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Current issues

Actions of Alansohn in relation to continued WP:POINT disruptions on Wikipedia talk:Schoolcruft

Since 14:26, 18 June 2007 (diff), Alansohn has engaged in disrupting editing on Wikipedia talk:Schoolcruft to the point where users are becoming significantly frustrated at their inability to achieve an appropriate resolution to the specific users' concerns despite reasonable and continued attempts to do so. The user has also specifically attempted to breach the spirit of WP:CANVAS by attempting to bring like-minded users into ongoing discussions relating to his discussions on the talk page in question.(diff) This has now escalated to the point where the user has been significantly WikiLawyering and falsely accusing users of making threats towards the user and engaging in personal attacks.(diff - refer to edit summary) He has also engaged in the same editorial practices that he has continued to accuse others of.(diff) Further to this, the user has gone within minutes of committing a WP:3RR violation on the essay itself (diff1 diff2 diff3), and as an experienced user with over 37,000 edits and using his account since May 2005, should have known better.

Further to this, the user is more than aware of WP:3RR having been blocked on 23 February 2007 for a 3RR violation on Springfield Park Elementary School.(user logs)

From information received from other editors, it appears on the face of it that the user has been engaged in a long history of poor editorial and consensus building practices despite such issues being constantly raised with him.(list of issues relating to users editorial practices). Thewinchester ^(talk) 12:32, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

• The Wikipedia:Schoolcruft article contained a statement on dealing with "Schoolcruft" that insisted that "However, articles created by anonymous IP Schoolcruft editors are always the most difficult to deal with, and sometimes action through AN/I is the only appropriate path when it has been clearly demonstrated they have not learnt, nor will they listen to attempts or offers to learn why nobody likes what they're contributing." I was struck by the incivility of a statement that those who have been involved in a content dispute regarding school articles must inevitably be punished through the AN/I process if they have a disagreement on wording. After reviewing discussion and previous edits, I followed the "Please update the page as needed" invitation at the top of the essay and changed this to "However, articles created by anonymous IP Schoolcruft editors can be more difficult to deal with.", among other changes ([1]) to address the clear WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF violations; this change was reverted ([2]). At this edit, the text was changed to the even more offensive "... AN/I is the only appropriate path when it has been clearly demonstrated they have not heeded the call, or simply fail to participate in attempts to help them learn more about the problems with the content they are contributing." In turn, I proposed the compromise wording of "However, articles created by anonymous IP Schoolcruft editors are often more difficult to deal with.", which in turn was reverted back to the new and more offensive version. A third and final attempt was made to address the WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF violations, which in turn was reverted back to the newer blatantly offensive version. As it was clear that the two individuals involved were blocking any effort to address the problems with the article, I made no further changes to the essay. There was no violation of WP:3RR policy. All of my edits to the section in question were made in good faith, retained the basic sense of the text in question, and were made to address clear violations of Wikipedia policy.

• On the talk page compromise wording was proposed by User:TerriersFan, who had also been effectively blocked from making changes to the article by User:Thewinchester's bullying and abuse. I indicated my general acceptance with this wording, noting that "the changes proposed indicate that there must be significant complicating factors to justify pursuit of an AN/I in such circumstances.", only to be informed (at [3]) that this agreed upon suggestion to deal with the issues involved did not need to be addressed or considered. Attempts to discuss the multiple Wikipedia policy violations involved in this article were met with increasing threats, bullying and multiple personal attacks (see [4], [5] for some of the more egregious examples). Ultimately, in response to an acknowledgment that the wording was "less bad" than before, came the proof of the poison in the pudding: at this edit, Thewinchester insisted that the efforts to discuss the largely closed issue demonstrated that my expression of opinion on the issue was "just crying out for spanking at WP:ANI" and concluding with an yet another shameless WP:NPA personal attack to "go back to New Jersey and continue [sic] create useless redirects for bus route numbers".

• User:Thewinchester has shown abundant bad faith in writing the offensive WP:SCHOOLCRUFT essay, and in his use of bullying, threats and personal attacks in dealing with constructive criticism from me and other experienced editors (see [6], [7]), and has chosen the path of incivility in dealing with a series of constructive suggestions. There is no consensus on the wording of this section; the equal number of editors who disagree with the offensive wording were bullied one by one into walking away from the article in disgust, a path I had already chosen. Just as shooting horses is seen as the only option to deal with many equine veterinary ailments, User:Thewinchester has decided that WP:ANI is the solution to deal with any and all Wikipedia problems, as he has done here. In dealing with the supposed "schoolcruft" issue, Thewinchester has demonstrated a persistent refusal to consider reasoned discussion and proposed compromise, and has used bullying and threats, abusing the WP:ANI process in an effort to circumvent violations of Wikipedia official policy and to suppress any suggestion that he disagrees with. Alansohn 14:37, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
  • In a conversation with another user (see here), which I assume was supposed to be unseen, User:Thewinchester made a hate-filled rant that those who disagree with him have to be dealt with through "appropriate procedural action", a process that he has abused, is abusing, and will continue to abuse. His final statement that "...I'm now going to engage in my favourite sport of poking the bear in it's own backyard. It's the bears fault, as he's lead me there..." demonstrates that there was no good faith involved here. Rather than dealing with the Wikipedia:Schoolcruft article's Wikipedia violations in a proper fashion, the sole goal of the process was to make a WP:POINT through bullying and provocation, as he himself has acknowledged and bragged about. I had hoped to make a constructive change to a less than constructive essay; In response, this AN/I, and User:Thewinchester's responses to those who have shown any disagreement with him, are part of a self-described premeditated effort to let anyone who disagrees with his own personal biases know that "they get dealt with accordingly". Alansohn 14:54, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
    • And let's not omit this comment, that "There's a whole project who given half a chance would lynch the user and hang them [sic] from the nearest freaking yardarm." In some parts of New Jersey, as seen on The Sopranos, threats like this are followed by a bullet to the back of the head; here on Wikipedia that bullet is here at WP:AN/I. This systematic and pre-planned abuse of the AN/I process must be put to an end. Alansohn 15:02, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
• I have to concur with Alan. Apart from antagonising a whole slew of editors whom he berated, censoriously accusing them of attacks and poor faith, offering up lectures on civility and providing an all-round peacock display of wikilawyering, finally driving one to an outburst of total exasperation, Alan has done nothing wrong at all. He should be quite rightly aggrieved that his innocent inquiry into reversing the tenor of the Schoolcruft essay, an essay that, as he notes, violates all manner of Wikipedia policies by espousing a POV on a controversial topic, which is not what essays are supposed to do; he should be quite rightly aggrieved that his clearly demonstrated willingness to listen to those with whom he disagrees, his sincere desire to establish consensus with editors who disagree; indeed, he should be quite rightly aggrieved that his very good-faith intervention on an issue over which he has consistently demonstrated an open-mindedness, tolerance and willingness to listen that can only be characterised as flabbergasting; he should be quite rightly aggrieved that this has inexplicably ended up at AN/I. Barging in on a group of editors and informing them that they have violated policies of good faith, civility, point, and personal attacks is certainly not trollish behaviour and I for one salute Alansohn's vigorous defense of his actions and salute the diplomatic finesse with which he consistently deals with those whose views differ from his own. Eusebeus 15:40, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
  • My most sincere thanks to User:Eusebeus for his exceedingly genuine support on the persistent problems created by User:Thewinchester. One correction, though; User:Eusebeus's remark that editing an article to address policy violations constitutes "Barging in on a group of editors and informing them that they have violated policies..." and is somehow inappropriate, would mistakenly imply that the editors involved have a right to prevent participation from other editors, in violation of WP:OWN, a claim made multiple time by User:Thewinchester. The suggestion to move the article to userspace was made multiple times, consistent with relevant policy at Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#The differences between policies, guidelines, essays, etc., that "If you do not want other people to reword your essay, put it in your userspace." I would be more than willing to tolerate this as a userified article. As a mainspace article, policy dictates that it will be edited. I appreciate the most helpful remarks, and hope that this one small correction will only improve the overall tenor of User:Eusebeus's WP:POINT violation here. Wikipedia would only benefit further if User:Eusebeus makes more constructive remarks. Alansohn 16:50, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
• Alansohn has literally been given enough rope, and has proved the exact problems that have been gave rise to this AN/I report. And if the user wishes to continue a baseless and unjustified attack on an essay and refuses to participate in multiple attempts to build consensus that's entirly their prerogative. And on the subject of essays that clearly breach [{WP:AGF]], let's look at his own work - Wikipedia:Cruftcruft, which not only fails to completly assume good faith and proposes no attempts or action paths to reach positive outcomes. WP:SCFT has achieved community consensus (Demonstrated by a near snowball keep at an XfD discussion) and encourages strongly undertaking attempts to resolve the issues it covers unless the users causing the problems just refuse to participate in reasonable attempts to do so. Seriously, this could go on and on to the point where someone will just have to open a WP:RFC on the user in question, and i'm half surprised that no one has done so already. The continued rantings of this user about pointless and baseless arguments and claims have exhausted my good faith towards them, particually since they totally take figurative comments out of context for their own person and try to claim that there has been a threat of violence towards them. That's just pathetic and to me comes across as a sign of desperation for the sole purpose of a faulty claim to the moral high ground in order to prove a point. Thewinchester ^(talk) 22:14, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
  • User:Thewinchester continues to demonstrate a pattern of bad faith and abuse of process. The XfD keep only proves that other editors are willing to tolerate the article's existence as an essay. Multiple editors have tried to achieve compromise at Wikipedia:Schoolcruft, only to be rebuffed by User:Thewinchester's repeated bullying, threats and regular ordinary refusal to consider any alternative to the article he thinks he owns in violation of Wikipedia policy. The physical threats -- especially this comment, that "There's a whole project who given half a chance would lynch the user and hang them [sic] from the nearest freaking yardarm." -- are disturbing enough coming from someone on the other side of the world. It's the persistent threats and continued abuse of the WP:ANI process that are by far the most disturbing aspects of User:Thewinchester's behavior. His final statement that "...I'm now going to engage in my favourite sport of poking the bear in it's own backyard. It's the bears fault, as he's lead me there..." demonstrates that there is no good faith involved here and never has been any. User:Thewinchester is someone who doesn't just make empty threats; he follows through on his bullying and regularly abuses Wikiepdia process to make his WP:POINT that it's his way or your brought up on WP:ANI. It's time this is put to an end. Alansohn 22:26, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
  • I'm going to try and stay out of this one, but I would point out that contrary to Alansohn's statement above, this is to my knowledge only the second time Thewinchester has ever brought a case to AN/I. Orderinchaos 22:44, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

