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    NAC closure of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Line 1 (Rio de Janeiro)

    Could an admin please review the NAC closure of this AfD? It was closed as "speedy keep" after 5 days. I did not participate in this AfD but my feeling is that this AfD was not suitable for a NAC closure. With only 4 keep !votes, plus the nom arguing for deletion, I don't think it was in the SNOW range. The nominator did not withdraw the nomination and in fact argued rather strenuously in favor of deletion during the AfD; the rather heated and contentious nature of the discussion (with various accusations and counter-accusations of bad faith etc) shows that this was far from a non-controversial AfD and thus a poor candidate for the NAC. Plus one of the keep !votes and the non-admin closer clearly used faulty logic in their arguments. The nominator suggested deletion based on the contention that the two articles in question were unneeded content forks of another existing article. The closer stated that "Come on, SnottyWong, if the main problem isn't notability, you know better than to bring it here". Of course, there are many other valid reasons to delete an article, apart from notability, and a content fork argument is an example of such a reason (whether or not that argument was persuasive in this case). The nominator has complained at the closer's talk page, but the closer indicated that he is not going to reconsider his NAC close. I think an admin review of this close is in order. Nsk92 (talk) 12:13, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    • Second this, This was a completely inappropriate closure, and I've observed multiple other instances where this user performed inappropriate speedy keep, non admin closures, and discussion with them has achieved nothing. I don't feel they understand deletion policy, nor NAC guidelines enough to perform non admin closures. SwarmTalk 12:30, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thirded. Inappropriate NAC but leave closed with leave to renominate. The participants were attacking each other as much as arguing whether or not the article should be deleted. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 13:05, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've reviewed it, and also would say it's an inappropriate NAC. Furthermore, it's very poor form to place a warning about personal attacks in a closure rationale, so that's another reason this ought not to be just left as-is. I agree with Ron's suggestion, but I would like to leave it to another admin to alter the close, since I've previously reverted two of the same user's non-admin closes already: here and here. Thanks. Paul Erik (talk)(contribs) 13:37, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think that at the very least the closing statement needs to be changed by an admin since the current closing statement clearly uses faulty logic (as noted above, lack of notability is not the only valid argument in favor of deletion). I am fairly neutral on the issue of reopening for another few days/relisting or whatever. Nsk92 (talk) 13:48, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm the original AfD nom. Most of my thoughts are already on Erpert's talk page, so clearly I'm of the opinion that this was an inappropriate close. Whether or not Erpert has a history of inappropriate NAC's, I don't know. I don't think that reopening the AfD will actually accomplish anything (which is why I didn't start this discussion myself), although I think that strongly encouraging Erpert to refrain from NAC's is a very good idea, as he doesn't appear to be particularly capable of making unbiased decisions. Further evidence of this point is the fact that Erpert gave User:Oakshade a {{WikiPint}} on his talk page here. Since Oakshade was the user who was clearly making assumptions of bad faith during the AfD, it seems odd for the closer to "spread the good cheer and camaraderie" with him directly under my warnings. In any case, the {{User wikipedia/Administrator someday}} userbox on Erpert's user page would seem to be a lost cause. SnottyWong gossip 15:48, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think this is another sign of the common misunderstandings around SK. It is commonly treated as some sort of "super keep" rather than a set of limited technical decisions about an XfD debate. No comment yet on the actual debate. Protonk (talk) 16:42, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • First of all, neither the {{WikiPint}} nor the {{User wikipedia/Administrator someday}} templates have anything to do with this situation. Yes, some people have said that they don't think I understand WP:NAC, but I have responded to the claims explaining why I do understand, to which there was no response. Thus, I thought people saw my side. And where in WP:SNOW does it state a set amount of time to wait in order to speedily close? It seems like SnottyWong is mad and just following me around because I don't agree with him/her, and using my later contributions to try to convince people into thinking I recruited Oakshade or something--and now several people are on SW's side by coming here. I am not a bad editor, so please don't treat me like one. Erpert (let's talk about it) 18:35, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Erpert doesn't understand when it's appropriate to do NACs and should be told to refrain from making them in future.Bali ultimate (talk) 18:50, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Agreed. There are 5 situations in which the Speedy Keep might be applied, and none of them work here. The first doesn't apply because Snottywong neither withdrew or "failed to advance" the deletion, on the contrary. The nomination wasn't vandalism or disruption, Snottywong isn't banned, the page isn't a policy or guideline, and the article isn't linked from the main page. Those are the only times that you can apply a Speedy Keep. -- Atama頭 19:37, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Are y'all aware of WP:BATTLE? (And Bali ultimate, don't talk about me like I'm not here.) Erpert (let's talk about it) 19:49, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Erpert: Several experienced admins (Paul Erik, DoRD, Black Kite, Protonk, Atama) have told you that your NAC was inappropriate - and yet you are still stubbornly refusing to admit your mistake. You should try to listen to people's advice that is offered to you in good faith and learn from it instead of stubbornly digging in your heels and assuming that people are out to get you. It has been explained to you that the standard 5 criteria for speedy keep did not apply here. If you are trying to argue that this was a SNOW keep case (in which case you should have stated so in your close), that does not hold up either. At the time of your close, there were only 4 keep !votes, one of them (by Milowent) was obviously faulty - that argument was that "the nomination seems to be about organization, not notability". As was pointed out to you above, making an assertion that a particular article is a redundant content fork is a perfectly valid deletion rationale, distinct from the issues of notability. Yet you yourself also repeated that faulty argument in your close by saying: "Come on, SnottyWong, if the main problem isn't notability, you know better than to bring it here". 4 keep !votes, one of them based on faulty reasoning, plus the nominator still strenuously arguing his case in the AfD does not make for a SNOW keep case, not by a long shot. You should also remember that the spirit of NAC is to be used for only clear-cut and noncontroversial cases, which this one, fairly clearly was not. The requirements of WP:NACD are quite stringent, both in their letter and in their spirit, exactly in order to avoid having to have prolonged discussions of controversial NAC closes like this one. You should listen to the advice of the more experienced users (including 5 admins!) offered to you here in good faith and take it to heart. You also seem to profoundly misunderstand AGF. No-one here says that you acted maliciously or with any kind of bad intent. What people are saying is that your actions were misguided and were based on misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the relevant policies. Nsk92 (talk) 20:29, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'd suggest a ban for Erpert from closing AfDs since he is clearly not competent enough at this time to do this task. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.44.191.215 (talk) 20:57, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • I don't really think that is necessary. Epert made a mistake, it was reverted, it isn't the end of the world. Obv. I agree broadly w/ Nsk92's comments that Erpert take the comments onboard, but a ban or prohibition is a little much. Protonk (talk) 21:04, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Agree with all of the criticisms of the AfD closed. But Erpert raises one good point: the SK criteria say the reasons for speedy keep include, not are. I think it should be are as SK has always been understood by the criteria as a limited ground for closure adequately covered by the five reasons (in particular, Reason 2 is broad enough). Thoughts? --Mkativerata (talk) 21:33, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • My first thought is to change the word from include to are. SK has (or should have) a narrow, technical meaning just as CSD does. Use of SK outside of that narrow, technical meaning invariably results in threads like this and lots of ink spilled over something which could have been resolved through either patience or clarity. Protonk (talk) 21:41, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • I see where you're coming from Mkativerata, but we're allways going to end up eventually having a situation where the strict rules don't work, so keeping all our policies and guidelines flexible does help, even if at times it seems it doesn't. Pedro :  Chat  21:42, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • I know from experience that SKs are pretty rare and in practice, we tend to be pretty strict on the use of this procedure to close AfDs. I really do think that it should be less ambiguously stated that SKs must fall under one of the 5 criteria listed, simply changing "include" to "are" should suffice as Mkativerata suggests. I believe doing so will update the guideline to reflect how it is actually perceived, which I think is the best reason to change a guideline. -- Atama頭 22:52, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I find it amusing that Erpert is asking people to AGF, yet he continually insists that everything I do is because "I'm mad that everyone disagrees with me at the AfD, and I'm trying to get back at him", or something along those lines (i.e. a clear assumption of bad faith), despite the fact that this discussion was independently created by someone else without my involvement, and countless editors have told him he was wrong. I was actually going to forget about the AfD and move on, because it seemed like a lost cause, and I didn't care enough to pursue it. Now that the AfD is actually getting some delete votes, I hope it's becoming clearer to Erpert how disruptive his NAC was. SnottyWong spill the beans 23:52, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • To answer Nsk92's latest comment: you say no one thinks I acted in bad faith, right? Well, what am I supposed to think when an ANI report is started about me? And I understand that several admins have brought it to my attention, but I see it as their opinions, not my misunderstanding of guidelines. If people still think I misunderstand, I think a little rewording (as mentioned above) of WP:SK wouldn't be such a bad idea. (And just for the record, I haven't even looked at that AfD since this started because I think it's best if I'm uninvolved from here on out.) Erpert (let's talk about it) 01:45, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • When you see a WP:AN report regarding you, you are supposed to read it and try to listen to the substance of what people are saying instead of taking it personally. The report was filed to request an admin to review a non-admin closure of an AfD; WP:AN is a perfectly proper and standard venue for making such requests. If you read my original post and the posts by other users here carefully, you'll see that nobody is accusing you of acting maliciously, just of making a mistake out of misunderstanding. That is what you are supposed to think. Now, if five experienced admins offer you their informed opinion - you should listen to them. These are experienced users who have been Wikipedia editors a lot longer than you have, and who are admins, meaning particularly trusted users of the community specifically charged with enforcing Wikipedia policies, particularly in the area of AfD closing -you really should assume that they know the issue better than you do. There are several other users here telling you the same thing. Assuming that everyone else here is wrong and you alone are right is precisely the wrong attitude to take here. Nsk92 (talk) 03:35, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • Actually, I've been here since 2005; this account is new because I retired from another account--and no, it isn't sockpuppetry because I haven't even so much as logged into the old account since creating this one. Erpert (let's talk about it) 06:58, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • By the way, who is this suspicious IP, that just registered today, that is suggesting a ban? Erpert (let's talk about it) 01:45, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    There seems to be some confusion over WP:SK. That guideline is only for the reasons outlined in that page. If one closes early for any other reason such as WP:SNOW, then that would be an invocation of WP:IAR and when doing that, one shouldn't bold speedy keep. (the AFD in question didn't qualify for either IMHO) I think that the confusion comes from the "speedy" check box provided by the popular Mr Zman closing script which many people think needs to be checked whenever closing early (which has led to some ridiculous closes such as "speedy no consensus") and from the common but misguided "speedy keep" !vote seen in a lot of AFDs. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:50, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    • As far as I can see, this is an instance of a confusion that I know that you've encountered before, and that I certainly have. People think that "speedy keep" is analogous to "speedy delete", when in fact it isn't, and what they are really talking about are snowball keeps. Even the latter isn't what people sometimes think it to be. Uncle G (talk) 06:52, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    The minor rewording of WP:SK that was suggested above is done. It now simply says "Reasons for a speedy keep decision are" to avoid giving the impression that there are unmentioned instances in which a speedy keep can occur. The sentence that says "WP:SNOW is a valid keep criterion for an early close, and is not subject to any of the other criteria necessary for speedy keep, but its use is sometimes discouraged" is really vague and unhelpful to the SK guidelines also. SwarmTalk 03:08, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    Topic ban proposal: User:Erpert

