Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive242

See User talk:166.70.79.252. I just reverted one addition, but I've seen a lot of links being added to this website over the past few months. A minor issue, of course, but it's come to my attention often enough that I wanted to inform those of you with block tools. --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 22:58, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

• Heads Up! - user is a shared IP belonging to XMission. --24.136.230.38 23:17, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Could someone deal with the stalking of me by this editor please? I reverted vandalism to the Caitríona Ruane article, and he has re-inserted the vandalism. I don't feel edits that call the subject of an article a "snide, hypoctricial cow" should be re-inserted personally. Thanks. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 23:08, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Not sure what the issue is, seems to have made a mistake. Viridae^Talk 01:47, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I suppose I should be flattered, but I have a sockpuppet. Can somebody please take care of this for me? I don't know what, exactly, should be done except that they should be blocked. --

02:59, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

AGFing and blocking for having a username too similar to that of an established user. – Riana_ऋ

03:07, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

As May 10th this issue is unresolved. This incident is in desperate need of comments. MrMacMan ^Talk 03:41, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

. Some of his remarks to other editors:

on my (noclador) talkpage:

• "I will take further actions" Gon4z 23:16, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
• "you did not citise anything its all crap you stright out deleted everything just because you are an anti Albanian dont mean you ahve to go around spreading propaganda you so called contribution of deeting articles are not wealcomed" Gon4z 19:54, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
• "ok I suggest that unless you have a real contribution you should not edit the article.... tahnk you" (unsigned)
• "you are delusional" Gon4z 15:46, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

on user MrMacMan talkpage:

• "I don’t know if you hate Albanians or what but pls do not edit that article unless you have sources from 2006 or 2007 I have been trying to work hard and fix that article I don’t need some one coming to ruin and spread propaganda just because they have a problem with Albanians" Gon4z 20:39, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
• "Las time I checked it was you vandalising the Albanian military articles using racist anti albanian websites as source i have cetise my figures." Gon4z 02:59, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
• "I not sure what you are considering an attack, I ahve not attacked you once I have just simplly replied to your comment, it is not nice to play the victim take it like a man you sources are not correct and are ruining the article." (unsigned, but once gain by Gon4z)

in the edit summary of

Albanian Land Forces Command

• "I am clearly the only one here providing proof from my figures unlike you two whore are spreading bate propaganda"

My information is based on the following sources:

• The World Defence Almanac 2006, page 95, Mönch Publishing Group; Bonn 2006;
• The IISS Military Balance Report 2006- 2007, page 80, Routledge Publishing; 106 edition (May 24, 2006)
• SIPRI Yearbook 2006, Oxford University Press, June 2006.
• Centre for SouthEast European Studies: Albania’s Armed Forces- 2002 Data]
• Bonn International Center for Conversion
• Albanian Land Forces Command

All this is ignored by Gon4z, who bases his information on the same homepage he criticizes as "Greek anti Albanian website". Also the same kind of edit war and personal attacks is waged by him at the article

, where he keeps reducing the number of active Serbian airplanes, substitutes the correct grammatical tense with the present tense, vandalises the syntax and tells a fellow editor: "this is the last time i will warn you get a profile because if not then your IP address will be suspended from editing any article" Gon4z 23:07, 1 May 2007 (UTC) Furthermore, according to user .

As Gon4z in continuous violation and a repeat offender of the following Wikipedia rules:

• Unsourced material
• Vandalism
• Three revert rule
• Edit warring and
• Personal attacks against at least three fellow editors

I strongly urge to block him for an extended period of time. noclador 03:28, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I can't say that I am not involved in this issue with this user and today I reported the editor to the Admin 3RR board

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/3RR#User:Gon4z_reported_by_User:MrMacMan_.28Result:24h.29 which resulted in his/her 24 hour block. I have really tried to get this editor to explain his reverts and his rational for using his older sources and his actual, apparent lack of sources. I think that this user has disregarded the newer and better sources put before him and has completely ignored all information not coming from his own older sources. When bringing up this newer information he ignores us and makes accusations that I'm biased or using other information that he says is biased (which I wasn't using anyway). I don't understand why he insists without explaining his reasoning so I have to conclude he is not acting in good faith. If this user was explaining his rational for reverting the changes this would be a content dispute but his disregard on this dispute and instead he's been very unresponsive to any comments that have been made to him. I would also say that his blocking period be expanded. MrMacMan ^Talk

07:43, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I brought this out of the archive because no one ever addressed the issue Noclador brought up for discussion. I would like to see someone else look over this users edits and tell us what action or their opinion is. MrMacMan ^Talk 19:58, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not excessively optimistic in that regard. I've previously reported Gun4z twice on this page for exactly the same reason and in both cases nothing happened. As I said back then, Gun4z's incivility doesn't seem to confined only to his dealings with Noclador, but also to other users. Valentinian ^{T / C} 22:37, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

That's horrible. While is why I hope to get some response about this user here and so it doesn't get archived again. MrMacMan ^Talk 00:54, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

He was referring to when he posted this and no one made any comments about it -- it sits in the archive uncommented upon. MrMacMan ^Talk 05:47, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

The first post got the same fate. Valentinian ^{T / C} 08:16, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh geez I didn't even think to search that far back for another incident. Wow. Can someone please notice this Incident report(s) now? MrMacMan ^Talk 09:54, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Breaking the Rules I'm going to completely abuse the system here and plead at the bottom of this page where apparently people are being much more helpful. I will now use a section break to separate my, Valentinian and noclador's messages from 3rd party editors who are not involved with this editor. MrMacMan ^Talk 21:27, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

---

Update: Gon4z has, in the past few hours, started to edit the articles listed above with similar outcomes. MrMacMan ^Talk 03:41, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I have looked at this. There are a number of simple problems here, like Noclador's preference for the Queen's english and spellings, and Gon4z' preference for American English, and the use of time-oriented words, like 'currently' and 'recently' and so on. There are also BIG issues. Noclador's writing tends towards the staid and encyclopedic, and Gon4z uses a lot of phrasing that leans in pro-Albanian ways. Despite his claims that all the others are 'Anti-Albanian', Most of the versions he opposes read in reasonably neutral ways, while some of his revisions seem to have a 'Albania will soon be a strong military power' anticipations.

I am addressing this because there does seem to be some talk page lack of interaction on the part of Gon4z, but would recommend that MrMacMan and NoClador try

WP:RfC for this. ThuranX

21:43, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks you for commenting. MrMacMan ^Talk 21:35, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I am not a Wikipedia regular and make edits to Wikipedia where I feel they are necessary. Today, I was insulted and humiliated by User:Fowler&fowler just because I misspelled At least [1]. And goes on to call me illiterate [2]. The user fails to give logic reasons while reverting my edits (says rv undiscussed IP edits when I had already raised the issue on the talkpage). I had heard a lot of stuff regarding the credibility of Wikipedia. Now I understand why Wikipedia is not credible.. because the users who want to make corrections get humiliated and insulted by some of these nasty, disgusting people. --Sriram Deshpande 03:42, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm very sorry about how he treated you, but you do have to realize that there is no way to force everyone to be nice. -Amarkov moo! 03:44, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm particularly disgusted by the 'hide behind an anonymous ip' remark. This sort of elitism has absolutely zero place on a collaborative encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It seems like some users get a few edits under their belt and assume that they're more valuable then a new user can ever be. It's pretty sickening. -

M^ask?

03:49, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I went and warned him. I'll keep an eye on that talk page as well.--Wizardman 03:51, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict x2)Yes, he was a bit uncivil, but maybe you shouldn't have baited him. "Guys.. keep this nationalistic crap out of Wikipedia please. And Fowler, yr userpage says u r a prof. Atleast you should be matured enough. Makes me feel it might be the same case as

not to make it personal. Sean William

03:53, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I do understand. I am sorry about that remark. I got carried away after I read some of the previous remarks on the same issue. I'll be more careful from now on. But I must say, a lot of people at Wikipedia are not very good role-models either. --Sriram Deshpande 03:57, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I have also warned the user with regards to his comments. Sean William is also correct with regards to your comments. Please read

WP:CIVIL to see what kind of language is expected when conversing with other Wikipedians. Thank you.--Jersey Devil

04:07, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I fail to see the relevance of the IP posting here when he was the one poking fun at Fowler in the first place; also the comments referencing Essjay indicate familiarity with Wikipedia, and not the first edits of a proclaimed "newcomer". My suggestion is that the IP/Sriram should apologize to Fowler -- Samir 04:11, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

there is no clause in

M^ask?

04:19, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Someone insults someone else, then comes crying to ANI saying they insulted them back. Not shortsighted to realize this is a waste of time, buddy -- Samir 04:34, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Warnings have been issued, I think at this point the best course of action is for the editors originally involved to try to keep away from each other as much as possible for the time being. ^{Review Me}CASCADIA^Howl/_Trail 04:25, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I am familiar with the Essjay controversy because I found it highly amusing. I used to use Wikipedia for my research work and after the controversy arose, I became a bit hesitant on using Wikipedia. When I was browsing through the concerned talkpage, I read some of the remarks left by Fowler and then I saw that his userpage said that he was a Prof. All I told him was that since he was Prof he should act in a matured manner and since he wasn't doing so, I felt that it might be the same case as Essjay's (as everybody knows.. he tried to gain credibility by telling everyone that he held numerous PhDs). The way he reacted to my comments has now made my belief that he is not a prof much more firm (I can't imagine my profs reacting in this manner). Anyways, I don't know why has this entire talk of me apologizing has come up? I don't think I did anything wrong. He blatantly reverted my edits without giving any reasons and that definitely aroused me. Nevermind.. good luck Wikipedia.. --Sriram Deshpande 04:26, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, if I had worked long and hard for a PhD and somebody said that I might not actually be a prof lol, I might be upset about that.

Veinor ^{(talk to me)}

04:31, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, fact remains that if I get a PhD, I won't publicly tell on Wikipedia that I have one because in that case, the main motive of me doing so is to gain respect and credibility. If Fowler demands respect and credibility by claiming that he is prof, then he should also behave as one. I mean look at the tone of some of his previous comments. Obviously, if write on my userpage that I am a Prof, others will look at my edits in a different manner. It makes me more credible in the eyes of others. I just felt he wasn't behaving like a prof but that definitely does not justify his reactions. --Sriram Deshpande 04:48, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I find it interesting that a brand new user knows about the

Essjay Controversy, can wikilink to it, knows how to add project tags, and found this noticeboard immediately. Yes, this guy was stupid, but people rarely act out unless they've been baited indeed. The Evil Spartan

17:36, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

So, new users aren't allowed to post here? Maybe you should write that at the top of the page or put it in the welcome message given to new users. Welcome to Wikipedia and oh, by the way, if you seem to well-informed about how things work you may be called a sock. Using the duck test can be perfectly okay as a way to make sense of otherwise convincing evidence. If no such evidence is present I don't think it's very civil to do so.

MartinDK

18:08, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

General comment - we've got 4 million registered users. Just from the sheer numbers, we pretty much have to have our saints and our villains. Be assured, the good, the bad, and the ugly are all adequately represented. Please don't judge the community as a whole by the behavior of any given few. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 18:17, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I think the history of this dispute lies in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/India-Pakistan ... Where User:Fowler&fowler lawyered for a bunch of Pakistani users who edit warred over a wide range of articles including Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. All i'd say "project tags" arent meant to signify national ownership as the banned Pakistani triad seemed to think. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar is a part of Pakistan project, based on mere technicality as he was born in what is now Pakistan! Amey Aryan DaBrood^© 18:02, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't aware that this had made it to ANI. My apologies to user Siram Deshpande. I did indeed over-react. It is true that I was baited, but, regardless, I should have been more civil. As for the Pakistan tag, I have no attachment to it, I merely wanted it discussed on the talk page (by the people who put it there) before its deletion. The dispute (as I saw it) was not about the Pakistan tag, but about the words, "Lahore, British India (now Pakistan)" for Chandrasekhar's birthplace. User SD, apparently didn't like the words "(now Pakistan)", but, as I point out in a post at the end of the section here, that particular format is used in the tertiary sources (Britannica, Encarta) for the biographies of people who were born in regions of British India that are now in Pakistan. In fact both Britannica and Encarta use "now Pakistan" in their respective biographies of Chandrasekhar. As for my "lawyering" in the RfArb, I am afraid I never got around to doing it. Finally, my interest in the page has nothing to do with India or Pakistan, but springs from my interest in the man—having worked through his last-written book Newton's Principia for the Common Reader, having read a recent biography, Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes, and having written the first two sections of his Wikipedia page. (I haven't gotten around to rewriting the last two sections, which are still not completely accurate.) Apologies again for my outburst. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:27, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Gene Poole (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

I have started working through Category:Micronations in an attempt to bring the articles there into line with our policies and guidelines. These efforts have included:

• Starting a guidelines proposal at
  WP:MICRONAT
• Seeking licencing clarification on several dubiously tagged images
• Nominating articles for deletion in good faith and with clear reference to our policies and guidelines
• Attempting to remove undue weight and opinion which isn't
  Lazarus Long (micronationalist)
  where I have meticulously trawled through the sources provided and rewritten the article to reflect what the sources actually say).

As with the last time I attempted to decruft the micronations articles, User:Gene Poole has popped up and:

• Accused me of vandalism and bad faith
• Canvassed the small number of regulars who support his viewpoint to !vote on AFDs
• Breached
  WP:OWN
• Rolled back some of my changes with rationales no greater than "this is how the article was before", without any rationale as to why the old version complied with policy and my version didn't.

If I were not involved in the dispute, I would block or warn him for the vandalism accusations and ownership issues at the very least. I can't, as I am involved.

I am therefore requesting a 3rd party admin to:

• review my contributions (if I am overstepping the mark, please say so!)
• review Gene Poole's contribs and roll back any unwarranted vandalism accusations and any changes which haven't improve the articles
• if unacceptable behaviour is found, warn or block him.

While I'm here I may as well also ask for interested admins to contribute to

, which is currently under construction.

Thank you. --kingboyk 11:42, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I've blocked him. See [3] and [4]. –

Steel

12:13, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

• (edconf, and I endorse the above) Gene Poole should be more civil and should refrain from canvassing. I don't see anything particularly wrong with Kingboy's edits. Note that Gene has a long history of non-constructive actions with repect to micronations, as well as of incivility and of persistent vote stacking through canvassing and sockpuppetry (for more information see Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Gene_Poole). I remain of the opinion that people who canvass for a particular debate should be blocked for the duration of said debate. >Radiant< 12:17, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
  • His reaction was, shall we say, predictable: [5]. >Radiant< 12:23, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

• [ec] Obviously you have failed to realise that any attempt to delete a micronation is necessarily an act of bad faith, an evil act of censorship and is motivated solely by your slavish devotion to state corporatism. Or at least that's how they see it. In my view a goodly number of these articles are blatant
  vanispamcruftisement, so you are doing the right thing reviewing them, it's not a surprise that the reaction is extreme and aggressive, because it always is. Guy (Help!
  ) 12:19, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

• Thank you, I wasn't expecting such quick reaction. Please, if I do overstep the mark on this, let me know, and also, please, if anybody wants to join me in rewriting these articles in a neutral way or discussing a guideline (and whether or not we need one) come on over to the new page. Finally, could somebody have a look at my user talk and remove any nasty messages, if there are any? (I haven't read it this morning but I've seen plenty of "vandalism" notices in his edit summaries). --kingboyk 12:27, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Note also that he removed {{

12:34, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

That block has been most effective, thanks guys. We now have some sensible dialogue going (see e.g. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lazarus Long (micronationalist)) on both sides. I hope it can continue when Gene Poole's block expires, but if not expect to see me back here asking for an extension. --kingboyk 15:05, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

This is somewhat infuriating. Again and again we see established users calling other established users vandals, and then we have templating the regulars, by regulars, which I think he did as well. I wish they wouldn't. It's very disruptive and very annoying. Regardless, calling editors vandals when they patently aren't is just a nasty form of personal attack, and should be treated as such. Peace and Love, eh? Good block. Moreschi ^Talk 15:30, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok, now, this all isn't fair. Gene's abrasive, but a block w/o warning for a single borderline comment on my talk page?

Kingboyk, this is really insensitive. Trying to make a real policy out of Gene's informal micronation notability guidelines was a great idea. AFDing a couple of related articles in the middle of that smacks of POINT, and coming here like this smacks of blocking for advantage in a content dispute by proxy. Your AFD nominations seem to be in conflict with the notability guideline you're seeking to establish, which is intensely frustrating and inconsistent.

There tends to be a lot of hot air in micronation debates on WP. What is overlooked a lot of the time is that Gene set up the first policy proposal for reasonable notability guidelines, and has deleted over time far more of the random micronation related cruft than the rest of the WP editor pool combined. He tends to be demonized in discussions, because he's not very PC and is abrasive, but in point of fact he's spent considerable effort in doing the right thing.

Kingboyk, you do not need a block to protect you from big bad Gene Poole. Gene doesn't need a block to keep him from grossly abusing anyone; this is clearly punitive not preventive. Georgewilliamherbert 21:11, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

It was his policy, and I used that to start up the page. He then said he didn't want a policy. Sigh. My current wave of nominations is based on existing Wikipedia policies and guidelines. It would be great if you would !vote to delete one or two of the worst ones, I'm sure you dislike cruft as much as I do. --kingboyk 23:25, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Also, please stop accusing him of canvassing. There's nothing wrong with giving people involved in a project or article a heads up when admin stuff happens related to it. The small list of people Gene notified are all longtime regulars working on Micronation articles. It's rather annoying (bordering on grossly offensive) when someone claims I was canvassed into participating on something on my watchlist. We have a SPAM policy - if he violates that then I'll block him myself, but him notifying me and others wasn't such a violation.