• I'm thinking an RFC is in order on this matter, or preferably going to WP:MEDCOM. It seems like a couple of people whining about an essay, and both parties blowing it way out of proportion. If one of you wants to do an RFC, then do it. Better than here, us admins can't really do much here.--Wizardman 22:29, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

• Essays are meant to be edited, but when the thrust of the essay is at odds with an individual users point of view, particularly when there is a consensus for the current version, then the opposing user is free to write his/her own essay (see Wikipedia:A treatise on essays). It is only an essay and is not policy and its reasonable to have opposing essays within the wiki (See for example WP:FAIL and WP:NOTFAIL). I agree with Wizardman that this seems to be a disagreement about content and that AN is really not the ideal place to be discussing it. All parties need to step back from this for a few days and calm down. Perhaps a moratorium or cooling off period for say 7 days where the 2 or 3 involved parties agree to not edit the article or talk page. The world will not end tomorrow. —Moondyne 01:16, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
  • The problem is that Wikipedia:A treatise on essays is, merely, an essay, and has no standing whatsoever as a policy or guideline. Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#The differences between policies, guidelines, essays, etc., which actually states that it "documents an official policy on the English Wikipedia" states that "If you do not want other people to reword your essay, put it in your userspace." Wikipedia policy makes all essays, even this one, open to editing by all editors and grants no one ownership rights, unless moved to userspace, as repeatedly suggested. Alansohn 01:43, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

It may be helpful to visualize the efforts to modify the wording to something less offensive, and the effort to maintain the status quo by User:Thewinchester:

Iteration	User:Thewinchester and User:Eusebeus	Alansohn and other suggested changes
1	Original version: "Schoolcruft articles can always be improved, but even longer term Wiki editors know where to draw the line. Users contributing Schoolcruft to Wikipedia need to be watched closely. If they are a registered user, gentle coaching and comments on their talk page from more experienced editors will usually pull them back from a self-induced death spiral. However, articles created by anonymous IP Schoolcruft editors are always the most difficult to deal with, and sometimes action through AN/I is the only appropriate path when it has been clearly demonstrated they have not learnt, nor will they listen to attempts or offers to learn why nobody likes what they're contributing."	First change: "Schoolcruft articles can usually be improved. If they are a registered user, gentle coaching and comments on their talk page can be useful. However, articles created by anonymous IP Schoolcruft editors can be more difficult to deal with." ([8])
2	Reverted to: "Schoolcruft articles can always be improved, but even longer term Wiki editors know where to draw the line. Users contributing Schoolcruft to Wikipedia need to be watched closely. If they are a registered user, gentle coaching and comments on their talk page from more experienced editors will usually pull them back from a self-induced death spiral. However, articles created by anonymous IP Schoolcruft editors are always the most difficult to deal with, and sometimes action through AN/I is the only appropriate path when it has been clearly demonstrated they have not learnt, nor will they listen to attempts or offers to learn why nobody likes what they're contributing." ([9])	No change
3	Changed wording of final sentence to "However, articles created by anonymous IP Schoolcruft editors are always the most difficult to deal with, and sometimes action through AN/I is the only appropriate path when it has been clearly demonstrated they have not heeded the call, or simply fail to participate in attempts to help them learn more about the problems with the content they are contributing." ([10])	"However, articles created by anonymous IP Schoolcruft editors are often more difficult to deal with." ([11])
4	Revert to "However, articles created by anonymous IP Schoolcruft editors are always the most difficult to deal with, and sometimes action through AN/I is the only appropriate path when it has been clearly demonstrated they have not heeded the call, or simply fail to participate in attempts to help them learn more about the problems with the content they are contributing." ([12])	Suggested edit "However, articles created by anonymous IP Schoolcruft editors are often more difficult to deal with." ([13])
5	Revert to "However, articles created by anonymous IP Schoolcruft editors are always the most difficult to deal with, and sometimes action through AN/I is the only appropriate path when it has been clearly demonstrated they have not heeded the call, or simply fail to participate in attempts to help them learn more about the problems with the content they are contributing." ([14])	User:TerriersFan suggested compromise wording of "However, articles created by anonymous IP editors are always the most difficult to deal with. When it has been clearly demonstrated that they have not heeded the call, or fail to participate in attempts to help them learn more about the problems with the content they are contributing, and the Schoolcruft crosses the line into vandalism then action through AN/I should be considered." ([15])
6	Compromise ignored	Compromise wording accepted "While less than ideal, the changes proposed indicate that there must be significant complicating factors to justify pursuit of an AN/I in such circumstances. As currently worded, the death spiral by those opposing "Schoolcruft" to open an incident for someone with what is at worst a content dispute would be almost automatic." ([16])
7	Compromise rejected: "*Um, this is an essay that lays out a point of view. It does not require any course of action. Since User:Alansohn is one of those whose actions are enveloped by the critical analysis proffered by the terms of the argument, his objections, while understandable, hardly need to be taken very seriously. Alansohn disagrees with the entire tenor of the argument. Why accommodate his own tendentious pov-pushing when he could simply write a counter essay?" ([17])

I disagreed -- and continue to disagree -- with the general tenor of the article and its insistence that content disputes revolving around school articles that are deemed to be "Schoolcruft" must continue on a path towards WP:ANI if other editors disagree with User:Thewinchester. All of my attempts at rewording the article left the essential gist of the article unchanged, but sought to remove the most uncivil and bad faith aspects. Compromise wording that I will still accept would leave in the possibility of a path to WP:ANI, but only where vandalism is involved. User:Thewinchester has refused to consider any alternative wording from an article that he has decide is his WP:OWN. Suggestions to move the article to userspace was made multiple times -- consistent with relevant policy at Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#The differences between policies, guidelines, essays, etc., that "If you do not want other people to reword your essay, put it in your userspace." -- and have been repeatedly ignored.

In a nutshell, User:Thewinchester has made a determined stand for the moral high ground that those who disagree with his personal biases will face AN/I if they have the audacity to disagree with him. It's not just an empty threat; It's happening right here, right now. Alansohn 01:43, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Considering both of you whacked warnings on each other's talk pages before it got here, and that you came close to violating other policies such as WP:3RR, I'd say it had gotten well past disagreement. You have every right to disagree with an essay, I disagree with many I see around the place. Likewise, I cack myself laughing at the ingenious wording of some which are blatantly anti-AGF (the vanispami whatever one, and WP:CB as examples) - despite assuming AGF in my own dealings, sometimes frustration is a factor! I'd rather see it expressed in an essay as a catharsis of someone's feelings that someone understands how they feel and move on, than for them to take it out on people who may be contributing positively. Ironically, the essay to which Alansohn posted a link to on the Schoolcruft page on 14 June [18], Wikipedia:Cruftcruft, is one of the most nasty pieces I've ever read. I, however, choose to ignore it as a view that doesn't match mine, and move on. I suggest Alan do the same re this one. Orderinchaos 10:11, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Holy crap. Alan seriously needs an extended wikibreak, or at least a moratorium on AfD-related issues. That's totally insane. Eusebeus 11:21, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• While it is an improvement over User:Thewinchester's threats of physical violence, what's with this latest personal attack. This is the second time you've violated WP:POINT right here on the Administrators' noticeboard. Again, address the issues in the article in question. I have. Alansohn 11:42, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• Incidentally, the title of this piece is "Actions of Alansohn..." so discussion of your actions is entirely on-topic here. Orderinchaos 12:01, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• Noting out that you've gone completely and obsessively over the top, Alansohn, is NOT "disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point" -- in fact, it's completely the opposite. You DO understand what WP:POINT means, right? Hint: it doesn't mean "pointing something out", even if it shares a verb. --Calton | Talk 12:14, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

As an aside, I had completely failed to notice the authorship of the essay I cited (thinking it was just a link-in), and the tenor of my opinions has changed markedly - this is hypocrisy at its finest. I am curious to know if Alan would be so keen as for those of us who disagree with his definitions and, in particular, his characterisations of hard-working users and administrators to be refactored or removed. I note with curiosity Alansohn's comment on the Cruftcruft talk page[19] with consideration of his behaviour at SCFT. Orderinchaos 12:24, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

As another aside, to show that this is a pattern and not an isolated incident, Alansohm seems to have done something similar in a "discussion" on the Kristi Yamaoka AfD where it didn't matter what I said as long as Alansohn got to reiterate his points about what I was doing wrong, despite the reasoning I gave him.. MSJapan 15:00, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• Please take a look at the AfD in question. User:MSJapan was warned by another user that "You've tried four times now over the last 15 months o have this article deleted. Enough is enough please. If 15 months after the first AfD you've been incapable of demonstrating lack of notability, it isn't going to happen. Continued attempts over and over again to have this deleted serves no purpose. Please, stop. Thank you." (See for details). User:MSJapan's actions in this AfD and the three previous ones he created speak for themselves in terms of failure to observe Wikipedia policy and persistent abuse of AfD policy. Alansohn 15:22, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

That's not my point, and it only distracts from the real issue at hand. In the AfD, you asked questions regarding why I felt justified in doing what I did, and every time I answered, you basically screamed "POINT violation!", which means you didn't really care what I had to say. That illustrates a pattern similar to what is going on here, which is either a total disregard for or a weak facade of "discussion" in order to show that you're right and no one else is. MSJapan 15:46, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I have repeatedly sought to improve an article that violates Wikipedia policy, only to face malicious attacks directed at me. In addition to User:Eusebeus's shameless personal attacks here, he also seems to have the same problem elsewhere on this same subject. Eusebeus' latest derisive remarks, "Have you seen the latest derangement at the Schoolcruft talk page" would fit squarely as a prima facie violation of No Personal Attacks. (see [20] for the details). Alansohn 15:16, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

How the FRACK does an essay -- which is, you know, NOT A FRACKING ARTICLE -- violate Wikipedia policy by having the temerity to not agree with your views? Wait, don't bother answering unless you can do so with fewer than twenty-five words, that doesn't rely on calling other people evil, and that cites actual policy WITH ACTUAL CITATIONS.