    Template:Formerly

    There have been problems with Erpert's NACs for weeks or months, and each time he has dismissed concerns. "I understand that several admins have brought it to my attention, but I see it as their opinions, not my misunderstanding of guidelines" shows a blunt refusal to admit ever being wrong. I do not have confidence in their judgement, so I would back a topic ban on closing AfDs. Fences&Windows 11:51, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    • Oppose for now. As far as the "SK" thing goes, I made that mistake once so I'm not going to slam him for that. However, I would suggest that Erpert voluntarily take a break from closing AFDs for a while. I've done that a few times after I've messed up. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 13:44, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Naw. He seems intent on not getting the message, but this isn't that big of a deal that anyone needs to be topic-banned or otherwise restricted. Protonk (talk) 14:38, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support - There is very little need for non-admins to be speedy-closing AfD's. When there is a need, it is overwhelmingly obvious (i.e. when the nominator withdraws the nomination). Since this user apparently has a propensity for closing a relatively large number of AfD's, and since he doesn't appear to understand the circumstances under which it is appropriate to do so, I would support a ban on closing AfD's. SnottyWong communicate 16:45, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support - take three months off from closures and gain some more experience , you should do this on your own anyways without this motion . Off2riorob (talk) 16:54, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • The rationales on a few of the pointy baseball AfD closes weren't exactly great (although I don't fault the closes), but there are a couple of disturbing closes that I came across-- Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Facebook revolution, where it was closed as nomination withdrawn when there was an outstanding delete opinion; another one is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Racial attacks on Michelle Obama, closed as a speedy redirect (with no objection to someone else performing a merger), within a day of the AfD being opened, when all three participants (other than nominator) opined for a merge. These closes along with the habit of entering personal opinions to closing rationales shouldn't be done. I'd support a topic ban from closing AfDs for a duration of a few months at least. —SpacemanSpiff 17:07, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support - But only because Erpert has made mistakes and seems to be unable to acknowledge the mistakes. I don't want a support of this ban to suggest that anything malicious has taken place. I'd prefer that Erpert just accept that the interpretation they had of SK was incorrect, especially since there was some ambiguity in the guideline that has only just now been fixed, and that they'll follow the guideline properly in the future. If so I'd expect a ban would be unnecessary, but since that hasn't happened I can only reluctantly support the ban. -- Atama頭 17:22, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Oppose - I think that Erpert got the message which was all I wanted to see. I don't think a ban is necessary at this point. If Erpert doesn't show more caution in the future, or better judgement, then perhaps a ban will be necessary but I believe we should give them a chance. -- Atama頭 05:57, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment. Wow, I thought people were assuming good faith; I guess not (Fences&Windows, "weeks or months"? No offense, but you don't even sound sure). And where's the proof that I won't follow the guideline in the future? Have I speedily closed anything since this started? And I didn't say I didn't acknowledge the mistakes; now that WP:SK has been reworded, I understand better. And I've noticed that whenever I bring up valid points (this situation turning into a battleground; no length of time being set for WP:SNOW), no one pays attention and instead continue discussing this as though I didn't defend myself at all. Why is that?
      • Another thing, why is SpacemanSpiff bringing up speedy closures I performed that no one objected to? If you had an objection then, you should have said it then. It's like you were waiting for things to build up and then using it against me at just the right time (yeah, I know I was encouraged not to take it personally, but it's really hard not to at this point). Erpert (let's talk about it) 17:43, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • Or, more likely, that most of the people in this discussion had never interacted with you and when faced with an accusation, they did their homework and looked up your past NACs. Protonk (talk) 18:07, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • There is no persecution against you, Erpert, we're only trying to judge your ability to close AfDs and Spiff looked into your past contributions and found other mistakes. He didn't have an objection then, because he was unaware of them at the time. This noticeboard report has brought your mistakes to light which is why we're reviewing them. But let me ask you, are you now acknowledging that your interpretation of SK was wrong? When you say, "I didn't say I didn't acknowledge the mistakes", that's simply false. We've quoted you doing exactly that. I've ignored your point about this being a "battleground" because nobody is trying to turn this into one, and you've repeatedlt asked others to assume good faith when you're not doing so yourself. I have to say, however, that if you're acknowledging the mistakes now, that's very helpful. We're only interested in preventing disruption, and inappropriate AfD closures are examples of disruption, even if the disruption isn't deliberate on your part. If the community is confident about your ability to close AfDs with a new understanding of the speedy keep criteria, then perhaps this ban isn't necessary. -- Atama頭 18:15, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • As mentioned above by Protonk, I checked the NAC history before commenting here. Just because a problem wasn't identified before it doesn't mean that it didn't exist. The issue here isn't a case of AGF either, everyone makes mistakes, but you've refused to acknowledge them ("Now go away" as a standard response on your talk page) and pass it off as just opinions of other people. That is a clear no-no if you plan to do such tasks. —SpacemanSpiff 20:29, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Weak Support - It appears that Erpert had only good intentions, and after looking what he/she saw it would be easy to come to the same conclusion. I don't think that there were any maliscious intentions involved, and it was obviously going in the way of keep at the time. This may a good time to begin a discussion on whether there should be additional tools to allow non-admin veteran editors the ability to close AFD and Requested Moves. As it would seem that WP:AFD and WP:RM seem to always have long back logs. This way also, we can get rid of the whole NAC, and have non-admin users more accountable for their actions (Similar to Rollback rights).--Jojhutton (talk) 17:46, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Comment AFD rarely has serious backlogs these days; as I type this there are no outstanding debates from 3 August or before at all. There is very occasionally a bit of a backlog when there are a lot of "difficult" ones to close but these are the ones that non-admins shouldn't be touching anyway. Black Kite (t) (c) 18:22, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • And largely the historical backup was a result of AfDs being really tedious to manually close. When Mr. Z-Man introduced the simple closing script it was like night and day. Protonk (talk) 18:26, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Atama, about my saying "I didn't say I didn't acknowledge the mistakes" being false, didn't you read the sentence that came directly after that? "Now that WP:SK has been reworded, I understand better." And as far as the assumption of me not assuming good faith, that can get a little clouded when an ANI report is brought up against me, don't you think? Erpert (let's talk about it) 19:18, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • And Jojhutton, you wrote "weak support", but then it sounds like you're actually opposing the ban. Which is it? Erpert (let's talk about it) 19:21, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • I believe that Jojhutton changed the subject halfway through, addressing the potential of creating a new tool for non-admins to assist in non-admin closures, given to select individuals the way that Rollback and Autoreview are. Let's just say that you have acknowledged the mistakes now, you're glad that WP:SK is more specific now, and that you won't go outside of that guideline with speedy keeps now that you have a better understanding of it? Does that seem a fair summary? -- Atama頭 19:51, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support I counted at least five sections on Erpert's talk page where user's noted that he has improperly closed AfDs. Clearly, this is a problem area for him, and he needs a long break from it. AniMate 19:53, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support Before I was admin, I did quite a few NAC's ... some were contested. I'd like to think I was open-minded enough to have learned, and stopped accordingly - I must have, or else I would not be an admin now I suppose. If this editor is not even willing to stop, re-read, re-learn, and whatever it takes, then not only do I not want them closing AfD's, but they should also be aware that this kind of grievous error (and lack of desire to learn) has probably added at least a year (and a couple of dozen opposes) to their next/first WP:RFA - we can only WP:AGF so much before WP:COMPETENCE becomes an issue. