User talk:JzG

Requesting +sysop back, please, I want to undelete my user & talk and do some work on spam, as originally intended. Resigned the bit in uncontroversial circumstances. JzG 23:31, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Done ~Kylu (u|t) 00:18, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks much. JzG 20:37, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

BL

Can you log the entries please (permanent link to the request) as the top of the pages says. I'm sure you will but it is a PITA attempting to find the rationale when someone comes along & complains in 6 months time. Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 19:34, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

• For sure, sorry. JzG 21:13, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Looks ok - it is a pain but finding stuff without it is worse --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:28, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely. Been there, done that. JzG 20:48, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Logging BL work

I realise you tend to work in your own rather individual way however as a courtesy to those who follow could you please log entries to the blacklist as everyone else does. I accept that it does take a moment longer however when an appeal is made it is far easier to find entries from the log one which can be clicked immediately. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 18:01, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

• I was called away from the computer at the psychological moment, sir, otherwise I would have done so. JzG 18:17, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
  • In fairness I did wonder & confess that even I ;) have had to leave logging till a little later from time to time - apologies & thanks! --Herby ^{talk thyme} 18:30, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

• No problem, actually I was fazed by the new COIbot format, which sort of stopped me in my tracks, and I had just decided to work on the huuuuuuuge backlog there, so I wanted to work through it step by step. Please let me know if I'm doing it wrong, because I am a n00b here really. JzG 18:32, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

• The help really is appreciated. For a while now few folk have gone near the page & the massive influx by the bot (great help but) came at a time when I have little time to spare. Thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 06:58, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

• And I can see why they avoid it, the reports are numerous and often huge, and the cleanup can take hours. It would be good if we could mobilisse local spam project volunteers to wikignome the spam out. JzG 17:54, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

• Agreed - I had a crack at a handful today - some wikis had deleted the link (even blocked users), others had removed but not warned, others had left them (& that was all the same link!). An issue I found was at least three reports have link placements by the same IPs - now that to me is very suss but doesn't really come out in the "by domain" aspect of the reporting? I try & get some more done tomorrow maybe, cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 17:59, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

BL backlog

If you have the time can you take a look at this - thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 07:10, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I think changing the status to "closed" clears it from the page at some stage - the ones I did yesterday are gone & I didn't manually remove them. Some "instruction manual" would be useful :) --Herby ^{talk thyme} 08:03, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure there's a bot, but the page is near unusable so I'm doing it manually for now. Please do let me know if that causes a problem, though. JzG 08:05, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Fine with me - I was about to do the few I got through today. It does bother me - great tool that deserves time & thought & we don't have enough people :( --Herby ^{talk thyme} 08:12, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't "do" barnstars but thanks. That said quite a few of us were working on it yourself included. We just need to get a framework we can all work in (been to the pub, not fully coherent :)) - cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 21:51, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Amen to that. I've killed opver a thousand links to freerepublic on en, many copyvios and blog-as-source-in-BLP abuses. It's hard work, but worth it. JzG 21:09, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

BL naming

Shouldn't need to lobby him. He posted his agreement on the BL talk page a while back. Somewhere in the arcs - maybe a couple of months ago. Thread on renaming the list. (& yes it should be done!) Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:36, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

• Jimmy emailed the devs weeks back requesting the change, but it's not been done. I've asked him for a comment; maybe it's got a bugzilla ref now. JzG 21:09, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Don't think it does, but I'll check and make one now if not.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 22:23, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Couldn't find one, so I made bugzilla:14719. If you know of other places where this was discussed, please link to it on the bug.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 22:49, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

question about askel dot com blacklist entry

Hello,

I noticed an old entry done by you in the blacklist .

Is there more information about this banlist entry? The question comes from there

esby 02:39, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

User:COIBot/XWiki/askell.com

Can you please let us know why that was blacklisted here? Thanks  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 00:35, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

• COIbot entry reopened due to further linking form the same subnet, looked like spamming to me. I don't care deeply enough about it for Abd to need to create an article on the website in order to force through removal form the blacklist, though. JzG 21:39, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Notice of review of adminship

Hello,

In accordance with Meta:Administrators/Removal and because you have made fewer than ten logged actions over the past six months, your adminship is under review at Meta:Administrators/Removal/October 2009. If you would like to retain your adminship, please sign there before 2009-10-9. Kind regards, —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 15:11, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Notice of removal of adminship