If you have a problem, write your own fracking essay and be done with it. --Calton | Talk 15:25, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• Who WP:OWN's this "fracking" essay? I encourage you to read the relevant Wikipedia official policy on the subject at Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#The differences between policies, guidelines, essays, etc., that "If you do not want other people to reword your essay, put it in your userspace." Whether its just a "fracking essay" or not, the article is open to every single editor, regardless of their connection to the subject matter. Every single "fracking" edit that I had made to this "fracking" essay was intended to leave the "frackingly" malicious tenor of the "fracking" essay as is, while toning down some of its most WP:UNCIVIL elements. Why would anyone have a "fracking" problem with that? Feel free to move this essay to your userspace if no one else is going to be allowed to edit it, per Wikipedia policy. And by the way, "frack" you, too. Alansohn 16:05, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• What part of write your own fracking essay and be done with it is causing you great difficulties? Apparently, the only word you actually saw was "fracking", given your mindless regurgitation of it. Here's a hint for you: The horse? Dead.

• Calton, Alan did write that essay; he calls it Cruftcruft and it is a model of the restraint and fair-mindedness that he shows generally. Anyway, I think the suggestion made somehwere in all the above is correct: an RfC would be a more appropriate venue for the issues that have been exposed here. Eusebeus 16:01, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
  • It was very carefully modeled on WP:SCHOOLCRUFT, building on its fair-minded and balanced coverage of the subject, with many sentences kept as is, with a few words changed. I was very careful to remove the text in WP:SCHOOLCRUFT that advocates bullying and threats to subject to WP:ANI anyone who disagrees with the essay. And what's the big deal, it's just a "fracking" essay? Alansohn 16:05, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
• This user has a long history of WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF violations. What's going on with the Schoolcruft essay is nothing compared to the plethora of problems interacting with others, some of which are documented here. I don't think there's anything that can be done about this essay. Someone should just file an RFC and let community consensus make the call. --Butseriouslyfolks 21:44, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
  • The threats and bullying from User:Thewinchester -- including threats of physical violence -- are what are relevant here. One only has to look through Thewinchester's bad faith actions in defending his patently uncivil essay in the face of good faith efforts to address some of its most malicious aspects. For all the personal attacks, there has been no one here who has justified User:Thewinchester's efforts to falsely claim ownership of this article in violation of WP:OWN and his abuse of Wikipedia process that involved him following through on his bullying. There is plenty to do with this WP:SCHOOLCRUFT essay: follow Wikipedia policy and implement the good faith proposals to improve it. Problem is that folks just refuse to observe this policy. Alansohn 22:11, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
    • Are you still crapping on and trying to make a mountain out of a molehill Alansohn? I've crossed five state borders and three different timezones since I last checked in on this, and you've continued to persist in beating this up for your own purposes, a viewpoint that I can see many of the comments to this AN/I report support. Would someone please open an RfC and help put a stop to this continued WP:POV and WP:POINT ranting? Thewinchester ^(talk) 22:29, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
      • You're still crapping about an attempt to take a sentence that read "However, articles created by anonymous IP Schoolcruft editors are always the most difficult to deal with, and sometimes action through AN/I is the only appropriate path when it has been clearly demonstrated they have not learnt, nor will they listen to attempts or offers to learn why nobody likes what they're contributing." and attempted to change it in various efforts to any one of the following:
        • 1) "However, articles created by anonymous IP Schoolcruft editors can be more difficult to deal with." ([21])
        • 2) "However, articles created by anonymous IP Schoolcruft editors are often more difficult to deal with." ([22])
        • 3) "When it has been clearly demonstrated that they have not heeded the call, or fail to participate in attempts to help them learn more about the problems with the content they are contributing, and the Schoolcruft crosses the line into vandalism then action through AN/I should be considered." (As suggested by User:TerriersFan at [23] and supported at [24])
        • You are absolutely right that an RfC needs to be created to deal with the abuse by User:Thewinchester. In the face of multiple good faith efforts on my part to amend the malicious bad faith tone of the original wording, which demands WP:ANI as the only solution to an imagined "Schoolcruft" problem, User:Thewinchester repeatedly violated Wikipedia policy by insisting that he WP:OWNs the article, refuses to consider any edits to his essay and repeatedly violated WP:NPA and WP:POINT through his bullying and threats to initiate this notice. Above and beyond the grotesque physical threats, the exact abusive action that User:Thewinchester threatens to impose on those who disagree with him about "Schoolcruft" are what he has abusively created here. I stand 100% behind my actions in attempting to edit and improve this Wikipedia:Schoolcruft essay. This shameless violation of WP:POINT by User:Thewinchester must be dealt with appropriately. Alansohn 00:04, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
          • • It's interesting to note that the line you keep quoting appears to no longer be in the essay, due to changes by another editor which I think have changed it for the better (and probably addressed nearly all of the AGF concerns). Orderinchaos 10:22, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
              • The original wording was problematic, to say the least. I proposed two variations to reword the sentence; another user proposed a third version as a compromise. Given that the text was deemed perfect and was set in stone once the XfD passed, the fact that this offensive sentence was changed by a third editor shows that there is broad agreement that the original wording was unacceptable. While the modified version may be more accurately described as "less bad" than "better", it further demonstrates that there is a clear consensus that the original wording was indefensible by Wikipedia standards. No one supports the original wording. Alansohn 11:57, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
                • Case of beating a dead horse if ever there was one - the wording was changed nearly 48 hours ago. I recall saying at the time (way back on 18 June, actually) that the only result of revert-warring is that two inferior versions battle it out - which is exactly what happened. I do not believe the original wording was problematic, but I believe it was capable of misinterpretation - something that can't be said for the new version, which I thank Zivko for putting in the time and effort to produce - something which, I might note, he did with the utmost of civility towards those who wrote the bits he decided to remove or reword. Orderinchaos 13:55, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
                  • Calton, Alan did write that essay - Good, then he can confine his bitching there instead of trying to take over someone eles's opinion. --Calton | Talk 05:22, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

My god, this section reads like alphabet soup in parts. I'm amazed that no WP:USERs have written a WP:ESSAY to address the overuse (or overabuse?) of WP:POL WP:SHC's in WP:AN. :) That being said, I think we need to all stand back and look at this objectively. Yes, the essay needs improvement. Nothing is set in stone. No, waging a POV campaign because you don't like it is not going to fix it. Accusing editors of threats of physical violence and whatnot (I have read four entire talk pages this morning and failed to find one, other than a metaphorical reference akin to "X should be hung from the nearest tree" - perhaps a failure to understand the Australian idiom is part of the issue) is only going to inflame the issue. Writing essays which are more ridiculous just to make a point is not constructive. An editor with 37,000 edits should know better than to act in such a ridiculous manner and I hope that this stops very shortly. Before this interchange ends, I would like to propose that someone should make a really silly cartoon of this section of WP:AN before it descends into the archive pit. Zivko85 23:42, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

See WP:OMGWTFBBQ. --Carnildo 06:10, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

• Here is a suggestion: everybody step back, take a deep breath, and relax. You seem to be a few steps away from request for comment or arbitration committee territory over a couple of essays. I've half a mind to nominate "schoolcruft" and "cruftcruft" both for deletion as they appear to be much more trouble than they are worth (and no, that wouldn't be just to make a point, I genuinely see both of these essays as comprising very little in way of value to the project).--Isotope23 20:23, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Wow. There really is a page "Wikipedia:Cruftcruft". And it's written in a far more serious tone than I'd expect. -- llywrch 21:24, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

User:Thewinchester seems to have a chronic problem with civility, that resulted in an administrative block imposed at the beginning of this month. Thewinchester was asked to apologize to the user he had abused, something who could not manage to do (see [25]), which makes the claim of an "almost" violation utterly irrelevant. While User:Orderinchaos and User:Eusebeus have taken on the role as Thewinchester's chief apologists, neither can feign ignorance of Thewinchester's chronic incivility, personal attacks and abuse of Wikipedia process. Orderinchaos had to be rather disingenuous in discussing Thewinchester's block, when he stated that "I see that 'persistent gross incivility or gross harassment' is the standard required to achieve a block", but given Thewinchester's track record since then we seem to be well past the point of "persistent". His discussion with Eusebeus that "...I'm now going to engage in my favourite sport of poking the bear in it's own backyard. It's the bears fault, as he's lead me there..." demonstrates a deliberate effort to provoke and disrupt, a textbook definition of a WP:POINT violation. My good-faith edits to WP:SCHOOLCRUFT seem to be only the latest trigger of Thewinchester's long-festering incivility. User:Thewinchester has repeatedly lashed out at anyone who violates his definition of this arbitrary and malicious term; I am far from the only victim of his abuse. It's time that serious action was taken to address these chronic violations by User:Thewinchester, who has made incivility, personal attacks and abuse of Wikipedia process his hallmark means to disrupt Wikipedia. Alansohn 03:59, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

My complaint was one of process in that instance, and has been resolved since with the fellow admin concerned. I still believe that block was unjustified based on the circumstances which led to it. Had I been disingenuous, I would have noted that neither WP:COI nor WP:BLOCK would have obstructed me from lifting the block myself, and done so, rather than raising it at AN/I and on the blocking admin's talk page. I think, however, this is a distraction from the point that many others have made that your behaviour is really the core issue here (not least because Thewinchester hasn't edited any related articles or talk pages for two or three days now) Orderinchaos 12:38, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Repeating and slightly rearranging your collection of pejoratives and Wikipedia shortcuts over and over again won't change anything at this point, since at this point, the main generator of disruption appears to be you and your never-ending foot-stamping. That horse? Dead. What you're selling, no one's buying, so you best drop it before someone figures out the simplest way to deal with the main generator of disruption involves pushing certain admin buttons. --Calton | Talk 05:22, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

