Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive45

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Contents 1 Love Virus 2 Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Lyndon LaRouche 2 2.1 Remedies 2.1.1 Sockpuppet abuse 2.1.2 POV parole 2.1.3 Ban on editing LaRouche-related articles 3 Suspected new User:Wik aka Gzornenplatz aka NoPuzzleStranger sockpuppet 4 Ray Nagin and School Bus Controversy 5 Sock puppets 6 Imposter using my name on es.wiki 7 "love virus" vandal 8 Blocked proxy 9 User:Ehrlich 10 Impersonation of Ed Poor by bot 11 61.17.248.30 12 malicious editing by group of MB posters and then bragging about it. 13 User:Winnermario 14 202.147.97.0/24 15 Large scale AfD unlisting 15.1 Initial discussion 15.2 Previous similar action 15.3 Conversion to speedy delete 15.4 Back to general discussion 15.5 Consensus creates policy 15.5.1 On AfD regulars and irregulars 15.5.2 Does consensus really create policy? 15.5.3 Clean-up 15.5.4 Consensus on Notability 15.5.4.1 Poll 16 User name containing soldier 17 Legal threats 18 Skyring 19 Vandal / Hate speach 20 User:StephenCox 21 User:Sortan 22 207.63.113.10 23 AFD and Snowy 23.1 Flcelloguy's AfD proposal 23.2 Notability proposal 24 I don't know where to put this so 25 Jimbo's address 26 How to deal with a difficult new editor? 27 Avram 28 Free Republic: Mild outbreak of spam/vandalism from anons, et al 29 Ditto Survivor Sucks 30 Possible class project? 31 User:DickyRobert

[edit] Love Virus

I have just blocked 62.111.220.194 (talk • contribs • logs • block user • block log) for 'love Virus' redirecting. Strange, since I hadn't noted this type of vandalism from an IP. I've blocked him indefinitely for now, but as a new admin, I'd like some advice as to whether this should be a timed block and for how long. If there's a protocol here - I'm happy to have by block altered. --Doc (?) 22:37, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

We don't normaly block IPs for more than say a month.Geni 22:44, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, but as it turns out it's an open proxy (the proxy tester entry in the contribs is a dead giveaway), so I've reblocked as a {{BlockedProxy}}. --fvw* 22:59, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Lyndon LaRouche 2

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Lyndon LaRouche 2 included several "enforcements". One was a ban on user:Herschelkrustofsky inserting "material which relates to Lyndon LaRouche into any other article". Recently, that editor repeatedly added material into a non-LaRouche article (American System (economics)) supporting a theory which is apparently unique to LaRouche. (The American System is integral to LaRouche's political theory). When I asked him on his talk page to provide a non-LaRouche source, he called the request vandalism. He hasn't provided any such source on the article talk page either. See [1], [2], Talk:American System (economics), and User talk:Herschelkrustofsky/threats and insults.

In related incidents, the same editor pushed the LaRouche POV in this edit [3]. And an IP identified by the ArbCom as belonging to the same editor made this edit to a LaRouche-related article, [4], which inserted "unsubstantiated derogatory claims" into the article. So the occurence above is not isolated.

I believe that this editor is returning to the behavior which led to the two previous arbitrations, and I think that the ban enforcement called for by the ArbCom should be implemented. Namely, he should be blocked for up to a week, and the ban reset. Any thoughts? -Willmcw 23:06, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Please note that as Willmcw was executing his second revert on that article today, I was completing my response to his allegations, which may be seen at Talk:American System (economics). I would ask that you take a moment to read my response.

Willmcw appears to allege that this edit was made by myself. This allegation is false. If I understand his argument, he may be insinuating that this edit originated from a computer at my workplace, where there are approximately 100 young people, many of whom use Wikipedia. After the last ArbCom ruling, where I was found to be using sockpuppets for the simple reason that I and many others were using the same IP address, I have discontinued using that address. The poor grammar of the edit Willmcw wishes to attribute to me is certainly not my style.

I also maintain that Willmcw is carrying out a campaign of harassment, with the intention not of improving the article(s) in question, but of making my participation as an editor sufficiently unpleasant that I will will leave the project. Please note that there have been numerous complaints by other editors against Willmcw for carrying out similar activity, complaints which have fueled a debate about the practice of "WikiStalking," and a request for action by Rangerdude that is presently under consideration by the ArbCom. --HK 23:29, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Enforcement of the Arbitration remedies which have been enacted concerning Herschelkrustofsky is not Wikistalking. It is doing your job. Fred Bauder 23:39, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Fred. Hearing no other objection, I will place a one week block on this editor, and reset the special editing bans. -Willmcw 05:06, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Given that there appears to be some debate at the American System article as to whether HK has inserted LaRouche material, and given that Willmcw has a lengthy history of animosity with HK dating back to and including the Arbcom case that is being cited as a basis for the ban but also including numerous other disputes, it would probably be better for this case, and any related blocking penalty, to be reviewed by a more neutral administrator than Willmcw. I state this without taking a position on the merits (or lack thereof) in this case regarding whether the LaRouche block was violated. If it is deemed that the block was violated, however, this judgment should be made in a transparent manner by a party who is NOT simultaneously involved in historical and current ongoing disputes with the editor being accused of violating the Arbcom block. Rangerdude 05:55, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

The purpose of this page is to bring actions to the attention of the community in order for review. As with most all problem editors, the attention of the community is beneficial. This editor has been a serious, long-term problem for Wikipedia and involved in two previous arbitrations. Note that the ArbCom's decision repeatedly says that it may be enforced by "any administrator", not "any uninvolved editor". Enforcements are reviewable by the community. If another administrator feels that User:Herschelkrustofsky is neither edit warring nor pushing the LaRouche POV then they might say so and clear or alter the enforcement. That's the way everything on Wikipedia works. Cheers, -Willmcw 06:39, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Your initial post seeking community input was on 9/29 at 23:06 and HK responded about half an hour later. You announced your decision to impose a ban on HK on 9/30 at 05:06, or exactly six hours after the original post. In doing so you cited your rationale as being that you heard "no further objection." A mere six hours is not time for sufficient community consideration of anything on wikipedia, and even if it were a more neutral and mature administrator would recuse himself from ban decisions in a case where he was a long term dispute participant. In the very least the responsible thing to do would be (1) allow time for a greater cross-section of wikipedians to review your request and (2) should you still desire a ban upon the expiration of that time, seek out a neutral third party to do it so as to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. It's a simple matter of etiquette and transparency to do these two things, whether you technically have the power to impose a ban unilaterally or not. Rangerdude 06:54, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

It has been over 24 hours and no one has stepped forward to claim HK's innocence (except HK himself). Cheers, -Willmcw 02:39, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

In my opinion, any allegation of "wikistalking" a contributor which fails to mention that said contributor is under arbcom parole which requests or invite blocks for violating that parole, is in itself disruptive. I think HK should be banned for 30 days for wasting everyone's time with this frivolous accusation. Uncle Ed 17:01, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Remedies

[edit] Sockpuppet abuse

1) Herschelkrustofsky is restricted to one account for editing. All other accounts showing the same editing patterns are to be blocked indefinitely. This includes the accounts User:Weed Harper and User:C Colden. Nor is Herschelkrustofsky to edit anonymously.

Passed 7-0.

All other accounts showing the same editing patterns are to be blocked indefinitely. Fred Bauder 23:44, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] POV parole

4) Herschelkrustofsky is placed on POV parole for up to and including one year. If he re-inserts any edits which are judged by a majority of those commenting on the relevant talk page in a 24-hour poll to be a violation of the NPOV policy, then he shall be temp-banned for a short time, up to one week. Repeat deletions of text, similarly judged to result in a violation of NPOV, shall be treated in the same way.

Passed 6-1.

[edit] Ban on editing LaRouche-related articles

5) Herschelkrustofsky is banned from editing any article relating to Lyndon LaRouche for up to and including one year. If he edits any LaRouche-related article, he may be blocked for up to one week by any administrator. Administrators may use their discretion in determining what constitutes a LaRouche-related article. The prohibition against inserting La Rouche material into other articles remains in effect.

Passed 7-0.

Administrators may use their discretion Fred Bauder 23:44, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Suspected new User:Wik aka Gzornenplatz aka NoPuzzleStranger sockpuppet

Rivarez is strongly suspected by myself and others of being a sockpuppet/recreated account of the 3-times banned troll above. Rivarez appeared soon after Jimbo hard-banned NoPuzzleStranger, displaying a strange familiarity with Wikipedia processes and procedures, and a strangely familiar focus on similar central European history, politics and biography articles as NoPuzzleStranger & co, particularly Party of the Left. Rivarez has gone on to engage in behaviour identical in tone and nature to NoPuzzleStranger & co, on identical articles, including Empire of Atlantium and Sealand. Within the past 3 days Rivarez has been banned for 24 hours, twice, for abusing the 3RR when edit-warring against multiple editors and ignoring both consensus and invitations to contribute to ongoing discussions at Sealand. In perpetrating this particular edit war Rivarez has used trolling techniques perfected by NoPuzzleStranger & co, including the use of misleading and abusive edit summaries, discussions-by-edit-summary, and ignoring and deleting talk page requests. I therefore request that Wikipedia's admins place this disruptive editor under close observation until such time as his behaviour is appropriately modified, or his identity is confirmed sufficient that he banned (yet again).--Gene_poole 05:45, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually on Left Party (Germany) he was helping remove a POV (and inaccurate) repeated addition from an IP address. Everyone was helping revert.. Secretlondon 22:41, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi there. My understanding is that with disruptive users who have an Arbcom history, you can request a legitimate IP check from a Checkuser. Try David Gerard.—encephalon 07:29, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

CheckUser is horribly slow at times - querying for IPs for a username is a pretty heavy-duty query, so the system happily times it out if it's taking too long, and this can go on for hours at heavy load times. That said, CheckUser isn't magical pixie dust - NoPuzzleStranger didn't edit from any of the ranges Wik/Gz did, and neither is Rivarez ... but was apparent by his obnoxious behaviour. (And that his name was an anagram of User:Gzornenplatz, which I didn't spot either.) The guy is fiercely dedicated to Wikipedia ... if only he wasn't such a dick about it, and in such a way that it's obvious it's him. Next he'll find Cantus' latest sockpuppet to edit-war with, you watch - David Gerard 13:18, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Lol. Yeah, that's the problem, isn't it? It's not just the good guys who're "dedicated" to WP.—encephalon 06:01, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

If there was any kind of logic at work here whatsoever, we'd let him edit and simply penalize him for things such as edit warring while not attempting to inhibit his many good contributions. But alas. The ruling was issued in May 2004 and we still haven't fixed it. Surely having him edit under one account, with plenty of people warily watching him and a certain sense of accountability that comes with being an accepted member of the community, is better than this. Everyking 17:36, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

The thing is that penalizing for bad contributions takes the time of administrators and other editors. Dealing with trolling or revert warring takes time and effort, and may scare off new contributors. If lots of people have to 'warily watch' an editor, then that editor probably isn't suited to work here in the first place.

If he wants to be an 'accepted member of the community', it's easy: he can start a new account, make positive contributions, and not revisit the bad habits that led to the original bans. ArbCom bans aren't real; anybody can get a clean slate and a new username. The only reason that these editors are banned repeatedly as socks is because they repeat the behaviour that got their original accounts banned. If the new accounts were well-behaved, they wouldn't end up being discussed here on AN/I. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:42, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I bet they would, if someone figured it out anyway. There are more clues to a person's identity than just revert warring over certain topics. And I have little doubt that in such a case the person would be banned even if they had a spotless record under that account. Everyking 03:42, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

In practice, they wouldn't. Remember Lir coming on and pointing at NoPuzzleStranger and shouting "WIK! WIK!" and no-one caring? Because he wasn't being a dick at the time - David Gerard 12:24, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

The latest update is that Wik is now creating sockpuppets as fast as admins are banning them. His latest puppets include Crankshuick, Crankshuick 1 and Crankshuick I. Between them they've been responsible for 51 reverts to Sealand and Empire of Atlantium today. This represents a direct challenge to the 3RR, as no other editor can hope to repair the damage he is causing without himself breaking the 3RR. --Gene_poole 04:07, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Wik is a banned user. Edits by banned users don't count for the 3RR and are freely revertable by all. --fvw* 04:11, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

He's using open proxies. So I'm using him as an open proxy canary. Please keep listing the names here - David Gerard 14:38, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ray Nagin and School Bus Controversy

Can anyone help me find this article - it's essential that I find it? Post the link if you can! --Hornwood 07:55, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Umm... can you spell Google? -- Chris 73 Talk 07:57, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Please do not bite the newcomers. Taco Deposit | Talk-o to Taco 08:40, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

The exact article on the school bus controversy I can't find either. --Sarthen1108 08:19, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Try Ray Nagin (??)- but next time the 'Help desk' (WP:HD) is for questions like this. --Doc (?) 08:34, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

You are most likely looking for Mayor Nagin and the Evacuation By School Buses Controversy. However, please be aware that because both of you are new accounts, your votes on the deletion discussion won't count.

