify notifying all countries, it doesn't justify votestacking by notifying only people expected to be on one side of the argument.

As your closing comment about the substance, I have yet to see any trace of any evidence that readers actual object to the spelling. And its not simply a matter of editor time: one of the persistent problems of the current inconsistency is that it leads to miscategorisaton. Articles and categories categorised are repeatedly categorised in redlinked categories because editors have no way of knowing in advance which spelling is used for which type of org category, and no way of knowing whether the redlink indicates a mis-spelling or a non-existent category. Those miscategorised articles and categories don't appear in parent categories, and that missing categorisation is what really hurts readers, not one letter which they may consider unfamiliar.

I also strongly urge you to reconsider the notion that the burden on editors is not a priority. The ratio of articles to active editors has nearly quadrupled in the last decade, from 430:1 in 2007 to 1650:1 in December 2018. Policies designed around assumptions of infinite editor time should have been ruthlessly discarded when the number of active editors began to fall off a decade ago. Clinging to those notions is a very effective way of reducing Wikipedia's chances of surviving the 2020s, because they divert so much editor time into inconsequentials that they leave less time for the stuff which actually matters, namely keeping article updated, and monitoring those articles for vandalism, POV-pushing etc.

The objections to this sort of simplification miss that big picture. The demand for idealistic perfection in something that doesn't actually matter isn't a free option: it comes at the hidden price of scarce editorial time diverted. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:31, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

• Response by closer: the following is a response by the closer (specifically and generally) since the previous response.

• Sunrise, it is inaccurate to state [I did not] considered canvassing at all, when I did, but not in the way some would prefer. Per your diff, I stated: I did not attempt to make a determination about the "substance" of the allegations. To paraphrase, I did not attempt to make a determination as to whether the notifications by Number 57 constituted misconduct.
• To whether the allegations (if substantiated) could be effectively addressed (per Sunrise):

• It is quite correct to make notifications to projects regarding a discussion of interest to the project. The allegation goes to the "selectivity" with which these notifications were made.
• The comments made here on how to address the allegation are quite arbitrary - they either wind-back to the earlier close or would discount opposing comments. In part, there appears the assumption that any opposing editor has come to the RfC as a result of the notifications. This is a generalisation and an assumption that falls to Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
• Neutral notifications made to any project are intrinsically correct. Disenfranchising a comment from editors that received such a notification assumes "bad faith" on the part of that editor. Discounting comments in such a way would (in my conclusion) severely compromise a close and would give reasonable and valid reason for it to be overturned. Consequently, I considered such a course inappropriate.

• To the comments by Alsee (and those that follow in this vein) that I am biased by my spelling preference:

• It is a red herring fallacy to assert that a person with a spelling preference for "ise" cannot close an RfC advocating "ize". The counter-arguement (equally fellatious) is that an "ize" speller is also inherently biased. Such logic would leave the close to someone who has never written English or knows nothing of spelling? There is no way for any closer to be immune from the suggestion of bias where the basis for such an allegation is that they do actually spell such words consistently.
• As well as being a red-herring arguement, it is also an Ad hominem arguement, which is inherently a personal attack, rarely an appropriate arguement to make and low in the heirarchy of disagreement,[44] since it does not address the central or most pertinent points.

• Implicit to Alsee's clam of bias is that any editor using "ise" is inherently biased (and those that use "ize" are not). I observed: The comments made have the appearance to me of polemic ad hominem. "
  WP:POLEMIC
  .
• Alsee has claimed that my use of "ise" in "winteris[z]ed" is borderline-fringe and far out of sync ... with the rest of the planet. There are many misuses of statistics of which, I believe, this falls to overgeneralisation, possibly data dredging or simply a case of apples and oranges. It ignores the frequency of usage of the particular word in the two main English domains and how this can skew an observation such as that made by Alsee. All this statistic proves is that I am fairly consistent in my spelling.
• My response to Alsee (though in not so many words) was to indicate that their comments did not (IMO) represent a particularly good arguement. It is inaccurate to construe from this that I am hostile to the idea of a challenge, which suggests a lack of neutrality. It is another ad hominem arguement with a conclusion based on an inaccurate premise.

I apologise for the length of this response but it appears necessary to provide this level of detail. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 04:30, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

• Overturn I am Australian; I opposed standardisation. I was not canvassed: I think I found the discussion on CENT, although that was after it had been reopened. While I think the close was "correct" – there was clearly no consensus reached – I think it needs to be closed by someone with more neutrality, given that Australians became the locus of the discussion. Triptothecottage (talk) 04:53, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
• Overturn The point that particularly concerns me is that the close is not an accurate summarization of the discussion at all. I also do not understand why CANVASSING guidelines can be misconstrued and then essentially annulled in an RfC close, something that is bound to follow Wikipedia policies. Even, if I were to assume good faith, it would only take me as far as misunderstanding guidelines as they stand and not that, no canvassing actually occurred. I'm even more worried that if a new editor were to canvass in this manner, it would reflect horribly upon them but in this particular case, we will beat around the bush via "it only impacted this subset of editors, so I informed them", if that isn't canvassing, I don't know what is. I am not aware of Lourdes' close so I cannot comment on it, but this close should definitely be overturned, for lack of any support through the ensuing discussion. --qedk (t 桜 c) 06:53, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
• Endorse no consensus per Amakuru, it could have been better explained, but there is no clear consensus and a lot of the above is sour grapes. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:01, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Hey, if you really want to apply pejorative terms such as sour grapes to those who object to blatant votestacking, then please make haste to change your username from the highly inappropriate Peacemaker67 to something more apt, such as User:Gaslighter. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:43, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
    • I think it's alright, BHG, if Peacemaker67 decides that invalidating other people's viewpoints with "sour grapes" (similar to N57) is the best way to prove their point, so be it. Amakuru atleast made their point as someone is supposed to, without feeling the need to invalidate their opinions as well, so kudos to them for doing so. --qedk (t 桜 c) 17:04, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
• Endorse cloze - I'm going out on an IAR limb here, but I don't think there's any way that a discussion which boiled down to "let's prefer [North] American spelling over all other varieties throughout this enormously important and visible function of the project" could possibly have reached an acceptable consensus. I understand the rationale but I think it was a bad idea from the start, because no matter what it ends up being exclusionary to some significant portion of editors. I see the original close as flawed: this is a monumental change, and should have had much more support than it did to have been declared "passed" at that point. I also don't think Number57's posting of what appeared to be a neutral discussion notice at only WikiProjects for nations which would be expected to oppose the proposal was at all in good faith. But in the end, consensus is likely impossible to obtain here. Might I suggest that if standardiçation is an urgent concern, why not make an effort to be inclusive and agree on a word other than organiɂation? I don't know what that would be and maybe that would require rethinking category trees somewhat, but here's a list to get started.

If on the other hand some editors insist that this must be decided in favour of Team Ess or Team Zed, then I suggest a panel of multinational uninvolved experienced closers be convened to reevaluate all of the discussions up to this point, being sure to select at minimum one editor from Britain, one from the United States, one from Canada, one from Australia and/or New Zealand (I'm not sure how distinct the language variants are there), and one from India/Pakistan, so as to avoid inherent bias. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:36, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

• Reopen My personal position would be to support the results of the close (don't standardize). However, I also understand the problem with selective notification. In this case the problem is you have obviously interested projects that would presumably voice opinions in one direction. You don't have obvious projects in the other camp. This is a case of the obviously interested focused group vs the nebulous masses. I personally think it would be best to agree to a few more notification locations, reopen and see where things go. I don't believe it will change the final result but BHG's concerns have merit. Let's not discount them. Springee (talk) 16:18, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
• Overturn Per
  WP:VOTESTACK, Votestacking is an attempt to sway consensus by selectively notifying editors who have or are thought to have a predetermined point of view. I can't see how notifying "the most affected editors" doesn't squarely fall into this category: they were admittedly notified entirely because they are associated with countries that use precisely the language the RFC proposed to deprecate. Even if we take at face value that "other Wikiprojects aren't affected", what would have been the harm in notifying them? If they are truly as disinterested as claimed, either no one would show up (due to this supposed lack of interest) or the few that did would cast a neutral, unbiased !vote. I don't see the problem here. We very well may have ended up a no-consensus anyway, but all we have now is an invalid result, and our only recourse is to reopen with a neutral notification on all wikiprojects.

  For the record, I did !vote in the RFC for "ize", but if the RFC ultimately closes "no consensus" or even "oppose", I'm perfectly happy with it assuming we correct this irregularity. CThomas³ (talk) 06:14, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
• I take it then no-one wants to close this review? I suspect we have got to a stage like the original proposal which @Cinderella157: closed because no-one else wanted to do it - mainly as it would lead to further debate and discussion as no-one would be happy. Not sure what the next step is? - Master Of Ninja (talk) 05:36, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Closing this close review

@

NAC? –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 05:05, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

MJL, no objection. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 05:35, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

@MJL, I would prefer that it was closed by an editor with a lot more experience, ideally by an admin. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:55, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

@MJL: This is really not an appropriate discussion to be closed by a non-admin. It’s contentious, complex, and in need of experience. Triptothecottage (talk) 11:16, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

@BrownHairedGirl and Triptothecottage: I figured as much. Glad I asked ahead of time! –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 15:50, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Further comment

I have just been looking at

MOS:RETAIN

. It also states:

If a topic has strong

ties to a particular English-speaking nation, the title of its article should use that nation's variety of English ... Otherwise, all national varieties of English are acceptable in article titles; Wikipedia does not prefer one in particular. American English spelling should not be respelled to British English

spelling, and vice versa ...

In short(ish):

• The existing guidance already addresses the issue of the RfC in a way consistent with other guidance used to resolve such issues elsewhere.
• The premise of the OP is that: there is no clear convention here; no single principle (or even agreed set of principles) defining which spelling to use. This would appear to be incorrect. The principles of ENGVAR etc do apply.
• The proposition of the RfC would be at odds with the existing guidance at Wikipedia:Category names (and the link of guidance that follows) for the case of "organisations" per the RfC proposition.
• The extended discussion by the OP gives the impression that the problem exists because ENGVAR etc do not explicitly apply. They do explicitly apply but their application is not overtly stated - even though the specific guidance at Wikipedia:Category names is a close paraphrase of those principles.
• No other editors appear to have identified the existence of explicit guidance. Consequently, there appears to be an inadvertent misdirection. The whole process appears, therefore, to have been compromised through a lack of precision: from comments provided, my close and even the close here. There was insufficient information for the processes to be "informed".
• For my part, had I been more aware of this earlier, I would have probably posted to this effect and not closed, noting that such a comment might be considered a supervote. In other circumstances, this might not be the case (rather, being a reference to broader community consensus) but
  WP:VPP
  is the forum for making such changes.

How does this change things Scottywong? In light of the above, it would appear far from appropriate to relist the RfC without significant amendment to the OP. As an aside, it is inaccurate to state that: didn't attempt to take the allegations of votestacking into consideration. I did take them into consideration but not in the way that some (ie the OP of the review here) desired. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 11:23, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps if your closing comments in the RfC looked similar to what you posted above, the closure wouldn't have been challenged. But, your closure included none of the details that you mention above, in fact your closure only minimally implied that you had even read and comprehended the comments in the RfC. It included bizarre comments like "The most compelling arguements [sic] are to embrace our differences in a more formal way and make this explicit to categories (CREEP to avoid CREEP - irony)." If you had taken the accusations of votestacking into consideration, then your close should have included details as to what you found, what effect the notifications did or didn't have on the RfC, etc. My problem with your closure is that it didn't clearly explain any of your reasoning, and didn't clearly summarize the result of the RfC. If you're going to close RfC, you have to put a minimal effort into doing it completely (especially for non-admin closures of contentious discussions), or else your closures will be challenged. ‑Scottywong| communicate _ 18:01, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Scottywong, the primary question is to: In light of the above, it would appear far from appropriate to relist the RfC without significant amendment to the OP. I have posed this to you since your advice, in closing the review, is to rerun the RfC. I am suggesting that you may wish to reconsider or modify your advice given this further information. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 22:59, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

That advice still stands, primarily because the discussion was fatally tainted by canvassing, so it deserves to have a fair shot if someone wants to rerun it. ‑Scottywong| spout _ 10:49, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Scottywong, the matter also deserves, if it is returned to, to be accurately represented. Without qualifying your advice, there is a risk that a re-run will suffer from the same misdirection. Do you disagree with the analysis above or do you think that my posting the analysis is sufficient to obviate continuing the misdirection? I think this is important since you have stated: it [is] more likely that future discussions will rehash the same points rather than moving the discussion along and getting it closer to a compromise consensus. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 10:37, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Scottywong, in regard to your comment Perhaps if your closing comments in the RfC looked similar to what you posted above, the closure wouldn't have been challenged, I want to note that it would have resulted in an even speedier challenge. To quote Wikipedia:Closing discussions#How to determine the outcome:

If the discussion shows that some people think one policy is controlling, and some another, the closer is expected to close by judging which view has the predominant number of responsible Wikipedians supporting it, not personally select which is the better policy.... If the consensus of reasonable arguments is opposite to the closer's view, he or she is expected to decide according to the consensus.