• Your statement that I am "trying to take over someone eles's [sic] opinion", repeats the false claim that User:Thewinchester has some sort of ownership rights to this article, in direct conflict with WP:OWN. Wikipedia policy at Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#The differences between policies, guidelines, essays, etc. could not be any clearer, that "If you do not want other people to reword your essay, put it in your userspace." The move to userspace was suggested, and ignored. I stand by every single edit I made to the WP:SCHOOLCRUFT essay as a good faith effort to address the incivility in this article. User:Thewinchester in turn has repeatedly bragged about his disruptive actions, bragging that "...I'm now going to engage in my favourite sport of poking the bear in it's own backyard. It's the bears fault, as he's lead me there..." (see [26]), as part of a deliberate effort to provoke and disrupt, violating WP:POINT by definition. It's high time that Thewinchester's consistent pattern of abuse is addressed appropriately. Alansohn 05:43, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Excessive AGF towards a user with a long, long record of 3RR, edit-wars and POV-pushing

R9tgokunks (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), suspended several times (days, weeks, even a full month) from editing because of his constant edit-wars is back and, guess what, edit-warring again, erasing whole passages without justification and randomly putting misspellt German names wherever he can, like here or here ("Garten Botanik" is no German). In spite of his long block log and the repetitive pattern of his demeanour, he is met with extreme AGF by Heimstern (talk · contribs), among others. This is abnormal ! Thanks, RCS 07:16, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

That's an issue you should probably raise with Heimstern. It would help if you clarified what exactly his action was, e.g. to decline a report on 3RR or AIV, and now for you to appeal that decision because the past history was not considered. I found a mixture of good and bad edits in the last two days for this user; based on that pattern, I didn't see why he should be blocked again. Please explain further. YechielMan 14:56, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Has any dispute resolution been tried? If this really is a complex vandal masquerading as a legitimate editor, WP:AGF places the burden of proof on you to demonstrate how bad the problem really is. For a sample of a report I put together on an editor who eventually got banned, see User:Durova/Complex vandalism at Joan of Arc. If things have really gone far enough you could start a thread at the community sanctions noticeboard. Durova^Charge! 19:39, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

See here

R9tgokunks has specialised in putting the German perspective into articles dealing with towns and regions now belonging to other countries, especially France (Strasbourg, Colmar, Mulhouse...) and Poland (Szczecin, Wroclaw...) Nothing wrong about that except that he has no knowledge at all of the German language (although he pretends to be German - but he's not : i am German, and i know when somebody doesn't understand a word of what he writes) and of European history and replaces it with products of his imagination ([27] or [28]). Just have a look at his talk page and at the history of it as well. Genuinely mad people like him are expandable, i say, and calling their contributions "content" is beyond contempt for serious contributors. My card : de:Benutzer:Edelseider. Thank you. RCS 20:34, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I would have appreciated if you'd informed me before complaining about my behaviour here. I am making no assumption of faith whatsoever about R9tgokunks; I am simply stating, as several admins have when you have made your AIV reports, that this is not a case of vandalism, and therefore does not belong there. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 23:17, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for being patient. I've taken a look at RCS's report and this looks like complex vandalism to me. Please point me to any dispute resolution attempts that have been attempted and report future problems to my user talk page. I take this seriously. And if it helps to state this, Ich kann Deutsch. Durova^Charge! 21:37, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Sehr freundlich von dir, vielen herzlichen Dank! --RCS 10:15, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Macht nichts. :) Durova^Charge! 04:02, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

BAG Joining

Hey, I have been asked to post a notification of my request to join the Bot Approvals Group on here. It can be found at Wikipedia talk:Bots/Approvals group#Joining. Thanks! Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 02:07, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Improper action by admin Omegatron (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

Aquygen & Denny Klein were deleted per AfD and consensus. One was salted to prevent recreation. User:Omegatron was against deletion of these articles. Against consensus, User:Omegatron used his admin tools to recreate these articles as redirects and then protected them. This is blatant misuse of admin tools and could also be considered wheel warring as he essentially undid the actions of another administrator by recreating these articles. He was asked on his talk page to reverse his actions but he refused. These articles should be deleted per the AfD and deletion review. Omegatron should be admonished for using admin tools to further a dispute he is involved in as well as using admin tools wheel war. --Tbeatty 05:53, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Having the titles go somewhere as a redirect sounds reasonable to me. Keeping them protected prevents someone from trying to recreate the article. What is the issue? --BigDT 06:00, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

[ec]Just a passing note: Denny Klein was deleted primarily because there weren't valid sources for notability. The way it is now, the article is still there, and can be corrected at such time evidence can be provided. I see nothing wrong with keeping the door open on a future article. EVula // talk // ☯ // 06:03, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

They were deleted and salted for a reason with consensus by multiple admins. Consensus has not changed. Omegatron was involved in two related articles that were also deleted in the last week. His recreation and redirect are direct contradictions to both the previous consensus on those articles as well as the recent consensus on the deletion of HHO gas and Brown's gas. His involvement in both of these articles should preclude him from recreating these deleted articles. This is wheel warring, wp:point and using admin tools to win an argument. It's improper. --Tbeatty 06:13, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I didn't want to discuss content here as that is not the issue (this is a tool abuse case). But Aquygen should not be redirected as it is product advertisement spam/scam. Denny Klein should not be redirected hecause he has no contribution to creating/inventing/analyzing Oxyhydrogen. This is more spam. that discussion was essentially omitted with the unilateral action by Omegatron. --Tbeatty 06:18, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Omegatron. Guy (Help!) 09:00, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I would note that this article has been created/deleted/recreated/deleted/redirected/recreated/deleted, etc. The redirects existed after previous AfDs, long before Omegatron came on the scene. So if there's a wheel war, it seems to me to be one where the redirects keep being taken away. I'd also question that this is a 'genuine' wheel war, since this is more than just protect/unprotect/protect. And it looks like the article was closed very oddly, as the page history was (somewhat) blanked: previous versions of the article exist in the history, but not the versions deleted by the latest AfD. I left other points (specifically about Omegatron) in the RfC, but as I see it, maybe all the Admins currently involved in this -on both sides- should just walk away and leave the (deleted) article's care to other Admins. LaughingVulcan 14:58, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

The DRV specified that the HHO gas and Brown's gas content should be at Oxyhydrogen, and they were undeleted and turned into redirects to that article. It was pointed out to me that the other redirects no longer pointed at the correct place, so I took care of it; I recreated the redirects from HHO, HHO Gas, Brown's Gas, and so on, to point to the new location. Aquygen is another name for HHO gas, used by HTA, Inc., of which Denny Klein is the CEO, so I recreated these, too. There are probably others that I missed. (Other names include Klein gas, Rhodes gas, Green gas, Hydroxy/Di-Hydroxy, Watergas and so on. It's a common theme in the pseudoscience world, with much the same claims made for each, and, in my opinion, should be covered in the same article.)

(It appears that they've been turned into redlinks. If the end result of this is deletion instead of redirects, I think salting would be preferable, to keep proponents from re-creating them as articles. Also, do we need them undeleted for licensing purposes, since the later articles are derivative works of the earlier deleted ones?)

For the record, I really don't care if these redirects exist, but I have yet to see any reason why they shouldn't. So I left them undeleted and asked for a third party opinion (not another antagonist from the AfD). See my talk page for the complaints and my response.

I think it's quite silly that creation of redirects, previous deletions or otherwise, is being characterized as a serious abuse of admin powers. — Omegatron 18:51, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Bots of former Wikipedians

What happens to the bots that belong to editors who have left Wikipedia? Do they have their bot flag removed, or are they adopted by another user? —Kurykh 07:44, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Typically nothing, unless they're malfunctioning. As long as a bot that was designed to run fully automatically performs within specs (ie. does what it's supposed to do, doesn't screw up and doesn't do anything not approved by the BAG), it can theoretically run indefinitely without any human intervention or even supervision whatsoever. It's obviously preferable to have an operator around who can respond to queries and fix any issues that might come up but, technically, it's not a requirement.
HagermanBot, for instance, was working perfectly fine for quite a while without any human oversight. Now, that you mention it, I recall an an older discussion we had on this but, personally, I don't recall ever seeing a bot deflagged. I don't really consider that a problem either since there's always the possibility that a bot could just come back (even after an extended period of time) and still work flawlessly and due to the fact that the potential for abuse is rather limited. --S ^up? 09:42, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

The only two deflaggings that I can find in the last 500 botflag log entries (both granting and revoking of flags) that were due to the user leaving (not counting situations where the owner turned out to be a sockpuppet of a vandal) are EssjayBot (and Essjay's other bots) and BlueBot. Other reasons for deflagging included cases where the bot flag had only been given temporarily, where a user had accidentally been flagged instead of a bot, and in one case where it was decided that a bot would be more effective without a flag. --ais523 08:40, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

My understanding was that bots are not allowed to run without an editor around who is available for contact, can vouch for the bot's edits, and who has agreed to fix any problems caused. Of course, I suppose someone could always 'adopt' a bot if its user disappears. --Aquillion 17:50, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

This has already been a problem, as seen at LDBot creating pages from....where?. 64.126.24.12 18:41, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

DiabloSE30 (talk · contribs)

