User talk:FT2: Difference between revisions

Hi! Would you mind reviewing your close of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rich Shapero? WP:NOT#NEWS and WP:EVENT describe what types of events are suitable to be the main topic of an article, not what is suitable as article content. Or are you saying that every article should be purged of events that doesn't meet that policy and that guideline, even if they are properly referenced? As far as notability goes the application of the GNG is always somewhat subjective in the disputed cases and I was surprised to see you simply going with your own interpretation over the rather strong consensus. Cheers/ Pax:Vobiscum (talk) 09:27, 15 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Sure. Slightly fully explanation will go on its talk page tomorrow when I'm home, and I'll review it as well to see if I still agree with myself. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 11:28, 15 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion review for Rich Shapero

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Rich Shapero. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Alzarian16 (talk) 10:51, 15 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Eh

I'm now seeing the 'Del/undel selected revisions', was the bug fixed? If not, we should probably quickly act to disseminate information about this and caution against using it on log actions subject to breaking per your concerns. –xeno^talk 13:55, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and almost certainly not (I'm CCed on bugzilla for the relevant threads). Going to ask around. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 19:46, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:VPT#Activated Single-Revision Deletion. –xeno^talk 19:52, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Update - RevisionDelete has been enabled for admins (as most here know) - but only for one revision per action. The checkboxes that allow revdelete on multiple revisions in one action are disabled for admins.

The underlying bug issue has not yet been fixed. As best I can guess the idea is that limiting RevDel to one revision per action should stand a chance of being workable. Needs testing though.

My tentative conclusion from testing it so far - log links do still break with deletion, in some cases badly, but the damage is mitigated by the fact it's limited to one revision per action. This does make it much easier to figure out and fix any issues, if the problems described were to happen.

I am continuing to test it and check how the issues stand, I will then post a summary on-wiki. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 20:36, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hrm. Unless I misunderstand you, I think you're incorrect when you say "The checkboxes that allow revdelete on multiple revisions in one action are disabled for admins" This was done by checking off three revisions and using the Del/undel selected button. –xeno^talk 20:39, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thats odd. I did exactly the same (I think) and it refused to. Werdna said he enabled "single revision delete" too. If you're on IRC can we catch up there to try and figure out together what's going on here? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 21:01, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, I can't get on IRC right now. Maybe later this evening, if my son doesn't monopolize me =) But I was definitely able to hide 3 at once: [1] –xeno^talk 21:26, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, /notice or privmsg me or email later then when around. In the meantime I've posted an update at AN to try and mitigate any issues and provide some kind of suggested good practice until we're all more sure what will happen. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 22:07, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You might want to ping NawlinWiki who is deleting revisions like they are going out of style. –xeno^talk 22:08, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry I never got around to IRC, I didn't really have much face time with the PC last night. –xeno^talk 18:05, 19 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I was reading AN and followed the thread to here. When the revDel feature is stable, I'd like to see this page history cleaned up. There are many revs that quite clearly meet WP:CFRD#2 (which is an invalid anchor due to it starting with a digit). It's the work of our most unwelcome vandal and his /b-tards. I started the page and could put you in touch with the founder of the organization (who is shocked at what is in the page history) Thanks, Jack Merridew 02:35, 21 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Main issues on that page fixed now. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 23:23, 23 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, that's fine. I know there were issues there and with me that required careful judgment and that is why I brought this to you. Cheers, Jack Merridew 01:49, 27 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Any comments on Wikipedia talk:REVDEL#"Delete edit comment" → "Delete edit summary" ? –xeno^talk 13:50, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mobbing

Penbat has, IMO without regard for the ongoing discussion and apparent current lack of consensus on the Mobbing discussion page, restored his edits with an edit summary and notes on the Talk page that cast my edits as Vandalism. I would greatly appreciate your feedback and/or intervention. Thank you for your assistance. Doniago (talk) 20:29, 20 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have opened a Wikiquette Alert regarding Penbat's conduct towards me, given that the WP:AN discussion was archived without resolution and Penbat's aggressive behavior towards me has continued. Penbat has been notified. Doniago (talk) 04:48, 23 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have opened a Wikiquette Alert regarding Doniago's bizarre aggressive timewasting conduct towards me. Doniago's aggressive behavior towards me has continued. Doniago has been notified. --Penbat (talk) 22:58, 23 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Revision hiding on already deleted page

Hi FT2!

Any reason in particular you changed the visibility of a revision that was already deleted? I do not immediately see the usefulness of this, as the page was already only visible to administrators, but perhaps I'm missing something. Regards, decltype (talk) 02:17, 26 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It made an obnoxious edit summary less "in your face" to a passing admin reader. No ultimate net benefit as you rightly notice and no real net cost. Probably best not done on deleted edits, in case the log bug impacts it, so feel free to reverse the visibility hiding and thanks, on reflection you're right. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 02:40, 26 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, thanks for the clarification. Since it technically meets RD2 I do not see a need make another log entry just to undo it. I just wondered if there was some profound reasoning behind it. Regards, decltype (talk) 03:03, 26 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Request for Comment needing your input

Hi, I'd like to ask for your input here: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Minphie. Recently you commented on Minphie's conduct and we ask if you could come and give feedback at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Minphie as the editor appears not to have taken any heed of the community's feedback on his approach to editing. If you don't remember your exact interactions with Minphie, it is detailed in the RfC/U page. Thankyou for your time, --Figs Might Ply (talk) 23:57, 27 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

paid position?

Mr. Godwin is paid by Wikipedia. Wikipedia also presumably pays the water and electric company. Perhaps, CU and oversight could be a paid position. Hire people and bond them. I heard Wikipedia had a big budget so hiring one professional checkuser could go far to address the problem. One professional CU working 8 hours a day could probably clear the CU board quickly. Wikipedia is in San Francisco. I am sure there are hundreds of computer science graduates from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley who might apply for the one full time position.

This is one of many "other" solutions that are possible. Good luck in picking a solution! Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 19:26, 31 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's actually been considered. And more than once, rejected. I'm not sure the links, but it's come up a few times. Mainly the issue is that so much of checkuser relies upon knowing your community - like a good police officer is most successful if they are on a "turf" they know very well and can spot stuff that doesn't quite fit. Paid checkusers could manipulate the data but would not as a rule have the knowhow where to go, what it might hint at, what behaviors it might link to, all the dozens of things checkusers as seasoned enwiki admins can draw upon. A second problem is Wikipedia is in many languages. So to do this WMF would potentially need to employ many dozens of people in many languages. Finally there is a lot more than one person's work to do. Even full time you'd need several. I guess (but don't know for sure) that these are some reasons it hasn't ever gained traction. It sounds good but fails on practical value. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 20:54, 31 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your words of wisdom. An administrator who I regard as wise has taken a wikibreak. In view of your wise answer, I come with another question to you, instead of to him.

Amanda Knox has been deemed not notable enough for an article despite more than a year of extensive international coverage. Other accused murders with far less coverage have been deemed notable for separate articles by AFDs. Futhermore, there are very non-notable people, like Fawaz Abd Al Aziz Al Zahrani, some of whose article have been subject to AFDs, never resulting in delete. Some may want to keep memorials to the Guantanamo Bay prisoners despite WP not being a memorial.

I do not seek drama. Many might say "go ahead and nominate some articles for deletion", but I am more interested in seeking wisdom on how to achieve consistency. Wise editor, FT2, I seek a tiny portion of your wisdom. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 19:11, 1 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I can give it a go. I can see why the case might seem like a good candidate for an article. There has been a lot of coverage of Knox, over an extended period, from several angles, and the coverage has beyond doubt focused on her as a person not just the murder case she was involved in.

There are two big reasons it's likely to fail. Despite the notoriety and attention, she is still basically only notable for the one event, and WP:BLP1E says we would normally have an article on the event. Sometimes we do have an article on the person as well as the event, but usually that's when we can't cover the person's life with the event, and their whole life becomes worth documenting or such. In this case it's a judgment call but probably still a BLP1E case, what's useful to cover about her purely pertains to the criminal case, its prelude, its aftermath.

Second, especially for criminals (or alleged criminals) we often play a bit cautious in articles. Do we really need an article on the criminal, when most of what's relevant for encyclopedic purposes is covered under the crime. That kind of thing. So yeah, borderline case but if I were forced to choose I would probably side with BLP1E, simply because there is not one thing of wider notice about her, except the one event for which she's in the press and its aftermath. Caveat, I haven't thoroughly researched the matter or the media though. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 22:11, 1 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Your "immediate" proposals

It's starting to look complicated. Is it not possible to simplify? My perennial fear is that people won't bother to think it through unless it's simple. Tony (talk) 13:02, 4 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Good call - better now? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 13:24, 4 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Resolution to the problem

Looking throught the comments, if someone were to declare "all the candidates have been appointed", this would not be the consensus. If someone were to declare "some sort of new election", others would be upset, some of them believing that this is an emergency where CU/OS must be appointed within the hour or there will be a massive number of deaths or injury (true emergency).

Choosing either is not selecting the consensus.

When there is no consensus, compromise is sometimes necessary.

Disclaimer: Brainstorming is when one makes suggestions without being afraid of being called an idiot. In doing so, an innovative suggestion may be made. The following is brainstorming.

There could be the declaration that no new CU/OS are appointed. However, the title of "Provisional OS" or "Provisional CU" could be appointed to a limited number of people. The title of "provisional" is to highlight that they are different from the others. They will be under greater public review, have a limited term, and must submit a report of their actions daily (posted on their talk page). In the interim, there will be new elections as a concession to those who say that election rules should not be significantly altered after an election has taken place.

This proposal will be liked by nobody but incorporates ideas of several opinions. Also, it is brainstorming.

This proposal is also among the very few that attempt to reach compromise.

Good luck in trying to find a fair idea that has widespread support. We are cheering you on! Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 16:46, 6 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that in the gentlest way, this doesn't work. You need a better understanding of how CU/OS operates and what these functions do. I'll try to explain.

The ultimate appointing body for this community is Arbcom itself (40% of CU/OS are arbs and another 25-30% are ex-arbs). Arbcom has varied how they are appointed over the years, to encourage wider input while retaining its role of quality control and comfort with the appointees. At present Arbcom chooses to ask the community to express a preference between the users who have indicated an interest and Arbcom would be comfortable to agree as giving access. In this case the problem is that the community has not shown the level of preference set out in the election rules. In other words, Arbcom could as easily have set rules at 50%, 60% or anything else when they announced the election and then it would not have been a problem, but the election was announced with a percentage at 70% so it is.

They are trust positions. It's like "provisionally" giving people keys to private data. There's no provisional - they are trusted enough to view the data, or not. There's no halfway, and no scope for "if we don't like their use, withdraw their access later". Adminship to an extent is "they look okay, no reason not to", because if they do wrong then its incredibly rare any lasting harm will arise. You appoint these tools from the opposite perspective, affirmative trust and knowing if they do wrong then harm may result.

So if "provisional" doesn't make sense, what about extra regulation? Well, the issue here is that these tools aren't under public review, full stop. Rmeoval of privacy based material followed by reposting the private material so everyone can agree nobody should see it, doesn't make sense. Ditto, though less obviously, for Checkuser. These tools aren't public tools and the data they work on isn't public data, so the public will not be able to access the material (like they could with ordinary edits and admin actions) to check it. The regulation for CU/OS is largely by other CU/OS, and Arbcom itself (via its audit subcommittee). That's a Foundation policy and it goes to the extent that you can't appoint just one CU or one OS on any wiki - there must always be 2 or more precisely so they can scrutinize each other's actions.