If someone wishes to engage in creative advocacy and novel synthesis weaving through three guideline pages to craft a tenuous theory which they acknowledge was not advocated by any debate participant and which clearly was never contemplated by guideline authors and which clearly is not a commonly recognized interpretation, then they are supposed to post in the RFC. They're not supposed to step over the discussion to post their personal arguments and personal theories in a close-box. Cinderella's creative advocacy and novel theories just further establish that they had no business closing the RFC. Alsee (talk) 19:26, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

I took the step of notifying this thread to the discussion at VPP just as I took the step of notifying that the close had been contested here. My question here to Scottywong goes specifically to their advice to rerun the RfC and not to the close. These are not "personal arguments and personal theories" being posted in a close-box. As stated above, had I been aware of the afore earlier, I would probably have acted differently - as indeed you say I should , however; your point is mismade. Your assertion that my OP to this sub-thread formed my opinion in closing the RfC is incorrect. To say something clearly was never contemplated by guideline authors, is an unsubstantiated opinion which assumes insight into the thoughts of those authors, which we cannot have unless there is a record of their intentions. What we do have, are the words at Wikipedia:Category names#Naming conventions, which are a close paraphrase of ENGVAR. Further, an editorial turn-of-phase (creative advocacy, novel syntesis, weaving, craft a tenuous) are all subjective opinion and are rhetoric rather than reasoned, objective arguement. As to your quote of Scottywong, I cannot speak to their meaning or intent. Cinderella157 (talk) 01:07, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Request to remove Topic ban

Since there has been a request for a formal close, I find no consensus to overturn the ban.
This is a little difficult, as there is a noticeable numerical majority in favour of lifting the ban. However, much of the support is on the basis that SS49 will continue to abide by the ban and almost everyone seems to acknowledge, either implicitly or explicitly, that the effect of the ban is still necessary to prevent disruption. Arguing that a ban is still necessary but that it can be lifted because in practical terms it will remain in effect is not a strong argument in favour of lifting a ban, hence my finding of no consensus. GoldenRing (talk) 08:36, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Per this ANI discussion, I was banned from sorting, relisting or closing discussions at AfD. That was my big mistake not to follow the instructions. I must apologize for that. Now I am a completely changed person. I won't do anything which may harm the community. Please accept my apology and remove the Topic ban. Thanks! ~SS49~ {talk} 16:07, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

• @
  54129 16:16, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
  • @
    Serial Number 54129:, sorry I missed that. I won't return to clerking at XfD. In my opinion relisting and closing at AfD should be limited to administrators. ~SS49~ {talk} 16:22, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support: It's "only" been four months as opposed to my preferred six, but the unequivocal renunciation of the behaviour that led to the ban leaves no room for envelope pushing or other games. Although, arguably, if one is effectively topic banning oneself from a theatre of activity, some might argue that there's no point in lifting it; however, I can't disagree with someone wanting to remove a stain from their character if we allow them to, which we do. Also noting that my previous concern was that the penny had not dropped—it seems now to have—and that WP:ROPE applied—it still does. @
  54129 16:31, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I won't do anything which may harm the community. If I do any intentional mistake, I will accept anything imposed by the community. ~SS49~ {talk} 16:47, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
• Are you hoping to have this TBAN lifted because you don't want it on your record or because it's stopping you from doing work you'd like to do? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:08, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Obviously first option. ~SS49~ {talk} 20:34, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

    I'm Ok supporting then, especially in light of the acknowledgement SS49 has made below to Nick. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:36, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose for all the reasons from the previous discussion but also because I see no benefit to the community if this is lifted. Praxidicae (talk) 20:10, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
• I'd support, on the basis that anything other than !voting in an AfD will result in an indefinite block. That would be no non-admin closures, no re-listings, no sorting, nothing other than a regular comment. Nick (talk) 20:21, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Agreed. ~SS49~ {talk} 20:34, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

• I can support this, we take the ban off the books with the explicit understanding that we will hold SS49 to their word that they will not return to clerking. Sounds reasonable. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 20:42, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

So what purpose is there in lifting the topic ban? I still see absolutely no reason why they should be trusted with this or what value it adds if they are still giving us "their word" (which ftr, was absolutely meaningless last time) if their only intent is to continue to abide by the existing ban anyway. Praxidicae (talk) 23:50, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose Given that one of the first things the editor did after being topic banned from "sorting, relisting and closing discussions at AfD" was...more delsorts [46], and that they've delsorted AfDs multiple times since then [47] [48] [49], I find the promises not to do those things a bit odd. Like Praxidicae, I see no benefit to the encyclopedia from lifting the ban early (or, in my opinion, at all).
  talk) 20:45, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
  • That was in the AfDs nominated by me. While nominating articles for deletion we have to fill the box. From now I won't sort even AfDs created by me. ~SS49~ {talk} 20:55, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
    • [50] was not, and it happened right after the topic ban was placed. Simply put, on multiple occasions where you could have adhered to the topic ban rather than doing what you wanted in Twinkle, you repeatedly chose the latter.
      talk) 21:16, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
      • I didn't know the difference between ban and block so I did that just to find out the difference. Apologies . ~SS49~ {talk} 22:20, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
      • Was SS49 warned, blocked, or otherwise sanctioned for that, and did he violate it again despite such action? —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 21:22, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
        • Did SS49 keep the promises they made in the previous ANI discussion?
          talk) 21:39, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
          • Answered above. ~SS49~ {talk} 22:24, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
            • User:Bakazaka there was that single transgression hours afterwards - but they also self reported it, apologized, and did not, as far as I can see, repeat the transgression. Nfitz (talk) 22:26, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
              • You linked to SS49 saying I recently nominated an article for deletion and sorted the deletion discussion. Sorry for the mistake. Thought sorting is not an issue. Note that they subsequently did the same thing multiple times (linked above), including only 3 hours after the apologystriking because I got a timestamp wrong, there are still two subsequent incidents, despite TonyBallioni clarifying that anything other than !voting in AfD was prohibited, and despite apologizing for it as a "mistake". Not sure which part of this is unclear.
                talk) 23:55, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
                • I don't see two subsequent transgressions - unless you (
                  User:Bakazaka) are referring to them creating an AFD in June, and another in July (that were both uncontroversial). Nor do I see a prohibition on creating AFDs. I see no behaviour issues related to the topic ban since the day of the topic ban. Nfitz (talk) 01:10, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
            • (
              Bakazaka: My question was serious. I wanted to know, since you've done the legwork, whether there was discipline for that specific violation and whether there were subsequent violations. While I believe that SS49's topic ban should be lifted at this point, I'm also open to having my mind changed.
              At this time, I'm thinking that a single violation so close in time to the topic ban itself—which is generally a time of confusion and frustration for an editor—just as easily indicates a mistake as it does deliberately and knowingly flaunting the topic ban. People often screw up just after they're topic banned, and people often lash out just after they're topic banned. In neither case is it out of malice or a willingness to break the rules for rulebreaking's sake.
              I also credit the absence of harm from this one infraction—it being delsorting rather than the relist/NAC actions that originally got him in trouble—in addition to the fact that nobody seems to have noticed it until now as mitigating factors in my mind.
              I take your attempted inference to be that the violation indicates malice, or perhaps incompetence and inability to follow rules—you don't say exactly what you're inferring, so it's left somewhat up to me to guess. Neither inference rings true to me based on what you've pointed out. If there were a pattern of misconduct after the ban—whether repeated violations after warnings, or causing disruption in other areas not covered by the ban, that was sustained for a sufficient period after the ban was enacted—I could be convinced to oppose lifting the ban. But I'm not seeing a pattern, I'm seeing a single incident. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 00:02, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
              • So, for example, if SS49 clarified with an admin that delsorting was not permitted under the ban, even for their own nominations, apologized for that "mistake", then did it again anyway, would that be convincing?
                talk) 00:12, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
                • You know what, I took a second look and you're 100% right, there's no exception for self-created AfDs in terms of the delsort ban. I'm changing my !vote below. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 04:08, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
            • Bakazaka, That was done just to complete the process. While AFDing a box appears which is required to be filled. If you say it is better not to complete, I won't do it again. I thought the box should be filled completely. ~SS49~ {talk} 01:23, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
    • There was no prohibition from creating AFDs - and including sorting is listed as a step in AFD creation at
      User:Bakazaka - it's rarely controversial. Nfitz (talk) 21:10, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
      • The concerns about sorting were discussed in detail in the previous ANI discussion, which is why sorting was explicitly included in the topic ban under discussion here.
        talk) 21:13, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
        • There was a bit in the ANI (a couple of complaints over a month before the ANI discussion) - unless I missed something. One was just about formatting (some extra spaces), and the other was a request to only use sub-categories rather than the super-category, which was immediately agreed to, and not repeated. This didn't seem to be a lingering problem, even at the time of the ANI discussion. Nfitz (talk) 21:23, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support as a reasonable request, articulated reasonably. (see below) I do not support the “don’t do delsorting after this or you’ll get blocked” condition since it’s just another way of saying “topic ban.” Either we lift the restriction or we don’t. There’s no middle ground. That said, if SS49 were to immediately go and start clerking at AfD after this is lifted, contrary to his assurances here that he has no such interest, then we could reasonably infer that he had lied to get out of his TBAN, and reimposing it or blocking him would be appropriate. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 21:05, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per discussion with Bakazaka above. The original ban had no exceptions for delsorting when starting an AfD. Delsorting is optional when starting an AfD, and as far as I can tell Twinkle won't throw an error if you don't put anything in the delsort box (and it says "delsort" so there's no confusion there). And SS49's ban explicitly says that delsorting is covered. So, frankly, I'm not impressed with SS49's "oops", "if you say so", and "I won't do it again" responses to these issues. And let's be realistic: Even if Twinkle did require you to fill the delsort box when starting an AfD, this is not a new problem. The limitations of automated and semi-automated tools are never an excuse for violating policy or sanction. If SS49 thought it was required to fill the delsort box to make Twinkle work, he should have been starting the AfDs manually, like we all used to do years ago. All the instructions are still there at
    competence problem—I think this action needs to be tabled at least until the six month mark.
    I don't think there's a need to impose further sanctions as a result of the discovered violations, however. This is based on my observation that they are essentially de minimis. Let's just close this and get back to our normal activities. While I don't think SS49 would go and immediately break his promise not to violate the conditions of lifting the ban, that's not the problem we need to be careful of: It's little disruptions that go unnoticed for a long time. That, and my objection to "unbanning with conditions matching the original ban scope" (which is tantamount to making this an undocumented editing restriction) means I must oppose this request. Sorry, SS49. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 04:08, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Meh. The intent of the ban was pretty clearly to prohibit AfD clerking. I really don't see it as being intended to prevent them from properly submitting AfDs. It seems like this should be common sense. We don't engage in mindless bureaucratic nitpicking, we care about the spirit of the law. I find Bakazaka's strenuous objections to be a bit bizarre, tbh. I mean, there was one violation, which was self-reported with assurances that it wouldn't happen again, and it hasn't. Trying to frame correctly-filed nominations as violations is dubious. I'm not particularly convinced that SS49 is the best editor, or that they're deserving of the advanced permissions they hold, or that they're

competent. But I can not hold the AfD noms against them. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 04:45, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

You don't need to delsort to properly submit an AfD though. We're not talking about the AfD category code that's part of the whole thing, we're talking about doing delsorts. It's not mandatory, as far as I can tell Twinkle doesn't require it, and even if it did the rules about automated tools makes that no excuse. There are four violations, not just one. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 04:56, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Fair enough. It's listed as an inherent procedural aspect of making an AfD though. It does not say "mandatory" or "optional" either way, but it is an inherent part of deletion process as written. It's not convincing that self-deletion sorting is the problem that the TBAN was intended to address, which was pretty obviously self-appointed clerking, to which sorting was an aside, not the primary issue. I get where you're coming from, and I don't think you're being unreasonable. I'm just meh about it, which admittedly reflects my view on this user's presence overall. I can't decide whether they're headed towards an RfA or towards an indef block. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 05:41, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Swarm that deletion sorting was not the sort of behavior that caused the ban, however can understand those who say that its breaking argues against lifting this ban. If the consensus is to keep the ban I would hope that the closer would do so allowing an exception deletion sorting for SS49's AfD nominations going forward. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:37, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

• Support The request seems reasonable. There was one clear transgression about sorting, within hours of the topic ban, which was self-reported with an apology. The debate seems to be about three AFD listings (I'd only seen the June and July ones previously, but there was a third in March that I'd missed). As there was no prohibition of AFD submissions, and the delsorting that occurs automatically as part of that seems a bit grey, I don't see any need to use this to keep the ban - which starts to appear to be punitive to me, rather than preventive. The primary issues in the original discussion were closing and relisting AFDs - the sorting issues raised were very very minor (one was a formatting issue, and the other was related to subcategories), that were sorted out weeks earlier. There's a very clear commitment to avoid closing or relisting AFDs. It won't harm the project to give some rope here. Nfitz (talk) 04:36, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support I don't see what will change from four to six months in this case, and we've always got
  WP:ROPE if it goes pear-shaped. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 13:22, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose There's zero benefit to lifting a ban when the user who is subject to the ban says they will respect it even if it is lifted. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 14:45, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Your username in the list of editing restrictions never encourages you. ~SS49~ {talk} 15:05, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
    • I get the motivation to go for a withdrawal of the ban, but when the conditions are identical to the ban itself, we just have the equivalent of someone saying “I don’t like my name on the list, can we just do this off the books?” That’s not how Wikipedia works, and the call for that sort of underscores a concerning lack of clue, which I believe is a symptom of what triggered the original ban discussion. Like as SN54129 pointed out, it has only been four months. The
      standard offer (which pretty well forms the core of our relief from sanctions practices) calls for six months. To me, you need to make the case for an exception. In light of the violations revealed above—even if they’re technical, even if they’re uncaught, even if they’re not disruptive—I don’t think you can make the case for an exception anymore. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 17:51, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support - Everybody deserves a second chance, and this user has agreed to reform. Foxnpichu (talk) 10:31, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support: Agreed, improving editors is what Wikipedia is all about! - Ret.Prof (talk) 13:46, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support user !voting only; not doing the other stuff.   Dlohcierekim (talk) 21:38, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Dlohcierekim Unless I'm mistaken, they're not prohibited from that. Praxidicae (talk) 18:54, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