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 19:55, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support, making mistakes is acceptable (and expected with one's first steps into a new area), but refusing to acknowledge and learn from a consensus that they were a mistake is not. It's a shame that this is what it takes to get that point across, but judging from the comments made by Erpert here, I don't see it happening any other way. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:58, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support per Bwilkins. The history of inappropriate NACs being raised with Erpert indicates that he or she is not responsive to the community's concerns. Responses here show a similar lack of responsiveness. --Mkativerata (talk) 20:00, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support - going against the projects' consensus is not allowed and the user is unwilling to cooperate with users and respond to good faith community concerns. Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 20:52, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support Obviously a recurring problem; the fact that they haven't learned or acknowledged their mistakes earlier don't help. —fetch·comms 22:02, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support A recurring problem. Obviously doesn't understand deletion policy. When corrected individually, they continue to defend themselves, showing lack of ability to correct mistakes and understand policy. Even in the face of a strong consensus against them, they appear unwilling to respond to concerns, instead making accusations of bad faith assumptions against them. I've seen nothing that would lead me to believe these actions will stop. SwarmTalk 02:05, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support- People have been asking Erpert to stop making bad NAC's for quite a while and his response has generally been to ignore them or tell them to go away. Editors who don't know what they're doing and won't heed advice are problematic. Reyk YO! 02:37, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support - I was neutral, or leaning toward opposing, but after reading this exchange, I feel I must weigh in. Yes, the improper NACs are an issue, but the larger problem is Erpert's combativeness and refusing to listen to reason when mistakes are pointed out to him, even when called out by much more experienced users. Until he learns to listen to advice and gains a more collegial attitude, Erpert should not be closing AfDs, or doing any other "admin-lite" tasks for that matter. —DoRD (talk) 03:05, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support - I read the exchange that DoRD linked in his comment, and agree that it shows Erpert in a bad light. Anyone who closes AfDs, admin or not, needs to be aware of consensus and pay attention to feedback from others. EdJohnston (talk) 03:26, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment. See, the same thing is happening: I have acknowledged what happened, but people don't seem to see that. I guess I have to spell it out:
    • 1) "Have I speedily closed anything since this started?"
    No.
    • 2) "I didn't say I didn't acknowledge the mistakes; now that WP:SK has been reworded, I understand better."
    This is the third time I had to write this. You all are saying I'm not acknowledging the situation, but no one is acknowledging where I'm coming from. I'm being torn apart after clearly stating I do understand what went wrong here, which is totally unfair. In fact, after it was reworded and I said I understood, I simply asked if the discussion could be closed; instead, a topic ban thread was started. (By the way, Bwilkins, as I mentioned before, WP:RFA has absolutely nothing to do with the situation at hand.) Erpert (let's talk about it) 04:38, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Erpert, you've had multiple issues when it comes to closing AfDs. Most of the time we don't have to spell things out so specifically, and even when told what you were doing was incorrect you rule-lawyered over it and generally refused to hear what you were being told. Wikipedia is a big place. A few months from doing non-admin closures isn't that big of a deal, and I'm sure you can channel your energies elsewhere. AniMate 05:48, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • But when WP:SK was changed, I said I understood. What don't you understand? To me, WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT would only apply if I didn't defend myself at all. Erpert (let's talk about it) 06:23, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • I changed my suggestion above, and now oppose a ban against you. I believe that you get what people are saying and won't close AfDs in the same way. But if you understand what went wrong, I hope you understand that there was cause for this whole discussion to begin in the first place. I don't think anything here is unfair, except for a couple of unfair comments against you (which you'll see were already objected to by others above). You're within your rights to request that the discussion be closed, but if the community wishes it to continue then it will. If it's a comfort at all, NACs aren't all that common anyway, I think I might have done a total of two ever, and SKs are pretty rare, so if you are in fact banned there are many other things you can do. It's not like people are banning you from the site, very far from it. -- Atama頭 05:57, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • Let me explain a little further why I support a community ban, Erpert. It goes beyond the minor wording mixup at WP:SK. For example, you speedily closed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jorge Castillo (artist) because you didn't think the nominator understood "what warrants an afd", despite a valid nom rationale. When I left a note on your talk page, you cited #2, or "The nomination was unquestionably vandalism or disruption and nobody unrelated recommends deleting it". Or this speedy keep. When Paul Erik informed you that it didn't qualify for a speedy keep, instead of trying to clarify the issue at all, you're response was "I think it does. We should agree to disagree on this." Or the fact that you feel collapsing AfD discussions (a procedure widely frowned upon) is okay simply because it doesn't say not to. When advised not to do this, you reacted with stubbornness and very incorrectly cited WP:AGF. You showed inability to understand WP:Consensus also. Here, you received a message, "that current consensus holds that it is bad practice to tag articles for speedy deletion as lacking context (CSD A1) or content (CSD A3) moments after creation", and your response was, "I understand that, but that's a suggestion, not a guideline." Consensus is central to Wikipedia, as it is central to AfD. And then we have this incident, where you essentially closed a discussion because the nomination wasn't notability-related. The speedy keep guideline isn't the only problem, it's the fact that you've shown you don't fully understand deletion policy in general, nor do you easily admit mistakes, cooperate with complaints, or accept consensus. I don't think you currently have the qualities needed for a non-admin closer. This topic doesn't appear to be "your thing". SwarmTalk 07:09, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • I think you mean topic ban, not community ban. A community ban is way over the line here. Still, I think Erpert's problems at AfD are strong enough that he needs to focus his efforts elsewhere. Again, you have acknowledged the problem, but there are just so many. AniMate 08:35, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
            • I hope this can be a life lesson for Erpert. I can't tell you how many people I meet in life who are unable to admit their mistakes and take constructive criticism from others. These kinds of people rarely succeed in life. This sprawling ANI thread could have been a whole lot shorter if Erpert's first response to it was something along the lines of "You're right, I see now that closing that AfD early was not an appropriate application of WP:SK, and wasn't a good candidate for a NAC. Sorry, my mistake." If that was the first response, this discussion would have ended immediately. Instead, Erpert initially had to endlessly plead not guilty, tell people to AGF, and warn people about WP:BATTLE, despite a dozen editors and admins telling him he was wrong. He hung his argument on the word "include", as if that word means that you could make up your own reasons to speedy keep an article. Now that the word has been changed to "are", he is willing to admit his mistake. It appears there is a consensus for a topic ban, and hopefully the ban will teach you to admit your mistakes instead of wikilawyering to try and justify your actions. SnottyWong prattle 16:14, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
            • I'm sorry, AniMate, I don't quite understand -- the community can impose a topic ban, which is what's being discussed right now (obviously). I didn't say full site ban I said community ban, which isn't incorrect. SwarmTalk 20:52, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    * Oppose and close this nom This was a good faith close. I looked at the AFD as it stood when Erpert closed it and his closure reflected current consensus. Yes, I realize it wasn't in keeping with NAC because per WP:NAC a non admin close cannot be done in a speedy fashion. Yet, he reflected the consensus and didn't try to close as anything other than keep, suggesting that he knew how NAC worked. I saw it as an IAR close. I think the proposal to ban him from AFD is innapropriate. I further disagree with re-opening the AFD, we have DRV for that. Such a re-opening assumes bad faith on the part of the closer (yes, I saw on the NAC page that an Admin CAN re-open a NAC, but just because you can doesn't mean you should. Just my two cents. KoshVorlonNaluboutes,Aeria Gloris 12:11, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

