Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents

Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents
This page is for urgent incidents or chronic, intractable behavioral problems. Before posting: Read these tips for dealing with incivility If the issue concerns a specific user, try discussing it with them on their talk page Try dispute resolution Just want an admin? Contact a recently active admin directly. Be brief and include diffs demonstrating the problem Do not report breaches of personal information on this highly visible page – instead go to Requests for oversight. When starting a discussion about an editor, you must leave a notice on their talk page; pinging is not enough. You may use {{subst:ANI-notice}} ~~~~ to do so. Closed discussions are usually not archived for at least 24 hours. Routine matters might be archived more quickly; complex or controversial matters should remain longer. Sections inactive for 72 hours are archived automatically by Lowercase sigmabot III. Editors unable to edit here are sent to the /Non-autoconfirmed posts subpage. (archives, search)
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User: Hopiakuta

Can anyone make any sense out of this user's page or talk page, signature, or the user's edits? Hopiakuta (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) I think the original block was probably not so far off base - this seems like a lot of gibberish to me. Tvoz |talk 08:07, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

This is the user's signature - everything within and including the outside brackets:

[[ user : hopiakuta |[[ hopiakuta ]] Please do [[ sign ]] your [[ signature ]] on your [[ message]]. [[ %7e%7e ]] [[ %7e%7e | Thank You. ]]-]]

which comes out like this, including the brackets: [[ hopiakuta Please do sign your signature on your message. ~~ Thank You. -]]

Tvoz |talk 08:23, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I went to his talk page, and couldn't make heads or tails of it. Does anyone think he/she is copying a message someone left for them at one time? And what's with that warning at the top of the page? R. Baley 08:31, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

He seems to contradict his own rule about clear signatures.. — Moe ε 08:42, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Careful Moe, that little greek character there might be considered vandalism. Someguy1221 08:44, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Not just vandalism, but SPAM VANDALISM Better add "ε" to the list of bad words.. — Moe ε 08:56, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) I looked back through his/her contribution history (which is a little scary) and he looks to have tried to get help with his sig back in November 2006. I'm sure there are other issues at play here, but is it possible that he changed his sig at some point and just never got it right (looks like his name didn't have traditional characters in it early on). I'm not sure she/he knows enough english to be helped. Btw, she added back the quotes to the Obama page, but it's still unclear what she wants. . .R. Baley 09:57, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe this person is trying to recreate WP:BJAODN? Both user & talk pages are truly ... odd. -- llywrch 21:33, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

From the talk page: "Please do respect my disability access need." Actually I think this user might be blind and is using some screen reading software. That would partly explain the copying of system- and error messages into the edit window. — Edokter • Talk • 23:05, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I got that impression when I encountered him some time ago - is there any kind of support group here for that sort of thing that he could be put in contact with? --Random832 00:36, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

That would also explain the concern with others signing their comments. For the sighted, it is a simple thing to click on the history tab and see who made the edit. On the other hand, if you have to have it read to you, what an ordeal that must be. -- But|seriously|folks  01:33, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm blind and use a screen reader - using Wikipedia effectively with a screen reader can be very difficult if one does not understand much about the technology. The closest thing to a support group for users like that is probably wikipedia talk:accessibility but I suspect English is not this user's native language. I've left a message at the talk page anyway and I'll see what I can do to help. Graham87 02:35, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Well this is the response. Make of it what you will. Graham87 12:49, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

In trying to make sense of it, I managed to track down the "extremely racist, extremely handicappist, policy page, about vandalism." - he objected to the inclusion of this image to illustrate the concept of "doppleganger" [which apparently meant, at the time, closer to "sock puppet" than to what we now use the term for] - He considered it racist because the subjects are black (though, no comment on whether he would think the same if a picture where the subjects were white had been used instead), and handicappist because either he considers being a twin to be a disability, or because of the (by no means obvious from the picture itself) fact that one of the subjects suffers from Aplastic anemia (though it seems the motivation was not in fact racism, but simply because it was an available picture of twins, the use of a picture of living people to illustrate it was certainly in bad taste) - he had some difficulty communicating this objection, leading to accusations of vandalism etc which understandably left him with negative feelings about the wikipedia community --Random832 14:01, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I've taken a somewhat detailed look at his contribs, and it looks like apart from incoherent talk page comments, it's mostly redirects from dubious misspellings. --Random832 16:37, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

With no disrespect to the user, it looks like neuro damage to me, like someone that's been in a really bad car accident at some point. Someone I knew at school went like this, one quirk which is similar to this person is repetition of similar or inverted forms, eg the "complex" bit in the diff. I could probably find emails from that person on one of my old hard drives to compare. Mostly they are still high-functioning but the bits related to communication, both inbound and outbound, are impaired. Orderinchaos 06:57, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Ghirlandajo (talk · contribs) moved Soviet occupation article to Allied occupation of Europe

Without any consensus what so ever. The decision was never discussed at talk page. Also he created Soviet occupation disambiguation page to prevent moving back.

The page was under active editing, in the scope of several wikiprojects working towards GA status, and this kind of hijacking to totally different topic without any consensus or even mention on talk page is the rudest thing I have ever seen on wikipedia. Suva 20:51, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

This section was deleted by Ghirlandajo and replaced with the below topic about Piotrus [1]. -- Cyrius|✎ 21:47, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Wow, that's really a nice attempt to deflect a 3RR block - not the first time I have seen this done by involved users. I am glad to see that this time it didnt' work well.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  22:15, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

After your latest outburst of admin abuse, I'm on no speaking terms with you. The IRC incident was Suva's retaliation for my remarks here and here. It's a pity that you could not resist joining the crowd. --Ghirla^-трёп- 23:20, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your personal attack. I just saw Allied Occupation of Europe in my watchlist again, and my bullshit detector went off. If it were someone else who would have done something like that, I would have acted exactly the same. No need to get personal here. Suva 04:17, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Suva, you are not an editor in good standing to expect replies from me every time you come up with a slur. This has become pretty routine, and I wonder where our civility police is lurking these days. --Ghirla^-трёп- 06:36, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

And why, exactly, is Suva not in good standing? Is there a community sanction against him or was he blocked recently for edit warring? Are complaints about him usual in AN/I? Is he pointlessly pushing personal pro-Sovet POV? Sander Säde 07:20, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Piotrus abusing admin tools (again)

The point of Soviet occupation is obviously to "prove" that, at the end of World War II, Eastern Europe was "occupied" while Western Europe was "liberated", although there was no material difference between the two. The page is a farrago of tenuously related or totally disconnected events, such as the Soviet liberation of Bornholm and Soviet war in Afghanistan. I removed irrelevant passages about Mongolia and Afghanistan, started passages about Greece, Italy, and France, and moved the page to the more appropriate title Allied occupation of Europe (since we have Category:Allied occupation of Europe, there should be some article about the phenomenon). I was rudely reverted by User:Piotrus who on T:TDYK proclaimed the page a good and neutral article and arbitrarily deleted the disambiguation page to make his point. Against the background of never-ending concerns about his misuse of admin tools for POV-pushing, Piotrus stoops to out-of-process deletion of a disambiguation page. Hilarious. Do we need deletion process for Eastern Europe-related page, when Piotrus is always here to judge what is to be deleted and what is to be kept? --Ghirla^-трёп- 21:12, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Ghirlandajo opposed the current article and without any discussion changed its title, while creating a stub that made it impossible to change it back to the previous name. Then he started to change and delete content of the article, justifyng it by the new title saying "its not about Soviets anymore". --Molobo 21:17, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

What you call "stub" was a full-fledged disambiguation page which referred our readers to such disparate pages as Allied occupation of Europe and Soviet war in Afghanistan which you, Piotrus, and Digwuren preferred to bundle together, for reasons unknown to me. --Ghirla^-трёп- 21:20, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Ghirla has been blocked for a 3RR violation on the page in question. --Golbez 21:20, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

"Allied occupation of Europe" is a fiction invented by Petri Krohn and previously deleted. "Soviet occupation" is a common name for, well, Soviet occupations. Ghirlandajo's actions were most disruptive. Digwuren 21:26, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

can somebody restore the original name to the article ?--Molobo 21:41, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Apparently, the process for that is WP:RM. I'm trying to figure out how it works. If you know, you're welcome to go ahead and not wait for me. Digwuren 22:15, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I believe I've achieved filing a WP:RM request. Digwuren 01:13, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Ghirlandajo (talk · contribs) also removed my complaint about him [2] and replaced it with this one. This kind of article hijacking is not of good taste. And removing complaints about himself on AN/I is not one either. Suva 21:49, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, we are starting to understand what happened as known IRCers who chose to block shop at IRC are starting to pop up here at last. --Irpen 21:53, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Wait what? The only "IRCer" here is Golbez (until now, zomg). From what I've read just now (on this page), Ghirlandajo was editting tedentiously and unilaterally moved a page without any discussion on its talk page. In addition to that, Ghirla replaced Suva's thread concerning his actions at Soviet occupation with this thread to complain about Piotrus fixing Ghirla's purposeful disruption.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 21:55, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Make that "moved the article three separate times"—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 21:57, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

You are being mistaken, Ryulong. Golbez was not the only party who discussed this over IRC. Someone brought it up to IRC while this board is available. And there is a 3RR board, rather than an IRC channel, designated for 3RR allegations. --Irpen 21:58, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I have been at wiki IRC half a year ago maybe two times, Irpen, didn't use IRC since then. What happened here was Ghirlandajo forcefully naming article to change its content, and blocking restoration of its original name. He was blocked just for 3RR as result. Not even disruption --Molobo 22:00, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Irpen, take your anti-IRC crusade elsewhere. The facts are clear. Ghirlandajo broke policy. He got blocked. That's what happens. Stop bringing your anti-IRC crusade into this and fogging up things. ⇒ SWATJester ^{Denny Crane.} 22:06, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Swatjester, please stay on topic. My "crusade" has nothing to do with this. Violation is unclear. If allegation was brought in plain view, we could have discussed it and see its merit. This is exactly why it was snitched at IRC, to achieve the block rather than give the matter a due consideration. --Irpen 22:11, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Getting back on subject, I do believe Piotrus' deletion of the page in question to engage in moving the page again may have indeed been inappropriate, as he was using admin tools to make way for the move to his preferred version of the article, then followed by a revert of Ghirla's edits. But yes, Ghirla also should not have moved the article more than once after it was undone, as the very fact that someone disagreed with his edits meant that he should take it to discussion. I don't really think the 24 hour block of Ghirla is called for though. It isn't really doing anything preventing him from editing from 24 hours when more productive editing could be taking place. Cowman109^Talk 22:10, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Few points. The related page, after Ghirla POINTed move and move war it caused, was a mess with triple redirects, talk page separated from article page, and other issues. In fact what I moved was no longer the article but - as far as I can tell - a redirect (it seems I moved a redirect, and deleted a redirect...), as the article was at that point being moved around by at least one more admin; we were all trying to clean up the mess, and eventually, after Circus protected the article from moves (thanks!), we were able to do so. My primary concern here was not moving the article into any name that I thought was better, but to fix the n-th redirects and other navigational problems created by the move war. Considering the disruption caused by his actions - not for the first time - I see no reason why Ghirla shouldn't be treated as any other user who is responsible for a 3RR violation and a move war. He is an experienced editor and should now much better then to carry out an obviously controversial move without discussion and then on top of everything engage in a move war. Last but not least, trying to deflect the criticism of his person by turning on another editor, removing other editor's post in its entirety ([3] - what Suva well described as 'trying to hijack an ANI discussion') is certainly not what we expect from our editors. PS. I have no idea how IRC is related to this discussion, I was certainly not using it today - why do I feel it's another attempt to turn this 'off topic'? PPS. I find the title Piotrus abusing admin tools (again) to be quite offensive and untrue - I have never been found guilty of admin tools abuse, and such slander should not appear on ANI. -- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  22:30, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

This screed is bullshit. You should be ashamed of yourself, Piotrus. There are still people who remember how you wheel warred to unblock Molobo which - amid your protestations - was eventually banned from Wikipedia for a year. After His year-long block expired in June, the guy instantly resumed his disruptive activities in the project, with your full encouragement and support. --Ghirla^-трёп- 07:00, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Apparently bullshit is not as offensive as schmutz. I have not seen anything disruptive from Molobo. Actually, with the ban of Vlad Fedorov, our side (if there is such a thing, really, just editors who prefer to cite sources, not opinions as fact) would appear to be up by two.

   So sad that editors toil at their editor-denouncing-and-accusing cottage industry instead of making any positive contributions. I thought we were here to help edit an encyclopedia.

   To Irpen, I am sorry to see you have utterly descended into the trenches. You threaten me, creating an entire article talk page section over "schmutz" [4] yet let slide Ghirla's "bullshit" and unsourced allegations of editor misconduct and collusion with not a peep. And don't you and Ghirla tire of your permanent campaign against Piotrus? Really, he's not going to roll over and play dead for you. And he manages to be productive despite your best efforts to bog him down. —  Pēters J. Vecrumba 03:20, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Vecrumba, when you, as it seemed called the editors who disagree with you "schumtz" repeatedly, I did raise the issue. This is not the same as calling some statement bullshit. You explained at that very thread later that by schmutz you meant the situation, not people. I never said a word after that.

And please no ridiculous accusation on "campaigns against Piotrus". You may want to check here for who is running the well-organized campaign against the wikipedia contributors. As you can see Piotrus was "gunning" for Ghirla for years and for me for several months. I am looking forward for your appreciation of our "managing to be productive" while being subject to such a meticulous and well-organized campaign by Piotrus. --09:02, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Molobo's editing may be described as a never-ending nightmare. The guy was known as a tool to ram your POV into the articles, but that does not excuse his sockpuppetry (see his talk page for details). During the time of the block, his self-professed IP continued editing, in defiance of our rules on block evasion. Anyone is welcome to compare this edit by Molobo with this edit by a newly registered account in English Wikipedia. Enough is enough. I'm surprised at the facile attitude of our sysops who refuse to investigate the defiant avoidance of the block on Molobo's part, preferring to persecute myself on the urging of IRC regulars like Suva. --Ghirla^-трёп- 08:49, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Piotrus, you did abuse the admin tools in the past. Unblocking your friends rightfully blocked for disruption is one of ways. Polish names issues is another one. But I agree that those happened in relatively remote past. This incident refreshed those old memories.

I appreciate your concern about the title. You were sadly silent when Digwuren started a thread titled "Irpen persisting in using a deletion board for personal attacks" at this very board recently (must have moved to the archives now.) True enough he was quickly shown the door here at that time. Next time you ask him for his "valuable input" in the articles on which you edit war, please mention that the issue of ANI thread names. --Irpen 02:15, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Irpen, if I had abused my admin powers in the past, I'd have lost the admin status. That never happened. Yes, some people - yourself included - were unhappy about my actions. But the community saw no need to take any action - so please stop slandering me with your accusations that I abused my admin powers.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  05:05, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Desysopping requires severe and systematic abuse, Piotrus. You know that perfectly. Your rarely use your admin tools as unlike some admins, you write a lot. That itself is a good thing. I view your editing habits, while in part problematic, separately from your admin habits. They have some common issues that have to do with your concept of ethical conduct but, unlike your editing, your admin activity is generally not my major concern. --Irpen 06:00, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

He didn't have any right to hijack and retask the page without consensus or any discussion in first place. I reverted him once, and as he ignored my revert, I reported him. Suva 22:15, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with your general point: Wikipedia's policy of blocking may be quite disruptive. Unfortunately, MediaWiki doesn't have anything better. :-( Digwuren 22:26, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

It was me who brought it up. It's standard procedure when you see significant disruption. I didn't ask any blocks, 3RR or otherwise, I just asked for administrative advice. User:Golbez found the 3RR violation. Ghiralandajos actions of retasking the article without even slightest hint of discussion anywhere were clearly against the principles of wikipedia. Suva 22:13, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Ghirlandajo was doing more then moving the article :he was changing the content so that it was completely different from the previous article with his stated justification being the new title, while making it impossible to restore original title by creatng a disamb page with the same name. This blocks any attempt to resotre previous tittle. Such action seems disruptive-I would like to know how to clean this mess ?--Molobo 22:19, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Who "hijacked" the page is a separate issue, Suva, and it's not Ghirla who "hijacks" and "owns" not just this page but a set of them created in a rabid spree. There was no 3RR either. Your choice to act through IRC is deplorable. There is an AN3 for a good reason where the accused may face the allegations and respond. --Irpen 22:21, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I DID report it to AN/I, but it apparently got deleted. I didn't count the reverts, as I only reverted him once. And yes, discussion is important. You just don't retask actively edited page which is in the scope of several wikiprojects and being worked towards GA without discussion first. Suva 22:25, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Who cares how the issue is brought to an administrators' attention? Just because it's IRC which you obviously have something against does not make the later block completely invalid. Like I stated at Ghirla's talk page, there's no difference if this was brought up towards an administrator at AN3, ANI, AIV, VP, IRC, AIM, SL, ICQ, MSN, etc.

Ghirla moved the page 3 times today in the span of less than an hour without making any mention of it on the article's talk page. This is what prompted Suva to contact an administrator through IRC (how is there anything wrong with that?) and Golbez just happened to be the one to look into the issue, find what he saw as a 3RR violation, and block Ghirlandajo. Suva also brought this up here, but Ghirlandajo removed it claiming a "massive edit conflict" which occurred twenty minutes after Suva made his/her post to ANI, and was well before Ghirlandajo was blocked.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 22:31, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

It's not the first time that you defend "cool-down" blocks of established contributors made without prior conversation or warning on IRC advice, with a taunting block summary like "you aren't getting that courtesy, etc." If you search for "tendentious and unilateral" editing, you are welcome to check the entire edit history of Digwuren and Suva, from their first edit in the project. In the first months, you will hardly find anything but reverts. Nobody seems to care about the amount of disruption they bring to the Eastern Europe-segment of the project but, when I make two page moves and two reverts, they are somehow joined together and declared in violation of 3RR. Since such a report has no chance of being taken seriously on WP:AN3, it is submitted on IRC (where most administrative decision-making has been done of late). This is a sign of the times and where Wikipedia is heading. --Ghirla^-трёп- 06:46, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Here is my thoughts, folks were editing disruptively, nobody can deny that. Moving a page 3 times (and presumably having someone else or another group moving it back at least 2 times) is disruptive. Folks, we all know the English language, we all know how to talk to each other using the English language, so use the discussion pages rather then mindlessly undoing each other. Please note that being disruptive is being blockable, 3RR is an upper limit on disruption, if you read it closely it will note exactly that, you are not entitled to 3 reverts. Now my suggestion here is the lot of you go and discuss whatever issue set this off on the talk pages, and remember we are all trying to write a good encyclopaedia. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 22:29, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

All this is true, and I was the only one who attempted to start discussion. There was no response whatsoever, only reverts and IRC complaints. --Ghirla^-трёп- 23:26, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Mostly agree with everything Eagle said, including that 3RR is not an entitlement. One can be blocked for under 3RR revert warring in general? Is this what happened? Because it was said that it was a 3RR violation block. Next, we are not discussing the "whatever issues" that belong to talk here. We are discussing the block. --Irpen 22:35, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

For the record, I think move wars are regarded as more disruptive then normal revert wars.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  22:37, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. For the record, Piotrus, you moved warred as well, and used the amdin button to enable yourself to do it. And, the main issue. Are there 4 reverts here? Is the 24-hr block justified? --Irpen 22:42, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I did not move war. I tried to move the article once, to fix the broken links, and ended up moving a redirect anycase. I find your attempts to portay me as a villain here quite unconstructive. It was Ghirla who move warred against comments and moves of several (4? more?) editors; it is quite clear who is the disruptive party here.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  22:45, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

There are several disruptive parties here, Piotrus. And some of those parties act sneaky and play dirty. --Irpen 22:47, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I certainly agree with the last part of your comment - although I am afraid we would disagree on who those parties would be.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  22:50, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Is blocking any attempt to restore original title and original content by creating a disamb page that makes it impossible to change the title "sneaky and dirty"?--Molobo 22:51, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Ah, that would explain why admin intervention was needed, indeed. Sigh.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  22:54, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Sigh indeed. What kind of intimate connection do you see between the Soviet liberation of Bornholm in 1945 and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 that justifies your insistance on their coverage in the same article? --Ghirla^-трёп- 00:06, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

• For the love of Jimbo, can't Piotrus and Ghirla leave each other alone? Neither of you ever comes out of your fights looking good. Guy (Help!) 22:48, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
  • JzG, this is not a Piotrus - Ghirla conflict. I did not block him, I did not report him... I was just dragged into it by Ghirla complaining about me being in the neighborhood :) -- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  22:50, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
• From what I've seen, the block is definitely justified. Move wars are far more disruptive than edit wars. From what I can tell by looking through the splintered move history, Ghirla moved the page multiple times and was reverted by multiple editors. When you get reverted multiple times by multiple people, that should usually raise a red flag that should warn you to stop as you may be doing something against consensus. From WP:3RR: "If you seem to be the only person who feels that the article should be the way that you have made it, perhaps it is better the way everyone else thinks it should be." Piotrus happened to be one of the reverters. Admin tools are usually required to clean up page move issues; that's what WP:CSD#G6 is for (among other things). If it was any other admin, would they be accused of abuse? Mr.Z-man 23:08, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

  It never hurts to have a word with another wikipedian before rushing to press the button, especially when he has never been blocked for 3RR before. There was neither warning nor 3RR report. I will question the wisdom of anyone who approves IRC-prompted blocks of established contributors. --Ghirla^-трёп- 23:23, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

  You've been blocked for 3RR twice before, one time it was undone. And the word was sought, and many admins agreed with my decision; in the end, I decided there were too many extenuating factors to continue having my name on the block. That does not mean you get to either resume being disruptive, or to misrepresent the situation. --Golbez 23:26, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

  I assure you that I was never blocked for 3RR, I generally pursue the policy of 1RR, and I could never imagine that two page moves could be bundled together with two ordinary edits to represent it as a 3RR violation. I still don't understand how one could count a page move as identical to a "classical" revert. But let us not go into these technicalities. If you find it helpful to survey two-year-old block-logs, you will certainly notice that the first block was for "inciting a 3RR violation by another user" (and was lifted with an apology from the blocking admin on my talk page), and another was a result of Bonaparte's sock-farm antics. So your reading of my block log is disconnected from reality. --Ghirla^-трёп- 23:38, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

  Indeed you have. The block log does not lie. It does not matter who is "at fault" when you are blocked for 3RR. If you are blocked, that means that an administrator has reviewed the case and determined that you have violated the policy. It has nothing to do with who was right, who was wrong, and who used sockpuppets. You Can't Review Me!!! 01:24, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, lot's of things matter and block log cannot tell the full story. The unfair or abusive block that brought an apology or a desysopping equally stay in the log forever. Just an additional reason to not use blocks on the whim AND to check the wider context than the block log. --Irpen 02:05, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Irpen, I don't think you are well-served to argue the concept of "blocks in perpetuity" (debunked by ArbCom on many an occasion) with a user specializing in "Pokémon species". I'm not a Pokémon species, thankfully. There are about 2000 administrators, the vast majority of which are clueless, to put it mildly, but only one Ghirla so far. --Ghirla^-трёп- 06:30, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

How is attacking 846 people indiscriminately helping anything? You're unblocked now, and there's nothing wrong done by anyone else here.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 06:38, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Three out-of-process deletions of pages are "nothing wrong", while "cool-down" blocks of established contributors made without prior conversation or warning on IRC advice, with a taunting block summary like "you aren't getting that courtesy, etc." are perfectly consistent with our blocking policy, eh? Sorry, our attitudes seem to be too different to be reconciled. Everyone is entitled to his delusions, I guess. --Ghirla^-трёп- 06:52, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Ghirlandajo, I apologize if my comment seemed insulting. I meant what I said in the most literal sense: that you had been blocked before; I did not mean to imply whether you deserved it or not, just that it happened. This was due partially to my partial misreading of your previous statement, and I admit that I did come in with a bias due to the first few posts.