Also, Doc is right; this page is not the appropriate place to ask this type of question. Taco Deposit | Talk-o to Taco 08:43, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

For those of you wondering what this is about, those were JimmyCrackedCorn sockpuppets, I think he's trying to make the point that people want to read his Mayor Nagin and the Evacuation By School Buses Controversy POV-fork. --fvw* 08:41, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

If this is true, then all he will be successful in is generating more votes to delete on AfD. Taco Deposit | Talk-o to Taco 08:50, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't think they are sockpuppets of whoever JimmyCrackedCorn is. People are genuinely studying the Mayor Nagin and Evacuation By School Buses Controversy, so it's a valid reason not to generate more votes to delete. --Treehorn 08:55, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, it's counterproductive - as this discussion made me find the afd - and vote 'delete' --Doc (?) 09:00, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

The article should be kept - and not deleted, it's totally different to Ray Nagin anyway - just like the Iraq war is divided into many issues. --Longmans Run 09:08, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

OK - this discussion should happen (and is happening) at afd - no more here please. --Doc (?) 09:11, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Has anybody blocked these socks? Sarthen1108 (talk • contribs), Hornwood (talk • contribs), Treehorn (talk • contribs), Longmans Run (talk • contribs) -- I'd do it myself, but have been involved in the dispute over Ray Nagin so I'd rather leave the task to someone else if it hasn't been done already. · Katefan0^(scribble) 16:14, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Rather stark IMHO and I took the opportunity to vote for deletion. Wyss 16:28, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sock puppets

These NPOV dispute sock puppets are starting to appear faster than I can block them. Is there a more efficient solution to this, or do I just have to keep blocking them? — JIP | Talk 10:15, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, POV-pusher sockpuppets are increasingly numerous lately. I'm afraid it's block block block all the way, though if someone has a good idea I'd love to hear it. --fvw* 10:27, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Arbcomm? Guettarda 11:54, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

It seems there are a LOT of people astroturfing the NPOV tag on various articles. Here's a list of the most NPOV/Controversial3/Disputed/TotallyDisputed articles, just for reference:

• Nadine Coyle
• Evangeline Lilly
• Girls Aloud
• Tony Blair
• Kelly Clarkson
• Obesity
• Manchester

Hope this helps. --Crodziuk 11:58, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

If they don't put a remedyable objection on the talk page, the NPOV tag is removable. Who are some of the usernames in question? - David Gerard 13:11, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Ehm, that would be Crodziuk the sockpuppet himself. --fvw* 13:15, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

One of the JimmyCrackedCorn/Ray Nagin socks has been active on the Girls Aloud page. He also added a totallydisputed tag to Pussycat Dolls. · Katefan0^(scribble) 16:04, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

IMHO anyone adding an NPOV or Disputed tag on Girls Aloud, Pussycat Dolls or Darkwing Duck can be blocked indefinitely on sight, especially if they don't have any contributions prior to that day. — JIP | Talk 18:04, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

A new user who I suspect to a sockpuppet, has added a Totally Disputed tag to Taryn Manning. How do we stop them? --Astwell1986 14:12, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Imposter using my name on es.wiki

Someone today created an imposter account on es.wiki. He is evidently posting messages in the User Discussion and possibly vandalism.

Imposter page on es.wiki

Please help me block that account. I actually want that user name for myself, if at all possible. It is my actual name.

Aren't I popular!?

paul klenk ^talk 17:21, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

An admin from es.wiki, "FAR", is helping me. Right now I think the situation is okay. But I do want that user name for myself -- I intended to actually create it today. If someone can help with that, it would be most appreciated. paul klenk ^talk 17:26, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

This isn't anything admins from en can help you with. You may want to contact a dev or someone like Angela, but really, this sounds like an issue to be handled on es, and only es. --Golbez 17:36, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

may not be deliberate. There is a geni on the german wikipedia who isn't me.Geni 19:09, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

You could always register "Paul klenk", "PaulKlenk", or the like... or wait for the far-off days of single-login across projects when All This Will Be Resolved ;-) Shimgray | talk | 21:27, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

It was deliberate as the es impersonator claimed to be the en Paul Klenk, come from NY etc, and with some of the worst Spanish I have ever seen, SqueakBox 21:33, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't doubt it -- I think there was a sock registered as User:PaulKlenk that was banned. · Katefan0^(scribble) 21:34, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

User:PaulKlenk (no space) was a sock of Rainbowwarrior1977 - David Gerard 21:01, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "love virus" vandal

Well, the "love virus" vandal just struck, under the name Wikipresident (talk • contribs). Thanks to BrokenSegue (talk • contribs) for helping to clean up this mess. --Ixfd64 19:42, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Bloody MARMOT again. I've blocked the IP for three months. Here's to the devs for putting code into Mediawiki just for identifying the real IP of NTL users!

He'll keep coming in through open proxies, of course. So Cool Cat's user page can be a sort of open proxy detector, every time MARMOT swings by to vandalise it ;-) - David Gerard 22:16, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Blocked proxy

I just wanted to ask if someone could check this for me. At User:Karl Meier's observation (see the bottom of User talk:Splash) I have blocked User:64.34.173.133 indefinitely as an open/anonymous proxy. However, SORBS said they hadn't come across the address, but ARIN.net certainly returns some odd results if it's an ordinary address. If I messed up, maybe someone could show me a way of determining these things? -Splash^talk 22:08, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I tested it manually. It is running an open proxy on port 80. --GraemeL ^(talk) 22:39, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

While this method doesn't always work, but if you google that ip you'll find it's in the proxy lists [5]. -- BMIComp (talk, HOWS MY DRIVING) 20:04, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:Ehrlich

The user Erlich is Donald Alford (AKA DotSix) who has been injoined by the Arb Committee from editing any page except the evidence page for his Arb Hearing [6] and his own user pages. Please block him until the Arb action is completed. Thank you. --Nate Ladd 22:49, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

The user name you give has zero contributions. Did you mispell? -Splash^talk 23:13, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Sorry. It is User:Ehrlich. --Nate Ladd 23:47, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I'll confirm Nate's suspicions. I thought I gave someone a heads-up about this a few days ago, but I've been really busy this week and it's entirely possible I meant to, and then forgot about it.--chris.lawson 00:09, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

On reviewing the evidence that was orignally offered at Talk:Atheism (and has since been added to the Dot6 RfArb) and on studying the contribs history for User:Ehrlich and User:Adrigo (whom I have previously blocked) I see that they edit in a manner so similar as to be indistinguishable from one another. They use edit summaries that are practically identical in some cases, and even created the same userspace subpage as each other. Adrigo=Dot6 is not to edit outside of their userpages and Arbitration for the duration of the case, but shows no sign of respecting that injunction. I have therefore blocked User:Ehrlich indefinitely, and that block can be lifted if appropriate once the Arbtitrators have deliberated. If he had confined his edits to the prescribed areas, there would be no need for a block at all, but as it is he should return to using other accounts or his original .6 IP to edit those spaces. -Splash^talk 15:47, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Now using 172.195.13.100 (talk • contribs).--chris.lawson 20:00, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Impersonation of Ed Poor by bot

I copied this here from WP:AIAV. -Splash^talk 03:33, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

A bot is impersonating me and "moved" a hundred articles to 'deletion' titles. I don't have time to go and undo all this tonight. It's 11:30 P.M. in New York. See below, to get started. Thanks! Uncle Ed 03:29, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

1. 03:24, October 1, 2005, Ed Poor blocked #40350 (expires 03:24, October 2, 2005) (unblock) (Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently used by "Uncle Ed's major work 'bot". The reason given for Uncle Ed's major work 'bot's block is: "impersonating me, moving articles to strange titles".)
2. 03:24, October 1, 2005, Ed Poor blocked Uncle_Ed's_major_work_'bot (infinite) (contribs) (unblock) (impersonating me, moving articles to strange titles)

By way of observation, it is named after Uncle G's major work 'bot. -Splash^talk 03:33, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh boy, this should be fun. Is it just a matter of rolling back? · Katefan0^(scribble) 03:41, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Some of the earliest thing are made-up VfDs moved to made-up AfDs (the casing is all wrong, for example), so those are just deletions I think. Perhaps a bug in the bot when it was created. The later stuff (tonight) is reverting moves from the move log, yes. -Splash^talk 03:49, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I think maybe we've gotten 'em. · Katefan0^(scribble) 04:18, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, looks like we got them all. Annoying that it moved some genuine AfDs to VfDs too, but I think I nobbled the never-existent redirects for those, too. -Splash^talk 04:26, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Yup, and it moved some real articles to AFD, as well as a user's user and talk pages. Nasty bit of work. Time for a beer! Here's a toast to you · Katefan0^(scribble) 04:28, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

...and you <clinks beer glass> -Splash^talk 04:32, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

...and the others, too, of course. -Splash^talk 04:47, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

For reference: Uncle_Ed's_major_work_'bot (talk • contribs • logs • block user • block log)

Curps: was this below your bot's move-rate limit, or did you disable the bot? -Splash^talk 04:47, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

See the move log, it was done at a quite slow rate, slower than Uncle G's bot in fact. However I do have some ideas for detecting this sort of thing in the future, although it's hard to detect it in a way that there would be enough confidence for the bot to perform a block automatically without manual intervention. -- Curps 19:24, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Wow. It took me a while to understand what was going on here. So a vandal created an account, User:Uncle Ed's major work 'bot, and operated a bot under that name? Holy crap. I imagine someone with a mind to do it can create an innocent looking account and run a bot with it that made subtle changes to articles (like making changes to dates and factoids and such) that no one would immediately notice as suspicious. Is that possible? Imagine the damage if this was set loose on articles that are not heavily watched (or understood), eg. technical articles. Is this as scary as I think it is, or can it somehow be detected? Is there a way you can tell an account is a bot, if the creator has not specified on the User or talk page that it is (or in the Account name)?—encephalon 05:59, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

• Yes, that's right. Whether it was in fact a bot or a human is hard to tell; the account's creator just duplicated the userpages of User:Uncle G's major work 'bot which does the exact opposite of this 'bot (it moves VfDs to AfDs). Willy on Wheels appears only to have used an automated approach recently for example, but stacking up tabs in Firefox can make it look bot-like. Normally, the only way you can tell if an account is a bot is if it has been flagged as such in software (like admins are) — this is done after a request process and a Steward's intervention and can be checked in Special:Listusers. So if someone does run a bot without a flag, you can't tell unless the action rate is above what a human could achieve. A number of people (e.g. User:Uncle G and User:Who) run legitimate bots that are not bot-flagged yet, which muddies the waters. Normally, vandalbots are spotted by RC patrol because they edit so quickly and badly and can be blocked on sight (as can out-of-control normal bots). But if someone made a slow, sneaky vandalbot it could be a worrying while before anyone noticed what was going on, which is scary. In fact, I'm surprised this hasn't been done yet. WP:BEANS. -Splash^talk 14:00, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Hey Splash, whatsup. Thanks for this. As it happens there's a discussion on the RFA Talk page right now about old vandals, and so I've been enlightened, so to speak, that these things have actually been done. It seems to me that the main reason serial vandals aren't usually subtle is that damage is not really their goal. It's what they use to get attention—they want everyone to see their handiwork. We'd be in a spot more trouble if they didn't.—encephalon 14:22, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Willy on Wheels publicly stated on Slashdot at one point that xe used multiple tabs in a tabbed web browser. I can confirm, from personal experience, that using multiple tabs can be mistaken for using a 'bot. At the beginning of 2005, long before I learned how to write 'bots, my use of a tabbed web browser was mistaken for the use of a 'bot at Wiktionary. Given the pattern of edits here, which is not regular enough for automation, it is unlikely that a 'bot was involved, and likely that the vandal was simply using a tabbed web browser. Uncle G 18:45, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
• If approval was never asked at Wikipedia talk:Bots, or it's not listed on Wikipedia:Bots, it's almost definitely not kosher. ~~ N (t/c) 15:43, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

D'oh! <slaps himself in the head> A few days ago I saw this bot account registered in the new users log, and I went to check it out. The user page looked legit, and on a cursory glance at the bot/user's log, it looked legit as well. I meant to ask Uncle Ed about this, but it slipped my mind. </ends slapping himself in head> Is everything cleaned up now? Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk | W_S 14:10, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Same here! This was the most confusing impersonation in a while, and the second time where I noticed something peculiar with a user name where I didn't take action...the last time was with User:Four Wheels...Anyway, I think everything is cleaned up now. By the way, is there a way to query the list of usernames? The other day I found an account which had the string "WILLY" in it (all in caps), but I can't seem to find it anymore. --HappyCamper 14:55, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 61.17.248.30

61.17.248.30 (talk • contribs • logs • block user • block log)

Rapidly puts in a single link on many, many pages. I've reverted all the edits before 8, but that was like 20 reverts, and my fingers are tired :).. The ones before 8 were mostly bad links, but now appear to be valid links... maybe its just a confused person? Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 08:42, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] malicious editing by group of MB posters and then bragging about it.