      • The last thing non-admins should be doing is WP:IAR closes, frankly. Because this is what happens. Also, the problem isn't that NAC's can't be done as Speedy Keep (they can), it's that this wasn't a Speedy Keep. And what's the point in going to DRV and wasting everyone's time when the result of the DRV would clearly be that the AfD was improperly closed and therefore should be relisted anyway? Black Kite (t) (c) 12:28, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • "Such a re-opening assumes bad faith on the part of the closer". That's just not so. When I reverted two of Erpert's closes in the past, I assumed that the guidelines were misunderstood, not that Erpert was being deliberately disruptive. Paul Erik (talk)(contribs) 12:47, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • With respect, you really should have read more of the thread before leaving that comment. This one close isn't the reason for a proposed topic ban. If it was, I would absolutely agree with you, but if you look above you'll see that there are numerous recurring problems. SwarmTalk 21:01, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support particularly since he's been rather insistent that there's no problem. It's a minor restriction "Don't close AFDs." Costs nothing and improves the editing environment.Bali ultimate (talk) 12:26, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support I'm not a huge fan of non-admin closes in general, and it's painfully obvious that anyone who's proved not of sound judgement on NACs multiple times now should be asked to work elsewhere. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 13:32, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • You know what? Forget it. I don't even care anymore. Hardly anyone is even trying to see my side here, and when a few editors do, people seem to continue this discussion as though no one spoke. I have said numerous times that I have acknowledged the problem; what more do you want? If NACs are that much of a problem, then no non-admins should perform them; not just me. If y'all don't think this is a battle, there must be a different definition of the word that I'm not familiar with. (By the way, SnottyWong is way too personally involved in this.) Erpert (let's talk about it) 16:48, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I agree that SnottyWong is not uninvolved in this matter, and to be honest the "unfair remarks" I'd alluded to before were from them. As to the suggestion that this is becoming a battleground, that's part of the problem here. I don't see that anyone is personally attacking you. I can understand if the volume of criticism is overwhelming, and I sympathize, but the nature of the criticism is simply to express a dissatisfaction with your closure of AfDs (which you've acknowledged was problematic, much to your credit) but also your inability to accept criticism properly. This isn't personal, I don't believe that anyone here thinks that you've been malicious and nobody has said you're a bad editor. But you do have a history of either brushing off criticism or taking it too personally. In this very discussion you've done both, and though you're definitely not brushing it off anymore, you are interpreting these criticisms as personal attacks against you. Does anyone other than SnottyWong have a reason to have a grudge against you or do they have personal conflicts with you that they're carrying over? If so, it would be helpful to identify that, otherwise I don't think that your complaint that this is a battlefield is justified. In a collaborative environment like Wikipedia, it's important to be able to accept input from others, even if that input is negative. I do want to personally thank you, however, which I have not yet done. You chose to point out a flaw in our Speedy Keep guideline which led to an important change that should help avoid misunderstandings in the future. And you've also been relatively civil during this whole discussion (you haven't "gone off") despite the number of people criticizing you, which shows character on your part. -- Atama頭 17:33, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I know you probably won't believe me Erpert, but trust me, I'm not way too personally involved in this. I honestly don't care which way the AfD goes or what happens to the article after that. From the very start you assumed that the reason I opposed your NAC was because I was upset that no one agreed with my AfD nomination, and it's clear that you continue to believe that. Perhaps it was my argument with Oakshade regarding the AfD which caused you to assume this (which is fair enough), but I assure you the only thing that upset me were Oakshade's blatant assumptions of bad faith. And, the only thing that prompts me to comment here and on your user talk page is a concern that there might be an abusive non-admin closer out there who is inappropriately speedy-keeping a lot of AfD's. So, in summary, I am not personally involved in this, regardless of what you or anyone else might think. Furthermore, I fail to see what is "unfair" about any of my remarks during this discussion. I have remained entirely civil and made no personal attacks. Erpert is upset because he wants to see an outpouring of support from everyone now that he's decided to make a belated admission of guilt, and he's not seeing that outpouring. Them's the breaks, kid. Wikipedia is unique in that everything you post is set in stone for all eternity for everyone to see, and this leads to people focusing more on the history of an issue rather than the immediate present development of it. You've done what you've done and said what you've said, and nothing can change that at this point. I'd suggest you stop complaining and take your lumps. SnottyWong spill the beans 22:22, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Also, even if I were too personally involved with this discussion, it wouldn't really matter since my participation in the matter has been extremely minimal. I didn't revert your close, I didn't start this AN thread, I didn't propose the topic ban. My involvement is limited to the 4 or 5 comments I've made on your talk page and this page, so if you're looking for someone to blame for your problems, it's not me. SnottyWong spill the beans 22:25, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • What I thought was unfair was labeling the early AfD closure as disruption. I just see it as a good-faith act done incorrectly. You say that now that there are delete !votes, which wouldn't have been there had the discussion stayed closed, that there is evidence of how disruptive the close was. But I don't think that's fair. Most AfDs run for 7 days and are closed if a consensus has emerged at that time, or if it seems like a consensus is unlikely to happen. I'm sure that there are unanimous AfDs that could have had different results if they'd stayed open longer than the week they ran, but you wouldn't call the admin closing those AfDs "disruptive" for following due process, would you? The fact is, you can always second-guess any discussion, and speculate on how they could have ended differently if only more people had joined in or if it had gone on longer, but it's not fair to hold the closer accountable if there's no indication that current consensus is going to change; we can't see the future. If you had meant that this helps demonstrate why closing the AfD early was wrong, I think everyone would agree, but your statement above (that others asked you to refactor) doesn't state that. Accusing an editor of disruption is pretty serious, and unfair when they make an honest mistake. Mistakes are common enough with deletions that we have WP:DRV to routinely handle them. -- Atama頭 00:33, 13 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I commented way above when I figured this would peter out with little to no interest, but I think we should close the debate without action. This 'topic ban' has taken a life of its own. We should be comfortable trusting in the strength of unofficial censure/displeasure rather than willing to dish out formal 'punishment' (I know it isn't punishment per se, but bear with me). It is possible that Erpert can simultaneously understand that his actions have incurred tremendous feedback and deny that his actions were wrong in the first place. In fact, it isn't necessarily our job to ensure that Erpert learns that his/her actions were wrong in the first place, such a state of mind might not be possible to enforce. If s/he comes around and treats NACs w/ more caution, wunderbar. But if not, I think the general message sent has been clear. We don't need to follow it up with unnecessary aggravation. If backing away from the topic ban isn't an acceptable solution to supporters, then how about we treat it as a 'trigger'? No topic ban, but leave the decision of a topic ban up to admins based on future NACs. In general we need to give people the freedom to fuck things up and even to be stubborn about it, provided those two traits aren't disrupting the project (I don't think we could claim much disruption from the NACs s/he closed, even the improper or reversed ones). Not every job needs the hammer. Protonk (talk) 22:06, 13 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Its not petered out, a request was opened and users have commented and it clearly is supported, its been open a couple of dayys and should be closed and the user notified of the restriction. Off2riorob (talk) 22:12, 13 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Clearly it hasn't petered out. I said I thought it would when I posted my comment. I was wrong. Protonk (talk) 22:21, 13 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Agree with Off2riorob your opinion is very reasonable, Protonk, but we can't close this with no action. A topic ban is indeed clearly supported, and very justifiable. I don't feel we're being harsh, jumping on someone for making mistakes and simply being stubborn, the issue is beyond that. It's gone too far. This user has not shown me that they fully understand their mistakes and can effectively continue the work without further incident. SwarmTalk 03:20, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Eh. Really honestly all he did was mess up some NACs and get his nose out of joint when people asked him about it. Sure there is an overwhelming majority in favor of restricting him, but I don't see the point. What's liable to happen is he gets pissed off for being restricted based on what he feels to be marginal harm and flares out or leaves. Protonk (talk) 03:30, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Protonk, your comments (about how the "topic ban has taken a life of its own") hint to me that you think people are piling on for the sake of piling on, or that this proposal has turned into more of a a popularity contest (i.e. a discussion about whether everyone likes/dislikes Erpert, rather than about the topic ban itself). Don't assume that all of the !voters above haven't thought through what this topic ban means before they cast their !vote. There's a clear consensus above, and your comments appear to be an attempt to circumvent that consensus because you don't agree. If this were the first time Erpert did this, a topic ban would be a bit harsh. However, multiple admins have commented above about how they have had to revert multiple NAC's by Erpert, and linked to warnings he's already gotten on his talk page. This is clearly not working. Besides, the "punishment" is so minor anyway; NAC's are such a small part of WP. Surely Erpert can be constructive elsewhere. SnottyWong chat 20:04, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I mean only what I say. I'm sure everyone above thought through their comment (and in most cases I don't have to assume, they made explicitly clear their chain of reasoning and the evidence in support of it). The idea that a discussion can have path dependence is not exclusive with the idea that participants can have free will. We ought to be a little realistic and explore the possibility that calling for a topic ban might have pointed people down the path of either "opposing" or "supporting" without simply resolving the issue by gradiation. My larger point is that we clearly are not in a situation where a topic ban is the minimally intrusive tool in our kit to deal with the extant disruption. And if that is not the case, we ought to consider strongly whether or not use of a topic ban is the right choice despite the opinions and arguments made in favor. Sometimes opprobrium is response enough. Protonk (talk) 21:46, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    Despite a previous ANI which concluded that links to oocities.com violate WP:COPYLINK, user UpdateHelper's bot is changing hundreds of links to point to it. [1] Geocities.com is defunct, but its pages are reliably hosted on Archive.org. If somebody wants to provide reliable links to vanished geocities pages, it would be very simple to make a bot to change "geocities.com/blablabla" not to "oocities.com/blablaba" but to "web.archive.org/web/*/geocities.com/blablabla".