I regret to inform you that you have been stripped of your administrator access, due to your failure to sign at Meta:Administrators/Removal/October 2009 by the prescribed time and date. Kind regards, —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 15:30, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Are you still updating the spam blacklist? If you find you need adminship again, don't be shy about renominating yourself; adminship on Meta should be no big deal. Sj+ translate 03:07, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm doing virtually nothing on any Wikimedia project right now, but if I do become active again I will bear that in mind. I know there's always work to be done, I just don't have the time to do it or (more importantly) argue the toss with people like Abd. JzG 21:59, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Request for IRC transcript showing "consensus" on Public Speakers

You are also hereby invited to provide a transcript of the IRC discussion that found consensus to manipulate my listing on the Public speakers page here, without my participation and without notifying me. Please respond on the Talk:Public speakers page, as that is where consensus is currently building against you and your private team of manipulators. -- Thekohser 15:33, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

• You seem to be asserting that you are a suitable person to contact in respect of public speaking about the Wikipedia foundation. Since you have tried at least once to my certain knowledge to shut them down, and are banned from the best known Wikimedia project, and insist on using a heavily loaded and bizarre search term as an advertisement for your services, and this site is not actually designed as a vehicle for self-promotion especially by people in dispute with the foundation and misrepresenting themselves as being anything else, I would invite you to accommodate your views where the sun doesn't shine. Please also be advised that any future comments here will be removed unacknowledged. Goodbye. JzG 22:32, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

JzG, don't confuse the Wikimedia Foundation with Wikipedia. There are many WP users and former users that judge en:Wikipedia to be a failure, yet strongly support the Foundation's goal to freely spread knowledge. That said, your reply here is sufficient evidence that we can't really weigh in your opinion in this matter, as it is based on a personal dislike, to say it gently. The IRC transcript would not count for anything anyway, so I for one am not particularly eager to see it. Guido den Broeder 19:43, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't. I also don't confuse self-serving twaddle with commitment to a foundation he tried to kill off. And there is no IRC transcript, much as the WR cabal would love to believe that everything is the result of off-wiki collusion. I think I've had one single IRC session in the last six months, and that devoted almost exclusively to consoling a friend on a personal bereavement. JzG 21:18, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, then the 'consensus' on IRC was probably a single-user thing. As for the intent to kill the foundation, that should be interpreted in context, I think, that is with more than one grain of salt. We're still here, after all. But wait - was it perhaps 'kill Wikipedia'? Guido den Broeder 21:40, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Evidence-free request at Talk:Spam blacklist

This is a long statement here, based on the extraordinary density of misrepresentations in your request. Better here than on that page.

[1] was completely evidence-free. You made many irrelevant claims there, with evidence for none of them. I don't intend to answer the claims there, because they are irrelevant, indeed, but there should be a response somewhere, your claims are dense with misinformation and error, and your raising of this resolved issue is purely disruptive.

You got a support, so far, from one editor whose entire history at meta for the last two years has been opposing the delisting of lenr-canr.org and lyrikline.org, he is obviously a tad biased; he gave spurious and unsubstantiated copyvio arguments in both cases. With lyrikline.org, that was totally preposterous, all content there is created for the web site, specifically, provided by the poets. Lyrikline was blacklisted because of alleged linkspam, which boils down to "adding too many links too quickly." Later examination found no links that were clearly improper; the editor was probably COI, so there was some justification for a temporary blacklisting, but the massive removal of links, as was done, was little more than vandalism, and that lyrikline.org stayed blacklisted for so long, I found evidence, frustrated many an editor. And the linking editor had stopped adding links and had apologized. The global blacklisting was probably not necessary. w:Lyrikline.org was reliable source, in fact, independently and academically edited.

With lenr-canr.org, you never did establish a single copyvio. What you did was to suspect copyvio, in a way that could be used to suspect any web site, unless you have seen a notarized permission, maybe, and very obviously you did so not because of the alleged copyvio, but because of personal enmity for the web site owner, who had previously confronted you on your ignorance. He's abrasive, but you've claimed many things about him that are not true, making yourself worse. I never saw him lie about you.