The people doing the malicious editing of Wikepedia are bragging and laughing about it here:

http://www.robkamphausen.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/598282/page/0/fpart/1/vc/1

They've been guilty of massing on other (usually comic book related) sites before and trying to create as much mayhem as possible and working around getting banned as well to cause further mischief.

The owner of the boards coincidentally enough works for DC comics.

I don't know if you can use this info or not but at least you have a heads up on what areas of Wikepedia they're targeting or have targeted.

It appears to being delt with on a local level (these days it takes quite a dedicated or large group even to show up against the background level of vandalism).Geni 14:52, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:Winnermario

Could someone have a word with Winnermario (talk • contribs)? He's in danger of self combusting. Although in many respects he's a decent editor, he seems unable to cope with disagreements (as his Talk page hints at; the real problem lies scattered across article Talk pages. His User page contains the line: "I promise to try and contain myself over lashing out at people on this website", which suggests that he knows that he has a problem, though he clearly hasn't mastered it yet). He's one of a growing class of editors who treat edits they don't like as "vandalism" (see, for example, [7]), and is descending into more and more hysterical childish abuse (see, for example, [8]. He's also started deleting other people's comments from Talk pages [9]. I originally tried to reason with him and to calm him down, but he's reached the stage where he has tantrums at the mere sight of my name, so if another admin could step in and have a quite, calming word I'd be grateful (and it might defuse what could otherwise become an even more unpleasant situation). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:34, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure a word would make much difference now, especially since Annittas has been fanning the flames on Winnermario's talk page. I'd cautioned Annittas previously, only to be brushed off. Still, perhaps someone with a light touch should try (I concede here that wouldn't be me...) FeloniousMonk 16:29, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Although no-one's responded to the above, I thought that I'd add another plea of the same kind (I'm editing popular-music articles, which seem to attract this sort of editor): BGC (talk • contribs) is mass reverting my attempts to tidy albums-articles, calling the removal of excessive Wikilinking (multiple links to the same year in successive lines, linking to seasons and months) and the conversion of hyphens to dashes "vandalous". Again, I started by trying to explain the MoS, etc., but he's just become more and more belligerent. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 15:49, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

After reviewing BGC's edit history, I left a mild caution. We'll see if it takes. FeloniousMonk 16:14, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I may be naive, but I think an easy-going approach to these kinds of issues would work fine. Unlike factual issues, it really makes no difference if you work to gradually ease opposition instead of simply implementing a change outright. Now, I guess maybe Mel will say he is easy-going about it, but he sure gets a lot of tempers flared about this kind of thing, so it might be useful for him to reconsider his approach. Everyking 04:48, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

The problem is that there are thousands of pop-music articles that are in need of attention — both in terms of Wikipedia style and in terms of content. Each of them seems to be "owned" by one or more devoted fans, who defend them vigorously from any outside change. I'm not altogether sure what an easy-going approach would be, but I'm pretty sure that it would mean that ordinary house-keeping edits of the sorts I'm trying to engage in would take up all my time, and that it would be years before the work was done.

Incidentally, my first encounter with BGC was when I found him blanking User:PetSounds. He ignored my requests for explanation, simply deleting them from his Talk page. Someone e-mailed me to tell me that PetSounds had been BGC's previous account, and that he'd behaved badly with it, generating ill-will (apparently using his odd notion of vandalism even then [10]), and felt that he needed a fresh start. Unfortunately he immediately began acting in the same belligerent way with the new account, so it didn't really get him anywhere. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 16:41, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Excuse me, but if we're going to start pointing fingers and labelling people "belligerent", perhaps you need to look at your SELF before throwing baseless accusations. YOU removed my album pics because you "didn't like it", not because it broke policy because that hasn't been established at all. Secondly, after reinserting them, you removed them again, instead of waiting out the decision into the infobox deletion query like a proper Wikipedian is supposed to. And this subjective, indeed belligerent, steamrolling behaviour comes from an admin - someone who is supposed to set an example?? Wow... I have never locked horns with anyone here, except for the obstinate ones who are averse to collaboration, as you clearly are. And from the various remarks I've read about your way of working, I can see I am far from the only one who feels you are WAY over-exerting your preferences because of your admin position. BGC 21:36, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry to be flippant, but I like the word "vandalous". Couldn't find it in the OED, though! I agree that Anittas is stirring up Winnermario. In fact, he's been searching for editors who have ever had a disagreement with Mel, so that they can get together and do something about it! I thought of having a friendly word with Anittas a while ago, although I'm not an admin, but he got quite upset when I reverted some of his grammatical errors back to Mel's version, and seemed to think that Mel had put me up to it. He also got upset when I (twice) reverted a very childish personal attack that he made against Mel [11] on his user page. I felt that any intervention from me would only make him feel more "ganged up against". Ann Heneghan ^(talk) 17:42, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Hello, Ann; how are you? :) --Anittas 23:17, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to note that there is a discussion taking place at vandalism over whether or not repeated reverts that are contrary to the manual of style constitute vandalism. -- BMIComp (talk, HOWS MY DRIVING) 18:30, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 202.147.97.0/24

I blocked this range for three months for unbelievable amounts of crap coming through it, particularly massive sockpuppet trolling on Australian-related articles. However, I've received reports of collateral damage, so I've unblocked it. The person affected is a student from Hong Kong staying in Melbourne, and says: "This is what I see when I try to edit an article. Am in a short stay apartments place in Melbourne, until Christmas. I share my apartments with other students but they have never use Wikipedia and have not been blocked." I'll be keeping an eye on this range in any case, in case the malefactors return to it - David Gerard 12:20, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Refractory malefactors... no shortage here. I'll watch as well. FeloniousMonk 16:32, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Key point is sockish trolling on Australian politics-related articles, particularly student politics. Hopefully that was just one idjit using the range in question - David Gerard 11:00, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Large scale AfD unlisting

Lacking a better place to put this, I thought I would note that I've just speedied about two dozen AfDs and removed the tags from their articles because their sole grounds for deletion were notability. I was relatively lax in this - articles where it seemed clear that notability was being used as a stand-in for verifiability were left - including cases where the verifiability seemed to rest on a single not-highly-ranked webpage, since ephemeral verification is not acceptable. I intend to take a pair of second passes at today's AfD nominations, one to kill things that should have been speedied, and one to kill things that are based on nominations according to policies that are unofficial - deletion policies of wikiprojects (i.e. WP:MUSIC) for example. My guess is that about 1/3 to 1/2 of the AfDs for the day should be removed, either for being slam-dunks that didn't need a vote or for being things that don't actually meet any deletion policy, and the only consensus for their deletion exists among the AfD regulars, not the Wikipedia community at large. Snowspinner 21:52, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

No offence, but the purpose of AfD is to allow members to decide what is notable and what is not notable. It is not up to one member to decide this - even if they are an admin. I realise that you may be trying to cut down the amount of articles, but delisting because the sole reason for listing is due to notability is not the right thing to do. The process allows for debate, and after one or two AfDs where it is decided that the article is notable then it should be kept. On this note, if an article does get removed and you strongly disagree, the article should be taken through articles for undeletion. I strongly disagree with your delistings. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:11, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I have requested that Snowspinner give up his sysop priviledges for several months due to this violation here. If he declines, I will initiate an RfC. --Blackcap | talk 03:58, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

He has declined, and I have created an RfC here: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Snowspinner 2. Please show your opinions there. --Blackcap | talk 06:47, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I find it jawdropping that you seriously considered he (or anyone) would get deadminned over such an incident, and a sign that you are not altogether clueful concerning the Wikipedia community and how it works - David Gerard 19:49, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I'd urge all editors to be cautious in their statements, to be civil at all times, and to avoid biting. - brenneman^(t)(c) 00:36, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

That's nice, dear. I urge you to post a suitable rephrasing of my statement if the wording offends you, because it's a salient point since he (a) made the initial ridiculous request (b) put up an RFC - David Gerard 00:41, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Does that offer extend to anywhere else I think you're uncivil? - brenneman^(t)(c) 00:45, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I certainly can't stop you writing whatever it strikes you to. However, I do see this request of Blackcat's as evidence of jawdropping cluelessness. Please do answer the question: How would you phrase this observation of the bloody obvious in a manner more pleasing to you? - David Gerard 09:58, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Initial discussion

This was entirely inappropriate. On what grounds do you get to be the sole arbiter of what is or is not a valid AfD listing? This is unaccetpable behavior, and if it is repeated, should lead to your being desysopped. User:Zoe|^(talk) 22:01, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Articles that are being nominated for reasons that do not coincide with any listed deletion policy clog up AfD and contribute to its uselessness. I encourage other admins who see things that are not covered under deletion policy to remove them as well. Snowspinner 22:16, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Failure to allege notability is, by policy voted upon by consensus, a valid CSD reason for people. By extension, discussion of the failure of the article to establish notability for other things other than people makes that a valid reason. Any unilateral deletion of AfDs, especially those which have had several votes, is bad faith. What's wrong with just letting the vote continue and let an admin who isn't interested in keeping all of the crap make a decision on proper closure based on the voting process? Or are you afraid that some of the crap might get deleted? User:Zoe|^(talk) 22:22, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, actually. I am afraid that the AfD regulars (Who show a tendency to ignore deletion policy) will railroad a vote, and that swamped admins will close on votes alone instead of looking to see if a consensus for this kind of deletion exists broadly instead of among the AfD regulars. And failure to establish notability was, I think, a move to block obvious vanity articles and articles with no real content - not articles on minor subjects. Snowspinner 22:37, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

While it is certainly a de facto standard on which many AFDs are judged. Notability has never really been defined and not really part of the deletion policy. What the deletion policy does include is an article which "is not suitable for Wikipedia (see WP:NOT)", but WP:NOT doesn't really delve into notability either (though it does point out we are not "indiscriminate" in producing this encyclopedia). The top of Wikipedia:Notability says "There is no Wikipedia policy on notability...". Some, like Snowspinner, believe that the lack of explicit reference to notability in deletion policy make it an invalid justification for an AFD. Dragons flight 22:39, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm a bit more subtle in my criticism. I think notability is one of four things - vanity, a dicdef/permastub, unverifiable, or something I don't know about so want to delete. In the first three cases, we have better means for deletion. In the fourth, we shouldn't delete. I point out also that the very first thing Wikipedia is not is paper - that is, in need of deletion for reasons having to do with space. The overall deletion criteria - the one that should be bent as needed - is that the article harms Wikipedia, as vanity, dicdef/permastubs, and unverifiability do. Snowspinner 22:44, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

This was entirely inappropriate, de-sysoppable behavior that's a pain in the ass. At the very least the AfDs should remain as record. I entirely concur with Zoe, and think that your belief that this should continue is a bad sign. --Blackcap | talk 22:28, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Further, where in policy does it say that you can arbitrarily speedily delete articles in the project namespace? Nowhere. This is not grounded anywhere in WP policy, and was a call based solely on your own opinion. --Blackcap | talk 22:35, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

That was me being bold. If people would prefer removing them from the AfD listing and closing them as speedy keep, I can do that when next I patrol AfD. Snowspinner 22:41, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