    Furthermore, to quote a different objection on UpdateHelper's talk page, "Geocities links can be redirected quite easily using Checklinks. Tedious as a human job, but likely possible with a well-thought-out bot. Once they've been changed to point to this mirror, Checklinks is no longer an option. It's worth seriously considering whether this action is going to cause even more work down the road. " (quotingUser:Katherine) [2]

    I think these bot-edits should stop until there has been some consensus among administrators on the best place for vanished Geocities links to point to. betsythedevine (talk) 16:40, 13 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    From Wikipedia:BOTPOL#Bot usage: "Note that high-speed semi-automated processes may effectively be considered bots in some cases, even if performed by an account used by a human editor. If in doubt, check." [emph. in original]. I think a best practice would be to seek community consensus and have the task approved by BAG. There are several issues here: first, that many of the oocities links are not presently operational (and may never be), so it's replacing one dead link with another. Second, there is the concern of copyright - which needs to be resolved before we create links en masse to OoCities. I'm not sure that their http://oocities.com/geocities-archive/faq.html satisfies the concern that the re-use of the Geocities content is legal (IANAL). See also Wikipedia:BOTPOL#Assisted editing guidelines: "In general, processes that are operated at higher speeds, with a high volume of edits, or are more automated, may be more likely to be treated as bots for these purposes"). At the present volume and rate, I would say that it 1) is considered a bot task 2) is potentially controversial 3) requires community consensus before continuing and 4) should go through BRFA. And finally, some (most?) of these links perhaps shouldn't even be here in the first place, the former Geocities being a free web server. –xenotalk 17:45, 13 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Agree on all points. The copyright status of internet archives are by no means clear, but at this point Wayback is permitted. OoCities seems to have its heart in the right place, but they also seem a bit naive. Did anybody see a registered designated agent there? (I didn't; I also see that in order to remove content, copyright owners must "Use your original email which was stated on your page to verify that you are the owner." That seems to be putting hoops up beyond those permitted by OCILLA.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:15, 13 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    - Free webserver is a question i totally agree it should be asked, especially for freewebsite sites made within the last ten years. But in the 90s this was slightly differnt, because there were less better ways to publish. Those geocities sites linked in wikipedia were mostly made between 1994 and 2000 and it was differnt, thus there are quiete a few geocities pages made by high university degree autors which provide trule unique scientific sources. or just very specific unique informations like this one providing tables of results of a historical chess championchips http://web.archive.org/web/20091021101919/http://geocities.com/al2055km/ch_repub/1919/ch_mos19.html --Updatehelper (talk) 00:13, 14 August 2010 (UTC)


    • While I don't doubt their good faith, there are too many questions that need answering before this task goes forward. I've reverted the most current batch of edits and will ask the user to seek consensus and approval at BRFA prior to recommencing this task. –xenotalk 18:52, 13 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    --------------

    Hello, To read further on the issue you may want to have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive579#User:_Updatehelper and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Updatehelper

    My task is simple but cost a lot of time: It is to update links which lead to geocities.com (13000 left) because geocities is completely dead since 10 Month. Therefore i either change them to oocities.com (which has got about 90% of them) or otherwise afterwards to archive.org (which has got less, and takes longer to load single pages) when iam done most of them work again, when i stop they will stay dead as they were for the past 10 month and they will go on wasting a lot of human time.

    Now i will give a statement on each single point of criticism:

    "better Archive.org? " :

    • 1. Oocities has a higher percentage of these pages, estimated 90%, whereas archive.org appears to have only about 50%. Thus its the most reasonable first step to update the links, which are still not changed 10 month later, to oocities.com.

    -->A great amount of pages which is not at Archive.org is available at oocities.com but only very few are not at oocities but can be found in another archve. in this case oocities redirects to archive.org

    • Anyways there will not be any barrier doing further efforts after my first and most striking step is done and edit single 404 Links to oocities and make them web.archive.org/web/*/geocities.com/ if they are available there. but as said before thats rarly the case. And even 13000 Links are quiete a few i was the only one willing to work on updateing them since they were pulled offline in 2009

    If noone else will, then i will of course take those further steps to improve my action. but yet the first and most effective step is to change the links to oocities.com because still 13000 Links lead there and after this first step most of them will work and only a few 100 will redirect to archive.org and another few 100 will not work because they probably arent available anywhere. also Archive.org is very slow (especially images).

    • Oocities is not online since 14 years but since one year, when geocities was closed, and its stable.

    "copyright" :

    • its basically the same question for all archvies. Both take down contents on requests and both mean to be a community service.
    • OoCities probably receives less removal request because for Geocities the owners did not intentionally remove their pages.

    "BOT"

    • I use a very sophisticated so called RegularExpression in AutoWikiBrowser which contains a hundred lines to avoid any mistakes
    • i can just apply to be a "BOT" if you guys want me to but it will not change the way i work which is obviously still much more human controlled and time-consuming than a bot was:

    When i start editing i first collect a list of articles which should be updated. later working on the articles, thanks to AutoWikiBrowser and the Regular Expressions, i reach a partly high speed because the only thing you have to do is review the changed line for a moment (15 seconds or more) and just click save. But I work concentrated and learnt from a few minor mistakes in the beginning and further improved the Regex so that there wasnt any unwanted mistakes for the past 5000 edits and i will get the next 13000 done within the next month.

    -Updatehelper (talk) 21:06, 13 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    I disagree that it is basically the same in terms of copyright. Archive.org complies with the DMCA, with a duly registered designated agent. There's no sign that OoCities does this, and their requirement that the copyright holder contact them via the same address they had when they last updated their GeoCities content is problematic. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:12, 13 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Its obviously not a requirement but an advice to simplify or speed up their removal process thus its not problematic --Updatehelper (talk) 21:29, 13 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    That's not what it says. It says, "Use your original email which was stated on your page to verify that you are the owner." --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:32, 13 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    At this point, I begin to feel that in addition to being problematic for copyright concerns (lack of OCILLA compliance), this website could very well be problematic for spam. Randomly clicking, I see that this site is advertiser supported: looking at the last article you updated, compare the wayback version to the version OoCities kindly supplies: [3], complete with urging me to "seize today's top bargains." At this point, I am firmly opposed to this transition and wonder if we should not instead blacklist OoCities. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:30, 13 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I reverted about 20 "oocities.com" conversions, until I realized there are 7680 of them, by searching on "*.oocities.com" with Special:LinkSearch. Every one I looked at was an edit by Updatehelper, usually from November or December 2009, or August 2010. Many are egregious edits of other editors' comments on talk pages, explanations of regex matches, edits of archived threads that say "do not edit", etc. You can look at my contribs for today for some sample diffs. But that's beside the point. I agree with Moonriddengirl and the others about the Copyvio and probably commercial Spam. -Colfer2 (talk) 22:44, 13 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    the site does not show ads for wikipedia visitors. geocities is dead, it makes no sense to revert the changes. some of my early edits were talk pages but for the last at least 5000 edits i only edited Mainspace and iam no going to edit talkpages. yet there was noway a decision to revert the action. please respect my work which costes 100 of working hours and do not undo random edits, which is contraproductive to the effort. --Updatehelper (talk) 23:38, 13 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Just a note on the coverage issue - when geocities was going down, I sampled a couple of hundred of our geocities links and tested them against archive.org. Off the top of my head, there was quite a low hit rate - perhaps 40-50% - so a simple direct-replacement won't work well; we'd need a vaguely intelligent script looking for the failures. Shimgray | talk | 23:16, 13 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Exactly! Im not makeing up those numbers. Oocities is an Geocities archive only but also did special seperated collection for everything linked in wikipedia. thats why it totally makes sense to use it. --Updatehelper (talk) 23:38, 13 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm not sure if I'm supposed to post here as a non-administrator (so please delete this if I'm not), but I also wanted to point out the huge WP:NPOV issue here. In case anyone doubts that this is an agent of oocities.com, one only need look at the log for user Oocities. User:Oocities refers to oocities.com as "we." That account was created on November 8, 2010, made 32 edits, and then created UpdateHelper 3 days later, which I feel can only have been to conceal that he is an agent of the website. UpdateHelper has since made 6,860 edits, virtually all of which link to a website he represents. These are continuous bot-like edits which directly contradict the guideline that

      "It is true that a link from Wikipedia to an external site may drive Web traffic to that site. But in line with Wikipedia policies, you should avoid linking to a site that you own, maintain, or represent—even if WP guidelines seem to imply that it may otherwise be linked. When in doubt, you may go to the talk page and let another editor decide. This suggestion is in line with WP's conflict-of-interest guidelines." Wikipedia:EL#ADV