Gene being blocked when uncivil acusations like this are flying in both directions is not cool. Georgewilliamherbert 21:16, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Gene doesn't need a block to keep him from grossly abusing anyone So what do you suggest? Nothing else seems to stop him. Certainly enabling such behavior doesn't discourage him. --Calton | Talk 01:23, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

GWH, you appear to be misstating the situation. Gene has done quite a lot more than making "a single borderline comment". For instance, as demonstrated on his RFA, he has quite the history of canvassing,a nd not just to "longtime regulars" either. >Radiant< 08:01, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

The point is that with the exception of Gene Poole, people on both sides of the debate seem to be deal with the issues as adults. I've had useful dialogue with George W.H. and others over the last day and a half.

Gene Poole on the other hand is back, and following me around:

• soliticing another editor to revert war against me
• [6], [7] labelling my well argued AfD nominations as "spurious"
• Rolling back any change I make and labelling it as "no consensus" --kingboyk 23:25, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

• Agree, Gene Poole is a problem here. He exhibits signs of
  WP:OWNing these articles, and also he seems to be trying to inflate the significance of every minor tax protest (which is what a lot of these short-lived supposed micronations amount to). A town briefly declaring itself independent does not merit a separate article, and I struggle to see why we should include one nutter's protest at all in the article on Hay-on-Wye. Guy (Help!
  ) 07:00, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I think I need to comment on this after stumbling onto it while reviewing Gene Poole's unblock request. From what I can see, this is a content dispute that got out of hand. Gene Poole, without a doubt, got very uncivil and could stand to cool down for a bit. However, on the content dispute itself he has a point -- albeit an, at times, poorly made one. Even though these "micronations", "scams", what-have-you are not "real", they can still be notable in their not-real-ness. Last summer there was a great piece on the BBC titled places that don't exist (can't remember). I hope we can bring Gene back into the discussion constructively when the block expires. I think it is very important to draw the bright line between blocking for incivility during a content dispute and blocking for the content dispute. We need to be careful not (in reality or appearance) to use admin status to influence these disagreements. --Selket ^Talk 07:20, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. on further reflection, Places that don't exist was two summers ago and about unrecognized nations, not micronations. They had something on micronations last summer, but I can't remember what it was called. --Selket ^Talk 07:30, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

It's been happening for the last month and admin request to User:DaGizza proved fruitless so I will report it here. IP User 81.149.27.200 and 88.109.215.0 (who are clearly same if you look at their edits) have been repeatedly reverting my good faith edits on Khatri, Malhotra and Luthra. He also accuses me of vandalism.

I will let you judge the two versions yourself. Our diff on Khatri, Our diff on Malhotra, Our diff on Luthra. He also does not explain to me where the peacock claims on Luthra are, instead changing the category from a sourced one to an unsourced one. I think his motivation there is simply because I rvert him on Malhotra. He believes my surname is Luthra without any basis at all. Hopefully admins can judge the two versions. dishant 06:55, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Response to above claim

On the contrary dishant has been Petty stalking my edits and vandalising my and other users entries after his peacock claims about the Luthra family were reverted.

This claim to you appears in retaliation for my being one of four users having supported a Delete case for removal of an entry for an Ankur Luthra [8] which was deleted by an administrator the same day as he filed this report.

Contrary to his claims this has been going on for just a month, Dishant55555 vandalism goes back to March after my Correcting his Vanity claims about Luthra. You can see on this link he has made unsourced vanity claims including -

• "Many Luthra's are extremely successful in terms of business."
• "The Gupta Dynasty assumed control of Northern India in 400 CE, and the Luthras joined forces with the Guptas to maintain law and order in what became India's Golden Age."
• Luthras held prominent positions as rulers and warriors.

and adding alleged prominent people with the surname Luthra who do not meet wikipedia guidelines for prominence

He has since been stalking and vandalising Khatri, Malhotra, Kapoor etc pages by users who have changed his edits to NPOV ones. See his vandalism of the Malhotra page for example where he has removed dozens of lines of entries with authoritative sources such as links to Indian government websites.

Could dishant please be blocked from doing so. He has already received warnings to stop.

On the contrary. Ankur Luthra was deleted after I made this report. The IP User above has been picking off one-off ignorant reverts, please see above for the two versions we have been edit warring about at make your decisions. And please act, because this has been going back to March without solution. dishant 07:40, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

==2nd Response - The [9] page clearly shows that I supported an administrator Xoloz's Delete, of the not noteworthy Luthra article on 4 May. Dishant made the above request on 10 May I believe in retaliation fully aware of this - proved by the fact that he commented on my Delete comment it on the 5 May.

dishant reverts are not in good faith but I believe to be malicious as he is now indulging in sneaky vandalism since I have reverted his POV claims about Luthra , he has simply undone my sourced contributions by stalking. He keeps writing on the Luthra page "where are the peacock claims? ...when the comments on the Luthra page clearly shows what they are.

I wish to complain about the actions of an editor who calls herself TheRingess. This editor has a long track record of deleting the contributions of other editors, usually for trivial reasons or no particular reason at all. Often it is done purely on a matter of taste, when discussion would be indicated.

She has been doing this for as long as I have been contributing, sometimes to my contributions as well as those of others. She does not discuss things. I have tried to talk to her about this matter but she takes no notice. It has got to the point where she is deterring others from contributing. It is a waste of time when there is a 50/50 chance that she will delete the contribution.

Some relevant articles are:

Siddha Yoga

Bhagawan Nityananda

It is at the point where official intervention is the only thing that might help.

Thank you,

Sardaka 12:20, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

• From what I can tell, this appears to be a content dispute or series thereof, rather than an issue that requires administrative action. TheRingess has been active on the talk pages of all three of the articles you cite, in several cases replying directly to you to address your concerns (as here, for example). If you would like to pursue a solution on a dispute within a particular article, you might want to try an article
  RFM. If your dispute is more with the editing style of TheRingess herself, you might want to try discussing your objections with her on her talk page, since it does not appear that you have raised the topic with her in the past[10]. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!)
  15:16, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

• I absolutely agree with Sardaka. Ringess goes into topics and removes all but one external link with no justification other than maybe that she likes to feel powerful and destroy all the gathering work others have done to find and include relevant links. Sometimes she apologizes and admits to being wrong, but then she goes into another topic and deletes more. She seems to think she is the queen of Wikipedia. And she likes to fight with other editors and complain when she gets them so exasperated that they confront her about her behavior. Just look through her contribution history and you'll see all these things. I'm sure there are many other editors who just give up and stop contributing to Wikipedia due to Ringess. I created a new user name to share this information because there have been reports of Ringess putting people she doesn't like on her watch list and deleting their contributions. Then she archives discussions where she is confronted for her actions so they are hidden from other unsuspecting editors. Just look through her contributions and you'll find these things.
  no other edits
  outside this topic.

School block

User:167.206.181.204 has a history of obvious vandalism, and no good edits except for soem self-reverts. i have just blocekd it indefinately. Accordign to a WHOIS search, it is part of 167.206.181.192 - 167.206.181.207 which is assigned to "Ross School". Should other IPs in this range be checked? Is an indefiante block proper, and should the school authorities be contacted in any way? Note that i have no indication of where the school ios located geographically, althouygh i haven't really tried to find out, yet. Is there any other, or any different, action that i should take? DES ^(talk) 14:51, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

IPs should never be blocked indefinitely, especially school IPs. For blatant repeated school vandalism IPs a block of a month or two (with account creation enabled? I forget) is usually accepted. Luigi30 (Taλk) 15:52, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the IP should not be blocked forever. Escalate block up to a couple months if need be, disable account create but leave it anon only. That handle schools much better. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:55, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Block shortened. {{

schoolblock}} used on talk page. DES ^(talk)

16:15, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, a shorter block works just fine; school is going to be letting out soon anyway. A month would have been plenty sufficient. EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:03, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

User:Nikkul has been deleting all warning templates issued to him by various other editors. He was blocked for sockpuppetry approximately 2 months back which can be seen in his talk page. After that he has been warned several times regarding his edits on different pages by different editors. But the user has blanked the page several times using revert tools without explaining anything here, here and here. He was reverted twice but again blanked his talk page. What can we do regarding this? Gnanapiti 17:20, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Users can blank their warnings, even though we don't like it. It is interpreted as them having received them. This is why it is important to look at the history of a user's talk page before warning. 142.20.217.152 17:27, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Note that Nikkul has also deleted messages pointing out his copyright violations form article talk pages [11]. Currently there are two suspected but unconfirmed sockpuppets of Nikkul: Johnsmithcba (talk · contribs) and Universe=atom (talk · contribs), the latter of whom has similarly deleted warning messages from his talk page [12] and prematurely archived the Talk:India page soon after the sock suspicion was voiced there. [13] Abecedare 17:32, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

That's a stupid, stupid, rule. Surely, people probably warn each other with bad intent or incorrectly, but talk about throwing out the baby with the bathwater, in not letting obviously correct warnings stand. The Evil Spartan 17:36, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, though, it appears warnings are not the issue. Perhaps an administrator should just block the accounts. The Evil Spartan 17:38, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

• The point of a warning is to, you know, warn the user, not to serve as a permanent record. >Radiant< 10:42, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
• Blanking your own user talk is rude but permissible. Blanking other people's messages on article talk pages, on the other hand, is a problem. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 14:41, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

This just seems odd User_talk:JOKPL. Is it ok to ask the user to remove the images & link? Not a dog 19:23, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Remove the link yeah, but the image? It's a free-use image. Wikipedia isn't censored, so I don't have a problem with it. EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:42, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to jive with the purpose of a user talk page, though. Not a dog 20:36, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

It's their talk page. Ideally, it'd be on their userpage instead, but that's their prerogative. I've seen plenty of talk pages that are decorated with more than just the necessities (hell, my own has plenty of extra stuff on it). None of it involves topless young women, but that's just my choice. Though now that I think about it... EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:57, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree, it's their prerogative to put stuff on their talk page. Check mine out. (: ~Crazytales [talk] 01:20, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I thought a user talk page was meant to facilitate communication in order to help build the encyclopedia.... Not a dog 04:50, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

See

WP:USER. Really, as long as they aren't spending all their time messing with their userspace (it kinda looks like they are, but the majority of those edits also seem to suggest they're using it as a sandbox, which is acceptable), no harm is being done to the project.
That said, after checking out the user's other contributions, I can't say as I have much faith in his ability to contribute constructively to the project. EVula // talk // ☯

// 14:08, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

DeletedIgnored and archived personal attack complaint

Why was my complaint deleted without reason. [14] Is it now beyond the scope of administrators that editors calls other editors "idiot" and "asshole"? For your benefit, I will repost it here:

Dear Admins, User:Lars T. poses a problem on Hans Filbinger and Talk:Hans Filbinger. He has a very strong POV in the matter but does not make any valid contributions. His edits to the article itself consist of repeated unexplained tagging [15][16]with no answer to requests for his reasoning, posting hidden comments [17], frivolously tagging "autobiography" when the man is in fact dead [18], strange edit summaries [19] [20].

On the talk page he ignored my pleas to explain his tags [21] or replied with snipping, incorrect remarks [22]. - In contrast to another recently arrived editor that tagged the article and eventually heeded my request. Lars, instead of clearly making his point he resorted to a cat-and-mouse game [23][24][25] and recently resorted to personal attacks [26]. I reverted these [27] and posted a warning on his talk page to please desist from such behaviour [28], to which he reacted by this and this. Let me note that I did not actually call him a troll but described his behaviour (as shown above) as "trollish" and used the verb "to troll". How far these can be termed personal attacks has been debate before - I directed them not at his person but his behaviour. In any case, his attacks were much stronger and any wrongdoing on my part would certainly not entitle him to this.)

While there is a substantial discussion between the other editors, who have contrary POVs on the matter, Lars is simply a disruptive force. Please do something. Str1977 ^{(smile back)} 00:01, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Str1977 ^{(smile back)} 22:36, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

It wasnt deleted, it was archived to

M^ask?

22:49, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Moved to an archive nobody will ever take a look at. I am astounded that supposedly no admin found anything relevant in an editor calling others "asshole" and "idiot". Not I am in need of a reply (and I never asked for a reply) - the one issuing personal attacks needs a reply. Which one I leave to the digression of the admin that takes his office seriously. Str1977 ^{(smile back)} 22:58, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

This is an extremly busy page. Assuming your post has grounds (I haven't looked) it may just have been overlooked. Viridae^Talk 23:42, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I know this is a busy page full of stuff. It might have been overlooked though that IMHO calls this whole archiving automatism into question. Such clear cases do not take much time to address. Str1977 ^{(smile back)} 07:26, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Lars T.'s remarks were well over the top. I have left him a warning. Tom Harrison ^Talk 01:05, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Str1977 ^{(smile back)} 07:26, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

23:50, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that calling you a "blatant vandal" is certainly incorrect as this isn't vandalism. However, I don't agree that the image is justified fair use. For starters, the resolution is way too large for a fair use image. Secondly, I don't believe that the image itself is being specifically described in the text (as opposed to the storyline surrounding it) which is required to justify using a copyrighted image. Will (aka Wimt) 23:58, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll certainly admit that the justification is arguable. But that disagreement should take the form of discussion, not clearly false accusations. --Minderbinder 00:08, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Good faith went out the window when you were removing images on other pages after several reversions during the recent episode list crackdown. You know they aren't allowed, and you're being all

M^ask?

00:08, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Disagreeing with you doesn't mean he has bad faith. Bad faith means he is purposefully intending to harm the encyclopedia.

Disagreeing with you is also not vandalism. Labeling his edits as vandalism is an example of bad faith in and of itself.

So while you may possibly be right on the acceptability of the end result, the way you are handling it is clearly not acceptable. Your response above in no way admits any error for your actions. Stop labeling good faith edits as vandalism and your arguments for your actions will become easier to accept. If you are in the right you don't need to be deceptive in edit comments. DreamGuy 00:19, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

M^ask?

00:25, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe Minderbinder was operating as a vandal, just perhaps he/she was not aware of the discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Removal of images from lists of episodes which made it so images on episode lists is now prohibited.--十八 00:28, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

She/he was a participant in that discussion. Check their contribs, at least a dozen to that subpage. -

M^ask?

00:30, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

You are WP:Wikilawyering to try to justify your false accusations of vandalism. It'd be far better for you to just apologize and promise to not do it any more instead of rationalizing your bad behavior away. DreamGuy 07:10, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh please, I'm the biggest supporter of

M^ask?

09:40, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

IAR says to do it when doing so makes the encyclopedia better. I don't see how lying about "vandalism" does that when you can just make edit summaries that aren't misleading. --Minderbinder 12:06, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I had this page on my watchlist since I unprotected it a few days ago. I agree that the edits were not vandalism, but they do qualify as edit warring. Minderbinder ran up against his 3rr limit despite being advised by several people, including me, to discuss the issue instead of reverting. I protected the page again, for now, but that is not a long-term solution. CMummert · talk 00:56, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

If Mindbinder was a participant, then why did he/she try to include the screenshots? That seems like a blatent use of

WP:ILIKEIT and goes against the policy that was introduced, which is to remove the screenshots from the episode lists.--十八

01:24, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

"images on episode lists is now prohibited" Not according to the policy

WP:NONFREE. According to that, as long as use is minimal and meets the criteria there (and in this particular case I argue one image on an article is minimal, and I argue that the use was for criticism and commentary and thus met the policy) nonfree images may be used. If the intention is that lists may not contain even a single nonfree image, I'd suggest making a proposal to add that to the policy. I'd really like to get a clarification on this so that this debate can be put to rest and we can go on editing articles - are lists allowed to have any nonfree images or not? --Minderbinder

12:06, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

The main debate was about having a "nonfree gallery of images" such as having a screenshot for every episode in an episode list. This was discussed in full in the link to the discussion I provided above, and the end result of it ended up causing the removal of all screenshots from episode lists on the entirely of the English Wikipedia. All I'm saying is that if you were to add one nonfree image, that would intice others to add more and eventually it would get out of hand, so it would be best not to include any.--十八 00:32, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, I brought this on myself. But still. I e-mailed a government agency to settle a dispute and got a great response back. Please see

01:04, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not asking for his identity, and as I said to him on my talk page: Even if I was they couldn't tell me because Privacy Laws preclude her doing so without your authorization. Privacy policy of the us federal government

Anynobody

01:07, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

[31] [32] [33]

01:11, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Just a comment on the diff you provided; that was a fairly complicated situation, and I think he was perfectly to suspect the user (which is why I said as much[34]). To point at that diff as damning evidence of bad faith is, in my opinion, unfair. EVula // talk // ☯ // 01:09, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

EVula, no disrespect, but ignore the diff. This is a very serious matter, regardless of his history. It has been very carefully explained and he is flat refusing to write a simple email to avoid an accidental disclosure. He is saying.. ok if she screws up JA can get her fired. That doesn't do much for his privacy though, does it?

He is not being asked to sacrifice his first born. He is being asked to correct an honest mistake. Lsi john 01:13, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

"Just a comment". Nothing more. I didn't address the rest of the post because I didn't have time to properly look into it. Trust me, if I was bringing my personal opinion into the matter, I'd be responding in a totally different fashion. EVula // talk // ☯ // 02:09, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

That a law exists does not mean that every person knows it or that it won't be broken accidentally.

Phony Saint

01:14, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

We're talking about:

(name removed)

Coordinator of Communications Congressional Research Service (phone removed)

(e-mail removed)

The position seems to be one that would be aware of the law.

Anynobody

01:18, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, and now you have been made aware that a mistake could easily be made. You did not explain how you got that email. You did not explain who redacted the information. You are gambling that she wont assume you got it from him. However, by refusing to take appropriate action to ENSURE she won't make a mistake.. for me.. AGF is hard to assume here. You can correct this with a simple email. It costs you nothing. This isnt a matter of law, its a matter of making sure she doesn't make a mistake. The only two reasons I can see for refusing are a) pride and b) hoping to get his name. I am open to other reasons. I just don't see them right now. It's not too late, but it will be after she makes a mistake. Lsi john 01:23, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

[diff] Lsi john 01:23, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

In the remote, unlikely, and improbable chance she mentions your name I would never post it on here and would even be his witness in a lawsuit against the government if he wants. (I truly don't care who he is, I don't know how to express my complete and total lack of interest in knowing anything about him or spreading his personal information around.)