Ok, I have tried to take this guy down through the systems, but this guy is becoming a problem, fast. By the time that he gets taken care of through the systems, he will probably have a 1,000 socks running around Wikipedia. Anyways, There is this suer called User:DiabloSE30, and he has taken to making fancrufty edits to the Lamborghini Diablo article, claiming that he thinks the article is "very poor". [29] He acted like he was going to improve the article, but the only real edits he has made was removing the free use images provided by me and another user, and putting a fair use image in there instead, coupled with a high quality image of a Jota, albiet it is CC licensed, so I have perferred to keep it in the article. The diffs between his version and the article version that I am trying to keep in order are here. Well, edit warring is not the only thing that he is doing. Whenever anyone reverts his edits, he automatically tells them to stop editing the article, claiming that they "are adding wrong info on the car",[30] though we made no textual edits of any kind, it is simply a game of image shuffle. I now have requested that the page be protected. Anyways, last night, after the start of this mess, a sockpuppet of his and a lot of Ips started an all out assault on my userpage, which was only stopped by my page being semi protected. There are at least two accounts and many IPs which I link to this guy. I am 100% sure that the accounts are socks. The IPs are either numerous because he is in a library or something, and he switches computers, he is using a proxy, or the Ips are meatpuppets. The Ips have maiunly been used just to attack me. The main account (DiabloSE30) is the only one that touched the page. The use of the socks adn IPs were mainly to attack me. I believe that they belong to him, because when my page was vandalized, they said stuff like "I need to stick to stuff I know about" [31] and that I "don't know jack squat abotu cars" [32] and that is why I believe that this ties in with that. Anyways, this guy is quickly becoming a problem, and he needs to be taken care of, fast. Pretty much, this guy is just rampaging aroudn WIkipedia, and he needs to be stopped immediately, and frankly, doing it through teh systems has gotten nowhere and is taking to long when we are running out of time with this guy. We need to nip this in the bud before this becomes a full stop disaster. Anyways, I want immediate action. This guy needs to be stopped, fast. Karrmann 15:25, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I gave him a stern warning. If he continue, a block may be needed. Please note that you've been edit-warring with him without issuing proper warnings. Technically, you violated 3RR, but you've been reverting copyright violations, that's why I don't think you should be blocked. MaxSem 15:49, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

That is the reason I continued to revert. By him trying to force that fair use image into the article, he was aggressively infringing copyright, so I made sure that the image stayed out. If it were not dealing with copyright infringement, I would have stopped after three. Karrmann 21:02, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

How to avoid edit-warring?

Hello.
I wasn't sure if this was the proper venue for this question. The village pump seemed equally valid, but I didn't want to cross-post, and since part of my concern is how to also avoid being blocked, that seemed to be the tie-breaker.
I don't have a specific 'incident' to report, which is why this isn't on AN/I. I wanted to know how one should generally deal with editors who either won't discuss changes/tags/etc. at all, who only discuss via edit-summaries (which doesn't really allow further discussion without edit-warring), or who simply ignore consensus?
I know there's RfC, but that seems somewhat extreme (and a ton of work). On the other hand, even if they refuse to discuss changes, reverting them is still edit-warring. So, what do you do? AN/I seems inappropriate if they're presumably still working in good faith. RfC is drastic. What's the policy?
(I ask it here because I've seen people blocked for reverting people who refused to discuss changes) Bladestorm 18:48, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

My advice is to not get carried award. First off, attempt to communicate with him. If he keeps on making bad changes, don't violate the 3RR unless there are extreme circumstances. Really, telling an admin you know or posting a thread here is probably a safe bet. I agree that RfCs, et al are usually incredible time-wasters for content disputes caused mostly by one editor. Above all, keep cool. David Fuchs 21:38, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I'll block the user you're warring with for 24 hours again. Apparently, the user had been blocked for edit warring just a day before, see a discussion on his talk page on that. Sr13 21:40, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I change my mind on that; I'll strictly admonish instead. Sr13 21:43, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I actually wasn't only referring to in this particular case, but also curious about the general rules of conduct. (It's often easier to find advice on what to not do than what to do.) That said, this was actually pretty helpful. :)
I've been more conscious about keeping my cool, pushing for more discussion, and simply not using any stronger tones than I really need to. And it's worked out pretty well. Thanks for the advice. :) Bladestorm 05:48, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes I don't think that edit warring can be avoided. There are some cases where a certain editer who has an enthuiasm for a page, adn them takes ownership of the page and puts a lot of POV into it. Examples would be the Ford GT90 page or the Lamborghini Diablo page. And with these people, they don't seem to be able to be talked to. They constantly edit war with anyone who changes the page off of their version, or even goes as far as horassing them. There is a current incident where this user User:DiabloSE30 inserted fair use images into the article, and removed all the free use ones. I revert, and he just edit warred with me and started to horass me endlessly. I think that ocassionally, we just meet people who think they know everything abotu a subject, or think about a subject endlessly in POV, and kind of wants to glorify the subject. Anyways, we pretty much go until they finally horass and commit sockpuppetry, get blocked, and we move on. Karrmann 17:58, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Rascals Mob Recordings & Friends

I came across these guys about a month back, and after a sock puppet tag got added to one of their pages I thought everything would be sorted out, but it hasn't been. Pretty much they're trying to get around WP:BAND by creating user pages with information about themselves. None of their edits have been constructive to wikipedia, they are only edit their user pages, which in turn have nothing to do with wikipedia. The users/pages in question that I've found so far are (although there could be more):

• User:Rascals
• User:Rascals Mob Recordings
• User:Dean 'Big Dean' Woodward

I hope this is the right place to go, I couldn't find anything about how to handle an incident like this, if not then please move it to the proper section. Guycalledryan 08:54, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Userpages deleted per WP:NOT#WEBSPACE.—Řÿūłóñģ (竜龍) 09:04, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Repeated vandalism of my page

My user page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:John_Hyams has been vandalized by User:Pancasila for the second time. That user was already warned by an andministrator not to do so. Therefore, please:
1) Restore my user page to what it used to be.
2) Block user User:Pancasila from editing Wikipedia. Writing "fuckface" on my user page after being warned is something that should be unaccptable by the Wikipedia community.

Thank you. John Hyams 10:23, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

The vandalisation appears to have occurred in April this year, and is the last contrib by Pancasila to date. I don't see any point in a date expiry block for an individual who doesn't appear to be contributing. LessHeard vanU 10:38, 24 June 2007 (UTC) I note that User:Rettetast has blocked Pancasila for one month. LessHeard vanU 10:43, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

For anyone who cares, John Hyams had also not edited WP since early April before coming here to request action on some old vandalism of his userpage. I note there has been no subsequent contributions. I have to ask, what was the point? LessHeard vanU 18:36, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Actions of Nick (talk · contribs)

Nick cleared and protected my entire monobook.js-page after I used twinkle instead of the normal "undo" button to revert someone. Could anyone please readd the other scripts that were in my page? (see also User talk:Salaskan#TWINKLE abuse) SalaSkan 10:54, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

You forgot to mention that you were also revert warring and left an edit summary accusing Dmcdevit of vandalising the page that you were edit warring over. ---Spartaz

Stop wikilawyering. You should have been blocked for disruption. Consider yourself lucky to have avoided an enforced wikibreak. Moreschi ^Talk 11:03, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I have restored the non-TW scripts, please do not use automated scripts to undo non-vandalistic reverts. Hell, I don't even like people using 'undo'... Riana (talk) 11:04, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

• I have notified Nick that he is being discussed at AN. You might also have tried to resolve this on his talk page before bringing this here. Spartaz ^Humbug! 11:34, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Perhaps I should've been clearer in the name of this section: this is not a complaint against Nick's behaviour in general, but against the clearing of my entire monobook page instead of just the Twinkle script. I responded on my talk page, but he was offline, so I added a request here. SalaSkan 12:10, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
• Thank you, Riana. This is no big deal aside from the removing of all my scripts, so now my other scripts are restored, we'll leave it there for now. SalaSkan 12:04, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Threats of blocking for an outside view on RfC

Yesterday I was presented the inaugural award for 200 contributions to DYK. Has anybody had more articles on the Main Page? Now, that is a big question. Earlier that day, User:DLX had expressed his opinion to the effect that I am an ordinary troll.[33] Instead of blocking him on the spot, User:BigHaz came to my talk page and posted what he termed "a final warning regarding personal attacks".[34] At first I thought he confused our talk pages and then I thought it was another attempt to oust a content creator from the project. When I asked BigHaz to specify my remarks which he considers to be personal attacks, he referred me to my outside view on WP:RfC.[35]

In my statement, I allude to the actions of the nominator of the RfC, User:Digwuren, as trolling, e.g., his (now deleted) page about Petri Krohn's History of Estonians.[36] I also take issue with his routine rollbacks of my good-faith and proper edits as "vandalism"[37][38][39][40] and his generally rude and defying manner of conversation, as clear from the list of his accusations against Petri on RfC[41]:

• "Petri Krohn's possibly most unusual behavioural aspect, the prospensity to construct elaborate fictitious ideas influenced by WP:POV and then present them as fact."
• "Various peculiar, but invariably nasty theories surrounding the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn"-- An actual header, visible in the TOC
• "Attempts to represent private fantasies as historical fact,"
• "Representing pet theories as fact,"
• "A truly bizarre rant," etc.

Instead of dealing with real disruption, BigHaz finds it helpful to threaten me with "final warnings" and blocks for referring to Digwuren's actions as trolling. I maintain that keeping a sarcastic page about your opponent's views on your nation is pure trolling. "Comment on content, not on the contributor" isn't a rule one can apply to a *user* RFC. His whole idea of warning and threatening people for what they say *in an RFC* is strange, unless it's something really extreme.

The examples of "personal attacks" presented by him on his talk have several points where the "PA" aspect is supposed to lie in the fact that I don't have (=don't give) any *evidence* for what I say. Now surely that's not the way to look at an RFC Outside view. It's *supposed* to be my opinion. And opinions on the nominators are as appropriate as opinions on its subject; compare "An RfC may bring close scrutiny on all involved editors", at WP:RFC#Request_comment_on_users. I would like people to comment whether my conclusions are correct or, on the contrary, I should provide tons of diffs to buttress my outside view on RfC (as far as I can see, nobody does substantiate his outside views with evidence).