    If there was a consensus from users generally that this needed to be done, the common sense thing to do would be to allow it. But given that most people have met this with, at best, a lukewarm reception, with many directly opposed, going ahead with this bot-like activity and constantly telling people that the discussion has already happened is not at all appropriate.‡ MAHEWA ‡ • talk 23:57, 13 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Agree with you. I just hope people complaining would see the actuall issue that it 1. as a precondition it cant do any harm 2.that 1000s of people are continuously misled everyday to the dead geocities domain, which is clearly wikipedia`s fault, and its not going to change if i dont change it or if we produce a better plan how to do it. Of course we dont always have to pick oocities but its the most effectiv step possible right now and for a major share of all the lins its the only source available. these were once again the most relevant facts i have to say. --Updatehelper (talk) 00:36, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    This seems to imply that you know there isn't a consensus. Your wish that people would see it your way does not make consensus. I'm not saying that this definitely isn't the best way to modify these pages. But no matter how much you might think you are improving Wikipedia, it must reflect consensus. The links need to be changed, no doubt. The sooner, the better. But, with very few exceptions, a desire to have content updated right now does not negate the need for consensus. Some editors might think the best action is to remove the links and find better references, given the low quality of these links in the first place. Others may only want to use a more reputable archive. It is completely wrong to act like our only option is to switch the links to oocities.com. Your complete lack of a neutral point of view only makes it worse.‡ MAHEWA ‡ • talk 03:15, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]


    i would like to suggest you guys to judge about the initial Problem referring to WP:COPYLINK i suggest to indeed just have a look at

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:COPYLINK#Linking_to_copyrighted_works

    "The copyright status of Internet archives in the United States is unclear, however. It is currently acceptable to link to internet archives such as the Wayback Machine, which host unmodified archived copies of webpages taken at various points in time."

    there is no breach of WP:COPYLINK:

    • Oocities is a webarchive, which hosts unmodified copies/snapshots of these pages.
    • Those links to the unmodified contents have generally the full qualification to go on exsiting functional as much as all wikipedia should. the archive is only a service provider.
    • The pages are not avaiable anywhere else.
    • The Archive is not as old as archive.org but there is no clear reason to distrust it.
    • Wikipedia links to other tiny webarchives like http://webcitation.org/ which is much smaller than oocities, links: about 15.000 times most are geocities pages, they run their own bot. and in this case the bot with the same name as the.
    • And there is me, who offers to updateing those 13000 geocities.com links all to oocities.com to make already an estimate of 12000 work again and in a second step further optimize the result and without any harm. if you totally deny such action then you will slowly make wikipedia the biggest collection of dead links.

    --Updatehelper (talk) 23:37, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

    I disagree with your conclusion about WP:COPYLINK. Wayback Machine has a designated agent to address OCILLA complaints; Oocities does not. Considering the changes to Oocities since the start of this discussion (the FAQ now says, "Preferably use your original email which was stated on your page to verify that you are the owner", where it used to say "Use your original email which was stated on your page to verify that you are the owner." The advertisements which were most definitely visible to Wikipedia visitors when I quoted one above are now evidently suppressed), it seems very apparent that you are directly connected with oocities, which is no more than implied by your focused attempts on getting oocities on Wikipedia. (It was your very first edit to an article, after all; and, of course, User:Mahewa points out the origin of your account.) You may have good intentions, but you need to be aware of our conflict of interest guidelines and be cautious of linkspamming. I am still firmly opposed to this transition. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:35, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    Someone above mentioned spam on oocities.com? Can I ask, what spam? I have been to numerous pages in their archive, and it is advert free. And unlike archive.org, it is fast loading, and also had pages that archive.org doesn't have. Frankly, this is a good change as far as I can see. I see no policy that would forbid it. --Russavia I'm chanting as we speak 00:40, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    Have you read the whole conversation? Perhaps you overlooked that, since it began, the single-purpose account that has been adding these links has disabled advertisement for those who follow the links from Wikipedia. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:42, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    They're not all disabled, either. I just followed the link from the bottom of L'Olimpiade (Vivaldi). The top of the page it takes me to is urging me to "Be smart" by purchasing a calling card from Thaitel.com. (And the link from Arman Sabir would like to tell me about the splendors of the IE School of Communication.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:53, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    The link from List of Sigma Lambda Beta chapters ([4]) did not work. Instead, I landed on a page that tells me, "Sorry, "http://oocities.com/slb_betaalpha/" is not available yet. But the following Archive Link maybe leads you to the site you tryed to visit..." following which it offered me a link to Wayback. And two prominent ads...again for Thaitel.com and Nextag.com. But now it's altered to read, "If you are working on Wikipedia note that this link should probably not be deleted even its yet not here. But we are an archive, which is currently trying to retrieve all of these lost contents." These people have been spamming us for months. Even if they did disable the advertising for everyone who follows the links from Wikipedia, what's to stop them restoring them once attention has died down? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:01, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    For ads it might be confusing because some site owners orginally includeed their own ads, which cant be disabled or otherwise they would have to manipulate the single sites. I did neither spam wikipedia nor you. Since i tried to help archival and reduceing the damages/errors caused by geocities closure in 2009 its a a matter of course i was in contact via irc/mailgroup with other people who are/were working on similar aims, especially on oocities. --Updatehelper (talk) 04:15, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    A couple of things. I opened up the site in Internet Explorer, after clearing the cache, and went directly to oocities.com - that is the first time I have visited the site. I have gotten zero ads by doing it this way. I have then done the same thing with Firefox, and again no ads. I have then gone to their site by way of a WP article, and again no ads. It would appear to me that you could have adware on your machine which is causing that to happen to you? On the "not available yet" pages, I agree that links should be checked being changed/added to WP, and the editor in question should be checking those beforehand. Other than that, I see no reason why we shouldn't be using this resource that is available to use. --Russavia I'm chanting as we speak 01:41, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    No, because it doesn't happen to me on any other sites. When I visit the page linked from Wikipedia at L'Olimpiade (Vivaldi) via Wikipedia ([5]), it no longer has an ad...though it did. When I visit this random page simply through Firefox, it invites me to Avatar-myself, courtesy of IMVU. This material is advertiser supported; it says so in their FAQ: ("OoCities.com displays a content-related ad within a seperated frame or box next many pages just like it was before on GeoCities, which every page owner agreed with."). And they are not OCILLA-compliant, though they seem to be taking steps to become so after this conversation. At least they no longer block website owners who do not have their original address from removing content. (Adding: Just a thought, but maybe you have a good spam blocker?) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:50, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    @Moonriddengirl. will you please drop them an email what exactly to change to be perfectly OCILLA-compliant. im sure this will be done.--Updatehelper (talk) 04:15, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    I'm sorry, but that's a legal matter, and I can't give you legal advice. I know nothing about your business operations; frankly, I'm not sure if you'd qualify, since you may not meet the definition of an online service provider. You can read up on it elsewhere on your own and try to comply, or contact an attorney. But even if you were OCILLA compliant, there would still be issues with your project.
    Think of it this way. Say a prominent university publisher goes out of print--Oxford, maybe. That would be quite a blow to the academic community. But that doesn’t mean somebody else can pick up all their stranded books and reproduce them.
    What Wayback (which I love; it’s really essential for copyright cleanup, where I work) does is on legally unsettled grounds (as our copyright policy acknowledges). But the Internet Archive Project that maintains it is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and it is fully OCILLA compliant. They position themselves as a library, and their claim to fair use is at least somewhat supported by their non-profit status.
    Oocities by contrast is a commercial entity. In essence, you have picked up somebody else’s out-of-print back catalogue and are selling it now yourselves, under the explanation that if the original authors didn’t mind Geocities selling ads to people hoping to profit from their contents, then surely they won’t object to your doing so. If you truly allow them to opt out, as you say, that's honorable...but you are not a publicly registered organization. There's no accountability.
    Finally, as the owner or webmaster of the website in question, you have a clear conflict of interest here. You should read WP:LINKSPAM. While what you're doing is by no means the same thing as someone who drives by adding new links to a commercial website, since you are replacing the GeoCities website, you are nevertheless using Wikipedia to drive traffic to a website in which you have a commercial interest. Most of the GeoCities links on Wikipedia should be removed anyway, under external link guidelines, as it is a self-published source and seldom possible to verify the authenticity of the blog writers. It's not a good idea for a webmaster to replace thousands of those links with links to unauthorized copies of the content at his own site (especially when it's a commercial site in which he has financial interest) without first obtaining strong community consensus that this action is in the best interest of Wikipedia. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:16, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    please stop claimin things you only guess without a most clear reason. iam neither the owner of archive nor have i or they a commercial interest. geocities was probably closed because obviously yahoo were not able to make money with it. the oocities people agree not to show any ads for wikipedia. --Updatehelper (talk) 19:43, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    They sell advertising. And you are clearly connected to the site. It's a commercial site, and you have a conflict.--Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:49, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree with Moonriddengirl -- and would like to add
    • The reliability of oocities.com is not known. When this bot showed up on my watchlist, the links to oocities all refused to load. The problem of being sometimes "partly unreachable" (to quote Updatehelper [6]) should be solved before the website becomes a target for hundreds of links from Wikipedia.
    • Before making massive bot edits, the bot-runner should be sure that links go to working pages. Consider this change [7] which takes users to an error message that links to Archive.org. It is putting the cart before the horse to make hundreds of links from Wikipedia leading to pages that have not yet been created.
    • Wayback Machine has information that is missing from oocities, such as the dates of pages they harvested, but it seems to have no ads on pages where oocities does have ads, compare oocities, Wayback target page, and two different past captures archived at Wayback 2007 and 2009. betsythedevine (talk) 15:44, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    i did nto say sometimes. the website is up since a year, i have no idea why it shortly seemed to be unreachable for some people but this probably due to the nature of the internet and rarly happens to most websites -Updatehelper (talk) 19:43, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    By the way, wrt the claims above that oocities.com does not show ads, or shows ads only because those were present on the original Geocities websites, consider this screencapture taken today of a page to which Updatehelper created a link on August 13. Once again, Wayback Machine would have been an appropriate target for this defunct geocities link; oocities.com simply is not. It does, however, seem to be a very successful website as a target for search engines, according to Alexa. [8] betsythedevine (talk) 18:28, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I see ads. But even without the ads, I agree completely that this should not be happening. The copyright issue alone is sufficient to say no to this, and probably to blacklist it. Reliability is another major issue, and the idea that anyone directly involved with this is going to convert thousands of links to their website is almost beyond belief. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dougweller (talk • contribs) 18:55, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    since there is no consensus, i absolutely agree not to change any more links . now ill concentrat on improving the outer situation. even now probably all is said because everything was at least said twice, maybe check again the discussion in a few days because when i reported those achievements i try to reach, then in a few days they will either prove or disprove quiet a few of the points of critics which remain unclear now.

