Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive50

They're all starting to come up now on AfD with unanimous "delete", and, bearing in mind the background research into them, I don't think anyone is going to object. Tyrenius 16:04, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

It is done. A Wikiquote admin will need to do the needful as well. Just zis Guy you know? 17:22, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Nice work. Thanks. Saves wasting any more time. I've left a message on Wikiquote. Will the sockpuppet aspect be dealt with via

You want them blocked? I don't mind doing that. Just zis Guy you know? 09:15, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for swift and effective action. Tyrenius 03:48, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

While the person in question is probably just trolling for a reaction, I have a right to be f**king pissed off with the sheer amount of death threats I've been receiving lately for being an admin on this site. This one is the most recent of a line of threats I have received. I would like to make an official report of it because I don't believe that kind of thing should be allowed. However aside from going the police who probably won't do anything anyway what can I do to follow this through and report this troll for threatening me? --

Yep, it's bullshit. The IP tracks to Chicago, Illinois. Here's the IP provider:[12]--MONGO 22:33, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

This seem to be happening more and more is it not? From the 8 months or so I have been on wikipedia this kind of stuff seems to become more common. (including the "outing" business recently). Which really is too bad. But besides reporting it to the ISP and perhaps the police, I don't see any other way. Garion96 ^(talk) 22:39, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Here's Chicago PD contact info. --Aude (talk contribs) 22:50, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the threat from Francs2000's talk page. Now can a developer deletethe offensive revisions from the text?? --Sunholm(talk) 22:52, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, a developer isn't required for that anymore. There are 17 users with the ability to hide revisions like this and they are listed here. --Woohookitty^(meow) 22:57, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Can you not do that for the moment please? I have emailed my friendly local copper with an enquiry as to what they can do about it, and so the entyr would need to remain for the time being so that they can see it. Many thanks for your message though. --

Francs2000

23:03, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Why would you "destroy the evidence"? Titoxd^(?!?) 22:59, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

People don't like stuff like that hiding in their talk page history. I say oversight it... but I guess what I think doesn't really matter. --Lord Deskana (talk) 23:06, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't mind it lurking there, and if I really had an objection to it as an admin I can get rid of it easily enough without poking oversight people with a stick. --

Francs2000

23:07, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Apologies for deleting it, I thought I was doing right. Sorry. Well, Libellous revisions were removed from GWB by developers. --Sunholm(talk) 23:09, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

It's still there in the page history. --Aude (talk contribs) 23:10, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry Francs2000, I thought you were requesting it to be oversighted. Sorry, I misread it. Don't apologise Sunholm, you've got nothing to apologise for. Reverting it was the right thing to do. --Lord Deskana (talk) 23:11, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I am trying to help where I can. --Sunholm(talk) 23:12, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

My enquiry was ways that it could be reported, not "can someone please remove it"? It's an easy misunderstanding to make. --

Francs2000

23:15, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I am willing to take up dedicated responsibilities of contacting the ISPs of people who threaten physical harm to an admin. How this would work I'm not sure, but a go-to place for admins who feel threatened is needed. --mboverload@ 01:43, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Threatening death or rape is a felony in virtually all U.S. jurisdictions (and probably most other countries). This psychopath is hopefully only a slight physical threat to any Wikipedians but he is likely a dangerous presence in his local community. I doubt his antisocial behavior is or will always be confined to Wikipedia. Even if he never acts on threats, this behavior is chilling to people when made by someone locally -- that's why the law treats even threats of this sort as serious crimes. He should be reported and I'd be happy to do so. Does

WP:LEGAL still apply in this sort of case? I hope not. --A. B.

01:52, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think anyone's going to block you under

LEGAL for reporting a death threat to the police. In fact it could be a crime to do so as it would be obstructing justice. However, it may be time for wiki to set up a dedicated service for automatic reporting of such things. There's no reason why they should be tolerated. Tyrenius

01:55, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

There is already ISP reporting via

WP:ABUSE, no reason this couldn't be done there as well. Essjay (Talk • Connect

) 07:38, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

If the police acted in the episode that troubled Phil Sandifer I would think they would respond when direct threats as these are made. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-07-04 08:29Z

Yeah, hand the offending revisions, the IP adress and a Whois trace of the IP and the timestamp of the edits to the apropriate law enforcement agency and charge him with death treats. That should be enough for the police to get a warrant to get his identity from his ISP. No reason to write it off as trolling, even if it is just hot air (wich is likely) it's not something that should be tolerated, and a visit from the cops should make him think twise about doing it again at the very least. --Sherool <span style="font-size:75%">(talk) 12:01, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Just so that you all know, I reported this incident to the police in the UK yesterday. It will now be investigated under the crime of threatening with the intention of creating fear (or something like that). --

I hope the threats against you stop. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-07-06 08:29Z

Another death threat today against

UK Protection from Harassment Act 1997
(1) A person must not pursue a course of conduct- -- (a) which amounts to harassment of another, and -- (b) which he knows or ought to know amounts to harassment of the other.
and a more serious crime:
4. - (1) A person whose course of conduct causes another to fear, on at least two occasions, that violence will be used against him is guilty of an offence if he knows or ought to know that his course of conduct will cause the other so to fear on each of those occasions.

--- (2) For the purposes of this section, the person whose course of conduct is in question ought to know that it will cause another to fear that violence will be used against him on any occasion if a reasonable person in possession of the same information would think the course of conduct would cause the other so to fear on that occasion.

Tyrenius 03:57, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Addendum on 9 Jul 2006

The anon editors have refused to discuss despite a message on the talk page and two messages on edit summaries. Hereby I request an action on these (or this) disruptive anon editor(s). --Deryck C. 02:00, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

A few thoughts:

• WikiProjects, despite being informal, are generally regarded as a basic and quite legitimate form of editor collaboration within Wikipedia. Further, the use of talk page templates to advertise WikiProjects is a long-standing practice.
• The question of WikiProject scope is somewhat tangential to this. I cannot recall any limitation on the potential number of articles a WikiProject can deal with, and cannot fathom why such a restriction would be beneficial, in any case.
• Aside from advertising the existence of the WikiProject to editors in the applicable subject areas (which is quite important in its own right, since projects that fail to recruit editors effectively tend to wither and die in short order), the tags also serve to introduce articles into the
  Wikipedia 1.0
  project.
• The question of whether AWB is used seems rather unimportant, in my opinion. So long as the tagging itself is legitimate—and I'm not aware of any complaints in that regard—the use of a tool to make the admittedly monotonous task easier seems perfectly acceptable. Kirill Lokshin 19:55, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

To what Kirill said, I'll add a few things to explain:

I've just went through ~300 articles of a military-related category. Only 61 were tagged and 2 ignored because they were not military-related. Meaning there was ~240 articles in this category that were already tagged, through infinite pains, by hand, before that (and not by me). So it is a matter of being methodic: why .44 Magnum was tagged and .22 Long Rifle was not? What is the logic?