• Support I am not sure if I'm allowed to !vote here, or even edit. But, I just wanted to say-- I came to know the user only after the ban had come into effect, and didn't know of it until I saw this discussion. The user has never struck me as someone out to do anything other than contribute to the encyclopedia, and they haven't shown any behaviour that looked even marginally questionable to me. I am frankly shocked at how they seem to have approached communication and action, in the run up to the ban. I don't think there's anything that harmful in what they've done against the conditions of the ban, more than mere technicality; which I am willing to accept were due to ignorance rather than malice. As such, I want to see this ban lifted, if only to see how they behave afterwards. I think it ought to be enough to put some condition akin to "one admin can take such and such action against you at their personal discretion if you repeat your disruptive behaviour after this ban is lifted", to lift the ban, to show that the community has the user's best interests at heart as well as the Project's. Agree that it's more punitive than preventative at this point. Usedtobecool ^✉️ ✨ 18:21, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per Mendaliv and others and because the user just now demanded that TonyBallioni lift the topic ban. -- Softlavender (talk) 12:45, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Is there a diff for that User:Softlavender? I was looking, but all I see was them asking it be lifted (with a please), but not a demand - so I'm assuming that there's something else I'm not seeing? Nfitz (talk) 04:49, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

He asked TonyBallioni to "close the discussion and remove the Topic ban", basically determining the consensus of his own request thread, which has/had no clear consensus. The fact that he would even dictate the result is extremely troublesome, hence my oppose. Softlavender (talk) 08:19, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

This User:Softlavender? He said "Please close". It looks like a simple polite request to me. I don't see how it's either demanding or dictating. Nor do I see the danger here, given the only thing that they seem to have done to cause scrutiny since March is submit handful of two AFDs, which wasn't precluded in the topic ban. Was there something else I missed? Nfitz (talk) 15:52, 3 August 2019 (UTC) edit - only two AFDs that I see since March, not a handful. Nfitz (talk) 17:05, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

• Support Discipline is meant to stop the negative behavior and it seems like there is a lesson learned by SS49. Discipline should be progressive and corrective, not punitive and destructive.

Per

WP:BLOCK

guidelines

1. Blocks are used to prevent damage or disruption to Wikipedia, not to punish users.
2. Blocks intended solely to "cool down" an angry user should not be used, as they often have the opposite effect.
3. The purpose of blocking is prevention, not punishment.

I did not see the editor demand TB close, seemed more like he politely urged. Lightburst (talk) 00:03, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

The user is not blocked, and is not requesting the removal of a block. Softlavender (talk) 02:17, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Softlavender Yes topic ban, my mistake. Nice to get a block refresher anyway. Lightburst (talk) 04:01, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Move to close

As this has been open for ~7 days now. I don't know who put the original topic ban in place, but if an univolved admin could please review? Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 07:20, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

It was

54129 12:37, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Golly, was it? There you go. I don't think you need my input here, though. GoldenRing (talk) 13:17, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

• I've rescued this from the archive as it was not closed yet. Softlavender (talk) 12:42, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
  • No admin is interested to close this discussion. I am surprised. ~SS49~ {talk} 00:27, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
    • It was archived at least once without a close, meaning there was no consensus. It should've been left in the archive. There's no consensus to lift the topic ban. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 06:45, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Request to lift IBAN

There is no consensus to lift the interaction ban, which therefore remains in place. Opinion is divided: Supporters of lifting the ban argue that an interaction ban with an indef-blocked user is superfluous. But others are of the view that the block is not superfluous because the block may in the future be lifted, or because the ban remains otherwise needed. Sandstein 10:17, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Since September 2018, I have been subject to an IBAN (see

WP:EDRC) re Jytdog (talk · contribs). See ANI

.

Since December, Jytdog has been indeffed by Arbcom, see User_talk:Jytdog#Block.

As it is over six months since both of these events, for which the IBAN has been moot anyway, I now request its repeal.

For clarity, this has arisen today as a result of an RfA. I believe that I am entitled to express an opinion at this RfA, per normal practice. However because of this IBAN, SchroCat has expressed the opinion that I am not: Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Johnuniq#Oppose. Despite neither Johnuniq nor SchroCat being part of that IBAN. Accordingly I would like to have it lifted. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:12, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Which I should probably have done when I first posted this, @Ivanvector: and @Bishonen: as the admins who enacted the IBAN (guidance for appealing such should probably have a reminder for that). Andy Dingley (talk) 12:36, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

• I have not expressed anything of the sort. I asked you to provide diffs to your !vote to back up what is a personal attack without the use of diffs. In your first comment, you have expressed your personal opinion, without even bothering with diffs. - SchroCat (talk) 10:16, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support removal of IBAN as superfluous. Johnuniq (talk) 10:30, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support to avoid
  vanished, so surely the interaction ban could be archived elsewhere. --Pudeo (talk) 10:42, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support- although the request itself is peevish, and puts words into SchroCat's mouth that they never said, it's obvious that restricting someone from interacting with an indef banned editor is pointless. It's like being barred from a nightclub that burned down years ago. Reyk _YO! 12:14, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support - More than 6 months and seems appealable to me, —PaleoNeonate – 12:42, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose - "Indef" is not infinite, Jytdog may be unblocked, and the IBan will be just as necessary when that happens. Otherwise, the rationale for lifting the Iban is spurious, at best. He's voted at RfA (his usual "oppose"), that's enough. Beyond My Ken (talk) 12:50, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

• User_talk:Jytdog#That's_all_folks: So, I am out of here. I am scrambling my WP password and deleting my gmail account and "Jytdog" will cease to do anything, anywhere. If you see any other Jytdog doing stuff in the future, anywhere, it is not me. (And no, I will be not be coming back here as a sock.) I urge Arbcom to do just do a motion and indef or site ban me.

So please explain, given that Jytdog is both indeffed by Arbcom, and resigned by his own action about as strongly as he can, he "may be unblocked" in the future?

As to RfA, then what does, "(his usual "oppose")" mean, other that to cast aspersions? I avoid RfA and almost never take part in it. I don't remember when I last did. I have, most unusually, voted at four RfAs in the last week, and they were 3/4 supports.

The request itself is hardly "peevish". I voted oppose and SchroCat's uninvited reply to was to dismiss that twice as a personal attack: "Any chance you could back up your personal attack with some diffs?", "the less said about the outright personal attack the better." And yet, with this IBAN in place I am prevented from giving any such reply or explanation. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:25, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Re: "His usual oppose" - I may have been confusing you with another editor, and since the RfA counters I usually go to both seem to be down, I have no evidence to support my claim, so I'm striking it. Beyond My Ken (talk) 16:36, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

You're probably thinking of a different Andrew D. Reyk _YO! 11:58, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

I think you're precisely right. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:20, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose SHould Jytdog return, we would still need this. In Jytdog's absence, there is no way to assess if it no longer needed.  Dlohcierekim (talk) 13:06, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

  Comment Please note, this is preventive and not punitive as Andy has not left the past in the past. He carries it in his back pocket. It is not unfair as it is based only on Andy's inability to leave the past behind.   Dlohcierekim (talk) 02:46, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

  Also, per points raised by Hijiri 88. and others added04:33, 28 July 2019 (UTC)  Dlohcierekim (talk) 04:33, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

• Support - Dlohcierekim's argument is unfair. It means the negative actions of another editor permanently deny another editor the chance to eliminate a ban against them. I believe this IBAN is functionally unneeded, and generally is reasonable to improve as it is causing collateral effects without serving its primary purpose. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:09, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support as moot. In the unlikely event that a) Jytdog returns and b) resumes the same behavior, we can reevaluate. -FASTILY 22:17, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support as moot per Fastily above. Miniapolis 22:31, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support; we're often fine removing sitebans after six months if the editor hasn't misbehaved since the ban and has presented a good rationale. We shouldn't be stricter with a lesser restriction. Nyttend (talk) 02:16, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support Jytdog has been gone for well over six months and this logged IBAN serves no purpose, except to irritate Andy. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 02:26, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support this has been in place for nine months and Jytdog has been gone for six, and it hasn't served a purpose for that time. If, somehow, Jytdog returned, the situation could be re-assessed. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:40, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

• Just to make it clear, I disagree with this as a general way of dealing with IBans and absent editors. IBans include limitations on what the sanctioned editors can say about each other for a reason, generally because they have been saying nasty things, and thereby causing disruption. Then, when one editor leaves, for whatever reason, and cannot defend themselves from the criticism or insults of their partner in the IBan, we allow that other editor to say whatever they want about them?
  "Indef" is not "infinite", and many, many editors have returned from indef bans and retirements. This is far from an unusual occurrence, especially with long-time editors, who can't get rid of the itch to edit, and work hard to find some way back. When they do, if the IBan has been dissolved, we've left things open for a continuation of the same problem, and potentially have to live through the same disruption in order to get to another IBan. Far, far, easier to leave the IBan in place in case it's needed. That, I believe, should be the general way to deal with that asymmetrical situation, not to hand a license to one of the IBanned editors to slag off their opponent with impunity whenever they want to. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:06, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

• See my comment above. WP:STANDARD requests are often granted for sitebans after six months. Without any evidence of wrongdoing being presented here, why would we keep this lesser ban after ten months? Nyttend (talk) 03:41, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

• Yes, I understand how it works, I simply don't agree that it's the best way to run things, per my comment above.Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:53, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

• Which comment would that be? The one you made up? Andy Dingley (talk) 11:47, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

• I generally don't copy my noticeboard and talk page comments from outside sources, so, to be precise, all of them are "made up" right out of my mind -- but I know that you are sarcastically referring to my saying "his usual oppose" about your vote on Johnuniq's RfA, which I've already explained - which I know that you already know, but still felt the need to make a sarcastic remark about. That, I think, speaks volumes about why you're subject to an IBan, and also why lifting it would be a mistake. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:26, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

• You were happy to make a pejorative accusation against another editor, without any attempt to check that it was true, and when that was challenged you were forced to strike it. Yet despite that, you later made reference to it "per my comment above" as if it still stood. My expectations are low enough, but I would appreciate some basic honesty here. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:34, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

• Actually, if you read my comment above again, you'll see that I did make an effort to support my statement by going to the RfA counters listed on my "Code" page, but both were apparently down, so I couldn't get any data. Therefore, I went with what I thought I remembered, which turned out to be inaccurate, and which I struck out as soon as it was pointed out to me. I think that's pretty reasonable behavior on my part, but obviously you disagree. Your continued harping on this relatively insignificant matter is unfortunately indicative of why the IBan exists in the first place, and why lifting the IBan is not a good idea. You appear to be out for blood from anyone who looks crossed-eyed at you. See
  WP:AGF . Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:27, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose per BMK.
  54129 03:22, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose - per BMK and Dloh. Sorry, but I totally reject the SO approach. The six month SO has, AFAIK, never applied to IBANs, because grudges and interpersonal conflicts do not just cease to exist after six months. It seems highly unlikely that we will never see Jytdog again, and/or that it will be reasonably productive to allow Andy to interact with an indeffed Jytdog, who can't defend himself. If the sanction is moot only because one user is not currently around, that's not a convincing reason to lift it. Andy makes no attempt whatsoever to address the root of the problem, and wants the ban overturned on the technicality that the other user is no longer around. That's not reassuring. The current status quo is absolutely harmless. The alternative of proclaiming the IBAN moot and then unrestricting Andy from taking back up his issues with Jyt, but without any way for Jyt to defend himself is hardly a better scenario. No convincing case has been made that the reasons for the IBAN no longer exist, and the technicality that Jyt is no longer an active editor is not convincing. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 04:23, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

So there's no SO on IBANs, but we have to keep the IBAN just in case an SO does get applied to Jytdog's indef block (and irevocable resignation) from the whole site? Andy Dingley (talk) 11:49, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

SO's were always intended to be about indef blocks and site bans, the extension to IBans is what's new and under discussion here, so there's no reason that they wouldn't be used for their original purpose. And whatever gave you -- a very long term editor -- the idea that resignations were "irrevocable"? The password to the Jytdog account was scrambled, so -- if they were unblocked -- they couldn't come back with that account name, but they could come back with any other available account name, and the IBan between the two of you would (if not voided) still be in effect, since bans are to the person and not to the account. SO's have nothing whatsoever to do with resignations. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:20, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose per BMK and Swarm. The SO does not apply to IBANs and the tone of Andy's recent comments at RfA indicate that this problem has not gone away. GoldenRing (talk) 08:33, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per Dlohcierekim, BMK and Swarm. -- Begoon 08:42, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

  Basically, I think Andy has demonstrated that lifting the IBAN would be a poor idea. Needs to let it go, drop the stick, disengage, focus on something positive.  Dlohcierekim (talk) 12:17, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

• Support People should not be held in perpetual bond of IBAN with indefinitely blocked users. Should Jytdog return, the IBAN can be reinstated, but for now, it's
  not needed at all. – Ammarpad (talk) 19:36, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

• Not being allowed to talk about another editor who's not around anyway is not much of a "perpetual bond", really. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:29, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose per Dlohcierekim, BMK and Swarm. –Davey2010^Talk 19:49, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support Per preventative not punitive, etc. Like others, the present purpose of this apparently indefinite restriction alludes me. No objection to revisiting should there ever be an "interaction" in some unknown future and it is needed, but as of now, it serves no legitimate purpose. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:59, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