Extra data for you to take into account in considering your view. Hopefully it will help. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 19:24, 6 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your answer. I seek not to argue with you. I seek to find a compromise when the consensus does not exist. Lowering the standard after the election has significant opposition. Not lowering the standard after the election has significant opposition. Brainstorming is a way to find a compromise.

You mention that the positions are a position of trust, more so than admins. Admins generally have to get 80% support. CU/OS are lower at 70%. It seems that using the definition of trust at 70% (not my definition but the election rules), only one person met that definition.

Provisional makes sense because it fulfills the "don't change the rules after an election" people but the "appoint them now" people get their man appointed.

As far as regulation, this makes complete sense. The provisional people would just list the results they made public. For example, FT2 could write on his talk page (if he were a CU), "I published the following CU results....CU results on SSP cases 1, 2, 3." This information is already public, just scattered. This regulation would also try to appeal to those opposed to breaking the election rules by having the appointed provisional people be special appointees.

Can you think of ways to combine the wishes of the "appoint now" versus "don't change the rules to get the election results you want" people? Again, not to argue, but to think of hybird ways to compromise between two opposite views. Note that among the millions of WP users, I am the only one trying to find a compromise solution. Hope others will help try. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 20:12, 6 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Brainstorming's a good thing. I hope it's helpful. I'm not in any sense a "moderator". I've set out a framework and useful guide, so the community can consider what's best. The appointing body has listed people it trusts, asked for a preference from the community, but has set rules that mean everyone got excluded. Logic (to me) says that at this point with the exclusion of the one user who got >70%, there are only 3 options: CU/OS are appointed (two suboptions - we either do or don't ask for more community views on the candidates), or CU/OS are not appointed. All other options including any change to the assessment mechanism (percentage etc) fall into one of these 3 cases.

The percentage at RFA and percentage at CUOS is a very different basis - those at CUOS already got virtually unanimous agreement from all arbitrators (or all who expressed a view) and will have been scrutinized quite deeply as part of that. In that sense a fair representation for the trust for CUOS is probably around 95% at Arbcom (> 90%) - if they get one serious oppose or a couple of minor uncertainties, the answer will often be "not now/not yet", and those views will be based on scrutiny.

But no, provisional doesn't make sense (to me) because I can't see what exactly is (or could be) provisional about it. They are allowed to view WMF data or they are not allowed. If they are okay to view it then why would they stop being trusted later? And with all OS and probably half of CU work being off-wiki, and the half that's on-wiki being clear anyway to anyone who tracks SPI, and the wider community unable to do any kind of checking anyway, what's the point of a partial list of cases? More food for thought. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 20:40, 6 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Part of the solution is to acknowledge the opinions of two large groups (and probably some of the subgroups). Throwing out the election or changing the rules after the election so as to elect some does not have the consensus. Neither does a new election (of course, a new election addresses the fairness and ethics issue). So the brainstorming idea is still the only idea to try to compromise. So far you have picked faults with some of the ideas but nobody has suggested a compromise. I wonder why not?

As far as the issue of term limits, arbitrators have a given term. By giving a short term to new CU/OS then trying to resolve the issue, it can't be that bad because that's what arbitrators are given, a term. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 00:24, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Again, I'm thinking that's misguided. We're finding out what response has consensus, so the statements you make about what does and doesn't have consensus are flawed - we're presently finding the community's views. You next ask why nobody suggests a compromise, but I think I've explained the issue is that there are only a very few practical alternatives, the rest (whether compromise or not) collapse into those for this one set of appointments. (See explanation under "Some other option or variation"). Last, the comparison doesn't work either. Arbitrators, appointed for fixed terms (with option to restand), assess disputes, cases and privacy functions of the wider community. CU/OS are toolholders not judicial positions (so to speak). CU's analyzing technical data in one case and OS's remove private/defamatory info in the other. Like admin tools (only more trust needed) once trust is given for a tool, it endures until they cease activity or something changes. Arbs retain CU/OS after arbship terms end for exactly this reason. Last, to repeat my observation above, "provisional" doesn't make sense with CU/OS, nor does a "short term". These are trust based tools. To repeat from above, they are trusted enough to view the data, or not. There's no halfway. I think that's mostly why your arguments aren't making much headway nor gaining much support. The role is different from arbitratorship and the CU/OS tools different from on-wiki public or admin tools. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 01:12, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Part of a compromise is to take equal chunks of several proposals. Usually, few people like it but sometimes more people accept it. Compromise is usually not dictating that one side gets its way. It's usually not taking 99% of one view and 1% of the other views, though often politicians will do that to claim a false compromise. Even I don't like my compromise idea but it's better than imposing my idea on everyone else or some other person's idea on everyone else. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 15:32, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Agree, but in this case it's not clear what proposal might exist that is not seriously flawed compared to the existing ones. It's worth constructing proposals amenable to as many people as possible, but I've looked now at the question of "temporary" or "provisional" for these roles and it doesn't make sense or seem to mean anything. Even the comparison above is plainly incorrect ("arbitrators have fixed terms" - no they don't for the tools). I can only repeat what I said above. The suggestions so far don't work for me. I can't see a way to make them useful to the community, and I see their flaws. I'm not voting on proposals but my comment is, these ideas just wouldn't work. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 15:45, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Again, I seek not to argue with you. What I see are drastically different opinions, many of them within the bounds of being reasonable, but difficult to decide without ignoring many opinions. It is easy to declare "I select A as the answer, not B and C, though I've carefully considered B and C (ha, ha B and C lost, tough luck)". It is harder to come up with a compromise taking ideas that are reasonable but that one doesn't like. Try to come up with other compromise ideas! Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 15:52, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have, however in this case there aren't any with a significant chance that come to mind. Part of the art of a matter like this is to distinguish options that are likely to have a chance of gaining traction and being useful. Sometimes there are several, sometimes one or two, sometimes none, and sometimes only time will change the communal mood to allow actual solutions. A good test here is that almost no credible experienced users are diving in to propose alternatives. As an example, the only option that has (#4) has so far got low levels of interest - 3 responses and all opposed. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 16:09, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Does that mean that I am now a FT2 designated "credible experienced user" or that I am not one? Ha, ha, don't answer unless it's a yes! It is too bad that over 200 people voted yet few are offering an ideas, even an oppose or support, to the RFC. Thank you for your effort in drafting the RFC. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 16:46, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

RFC end

Does the RFC have an end date? June 29th? With something of this importance, it is better not to say that it ends when someone says it ends. Otherwise, one could say that it ends when I win and continues if I am losing. Of course, if we say ahead of time that it ends some time after two weeks, then nobody should think that we are short circuiting the time period. So an alternate would be no sooner than June 14th but as long as a month.

I bring this up not to make trouble but to prevent trouble! Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 22:11, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

funny

Berghuis v. Thompkins

After 3 hours of silence to police questions....

Do you believe in God? Yes

Do you pray to God to forgive you for killing John Smith? Yes, oops.

That is like...

In the court room: The People of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts versus John Smith. Charged with 2 murders (error in speaking) in the first degree.

Two? I only killed one guy! Oops! Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 22:57, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

i suppose i am the only one laughing..... :( Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 20:21, 13 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

DYK

I replied to your comments. Joe Chill (talk) 15:26, 10 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I hope that you don't expect me or someone else to fix your cites. I won't and that's being lazy. Joe Chill (talk) 23:10, 10 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't "expect" any given person to. My focus in editing was on identifying whether the section was written from a neutral point of view - which directly affects whether readers will get a balanced representation of the topic. The cites went in there quickly with the view that I'll fix them if time permits (if not they'll eventually be put into proper "cite web" format). But the NPOV matter was more urgent. Given your request for a DYK hook on the article, the existence of poor flow, tone, a few sentences needing improvement, and the like, needed fixing much more quickly, so I did.

However, not to worry. Just 21 minutes later another user fixed the cites [2]. Isn't collaboration great :) FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 23:31, 10 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What you call poor flow and a few sentences needing fixing is personal taste. I like what you did with the article, I'm just saying that isn't even close to a major issue. Joe Chill (talk) 00:16, 11 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Plip!

For adding non-formatted references. This should really be a trout but I'm in a good mood. Mjroots (talk) 16:49, 13 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Peter Damian

Hi FT, I emailed you a few weeks ago to let you know as a matter of courtesy that I was considering requesting an unblock for Peter, and again tonight to tell you that I was about to post it. You can see it here on AN. I'm letting you know here too just to make sure you see it. Cheers, SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 09:13, 11 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comment. I've moved it into chronological place because it looked as though the supports might be supporting those additional points. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 10:08, 11 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That makes sense, sure. Hopefully they are factual enough to be useful. I've added a sample diff so you can see what I mean. Can you ask him to explicitly confirm on the stated behaviors as part of this? Thanks. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 10:12, 11 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

He agreed to avoid interaction, and I'm sure that will be broadly interpreted, because lots of people will be keeping an eye on it. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 10:15, 11 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate change

Extended content

An Arbitration request in which you are involved has been opened, and is located here. Please add any evidence you wish the Arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate change/Evidence. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate change/Workshop.

Additionally, please note that for this case specific procedural guidelines have been stipulated; if you have any questions please ask. The full outline is listed on the Evidence and Workshop pages, but please adhere to the basics:

The issues raised in the "Sock Puppet Standards of Evidence" and "Stephen Schultz and Lar" requests may be raised and addressed in evidence in this case if (but only if) they have not been resolved by other means.
Preparation of a formal list of "parties to the case" will not be required.
Within five days from the opening of the case, participants are asked to provide a listing of the sub-issues that they believe should be addressed in the committee's decision. This should be done in a section of the Workshop page designated for that purpose. Each issue should be set forth as a one-sentence, neutrally worded question—for example:
- "Should User:X be sanctioned for tendentious editing on Article:Y"?
- "Has User:Foo made personal attacks on editors of Article:Z?"
- "Did Administrator:Bar violate the ABC policy on (date)?"
- "Should the current community probation on Global Warming articles by modified by (suggested change)?"

The committee will not be obliged to address all the identified sub-issues in its decision, but having the questions identified should help focus the evidence and workshop proposals.

All evidence should be posted within 15 days from the opening of the case. The drafters will seek to move the case to arbitrator workshop proposals and/or a proposed decision within a reasonable time thereafter, bearing in mind the need for the committee to examine what will presumably be a very considerable body of evidence.
Participants are urgently requested to keep their evidence and workshop proposals as concise as reasonably possible.
The length limitation on evidence submissions is to be enforced in a flexible manner to maximize the value of each user's evidence to the arbitrators. Users who submit overlength diatribes or repetitious presentations will be asked by the clerks to pare them. On the other hand, the word limit should preferably not be enforced in a way that hampers the reader's ability to evaluate the evidence.
All participants are expected to abide by the general guideline for Conduct on arbitration pages, which states:
Incivility, personal attacks, and strident rhetoric should be avoided in Arbitration as in all other areas of Wikipedia.
Until this case is decided, the existing community sanctions and procedures for Climate change and Global warming articles remain in full effect, and editors on these articles are expected to be on their best behavior.
Any arbitrator, clerk, or other uninvolved administrator is authorized to block, page-ban, or otherwise appropriately sanction any participant in this case whose conduct on the case pages departs repeatedly or severely from appropriate standards of decorum. Except in truly egregious cases, a warning will first be given with a citation to this notice. (Hopefully, it will never be necessary to invoke this paragraph.)