With that out of the way, I do not see how my preference in editing Pokemon species articles has anything to do at all with my ability to comprehend an explanation, nor what it has to do with my standing as a Wikipedian editor at all. I can't blame you for losing your cool like that, given the circumstances, but I would appreciate it if you would not demean me or any other user because of the subject matter that we choose to edit. Regards, You Can't Review Me!!! 06:47, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

More out-of-process deletions

Despite my complaint about Piotr's escapade above, some folks (who apparently read IRC more often than ANI) persist in deleting the redirect which has never been nominated for deletion (neither was the article it linked to). It is disturbing how widespread and facile abuse of admin privileges has grown. --Ghirla^-трёп- 00:03, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I believe they were refering to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allied occupation of Europe (2nd nomination), which choose to delete the article (instead now it's a redirect). — Moe ε 00:29, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I infer as much, but I can't find where the redirect was nominated for deletion. I am told that Digwuren replaced the redirect with {{db|recreation of deleted article}}, in an effort to mislead the administrators. It's a pity that they did not care to check the veracity of his assertions. --Ghirla^-трёп- 00:41, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Just because you disagree with an admin doesn't mean their abusing their tools. If I looked from your point of view, you're abusing your edit rights and should be banned off the project. So think twice before throwing allegations of admin abuse. Maxim_(talk) 01:00, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

You are very welcome to demonstrate that I was "abusing my edit rights and should be banned off the project".[5] I, for my own part, will appreciate if you refer me to the process by which you have received the tools. I see that you have been editing for several months already but I can see your name neither in the user rights log or user rename log. It is annoying to see so many sysops whose qualifications for adminship are difficult of impossible to ascertain. --Ghirla^-трёп- 06:22, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Bit confusing, but by checking his earliest edits to the project his username was Evilclown93, RfA is here and two weeks later he usurped the username Maxim through the CHU/U process (much as I did with my own). The log is unclear but that's not Maxim's fault - my own log has a similar problem (my original name was my current with "78" at the end), it's to do with the fact the history doesn't migrate. Note I have absolutely no opinion on the actual debate here (the number 10 and the words "foot" and "pole" come to mind) but I saw a need to clarify here. Orderinchaos 07:09, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Please refrain from veiled threats and address the issue at hand. Was the deleted page's content reasonably close by content to the originally deleted page to justify the speedy deletion? --Irpen 01:27, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Technically no, it was just a redirect. I've undeleted it and nominated it for deletion at RFD. I think saying "disturbing how widespread and facile abuse of admin privileges has grown." - is a bit of an exaggeration. Its a redirect, nobody was deleting real content. Should we start an RFAR to get some people desysopped over this? I think not, just let the RFD run its course and stop screaming "Admin Abuse!" whenever an admin does something you disagree with. The proper venue for this should have been WP:DRV to complain about the deletion, not ANI to complain about the admins. Mr.Z-man 03:09, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

The matter is not so trivial as you try to represent it here. The page was protected from recreation, although nobody tried to recreate it, as far as I know. Furthermore, it was deleted rather controversially, from the second attempt, when the main contributor was away from the project. I don't believe it's a solid reason to protect the page from recreation. Please point to the community consensus that there should never be an article about Allied occupation of Europe, and that any attempts at starting one are patently disruptive. --Ghirla^-трёп- 06:20, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Irpen, please refrain from attacking editors who actually try to enforce some civility here. Thanks, -- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  05:03, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I simply asked above to refrain from from threats. In what way is this an attack? Please stick to the issues at hand and do not switch the subject to the civility. ---Irpen 06:08, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Piotr's attempt to derail discussion of his out-of-process deletions to his favourite subject of civility is pathetic. There's no denying that he deleted a valid page to make a point. Abuse is abuse, and he should face the consequences. --Ghirla^-трёп- 06:17, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, it's time to settle down. All parties have lost our cool here. Let's calm down, take a breather, and return as ice cubes. This debate won't get anywhere should everyone stray into the realm of personal attacks :). You Can't Review Me!!! 06:29, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Your conduct reminds me of User:Ideogram. I'd like to inform you that, in Wikipedia, we discuss issues robustly and openly, and there is no way we'll stop doing that until some sort of conclusion is reached. The matter at hand is frivolous deletion of three pages. I don't see how it qualifies as a "realm of personal attacks", sorry. --Ghirla^-трёп- 06:32, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Might I ask how my behavior is similar to Ideogram's? I'm not asking that you stop debating. I've just noticed that the users involved have become increasingly hostile, and suggested that all parties involved should take a quick break to regain composure so that intelligent debate may resume. Perhaps "personal attacks" is not the right phrase, but this is getting nowhere if Piotr suddenly takes everything offensively and you shoot every messenger that does not particularly support your stance. This has nothing at all to do with the deleted pages at this point. You Can't Review Me!!! 06:56, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

The underlying problem is the failure of folks to take lessons from what's going on this noticeboard. Each month we have longish threads revolving around drama blocks made purposefully to inflame a situation rather than defuse it. Each time it turns out that they serve no useful purpose, and each time the same guys say the same things about cool-down blocks, the superiority of IRC communications over such outdated noticeboards as AN3, etc. This is really boring. (Shrug). --Ghirla^-трёп- 07:10, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I was not requesting that anyone get blocked in order to cool down. I was suggesting that people take the time to cool down on their own accord. If you feel that my posts were useless, however, than I shall simply refrain from continuing in this discussion. That's all you really needed to say. Regards, You Can't Review Me!!! 07:19, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok, folks, arguing (read: pointing fingers at who is in the wrong) is not going to solve the underlying issues. If one feels that things are being deleted out of process, please see deletion review and argue the case there. Feel free to argue about the underlaying issue, but no need to point fingers, instead argue over why whatever it is should not be deleted, or how whatever it is, is being deleted out of process, such as: CSD "A7 does not apply here!" (I don't know what CSD criteria was used, nor if its even an argument over a speedy deletion, nor do I really care). All I do know is continued revertwarring here is going to lead to blocks, so discuss the issue, take it to the relevant forums (read: not here), and discuss! Thank you. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 09:00, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Canvassing to edit war through other Web sites

Canvassing on Wikipedia talk pages to edit war articles is a bad thing. Likewise, I would assume canvassing on other Web sites to edit war on Wikipedia articles would also be a bad thing. If I am right, are there ramifications for those who do? To be more specific, I've removed original research material from Man vs. Wild that violated inappropriate synthesis policies. Rei and someone who he canvassed (Tasco 0)[6][7] have since been arguing with me and others on the talk page (see e.g. talk:Man vs. Wild#Criticism.2C_fakeness_and_what_they_don.27t_tell_you). So far though, edit wars have been avoided. ~ UBeR 00:12, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Canvassing is inappropriate regardless of where it's done, on or off-wiki. The same is true of harassment and personal attacks. I don't know about consequences — since there doesn't seem to be any substantive harm now, but a polite reminder would probably be a good idea. --Haemo 01:07, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

It should be also noted that Rei has consistently needed to be put in check due to some strange personal vendetta that she has against Man vs. Wild, and has attempted to put in OR numerous times in an attempt to prove that the show is "fake," going so far as to start her own wiki in an attempt to accomplish that goal. It is obvious that she will go to extraordinary means to accomplish this goal. --Tao of tyler 01:09, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I dealt with Rei briefly in late '05 to early '06 and her MO was to edit war while referring to (but never actually citing) a few marginal sources. The POV she advocated had been originally proposed by a nonspecialist three quarters of a century earlier and thoroughly rejected by the academic mainstream. In six weeks she failed to contribute even one reference other than OR musings upon previously cited primary source material and her talk posts were in consistent violation of WP:CIVIL (if unfounded accusations of homophobia count as WP:NPA then she crossed that line also). She finally left the topic after two editors pointed out to her how thoroughly unacceptable these methods were: among other things she had misidentified the author of her leading source. I find it disappointing, but certainly not surprising, that her conduct appears to have deteriorated since then. Of course I recuse myself from direct intervention, but I urge other sysops to bear in mind that this offsite canvassing occurs within the context of longstanding disruptive behavior. Durova^Charge! 03:32, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Being belligerent enough to drive editors off of articles is nothing to be proud of, Durova. And concerning an editor who had just gone through a painful affair in her life at the time, not that difficult, to be quite honest. As an addendum, anyone who checks the history of the article can see that I was adding cites all over the place, and Durova was reverting my edits almost every time, half of the time without any explanation and while leaving the sections on the talk page that I started asking why dangling -- the whole time defending their actions (when defended at all) by claiming an academic concensus which was never referenced, despite repeated requests. -- Rei 02:02, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Anyone who wishes to is welcome to read the article talk archives. Rei's attempts to WP:OWN the article led to page protection and delayed progress toward WP:FA for Joan of Arc by six weeks. All of Rei's citations had to be reverted as violations of WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, and WP:NOT#Not a soapbox. I opened two content WP:RFCs and an Wikipedia:Article review to bring impartial opinions to the article, then brought the page through WP:GAC and WP:FAC. Rei's approach was to raise a variety of different points simultaneously and repeat them in various combinations, disregarding feedback. I tried addressing those points in a variety of ways, I requested prioritization and focus, but this individual would not engage in encyclopedic collaboration. Durova^Charge! 04:32, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

That's rich. I'm trying to "WP:OWN" the article, says the person who has made 631 edits compared to my 18,** who continually rolled back changes without addressing them on talk (the archives are full of dangling threads ending with me asking why you hadn't responded), and you who continually claimed an academic concensus as justification without ever citing it. You claim problems with my cites, and yet you continually ignored (and still ignore) requests to back up your concensus claims with any cite. I've been kind enough to not throw allegations around at other people and not to assume bad faith. But someone who's made 20 times as many edits to the article as me telling me that I'm trying to own it, and trying to war, when the vast majority of my contributions were on talk trying to resolve the issue? Give me a break.

** -- Pull up the page history, modify the number of results to 5000 (which gets you back to the first edit), copt the contents to a file, and "grep -c " for "Durova (" vs "Rei (". -- Rei 16:07, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to add this article to my watch list. I could have sworn there was an OTRS ticket about this article somewhere but I can't find it. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 18:57, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Me "planing" and edit/revert war. You are making false accusations. As you can read in Rei's talk page here you will clearly see how I was trying to do this the correct way. Anyhow, if you think Rei is talking about an edit war, don't put my name into this. It's clear enough to see that I created the discussion to prevent any conflicts when editing the article. You're assuming bad faith on me, when I did not have any intention to create an edit war. I suggest to the administrator to read the source of this problem here. Any person with a brain can read that I am not part of Rei's idea of a "possible" edit war.--Tasco 0 23:34, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Anyone can read for themselves what they're calling "Canvassing" and "meatpuppets" and see for themself that their description of what happened is a complete fabrication. Tasco O came to me wanting to get information into Wikipedia that happened to be something I had already been defending on the article (but had stopped while awaiting outside comments). I told Tasco O that I had been avoiding putting that sort of stuff in because I didn't want an edit war and I knew that UBeR and Fredrick Day would start one if I put it back. This all comes right on the heels of Frederick Day lying about me trying to reference BearWiki on the article. -- Rei 02:02, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Also, let it be known that UBeR tried to avoid dispute resolution[8], while I tried to solve the problem peaceably by starting a request for comment[9] and dropping the addition of the section I was defending[10] in order to avoid the aforementioned prospective edit war. I'll repeat: I let them have their way, and and tried to get a outside opinions. In the process, I've been repeatedly slandered (at one point, someone even started a thread with the specific purpose of bashing me[11]), and just today have discovered that one of them seems to be daily tailing me to other websites to try and dig up dirt on me.

I've wanted to solve this peacefully and get the dispute over whether the edit in question is SYN resolved through getting outside input. And all I've gotten in return is personal attacks. -- Rei —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rei (talk • contribs) 02:14, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Lol? I wanted to avoid the dispute resolution because no reasonable person wants to go through it. People looking to get into long, drawn-out arguments might want to, but I would much rather settle the dispute on the talk page with the involved editors. I think this is a much better and easier solution. Seeing as how you are unwilling to comprehend WP:SYN, I've supported going through the dispute resolution, and so far the outside opinions tend to agree with my position that original research should not be allowed on Man vs. Wild, even if it does appear on other articles. As for the person who Rei claims is "daily watching" her, Fredrick Day simply came across a discussion on Rei's Web site that is easily found simply by clicking on "recent changes" on the side of her Web site. Cheers. ~ UBeR 05:30, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Right. Because your interpretation of the policy is inherently correct, and mine is inherently wrong, right? The whole conflict was over what constitutes SYN. Declaring your stance as inherently right, and that I am "unwilling to comprehend", is exactly why we needed dispute resolution in the first place.

There's a world of difference between checking out a website and watching it daily to dig up dirt on someone. -- Rei 15:56, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I know I'm right because I've been involved in WP:SYN dispute countless times. I understand the policy well. I've discussed the policy with many administrator and may lay editors. My position on SYN is the one represented by the WP:OR policy and the rest of the Wikipedia community. I've explained to you why what I removed entailed improper synthesis, but you've ignored it; you've been unwilling to comprehend it. Already, third party editors on the talk page agree with me.

As for your site, how do you know he's watching your site daily? Wouldn't he have brought up the discussion as soon as it occurred, as opposed to days after it ended? What's wrong with visiting a site on a daily basis in the first place? I visit Wikipedia each day and go through and read portions of that I am interested in. Is this wrong, or does it entail stalking users? No. Like I said, your discussion was easily found by any user visiting it just once. Get over it. ~ UBeR 21:57, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

UBeR, I don't know how many times I have to mention this, but you are not the ultimate arbitrer of Wikipedia and all of its policies. When there is a disagreement over policy, which is what this is between us, the correct response is bring in outside inputs (what I have done), not repeatedly insist that I'm right and you're wrong and personally attack the person you disagree with. (what you have done).

"I visit Wikipedia each day and go through and read portions of that I am interested in." -- And do you do so stealthily, not making edits, but just watching over a particular user to try and dig up dirt on them? No, I didn't think so. That's creepy and a clear demonstration of bad faith, especially when it's followed with a completely false reporting of events (going so far to claim I was "recruiting meatpuppets" and "canvasing"). As for "daily", the conversation was on the evening of the 11th, and it gets reported on Wikipedia midday on the 12th. -- Rei 22:11, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Here's an outside input: UBeR is right. I read through the discussion on the article talk page, and it's quite clear that what content you wish to add violates the spirit and the letter of WP:SYN. Box says X, John says Y; therefore, Bob is wrong. Someguy1221 22:21, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks again for the input, Someguy1221! One minor difference with your presentation: the [edits in question] had no "Bob is wrong" section, or at least had the goal of not having a "Bob is wrong" section (wording changes welcomed). Does that still fit your criterea?

Perhaps this should be moved to the article? -- Rei 22:58, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

The original research was under a section titled "Inaccuracies in survival advice." That is to say, you had sources that said "not x," you had the television show in which Bear said "x," and you therefore inappropriately synthesized the material into a section that effectively says "Bear is wrong." That is not allowed. ~ UBeR 23:17, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict)OK, Rei, so you have no evidence that he did anything other than click on recent changes and came across the first listing (as of Sept. 12), so I suggest you stop making such specious claims about Fredrick Day. As for WP:SYN, outside opinions already agree with me. What else do you want? The policy is concrete, my interpretation has been supported by many people. ~ UBeR 22:23, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

And who are these "outside opinions", apart from Someguy1221 who weighed in just minutes ago? If you'll check the talk page, you'll notice that the [for comment] is quite blank (it was interrupted by someone who started a section for the specific purpose of attacking me). I welcome outside opinions, and I've been trying to get them for a long time. Instead, all I've gotten is your assertions.

ED: User:JS made a (recent) comment about what would be considered SYN that I'm trying to get cleared up. So, we might have two comments. -- Rei 23:03, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Ethnic slurs, personal attacks, and incivility by User:Mandsford in afd discussions

I was reading through yesterday's afd discussions and noticed this user often makes abusive or insulting comments. He calls a nominator an "asshole" here. He calls the same editor an "asshole" again in another afd here, and uses that insult yet again here, then calls the nominator "Jerko" here. He implies that editors using a common argument in some afds are "morons" here.

He makes anti-Semitic remarks by referring to refugees who fled from Hitler as "running away from your problems" here. He makes another ethnic slur here by saying List of Polish Americans should be renamed List of Polacks (which is also a disruptive suggestion, although User:Mandsford may be so ignorant that he believes it is reasonable). He uses another afd comment to make a joke about POWs here.

This isn't the first time I have noticed User:Mandsford, I look at the afd list occasionally, and the examles I have cited are not isolated cases. I'm sure people who follow afd more than I do will be even more aware of this user's behavior.

The main afd page says "AfDs are public, and are sometimes quoted in the popular press. Please keep to public-facing levels of civility, just as you should for any edit you make to Wikipedia. Avoid personal attacks against people who disagree with you; avoid the use of sarcastic language", but User:Mandsford totally disregards this in most of his comments.

I won't be returning to this post, since I have no interest in reading any potential personal attacks made by this user, and I'm on a dynamic IP, so any messages that are left on this IP address will not be read. (I have never been involved in any afd discussions with this user, but their conduct needs to be closely watched by those with more authority than an unregistered user like me). 172.141.128.108 04:16, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

• I left a warning on his talk page. I have seen him at Afd a lot. He is usually very civil - although we disagree most of the time. I will chalk it up to having a bad day, for which a warning should suffice. We all have bad days. While calling another editor an "asshole" is not to be condoned, it is a severe view that the comment about people fleeing Hitler and/or Stalin (as both were mentioned in tandem) was a singling out of Jews to make the comment anti-semitic, but I'm not Jewish and Jewish people may view it differently but we should WP:AGF on motives. Also the comment about Polacks and Japanese internees (who were civilians not POWs), I would assume wer poor attempts at sarcasm or humor unless the editor indicates otherwise. Needless to say, they fell flat - like a certain well-known celebrity's blackface incident that really had no racist intent. Carlossuarez46 06:08, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

• • Update: he's left an apology: User_talk:Carlossuarez46#You.27re_right. Carlossuarez46 21:37, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I have also noticed Mandsford's poor AFD conduct.

During Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anti-Iranian sentiment (3rd nomination), he started with poisoning the well and assuming bad faith, then moved to taunting me for defending my nomination. He continued trolling along this line, taunting me for making another response. At this point, User:The Evil Spartan actually had to remove Mandsford's comment as trolling.