P.S. I question BigHaz's impartiality in issuing "final warnings" to me. According to his own confession, the removal of the WWII memorial in Tallinn induced him to "start digging around the internet to see what on earth the story was here" and to "form some opinions" on the subject of the Estonian-Russian debacle.[42] It's hard to say how the opinions of a "Baltic German" of "Teutonic ancestry" (as BigHaz identifies himself on his user page) qualify him for the role of a neutral arbiter in the current debacle which he seemingly seeks to assume. --Ghirla^-трёп- 13:29, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

They're not "user requests for comment", they're "user conduct requests for comment". The focus is always on conduct. --bainer (talk) 15:13, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for buttressing my argument. --Ghirla^-трёп- 10:11, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

user Sesshomaru

im not sure if this is the right place to post this or not but this user keeps trying to say im a troll and a sock puppet. He is also telling others that I refuse to listen to him and hes giving me grief about my archive. He refuses to listen to reason and I was hoping a admin could talk to him. Thanks.TheManWhoLaughs 15:52, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

• TheManWhoLaughs was blocked as a sock by Yamla. Keegan^talk 20:32, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Personal Information Posted on Wikipedia

Resolved

- Oversight took care of it. YechielMan 16:11, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Could an administrative please purge this edit from your website immediately [43]. An individual at a computer lab posted personal information, to include the real name of a Wikipedia user and information about his present whereabouts. It was posted from a VPN account at the computer lab, of which only a few people have access to, so we are handling that on our end. We apologize that this happened and ask for a quick response from Wikipedia. Thank you. -195.229.236.216 16:02, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Go to requests for oversight, and send a request to them. They will delete the revision of the page which contained personal info. GrooveDog 16:05, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I deleted the edit, but GrooveDog is right that in the future an email to the oversight mailing list will take care of the problem without calling attention to it. Thatcher131 16:11, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

POV on the "In the News" template.

Could an administrator please address the concerns stated there? Italiavivi 16:31, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

• Ongoing discussion here, for those who'd like to take a further look. Keegan^talk 20:30, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Userpages

I noticed that Xdt (talk · contribs · logs) has a huge list of Doctor Who monsters - with fan-like commentary - on his userpage, and dropped him a note suggesting that it may be against WP:NOT#WEBSPACE. If I did wrong, would someone please tell him and me? Thanks.--Rambutan (talk) 17:20, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

A suggestion like that might be best made as 'please move that to your sandbox'; there's actually nothing wrong with keeping an inventory like that around and available so that you can refer to it and occasionally move it into articles as it becomes usable (and it looks like this user does, from time to time). You're right about usage, but I think in this case, it might just be the user not realizing they can use other space for the storage of info they use on wikipedia. --Thespian 18:28, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

It should really be moved off-site if he intends to as a resource for fans. We don't need to be hard-nosed about it... just offer gentle reminders. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 20:05, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Contributor using multiple IPs

Resolved

Almost identical vandalism to the article Keith Jardine (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) is coming from different IP addresses:

• 203.59.187.129 (talk · contribs) diff
• 155.144.251.120 (talk · contribs) diff diff
• 203.166.243.179 (talk · contribs) diff
• 192.30.202.20 (talk · contribs) diff

Other than page protection, how can this be investigated/dealt with? Sancho 20:42, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

• I've taken on a few sockpuppet cases in the last week, and reports of this nature usually go to WP:SSP. If these were logged in accounts, we could block them indefinitely as socks, but for IPs it's not allowed. So the question is, will blocking any of them prevent vandalism from now and forward? To answer that, I observe that only 203.59.187.129 among all the IPs you listed has edited within the last 24 hours, so he's the only one who could reasonably be blocked as a preventive (not punitive) measure. I would support semiprotecting the article for a full week, and I will make such a request at WP:RPP. YechielMan 22:48, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree with Yechiel's analysis on all substantial counts; hopefully semi-protection keeps these guy(s) off, for now. Tagging this resolved, for now, as semi-protection has been applied, but feel free to remove that if problems persist. – Luna Santin (talk) 01:56, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Single purpose account User:Whydoesthisexist

Single purpose account User:Whydoesthisexist. Please investigate. SakotGrimshine 21:02, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I've blocked SakotGrimshine (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) indefinitely. The majority of his edits in the past 24 hours have been disruptive. I cannot see any constructive edits, several of which were to userboxes.—Řÿūłóñģ (竜龍) 21:26, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

In retrospect, I have shortened the block to 48 hours. For information on disruptive activities, see the pages I have recently deleted that were in his userspace.—Řÿūłóñģ (竜龍) 21:28, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

New users making multiple accounts

Several times today I have noticed users creating other accounts even though they have only been registered for under a minute and they have no contribs, talk pages, or user pages. It seems a little weird to me, maybe sockpuppets or secondary accounts? Most of the other names are completely different, and because it's tracked back it doesn't meet any of the legitimate sockpuppet requirements. It might be request an account, but users who don't even have any edits yet?

Ah well, it seems strange, so I thought i'd post it here, as it may be a new type of sockpuppeting from someone who doesn't know it can be traced. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 01:39, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

If they're sockpuppeting, they're not picking a very bright way to do it, if a user creates another account that stays in their log forever. It's not against policy to have multiple accounts, though, only to use secondary ones in certain ways, so there's nothing to be done unless they actually try to abuse the secondary ones. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 01:59, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I expect during the first month of school you'll be able to see a lot of such things. "I just heard about it too, this is how it's done..." (SEWilco 04:33, 25 June 2007 (UTC))

• Or the IPA is a school's and the multiple users are all at that school. Anthony Appleyard 08:16, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

24 characters too long for a username?

Naconkantari (talk · contribs) has blocked the new What love has made of me (talk · contribs). When I asked about this at User_talk:Naconkantari#User:What_love_has_made_of_me, they replied that the username was blocked for excessive length. I haven't gotten a reply on my following message, so I'm posting here for review. Is this a reasonable block? – Luna Santin (talk) 01:51, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

No, its not. There is nothing wrong with that name. The name is not confusing, isn't not hard to remember and contains all latin characters. Hell, it's probably a better username than mine. I think we should unblock and apologise to the user. --Deskana (talk) 01:54, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Somebody better go block Can't sleep, clown will eat me then. That doesn't seem like a good block at all. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 01:56, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

(ec) No, it's not. Then again, I'm more lenient on usernames than many. What about ... umm .... this one? - Alison ☺ 01:57, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Too many people are rigorously enforcing WP:UNP with no regards for the meaning of the policy at all. Scaring off new users isn't good. --Deskana (talk) 01:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Totally agree, Deskana. Hence this report I filed yesterday - Alison ☺ 02:00, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

heck, it's more easily remembered than Naconkantari. :-) Seriously, 6 short words in a sensible order over one made up one? Easy.--Thespian 02:41, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

No, that's a very bad block. The excessive length section is deliberately vague, as I don't think we've been able to come up with an actual number, but that certainly isn't it (for cryin' out loud, it's only 24 characters). EVula // talk // ☯ // 03:02, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I think this is within policy. 24 characters could be too long if the words are run together and difficult to distinguish - but this is a straigforward phrase. We clearly allow User:Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington (33 characters) and User:Can't sleep, clown will eat me (31 characters)... WjBscribe 03:09, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

You mean the block is within policy or the username? Incidentally, I have always been against this policy altogether. Obvious disruption is blocakble under other policies, and, as others have pointed out, all kinds on newbie-biting goes on with borderline usernames that were obviously intended in good faither. Chick Bowen 03:24, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I meant that the username is within our usename policy IMO - I think that's clear from the rest of my post but I could have phrased myself better :-) WjBscribe 03:52, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Ridiculous block. Everything that's needed to be said has been said though. Wizardman 03:29, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

What's the point of unblocking? We've already lost a potential contributor. S/He ain't comin' back. Riana (talk) 03:33, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

(ec) And remember - there's nothing more BITEy than taking the plunge to sign up for an account in good faith only to be broadsided by the banhammer over some policy you're barely aware of!! Indefblocking a username, where there's any doubt at all, should be a last measure. - Alison ☺ 03:36, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

from the comments here, I've seen enough. I'm going to unblock that account and apologise, if they've not left in disgust already - Alison ☺ 03:38, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Ah - Samir just beat me to it :) - Alison ☺ 03:39, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Something like 80% of the accounts on Wikipedia have no edits. In my experience, username blocks can create a whole lot of grief over nothing (like this one) and think I'm pretty liberal with what I allow. Grandmasterka 03:52, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Naconkantari's a good kid, don't be too hard on him guys :) Very classy apology note btw, Alison -- Samir 03:56, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely. He's one of the Good Guys™ :) - Alison ☺ 04:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Really? I trust you, because you're nice and sweet and cute and stuff, but Naconkantari's page shows someone who is a wee bit quick on the deletions and blocks, and whose response to people whose stuff he's deleted, sometimes minutes after creation is 'go request a deletion review'. Very few things really need a rush, and taking his time could help him be a better admin. This isn't the place for this, but I think he needs a little more guidance with his admin stick :-) --Thespian 05:26, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I've been looking through his deletion logs, after encountering some IMO problematic deletions by him, and I have found some troubling patterns. Lots of deletions for Patent nonsense of stuff that might be deletable, but is pretty clearly not PN. A number of deletions for A7 that are, IMO very questionable. No response to date to any of my comments on specific pages, nor in any of the resultdeletion review discussions. I think that this editor is trying to help the project, I have no question of his good faith, but I think that Thespian has a point. DES ^(talk) 17:20, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Ownership of Editor Reviews

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

• Cross posted at WP:VP. Please respond here: [44].