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, ~ Amory (u • t • c) 00:35, 13 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the heads up - collapsed this as it's lengthy though. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 19:05, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sub-issues questions

Hey - I removed your proposed issues as they were not phrased as "one-sentence questions." Please feel free to rephrase them into questions, or contribute your thoughts elsewhere on the workshop page. Thank you. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 12:28, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Missed that bit . Okay! FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 16:05, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback

Hello, FT2. You have new messages at Talk:Berghuis v. Thompkins/GA1.
Message added 16:38, 15 June 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Berghuis v. Thompkins GAN

Congratulations, I have listed Berghuis v. Thompkins as a Good Article. Please consider reviewing a nominee for Good Article. Regards, GregJackP (talk) 19:06, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keegscee Sock #I Lost Count

User:TubingTommy posted on Keegscee's SPI, claims to be Keegscee. I have asked User:Georgewilliamherbert who has been wranglin' the socks of Keegscee previously to get with a checkuser and flush out the other ones and rangeblock, but he appears to be offline for the moment, hence I bring this to your attention. -

Taken care of by Georgewilliamherbert. Take Care. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 00:03, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

REVDEL multiple revisions at once?

Forgive me if I've missed an announcement somewhere, but is it still best to avoid using Revision Delete on multiple revisions at once or has that bug been fixed? I can see you've had this and related conversations more than once, but I'm not an admin so some of it still escapes me. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:47, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes and thanks for checking. The bug's half fixed, ie, the basic functionality is there. Werdna's working on the other half but (with Pending Changes being released) could be another week or a bit more. May be okay but until tested can't be sure. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 18:11, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

DYK for Berghuis v. Thompkins

Hello, I've had a look at your DYK nom for this article. I've only started reviewing DYKs (so I could be wrong!) but on first inspection it seems to fall short of 5 x expansion if you want to have a look at it. G~~ain~~Line ♠ _♥ 15:31, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill

You deleted an article which should be restored:

02:51, 22 May 2010 FT2 (talk | contribs) deleted "John O. Merrill" ‎ (A7: No explanation of the subject's significance (real person, animal, organization, or web content): Essentially "Was a partner in a big firm". Would need more reason to sustain an article.)

Your decision-making in this instance was flawed. The fact that Britannica considers this figure sufficiently important to include in its online encyclopedia for children is sufficient argument for the article to be restored -- see here.

Please do what you can to rectify this unfortunate mistake.

When restored, you may trust that I will add material sufficient to clarify its legitimate status as an article.

Thank you. --Tenmei (talk) 21:17, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A note at User talk: زرشک#Speedy deletion nomination of John O. Merrill suggests that it may be more conventional for me to ask you to "userfy" what was deleted?

John Ogden Merrill (b St Paul, Minnesota, 10 August 1896— d Chicago, Illinois, 13 June 1975) was an structural engineer and founding partner of the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM).<:ref name="wilson">Museum of Modern Art (MOMA): SOM citing Richard Guy Wilson (2009). Grove Art Online, Oxford University Press.</ref>

Merrill's notability

Merrill's contribution to the firm was seminal. He is credited with establishing the multi-disciplinary nature of the firm.

SOM defined a new architectural approach of team work and total or comprehensive design, since the firm undertook everything: design, engineering, landscaping, urban planning and interiors. Also an innovation, especially given the quality of work and the prominence of the firm, was that none of the founding partners actually designed.

The unique character of SOM’s work was influenced by the engineers who became partners in the practice.<:ref name="wilson"/>

The bottom line—this person is an appropriate and necessary subject for an article in our Wikipedia context. --Tenmei (talk) 02:01, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be glad to let you have a copy of the page text. I've sent it by email to you.

In terms of suitability for an article, as I understand it, Merrill's "claim to notice" is due to the company (work done by SOM, size of SOM, etc), and also because of the important changes he made to that company. Is that roughly correct? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 10:06, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I do not know the answers, but I will undertake to find them.

Let me explain why I developed the article about Nathaniel Owings, who is the "O' in Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

I was invited for tea at the home of one of the hibakusha whose career as an interior designer had been entirely at SOM. In September 2008, I created the article here as a token gift to offer my hostess at tea. In 2010, it is only an accidental oversight that Talk:Skidmore, Owings and Merrill is still on my watchlist in 2010; but there you have it.

The projected "stub" or "start" which results from my small investment of time will become another gift I bring to tea. I have no continuing interest in John O. Merrill beyond what is needed to rebut the rationale which informs this speedy delete. --Tenmei (talk) 13:52, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please userfy Talk:John O. Merrill. --Tenmei (talk) 14:58, 19 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've restored both current and previous versions for you - see here. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 15:04, 19 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

John O. Merrill

John O. Merrill is not an appropriate article for the speedy deletion process. --Tenmei (talk) 23:53, 20 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Justification

The burden of research supports the notability of John O. Merrill; and the following is sufficient to rebut any "speedy deletion" argument. In summary, the notability of John O. Merrill is verified by reliable sources: (a) the obit in the New York Times, (b) the article in the Grove Art Online, (c) the article in the American National Biography and (d) WorldCat Identities ... plus (e) the previously mentioned but unused article in the Britannica online.

Notes

^ a b c d e f g h "John Merrill Sr., Architect, Dead," New York Times. June 13, 1975.

^ a b Museum of Modern Art (MOMA): SOM citing Richard Guy Wilson (2009). Grove Art Online, Oxford University Press.

^ "Merrill, John Ogden," (1999). American National Biography, Vol. 15, pp. 360-361.

^ a b c d Lehman College Art Gallery, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), Merrill bio notes

^ Westcott, Ed. (2005). Oak Ridge, p. 61., p. 61, at Google Books

^ Nauman, Robert Allen. (2004). On the Wings of Modernism: the United States Air Force Academy, pp. 72-80., p. 72, at Google Books

^ Wilkes, Joseph A. and Robert T. Packard. (1989). Encyclopedia of Architecture: Design, Engineering & Construction, Vol. 4. p. 454.

^ "Radical Design Dropped For Air Academy Chapel," New York Times. July 4, 1955.

^ "Residential Work Rising in Chicago," New York Times. February 14, 1937.

^ "Name Consultants for Building Code," New York Times. March 26, 1950.

^ American Institute of Architects Historical Directory, Merrill, ahd1030138

^ a b WorldCat Identities: Merrill, John O.

References

Nauman, Robert Allen. (2004). On the Wings of Modernism: the United States Air Force Academy. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 10-ISBN 0252028910/13-ISBN 9780252028915; OCLC 52542599
Westcott, Ed. (2005). Oak Ridge. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing. 10-ISBN 0738541702; 13-ISBN 9780738541709; OCLC 62511041
Wilkes, Joseph A. and Robert T. Packard. (1989). Encyclopedia of Architecture: Design, Engineering & Construction. New York: John Wiley. 10-ISBN 0471633518/13-ISBN 9780471633518; OCLC 300305038

The article text explains that John O. Merrill is

Notable for design and development of the US Air Force Academy campus; and he provided on-site architect construction oversight for the project in Colorado Springs, Colorado
Notable for design and development of the Manhattan Project research campus; and he provided on-site architect construction oversight for the project and for the new community which was created at Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Notable for design, development and construction of the permanent US military facilities on Okinawa, including the still controversial Kadena Air Force Base
Notable as a founding partner of the prominent international architectural firm, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM); and also notable for his seminal influence on development of unique SOM corporate culture

Thanks. I would agree. Notice that it isn't a matter of personalities or defensiveness. The issue was evidence. before there wasn't. Now there is. Specifically, an NY Times obit is enough to suggest notability all on its own.

Be aware that the claim "Built notable project X so must be notable" or "Founded notable firm X so must be notable" generally fails due to WP:NOTINHERITED (the X might be notable but it doesn't demonstrate those involved in its creation are). To put it simply, architects design and help built things, the same way accountants count things and help run businesses, and writers write things. Its the daily work of all architects to design and built things.

The key here is evidence he himself was notable, not that he built notable things. The single NY Times obit by itself is enough to show that. A career that included building some big military objects (putting it crudely) by itself does not.

I put it crudely, not to offend, but to explain in very basic terms, the distinction and significance. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 00:43, 21 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've got the full obit from NYT, if you want to use it for source material. Its not copyright free or fair use though, so I can't put it on wiki. if you want it by email, please email me and I'll send it to you. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 01:08, 21 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate your offer, but that won't be necessary. I have full online Times access. One question remains: What next? May I now post John O. Merrill in main space? --Tenmei (talk) 01:43, 21 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to write it in user space I'll be glad to cast an eye over it and see what cleanup may be useful. It might help.

Update - left a few review points here. Those aside and a bit of minor copyediting, it looks okay to go.FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 02:20, 21 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

DYK for Berghuis v. Thompkins

On June 21, 2010, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Berghuis v. Thompkins, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, quick check ) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

— Rlevse • Talk • 18:03, 21 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

bugzilla:21312 (revision move) is listed as 'resolved fixed'...

...so I guess we should have a community discussion on whether we want it enabled here? –xeno^talk 12:45, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Would be nice to see how it works, and noting also it's still marked "experimental". I've asked if it's enabled on any WMF test wiki. It would be good to see it in action, not least to be able to explain and screenshot it (and point others to where it can be tested) for any possible discussion. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 12:49, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Probably need to file a quick 'zilla to get it enabled on testwiki:. –xeno^talk 12:51, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

~~bugzilla:24158~~. –xeno^talk 14:26, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Done, and got there first. (bugzilla:24157). One or the other's a duplicate :) FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 14:28, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

lol. –xeno^talk 14:30, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Left it to you to strike one out. I could just see the scenario happening where we both did that, too :) FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 14:32, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

ha! Go ahead and request sysop on testwiki while we wait: testwiki:WP:RQ#Requests for Adminship/Bureaucratship. –xeno^talk 14:33, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

← In case you haven't been keeping up on the bugzilla'en, we're currently awaiting a code review for the RevisionMove so that it can be enabled on the WMF branch (or something...). –xeno^talk 15:46, 10 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Climate change moving to Workshop

This Arbitration case is now moving into the Workshop phase. Please read Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration#Workshop to understand the process. Editors should avoid adding to their evidence sections outside of slight tweaks to aid in understanding; large-scale additions should not be made. Many proposals have already been made and there has already been extensive discussion on them, so please keep the Arbitrators' procedures in mind, namely to keep "workshop proposals as concise as reasonably possible." Workshop proposals should be relevant and based on already provided evidence; evidence masquerading as proposals will likely be ignored. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:37, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Opinion for a requested move of WP:Ownership of articles

Hello! I have requested a move for WP:Ownership of articles → WP:Page ownership. As you participated in the previous discussion, could you please voice your opinion again regarding this move, as it is my intention to restart the discussion with a clean slate. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 23:02, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - posted. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 23:44, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note

I have mentioned you at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard and User talk:Nihonjoe. Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:40, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, would not have been aware otherwise. Posted at both. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 18:32, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The last point was addressing both points 3 and 4 (which were synonymous in that they were dealing with questionable/good standing). I'll ping you (before the week ends) when I've looked at it properly. Ncmvocalist (talk) 15:08, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've responded at the policy talk. Ncmvocalist (talk) 10:12, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Frank Mangano

Hello, I appreciate your comments and criticisms. I know more work needs to be done here, unfortunately, my schedule does not permit me to respond immediately to this. My intent is to continue the make improvement to this BLP however, I have become swamped with work assignments. Can we keep the bulk of the content in my user space? I will not move into article space without significant improvement as I find it, nor will I move it without review. All that I have done has been in the open, I have not deleted anyone's comments. I would really hate to start over though. Thank you! (User talk:Lisa Snead)) Cre8tivedge 19:04, 30 June 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cre8tivedge (talk • contribs) [reply]

Sure - restored the June 18, 2010 11:57 version (latest) for you at User:Cre8tivedge/Frank Mangano. Best! FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 20:27, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much for returning this to my user space. I do see where significant changes need to be made and your statements are fair and clear! Thanks again!

