User talk:2607:FB90:64E2:6542:D45F:D6A3:D495:F816

Date sources

Do you have any sources to back up the date information you provide? Bytesock (talk) 19:08, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

I second the question. I encountered such an edit on Amiga and I now see from the contributions list that it's basically all like this. Precise dates should have sources; otherwise, the existing years were good enough. Improvement would be attained by sourcing them, not by adding more unsourced small details. LjL (talk) 21:06, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps you could use some markup that marks specifically the date and not the month and year as "citation needed" ? Bytesock (talk) 21:24, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

A few of the dates this editor changed were fully "citation needed" in the first place, and citations should be provided before attempting to make the dates even more detailed. Aside from that, I think your suggestion is overkill: just give the most detailed date that can be given with a citation. I also suspect that since all that this editor has been doing is adding such details to date, there may be something fishy. LjL (talk) 21:29, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

I agree with the above. I'll AGF until we get some kind of a response from the user, but if this user is unable/unwilling to communicate then this has all the hallmarks of subtle vandalism. -Thibbs (talk) 01:30, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps we shouldn't jump to conclusions. It may be that the person knows the correct date but is unable to deal with references. Mobile phones suck for typing. But regardless, such specific claims should be sourced. Because we can't otherwise verify that the claim is true at all. Bytesock (talk) 03:42, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Of course you're right that we must assume good faith, Bytesock, but I've been wondering recently whether there would be some kind of a filter we could enact to tag these kinds of rapid-pace unsourced date-related edits so that other editors would be alerted that the editor making the changes should be contacted to request sources and that the changes should be rolled back if no sources could be located. I've actually proposed such a filter here at the Edit Filter Noticeboard this morning. Do either you or LjL have any thoughts about the feasibility of such a filter? -Thibbs (talk) 03:13, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

It might possibly be done by measuring the amount of changed wikicode, especially if it's only numerical and relate it to if, or not a reference were added. The exception case being a source that is already present and the editor is just using those. But as in this case, only IP, no edit comments, no sources, no feedback. It should be easy to undo these with a realtime bot. If the IP persist, the bot can stalk and undo everything. Bytesock (talk) 03:45, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with Wikipedia filters, Thibbs. But I see things being tagged that are relatively subtle behaviors, and bots like ClueBot NG detecting even subtler edits (to an extent that it sometimes leaves me baffled, especially given the low amount of false positive I've witnessed), so I assume it shouldn't be too difficult to detect unsourced date expansions, given dates are pretty regular patterns. LjL (talk) 14:26, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

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