You seem to have confused "being bold" with "someone died and made you God". I, personally, would prefer you don't dick around with process based one your own whims. --Calton | Talk 00:13, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Being bold has limits. You were in direct violation of policy. You can't speedy keep an article that has a number of delete votes unless you're Jimbo, who here is God. --Blackcap | talk 22:48, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Note that the full title of what is frequently called WP:BOLD is Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages. So from the very first line, I cannot reconcile that document with Snowspinner's actions at all. Furthermore, the second section says "don't be reckless" (there are other things you shouldn't be round here, too). Since Snowspinner thought necessary to post something as mundane as an AfD 'closure' here, he must surely have wondered if he had been reckless. I trust he will take this thread as telling him he was. On re-reading WP:BOLD (something we should all do more often), I am reminded that it is primarily an editorial, not an administrative, guideline. As the final section of the page exhorts, Snowspinner should familiarise himself with the relevent Wikipedia policies and guidelines for speedy deletion of AfD subpages before he continues in that vein. Once he has done so, perhaps he could post here a link to where this practise received the green light, for it is emphatically not in either WP:BOLD or any other document that I am familiar with. -Splash^talk 01:34, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

True. WP:IAR is what applies here. -- grm_wnr Esc 12:13, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

AfD is way broken, yeah, but skimming through the day's nominations with a personal, non-policy notion of what belongs and what doesn't is unhelpful and replete with opportunities for mistakes. Please don't do that anymore? Wyss 00:09, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Snowspinner mentions that some deletions are "slam dunks". Yes, they are. We just went through a faintly tortuous process of trying to accelerate "slam dunks", but they largely fell short of fuzzy-consensus. In the case of some established editors, they refused to support a single such proposal and, despite these proposals significant support in the community at large, we continue to be unable to "slam dunk" most AfDs (Snowspinner is part of "we"). However, looking through Snowspinner's log, I see only very few instances where he speedied articles to deletion, and then only because they met CSDs rather than that they were "slam dunk" deletes. Even in those cases, he was so casual as to delete the AfD too, rather than taking the, say, 5 seconds it takes to tag an AfD debate properly. -Splash^talk 01:34, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

On a broader point, IMO one of the reasons that standards on RfA are ever rising is that people know that, when an admin behaves in a manner such as this, they can smugly sit behind their adminship safe in the knowledge that it is extraordinarily unlikely they will be properly disciplined for it. The community has little effective recourse to admonish a power-drunk admin in a way they can be expected to promptly listen to. Action such as this merely reinforces that perception, particularly when it is clear that the admin in question shows little sign of accepting any of the criticism. -Splash^talk 01:50, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

This seems WAY out of line. Let the AfD process work. I've only very rarely seen it reach what I would consider a seriously wrong conclusion, no more so than any of our other processes. And if our policies don't make it clear that non-notability is a criterion for deletion, then I'd say that would be a problem with our formal written policies, since it is clearly our de facto practice. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:24, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

The problem arises because afd regulars are not representative of the community at large. We've time and again seen the evidence that prove this. Pcb21| Pete 11:40, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Previous similar action

Something like this has been tried before; see Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/March 2005 Part One#How to make VFD of manageable size, Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Policy consensus/Deletion criterion boxes, and the mailing list discussion of the topic. It didn't take. —Charles P. (Mirv) 22:36, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Indeed not, though neither has nomination against deletion policy taken. Much of my interest in this was seeing how many AfDs are unnecessary - either because they're against policy, or because they could have been speedied. The answer is actually a lot. Snowspinner 22:41, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

And even before that: see Wikipedia:VfD decisions not backed by current policies, its talk page, Wikipedia:VfD decisions not backed by current policies/poll, and mailing list discussion. It didn't take that time either. —Charles P. (Mirv) 22:46, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Conversion to speedy delete

On a similar topic - if an article on AfD clearly meets CSD criteria, is it okay to Speedy it immediately instead of waiting for AfD voting to close?--inks^T 22:39, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I do this quite a bit. Some things just need to die - David Gerard 09:47, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I did this as well to AfD, so I'd say yes. Snowspinner 22:41, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

If it clearly meets CSD criteria, then it should be okay to speedy it immediately. I'd be surprised if that's not what many admins are already doing, especially since articles that don't meet the CSD are too-often speedied. Taco Deposit | Talk-o to Taco 22:43, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it is. But you keep the AfD as a record and it doesn't apply to speedy keeps. --Blackcap | talk 22:48, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

The purpose of AfDs being kept is so people can review the debate. In the case of the speedy, the reason for deletion has nothing to do with the debate, and so keeping the AfD is pure instruction creep. Snowspinner 22:53, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

If an article is kept, then the AfD is preserved as a record in case it's listed again. The only time one can speedy keep an article is when it's a bad faith/vandal nomination. You were speedy keeping articles. That's completely different than speedy deleting. --Blackcap | talk 23:12, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

About 7% of AFDs are closed as speedy delete, based on my recent survey. Dragons flight 22:51, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

In how many cases were the AfD subpages of articles that were speedily kept, speedily deleted? -Splash^talk 01:34, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

The computer script can only read pages that were not deleted, so if someone deleted the AFD, I would not be able to count that at all. In my sample 7% of the properly closed AFDs listed speedy deletion as the result and about 0.2% listed speedy keep as the result. Dragons flight 02:06, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I certainly do speedy obvious hoaxes on AfD, recognized as such by many voters, just as soon as possible, per minimum waste of time. There seems to be community support for not extending those doomed lives to five days, and not wasting people's voting time and bloating AfD with them. After I speedied and removed the "verifiably false" hoax Ria Fulton after only one day on AfD, ignoring its hoax keep votes, I asked around, trying to get a single person to say I did the wrong thing, without success. Not even the "Keep, I’m still crying from Fulton’s performance at Memorial Hall" sockpuppets complained. (To its other fine qualities, this article was a recreation of an already speedied article, I don't know what is was doing on AfD, but people sometimes nominate those, too.) Rouge admin.

[edit] Back to general discussion

I applaud your boldness, Snowspinner. AfD is getting out of hand. Taco Deposit | Talk-o to Taco 22:43, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Please explain how it's "getting out of hand"? If that were the case, then surely there would be considerably more listings on VfU? But that doesn't seem to be the case. And considering the number of articles and editors which are increasing on Wikipedia, the number of articles listed on AfD is not increasing to keep up with the numbers of articles and editors. Nobody is preventing anybody from voting on AfD to keep articles they think don't lack notability, or for any other purpose. User:Zoe|^(talk) 22:56, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

If I wanted to spend more time on AfD, then you'd certainly see a lot more "Keep" votes from me there. As it happens, I'd rather kill myself than spend lots of time on AfD, so applauding Snowspinner's action is the next most effective thing I can do. Taco Deposit | Talk-o to Taco 23:15, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Regardless of how out-of-hand AfD is, Snowspinner does not have the authority to single-handedly strike down AfDs due to his own beliefs. He, like everyone else but Jimbo, gets one vote. That's it. He exceeded his bounds. If he wants some kind of speedy keep system, fine, let him make a proposal. But this is not acceptable. --Blackcap | talk 23:19, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

What about when they're blatantly against policy? - David Gerard 10:12, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

This is faintly ridiculous. I imagine you live somewhere that, if those with power were to turn force on those debating an issue in an effort to silence them, you would decry that action, even if you disagreed with the debaters. You would tell the Those With Power to face down the discussions with better arguments of their own. You would tell them to respect everyone's opinions, not simply to discard them as trash. Apply the same philosophy here — deleting a debate is identical to telling the participant to "shut up, because I say so". If you think many more articles should be kept then stop bemoaning the fact, and call by AfD. If you can't be bothered to edit like the rest of us, then don't be surprised when we don't hear what you wish you were saying. But don't simply tell us to shut up. It's rude. -Splash^talk 01:34, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Hear, hear. --Blackcap | talk 03:20, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, I don't think he expected his actions to go unreversed. I know I didn't. I applauded him for making a radical statement about what's wrong with AfD. But I misjudged what community's reaction would be. Snowspinner's action didn't have the effect I (and I'm sure he) hoped. It just pissed a lot of people off. It did more harm than good, so I withdraw my "applause". Taco Deposit | Talk-o to Taco 03:24, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. --Blackcap | talk 03:59, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Consensus creates policy

A thought -- It's claimed above that AfD voters "ignore deletion policy". It's always been my interpretation that (outside of "core" policy such as NPOV) Wikipedia policy is supposed to reflect the consensus of editors, rather than dictate what we are all supposed to believe. Therefore, if deletion policy fails to describe what editors actually choose to keep or delete, then this would indicate that deletion policy is inaccurate and needs to be amended to reflect what editors actually support.

Put another way, Wikipedia policy and guideline pages are not statutes, but rather attempts to describe the consensus of editors. (Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy: the fact that, once upon a time, a majority of editors voted for a policy does not prove that it remains binding today if the consensus today is otherwise.) So, if there exists a consensus of editors in favor of policy "x", and "x" is not in violation of core policy (e.g. NPOV), then "x" already is Wikipedia policy; even if it hasn't yet been written up as a policy page.

It's also claimed above that there exists a group of "AfD regulars" whose views differ substantially from those of editors as a whole. If this were the case, then AfD votes would not be indicative of policy consensus on deletion. But is that really the case? Didn't someone do some actual science about this a few weeks ago -- counting up AfD votes of various people -- and find that people who participate more often on AfD don't have a substantially different tendency (in terms of whether they vote "keep" or "delete") than people who don't participate often? I seem to remember something along those lines.

In the cases of most policies, it would be difficult to adjudge whether a policy statement written in the past was out of sync with the consensus of editors today. However, in the case of deletion votes, there is no such difficulty. Insofar as an AfD vote reflects a consensus to delete based on "non-notability", there does exist Wikipedia policy to delete on this basis, at least in some cases -- since policy equals consensus. Therefore, rather than railing against deletions that are out of accord with the current policy statement, the correct thing to do is to amend the statement so that it reflects what policy (i.e. consensus) really is. --FOo 00:01, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I completely agree. This is reminding me a little of when GordonWatts was telling everybody who opposed his RFA that because the RFA page said "policy is to make trustworthy people administrators", and he's trustworthy, they're not allowed to oppose him. The point of AFD is not to blindly carry out the deletion policy - it's to discuss whether an article should be deleted. That's why AFD is there in the first place. It's not just to discuss cases on the borderline of the deletion policy either, because there are some things the deletion policy hasn't thought of. AFD is supposed to create flexibility and to enable new consensus to be formed. Snowspinner was 100% out of line, and deleting the AFD pages was even more inappropriate. I hate to say this, but it looks like adminship has really gone to his head this time. ~~ N (t/c) 00:13, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

"I completely agree. This is reminding me a little of when GordonWatts was telling everybody who opposed his RFA that because the RFA page said "policy is to make trustworthy people administrators", and he's trustworthy, they're not allowed to oppose him." Thank you for agreeing with my general theory. I wonder where my support was in my RfA. (smile) (Well, I would actually have had to have been qualified to get it, and maybe I was too busy to do a good job, but that's another story.) I'm glad that I could move the discussion in a helpful way for my neighbors here (even if I didn't quite help myself to an RfA)!--GordonWatts 05:50, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Foo; couldn't have said it better myself. · Katefan0^(scribble) 00:15, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

PS, about "AFD regulars": While the existence of this phenomenon is regrettable, you've got to consider the cause. Not a single experienced Wikipedian exists who doesn't know what AFD is. So why do so few participate? They don't want to. Whatever the reason for this, they know that by not participating they give up their voice in the debate. What's wrong with that? That's how consensus works - you are free to not say anything, and we are free to not take into account an opinion that we can't read your mind to get. (Now, if the AFD atmosphere actually is poisonous and repulsive - and I don't find it such - that should be fixed, but it does not make AFD decisions invalid.) ~~ N (t/c) 00:18, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I concur so completely that I am at a loss for words. With all of this. It goes right to the core of my black anarchist heart. --Blackcap | talk 00:20, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

FOo and N are completely spot on in their points. - Mgm|^(talk) 23:07, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I think that a number of Wikipedians do "tours of duty" on AfD, RC patrol, and that sort of thing. You get very involved for a few weeks or a month or whatever, and then get a little burned out on it and move on, and then come back to it after a while. There were a couple of weeks recently when I feel like I'd voted on nearly every single AfD in the daily log, and now I don't look in on it often, although I'm sure I'll be back. Hard to tell if there is a true permanent cadre of regulars, more than the 100-day analysis would show. MCB 21:54, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

If you've got limited time to donate to Wikipedia, then you have to pick and choose what you work on. It is horrid being an inclusionist at AfD. Thus you pick something more rewarding to work on. And AfD becomes steadily more deletionist. Pcb21| Pete 11:45, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] On AfD regulars and irregulars

I think FOo might be referring to something I had deleted in a fit of pique. I had done some basic analysis on school VfDs to see if there was be a different outcome if the "hardcore" voters stayed away. I could similar analysis again for all AfD's if any thought it useful.
brenneman^(t)(c) 00:25, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, Fubar may be referring to this: Wikipedia:AFD 100 days. As to the issue of different camps. I did observe in this analysis that the more one votes, the more likely one is to vote delete, but the difference is only a few % between the hyper regulars (those voting several times a day) and the semi-regulars (those voting a couple times a week). There is however a noticable difference between regular voters and infrequent voters. (see: Wikipedia:AFD_100_days#Condensed_voting_patterns) People voting at least once every five days said delete 73% of the time, whereas those showing up less regularly (i.e. most voters) cast a delete vote only 56% of the time. Dragons flight 00:34, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

That would be it! Thanks. So it depends on what one means by "AfD regulars". It would be interesting to see the shape of the "tail" of those below 20 votes in the 100-day period, though. Is the decline in the delete/keep ratio smooth? I would expect that there are a lot of people who vote only once and vote to keep -- because they're the single author of an article that's been nominated for deletion, whose only encounter with AfD is when "their" article got nominated.