Anynobody

01:33, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Then why not send a simple email, to make sure she doesn't? Why dig in? Why not take 30 seconds and do the right thing? Lsi john 01:36, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Because I have faith she knows her job and the law, as I've said. If you and

Anynobody

01:40, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I can't as I don't have her email address. JA probably will, but he shouldn't have to. Your first email, was an honest mistake. Your refusal to correct it, is deliberate. Further discussion is irrelevant. Lsi john 01:50, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Here you go: (removed - justanother)... you and anyone else can access it through the history on the talk page.

Anynobody

01:56, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Is one of you going to send the email? If not, I will, just to end this. If you don't mind my saying so, JA and LJ, you're the mother asking Solomon to judge. Anonobody's fine with cutting the baby in half, you're going to have to be the ones to give in in service of the more important goal. Or, you can keep running to AN/I expecting the admins to just hand the baby to you. I know I'm being rude and I'm sorry, but I really think this needs to be said. It's not an admin issue. It's not the admins' job to get Anonobody to do the right thing (putatively, anyway, I'm not making any judgements). The email needs to be sent, send it. And Anonobody, geez man, just send the friggin' email. So what if you don't need to? Do it to be a gracious human being who stoops to conquer. Do it because it's easy, it doesn't harm you in any way, and it helps a fellow being who is making a sincere request. Anchoress 02:04, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Endorse Anchoress, even though she's edit conflicting me. I believe you when you speak of your "complete and total lack of interest in knowing anything about him," Anynobody. I certainly don't think it's in order to fish for his identity that you're refusing to take a minute to do this. I think it's because of orneriness and personal dislike. More: I honestly don't believe Justanother needs to be worried about this government employee giving out his identity. It would be highly unprofessional. But for goodness' sake, Anynobody, you can tell JustA is worried, can't you? What's so dadblammed hard about being nice, even if it is Justanother, instead of spending all that time proving that you have a Right to be Not Nice? Bishonen | talk 02:11, 11 May 2007 (UTC).

Tee hee. Well I just squeaked in under the wire. Between my numerous edit conflicts trying to post and deciding not to post and editing out the swears, you really should have been first, Bish. You can have the baby. ;-) Anchoress 02:25, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't mean to give the impression I'm being stubborn just to spite anyone, but I really honestly believe the employee knows her job. Phrasing a note that says in essence "Don't make a mistake and mention the person's name from the e-mail I cited" as a follow up to a good faith request about the function of the government seems inappropriate since we don't have any way of knowing if she will or won't make a very VERY improbable mistake.

Anynobody

02:13, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Let's also not lose sight of the fact that if I were to receive and spread his personal info it'd get me kicked off here and open me up to being sued. I'm not going to open myself up to those chances, which is why nobody should be worried about it. (Folks, I can't help but observe if there is this much concern about her knowledge of her job, why are we even taking her word for

Anynobody

02:22, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

"Please note that Anynobody has a bit of a fishing history, see Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/COFS and this diff".

"EVula, no disrespect, but ignore the diff."

Why the sudden 180 on this issue? Could it be to "prove" that "This is not about me®"? For that matter, why did you bring this incident to WP:AN/I at all, besides so that you could slap an accusation complete with the editor's name in the Table of Contents of the page? An easy solution, so easy that it's just not plausible you didn't think of it, was near at hand all the time, and yet you chose to go the inefficient (inefficient, that is, if protecting your privacy was your true goal) route of raising a very public stink about alleged misbehavior by Anynobody -- which turns out to be very much 'alleged theoretical misbehavior'. More than that, anyone who reads your lengthy confusing allegations all the way through will now know just as well as Anynobody does how they could "fish" for your RL name. Again, if your actual purpose was to protect your RL identity you really chose a curious way to go about it, by telling everyone who reads WP:ANI how they, too, could "fish" for it just as effectively.

I think that the situation is really quite plain. The "fishing" is not Anynobody "fishing" for your RL identity, it is you once again "fishing" for some pretext to smear the name of an editor whom you disagree with, accusing them of bad behavior. A quick look in the history of the Incidents noticeboard shows a recurring pattern of such efforts. This one is particularly shameless, given your recent (just about one week ago) oh-so-accidental dropping into the conversation of an editor's purported first name (for obvious reasons, I will not post the diff here, but I will provide it upon request to any admin who e-mails me requesting confirmation of it.)

As I said, if your real concern was protecting your own identity, the solution is so blatantly obvious that it is simply not credible that you didn't see it. The entire stink you're raising here boils down to "I used my real name when I e-mailed Person X who works for the government. I revealed who Person X was, when I relayed what Person X said to me. Now Anynobody has e-mailed Person X, referring to my e-mail. If Person X jumps to the conclusion that he and I already know each others' real names then she may use my real name in replying to him! Obviously, if Anynobody does not immediately send an e-mail to Person X warning her not to use my real name, then he is "fishing" for my real name and I am justified in making immediate accusations of him doing so on WP:AN/I!" Are you actually expecting us to believe that it never occurred to you that you could send a second e-mail to Person X, asking her to please not reveal your name to anyone else? Didn't that strike you as a far more effective means of getting the message to the person who actually needs to hear it?? Or was manufacturing an "Incident" over Anynobody's purported failure to provide appropriate cooperation such an attractive prospect, it completely kept you from examining any solution that did not require Anynobody's involvement? -- Antaeus Feldspar 02:32, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Antaeus, you are doubly confused. 1) those two quotes in italics up there? Only one is mine - the other is from Lsi john about "ignore the diff". 2) Never ever dropped F451's name - that is a LIE (BIG LIE) on your part. --Justanother 03:11, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

You are correct on the first point -- I went back and checked and it was indeed Lsi john who said "ignore the diff". On the second point, it is neither a LIE nor a, quote, "BIG LIE" on your part, but the truth which I am quite ready to prove with a diff to any appropriate parties. -- Antaeus Feldspar 04:17, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I BEG an admin to take Antaeus Feldspar up on his offer rather than let his crap accusation stand. Please. --Justanother 11:46, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

No, Justanother, it is verifiable fact, not a "crap accusation". If you want an example of a "crap accusation", why, then, let's look at this. Right away we see certain similarities, like the editor name slapped up in the section title so that even if the accusation is proved to be a blatant fabrication, the smear on that editor's reputation is archived for posterity. Another similarity is that the actions taken reflect a far greater emphasis on manufacturing an Incident than on actually resolving any wrongdoing -- if you actually had a legitimate report of 3RR violation to make (which you didn't) then why didn't you report it on the appropriate noticeboard? You certainly knew of the existence of that noticeboard, since you had reported an alleged violation just two weeks prior (I think it's quite revealing to note that in that instance, too, an admin called you on improper usage of the noticeboard: "What I really dislike is you, Tanaats and BabyDweezil continuing the edit war on this page, which is strictly not ok (just look at the very top of this page).") So you not only made a "crap accusation", to use your own pungent phrase, you apparently deliberately filed it in the wrong place. As I said, the "fishing" going on here seems to be you fishing for ways to manufacture grievances. -- Antaeus Feldspar 15:05, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Au contraire, mon frère. You continue your wikidream. My AN/I on you was about a lot more than 3RR; I noticed that you only linked to the section break sub-title. The real issue was called "Attacks and disruption of noticeboards by User:Antaeus Feldspar". Which, golly gee, I see that you continue with your lie about my "name-dropping". Hopefully an admin will happen along soon and expose your lie. Until then . . . Carry On. You might as well because you sure won't stop on my account. --Justanother 15:14, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

When did anyone say that the Incident you manufactured at that time was solely about your phony allegation of a "5RR" violation? I said nothing of the kind, so I don't see why you're acting as if you somehow nullified the fact that you deliberately posted a false report of a "5RR" violation to the wrong noticeboard. I posted to the section break sub-title because of the two section headers you created for the same manufactured Incident, that was the one where you specifically highlighted your false allegation of "5RR" violation. Good Lord, I don't have enough time in the day to sit down and list out every "crap accusation" you make; I was just pointing to one of the ones that make it most obvious that your first priority in pointing out these alleged "problems" is not actually resolving the problems. -- Antaeus Feldspar 18:07, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Sigh. You accuse me above of posting to the wrong noticeboard. I was showing that I did not because my complaint was about a lot more than 3RR. It was pretty much about what you are doing right here, right now; lying and misrepresenting on an admin noticeboard. --Justanother 18:13, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

You know what, Antaeus. I am done here. And I apologize to all the readers here. This had nothing to do with you, Antaeus, and you show up with your usual crap and I rise to the bait. I am sorry and I am done here. You can have ALL the last words on this one. --Justanother 18:16, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not surprised that you're done here. You already got what you were apparently really after, which is a chance to slander fellow editors. -- Antaeus Feldspar 03:35, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but I was away for a bit. I am going to send an e-mail to the employee asking that my name not be revealed. Thank you for your input. I thought it would be appropriate if Anynobody did so but I am certainly capable of doing so. --Justanother 03:05, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

He's right though, you have an unusual and counterproductive way of preserving your privacy, for example:

Here you go: (removed - justanother)... you and anyone else can access it through the history on the talk page. Anynobody 01:56, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

If you're worried about people getting at the e-mail address why remove the address but leave my instructions on how to access it?

10:05, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

You too are confused AN. I am not trying to protect the identity against the human editors viewing this board; I am trying to protect it against bots and web spiders so it is not harvested for spam or scraped for elsewhere. The best I can do is remove it. I have asked the employee if she would like me to have all references oversighted but, as she is a public servant, I doubt that she will care enough to. I do what I can, AN, and that is all I asked you to do, what you can. I was angry at the moment when I brought this here but upon reflection still think that it would have reflected better on the project if you had asked. That way we could at least pretend that we argue here in a mutually respectful manner. --Justanother 11:46, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

That's very thoughtful of you, I'm sure the employee'll appreciate your concern. I hadn't thought about that aspect, did you let the person know that their e-mail was posted briefly here in case the spammers already got it when you e-mailed to remind about your name not being released? It's too bad you didn't think of that possibility before posting it, I guess hindsight really is 20/20.

02:16, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I first stumbled upon this when I was trying to do research on the University of Texas, and was confused when wiki redirected me to one particular university instead of the general page the talks about them all. When I tried to correct the mistake, I noticed that the page was protected by Johntex, a wiki administrator and UT-Austin alumni that made major contributions to the University of Texas, Austin’s football team.

Despite the obvious bias, Johntex reverted an edit that made the page properly link to the University of Texas System instead of the University Of Texas, Austin, and then protected the page. He claimed that he reverted the change due to "current consensus;" however, it's clear by visiting the talk page[35] that various users insist that it should link to the System instead of Austin, with only Johntex contending the change under the false premise that the University of Texas colloquially refers to Austin. Other users have pointed out that, “University of California, University of North Carolina, University of Hawaii, and University of Illinois all redirect to the system.” It is inconsistent to treat the University of Texas system any differently, especially when one considers the amount and the size of all the individual universities that encompass the term.

If it all possible, can another administrator fix the protected page and leave the editing to those without bias? --Dimachaerii 04:04, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Says the user with all of 3 edits. --Akhilleus (talk) 04:13, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

(ec) That's a common problem/practice when it comes to university systems. The redirect often goes to the flagship campus, rather than the article on the system, and there doesn't seem to be an overwhelming level of agreement on whether that's a good thing or not. For example, I believe

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Universities. --Dynaflow babble

04:17, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm guessing that User:Dimachaerii has already raised this issue on the talk pages, under the name of User:Unsuspected. --Akhilleus (talk) 04:19, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Could be, but I don't think it was appropriate for Johntex to revert the change and then immediately protect it. Frise 04:20, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Probably so, but that stopped an edit war and maybe saved Unsuspected from a 3RR violation. --Akhilleus (talk) 04:23, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Wow, life is interesting. I was confused was Akhilleus comment regarded the amount of edits I made instead of the topic at hand; it felt as if Arkhilleus had a personal agenda against me and used a personal attack instead of answering my issue.

I really valued Dynaflow’s comment, as it poised a very good question, so I did a research on the University of Wisconsin to find out why it differs from the other university systems and if it has anything in common with the University of Texas system. My finding were very interesting; it seems as if what the two systems have in common is that both are defended by a bias admin, in the case of Texas, it’s by Johntex, but in the case of Wisconsin, it’s by Akhilleus! The University of Wisconsin page is also plagued by controversy for the inconsistent redirect, so I can only conclude that the reason it was not changed yet is for the same reason the University of Texas redirect was not changed.

I strongly believe that the reason these redirect are in place is simply because of bias, although I’m not sure if a user like me can really amend this inconsistency.--Dimachaerii 04:42, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

No, I am not Dimachaerii, but I do know him in RL and have discussed the matter w/ him (although I think that’s irrelevant anyway).

I find it interesting that the only 2 university that link to the flagship university as oppose to the system are the ones with admin backing…

University of California, University of Hawaii, University of North Carolina, and University of Illinois all properly redirect to the university system as oppose to the flagship university. And, on top of that, most of them tend to be fair by listing the universities in alphabetical order and such, instead of treating one university as special.

I think it is pretty clear to unbiased users what is the right and fair thing to do.

P.S. I know the 3RR rule. Johntex, having done the first and second revert, would have violated it before me (I only reverted once). Unsuspected 04:44, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

You have not adequately researched the issue and your findings are invalid. See

University of Wisconsin, or Purdue University for example. You gave four examples of your desired method, but there are at least six counterexamples. - ChrisKennedy^(talk

) 07:18, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Add University of Oklahoma, University of Washington, University of Tennessee, University of Arkansas, University of Florida, University of Georgia and University of Arizona to that list of counterexamples. Phaedriel - 11:46, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Phaedriel, almost all of your examples are actually not university systems, but just universities themselves. And most of the university systems are so small that the other campuses barely have a page.

BTW, the way I picked those universities was by looking at a university ranking chart. It is interesting to note that the better the flagship University, the more likely it is that it will not try to steal the spotlight.

Also, guys, let's remember what is relevant to this discussion is the debate on what is the right and ethical thing to do. Listing examples is not the best form of argument. Unsuspected 15:02, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

It is humerous that you don't like examples when they go against you, yet you started your argument here by citing examples. Does that mean your post is "not the best form of argument"? Johntex\^talk 16:02, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd be happy to discuss the matter further on a different page, but please note that most of the Universities you guys listed don't have a system page, and some don't even have a system. "University of Florida system," for example, does not exist, and the only University of Michigan is Ann Arbor. I'd be happy to debate each one of the Universities with you, but almost all of those you listed are actually fine the way they are. --Dimachaerii 19:06, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

"the only University of Michigan is Ann Arbor" -> Wrong yet again, see

University of Michigan-Flint. ChrisKennedy^(talk

) 19:49, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

My first point still applies; there is no University of Michigan System page.--Dimachaerii 00:02, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll give full support to Dimachaerii. It is very obvious that University of Texas is the system. The same thing is true for University of Wisconsin. Some administrators and editors are

13:51, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree, Miaers. It is really not that compliated of an issue, I think. Unsuspected 15:03, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Please note that Miaers, previously uninvolved in the matter, was notified of this discussion by Dimacheaeri.[36] Johntex\^talk 15:46, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Dimachaerii/Unsuspected are probably the same person and even if they aren't then

Talk:University_of_Texas_at_Austin/Old_4 and the consensus was that most people are looking for the University of Texas at Austin if they go looking simply for University of Texas. User:Unsuspected

is welcome to work on changing the consensus if he/she does so in a civil manner. However, the user's very first post on this topic was combative and insulting. A portion of which reads:

I find it appalling that UT-Austin students keep redirecting UT to UT-Austin. UT needs to redirect to the UT system, just as how University of California, University of North Carolina, and University of Illinois all redirect to the system and not to the premier university in the system. UT students of other campuses really need to combat this more instead of having UT-Austin steamroll them. UT-Austin is inferior in relations to the premier universities of the systems mentioned above, so maybe that’s why you guys have such an urge to stomp on anybody who is smaller. (emphasis added)[37]

Judging from other edits this new user has made, it looks like they read a US News and World Report college ranking story and now want all Wikipedia articles to conform to that one source.

Unsuspected is wrong on the facts, and wrong on the methodology they are trying to employ to change the redirect. He/she needs to be steered toward civil discussion and away from bombastic rhetoric and revert warring. Johntex\^talk 15:29, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Johntex, you are hardly being civil. My facts are far from wrong, and in fact, you have yet to counter any of my points. Is it really that big of a blow to your ego to have UT redirect to the system as oppose to Austin? It's not like Austin is not part of UT, and I won't mind if you put a tag at top similar to Univ of Hawaii. You only keep repeating that there was a consensus reached, which is clearly not true. Attacking me for "not doing my homework" is very uncivil, considering that I replied to you on this matter. While you're citing me, why not cite some of my main points?

• Why is University of Texas different from every other University systems (University of California, University of Illinois, etc)?
• Since UT-Austin is an entity of University of Texas, why shouldn’t University of Texas redirect to the main entity (the system).
• Since UT-Austin is part of UT, there are clear links in the UT page for the Austin campus; I don’t see any problem with people following those links in case they were looking for Austin.
• While people in Texas, and particularly in Austin, might refer to UT-Austin as simply UT, that is just not the case for people outside of Texas.
• And furthermore, while I do not mind you taking part in the debate, it is obviously unethical for you to use your mod privileges for this article. It is like being the defendant and the judge at the same time. I’m surprised Wikipedia does not have a policy against that.