I'm not a bot and I'm not applying tags blindly. If an article is really out of scope, I don't tag it.

I do exactly the same job as was done before, only it goes 10 times faster. I really don't see what the problem is. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 20:01, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Unlike most of the project tags kicking around, these ones are preset to allow for notes about quality rating, completeness, importances, etc. The project is pretty active, and seems to have a good deal of article rating/validation/etc going on; it seems to me that this sort of thing is greatly helped by identifying and tagging articles for people to get to, since it allows category sorting, report generation, etc. (In many ways, it's probably better than slapping "This x-related article is a stub..." in the main namespace)

(Yes, indiscriminate bot-adding is a bad idea, but it's hard to distinguish between indiscriminate and eyballing-and-approving each time. Were any of the marked pages inappropriate?)

To my eyes, it's not "advertisment", it's infrastructure for the development of articles. Yes, it's not much use to start with, but people can't go and work on articles before someone's found them... It seems to be working fine; I say leave them to it.

talk

| 20:03, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

It was not bot-adding. I check the title carefully and if needed, open the article. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 20:04, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Apologies - I was caught by an edit-conflict and hadn't seen your reply.

talk

| 20:12, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

(multiple edit conflicts) The problem is there are so many different WikiProjects out that if all of them went around tagging related articles en masse, the average article's talk page would be flooded with half a dozen advertisements for various WikiProjects. Look at the huge list of WikiProjects

Most of the WikiProjects on that list don't use tags. Most of them are also quite catatonic. Care to guess at the relationship between the two? ;-)

(This aside from the fact that even double-tagging tends to be rare, and is becoming increasingly rare as smaller WikiProjects are being absorbed into larger ones. I don't believe I've ever seen a talk page with more than two WikiProject tags on it.) Kirill Lokshin 20:07, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

The "spamming" problem from having five or six tags seems more due to the size and style of the templates. If this *does* become an issue, reformatting the project tags might prove a good idea... but this is useful infrastructure, and people do seem to be using it to build an encylopedia. So why make their lives harder for something that isn't a problem yet?

talk

| 20:12, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

• The addition of the tags seems proper to me. This is a very active project and the scope of the project seems to be all pages that have a military topic. As such, then all these articles should probably be tagged as such. I do note, however, that looking into the far future, we may have problems with articles tagged by a dozen different wikiprojects. (E.g. As it stands today, a military war-ship made by a prominant manufacturer in Texas could conceivably be tagged by wikiprojects on Military, Ships and Texas. How many more wikiprojects might the same ship fall into next year or ten years from now?) Just the size of the cumulative talk page tags could theoretically be a problem. My opinion is that this hypothetical problem is not serious enough to attempt to solve ahead of time before it actually exists. Let's let these projects grow and tag articles and see what happens. Johntex\^talk 20:08, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  • "The scope of the project seems to be all pages that have a military topic" -- hrmm, yes, because they're defining their own scope. What happens when WikiProject United States comes through, with an acknowledged scope of the United States, and tries to tag hundreds of thousands of articles? I just don't see why it is necessary that every single article in the encyclopedia dealing with military history (we must have over 10K such articles) needs to have a tag advertising this WikiProject. --Cyde↔Weys 20:16, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
    • For assessement purposes for instance. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 20:17, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
      • How about they put the tag on once it's actually assessed, rather than putting up thousands of these tags that will doubtless remain blank (and useless) for months? --Cyde↔Weys 20:22, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
        • They won't get assessed until somebody knows they exist (usually not the people with enough time to do mass-tagging, either). Category:Unassessed military history articles has been getting reduced in size quite consistently. Kirill Lokshin 20:25, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
    • The United States WikiProject has a large number of child projects (many of which do tag things); it's likely that a most-specific-project tagging rule would be adopted by them should they desire to add tags. (In any case, creating current restrictions based on hypothetical problems seems somewhat questionable.) Kirill Lokshin 20:25, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Might we think of a better infrastructure than having each WikiProject tag each article they have identified as being somewhat related to their topic area? This just doesn't scale well at all. That's the reason I brought this here ... for community review. I still don't think that having WikiProjects tag each article they're even tangentially related to provides enough benefits to outweigh the signal to noise decrease inherent in adding more colored boxes to the top of talk pages (once it gets past two, does anyone even read them?). I've thought this for a long while and haven't said anything, but when I ran across the massive addition of tags today, I felt like I had to say something. Hopefully we can come up with a better system. Why not have all of the article assessment ratings on a centralized page? Why should it all be scattered around on individual articles? WikiProjects are project-space stuff ... can't they do it in project space and project talk space rather than spreading their colored boxes all across article talk space? --Cyde↔Weys 20:22, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

It was tried. It really doesn't scale for any more than a few hundred articles. Kirill Lokshin 20:25, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Take a look at Talk:Joseph_Stalin for instance to see that there are alredy such cases of pages having a lot of templates. And people live with it. Don't know where the problem is... -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 20:26, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll point out that nobody has really offered an argument against the fact that advertising relevant WikiProjects—even in the absence of any other purpose for the tags—is a very useful thing (assuming that you like having active WikiProjects around, obviously). WikiProjects that fail to recruit editors die; there's simply no way around that fact. That's why the idea of talk-page tags was developed in the first place. Kirill Lokshin 20:29, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

My thoughts on the subject - it wouldn't be a horrible idea to restrict the WikiProject tags to those articles where either (a) your project makes up a substantial portion of the editors of the article, (b) the article is obviously inextricably linked to your project (eg

I think that might be more of an issue with the particular WikiProject you mention having a somewhat unusual (or controversial?) scope. Is it your impression that it's a more widespread issue? Kirill Lokshin 20:55, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

That's a good question. Looking at the

This is one I imagine could get really annoying really fast if they did article tagging. So really, the answer is probably no, I don't see a widespread problem now ... but it could be and, as we have another incident here, some standards wouldn't be a bad thing. BigDT

21:34, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that there are two opposing risks to allowing projects like MILHIST to tag the approximately 11,000 relevant pages they estimate exist. If this is permitted, there is a risk that some pages might eventually have several tags from several projects. If not, it's likely that more pages will be orphaned than if not. I tend to think that allowing an active project like MILHIST to tag thousands of pages will do more good than harm, although maybe there needs to be some procedure to remove tags from dead projects. A lot of projects are doing great work, and MILHIST is one of them. TheronJ 20:55, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

A way to remove dead projects in general might be helpful; the only way I've seen any disappear is by getting absorbed by a more active project. Kirill Lokshin 20:57, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