I suspect that there are many people whose first encounter with AfD is when an article they've worked on is nominated for deletion. Most of them will vote only on that very nomination, and vote to keep. But -- these folks need to be able to get themselves up to speed to respond to a nomination meaningfully. If they read the deletion policy page and don't see "non-notability" as a criterion, they won't understand what's going on when people vote "delete, non-notable". That's why, if non-notability is a criterion for deletion (in consensus policy), we need to make sure that it's written up as such (in the description of policy). --FOo 00:47, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Notability per se as a deletion criterion was put to a vote (one not just amongst AFD regulars) to become policy once. It achieved a simple majority, but nothing like an indication of consensus. Verifiability was suggested as a better idea - David Gerard 10:12, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. I hope that those reading the RfC against Snowspinner will read it in that light. There is activity on AfD that is in direct contradiction to the current deletion policy (which says that an article whose only problem is that it's on a subject so obscure that it doesn't merit an article is not a deletion candidate, but should be merged). An administrator may sometimes take action necessary to support adherence to policy, for instance in this case removing invalid nominations and removing inappropriately placed tags. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 14:51, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Since you asked:

Category	Voters	Votes	Delete	Keep
Voted 20 to 49 times	276	8837	68.3%	31.7%
Voted 10 to 19 times	369	5020	66.0%	34.0%
Voted 5 to 9 times	591	3855	61.1%	38.9%
Voted 2 to 4 times	1476	3787	54.8%	45.2%
Voted once	3878	3878	40.2%	59.8%

The drop off seems to have both a gradual element to it and a sharp jump for those only voting once. Dragons flight 01:56, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

What is the data fro this statistics, please? I'd like to make a more detailed analysis. mikka (t) 20:44, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Thank you! This is great information. I think it's really interesting that the group of people who predictably vote to keep are the ones who only vote once. Moreover, this is a rather large group of people! This fits (but doesn't prove) my hypothesis that many of these are people who are brought to AfD only by the nomination of their own work for deletion. --FOo 02:28, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Another thing that it shows is that deletion listings have a remarkably low hit rate. Figures elsewhere show that it only deletes around 75% of all nominations. In other words, a lot of stuff is there that shouldn't be listed. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 14:51, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

The problem is that shold/shouldn't can't be decided without voting. Also, your remark would be reasonably correct if you were speaking about cases with an overwhelming votes to keep (e.g., less than, say 3 votes to delete). mikka (t) 20:44, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Here you go (Wikipedia:AFD 100 days):

Category	AFDs	Percentage
Unanimous delete	6523	58.2%
Unanimous keep	635	5.7%
Strong delete (>80%), not unanimous	855	7.6%
Strong keep (>70%), not unanimous	463	4.1%
Majority keep (>50%), not strong	803	7.2%
Others (50-80% delete)	1932	17.2%

mikka (t) 20:52, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Does consensus really create policy?

Like FOo said. It's the same category error GordonWatts made when, having failed miserably to get ANY real support for his adminship (what, 29-4 against, counting his vote for himself?) tried to browbeat Jimbo Wales into giving him the adminship by claiming policy demanded it and he must obey policy. Most of the rules that govern and regulate this place were not handed down on stone tablets for the Wikirabbis to debate the meaning, they evolved through discussion, usage, and experimentation. The users have created policy and are subject to them to the extent that they choose to be. --Calton | Talk 00:32, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

"It's the same category error GordonWatts made..." You silly rabbit, you: Nickptar agreed with my general theory: Read again: Nickptar said "I completely agree" in response to FOo's statement that "Wikipedia policy is supposed to reflect the consensus of editors, rather than dictate what we are all supposed to believe." If you recall, I said over and over (on Jimbo's page, for example) that Jimbo should either enforce the current policy (policy dictates consensus action) or change the policy (consensus dictates policy), thus giving approval to both of the competing methods (only one of which Nickptar and FOo support). (To quote you again, putting my reply in context) "It's the same category error GordonWatts made..." I made no error in my general theory: If I failed, it was either because (in my case) I was not qualified -or because the voters (in their case) did not follow policy (or both; error on both sides is most likely). We also remember, Calton, how you deleted one small paragraph in the Terri Schiavo article and asserted that it belonged in the legal sub-article -when, in fact, you never really thought this was true (or else you would have moved it there after deleting) -and furthermore, how you deleted that paragraph selectively whilst leaving alone the paragraphs above and below in, also legal paragraphs. Your disruption, according to the edit comments of the FA-editor, Raul654 (Mark) were partly responsible for him deciding to lock the article, and your excuse about "vanity links" was not justified, since I had removed from plain view all questionable links; Anything I left in hidden comments is at my discretion, since that is the proper place to put disputed material -and, certainly that was an issue in dispute.

Before you opine on another person, first make sure your behavior is justified and polite: If you were serious about placing legal comments in the sub-article, for example, you would have removed all of the legal paragraphs, and placed them in the article yourself -not merely deleting one section and refusing to move it to the section you said it belonged, which I add so you know I wasn't telling you that you "were wrong" without also suggestion a "proposed correction" in your action.--GordonWatts 06:06, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

And before you opine gaseously about what someone said, Gordon, perhaps you should actually understand what's being said. Your reply indicates either that you don't or are deliberately setting up strawmen to knock down. Here's a word of advice, Gordon: honesty is the best policy, practice it.

But it's immaterial. I consider what I do here, as I say on my user page "...clean-up duty, mopping up after the dishonest, incompetent, and fanatical", and since you qualify on all three counts -- as your tireless self-promotional obsession with adding your personal Geocities links as "news sites" and your outright lies in the above paragraph amply demonstrated to me -- you're not worth the electrons to engage, you're only worth the effort to clean up after. --Calton | Talk 06:24, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Calton, I would appreciate it if you refrained from making personal attacks against other editors. Would you like to rephrase what you wrote? Thanks. moink 07:05, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Would you like to rephrase what you wrote?. No. --Calton | Talk 07:56, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Ok. I thought I'd give you first crack at it, but since you declined I did it for you. Thanks for the response. moink 08:26, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

If you wanted to argue that "consensus creates policy" and hence non-notability is a deletion criterion, you would have to demonstrate that there is a demonstrated consensus that notability is a deletion criterion. I don't think you'll manage that. There is no such consensus. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 00:30, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Barrister Tony, look up de facto when you get the chance. --Calton | Talk 00:32, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

That's precisely my point. There is absolutely no consensus on AfD, de facto or otherwise, about notability. It's one of the most contentious claims on AfD. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 02:41, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, policy is that anything AFD voters say to delete gets deleted. Regardless of what other criteria it fits. ~~ N (t/c) 00:34, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

With some minor exceptions, yes. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 02:42, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with FOo. I think a lot of AfDs have gotten me thinking about the process though - even ones that are obvious deletes I think maybe should be userfied more. Often, I think that it is rather harsh to see it get deleted, especially when its in good faith. Also, I would like to point out that the difference in % between regulars (like myself) and non-regulars is obvious - generally non-regulars only vote to keep certain articles, often when petitioned to by someone else. Also, the high % delete thing is really too relative to judge a person on, as often people just vote delete on everything and there are a lot more bad ones (many obvious spam) then good ones. There are some regulars like Kappa who are rather, um, extreme inclusionists that go mainly to VfD to vote keep. Its just a different thought process between those who go to VfD to delete bad articles (like me) and those who go to VfD to save the potentially good ones (like Kappa) - that's why its important that it be a discussion so people can be convinced of an articles worth/uselessness. Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 00:46, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Not to scapegoat, but this is exactly the problem. Somewhere along the line, people began using the judgment of "usefulness" and, particularly, "worthyness." It sounds like we're picking people to put on the rescue boat - is this article worthy of being saved. And there's no reason to do that. The onus isn't on articles to prove their worthiness. It's on people to show why an article harms the project - to show why it's so bad that we'd be better off just removing it instead of fixing it or letting it stand with a stub tag or a cleanup tag. That so many people have lost sight of that is appalling to me. Snowspinner 01:21, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, but I thought that the "sum total of human knowledge" kind of came with a burden of worthyness? Are we putting together something "great" of something "all-inclusive"? Because we sure can't do both. - brenneman^(t)(c) 01:29, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Snowspinner, this isn't the place to rehash deletionist/inclusionist debates. Bringing that up is a distraction from the issue here, which is one of a group of consensus discussions .... and an administrator who chose to seize veto power over those discussions and shut them down. Administrators aren't supposed to hold veto power over the consensus of Wikipedia editors, and aren't supposed to shut down discussions because they don't approve of the consensus that is forming. --FOo 02:24, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I just looked at CSD A7, and the voting and debate that went with it. I noticed considerable support for it. I noticed that it has been widely used and largely successful in its goal. I see that sometimes it malfunctions, but that to err is human and that to fix is easy. I see non-notability as such a popular deletion criterion that, in extremis, we delete it on sight. -Splash^talk 01:34, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

A7 has worked out well, no doubt. But because non-notability has become a popular deletion criterion (outside of A7) and admins accept it when closing AFDs, that doesn't make it official policy does it? As accepted of a practice it might be? Rx StrangeLove 02:18, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I would dispute that A7 is working well, as it seems to be just about the most abused CSD criterion. Department head at Cambridge University? No notability there. Creator of the DeCSS haiku and security expert for EFF? Nothing special about that. Someone writes an article about a private boat, clearly that's a non-notable biography and so can be speedied. These kinds of things get caught looking in the speedy category and saved or sent to AFD if I see them, but I can't help but wonder what things have been deleted under A7 by others. Dragons flight 02:36, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, I can't say I totally disagree....I was just trying to separate A7 non-notability from general non-notability. A7 is abused for sure, I see it everyday, but it's abused less than Patent nonsense but more than say, attack pages. Rx StrangeLove 03:14, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

It's my suggestion that being accepted would make it "official policy" -- as official as it gets here, outside of core policies decreed by the folks who own the servers (i.e. Jimbo and the Board).

There isn't anything else but decree or consensus that can make something "official" here. Wikipedia isn't a democracy, so the act of holding a vote doesn't itself create policy; we use voting to ascertain whether a consensus exists; and the consensus determines policy.

Policy emerges by being what people are willing to follow and to defend. We write policy proposals to see if we can gather consensus around new ideas. We make sure that existing consensus gets written up as guidelines so that newcomers and the perplexed can have a chance to understand the rules that other editors are going by. We hold votes to make sure that what we think is consensus actually is consensus. (That last bit is why Tony Sidaway is mostly-right above: a demonstration of consensus is needed. A proposal and vote would be one such demonstration. The facts of what is presently accepted on AfD are a different such demonstration.)