    What i already did therefore is: i requested info@archive.org as well as oocities to send a list of all available geocities links to see which are there and which not, i also asked oocities to permanently remove all ads from all these 13.000 possible links as well as error page and i am sure they will. furthermore i asked them to clearify their copyright situation so that consensus can later maybe be found to use those oocities.com links, which are nowhere else available. if i will not receive any list from one of the archive, then i will find a way to make both lists myself which will take some more days to check them all. both ways i will probably be able to report all the results within a bunch of days --Updatehelper (talk) 19:43, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

    No consensus? There seems a strong consensus of those who have commented that oocities is not an appropriate target. Right now, it will be relatively simple to undo your bot edits -- if instead you proceed to make the 13,000 links to oocities that you intend, but then 6 months down the road oocities starts hosting ads on all those target pages again, it will be much more complicated to change all the links, especially since oocities does not retain all the original info in the geocities header -- for example, Geocities' Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash page was clearly on uk.geocities, but that info disappeared when you moved it to oocities.* [[[User:Betsythedevine|betsythedevine]] (talk) 20:49, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    sorry, honestly, this further complaint makes totally no sense! please catch up on the topic before you complaint. there was noway changed anything else than 'geocities.com/' into 'oocities.com/' it will in fact not make anything more complicated for further works.

    Conuting the voices against and pro there is at least not now consensus against. this does not changes if you post repetitive complaints. --Updatehelper (talk) 21:59, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    I suggest we should probably blacklist oocities.com and then convert all the existing oocities links to archive.org. Yworo (talk) 21:21, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    as said before many of them will show error 404 at archive.org

    furthermore i just said i agree with the denial of further edits but i start to try to improved the whole situation for the next dayss and therefore need to pause this discussion and any further actions. I wonder whats you reason against this part? --Updatehelper (talk) 21:59, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    • Such that the user is not making bot-assisted changes for the time being, I think this thread should probably be marked resolved. UpdateHelper, once oocities.com house is in order with respect to the contributor copyright infringement concerns and other issues, this task can be proposed at WP:VPR or a similar venue. –xenotalk 22:04, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I think the consensus here goes beyond simply closing the thread -- the edits should be undone, and oocities blocked until it has showed itself an appropriate resource. betsythedevine (talk) 22:19, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I am inclined to agree, but we would need a bot to do it efficiently, I'm afraid. He has converted literally thousands of links, even on talk page archives. (Some of these conversions have broken working links to other archives of the content, and many of the ones I've looked at today have still had advertisements in them.) Probably the bulk of these links should not be reverted, but simply removed, as they weren't reliable to begin with, but that requires human judgment, I'm afraid. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:37, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    "Some of these conversions have broken working links to other archives of the content" As said before this only happend about 10 times during my first edits in november 2009 and i undid them and included all other archives into my Regex of articles to exclude. --Updatehelper (talk) 16:19, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    I would think that a lot would be obvious candidates for a simple revert, those being the hundreds of edits to user pages and talk pages and project page archives. As for the 6,000+ oocities and 11,000+ geocities links remaining in article space, time for a clean-up project to determine what should be deleted and what is worth redirecting to Wayback? I'd put my hand up to participate (as I have been already, as I come across them). Katherine (talk) 06:24, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Works for me. I've put a few hours into it, but there are tons, and I feel guilty if I'm away from my copyright work for too long. :) Maybe we can cobble together a workgroup at WP:ELN or WP:RSN? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:35, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    A fine suggestion indeed. =) I have commenced the cobbling over at WP:ELN. Will leave a clearer note below. Katherine (talk) 16:01, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Another argument against simply closing this thread and waiting is the previous ANI concerning oocities. Despite clear consensus there that oocities violates copyright, no action was taken and Updatehelper resumed the bot edits almost at once, presumably with none of the people who took part in the ANI being any the wiser. betsythedevine (talk) 12:42, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    Notice to interested parties: I have initiated a discussion at the External Links Noticeboard to establish a way forward with the GeoCities dead-links issue. Comments, concerns, and idle hands would be greatly appreciated. Katherine (talk) 16:01, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    • As iam already done with a lot of research on the topic and have a complex Regex and handmade lists in AutowikiBrowser i will of course volunteer and be able to change effectivly semi-automated all geocities.com links to archive.org/..../geocities.com/ one's which will work there, which will as said before only be about 50% because they only have about 50% avaialable. at least this will already solve half the issue within weeks and within consensus. --Updatehelper (talk) 16:44, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Please understand that the proposal I have put forward at the External Links Noticeboard relates specifically to manual, human review of existing links; and the careful replacement or deletion of those links. As the proposal sets out, each link would be assessed on a case-by-case basis after review of the article and the source, in accordance with existing policies and guidelines (specifically, WP:V, WP:RS, and WP:EL.
    Accuracy and quality are the key to this proposal, not simply speed. I do not believe that this task can be adequately addressed by an automated or semi-automated tool, and the wording and intent of the proposal reflects this belief. There are many thousands of valuable contributions made daily by approved bots and scripts, but automation is not the solution to every problem. Please keep in mind User:Xeno's earlier advice about the proper process to seek approval from the community for running automated tasks. Katherine (talk) 19:31, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    Continuation

    Please be fair and stick to the facts and make posts which clearly help the discussion. your stylisic devices tend to overact. At latest since my last edits here and at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links/Noticeboard#External_links_and_references_to_former_GeoCities_sites you should have an impression of what i care about. some of your points tend to be defamation about me. its not my site nor cant those links push a site of this size. i said i stop editing geocities and i do so. you are free to further monitor my edits. although your voice is the loudest one against, there isnt any consensus for what exactly to do.<ou --Updatehelper (talk) 02:43, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    There is strong consensus in this conversation, and if it is not your site, your use of the first person plural at User:Oocities ("Now we did not finish checking pages and putting them online.") is hard to understand. And, yes, it's true that you did say you would stop editing geocities--you said, above, "since there is no consensus, i absolutely agree not to change any more links ." (timestamped: 19:43, 14 August 2010); the timestamp here is unmistakable. You have changed more links in spite of your absolute agreement not to do so. --Moonriddengirl (talk)
    will you please use correct plural, instead of defameing me? it was at maximum one edit and clearly noway another reason to complain about me like you suggest to do. --Updatehelper (talk) 05:08, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    In the discussion above Moonriddengirl, Colfer2, Dougweller, Yworo, and I expressed the strong opinion that links to oocities are inappropriate, with several people suggesting the site be blacklisted. In the light of Updatehelper proceeding today to create yet more links to oocities.com, could some administrator please take action to block future links from Wikipedia to this site? I also note that several Wikimedia logos appear prominently on the oocities.com front page giving a clear impression that we have somehow endorsed their project. betsythedevine (talk) 03:30, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    The WMF can and should be able to sue over that, I'd think. —Jeremy (v^_^v Carl Johnson) 03:59, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I just said you will also be able to count few people who agreed with my actions thus its no consensus. i also saw edits who agreed with it beeing undid by people who complait about it.

    this discussion is now baselessly and causeless defameing me. which is irrational to the actual topic and its not of any use to further extend it. As soon as i reached the update iam trying to reach (lists of links available at several archives) like i said above, iam going to post it here because those list will be of good use as soon consensus is reached and when the issue i tryed to solve will finally be solved whether with me or not and with archive.org, oocities, webcitation,... or not but hopefull hopefully soon. in this context best regards, hugs & smiles especially to Moonriddengirl, Betsythedevine, Katherine --Updatehelper (talk) 05:08, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    That paragraph is not something I'm capable of grokking. But here is something clear. There is ample evidence at a minimum that adding links to oocities is controversial. You have been asked by multiple people to stop. Notwithstanding the appearance that you are associated w/ the site, your behavior has been non-optimal. If you add another link to oocities without some express indication from an admin that this discussion (or some parallel discussion of the same issue on the merits) has reached a conclusion, I will block your account. Is that understood? Protonk (talk) 07:18, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    Requesting review of blocks