In case of WPMILHIST, we're in cases (b) or (c) in 99% of the articles. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 21:01, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I think these wikiproject tags are almost always useless and almost always harmless; if it makes people happy to add them, so be it. But I would like to see the people who design the templates trying to make them as small as possible- no pictures, and directions to the project page rather than using the template to add lists to every talk page. Henry^Flower 21:10, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

The design of the template is different story - if a page is tagged, the initial template can be changed at will afterwards... :) -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 21:20, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

• Cyde, the assessments are centralized. You can try having a look at
  WP:WVWP projects. It is impossible to edit a page with 10,000 entries, so that's why you have a bot filling them out automatically. If there are several WikiProjects that could have "jurisdiction" over an article, And yes, Cyde, I really don't see a problem with all of them tagging the article (which won't happen, because not all WikiProjects tag pages, and not all WikiProjects are even active). More eyes looking at one article → better article. If it truly annoys you, you can always turn off the coffee roll templates on your personal CSS. Titoxd^(?!?
  ) 23:18, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Ooh, is there a standard div id I can use to turn off all WikiProject notices? Granted, this just solves the problem for me personally, and not for anyone else out there who doesn't know how to do it, but I might as well solve one problem. --Cyde↔Weys 23:20, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
    • They all currently use class="messagebox standard-talk"; that's the same as all the other talk page banners ({{
      featured}} and so forth). I suppose we could introduce a distinct class just for the project notices, if people want to turn only those off. Kirill Lokshin
      00:55, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
      • It's a good idea to standardize on a separate one for WikiProject banners, methinks. I'd want to hide WikiProject banners but not the usual talk page stuff. --Cyde↔Weys 00:56, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
        • I was thinking of going through with a bot and giving every header in Category:Article talk header templates an id of "t_Administrators%27_noticeboard/Archive50", as honestly I hate seeing all of them. Adding a class="...wikiproject" or such (even if it doesn't have a class defined by default) would be useful too. Kotepho 05:09, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I was a bit surprised the first time I saw these templates, but I like the idea about rating articles on both quality and importance. True, many articles have only been tagged and not rated yet, but a large number of articles have already been rated. Valentinian ^(talk) 23:58, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

• This discussion seems to be related to Wikipedia:Avoid using WikiProject talk page templates. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 05:00, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  • If it's just about talk page color, I can ignore articles with an empty talk page. How's that? -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 18:19, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay, it would seem that no one is really against this tagging, or am I missing something? :) -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 18:21, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think this is the correct venue for this discussion; if there really is disagreement about this practice we should find a better venue for discussion and seeking consensus. That said:

• WikiProjects do some great work and help foster community. I'd be very reluctant to impose any restrictions on them unless absolutely necessary. I don't see any such necessity right now.
• I'd fully support using a special div type for WikiProject banners. It's never occured to me before, but if some folks don't like seeing those tags then I have no objection to making those editors happier by making such a simple change.
• WikiProject banners are essential for Mathbot-based article assessment, as pointed out above.
• I believe the banners are useful to WikiProjects and therefore to Wikipedia in other ways, which I won't list here.
• "Turf wars" and which articles "belong" to which WikiProjects and how this is determined are some things which might at some point need to be talked about, but not here. We've (
  WP:BEATLES) had a few disagreements in the past and some of our articles are also tagged by the Albums and Films WikiProjects and probably others. However, different Projects tagging the same article doesn't even break the Wikipedia 1.0 assessment, especially for "article importance" because the importance is importance within the WikiProject, and then the enyclopedic importance is assessed by also factoring in the importance of that Project. Having multiple gradings therefore doesn't break the system at all. --kingboyk
  18:39, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Freakofnurture brought up an interesting point on IRC. Whether or not the talk page tab at the top of the page is red is useful feedback to the reader. Oftentimes I find myself wanting to know if a page has any discussion on it; if the tab is red, I don't even have to load a separate page. However, if all of these articles are going to be tagged en masse with this WikiProject banner, then none of the tabs will be red any longer, and some reader feedback will be lost. Also, I question the value of putting a banner on a page with so little traffic/interest that it doesn't even exist. What do you guys think about only putting the banner on talk pages that already exist, and not creating the ones from scratch that don't? --Cyde↔Weys 20:25, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

See what I suggested above :) (18:21 UTC). -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 20:29, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay, that sounds acceptable then. Since no one else seems to be objecting I think I'll bow out. --Cyde↔Weys 20:33, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, there would be three main reasons why we would prefer the banner even on empty talk pages:

• The article rating component of the tags applies regardless of whether there's any other discussion going on.
• Many of these pages are extremely low-traffic in terms of actually having discussion (some manage to make it up to FA status without any comments there). The banners still provide useful links for both the editors of those pages and other people (who are often more likely to get assistance with the article from the project than merely by posting to an empty talk page.
• This will require a dedicated effort of trying to keep track of newly created talk pages so that we can tag them, rather than tagging everything in one go.

Whether you find any of these arguments convincing is, of course, up to you. Kirill Lokshin 20:32, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Indeed. The reasons for such taggings seem to heavily outweigh the reasons against (one or two folks don't want to load a talk page to find just a WikiProject banner). I reiterate that since this is currently the way things are done, and we're quite deep into Wikipedia 1.0 assessment now, this isn't the correct forum either. If this is a genuine issue affecting many editors (and I don't think it is) let's have a policy debate. --kingboyk 20:40, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

The article rating component only applies if you're actually rating the page. I don't see the point of turning a red talk page blue with an empty rating slot. Yes, if you want to take the time to also make an assessment of the page then it's a different situation. Also, I can't believe that an article has made it to featured status with a red talk page. Can you give me any examples? I still don't think the questionable benefits of having a WikiProject banner on a previously nonexistent talk page outweigh the loss of feedback provided by that talk page's nonexistence. --Cyde↔Weys 20:38, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, aside from the project banner and the fac template, obviously. In any case, if you want an example,

Italian War of 1521 had three tags and not a single word of actual commentary on its talk page when it was featured; does that count? ;-) Kirill Lokshin

20:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Hrrmmm ... I didn't think such a page existed. Anyway, nice article. I shall read it soon. --Cyde↔Weys 20:59, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 21:03, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Then you don't (or more likely don't want to) understand the assessment system (and indeed the WikiProject system). Knowing which articles a Project is watching over, and which are unassessed, is an important part of how the average WikiProject operates. This is the way things are done (and for the benefit of the wider Project); and admin action isn't going to stop it. Make a policy debate out of if you don't like it (that's an invitation not a threat :) but please don't, we have enough to do with W1.0 assessments), but for now it's status quo and c'est la vie. --kingboyk 20:44, 6 July 2006 (UTC) Edit --kingboyk 20:48, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Please, let's not have any "not-threats" here either. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 20:46, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Happy now? :) --kingboyk 20:48, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I know how the assessment system works (when the assessment is left blank it's put into a "to be assessed" category, right?). I just don't think it's worthwhile creating talk pages out of nothing to put them into a blank category. You could save yourself a lot of page edits if you just compiled a simple list of pages to be assessed. --Cyde↔Weys 20:59, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, I do find it useful. Every now and then, a lonely article pops out into Category:Unassessed hurricane articles, and that is picked up on Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Tropical cyclone articles by quality log (and the summary), so I know a new article was created, so I can go assess it. So, useless to one doesn't mean useless to all. Titoxd^(?!?) 21:09, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