User:Mcr616 has violated 3RR on his own Editor Review, and any sort of reprecussion was declined on this basis of his ownership of his own review. This raises serious issues regarding WP:OWN and whether or not legitimate comments on an ER can be construed as vandalism. More here: [45]. 72.128.85.212 04:02, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Users have considerable latitude over control of their own user pages, sub-pages, and talk pages. They are certainly not bound to respect anonymous reviews by sockpuppets of blocked users. Furthermore, editor review is for the benefit of the user - if they don't want to listen to comments, so be it. It's a totally informal process. --Haemo 04:08, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

The user is free to ignore it. What he's not free to do is remove it, or violate 3RR. Allow me to remind you that an ER doesn't reside in User space, it's in WP space.72.128.85.212 04:09, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Users are granted serious latitude, especially when blocked users are trying to game the review process in retribution for past slights. That's a not a fair review, and it's not what the process is for. --Haemo 04:13, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Regardless, the user in question could have solicited another to remove the comments, if they really were so serious as to constitute harassment or vandalism. The way I see it, there are three issues here:

• 1) Should an editor who lists himself for Editor Review have the "serious latitude" you mention to remove comments they don't like?
• 2) Should 3RR violations be ignored simply because an editor was cleaning their own Editor Review? and
• 3) Does an editor maintain "ownership" over an Editor Review page in the same way they would over a page in their Userspace?

As an Editor Review is entered into voluntarily, and occasionally to "test the waters," as it were, for a run at adminship, I believe that once created, a user should leave the substance of reviews regarding them alone. This is both to the end of maintaining an atmosphere that allows for free expression of thoughts on an ER, and maintaining an accurate records of people's opinions of an editor seeking review. What is the good of an ER if people are worried that negative reviews constitute harassment or vandalism? What is the good of reviewing an editor's ERs when said editor is seeking elected position if the editor has cleaned every negative comment up? To that end, I believe that an editor (1) should not be allowed to remove comments from their own ER. If something is harassment or vandalism, it should be obvious enough that someone else can clean it up. It follows that (2) 3RR vio's on ER pages should certainly constitute serious violations. Finally, because of the previously listed reasons, an ER should (3) not constitute a personal page, and the reviewed party should not be affored WP:OWNership rights over it. It is in the WP namespace, not the User namespace, for a reason. 72.128.85.212 04:25, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

As the IP user starting this thread is clearly evading a prior block on 72.128.88.130 (which in turn may have been used to evade another block), I've blocked their current IP address, as well. – Luna Santin (talk) 04:28, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I would anticipate getting some serious wikilawyer-ish complaints over that block. --Haemo 04:31, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

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

user DBZGokuSaiyan

not sure what his problem is but he made some very derogatory statements here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:BrenDJ I dont know what to do though can some one help me?BlueShrek 04:41, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Just try to talk to him, and mention that personal attacks are not appropriate. --Haemo 04:43, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Links

Something that myself and quite a few acquaintances have noticed, is that it has become near impossible to add links to Wikipedia articles, without someone immediately removing it and possibly even giving an unfair warning. While I'm sure there are some cases when this is called for, it frequently happens to people who do not deserve it. For example, I recently added a link to the following section: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni

Prior to adding it, I read all the neccessary guidelines and saw that it violated none of them. It possesses a growing wealth of information, the section in question has very few links, and the one I added is to the ONLY english site currently in existance. Since then, several editors have deleted the link, claiming it violates the ELG or is not notable. I am positive it does not violate the ELG and considering the rare and exstensive information on it, plus the fact that it is the ONLY english site for the series, should make it more than notable enough.

I've read the articles about dealing with this sort of thing, but they were really no help at all. Something should be done about this, because people should not have to be attacked or have their links removed every single time that they add them. Wikipedia may not be a "Depository of Links", but that does not mean that every new link added needs to be eliminated without the site even being looked at properly.TomitakePrincess 07:36, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

You added a fansite to the article. This is contrary to our external linking guidelines, and was removed on that basis. --Haemo 07:38, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

And as an addition, those so-called other english sites in that search are all sites that review anime and not actual english sites with information beyond a basic plot summary.TomitakePrincess 08:02, 25 June 2007 (UTC) There is nothing in those guidelines about adding fansites. Personal sites are not fansites. Personal sites are sites for one's own resume or information about oneself. The site in question is a site that possesses a great deal of information not in the article itself, translations, and is the ONLY english site for the article topic. It is wrong to keep removing it by twisting around words/meanings in the guidelines, when the site is both rare and informative.TomitakePrincess 07:44, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, there is -- see "Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a Featured article" -- a fansite, such as this, tends to fall into that category. You should also see the three revert rule, which you are violating. --Haemo 07:45, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

And what exactly are the "unique resources" beyong a featured article that you are referring to? The site contains information translated from many of the original Japanese games, books, and other such things, exstensive information, summaries, and analysis, plus shall soon have cast interviews as well. Sounds like more than enough to qualify it staying.TomitakePrincess 07:50, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

None of those things are unique to this, as opposed to many other sites about it, nor are they something which would not be dealt with in a featured article version of this page. Your tone also belies a serious conflict of interest, and you are seriously violating the three revert rule, and can be blocked for it. --Haemo 07:54, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Why are you avoiding my question? And with the exception of two, all of the other sites on the Higurashi page are in Japanese. One is a forum and thus in violation of the guidelines and another is a site with little to no actual information. You are not providing a very good argument as to why the site cannot be added. Are you telling me there would be cast interviews in a featured article? Exstensive analysis of the plot, plus the complete guides and translations? Because, according to what I read, that is not true. This is the ONLY english site for this series. Why are you so bent on getting rid of it?TomitakePrincess 07:59, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

And as an addition, those so-called other english sites in that search are all sites that review anime and not actual english sites with information beyond a basic plot summary.TomitakePrincess 08:03, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

You're at about 10rr on that page right now TomitakeHime... Kyaa the Catlord 08:04, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

That's because people like you keep provoking me over something unfair. And stop getting my name wrong on purpose-it is very rude and not appreciated.TomitakePrincess 08:06, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm pointing out that none of the material covered in this site are in any way "unique" to it; as is required by linking guidelines. None of them should be linked, because none of them provide unique information. You seem to believe that because no other site does them all better than your link, that it's acceptable to add it. This is not the case. I'm not "bent on removing your link" -- I'm bent on enforcing our policies and guidelines. But, I've already done my three reverts, so I'm washing my hands of this. Someone else can handle this. Perhaps you should notice that when five different editors all say you're doing something wrong, you might want a gut check. Just for future reference. --Haemo 08:08, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Note - I've placed the spam1 warning template on this TomitakePrincess's page. Kyaa the Catlord 08:11, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

You know, this is why I dislike Wikipedia. It's nothing but a bunch of bigshot editors who enjoy ganging up on people, at least for the most part. And there is material that is both unique original. No one else has most of the the translations I do. No one else has the same cast interviews I do. There is no other site will FULL episode summaries and theory analysis. There are no other sites in English! You guys are just continuously making up excuses to delete this link, which is a huge injustice to Higurashi fans everywhere.TomitakePrincess 08:16, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

TomitakePrincess, yes, you have a very nice-looking site. However, there's no indication that it undergoes fact-checking or editorial control, which tends to be about the minimum that we require to consider something a reliable source. Unfortunately, if we allow linking to fansites, we'll soon have external link sections five pages long, if not longer. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 08:43, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

But you have turned it into a crusade. With your current guidelines, no sites but official sites have any hope of being accepted, which is a huge injustice. This series has just been release in the US, but new fans will have nowhere to turn for information, because all the sites are in Japanese. And let's face it, even official sites these days have very minimal information. Most contain a tiny plot and character summaries, with a few wallpapers to download and that is it. Fans looking for more have nowhere to turn, since exstensive sites are always turned down here. It's one thing to be picky about links with sections that have huge fanbases, but this is for a series with a very tiny fanbase and a section that desperately needs some english links. There is no way for any site but the official ones to meet ALL the guidelines. There is no way for any site, even yours, to verify it's facts. You can link to sites that confirm it, but how do you know their info is accurate? Even if the site meets all the guidelines, you'll accuse it of being not notable, and if all else fails, you will try to claim it infringes copyright because a screenshot or quote is on it. But by that, no sites but official ones can exist. And when all the official sites are either uninformative or not in english, fans are left with an "encyclopedia" that lets them down in the link department.TomitakePrincess 08:57, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

The purpose of external links is to provide material which is impossible to include in an encyclopedia, and which is not producible by other sites. For instance, an interview with the subject of an article would be a good external link. A link to a video where the creator talks about the subject would be a good external link. A pdf which forms one of the subject's most important works of fiction, or literature, would be a good external link. An essay written by a notable individual about the subject would be a good external link. Wikipedia is not your "one stop anime shop" -- we're here to write an encyclopedia, not to provide fans of a series with a directory of links to go shopping for. External links sections are not a "oh, and by the way, see these other places too" depository -- they are meant to extend the content of the article in an encyclopedic fashion, especially when we cannot do so ourselves. The links provided should be resources that are unique, reliable, and authoritative - a fansite, regardless of its quality, is none of these. --Haemo 09:11, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

User:TomitakePrincess blocked indefinitely, move long now. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 09:19, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

After reviewing his block at CAT:UNBLOCK , I decided to assume that what was done was in good, but ill-advised, faith. It is not an endorsement of his behavior, I just hope he will learn from his mistake. -- lucasbfr ^talk 16:11, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Strange unblock request

Can someone please have a look at User talk:Jayneyalice? They say they are autoblocked because 217.41.217.24 (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log) was blocked, but since that IP was blocked anon only, I don't see how this is possible. I asked the user to double-check that they really are blocked, and they confirmed it. -SpuriousQ (talk) 10:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Weird at best, the blocking admin did not trigger any autoblock either. Since the block expires today, I think it's safe to directly unblock the IP and see if that unblocks this user. Doing it. -- lucasbfr ^talk 11:04, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

On second thoughts, if the user was able to edit your page, he was not blocked. -- lucasbfr ^talk 11:08, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

That's what I initially thought, but apparently autoblocked users can edit talk and user talk pages. -SpuriousQ (talk) 11:16, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I double checked (I blocked my test account), and you can't edit anything while you're autoblocked. -- lucasbfr ^talk 11:31, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Hrm. Well, the last paragraph of Wikipedia:Autoblock makes it sound like autoblocked users "often" can edit talk pages. -SpuriousQ (talk) 11:36, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Weird. Any idea on the reason why some can and some can't? Length of the block maybe? I tried with an indef block. -- lucasbfr ^talk 11:40, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm actually thinking that Jayneyalice is the same person as 217.41.217.24 - the contribs show they've been around for a similar period. Ryan Postlethwaite 11:13, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Autoblocks

Something weird happened when I was trying to test the autoblock system:

• I blocked my test account (same IP than me, different computer)
• the autoblock triggered: I can edit (I assume admins are on a white list), and the IP is blocked
• I unblocked the account. The autoblock stayed, and I couldn't find it in the autoblock tool. I had to manually unblock the IP.