User talk:Lisa SneadCre8tivedge 18:00, 5 July 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cre8tivedge (talk • contribs) [reply]

RFC is closed

Hi, just a note to let you know that the RFC discussion you started has closed "Immediate steps" poll by FT2 and is in need of assesment and the next step, whatever that is to be, regards. Off2riorob (talk) 23:05, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just to note I sent you email; hopefully things make more sense. Ncmvocalist (talk) 10:43, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Article on Administrator abuse

Thanks for your comments. That topic is stuck in my throat and I could write pages and pages about it. Luckily for you, I am rather busy with real-life work so I will just blurt out a few disconnected thoughts.

Extended content

I did not start the article, and I even agree that, ordinarily, it would not be a suitable topic --- not for lack of "notability" (a criterion which I donot recognize as valid) but simply because I think its is very poor taste for an encyclopedia to have more than one article about itself. However, having read through several megabytes (literally) of talk on the topicof admin abuse, which never went anywhere, I saw that article as a unique opportunity to have a *productive* analysis of that topic. Being in Article space, rather than Wikipedia:* or Talk:*, would force the text to be organized, non-redundant, impersonal, neutral, limited to verifiable facts, etc. etc.. Alas, we lost that opportunity.
As I had observed in the article's lead, "administrator abuse" is usually meant in the broad sense, including abusive behavior by non-sysop editors who perform substantial administrative work --- like tagging, posting on the AfD, writing rules, operating robots, etc.. The brader interpretation seems to make the discussion of "admin abuse" more useful.
Given the obvious "conflict of interest", I would have expected admins to be extra cautious in their edits to that article. Instead, they not only promptly listed the article on the AfD, but even closed the AfD before its normal 7-day period was over.
There are many more reputable references on that topic besides those listed. The sources call it by various names or may just imply it indirectly, e.g. when discussing conflict resolution and elitism. Thus, finding such referentes takes work. The article was deleted even as I was editing it. Note that most editors --- those who wrote the 3 million articles --- have limited free time, and may take weeks to see challenges and respond to them. That is why, in the good old days, editors who challenged some statement in an article were supposed to edit it out and explain their concern on the talk page. But of course deleting is much easier and definitive. "I did a Google search and nothing turned up, so I deleted the article", "The article has been up for 3 days and it still has no references, so I deleted it" --- those are precisely examples of admin abuse that the article was about.
Independently of what the media says, admin abuse is real, widespread, and is doing terrible damage to Wikipedia. Sadly admins seem quite blind to the problem. They claim to be merely enforcing the law according to well established procedures --- without realizing that the laws and the procedures themselves are part of the abuse. (And the world outside *is* taking notice. The blog drivel pieces are just the leading edge of the wave. In a few minutes of googling I found several scholarly papers criticising the Wikipedia decision-making, admin promotion, and conflict resolution processes, and even a masters thesis.)
Take the notability rule, for instance. It s labeled as "consensus" by those who apply it --- but in reality it was created by a handful of deletionists (less than 1% of the total pool of editors), apparently admins in their most part; and became "law" simply because those people started enforcing it --- and deleting an article is not only definitive, but so much easier than writing one.
Or take the AfD. Who decided that deletion discussions should be carried out in a central board, rather than on the article's talk page? Which class of editors finds that arrangement more convenient? Who are the people most likely to have the AfD on their watchlist? Who has the time and motivation to vote for the deletion of other people's articles? Who decided that AfD discussions should be limited to 7 days? Why? Who makes the final decision? Why can't ordinary editors undo deletions, like any other edits? And, finally, who gave those people the right to define those rules?
I have been editing Wikipedia since 2004 or so, and to me it is absolutely clear that the attitude and behavior of adminis has changed for the worse --- much worse --- since 2006. At first I thought it was just me burning out. Then I noticed that lots of other editors were just as pissed off as me about article deletions, disparaging tags, robot edits, idiotic standards, and the like. As time passed I ran into more and more report and examples of abuse, against me and others.
For instance, last year I had the curiosity to check how the "unref" taging policy had been decided upon. I found out that 30 people (who had been involved in the tag's design) voted it on an obscure talk page. The "consensus" option was voted by only 10 of them. Nevertheless, those admins who wanted the tag started inserting it on thousands of articles with the help of robots. Then the fashion caught on, and dozens of other stupid article-side tags appeared; I bet thay did not even bother to held a poll at all. So all those tags ou there --- perhaps half a million or more --- were never a "consensus", in any conceivable sense of the word. They stuck only because deleting them is far more work than putting them in, and because the admins who created them also declared that their removal by ordinary editors would be considered vandalism and punished as such. If that is not "administrator abuse", then what is?
Last year I also did an analysis of the growth of wikipedia from 2001 to 2009. To my dismay, I found out that the "slowdown" in article creation since 2006 was actually due to a steady loss of editors --- a striking contrast to the exponential growth until 2005. It seems that since 2006 hardly any new editors have been recruited, and old timers are steadily leaving. This alarming pheonomenon had been noted already by people at Xerox PARC,but strangely no one in Wikipedia seems to have paid attention to it.
I had many other other eye-opening experiences since then. Early this year I wasted several days reading and voting the Unsourced BLP RfC, which, from start to finish, was one of the grossest examples of institutionalized admin abuse ever.
An old article of mine was deleted over the year-end holidays (the AfD debate ran between 2009-12-27 and 2010-01-02, to be precise) on totally bogus claims of "original research" and bungled Google searches. Needless to say that I did not have a chance to rebate the claims. I managed to have the article restored as a draft under my User page, but then had to be away from Wikipedia for a couple of months. When I returned I found that it had been deleted again --- from my User: draft space! The admin's explanation? "That's simply too long a period of time." Well, who decided that? And why is "their" opinion more authoritative than mine?
The root of the problem is that Wikipedia has no decent decision-making or voting mechanism that would prevent administrator abuse. All the talk about "consensus" stuff is crap; that is a meaningless buzzword, a pile of sand where Jimbo and the Foundation bury their head whenever the issue of governance comes up. The only thing that can be said about Wikipedia's governance is that is neither a democracy nor a dictatorship, nor anything in between; its basically anarchy. Wikipedia admins behave like like a rogue motorcycle gang: any admin can do basically anything he wants, as long as he does not step over the toes of his fellow admins; and these will automatically tend to side with him on any dispute with non-admins.
It is written in several places in WIkipedia:* that its "rules" do not create rights and obligations for admins, but merely describe what they are used to doing. I have even found two cases where an admin did something against the rules, and then edited the rules to make that thing legal a posteriori. (In one of the incidents, and perhaps both, attention was called to the fact only because it pissed off another admn. Had the abuse been made against a common user, no one would have noticed or cared.) But since rules *are* supposed to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, neither incident was technically an abuse, so the matter rested there.
In any organization, those who write the rules are inevitably tempted to twist them so as to give themselves more power. Lacking a firm constituion and with an assumed disdain for democracy, Wikipedia has let admins free rein to do so. The old rules that prevented admins from abusing their powers, and from imposing their opinion on non-admins, have been largely removed over the last few years. And since the ability to delete articles is the epitome of and admininistrator's power, more power meant more freedom to delete. That is why Wikipedia post-2006 has become the den of a few hundred rabid deletionists; and why tens of thousands of editors like me, who like to write rather than delete, are being made to feel like villains.

Well, sorry for this long rant. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 01:36, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Markup

Hi, Sorry if I'm troubling you, but, I was trying to put an email link on my page, or find how to email another user when they don't have a link, and I saw the link on your page, and I just wanted to ask how you put it there. I will be truely thankful if you can answer me. Zarin87 (talk) 04:38, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Antigrandiose

I saw you'd posted to Antigrandiose (talk · contribs)'s talk page. I'm bothered by the way he not only uses his userspace as facebook/myspace, but also copies into it other people's posts. Worth taking to MfD do you think? Dougweller (talk) 20:25, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

~~Dealing with this.~~ Done. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 23:41, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much. I see User:Antigrandiose is tagged for MfD but not in the MfD - and not only is he using it as Myspace, but as I said, he's copying other people's posts into it, eg from here [3] - should this be of any concern? And bits of other articles, templates, etc which has ended up with his userpage having article categories. Dougweller (talk) 05:09, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't MFD that one, someone else did. This 2nd MFD is probably what you're missing. If the snips of other people's posts are an actual problem (laundry list or suggesting they are biased or idiotic etc in the context of his other templates or anything) then that's probably best dealt with by mentioning at that MFD, or dropping him a brief note that that we don't (or shouldn't) "knock" other editors that way and please desist. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 11:39, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wow...

... You didn't even give me a chance to respond to your inaccurate "quick corrections." You'd rather just delete something than risk being shown wrong. I'm left with the feeling that I was waylayed, by two or three people, who had a problem with my page that was far out of proportion to the problem that other editors and administrators had/would have had with it. --Antigrandiose (talk) 20:25, 28 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Like your post here at MFD, this is fairly inaccurate.

Your page contained genital closeups, sexual innuendo, and repeated sexual posts. Your posts included inappropriate edits like this, edits that claimed a term you added was taken from a source that in fact was your own interpretation like this, inappropriate incivility like this, interface-hiding CSS, and posting fake "bot" warnings to an IP user that their editing would be "monitored" and to "stay off nakedlittleboys.com" like this (in apparent retaliation for removing your sexual gallery [4]). The times your editing was appropriate were also equally noted. You had a bunch of warnings by other users and ignored them. You were told the content was unsuitable some weeks ago and ignored that too, promptly recreating a bunch more sexual related content instead.

You'll notice in fact I didn't "just delete". Far from it. I removed the disruptive CSS style in the one HTML code it was a problem (not affecting the displayed content but fixing the layout), de-linked a number of userboxes showing sexual content (but did not delete the actual userboxes themselves), and asked the community to spend a week discussing whether the rest should be kept or removed as is our norm.

I suggest a quick read of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT which may give guidance on when this kind of thing can become disruptive. I notice someone else suggested you use a humor site for your humor posts. As many people have told you, this is an encyclopedia and an encyclopedia-writing community. We have norms. You have simply been asked, again, to ensure you follow them. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 22:57, 28 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Microformats

You recently !voted on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Microformats. This is a courtesy note to let you now that I have now posted, as promised, my view there, and to ask you revisit the debate. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 14:52, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Third opinion

Hi FT2. I closed a RfC today - Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Request_for_Comment_on_Fox_News_Channel. The close has been disputed - User_talk:SilkTork#RfC_close_on_Wikipedia:Reliable_sources.2FNoticeboard. Would you take a look at it to give your view and hopefully resolve the matter one way or the other. SilkTork *^YES! 00:56, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Attention and participation

As you expressed this concern at an earlier date, I think your attention and participation is invited here. Ncmvocalist (talk) 04:47, 18 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki:Anoneditwarning

As a long time IP editor, I'd like to know if there was any discussion before you changed the coloring of the text. As it stands, it's overbearing, distracting, and is alreading causing a bit of eye strain. Any chance I can get you to change it back, or at least to something with a bit less contrast? I really understand the desire to grab attention, but this is a bit over the top. 69.181.249.92 (talk) 07:33, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

One could probably split the difference and only highlight the first of the two sentences. Would that be better? Or in the alternative, maybe black text on a soft color background would accomplish the same purpose of highlighting the box without causing eyestrain? Dragons flight (talk) 09:56, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I like the second option - it draws attention without inducing panic for the casual editor and the need for filtered glasses for established ones. Tan would be a nice neutral colour but I'm not particular about it.

And thanks.69.181.249.92 (talk) 10:30, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Flying humanoid

Hello. I am the original creator of the article Flying humanoid, which you deleted in May 2008. Could you possibly restore the article in my userspace so that I can improve the sourcing? --Uga Man (talk) 21:41, 2 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Replied on your talk page. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 17:21, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WP:BLANKING misinterpretation after March 2010 re-write?