So if everyone (for some value of "everyone" -- consensus doesn't mean unanimity) takes a given AfD vote as binding, then that makes it policy. (Likewise, if everyone thinks that admins shouldn't delete discussions, then that makes that policy, too.) --FOo 02:46, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

That's why I asked, official policy comes from a process that attempts to form a consensus via discussion over a period of time (the recent CSD updates for example), and not because somethings been an accepted practice for some amount of time. At least that's how I understand it...I guess I'd be worried if official policy can be created without some community discussion that works toward a consensus before that policy is accepted. Rx StrangeLove 03:14, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Clean-up

I believe Snowspinner was acting with what he thought was Wikipedia's in best interest, and I applaud him for being bold. So I'd ask him to now help "undo" the parts that have proven to require discussion. Leave the speedies speedied, replace their AfD pages, and put the speedy-kept-nn-is-not-an-option pages back on AfD. I'd let them run for five days from now, as well.
brenneman^(t)(c) 01:54, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I believe Uncle G has done all cleanup necessary now. Snowspinner 02:13, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Consensus on Notability

It is my view that there is general consensus that a subject must be notable in order for it to have an article on Wikipedia. I point to the recent discussion at Wikipedia:Deletion reform/Brainstorming#Remove notable requirement where it was suggested as part of proposed reforms of the deletion process that this requirement be removed. The overwhelming agreement on those who have commented is that notability is now a requirement and that it should remain one. And I note that these discussions, as part of the deletion reform proposal, are likely to be didproportionaly viewed by people who think the entire current deletion process is "broken" -- but of course they are even more disproportionatly likely to be viewed by people who have a significant interest in the deletion process and deletion policy.

I cite additional support for my view that there is a consensus that non-notable subjects should not have articles, even if they are verifiable. There is a general agreement that bands not meeting the WP:MUSIC criteria should not be the subjects of articels, and that such articles, when they are created, should be deleted. Such articles are almost always deleted at AfD, and a proposal to make this a speedy delete criterion got majority supoort (but not consensus, in significant part due to issues about definition and explicit reliance on a non-policy page). Many such bands are verifiable, but the issue of verifibility pretty muich never comes up in AfD debates on such bands, it is always an issue of notability.

The subject of WP:CFD A7 have been discussed elsewhere including on AN/I. it is new, and it has been somewhat contentions, and it IMO needs clearer support standards. But when there have been disputes they have been over what is or is not notable, or over what consitutes a "claim" of notability. No one has been arguing that biographies of non-notable people ought to be retained.

Indeed, does anyone really argue that verifiable but admittedly non-notable subjects should have articles here? To borrow an example recently used on VfU, my left shoe is verifiable, (I can send you a picture if you like) but does anyone really want an article about it? Consider a thunderstom that occured in New Jersey in 2004. It is esily verifiable -- I can produce newspaper reports. But should there be an article on wikipedia on every storm that got newspaper coverage? Or to be a little more reasonable, consider me. I was, earlier this year, an unsuccessful candidate for local elected office. This is verifiable -- there were quite a number of newspaper stories local and regional about the campaign. I have previously been the chair of a professional sub-orgianization (ACM's SIGAPL) and have published professional papers and edited professional conference proceedings. This is easily verifiable. Still I am probably not notable (I wouldn't meet my own standards on AfD) Should there be David E. Siegel? Would you vote to delete it on AfD? If not, why not?

I would argue that if a subject is not notable, an article about it is not encyclopedic, because an encyclopedia only has articles about notable subjects. It is is certianly policy that wikipedia includes only encyclopedic articles. Notability is really just a shorthand for encyclopediacicty, or more accurately, it is one criterion for encyclopediacicty (verifibility is another, as is a factual tone).

So I think that notability is a current requirement for being the subject of a wikipedia article, and it should be -- even though there is not always clear consensus on what constitutes notability, and like any other critierion of inclusion or deletion, it can be abused. Thus I feel that unilaterally deleting AfD pages where non-notability was cited as a reason for nomination, or ignoring AfD votes that site non-notability as a reason, is against consensus and therefore violates policy. DES ^(talk) 15:37, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Learn to write in paragraphs if you expect to be read. When this was put to a general vote (i.e., not just AFD habitues), there was not consensus for lack of notability to be a grounds for deletion.

That twenty people are violating the deletion policy in concert makes more of a violation, not less of one, and that's time for an admin to step in IMO - David Gerard 15:44, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

But my arguement is that in nominting articles for deletion on the grounds that the subjects are "not notable", people are upholding policy, not violating it. I refer to WP:NOT, a policy page, where it says "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of items of information. That something is 100% true does not mean it is suitable for inclusion in an encyclopedia." and "Subjects of encyclopedia articles must have a claim to fame besides being fondly remembered by their friends and relatives." and "Biography articles should only be for people with some sort of fame, achievement, or perhaps notoriety." and When you wonder what should or should not be in an article named "whatever", ask yourself what a reader would expect under "whatever" in an encyclopedia. ". I argue that those statements effectvely support a notability requirement.

Also, when you say "That twenty people are violating the deletion policy in concert..." it sounds like a conspiricy, not the result of free and open discusion, by many editors in good standing here whose opnions on this issue generally agree on this point. Expressing the opnion that a page ought to be deelted does not violate any policy that I can think of, even if the reason are not in line with the current deletion policy. DES ^(talk) 16:22, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I might also note that the above was in paragraphs. What it lacked was whitespace between paragraphs. i have corrected that. DES ^(talk) 16:22, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

If we're arguing over whether there's a de facto consensus in support of non-notability as a general criterion for deletion, then clearly there is no de facto consensus in support of non-notability as a general criterion for deletion. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 17:24, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

That's about it. All of these people with apparent brain damage who cling so desperately to their cruft that they are willing to shout "notability isn't in the policy page, so it has to be kept!" are noxious. 1. "Notability" as a magic word lost out in reaching 80% (or whatever astronomical figure the most petulant want to set for it now) to be "consensus," but this does not mean that an article cannot be nominated for lacking notability. 2. "Notability" is just a word. What that word refers to is a whole set of attributes that could also be called "encyclopedic." It's a vague term and a tautological one (to be notable, one must be worthy of noticing, and to note them in the encyclopedia they should be note-able), so it's no wonder it failed to get consensus. However what most of those nominating on those grounds mean by "notable" is fully and fairly covered by several other parts of the deletion policy. 3. It is no one's right to delete the VfD listings wholesale. Neither Snowspinner nor Kappa nor Taco Deposit nor I gets to say that the nominators have no rights to make the nominations. That is anti-democratic and anti-Wikipedia. They would silence nominators to preserve the rights of bad authors, it seems. They fight for peace, censor for liberty, shout for silence. 4. If the nomination was on the grounds of "not notable," so what? Why be so damned afraid of VfD and the sense of the editors that you have to prevent discussion? That's a sure sign that you don't belong here, if you think that The People will delete what should not be deleted and that they cannot read the policy. 5. Ignore the word used by the nominator. Snowspinner already read and assessed for himself when the wrong word was used and something could be speedied. Why, then, did his reading skills fail him in the other cases? Most of the time, those who use "not notable" are really saying, "Too granular an article" or "Does not meet the standards of WP:MUSIC/BIO/Whatever" or "Unverifiable" or "Ephemera." Reading for the magic word so that you can unlist the nomination is being a jerk. Geogre 18:34, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Anti-democracy and anti-Wiki are hardly synonyms. In fact, they're often antonyms. Snowspinner 18:37, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Steady on geogre, have you read WP:NPA? On the subject of deletion criteria, not the least problem with "notability" is that it's so unreliable as a factor in nominations. Twenty-five "non-notable" elementary school articles were listed for deletion on 21st of last month. Not one single article was deleted--this set against the general 75% deletion rate of articles listed on AfD. Overall, 89% of school articles listed for deletion, the vast majority of which have been listed on grounds of "non-notability", have been kept this year. Add to this the fact that it's ruled out as a deletion criterion, and that editors still have the option to merge (as the deletion policy says they should) I really don't see what's anti-wiki here. What's more wiki-ish than merging content? --Tony Sidaway^Talk 21:35, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

• George is right, notability is a collective name for a group of article properties. The only reason why the schools are kept is that it's still a big debate whether they deserve articles. Some say schools deserve articles, others say, while education is a noble thing, schools aren't really that remarkable. In this regard I feel too many people vote delete instead of merge with would put the school in context and enhance some Rambot stubs at the same time. Still, the fact notability of schools is contentious doesn't mean it's faulty in itself with regard to websites or people it's often quite accurate. If people where to use their time and craft nominations of more than one line, they could explain why they feel it needs deleted, by citing outside sources and policy instead of just saying "nn, delete" - a useful nomination needs to explain WHY the subject is non-notable according to the nominator. - Mgm|^(talk) 23:28, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Yes, Geogre is absolutely spot on. Snowspinner's actions are anti-Wikipedia because they ignore three basic tenets: that Be Bold relates to article content, not to the overall shape of the project, that consensus for significant steps is required for the project to prosper, and, most important of all, that the primary aim of the project is the creation of an encyclopaedia, not a big book of everything. The recent series of assaults on AfD are nothing more or less than an attempt, conscious or otherwise, to undermine this last goal. Filiocht | The kettle's on 09:32, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

• Further, as we see above, this is all about the schools. That's ridiculous. Stop debating schools by unlisting, undeleting, and destroying the process of deletion debate. Stop using schools as a reason for agreeing or disagreeing with unlisting nominations. MGM is, of course, right that nominators shouldn't be in the habit of "nn, delete" as nominations, but if the brevity and sloppiness of the nomination is really an issue then Snowspinner would have been best by putting a note on the nomination saying that it needs to be improved. I also think that "be bold" should be stricken everywhere it occurs, as it's clear now that it is the excuse used by every vandal, the plea of every abuser of policy, and the credo of every thug on Wikipedia. Geogre 12:00, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

• • If nothing is done about Snowspinner's, just as nothing effective was done about Ed Poor's, then nothing will be done about the next arrogant admin who decides to do what they want with an area of policy or debate they just don't like. Eventually, Wikipedia will become the private playground of smug and self-elected point-scorers. Those of us who are mainly concerned with building a work of reference that might be of use to the rest of the planet's population will simply give up and walk away. I'm with Geogre: enough of being bold, it's time to be considered. Filiocht | The kettle's on 12:22, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
    • Being bold is fine, as long as editors remember that the full title of WP:BOLD is "Be bold in updating pages". It's not Be bold in closing AfDs or Be bold in making controversial administrative decisions. Carbonite | Talk 13:36, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Poll

I have started an informal poll on this issue. ~~ N (t/c) 21:57, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User name containing soldier

At Talk:Ancient Macedonian language, there are concerns about the username Soldier of Macedon. Since I personally don't see anything offensive in the name soldier, I'd like to ask for a second admin opinion on the matter.--Wiglaf 12:32, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

• I don't see anything offensive in it either. Could we have more admins commenting on it? — JIP | Talk 12:35, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

His militant username and tone, along with his use of bold text throughout, should have alerted you to his true intentions. A brand new user going by the username of User:Te1mak (a sockpuppet?) has just posted links to an internet forum where a Soldier of Macedon makes wild claims about a supposed connection between ancient Macedonian and the unrelated modern Slavic language spoken in what is now the FYROM. The vexed question of whether or not ancient Macedonian was a Greek language is an entirely separate issue, and is discussed at length in Ancient Macedonian language. What is certain, however, is that a link between it and the Slavic languages, other than their common membership of the huge and diverse Indo-European family of languages, has most definitely not been acknowledged by any serious scholar. Of course, this hasn't stopped Slav nationalists propagating their zany theories nonetheless.--Theathenae 12:49, 3 October 2005 (UTC) (also posted at Talk:Ancient Macedonian language)

In that case the user may (or may not) be a problem themselves, but no way this fits the problem username policy - David Gerard 13:00, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Legal threats

Today I blocked an anonymous IP, who had replaced France and Turkey with comments including legal threats and even death threats, for 1 week, even though those were his first contributions. Is this against Wikipedia policy?