Your arguments and claims from your filing:

• This was blacklisted due to repeated linking to copyright violations hosted on the site,

You made a series of claims with the original blacklisting. The only comment approving the original request didn't mention copyvio, it mentioned "fringe." The admin approving the request made no comment at all. When that action was challenged, Mike.lifeguard asked questions. None of them were about copyvio. In your very long response to Mike's point #2, you raised 'contributory infringement' as a specter, which is preposterous. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell of contributory infringement from any linking to lenr-canr.org, unless Wikipedia were to knowingly link to actual copyvio, the case law is clear on that.

Mike.Lifeguard gave his reasons for not delisting. He settled on inappropriate promotion of the domain, but did not cite any actual inappropriate promoting edits. Your common references to such referred to Jed's IP signature, self-identifying as "librarian, lenr-canr.org," which was not a link and which was not prevented by blacklisting. What promotional links existed? All I've seen were links to pages proposed for articles, or in reasonably appropriate discussion, whether correctly or incorrectly.

Mike set the copyvio claim aside. DGG's reasoning may or may not be accurate, however I'm not inclined to give it much weight because it has bearing only on the secondary issues - regardless of any copyright concerns the link is being pushed & that is why I am leaving it blacklisted.

If Mike had been correct, if the link was being "inappropriately pushed," and if, further, that this was massive or blacklist instructions and intention is being violated, he'd have been correct. (I examine this as part of the delisting request. He wasn't correct.) That is a reason to blacklist, and, I assume, that is why he chose to focus on that argument. DGG gave expert opinion on copyright, that copyvio wasn't a problem. DGG wrote, on that page, this:

... Cold fusion is not far out fringe. it's not, for example, UFOs. It may be unlikely, it is certainly not mainstream, but it is not utterly impossible. Its advocates should not be treated as likely to be totally incompetent copyright thieves. At least some of the material on that site is suitable US-Gov PD and other acceptable material. I have not examined it in detail, item by item, but at least for the material advocating the reality of CF, it would seem to me highly likely they did get the permission they claim. That alone is enough reason not to blacklist it--it is not predominantly devoted to copyvio. I am inclined to wonder if the attempt to do so is an attempt to keep pro-CF material out of WP, in direct violation of NPOV. DGG 01:25, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't just wonder, I know it. It's blatantly obvious. Stop trying to abuse the meta blacklist to promote your agenda.

So the claim that it was blacklisted because of linking to copyvio is utterly without foundation, it's only based in your own allegations, unsupported in that original filing.

That discussion was a mess. Why are you bringing this up again? What's the emergency, the need for blacklisting? Where is the linkspam?

• as well as spamming of the site by its (banned) owner and several proxies.

Again, no spamming was shown. "Inappropriate promotion" was the claim. In the original filing, like this one, normal spam evidence was missing. Looking at diffs would show the domain name, part of Jed's signature, and someone not being careful might think it was a link, but it wasn't. No link, not linkspam!

"Several proxies" is very unclear. I know Rothwell and he's very direct. He doesn't edit through proxies, he does it himself, if he's not blocked, and never asked for proxying. He wasn't banned, you personally declared a ban, a practice that ArbComm definitely deprecated later. MastCell eventually blocked his old account, not used for years, stating pretty explicitly that it was a favor to you. Meat puppetry, JzG. And I showed before that links you had removed had been added by editors who were *against* Rothwell, Such as LeadSongDog, because the links were useful.

One of the proxies campaigned for removal from the blacklist, which was done at the nth request.

That would be me, I suppose. I'm nobody's proxy, that's uncivil and unfounded. Rothwell has opposed my efforts to delist, he prefers the site to be blacklisted, and he says that privately to me as well as in public. He had nothing to do with the delisting request, he didn't even know about it, or he might have popped into oppose it, as he did before at en.wiki.

As to 'nth' request, no, after the original blacklisting, I made one request for removal here, and it was granted. You believe your own arguments so strongly that you apparently fantasize that others agreed with you. One request is a "campaign"?

JzG, my strategy was simple and clean: arrange for whitelistings at en.wikipedia, based on individual consideration of papers hosted, which allowed review of copyright issues -- and that issue was raised. In one case there was some extra reason to suspect possible copyvio, and that request was dropped. (the extra reason was hosting of an as-published copy, and it would be complex to explain that here. It was not worth arguing for one page, and it may be technically copyvio, i.e., the publisher could issue a takedown notice, except that it's obviously being permitted by the publisher, that's an argument you have consistently ignored.)