(Sorry, me again) Actually, I would like to add that prior to the W1.0 assessments scheme I would, in the case of very large Projects, agreed to you. I remember creating new articles on albums and shortly afterwards a {{

I wouldn't mind having these ratings for every article but I don't see why they should have to get there through a single very active project - the importance and quality of an article aren't tied to a particular project. And, as others have mentioned, things are being tagged that seem rather marginally related to military history - I noticed Ágrip af Nóregskonungasögum was tagged. It could just as well get a tag from a WikiProject on Norway, or on the Middle Ages or on literature. Couldn't we just have one generic talk page template for people who want to rate articles for quality and importance? We could still have a parameter allowing us to specify individual projects or "task forces" that could help with the article. Haukur 21:00, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Quality: perhaps. But importance, at least the way it's set up, varies from project to project. Something very important within the topic of "Norway" might not be that important within the topic of "Middle Ages", and vice versa. And there are also other things like project peer reviews/collaborations/etc. being listed in these tags. I think that trying to combine them all would be far too chaotic to bother (not to mention resulting in a template that would freeze the database anytime it was edited). Kirill Lokshin 21:03, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I am supposed to be on wikibreak, and about to be away from the computer for a week, but I thought I should chime in, since I wrote a bot (

I would say "fortunately" rather than "sadly" as that essay is a terrifically bad idea. As I said in the talk there, tagging articles, including tagging by multiple projects, is terrifically valuable, and the advantages, short and long term, far far outweigh any minor inconvenience that having them might entail. The fact that

WP:MILHIST has taken an amazingly large number of articles under its wing, and is steadily improving them, is something to marvel at, not something to consider harmful. And the idea that these project boxes are "spam" seems to show a fundamental misunderstanding of projects and how things get done. ++Lar: t/c

11:54, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I have revoked the editing priveleges for this account after this edit following clear instructions in both that article's edit summary history and on the article Talk page that unfree image cleanup should not be reverted. Per User:Jimbo Wales' encouragement to be strict about fair use abuse, this account should remain blocked until the user commits to not interfering with unfree image cleanup. One such a commitment is received, any admin should return editing priveleges immediately. I am cross-posting this here for review and to be clear that any admin considering lifting this block after receiving such a commitment should not hesitate to do so. Jkelly 18:25, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

You did the right thing, in my view, and I note that he has now given his commitment and been unblocked, so the whole thing was cleared up in just a few minutes. AnnH ♫ 18:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

You shouldn't have blocked him over this. First off, the photo is a copyrighted by the Canadian government and is the official picture of the Canadian prime minister. A strong claim could have been made that the use of this photo to illustrate an article about the prime minister is valid under fair use. In short, this wasn't a nonsense fair use claim and you should not have blocked the user for disagreeing with you over it. In addition, I find it distaste that you blocked an editor over what was an editorial dispute you were involved in. You should have gotten another admin to do that.--Alabamaboy 18:46, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

You seem to be confused about two things here. The first is that I didn't block someone for a lousy fair use claim. I blocked an account that was replacing a free image with an unfree one. The strongest fair use claim in the world wouldn't matter --

fair use criteria is now an editorial decision. Jkelly

19:04, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Aside from the (admittedly not very applicable in this particular case) general point that determining whether a free image adequately replaces a fair-use one is, in some respect, an editorial decision, I am uncomfortable with the fact that we're handing out indefinite blocks to editors in good standing without even a warning. Unless the editor is actually refusing to follow image policy when asked to do so, there is no need for an indefinite block to be imposed. Indeed, in a situation like the above where the violation is very limited in scope (a single image on a single article) and the editor is not causing any substantial damage, I am unconvinced that we need apply a block at all before asking/warning/instructing them as to the relevant policy. Kirill Lokshin 19:13, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Here is the Talk page note I left. Assuming that is insufficient warning that reverting image cleanup is not okay, what would you suggest? What is better in these situations? Revert-warring, page protection, or blocking? Jkelly 19:24, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Leaving the same request you did on the editor's talk page, but without imposing a block; there's always time for that if they refuse. Kirill Lokshin 19:27, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

We should all note – in general, and not just specific to this situation – that there is a distinction between an indefinite block and a permanent one. While both are implemented the same way technically, they can be handled very differently in practice. A permanent block is imposed on an editor who has exhausted the community's patience or by decision of the ArbCom; such a block is accompanied by the sentiment 'Good riddance, you're not welcome back here' (if not those precise words). Other indefinite blocks may be placed to mean 'You're doing something that you shouldn't be doing, after you've been asked to stop. Once you agree to stop, you'll be unblocked; I had to block you to get your attention.' Such blocks are meant to be lifted quickly and by any admin as soon as – but not before – the appropriate condition has been met. Particularly since we have the {{unblock}} template, such 'indefinite' blocks should represent a small inconvenience for the blocked editor. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:14, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Except that such subtle semantic games are rarely a consolation to the target of the block, particularly when we use overly formalistic languaged like "revoked the editing priveleges for this account".

In general, requests and suggestions should be preferred to warnings, which should be preferred to blocks; not because it's any more difficult to remove blocks from a technical standpoint, but because of the effect of harsher measures on (usually) well-meaning volunteer editors. Kirill Lokshin 20:20, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I actually agree with you – and with Jkelly's revised opinion – that the block was hasty in this case. But I don't think that any 'subtle semantic games' are being played here. Jkelly provided clear conditions for the lifting of the block, and was clearly monitoring the situation—Jkelly attempted an unblock eight minutes after Michael Dorosh agreed to abide by the policy. (I also applaud Jkelly's decision to post a notice on this page, so that other admins could review the situation.) If we're going to talk about the language editors use, I'd say that the intent and meaning of Jkelly's whole comment – particularly the part that reads "One such a commitment is received, any admin should return editing priveleges immediately." – are clear. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:36, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I understand why you replaced the image and I agree it was the right move (assuming a better quality version of the pic can be found). The problem is that User:Michael Dorosh made what appeared to be a good-faith edit, reverting the image for a better looking one which had a valid claim at being fair use. Since you originally replaced that image, you were free to revert his edit and explain to him why he shouldn't have done that. Blocking an editor for one apparently good-faith revert, especially when the editor reverted your own edit, is not justified. If User:Michael Dorosh had reverted that image over and over, the block may have been justified but it would still have been better for another admin to block him since you were involved in the edit in question. Best, --Alabamaboy 19:10, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