FYI –xeno^talk 16:57, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Replied on that page. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 17:22, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

RFC on vandalism sandboxes

As someone who previously participated in the discussion to adopt policy verbiage that is being used as a rationale to delete "vandalism sandboxes", your input would be appreciated on the matter: Wikipedia talk:User pages#Userspace Vandalism Sandboxes. Gigs (talk) 15:08, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Clean Start

I saw that you created the new 'Clean Start' policy page. I have a question about that policy, and don't know where to ask it, so I there I'd start with you. There is a "new" user whom I suspect is a returning user trying to make a clean start. The previous account has not been banned or sanctioned as far as I can tell, but had been blocked, more than once, for various violations (edit warring, harassment). It has been retired (not active for 1+ year, 'retired' box on the user page), but the "new" account is editing in the same topic area (which is a highly volatile one on Wikipedia), and making contentious edits (e.g. - blanket revert of several days worth of edits , undoing 20+ edits by 4 editors). This appears to be in clear violation of WP:CLEAN START, which says 'a user who then re-enters disputes and topics where their conduct was likely to be noticed (blocks, disputes, disruptive editing, contentious and edit warred topics, and the like) may be seen as evading scrutiny'. The question is what can be done about this? I am not sure a sock puppet investigation is the right way, because technically, I am not sure if this is sock puppetry. HupHollandHup (talk) 14:59, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Without knowing more, or knowing the situation, see if this helps.

The ability to start again is open to almost anyone, and trying to start again is usually fine. The main thing is that people may need to know about someone's track record to assess (for example) how to handle concerns over their behavior or edits. For example, you might expect to handle a genuine newcomer differently than someone who's been round months, had warnings, and "knows the ropes". So this is more about clarity and transparency. If their editing is a concern you probably have a fair right to check if they are the same person returning.

On the face of it, it wouldn't be "sock puppetry" (even though covered in the same policy) because you haven't suggested that they run multiple accounts at the same time, shut down one account then promptly restarted with another, etc. Your best bet is to look carefully at the evidence - do their edits look the same, is there evidence you could show other editors from their edits or other contributions? Or is it purely a complete guess?

If there is no evidence, then best take them at face value as a new user. If there is some evidence to suggest they are the same person your best bet is to be non-contentious. Ask them by email or on their talk page, something like "I notice your editing reminds me of a user who once edited these pages, are you new here?". Emphasize that you are not seeking to "do" anything nor saying anything's wrong, but as it's a contentious topic and their editing suggests they might be a returning user to the area, you would like to know if they are a genuine new user or a returning "old hand". Don't threaten or accuse, be open, friendly, and ask. Make clear that it's mainly so you know what level of knowledge to assume (for example).

If you still aren't happy with the response, explain that it's important if they are a returning user with "history" in that discussion they need to disclose it. Again cite the policy more so they can check the position (ie to help them) and not as a "weapon" or to attack them. Then see what happens. Ultimately if there is evidence in their behavior and they persistently deny it, and their conduct were disruptive or a problem, then you would need to raise it on the talk page of that topic (is probably best) to ask other editors of that topic to comment on your concern and the evidence.

But bear in mind this may be a user who has done nothing wrong at all, could be a newcomer, and be civil, courteous, inform them the concern/question/issue, but assume good faith in your approach. If you have no evidence then think twice whether you have any basis to say anything. If there is good evidence and you can't sort it out by private dialog, then raise it with co-editors, again in a civil manner.

Hope this helps. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 15:42, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, FT. There is very strong evidence (in my opinion), otherwise I wouldn't bring it up. The evidence comprises behavioral similarity (editing the same set of articles, from the same POV, often repeating similar arguments, and apparent familiarity and "history" with other long-term editors), identical language quirks (both users are self-admitted non-native English speakers, as well as technical (limited to what a non check-user like myself could gather) which point to the same geographical area and the same ISP. I believe the evidence is strong enough that a CU request would be granted. I could e-mail you the evidence in private if you'd like. HupHollandHup (talk) 16:11, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sensible to ask. Would be fine to look at it for you and give suggestions. Email's good. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 16:35, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, thanks. I've sent you some material. (there's more, as in the course of putting this together i discovered that the old account had actually used more than one account (they are linked by the user himself, but I didn't have the time to go over all the other old accounts' contributions- but did find some that link all three). fee free to discuss this over email if you think there are privacy issues. HupHollandHup (talk) 18:43, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You have a reply by email. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 22:12, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I appreciate it. I wish no adverse consequences for the user - merely that he truly starts afresh, by avoiding the contentious area he was previously involved in. HupHollandHup (talk) 23:26, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

heh

You're really stretching the definition of "nutshell" there! (must be a walnut or coconut) –xeno^talk 13:23, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It needs dividing into a nutshell v. intro (you'll notice there is no intro so far!). Haven't finished yet. Want to help? :) FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 13:32, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'll go over it once you're done ;p –xeno^talk 13:42, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Have a go. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 13:53, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'll need some time for the page to percolate, but at first blush what I noticed was "various pages or discussions related to your conduct that will cease to be relevant to the project " is given greater emphasis than it was in the former, where it was a bit of a throwaway mention ("other pages which affect them alone"). And this was not your doing, but I've just noticed the "Replacing references to the former username with references to the replacement username," <-- I'm not sure if this is meant to refer to signatures, but going through replacing signatures en masse seems to be counter intuitive, no? –xeno^talk 14:04, 4 October 2010 (UTC) Looks like you pre-empted that last bit =)[reply]

That first one is deliberate. A common critisicm (and source of confusion/upset/misunderstanding/dispute) over right to vanish is the extent to which "vanishing" happens and what it provides. Some users believe it provides anonymity, removes their contributions, removes all discussions they were in, removes all sections and pages where they were adversely mentioned (eg on others' talk pages). So this rewrite makes a lot clearer what exactly is done. The pages and sections that are usually deleted or blanked in RTV are those where the user's conduct is the topic of discussion - SPI, ANI sections, RFC, RFAR, etc. We also may delete if asked, their user and talk pages. It's making clear what expectation a user should have, to prevent people coming to RTV with incorrect beliefs about what can and will be done, and equally to prevent gamers seeing RTV as a means to remove everything and requesting RTV as a way to bypass a bad record, when in fact we never have removed "everything". Being explicit on what is actually done for "vanishing", preventing unrealistic expectations or belief in loopholes, and making clear it's for permanent departure only, are key points that were not so clear before (or could be read favorably by a gamer). FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 14:17, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Does it remove (archived) ANI sections? I've never seen that... –xeno^talk 14:20, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No reason why not, in principle. If an ANI section covered a user's sock-puppetry or sought consensus on a ban for edit warring, or discussed their real-world connection to the topic, and the user genuinely wished to vanish, that would probably be a fair request to blank or collapse under right to vanish. The section could easily have been archived by the time the request is made, or shortly after. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 14:24, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

← re: "finally" I understand your desired use (i.e. "full and final" departure) but it might also be read as "Thank the maker - this guy is finally leaving" ;> –xeno^talk 14:40, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's such an important point - a number of people considering RTV have left briefly, been banned, stopped editing, come back, etc. It needs to be clear this is when they are ready for a final and forever decision, nothing less. Both of those words probably matter. Is there a better way to say it? ("When a user makes an irrevocable decision to leave forever"?). If so, go ahead. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 14:43, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just thought I'd let you know why I removed 'finally'; will think about the best way to say it unambiguously. –xeno^talk 14:46, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It needs to be clear this is when they are ready for a final and forever decision, nothing less. Both of those words probably matter - that it's fixed/final, and that it's forever. There is some redundancy but it needs to be really clear as its target audience is people who may have thought they were leaving on other occasions and then cooled off. ("When a user makes a categorical decision to leave forever"?) if you can think of a way, go ahead. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 14:43, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A user page appears in a category

Hello FT2: Your user page [[User:FT2/LTO]] may be in violation of WP:USERNOCAT. The Category that it appears in, Category:Periods with timeline in infobox, appears to be a maintenance category, so it seems reasonable to allow user pages to appear in the category while development of a page is proceeding. Your user page in question does not seem to be in active development. Do you think you should comment out or otherwise deactivate the code that is putting this page into a category? Thanks for your consideration. --Fartherred (talk) 21:48, 9 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, good catch. Fixed. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 21:55, 9 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!

File:Wikithanks Ribbon.png
Thanks for the minor copyedits you have made to the ARKBK and Bunyoro articles! Skibden (talk) 15:07, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Date error

File:Deepwater Horizon oil spill - May 24, 2010 - with locator.jpg is from May 24, but the disaster is from April 22 ... whats wrong? Palu (talk) 23:10, 21 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing. The image is a satellite photo of the spill showing the spread around a month after the explosion. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 23:17, 21 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

recap table

this is totally off in left field, but I like that recap table you used here. do you think i would be worth the effort of turning that into a template for more general use in summary-type situations? I'm happy to do it, I just don't know if it would get used sufficiently to justify the effort. --Ludwigs2 23:38, 21 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

For pointing out the exception to the topic ban. I assumed there had to be one, but had not seen it. Lots of luck with the rewrite, Sandstein has some good points, but progress is occurring. My main goal is to make sure that user talk pages are in scope (i.e. not an exception to the ban).--SPhilbrick T 19:21, 25 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for File:Draupner close-up.png

Thanks for uploading or contributing to File:Draupner close-up.png. I notice the file page specifies that the file is being used under fair use but there is not a suitable explanation or rationale as to why each specific use in Wikipedia constitutes fair use. Please go to the file description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale.

If you have uploaded other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on those pages too. You can find a list of 'file' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free media lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 22:01, 29 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Done, I think. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 22:13, 29 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

AFD - List of Medical Eponyms Discouraged Because of Nazi Associations

Feel free to stop by the AfD and see how I've improved the underlying article. If you've still got concerns that you want me to address, feel free to let me know, but I think I've fixed everything, except the title--which I agree needs work and better options are currently being discussed both in the AfD and the article talk page. Cheers, Jclemens (talk) 01:35, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The title itself is still a real concern. I've fixed most of the remaining issues I can see with the rest - see article and AFD comments. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 01:48, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Jclemens (talk) 02:36, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, can you pop by the article again and provide constructive criticism on how I'm using the table you created? Cheers, Jclemens (talk) 00:46, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No need - it's fine. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 01:04, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

An award

What started as you bothering me over my tag moving around resulted in great social progress and similarly awesome results in the name of better service on behalf of User:RFC bot. For your efforts in achieving change I award you the Congressman Gene Taylor Award for Progress, ironically named after a conservative member of Congress. harej 03:35, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Incubator CSD

Thanks for restarting the discussion. At this point we needed a new proposal to "wipe the slate" and get something moving. That said, I think it might need an adjustment in wording. The short summary implies that the article has to be stale either way, but the way it's written, the first clause could apply to non-stale articles. Gigs (talk) 13:01, 3 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The wording is "stale or unlikely to be suitable", not just "stale". Doesn't that cover it? But yes, do reword if it'll help. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 13:04, 3 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, so I guess that was the intention. I like it, but you might pick up some opposition since the first criteria allows for someone to instantly "veto" an incubation, with no opportunity for anyone to improve it. That might cause drama if it were widely used without giving people a chance to improve an article that was incubated. Gigs (talk) 13:20, 3 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

JohnCD's already proposed a fix for that ("after one week at deletion"). I'm fine with that, others will support it if it's needed. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 13:28, 3 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback

Hello, FT2. You have new messages at WP:VPP.
Message added 23:02, 7 November 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Wikipedia talk:Administrators