    Don't we have enough recent screw ups to navel gaze about that we need to dredge up events from 4 years ago? - Spartaz Humbug! 19:09, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

    User:♠[9] and user:$2[10] were indefinitely blocked because of their usernames. I don't see how these names violate username policy and request that an admin review the blocks. The admin who blocked them is inactive. Thanks. SwarmTalk 03:05, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    • No, I am making the request. They were blocked as newcomers back in 2006 :P. Username policy at the time of the blocks, however, did not prohibit these usernames, and stated that administrators should only take action on usernames if there was a consensus that the name was inappropriate (barring, of course, usernames that were specifically prohibited). It also detailed changing usernames. These users were blocked without any complaints or requests to change their name. Policy or consensus didn't support the blocks in 2006, and doesn't support them now. It's for that reason that I make this request. SwarmTalk 04:02, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • So my followup question is, we are unblocking the accounts because? I understand the policy question, but what's the point. there hasn't been a human behind that username for 4 years. Protonk (talk) 04:14, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • There may be no point in unblocking them, but there's no point in leaving them blocked either. The only difference between the two options is that unblocking would right a wrong. In other words, this error should be fixed. SwarmTalk 04:26, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    There is no point at all in forcing the pursuit of a nullity, and in any case there are good (but WP:BEANS sensitive) reasons not to allow usernames like $N. I see no good in this. — Gavia immer (talk) 04:35, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd love to discuss why you think "$N" shouldn't be allowed. This is not the place, but leave me a note on my talk page if you'd like to elaborate. With respect this is a simple request that doesn't have anything to do with you whatsoever, so I'm wondering why you're concerning yourself with it. SwarmTalk 05:23, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    It's up to the user themself to request unblock - there's good odds that the person has a new userid, and is happily editing Wikipedia - we sure wouldn't want to implement a case of WP:SOCK accidentally. There is no valid reason for you to request their unblock at this time. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 10:11, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I was requesting a review of the block, because the block appears completely inconsistent with policy. I figured that's about as valid a reason as I could ever give. Not unblocking simply because of a WP:SOCK concern is completely reasonable. SwarmTalk 11:09, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Still, i would point out that even a review is fairly senseless seeing the amount of time that has passed. In the past four years a lot of rules have been changed, which means that any old block such as this one will have been done under other conditions. For example, we used to prohibit names that contained non-latin characters (Names containing things such as Chinese characters were forbidden) - Nowadays such a block wouldn't make sense either. If there is a more recent username block its fine to discuss, but i believe that the horse is death and decayed in this case. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 17:02, 14 August 2010 (UTC)0[reply]
    The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

    Old NAC AfD never transwikied

    Found this AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gallery of triband flags

    It was closed by a non-admin as Transwiki to Commons, yet the articles were never transwikied nor were the AfD tags removed. Could an admin please take care of this? —Train2104 (talk · contribs · count · email) 22:08, 14 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    Edit needed on protected template

    Can someone please remove the link to Wikipedia:Requests for expansion from Template:Tasks? The link should've been removed two years ago when Requests for expansion was tagged as historical. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • (Many otters • One bat • One hammer) 02:41, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    1. There is no linmk to that page anymore. That link was removed in December 2008. The link "Wikipedia:Writing better articles" now links to Wikipedia:Writing better articles.
    2. To request edits on protected pages, please go to their respective talk pages, and make an {{editprotected}} request.
    עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:47, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    Is Wikipedia exporting its problems to other WikiMedia projects?

    Or is this just a coincidence? Count Iblis (talk) 22:07, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    Wikiversity seems to be a playground for people banned from Wikipedia. Many problem users spill over onto smaller Wikipedias and Wikimedia projects, and sometimes they are productive. Ooh, this is fun: Abd blocked Ottava Rima, so Ottava Rima unblocked himself and says he'll desysop Abd. fetches popcorn Do they not have rules against wheel warring and unblocking yourself over there? Fences&Windows 23:52, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    It would be a good idea to let other projects manage themselves by their own standards. No, Wikiversity does not do things the same way we do. And it would also be good to let users who've left here by choice or by sanction to be free of having their actions commented upon here, which is nothing more than rubbernecking. Jehochman Talk 00:11, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I'll get back to you when the hive mind gains omnipotence. Also, isn't this post a little absurd given that you are suggesting that a certain editor make his way to wikiversity? Protonk (talk) 01:00, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I started editing there two days ago, see here. After I told Brews Ohare that Wikiversity may be a good place for him, I tried it out myself. It is amazing how much you can get done there, compared to here.
    I got a welcome message from Ottava and I saw on his talk page that Abd is also there. So, perhaps we can say that that place is like the Wild West in more than one respect. But if you are interested in creating new content instead of arguing with other editors, that is ideal. Count Iblis (talk) 01:33, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Sure it is; we tell people to go to other project to earn a return... when they pick one, they do what they do, which may-well be what they've done before. Different sorts of people will find their ways to different sorts of sister projects. w:simple: gets the ones with the most garish sigs, for example. v: gets the academics. Hopefully the regulars on the other projects can cope with it all and don't get too annoyed with this sort of influx. Sometimes it works-out ;) Sincerely, Jack Merridew 02:12, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    How do you {{C-upload}} an SVG file?

    What is the process for {{C-upload}} of an SVG image? MediaWiki auto-magically converts SVGs to PNGs before displaying, preventing a copy of the original source from being accessed. Additionally, both the image upload and page move functions check a file's MIME type against the filename extension. As a result, only a PNG file is available to upload to the English Wikipedia and it needs to be loaded into a location requiring an SVG formatted file. --Allen3 talk 01:02, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    What's the file you want to upload here? Nyttend (talk) 03:02, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Same way you "c-upload" any other image: go to the image description page, right-click on the image, select "save link target as" (or whatever your browser calls it. Not "save image as"), save the image on your hard drive, and upload it to enwiki the same way you'd upload any other image. --Carnildo (talk) 03:04, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    There's another way to do it as well; to take a random example, look at File:Blank globe.svg. Using Internet Explorer, I rightclicked the file name in the line reading "Blank_globe.svg‎ (SVG file, nominally 210 × 210 pixels, file size: 42 KB)" and clicked "Save target as"; this put it into the folder where I told it to go on my hard drive. Can't imagine that you'll have any uploading problems. Nyttend (talk) 03:06, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks, rightclicking the file name link instead of the displayed image appears to be the trick for obtaining the actual SVG image. With the SVG source, I agree that everything should work the same as for any other image format. --Allen3 talk 03:19, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    Vandalism on Logic Wireless wiki page

    Resolved
     – Vandal indef-blocked

    Hello: There has been a user named LonnyBaxter that's been vandalizing the Logic Wireless page. I've fixed it about 6 times so far, but I feel this individual is completely insane. We have only written non-biased materials that are backed by several reliable sources, ranging from Forbes to CNN. We are a young company that's gained fame in the telecom field by inventing the world's first projector cell phone. Is there anyway we can have an edit protected lock on the Logic Wireless profile? Thanks you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shelleyboothbishop (talk • contribs) 05:04, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    Lonnybaxter (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is now blocked as a vandalism-only account. Shelleyboothbishop (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), I recommend that you read WP:COI and Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations if you intend to continue editing Logic Wireless (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views).  Sandstein  06:10, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    Canvassing votes

    Several days ago, I initiated a discussion at Talk:Hyundai Elantra#Merger of Elantra LPI Hybrid to merge the contents of Hyundai Elantra LPI Hybrid to Hyundai Elantra.

    One of the voters, Mariordo decided to canvass support for his point-of-view by messaging four other users, [11], [12], [13], and [14].

    This is not the first time that Mariordo has done this. At a previous discussion to merge Toyota Camry Hybrid with Toyota Camry (XV40) the user in question canvassed five votes from users that would support his point-of-view: [15], [16], [17],[18], [19]. An administrator at Talk:Toyota Camry Hybrid even stated that canvassing votes is not allowed due to it undermining the consensus-building process.

    Of the four users that the user in question has requested support from, all of them voted in his favour at the previous merger proposal at Talk:Toyota Camry Hybrid (the primary topic and rationale behind both mergers are identical).

    I have attempted to reason with Mariordo at his talk page ([20]), but he maintains that, "inviting other editors to participate is allowed", despite the clear guidelines of WP:CANVASS, a policy that I have made clear to Mariordo on several occasions.

    All that I am requesting is for the integrity of Wikipedia's consensus building procedure be maintained. OSX (talk • contributions) 06:12, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    Mutants and Masterminds Roleplaying Game

    The link does not work properly (i.e. go to the correct page- it says that there's not a page about the subject). I tried to create a proper redirect (#REDIRECT [[21]]) but for whatever reason the page creation was locked to prevent vandalism and I was directed this way to create a notice. That's what I'm doing. Thank you. Mrobviousjosh (talk) 12:01, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard&oldid=379204936"