Unsuspected 18:21, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I personally do not like US News and World Report ranking, and I have *never* made a change that supported it. I don't know why you claimed otherwise. Unsuspected 18:30, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Aside from the question of whether Johntex should have protected the article, this discussion belongs at Talk:University of Texas. --Akhilleus (talk) 18:23, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Similar to Akhilleus, you've strayed away from the issue, Johntex. You reverted a change and then blocked the page, which was a clear abuse of your administrative privileges. You keep claiming that the consensus is in your favor, but the talk page[38] that you blocked has only you defending the "consensus" against multiple users for half a year, now. Also, the vast majority of university systems link to the system page and no the flagship university; once again, a consensus is clear in this manner.

Yes I did notify Miaers of this issue after reading the talk page on the University of Wisconsin redirect. He's been trying to get that page fixed for a year now, but unable to due to administrators. He was even interested in going through the mediation process, but of course no one agreed. This is my mind makes him anything but "previously uninvolved in the matter." While I believe a consensus already exists, perhaps we should take the next step and go to mediation if this issue cannot be resolved.--Dimachaerii 18:34, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

but you are agree you are an involved party and that in the future - protection and the like should be done by uninvolved admin for the purposes of transparency? --Fredrick day 18:21, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree with you, Fredrick. Switching the redirect to support his campus and then locking it is completely wrong. Unsuspected 18:30, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Those complaining about the page protection should see The Wrong Version at Meta before making any further complaints about the administrative action.

In all seriousness, this conversation should get off ANI and move to

after it's determined whether or not admin tools were abused (it doesn't seem, judging from the conversation so far, that they were). There's a big temptation to get uncivil when talking about one's alma mater, but that tendency should be suppressed as much as humanly possible on Wikipedia.

For the University of California system, it was apparently found most graceful to use the system's article instead of a disambiguation page under the "main name." The same solution was used for State University of New York. Both systems contain too many "heavyweights" for any one of them to "win" the main name link. However, as has been shown, other solutions have been used, and those may or may not be fair to other articles which share the name. I would suggest, based on my experience with the university articles I've worked on, creating disambiguation pages or linking to the system's article -- mainly because, once a university spawns more than one campus but decides to remain one university, the name belongs to the system itself. That, at least, is my opinion, and there are a lot of others with opinions on this too.

Again, please take this necessarily tedious argument to the appropriate place, not only so it doesn't clutter up ANI, but so that others who work on university projects can participate. Thanks. --Dynaflow babble 00:32, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

This edit by me where I removed a lot of unsourced and some material copied from here has upset User:Faniman. They re-added the material and eventually I blocked them for violating copyright, after they had been warned. There is little point in providing differences but take a look at User talk:Faniman and User talk:CambridgeBayWeather#Why Changing page and on to the bottom. I looks as if I'm going to be featured on CNN, BBC, Newsweek, Economist, Google, etc. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 04:45, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Dear Administrators, Faniman's response to Mr/Ms. Cambridge!

This is absolutely difficult to know who is making changes and why. Simply saying that something is unsourced and being removed (and do that with immediate effect) is absoluetly unacceptable. If Mr. Cambridge or whatever his/her name is wanted to edit s/he must have discussed with me and find a solution and then block me or whatever. After this incident, I am not a great fan of wikipedia. I am sure the way your admistrator has behaved is a true case of 'administrated vandalism'. You should try to develop some professional norms. Faniman.

I see nothing wrong with what CambridgeBayWeather did. Our policy

policies and guidelines. Sandstein

05:36, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I too suggest you read our policies provided by Sandstein above. The administrator correctly removed the material added to that article. Thank you.--Jersey Devil 05:44, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

This is getting to be a bit annoying and I'm done for the night. Could someone tell him to stop with the requests for information as I'm not giving him more than what is on my user page and if I tell him again I'm likely to violate Wikipedia:Civility. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 05:51, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Warned, and told to contact the press room. However I see you already did that. Viridae^Talk 06:44, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there is anything wrong with CambridgeBay's handling of the situation. The material did appear to be a copyvio from a website based on matching the first paragraph. Although closer inspection does seem to back up

ownership of articles. My view is, from here, we should focus on improving the article on the talk page. It needs cleanup, sources, and a careful reading for NPOV. --TeaDrinker

05:59, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

From Faniam: I am not sure how to write/respond on this page so I just edit it. Please, educate me how should I respond as you guys do. I am 100% that the website cited as official website of Ms. Iman Ali is wrong and the website has actually copied materal from wikipedia. As a suggestion, endorsing the one by TeaDrinker that WE should try to improve the content of the website and bring in as per policy of the wikipedia. Just throwing some content away is initself is a very very disgusting act. I am sure wikipedia and CBW will take note of this. Ultimately, what do we want to achieve? We want to put some good quality information content on the website which does not violate the policies of wikipedia and other conventions.

In doing so, I am ready to re-write the content as it can be suitable for wikipedia administrators. This conversation should be taken as an oportunity to improve our way of working and not throwing people away and blocking them from using wikipedia. Blocking and deleting the content is very contemptuous as well as unprofessional approach. I am sorry to be a bit agressive towards CBW but s/he made me react that way and I hope s/he also realizes that we should be encouraging people rather than just showing naked power to whatever one deems it fit to do. ends]

Multiple User Accounts, possibly for vandalism?

I've come across this account User:Mdshtl, along with User:MELDX1 and the several other accounts listed on the MELDX1 userpage. The accounts have primarily been used for vandalism, and the content on the userpages makes it seem as if its some group that plays pranks? It would be great if an admin could look into it. Thanks. Recurring dreams 04:56, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

If you look here, you can see that this is definitely a group of some kind and I highly doubt they are here to be constructive. John Reaves (talk) 05:44, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for looking into it. I'm afraid I can't see what you've linked (not an admin). Recurring dreams 05:47, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I've left a message on the talk of MEDX5 a few week back, and they have paid little, if any attention towards it. --Kzrulzuall ^{Talk• Contribs} 05:52, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I blocked them all as either vandalism only accounts or because they are obviously not here to contribute. John Reaves (talk) 05:54, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

The full list of the MELDX is here.... --Kzrulzuall ^{Talk• Contribs} 05:58, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Good block... I almost blocked them all last week when I deleted the User: Melbourne DX userpage, but I decided to wait and see what they did. Looks like I should have went with my gut instinct...--Isotope23 13:37, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Could someone give me a reaction check about

07:20, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I'd call it trolling. I've encountered

WP:KETTLE at some point or another. That said I don't see any evidence that Manticore is intentionally trying to disrupt or troll; he just has a set of opinions and he rather aggressively argues those opinions.--Isotope23

14:08, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think he's a troll... he's just a tireless rebutter and I've never seen him change a stance, even after he was wrong from square one. I can see how that comes off as annoying, but he's disagreed with me in one debate and agreed with me in the next... he's never made it a personal thing at all, or used argumentative debating techniques... he just replies a lot. I see no reason to think he doesn't mean well. --W.marsh 14:24, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Can I please request that the partial restoration proposed at [39] be carried out when time permits. Thanks leaky_caldron 11:36, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Sumburgh (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) No warning given or action taken due to personal involvement. --kingboyk 13:36, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll investigate. By the way, personal involvement isn't a reason not to tackle the editor about this issue, although it would preclude taking administrator action on your own. It's good to warn other editors with whom you're in close contact if they're doing something potentially damaging--they may not realise it until you point it out. --Tony Sidaway 13:40, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice Tony. I kinda know that, but I'm getting a bit sick of warning people etc etc. Maybe I shall go and pick some flowers or something :) --kingboyk 13:43, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Alton (

) 15:14, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I've removed the AfD template from all the remaining articles.--thunderboltz^(TALK) 15:57, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

The user [User:Showninner|Showninner] repeatedly vandalised the Nicolas Sarkozy page, [40], [41], [42], [43]. When I reverted his vandalism and gave him a warning [44], he responded by blanking his talk page [45] and copy the warning to my talk page [46]. As I have never vandalised any page, I would appreciate having his nonsense removed. Dusis 16:34, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

You can remove warnings without admin help according to

Phony Saint

16:50, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Feel free to remove it. Spurious warnings are one reason why removing warnings from your talk page is not forbidden by policy. CMummert · talk 16:49, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I looked at a couple of showinner's recent contribs and the editor seems to have added a source for a claim in the Sarkozy article and seems to be aware of WP:V. It doesn't look like a vandalism only account. CMummert · talk 16:54, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

The Mr oompapa vandal (WP:OOMPAPA) is back and continuing to violate privacy. I have placed a 4 day block on 81.151.0.0/16 in the hopes of dealing with the issue. I'm not quite sure why BT is the source of so much vandalism. --Yamla 16:36, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Yamla, someones created a page on you and someone needs to put it as speedy delete. Neldav 16:40, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

He uses a rolling IP so I'm not sure it will help, is BT dynamic? Ryan Postlethwaite 16:42, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi. I think this edit should be removed or even oversighted, because it was made by an abusive user, and because the user attempted to reveal presonal info about another user. Thanks. -- AstroHurricane001^(T+C+U) 17:16, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Too many revisions. I've requested oversight. Michaelas¹⁰ 18:13, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Quite simply put, he doesn't appear to have any. If anyone other than an admin posts on his talk page he calls it vandalism (even going as far as reporting them), he blanks his talk page constantly and he's almost totally uncommunicative. HalfShadow 16:44, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Why doesn't he request it protected if he hates comments so bad? Funpika 18:14, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Talkpages are an important part of the wikipedia communication process - so it's a terrible idea for users to have pages protected because "they don't like comments" - wikipedia is a community project and if people don't like community interaction, I'd suggest they find another hobby! --Fredrick day 18:25, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree. The user is a borderline-case. Immediately removing all comments, regardless of content, to the archive is not very different from blanking one's talk page. And to call valid comments vandalism and even report other users for vandalism when they make constructive comments doesn't give a favourable impression. Dusis 18:49, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I withdraw my earlier statement, the user is well beyong the border as a check of his actions show. For a long time, the user had the habit of simply blanking his talk page, calling valid comments vandalism.[47], [48], [49], [50], [51] Only after an admin protected the talk page [52] did he invent the idea to move all comments to the archive right away. [53]. As pointed out by user HalfShadow, the user has a history of reporting people for vandalism just because of disagreeing with him. That this isn't in line with Wikipedia etiquette has been pointed out to the user [54], [55]. The user had a tag claiming that his talk page had been vandalised 13 time, browsing through the history of the talk page I could not find a single incident of vandalism apart from the frequent blankings by the user himself.Dusis 19:15, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

And again:[56] Complete wiping of talk page and now his 'vandalism count' has gone from 13 to 16 [57]. HalfShadow 19:58, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

He can blank his talk page all he wants, that's allowed under

Phony Saint

20:29, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

That's exactly my point. Referring to anyone who posts on his talk page as a vandal is effectively defamation. We're not postinfg 'Fuck' 100 times on his page, we're making valid entries. If he wants to blank his page, whatever. I don't appreciate being labeled a vandal. HalfShadow 20:58, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

sure he can remove comments from his page but an editor who refuses to communicate with fellow editors about any of his actions is disruptive in itself. --Fredrick day 20:31, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

My recent messages were removed and labeled Harassment. I'll leave it at that, an admin might want to pop across and wave the "get a clue" stick. --Fredrick day 20:30, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I posted a comment on his page. But still, maybe if it is possible we should go to

WP:RFC/U depending on what he does. Funpika

20:40, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

An explanation for his actions can be found here. Funpika 20:57, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh, that's cute. HalfShadow 21:04, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Assuming good faith is an important principle, but the "explanation" given by

User:Stoic atarians talk page, but that message is not the cause of his behaviour.Dusis

00:40, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism by IP belonging to Texas Legislative Council

204.65.67.181 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) has repeatedly vandalized Barry Bonds today. The IP belongs to the Texas Legislative Council, which appears to be an official arm of the Texas Legislature. Uncertain of the proper action to take since it appears to be governmental, I blocked the IP for 15 minutes for the time being (even though I would have ordinarily blocked for 24 hours). Thoughts are requested. (Also reported to meta:Talk:Communications_committee.) --Nlu (talk) 18:38, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

At least for blatant, obvious vandalism like this I don't see any reason to tiptoe around this or any government IP or treat the IP any differently than we'd treat, say, a school. Any complaint someone might take to the media would serve only to make them, not us, look bad. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:51, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

This article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Asian_Economic_Union was vandalized. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by John.walshjp (talk • contribs) 14:28, 11 May 2007 UTC

Thanks for fixing it. -- MarcoTolo 19:37, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Can I have help to undo these edits please,

21:19, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Now done spotted,

SqueakBox

21:31, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

More to be done. Huge damage caused by page move vandal. GDonato (talk) 21:36, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Huge damage? It's a talk page and some archives. Let's not go ballistic, here... -- nae'blis 21:39, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Damaging for the user,

SqueakBox

21:43, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Needed attention- plus loads of redirects, several archives, multiple pages and a miserable time for all ;-) GDonato (talk) 21:45, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the help, everybody. I'll sort these out later tonight. -Will Beback ·:· 21:46, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Should all be sorted --pgk 21:54, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Whats up with this article? Smells

22:33, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

See [58]. I speedy deleted the article as a blatant copyvio. --Akhilleus (talk) 22:36, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

User:Dariux has recreated the article. I'm deleting again, as this is very obvious plagiarism, but should I protect the deleted article, or take any further action? --Akhilleus (talk) 22:55, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Editor has been warned at least ten times not to revert against consensus, he just came off his third block this week and did it again. Here's the discussion where consensus was reached and as you can see on his RFC he was warned about it and editors and admins stated there and on his talk page that he has reverted against consensus and he did so immediately after returning off his third block this week. Tayquan ^holla_{My work} 22:59, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Edit:[59]

Basically consensus was reached that this statistic is noteworthy, it's sourced to USA basketball which is a reliable source and he reverted it again. Tayquan ^holla_{My work} 23:07, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

He also just gave me a final warning for reverting a change to

NBA records that was reverted by three editors in total, in other words he warned me for making a consensus revert. Tayquan ^holla_{My work}

23:24, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Another user, previously from various IP:s, now registered as

23:50, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

In the articles Mary Karen Krajnak and Jose Joaquin Rodriguez, speedy deletion tags have been removed numerous times by an anonymous user (presumably one of the originators.) Can someone please permanently delete both of these articles and prevent them from being recreated? I apologize if this is not the right place to request this action, but I couldn't find anywhere else that seemed appropriate. Thanks for your help. --Proofreader J-Man 01:50, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I replaced the tags, warned the IP that's removing them, and added the articles to my watchlist. -FisherQueen (Talk) 01:55, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you for your prompt action!--Proofreader J-Man 02:39, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi, a few days ago, I went onto somebody's talkpage and there was a bit of content on it (a few people asked him questions). He's gone and removed virtually all of it. I've noticed him do it for a month or so (before I created a account on Wiki), and this is clearly seeable from the history of the talkpage. Are you allowed to do this? If you are not allowed to do this, can somebody warn him about it? Neldav 16:13, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

• It's allowed under current policy/de facto policy. See Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#User_talk_pages. But just because it's allowed doesn't mean it's a good idea... it's generally seen as somewhat rude to just remove comments without archiving them. --W.marsh 16:18, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, there is this rule, though obviously that doesn't apply for any other sort of disruption. Moreschi ^Talk 16:19, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Should we tell the user to archive his talkpages instead? Neldav 16:25, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

You can tell him politely that it's a more above-board way of going about things, but it's by no means required. --W.marsh 18:38, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

• Theoretically, page history is an archive.
  .V. _[Talk|Email
  ] 19:56, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

But I don't wanna see the editing process that is the page history. --293.xx.xxx.xx 10:34, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Can someone who's more familiar with the background of the block of

00:15, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

• As an aside, the page
  User:NI4D has to subvert some policy/guideline (POV pushing, user page masqurading as a WP: page, etc.). --Kinu ^t/_c
  06:16, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

If

WP:USERNAME). 75.62.6.237

08:23, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Still wondering about the connection, but he is causing a nice bit of trouble for himself already. He was blocked for 24 hours for 3RR violations and now he's been blocked again for avoiding the block with 203.49.244.253 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log). What a first day. Metros232 17:33, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

For the past few, oh, I don't know,months, the Turkey article has been bombarded with Ararat arev-style sockpuppetry and vandalism, all detailing something about the Armenian Highlands. Looking at the history and protection log, I've decided to leave the article under full protection indefinitely. I would like some comments on this action, and whether any other viable alternatives are better than the current solution (or rather, plug in the leak). —²¹⁰physicq (c) 05:36, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Maybe going to RFCU about the socks is better? Turkey is a highly viewed article, and a full protection is a bit too much. Indef block the socks, and leave on semi protection will be better. --Kzrulzuall ^{Talk• Contribs} 05:51, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

The article is intermittently fully protected, so I'm not quite sure what you mean by not full-protecting it. Check the protection log. —²¹⁰physicq (c) 05:54, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

RFCU - bit late. I'll have to hunt for the link now, butHere's the link - a few of us compiled a list of socks (about 40 in all, all the ones we could find) and submitted them to RFCU. Dmcdevit has an eye on them. I'm not sure indefinite full protection is the way to go - it has to be edited, after all - but we do need a breather once in a while. – Riana_ऋ 05:55, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Unprotect when you feel like it. It's indefinite, not permanent. I didn't want to give Ararat arev a timer to when he can start vandalizing the article again. —²¹⁰physicq (c) 06:02, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that's the best way to do it for now. I'll keep an eye on it for editprotected requests, I already have it on watch. Dmcdevit has in the past been able to at least slow him down, but he always seems to pop back up. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 06:07, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

It's mostly these ranges, which he uses to return whenever the blocks expires: [60], [61]. I've reblocked them for longer this time, and set the protection back to semi. Usually, when he comes back, an IP block will solve it, and a CheckUser will turn up any sleepers he's tried to store up, though I wasn't online as it was happening this time.

t

09:24, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

• I've been nicked! (
  talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki
  )

As per [62] that account should be blocked indefinitely. -- Cat ^chi? 12:27, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