I can understand that someone may slip up and lose their cool every once in awhile, but taunting is unacceptable, and if this is a regular problem with Mandsford (as this section suggests), we may have to take action to prevent further disruption. Perhaps this matter should be investigated further? The Behnam 21:05, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

As of now, he's still not exactly what you would describe as 'cool'. I'd advocate a warning that he's still pushing it somewhat, any more and he'll get blocked, and then procede to blocking if he continues. I don't think it's quite blockable yet, although I apreciate he's unlikely to stop. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 18:31, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

User:Prester John and User:Skyring deleting references from John Howard article

User:Prester John and User:Skyring have been repeatedly deleting references from the John Howard article.

The two editors apparently have a sensitivity to news reports that the parents of Australian Prime Minister John Howard once owned Copra plantations in New Guinea. However, User:Prester John and User:Skyring(Pete) have been deleting references about other aspects of the Australian Prime Minister's life, because somewhere in those newspaper articles is a mention of the Howard's copra plantations. The deleted references were all from major Australian newspapers.

Finding references for each sentence in a Wikipedia article can be an extremely time consuming task. For someone to just remove the references from a biography, just because they didn't like the way a news report treated some other subject, is to me an act of vandalism.

Most recent deletions of User:Skyring(Pete)

Skyring(Pete) has been the most prolific deleter of references:

• 01:37, 13 September 2007 Skyring(Pete) changed some article information, but also deleted a reference called <"Age_Copra">. Notice at the bottom of the diff page, 'Reference #5' is missing. At first you could think the breaking of this reference could have been by accident, but then half an hour later he comes back to do it again...
• 02:05, 13 September 2007 we see User:Grahamec had kindly repaired the broken anchor reference, but a few minutes later User:Skyring(Pete) strikes again, and deletes the same reference further down the article, even though the text has a different subject matter and is nothing to do with "copra".
  

Earlier in the same day he was at it yet again...

• 03:31, 12 September 2007. This edit serves no other purpose but to delete the existing reference. Again, the subject of the text is not "copra".

Most recent deletions of User:Prester John

Prester John has, to a lesser extent, also been deleting references:

• 15:39, 12 September 2007 we see User:Prester John change some article text, but scroll to the bottom of the page and you'll again find missing references.
• 19:32, 11 September 2007 here we see Prester John perform an edit which leaves the online text unchanged, but just deletes the reference that User:Grahamec had added a few minutes before. The subject of the text has nothing to do with "copra". Some time later, after my complaints, he returned to the article and added a different reference, though the replacement didn't adequately cover all the subject matter.

Earlier deletion of the same reference by User:Skyring(Pete):

(Scroll to reference section at bottom of page to see what references are missing) 05:37, 6 September 2007,05:07, 6 September 2007, 04:44, 6 September 2007, 01:39, 3 September 2007, 16:28, 2 September 2007

Earlier deletion of the same reference by User:Prester John:

(Scroll to reference section at bottom of page to see what references are missing) 00:16, 6 September 2007, 22:38, 5 September 2007, 15:39, 4 September 2007, 06:21, 2 September 2007, 17:58, 1 September 2007

Both editors go up to 3 deletions per day, which is not enough for 3RR. I have warned both editors, in the edit summary window, as well as on their talk pages, but the reference deleting continues. I request administrator assistance for 2 reasons: To revert the current edit by User:Skyring (as I want to stay out of this edit war); and to help stop this deletion of references (maybe a user block would allow those editors to cool off, and give the other editors a break from having to continually repair broken or deleted references).

The "copra plantation" info is currently the subject of an RfC. Regardless of what anyone thinks of the RfC or "copra plantation" info, the deletion of other references on other subject matter is a separate matter, and a wilful act of vandalism. --Lester2 04:47, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Can you summarize this in 30 words or less?—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 05:08, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I think I can summarize it in two: "content dispute". --Carnildo 05:18, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Gaming I believe is also valid. Shot info 05:26, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Summary: It's not a dispute about the content of the article text. It's about repeated deleting of references. References are being deleted from paragraphs in the article that are not in dispute, just because the reference newspaper story also mentions the disputed subject (Copra plantations). So we're getting deleted references all over the place Lester2 05:49, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

If you just want to source the statement, "leaving his mother to take care of John (or "Jack" as he was known in the family)," then why don't you use a different article which most people do not consider to be an attack piece on a living person? If Prester and Pete are reverting up to six times a day combined, who are they reverting against?? Why aren't their opposition reported here? Sarah 09:05, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

That goes both ways. If an article is beign used as a reference for material that belongs in the article, it should only be removed if it is replaced by another reference. JPD (talk) 09:18, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree, it does go both ways. However, Lester knows full well that a lot of people consider that article an attack article. Two weeks ago I emailed him a whole lot of articles he could use instead to reference that statement but instead he insists on using the one article that is most contentious. I've told him before that it would be better to use a different article as the source but he apparently feels using the Marr article for a benign tidbit (that JH's family call him Jack and that his mother raised him) is critical. If he was serious about this, instead of just forum shopping and desperately trying to include a link to that particular article in the main bio, he'd simply use another source. Sarah 09:39, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I've changed it myself to a non-copra source and now I wait with bated breath...Sarah 10:05, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

...And the old source was restored three minutes later. Sarah 10:09, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, by me, because you deleted the content to which it refers in spite of talkpage consensus for its inclusion. --Brendan Lloyd [ contribs ] 10:11, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

What?? There is no consensus to include that material; that's why I deleted it. All I removed was the twaddle about Howard's father. There is absolutely no consensus to include that material, I don't understand how you can even claim that. The fact that it is removed multiple times a day is proof of this. Sarah 10:14, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Twaddle indeed. Sarah, you and the rest of the minority of editors that oppose any plantation inclusion (however brief) keep denying consensus without ever explaining what your interpretation of consensus actually is in this instance. Go through the reams of conversation, starting in the archived talkpage topic John Howard's secret ancestry revealed then on to the RfC (which I started, by the way, so I find it hilarious that some opposing editors have accused me of being a sock puppet and questioned whether my comments meet the RfC; talk about wikilawyering...). You will find a majority of editors making favourable comments for at least a brief inclusion of the plantation fact (including me, Lester2, Shot info, Aussieboy, hamiltonstone, Peter Ballard, Lord Chao and Hornplease), yet you, Skyring, Prester John and on occasion BInguyen, keep reverting. Why? --Brendan Lloyd [ contribs ] 07:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

What rubbish. Since the start of the year I've made two reverts of the "copra" link, one administrative revert after blocking people for a 3RR violation, a couple of vandalism reverts, and a couple of edits swapping references. You, on the other hand, seem to have restored the "Copra" text in one form or another somewhere around 20 times in the last two or three weeks. And it isn't just myself, Peter and Prester, as you claim, who don't agree with you restoring the copra material. Sarah 07:52, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

This article came off protection fairly recently, I think it may have to go back on it :/ Orderinchaos 08:55, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

A comment was posted about 9 hours ago that indicated that some editors were of a similar opinion, there is no suggested wording. Given this there isnt any consensus on wording to claim that there is erroneous. Gnangarra 13:42, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

• Skyring comments: Lester2's contributions since his recent appearance in Wikipedia is focussed on inserting negative material into the John Howard article - a glance at his contribution history shows an impressive dedication to this task. This most recent effort has been discussed at great length and no concensus for insertion found. Lester's complaints that references are being removed revolves around his replacement of a good source for non-contentious material - the childhood nickname of John Howard etc. - with a source that also includes contentious material, namely the business dealings of Howard's father, Lyall Howard. As Sarah points out above, replacing the contentious source with one that is not disputed solves the problem. Lester's complaint here is contrived. --Pete 17:55, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Response from User:Lester2:We need to separate issues here. The issue of contentious text in the article ("copra") has nothing to do with the deletion of references for non-contentious text. We are talking about references being deleted for non-disputed text. I, more than anyone else, over the past few months have called for other Wikipedians to find references for the John Howard article, but few people responded to that request. A reasonable proportion of the article's references were found by myself.
Now, after that hard work, imagine how I feel when some people take it upon themselves to start deleting those references. The deleted references are not from some flat-earth quackery website. The deleted references were all from major Australian newspapers, such as The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age (Melbourne).
Recently published articles about John Howard's early life often contain a references to the "copra" issue. The most recent best-selling biography of Howard mentions the copra issue. Are the people above suggesting that it's OK to delete any references about any subject matter sourced from that biography, just because it also mentions "copra" somewhere else in the book?
Skyring(Pete) is suggesting that it's OK to delete references because he didn't like the newspaper article that was used for the reference, and he suggests I should have found a different one. Let me turn that around. Why didn't Skyring put some effort into finding a reference himself? That's the difference between sincerely working to improve Wikipedia and vandalism. The act of repeatedly deleting existing article references is vandalism, Wikipedia breaks down if it is allowed to continue, and it should be stopped. --Lester2 21:27, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

The article lists a number of biographies of John Howard. Has done for a long time. Page 9 of the Barnett/Goward book includes the material about John Howard and his mother that you are getting upset about. Kindly stop wasting everyone's time with contrived wikilawyering. You have shown yourself capable of good wikiwork and excellent research. There are a tonne of non-controversial articles that cry out for attention. I've praised you for excellent work on the Lyall Howard article, for instance. Can we please see more solid additions to our encyclopaedia and less epic discussions? --Pete 01:42, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

As far as know people have only been removing one source and that is the Marr article which (as I've been telling you for weeks now) many people consider to be an attack article. If people have been removing other sources, which is what you seem to be claiming, please cite diffs. Please stop flinging around accusations of vandalism. By definition, editing in good faith is never vandalism. Sarah 01:49, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Reply from User:Lester2: I'm happy that User:Sarah has swapped one of my original references for a different one that suitably covers the topic. I've got no complaint about that. My complaint was about the other examples where references were just deleted.

All of the diffs I cited (above) resulted in broken and missing references, which were showing up as missing holes in the Reference section. Sometimes there were holes resulting from more than one reference missing, but they were all either from The Sydney Morning Herald or The Age (Melbourne), and they all made some reference to "copra". The broken/missing references were making the Wiki article look bad. Sometimes the anchor reference would be deleted, leaving all the downstream ones broken. It probably happened 20-30 times or more.

The purpose of an inline reference is to verify a single fact from a reliable source. The reason I used the The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age (Melbourne) for citation is because I thought they were reliable, and easily accessed. For example, I Googled the terms Howard Dulwich Hill house, and the SMH / Age article came up at the top of the list. Skyring(Pete) suggests (above) that a better reference would have been Page 9 of an offline book written by Barnett/Goward (author 'Goward' is a member of John Howard's staff).

The end result here, and this is what the complaint is about, is that breaking references makes the online Wikipedia article look bad. Look at all the broken and missing references linked above. Is this good? No. This is why I referred the issue for Administrator intervention.Lester2 03:32, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

So fix it. If I somehow broke a reference, then I didn't do it intentionally. As noted in my edit summaries, I was cleaning out the copra, which you keep on inserting without consensus. Look, here's some advice which took me a lot of pain to find out for myself. Administrators are just regular people. The Arbitration Committee aren't gods. Jimbo has a lot of important stuff to do. Taking up the time of these people with long, obsessive, self-indulgent tirades against wicked users, editors and wikibureaucrats isn't going to earn you any bonus points. It might be a lot of trollish fun, but it gets you nowhere except to the land of high blood pressure. --Pete 03:56, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Lester, that is an editorial issue, not administrative. If you find someone has broken a reference while editing, fix it and if the same person breaks one again, just tell them; they most likely don't realise they are doing it. This only becomes an administrative issue if you are claiming policies are being broken or that someone is doing it deliberately (i.e. vandalism). Sarah 04:42, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Update: I wish to report that the deletion of references has stopped. I think the mere mention of the incident on the ANi has resulted in it stopping. There has also been a scramble to replace references with alternate ones. So I'm happy if this has resulted in a change in behaviour from those involved. --Lester2 03:30, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Funny man. What's happened is that we've cleaned up all your attempts to introduce material without consensus, and restored the original references. --Pete 03:43, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

There was no "scramble" to do anything. I simply replaced the Marr article with one you and I both already had in an attempt to put an end to this ridiculous edit warring. It has nothing to do with you and Brendan misusing ANI. You might have noticed that your complaints have been ignored by other admins and this is because this discussion belongs on the article's talk page, not ANI. This isn't an admin issue; it's an editorial dispute. You could have resolved the dispute yourself by using another reference, which you had because I emailed them to you last month. Now, please stop edit warring when it is clearly established there is no consensus for what you want to add to the article. Even people who agree with you in principle have told you two to stop because there is no consensus. Sarah 04:08, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I made the comments here that I have because I feel matters are being misrepresented. If that is a misuse of ANI, then I'm certainly not the only one guilty of that. An exclusive attack on me in respect of that, shows bias, an absence of good faith, incivility and newcomer biting. I, as a relatively new participant, am guided by the examples that others, including admin users, set.

Meanwhile, regarding comments on consensus, and to set the record straight about my edits, interested parties to this matter are again encouraged to go through the talkpage volumes, starting in John Howard's secret ancestry revealed then the RfC. Between them, a majority of editors making favourable comments for at least a brief inclusion of the plantation fact is evident (including me, Lester2, Shot info, Aussieboy, hamiltonstone, Peter Ballard, Lord Chao and Hornplease). --Brendan Lloyd [ contribs ] 04:42, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Broken references/links/missing reference holes were an admin issue, not a content issue, as I had no power to stop it. If I hadn't listed it for ANi, there would still be broken things and holes in the article. The activity has stopped since I listed it on the ANi, so I guess the players know they're being watched.

It's sad that situations like this make referencing of articles impossible. I started from the top of the article, referencing text that others had written. I added probably 15 or so references, not just the ones that 'Skyring'/'Prester'/'Sarah' didn't like. Prior to this ANi, nobody had contacted me to say what are appropriate references for this article and what are not.

Is this a new thing in Wikipedia, or is there precedent, that "consensus" must be sought for what references are used?Lester2 05:40, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

What I suggest is that you back away from John Howard and start to be involved at other BLPs [12] to help you understand a lot of "BLPisms" outside of the context of Australian Politicians. Enjoy! Shot info 08:04, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Banned user is still editing under another name

BLueRibbon (talk · contribs) was banned along with several other users in March and April for self-identifying as a pedophile. Two months ago, he responded on a blog post I did about the incident with a statement that he was still editing on Wikipedia under another username.

I alerted Mackensen about this via the email function, but in case BLueRibbon's sock hasn't been unraveled yet I thought I'd post here to get some more eyes on it. Blueboy96 12:46, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

If the new Username is not disruptive, then what's the purpose of trying to ferret it out? Corvus cornix 17:09, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Per WP:BAN#Evasion and enforcement, "If the banned user creates sock puppet accounts to evade the ban, these may be blocked." so if another account is proven as an alternate account of this banned user regardless if its disruptive or not it should be blocked as a ban evading sock puppet. - Caribbean~H.Q. 17:50, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Is the user banned as well as blocked? There is a very distinct difference between the two and it doesn't appear that he was banned. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 18:41, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

It appears he is only indef blocked. - Caribbean~H.Q. 21:25, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

At the very least, he's evading his block, and can be dealt with per WP:EVADE. Unfortunately, he left his message on a mirror of my blog at Multiply, and not my main one at LiveJournal--otherwise, I'd be able to provide an IP to check. Blueboy96 19:03, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Common sense: self-described pedophile evades indef block - yes of course I'll sleuth this. Send me the information you have so far and I'm right on it. Durova^Charge! 01:23, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

If he was blocked for disruption/"bringing the project into disrepute", and his new account isn't, where's the grounds for blocking? --tjstrf talk 01:52, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:SOCK, WP:BLOCK, WP:BAN. How is this even a discussion? Durova^Charge! 02:04, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I believe the cause for discussion would be that "If he was blocked for disruption/'bringing the project into disrepute', and his new account isn't, where's the grounds for blocking?" --tjstrf talk 02:10, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

In short it's against the rules to create another account while blocked or banned. Doing so is avoiding said block or ban. Anynobody 02:06, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

In that case, it's a bad policy. I agree with tjstrf. If someone is blocked for something as unspecific as "bringing the project into disrepute", and for behavior that the community had no firm policy on back then, I see no reason why we should not let the user in again as long as his behavior stays inoffensive. It is another situation if a user consciously disrupts the project. --Stephan Schulz 02:23, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

The user is a self-described pedophile, indefinitely blocked from the site. You ask me to abandon the investigation because you suppose - lacking any exonerating evidence at all - that this person is behaving responsibly on whatever sockpuppets might surface. Consider the potential real world consequences of such an assumption. It would display an astonishing lapse of judgement to carve an exception to longstanding policy for this of all possible cases. No, I will not do so, and I am rapidly losing respect for those who suggest otherwise. Durova^Charge! 03:48, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Either he is behaving himself, in which case there is no reason to act, or he is not, in which case he can be dealt with as any other disruptive user. While paedophilia is used as a scareword nowadays, paedophilic desires, if not acted upon, are no more problematic than many other kinds of sexual fantasy. And as for the act, very much depends on details and the reactions of society. I don't think Achilles or Patroclus [*] felt particularly hurt by their reciprocal attention. So we should not stamp this with the "absolute evil" seal, and there is no reason for panic. ([*] Yes, I know that the view of their relationship may be tainted trough the classical age spectacles, and that one was physically older while the other played the dominant role normally reserved for the older partner, and so on, but you get my point) --Stephan Schulz 04:27, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

In most jurisdictions the behavior constitutes a serious felony. Philosophical, historical, or psychological analysis is beside the point. We could have that discussion elsewhere; here I serve an administrative and investigative function. Durova^Charge! 05:40, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Agree with the above. Indefinitely blocked users do not get a pass because we assume they're behaving nicely. Having known, banned, and identified pedophiles editing this site brings it into disrepute regardless of what username they use. --Haemo 03:54, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

And I am flabbergasted by your outright panicky reaction here, Durova. He wasn't blocked for cyberstalking children. --tjstrf talk 04:01, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Panicky? Certainly not. Responsible. I investigate things where there are grounds for investigation. Durova^Charge! 04:12, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree with tjstrf here. He was blocked (not banned) for disruption. The block of his account is no different than the block of any other vandal's username. Someguy1221 04:07, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Disruption blocks are different from username blocks: the latter are welcome to return under an appropriate name. Not so for the former, and those who disagree are posting to the wrong venue. Go to policy and seek consensus for a change. Durova^Charge! 04:13, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

You're hardly the voice of all Wikipedia here, Durova. And you've been here more than long enough to know the rules aren't binding. --tjstrf talk 04:22, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Eh? I was referring to the blocking of a username for disruption, not the blocking of a username for being a bad username. This is exactly the case in which I think we should ignore all rules. Enforcing a policy for the sole purpose of enforcing a policy is plain silly, even if he is a self-proclaimed pedophile (blocking people for being subjectively disgusting IRL is also silly, even when everyone agrees with you). Further, the block was the unilateral decission of one admin, not a community concensus that he should never ever be allowed to edit ever again. I'm not seeking policy change here, I'm just asking you to not treat this as anything more than someone coming back months after being blocked for vandalism. Someguy1221 04:29, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

When an editor is blocked for disruption, the editor is unwelcome. I treat this mostly the same as any other editor evading an indefinite block, with the following exception: given a large enough sample of self-declared pedophile accounts, some of them will be active lawbreaking pedophiles. It is common knowledge that such people network and seek victims through the Internet. Where I see the credible potential for such behavior I will investigate it. I have no apologies for doing so, nor do I think such an obvious decision ought to require either defense or explanation. Durova^Charge! 04:46, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but I think you are loosing your normally excellent head here. Given a large enough sample of humans, some of them will be lawbreaking assholes and otherwise undesireable characters. I've not had much experience with "self-declared pedophiles" - as far as I can tell, they are a very rare brand. Most keep their sexual appetites private, probably even more than most of the population. And the "common knowledge" seems to be much like "common sense" - it isn't, if for the other reason. --Stephan Schulz 05:09, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Given a sufficiently large population of humans, some of them will also commit suicide. When one actually posted a suicide note on Wikipedia I reported it to the Pennsylvania state police. These are disturbing topics, but I would consider myself irresponsible to turn a blind eye to the credible possibility of either. Investigation, coupled with decisive action where appropriate, is the appropriate response. Durova^Charge! 05:23, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Since Durova requested evidence that he won't repeat his behaviour, I'll present some: he was blocked for saying something. He will doubtless be extremely careful to avoid saying anything disreputable in the future so that he won't be blocked again. --tjstrf talk 04:35, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Experience demonstrates otherwise with returning sockpuppets of indef blocked accounts. Durova^Charge! 04:46, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Futurecrime, anyone? --Carnildo 07:53, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

He is indef blocked not banned that's clear, one thing I don't get is why this case was open here instead of consulting with someone with Checkuser privilege to see if its worthy of further investigation this being an very unusual case. Regardless of that if the user creates any alternate account while the block is there it will be blocked as any other block evading sock would. One last thing I think this user is quasi-banned, there aren't many admins out there that would probably unblock him and we all know what would happen if the comunity was given the final outcome. - Caribbean~H.Q. 04:40, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually the banning policy defines a community ban as an indefinite block that no administrator is willing to undo. I'm not particularly fond of that definition, but it's written into policy so the distinction is academic. Durova^Charge! 04:49, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