And then, showing usage, come back to meta. That's what had been suggested. I also followed that with lyrikline, but hadn't come back yet, that's all.

Having been mainly absent from Wikipedia during the period of a topic ban from the topic area which is the locus of this dispute, one of his first actions was to link to... a copyright violation located at lenr-canr.org.

I am unaware of any copyvio from lenr-canr.org. Before the delisting was granted, I linked to a series of pages in an edit to Cold fusion, after my ban had expired. These were all pages that had been whitelisted after consideration of copyvio arguments.

You have misrepresented this as "permission to link to copyvio" because you believe in copyvio. Rather, the copyvio argument was reviewed by an admin, and had the admin believed that the pages were copyvio, he would not have whitelisted. You have never stated what specific page or pages you believe to be copyvio.

You are alleging misbehavior on my part, while giving no specifics. That's uncivil.

The tiny group of people advocating links to this site have repeatedly shown that they simply do not accept Wikipedia policy on linking to copyright violations hosted on external websites,

That policy has been rigorously followed. Sometimes there have been attempts to tighten that policy to require proof of permission, which is utterly impractical, as I've pointed out before. As to "tiny group," links to the site have been supported by consensus, which was interrupted and bypassed by your blacklisting and tendentious removals. Keep up pressure like that for a long time, what happens? Amazing, few links or no links? Just keep removing them! You have never cited the guideline you refer to (it is not, formally, policy). Here it is: WP:ELNEVER.

Material that violates the copyrights of others per contributors' rights and obligations should not be linked. Linking to websites that display copyrighted works is acceptable as long as the website has licensed the work. Knowingly directing others to material that violates copyright may be considered contributory copyright infringement. If you know that an external website is carrying a work in violation of the work's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work. Linking to a page that illegally distributes someone else's work casts a bad light on Wikipedia and its editors. This is particularly relevant when linking to sites such as YouTube, where due care should be taken to avoid linking to material that violates copyright.

Notice: it's claiming that one should never link to material known to be copyvio. I've never done that. This guideline doesn't ban the site, or else youtube would be banned. It prohibits specific links only.

There is a link now, in w:Energy Catalyzer, placed by a Nobel laureate. I assure you, he's not Rothwell's proxy. He does know a bit more about physics than you, or your electrochemist friend, by the way. That doesn't make him right, necessarily, but you have imagined that anyone interested in cold fusion must be part of a "tiny group" of "die-hards."

If you'd read the recent sources, you would come up with a different impression. Publication hit a nadir about 2005, it's up by a factor of four since then, there is active research, and there are 18 positive reviews of the field in mainstream peer-reviewed publications since then, including the recent Naturwisssenschaften review, which is not an accident, some fluke. It was an invited paper, Guy. Springer-Verlag, the second-largest scientific publisher in the world, invited a review on cold fusion. Smoke that!

The two largest publishers of scientific journals are now publishing material on cold fusion, i.e., Elsevier is doing it also. There are really only a few hold-outs, such as Nature and Science and the APS journal, journals that heavily committed themselves to an editorial policy of not even considering cold fusion papers for review, back in the early 1990s. That's a story told in reliable source, in itself, in the academic press, all excluded because of your faction at Wikipedia.

So, JzG, what link are you claiming is copyvio and what is your evidence? Are you going to warn Brian Josephson about his addition of a link to lenr-canr.org? In fact, did you warn anyone about copyvio addition before? No, AFAIK, you just removed the links, and backed that up with blacklisting. Copyvio was a secondary justification you made up, finding it to have more traction than "fringe."

Have you looked at the first page of the recent Storms review on w:Naturwissenschaften? ("Status of cold fusion (2010)") In the on-line preview, you can see, prominently, a link to lenr-canr.org, as a place to read some of the cited papers, and I've seen many of these links to the site in peer-reviewed publications, published by publishers whom you imagine will be horrified by the papers being hosted by lenr-canr.org. You think they don't know?