This is still not the correct sequence of events. User:Thivierr was the one who was doing image cleanup here. Thivierr was then reverted, reverted back, and posted at Wikimedia:Media copyright questions asking if they were confused about image policy. That's how the matter came to my attention. I reverted back to the free image, and left a strongly-worded note at Talk:Stephen Harper. Your argument seems to be based on the idea that I have some sort of personal investment or conflict of interest here. That's not the case. Jkelly 19:18, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I just noticed that User:Michael Dorosh is complaining on his talk page about still being blocked despite agreeing not to revert that image again. I thought his block was lifted.--Alabamaboy 19:16, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I think I've cleared the remaining autoblock now. Kirill Lokshin 19:19, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

This was a clear over-reaction and a violation of

WP:BLOCK. Please engage in discussions with user before issuing blocks. Joelito (talk

) 19:22, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Nonsense. There was discussion. Assume good faith towards admins, please. User:Zoe|^(talk) 02:15, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Unrelated to the rightness or wrongness of anything, I hope that a better, useable picture can be found. This one is truly terrible (it is not the fault of the photographer, the picture was taken during a speech, which is bad enough for a portrait, and then it was cropped to show just the head). As an interim measure, the picture could be made far better with some simple editing (use the original and then recrop, of course). We should encourage this to be done before uploading the picture, if we don't already. :-) -- Kjkolb 19:21, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I totally agree. After all, this is the prime minister of Canada. If someone had replaced Bush's official picture with something like this people would think it was vandalism. While we should not use non-free images when a free image is available, if the free image is of horrible quality then (perhaps) the non-free image has a decent claim to still being used under fair use (notice I said perhaps, I'm still not sure on this).--Alabamaboy 19:27, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for the confusion. I didn't mean to suggest that the original picture should be used, just that a freely useable picture should be found that is better than the current one. I suppose if there was a valid fair use claim that it would be preferable to use the original, but I don't know at what point quality is so bad that it cannot be considered an alternative freely available picture, or if there is no such point. I guess that we should be grateful that it isn't a child's drawing. ;-) -- Kjkolb 19:45, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Jkelly, I'm glad to hear that you don't have an editorial stake in this article, although the issue of which image to use does appear to be an editorial decision and since you edited the article to use one image that seemed to me to have involved you in the dispute over the image. I still believe, though, that there was no need to block the editor over this one revert. Simply explaining the situation to him would have been enough. After all, we block people for a pattern of abuse after giving said editors sufficient warnings. Best, --Alabamaboy 19:24, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree that he should have been warned first. I don't know if it is true in this case, but people frequently don't read edit summaries or the talk page before editing or reverting. Also, if he was aware of the message(s), he may have thought that he had a legitimate fair use claim when he reverted. That makes it a disagreement over whether an image is fair use and not a willful violation of policy (deliberately using an unfree image that is not fair use). -- Kjkolb 19:45, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

No "fair use" claim justifies replacing freely-licensed content. See

Wikipedia:Fair use criteria for more details. This is perhaps where some confusion lies. Jkelly

19:51, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

There was a discussion

here was argued that, if the free image was not "suitable", a fair image should be use instead. Useful reading. -- ReyBrujo

20:08, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

It has also been argued that we should get rid of

WP:NOR. Jkelly

20:13, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I was referring to the conclusion both talk reached, not whether the discussions had any valid point for changing the policy. Discussion is good, especially in a topic that is easily "abuseable" by a casual user who happens to be browsing around. -- ReyBrujo 20:18, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

That there is confusion is the point and we should consider that users may not have read things like Wikipedia:Fair use criteria. I am not arguing that the content should have not been removed. I am arguing that an indefinite block without warning was a bad idea. A user may think that he or she is correct in replacing poor quality free content with high quality unfree content that he or she thinks it can be used under fair use. It does not matter if the content cannot be used under fair use because that only tells us that the content should be removed. It does not tell us whether an indefinite block without warning was the correct thing to do because that depends on the user's intentions, not whether they are right or wrong about a fair use claim or a policy. That is why I think a block without any warning, especially an indefinite block, is a bad idea in this type of case. -- Kjkolb 20:33, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Consensus does seem to be that a note at the article Talk page was insufficient warning that blocks might happen. I'd like to invite further discussion about whether page protection or revert warring are better alterantives. I'm concerned that there seems to remain some confusion about whether or not reverting unfree image cleanup is some kind of individual judgement call, and that we should treat replacing freely-licensed content with unfree content casually. All of that said, if consensus is that blocks shouldn't happen without significantly more warning, I'll commit to not blocking for image use violations without a warning on the user's talk page, and consider this to be a bad block on my part. Jkelly 19:48, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that part of the issue is confusion over the meaning of "alternative" in the criteria; this can be interpreted as meaning either any free image, or only a free image that is a suitable replacement within the context of the article. In other words, it may be unclear whether we should prefer free images even where there are concerns that their quality is so deficient as to make them useless; or whether we can temporarily retain the fair-use images (in places where we have legitimate claims for such, obviously) until a suitable free image can be obtained. Kirill Lokshin 19:59, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

The non-free image was re-added by User:Michael Dorosh [13], and re-removed by me. I request admin action on this. --Rob 04:43, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

On the general issue of use of the free image, I feel the standard should be: would we use the free image as the lead photo, if there was no alternative? If the answer is yes, we should only use a free image. The free image does not have to be as good as the non-free image. That's an impossible standard. Very few people/organizations are going to donate professional studio quality photographs to Wikipedia, and we shouldn't pretend they ever will. Also, I concede the low quality of the free image. But that's fixable by a industrious Wikipedian either taking a new photo of Harper, or getting somebody who has a photo, to donate it (e.g. a supporter who wants their leader to look good). There's no incentive for such hard work, if we're unwilling to give preference to free images. User:Michael Dorosh is demanding the free image be as good as the non-free image. But that's unreasonable. It need only be "good enough". Also, I note there's this public domain option as well. --Rob 04:57, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

The article on Inayat Bunglawala was edited by an anonymous user, who inserted links to the far-right, racist British National Party and included POV statements like "claims to be a moderate but revealed himself to be a born jihadist." It also included unsubstantiated claims of death threats made by Bunglawala to the anti-Islamic far-right weblog Little Green Footballs, which have not, as far as I'm aware, been discussed anywhere but on the aforementioned weblog.