13:55, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Pages protected and 91.120.102.182 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) blocked for 1 week. Adambro 14:23, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I've had some trouble with two users: a Bogbuster and a LooneyGeoffrey. Bogbuster doesn't seem to really be an editor, as one of his 3 edits was vandalising my user page: Special:Contributions/Bogbuster. LooneyGeoffrey, on the other hand, has been reverting or removing all talk page activity for both users ([68], [69], [70], [71]), but appears to have at least done some editing: Special:Contributions/LooneyGeoffrey. I'm puzzled by the pattern, but I wouldn't immediately say that either one should be blocked (Bogbuster, while annoying, isn't definitively a vandal account, yet. LooneyGeoffrey appears to have made some reasonable contributions.) I don't know what would be a good course of action to take, particularly because LooneyGeoffrey reverts all edits made to his talk page. I'm not sure how to deal with this past trying to get LooneyGeoffrey to acknowledge messages, so I'd appreciate an outside view on the situation. Nihiltres^(t.c.s) 14:03, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. Bogbuster is vandal-only, and I have blocked as such. Feel free to disagree, etc. KillerChihuahua^?!? 14:24, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

That's fine by me - I'm just lenient, I suppose. Nihiltres^(t.c.s) 15:52, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

He has been revert-warring like crazy on the

14:10, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

(EC)You're both to blame. Neither of you is acting with much good faith in talking this out. However, you're factually accurate. You've got the citations, and the relevant genre section makes it clear that 'Love Metal' Is an album name primarily. ThuranX 14:22, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

True. I'm fine with the current revision, I'm going to edit someplace else and rest the headache. — The Future 14:29, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I have not been 'revert-warring like crazy', I'm saying that Debated is not a valid genre, it should be a list of the genres of the band. ≈ Maurauth ^(09F9) 14:50, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

LooneyGeoffrey recently moved his talk page to My Talk. I tagged it with {{db|Cross-space redirect}}, and an RFD. He has removed both, and sent me a notice saying that I should stop harassing him, or I will get blocked, per [72]. Cool Blue^{talk to me} 18:13, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... Fang Aili (talk · contribs) deleted it, I will drop a note there. -- ReyBrujo 18:16, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Cool Blue^{talk to me} 18:17, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I would appreciate the feedback of some clueful users on

12:34, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

What the hell is a Kibibyte? End of story. My laptop's cache rating is in kilobytes. My mp3 player's manual actually displays capacity in kilobytes: and it's written in Engrish. Bill Gates uses kilobytes. And once again: what the hell is a kibibyte? Seriously, ask any random person on the street which one is "correct" and you're more than likely to get kilobytes. Swatjester 12:49, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

My thoughts exactly. Did nobody else notice (and was nobody else angry?) that the "overlong page" warning was displayed in "kibibytes" yesterday? --kingboyk 13:03, 10 May 2007 (UTC) (e/c)

1024000 bytes = 1024

kibibytes. It's just a case of making it clear which unit you're using. As for which one should be used in an article, the one with a conventional name or the one with a conventional size, that's something that'll have to be debated at the MOS page. --ais523

12:52, 10 May 2007

Well, I've long favored conventional usage for the same reason Swatjester mentions above. But many people disagree with that, and it appears unlikely that a consensus will form to standardize on one type or the other. As a result, I think the best outcome is to set a guideline similar to that on

WP:MOS#National varieties of English, urging people to stay with established usage, follow the lead of the first contributor, and not go around changing things to one form without good reason. Unfortunately, there is one particular editor who is insistent that the present guideline must remain until there is a specific consensus to change it, and is willing to edit war to enforce his/her view. If ambiguity is a concern, there are ways this can be dealt with; for instance, footnotes or parenthetical notes could specify exactly how many bytes (usually 1024) is meant by "K", "KB", or "kilobyte". Crotalus horridus

12:56, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly what we're talking about here, but actually 1024 kilobytes is 1024*1024 bytes, or 1048576 bytes. Thank you, drive through. JuJube 14:03, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

No, 1024 kilo​bytes is 1024000 bytes, since one kilobyte is 1000 bytes. Even if you think "kibi" is silly, why not just use "KiB"? --Random832 03:07, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

• Note that this issue is spawning several dozen edit wars (see here). Radiant! 13:01, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Specifically, a user has been altering a lot of articles recently to xis preferred version. This is somewhat reminiscent of that user with the both who kept changing date notations. Radiant! 13:09, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I prefer binary prefix notation. The reasoning is simple: according to SI definition kilo means 10^3, mega means 10^6, etc. Kilo certainly doesn't mean 2^10, and likewise, mega doesn't mean 2^20. It gets even worse because in computing you will see the SI prefixes alternatively used to mean powers of ten and powers of two. This is unacceptable for an encyclopedia. We need to be unambiguous. So use the SI prefixes when you mean powers of ten (like when talking about hard drive capacity and bandwidth) and use the binary prefixes when talking about cache and memory capacity. --Cyde Weys 13:05, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

• You're missing the point, Cyde. I'm not asking people to state their preferences. I'm asking for people to realize that there is no consensus to mandate either version in Wikipedia, just like there's no consensus to mandate Anno Domini or British English. Radiant! 13:09, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I'm not missing the point. I've been following this argument for awhile. I was arguing against the people who are saying the binary prefix notation should never be used, when it is in fact the best way to state something un-ambiguously. --Cyde Weys 17:04, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Independent of my personal preferences regarding binary SI prefixes, I agree with Radiant's warnings to several users about edit warring. "Enforcing the manual of style" is not a justification for causing disruption. I would encourage Radiant to lift the block on Sarenne early if he/she agrees to stop until the discussion is over. CMummert · talk 13:28, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

There is a -big- problem with mandating binary prefix notation, and that is that as a consequence the common usage of "kB" (as in "kilobyte", or 1024 bytes) is changed to a new meaning as 1000 bytes. That is just -not- acceptable. Especially not for articles about older computers. There is also absolutely no sign that binary prefix notation will -ever- become mainstream in it's use. As an example, here you can find an encyclopedic entry from a mainstream computer magazine talks about this. [73] Mahjongg 13:49, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

• It seems to me that a small group of people want to change the fact that the world in general doesn't give a wet slap about the corrcet usage. Wikipedia is not the place to do that. End of story, I'd say. If the world outside is Wrong, then Wikipedia must be Wrong. And when the world gets it Right we can reflect that. Guy (Help!) 13:54, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Eloquently put.
    ^{Denny Crane.}
    14:46, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Style guides are just that: guides to style. They can be helpful. Arguing over them is a bad idea, and those who insist on doing so get what they deserve. --Tony Sidaway 14:12, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

• Admins and edit warriors alike should read
  Thatcher131
  14:26, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
  • What do you think is a minority point of view? — Omegatron 00:37, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Since when has the

15:18, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

This debate has gone on for a long time it even had me blocked and labeled as a sock puppet for the same arguments above, ( i might be accused of being one of you for expressing my point) it all started when I reverted User:Sarenne for adding (what at the time I never herd of) MiB and GiB and so on several user including myself have fought against this change. It's not the norm to use the new prefix. My pc surly don't use it and im sure nobody eles does either. --  Planetary Chaos  Talk to me  17:24, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Wow, it's too bad you're so sure about nobody using it, because you're wrong. I've had the pleasure of using several applications now that use binary prefix notation, and many more are making it optional (including Azureus). It really doesn't help an argument to assert that something is true without evidence, and then, to top it off, it turns out to be wrong. --Cyde Weys 20:53, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I wonder if part of the problem is that people are interpreting "guidelines" in exactly the same way as "policy", and using the guidelines (like MoS) to make changes to articles without discussion, and possibly despite local consensus to do things differently. Surely guidelines do not give overriding authority over consensus? Notinasnaid 11:41, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Gosh. So much fuss over nothing. And yes, I do have an opinion on the matter, but I'm not going to say it, and that doesn't change the fact that people are getting worked up over nothing. --Deskana (AFK 47) 11:48, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Gene Poole (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), followup to #3rd party admin intervention requested

I've been working all day fixing up articles related to micronations, merging where necessary, improving if I can, adding maintenance templates, nominating the worst for deletion, and having discussions with several micronation enthusiasts without incident.

Now User:Gene Poole has returned from his 24 hour block and is obviously going through my contribs list; commenting on all my AfDs (some of which have very strong, near-speedy, rationales for deletion, one of which I shall probably withdraw as new sources come to light, others in between, but it's all the same to Gene) and calling them "spurious"; inciting another editor to roll me back; and basically rolling back all my hard work from the day citing "no consensus". I don't need consensus to carry out maintenance work, and I don't need to ask the Emperor before touching micronation articles.

I think he should have been blocked for the duration of the AFD he canvassed about; since he wasn't, would somebody keep an eye on this please? I'm off to bed and would be very disappointed to find he'd wiped out my day's work by the time I get up. --kingboyk 00:03, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Blocked for 24 hours for edit warring. In the two hours since his block expired he reverted 12 times across 9 articles and only commented on one talk page. That's

Thatcher131

00:24, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. That's a good idea. As I wrote to JzG just now, though, I might just give up on this - let's see how the AfDs go, perhaps. I tried creating a guidelines page and that was tagged as rejected; I'm not sure that trying to clean up this little part of Wikipedia is worth the trouble. I can at least say with some pride that the New Utopia article has benefitted greatly, from this to this, with a pro-micronation editor helping out. It can be done! --kingboyk 00:31, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

You can only edit where you feel motivated to do so, but if it ever happens that an editor gains de facto control over a suite of articles it might be that other editors were driven away. You could also consider arbitration as this is apparently a

Thatcher131

00:56, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

The Gene Poole account also has a history of sockpuppet use to try to get his way (see this ANI talk page discussion (archived)) so you might want to check any other accounts making edits on his side with similar edit histories. Plus, for those who haven't looked at the request for arbitration above, one of the articles the Gene Poole account is edit warring on has been shown to be about himself as self-appointed monarch of a micronation. This goes beyond mere edit warring to active self-promotional campaign and POV-pushing. DreamGuy 07:20, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Gene's actually rather careful and restrained with the Atlantium article, and has never hidden his connection there. Georgewilliamherbert 10:55, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

"Empire of Atlantium" is not a terribly bad article as it happens. I don't understand though why you, an admin, keep rushing to the defence of a user who edit wars, breachs

WP:OWN, uses personal attacks and accusations of bad faith to try and win arguments, had a proven long term sockpuppet shut down, and an Arbcom case against him. The guy is a POV warrior, plain and simple and, AFAIC, he ought to be infefblocked. It might be excusable if he actually produced great articles, but I don't see any FAs or GAs in the micronations category. --kingboyk

11:44, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Quite possibly because he appreciates the irony of comments such as the one immediately above, which manage to squeeze name-calling, bad faith accusations, half-truths and untruths about me into a rant wherein I am accused of - you guessed it - using name-calling, bad faith etc etc. Pot. Kettle. Black. --Gene_poole 13:03, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Not so much name calling as tossing an idea into the wind that your presence here doesn't help the encyclopedia in any great way. --kingboyk 14:16, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I think it's fair to asume most people would view "The guy is a POV warrior, plain and simple" as something other than hearty jocularity. My contributions to WP over a period of 4 and a half years - which, among other things, include actively deleting more micronation and other "cruft" than you could imagine in your wildest dreams - speak for themselves, and I certainly don't need to justify my contributions to you. --Gene_poole 22:22, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi, User:RX82004 (Contributions for consideration), an apparant SPA created to defend an article I tagged for speedy deletion appears to be trying to troll and harass me over the tagging of the article. Please see Talk:Chase Sampson and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Television‎ to see what I mean. DarkSaber2k 10:24, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

My neighorhood troll appears to back, according to this diff: [74] DarkSaber2k 23:58, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

This diff ([75]) is yet another personal attack against me, in response to being warned about personal attacks. Apparantly the warning is 'irrelevent'. DarkSaber2k 00:08, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

He's received a final warning from User:Anetode, and has not made any attacks since. If he continues the same behavior, now that he's been warned, a block would be in order. MastCell ^Talk 19:57, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Over the last few days I have deleted material from the entry on Mike Farrell. The removed material clearly violated policy on BLP, NPOV, and was also plagiarised. Each time I deleted the material, it would be re-placed within 24 hours by either of two IP addresses. After deleting the material 3 or 4 times over several days, I placed this message on the talk page of both IP addresses. At one of these addresses, this reply has now been placed. In addition, this text accusing Farrell of "enabling terrorism" has been added to the entry, and this comment left on my talk page. Both of the IP addresses involved have virtually no edits other than to the Farrell entry. In short, both addresses appear dedicated to vandalising the Farrell entry, and have persisted in doing so in spite of warnings. I believe the time has come for administrator intervention in this matter. FNMF 13:31, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

The other IP address involved is the one on which I also placed this warning. FNMF 13:35, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

The first IP address has now also engaged in similar vandalism at the entry on Ed Asner, see for instance here. FNMF 13:58, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

That does look problematic. I'm not sure that

WP:RS, considering the obvious strongly conservative lean of the posts being referred to by the anons. Tony Fox (arf!)

15:45, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

• sprotected Mike Farrell, checking Ed Asner now. Guy (Help!) 15:51, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/Libsmasher is interesting. Looks like this is a long-time thing. Tony Fox (arf!) 19:00, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Considering the edits being made, and the name, "Libsmasher" doesn't seem like an appropriate User name. Corvus cornix 20:02, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I've indefinitely blocked

14:03, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

• Seems like a good block to me. Nothing good was going to come from a recreation of that particular page. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 14:54, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Support block. MastCell ^Talk 19:59, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

(note, this discussion has been moved from

, where it had been deleted)

13:47, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Another note, Ed has been reported for edit warring on 300 (film) twice. Edit warring by admins is really sad. Kyaa the Catlord 13:49, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

...for enforcing our policy. Hence no blocks. ed g2s • talk 14:04, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I very much agree, the actions are disruptive and heinous. Perhaps this should be taken to

Matthew

13:50, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

A third note, he's also unblocked another editor (I'm half-certain another admin in this case) who is involved in the same edit war. Using admin powers to assist your side in an edit war... Kyaa the Catlord 13:51, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I didn't unblock Ned to assist in the edit war. I protected the page to stop the edit war. ed g2s • talk 14:04, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Ned isn't an admin. While I don't 100% support a sole block against Ned... I also don't support Ed wheelwarring.

Matthew

13:54, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Someone should propose Ned for admin, then. :P (And yes, I agree that Ned's being the sole block in that case was wrong, but the correct response is to block all the edit warriors.) Kyaa the Catlord 13:56, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

About the revert warring at 300, he was initially blocked for 3RR violation but the block was removed per "enforcing policy" which 1) is arguable in this case since it's an instance where the policy is open to interpretation 2) isn't an exemption from 3RR. 3RR lists a few exceptions, and this clearly isn't one of them. --Minderbinder 13:53, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Ed wasn't "enforcing policy", he was "enforcing opinion". I believe that Ed needs to be admonished that his opinion doesn't over-rule consensus.

Matthew

13:55, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

For the love of god people, he's enforcing our damn foundation licensing policy. Thats not really an optional thing. Should he have protected a page he was involved in? Probably not, but this sort of hyperbole is akin to asking a cop to have his drivers license revoked for speeding to get to a crime scene. Foundation level policy is not a consensus issue, not now, not ever. The sooner this troupe of 'Damn the copyrights and lawsuits, full rights to all images everywhere!' editors realizes this, the sooner all the damn disruption will die down. -

M^ask?

13:58, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps if Ed is enforcing Foundation policy, but... and that's a big but: he isn't. He's enforcing opinion.

Matthew

14:02, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Interpretation of foundation level policy is a consensus issue. I'm not sure why Ed thinks that he gets to be the sole interpreter of it, and why he can enforce his opinion at any cost, consensus and policies be damned. And as for the "edit warring", five different editors added that text, none more than once - the only one edit warring there was Ned (and that looks more like consensus to add the text). --Minderbinder 14:09, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

It is sad that so many users are trying to force in the ISA exception on our policy page by edit warring. The exception, as discussed at length on the talk page, is contradictory to the recent licensing resolution, and our long standing policies. Blocking a user trying to protect our policy page was nonsense. ed g2s • talk 13:59, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think calling him an "involved editor" is exactly correct here. The revert and protection were his only edits to that page in nearly 2 months, so I don't really think we can say he's involved in the edit war. I've seen several situations brought up on these boards where admins were backed for reverting to the version they thought was correct before protecting on pages where they had no heavy involvement. --OnoremDil 14:01, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Policy is policy. Wikipedia's goal is not to be the world's prettiest encyclopedia but the world's greatest free encyclopedia. However, should anyone with a different point of view want to take further action against Ed, I suggest filing an arbitration case.

Thatcher131

14:04, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

And on the greatest "free" encyclopedia, nonfree content is currently allowed by both the foundation and wikipedia policies within certain limits. The question isn't whether nonfree content is allowed, but where specifically it should be allowed. Inclusion of some nonfree content is contrary to neither the foundation or wikipedia goals. However, unilateral attempts to create restrictions beyond what is necesssary is contrary. Particularly when it is done by abuse of admin tools. Sadly, I think an arbcom case may be inevitable in this situation. --Minderbinder 14:09, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

In which case I don't see the need to spend more time at AN, because nothing's going to get done here.

WP:RFAR is the way to go, ASAP is preferable. No need for more discussion here that won't achieve anything. Moreschi ^Talk

14:13, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Then bring the case. I've cleared out quite a few lists and would not mind standing in front of the arbcom about it one bit. -

M^ask?

14:19, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

List of Lost episodes

There is one more thing that needs to be discussed here, regarding the one image that is being fought over at List of Lost episodes. I have asked all the editors involved to work towards compromise, and I plan to block any editor who engages in revert warring rather than seeking compromise. I would like to know if other editors agree with this course of action. CMummert · talk 14:23, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

This was discussed during the original debate that led to these images removal (how much is allowed, essentially). The consensus then was that an image used to show an episode (not, in my thinking, a title card at the top to illustrate the whole of the work) would require an amount of commentary that would not fit into a episode list, and if enough were added to justify the image, the list item's text would be moved to an article on the episode itself. -

M^ask?