Perhaps you have overlooked what's been pointed out: many of these publishers permit preprints to be put up by authors, and that's what lenr-canr.org typically hosts: preprints. If there are exceptions, they are rare, and are with likely permission. I believe that this is Jed's procedure. He only hosts papers when they are provided to him with permission by authors, representing that they have the right to do this. He doesn't go out and make copies to host (he has in his bibliography, and has possession of, about 3000 papers, he only hosts roughly 1000). He then requests formal permission from the publisher, if there is any unclarity. Publishers have no incentive to reply, it cost them money for no benefit, but that he has asked completely protects him from claims of copyvio, should a publisher later decide that it's a problem. He'd take it down immediately if they ask. Is this copyvio? You could watch moot lawyers argue over that for decades. In fact, there is no legal risk to Jed, and neither to any site linking to lenr-canr.org. Look at all those links in reliable sources! Those are for-profit ventures, they don't have the nonprofit shield!

It is safe unless copyvio is known, which is how the WP guideline reads. If you know there is copyvio, don't link.

More damage to Wikipedia reputation has been done by the blacklisting of lenr-canr.org than by any possible criticism over "linking to copyvio" from something like linking to lenr-canr.org. It's known and obviously based on bias.

I don't know that any paper there is copyvio, still, so I linked, and I continue to link at Wikiversity, because the whole site is whitelisted there, so as far as anything I personally care about, it's been covered for maybe a year. I requested delisting for everyone else! Including, say, Enric Naval, who has an active proposal to place a direct link to lenr-canr.org as an external link, bottom of the talk page, currently. You just bypassed the editorial process on that with your blacklisting on en.wp.

If I didn't know that you sometimes get away with this stuff, I'd call that suicidal, you are directly defying ArbComm's prior reprimand of you for your first blacklisting.

• citing "convenience" in their defence.

"Convenience" has never been cited as a defence against a charge of copyvio, that would be preposterous. Rather, there is no copyvio known, and "convenience," as in "convenience link," is cited as the reason to link. Convenience links make verification of text far easier, where the paper is difficult to find. They are not essential, but the practical effect is that errors are far more easily found when a convenience link is present. In other words, convenience links support the basic function of verification, as well as helping further study of the topic.

JzG, if I didn't know that your perception of others is radically distorted, I'd call this a lie. Where has someone cited "convenience" as a "defence", obviously as a defense against a charge of copyvio? Who has been sanctioned for copyvio for adding these links? Where has this claim been supported?

• Wikipedia policy cannot make such an exception because the law of copyright does not make any such exception.

The law of copyright (which is case law, linking isn't covered by statutory law, explicitly, I believe) doesn't prohibit linking to pages other than those known to be copyvio. To be triggered, legal exposure requires guilty knowledge. We do not know if a site hosts copyvio or not, we only can judge certain appearances, ordinarily. In the only case for legal sanction for linking, the linking was not innocent, ignorant. They knew, it was deliberate. So the "law" you cite does not apply to the situation. Rather, as DGG correctly argued, it's extremely unlikely that lenr-canr.org hosts any significant level of real copyvio.

To put content here we need to know about permission, it's very different. A link isn't copyvio, in itself. It's "contributory infringement" if we knowingly help a copyvio site to violate. The legal remedy for "negligent" linking would not be prosecution or lawsuit, there is no such offense, if it's a nonprofit. It would be as with any ISP, a take-down notice from the copyright owner.

You seem to imagine that Jed is greedily hoping for traffic coming from Wikipedia. He is already very prominent in google searches, and he really detests Wikipedia, largely thanks to you and how you treated him and Pcarbonn. He really has discouraged me from doing anything about the blacklistings, he's argued that it is a total waste of time. He makes no profit from lenr-canr.org, instead, it costs him money, out of his own pocket. He doesn't sell advertising!

I never tried to create an article on lenr-canr.org, but it's marginal, lenr-canr.org is mentioned in many reliable sources as the best place to find copies of published material on cold fusion. There is no way that he'd escape the attention of the publishers, his site frequently comes up first place in searches for a paper, whenever the paper isn't mentioned on Wikipedia.

• The site has been extensively abused in the past and the abusers have returned to abusing once it was removed from the blacklist, so I think it needs to go back on, please.

No examples of abuse. None.

From the guideline at the top of the blacklist talk page:

• Please provide evidence of spamming on several wikis. Spam that only affects a single project should go to that project's local blacklist. Exceptions include malicious domains and URL redirector/shortener services. Please follow this format. Please check back after submitting your report, there could be questions regarding your request.

Every argument in your request was irrelevant to a possible blacklisting.

Your claim is not based on any evidence of spamming, it is purely tendentious and disruptive, and you have not followed the instructions. Please stop this, and please stop the incivility, as shown in this request and even more in the delisting request.