It seems as if most of this page was unintentionally hatted. Not sure how to fix this. What do you think? ScottyBerg (talk) 14:25, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm looking but it's not completely clear what the issue is - which hats or why? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 14:35, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's just that there are eleven items in the Table of Contents and only three are visible. I'm not sure how that happened, as it is not evident from the page history. Wasn't sure who to ask about this, so I took the liberty of contacting you. ScottyBerg (talk) 19:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see...... well spotted :) And fixed. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 19:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it looked like an incorrect archiving, but I wasn't sure. ScottyBerg (talk) 20:39, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

2010 Duke University faux sex thesis controversy

For BLP reasons I have removed, so that at least it does not show on the top version of the article, the link to an "unredacted" version of the document, which names names. If the article gets kept, I think that link should be suppressed, if possible. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 22:16, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Gladiator screenshot

Here you go: File:Gladiator.png. If you need anything else, let me know. Oh, and if you could check over the fair use template, I'd appreciate that. This is my first screenshot for WP, so I might have made some slight errors in the red tape. Dismas|^(talk) 05:42, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You want subtitles, I got yer subtitles right here! Sorry, different film... The time is 1:44:18. And yes, it's spoken. I don't know of a place where it's seen and not spoken. Though, like I said, it's been years since I saw the whole film and I just knew where to jump to because the other editor who responded on the Ref Desk remembered the scene. For the article that you're working on, I think it's better with subtitles. After all, that's what you're going for is the phrase and a still image doesn't do much for you without the subtitles. Anything else you need, just let me know! Dismas|^(talk) 06:02, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the deletion and the update of the info for the kept file. Dismas|^(talk) 06:22, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Guru Larry's Retro Corner

The article you defaulted to keep is up again for deleted a day later by the exact same person who tried to have it deleted a few days before. Can they constantly apply to have an article removed, even if an admin has approved to keep it? This person has systematically gone through every article referring to a show or TV network involving Larry Bundy Jr. Which seems rather strange. --FirecrackerDemon (talk) 06:05, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If they don't have anything new to offer in the way of rationale and it's tendentious, you can often suggest a SNOW close. But in this case it's got at least some rationale (unbundling a matter that got no comment) and other users don't seem to be expressing a view that it's tendentious, so I suspect just let it run its course. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 06:22, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks ever so for your help. Is there any possibility you can step in and comment at all? I must admit, while I've been on here for a while, I'm nor adept at deletion/merging discussions. These articles had the same issues a few years ago too, so it's coming quite a headache. Thanks!!!--FirecrackerDemon (talk) 08:52, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback on Wikipedia talk:Revision deletion/Noticeboard

Talkback removed, tracking separately. Thanks. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 19:21, 21 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Expectations and norms

Hi FT2. I'm trialling an invitation to edit at Pain that links readers to a simple editing tutorial from the top of the article. I've added a link in that tutorial to Expectations and norms.

It's nicely done, simple and effective when collapsed. Two concerns worth considering though:

Tagging an article as "you can edit this" may imply that others cannot be so edited. You might potentially get strong opposition for this reason.
The template when expanded is way too long and detailed.

Because of these I'm not sure what wider feedback will end up being. But as a concept - it's definitely worth experimenting and trying out! Nice work :) FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 11:14, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Both very good points, FT2. Thanks so much for the feedback. I've copied the above to the project talk page. I hope that's OK. Anthony (talk) 14:56, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Accident or intentional?

Did you mean to delete my post here? Tijfo098 (talk) 13:19, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry - the two look like they edit conflicted in the same minute - I was actually commenting on yours (supportively) and it looks like I accidentally overwrote the text rather than adding mine to it. I see you've edited yours since - I'm not sure what the correct version should be, so please go ahead and reinstate yours, and thanks for noticing it. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 15:16, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On second thought, it wasn't incredibly important. It is hard to believe that a non-fiction writer who has received multiple awards is unaware of the weasel word concept, but the issue is not central to that discussion. Tijfo098 (talk) 16:09, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That thought had ocurred to me too. Seems something of a labored effort and a coatrack. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 16:23, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Now, "coatrack" is a far better example of Wikipedia jargon. [5] :-) Tijfo098 (talk) 18:08, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I wondered where the post went too... One minute it was there, the next it was just gone. --Tothwolf (talk) 21:15, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, this seems to be the issue. Tijfo098 (talk) 18:18, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On Beauty

Hi, could you please take a look at On Beauty? Now there is a third SPA, an IP editor actually, posting that same link (and messing up some of the rest of the article. Thanks. Logical Cowboy (talk) 22:36, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have blocked that and the other previous account. The IP is dynamic. If it repeats without unblock being agreed, then any admin should be able to block a reincarnation or semi-protect against IP disruption. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 23:29, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Logical Cowboy (talk) 05:42, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, On Beauty has been reverted by three different IP editors. What would you think about protecting from IP edits for a while? Thanks. Logical Cowboy (talk) 14:16, 22 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Semiprotected for 3 weeks. If it goes further, seek pending changes protection at WP:RFPP. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 16:38, 22 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just to let you know, I reported this at WP:RFPP. IP vandal is back. Thanks. Logical Cowboy (talk) 07:30, 24 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've put a fairly long pending changes on. Still gives us the option to wack-a-mole with the IP without damaging the article. Ged UK 08:02, 24 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, could you please have a look at Zadie Smith? Same editor is back. Logical Cowboy (talk) 17:46, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for File:Drauper freak wave.png

Thanks for uploading or contributing to File:Drauper freak wave.png. I notice the file page specifies that the file is being used under fair use but there is not a suitable explanation or rationale as to why each specific use in Wikipedia constitutes fair use. Please go to the file description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale.

If you have uploaded other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on those pages too. You can find a list of 'file' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free media lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. SchuminWeb (Talk) 18:02, 21 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Old upload, formal templated rationales now added. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 19:19, 21 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to the elections!

Dear FT2, thank you for nominating yourself as a candidate in the 2010 Arbitration Committee elections. On behalf of the coordinators, allow me to welcome you to the election and make a few suggestions to help you get set up. By now, you ought to have written your nomination statement, which should be no more than 400 words and declare any alternate or former user accounts you have contributed under (or, in the case of privacy concerns, a declaration that you have disclosed them to the Arbitration Committee). Although there are no fixed guidelines for how to write a statement, note that many candidates treat this as an opportunity, in their own way, to put a cogent case as to why editors should vote for them—highlighting the strengths they would bring to the job, and convincing the community they would cope with the workload and responsibilities of being an arbitrator.

You should at this point have your own questions subpage; feel free to begin answering the questions as you please. Together, the nomination statement and questions subpage should be transcluded to your candidate profile, whose talkpage will serve as the central location for discussion of your candidacy. If you experience any difficulty setting up these pages, please follow the links in the footer below. If you need assistance, on this or any other matter (including objectionable questions or commentary by others on your candidate pages), please notify the coordinators at their talkpage. If you have followed these instructions correctly, congratulations, you are now officially a candidate for the Arbitration Committee. Good luck! Skomorokh 22:10, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from Lar

Hi. Best of luck in your upcoming trial by fire. As in previous years I have a series of questions I ask candidates. This year there are restrictions on the length and number of questions on the "official" page for questions, restrictions which I do not agree with, but which I will abide by. I nevertheless think my questions are important and relevant (and I am not the only person to think so, in previous years they have drawn favorable comment from many, including in at least one case indepth analysis of candidates answers to them by third parties). You are invited to answer them if you so choose. I suggest that the talk page of your questions page is a good place to put them and I will do so with your acquiescence (for example, SirFozzie's page already has them as do the majority of other candidates). Your answers, (or non-answers should you decide not to answer them), that will be a factor in my evaluation of your candidacy. Please let me know as soon as practical what your wish is. Thanks and best of luck. (please answer here, I'll see it, and it keeps things together better) ++Lar: t/c 22:12, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I look forward to them. I see we have many candidates in the last day or so. My concern would purely be "will there be time to answer more". Some answers may end up briefer and less nuanced than they should for that reason. My Q&A in 2007 was 370 K long, so I've done long answers on many matters previously (including older versions of yours) that do reflect nuances. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 22:40, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to cut and paste where that makes sense... or comment on how your answers have changed. They have been added. ++Lar: t/c 01:52, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Revision deletion/Admin

Just came across Wikipedia:Revision deletion/Admin when I was searching for something else; seems like a now-redundant old draft. Just wondered if you want to delete it or if there's some reason to keep. Rd232 ^talk 01:07, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes - done. Thanks. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 01:17, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ransack (2nd nomination)

What do you mean by "We do have articles on "multiple characters who share a name", whether related, in the same topic area, or unrelated"? Why should we have articles on characters who have no actual connection?

In Wikipedia, things are grouped into articles based on what they are, not what they are called by.
— Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary

Judging by that AfD and the previous one, it seems clear that all that information shouldn't be on the same page, so I'm sure we shouldn't have articles on things with nothing in common but name. NotARealWord (talk) 15:54, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The example I was thinking of was K-9 (Doctor Who), where 4 completely different characters spread across what looks like 3 completely different tenuously connected programs are covered in one article. Analysis is a non-fiction example where many completely different uses in completely different fields from music to statistics to chemistry use the word but with something in common - the concept of "breaking something down into smaller pieces to understand it better". The topic is covered in an article not a disambiguation page.

In this case these are not unconnected "Ransacks". (For example, it doesn't contain examples such as "Ransack - the looting or pillaging of a city or country" and a link to an article on ransacks of towns.) They are all Ransacks in the Transformers series and universe. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 19:27, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Those K-9s were all robot dogs as far as I can tell. They are related concepts since the subsequent ones were based on the original, as a real-life design influence. Those Ransacks are simply characters from one brand who share a name. They don't look or act alike. They're not even the same species of Transformer (Ransack from the Armada comic books is a Mini-con, a separate species with separate origins compared to the rest of the Transformers). I understand there are articles like Batman of Zur-En-Arrh that covers multiple subjects, but those things actually have a relation beyond name (For the Batman of ZEA thing, it's clear that the one from Batman R.I.P was based on the Silver Age character in some form). NotARealWord (talk) 19:53, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's exactly the point. You can't tell if they are the same or not (nor could I!). You don't know if someone who's a Doctor Who fan would be horrified to see K-9 mark I, II, II, IV grouped as "all robot dogs"; they aren't all even in the same story or series, they are completely different characters. Yet they have enough in common as Wikipedia article subjects to share an article. Similar logic applies to Analysis, Ransack and various other topics. The AFD decision was because 1/ they are all "Ransacks" and all from the same fiction series/universe so it's not entirely unreasonable: there's considerable precedent that different characters or terms with a common thread (same series, same root) can and do share one article, 2/ there was no clear consensus otherwise at the AFD. If you're still not sure, it's easy to re-check at deletion review. Link it to this thread though. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 20:39, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The difference between the K-9s and the ransacks is that the K-9s were all based on the original. The Ransacks are entirely separate concepts. They don't look or behave like each other. A more relevant comparison is i the article Master (Doctor Who) was also about "The Master of the Land o Fiction". Those two have about as much relation as all the Ransacks. I'm not sure what you mean by "cannot tell if they are the same or not. Tlano is not the same thing as an alternate personality of Bruce Wayne. K-9s are separate things in-story but they're related in terms of as real-world design inspiration. Ransacks are entirely different characters. As I've mentioned, they don't even look alike. They're not really based on one another the way the K-9s are. NotARealWord (talk) 20:53, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted archives

I see that you deleted your archives (User talk:FT2/Archive) on 27 August 2009. Is there any reason for preventing non-admins from seeing this? John Vandenberg ^(chat) 23:04, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Also, as your deletion message says 'Refactoring'; what refactoring was done? I can't quickly see any refactoring being done at that time[6][7] John Vandenberg ^(chat) 23:10, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you're running for ArbCom, your talkpage history needs to be visible to non-admins. Seconding John's question, is there some reason that you, or I, or another admin should not restore these forthwith? MastCell ^Talk 23:59, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No need. When I archived it was with copy/paste not page move. So the talk history is still 100% visible in this page's history. Up till August 2009 I added a reorganized copy to a separate archive page when pruning the old threads. It was a habit from the days when I would work on a set of pages for many months and might need to refer back to old discussions related to those articles. My editing style changed years ago but I kept it from habit. That's what you're seeing.