So if some admin lifts the block on the original name, the user might return with a new name? That does not seem to be be particularly logical... --Stephan Schulz 04:57, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't defend that version; I argued rather strongly that it's archaic. But yes, that's policy by consensus, and if you'd like to change it seek a new consensus. Durova^Charge! 05:04, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Since I'm willing to lift the block if he agrees to not resume editing in a manner that will get him blocked again, it's not a community ban. --Carnildo 07:55, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that's exactly what I said. - Caribbean~H.Q. 04:53, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Note: The original username is too old for a checkuser, those secret records get erased after a time. Someguy1221 04:46, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Huh, April yeah should have remembered that. - Caribbean~H.Q. 04:48, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually this person was not blocked for being a self confessed pedophile, but for actively condoning and encouraging sex with children on Wikipedia. If this person is back we need to find him and treat him like the sock puppet of a blocked user, and block him. ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 05:05, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Evidence being... where? Judging by Special:Contributions/BLueRibbon, his entire contribution history consists of one AfD over BoyChat, a few edits to pedophile activism (that were pro-pedophile groups, but not pro-raping children), and arguing on Jimbo's talkpage that pedophiles shouldn't be blocked. Presumably there was something on his userpage as well. --tjstrf talk 06:11, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Don't forget the deleted article logs. They don't show up on contribution histories. Durova^Charge! 07:01, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Most of us here are admins and can read them. I haven't seen anything in his deleted contributions that could be interpreted as "encouraging sex with children". --Carnildo 07:57, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

There was a line admiting his sexual preference and an external link to a profile of him on some pro-pedo site (I'm not sure exactly what website it was I didn't read it) this made some users blank it a few times and there were some content disputes, that's what was there for those who aren't admins and can't browse the deleted history. - Caribbean~H.Q. 06:31, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

He did provide a full paragraph detailing all his preferences and stuff early on but it was later reduced to the afore mentioned there were also two links to some websites back then. - Caribbean~H.Q. 06:39, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I would not support any action against a "self-confessed pedophile" whose wikipedia activities do not touch upon the subject. Words are words, and gropes and gropes. I vaguely recall an incident when a minor person (13 or something) put a userbox advertising himself as a pedophile. He probably did it for fun and ended by being blocked. The current case is altogether different. The guy tried to use Wikipedia to further his unseemly activities and, fully aware that the website is full of minor editors, attempted to insert links to inappropriate pages. This has nothing to do with writing an encyclopaedia and should not be tolerated. For this reason, the new account should be discovered and blocked. We are not supposed to encourage block evasion. I'm surprised that tjstrf finds it appropriate to dispute this contention. --Ghirla^-трёп- 07:56, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Right, that's the "self confessed pedophile" thing. The entire block was so that we could avoid an appearance of impropriety, and as long as he doesn't do it again on his new account, whatever that one is, I'm not seeing where there's a problem. --tjstrf talk 06:37, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

All of these points have been addressed already. Durova^Charge! 07:22, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with most of what Durova has said. I don't support turning a blind eye towards this person editing. If they want to return, they need to obtain permission from the ArbCom first. Sarah 05:19, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

tjstrf I understand the good faith approach you are advocating on this, but perhaps you are unaware of the difference between a ban and a block. A block, which this person's original account currently is, resembles an extended time out rather than a never return action like a ban. (Which by the way, aren't always as final as they sound either.) Here it means this person's behavior has raised concern in the community, which must be addressed before editing can be allowed to resume. If this person wishes to address the issue because they feel it was a mistake, they do have options available under the blocked account. By simply reincarnating without addressing the concerns this person is attempting to sidestep the blocking policy. In short, they can "legally" become unblocked via the arbcom, creating a new account to avoid doing so, and the block, is one reason sock puppets are frowned on. Anynobody 07:43, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I know this, and would normally agree. The concern here though is that, unlike pretty much all other types of block, the unsurmountable concern is that us knowingly permitting him to edit is unacceptable due to PR concerns. We can't fix that problem through him promising to be good, or any of the other methods we would normally use to let back a person, since the issue has to do with outsider perception. (What are we supposed to say, "He promised he's not a pedophile anymore"?) If you're suggesting he come in through the "backdoor" by privately asking arbcom, then realize that arbcom knowingly permitting him to edit and not telling us is even more of a PR concern than just the community doing it.

So, barring a change in public perspective, we can't knowingly let him back. This, however, is unfair to him, since he wasn't harming the encyclopedia with his article edits, and as such shouldn't be prevented from editing articles. Because of this, the most fair and reasonable thing for all parties involved is simply not to ask. As long as we don't know who he is, we don't have to block him again in order to keep up appearances. It would of course have been ideal if he'd never said he had another account to begin with. --tjstrf talk 08:08, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

tjs, bear in mind that this is one of those rare cases where the totality of evidence takes a significantly different shape to someone who has the sysop tools. I don't agree with the premise that the indef was purely a PR measure. Durova^Charge! 08:40, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

“ Evasion of blocks

An administrator may reset the block of a user who intentionally evades a block, and may extend the duration of the block if the user engages in further blockable behaviour while evading the block. User accounts or IP addresses used to evade a block may also be blocked.

”

WP:BLOCK is pretty clear on this. He was not banned (as a person), he was blocked (as an account). I don't see any continued blockable behaviour. We don't ask, they don't tell, and we certainly shouldn't start a whichhunt. — Edokter • Talk • 14:41, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Anouther concern here we need to take into consiteration is how any tracking can/could be done. I would hate to see ChckUser be used for a fishing expitdition when IP evidence is often so unreliable. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 15:18, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

J.S. expresses my concern -- although I'm not as dubious over IP evidence. We shouldn't be engaged in witchunts, & if this person hadn't boasted off-wiki that he was still editting, we wouldn't be having this conversation. If Durova wants to look closely at any disruptive editors (whether or not they advocate pederasty) to see if they are this person, I don't think anyone honestly objects. (And if he is nominated for the Admin bit & someone discovers his prior identity, that would be a very good thing.) However, if this person with the loose lips is acting on the level of a WikiGnome, quietly fixing articles & otherwise behaving himself, I believe that aggressively tracking him down & peering into the backgrounds of countless people just to boot him off-Wiki will cause far more trouble than it's worth. Having typed all of this, I just had the belated thought that maybe a simple clarification would address all of our concerns & we could close this thread. -- llywrch 17:53, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

This is a rather delicate question because most of my research is based upon leads I found in deleted pages. To speak in general terms, I would not characterize this as an instance of a lone individual who made one unfortunate choice of words, got booted off the project for it, and has returned as a quiet wikignome. A nontrivial portion of people who claim to be pedophiles actually are child molesters. It is not my role to attempt a pronouncement on whether this individual crosses that line, but where I see a credible possibility of such a thing I do prioritize it. That's simply common sense. A frequent misuse of WP:AGF is to cross the line into assuming bad faith of anyone who doubts one's trust in some particular individual. Durova^Charge! 01:39, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of off-wiki activity, BLueRibbon encouraged people to engage in off-wiki harassment of a Wikipedia admin. We should not extend much good faith to this user. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 01:48, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

It's obvious that there is a PR aspect to this sort of discussion, however we needn't actually worry about it because this persons behavior in creating a new account to get around a block would be wrong whether he is a pedophile or was blocked for making personal attacks.

Pedophilia is not why this is an issue, it's an issue because an editor was indefinitely blocked and said editor may be creating socks to evade it. Getting the indefinite block removed from the account is where the pedophilia issue belongs, not enforcing an indefinite block. Anynobody 02:44, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Matrixism and section in The Matrix (series)‎

Some uninvolved admin attention, please? Following an AFD (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matrixism), the article Matrixism was deleted. Xoloz put a copy in his userspace, at User:Xoloz/Matrixism. It was worked on by a number of editors, and got to a fairly decent standard. It was restored into articlespace, and deleted in a 3rd AFD (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matrixism (3rd nomination)) in May, stating it needed to go via AFD. Eventually, a compromise seemed to be arrived at that a section in The Matrix (series) might be appropriate, as there wasn't enough for an article of its own, but the paragraph that did exist was well-referenced, and added a great deal of value to the article (it's at The Matrix (series) if Phil Welch hasn't removed it again). There seems to be a fairly strong agreement to keep the content there, apart from Phil Welch (who actually initiated the initial deletion discussion way back in 2005). Now, keeping it there or not would ordinarily be a content dispute, and no admin attention would be needed, but consensus is to keep the information, Phil keeps removing it (usually with edit summaries of "bullshit" or "linkspam"), and then tagging the Matrixism redirect for speedy deletion. If the information is there, the redirect needs to stay to preserve GFDL. As consensus is to keep the information in the The Matrix (series) article, the redirect also needs to remain. As I'm involved in the content disagreement, it's not proper for me to protect it. Could someone else look into this? Ideally, I'd like to see some kind of discussion on the talk page of the article, but Phil is edit-warring to keep it gone - and it needs to be there to discuss its merits. Neil ム 12:55, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

• So what you're saying is that we deleted the article because of a complete lack of reliable sources, so instead it's now a section in the Matrix article with the same unreliable sources that got it deleted, and that you think Phil is a Bad Man because he's removing the vapid self-promotion of the handful of loons who promote this non-religion, yes? Chunks of it were sourced from blogs and other ephemera, I think Phil will have less of a problem with my revised version which is less about trying to pretend it's a real religion (which it clearly isn't) and more about documenting it as a spoof religion that a couple of people have mentioned in passing (which it is). Also, I notice that although you assert that you want to take this to the talk page, you haven't. Guy (Help!) 15:09, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

• Thank you, Guy, for utterly failing to understand my point, and for insultingly describing myself and Xoloz, among others, as a "handful of loons". Also, your description of the article as having a "complete lack of reliable sources" is flat-out dishonest (I count 9). Neil ム 17:10, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

• You mention "Phil is edit-warring to keep it gone" -- he must be warring with someone, yes? It takes two to tango. As a group, people should be able to discuss the content just fine if you provide an oldid permalink including it in the page. Talk pages are great for talking -- edit wars not so much. – Luna Santin (talk) 18:42, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks, Luna Santin, for what I think is a very good observation. If you insist on edit warring, you only get to argue your case three times a day before you risk being blocked... and maybe not even that. Sheffield Steel^talk_stalk 04:12, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• I didn't misunderstand you at all. You want other people to tell the nasty man to go away on the basis that your version of events is The Truth™. I am far form being the only admin who is inclined to scepticism in such cases. The sources are not reliable because they all trace back to the same Geocities page. I suggest you engage your critical faculties a little more. The only thing we know for sure about Matrixism the "religion" is that it is vanishingly small and of pretty much zero measurable significance - that was established a long time ago and in the intervening period nothing has changed except the number of claimed adherents on said Geocities website. It's a fans' joke, and should be treated as such. Guy (Help!) 20:24, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

• Back to the point: I came across this last night while whittling down the speedy list - it helps me sleep (;-P) and noticed the whole history including Xoloz's userfication and subsequent build up and redirection. AfD's address content not title. The same content under a different title is G4 bait. Different content at the same place is not. Placing a redirect where the deleted article was is proper. The rest is just a content discussion of whether it ought to be or not be in the Matrix articles, and that should be solved on the talk page and other ways in which content disputes are handled. Carlossuarez46 21:48, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I am somewhat to blame for this current stramash. Here is what happened. There has been occasional questions at WP:RD about Matrixism, most recently Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2007 August 23#Matrixism. A self proclaimed anti-deletionist StuRat (talk · contribs) took exception to the fact the article had been deleted and not merged per the original AfD and moved the previously userfied content to form a section in the main article. He asked me to redirect the WP:SALTed Matrixism article there. I declined to do so immediately, per its deletion review and history of admin action. However, I noted that an AfD had closed as a merge and direct, and the material seemed appropriate as a subsection. So I told him that, if the material is accepted there for a week or two without significant challenge, then I will unsalt and redirect to there. There was no protest about the content seven days later, so I unsalted and redirected. I hold no opinion on whether the material should stay or not, I simply acted out of process on the request of an editor. Rockpocket 01:38, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

The original "merge and redirect" was to The Matrix. By consensus on Talk:The Matrix, the merged content was rejected. The redirect went to RFD and was deleted there. The first AFD certainly does not tell the whole story. Anyway, the new article was merged to The Matrix (series), but still formatted as its own article, before it was edited down. Since it read like a total tangent (and among other things, categorized the film trilogy itself as a "new religious movement"), I've split it back out to its own article at Matrixism (after suggesting twice to do so on Talk:The Matrix (series) without objections). As to the Reference Desk question, it came from an anonymous IP. Since about 2005, anonymous IPs have been linkspamming for the Matrixism website (a Geocities page) in a multitude of articles, as documented here. Anonymous IPs have also been behind the creation and re-creation of the Matrixism content. A web search shows that there's been a campaign to promote Matrixism on webforums and the like, matching this promotional behavior on Wikipedia. (I should also point out that the latest IP associated with this behavior has also posted a bizarre personal attack on my talkpage.) Anyway, I expect to prepare a third AFD shortly to settle this Matrixism issue, and may prepare it myself. Philwelch 15:08, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• Phil, proposing a reinstatement at around 2am GMT and then deciding that lack of input by 2pm GMT equates to consensus for restore, in the face of deletion and reviews as already noted, is very foolish. If you want the deletion reversed, go to deletion review. I don't hold out much hope of success as no new independent sources appear to have been found since the last review. This is a very minor joke in Matrix fandom. I don't see the problem with mentioning the minor joke in the matrix series article, but I do see a problem with having a separate article, because every time we debate that we get the same answer. Guy (Help!) 15:40, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Grafting a largely-unrelated, tangential article onto The Matrix (series) like a parasite attaching to a host isn't a solution either, and I don't see any way of better integrating it into the page content—and this is to say nothing of the undue weight and notability problems, which still exist. Splitting it back to its own article would allow for a third AFD to resettle the issue. (Furthermore, I don't even think Matrixism is notable within the context of the film series, certainly not enough to merit its own section). If you can suggest a better way to unify discussion venues (as to prevent discussion sprawl and forum shopping) and gain a definitive new consensus, I'm open to suggestions. Philwelch 16:03, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
    • I found a way. It's fairly well integrated now, but I still have some concerns about undue weight and notability. Philwelch 00:25, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Wacky bot

While not an emergency, User:OsamaKBOT (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) is marking fair use logos as unsourced and up for deletion. Logos are inherently fair use, and there really aren't valid sources that I can think of for logos anyway. Several editors have notified the owner of this behavior (see USER TALK:OsamaKBOT), but the owner doesn't think there is a problem. Not sure what else should be done, if anything. /Blaxthos 19:49, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Why can't a logo be given a source? Seems easy enough. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 19:52, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Logos are not inherently fair use. They only satisfy our non-free content criteria if they are used in conformity therewith. And all images have a source. -- But|seriously|folks  19:54, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

No valid sources? Unless it was uploaded by someone from the company's ad department, the image had to come from somewhere, most likely from the intenet. The company website perhaps? Sources should be easy to find. Mr.Z-man 20:35, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Most of these logos are for long defunt companies. I personally have about 10 or 20 defunt company logos in my collection obtained from various employers and partners. /Blaxthos 19:13, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Long term vandalism by 201.9.xxx.xxx IP range (again)

Someone has been vandalizing The Fairly OddParents and related articles for some time now. The vandal will make a few to several dozen edits every week or so under a different IP starting with 201.9. The edit is subtle, almost always changing a date to be one year earlier, such as this recent series of edits. This has been happening at least since March 2007, earliest edit I found was this one.

This is the second time I am reporting this, the first time the range was blocked, but undone shortly after. Since the vandal has persisted for a rather long time, I doubt a block would be of much help anyway.

Most recent IP was 201.9.190.232, making 4 (now 9) edits.

Is it possible for someone to contact the ISP and report the abuse? CoJaBo 22:09, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

It's not really long enough for a long-term report - that said, the blocks should get longer if you keep reporting them to WP:AIV, and semi-protection might be a good alternative. x42bn6 Talk Mess 04:45, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I believe you may have misunderstood the problem, it isn't 1 IP, its a vandal with a dynamic IP range of 2¹⁶ IPs. By the looks of it, the vandal's number of edits may exceed 100. Based on the pattern of repeated vandalism, the IP changes at least weekly. Semi-protection is unlikely to work, the vandal moved on to Pokemon-related articles after noticing I reverted the OddParents ones [13]. As blocking the entire IP range or semi-protecting all cartoon-related articles containing dates would likely be disruptive to legitimate editors, I think the only solution is to contact the vandal's ISP and let them deal with it. CoJaBo 02:42, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Archival of young thread apparently for POV reasons

Over at Talk:Battle of Jenin, user Jaakobou has been archiving old talk page threads. Perfectly normal, necessary, and helpful. Except that recently he has taken to archiving young talk page threads which he feels are "nothing more than an intrusion to the talk page"; see [14]. The last comment there came at 00:47, 8 September 2007; he archived it at 16:00, 12 September 2007 four-and-a-half days later. He did not archive a thread which saw its last comment (by Jaakobou) on 22 August 2007, or even a thread which was just one post, by him, from 6 June 2007.

I perceive this action as part of a longer pattern of talk page disruption. At one point Jaakobou added "closed discussion" headers to a 4-hour-old thread based on his belief that "this issue has been fairly well explained" which was not the general consensus. He has also been moving comments fairly aggressively to conform to his preferred scheme of organization ([15], [16], [17] among many others). I issued warnings [18], [19] which he rejected, so I feel I have to escalate this. Eleland 22:28, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

i believe i replied to all the concerns,^{[20] * , [21]} and also that my statement regarding the archiving is misrepresented. i note to whoever might notice this thread that my comment on the archiving was: "stopping the fude here"^[22] and not "this issue has been fairly well explained"

* please disregard inaccurate/false accusation by User:PalestineRemembered who has yet to find a mentor since his CSN case.^[23] Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 22:52, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

There is certainly a mountain of information here. From a brief foray into the first diff it becomes clear that...

• editors were complaining about User:Jaakobou refactoring the Talk page according to his own view of how it should be organised, hinting at possible WP:OWN problems;
• editors raised issues about article tone, WP:NPOV, WP:UNDUE etc. which were archived, rather than answered, by User:Jaakobou.

I hope Jaakobou's actions aren't part of a pattern. Anyway, it's late and I'm not going to be able to cover all of this fairly. I hope someone with a little more fortitude can stick it out. Sheffield Steel^talk_stalk 04:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

(1) i've explained my pallywood archiving here and here.

(2) to be frank, the refactoring of that old, long and complex misunderstanding from the Abu_ali-rolandR case makes my GF drop some, but i'll still assume it. in fact, i've recently made a note to the blocking admin noting him that i believe the comment he's left was exaggerated and requesting if he'd agree to fixing of the issue.

-- Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 10:34, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

extra comment: i wish to contest the "archived rather than answered" statement. i've been giving phone calls across the world to validate contested sources^{[24] , [25]} so that we can get rid of prolonged polemics that go nowhere. and opened up subsections regardless of my position on the complaints,^[26] or the people raising those issues. to be frank, this article has seen immense amounts of misconduct and incivility (borderline on harassment even).

-- Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 10:54, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I can see that you believe that you have explained your actions adequately, and that you believe those actions were good for the discussion, non-disruptive, etc. What I can't see is support from other editors, much less consensus. I'm sure you can appreciate that, to uninvolved outsiders, an editor who stands alone for neutrality, verification and reliable sources may be difficult to distinguish from someone acting unilaterally to promote their own POV and their own way of doing things. Sheffield Steel^talk_stalk 13:17, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

not too long ago i've placed a notice on the village pump requesting someone to be some type of clerk on the article so that i, an involved editor, won't be forced into that role. however, with the lack of response, i had no alternative (with my desire to resolve issues and promote the article) but to take to the role. i completely understand eleland's issues with this archiving, being that he also is an involved editor and with his lack of an effort at assuming good faith.^[27] however, i don't quite believe that his insistence/allegation that i'm "apparently" promoting POV is remotely close to an established fact. to be frank, i find some of his commentary a symptom, which other editors have taken to, to the reason editors have been less responsive to attempts at promoting the article.^[28] i've no issues with readmitting archived sections, but the reasoning that "there's older threads" and "i don't like what you are doing" don't hold much water if the subsection is but a distraction to the talk page and people have moved on to bickering on newer subsections.

i'd be happy to have a serious outsider relieve me from my self appointed "cleanup guy" duties, but it is indeed a much needed role on this article where editors are quick to lose focus and make generic statements. Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 14:29, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

List of Rookie Digimon (Part 2)

We've been having a few problems down at List of Rookie Digimon (Part 1), and List of Rookie Digimon (Part 2). This is an example of what one of the pages was like before I removed all the fair use from it. I counted over 30 non free images on the page and unfortunately now both pages keep getting reverted, but quite frankly, all those pics can't stay on there. Can someone take a look at it protection for the pages? Cheers, Ryan Postlethwaite 23:15, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Ugh, waht a mess. What I don't understnd is, how are all of those even truly 'notable'? ThuranX 23:24, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

i took a peek and i have to support ThuranX's comment. Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 23:33, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

For a list, the individual entries don't need to be independently notable, they only need to be notable as a group. -Chunky Rice 23:44, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

point taken. Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 00:49, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Seconded. Ryan removed the images from part 1, myself from part 2. I'm not particularly concerned with notability issues as its a list and not individual articles, and, frankly, thats not the issue anyway. The images cannot stay, as we all know (but neither Ryan nor I can protect the pages as we've been the ones removing the images). --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 23:38, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't trying to steer the report to a notability thread, just wondering what the policy justification was. As it's a series of interlinked lists, I suppose that it's not too bad, though I also noticed that some seem to link to fairly blank individual entries consisting of powers and 'genetics'. ThuranX 23:48, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I brought this up before (Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Digimon#Fair use + lists) but didn't get much of an idea. Note that there are many other lists of Digimon - a lot are one or two episode "noteworthy" but there are a couple that are considered main characters. I'd link this back to the WikiProject but would that be canvassing? x42bn6 Talk Mess 04:43, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Looks like a mess of fair use image in all the Digimon list pages. I see maybe 30 fairuse in Mega, part 1, and Ultimate, part 1 with still another maybe 15 pages like that. This whole thing needs to be settled one way or another. Frankly, why are the lists considerable notable by themselves? I'd suggest what I saw with RuneScape monsters and other stuff and say just send those details over the Digimon wiki (it's GDFL as well so the data can move very quickly). There's just no way to have them here: either we have violating our fair use policy with so many images on one page, we split them into separate pages again (which won't work) or we simply have them with no images, as I can't see a way to have free images available. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:37, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Baby steps, baby steps. The images should be dealt with first, and then the notability issue. The images being kept out is more important then the notability issue, at this particular moment anyway, since having non-notable material can't get the site sued. Pardon my melodrama. The Hybrid 05:42, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• On the other hand, if we dealt with the notability issue (this is, after all, a level of detail vastly in excess of what's necessary for a general readership) the image problem goes away. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Rookie Digimon (Part 1). Guy (Help!) 06:46, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Deedstar

I have blocked all accounts here, may I have a second look? Thanks in advance, Navou ^banter 03:02, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• Quack! Quack! - Dean Wormer 03:23, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
• endorse per WP:DUCK ++Lar: t/c 11:47, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
• socks' or meats' disruption of RFAs is seriously frowned upon and blocks are unquestionably in order. Carlossuarez46 17:29, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

User:Giovanni33: patience exhausted?