• Please define, precisely, what is "punitive" about an IBan. Beyond My Ken (talk) 11:03, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

• The other editor is indefinitely blocked for unrelated reasons. An IBan between the two is preventing absolutely nothing, since there's no interactions that can occur (other than blatantly egregious things like vandalising his user talk page, but that's an irrelevant hypothetical). Thus, this IBan, as of now, is doing nothing to increase the civility of Wikipedia, and is instead solely a black mark on Andy's record (which makes it punitive). In the (unlikely) case of Jytdog being unblocked, then it can be re-evaluated to see if it needs to be reinstated. But there's really no reason to keep a long-dusty editing restriction on the record for no other reason other than "he might come back someday". -A lad insane (Channel 2) 16:30, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

• @A lad insane: That is not true. I have linked to a situation in my oppose above to a situation where Andy was restrained from comment by this IBAN. Indeed, his whole reason for bringing this here is that the IBAN was restraining him from saying something. Judging by the tone of what he did say, it's a jolly good thing the IBAN is in place, because it has restrained him from saying something he oughtn't to have said. Even in Jytdog's absence, the IBAN remains necessary. GoldenRing (talk) 17:42, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

• Disagree. The only thing that RfA diff demonstrates is the interaction ban is suppose to remain to punish the User for "tone" on something that has only in the most round about fashion anything to do with interaction, even the person whose statement he quoted and critiqued, Johnuniq, says this IBAN is "superfluous" and votes to remove it, at this time. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:14, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
• So what did I say that's so terrible? There is no IBAN in place against me and Johnuniq. You might not like it, but I'm permitted to oppose his RfA. Now (like so many RfAs) that's a general impression formed over years of occasional encounters. Yet the one concrete example I can give (and rightly, I was aked for diffs) was of Johnuniq defending Jytdog for comments which I still, and unashamedly, see as unacceptable anywhere on WP (You do realise that most of what I posted was a quote, yes?). And yet I can't discuss that. Andy Dingley (talk) 19:20, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

• Support (assuming there are no expired restrictions to be taken into account), as the other user is no longer editing for reasons unrelated to the interaction ban; there is no evidence that the behaviour has been repeated recently; and six months, same as the standard offer, should be enough unless there is a pattern that has led to, or is leading to, multiple editing restrictions with the same or other topics or users. Peter James (talk) 19:41, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
• Conditional Support The purpose of an IBAN, as I understand it, is to reduce hostility on WP by limiting interactions between editors. An IBAN between editors of whom one is not editing seems to be punitive and ineffective. Support is contingent on generally leaving Jytdog alone (no talk page, no vandalism, no undoing all of his edits). A warning in his file with a note to admins that he should be leaving Jytdog information alone should be sufficient. Merely mentioning Jytdog at this point (especially when asked) should not be grounds for a block. Ergo, the IBAN should be conditionally lifted. Buffs (talk) 19:59, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

• "Support is contingent on generally leaving Jytdog alone (no talk page, no vandalism, no undoing all of his edits). A warning in his file with a note to admins that he should be leaving Jytdog information alone" That is exactly the behavior that the IBan stops, so why replace it with another kind of sanction? Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:19, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

• That's what it does now. When it was put in place, it stopped the two of them from interacting. It's past its purpose, and most of what you mentioned would be considered disruptive even minus the sanction. -A lad insane (Channel 2) 23:18, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

• Given Andy Dingley's 's comments here and on the RfA, and in the light of Hijiri88's comment below, I don't think anyone can say with any certainty that the IBan is "past its purpose". It may seem that it should be on a conceptual level, but I think, rather, that the facts on the ground indicate that it's still holding back a fair amount of potential misbehavior from a pretty angry person. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:27, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

• Support: Agree with Peter James, among others. Usedtobecool ^✉️ ✨ 13:08, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support - (enacting admin comment) the purpose of the sanction was to shield Jytdog's editing from Andy's overzealous scrutiny. Since Jytdog has retired and is also Arb-banned, they cannot edit and thus the original purpose is moot. The sanction serves no purpose now except to beat Andy down over past transgressions, as many comments above of the form "Andy can't do this because of the sanction" (and not for any other reason) are amply demonstrating. If the editor behind the retired Jytdog account feels that they are being harassed in real life by Andy Dingley (of which I see no evidence) they should contact the Arbitration Committee or roll the dice with T&S; there's nothing for us to do here about it. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:12, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support The IBAN is no longer necessary. Also per administrator Ivanvector's rationale Lightburst (talk) 21:07, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose Jytdog was blocked by ArbCom because they had agreed to accept a case over some incident(s) involving him, he declared his retirement, and ArbCom decided that if he was retiring they should block him pending an unretirement and formal opening of the case they had accepted. None of this had anything whatsoever to do with Andy, whose tendentious editing that led to the IBAN does not appear to have changed at all. And, most importantly, the IBAN currently serves to prevent disruption such as Andy invoking the boogeyman Jytdog's name to attack and harass other editors (whom he apparently views as "Jytdog-enablers") such as Johnuniq and myself: lifting the IBAN would just invite more disruption, and if anything I would think further sanctions to prevent this disruption are called for. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:17, 27 July 2019 (UTC) (edited 00:35, 27 July 2019 (UTC))

Also, in response to the So please explain, given that Jytdog is both indeffed by Arbcom, and resigned by his own action about as strongly as he can, he "may be unblocked" in the future? above, I should point out that no, Jytdog is indeffed by ArbCom as enforcement of his resignation, pending a return and an automatic opening of an ArbCom case. Essentially, Jytdog is subject to voluntary retirement and a suspended ArbCom investigation of his behaviour -- if this IBAN appeal had come before Jytdog's retirement but after the ArbCom case request was filed, we wouldn't be saying the ban was redundant because Jytdog was under investigation by ArbCom, so why is it suddenly redundant because he is both under investigation by ArbCom and retired? What good does appealing this ban do if it's redundant? I see a tendentious editor who harassed Jytdog and everyone associated with him, wanting the ability to continue to do so now that Jytdog is no longer here. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:35, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

You will, of course, be able to supply the diff for where I described Johnuniq as a "Jytdog-enabler". Andy Dingley (talk) 00:25, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

he was so ready to excuse the "dogshit" comments. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:35, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Wow. Nice edit to your previous comment. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:44, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

I agree, it is a nice edit. It's also nice that I explicitly noted that I had made that edit. The only that wasn't nice was that I didn't apologize for misremembering that "Jytdog-enabler" was (apparently) not a direct quote from you. I read your comments together with Pudeo's, and apparently didn't notice that those exact words didn't come from you. That being said, had I said Andy Dingley apparently sees me, Johnuniq, Bishonen, etc. as "Jytdog-enablers" (not a direct quote) and has convinced himself that Jytdog's ban somehow vindicated his own behaviour. This is the exact same behaviour that led to C. W. Gilmore's block -- I can't see why we would reward it in this case. that would have been a pretty accurate summary. Now that my original comment has been fixed to say as much, I think we are done here. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:05, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Unsurprisingly, you have missed the point altogether. This is an RfA. It is about Johnuniq, not Jytdog. I have not discussed Jytdog, at least as far as is possible. I have never described Johnuniq as a "Jytdog-enabler": Jytdog was perfectly capable of acting as he did, all on his own. My point, and why I raised it at that RfA, is that when Johnuniq was presented with the context of Jytdog's comments (and why are you still so keen to excuse his description of "dogshit editors"? How on earth were they ever acceptable?) his reaction to them was to excuse them as "occasionally over-enthusiastic". Now this is nothing to do with Jytdog, but that's not an attitude I want in any new admins, hence my opposition to him.

Now Jytdog has departed. I have no interest in him, I have no interest in any gravedancing. But further down the line, this IBAN has made appropriate and permissible interaction in an RfA difficult if not impossible. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:33, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

this IBAN has made appropriate and permissible interaction in an RfA difficult if not impossible Yes -- because your actions in that RFA constitute both violations of this IBAN and grave-dancing. It is grave-dancing to pretend Jytdog was blocked for reasons other than those officially stated, as you have been doing (i) on the RFA, by implying his block somehow vindicated your own behaviour and tainted those who had "defended" him in his previous interactions with you (that's precisely why you said you opposed the adminship; you're not the only one, but you're the only one who was violating an active editing restriction by doing so -- the others were engaging in dickish grave-dancing, but not violating an IBAN), and (ii) here, by claiming that his self-imposed retirement and ArbCom block are somehow separate and not co-dependent, and that he couldn't request an unblock any time he wanted by saying he wanted to unretire was prepared to go through Arbitration. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 15:31, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose per BMK, Dlohcierekim and others. This is not mooted by Jytdog's block. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 04:42, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. Fails to acknowledge wrongdoing and what got the IBan enacted in the first place. This is a politically motivated removal request so Andy can get back at someone who supported the IBan. Andy should not be mentioning Jytdog's name, grave-dancing, or in any other way violating the IBan. See also the points made above by BMK, Dlohcierekim, Swarm, Golden Ring, Hijiri88, and Mendaliv. Softlavender (talk) 04:55, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose, per many of the above rationales, particularly Mendaliv, Softlavender and BMK. I wasn't going to !vote here, but given the rather combative approach it seems that anything that stops the subject being raised and rehashed is a good idea. Jytdog may well come back at some point, and rather leave the door open for further grief, it's probably safer to leave this in place. - SchroCat (talk) 11:06, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose: per Mendaliv, SchroCat, BMK et alii. Just because Jytdog is out now (blocked or not) doesn't mean he won't return someday. —Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 22:12, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

User:Tots & little ones matter! and BLPDELETE review

There appears to be near-unanimous consensus here that editing by

Tots & little ones matter! was inappropriate and that TonyBallioni

's BLPDELETE deletion, followed by discussion here, was an appropriate course of action (though a significant number thought the discussion could have better happened at DRV). Even most of those opposing sanctions seem to have recognised the problems with T&LOM!'s editing and opposed on other grounds.
That said, there is no consensus for any action at this time. Specifically:

• No consensus for TBAN Although this was initially supported, that support drained away (including one editor changing their !vote), partly because some felt that T&LOM! is a new editor who is more in need of guidance than sanctions and, later on, because T&LOM! appears to be already responding well to the feedback they have received here and has changed their approach.

• No consensus for CBAN The new accounts that lead to this proposal seem to be accepted as mistakes made by a new editor; once again, what support there was started to drain away from this proposal and this could perhaps also reasonably be read as consensus against the proposal.

T&LOM! should take note of the comment above that there is a very strong consensus that their approach to editing needs to change (as they appear to be doing already) and not read this close as an endorsement of their editing.

Two editors asked for specific guidance on separate administrative matters related to this discussion. No such guidance has yet been forthcoming, but I've left these two sections open in case anyone wants to comment, expecting that the whole section will eventually be archived without further closures. GoldenRing (talk) 10:30, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log

)

Hi all, I have deleted

WP:BLPDELETE

and per that policy am seeking review here. I'm not really clear what is best to do here. The article was about a real pedophile ring, but contained extensive profile on the individuals involved, none of whom appear to be individually notable. I discovered this when Tots & little ones matter! was creating redirects for all of the individuals involved.

I honestly don't know how I feel about this. While I think having an article on the subject is likely appropriate, the way the article was written highlighted individual convicted criminals who were not otherwise notable in a way that we would not ordinarily allow, and on a subject that unfortunately people are using Wikipedia to accuse people of more frequently.

I'm also concerned that Tots & little ones matter! appears to be an SPA focused on creating articles on British pedophilia scandals. While some of these are undoubtedly notable, I am very concerned that they are giving undue weight to the sections on the individuals. This was something I discovered after I made the initial BLPDELETE deletion, and since there were multiple articles, I did not want to act without further consulting the community. I'm bringing this here for review and am fine with any outcome. I will also be alerting Tots & little ones matter! to BLP DS, but that doesn't preclude the community from taking action if it sees fit. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:25, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Just a quick note on Robin Hollyson who repeatedly raped a 3-month-old baby and naturally received widespread news coverage because of this exceptionally shocking crime, he is no longer alive, so BLP is unlikely to be relevant to Robin Hollyson. The same applies to Neville Husband and Leslie Johnson.

talk) 23:31, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Tots & little ones matter!, BLP also applies to recently deceased individuals. Content on Wikipedia about such people can still greatly impact the person's direct family. --MrClog (talk) 23:38, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Robin Hollyson died in January 2016. Is 3½ years ago still recent?

talk) 23:50, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Tony, thank you for raising this here. I've been watching this too. I revdeleted some extremely detailed edit summaries, and asked the user to stop making them. He did stop doing that, although he didn't respond to my note. I remain concerned about the level of detail in the articles, the user name, and the singular focus. SarahSV ^(talk) 23:34, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

In response to my posting here that Tots did not respond to my note in March about his edit summaries, he has just written on his talk: "You did not ask for a reply. Please stop misleading other administrators by creating the impression you did." SarahSV ^(talk) 00:00, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

SarahSV, are you asking me to change my username?

talk) 23:42, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

It's the combination of the user name, the focus of your edits, and the level of detail you go into, including details that most people would find hard to read, never mind write about. The article Tony deleted is a good example. Do you have any suggestions as to how you could change your approach? SarahSV ^(talk) 23:53, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

SarahSV, It is my understanding that wikipedia is

UNCENSORED

, meaning:

Wikipedia may contain content that some readers consider objectionable or offensive‍—‌even exceedingly so. Attempting to ensure that articles and images will be acceptable to all readers, or will adhere to general social or religious norms, is incompatible with the purposes of an encyclopedia.