You can restore it if you like, but anyone wanting to see my talk history doesn't need access to that page and I wouldn't rely on it. They can just look in this page's history for "archive"/"archiving" with page text search (or where byte count drops by 100K or so). The talk page history itself is the better source, because as a page for personal reference, the archive was not a 100% copy. It's been deleted a year now. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 01:53, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The archive is much more accessible, covering 4 years of your history on one page, and has incoming links. non-admins should be able to access this. Typically when people don't provide an archive, they provide a set of links to all archived versions in the history. You are providing neither. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 03:25, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure why anyone would link to the archive, but the link can easily be redirected to the relevant history revision. Also disagree that people "typically" provide links to all archived versions in history - or at least it's not a practice I've seen as a norm. If you sampled editors who remove rather than archive old posts, very few seem to provide a list of links to the history revisions. If they're needed then we look them up in history. Mine had precisely two incoming links in 4 years, both years old now. Suggests it's only salient now, in the context of this specific election, for one week. Then it goes back to being unwanted.

List of versions where threads were removed as old: May 2010 Aug 2009 June 2009 Jan 2009 (2) Jan 2009 (1:long) Aug 2008 Apr 2008 Apr 2008 to Mar 2008 Feb 2008 Dec 2007 Jul 2007 (2) Jul 2007 (1) Dec 2006 May 2006 Apr 2005. Before this there was ad-hoc removal of odd threads. My talk page has 12 deleted revisions, all apparently routine related to sockpuppetry policy and removed by an administrator in 2006 as being posted by banned user Zephram Stark. Apart from that and as far as I know, all edits ever posted to that page are public and in its history.

(Caveat - I haven't really operated a formal archive system nor expected to be asked for one. I don't have a foolproof way to produce one. The above list is generated by skimming my page history looking for where the byte count dropped. So I can't guarantee the above links will show all posts (there may be odd removals I missed) nor that any archive page I created for my own use will show all posts.)

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 04:37, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Disturbing Behavior at FT2's Question Page

This message has been posted to both involved parties' talk pages in identical form. Please discuss this further at the coordination talk page, rather than on your individual pages.

Let me make this very clear. This has to stop, if not because it reflects poorly on the two of you, if not because it reflects poorly on the elections, but at the very least because it is, at this point, disruptive. You are bickering over information that the public can not see, and accusations are being traded that can not be verified by the community at large. At this point, the damage is limited, and both of you have much more to gain by shaking hands and moving on. If there is a real concern here, it should be brought to ArbCom in private. If this is only posturing, it has to end. This is neither the time nor the place for this concern to be voiced, and while I do not have the authority to compel you to stop, I would kindly ask (in the strongest possible way) that it does.

Thank you, Sven Manguard _Talk 05:58, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I would say that responding to a pointy question by asking for data and suggesting email is the correct thing to do. I also asked for it to be removed. However it's solved now and hopefully all okay. I've checked the data he finally gave, the data at Arbcom is unsurprisingly correct. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 07:46, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Asking FT2 embarrassing questions about the scandals of his wiki-career "has to stop"? Well, why why do you suppose it hasn't stopped, Sven? Because FT2 had the questionable judgment to list himself as a candidate in these elections. People who do that must be prepared for questions, and if their wiki-past is chequered and their election statement full of holes, the questions will be sharp and difficult. If they weren't, it would indeed reflect poorly on the elections. This is very much the time and place for concerns to be voiced. Bishonen | talk 21:22, 30 November 2010 (UTC).[reply]

Aside from the mis-assumption about judgment, Bishonen is completely right here and I concur with her in all she says. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 14:21, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

FT, would you mind undeleting User talk:FT2/Archive? It was linked to in the 2009 RfC, but it's now coming up as a red link and it may contain some of the clarifications people are looking for (in the #Necessary Clarification section). SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 02:40, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's okay, my mistake, I replaced it with a link to the page history. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 09:06, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Everything should be in page history. Much more reliable than a link to that page (as discussed above). FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 14:21, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Query

I spent some time today rereading the OrangeMarlin and Oversighted edits debacle of late 2007-early 2009. One thing that confused me was Thatcher's statement in Wikipedia:Requests for comment/FT2 ("FT2, FloNight and I also discussed the issue of the oversighted edits in an IRC chat on April 24, 2008. Arbcom has the log. Thatcher 19:26, 14 January 2009 (UTC)"). That seemingly contradicts your extended statement and previous posts you made, which indicate that you were unaware of any such oversighted edits (although I can think of a number of things that would explain the situation). Could you clarify please? NW (Talk) 22:05, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for asking. I have a fair memory on it. The machine I need to check it for certain is briefly inaccessible - I should have access back shortly if all's well. Taking note of the query I'll do what I can to make that sooner than later. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 12:44, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've tracked down the log now. It bears out what I stated - the only statements are ones that speak of oversighted edits as a completely speculative allegation he could potentially make.

The log I have starts where I'm asking Thatcher and FloNight to agree that his wish for an on-wiki case is granted and the user allowed a public unban hearing visible to the community for transparency, if he wants, because then evidence can be openly scrutinized. Otherwise if heard in private there will be suspicion whatever the outcome. I get overruled because of their perception it will be disruptive to allow a platform - FloNight noting that he was banned for good cause, Thatcher pointing out that it doesn't matter whether there is anything to back up his claims or not, as - if no improper edits can be found - he would just allege material was oversighted instead (or if nothing's found in the oversight log either, that the developers removed it). Thatcher and Flonight then discuss how to deal with him as an obsessive or disruptive user and that I should not worry about him being given a private hearing instead.

That's all that's said about the oversighted edits in that log. As I stated, there's nothing at all that discusses whether specific edits were oversighted or would alert a user that actual edits were being claimed to be. There was no discussion of any oversighted edits, just discussion by Thatcher that if allowed a public case he might claim there were oversighted edits (and try can cause drama which both stated to me, would be pointless to allow). I've also emailed you the April 2008 log I have, either for review or to verify against the version from Thatcher. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 06:54, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That is a great response to the question FT2, but it is based on your 'data' and is not the right answer. The following dates could be slightly wrong as I haven't looked closely at timezones.

On April 21 (F43A818E433D44648BB0569FDCB686CB), the banned user emails Arbcom with a link which includes a crat saying publicly that they are emailing the details to the [Wikimedia] Foundation for review.
On April 22 (480dbb5d.1f15300a.0410.01b4), FT2 provides Arbcom with a summary of the user in question, leaving out many specifics that I know he knew back in December 2007.
On April 22 (54ADCFC31B35499C86E666B5197CB5D0), the banned user emailed Arbcom, forwarding their email from 8 December 2007 which contained all the details necessary to find these edits, being the first two edits FT2 ever made. FT2 claims to have forgotten that he started Wikipedia on the article Zoophilia. Even if he had forgotten, these emails were a reminder. The original email had been sent to two 'crats in December 2007. Jimmy Wales has also been sent these emails between December and April; I don't know whether they were received or not.
On April 24, there were a few arbitrator comments in a separate thread. MessageID 16032ea0804241712n3ee276cayd178991b1e0df657 shows that the problem was properly understood. At this stage, FT2 (48111d14.04eb300a.328e.097f) is still participating in the relevant discussions.
On April 25 (86CD3F11-2D27-44EC-A05E-3107DCA4965E), an arbitrator responded to the banned user, indicating that the committee would discuss the matter, and proceeded to start the arbcom discussion.
On April 25 (481265c7.2435440a.29eb.0c79), FT2 gave the arbs a brain dump of how he thought the arbs should handle the matter, whilst also indicating that he knew he was considered involved. Another arb promptly told him to keep his opinions to himself. FT2 respond acknowledging that his comments are as a party rather than as an arbitrator.

The Arbs in that IRC discussion may not have mentioned the specifics, but they were aware of them, or should have, or could have easily found them in their Inbox.

And riddle me this; why were you involved in that IRC discussion at all? You should have known to stay well away from this issue. By participating in it, you give up your right to claim you know nothing when the details were right there under your nose. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 10:01, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

John, this is getting pretty close to trolling. Thanks for the compliment and for jumping in with a mix of irrelevant emails and unfounded claims, but since the log was sent independently to Arbcom by Thatcher (as far as I can tell) it's verifiable and anyone can check the description is accurate.

Turning to the emails: like it or not, those emails were filtered and that was entirely what any arb should have done. You're suggesting that parties to a case watching their opponents' emails to Arbcom is acceptable. It is not. The community in 2007 and I strongly agreed on this point (this was a "big issue" at ACE2007). Parties to a case should not be shown or seek to view emails sent by opponents to the Arbcom mailing list, even if technically they could.

Extract from election platform in 2007

From Arbcom election Q&A, December 2007 (link):

Question by Irpen:

Arbitrator's private mailing list, known as Arbcom-l and the arbitrators only IRC channel may obviously include information that cannot be made public under any circumstances. Additionally, being aware of the intra-ArbCom communication may give case parties an obvious advantage over their opponents. [...] Should users who are parties of the case, comment on the case, present evidence on the case, be allowed to have read access to the list where the case is discussed by the decision makers?

Response:

"One line answer -- [...] 3/ Clear and strong oppose to parties being able to influence, shoulder-read, or be in the frame, in cases where they have involvement, but concerns over the best way to achieve that technically in practice. [...] (emphasis in original)

"[N]on-arbitrators have no way to tell whether (and how well) these things are being taken care of. Hildanknight used a good word discussing the Singapore elections yesterday: "Incorruptible". I think that's what's needed. Arbitrators so strict in their self-managing, that even if they were able to access such matters they wouldn't use it, nor would others be influenced by them."

If you don't approve of this stance, then we differ.

Asking on IRC that those handling his case give the guy what he wants (a public hearing) is not by any stretch "giving up a right". It's complete fairness and best practice, and needed to happen. That's why I requested that chat. There was not one statement in it to suggest an actual oversighting had happened. That's a red herring. The description above is accurate and NW (who's been sent a copy) would surely say something if not.

Perhaps that scale of integrity doesn't occur to you as something people do. Luckily as it's in the chat log itself, which I gather was sent independently to Arbcom, and in repeated emails to Arbcom demanding the user was given a hearing without my access to his email dialog, I don't have to ask that my word be taken on it. Be very careful not to assume I saw his emails just by being on the list. If I had seen them, that would be a black mark.

Of your 6 bullets -- (1/3/4/5) were all communications between Arbcom and the user (or by Arbitrators on the user's case) to which I excluded myself or was not included in the first place. I avoided reading emails that would infringe the user's right to a fair hearing. (2) is merely a vague claim "leaving out many specifics that I know he knew" Specify please. (6) was my demand that the case were held in a way that minimized harm and gave the best chance for a fair hearing, and listed the factors that could be seen as fair or pro/con public hearing. As a party, much less an arb, that's completely correct (even if others would have appreciated my not being so strongly concerned for the other user's reassurance). The IRC chat was my request to give the user the public hearing he wanted. I was declined on the basis he might use it as a soapbox. There was nothing in the chat to suggest to a participant that this was an actual issue.