Having just blocked this user for continuing an edit war across several pages for several days (see Mao: The Unknown Story, Bruce Cumings, Great Leap Forward), I was astounded to see his prior block log. He appears to have one of the most extensive histories of unrepentant edit warring I've encountered, and his behavior in the last few days is not the kind of behavior that indicates that we should expect any improvement in the future after adding one more block to the over 20 previous blocks and block extensions he's had. I've given him a 48 hour block, to match his adversary-in-warring's block, but if there are no objections, I think we should recognize that this is an incorrigible case, and extend that to indefinite. And we need to get better at removing these time-sinks before it goes on so long. Dmcdevit·t 07:44, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I endorse an indefinite block. This should have happened a long time ago. This is unfortunate, because Giovanni has an outstanding work ethic, but he just cannot stop edit warring and trying to game the system. Pablo Talk | Contributions 07:51, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• It's going to be hard to find an admin who's never blocked him to provide an independent review of that :-) Guy (Help!) 08:20, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm so glad to see DMC back on this noticeboard with the threads like this one that I would definitely support an indef block. In a similar vein last year, Dmcdevit imposed a one-year block on Molobo, who nevertheless continued editing from his self-professed IP, let alone from newly registered accounts. Since his block evasion was given a free pass by admins and he did not face any consequences (see his talk page for details), I assume that Giovanni33 will be allowed to proceed in the same fashion. This is rather disheartening. --Ghirla^-трёп- 08:54, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Done. Durova^Charge! 09:03, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Aaaaaand endorsed. Time-wasting like this should not be tolerated. Moreschi ^Talk 09:10, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Wait, so G33 reports somebody else for breaking WP:3RR, and he gets blocked indefinitely?Proabivouac 09:20, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes. His history of edit-warring is ridiculous. Way into double figures, FFS. Moreschi ^Talk 09:22, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Most of it's from last year, when he was by all accounts (and by his own admission) completely disruptive. I only took a small look at the recent dispute centered around MTUS, but it didn't seem at all obvious to me that he was wrong about content, or conducting himself poorly.

And what happened to that RfC/U?Proabivouac 09:29, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that 3 reverts in under an hour, 2 more reverts here today (and another a couple of days ago), 3 more reverts here in the last 3 days, and 2 reverts in a day, all reverts of the same user, across multiple articles in a short time span without any intervening discussion could be less obvious that he is "conducting himself poorly." Two of those articles have not even seen edits to their talk pages in months. Dmcdevit·t 10:36, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I looked at only the discussion on Korean War, not the reverts, so I don't contest what you say. Only that Giovanni seemed reasonable and his general contention that the book is revisionism (though I might personally be inclined to agree with it) seems sound to me.Proabivouac 11:05, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

How about an alternative sanction of revert parole limiting him to 1 revert per day with explanation on the talk page? I'm not sure the community technically has the power to implement paroles, but if the alternative is an indefinite block...--Chaser - T 09:31, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Sure it does. One can see that sort of thing proposed and sometimes implemented via the Community sanction board. If an admin commutes the block, with that proviso, and no other admin changes it, it's done. As for Molobo et al, we're not perfect, but if sockpuppetry is identified and clearly evident, accompanied by bad behaviour, it usually gets blocked once we find it. I am sure, however, there are unidentified socks out there editing peacefully after having turned a new leaf... and that's fine by me. For the record I'd support such a parole in this case. But then I'm a big softie. ++Lar: t/c 10:24, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

The problem with such restrictions is that it becomes a tool for others to game in edit wars, if handed out unevenly. And John Smith's has been edit warring all over the place as well, almost exclusively with Giovanni33, and has 7 blocks of his own. If we were going to go that route, might want to note the failure of Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Mao: The Unknown Story 2 and escalate it to arbitration. Dmcdevit·t 10:36, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Nod. It does hardly ever work, yes but that doesn't mean I don't favour trying things short of indef block for people that have made contributions. I also agree (see below) that some evenhandedness would be good, although wikipedia is not a government and therefore there's no implied promise of fairness. ++Lar: t/c 11:36, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, no, I object to having this longstanding edit war 'solved' by effectively siding with/against one of the two main participants. I'm going to be unblocking and reimposing Dmcdevit's original block. If you're going to seek probation, fine, or if you're going to be issuing concrete ultimatums, that's also fine, but in such instances, too, we need evenhandedness. Parity over posturing, please. El_C 10:55, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I have not looked into the matter to know who is who, I just tend to favour trying things if there is some hope of redemption. Would your feelings about imposing an indef block on G be the same if the other "side" were also subject to the same probation instead of indef blocked? If so, then this is a case where the community hasn't endorsed the probation approach and that is that. if not, shoud it be tried? Who are the key players besides G that need this? ++Lar: t/c 11:36, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I will not wheel war, but tu quoque is not a defense. The block and checkuser history here was eminently worthy of a ban and I would gladly review and address other parties' behavior separately. Durova^Charge! 13:54, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I just want parity. I only know of them two; but this dispute has been going on for over a year now, so a resolution is long overdue. El_C 11:50, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Just a procedural comment - Rather than unblocking and re-blocking for the original duration I might suggest leaving a note to the user of your intent to remove the block after the original duration has expired. Avoids further cluttering the block log and reduces the possibility of wheel-warring by giving time for any consensus to form one way or the other (rather than someone re-imposing the indefinite block and that being reverted and whatnot else). --CBD 12:10, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Giovanni33 has a long history of tendentious editing, gaming 3RR and block evasion. He did previously agree to cease using sock accounts and went almost a year and was not blocked. However, since June he seems to have resumed his old ways, aside from the sockpuppeting issues.--MONGO 12:45, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

My patience is exhausted anyway. If this isn't he incident that leads to Giovanni33's indefinite block, the next one will be. I don't see why we should put ourselves through another round. Tom Harrison ^Talk 13:46, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't seem logical to me. Giovanni33 went about a year without block, despite being an active editor the whole time (I checked). If after this he were to go another decade without doing anything blockworthy I doubt anyone would then be advocating indefinite block over a 3RR violation or the like. A decrease in the number and frequency of blocks is evidence of improvement... why would we indefinitely block Giovanni33 now, when he is being blocked infrequently, when we did not a year ago... when he was being blocked on a weekly basis? He has gotten better, but since he has not achieved perfection he should be banned entirely? Such an approach seems to suggest that a user can never 'recover' from bad behaviour... it is just a cumulative tally leading to their eventual banishment even if they continually improve. --CBD 13:58, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Do it now or wait till next time. Of course I probably said that last time too. Tom Harrison ^Talk 14:05, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I am uninvolved with this user. I think the indef block was valid. How many edit warring block do we give a person? Enough is enough. ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 14:28, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

He does deserve an extended block, but an indefinite block is the end-all-be-all block. So how about a less arbitrary process in imposing it? Maybe other avenues need to be explored, from months-long blocks to a one-year block. But an indefinite block? It would be nice if there was a formal process to determine that this is the right decision. I'm bringing this up because despite his behaviour, he has been a valuable contributor. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 15:25, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse Indefinite block. Long time coming. --DHeyward 15:39, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Just to note since no one is admitting it. Dheyward, Tom harrison, and MONGO were all involved in "incidents" on an article with Giovanni33. They disagree with his edits to Allegations of state terrorism by the United States. As for endorse or not, I do not for the reasons noted above, 1 block in a year seems to suggest they are doing very well on the road to improvement. --SevenOfDiamonds 16:02, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

He hasn't had 1 block in a year, Giovanni33 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) went 9 months and was not blocked, but has been blocked now another 4/5 times in the last 2.5 months...that on top of his abuse of sock accounts previously and his more than a dozen previous blocks, all for edit warring. If he isn't indefinitely blocked and someone shorthens his block and he resumes his usual behavior than the situation needs to be presented to arbcom.--MONGO 18:09, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

There was a block in June that was overturned. Another in August, then this one. So prior to this he had 1 in about a year. YOu also should have acknowledged how many of those blocks in the past you were involved in as the block admin, then later seemed to bump into Giovanni again while not one. So actually considering the block this year to stick was in August, and his last one prior was September 2006, its been 11 months. --SevenOfDiamonds 18:43, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Are his year-long disruptive revert-warring acceptible if the 3RR was technically not violated? I have evidence below of his revert-warring involving possible stalking.--Endroit 18:51, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Surely not, about as disruptive as those who edit warred with him. He could not have done it alone, so is there a motion to indef ban all of those people? --SevenOfDiamonds 19:01, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think any of the other editors were nearly as disruptive as Giovanni33: Stalking, using socks, evading blocks, filing false 3RR reports, and whatnot. Other editors have already stated that Giovanni33 appears to be stalking John Smith's. Giovanni33 appears to be a user, whose major purpose is to stalk another user. Can you say the same about the other editors you are referring to, SevenOfDiamonds?--Endroit 19:18, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Have not examine in detail. I have not seen anything regarding socks other then what happened very long ago, over 11 months. The 3RR reports were not false, the cited point of them was he was also involved in them. As for stalking, if you are reffering to your below items, there was no disruption is seems, so it was not "wikistalking." I am not really here to argue their points, just state that edit warring is not a single person thing. --SevenOfDiamonds 19:27, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Since User:El_C first commented that he would restore the original 48 hour block, a consensus has formed that this indefinite block is appropriate. However, I am concerned that El_C has decided to ignore consensus based on this edit to Giovanni's talk page.[29] Restoring Giovanni's original block would be wildly inappropriate. The community has spoken, and Giovanni has worn out his welcome. Pablo Talk | Contributions 21:08, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but I do not at all see a consensus here for an indef block, particularly since the discussion is ongoing. In addition to El C's objection above I objected below and I also see objections from Proabivouac, Chaser, Lar, HongQiGong, and CBDunkerson. Several folks have proposed a long-term 1RR parole or something similar and that as well as other options should be considered. I don't think El C is ignoring consensus since there is none. Rather the indef block was far too drastic of a measure to take on an established user, particularly since the admin who indef blocked him did so after only a couple of people had commented here and did so less than 90 minutes after the thread was started.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 21:41, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

All I ever hear about Giovanni33 on this board and WP:AN is that he's edit warring with someone. Honestly, we do not need users like him who disrupt the project in the long run by constantly pushing their own point of view in their edits and causing drama by constantly gaming the system by feeling that he's entitled to X amount of reverts a day (three is an arbitrary number, and was simply chosen as a limit). We are much better off without such a user on Wikipedia. Even if there's a mass of consecutive blocks and unblocks, Giovanni33's block log is extensive and solely 3RR blocks. Users who constantly edit war should be excised from the project long before their block log gets to Giovanni33's length, or Nixer's length as mentioned below.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 04:25, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

There should be a rule

As a side note, I'm getting slightly annoyed at the sight of people like this fellow and Nixer (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) running up 20/30 blocks for 3RR before anyone takes any serious action other than a day's enforced wikibreak? For one thing, many admins do not implement 3RR blocks in an escalating manner, so it seems, and just continue to add on another 24 hours of enforced wikibreak to the block log. This seems...strange. Perhaps a system whereby after 7 non-overturned blocks for edit-warring/3RR, a bot automatically leaves a note here informing us that this is so? Then we can decide what action to take, rather than letting unrepentant edit warriors get away with it time and time again. Moreschi ^Talk 15:32, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm concerned that this scenario will lead to an increase in block shopping either here or on IRC, but otherwise I'm all for it. Nixer's case is quite instructive, as it took me more than a year to have him sent away from Wikipedia for good. Another case that needs to be recalled here is Eiorgiomugini (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log): a knowledgable editor, but also an incredibly stubborn revert warrior who was simply impossible to get along with. --Ghirla^-трёп- 20:13, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Just clarify the situation about Nixer he was not banned until I caught him abusing his socks and even then I doubt he would have been banned if he hadn't used them to evade his previous blocks. In fact, Zoe's indef block was overturned by Sir Nick despite his huge block log. Jacob Peters (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was also not community banned until way after his disruptive behavior finally exhausted community patience and at least one very good editor had been blocked for breaking 3RR when he cleaned up after him. I'm all for assuming good faith but there is such a thing as WP:DUCK EconomicsGuy 08:22, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Agree strongly. Probably needs a new noticeboard instead of here, though. This proposal deserves serious discussion. Raymond Arritt 16:04, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to add my voice to those endorsing an indefinite block. Enough is enough, really. This guy was let off the hook last time because he was being "ganged up on because of his politics." Instead of taking that incident as a warning, he's continued the exact same behavior that's gotten him in trouble many times in the past. I have to agree with Dmcdevit, Durova, etc etc that it's time to stop enabling this kind of editing. I'm not really impressed with the excuse that "others are doing it too", and letting him evade responsibility for his behavior again is just enabling more of the same. The only special or unequal treatment I'm seeing here is that people are still making excuses for a guy with his record of edit-warring, WP:BATTLE issues, and blocks. I'm opposed to undoing the indefinite block; at the very least, if the block is overturned, a 6-month or 1-year 1RR probation needs to be in effect that, if violated, leads to an indefinite block. MastCell ^Talk 16:20, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

However completely ignoring that others are doing it to just leaves the same situation for the next person. You cannot edit war alone. --SevenOfDiamonds 16:35, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

The others should be looked at, but there's no doubt in my mind that G33 has earned an indefblock. Worthy contributors are subject to the same rules as everybody else. -- But|seriously|folks  16:40, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

All due respect though, why were more extensive blocks (as in months-long or year-long block) not considered before jumping to an indefinite block? Or how about a 1 revert/article/week enforcement? I agree that his continued edit warring is a serious matter, there's no question about that. But imposing an indefinite block without going through a formal process of WP:Arbitration seems excessive. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 16:53, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Endorse, a true POV warrior. But it seems like an admin is objecting it will have to be next time. - Merzbow 18:07, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I think an indefinite block is far too draconian. Giovanni most definitely has a tendency to edit war and that is not good. But I disagree that he is merely a POV warrior. He has made good contributions here, and strikes me as quite rational and open to suggestions, be they on article content or his own behavior. More significant than his blocks in 2006 is the fact that he was not blocked at all for a long period of time and thus seems to be showing signs of improvement. Usually the default here at Wikipedia seems to be to forget past indiscretions if improvement is shown. Admittedly Giovanni seems to be slipping back into pushing the 3RR boundaries in the last couple of months so presumably some kind of action should be taken. I agree with Mastcell above that a 6-month (that seems good for starters, it could easily be extended) 1RR probation might be the way to go. This would allow Giovanni to continue to make good contributions (which we want) but prevent him from edit warring. If he continued to edit war while on probation longer blocks would be put into effect. That seems by far the best solution to me as I don't think Giovanni is just a problem user and I don't think it's impossible for him to reform his behavior. Incidentally, Giovanni's block log is a bit deceptive and, although unacceptable, not as bad as it seems if you just glance at it. For example all of the apparent blocks from July 6-10 in 2006 (there were 13 of them) seem to revolve around one issue and involve a classic case of wheel warring. In the end Giovanni was not blocked, so what appears to be 13 blocks could actually be viewed as none (or 1 which was contested). In total it seems Giovanni was blocked about 10 times in 2006 (which is no good obviously) and 3 times so far in 2007.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 20:08, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. ^^James^^ 22:57, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Just for the record I also object to the arbitrary banning of a long time editor. The double standards shown here and the clutching at straws smack of a kangaroo court. If there is a problem with an editor then that is what the RfC and RfAr channels for. Sophia 22:16, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I also object to arbitrary banings of long time users. Established users should be given a chance to improve or correct their behavior and should only be permanently banned after a long period of ignoring the rules, incivility, edit warring, pov pushing, tenditious edition and with a corresponding record of blocks documenting such behavior. In the case of Giovanni, it seems that yet another short term block may be as futile as the last dozen blocks. I've seen other editors merit indefinite blocks with behavior and block logs not nearly as egregious as that of this particular editor. Any block, whether indefinite, long or even short could hardly be considered arbitary in this particular case.Dman727 22:32, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't exactly say this is arbitrary, maybe a little hasty but hardly surprising that editors are starting to consider longer term blocks in this case. There isn't a "right" to edit here you know, and if someones editing becomes agitated enough it starts to be a waste of time to keep dealing with it. RxS 22:41, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

We have the Arbcom and editor review at RfC. Decisions become arbitrary when an admin gets a bee in their bonnet and can't be bothered to go through the proper channels. Be honest - if you don't think they did the job properly last year when they didn't ban him just say so. Other editors have been allowed to walk away from accounts with clouds hanging over them but Gio is stuck with a long history that comes back to haunt him. One person doesn't edit war by themselves and perm banning someone for reporting 3RR is breathtakingly unfair. Sophia 22:56, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Arbcom and RFC are not the only routes to long terms blocks, in fact I'd bet all the money in my pocket that more long term/indef blocks were done without Arbcom or RFC involvement than with their involvement. And as far as taking two to tango you're right. Consistent edit warriors need to be shown the door when they've started to take up too much time...whatever the POV and wherever their editing takes place. If Giovanni has an editor that he's warring with then that editor needs some attention also. But that doesn't mean Giovanni needs to be released from any responsibility, it just means someone needs to shine the light in other directions as well. RxS 23:21, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Completely agree that Giovanni shouldn't be "released from any responsibility" - but that does not necessary mean he should get an indefinite block just because few admins has lost patience with him. To be honest, it makes me question the integrity of the admin population if they make such severe decisions based simply because they've lost patience. Something should be done about Giovanni, yes. But an indef block on an editor without going through ArbCom? I would disagree with that even for editors that I dislike. It's not like Giovanni was vandalising or making legal threats. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 23:42, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• I agree with SOPHIA here. I do not think the banning of Giovanni33 was the right decision. It appears that there is not a consensus here, I hope our voices are recognized. Zurishaddai 22:53, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
  • I find it telling that Giovanni33's political opposite User:TDC has a block log almost as outrageous, yet there is nobody calling for his head. Considering who gets singled out for a ban, this is obviously completely one-sided. Zurishaddai 23:28, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

At the very least, something as severe as an indef block should go through ArbCom. Gio might be an edit warrior, but he's not a vandal. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 23:00, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Your comment assumes that being an incorrigible edit warrior is somehow not as bad as being a vandal. I don't think that's true. Hard-core edit-warriors, WP:BATTLE violators, and people who refuse to work via consensus are, in the long run, far more damaging to the project than run-of-the-mill vandals. MastCell ^Talk 00:02, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with what Sophia has said as well. I don't think an indef is the right way to go here. I'd support some sort of revert restrictions if that is considered necessary but an indef is way too much. Sarah 04:13, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Evidence of possible stalking by Giovanni33

I'm sorry if this is a mistake. But Giovanni33 appears to have been stalking John Smith's and deliberately engaging in revert-wars, even in articles he's not familiar with.