I request that the administrators look over the edit history of the article, investigate the links to the British National Party and Little Green Footballs, and take appropriate action against the user: 24.79.43.137.

JF Mephisto 18:36, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Looks to me like simply inputting information that isn't reputably sourced. As offensive as you may find it, in my (non-admin) opinion, its no worse than any other article being edited with nonverifiable content and this user shouldn't be punished more strictly simply because what he input was pov and sourced to a weblog, or deemed anti-islamic. Batman2005 19:22, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, logging in as anonymous user to input links to racist organisations (namely the British National Party, which has leaders convicted of race-related offences as well as links to Holocaust denial and violent groups) in order to support Islamophobic comments, I believe, is significantly more than just using "nonverifiable content." It's vandalism and abuse. JF Mephisto 21:06, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I still don't understand though. In this edit [14]

admin noticeboard against simple vandalism. What you have here is a content dispute between yourself and several other users. It should be discussed on the talkpage civily and all users should try to work towards a consensus on the content of the article. As is now, there is nothing that 24.79.43.137 has done on that page that warrants any action by an admin. The IP user was reverting the blanking of a page, not pushing his/her own agenda. Batman2005

22:48, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

SIDE NOTE in this edit JF Mephisto, the user who intiated this report, added the semi-protection tag to the article. JF Mephisto is not an admin and does not possess the necessary permissions to protect/unprotect pages. I left a message on his talk page about falsely representing adminship. Batman2005 19:49, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

This article is undergoing an edit war - just keeping under the 3RR. Can someone do something else to solve it? Rmhermen 23:54, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I have contributed to this article, as have a number of quality editors... The other person reverting, has made no contributions to Montanism whatsoever, but just waded in out of nowhere a couple days ago, and announced that he says the article is no longer "allowed" to start off with "Second century AD" - but rather, must say only "Second century" - leaving the reader to figure out from the context that it is AD and not BC. He has made all kinds of ultimatums to me, including on my talk page, and when I don't answer all of his petty arguments quickly enough or to his satisfation (I really have several much more important tasks than minor details like this), he starts reverting again. Unfortunately, none of the other actual contributors to the article beside myself seem to have noticed, perhaps they are all on vacation this summer. I would love to see what some of the other people who actually wrote the article think about this.

ውይይት

) 01:10, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia (and this article in particular) is not of your property. This means that a right contribution made by anyone has the same value as your long-standing contributions. Your complaint, however, shows the way you work. You immediately revert my edits, but "have several much more important tasks than minor details like" answering my comments. Only recently, and after reverting your reverts, I got some kind of attention from you. You gave your points, I countered them (I would say I showed they were wrong or of lesser importance, but this is POV) and you simply told me to wait for "other people who actually wrote the article", after reverting, of course. Is this your way to settle the matter, ignoring other's comments but reverting their edits?--Panairjdde 01:26, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Well I don't know. But the fact is I have have not "ignored", but have replied to each and every one of your comments, as the record will show. I guess I just didn't respond to your satisfaction. I consider this an minor irritating nuisance over something quite petty, that is beginning to get more than just a little out of hand. I know this article is not my property, and never insinuiated that it was. I am only asking you to please chill out until we can get a third opinion besides yours and mine, preferably from someone who has actually had something to do with the actual article. Thank you again.

I was talking about comments on your

talk page. I usually avoid using edit summaries to discuss my position, they are not suited for this purpose. And I got angry for the way you had time to revert but not time to answer. You remembered a bit later to talk, and only after reverting to your version.--Panairjdde

01:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Dear Mr. ፈቃደ,

I would like you to understand what other people are doing, before attacking them. I have been removing redundant ADs and CEs, as well as uniforming usage in the articles. I think I need to tell you (because you claim to have no time to read my posts or understand my edits, but you have plenty to revert my edits) that this means that I remove AD/CE where not necessary, inserting them where necessary, and making articles that use both AD and CE to use only one of the two formats (apart special articles that use both, of course). This does not mean that I am deleting AD from all the articles. I also noticed in your talk page, that you have several problems with dealing with others' edits about AD/BC/CE/BCE matter, so, before claiming I am going "spirit of the rules regarding Eras", understand what the MoS says, and meditate on it.

Thanks. --Panairjdde 22:57, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

MarkSteere (

• Indefinitely block all the sockpuppets and leave the main account active. While having sockpuppet accounts is fine, using multiple sockpuppets for the purpose of having additional commentary is not. He's been using these multiple sockpuppets to participate in AfDs & DRVs, and he's also been launching personal attacks against the "evil deletionist cabal". Definitely not good faith. Note: only for accounts that are either self-admitted or confirmed (by CheckUser or whatever). --Deathphoenix ʕ 14:14, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
• Mark is disputing some of the sockpuppet accusations (on the Unblock mailing list). I haven't confirmed it with him, but it appears as if he is admitting to User:CluePuppet and User:Advocron (User:MarkSteere and User:Mark Steere would be assumed). He claims not to know about any other accounts. --Deathphoenix ʕ 14:31, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Note: As a show of good faith, I've deleted the user pages of User:CluePuppet, User:MarkSteere, and User:Mark Steere. I don't know if Mark actually wanted the accounts deleted, but I've explained that it's not possible, and I think he'll be satisfied with having the user pages deleted. --Deathphoenix ʕ 20:43, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Interesting! Steere's behavior is all too well-known including the use of pseudonyms, racist remarks, boastful texts and very defensive behavior when someone writes anything he doesn't like. He destroyed two Yahoo!Groups and, well, see yourself: Mark's destructive behavior in an SDG forum.

I don't know if the thread will be censored soon, so some short excerpts:

Mark: "priding oneself on how many edits one has conducted is like a terrorist priding himself on how many buildings he has blown up."

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/mancalagames/message/1305

Mark Steere used five e-mail pseudonyms to harass an internet user, of which two e-mail accounts were soon disabled because of criminal content ("violation of TOS).

In one e-mail he wrote about himself:

"Mark Steere (...) seems to be a self absorbed pompous idiot."

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/abstractgames/message/916

In others he pretended to be a German Nazi.

Mark Steere wrote a boastful vanity article about himself (perhaps he would call it "megalomanic") for the English language Wikipedia using a pseudonym. He was asked in the discussion on the article's deletion: "I would urge Mr Steere to moderate his responses to the issues raised here, and refrain from personal attacks on Calton or any other editor." (I wish Aaron would say something similar).

Discussion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Mark_Steere

Inappriapriate behavior in SDG forums:

Ultra-defensive behavior (confusing critisicm of his game with a personal attack on himself).

http://forums.superdupergames.org/viewtopic.php?t=233

And, well, one SDG thread was closed because of Mark's uncivil remarks.

http://forums.superdupergames.org/viewtopic.php?t=427&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15

I was a co-moderator of this forum (ie. stacking games at Yahoo!) and revived it after there was not a single post for 11 months. You (ie Mark) posted racist remarks about Russians to which I objected. However, the owner of the group defended your actions, so I left the group simply because I didn't want to be part of a group in which racism is acceptable. After that you started to "stalk" my e-mail account with numerous abusive e-mails using pseudonyms, but all sent from your computer.