Is that the intended behavior? I thought autoblocks were lifted when you unblocked an account. -- lucasbfr ^talk 11:39, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

The autoblock stays until you manually lift the autoblock, I'll see if I can find it. Ryan Postlethwaite 11:42, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

No they are not lifted. And admins have ipblock-exempt. --(Review Me) R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 11:42, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

It's in your autoblock log. Ryan Postlethwaite 11:45, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh, it appeared afterwards, I must have been too impatient. -- lucasbfr ^talk 12:31, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

9-day old CfD still open

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

---

Resolved

 – This is the place to request a close, not the place to discuss how it should be (or should have been) decided. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 18:33, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

The CfD for Category:Wikipedians by religion is still open after nine days at WP:UCFD (the quoted time to keep open is 5 days, unless I'm mistaken), not to mention that its length alone is impressive. Could an admin go take a look and close as appropriate whenever there is time? Thanks!--Ramdrake 13:33, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

UCFD's may be closed after 5 days, but administrators have the discretion to allow them to remain open longer to allow for additional discussion, to properly gauge consensus or access the weight of the arguments. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 15:29, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any consensus. Right now, I personally couldn't in good conscience close this either way—does anyone else have any more productive opinions? :) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 15:34, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I'd say personnally it can be closed as no consensus, which defaults to keep, or if you actually want to gauge by the !votes, it's about 2:1 in favor of keeping. In any case, the chances of this turning into a delete consensus (even rough) seem to me to be akin to WP:SNOW. But please, don't take my word for it, as I involved myself in the discussion.--Ramdrake 15:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I can't close this one because (1) I'm not an admin, and more importantly (2) I commented in the discussion. It looks to me like this could stay open for a month and we still wouldn't resolve it. I see legitimate arguments on both sides, and I would suggest closing it as no consensus, defaulting to status quo. Shalom ^Hello 16:00, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Just wanted to say that after recounting the !votes, I counted 30:11 in favor of keeping the categories. While Wikipedia is not a democracy, and doesn't go by votes alone, this should count as something.--Ramdrake 16:06, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Closed. I read the debate and decided on delete. THese categories are not helping the encyclopedia, same as many other user categories that have been recently deleted. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:15, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I believe this was closed in error and against a demonstrable rough consensus to keep, ignoring valid argument for keeping the categories. Thus, I have requested a DRV at: [46].--Ramdrake 17:40, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

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

{{unblock}} backlog

Resolved

 – Looks like it's been resolved, as there's just one anon in there now. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:38, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Just to let people know that those requesting unblock here have been waiting rather a long time.--Rambutan (talk) 13:50, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

WP:CN closure requested

The discussion at WP:CN#User:COFS has seen minimal traffic for the last day. Under discussion is a three month Scientology topic ban, reducible to one month if COFS enters WP:ADOPT, and COFS may post to Scientology talk pages during the ban. An uninvolved Wikipedian is needed to determine whether consensus exists to implement that proposal. Durova^Charge! 16:51, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

• ...and on an unrelated WP:CN note, some outside input at the Bus stop (talk · contribs) entry would probably be appreciated. As of right now only one uninvolved editor has chimed in there. I'd rather not see the WP:CN report just be another venue of an ongoing dispute between editors.--Isotope23 18:46, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

False 'New Message' bars on people's user/talk pages

I'm allowed to remove them when I see them, right? It is technically disruptive. HalfShadow 18:35, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Meh. I suppose you are right but as long as the link doesn't go anyplace bad, I don't really care. Most such removal attempts seem to involve users who are already in conflict over other issues. If this is the case, it would be better to bring the matter to someone else's attention rather than escalate a dispute. Thatcher131 18:40, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

What Thatcher said. If you do remove them please don't fight over it if you get reverted. It just creates unnecessary drama. Spartaz ^Humbug! 18:57, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Removing them is likely to be far more disruptive then just thinking to yourself "what a jackass" then going about your business. It's just shit that doesn't need to be disturbed. WilyD 19:00, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I must really like worms, 'cause check it out -- I'm opening a can. I ask this because I really hate them: why isn't it policy to forbid them? It's either someone posting it for entertainment value, which is prohibited per WP:UP#Games, or it's someone being a dick, which is prohibited by, well, m:DICK. I understand there were beans-y objections to explicitly forbidding them, but it's come up often enough just in the past week. Granted, it is somewhat nice to have the dick-y editors categorized for me, but, well, did I mention how very much I hate them? Ugh. -- Merope 19:04, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Making a rule against it is an interesting idea, because it would put a stop to the edit wars over their inclusion. --Masamage ♫ 19:08, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I thought there was some sort of restriction against having things that pretended to be Mediawiki features, but I can't find any page at the moment. In any case, there should be a rule preventing such "spoofing". Chaz ^Beckett 19:12, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I did find an inactive (not rejected) proposal at Wikipedia:Avoid imitating MediaWiki user interface elements. Chaz ^Beckett 19:16, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

It was discussed at WT:UP#JOKE, but it didn't appear to be resolved -- someone threw out WP:BEANS and WP:CREEP and the matter was dropped. -- Merope 19:14, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Seems to me the whole issue could be dealt with simply by having the software generate a more personalized message: instead of "You have new messages", it should say (for example) "Jpgordon has new messages". --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 19:18, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't respond to the text, though, I respond to the box itself. --Masamage ♫ 19:27, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Ah. Well, that's in the category of "your problem and your problem alone." --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 19:37, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

That was supposed to be a general "I". :P My guess is that a lot of people are so used to the orange bar at the top of the screen with the bolded "new messages" in it, that they immediately know what it means without needing the text, and click on the link. I don't think replacing "you" with a synonym of "you" over at the beginning of the line would do much good. --Masamage ♫ 19:45, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

The point of replacing "You" in the beginning is that the spoofs all say "You", not whoever comes to the talk page. Unless someone is a miracle worker in wiki-syntax, I don't think it's possible for someone to spoof what he suggested. — Moe ε 19:48, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree that it's the orange bar, not the text itself that causes a response. Would it be practical to make the message bar a specific color that could only be used by Mediawiki (i.e. this particular color couldn't be set manually)? Chaz ^Beckett 19:50, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

For one I think every color is already on Wikipedia, and two, I think it might be problem to restrict the use of the color orange on the site. :) — Moe ε 20:02, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't thinking of orange necessarily, maybe some seldom used color. It's probably not a very practical solution, though. I think I'd prefer just restricting people from faking the message boxes and asking them nicely to remove them. Chaz ^Beckett 20:06, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

That's why I'm going to be bold and nominate some pages directly used for the prank to be deleted. — Moe ε 20:15, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

That's not a half bad idea Jpgordon, do you know which MediaWiki file it is when someone gets new messages? Ideally, it shouldn't be that hard for the MediaWiki to recognize the user getting new messages and list the users' name instead of "You" since it already has a link to the talk page and latest change listed. — Moe ε 19:42, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Looks like the message is actually generated in includes/Skin.php. But -- it's a globalized message, and you'd need to reshape every damn message so that it can take the user name parameter. I don't know who does string globalization... --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 20:24, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

You should be able to change the colour of real "new messages" bars in your monobook.css, so that you learn to only respond to puke green message bars or something. Sancho 20:09, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Here's the solution... put this in your monobook.css: .usermessage {background-color: #669933;}. Of course, you can pick your own colour. Sancho 20:25, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Now that there is a great idea. --Masamage ♫ 20:28, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, fine, if you want to be all logical about it. I still think the solution is to ruthlessly remove them and then protect the pages against re-adding them, but that's probably because I'm a power-mad rouge admin. -- Merope 20:37, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Wait, crap, that doesn't work! The fake messages are the same color since they use the same parameters. I still think that massive rouge warfare is the answer. -- Merope 21:00, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Aw... I didn't know they completely faked the message bars. Yeah, then this doesn't work. But I like my new color :-) Sancho 21:03, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Ugh. Can an admin please delete? Template:New Message. — Moe ε 20:34, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Done. -- Merope 20:37, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Incidentally, if you do happen to get a new message at the time you see one of the fake message bars, you end up being greeted by two message bars, the real one above the fake one. I personally have gotten into the habit of looking at the bottom of my browser to check the target location of the "(diff)" link. --Kyoko 21:31, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Requested history merge - Welland Viaduct and Harringworth Viaduct

On 6 June, the contents of Harringworth Viaduct were moved to Welland Viaduct by cut and paste, with the former left as a redirect. There have been subsequent edits to Welland Viaduct. Is it possible for an admin to merge the histories of these two articles please? – Tivedshambo (talk) 19:36, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Can't create AfD page for IEEE 754r/Annex Z due to slash embedded in article name

Resolved

Trying to follow the steps at WP:AFD to nominate for deletion IEEE 754r/Annex Z, the 'subst:afd2' expands into a nonsense string due to the slash embedded in the article name. This prevents me from creating the deletion discussion page. Does anyone know how to escape the slash? Note that this article is not a subpage; the slash is part of the name. Any help would be greatly appreciated. EdJohnston 19:59, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

The pagename Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/IEEE 754r/Annex Z looks fine to me--VectorPotential^Talk 20:08, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I created the page without trouble. I'm guessing that when you were trying to create the AfD page, you neglected to manually replace the {{SUBPAGENAME}} with IEEE 754r/Annex Z, which is necessary when nominating /-containing titles. You should probably go overwrite or add to my nomination depending on how well it reflects your reasons. --tjstrf talk 20:14, 25 June 2007 (UTC)