Your concern is solely about "content that some readers consider objectionable".

talk) 00:04, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

No. The concern is that you're going into

WP:UNDUE detail about living individuals who we would not ordinarily consider notable. They don't have to be notable to be mentioned in an article, but you shouldn't be writing mini-stubs on their crimes and then creating redirects on their names to the section of the article and adding categories to them. I the creation of the redirects was what concerned me enough to delete that one article pending review, as you were effectively getting around review of new articles that way. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:13, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Tony,

WP:UNDUE

deals mainly with opinions and points of view, which are not relevant to your concern. The amount detail I wrote about individuals always depended on the amount of detail in reliable sources. Deleting an article because of redirects was an extreme reaction on your part.

Couldn't you have raised an AN topic just about the redirects to individuals, and then depending on other admin's views, maybe deleted the redirects to individuals and left me a note about it?

talk) 00:41, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

One of the problems is that the articles milk all the sources for details, including

WP:BLPSOURCES: "material should not be added to an article when the only sourcing is tabloid journalism"). The articles could be rewritten to include only material written by the court reporters from high-quality national newspapers and BBC. The redirected names of living persons should be deleted. SarahSV ^(talk) 00:51, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

SarahSV, you are conflating regional newspapers with tabloids, which I almost never use. The two types of sources are quite different. Regional newspapers in a country as large as the UK often serve as many readers and the same purpose as national full-sized newspapers do in smaller countries.

talk) 01:00, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

But we don't ordinarily include detailed descriptions of criminals covered in regional newspapers. Wikipedia has significantly larger readership than regional newspapers, and as vile as these people's crimes are they are still living people and extensive coverage of them on Wikipedia could actually put them in danger if they ever get out of prison (or while in prison...)

We don't try to white wash, but we also don't write articles on every criminal who gets coverage in even a major regional paper. See

WP:CRIMINAL. You are basically circumventing our policies on criminal notability by writing enough content for an article covering the worst parts of their lives, and then creating redirects to the subsections. SlimVirgin and I are trying to work with you here, and explain things to you, but you really do need to change your approach, because otherwise you are likely to be facing sanctions surrounding biographies of living people, either through consensus here or through the discretionary sanctions I alerted you to at the same time as opening this thread. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:23, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

• Two points: First, the concerns about
  WP:AFD process), but I trust TonyBallioni's judgment here, as reinforced by SlimVirgin, both of whom are experienced administrators. Therefore, I endorse the deletion. There may be something a bit cutting edge in terms of policy happening here, but when it comes to genuine BLP issues, there's nothing wrong with erring on the side of deletion. Taking into account the salient points raised here by my learned colleagues, there may be grounds to discuss new guidelines or policies governing our coverage of sex crimes, whether or not the perpetrators are living persons. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 01:35, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Yeah. The policy is a bit vague: allowing unilateral deletions with discussion afterwards, which to me sounds like AN, though it also mentions DRV elsewhere. When I discovered there were potential problems with other articles created by Tots & little ones matter!/the username/the SPA bit, I thought here made the most sense. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:38, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
• Tots, you wrote above: "you are conflating regional newspapers with tabloids". The BLP policy cautions against relying on "tabloid journalism", and some of the regional reporting you're using is very definitely that. Wikipedia should follow the high-quality secondary sources. In this case, that will mostly mean the BBC, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, and their Sunday equivalents, plus academic sources and government reports. I wouldn't rule out filling in gaps with regional media, but you've used regional papers and websites to offer a huge amount of detail. SarahSV ^(talk) 01:52, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
• Mendaliv, you may review the Operation Voicer article here. Please try to identify a specific BLP violation before endorsing deletion.

Tony's reference to

talk) 02:01, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

@

Tots & little ones matter!: You can request deletion of things you've created yourself by tagging them with {{db-g7}} (if you're the page creator and there have been no other editors). —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 02:07, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Done.

talk) 02:30, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

• Tony, your concern "extensive coverage of them on Wikipedia could actually put them in danger if they ever get out of prison" has nothing to do with Wikipedia's BLP policy. The policy exists to protect individuals against libellous falsehoods and to prevent articles from filling up with pointless trivial gossip. There was nothing trivial or false about the crimes I was writing about. Children are safer when there is greater public awareness of the threats they face.
  talk) 02:24, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Uh, no. The BLP policy very much is intended to both protect the name and the physical safety of individuals. Wikipedia is not here to
    right great wrongs. It is appropriate to simply list the individuals involved in your articles, and maybe include slightly more details at an appropriate weight, but the more we have this discussion, the more concerned I am that you are going to continue with what you apparently see as a mission here. While that may be noble, you certainly won't find me defending the actions these people did, the way you are doing it is not compatible with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, and you need to change. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:31, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Here are some examples of articles not created by

Tots & little ones matter!

:

• Huddersfield grooming gang
• Telford child sexual exploitation scandal
• Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal
• Oxford child sex abuse ring
• Halifax child sex abuse ring
• Newcastle sex abuse ring
• Banbury child sex abuse ring
• Derby child sex abuse ring
• Rochdale child sex abuse ring

I don't know how they compare to the ones created by Tots, but I am quite sure that the same standards should be applied to all. Bitter Oil (talk) 02:45, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Here's another:

• United Kingdom football sexual abuse scandal

talk) 02:56, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) TonyBallioni mentioned it above, but the username "Tots & little ones matter!" strongly suggests that the user is here to

talk) 02:58, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

@

54129 09:38, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

You're "iffy" about quoting police on the seriousness of a crime and how it merits reporting? To you, the notion that child sexual abuse is a serious crime is "opinion creeping in". (Wow!)

talk) 03:18, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

You're "iffy" about quoting police on the seriousness of a crime and how it merits reporting? That is not what Creffett said. To you, the notion that child sexual abuse is a serious crime is "opinion creeping in". That is also not what Creffett said. Creffett has pointed out, accurately in my opinion, that your username and conduct indicate someone that is

right great wrongs and raise awareness of child sex abuse. While raising awareness of these horrific crimes is indeed a noble pursuit, it's not the job of an encyclopedia to raise awareness of anything. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 04:13, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Actually, it is one of the things Creffett wrote: "every so often there's opinion creeping in - usually a choice quote from police/judges/what have you about how terrible the events were or how important it is to report that sort of thing".

talk) 05:06, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Okay, "opinion" was the wrong word (perspective-pushing, maybe?), but you're misquoting me. Nobody is debating whether child sexual abuse is a crime, the issue at hand is the use of Wikipedia's voice to give opinions on the content of an article. Wikipedia's role is to report facts, not to give opinions on the article's topic. By adding those selected quotes, you're making the article less about facts and more about your issue of choice. If you want to tell people how terrible (insert topic) is, try the 11 o'clock news.

talk) 13:28, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

To summarise, the main concerns of TonyBallioni and SlimVirgin are:

• TonyBallioni wrote: "See WP:CRIMINAL. You are basically circumventing our policies on criminal notability by writing enough content for an article covering the worst parts of their lives, and then creating redirects to the subsections ... you really do need to change your approach."

• I have already deleted the redirects. I have shown that I understand this concern and taken it on board. Deleting the Operation Voicer article because of redirects was disproportionate.

• WP:BLPSOURCES
  ".

• This concern relates largely to sourcing from regional newspapers.
  WP:BLPSOURCES was not communicated adequately on the policy's article and doesn't appear to have been agreed with the community. I cannot have been expected to read SlimVirgin's mind when choosing my sources. I would be open to choosing BLP sources differently, especially if I see evidence that SlimVirgin
  's very broad idea of what constitutes a tabloid has community support or is stated on a Wikipedia policy page.

• SlimVirgin also asked: "Do you have any suggestions as to how you could change your approach?"

• I could use a more limited range of sources in future when writing BLP content and be more inclined to exclude certain sources. I could review articles that I have written and look for and remove what could perhaps be considered inadequately sourced BLP material. I would like greater clarity on this, perhaps a definition, explanation or list of sources that the Wikipedia community agrees are unsuitable for BLP content.
• I could use a different username.
• As stated above, I have already deleted the redirects to named individuals. I will not create any more.

talk) 04:53, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

The safest thing is to stick to high-quality national media and not go into so much detail. The article that was deleted, Operation Voicer, relied 16 times on a Daily Mirror article, once on the Daily Record, once on BreakingNews.ie, and numerous times on local media. It's written in a tabloid style with one-sentence paragraphs, unnecessary quotes, and a subsection for each of the convicted with the men's names as headings. It's unclear from the article how many children were involved; the Daily Telegraph reported that seven men assaulted three children. The article would have to be written and sourced differently to be BLP-compliant, and would have to demonstrate why the topic is notable enough. SarahSV ^(talk) 05:37, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Where exactly does the BLP policy deal with article style?

talk) 05:44, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

talk) 07:19, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

talk) 07:39, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Tots & little ones matter!, I know you think you are doing right, but please think about taking a break for a day or so before you comment, as your temper seems to be getting a little stretched here and you are coming across as a bit aggressive (that's just the impression I get, so forgive me if I'm wrong). Sarah and Tony are trying to help you here, and to ensure that the encyclopaedia maintains neutral and within decent standards (avoiding righting great wrongs, the privacy and safety of all those involved and avoiding publishing excessive detail, etc). Both of them are seasoned and experienced editors and both have written content about emotive subjects, but have done so with sensitivity and precision. I know it's difficult, but please try to work with them to bring the articles into line with the standards we have here. Thanks - SchroCat (talk) 10:51, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Tots & little ones matter!, don't take my comment as endorsement. I think all of these types of articles are magnets for problems. Having said that, yours are no worse. TonyBallioni should not have deleted Operation Voicer. Bitter Oil (talk) 13:41, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

• We have a Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard for this, note. Uncle G (talk) 05:29, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
• A few thoughts.
  • This is probably not the best venue for this, but we're here now. I do suppose this could be procedurally moved over to
    WP:DRV but it sounds like we're now discussing both the article
    as well as the creator's editing, so that swings it back towards discussion here.
  • I agree with the deletion, if only to remove large chunks of very specific information about otherwise non-notable individuals (I think the phrase above was "mini-stubs"). It's all sourced, but it's still inappropriate levels of detail and content.
  • The second point being said, I see no issue with recreation or restoration
    iff
    the perpetrators get no more than a listing (or maybe a sentence) of mention.

Regarding the creator's overall editing habits, I have not had a chance to look into it, but I would agree based on what others have said that they should probably be cautious going forward with what some people view is an agenda. Username isn't in great taste but I don't see any immediate violations that would require a name change. Primefac (talk) 13:55, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

• Here’s another lurid and overdone article: Kidwelly satanic child rape cult. I just moved the title to Kidwelly sex cult because that is how the case is described by sources. I also think the intensely detailed information about the perpetrators and their crimes should be trimmed by about 80%. Would I or others be justified in doing major trims on this and similar articles, citing this AN discussion as justification? I am not proposing a whitewash or any minimization of their crimes, but I think the crimes should be summarized as is done with most criminal cases - rather than giving blow-by-blow descriptions of every act as well as minute details (tattoos, missing teeth, names of their dogs) about the personal lives of the perpetrators. -- MelanieN (talk) 17:09, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Absolutely agree; I'd suggest that the tabulated information under sentences be kept, as that contains the pertinent information—name, age, charge and sentence, etc.—and the mini-bios go ASAP. Not only do they read rather disturbingly—salacious, almost—but per

54129 17:20, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

The use of the same syndicated article, sourced to a different newspaper carrying the same article on each occasion, to give the appearance that it's more heavily referenced than it is, should go for a start. There's no possible way anyone reading the articles could fail to notice that (e.g.) [51], [52] and [53] are all the same article in a different font (and all from local newspapers in areas not remotely near Kidwelly), which sets off my