After I left the stacking games group, Mark wrote that all Germans are Nazis and Dieter Stein (another member on this forum) responded to him:

"Mark, please calm down too.

Dieter

(BTW: I am German and I do not feel urged to always "dispel the myth that Germans are Nazis". That myth is your problem, sorry)"

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/stacking-games/message/183

Category:Wikipedia protected edit requests has had a backlog for over 24 hours now. --ais523 12:10, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Cleaned, I've removed the tag, thanks. -- Omniplex 10:33, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I had a request on my talk page to take a look at

I would say, send them through AfD as a group nomination. They do have content... I don't think the community will want that content though. Mangojuice^talk 12:49, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Couldn't you just redirect them back to the main article? Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 12:55, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

That's what I'd do - they can be split out again if there is anything notable about an individual player list. Just zis Guy you know? 13:43, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi folks, things aren't working the way I thought they would. It seems that Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brooklyn Beckham is a nomination closed on 20 March 2006. When this article was renominated, the nominator didn't create a new AfD, rather, he cleared out the old page and replaced it with a new AfD. I tried to split the two versions by deleting the page and restoring all the edits from 20 March 2006 and back. I then moved this page to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brooklyn Beckham (old nomination), and restored the latest history to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brooklyn Beckham. However, things didn't work the way I thought they would, and after multiple attempts to delete, move, and merging histories, I am now left with the old 20 March 2006 AfD, and while the AfD says that there are deleted edits in the article history, when I try to restore the edits, it says that there are no edits in the history! Can a more MediaWiki-savvy admin take a look at this and fix it, then tell me what I should have done? Thanks, --Deathphoenix ʕ 16:07, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Clear your browser cache. I'll try to split it. Prodego ^talk 16:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

• Ah, okay, thanks. I saw things were okay, then restored to my last "closed" version, but I'll leave the splitting to you. Please let me know how you did that so I can repeat the steps when I have to do it again in the future. :-) --Deathphoenix ʕ 16:11, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

All done. Just clear your cache before checking the history, and you should be fine. Prodego ^talk 16:18, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Great, thanks. It's that damn browser cache. :-P --Deathphoenix ʕ 17:47, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

In fact, it's the server that's not invalidating the proxies properly. It's a longstanding problem which happens with the history page when you have deletions or undeletions (it shows more often when you are doing a page history merge/split). --cesarb 21:46, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

As entertaining as this one-sided discussion is, I think it needs an external eye. I have also received an Email from ghirlandajo regarding is "eff off" edit summary, how necessary he is to the project and similar matters, which I will disclose if requested. Ghirlandajo has been warned before (notably in an ArbCom case) about his confrontational editing, uncivility and personal attacks. Circeus 18:25, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't necessarily have issued a block of any length for this, but he is being overly aggressive and confrontational. It's clear that you are not in a content dispute (in particular, you did not reinstitute your edit after blocking him), but it would have been better if someone other than the person the "eff off" comment were directed at had conducted the action, since it could be seen as an impassioned response to an insult. Deco 19:01, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I didn't care much for the "eff off" (although his severe issues with WP:OWN are something else). It's really the "troll" comment for leaving a {{civil2}} on his talk that triggered it. Circeus 19:04, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it's quite necessary to impress upon Ghirlandajo the fact that nobody—no matter how many articles they've started—is exempt from the requirement to stay civil. It will be regrettable if the only way to do this is through blocks—it would certainly be much easier for everyone involved if he were to change his behavior of his own volition—but, if nothing else works, I suppose there's not much else to be said. Kirill Lokshin 19:17, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

So you may congratulate Circeus that he saved Wikipedia from such a rude person and disgrace as myself. Either you create an encyclopaedia or a talk group of well-mannered pansies. If good manners are more prized here than content creators, I shall depart gladly. Just make sure there is a good substitute that will write articles about Russian history and art for myself. Since I joined the projetc in 2004, nobody has emerged to claim the place. Moreover, a large portion of my 2,500-entry watchlist doesn't figure in the watchlists of any other editor. Unlike manga or Star Wars articles, the topics from Russian history and art do not attract much interest from admins. It's enough to scan my watchlist to see numerous articles vandalized during my brief absence from WP. But it was your choice to oust me from this project and you have to live with it. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 15:35, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

First of all, the regretable and totally inappropriate "Fuck off" comment was from months earlier. Please do not use it to justify anything here. Second, eyes at the talk page provided by Circeus are invited indeed. I think admins should avoid borderline actions in cases where they are involved, especially since user:Circeus admits here that he "mostly hasn't been doing much user-related stuff since becoming an admin and that he needs guidance, so he wants to get some guidances". Blocking is the most serious punishment available and one has to be absolutely sure when using it, especially due to an issue where the user involves himself. I regret that Circeus lost temper. I suggest he removes his block himself and if he after

The Fuck off (or more exactly "eff off", occured today [19]. Within twenty minutes, having done a single revert, I was called a "revert warrior" (see previous diff) and a troll. Ghirlandajo, with all his edits and experience, and having been warned by the ArbCom, should have, of all people, been aware that such comportments are not accepted on Wikipedia. Circeus 19:59, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I then agree the remark was inappropriate. The rest of my message stays then, see above. Your referring the case to experienced and uninvolved admins at WP:ANI would have been the proper thing to do. I think you are taking this personally. You have the full right to do so, but not to use Admin tools while at it. Is there any reason not to have others decide on the issue? Please think of it calmly. Whether you self-revert your block or not, I think this is truly a borderline case and you should have posted it to WP:ANI for others to act on it. I do not accuse you in acting unethically. I think you simply lost the temper, also judging for your entries at talk, but that's just my opinion. --Irpen 20:05, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Seems pretty trivial to me (especially considering that Ghirlandajo is not a native speaker of English). Anyway, at least we now know that we ought not disagree with admins, or else... --Tēlex 20:02, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Telex, c'mon. Jkelly 20:09, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

My point is, JK, that even if it was done with the best of motives, it seems more like a revenge block than anything else. As there was interaction (i.e. conflict) in an article editing capacity, I think C was perhaps too involved to be issuing unilateral blocks. IMO he shouldn't have blocked, but asked someone else to review the situation (you maybe). --Tēlex 20:11, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, Telex, if memory serves, Ghirlandajo has insulted me in the past, so I suggest that your example helps demonstrate the point I was trying to make below. Jkelly 20:28, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Circeus, since you were an involved party, you should take the affair straight here, and not blocking him yourself. My $.02 -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 20:07, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