Anyway, I find it amusing when people threat legal action if their contributions are edited, especially (such as in this case) when the contribution is vandalism. If their lawyer knows what Wikipedia is, or grasps the general concept, he'll have a hard time stopping laughing when he hears his client's case. — JIP | Talk 14:58, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me. Vandalism is one thing, threats, especially those of violence, are quite another. As long as they're not directed against specific people I generally just treat them as nasty vandalism though. And I'm sure the lawyer would manage not to laugh and earn a big hourly fee for the entire duration of the trial. --fvw* 15:05, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

And that would be 10 minutes after it gets in court, because the judge is too busy laughing to dismiss the case? --Phroziac^(talk) 16:30, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Plus 50 hours of preparation. I must start handing out offers to work as a legal researcher along with my blocks. --fvw* 16:43, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

IMO it iks time to reconsider the legal threat policy. Wikipedia has grown sufficiently mature to deal with such cases in a non-panic way. Cleary, such threats are issued either by legally ignorant nervous people or by trolls. The latter ones must be done as usual, while the former ones must be politely recommended to consult a lawyer. mikka (t) 17:59, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I disagree for a couple of reasons. First of all, although Wikipedia has grown and matured, I don't believe the Foundation has a legal defense fund to speak of. So an actual lawsuit could well still hurt a lot. Second of all, many legal threats are not issued against the Foundation, but against individual contributors - they serve as a particularly brutal chill on discussion. Snowspinner 18:23, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Just keep on blocking for legal threats, but make it last forever if the threat included the possibility of physical harm. Zach (Sound Off) 20:34, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Couldn't a person renounce a threat, though? Everyking 05:27, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I would say so for legal threats. In general, an editor blocked (solely) for making a legal threat should be able to withdraw the threat and return to being a positive contributor. They can email the blocking admin or make a posting to the mailing list. Editors who repeatedly make and withdraw legal threats should probably be shown the door, however.

I don't think I would be as forgiving with threats of physical harm—such situations tend to be rather complicated, however, and I would tend to look at them on a case-by-case basis. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:53, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Threats should be instant bans. Why? Because 1) They obviously aren't tests; 2) You have to be suitably intelligent to make them, and therefore know what you are doing; and 3) they have demonstrated a blatant disrespect for Wikipedia by feeling the right to threaten it. No quarter should be given. --Golbez 03:56, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Skyring

139.168.159.136 (talk • contribs • logs • block user • block log) needs to be blocked immediately. I don't like having to edit war with a banned user. His attacks on users should not be tolerated. Why haven't admins been enforcing his ban, as per the Arbitration Committee's request?--Cyberjunkie | Talk 18:10, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

• You two are obviously having a personal dispute of some kind. But I don't have personal experience with either of you so I can't know who is right. Can this be taken into a case of mediation or arbitration of some kind? — JIP | Talk 19:12, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

• It's not a personal dispute at all. It's a matter of preventing his personal attacks on users. The point is that Skyring has been the subject of Arbitration, and was banned. So why has he been allowed to continue the behaviour that he was banned for?--Cyberjunkie | Talk 02:09, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

• Skyring is proving to be every bit as vexatious as his real-life namesake. IP blocked. Slac speak up! 20:09, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Slac.--Cyberjunkie | Talk 02:09, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, what is an example of Skyring making an "attack"? I've never seen him be anything other than unfailingly civil, so such an example would be very interesting to see. Everyking 05:23, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Skyring#Wiki-stalking_by_Skyring. Demiurge 09:50, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

How about "(User X) reliably produces crappy edits" [12]?. Speculating that an editor is sleep-deprived or dyslexic would not normally be seen as flattering either. Slac speak up! 10:36, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Also, have a look at his blog, accessible from his user page (I don't have the URL to hand). There's plenty in the archives about Jtdirl and another user, and all the errors they (according to Skyring) make, and how Skyring was "pissing [himself] laughing". And, while I can't provide diffs without doing a big search, I've often seen examples of Skyring here on Wikipedia (not just on his blog) referring to the "crappy edits" of another user. Ann Heneghan ^(talk) 10:44, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Everyking, there's a context surrounding this that you're perhaps not appreciating. Wikistalking is in itself an attack. There is a voluminous Arbitration case – technically three (another was merged into the original, and it was re-opened) – with many diffs for you to look over if you’re truly curious. --Cyberjunkie | Talk 11:23, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vandal / Hate speach

I would like to bring attention to Special:Contributions/209.113.221.11. He or she has been vandalizing articles and it appears nobody has yet warned him or her about wikipedia's policy on vandalizim. I hope this is the right area to bring this up. --Quasipalm 18:46, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Usually, Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress would be a good place to put reports of vandalism. --FOo 19:41, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:StephenCox

I got a message on my user talk page from this chap, who seems to be a man from nowhere. He has a barnstar on his user page, but it has only ever been edited once, some time this morning, and there is no record of him at all before six days ago. He's involved in some kind of argument over Urdu language, which I've protected. Does anybody know what's up here?

See also User talk:Tony Sidaway. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 19:16, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:Sortan

I'd welcome some outside comment on User talk:Sortan about this user. See his user contributions. The vast majority of this user's edits are disruptive and seem to be trolling. He also seems to wikistalk me and give offensive edit summaries (which I'm inured to, but which don't help resolution either). It may be a role account of another user, to me Sortan doesn't seem worth keeping for the very small number of positive edits he has made. After all the BCE/BC arbitration business I'm keen not to get this blown out of proportion again - but most users, including myself, appear willing to accept the uneasy compromise of "no changes in style" - Sortan appears just to mix things up. Many thanks, jguk, 20:21, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 207.63.113.10

Special:Contributions/207.63.113.10 appears to have a long, unblemished record of vandalism. S/he has been warned a few times, but as far as I can tell has never been blocked. Maybe it's time? TIA, Mwanner | Talk 20:54, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

It's a school IP, short blocks can be useful here to stop currently happening vandalism, but unless we want to permanently block this school (which I suspect we don't), I don't think anything other than blocks to stop current sprees is useful. --fvw* 21:01, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I checked all 42 edits, and only saw 2 or 3 that could be considered anything but vandalism (other than a couple that were self-reversions). Seems reasonable to me to do a block. Granted it's not a huge flood from this one source, but maybe a brief (1-2 week?) block would scare the little twerps some (er, uh, students)  ;-/ Mwanner | Talk

Yeah, but you might also be seriously inconveniencing good editors. Remember, the vandals generally don't bother to log in, whereas the good editors do, so their edits don't show up in the IP's contributions. I think it'd be more effective to scare the little students some by blocking them when they're vandalising. That way the block can be shorter, plus the added shock factor of it actually being a direct reaction to their vandalism. --fvw* 23:08, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] AFD and Snowy

Well. We can spend all week bickering on whether we should blame Snowspinner, or blame the people who blame Snowspinner, or blame those who blame those... - well, you get the idea.

Or, we could consider that AFD is unwieldy, bureaucratic, factionalizing and generally unpleasant, and find some way to fix that. Looking over AFD it is obvious that the vast majority of nominations don't need the debate - many end up as unanimous deletes; many others get a plethora of keeps because the nominator overlooked something, or the article had a source added; and yet many others are actually nominated for NPOV'izing, merging, or renaming and don't need AFD.

In the spirit of the latter, I would suggest this extremely simple deletion system...

1. If you want some article deleted, for whatever reason, edit it to add {{subst:SomeDeletionTemplate|reason}}.
2. If someone else disagrees, they can edit the article and remove the template. End of story.
3. No edit warring - no user is allowed to place that template on the same article twice.
4. If the template remains in place for some specific period of time, the article may be summarily deleted by any admin.

To ensure that this works, the template should add the article to Category:Deletion 4-10-2005, and a bot should update the template each day to point it to the new date. Advantages? Less bureaucracy. Less room for violent debate. Less chance of a cabalistic subculture. Less backlogs. And it requires no software upgrade. Disadvantages? It doesn't work on articles that are sock-supported or controversial, and it may be necessary to have some process to get rid of those. That process should not be invoked until this simple process has been tried and failed a couple of times.

Similar processes have been proposed in the past, but to my knowledge none as simple as this. It makes deletion easier if nobody objects, and makes it harder in case of controversy. Both seem like a good thing to me. I've crossposted this to Snowy's RFC since it seems very relevant there. Anyone who concurs should feel free to turn this into an official proposal on some other page, and discuss and advertise it.

Radiant_>|< 22:29, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

*sigh*

1. Sock puppets are bad enough in AfD as is, but in a proposal like this it gives them full control to remove the tag. Even if sockpuppets are not allowed then you'll have meaningless editwars with them. At least at AfD they give somewhat entertaining "opinions".
2. What about the creators of the page? 99% of the AfDed stuff is complete vanity anyway. Or stuff from "organizations" seeking publicity on WP?
3. In addition it makes it even easier to people to fool others and keep annoying stuff like original research. If that stuff is kept, then at the least it leads to edit wars etc. to get that original research into otherwise good articles.

Like I said, I think we should try and address both the over-deleted articles and the ones that get kept for no good reason... I don't know, maybe we can work out the kinks in it, but as is it sounds like it needs a lot of work.... what do you think? Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 22:50, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I think this should be tried... but will fail utterly. As RN says, you'll get crazy edit wars, and a higher percentage of crap being kept. I can't see how ANY deletion system could possibly avoid the problems of AFD, other than "admins can delete anything they feel like", and it's pretty obvious what's wrong with that.... Any method of getting community consensus requires discussion, and deletion is such a controversial area that discussion will inevitably lead to rancor and hurt feelings. This is why I oppose deletion reform unless it's a really damn good idea. ~~ N (t/c) 23:03, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

• Like I said above - if a deletion is controversial (as evidenced by edit warring and/or sockpuppetry) then some other system will have to be used. Possibly the current AFD, for lack of a better idea. But this simple system will deal with at least 80% of its load, and remove much of its bickering. For instance, User:A nominates some article stating it's "unverifiable". Then User:B removes the tag and adds a link that verifies it (yes, he could just untag it, but since he knows about the subject it's easy for him to add a line or two). Then A is happy and the article is better. And still no bureaucracy. Radiant_>|< 23:16, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
  • All right, I actually like it now, if you make the modification that no user is allowed to remove the tag more than once. ~~ N (t/c) 23:25, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
• Well, if highly-debated deletions are sent somewhere else this idea could get load of AFD. The only problem I see is vandals and article creators removing tags when no one is keeping an eye on the article. Categories don't allow for a central place to check changes to article nominated for deletion. Vandals would, in some cases, be able to remove tags without being discovered for ages. - Mgm|^(talk) 23:39, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
  • • I've been giving some thought to this, and thought I'd come up with something, but I now see that I have been re-inventing the wheel. However, what I was working on was a varient of what Radient has above, with afd relegated to a 'disputed deletions' to deal with cases where tages are removed - that means we get all the unanimous stuff (which not even the creator or Kappa want to keep out of the system). I've set down my thoughts here, if anyone is interested - but perhaps we need to take this debare elsewhere. --Doc (?) 23:31, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

• (after edit conflict with Doc) Personally, I don't think that the above system (referring to the proposal above Doc's comment) will work. When would an admin delete the articles? AfD regulars, in addition, would have to go to each article and spend time removing a tag. Where would discussion go? In addition, what if a vandal just went through every AfD and removed the tag? It would require double the amount of work by someone else to re-add the tag, and the vandal could again remove the tags, claiming that he's doing so in good faith. Instead, I've given this some thought and come up with my own proposal:

The ease of removing tags with no easy way to stop vandalous removals is my main objection, but "in addition, would have to go to each article and spend time removing a tag." shouldn't be a real problem. People already need to read the article to make an informed decision about its deletion. - Mgm|^(talk) 23:45, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

• I cannot see the merit in this suggestion, as it replaces such debate as ther now is with uncommented removal of a tag. IMHO, AfD is exactly as "unwieldy, bureaucratic, factionalizing and generally unpleasant" as it needs to be to do what is, of necessity, an unpleasant but vital job. Filiocht | The kettle's on 14:04, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

• I would strongly oppose this or any varient. It doesn't afford the encouragement to ahve the kind of useful discussion thar AFD now often fosters, and in a case at all controversial, it could lead to worse waring than the curreht system. leat us suppose that User puts a delete tag on, or for example, a school article. User A slos list the articel on a sub-page of his user page "Articles i have taged for deletion". User B removes the tag. User C reads A's page and restores the tag. User D removes it. Note that the end result is quite deeltionist -- if there is one more user who wants the articel delted than kept, the tag will wind up staying on -- thus we have an akward system that results in deltion by a simple majority vote, and that also favors organized groups focused on deletion or preservatio far maore than Afd does now. A horror, IMO. DES ^(talk) 14:22, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

• I would support this, or something like this... Although I would prefer the Pure Wiki Deletion System, of course. Yes, edit wars over deletion tags will occur, but edit wars occur every day over everything else, and our dispute-resolution processes somehow manage to resolve them. Why should it be any easier or more difficult to delete an entire article than it is to delete a section of an article? It seems to me that we should use the exact same methods--and, when disputes arise, the exact same dispute-resolution methods--for both. --Aquillion 01:59, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Flcelloguy's AfD proposal

• 1. The current AfD system would be kept, with a subpage for each date.
• 2. However, once consensus has been reached (i.e. there are 4 or 5 delete votes with no keep votes, or vice versa) an admin can close the AfD and either delete of keep the article. This would relieve the backlog at AfD, as the vast majority of the cases don't need a five day period to reach consensus.
• 3. Of course, the admin can always leave the debate open.
• 4. Another radical proposal: once an AfD is closed, the subpage should be removed from the day's log. This would make voting of AfD easier, and would also reduce the gigantic pages we have for AfDs. The disadvantage of this would be that there would be no one place to have the record; however, someone can easily check the history of the page.