The most prominent example I've seen is the following revert-warring by Giovanni33 in Japan (and the only edits ever by Giovanni33 in that article):

• 19:09, 6 March 2007
• 19:38, 6 March 2007

This appears to be in response to the following, and similar edits by John Smith's:

• 19:13, 5 March 2007

I have been monitoring the Japan article, where John Smith's received a barnstar from User:Nihonjoe for bringing that article to FA status, whereas Giovanni33 appeared from nowhere there just to revert John Smith's.--Endroit 18:32, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• Right. Take a look the recent history of Bruce Cumings. It would appear that John Smith's stalked Giovanni33 over there. And please, anybody can give anybody else a Barnstar. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 23:10, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

The edits in Bruce Cumings appears to have been preceded by this discussion. Also, User:Nihonjoe is not just any editor; he is one of the leaders in the WP:JA project.--Endroit 23:20, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

A clarification from the indef blocking admin

I'd have no objection to trying a lesser sanction such as a topic ban or 1RR. I am also quite willing to evaluate the behavior of other parties this editor may have edit warred with. Note that I do not automatically buy into it takes two to tango, so please provide evidence to examine below this post. I'll also respectfully request that this discussion move to WP:CSN where it can be archived as a case study in how to address a difficult but established editor. My own position on the matter is that editors do not earn a get out of jail free pass or a license to edit war by crossing some threshold and becoming established editors: a critical view of that thesis would argue it's a fancy way of saying double standard or hypocrisy. I'm all for encouraging useful edits and productive behavior, but when a user's long term effect is to decrease the productivity of other editors by more than the net value of his or her own contributions, eventually external solutions become necessary. We hope that dispute resolution and short term blocks solve the problem. Sometimes that doesn't work and then we're left with a difficult dilemma. Yes, the options at hand here are limited and crude. Let us all recall that Giovanni33 placed himself and us in this difficult position, and he should reasonably expect that consequences are at hand. Durova^Charge! 01:12, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

BTW I've posted an unblock offer to Giovanni33's user talk page. Basically I'm asking him to put together some proposal for lesser sanctions. I'll propose that to the community on his behalf and if the community accepts it I'll lift the indef. Durova^Charge! 01:25, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Durova. Again, I am open to any proposals, providing there is parity. El_C 03:11, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

This was his pledge 6 weeks ago on a 3RR/edit warring transgression that went unblocked. A few weeks later, he was blocked again for edit warring with a different editor on a different article. That block was reduced by El_C. This weeks edit war was with yet a different editor, a different blocking admin and a different article. If the 2RR pledge didn't mean anything and his blocks keep getting reduced, why is their a belief that anything other that a long period of quiet reflection will produce a change in behaviour? --DHeyward 07:38, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I opened this on the CSN noticeboard as suggested. --DHeyward 05:12, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

And that's really not necessary. Why should it matter which board is used to discuss this action? It's already a full discussion here, and bringing to CSN will only start an AFD mentality.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 05:16, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

It's a different question. Solving an incident is one thing, indefintely blocking an editor is another. Durova requested it and it's her name on the block log. Please respect that. --DHeyward 05:17, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

What makes this discussion here any different than one that will be started at CSN? Starting a vote (which is what it always ends up being at CSN) isn't going to solve anything. There's enough discussion here to gauge consensus that we don't need bulleted points with '''endorse''' or '''oppose''' to show us what to do.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 05:19, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Giovanni33's last block in August was discussed on AN/I. An admin pretty much unilaterally decided to reduce the block. G33 was in an edit war with a different user on a different article and the block was made originally by a different admin than the ones here. The discussion here appears to mirror that one with the same admin seeking a course of action without regard to community consensus. We have three things at work: 1) This ANI which appears headed to same as the last one (i.e. overturned by a single admin) 2) Durova's noble attempt to negotiate appropriate behaviour and 3) community consensus from the CSN. Option 2 is obviously the most favourable. Option 1 is not acceptable the second time around and one way to ensure that is option 3. Community consensus is an important gauge that an admin should be weighing when deciding to shorten or overturn a block. --DHeyward 06:15, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

The discussion here will be more indicative of community consensus than the notice board. A more diverse group edit here than there. Sophia 06:25, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I think that admins are more inclined to take unilateral action based on input here than on CSN. For example, Durova blocked very quickly based on evidence here. Likewise, El_C seems inclined to unblock based on his interpretation of fairness rather than consensus. This approach has its merits as well as detractions but it highlights the difference between the two noticeboards. CSN is geared towards achieving consensus while AN/I is geared towards solving problems requiring immediate admin intervention and is primarily consultative, not consensus based. --DHeyward 06:35, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

There is no consensus to indef-block ... there are two distinct groups of users who want different outcomes. A lot of admins have expressed disquiet about jumping straight to an indef block, and I think that the current situation is saying that we as a group stuffed up over the past year and failed to resolve this appropriately. My views are broadly in line with those expressed by Sophia. Orderinchaos 10:55, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

• I don't think dispute resolutions have worked in the case of Giovanni33 or would work now. Would be nice if he would change his ways, but after this many blocks and disruption, I doubt it. I have to support the indef block. --Aude (talk) 05:15, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chris Crocker (internet celebrity)‎

Just an early warning and a hunch, but I have a feeling that this is NOT going to end well. Some experienced eyes on this and on the original article may be necessary. --Calton | Talk 08:22, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I have it watchlisted, I'll close it in a few days, (currently looks like a no consensus, but it could change). Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup Sports!} 19:07, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Persistent disruptive editing of David Hicks by User:Prester John

User:Prester John is engaging in disruptive editing by massive non-consensual reverts of David Hicks page. Numerous editors have reverted his changes but he continues nonetheless, up to 3 reverts a day, without substantive justification or talkpage discussion, using Edit Summaries that mispresent the edit and/or prior editors[30][31][32] and are aggressively POV [33]

• [34] Mdhowe - "revert vandalism" by Prester John
• [35] Bless sins - Undid revision 157511776 by Prester John
• [36] Bless sins - "rv, mass removal of content; the article seems fine as it is"
• [37] Brendan.lloyd - "Prester John, please refrain from DELETING references, use more detailed Edit Summaries & justify your reverts on the talkpage; please avoid 3RR"

Mastcell had protected the Hicks page earlier, stating a lower threshold for blocking would exist if edit-warring resumes. Less than thirty minutes after protection was lifted, Prester John resumed edit warring. --Brendan Lloyd [ contribs ] 08:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Out of interest, have you ever heard of "crying wolf". Now that there possibly is a real wolf, there possibly isn't anybody to listen to you. Shot info 10:01, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment, Shot info. Please direct individual discussion to my talkpage. As my contrib history should show, and as far as I'm aware, this is the first Incident report I have ever lodged. --Brendan Lloyd [ contribs ] 02:47, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Looks like time to take an interest in David Hicks, author of "Terrorism for Complete Idiots". --Pete 03:08, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Immigration to Australia

Resolved

 – Article protected by Sarah

Edit war, sock infested. Protect, block etc, please. Someone is bored at work 08:40, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Wiki Blackshirts: more than personal attack

Please view this and take the appropriate administrative action. Jeffpw 08:48, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

He's already blocked indefinitely. Lupo 08:51, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Quite seriously, I have never had somebody write something so awful to me on the internet, and I certainly never expected it to happen here on Wikipedia. Jeffpw 08:54, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

We get all kinds of people, from the best to the worst. And a fair amount of nutcases, too. Just don't take anything like that personally; it comes from a truly sick mind. Lupo 10:12, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

On the side: anyone who knows enough European history should know that someone with a name like "Blackshirts" is asking for trouble and will be trouble. I see that he was not on the project very long, but why was he able to take a name like that? In my part of the world, "fascist" is only written, the spoken word is still "zwart hemd", Dutch for "black shirt".--Pan Gerwazy 10:30, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, please do not take offence from such nasty people. Instead, continue to do the right thing, and report it. Thanks, -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 11:16, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Why was this person getting warnings instead of an immediate block after the first edit? Corvus cornix 16:20, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm wondering why it wasn't given an immediate block based on the user name alone, or blocked immediately as Wiki Brownshirts (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) before him was. --Calton | Talk 17:00, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Many users, even including a few admins, believe that going through the full warning series is always necessary. I'd have indefblocked after that first edit with no more regrets than if I was swatting a mosquito had I known about it. Raymond Arritt 17:11, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Guys, I had already blocked him 22 minutes before Jeff posted his notice here. In fact, as soon as I noticed him. What do you expect? We're all volunteers here. Things slip through RC, and people aren't monitoring the user creation log constantly. Just business as usual. Lupo 17:19, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Heh, I didn't even look at his talk page. So scrap my comment. Lupo 17:21, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Does anybody know where User:Hayden5650 was from? We've now got an Australian IP address at 77.101.38.46 (talk · contribs) committing similar acts, although since blocked briefly. Corvus cornix 18:37, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know where Hayden5650 was from, but Wiki Blackshirts claimed he was from New Zealand, which would fit with your Australian anon IP. I'm glad the community is taking this seriously. I just can't express how upsetting it is to have messages like that pop into your talk page. Jeffpw 18:46, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

If you look in the history of Hayden5650's user page, at one point it had Category:Wikipedians in New Zealand on it. Then again, when he created it he had a an Admin userbox, & claimed that his page had been vandalized 15,000 times; who knows what the truth about him is? (Although to not only know about userboxes, but Admins suggests that this was not his first account on Wikipedia.) -- llywrch 18:54, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I've had many encounters with this person. He is 19-20 years old, of Oamaru, New Zealand. He's a racist/bigot and the message on Jeff's page was terrible and what he wrote to User:Muntuwandi was just as terrrible if not worse. He also added a swastika to my page as well, and called me ugly names. Also he once admitted to me that he hates Muntuwandi with a passion and wants him dead. UGH, and he keeps coming back again and again after a block. He'll be back again. sigh - Jeeny ^Talk 20:19, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, so now I'm confused. When I did the initial whois click on the above IP address, it resolved to Australia. Now it says United Kingdom. Corvus cornix 22:15, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Open proxy might be a valid explanation. Listed on WP:OP. MER-C 03:58, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

There's a CU related block which might potentially be connected - let me contact the CU person. It came up on unblock-en-l, and I can't go into details on wiki due to privacy policy. Georgewilliamherbert 20:36, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

This was apparently unrelated. Georgewilliamherbert 22:16, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Userspace Copyright Vandal

I have indefinitely blocked Limitedlincolns (talk · contribs) as a definite sockpuppet of Wiggl3sLincolns (talk · contribs). They both continually post (after being warned and re-deleted several times, see talk of original account, Wiggl3sLincolns) copyrighted content from the site http://automotivemileposts.com/ to their userspace. The original account was blocked for 24 hours, which has since expired. If I could get just a couple of people to keep an eye out for this guy, that'd be great, because I originally found this dispute via OTRS complaint. Regards, ^demon^{[omg plz]} 11:31, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

You should say how you know this is a sock. (I agree it is but...) If you got a CU to look into it you might mention that, or you could say that the one deleted of Limited (he has a total of 1 non and i deleted edit) edit is essentially identical to the most recently deleted edit of Wiggles... makes it blindingly obvious if you're an admin and can see deleteds, but not obvious to non admins. Seems a sound block, but I had to dig around to satisfy myself. Keeping an eye out is always a good idea... ++Lar: t/c 11:46, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for not making it clearer. The reason it's an obvious sock is because he is A) Posting copyrighted material from the same website, and B) Posting it to userspace, which stood out to me as well. Once again, apologies for not clarifying originally. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 12:12, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:DUCK. CheckUser is used as little as possible because it does reveal personal information. x42bn6 Talk Mess 16:23, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Right. No one is saying that a CU is needed, least of all me (because I'd be the one that had to run it? :) ). I think we're all saying that now that the edit pattern is a bit clearer this is an unquestionably sound block. 208.7.91.20 17:20, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Help needed

An editor (137.163.145.226 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)) that been adding their own personal experience with Neteller, keeps re-introducing the same non-encyclopedic content, I reverted twice on the Neteller article and twice own the WebMoney article, and I don't want to get into a revert war, any assistance would be appreciated ▪◦▪≡ЅiREX≡^Talk 11:41, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Final warned; happy to block next time. -FisherQueen (Talk) 11:43, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the help, I can understand why this user is angry, but those edits do not belong in an encyclopedia▪◦▪≡ЅiREX≡^Talk 12:03, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Today's featured article on Dungeons & Dragons has been inappropirately edited

Article as it appears contains the following: "Dungeons & Dragons is a structured yet open-ended role-playing game. This stupid game was invented by Brendan Chambers and his friends! they have too much time on their hands. It is normally played indoors with the participants seated around a table-top. Typically, each player controls only a single character.[14]" When you go to edit the page to remove it, the cited bold text does not appear. 12:24, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

It isn't there now. Are you sure the reason it wasn't there when you tried to edit the page wasn't that someone else had already removed it? WjBscribe 12:49, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia's editing foibles can easily be confusing to new editors. It's possible to see vandalism, click "edit" (which loads a newer, fixed version of the page into the edit window) and, confused, click "back" which loads a (cached) view of the page with the original vandalism. It's also possible to make a revert seconds after another user does so, and wonder why your edit doesn't show up in the history. So I can sympathise. Sheffield Steel^talk_stalk 13:38, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Bot on IP

Special:Contributions/86.140.176.154 seems to be a bot that forgot to log in. — Edokter • Talk • 13:50, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• Are you sure? Its first 5 edits are obviously human, and the rest aren't really at bot speed, quite possibly just an IP editor with a mission. --W.marsh 14:05, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Well, I said "seems". And up to 10 edits per minute seems like a bot to me. — Edokter • Talk • 14:14, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• Speed does not mean bot. Tabbed browsing lets you get all your ducks in a row before you start firing. At first glance the ips contribs seem helpful. ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 14:22, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Never said they weren't usefull. Just noticed it and though soneone might recognize the IP and notify him/her. — Edokter • Talk • 15:20, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Fatevan4 (talk · contribs)

Hello, This user appears to have created an account just to vandalize articles. It was just created and the first edits were change the KFC to Kentucky Dead Chicken. - Jerem43 15:20, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I warned the user with {{subst:uw-v2}}. You can do this yourself using the templates at WP:UTM. Report the user to WP:AIV if they continue vandalising past a level 4 warning. -- Flyguy649 ^talk _contribs 15:23, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

70.90.54.241 (talk · contribs)

Resolved

 – blocked for 3 months by User:Raymond arritt

Request permanent block for this user, based on repeated previous warnings & blocks and recent vandalism of List of United States Navy ratings, Captain America, and Cup. A review of this users' edits reveal that nearly all of them are vandalising edits that are ultimately reverted by others.

Highspeed

IPs are never indefinitely blocked because they can point to many people around the world. Simply dump warnings (from WP:UTM) and then when they hit level 4, report them to WP:AIV. x42bn6 Talk Mess 15:56, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

"Permanent" is a long time, but it's clear this is a long-time (if low-level) offender. Raymond Arritt 16:00, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Linda Hamilton

Sorry for the trouble - Geno (talk · contribs) repeatedly adds a non-free image of the actress to the article's infobox in violation of WP:NFCC#1, citing WP:IAR. He says an admin must rule on the usage, would appreciate a look, thanks. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 16:06, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

He's discussed it here as well, but believes that a lack of "response" (in his favour) indicates to him that there is consensus to add the image. Seicer (talk) (contribs) 16:32, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Images that simply show what living people look like are replaceable non-free content and cannot be used. I recommend that Geno contact Ms. Hamilton's management and request that they provide a free image. There is a great guide to doing so at this page. -- But|seriously|folks  16:55, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

The problem continues, despite the requested admin opinion. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 23:14, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

What the legal team has left out is that I believe other Wikipedia policies, including WP:IGNORE, Use Common Sense and "don't follow rules mindlessly", support showing an actor acting. Are you an admin? Who do you report to in the Wikipedia hierarchy? I wish to file an appeal with them.

I do not wish to get a free image license; I'm not against the idea in general, but this has become much more important than the issue of the one image. The anti-fair-use people are saying we can't use an entire broad category of images to which, by both sense and law, we are entitled. This requires a ruling from the highest possible level. If the highest people at Wikipedia really support the other point of view, then fine, I'm out of here, but I need to hear that to believe it. I remain convinced that the anti-fair-use people are misinterpreting. -- Geno Z Heinlein 23:16, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

"The highest level" has already ruled on this, specifically addressing non-free images of living people. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 23:18, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Even that page says "permits the upload of copyrighted materials that can be legally used in the context of the project, regardless of their licensing status." How is that against fair use? -- Geno Z Heinlein 23:39, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

As I explained to you on your Talk page, there is no "higher level". Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria is a policy. You will need to convince enough people to override the consensus there, and that involves using convincing arguments, not repeating personal attacks such as "by sense". Law has nothing to do with those cases where Wikipedia policy is stricter than law. In other language Wikipedias, there are no non-free images, period. And they survive. Corvus cornix 23:20, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Please clarify something for me. Are you saying that the Board of Trustees couldn't come in here and say, "Of course, in-character images are allowed." and have the result that you people stop reverting these images?

Also, I've made the arguments that refer to Wikipedia policy, and you guys have just ignored them in favor of other Wikipedia policies that support your position. -- Geno Z Heinlein 23:39, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

(Let me clarify, my position is not that we should be able to place in-character pictures due to policy; I've just been pointing out that the policies are contradictory. My position is that the articles are more important than the policy. -- Geno Z Heinlein 00:35, 15 September 2007 (UTC))

Not when the policy exists to keep Wikipedia compliant with copyright law. If there were no other picture, you'd have a good fair use rationale, but being that a free picture exists, even if it doesn't show her in the act of acting, would make it difficult to sustain using fair use as justification.

As far as the intersection of seemingly contradictory policies, that's where you need consensus to figure out the best way to proceed. Consensus can obviously change, but I've always found consensus here to be toward using a free image when availabe.

Finally, I'm not sure what would happen if the board of trustees said it was OK, they don't involve themselves in the writing of the encyclopdia or editorial matters. Wikipedia works by consensus, there's no single higher power to appeal to. VxP 00:41, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

If the Board "don't involve themselves in the writing of the encyclopdia or editorial matters" and "there's no single higher power to appeal to" is the case, then what is the relevance of "The highest level has already ruled on this"? You see why this requires someone with a sufficiently big stick to just lay down the law? I'm not only getting policy referrals, instead of people just saying that they think that policy is more important than article quality, but it's not even consistent policy! Every doc I've been pointed to eventually says -- or points to an article that says -- that exceptions are permitted, that fair use is permitted and that "If a rule prevents you from working with others to improve or maintain Wikipedia, ignore it."

Everyone is quoting Wikipedia policies except the ones that say that the encyclopedic content is more important than the policies! Is the intent really that community consensus should enable putting policy ahead of article quality? Seriously, what is it going to take to get the policy out of this discussion and replace it with the quality of the article? Once again, this requires someone with a sufficiently big stick to just lay down the law. -- Geno Z Heinlein 00:57, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that "Ignore all rules" won't work here, especially point 5 of what it doesn't mean: "Ignore all rules" is not an invitation to use Wikipedia for purposes contrary to that of building a free encyclopedia." That last statement is why we are here; to make a free encyclopedia. Anyways, the only higher person you might even convince to change the policy is Jimbo Wales himself, but he has been trying to cut down on our reliance on images that do not meet the Board's definition of freedom. So, in this case, you wish to use a photo of a living person. Well, if you look on the Flickr website, there are non-screenshot photos of the person. is an example. Of course, we cannot use that photo since it is copyrighted. But, you can ask the uploader and see if he can put it under a CC license. Emailing her website is a good option too. But, we just cannot use any ol' photo of her because she is still alive and from what I can tell, she is getting lots of work, so it will be possible to obtain a free photo pretty darn easily. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 09:21, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Please see the Linda Hamilton Talk Page for why this still does not address the issue. -- Geno Z Heinlein 09:39, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Quack test

Resolved

 – sock indef blocked, image deleted, article reverted and watchlisted

Sorry to have one report right after the other...