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 18:12, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for File:Bestiarii (EUR Museum).jpg

Thanks for uploading or contributing to File:Bestiarii (EUR Museum).jpg. I notice the file page specifies that the file is being used under fair use but there is not a suitable explanation or rationale as to why each specific use in Wikipedia constitutes fair use. Please go to the file description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale.

If you have uploaded other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on those pages too. You can find a list of 'file' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free media lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. SchuminWeb (Talk) 06:09, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Old upload, query posted at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions#File:Bestiarii (EUR Museum).jpg. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 12:33, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Editing stats - opting in request

Hi FT2. I am writing my own ArbCom Election voting guide. One of the criteria I am reviewing is candidate's activity. Would you consider opting in for this tool, so that we can see your monthly (and yearly) distribution of edits? Thanks, --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 00:01, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ping. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 23:50, 6 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I missed something from you earlier

Hi, FT2, I only just discovered this comment of yours from earlier. Sorry about that. At this point, it seems largely moot, but I've written a brief reply on what little I thought still mattered at this point. Mostly just didn't want you to think I was deliberately ignoring you. Cheers. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 11:38, 7 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you

FT2, thank you for your helpful sourcing improvements to the article Meade Emory. Much appreciated, -- Cirt (talk) 04:39, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Christmas Card

User:DeltaQuad/Christmas2010

File:Choclab-cropped.jpg listed for deletion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Choclab-cropped.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Kelly ^hi! 08:47, 22 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Template:Ctest2

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If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hang on}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion, or "db", tag; if no such tag exists, then the page is no longer a speedy delete candidate and adding a hang-on tag is unnecessary), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, you can contact one of these administrators to request that the administrator userfy the page or email a copy to you. Mhiji 02:01, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:SPIevidencebottom

Template:SPIevidencebottom has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 06:37, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

IRC logs

Post by banned user - collapsed, see Checkuser inquiry below

Any idea how I could get a copy of the logs referred to here [8]. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.164.187.54 (talk) 19:58, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As Jimbo said, it's not at all likely. Contents of private chats amicably dealt with are unlikely to be passed around publicly. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 03:12, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Gabrielle Giffords

Editing through full protection

I know it's just cleanup, but still not a good idea, if avoidable. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:30, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As a general statement, SarekOfVulcan is of course correct about the policy. However, this article is going to viewed over the next few hours by tens of thousands of readers. As such, I think that WP:IAR would provide support for wholly uncontroversial cleanup edits and the like. This is an exceptional, urgent situation. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:33, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I couldn't agree more, and I've already stated such on the talkpage, but I reverted my earlier changes. Perhaps we'll need to clarify this in future... The Rambling Man (talk) 20:34, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia policy is that admin privileges are not to be abused for overriding page protection. Is that somehow unclear? I am slightly surprised that an admin is not clear on this. 88.112.59.31 (talk) 20:39, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WP:IAR to make the page good for the many thousands of views it's getting. That's obvious. Thanks. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:40, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You cite WP:IAR as an excuse for admin privilege abuse? That is so the wrong way for an admin to think and behave. 88.112.59.31 (talk) 20:53, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) I don't have a problem with the IP user having this concern. Admins should be accountable for their edits and admin actions - of which editing through protection is one. That accountability is to all users, and the question is a fair one. I have explained my reasoning below, it is roughly the same as Newyorkbrad's and The Rambling Man's. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 20:56, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Your edits of Gabrielle Giffords

Please stop editing a protected article. As an admin you should know that admin tools are not to be used for overriding page protection. 88.112.59.31 (talk) 20:31, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See my comment above. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:33, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Giffords

This led me to believe that we shouldn't be making cosmetic edits to the fully-protected article. I reverted all my changes post-full-protection, but it all looks a little inconsistent to me. I'd expect some kerfuffle at AN/I about all this... Oh well, whatever. Just thought you should know. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:33, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See my comment above. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:33, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment on the above

Full page protection generally applies to contentious issues. If any user objected to an edit, it would then of course need talk page discussion, but cleanup of sections unrelated to the issue are not usually a problem.

Page protection policy related to content disputes: "Pages that are protected because of content disputes should not be edited except to make changes which are uncontroversial or for which there is clear consensus".

This is going to be an extremely high traffic article with much public attention over the next few days. It is also a BLP and requires the highest quality of sourcing and writing. The content issue is purely related to her medical condition after the shooting and compliance with BLP policy in the wake of media focus. The rest is not contentious, and I personally do not intend to make any edits other than quality / factuality / tone. If any specific edit is in fact contentious then it should be reverted and discussed, or discussed first if likely to be contentious. Administrators are trusted to understand this - editing through protection is not trivial.

But "Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy", WP:BLP, protection policy, and WP:IAR all come into play here. As Newyorkbrad correctly says, this is a case where cleanup is appropriate and sensible. The page is protected purely to prevent inappropriate BLP editing on the question of her death and medical condition, and vandalism or very poor editing, due to its high profile.

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 20:51, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Update - I am making one edit on the shooting, namely to note she was one of several victims, which better represents the incident. Hopefully not contentious. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 21:05, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note that at the moment, the page is semiprotected rather than full-protected. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:09, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I thought it was better to be open about it, in case the user saw the edit and was concerned what was going on. But you're right, not needed now. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 21:11, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Request

Hi FT2, you are not one to habitually agree with me. :-) Could you have a look at Wikipedia:WQA#Response_to_Jehochman and the underlying content issues. You have a good eye for WP:NPOV. I'd value your feedback. Regards, Jehochman ^Talk 17:16, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Ambassador Program is looking for new Online Ambassadors

Hi! Since you've been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, I wanted to let you know about the Wikipedia Ambassador Program, and specifically the role of Online Ambassador. We're looking for friendly Wikipedians who are good at reviewing articles and giving feedback to serve as mentors for students who are assigned to write for Wikipedia in their classes.

If you're interested, I encourage you to take a look at the Online Ambassador guidelines; the "mentorship process" describes roughly what will be expected of mentors during the current term, which started in January and goes through early May. If that's something you want to do, please apply!

You can find instructions for applying at WP:ONLINE.

I hope to hear from you soon.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 20:12, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests for oversight grammatical error

I arrived at the Wikipedia:Requests for oversight page through a series of links, as I am prone to do. While reading through the page to see what it was all about, I discovered that under the "Necessary information" section right around the middle of the page, there was the sentence "...which can saves time". However, there was (for reasons unclear to me), no talk page for the article to report this. Looking through the revision history, I saw that you had done some grammar correctional edits, and, currently, the most recent editor for the page. Forgive me if I'm asking the wrong thing of the wrong person, but, because of the aforementioned reasons and since you're an administrator, I was wondering if you would be able to correct this error. My preemptive gratitude, W M 2 22:10, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've fixed the typo, and tried to make it clearer how cases get reported. Hope this helps - go take a look. I've credited you in the edit summary. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 12:04, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I can now rest easier tonight knowing that an important Wikipedian page is now free of grammatical error. My gratitude, W M 2 01:24, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Details of IRC chat

Collapsed

This refers [9].

You said earlier you could not make the IRC log public. You seem to have the only record.

Can you say what time the chat occurred?
Do you still have a copy of the log, or have you destroyed it?
Did you know at the time of Scribe's email that you had the only log?
Why did you drop out of the elections? WJ Scribe claims he does not remember any of the events you refer to, and he claims (per email) that your account is incorrect anyway - he did not inform you of any oversighting or anything like that. It doesn't make sense you should drop out o/a of something that no one ever remembers.

Best 86.178.24.134 (talk) 22:30, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Appears to be a post and attempt to engage despite an Arbcom ruling by a banned user (as confirmed by CheckUser), with whom I will not interact on-wiki. Previous question and reply also collapsed too. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 18:34, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, FT2. That seems very likely. --KFP (contact | edits) 19:39, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ping!

See User talk:Risker#Long post is long.. I'm extending the same invitation I made to Risker there to you, and to anyone else you can think of to invite. Steven Walling at work 01:31, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Persons convicted of fraud

Since you Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2011_January_26#Category:Persons_convicted_of_fraud participated in the recent CfD of Category:Persons convicted of fraud I wanted to inform you that the category was recently recreated and relisted. Here is a link to the current CfD should you wish to participate. Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2011_February_20#Category:Persons_convicted_of_fraud. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 03:49, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Anime" vandalism by Russian IPs.

Hello. Sorry to disturb you. I don't know if TV or anime is your cup of tea, but you should anyway check the following IPs, all of which are trying to put "anime" hoaxes and other misinformation and "connections" to the Philippine cartoon, Super Inggo at ang Super Tropa. I've also noted that users of these addresses (possibly a single person) have also put unsourced information and categories on other unrelated anime articles and several others. Here are the addresses I found so far (he may have used more):

92.100.237.11 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
92.100.178.61 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
92.100.161.170 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
92.100.182.39 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
92.100.177.214 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
92.100.238.160 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
91.122.87.45 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
91.122.89.81 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

To top this all off, these addresses are based in Russia. So obviously, the vandal surely couldn't provide sources for his edits as the said cartoon (if I'm not mistaken) has not been aired out of the Philippines. So what do you think? Can a block be imposed on either or both of the 92.100.128.0/17 and 91.122.80.0/20 ranges? It seems the addresses are assigned to the same provider. Thanks in advance. - 上村七美 (Nanami-chan) | talkback | contribs 03:16, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

IP block exemption

You’ve helped me before with an IP block exemption. I’m blocked again, it seems. Could you please look into this? --Babelfisch (talk) 08:29, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is being handled. Cheers, Amalthea 19:31, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Has been solved, apparently, but I still wonder what happened and why. --Babelfisch (talk) 02:18, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It was an oversight. Sorry to bother you. --Babelfisch (talk) 01:21, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Las Vegas

Hmmm...you've made the sentence say that the growth of LV in the '40s was due almost entirely to the Manhattan Project. But the source says that the growth of LV between 1945 and 1962 was that way. You might want to double check the source there. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 02:20, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Source states: "Between 1945 and 1962, about 100 above-ground tests were carried out. The light pulse, shock wave and mushroom cloud could all be seen from Las Vegas. Many times, residents threw cocktail parties and gathered outside while a test was being carried out. The early growth of Las Vegas was due almost entirely to the boost in prosperity it got from the huge numbers of scientists, test ground staff and soldiers that worked on the atomic tests."

The focus of the article is on the connection of bomb tests and LV, not on the history of LV. The source looks like it's making 2 sets of claims:

Between 1945 and 1962 many tests took place, and much partying was had.
The early growth of LV was due almost entirely to the personnel of these tests.

I had read "early growth" as not necessarily being the same as "1945-1962". It could probably be read other ways. What do you reckon? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 14:04, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Early growth" is pretty vague, anyway -- Las Vegas history goes back well into the 19th century, and most observers would say "wait a minute, early growth -- what about the Hoover Dam, which drew many thousands of people into the area?" I don't think the assertion or the "almost entirely" characterization is necessarily accurate, and perhaps a historical source rather than a technical writer source for such information would be superior. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 15:22, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Stop paranoid censorhip !

Good morning FT2,

I just want to let you know that there is in your rank of unpaid moderators a guy whose skill consists in applying your rules in a stubborn and almost inept way.

Moreover, this person seems to have psychological disorders as he always reverts "vandalism" everywhere, all the time. With him, you have absolutely hunted down a real gem: he is a real know-all! His pseudo is Logical Cowboy.

I think it is very charitable on the part of Wikipedia to provide the laid-off worker with occupations, but it could be nice if you would not impose persons with social misfit upon net surfers...

Thank you in advance,

Jay