14:30, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

My suggestion to all editors was to move the image to the top of the list of episodes article. I agree that it's hard to justify the image otherwise. CMummert · talk 14:32, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

The problem is this one image doesn't identify the whole work. A title card, or a paticularly iconic moment (Enterprise warping off, or something like that) is whats needed to qualify for the 'identification' exemption. -

M^ask?

14:40, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Isn't the airplane crash an iconic moment for the Lost series? I don't really know, I haven't seen any episode, but that's what the fair use rationale says. CMummert · talk 14:41, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Very well could be, but its not explained anywhere. I look at that and I see 'screenshot from the middle of an episode'. If this can be claimed, put it at the top, in a box, with a caption. I honestly still believe the title card is always the way to go, but if editors are insisting on this image, thats the way it would need to be done. -

M^ask?

14:44, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I fail to see how a title card adds significantly to the listing of the episodes/plot summaries. ed g2s • talk 14:45, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I would like to see all fair use go, personally, but if we keep them, Many feel it works to identify the work as a whole. If you feel they should go to, no arguments whatsoever from me. -

M^ask?

14:47, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Does that mean you wish to see all television and film (i.e. any media) articles go as well?  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 14:51, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Not at all. We can talk about them, analyze them in a scholarly fashion, with no fair use images whatsoever. 2/3's of the other language wikipedias do this, disallowing fair use alltogether. They work fine. -

M^ask?

14:53, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Sure it is, but its significance is not the subject of the "List of" article, which is for providing a list of the episodes and brief plot overviews. ed g2s • talk 14:44, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Whether it is significant to that article is a question that must be answered by discussion, not unilaterally decided by you. There is clearly an argument that can be made about the significance of that one image, and it has a fair use rationale that hints at that argument. Summarily removing the image short-circuits the necessary discussion. CMummert · talk 14:47, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Comment by ed g2s

Using admin tools to protect our high profile policy pages (with legal consequences) is anything but an abuse of power, and I stand firmly by my actions. ed g2s • talk 14:26, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Then I request that you resign your position. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:29, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Why? All I've done is protect a policy page. ed g2s • talk 14:31, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Because you've shown an inability to use your position properly. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:38, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Because he wants it :-P Cyde Weys 14:32, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I have no interest in working with you. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:38, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Well then its good thing that nobody is forcing you to. ed g2s • talk 14:42, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:43, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Ah well that's too bad, you don't get a choice of who wish to work with at Wikipedia, and we flat out can't have administrators saying to each other "I won't work with you". I'll be sure to bring this up at your next RFA. --Cyde Weys 14:50, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Hopefully, if there is an occasion where I'd bother with a next RfA, you won't be an administrator any longer and I won't have to worry about it. Don't be holding your breath for the opportunity, though. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:51, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Don't hold your breath either. --Cyde Weys 14:52, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I can certainly figure out which occasion is more likely, don't you worry. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:53, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Guys, honestly, not to be rude, but you sound like a couple 12 year olds. Jeff, go back to not caring what others think about you, Cyde, go back to not caring what others think about you. That worked well enough for long enough, no need to stop now. -

M^ask?

14:55, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Right, this isn't Romper Room. Let's try and be a bit grown up here.--Isotope23 15:30, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I'll behave myself better. There's no reason to get into pointless bickering. --Cyde Weys 15:38, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I support Ed here. I don't know what these other people are up to, but it looks like they were trying to inject a highly controversial (and in the end, counter-to-WMF-goals) section onto a policy page. --Cyde Weys 14:32, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Cyde: I am looking at List of Lost episodes, not a policy page. Ed was edit warring there and (look at my talk page) claims to have little interest in working towards a compromise. CMummert · talk 14:34, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't see edit warring, I just see removing images used in violation of policy. --Cyde Weys 14:37, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

It would be easy enough to move this image to the top of the article and add a little commentary. Reverting rather than improving is edit warring. Ed has enough experience to know that compromise is needed. CMummert · talk 14:39, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

As I stated, it is not a case of edit the article to fit violating images. Our policy does not work like that. ed g2s • talk 14:42, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

What do you want me to say - "yes it does"? Be constructive. CMummert · talk 14:45, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

No it doesn't. All I see is people trying to jury rig our rules on non-free content to allow silly decorative photographs. Nobody's really making a case about why the images are necessary — they're just trying to come up with excuses as to how they can use them. --Cyde Weys 14:51, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

In this case, the image has a fair use rationale, and there is a case to be made about its use. So long as fair use images are allowed, each of these claims of fair use needs to be discussed and evaluated individually. It's true that this image is no less decorative than images used on many movie articles... The point is, ed g2s needs to discuss whether this fair use rationale is valid, not summarily reject it on his own initiative. CMummert · talk 14:54, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Quite, the issue is beyond the scope of that talk page. ed g2s • talk 14:42, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Now that the bickering seems to have subsided, I'd like to request that either Ed's edit be reverted or the page unprotected. --Minderbinder 16:07, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

What, so the nonsensical ISA notice can be reinserted? No thanks. --Cyde Weys 16:15, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Enforcing policy is good, but

16:24, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Minderbinder appears to be on a personal campaign against Ed, it's gotten pretty far out of hand. As far as I can tell, he's deeply in the wrong here and Ed did okay. However, we could have avoided all this bickering if Ed just went and got someone else to help with the enforcement. In the future I hope that ed does that. --Gmaxwell 16:26, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Please

WP:AGF. I do agree that admins should allow other non-involved admins to handle situations instead of violating policy. --Minderbinder

17:16, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

It would have been better for Ed to ask an uninvolved admin to handle the situation. However, for my part, I fully agree with what he did. The Foundation clearly states that use of non-free images must be minimal, we cannot set policies to say "Well, but we can use this non-free image all over the place." If you don't like that restriction, ask the Foundation to change it or make an exception to it. It's out of our hands. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 18:47, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, and the concept of "minimal" differs from group to group. To assume that his perception of minimal is the correct one is not good. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:58, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

At any rate, steamrolling over opposition is a major reason there's so much conflict here in the first place. People should just calmly follow Wikipedia policy, instead of acting like this is some kind of crusade that calls for guerrilla warfare. Dealing with opposition in the most in-your-face way possible sets things back a lot here... I wish admins could realize that. --W.marsh 19:17, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - User:ed g2s's actions (particularly the immediate unblocking of an editor who clearly violated our 3RR policy, because apparently User:ed g2s agreed with the violating editor) are reprehensible, and action needs to be taken immediately against User:ed g2s for abuse of admin powers. The worst thing about it is that he does not admit any wrongdoing but keeps chiming in to state that he was right to unblock the violating editor--when in fact ed g2s was part of the very dispute he unblocked over. This sort of thing cannot be allowed to go on for one more moment. Badagnani 19:07, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
  • But it's not a violation of 3RR to remove unlicensed images from an article. --Gmaxwell 19:47, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

The violation was Ned Scott's reverting Wikipedia:Non-free content 4 times. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 20:33, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

• My thoughts are, if Ned Scott was blocked, others should have been too. Multiple people were edit warring. It doesn't matter that others didn't go beyond three reverts, that's an arbitrary number designed to calm potential edit blitzkriegs as distinguished from petty edit wars. Or, better yet, the page should have been protected as a consequence of that 3RR report in order to prevent any further edit warring and prevent all the good-faith editors from being blocked. --Iamunknown 20:39, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

• • • (Re Gmaxwell). I do consider it edit warring to repeatedly remove an image for which there is a plausible fair use rationale without discussing the validity of the rationale. Some measure of good faith must be assumed for people who have made an effort to follow the policies. The ultimate goal is compromise and consensus, which may or may not end up meaning that the image is removed. CMummert · talk 20:39, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I've started an RFC page at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/ed g2s so that we can collect all this discussion in one place and get more views on it. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 21:13, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

• Why? That isn't a valid RfC...why not keep the discussion here? --Iamunknown 23:34, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Can I get some other admins to monitor Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anal Sex in Hadith? I've been watching it for the last day and have had to tag a bunch of SPAs on there. It'd also be good if some others can watch the article too. Some editors keep adding the {{hangon}} tag to the article despite its lack of speedy deletion status. Much appreciated, Metros232 18:53, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll keep an eye on it. We'll need to do a checkuser run once it's over; there's undoubtedly sockpuppetry going on here. -- ChrisO 18:59, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

It looked more like meat puppets to me. Somebody told them to all come sign up and vote to save the article. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 19:00, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Either way, I see they've all been removed now. The AfD was stuck in the backlog anyway - as it's over 5 days old I've closed it as delete and deleted the article. -- ChrisO 19:53, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

See also

05:04, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Were these articles oversighted? They both show up as redlinks and I don't see anything in the deletion log for either. *** Crotalus *** 21:04, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

The deletion log entries are showing up for me OK here, also all the deleted revisions are still intact.

talk

) 21:08, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

In the article on

which have no response. Now he has accused me of lying,[79] While I am quite tough-skinned, this is quite ("Calling someone a liar"), and is not constructive. Please can you remind DreamGuy that (a) calling someone a liar is not civil (b) not replying to comments is poor etiquette. --84.9.191.165 08:08, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

DreamGuy has a history of being abusive to editors (myself included, when I was a lowly little newbie). While I'd love to take him down a few notches, I have to recuse myself because of our history. Anyone else want to handle this? EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:05, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm in a pretty similar situation. It'd be rather ironic if no-one will do anything about him because of that reason.

Petros471

16:08, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Hilariously sad. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:11, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

WP:CIVIL is policy, Wikipedia:Etiquette

isn't, and I really don't think there's any consensus for forcing people to answer questions or engage in dialogue if they don't want to. Indeed I'm quite sure there are some long term editors who never even read their own talk page.

WP:CIVIL. --kingboyk

16:15, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, the diff provided would appear to be

a petty example according to WP:CIVIL, and it seems to have come in the midst of a long running content dispute. I'll drop him a note but it will be soft in tone as it seems to me to be the result of a content dispute. It's not unusual for tempers to flare in these situations. Of course, where you are right is that tempers are usually best calmed down by quietly discussing the issues. (I can say this for certain having been there myself recently). --kingboyk

16:20, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Good luck! I have no faith that it'll work, but good luck! ;) EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:05, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

FYI, DreamGuy has already been the subject of two RfCs,[80][81] and one RfAr.[82] Plus, just over the last few weeks, he's been the subject of at least two other ANI threads.[83][84]] Most recently he was on ANI for using

WP:SOCK, "avoiding scrutiny by other editors."[85] See also User talk:216.165.158.7. And unfortunately, on any of his accounts, it's usually necessary to delve into the talkpage history rather than reading what's left on the page, since he has a habit of deleting warnings (of which there are many). I think he's been given plenty of opportunities to improve his behavior, and we need to stop giving him additional chances. Either he agrees to participate in a civil and constructive way with other editors, or he shouldn't be allowed to participate here anymore. --Elonka

17:08, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

It should be noted here that the RFC and RFAr were from *two years ago* or longer. I was not using (and have never used) any IP address as a sockpuppet. I simply did not always sign on, which there is no rule against, and it was in fact encouraged by several admins to try to lessen Elonka's ongoing harassment. This accusation is yet another example of people with grudges making up nonsense as they go along to try to lash out at me. The admins involved in those recent bans are the same admins currently greatly under fire across this project for not following policy. If you're looking for someone with a proven history of sockpuppets to try to get their way, one only has to look at Elonka's very own request for adminship. DreamGuy 22:40, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Well then, it sounds like we need to take more serious measures until he gets it (or, if he doesn't get it, he'll just end up being banned). --Cyde Weys 17:13, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

He's just calling a

WP:SPADE a spade...he has always been blunt and to the point. It's just social discourse in articles that sometimes have disputes and though I do suggest he try and be cooler about it, I also don't see ebough cause here to block him.--MONGO

17:17, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I've seen "calling a spade a spade" worsen a lot more situations than I've seen it improve, and I've seen proponents of that philosophy come to grief, both on-wiki and off. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:02, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, calling me a spammer because I'm adding a wikilink to a book[86] doesn't strike me as being quite the same thing as the "a spade's a spade" bit. EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:50, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Let me get this correctly... you are complaining about an edit comment from *15 MONTHS AGO* to justify trying to take action against me now? Furthermore, you were inserting a whole section about one modern *parody* book on a page about a real topic quite aggressively for no real encyclopedic reason. That certainly looks like spam. But once there were some reasons actually given for why it might be considering encyclopedic (but it still seems out of place to be mentioned on the main zombie page... has this joke book really been important enough to be mentioned in the history of zombie folklore?) I stopped and let it stay. Before then I removed it, just as anyone seeing such a situation should. Why are you still so bent out of shape over it? nd why do you think your petty complaint from Feb. 2006 is relevant today? DreamGuy 22:18, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

...uh, you do realize that I said that I wasn't going to do anything, right? I may want to, sure, but there's a difference between thinking and doing; I thought I'd made an adequate distinction between the two.
As for the age of the diff, forgive me; I've done my best to stay the hell away from you ever since then, given your (obviously still active) hostility. I still remember you telling me "why the hell are you still here?" when I had the audacity to post on your talk page a month or so after we'd had our little spat. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:35, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Frankly, I had forgotten that you were the person involved in trying to give free advertising to that book until you brought it up. It's rather

pot calling the kettle black of you to try to take my responding to you bring up something from 15 months ago as *me* being "obviously still active" hostile. You can't just make an attack and then complain when someone responds. Civility would be moving on. You obviously haven't. But, yes, thanks for not doing anything to ban me based upon your longheld personal grudge. It's a weird sort of situation where you expect me to be grateful that you don't violate policy to take improper actions based upon a petty personal conflict from long ago. So, yeah, thanks. DreamGuy

22:45, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Wow, I think you've completely misunderstood everything I've said. It's obvious all we're going to do is get angry with each other, so I'm just gonna bow out of it; I've got better things to do. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:52, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

It's quite ironic to see EVula very properly recusing himself because of an old conflict, but Elonka by contrast picking up the glove, with no indication of the ancient enmity between herself and DreamGuy. (For a short introduction to this conflict, including my role, for I played one, see Elonka's RFA) Elonka, it's time to let go, already. Practice seeing a mention of DreamGuy and not jumping in. I'm glad to see Kingboyk note the pettiness of the issue. For what has DreamGuy done now, to have a ban suggested? After replying to 84.9.191.165's complaints several times on his talkpage, he has failed to reply to further repetition of them. That's it. Having followed this at a distance, I was actually just about to drop a note on the IP to suggest s/he stops nagging at DreamGuy, as DG has already replied and explained the matter of fact--the original complaint--and that 84.9.191.165 is mistaken in thinking herself/himself wronged. Bishonen | talk 18:58, 12 May 2007 (UTC).

May I offer two cents as a neutral outsider? I've been known to take a hard line on

, yet I like to extend an open hand to positive contributors who run into trouble under tough field conditions. I agree DreamGuy is on a problematic path. What can we do as a community to help him pull back before he reaches the brink?

Bear in mind that it doesn't set a good example for new users to be tolerant of bad behavior from an established editor. I'd like to retain dedicated people who help the project, yet I don't want to act in ways that validate accusations about double standards. Let's seek the right balance here before things reach a critical point. Durova^Charge! 19:25, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Part of the problem, as I see it, is that despite years of complaints from other editors, DreamGuy has never acknowledged that his behavior has been a problem. No matter how many editors bring up concerns, DreamGuy tends to respond with rage and counter-accusations, ranging from "seed of truth" comments to out and out falsehoods, usually including accusations of everyone harassing him. In order for the community to give DreamGuy another chance, what I would like to see is a genuine acknowledgement from DreamGuy that he is aware of past problems, and a promise from him that he is going to try and do better in the future. Those would go a long way with me. --Elonka 19:35, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Has he been notified of this thread? As I understand this situation, most of the parties who comment have been involved for a while. Good faith has worn thin and this hasn't been moving toward a positive resolution.

Community enforceable mediation might be one option worth exploring. Let's think outside the box and see how something useful could move forward. Durova^Charge!