Snootchie44 (talk · contribs) uploaded some copyvio images to illustrate the Sabrina Lloyd article. As the images were tagged as having various problems, 81.129.22.38 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) appeared as a bad hand to delete image tags and WP:PUI reports. As warnings accumulated, PixieGuard (talk · contribs) has now appeared and is uploading non-free images of Sabrina Lloyd, and is using them in violation of policy. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 16:39, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• Quack quack block (and revert). ELIMINATORJR 16:50, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

PalestineRemembered IV

i'm not going to spend time sourcing to any recent issues with User:PalestineRemembered since i would find it futile as long as the previous issue is unresolved.

a little while back, he's been taken to the WP:CSN (archive 11) with the proposition to ban him from the commnity and he's been given the leeway to be assigned a mentor to resolve some issues with his conduct on wikipedia.

i believe he has yet to find such a mentor and that he continues as if nothing had happened.^[38]

i'd request some assistance in resolving this non-existant mentor issue. Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 16:51, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• Users are given latitude as to what comments to keep and delete from their own user talk. However, removal of material is recognized as having read it, and now s/he's been warned of the harrassment you claim. If s/he conducts further harrassment, please report it - and link back here so that whoever has to deal with it knows that this editor has been warned of it before. I have no comment as to mentorship. Carlossuarez46 17:34, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not following User:Jaakobou around or wiki-stalking him. He's likely picked up the English word "harrassment" from others who have suffered his aggressive contributions to their TalkPages. Here are two admins claiming he's harrassed them at this AN/I and been blocked for it. See also [39] and [40], all from the same date. These further two exchanges are action against editors who (I'm pretty sure) are careful and productive - yet it includes posting their personal details into public view. One day Jaakobou might easily suffer angry retaliation - but it's not coming from me! PalestineRemembered 00:05, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

• I have no change in my opinion from that CSN discussion. I've never heard of a case of mentorship working. I don't care if he has a mentor or not. I don't want to see a community action for editors in this topic area, because there is too much violation of WP:BATTLEGROUND in the topic area for me to find a community action highly creditable. I think the rest of the community needs to find a solution to provide leadership to the disputes regarding the topic area, but lack ideas for viable solutions. The only idea (applied currently elsewhere) I'm aware of that theoretically sounds promising doesn't seem to be helping in the topical area where it is being applied. This opinion was solicited by the thread originator; I'm not sure why I was chosen. GRBerry 18:16, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
  • comment, i noted people involved on the CSN, mostly those who accepted the mentor suggestion, which has yet to be implemented. Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 18:22, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I am prepared to act as a mentor in the short term do people view this as acceptable?Geni 22:07, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Eh PalestineRemembered appears to be being mentored by user:HG.Geni 22:12, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Okey it appears not. I am prepared to mentor as long as far as possible past events on Wikipedia are left in the past and are not used as ammunition in future disputes. Do people view this as acceptable?Geni 00:37, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

User:Griot

Resolved

 – 2nd level warning was enough

• Griot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

This user has made recent edits to his talk page that constitute a very incivil personal attack. It is particularly immature considering this is regarding a conflict that was resolved several months ago. The following edits were made where the user refers to me as a FREAK and even altered my own words to make it look as though I was actually referring to myself as a FREAK:

http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Griot&diff=153021407&oldid=153021211

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Griot#What_if_I_am_a_gun_freak.3F_So_what.3F

He has also added a link on his user page that points directly to my talk page in an apparent attempt at starting more trouble: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Griot

At the end of the original conflict, I was blocked for 24 hours by Isotope23 for referring to Griot as a "hysterically paranoid info-deleting professor" on my talk page, so if justice is doled out evenly on Wikipedia I expect that he will now suffer the same consequences for this incivil personal attack of calling me a FREAK on his talk page, months after this conflict had been resolved. --BillyTFried 17:04, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any recent edits to Griot's Talk page which mention you whatsoever. The latest ones that have anything to do with you are over three weeks old, and consisted of changing a section heading (which I don't agree with). Corvus cornix 17:28, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

That's what I am talk about. He changed the title of a section that I WROTE that originally said San Francisco isn't as homogeneous as you wish it was to now say What if I am a gun freak? So what?, clearly referring to me as a FREAK and making it look as though I was calling myself a FREAK. This is clearly an incivil personal attack and a rehashing of a conflict that was resolved not weeks (when he made the change), but MOTNHS ago. --BillyTFried 17:46, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

may i suggest you give him a small 2nd level warning about changing your comment (give a proper reference) and hopefully that'll be the end of it. if you havn't submitted any previous warnings, there is no room for sanction. p.s. best i'm aware "gun freak" and "freak" are not on the same level of insult. if you've submitted other warnings, may i suggest you link them here. otherwise, i note to you not to search vengence here on wikipedia... that is not the purpouse of the project. Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 18:01, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

revert and notice given - [41]. Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 18:13, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

The user Griot has ignored your warning and undone your revert and changed it to: Ouch! That Hurt's Soooo Much! Somebody Hurt My Feelings! Mommy! Daddy!. http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Griot&diff=157902521&oldid=157900464

This is certainly further incivil behavior that deserves disciplinary action! --BillyTFried 19:46, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

User Griot still doesn't seem to get it. His response to your SECOND warning:

This place is becoming a fucking kindergarten. Do I get any credit for actually writing and editing articles? Or is this just a place for bitching and carrying on? Griot 21:48, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Griot&diff=157934985&oldid=157934285 --BillyTFried 22:39, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

User:Matthead and Germany/West Germany

User:Matthead is in the process of making a large number of highly destructive edits that go against consensus, both on WP and in the English speaking world in general. It's widely accepted that between 1945 and 1990, the Federal Republic of Germany was known in English as West Germany, even if its official name never changed and even if the name was less widely used in Germany itself. The same also applies to its national sporting teams. Matthead believes that we should simply refer to the teams as Germany, and we debated this issue recently, with his point of view defeated, per consensus and common name. Today he has started to unilaterally change references from West Germany to Germany, on hundreds of articles. These edits are so destructive that I would consider them vandalism. He needs to be stopped, and the edits need to be undone, and quickly, if possible. Thanks for your time. ArtVandelay13 17:40, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Most of his edits seem to be being reverted by other editors, though in some places he's made the edit twice, and may be approaching 3RR. I'll leave a note at his page. ThuranX 23:04, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

ArtVandelay13 (talk · contribs) himself concedes above that "West Germany" was only an informal name for the (BTW still existing) Federal Republic of Germany between 1949 and 1990, as well as for sport teams like the Germany national football team which is fielded since 1908 by the German Football Association. The team was and is called Germany even during the German Empire eras of Emperor Wilhelm, Weimar Republic, and Hitler. Its history continued after WW2, as accepted by FIFA in 1950, as well as in 1990 when the separate East Germany disappeared. Some people have pushed their view by trying to establish West Germany national football team as a separate article, a POV-fork which was replaced by the proper redirect again (see discussion in which many revealed both ignorance and Anti-German attitude). Links to this POV article had been planted in over 200 articles, a number which was reduced by me recently. It is ArtVandelay13 (and others) who makes many destructive POV-pushing edits that go against consensus by reverting like in [42]-- Matthead ^discuß!     O       12:53, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

This is the English language Wikipedia, and the common English name for The Federal Republic of Germany until 1990 was West Germany, as opposed to East Germany for the The German Democratic Republic. Of course term West Germany was unknown within the Federal Republic, since they term the nation Deutschland anyway, but the DDR was referred to as "Ostdeutschland" (East Germany) and the BRD as "Westdeutschland" as well as their formal titles. The appropriate English language names for both countries are established in the principle WP articles, and therefore those conventions are to be followed. Ultimately, consensus is against you - multiple editors are reverting you and you are in the minority in the discussions. You should now cease your unilateral revisions. LessHeard vanU 13:48, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

The football team remained the same in 1990. The "common English" separation into pre-1990 "West German nft" and post-1990 "German nft" is artificial, and not backed up by any serious source. It is informal, like calling the early-1950s Hungarian nft Golden Team, see Category:Nicknamed groups of soccer teams. While nobody would claim that the pre-1956 Hungarian Revolution team was not Hungarian, the pre-1990 German team is called "West German" and claimed to be something different, just because East Germany vanished. Current use by said multiple editors violates WP:NOR and WP:NPOV. It often creates a mess, like a town and team being called West German in 1989 and German in 1991, with 1990 being left out, see my example at the RfD (link below). -- Matthead ^discuß!     O       15:25, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

The editor is now moving for page deletions to accord with his POV. ThuranX 14:11, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

"The editor" has requested the deletion of the redirect [43]. -- Matthead ^discuß!     O       15:25, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Wildly inappropriate links

I am pruning a lot of links to Stormfront (Special:Linksearch/*.stormfront.org) - we should not be using Stormfront as a source for anything outside of its own existence, I'd say, as it is close to the perfect definition of "unreliable". In the mean time, could someone please take a machete to Stereotypes of East and Southeast Asians. Thanks. Guy (Help!) 18:04, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• Detectives: it may be worth tracking down who added this one http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=W%C5%82adys%C5%82aw_Sikorski&diff=157895366&oldid=155961950 Guy (Help!) 18:26, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
  • 'Evening all. The link was originally to the book as hosted David Irving's publishers, and was present in the very first version of the page. The link was 'fixed' to stormfront.org last Christmas Eve [44] by Keesiewonder (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). The other link to David Irving's own site (fpp.co.uk) was added by Piotrus on 9 March 2005 here. Sam Blacketer 18:54, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
  • (a.e.c. with Sam, whose summary is both shorter and more complete than mine!) Well, a link to the text of the book, albeit as hosted on forum.org, was included in the very first version of the page (and in the version of the page that was promoted to FA status in March 2005), and I don't know that one can say that the insertion of the stormfront.org link to the same treatise was in any way untoward or disruptive, except perhaps to the extent that the stormfront.org page was a copyright infringement (the page is no longer up, so I can't readily tell whether the text of the Irving work was hosted with permission, etc., or was a blatant copyvio, to which we would probably not, consistent with WP:C, have linked) or to the extent that a perfectly fine link was unnecessarily replaced with a link to a page that comprises the same text as does that of the former (but exists on a less reputable/more controversial website). If you mean to suggest, though, that, all copyright/reliability issues aside, we would do well not to link to a page to which we would otherwise link (per WP:EL) solely because it is hosted on a site the tenor of which doesn't fit particularly well with the article whence we link (here, for instance, we linked to a worldwide white nationalist site in an article about the Prime Minister of the WWII Polish government-in-exile), as you seem to in your link excision edit summary, well, then, I'd have to suppose that yours is not a conception of WP:EL, etc., that commands a consensus of the community. Joe 19:00, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• David Irving's views are not considered credible by anybody these days, though, are they? Regardless, linking to Irving is problematic, linking to Irving hosted on Stormfront is just wrong. Guy (Help!) 19:28, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• I'm bound to say I agree. The issue isn't so much that Irving has controversial opinions (lots of reliable sources come from the opinionated), but that a judgment of the High Court cast considerable doubts on his historical method and that respected historians in his field regard him as producing works of dubious validity. That is probably why, after long debate, his own biographical article refers to him as a "writer" and not a "historian". Sam Blacketer 19:52, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I've been smacking down the FUD at Stereotypes of East and Southeast Asians, but wouldn't mind a review, and maybe a tagging in of another editor on the article, here's my work thus far: [45]. Thoughts and reviews to that page's talk. ThuranX 00:21, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Also, compliments and respect to JzG, who seems to have taken that entire external links listing down to talk pages, archives talk pages, user and user talks, and maybe half a dozen legit linkings. I left notes at one locked down page he may have missed, that the reguar editors sould probably drop it, but that's it. Nice work. ThuranX 00:30, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Unsuitable edit summary and removal of material.

"If estonian pro-nazis revert it, I will add estonian tyblad sites" [46]. User Beatle Fab Four (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) removed once again sourced and discussed (here and here) material. Gross incivility, threatening and vandalism. Sander Säde 18:06, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Such summaries are unacceptable. I left him a message to cut it. There is no "threatening" and no "vandalism" though. The material he "threatens" to remove is a content dispute. All there is to it is an uncivil conduct in the content dispute. This by itself is also bad and I left the user a message to this degree. --Irpen 18:12, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Mandsford

This was originaly posted on WP:AIV, although I expected it to come here. My AIV post was as follows:

• Mandsford (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - Rather confrontational on AfD pages, I wouldn't personaly view it as bad enough to warn, but others do, and he doesn't seem to be cooling down. This may need moved to the noticeboard for full discusion; I don't know if action is required or not (although I feel at worst another warning would suffice).

Comments? Bear in mind I've just had a minor dispute with him, so I could be taken as having a 'grudge to settle', although I really don't think anyone would take that stance with this one (possibly the only thing I'm sure about in this case). Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 18:08, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

May I suggest that you check above thread #Ethnic slurs, personal attacks, and incivility by User:Mandsford in afd discussions. I assume that covers the same isssue. --Tikiwont 18:25, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, thanks, although he's been doing it more recently than is mentioned there... Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 18:27, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, if you think so it might still be better if you comment there as well and be specific (diffs). --Tikiwont 18:37, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I've already commented, and will try to find time to fish out diffs soon (working in tandem on something for Wikinews right now). Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 18:40, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

High traffic article needs TLC

Social bookmarking is linked from every page of the BBC News website. It could do with a few more sources, ideally treeware as well, and a bit of magic form the formatting and citation gurus. If they are going to cite us as a reference, which is kind of them, I think we should have a go at showcasing how an article should look, yes? Only I know bugger all about social bookmarking... Luckily Versageek stepped up to the plate and added what refs there are (kudos that geek) but is now "off shift" so hopefully some others can also pitch in. Guy (Help!) 18:08, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Tecumseh

Would somebody please semi-protect Tecumseh? I've asked at RFPP, but it's out of control. Corvus cornix 18:19, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• Someone should block the entire IP range for Mason Consolidated Schools - all vandalism to this article emanates from that range. I blocked one culprit, and noticed another had been blocked. I will semi-protect the page in the interim. The School range apparently has come to someone's attention before given the warnings on some of the IPs. Carlossuarez46 18:26, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree with Carlos there. It was probably several kids in the same computer lab working together. Thanks, Carlos. Corvus cornix 18:38, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Government of Canada

I've seen a number of instances of vandalism from IP addresses belonging to the Government of Canada in the past few minutes. 192.197.77.0/24, 192.197.78.0/23, 192.197.80.0/22, 192.197.84.0/23, and 192.197.86.0/24 belong to the Government of Canada. The specific addresses that I've seen vandalising are 192.197.82.153 and 192.197.82.203. Please keep an eye open. I blocked one and let the Communications Committee know but it may be necessary to block 192.197.82.0/24 if this keeps up. Anon-only, of course. --Yamla 18:24, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Ethnic war brewing, and abuse of WP:MINOR

Ethnic edit war brewing after disruptive edits by User:Figaro at article Graeme Garden:

• For nationality, he replaces United Kingdom (sovereign nation, U.N. member, passport) with Scotland (neither of them) every day [47][48]. To me that's not content dispute, but unencyclopedic.
• Conceals all his changes under abuse of WP:MINOR tag.

Since those ethnic conflicts degenerate so quick, an external opinion is wished from someone who can enforces Wikipedia's rules about encyclopedic (i.e. sovereign nations, not provinces or sub-states). — Komusou ^talk @ 18:32, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

My view is that it is acceptable to use Scottish as a nationality; I also feel that that is preferable. Therefore it's more of a content dispute than unencyclopedic, IMO. I don't feel the abuse of the minor edit checkbox is deliberate, perhaps just contact him saying 1) instead of waring, it could be taken to the talk page, and 2) since the content is disputed, it is no longer apropriate to use the minor edit checkbox when changing it, with a guiding link to WP:MINOR would be more apropriate. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 18:36, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment: My opinion is that the above commentator should have either self-disclosed that he is from Scotland and a member of Wikiproject Scotland (cf. his user page), or abstained from a conflict of interest. And as far as I remember Wikipedia doesn't recognize or endorse non-sovereign nations, an encyclopedia is descriptive. Is there a new policy that says we now should use "Scot" or "Quebécois" or "Flemish" or "Texan" or "Basque" or "Breton" as nationalities? I would like to see the references or archive of the debate that legifered that. — Komusou ^talk @ 19:01, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Point of order: Possible POV pushing should not be labeled COI. Please don't use COI allegations to intimidate another editor. Thanks. - Jehochman ^Talk 16:48, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't see the problem with using Scotland as country of birth, etc., but the nationality of anyone born in the UK is British, and should be stated as such. ELIMINATORJR 19:07, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

It depends on the situation. I think most people would describe Sean Connery as Scottish (and he self-identifies as such as well), for example, so that's why we have him described as such in the lead. Badagnani 19:07, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I really don't think the fact that I am a member of the project makes any difference when I have disclsed the more important point, that I am biased because I belive that it should state he is Scottish (as apposed to the fact that my nationality/project affinity merely suggests this to be the case). Anyway, the fact that we have disagreement between us still points to a content dispute. My stance remains that this is mainly an unfortunate misunderstanding of good-faith edits, and that it can be sorted out on the talk page of the article in question. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 19:14, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• Sean Connery would give his nationality as Scottish, I'm sure. I don't believe Graeme Garden does. He is not prominently identified with nationalist causes, and is not strongly identified with Scottishness. I'd wager that a decent proportion of his fan base are not really aware he's a Scot, since his accent is not at all strong. Apart from the Hamish and Dougal bit, of course, but then Barry Cryer is from Yorkshire... Guy (Help!) 19:24, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Important additional note: I forgot to mention that in that sort of cases, I'm always careful to have both the infobox say "Nationality: British (Scottish)" and the lead section say "John Doe is a British something from Scotland", thus there is both the encyclopedic sovereign nation, and the accurate sub-nation. But this is never enough for ethnic warriors, that simply delete all instances of "British" or "UK", such as the case above -- to me this is unencyclopedic and not a content dispute. And it seems to be the same everywhere. Our article about Charlie Chaplin is a laughingstock because "British" and "United Kingdom" are systematically erased from it. Surely we have a policy about that in 2007? — Komusou ^talk @ 19:30, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any discussion of this at Talk:Graeme Garden. Scotland says it is a nation and a constituent country of the United Kingdom. RJFJR 19:51, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• Scotland isn't a sovereign nation. Readers of an encyclopedia expect "Nationality" to give them the sovereign nation, the U.N. member, the passport -- which is UK/British. There is no Scotland at the U.N., and no Scot passport. This is unencyclopedic, and playing on words, the UK's internal affairs and diplomatic choice of words isn't Wikipedia's concern. And the original "Nationality: British (Scottish)" had it covered anyway for full information, so the reader is even free to decide. Doing otherwise would be as unencyclopedic as writing "Nationality: Texan". Not all readers are from the UK or the U.S.
• There is nothing on the talk page because the incriminated user first changed it without edit summary and concealed as a minor edit [49], then after I changed it back with full rationales he simply reverted again as minor edit without any counter-rationale[50], thus displaying contempt for the point made and showing that he's not in for discussion but for ethnic warring. For centuries people have been ready to die for a piece of fabric, today they're ready to be banned for a word on Wikipedia, nihil nove sub sole.
• And sorry for asking another, but I would really like to know what are our policies or guidelines or arbitration cases about this topic? When I posted this, I only expected an admin to brandish a WP:SOMETHING that would lay down the law on the matter -- not a POV discussion about whether someone's fans would considerer him this or that. Is this an encyclopedia or a fanzine?

— Komusou ^talk @ 20:13, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• We should go with their self-description. Guy (Help!) 20:17, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Of course Scotland is a nation (especially as far as international sports bodies are concerned) and a historical kingdom - the United Kingdom originally being those of England and Scotland. Also, there are sufficient cultural, legal and educational differences to establish separate identities. However, forget individuals and consider (for instance) cities. Are Coventry and Brechin simply cities in the United Kingdom, or are they areas of England and Scotland (and more to the point, does Scotland help fix the area in the readers mind)? LessHeard vanU 21:15, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Seems fairly straightforward to me as there is clearly a British identify, all be it there are scottish and welsh etc. subcultural identies. But many scottish/irish/welsh/english people identifiy primarily as british - infact most probably do, and culture is largely shared.WikipedianProlific^(Talk) 21:35, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Scotland maintains a distinct national identity. That it's part of a bigger thing doesn't negate that it's a nation. It's article says it's a nation. It calls itself a nation, and maintains a national archives distinct from that of the UK archives and distinct of English Archives. Demanding such changes would mean a massive overhaul of all Irish, Welsh and Scottish articles about people living in the last 300 years, and woud eliminate a lot of clear information by obscuring it behind the broad term 'United Kingdom'. The history of scotland is clear at its' article, and the ssame goes for UK. Readers want to know Connery's Scottish, not 'A citizen of the United Kingdom, being born in the subservient nation-state of Scotland' "Sean Connery is a scottish actor'. bam, done. Be CLEAR. Wikipedia is not censored for political correctness like that. Observing self-description in the text, and the British(Scottish) in the infobox is enough. ThuranX 21:43, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

True, but not truly relevant. British (Scottish) is OK, if a bit weaselly, but I've never heard Garden identify himself as Scottish and the only time I met him his accent was barely discernible. (aside: TBT is much shorter than he looks on the radio). Guy (Help!) 23:35, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I am unimpressed that I have been specifically named here as causing an 'Ethnic war abuse incident' because I commented that Graeme Garden was born in Scotland (he was, after all, born in Scotland!).

Scotland is still a country within its own right (Mary, Queen of Scots' son, James I of England was also James VI of Scotland). It was when James VI of Scotland also became James I of England that England and Scotland were united under a single monarchy (i.e. under the one crown). The other three countries which make up the United Kingdom are England, Wales and Northern Ireland).

To be honest, I can't really see what the problem is. After all, Ronnie Corbett and Billy Connolly both have their country listed as Scotland. In the same way, Terry Jones and Griff Rhys Jones have their country listed in their infoboxes as Wales — while Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Bill Oddie all have their country listed in their infoboxes as England. Figaro 07:03, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Many people's primary identification is with the UK, not with a constituent nation. You are wrong to presume that someone who was born in Scotland is Scottish. Billy Connolly is known as a Scottish comedian, Ronnie Corbett is not, nor is Graeme Garden. Putting people into an ethnic box is POV. Many editors could tell you this - I was born in England but I'm not English (but I am British). I know of others who were born in England but are strongly Welsh. Unless you know how people self-identify you cannot say. Secretlondon 07:41, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Well said - there are real issues over how to treat nationality in articles, but Wikipedia is riddled with "ethnic labelling" of very divisive kinds. It attracts race-haters and gives them far more of a platform than they have outside of the encyclopedia. We should not be providing any such platform, even in those cases where we think we're reflecting genuine differences. This is a problem that will get worse as en-WP attracts more and more members of minorities - some of their grievances will undoubtedly be genuine - but others will simply be malicious. Articles don't need it - objecting to "Lough Neagh is the biggest lake in the British Isles" is idiotic. Pandering to it in the encyclopedia encourages bitterness and violence. (On this last example I've had another look - consensus in Talk is for use of "British Isles" but nobody is prepared to confront the angry and stop them damaging articles). PalestineRemembered 08:38, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

In response to the following comment by Figaro, "I commented that Graeme Garden was born in Scotland (he was, after all, born in Scotland!)." well, when someone accused Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington of being irish because he was born in ireland, he famously replied "Jesus was born in a stable, but it doesn't mean he was a horse!" Where someone is born does not identify their nationality. Scotland does definately have a national identitiy within the UK, but many English people identify with scottish national/cultural symbols like tartans, kilts and bagpipes etc, without themselves actually being scottish, and vice versa many scottish people identify with english cultural symbols. Its like calling George Bush a Connecticutur rather than an american. While its true he is both, the latter is more appropriate for an encylopedic article. While scotland is a nation, it is not a sovereign nation, there is a significant difference. Bottom line is someone born in the UK is British. Consider as well that many people born in Scotland/Ireland/Wales and England will at one time or another live part of their life in another constituant country of the UK, so what sub-nationality one identifies with is really down to their own personal choice. You could argue its not their choice and its determined by the location of their birth, but i'm sure General Wellington would have disagreed, ;) WikipedianProlific^(Talk) 09:05, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

How the country of birth should be represented in an infobox should have been taken to the Wikipedia:Village pump for discussion there in a civilized manner, instead of being taken to this incidents section of the noticeboard on this page.