Comments? Thoughts? Thanks. Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk | W_S 23:33, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

If the debates themselves are held on a transcluded subpage, they can easily be removed from the listing while still being available. You'd still need to leave a closure not on talk though. - Mgm|^(talk) 23:46, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it's reasonable to rapidly close an AfD just because the first few people who vote happen to agree. Many people simply don't check Wikipedia more often than once a day. So there's a statistical likelihood, under that sort of system, that AfDs would be closed before people who know the article and the subject have the chance to weigh in. Likewise, closing an AfD after only a few votes makes it more likely that a clique can create an AfD and fill it up with a few votes, then declare "consensus" and shut down discussion before anyone else has a chance to contribute.

Another major disadvantage of rapidly closing non-CSD AfDs is that many articles get improved substantially while under AfD. The current five-day course of an AfD gives article contributors a chance to prove that the subject of an article is notable and worthwhile (or, at least exists) by improving the article, adding citations, and so forth. Closing AfDs more quickly means throwing away this chance for improvement on many articles. That would disrupt a process which presently leads to better articles. --FOo

I'd amend this proposal to say that AfD which have five(?) delete votes and no keep votes after two(?) days can be deleted. This way, if someone wants to do a rewrite, he can always vote "Keep I will attempt a rewrite -~~~~" or similar, and a bunch of people wouldn't be able to bring down the article in five minutes if they were fast - this is only targeted at stuff noone wants to keep anyway, but which for some reason isn't speedyable. Of course, someone could just go through and vote keep on everything to thwart this, but I'm being naive and assuming that no dickery will be involved. Also, I wouldn't remove the listing from the log if it's closed early, but maybe change ther transclusion to a simple wikilink. -- grm_wnr Esc 17:09, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Notability proposal

Wikipedia:Notability proposal is a proposal to explicitly make "notability" a requirement for Wikipedia articles, and to explicitly include "lack of notability" as a reason for deleting articles. Please visit Wikipedia talk:Notability proposal and express your view on the proposal. DES ^(talk) 23:45, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] I don't know where to put this so

I have read Wikipedia for a while but now I'm going to start editing. I am new. Can you refer me to any editors or mentors that I can go to with questions or help?Shelburne Kismaayo 01:49, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Answered at your talk page. Best, Meelar (talk) 02:49, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Jimbo's address

Well, this is all I ever need to know about our God-king. - brenneman^(t)(c) 02:40, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Meaning, should this be deleted from history per the porn star address talks? - brenneman^(t)(c) 03:24, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Removed, though if they really want to plaster this info everywhere I think it's a losing battle. Still, it's a bit obnoxious but I assume this is all publicly available information. --fvw* 03:38, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Maybe a bit of an overreaction, considering it was all public information. The address is already plastered all over Wikimedia's Articles of Incorporation, and the phone number is in the phone book. By the way, Jimbo was a bit surprised to find his talk page moved to an odd location -- apparently fvw forgot to uncheck the "move talk page as well" button when he moved the user page, and nobody noticed for 7.5 hours. -- Tim Starling 11:57, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Tim, there was information about Jimbo's family, which I believe what worried us. Zach (Sound Off) 13:45, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, oops about the talk page. I must be a stealth page move vandal. Given that the phone number is listed and everything, I'll skip on removing that particular essay from histories from now on. --fvw* 14:23, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Tony Sidaway has posted to the Ashida Kim message board in an attempt to sort things out: [13] - David Gerard 13:57, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

doesn't apear to have worked.Geni 16:44, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How to deal with a difficult new editor?

At the moment, I'm dealing with a difficult new user, User:Readallaboutit. Please read User talk:Readallaboutit for a history of my attempts to help them with editing. Unstructured lists instead of sentences, edits to apparently irrelevant articles, adding the same content over and over to multiple articles, copyvios, you name it, they're doing it. They appear to be ignoring all attempts to communicate via their talk page. I am now having difficulties maintaining civility, and beginning to wonder whether their behavior is more like vandalism than there being a mere content dispute. Can anyone else help? -- The Anome 10:32, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I looked to check if it was one of our regular pains in the backside, and he's on AOL. Yay. - David Gerard 13:52, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I see the newbie has never edited a talk page. It's frustrating to get no response, of course, but at least it leaves room for supposing they're incompetent rather than aggressive, and they don't seem to be reverting your cleanup. The impression isn't of non-native or dyslexia issues, or a child writing, or carelessness either, but simply an adult native speaker in the UK, with, uh, poor writing skills. I guess it doesn't help to ask someone to write grammatically if they aren't able to. I don't think there is any intentional vandalism, but how about a short block just the same, to get their attention? They'd see the block reason when they tried to edit next, right? I'm thinking it could read "Sorry, but you need to reply to the comments on your discussion page before you edit any more articles". (Yes, why do we have tabs called "discussion" which lead to pages we always refer to as "talk" ? It has to be confusing for noobs.) I'll do that in a while, if nobody objects below.

Meanwhile, my own cruel elitist view is that Wikipedia would lose if competent editors who're cheerfully contributing text of their own right now [hastily: I am, actually!!] should instead spend the time rewriting Readallaboutit's contributions. So you probably need to walk away, The Anome! But might there be editors out there whose creative juices are running low at the moment, who would like to "copyedit" these edits (though it seems a weak word)? UK editors for choice. I appreciate that the misspelled names are a big problem, and it's unfortunate that the new contributor has discovered category pages... but apart from that, it's mostly possible to tell what they mean. --Bishonen | talk 15:11, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

What Bishonen said. A pretty extreme case. I've bookmarked his talk and will keep an eye out for his name on RC. Not much help, I know. –Hajor 15:48, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Active editors have a responsibility to respond to legitimate enquiries about the edits they're making. It's a fundamental part of how wikipedians work together and collaborate. An editor who makes controversial edits but never responds is causing a problem, even if inadvertently.

The bottom line is, he has to respond. If he doesn't, I would go so far as to say you could block him, with the block message saying something to the effect of "I will unblock you as soon as you post an acknowledgement on [[User talk:Readallaboutit]]". This will clarify whether he's ignoring you or simply clueless. -- Curps 04:42, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, but I'm hanging fire on blocking because of the editing pattern. All Readallaboutit's edits were done in the space of 17 hours, and now he's been not-editing for 20 hours. Maybe it was just a drive-by hit. Bishonen | talk 05:22, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Avram

Someone claiming to be the "Grand Duke of Avram" keeps replacing the Avram page with a message claiming that the image displayed there is his personal seal and cannot be used as is. I tried to point the Anonymous User (talk) in question to the WP:CP policies but he keeps blanking the page with his message, crossing the 3RR boundaries by far. Could a Admin look this over and try to arbitrate? --MJ^(☎|@|C) 21:04, 4 October 2005 (UTC).

I've been keeping a close eye on this. After several days protection I unprotected, but he came back. Protected again. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 23:49, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Free Republic: Mild outbreak of spam/vandalism from anons, et al

A small group of anon IPs, plus one or two others, have suddenly started to target the Free Republic article with spam, dumb comments, text of e-mails, and other seemingly coordinated activity. A few are also participating in the talk page, to various degrees of seriousness.

Not a huge deal, but could someone keep an eye on the article? I will bring more details here.

I have had to revert a couple of spamming/vandalism items, and as I have already had 2RR on the article with respect to other disputed content, I do not want trouble. Many thanks. paul klenk ^talk 21:20, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

It's on my watchlist now, though anybody else willing to play spot-the-freeper or spot-the-anti-freeper is welcome to join me. (please.) - jredmond 22:52, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

something to do with this [14]?Geni 11:42, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ditto Survivor Sucks

Same as above message, different article. One anon user has now been blocked after repeatedly vandalising the article, though there is a long string of vandalism in the history. -- Francs2000 23:32, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Possible class project?

Call me paranoid, but I noticed a lot of users signing up on Wikipedia using the following names. The partial list includes:

1. 19:22, 4 October 2005 0101CHANmwlydia (Created the user 0101CHANmwlydia (talk • contribs))
2. 19:22, 4 October 2005 0101WAIys (Created the user 0101WAIys (talk • contribs))
3. 19:22, 4 October 2005 0101QUEENIELI (Created the user 0101QUEENIELI (talk • contribs))
4. 19:21, 4 October 2005 0101Leeyy (Created the user 0101Leeyy (talk • contribs))
5. 19:21, 4 October 2005 0101LIUch (Created the user 0101LIUch (talk • contribs))
6. 19:21, 4 October 2005 0101TONGck (Created the user 0101TONGck (talk • contribs))
7. 19:21, 4 October 2005 0101LAMcy (Created the user 0101LAMcy (talk • contribs))
8. 19:21, 4 October 2005 0101FUNGhy (Created the user 0101FUNGhy (talk • contribs))
9. 19:21, 4 October 2005 0101CHENGty (Created the user 0101CHENGty (talk • contribs))
10. 19:21, 4 October 2005 0101KUNGsf (Created the user 0101KUNGsf (talk • contribs))
11. 19:21, 4 October 2005 0101CHENGkw (Created the user 0101CHENGkw (talk • contribs))
12. 19:21, 4 October 2005 0101HUIml (Created the user 0101HUIml (talk • contribs))
13. 19:21, 4 October 2005 0101TANGhk (Created the user 0101TANGhk (talk • contribs))
14. 19:21, 4 October 2005 0101LUIyg (Created the user 0101LUIyg (talk • contribs))

The thing that is smiliar is the number 0101, the last name is in all caps and the first initials of their first and middle name afterwards in lower case letters. Could someone confirm that is going on, and if so, what school is conducting it? Zach (Sound Off) 05:55, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Have any of them made edits yet? I wouldn't worry unless there start to be editing problems. Everyking 06:47, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

No edits so far, but since there was another school project before that caused a lot of problems, so I was to be sure we and the school are on the same page, so to speak, before anything funky goes down. Zach (Sound Off) 07:06, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Have a look at the IP from where these users were made perhaps? Inter\^Echo 09:29, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Putting a link to Wikipedia:School and university projects on their talk pages may be useful. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 16:34, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Done. Dragons flight 20:02, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Any mass creation of accounts based on a pattern, which are then unused, smells like Willy to me. The only difference is that Willy is usually more creative. I say don't do anything yet, but we should remember these accounts and block them all if one of them starts moving pages. ~~ N (t/c) 19:44, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

• Didn't we have someone with a similar name banned a while back? It's probably not Willy. Mass creation draws too much attention. - Mgm|^(talk) 21:38, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
  • I still think it could be a class thing, but I will see what will happen during the weekend. Zach (Sound Off) 21:41, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:DickyRobert

Possible sockpuppet? User:60.34.94.68 and User:60.34.145.70 also show similar patterns.

User continually reverts List of warez groups article back to his version, regardless of the fact that other users have made edits, and that multiple people in the AfD process specifically wanted things like usernames, site names, irc channels and website spam removed. Even to go so far as to remove html comments specifically asking for users to provide references in order to add to the list.

I dont particularly care about the personal attacks on me, frankly that doesn't matter, its the going against consensus that is irritating... See user's contribs or article history and make up your own mind...  ALKIVAR™ 07:01, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

• He's already been warned once. If he does it again, ask him to communicate on the talk page and notice that he's going against concensus. If he does it again after that, give a final warning. If he still doesn't listen then, I'd be happy about this person being blocked. The current info on his talk page doesn't say why his reverts aren't appreciated. - Mgm|^(talk) 21:42, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

• Update: user has been put on a 24hr block by User:Katefan0 for continued reverting.  ALKIVAR™ 04:14, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Looks like this user violated his block by creating another acct see User:ZenDude contribs and his immediate revert of List of warez groups diff would someone please block this user as a sockpuppet/for violating the block.  ALKIVAR™ 05:35, 7 October 2005 (UTC)