19:51, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

DreamGuy was informed by kingboyk.[87] EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:58, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Elonka is complaining that *I* don't acknowledge that my behavior has been a problem? OK, considering it was her not admitting that her actions were wrong which contributed to her failed request for admin status (that and a nice stack of sockpuppet/meatpuppet votes that came out of nowhere once it looked like she miht not have enough)... What she fails to remember is that I *did* apologize to her for those parts that were incorrect, and I did step up to the ANI page to say that her permanent ban for wikistalking me was out of line and helped overturn it. I have also apologized for any number of mistakes over the years, primarily being that I have a hot temper and admit that. I stay away from articles once they get too heated and only return months later. I have already told everyone who ever asked me to go for admin that I don't have the temperment. But I am not going to apologize for some of the nonsense attacks certain editors are still making years later based upon their feelings being hurt when they have never apologized (or even tried to act civil to me) for their aggressive threats and policy-breaking and so forth. I just move on and go edit the encyclopedia and they seem to be sitting around tossing darts at my photo and hoping to be able to twist something sometime into something they can lash out at me about. If we want to talk about people with civility problems and bad faith, we've got some good examples in this thread, but I'm certainly not the worst of the bunch by any means, and I at least move on. DreamGuy 22:28, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I think all this hand-wringing about civlity would go a lot further if more people would take the time to investigate the claims of people complaining about civility to peer under the smokescreen and see what's going on. The anon IP who started this particular latest thread has a history of inserting pro-Catastrophism POV-pushing into articles, and the action he is his complaining about wouldn't even rate any comment at all (especially in comparison to him refusing to acknowledge that his complaint was already discussed and everything he asked for given while he still merrily pushes his POV against consensus) if it weren't for a number of people here upset about past conflicts. Civility works both ways, you know, and EVula and others feeling like they can say that they want me "taken down a peg" or whatever shows what the real problem is. Go through my edit history of late and you will see tons and tons of janitorial work improving this encyclopedia, along with harassment from the standard line of POV-pushers, spammers and others actively violating policies for their own personal agendas. Everytime one of these people has some complaint they have learned (from looking at history) to go off and compain and that *I* end up being abused for standing up to them. Wikipedia is broken, frankly, if you een waste your time trying to come up with ways to punish me primarily for things I did in my past (most of them blown way out of proportion as well, actively assisted by people holding grudges) and not anything current. So, please, while talking about civility and good faith, please try to follow those yourself when dealing with me. People abusing the system and not even trying to follow rules piss me off (as it should anyone who cares about this project), and I am working very hard to be as civil as necessary. It looks like other people aren't willing to be civil or assume good faith themselves. Same old faces, same old complaints. I'm doing what I am supposed to be doing, so give me some credit and don't let anyone who comes along with a very one-sided and ridiculous complaint have you pull out the torches and pitchforks. DreamGuy 22:10, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I've personally checked the contributions of 84.9.191.165 and this Catastrophism dispute only goes back by a couple weeks, with the anon making only two reverts, immediately going to the talk page after your first revert. I'm afraid I have to say that to me you appear to be someone who lacks a great amount of assuming good faith, especially towards anons. There's no rule to be unable to refuse to answer a question or engage in dialogue, but this is part of a dispute. If you refuse to speak and instead revert, you are trying to create conflict. There has been no agreement in the dispute so far and instead you've ignored the other party. - Zero1328 _Talk? 01:13, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

This dispute reminds me of an old sore my grandmother used to have on her ankle. She kept scratching it because it itched, and because she scratched it kept flaking and itching. That sore had been there as long as I could remember and when I asked her about it she said she'd have it until she died. One day she was reaching down to scratch again and I couldn't stand to watch: I got some ice out of the kitchen. Maybe because I asked her nicely, she started icing that sore and it actually healed.

So do you want to keep scratching each other the wrong way or would you rather find a way to ice this?

05:16, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

LooneyGeoffrey Userpage

Resolved

 – user blocked for disruption for 31 hours by Metros232

The userpage of LooneyGeoffrey, found here, contains some comments which some users may find offensive, particularly Geoffrey's comments about religion. The comments attack Protestants and Atheists. Cool Blue^{talk to me} 17:52, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

{{soremoveit}}. Will ^{(is it can be time for messages now plz?)} 17:56, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

The comments, at least about atheists, are back; especially troubling is this hidden comment.

Phony Saint

18:57, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

And, um, this. He deliberately doesn't want to stop preaching.

Phony Saint

19:17, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Question to any administrator who comes across this: Blatantly, what should we do with the situation? Should we block the user, as he's been extremely disruptive, or give him a warning, or what? Cool Blue^{talk to me} 19:36, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

He was blocked for disruption. I'm sure the appeal will be up here soon or something. ThuranX 19:41, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I just blocked him for the disruptions for 31 hours. Metros232 19:42, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

This user has admitted that his account is a sockpuppet [88]. Despite his contention that his activities are consistent with

18:03, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't see much, and the Malkin article makes light of and is dismissive of criticism, and DOES read as a pro-malkin page. The removal of blog citation is in keeping with wiki policy. ThuranX 19:18, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

SummerThunder (

02:19, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

And he's at it again, now he's implying I have OCD. Whack this idiot, please?

96

02:20, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Does he use numerous sockpuppets in Chinese Wiki, non even this English Wikipedia? I think that he might have more sockpuppets. Daniel 5127 02:21, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

As I understand it, he was indef'd on the Chinese Wikipedia--his whole career here has been ranting about what happened there. Dunno if he has more socks on Chinese Wiki ... but I've seen at least three today. Still, someone here needs to pull the plug on his mic on

96

02:25, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

How time flies--just as I wrote this, Physicq nailed him. Thanks!

96

02:26, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Is there a way to use an IP block on this guy? Or does he use open proxies? —²¹⁰physicq (c) 02:53, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

I think we managed to stop him for all of 2 days when we blocked his entire range, and it caused all sorts of problems for innocent users. So that's not a preferred option. Better would be to semi-protect his targeted talk pages if necessary. --

talk

02:58, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm guessing 0CD nutty editors is the same guy. I just had to blank his talk page too. I protected it as well. IrishGuy ^talk 02:59, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

(ec) He uses a different IP each time. I don't know if he's

Wikipedia:Long term abuse/SummerThunder) and will occasionally pick a "favorite" to harrass. I have been "it" as of late. This is nowhere near resolved; he will be back until someone definitively figures out his ISP and contacts to shut him off. He made almost a dozen separate vandalizing rampages across a host of articles yesterday and kept popping up with a new sockpuppet as quickly as administrators could zap them. --Dynaflow babble

03:04, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Get used to it. Random IP-users are a frigging pain... HalfShadow 03:11, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

This user has been canvassing / spamming many talk pages for an article which has since been deleted. I've warned the user with {{

03:09, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

This user has apologized for canvassing, so I hereby remove this post.

Brain Freeze!

03:12, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

A request for advisory opinion

I have two questions concerning a recent matter. There are two interconnected issues, and the narrative below is presented chronologically.

Background

• User:Certified.Gangsta maintains a UI spoofing banner ("You have new messages") on his user page: see, e.g. [93].
• This has caused much controversy, leading in the end to
  this policy discussion, which appears to me and to a number of other editors (e.g. [94], [95], [96]
  to indicate a consensus, if not a policy, against UI spoofing (but no consensus regarding joke banners falling short of UI spoofing).
• Thereafter,
  User talk:Certified.Gangsta#Your user page banner
  .
• User:Certified.Gangsta's behaviour in this and other matters was at issue before the Arbitration Committee in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Certified.Gangsta-Ideogram, as a result of which User:certified.Gangsta is on revert parole, limited to one revert (other than clear vandalism) per page per week.

Current events

• Following a number of reverts by myself and several other users (of whom, btw, I know nothing)I reverted User:Certified.Gangsta's restoration of the UI spoofing banner to his user page, with explanation referring to community consensus on this point; previous reverts by other users similarly referred to this consensus.
• User:Sean William reverts my edit without an explanatory edit summary.
• User:Sean William posts this message on my talk page accusming me of "baiting" Certified.Gangsta into reverting.
• Because I was at no point trying to bait Certified.Gangsta, I was indignant at this failure to
  assume good faith by User:Sean William. I removed his accusations, posted this message on his talk page, and reverted his edit to User:Certified.Gangsta
  with the Undo function.

The questions on which I ask for guidance from experienced administrators are the following:

On UI spoofing

1. Is User:Certified.Gangsta entitled to add the UI spoofing banner to his user page?
2. If so, am I acting within policy in removing the UI spoofing banner?
3. Is User:Sean William entitled to revert my removal of the banner without explanation?

On baiting

1. Can I be guilty of baiting without a subjective intention to provoke Certified.Gangsta into reverting and thereby attracting a block?
2. Can I be guilty of baiting if my objectively determined intention, as disclosed by my edit pattern, edit history, and past statements, was not to bait Certified.Gangsta but to uphold community consensus and policy? --Sumple (Talk) 00:48, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

So, you've heard one side of the story; now for the other. User:Certified.Gangsta was recently put under revert parole by the ArbCom (Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Certified.Gangsta-Ideogram). I blocked him for 48 hours recently for violating this parole. (The circumstances for the block can be found on the arbitration block log and Certified.Gangsta's talk page.) Now, this user is not the first person to bait Certified.Gangsta to edit war with them; Ryulong blocked another user for doing the same thing. I can't recall who that user was off the top of my head, but I'm sure Ryulong knows. As far as I know, the UI spoofing discussion did not achieve consensus, and nothing was changed (although the practice is still strongly frowned upon). My revert was designed to go back to the original version, in hopes that Sumple would heed my warning and stop revert warring. However, he did not, as you can see. Comments on my conduct would be greatly appreciated; I'm not afraid of criticism. Sean William 01:12, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

User:LionheartX—Ryūlóng (竜龍

) 01:59, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Wait a second here... wasn't this question asked

On the Request For Arbitration (Request of Clarification) board ? MrMacMan ^Talk

02:14, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

User:Sean William seems to be arguing that User:LionheartX's intentions are somehow imputed to me. He continues to fail to

assume good faith

on my behalf, and he has now added allegations of "edit warring" to his prior allegations of "baiting". In light of User:Sean William's post, I might add another two questions:

1. Is the behaviour of
   User:LionheartX
   relevant to determining whether I am "baiting" Certified.Gangsta?
2. Is my ability to edit Wikipedia somehow constrained by the remedy imposed on Certified.Gangsta by ArbCom? If so, what is the justification for that? --Sumple (Talk) 02:30, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't the UI Discussion, including the Jimbo Wales letter, indicate that only malicious 'spoofing' is to be avoided, and that banners about new, shiatsu, erotic or swedish mAssages are simple wordplay jokes? That people are now seeking to bust a user on 'parole' for doing something NOT prohibited by policy for jollies, malice, or boredom should be seen as a bigger problem than that he's got the joke. Can we knock it off with any number of these childish things and focus on useful stuff? This whole thing seems like the userbox issues. The obviously offensive should be stopped according to existing policy, and common sense. Arguing that sweidish massage is inherently sexually charged, and offensive, is asinine, as is arguing that having Allah is Satan on a userbox is NOT hateful minortiy view trolling. I keep trying to NOT get frustrated with Wikipedia, but 'issue' after 'issue' of childish beefs makes it very hard to. ThuranX 02:33, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

It was not the "Swedish massage" message bar that was being warred over. Sean William 02:36, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Sure it is. That's what all the reverts are about. He's got an obvious parody up, and a number of editors and admins who can't rise to the real challenges are out enforcing their perspectives on policy despite policy either being unclear, or the line defined by said policy being one requiring common sense, which isn't so common anymore, it seems. You can argue about if it's about him exceeding the reverts against his parole, but the obvious baiting by removing a NONoffensive spoof over and over, apparently b y multiple editors who are all waiting with 'baited' breath to pop him on it is 'dick-ish'. ThuranX 03:59, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Err no. We were disputing about the "You have new messages" banner on his user page, not the "Swedish massages" banner on the talk page. --Sumple (Talk) 04:03, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Six or half a dozen. Big deal, my comments still apply. Go improve Wikipedia, stop baiting the user. This whole mess reads like a bunch of people like to look at those on wikiparole like they are on real parole, and likely to criminally reoffend. They see someone on parole, and watch them like hawks, hoping the wiki-equivalent of jaywalking will occur, so they can get the parole revoked and get them off the project. It's like a truly screwed up Wiki-gentrification. It needs to stop. ThuranX 04:13, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

We should not accept the presence of such practical joke banners: their only utility is to bring their posters a sense of pleasure at imagining that the are subjecting others to inconvenience and confusion, as they invariably do the first time they are encountered. While arguably a mild example of

WP:BITE as they go, they are nevertheless objectively disruptive and add nothing of mitigating value.Proabivouac

02:38, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

• Sumple: the thing with "baiting" is that it's a blatant violation of the Decency Principle, otherwise known as "don't be a dick". It is entirely possible to act like a dick without the subjective intent to be acting like a dick; it doesn't matter a bean what your intent is; once it's been pointed out you're acting like a dick, you really oughta stop acting like a dick. It also doesn't matter if you're attempting to "uphold community consensus"; you don't get to be a dick even when enforcing what you think are the rules. Regarding other editors' user pages: if you don't like the joke on the page, don't go to the page a second time. (If you fall for the joke a second time, well, oh my.) Stop looking for excuses to be an enforcer; go find some vandalism to revert instead. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 02:43, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

And on what basis do you label me a "dick"? --Sumple (Talk) 02:58, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

What the heck?

Sumple removed the userpage banner. This happens to have been something that people have done before, so CertifiedGangsta was annoyed, and reverted it. I don't believe that he should be blocked for that, especially as it is his userpage. But anyway, how is that Sumple's fault, and why are we assuming that anyone who edit wars with someone under Arbcom sanction is deliberately harassing them? -Amarkov moo! 04:28, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Phony Saint

04:30, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Calling somebody else a dick is a form of dickery in itself, as Iamunknown points out below. In response to Amarkov: No, people who edit war with people sanctioned by ArbCom are not always harassing the user. However, deliberately starting edit wars with the intention of getting a user blocked is "harassment". I have assumed good faith until given evidence to the contrary. That evidence is

Carbonite's law.) Sean William

13:37, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Wow, I'm utterly confused as to why people won't simply be civil, assume good faith on Sumple's part (hey, he or she came here for open comments, he or she wasn't brought here) and just freakin' address the questions. Come on people. This is ridiculous. On the questions:

• Is User:Sean William entitled to revert my removal of the banner without explanation? - no well-intentioned edit, however misguided, should be reverted without at least a note (i.e. the "Undo" tool or a revert and a civil talk page note); preferrably none should be reverted, but using absolutives would not be in our best interest (e.g. well-intentioned but libellous or negative unsourced information of living people should be removed immediately, with a note afterwards)
• Can I be guilty of baiting without a subjective intention to provoke Certified.Gangsta into reverting and thereby attracting a block? - no, because you aren't baiting, simple as that
• Can I be guilty of baiting if my objectively determined intention, as disclosed by my edit pattern, edit history, and past statements, was not to bait Certified.Gangsta but to uphold community consensus and policy? - no, your edit was well-intentioned and you are, quite simply, not guilty of baiting
• Is the behaviour of
  User:LionheartX
  relevant to determining whether I am "baiting" Certified.Gangsta? - no, I think that block was a terrible precedent that should not be repeated
• Is my ability to edit Wikipedia somehow constrained by the remedy imposed on Certified.Gangsta by ArbCom? If so, what is the justification for that? - no, the case did not involve you

On UI spoofing, the consensus seemed to be that only malicious UI spoofs should be against policy; others are indeed frowned upon, but not removing them is probably best. --

WP:DICKs

 :)

Looking into it, Sumple was previously involved with Certified.Gangsta as indicated at an RfC, the RfA workshop, and Sumple's talk page. Sumple apparently has more of a background with Certified and really should just leave him and his user page alone.

Phony Saint

14:13, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Good investigation. I do wish that folks would just leave harmless (i.e. "new messages" without a link to some disgusting article) UI spoofing alone. But I do not think that Sumple was in bad faith; again, he or she brought this issue here for discussion in an open forum -- few people readily do that. --Iamunknown 19:21, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

• I won't comment on the matter of UI spoofing or policies regarding an individual's userpage because I'm not too familiar with those. But this quickness to label someone as "baiting" an editor on revert parole, or even blocking an editor for it when he hasn't violated 3RR, is a little ridiculous. Where's the good faith? And believe it or not, most of these reverts are well justified. There are good reasons an editor is placed on revert parole and in most cases there have been thorough discussions on why certain editors' edits are bad and need to be reverted. Stop treating editors on revert parole with kid gloves. They are fully aware of what they're doing, they don't get to be on revert parole without having been warned about their actions over and over again. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 14:57, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
  • And your previous involvement: [98], [99], and [100]. There's not much good faith when one editor who had a dispute with another editor begins an edit war on the other's user page.
    Phony Saint
    15:21, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Your point? Again, I won't comment on the UI spoofing or policies on userpages, and to note, I have not been edit warring on Certified's userpage myself. Having said that, Certified is the only editor that wants to see his version of the articles, there are numerous editors that revert his edits, and this is on the scale of a supermajority here. Believe it or not, some editors just make plain bad edits that need to be reverted, even if a lot of admins refuse to make a judgement call if only once in a while. There's a good reason why Certified is on revert parole and the rest of us are not, and it has something to do with his behaviour not just on one article, but across all of WP in general. Now that Certified has finally landed himself on revert parole for a year after all the bureaucracy of an ArbCom, he is still being treated with kid gloves. When did it happen that whenever someone reverts an editor on revert parole whom he previously had a dispute with, then it must be bad faith? His revert parole doesn't just apply to the articles he has edited before, it applies to all articles, this is an obvious clue to everybody that ArbCom has decided he needs to clean up his behaviour. Just block him if he breaks parole and nevermind accusing editors of baiting him. And I'm saying this as it could be applied to any editor on revert parole. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 19:15, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
      • My point is that Certified's edits on mainspace have nothing to do with his own user page, and that people previously involved in disputes with Certified should just stay away from his user page. Even if Certified is on parole, Sumple continually edited Certified's user page against the wishes of Certified as well as others - Sean William previously blocked him, yet still reverted Sumple's edits. Sumple cannot act as if he'd had no previous dispute with Certified, and wave away others' concerns about his edits by saying "I have consensus, see
        Phony Saint
        21:41, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
        • Sumple did not "wave away" concerns. This conversation was started because he asked if what he did was justified. -Amarkov moo! 23:33, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
          • He started when he reverted Irpen, so from the start he was disagreeing with a third party. Sumple already has a negative view of Certified as expressed in Certified's RfA (linked above) and at Sean William's talk page, and now is bothered at the fact that somebody actually disagreed with him and his "consensus" and "policy." Were he just a random person who stumbled upon Certified's page, I would assume good faith wholeheartedly, but as it is, Sumple and Certified have a past history which Sumple has decided not to disclose, making it very hard to believe his intention is purely to improve Wikipedia.
            Phony Saint
            00:56, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

BTW, there is a parallel (but less lively) thread at

here. --Iamunknown

00:37, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

My two cents says leave the guy's banner alone. It's hard to take this issue at face value. If Sumple were acting in good faith I'd expect him to leave a polite request rather than remove a feature from another editor's user space. I'd also expect him to have a track record of similar polite requests at other user talk pages. And considering the past history between these two users and the timing shortly after the close of arbitration, I'd expect Sumple to act with particular discretion - such as posting a noticeboard query before acting or even bypassing CG among those polite requests - yet to my knowledge Sumple addressed no other editor than CG regarding this issue. That does give this the unseemly appearance of baiting. Surely we all have better things to do at Wikipedia. Durova^Charge! 03:35, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you User:Iamunknown for that reasoned response. You have answered my questions. Thank you.