Iridescent 17:21, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

• • Well, after reading the Snopes [54] article that talks about fake news site that specializes in voyeuristic clickbait in the guise of discussing pedo crimes: A User with the clickbaity name might want to ensure that others do not see his or her writing in that wink, wink, (Ugh) vein, even if 'TOTALLY the TRUTH', and invite others to edit it extensively. We are not here to promote anything in the guise of 'all the lurid details' and yes, BLP has a section on restraint in
    WP:BLPSTYLE among others. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:28, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
    • This isn't just a red herring, this is disinformation. Tots etc didn't use that source. Bitter Oil (talk) 21:26, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
      • You may have misunderstood Alanscottwalker. Tots' MO seems creepily similar. Miniapolis 23:33, 27 July 2019 (UTC) (mother of three, grandmother of seven )
      • You totally misunderstood. I never said they used a source. It was an analogy to poor and worse writing, that Wikipedia does not want. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:19, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Iridescent about the repetitive sourcing. There is a focus on salacious detail in articles, titles (e.g. BBC investigation into pre-pubescent rape evidence failures, deleted as a copyvio, and Norwich child rape and sadistic abuse ring, which became a redirect, now deleted by Iridescent), and in the edit summaries I revdeleted in March. SarahSV ^(talk) 18:04, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
    • @
      WP:BLPDELETE if there is agreement to it here. Tots is clearly an agenda driven right great wrongs SPA, and there have been numerous issues identified in their writing about living people in what is perhaps the most sensitive BLP issue there is. There are questions about which of these are notable, and sorting through that in combination with a rewrite on every page Tots has created would take substantial work on the part of experienced editors and admins and even then stuff may be missed. The best solution to me seems that they need to rewrite any notable incidents from scratch with rigourous application to the BLP policy. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:40, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
      • What happened to "focus on the edits, not the editor"? I don't like these kind of articles anymore than you do, but they should be dealt with in the same way that we deal with other articles. By editing them to fix any issues. I dropped that very incomplete list of similar, pre-existing sex abuse articles here to make a point. Tots' editing and sourcing is no worse than the articles we already have. Possibly better. Take Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal as an example. It has 10 redirects to it, including one for each of the four men who were convicted. Tots didn't create that article or even edit it. Why don't you ask them to read the policies about neutrality again, change their username and move on? Bitter Oil (talk) 21:38, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
        • Well, actually, their articles are worse. They have significantly worse sourcing, significantly more detail about the perpetrators, and were also what was what I stumbled upon. Their behaviour is what we are reviewing here, not every other pedophilia article (which likely do have issues as well.) The concern is that there is one user who has made it their sole mission on Wikipedia to "tell the stories" of abused children, and in doing so is creating articles that need to be completely rewritten to comply with our policies and guidelines. We don't ignore that because the rest of the topic area has issues. We fix the problem we're presented with when we're presented with it, and then move on to the next ones when we can. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:57, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
          • Should it matter if their mission is to tell the stories of abused children if they do it in a way that conforms to our policies? There are editors here who have made it their mission to document every episode of the Simpsons. Maybe I missed it in all the hubbub, but I haven't seen a specific example of an edit made by Tots which is a BLP issue. Is Kidwelly sex cult a BLP issue? If it is, why hasn't anyone removed the BLP issues or started a discussion about them? If Tots' username is a problem, why hasn't anyone asked them to change it? If their sourcing is an issue (and it is) let's deal with it. This seems to be a lynching because people are uncomfortable with the subject matter. Bitter Oil (talk) 22:10, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
            • Yes, as they are not complying with policy, as has been agreed to by everyone but you. Unless there is an objection from another administrator or editor in good standing, I will be deleting under BLPDELETE. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:15, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
              • Is Kidwelly sex cult a BLP issue? If it is, why hasn't anyone removed the BLP issues or started a discussion about them? Actually they have. That entire section with all the excessive detail about the perpetrators has been removed. So have the ridiculous reference listings that showed the exact same article published in five or six different papers. That was done because it is under discussion here. But basically no-one wants to go to the effort of searching out all these overstuffed, lurid articles and bringing them up to Wikipedia standards until we know if they are going to be deleted. -- MelanieN (talk) 03:03, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
                • Both of those excisions were made after my comment. Bitter Oil (talk) 03:25, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
• I notified the DRV community of this
  WP:BLPDELETE review at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2019 July 28#Operation Voicer. Cunard (talk) 00:31, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
• Just a note: I wouldn't put too much weight on Bitter Oil's opinions. The primary purpose of the account (created in April) appears to be to post on
  Talk:Jimbo Wales (25/102 edits), and their articlespace experience, at least using this account name, is minimal (46 edits in 2 1/2 months). There's very little indication in the edits of this account to show that they are familiar with Wikipedia's standards. [55], [56] Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:46, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
• I have three questions about
  WP:BLP if the sections or paragraphs that "highlighted individual convicted criminals who were not otherwise notable in a way that we would not ordinarily allow" were removed?
Cunard (talk) 04:36, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

• Cunard, 1) Yes. 2) They were the only substantial contributor. 3) The main issue was the de facto stubs, but IMO the sourcing questions and issues with mission driven style editing were concerning enough and difficult enough to unpack that the BLP policies allowance for summary deletion and then discussion was warranted. That is to say, in my view the article would have had to be substantially rewritten in order to comply with BLP given the sourcing concerns and issues concerning weight and style. Deletion and recreation if found to be notable to me seemed the best option, and deletion followed by review as allowed by the BLP policy given the rapid creation of new redirects to the mini-articles seemed like the safest course of action. I’m obviously the deleting admin, but MelanieN can give her opinion on it, as she’s been looking at these issues and also has admin goggles. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:09, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Thank you for the explanation. Since no other editors' contributions were deleted, that resolves my concerns about other editors' work being deleted. If the deleted article had the same problems as
    WP:BLP.

    I support MelanieN's approach for these articles: "I also think the intensely detailed information about the perpetrators and their crimes should be trimmed by about 80%. Would I or others be justified in doing major trims on this and similar articles, citing this AN discussion as justification?" Trimming and rewriting is preferable to deletion, but I am also fine with deletion if trimming and rewriting is too much work and "the article would have had to be substantially rewritten in order to comply with BLP given the sourcing concerns and issues concerning weight and style" (quoting from TonyBallioni).

    Cunard (talk) 10:55, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

    • One could probably do the equivalent of this to the deleted article for similar effect. Uncle G (talk) 11:08, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

• As requested, I'm putting on my X-ray vision goggles for the deleted article Operation Voicer: Tots created it in June and was the only person who edited it. “Operation Voicer” was a the name of a countrywide 2014 police investigation into child sexual offenses which resulted in ten convictions. The article contained more than 38,000 bytes (!), the bulk of it subsections the size of a small article, detailing everything known about the ten perpetrators. There was what Sarah described as “a focus on salacious details”. It had 27 references, mostly small local papers, but also including the BBC (five separate references) and the Telegraph (two references). Bottom line, this was a significant story in its own right, and it could probably have been rescued - by stripping out the lurid language, the extensive quotes damning the crimes and criminals, and the mini-biographies, while retaining the origin and course of the investigation and the tabular summary of the crimes and sentences. In other words it was an even more lurid version of the Kidwelly article (which still needs work). IMO our way of dealing with such articles is a choice: either delete the article pending a rewrite, or assign somebody (any volunteers?) to go through every article written by Tots, reviewing it and trimming it until it meets Wikpedia standards. -- MelanieN (talk) 14:53, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Topic ban under

WP:NEWBLPBAN

for "sexual abuse of minors" proposed

I think there's consensus below (and I don't think this will cause anyone's !vote to look like it was supporting something they didn't actually support), so I'm

talk) 16:40, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

• I agree that the editing by Tots & little ones matter! is problematic for the reasons explained by TonyBallioni and others. I would support a topic ban or block under
  WP:NEWBLPBAN. The articles will then presumably need manual cleanup. Sandstein 08:32, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
• I would support such a ban immediately after the next time Tots edits in the same fashion. At this point, I suggest giving them some
  WP:ROPE and let's see what happens now that they've been put through the ringer by this discussion. Beyond My Ken (talk) 12:15, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support TBAN. This user clearly has an agenda they're trying to push. As they say on
  their user page, To so many forgotten kids who need to be heard, I want to tell your story. We're an encyclopedia, not an editorial page. My take on most of their comments here is that it's not so much, Educate me about wikipedia's purpose, but, Tell me the minimum I need do to avoid getting my stuff deleted. We don't want to get into a POV-whack-a-mole competition. I also observe that the very first edits this user did was to create a user page with some userboxes. That's usually a hint that this isn't their first wikipedia account. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:47, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support TBAN, and I agree with RoySmith's shrewd remark that "it's not so much, Educate me about wikipedia's purpose, but, Tell me the minimum I need do to avoid getting my stuff deleted". That means their editing is going to continue wasting Wikipedia's most precious resource, which is the time and patience of constructive editors. (There she goes again, like a broken record, but it's the truth!) I also agree that this is surely a sock. Apart from the userbox thing, note their knowledge of Wikipedia, including its history ("SlimVirgin was involved in writing the BLP policy"), quite remarkable for a seven-month-old account. I would not object to a NOTHERE block. Bishonen | talk 14:07, 28 July 2019 (UTC).

Please

talk) 17:55, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

• Note - the user was given a DS notification on July 26 at 23:26 (UTC) and have since then not edited any BLP related articles (only this noticeboard it seems). I do not think the
  awareness criteria are met. Am I missing something? --MrClog (talk) 14:24, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
  • The community can impose a BLP ban regardless of the awareness criteria. This isn’t a NEWBLPBAN. It’s just a BLPBAN as a community sanction. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:34, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Agreed. I've struck the reference to WP:NEWBLPBAN above (and in the header, which is not by me). Sandstein 14:36, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
    • @Sandstein: It may be a good idea to put something like: "Topic ban regarding sexual abuse of minors" at the top, just to make sure people know we're not talking about a topic ban from BLP pages, but regarding "sexual abuse of minors". --MrClog (talk) 14:57, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
• Question: if not NEWBLPBAN, could you please make clear what you have in mind for the topic covered by the TBAN? I'd be inclined to make the topic of the TBAN "sexual abuse of minors, broadly construed," but want to make sure we're all on the same page.
  talk) 14:39, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

  Yes, thanks. I agree that "sexual abuse of minors" is an appropriate scope. "Broadly construed" is superfluous, because

  WP:TBAN indicates how wide topic bans are. Sandstein 14:42, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

  Cool. I added "broadly construed" just because I've seen that language come up before in similar contexts of "what can and can't someone do," thanks for the clarification. 14:47, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

  Whoops, just saw TonyBallioni's comment above about a community-sanctioned BLPBAN. I'm concerned that a BLPBAN is too narrow, since the editor in question has shown interest in cases where the subjects have been deceased for several years.

  talk) 14:44, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

  • Exactly as stated by creffett. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:47, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
• It's possible a topic ban at this point may be too drastic - vs. an attempt to educate them on what is and is not acceptable here. They are only just now finding out what our problem is with their approach, so a topic ban is in effect punishment for things they did before anyone told them not to. Maybe they could be educated or instructed, to modify their existing articles and any pending new ones to meet our standards, giving them some rope as suggested above. On the other hand, their reactions to this discussion have not been encouraging. They have been narrowly defensive, insisting that there is nothing wrong with their approach and arguing against censorship, so it may be that they are not educable on this issue. They made a comment somewhere about "deplatforming", which suggested to me that they are very familiar with being banned from websites. Count me as neutral/conflicted about a topic ban. If there is one it should not be against BLP material; it should be specifically about things related to child sexual abuse. -- MelanieN (talk) 15:08, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

P.S. Although I said above that their response to this discussion has been discouraging, I should note that they DID request deletion of all those redirects with the names of the perpetrators. Maybe they are capable of learning our limits and staying within them. On the other hand, if they don't, I would favor not a TBAN but rather an indef block for NOTHERE. I am putting them on notice right now that I would institute such a block myself if I find them continuing to push sensationalism and BLP violations after all these warnings. -- MelanieN (talk) 18:16, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm a great believer in WP:ROPE myself. The post above regarding their being issued a DS alert and then refraining from editing BLPs suggests they are capable of responding to perceived criticism (even if in that case with unwarranted abstention). If, however, they're just testing our perimeter boundaries, then, having already received this warning, they'd clearly be NOTHERE and treated accordingly.

Incidentally, just my opinion, but the on the remark about deplatforming: that was hardly our finest hour, since they were immediately responded to—on their own talk page—by being told that Frankly, that's bollocks and you know it is. At which point they were an editor of two months' tenure. I'm saying, I suppose, that while I don't hold out much hope for either their motivation for being here or their long-term response to this discussion, I do think we could probably have approached the issue slightly more adjacently.

54129 15:23, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Oppose topic ban update. I see a fair amount of redink in their recent edits, which is a sign that they can listen and to some extent learn (considering how quickly a learning curve has been forced upon them). Hopefully, with further education as to what we consider to be

54129 10:20, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• Considering the nature of the edits we're discussing here, prevention is better than ROPE. Wikipedia rightly has rules about being tolerant of mistakes from newer editors and trying to be welcoming, but we shouldn't follow those rules over a cliff.—S Marshall T/C 15:49, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

@

54129 16:05, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

• Support TBAN - I don't have much hope in it being abided by but ROPE and all that, There's plenty of articles all of which don't relate to .... that sort of topic. –Davey2010^Talk 15:56, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support TBAN, whether from BLPs or sexual abuse in general. SarahSV ^(talk) 16:04, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
• Neutral, leaning toward very weak Oppose: I'm of two minds here. On the one hand, the user is wikilawyering, being an SPA, here to right great wrongs, and generally looks like they're NOTHERE. On the other hand, the user has disengaged from their topic editing for a day now, so that's a good start, and I'm wondering if they could become a productive editor in that (very difficult) topic area. As-is, I might be okay with them staying in the topic area on a probation of sorts - they a) are told, very clearly, what is and is not acceptable, b) have someone monitoring or mentoring them, and (optionally) c) consider a username change to something less POV-pushy. If they step out of line again, then I'm all for enacting an immediate TBAN, and if other editors think they've had enough rope already I won't oppose this TBAN, but I wanted to offer an alternative.
  talk) 16:55, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. Simply looking at the content edits by this contributor, I do not see how their behavior raises to the level of topic ban. For example, someone has removed a lot of content included by the user here, but the content was well sourced and clearly on the subject of the page. That was not a BLP violation, and arguably a content that at least partially could be included on the page, after some discussion. Yes, that was a good renaming of the page and definitely too many detail. However, having that many sourced details is not an outright violation of anything, and personally, I do not think that having so many details is any more problematic than having WP pages about individual buildings, for example. My very best wishes (talk) 20:00, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. It is disturbing that an article about a police operation into convicted pedophiles has been unilaterally censored and that the creator is being proposed to be blocked from creating or editing further such articles. The content was all directly sourced and the claim of BLP concerns is a nonsense - we have no duty to protect convicted pedophiles from having their crimes written about in detail. This is poor conduct from Tony and Sarah. Restore the article and close this section. Fences&Windows 23:30, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Fences and windows, what is the poor conduct exactly? SarahSV ^(talk) 00:13, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
    • You have both used your tools to unilaterally censor verified content, without prior community discussion. Policy does not support you acting to harangue this editor. Fences&Windows 12:55, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
      • Tony deleted the article "as an initial step" per
        WP:BLPDELETE, because there was no earlier version to which he could have reverted: "If the entire page is substantially of poor quality, primarily containing contentious material that is unsourced or poorly sourced, then it may be necessary to delete the entire page as an initial step, followed by discussion." I revdeleted several inappropriate edit summaries. Neither of those acts requires "prior community discussion". No one is haranguing anyone. SarahSV ^(talk) 21:05, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Yes. The BLP policy explicitly allows deletion and then discussion in these cases, which is what I did here, and as a whole, the community seems to agree that the pages either need to be rewritten or deleted. The coverage is excessive and undue, violating
    WP:BLPSTYLE, on what is quite probably the single most sensitive BLP matter we face. Deletion as a first step followed by discussion and review is hardly "poor conduct", it is what the BLP policy would have us do for something this sensitive. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:22, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
    • Just as an indication of the mindset Tony was dealing with here: the author had created dozens of redirects, to this article and other, for the otherwise-non-notable perpetrators. And those redirects were not titled with just the name, "John Doe"; they were all titled John Doe (paedophile). Those are all deleted now, but that gives you an idea of the extreme advocacy approach that was being taken here. -- MelanieN (talk) 00:32, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