Also, it is supposed to be against Wikipedia policy to make personal attacks on another editor. Komusou has personally attacked me by his public discussion of me in both this forum and in his edit summary of his reversal of my edit on Graeme Garden's article.

Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia, not a venue for nitpicking and slurs. Figaro 11:48, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encylopedia, surely it is therefore a venue for nitpicking? Its being discussed here as this is where it has arisen for various reasons, there is no need to take it to the village pump because its really quite an open and shut case. Scotland is not a sovereign nation. While it may have its own national identity saying someone is scottish is ethnic not national. Scots are a race like aryans or kurds are a race. Likwise the english are a race, does living in england make someone english? of course not. Likewise for scotland. The nationality of the english, welsh, scots and n.irish is British, as it is for any other UK citizen. By all means add to the article he was born in scotland but its not his nationality. His nationality is british like every UK citizen.WikipedianProlific^(Talk) 16:43, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any personal attacks. I see some contentious editong during a content dispute, and an editor who brought the issue up for wider discussion, but at the wrong place. Not everything you don't like on here is a PA. ThuranX 17:08, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Personally I think this has been brought up in the right place. The user who brought it to our attention skipped the usual process of actually getting an edit war underway by bringing the matter up before it got that far, but it would have ended up as an edit war without some kind of intervention (and consequently would have ended up here) eventually, one way or another. WikipedianProlific^(Talk) 18:16, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

DIGITESTAN

DIGITESTAN (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), who is also to a very high degree of probability Relativity Priority Disputation (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), has been taking on all comers at Christopher Jon Bjerknes (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). As far as I can tell this editor is not interested in anything other than getting his point of view into the article; his version of "cited" is an interesting one, encompassing as it does links to some pretty dodgy sources. Alvestrand is trying hard to make a proepr article out of this, as an editor interested in the controversy, but DIGITESTAN is making that pretty much impossible. I have therefore blocked DIGITESTAN indefinitely, as a dead loss. If he ever shows any sign of calming down sufficiently to engage in something approaching rational debate then I'll happily unblock him, but obsessive POV-pushing edit warriors are one of the things we can do without. Guy (Help!) 19:18, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

While I am involved, I agree with this block. There's a very good chance that Relative Priority Disputation and Bjerknes are the same person; if they're not, they're clearly here to promote an agenda.-Wafulz 19:43, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

OsamaK bot

I've left a message (rather harsh perhaps, but I feel he's not been very communicative or friendly with other users complaining about the same problem) on his talk page about the logo source problem. My interpretation of policy is outlined in the message, so I won't repeat myself here. Any opinions? I think it's a shame to see so much work going down the drain just because the uploaders didn't explicitly put a "source" chapter in the description (the organisation given in the description is obviously the copyright holder). This isn't a legal problem, it's a layout problem. Personally, I think the bot needs to be stopped until it's corrected, but I'd like your opinion. Thanks. yandman 19:31, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

What would you have the bot do? If people can't put the proper sourcing on their image pages, the pages should be deleted. The bot is doing its job. It's another Betacommand straw man argument: "The bot isn't working correctly." No, wrong, the bot is doing what it is supposed to do. Corvus cornix 20:20, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

My whole point is that for all these logos the sourcing is there: The image descriptions always contain the name of the company. It's just not been put under a "source" title (the policy clearly states "Source: The copyright holder of the image"). Is a layout problem really worth deleting an image for? Why is this a strawman argument? I know it would make things easier if everyone tagged their images correctly, but then again most new articles have problems, it doesn't mean we delete them. What I'm saying here is that we're applying a legal-problem type solution (i.e. "shoot first and ask questions later") to a stylistic problem. I'm sorry, but I can't see any justification (legal or not) for deleting all these logos (very few of the original uploaders are still active, so most of the time no-one will even know what happened) just because the uploaders didn't repeat themselves in the image description comments. yandman 21:09, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

The source is supposed to be provided for verification of the copyright. That's why we need it — you can't just say "Source is the company whose logo it is" without some evidence of where you retrieved it from. Otherwise, how does anyone know that your assertion that this particular company holds the copyright to this particular logo? If someone disputes the claim, then there's nothing to go on. --Haemo 22:08, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

American Family Association

There seems to be a long-running edit war on that page between CMMK and Hal Cross over whether to use a description closer to the "official" description or not. WAVY 10 20:05, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Inspector_Lee is fake, and has several other accounts

Resolved

 – It's clear this is nothing to be concerned with. --Haemo 22:05, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

This user Inspector_Lee definitely has some other accounts, look at his contribution, he created that account specially to stalk his "enemy" summerthunder. he has not done anything constructive to wikipedia, other than stalking that summerthunder person. and he always uses that account whenever he thinks that his stalkee summerthunder is back online. so someone should ban this faker's account, he definitely has some other accounts which is against wikipedia's rules. --Tuand029 20:41, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

The very first edit from User:Tuand029. Interesting. Raymond Arritt 20:47, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

(EC) WP:SOCK#Legitimate uses of multiple accounts allows for such single purpose user accounts. As long as the account isn't being used improperly, it's allowed. -- Flyguy649 ^talk _contribs 20:48, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Hey, this wouldn't be User:SummerThunder, would it? To anyone concerned, there is personal information on my regular account. I created this one to participate in the ST sock-bopping shenanigans, which incurred onto some articles i edit. I'm cool with my personal info being visible on site amongst collaborators, but all in all i'd rather not leave a calling card with where i live, etc, to some others.Inspector Lee 21:01, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

It is perfectly acceptable to track an indef blocked user who abuses multiple accounts to circumvent their indefinite block. In fact, it's encouraged. We need more people to do this, and if they feel they need to use single purpose accounts to do, that's a legitimate use. --Haemo 21:46, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Beat socks with socks, i say! Inspector Lee 21:50, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Not funny. WAVY 10 21:51, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Near funny. Someguy1221 21:56, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Hey, what's up? Is there work to do? Scabbers the Rat 22:04, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Inspector Lee, you may want to consider dropping a small note on your talk page to that affect. Not too much information, just that this is a secondary account used in a manner permitted by the sock policy. Natalie 14:57, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Second opinion on block for User:Malbrain

Tom Harrison has blocked this user, but not provided an explanation. He also listed the user on Community Sanctions. There are no obvious reasons for this block. I have placed a request for an explanation on Tom's user page, but in my opinion that user should be given the benefit of the doubt and unblocked. I would prefer a second opinion from another admin before overriding Tom. Banno 22:55, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

If you think he should be unblocked, do so. When I posted on the other notice board I said "Review and undo welcome," meaning that anyone who wanted to could unblock without further input from me. Sorry if that wasn't clear. Tom Harrison ^Talk 23:17, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:DUCK (or not) on Conch Republic

I'm involved in this dispute, so per admin conflict of interest policy I'm floating this here...

On Conch Republic (see history) we have had an edit war with one side having three editors (one 2006 account, one brand new account, one IP) re-making changes which we had a dispute over and eventual consensus on earlier this year. The article has had what we believe was a problem with it being a minor target of some long term vandals in the past.

The edits of long-term user Shanebb (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) were what started this and by themselves not particularly problematic. However, in the middle of it, on Sept 12, brand new user CheckLips (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) was created and immediately started editing the same exact changes into the article. They hit 3 reverts on the 12th and I warned them; if they were a sock of Shanebb that would have been a 3RR violation. Shanebb continued editing in the same pattern right after I 3RR warned CheckLips. CheckLips came back after 24 hrs, and the back and forth continued a bit, with an IP editor 68.115.107.3 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) joining in briefly as well.

There has been a little discussion on the talk page (Shanebb primarily, but the others each contributed once). The overall effect of the three of them has my WP:DUCKy sense tingling.

Independent admin review appreciated. Do you sense socks as well? Should we ask for Checkuser? I want to AGF but this article's history has had periodic persistent abuse, so I'm wary. Georgewilliamherbert 23:29, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• I think your bat puppet detector is working fine. Guy (Help!) 23:41, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Biased admins

I don't know how long I'll last on wiki if I'm confronted with repelling pov-bias as it concerns actually "administrators".. Namely the user dab. Firstly, he's apparently on some race/afrocentrism crusade and it reflects in his biased edits and biased appeals for help in confiding in other admins. Firstly, he shows up to this article[51] trying to push his biased point of view, making unsubstantiated claims about the entire article, that people worked hard to build up, with out even citing any sources for his claim.

Based on that, he proposes a move. Interestingly, he participated in a POV-fork for that article, and when it was finally discovered and deleted, he created the page again and redirected it.[52]. He also makes his bias known by editing the protected page and imposing his unsourced biased edits[53], even though he self reverts when he sees that the page is protected. Though he still makes additional edits.[54]

It is notable that no other admin touched that page with out a request or consensus, and he obviously has something at stake or personally invested that he needs to make known. It is rare that I see an admin make an edit to an article with out a rwquest to do so or with out getting rid of vandalism. He then takes his Pov pushing to the fringe boards, pushing his race-based venom, introducing a fringe topic in of its self (race), but focusing on one dimension of it (black people to criticize), as it concerns the last article.[55].

He then takes his war to other pages, reverting cited material like any other problematic editor would, leading to edit wars and eventually leading to a page protection.[56].. In the mean time, prior to this, he's thinking of more manipulative ways to get his point across with protected pages, so he makes up a fake name of some non-existent discipline called "Afrocentrist Egyptology", then links it to the very page that he had disputes with([57]), pushing his original research and trying to emphatically label an entire disputed and protected article to his liking. Not to mention, that he makes two of them.[58][59].

What I do, is move the page to another name and redirect it, he reverts. So I bring notice to this and request speedy deletion for a noncontexualized page which consists of a misnomer that has no correlation or is not a synonym/or inextricably linked adequately to the article in which he tries to redirect it. He removes the speedy tag (see history). They indeed get deleted. What he then does is recreate them both and pms the deleting admin[60], obscuring the reason why it had been deleted and emphasizing that it wasn't a typo, when no such complaint was made, even though it is a typo. The Admin claims that he doesn't necessarily agree with his edits, but it wasn't criteria for speedy deletion, which I disagree with. He also personally attacks users by calling them "trolls"[61], and leaves a message on my talk page, accusing me personally of being one[62], using his rhetoric to undermine editors and degrade them while appealing to fellow admins for help.

I'm sure there is more, but this is what came to mind. I had no idea that he was an admin based on the way he carries himself and his general tone in discussion. I was surprised to find that out.Taharqa 19:34, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

And what do you want us to do? Maxim_(talk) 00:41, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Yo. Cap'n Wallatext. Paragraphs. Use 'em. HalfShadow 00:47, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

This is just another complaint about Dbachmann because he stomped on another fringe theory. Nothing new, nothing credible - in other words, nothing to see here. The Behnam 00:59, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Havent Dbachmann, and Muntuwandi been here before for Afrocentrism related fightings MANY times? Is there any way to sort any of this out? It's POV 1 versus POV 2, round 9... or 10... Should a general RfC on their fight be opened? or what? ThuranX 01:03, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Fringe theories should be discussed at WP:FRINGE noticeboard. If there is a conclusion that it is not fringe, then we can look upon behavior of parties - although WP:DR may be a good idea first.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  01:05, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I know this isn't admin related, but if there is anybody out there who enjoys overhauling articles, is good at separating the wheat from the chaff when it comes to reliable sourcing, and isn't bothered by constant fighting, we badly need you. This whole series of articles is in a state of disrepair. Picaroon (t) 01:32, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

That generally happens - I think it is because these little-known and little-respected fringe theories are more apt to attract the interest of editors who support the theory. It is thanks to motivated users like Dbachmann that our coverage of these theories is made compliant with WP standards, which usually involves difficult editing laden with edit wars, SPAs, much OR, and incoherent polemic talk page posts riddled with conduct violations. The Behnam 04:21, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Picaroon, it won't happen on these particular articles. Anyone who tries anything like that will be reported by one side or the other as a POV warrior. I've seen arguments about lack of multiple citation, quality of citation ,and on and on and on. I avoid as best as possible pages that those two are on, because they decide whoe side you're on, no matter what you say. Forget it. ThuranX 04:37, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

KansasCity (talk · contribs)

Resolved

 – User has been contacted, and the pages are being watched. Alpta 01:46, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Could some one please explain the image policy to KansasCity? The user is trying to edit war with me and calls all of my edits vandalism. Alpta 01:12, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Hmm - it looks like the logos have rationales after a fashion, they could just use some fixing up. I'll do it. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 01:32, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I have also contacted him on his talk page about this and have asked Alpta to help him understand our Fair use guidelines. Cbrown1023 talk 01:34, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

ILikePikachu (talk · contribs)

This user has just threatened to harass me as an anon. editor, because I responded to his/her complaining that we wouldn't put editorial warnings on a page separate from her talk page Isn't there a way to block whatever IP she's using temporarily in case she goes after User:WODUP after she finds that my talk page is semi'd because of BSR trolling? -Jéské ^{(v^_^v Kacheek!)} 02:34, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Already blocked as I was entering a reminder to avoid attacks. I do concur with the block however. --JodyB _{yak, yak, yak} 02:41, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Including the IP? I was threatened with the promise she'd harass me through my talk page as an anon, and my talk page is semi-protected because of BlackStarRock sockpuppets, leaving WODUP as the only other possible victim since he was the one with the banhammer. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v Kacheek!)} 02:45, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

The default settings for blocks (when blocking a username) is to block the underlying IP for 24 hours and block account creation. If this block had not blocked the underlying IP, there would have been a note to that effect in the block log. The IP can't be blocked for longer than 24 hours though, so s/he may show up later. There really isn't anything we can do about that until they make themselves known. Natalie 15:00, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

User:Calton

• Calton (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) I warned Calton about a trolling war he was having with 66.35.127.0 and he replied to me here and, after I replied, here. I think that constitutes a personal attack. I tried at WP:AIV but they said to try here. —Ignatzmice^talk_contribs 03:10, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
  • None of what he's said to you seems to approach a personal attack... sharp criticism isn't a personal attack. On the other hand, your use of "you will be blocked" templates on regulars is generally something interpreted as being rude. --W.marsh 03:29, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
    • I noticed he and the IP were exchanging nasty comments, reported the IP, and warned him, because the way I saw it, he was being just as nasty as the troll. However, I noticed that the troll was goating him, so I didn't report him instantly. I was trying to stop the trolling on both sides. If you don't think he attacked me, fine, you can close the disscusion. Thanks for your time! —Ignatzmice^talk_contribs 12:57, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Guy with good faith edits but...

77.248.185.43 (talk · contribs) is persistently adding {{vandalism}} to user talk pages. He is trying to warn them. He was told many times to stop and persists, and he even reverted one of my changes. He is also reverting good faith edits and also he's trying to "block" them. Cheers,JetLover (Report a mistake) 03:53, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

He just put a vandalism waning on my user talk page... Cheers,JetLover (Report a mistake) 04:02, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Wow, that IP needs a block, take it to WP:AIV. YOu'll get a faster reply. ThuranX 04:33, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I didn't block him because it seems possible he's acting in good faith. But I did apply a nail-studded solid hickory clue stick. Raymond Arritt 04:43, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

ClueBot mistake

As someone fairly new to Wikipedia, I'm not sure if this is the place for this, but if not, I'm sure someone will tell me. An anonymous user vandalized the page "Wegmans Food Markets", reducing the page by 9,153 bytes. ClueBot caught this vandalism, but instead of reverting the page, it blanked it. Is this just a "whoops" or is something going on that I have no clue about? I went ahead and reverted the page to its status before the vandalism. Please tell me I didn't do anything wrong. Trvsdrlng 05:22, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Wegmans Food Markets has been unblanked. The place to report misbehaving botedits is on it's talk page User_talk:ClueBot. There seems to be discussion about it there. Secretlondon 05:41, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh you did *exactly* the right thing by reverting it! Secretlondon 05:42, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Trvsdrlng 05:43, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Melodymee (talk · contribs)

As I said in this report, Melodymee keeps adding copyrighted and potentially defamatory content to articles, including such claims that she is JJ Abrams's wife,[63] that Gail Berman is Abrams's mother,[64] and also that the subjects of certain articles have contacted her about "fixing" said articles.[65] Even if this is all true, not a single source has been cited to support the claims made. --Closedmouth 07:43, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I can find nothing on google except ourselves and a mirror - and a rather strange live journal which links to a fan forum. Secretlondon 08:11, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Plenty of sources say other things than what she's claiming about JJ Abrams and Gail Berman - IMBD bio on Berman IMDB bio on Abrams JJ Abrams fan site bio info. None of her edits have any proper sources that I see. I conclude stalker; I am going to indef block the account. Georgewilliamherbert 09:07, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, she was starting to get on my nerves --Closedmouth 09:15, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

COI SPA disruption on Aaron Klein bio

Resolved

 – protected article until 29 Sep--semiprotected, blocked the two anon IPs for one week. Rlevse 15:54, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

• Aaron Klein (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• 192.118.11.112 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 192.118.11.120 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

The anons above are two of 25* Conflict of interest Single-purpose accounts which have been used for the past 18 months by Aaron Klein and his cohorts to try to control his wikipedia bio.

25:* 21 anons since March 2006; 4 registered between March 2006 and January 2007.

• 16 documented in detail in January 2007 (Talk:Aaron Klein/Archive 1#Single purpose accounts)
• 25 so far updated on the active talk page (Talk:Aaron Klein#Single purpose accounts)

During the past year and a half, the users have been warned by other editors many times, in edit summaries, on the article talk page and on several of the user talk pages, which the users apparently don't read.

Klein has a book due out this month. Anon activity has increased, removing citations, adding a gossip column quote and an uncited claim about something in the book, etc. Request appropriate (72 hrs? 1 week?) blocks as a fair consequence, a WP:TEND/WP:EW deterrent and relief for npov editors. — Athaenara ✉ 11:00, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

resovled, see tag above.Rlevse 15:54, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Images (especially flags) not displaying properly

Before there's a number of posts on this issue, it's a Commons issue, and the developers are looking at it. ELIMINATORJR 11:41, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed it earlier. It doesn't look like the problems solved yet, though. Davnel03 15:30, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

User:Kingdom of crash and spyro

I wrote this up at another admins' noticeboard; turns out that I was at the wrong one. I'll paste it here to get your attention.

The user had already been filed here before for 3RR issues and an edit conflict, but sadly the dispute has not been solved. The article Crash Bandicoot (character) received a 24-hour lock relating to a dispute relating to the change of header image (the one in which he/she keeps insisting on changing has been rejected for reasons relating to an improper fair use rationale and failure on the acceptable image content criterion), but after the lock was done the user has kept changing it. I'm also curious if the user and User:Espio's da man are the exact same person as well given they seem to think alike, and we would also bear in mind that the latter user received a block for a week on counts of trolling (possible block evasion if they ARE the same person?).

Since writing the original message, he has since performed three edits on the Crash article in the space of an hour, and is still insisting to keep the image no matter how objectionable it is. Considering that he/she tried to apply for adminship in the past as well, I'm convinced about this user's welfare here. But please, do something about this. Freqrexy 12:42, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Alice Bailey article tampering

In the Controversies section, someone has tampered with the article, removing the links to the articles written Monica Sjöö and Rabbi Yonassan Gershom, which now contain only the links the the Wikipedia articles about them. Kwork 17:41, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

User:Tom13014 and Bruce Golding

Tom13014 has added copied and pasted material from news articles and political sites to Bruce Golding numerous times. Examples: [66], [67], [68]. Warned here. --Proper tea is theft 18:01, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Eurominuteman threatens to sue Nihil novi

An ongoing content dispute has resulted in one user threatening to sue another. These statements were made here and here by Eurominuteman against Nihil novi for a comment made in an edit summary here. Nihil novi was most likely out of line when he made the comment, but in his defense this comes after a month of trying to reason with Eurominuteman over the content of Translation. Man It's So Loud In Here 18:14, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Block indefinitely please per WP:LEGAL. Legal threats are not tolerated whatsoever on Wikipedia. Davnel03 18:14, 15 September 2007 (UTC)