User:Durova: You are right, that this type of matters should be discussed first. Indeed, other editors and I have on several occasions politely requested that User:Certified.Gangsta remove the banner. My most recent request was at:

User talk:Certified.Gangsta#Your user page banner

, where I politely suggested that he remove the banner, and he agreed, and restored to another, non-spoofing version. Surely you don't expect other users to repeatedly post such a message all the time. Would you do that, when you are dealing with a persistent editor who reneges on earlier agreement?

You are also right that I haven't edited anyone else's joke banner. The reason for that is simple: I don't know anyone else with such a banner!!!!!. Do you think I randomly click on User pages searching for UI spoofing banners? I'm afraid I have more constructive edits occupying my time. I only edited User:Certified.Gangsta's banner because his talk page happens to be somewhere I have edited and therefore I have watched.

User:Phony Saint, your unprincipled and illogical argument is a disgrace. You are assuming that I edited User:Certified.Gangsta's page in mala fides simply because I have been in past disputes with him. Has it crossed your mind that I have been in good faith when I had disputes with him too? Has it crossed your mind that perhaps I am able to disabuse my mind of past disputes? Obviously not. By your argument, a judge should never sit on a criminal case again if he rules against a government prosecutor in one case, because by disagreeing with the prosecution he has established his mala fides in all future cases involving the prosecution. Well, I sure am glad that you are not a judge.

A fortiori, I did not list all the previous encounters I have had with User:Certified.Gangsta, because of the basic principle that each dispute should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis by applying consistent principles -- a principle, I have no doubt, you would not agree with. To you, any suspicion of guilt condemns a man to all accusations. I have not sought to hide my previous involvement with User:Certified.Gangsta on this issue. The other disputes, including my involvement in his RfC, are irrelevant to my original request for comments.

User:Sean William I continue to be appalled by each new argument you raise. As another user pointed out above, is User:Certified.Gangsta to be treated with kid gloves just because he revert wars? Because that seems to be what you advocate! "User:Sumple knows User:Certified.Gangsta edit wars --> User:Sumple reverts User:Certified.Gangsta --> Therefore User:Sumple is acting in bad faith (even though User:Sumple in all honesty believes he is following consensus or policy) --> Therefore User:Sumple should be blocked"???? Let's substitute that with a real life analogy: "Policeman A knows habitual criminal B is easily provoked into a murderous rage --> Policeman A arrests B for robbery, prompting B to go crazy and injure several bystanders --> Therefore Policeman A is acting in bad faith (even though he honestly believed B had committed robbery) --> Let's sack Policeman A!! Well, boy am I glad that you aren't running the police service of your community! In fact, I didn't assume (as you did) that User:Certified.Gangsta would go revert war just because someone removes his banner. A part of

WP:AGF mean nothing to you? Maybe you owe an apology to User:Certified.Gangsta

too in assuming that he would revert-war at any minuscule provocation.

I came here for clarification on the policy regarding User:Certified.Gangsta's banner, my behaviour, and User:Sean William's behaviour. I did not come here to be pre-judged by you as to my character. I am sorely disappointed by the behaviour some of the editors posting in this thread, who seem to groundlessly assume that others are scheming "dick"s who are incapable of acting objectively and in bona fides. Even more ridiculously, they assymetrically apply such a prejudgment to editors who are not disruptive, and who produce constructive edits, and, for some reason, not to disruptive editors who have been sanctioned by ArbCom! If I were to prejudge anyone, I would prejudge someone who had been officially sanctioned! wouldn't you? Or are criminals good honest blokes and all cops corrupt machinery of the capitalist state to you?

Wikipedia is meant to be fun. Asking for the opinions of more knowledgeable administrators on areas of uncertainty is one way to keep it fun. Well, you have just made it un-fun. I won't be back on Wikipedia for a while, if ever. --Sumple (Talk) 05:34, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia was not meant to be fun. Nobody said it was going to be fun. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Maybe we should start treating it like one. Sean William 13:53, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

"Wikipedia, the volunteer encyclopedia that expects you to help for ... what?" --Ideogram 17:46, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Anynobody

08:53, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

UI spoofing is not a harmless joke. It needs to be included in the definition of vandalism, and I expect it will one day, but the wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly. Meanwhile,

Ling.Nut

11:30, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Sumple, if you want impartial comments, file a

WP:RFC against me. I've already argued my point, so I'm not going to bother to re-iterate it down here. Sean William

11:33, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Sumple, the fact that you and others obviously dislike Certified should have been stated from the beginning; if you wanted to be neutral, you would have stated your possible conflict of interest and why you didn't think it would affect this incident. Even if you believe that UI spoofing was against consensus or policy, you very well knew that it was Certified's user page you were editing and that you had a fairly good chance you wouldn't be neutral. As

Phony Saint

15:00, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

• I don't see a problem with UI spoofing as long as it doesn't cause any detrimental effects (phishing, etc.) I see no problem with having a little bit of fun every once and a while. At least until there's
  .V. _[Talk|Email
  ] 17:01, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

User:One Night In Hackney

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Please consider taking any complaints to

Request for Comments - such discussion has no place here. -- Nick ^t

12:11, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

I am writing as a banned user in regards to the actions of User:One Night In Hackney. He recently deleted about 100 edits made by a User:Rcb1 (see [101]). This is not me, although we do have some similar styles and interests. User:One Night In Hackney knows this otherwise he would have named me as the sockpuppet. As it happens ONiH does not know or seem to care about the identity of the sockpuppet or to whom it belongs and has made no effort in finding out. He has placed no notice or template on the userpage and has not requested that the user be blocked or banned ([102]).

ONiH has cast himself as judge, jury and prosecutor, and has been empowered by like-minded inviduals in his coterie or inner circle to carry out vendettas and delete whatever he chooses without an administrator's OK, although Admin. User:Alison seems to rubber stamp everything he does. He enjoys playing cat and mouse games (see [103] below):

• (cur) (last) 13:55, 12 May 2007 One Night In Hackney (Talk | contribs) (83,501 bytes) (rv -going to have fun with this editor) emphasis added
• (cur) (last) 13:54, 12 May 2007 General Peabody (Talk | contribs) (83,498 bytes) (they are terrorists)

I admit that I have continued to edit Wikipedia since being blocked, but how could I not. I was/am a Wikiholic ("My name is Robert and I am a..."), if I may be permitted to invent such a word, and no one is offering any rehab. Also I diagreed with the grounds for my lifetime ban - engineered by User:Demiurge, a friend of User:Alison, User:One Night In Hackney, et al. - and let's not use euphemisms - indefinite ban is a lifetime ban - for what amounted to "exhausting the community's patience".

I am not even going to get into the fact that these censors all belong to the same ethnic and/or national background:

• User:Demiurge
• User:Vintagekits
• User:Alison
• User:Domer48

I'll leave it to you to figure out what that is.

In closing, let me add that while in the short run allowing these censors and vendettists to perform "security" (locating sockpuppets, which in general I agree with, except, of course, my own case) may sem OK, in the long run feeding the egos of this ilk and allowing them to do whatever they wish is not the sign of a healthy or true encyclopaedia.

Yours,

R. Sieger — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.19.94.184 (talk • contribs)

Why was the above reverted? If there is no substance to this report then it will not stand. Erasing it makes it look like someone has something to hide. What are R. Sieger's previous edits?VK35 16:50, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

He has stated he was a banned user. Banned users are not able to edit on Wikipedia for whatever reason. However, if anyone wants to immediately throw this frivolous request out my window (and essentially doing the same thing as reverting it), be my guest. —²¹⁰physicq (c) 16:52, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

From my understanding of the process, banned users are often blocked and then submitted for banning. Therefore, they have absolutely no chance to defend their position. I would assume that this creates a situation that they create socks. In order to decrease socks, we must try to understand their motivation. Sometimes, we may be able to solve this. I say these comments because I have worked with socks in 3RR and SSP cases and have, so far, resolved their complaints through informal mediation. Extreme POV and vandal socks are a different matter.VK35 17:00, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

What is this banned user's account anyway? Funpika 17:04, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Nonetheless, the group of editors he mentions do occasionally overstep the mark with regards to pushing opinion. I'm also slightly interested to hear why this user was blocked and what his username was. He states he was banned, whereas it may just be a block (a ban being an indef block no admin will lift; I can't know if I would lift it without knowing more about it :)). I suggest if he has true grounds for being unblocked he should post an unblock request on his old talk page.

All that said, I strongly suspect this is all a load of hot air from a rightly blocked and banned user. --kingboyk 17:05, 12 May 2007 (UTC) (edit conflict with above post)

This has been reverted completely again. I have restored some of the regular editors comments so we can comment. By reverting out the entire comment, we are just asking for vandalism to occur.

Furthermore, the original edit says that he is blocked for being accused of being the banned user but that he is not the banned user. If so, reverting his comments is improper. Only the comments written by banned users should be reverted, not comments written by people unfairly accused of being blocked users.VK35 17:16, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Quick investigation suggests we could be looking at this user. Will (aka Wimt) 17:17, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I've left One Night In Hackney a note on his Talk page about this discussion. It's common courtesy. --ElKevbo 17:22, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

If R. Sieger is [email protected], I do not wish to participate in this discussion further. However, I still have not seen the contribution list (edit list) for R. Sieger.VK35 17:26, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

The IP is obviously the rms125a guy. Something confuses me though. I can't find anything about either user's account creation. Funpika 17:35, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

R. Sieger made this original edit using an IP address and not a regular log-in. The IP has been blocked for 1 week. I believe R. Sieger will be able to continue editing next week. If R. Sieger later gets blocked personally and feels that it has been unfairly done, then I might be interested in listening to his/her complaint (not a guarantee)VK35 17:50, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

It still seems obvious that User:Robert Sieger and IPs in the 70.19 IP range are sockpuppets of User:[email protected]. Funpika 17:54, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Also I don't believe User:Robert Sieger was ever blocked. Funpika 17:57, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

• I've restored the original RMS comment here because it contains useful context, because I'm mentioned personally there, and because it's a useful example of the editor in question. Please don't delete it as he'll only cry censorship. Comments to follow ... - Alison ☺ 18:06, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
• I'm glad this has been brought up here now as I believe in transparency and I've absolutely nothing to hide here. Robert Sieger, also known as just RMS or
  Celtic FC (they being synonymous, apparently) in check. He has had an extensive history of sock-puppetry - easily in the hundreds now - which he uses to evade his ban. Just two articles John Charles McQuaid and Tim Pat Coogan are classic examples of his sockery and edit-warring (check the history). He has been the subject of at least one RFC which resulted in his first ban. He's been involved in vote rigging, which was exposed by CheckUser (the User:Jill Teed debacle). Contrary to his claims, I do not block the guy on sight at all [104]. He's been incredibly offensive to others here, both on an off WP. He's posted rants to WikipediaWatch, complaining about editors and admins. Just this week, he openly mocked some other innocent editor who just happened to be on my talk page. The same day, he created an attack article on another editor which was speedied. And on and on and on and on it goes ... Recently, another admin questioned a block I placed on an RMS sock. I provided evidence in email and they were satisfied. I can provide extensive evidence for every comment I have made here, so feel free to question anything I have said on this thread. I certainly stand by every action I have made to-date pertaining to this phenomenally abusive banned editor - Alison ☺
  18:19, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
• Oh, and he was trolling here on ANI just last week - Alison ☺ 18:24, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Strong generic statement in support of Alison and Hackney (don't have much contact with the others). This whole complaint is a load of bullshit, and physicq is absolutely right: Banned users should not be allowed to edit at all, for precisely this reason. It matters not two whits whether they were blocked or not before the ban: The ban is a COMMUNITY ban: as long as everyone else in the community can decide, it really doesn't matter what the editor in question thinks. I personally think I'm the greatest thing in the world, but everyone else I meet thinks I'm an asshole. As disheartening to me as it ends up sounding, guess who's right? (hint: not me).

^{Denny Crane.}

19:44, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Again, since you people don't seem to realize the point of my writing -- it was not about me or whinging for any favours, but rather about ONiH's abuses and his unaccountability regarding the below, which is probably the tip of the iceberg:

I am writing as a banned user in regards to the actions of User:One Night In Hackney. He recently deleted about 100 edits made by a User:Rcb1 (see [105]). This is not me, although we do have some similar styles and interests. User:One Night In Hackney knows this otherwise he would have named me as the sockpuppet. As it happens ONiH does not know or seem to care about the identity of the sockpuppet or to whom it belongs and has made no effort in finding out. He has placed no notice or template on the userpage and has not requested that the user be blocked or banned ([106]).

ONiH has cast himself as judge, jury and prosecutor, and has been empowered by like-minded inviduals in his coterie or inner circle to carry out vendettas and delete whatever he chooses without an administrator's OK, although Admin. User:Alison seems to rubber stamp everything he does. He enjoys playing cat and mouse games (see [107] below):

• (cur) (last) 13:55, 12 May 2007 One Night In Hackney (Talk | contribs) (83,501 bytes) (rv -going to have fun with this editor)
• (cur) (last) 13:54, 12 May 2007 General Peabody (Talk | contribs) (83,498 bytes) (they are terrorists)

R. Sieger — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.72.102.179 (talk • contribs)

• Robert - I don't believe you. If User:Rcb1 has any issue with what's happened here, I'm pretty sure we'll hear from them soon and people here can address accordingly. Or not. It's very laudable that you're going to bat for this guy, but I somehow suspect your motives. Right now, you have at least 4 sock accounts active - I'm watching them right now - but they have not been blocked. And again, I do not "rubber stamp" whatever Hackney does. That's plainly false. - Alison ☺ 23:05, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

• Here's Robert's
  community ban from last month. Hackney brought this case to the Community Sanction Noticeboard, which is why Robert is so sore here. He's also been using sockpuppets to stack AfD votes. He has close-on 300 known sock-puppet accounts. Here he is on my talk page last week, which brought this thread to ANI last week. And here on my talk page about 1 minute ago. And on and on and on it goes .... - Alison ☺
  23:24, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Alison- that (Allyoops) was a joke, nothing more. Did you seriously think I seriously thought it would go uncovered? I told you at the time, that it was the merest of

bon mots

.

Getting to serious stuff: Alison: My motives are nothing less than ensuring that Wikipedia maintain its integrity, even though I am excluded from its mainstream, much as Desdemona loved Othello even as he made her life miserable and finally took it from her. That is why I monitor ONiH and as an Administrator, why haven't you even asked him about the 100 reverts he made when he has not even (as far as I know) tagged the userpage and requested a sock-puppet block?? Much as I care for you, this shoddiness won't do. You haven't even checked Rcb1's IP, have you.

R.M.S.

P.S.- I haven't touched Michael Cusack, Glasgow Celtic, or the GAA in at least a year.

• You just
  checkusers only. What's your point here? - Alison ☺
  23:41, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

With regard to

WP:BEANS

, as it will only make identification of further sockpuppets more difficult.

While it is true that I generally speak to Alison about new sockpuppets, I have frequently posted to ANI with suitable evidence for any admin to block a sockpuppet which is immediately clearly identifiable. However sometimes in-depth knowledge of the original editor is required, which Alison has. If any other administrator has sufficient knowledge of this editor, feel free to speak up and I will be happy to direct any future sockpuppet reports to you instead of Alison.

The comment of "going to have fun with this editor" is being misconstrued. When a brand new editor suddenly arrives with the sole intent on adding the word "terrorist" to several articles, it sets alarm bells ringing, especially when the editor refuses to listen to reason and acts like a troll. The addition of the word "terrorist" was not necessary in either article he edited, as can be seen below.

• He made this edit to Omagh bombing, ignoring that the lead already states The attack was described by the BBC as "Northern Ireland's worst single terrorist atrocity".
• He made this edit to Provisional Irish Republican Army, ignoring that the lead already states The organisation is classified as an illegal terrorist group in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.

The editor in question also created a page at User:One Night In Hackney/terrorist, and although I can't remember the exact wording, I seem to remember it was all in capitals, accused me of being a terrorist and that I should be blocked from editing Wikipedia. Naturally an administrator will be happy to correct me if I'm incorrect there please?

With regard to the comment of Nonetheless, the group of editors he mentions do occasionally overstep the mark with regards to pushing opinion by kingboyk, I request clarification.I cannot and will not speak on behalf of any other editors or attempt to defend them from an accusation without evidence, but I will speak for myself:

Before the creation of WikiProject Irish Republicanism there were a lot of articles in a poor state, and despite the efforts of project members and other editors there are still articles in need of improvement. If people wish to see me focussing the majority of my time improving those articles as evidence that I am somehow pushing a POV or have a certain political persuasion, they could not be more wrong. My aim is to improve the articles in question, nothing more and nothing less. The subject matter can be quite controversial at time, and attracts "POV warriors" from both sides. I am in fact neither, I have repeatedly tried to make sure the articles comply with NPOV. I have not attempted to hide any claims of terrorism, as the edits below show. I could find more, but I don't see the need to go overboard.

• I added Category:U.S. State Department designated terrorist organizations to Continuity Irish Republican Army.
• I added Category:U.S. State Department designated terrorist organizations to Real Irish Republican Army.
• I re-added Category:Terrorist incidents in 1998 to Omagh bombing.

You only have to look at the Gerry Adams talk page to see how I am attempting to prevent the whitewashing of Adams' alleged IRA involvement, and I would like clarification or a retraction please. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 10:24, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

• Before this progresses any further I think a checkuser on
  Giano
  11:30, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

• People, why are we even discussing this? Even if it did merit discussion, which I don't believe it does, it would be material for an RfC not an endless self-serving whingefest on ANI by a user blatantly and by his own admission evading a ban.
  WP:RBI was also the correct way of handling the edits of a banned user evading his ban, which is what happened here. I find my self wondering what part of "banned" Sieger is having trouble understanding. Guy (Help!
  ) 11:55, 13 May 2007 (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.