I just checked pages created by "Tots" and can see that several of them were deleted. Unfortunately, they are unavailable and I therefore can not comment about them. If they were about convicted pedophiles, one could just rename them and nominate for AfD, as they probably were sourced. For remaining pages, I do not see any reason for "speedy". One can nominate them for AfD, but I am sure they would be kept. Do not see any BLP violations in the page

WP:BLPSTYLE. I do not see anything special about these pages. My very best wishes (talk) 01:05, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

• MelanieN, you significantly exaggerated the number of redirects I created to sections on abusers. You claimed "the author had created dozens of redirects, to this article and other, for the otherwise-non-notable perpetrators. And those redirects were not titled with just the name, "John Doe"; they were all titled
  talk) 19:03, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

• Support topic ban, either BLP or sexual abuse I was holding off on this, but I'll spell it out: Tots in an agenda driven editor who is editing in the single most sensitive BLP topic area: child sexual abuse. They have shown thus far they are unable to edit there correctly. We simply do not create articles on every criminal unless their crime is especially notable, which none of these subjects were. Tots found a clever way around that: they create articles within articles and then created redirects to them, effectively circumventing policy. They've since had G7'd the redirects, but their behaviour in this thread is disturbing to say the least: they are WikiLawyering about the BLP policy, and making it clear that they are here for a public advocacy position: saying that exposing the crimes of individuals makes society safer. That is both not the purpose of Wikipedia and not someone we want editing in this subject matter.
  To the comments that don't see pedophilia as having unique BLP concerns even above other crimes I will say this: even convicted murderers are treated better in prisons and in society than pedophiles: no one likes them, including me. Their crimes are horrendous, and they are justly sent to prison for them. Creation of excessively detailed content about non-notable people who have committed crimes of this nature on the world's 5th largest website poses a real risk to their safety and even their possibility of building a life after potential release.
  We absolutely shouldn't white wash their crimes. We should list them simply in the articles and report the details of the criminal proceedings accurately. We should not, however, allow someone who is intent on creating excessively detailed pieces to tell the stories of horrific tragedies to have the chance to do so and to wikilawyer about it. That is a recipe for disaster. If they show they can edit productively in other areas, they can appeal this ban then, but there is simply to much risk to allow them to continue editing in these areas now. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:26, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

• Tots made only 300+ edits. So, unless there is an evidence to the opposite, we should assume this is a new user. Did they receive an appropriate warning with explanations? Did they completely ignore the warnings? I agree that we should not create excessive notability/promotion for non-notable people - no matter if they are criminals or not. This is simply per our "five pillars". What can happen with them in prison is not our business and not an argument. As a practical matter, the user has received a DS BLP warning a day ago. If any problems persist, she/he can be topic banned by any individual administrator or reported to WP:AE. My very best wishes (talk) 01:48, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
• "unless their crime is especially notable". Notability is not a speedy deletion criterion. If you think a crime or criminal is not notable (despite detailed national press coverage spanning several years), go to AfD. You should not be making decisions like this without discussion. Fences&Windows 12:55, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

  Except for

  WP:A7...which if you don't know is "No indication of importance" Primefac (talk) 15:33, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

• ...and the BLP policy explicitly allows for deletion first, followed by discussion when there are severe BLP concerns, which is what happened here. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:42, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

• Support topic ban This editor is clearly here to
  WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS rather than write neutral encyclopedic content, and this is leading to serious BLP violations. Nick-D (talk) 08:21, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose - there has been a lot of scrutiny of the editor's editing here, and as yet they have made no further mainspace edits, and seem to be willing to engage and listen. It may be that this intervention is sufficient. I would prefer to assume good faith (and failing that,
  ROPE). Fish+Karate 11:10, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per Fish and Karate. Tots... has not edited in article space since before this thread was opened other than to (a) add categories to some existing redirects and then (b) nominate redirects they created for G7 speedy deletion (all have now been deleted). The categories added were completely appropriate. For now at least they appear to have taken onboard the comments in this thread and so there is no need at this time for a topic ban. If that changes then this can be switfly reconsidered, especially since they are now aware of discretionary sanctions. Thryduulf (talk) 14:47, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose, mostly because this editor had just 300+ before this AN report was filed, and I see not major effort on their talk page to steer them "in the right direction", before this report was filed.

• Also, I think that
  User:Tots & little ones matter! should seriously consider a name change; their present name make the hair stand up on the heads of most Wikipedians, I fear. (Tots & little ones matter!: check out Wikipedia:Changing username
  )
• Another thing is that part of the
  WP:RS
  to back it up. (This, while "Robin Hollyson" has exactly 0 hits on Wikipedia.)
• Conclusion: I think "Tots & little ones matter!" can bring a valuable perspective to this subject, granted that more experienced editors take time to guide her/him through this very sensitive area. (Hint to "Tots & little ones matter!": take a hard look at the articles which are linked under the "Localised grooming" section in
  WP:BLP rules), Huldra (talk) 21:48, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

One might think that there was an editor who had made it their mission to document every case of sexual abuse by immigrant communities. They just didn't announce it on their user page. Bitter Oil (talk) 23:59, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Pages created by Tots were not about "abuse by immigrant communities". Pages noted by Huldra above, such as Aylesbury child sex abuse ring, were created by other users (e.g. User:CurrentUK), and yes, they should be fixed. If the goal by a user X were to document every notable case of a crime (and assuming that the user is following all policies), that would be just fine. Same about a user who would like to document every notable biological species, etc. There is no difference. My very best wishes (talk) 16:14, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

My very best wishes is quite right: Tots did not create any articles about "abuse by immigrant communities"; those articles had been created before Tots joined here. As I tried to say: Tots created articles about "abuse by local ethnic British communities", and that has been an area which for some reason has been totally unreported on Wikipedia, at least judging by the "Localised grooming" section in Template:Child sexual abuse in the United Kingdom. (And no; I find it rather hard to believe that only immigrant communities commit such "local grooming" in Britain.....) Huldra (talk) 21:57, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Sorry if my comment was not clear. It was not about Tots. It was about editors who have created a bias in our coverage by focusing on one particular area (grooming by immigrant communities in England) and ignoring other cases. If Tots is sanctioned for their edits, the the edits of any editor particularly active in that area should also be examined. Looking at those articles, it appears that Shakehandsman fits the bill. Bitter Oil (talk) 23:48, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

I would like to publicly apologize to User:Shakehandsman. I must have gotten myself confused while looking at the redirects Shakehandsman created. The articles about "sex gangs" of Asian immigrants to England were created by User:Vanished user lt94ma34le12, an entirely different, not at all related, completely separate account. In fact, Shakehandsman was on a long wikibreak during almost the entirety of Vanished user lt94ma34le12's editing career and could not have been involved. Bitter Oil (talk) 15:54, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose - Per all above. ∯WBG^converse 12:58, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose - Per all above. Editors should not be able to dictate a user's area of interest/expertise if editors are sticking to Wikipedia rules or attempting to do so. Perhaps there's an issue with a failure to stick to reliable sources etc, but the solution is to give guidance and to give someone who is quite an inexperienced editor ample opportunity to improve the quality of their editing (something that already appears to be happening).Shakehandsman (talk) 04:16, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
• Checkuser comment: Please see my post below. Risker (talk) 04:51, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Paedophile redirects issue

The redirects created by Tots such as Bruce Child (paedophile) have been deleted rather than renamed. I think from the discussion above it is clear that article titles which label someone as a paedophile are not acceptable. Here's a short list of existing redirects:

• Alan Webster (paedophile)
• Carl Beech (paedophile)
• Angela Allen (paedophile)
• Swirly faced paedophile
• Vico (pedophile)

I have to say I am not sure about the last two since they are not the person's real name. The Carl Beech (paedophile) may be worth looking into more closely since it points to one of Tots' articles. Bitter Oil (talk) 03:59, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for finding these. IMO these should all be speedy deleted, but they don't fit any of the standard CSD criteria and per the rules should be RFD'ed instead. I guess since they have been around this long another week won't hurt. BTW the Carl Beech redirect was not created by Tots. -- MelanieN (talk) 04:20, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

I have RfD'ed them all. -- MelanieN (talk) 04:33, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Most of these seem to be heading for deletion rather than renaming to something more acceptable. This is unusual because we already have a large number of redirects based on the names of convicted persons in child sexual abuse cases. Should we be looking at those redirects as well? Bitter Oil (talk) 23:55, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

New accounts created by Tots & little ones matter!

I was asked to check an account that has newly entered the fray indirectly, and discovered that

Tots & little ones matter! has created two new accounts. I note that Tots had made a request to change username and one of the accounts is the new username requested, which was promptly used to contact a user on their user talk with reference to the discussion above. The other account has not yet edited. Both have been indefinitely blocked per usual practice. I am going to leave it to the community to decide if further action needs to be taken with respect to Tots. Risker (talk) 04:26, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

• Comment At first glance, looking through the contributions and Risker's block log, I thought this was a legitimate use of alternate accounts, but She didn't go forward with the name change, and then posted on a user who would likely be sympathetic to the Tot's account and canvassed them to the discussion without disclosing they were the editor being discussed for sanctioning. That is pretty clear intent to deceive. Additionally, we have the creation of a second sleeper account with no clear relationship to the master. While this account hadn't edited, the addition of another account on top of the canvass sock doesn't look good, and is in my view, a violation of
  WP:ILLEGIT. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:04, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Tony, you failed to indicate in your comment below that it was you who initially linked to the policy section

talk) 18:51, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

• Comment The Lioness account is definitely canvassing, but I suspect the second account is/was going to be used to test an issue at
  talk to the boss) 13:42, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
• Comment You are correct,
  creffpublic. When I logged in for the first time in days, I found many new messages telling me to change my username, including new advice about the Changing username
  procedure. Under intense pressure, and having just learned of this procedure, I decided to change it immediately.

When I tried to follow the recommended Changing username procedure, I was unable to do so because the robot clerk wrongly blocked my username change, for this incorrect reason:

Talk to my owner

:Offline 01:50, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

From the source of the message, I hypothesised it could be failing because the robot clerk couldn't handle the ampersand (&) character in my username. The robot seemed to be treating my ampersand (&) character as "&".

The request was made by [[User:Tots & little ones matter!|]], not [[User:Tots & little ones matter!|Tots & little ones matter!]]; please login as Tots & little ones matter!

Checking this hypothesis was the sole purpose of my Ampersand & experiment alleged "sleeper" account. The only way I could find out whether my belief about the ampersand character was correct was by requesting for it to be changed to a different username, also containing an ampersand (&) character. I was planning to leave a note explaining this with the request, and then potentially a second note to the human clerk, asking for the ampersand (&) issue to be fixed. I was preparing a detailed description of the issue when my Ampersand & experiment account was blocked.

My only reason for my communicating with Shakehandsman was because while I was logged in, the following message appeared about them:

Sorry if my comment was not clear. It was not about Tots. It was about editors who have created a bias in our coverage by focusing on one particular area (grooming by immigrant communities in England) and ignoring other cases. If Tots is sanctioned for their edits, the the edits of any editor particularly active in that area should also be examined. Looking at those articles, it appears that Shakehandsman fits the bill. Bitter Oil (talk) 23:48, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

The top of the edit page for this admin noticeboard bears the message "When you start a discussion about an editor, you must notify them on their user talk page." While views may differ about whether a discussion about this user had technically started yet, it nevertheless seemed appropriate to provide this user with the following notification:

Hi Shakehandsman,

In an administrator's discussion about banning a user, this was written about you:

If Tots is sanctioned for their edits, the the edits of any editor particularly active in that area should also be examined. Looking at those articles, it appears that Shakehandsman fits the bill.

As a member of the Wikipedia community, you are entitled and encouraged to share your views in this discussion.

I legitimately believed this was too urgent to wait to for someone to resolve my technical difficulties with changing my username. My existing username was causing me enormous problems and I never wanted to use it again.

The proposal for blocking me seems to have been based on the following sentence in

WP:ILLEGIT

:

Based on the comment above by

WP:ILLEGIT

, I would surmise the proposal for blocking me was based on the following sentence in that policy:

While this is permitted in certain circumstances (see legitimate uses), it is a violation of this policy to create alternative accounts to confuse or deceive editors who may have a legitimate interest in reviewing your contributions.

One such legitimate circumstance is:

• Username violations: If you are blocked for having an inappropriate username, and that is the sole reason for the block, you are permitted to create a new account with an appropriate username.

Although technically I wasn't blocked for an inappropriate username, it was nevertheless a major factor in the proposed topic ban against me. This falls within the likely intention of this legitimate use.