So the way to make sure one never gets blocked for incivility is to just insult every admin who warns you? That's a brilliant system. Jkelly 20:09, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't get your sarcasm... They were involved in an edit war over Spanish Baroque article prior to that comment. I'm fairly new to Wikipedia, but if memory serves, you can't be a judge and a party if you're an admin... -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 20:11, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

It's very borderline whether there was an edit war; certainly the cause of the block is only tangentially related to the Spanish Baroque article itself. While it would have probably been a cleaner solution for Circeus to bring up the issue here rather than enacting a block personally, the block itself seems quite justified, so it's a fairly minor point. Kirill Lokshin 20:14, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, I see your point Kirill. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 20:15, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I suggest we brush the motives aside. Circeus was right to refer the case to this board. More correctly, he should have gone to WP:ANI and let others, with experience and uninvolvement, to sort it out rather than using the strongest possible tool in his disposal. There is no foul play here. We all loose temper at times. We should simply realize when this is happening and have some [{WP:TEA]] to cool down instead of pressing buttons. --Irpen 20:17, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

• As it is, Ghirlandajo's block should have expired by now. Circeus 20:21, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Too bad then. Self-reversion by the blocker would have been a useful gesture, even if a symbolic one. --Irpen 20:28, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

If someone would be so kind as to look at this. I'd prefer avoid any additional interaction with this user. Circeus 20:39, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll try and talk to him... (Incidentally, I already did several days ago because of another incident) -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 20:50, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

In this case, the guy clearly violated

• Oh for heaven's sake this is a storm over nothing in a teacup, people swear at those making tiresome edits all the time - If every dedicated editor was banned for swearing then the encyclopedia would just be full of pokemon and pop-singers. Ghirla needs to calm down and Circeus learn that people of different nationalities are all different some more hot headed than others. In certain parts of the world if you are tiresome and pedantic you will get sworn at, and Ghirla need to learn not to swear at the pedantic. The problem here is that we have too many untrained admins running about like prefects in a third rate
  prep school. Solve this problem and we shall all be happy. Giano | talk
  20:41, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

This edit [20] shows the insertion of a block of text lifted verbatim from the Catholic Encyclopaedia. Leaving aside the fact that copy & paste of big lumps of text is almost always a sign you are doing something wrong, and the fact that it's part of a POV pushing campaign by Vaquero100 (talk · contribs), I'd like to know form the copyright spotters here what would be the copyright status of lifting large, uncredited blocks of text from the Catholic Encyclopaedia. I've restored the redirect for now. Just zis Guy you know? 21:23, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Our article on the

1911}}) and of the suitability of such an old text for inclusion are, of course, quite separate. Kirill Lokshin

21:30, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Assuming there hasn't been a new version published recently aprox zilch.Geni 00:07, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Unless I've missed it, and that would mean that I *really* haven't been doing my job, the Catholic Encyclopedia, in it's entirety, is PD. It is, of course, polite to credit the source, but there should be no issue with including the information. It does, however, need to be vigorously fact-checked for accuracy, since it was published before Vatican II and the other sweeping changes of the 20th century. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 06:31, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm guessing that weholesale copy-pastes of entire articles should be on Wikisource, not here. Just zis Guy you know? 12:18, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

No we have complete copies of EB1911 articles around.Geni 12:57, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

The page was recently semi-protected, then unprotected. It needs semi-protection again. --AaronS 22:00, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I was the one who protected it and subsequently unprotected it during the last disruption. The circumstances at that time involved an uncooperative editor who was ttrying to push a particular POV while attacking other editors, all the while using tons of different IPs. The past days' vandalism are just that, standard good ole fashioned random vandalism, no coherent attacks visible, so protection is not necessary. Just be vigilant. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 08:36, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

There are some major sockpuppet problems with

I second this post, Hogeye continues to use both open proxies and throwaway accounts to edit on this and other anarchism related articles, and it is getting incredibly annoying. The Ungovernable Force 22:13, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Someone really needs to stop this guy, he is fast deleting every single "AD" from wikipedia in express violation of policy. What will it take to get an admin's attention???

What guy? --mboverload@ 22:59, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

He is talking about me, it is a continuation to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Montanism. I already answered there, and he duplicated his request with this "URGENT". Note that he is going to revert many of my edits. I am losing my temper with him. (written before following text, blocked by edit conflict)--Panairjdde 23:04, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

He was already asked by one admin to "STOP IT" On the Montanism page... Now he is enforcing his own interpretation of the MOS to decide that AD "isn't allowed" on scored of pages...

ውይይት

) 23:07, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I came to the conclusion that is useless to discuss with this guy. He does not read my points, but is promptly reverting most of my edits. I hope something can be done to settle this matter. Thanks.--Panairjdde 23:12, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Lokks like Codex Sinaiticus has a friend, User:Crculver, who just reverted 15 of my edits, calling them vandalism. What should I do, start reverting them, or this matter is going to be solved?--Panairjdde 23:40, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Somebody do something PLEASE!!! He is edit warring with me over the article

This is an example of CS way of thinking. If I write Paul was born in 9, what does it means? According to Manual of Style, AD/CE year does not require tags, and in this article no other year is BC/BCE. What should I do, stop editing because CS loves to see AD everywhere? As regards Paul, I left AD for the year of birth, as a compromise, but this is going to be ridiculous.--Panairjdde 23:40, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Read it more clearly. AD is acceptable. It is also traditional practice. And the MOS makes a point of saying that crusading across the wiki invading articles and messing with it is seriously frowned upon, because it starts edit wars, as we are now seeing everywhere. Even on the Montanism page where this all started, consensus is to keep the AD.

ውይይት

) 23:43, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

This is not the place for this discussion. Let's continue it on Talk:Montanism.--Panairjdde 23:52, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

THIS ISSUE IS STILL NOT RESOLVED Numerous Admins have pleaded with him to stop, ignoring them, he has now resumed his campaign to delete all AD's that he considers to be redundant. He is also one of thre most argumentative users I have ever seen in 1 1/2 years as a wikipedian.

Could a disinterested admin please close this discussion? All of the referenced articles besides just the George Eyre article are clear hoaxes and damage Wikipedia's reputation. I wouldn't mind seeing the rescinded Jehu Eyre deleted as well, but if not, I'll list it for afd after completion of the George Eyre discussion. User:Zoe|^(talk) 02:38, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Anybody? User:Zoe|^(talk) 21:54, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

After reviewing the evidence and references I have deleted all articles related to George Eyre, including the withdrawn Jehu Eyre. My reasoning is available at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/George Eyre. Please review it. Joelito (talk) 22:17, 9 July 2006 (UTC)