To summarise, I faced technical difficulties that other users do not face while I was under intense pressure to change my username. I tried to understand what was going on because I wanted it fixed ASAP. Then I noticed that a user may need to be immediately informed about what could soon become an extremely serious discussion about them. This required quick action. I did not have the luxury of waiting for someone to resolve the technical difficulties with my new username and I was unwilling to use my old one ever again. These are undeniably exceptional circumstances. It was a good faith effort to do no more than what I legitimately believed was expected of me and the right thing to do. It was very different from a routine breach or from bad faith deception.

Changing my username the normal way was, for exceptional reasons that were totally outside my control, impossible. Blocking me because of how I reacted would mean permanently banning a user for:

• Reasonably, in good faith, trying to help with fixing a software defect in Wikipedia that was extremely problematic.
• Quickly notifying a user about something serious affecting them that they could legitimately consider a genuine emergency and probably ought to have been told about.
• On the mere technicality of my inappropriate username resulting in warnings rather than a block.

I am forced to sign with a username I don't want:

talk) 13:56, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

talk) 15:53, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Well, that's certainly a wall of text up above. I'm not buying the product - the "easy" way would have been to submit the username using the little box on the page, rather than going to the simple change page - but it does not surprise me that the bot would have problems with the name. (It's not the ampersand, it's the exclamation point at the end. It's a known issue, and it's why human beings need to do the work rather than bots.) If Tots is serious about changing account names, I'd suggest reaching out to a global renamer who has admin permissions on this project; there are a few of them.

More specifically answering Creffett's question, checkuser data only goes back 3 months, and the Tots account is much older than that. There are pretty clear signs it's not a first account, but the original account could have been retired months or even years before, and there would be no CU connection. The range on which this account edits is very busy with many registered accounts and IP edits, but there were no other likely socks in the range. Risker (talk) 17:38, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Where can I find a list of global renamers? I have been advised on my

talk) 18:09, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Risker, I'm unsure which "little box" you meant when you wrote "the "easy" way would have been to submit the username using the little box on the page". To change my username, I started

talk) 20:34, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Risker has since written on my Talk page: "I was mistaken in thinking that there was an interface that allowed you to directly request a username change right from the

talk) 06:40, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

talk) 22:27, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

• Noting here that I've provided further information to Tots directly on their talk page, so as not to further clutter up this discussion. Risker (talk) 06:22, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Proposed indefinite block

I was pretty "meh" about the TBan: either we gained a editor who, having undergone a renaissance, as it were, became a productive editor in a difficult area; or, being unable to bear not editing the only thing they clearly want to, would breach it soon enough and we'd be here anyway.

But Risker's findings, in my view, make that now an otiose discussion. This is no longer about the users competence, their name or their intentions, but about their trustworthiness. Which they have just lost. They not only have all the issues for which they were about to be topic banned, but they are willing to deceive the community in order to continue to be allowed to do so. No thanks:

54129 07:35, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

• Support as proposed.
  54129 07:35, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support Creating an account under a desired new user name is the kind of minor error that all editors, and especially new ones make. I can't see any good reason for creating the second new account. As serious concerns have been expressed about this editor's conduct and there is every indication that they are a SPA, this suggests that they are trying to evade scrutiny to continuing their problematic editing. Nick-D (talk) 08:00, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support site ban. Indef block is insufficient for such behavior. Softlavender (talk) 08:24, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support site ban which just means that they have to appeal the indef to AN. Sorry, but the failure to disclose that they were the account under discussion is both an obvious canvass violation and a clear use of deception. The sleeper account makes this worse. That combined with the other issues makes this a pretty clear choice, in my view. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:34, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
• Serial Number 54129, Nick-D, Softlavender, and TonyBallioni: if this does not change your opinion of the matter, please indicate as such. Primefac (talk) 15:17, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Yes, my position is the same. A user who canvasses another user they believe would be sympathetic to them to a ban discussion without indicating that they are in fact the user under discussion is acting deceptively. The point of policy is not that using more than one account in inherently bad, it is that deception by creating the impression that there are multiple people is not okay. The question is whether or not they were trying to deceive here, and I think it is fairly clear that the lack of disclosure was intended.
    Tots is clearly not a new account to begin with (I think Bish mentioned this above), and they WikiLawyer better than anyone I've seen in a while. That someone can post a 7,000 byte explanation of their actions linking to policy sections and not know that posting under a new name and not saying it is you while canvassing someone is deceptive is beyond belief for me. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:22, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
    • Linking to policy sections? Have you forgotten that you posted the link to
      talk) 18:30, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
      • talk) 01:29, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
  • My position remains the same. Softlavender (talk) 01:25, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
    • Likewise. There are just too many problems with this person's engagement with Wikipedia. Nick-D (talk) 10:08, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
• Notice: A “community block” is a siteban. See
  WP:CBAN: Editors who are . . . indefinitely blocked after due consideration by the community are considered "banned by the Wikipedia community". —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 15:29, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Just so.

54129 15:45, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. None of the mistakes this new user has made are worthy of an indefinite cban either individual or in combination. Thryduulf (talk) 15:50, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
  • A new user does not create a user page as their first edit, use descriptive edit summaries and understand how our sourcing templates work, know that you can wikilink in edit summaries, or create perfectly formatted new articles without a single issue with the wikitext. The odds of them actually being a new user are exceptionally low to begin with. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:58, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
    • I can't fault your analysis, but I also don't think that it's significant whether or not the user is actually new. It could be a user who had an account a long time ago and opted for a clean start, or a former IP editor, or even someone who just likes reading policies (I myself am an example of the first and third). Just because they are familiar with some policies doesn't mean they know all of them, I'm still learning new rules all the time even after ~4 months of activity. That's why I'm willing to write off the alternate account issues and canvassing as a genuine misunderstanding. Also, even if they were a veteran editor, their explanation so far is sufficient that I think I would would oppose a siteban.
      talk to the boss) 17:39, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
      • creffett, just pointing out that even if the justification for this was a clean start, they would be in violation of the clean start policy by immediately returning to the most sensitive editing topic we have. This account is a second account, and when I created it the clean start policy hadn't been created yet and the sock policy looked like this. I'm very sympathetic to people creating second accounts for valid reasons, but my point here is that we the main reason for opposing is "they're new, they didn't know." Well, they're obviously not new, and they have an extensive understanding of policy that could rival many admins.

        The simple question is this: why would they request someone to comment on a ban of an account they intended to abandon if they actually intended to abandon it? It makes no sense, and the newbie mistakes look almost purposeful so they could make an excuse on the off chance they were discovered. The story they are telling just doesn't add up. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:32, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
        • Tony, you have been pushing this allegation of me coming here with "an extensive understanding of policy that could rival many admins" for some time now. You have been misleading the community, by for instance, failing to indicate in this comment that it was you who initially linked to the policy section
          talk) 21:08, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
          • I was referencing the totality of your editing history, not just the comments above, such as the time you referenced
            WP:LIMITED an obscure ALLCAPS in a supplement to the copyright policy within two weeks of creating an account: [57] as well as the other diffs I showed above. That's not misleading people, that's pointing out that your actions are very unlikely to be those of a new user. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:13, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
            • You failed to mention that I was told on my Talk page two days beforehand "You might want to look at
              talk) 22:22, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

        talk) 22:10, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose: I feel like AGF has gone out the window here. While I am suspicious of the wikilawyering, everything this user has done seems like it is within the bounds of reasonable new user misunderstandings and mistakes. A siteban is disproportionate, especially considering that the user explained the multi-account situation and provided a believable explanation for their actions. As I suggested before, I want to see probation and mentoring, not a banhammer.
  talk) 15:58, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per Creffett - I think we're rushing headlong into a siteban and getting things out of proportion. This is an editor who has done some valuable content work and I think the confusion over the username change is a plausible explanation for the new accounts.-- Pawnkingthree (talk) 16:14, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. I think there was no indication the user was trying to deceive. No edits were made from "Ampersand & experiment" (please note the name: an "experiment"), and she openly posted a request to change username, exactly as recommended. Some comments are problematic, but is not a valid reason for indeff in my opinion. There is no consensus even for a topic ban. My very best wishes (talk) 16:19, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support - Maybe I'm just gullible but I buy the username issue I genuinely do .... however I don't buy the deceptive account nor do I buy that they're a new user - Given the problmeatic editing, the problematic redirects and the deception IMHO they should be sitebanned. –Davey2010^Talk 18:11, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support - I declined to support the topic ban until Tots continued to edit in the same manner as before, but these new revelations just pushed al my AGF out the door. Obviously an editor with a previous account, obviously an SPA here to right great wrongs, obviously willing to circumvent rules to get what they want - a very bad combination. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:16, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose pr Creffett, ok, so call me naive, but where on earth did
  WP:AGF go? Also, User:Risker: I feel a bit guilty for steering Tots to the Wikipedia:Changing username
  page, without detailing to them "how" to proceed.

  And the argument against Tots are ...confusing, to say the least. (At least to me!) On one hand they are accused of not being

  not here to build an encyclopedia

  , instead being here "on a mission". On the other hand, some claim they are not a "new editor", while at the very same time not indicating who they were before. Anyone being a Zealot in such a sensitive area would surely easily be recognised? This just doesn't add up to me,

  (Also, registering with a username which any Wikipedian who has been around a while would know with 100% certainty would raise eyebrows.....that does not indicate an "experienced Wikipedian" to me.) Huldra (talk) 21:10, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

  Comment; Tots publicly asked to change their username to MamaLion / MamaLioness, and was denied on a technicality. Then they went ahead in any case and created User:MamaLioness, which was promptly blocked as a sock. If Tots had actually meant to deceive the community, then they deserve an award for "The most clueless sock master of the decade". The alternative is of course that they just screwed up, Huldra (talk) 22:43, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

  It seems that they came here with a misunderstanding of how to write a Wikipedia article/what Wikipedia wants from articles, but that's the sign of a new editor not of a sockmaster. Everything in this thread is consistent with a user who wants to learn and so reads the advice they're given and the policies, etc. linked from them. Yes they still want to add material in this topic area to Wikipedia but they want do it work with (not against) Wikipedia to do it, yet they are simultaneously charged with knowing too much of the rules and too little of the rules. When they encounter something that is obviously an error their first reaction isn't to give up but to try and understand what the problem is so they can rectify it or work around it. This is exactly the sort of thing that developers want in bug reports - not just a "this broke something" but "I attempted to do X, I expected Y but got Z. Further experimentation showed that the core issue is M and then sequence to reproduce is A, B, C. " Thryduulf (talk) 00:53, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• I will note that they have just now done a trim on the article Norwich sexual abuse ring, taking out a lot of the detail about the perpetrators, biographical information etc. They did a good job on that part. However, they left in some lurid descriptions of the sexual abuse, which I have now trimmed. Maybe they can get the message that articles on this subject will be OK if they do not include mini-articles about the perpetrators or salacious details about their crimes. If so, IMO they may be salvageable as an editor here. It will still need someone to check their work. -- MelanieN (talk) 01:09, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
  • I have studied your edit to
    talk) 01:41, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
  • I also trimmed
    talk) 02:45, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
• Support and not just meh-ish. There are too many problems here, and the user page, "I want to tell your story", spells NOTHERE. Drmies (talk) 01:16, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Not anymore. I did that page six months ago and I had not being paying attention to it until now. I have already being trying to change my username from

talk) 02:42, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose Clearly improving and trying to listen to others' concerns. ∯WBG^converse 10:04, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose At this point it seems unclear to me what some of the people in this thread actually want from the user, other than them to be blocked. Obviously they have an area they are deeply interested in, and clearly they jumped the gun when they began editing. But since then all they've done is listen to criticism, attempt to learn the rules, and fumble with our incredibly arcane conflict and username resolution processes. The fact that the clearly obvious test username was portrayed as some sort of deep covert plot to establish a sleeper account is a pretty big sign that y'all need to take a step back here, because you're in hammer looking for nails territory. Parabolist (talk) 11:37, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
• I was close to supporting this, but I'm gonna say Oppose per recent comments, particularly from Winged Blades of Godric. Foxnpichu (talk) 14:45, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Request for closure

The commentary appears to be winding down, so I'd appreciate a neutral editor/admin to look at closing this. I'm involved in the debate and therefore clearly not neutral, but here's my read on the major questions:

• The TBAN proposal fell by the wayside after a CBAN was proposed (as far as I can tell, the !votes stopped after Risker's CU comment which in turn led to the CBAN proposal), so that should either be dropped or reopened following closure of the CBAN.
• The proposed CBAN appears to be no-consensus; while one side or the other may have a small majority in terms of raw number of !votes (I haven't actually run the numbers, but my quick eyeball of !vote count is "roughly equal) I don't think that there is enough of a margin to call it a consensus.
• I believe there is consensus that T&LOM needs to change the level of detail they're including in articles and stop using Wikipedia to
  WP:ROPE
  ).
• As for the actual reason this thread started (TonyBallioni's original deletion), as far as I can tell the consensus was that the original deletion followed by review was reasonable, but I'm not sure what the consensus is on restoring the article.

talk to the boss) 16:01, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

As the editor being discussed, I have read the comments very carefully and found conflicting views by others (not me) on most issues. I am doubtful of Creffpublic's conclusion declaring a "consensus to ban if the editor does not improve". Some editors unconditionally opposed a topic ban (saying nothing about ROPE) and some opposed the article's deletion. The ROPE comments seem to be exclusively in the topic ban discussion and nowhere else. I would advise anyone thinking of reading every oppose vote looking for conditionality to allow themselves plenty of time to read through it all. It is a very long and complex discussion.

talk) 02:43, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm working on closing this. GoldenRing (talk) 10:13, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.