Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive117

User:Rosencomet

Rosencomet (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is here primarily to promote his off-wiki interests, mainly the Starwood Festival (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), and himself, Jeff Rosenbaum (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). This takes the form of WP:COI editing, promoting his festival in articles on people who appear there, creating articles on people who speak there, always with links to the festival, and so on.

Per this diff [1] he is trying to excuse his COI edits by claiming that he lets others edit from his account. This, as far as I'm aware, is an absolute no-no. ArbCom seems unwilling to extend his admonition from Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Starwood to a topic ban, which several editors think is necessary to rein in his self-promotion, requiring an RfC first. This will be complicated if he goes and gets another account - although it's usually not hard to spot him, he does appear to engage in large-scale solicitation.

I do not know what to do for the best here. Guy (Help!) 18:25, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Just warn him again about the policy, then block if he continues. Bearian (talk) 19:11, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

You can also possibly request protection. Bearian (talk) 19:12, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

What about restricting him to talk-page edits only (no article space edits) on topics where there is a potential COI? This was suggested as a possible remedy in the ArbCom case, and I think it can be a good compromise in some COI cases. I don't know the specifics of this one, though. MastCell ^Talk 19:17, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Pigman and Kathryn mentioned 2 RFCs but they must have meant article RFCs, as I find no prior User conduct requests for comment. Normally what should happen is that Pigman and Kathryn lay out their case, Rosencomet makes a defense, and uninvolved editors step in to comment. Ideally this will show Rosencomet how to change his behavior to fit community norms, or it will demonstrate to the community (and to Arbcom) that he edits outside of community norms and is unable or unwilling to change. Thatcher131 19:20, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

The RfCs were not formulated as user conduct RfCs on Rosencomet, but both RfCs wound up addressing his behaviour. The first was a conduct RfC brought against Mattisse by the Ekajati sock drawer, but the outside view centered on Rosencomet's behaviour: "2. All the articles in question have links to Starwood Festival and its website. Many of these links fall outside of WP:NPOV Undue Weight, overstating the importance of a performer apperance at the starwood festival. As such these links can be considered a case of WP:SPAM. The links have all been added by User:Rosencomet who is connect to the event so WP:VAIN also applies." (RfC outside view, point #2)

The second RfC was about the links, but again, as Rosencomet is the one placing them, it again addressed his COI and spamming: Talk:Starwood Festival#Request for Comment: Inserting references to Starwood Festival in articles. I also think yesterday's statement by Rosencomet, "several different folks have edited using this account;"[2] indicates a clear violation of the sock policy on Role accounts: "Role accounts, accounts which are used by multiple people, are only officially sanctioned on Wikipedia in exceptional cases. The one currently permitted role account on en: is Schwartz PR, the account for a public relations firm working with the Foundation. If you run one account with multiple users, it is likely to be blocked." - Kathryn NicDhàna ♫♦♫ 20:08, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Do you see my point? At least the first RFC can not be held up as a good faith attempt be the community to address concerns about his editing, not with Hanuman Das and Matisse both sockpuppeting like mad. You've raised several issues at WP:AE and I think a new user conduct RFC is the best way to proceed. You can try going straight to Arbcom if you want, or persuade some admins to lay down some restrictions without Arbcom, although the rate of success of non-Arbcom editing restrictions is mixed at best. The role editing is a different kettle of fish though and is directly addressable. Thatcher131 20:47, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

My take: sounds to me like the account has been and is being used for role account purposes, which is prohibited for several reasons including licensing. Cease and desist the role use, or the account must be blocked. Keegan^talk 04:18, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I already did that, as soon as someone called it to my attention. I've had nothing to do with the rest of his history. --Orange Mike | Talk 04:23, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Rosencomet made an unblock request and said he won't let others use his account. Thatcher unblocked him. - Kathryn NicDhàna ♫♦♫ 02:31, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Also, Thatcher has closed and archived the Arb enforcement discussion.[3] At this point I have to concur with Bearian. Treat Rosencomet like any user with a COI, and if he doesn't follow policies, he gets blocked. Edits to the articles he writes have spurred a re-emergence of a handful of abusive sockpuppets, but they're getting spotted and blocked pretty easily. Pigman and I posted about it over on the COI board, but there's a lot of articles involved in this; we really need more eyes on all those walled-garden articles. - Kathryn NicDhàna ♫♦♫ 03:18, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

After being warned about his COI issues many times in the past (during the RfCs, Mediations and Arbitration), and three times in the past few days[4] [5] [6] about his COI on the articles for people he hires for the Starwood festival (and whose tapes he then sells on the rosencomet.com website), Rosencomet has today gone back to work on his COI articles, adding yet more mentions of Starwood and himself (as well as reverting other editors' removal of Starwood mentions): [7] [8] [9]. I think he has been warned sufficiently and has still crossed the line. But since he's screaming about me on his talk page, I'd prefer another admin handle the block. (Or a final warning, if anyone really believes that at this point yet another warning will make a difference.) - Kathryn NicDhàna ♫♦♫ 23:54, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

LBU

Resolved

Article at AFD, agreement that if the article exists, it should be listed on the dab page --B (talk) 21:29, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Anyone who remembers user:Jason Gastrich will remember the efforts made by alumni of Louisiana Baptist University to have a redirect at LBU. A dab page has now been created, with three valid uses plus our favourite fundamental baptist diploma mill - and let's be clear, there has never been any proposed content for this page that did not contain said diploma mill. I googled this and found fewer than 800 hits for LBU -> Louisiana Baptist University, all of which were either advertisement copy, astroturfing or user-edited. I don't see any evidence that this is a widely-used initialism. I have removed it, but confidently expect Ra2007 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) to dispute it. I'm noting it here because it's possible I'm being more cynical than is warranted, though I don't think so, and becasue there will be a lot of admins who remember the Gastroturfing of Louisiana Baptist "University" and its alumni. Guy (Help!) 23:22, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

How about LBDM? Carcharoth (talk) 23:42, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Er, but their icon/logo says "LBU" and their domain is lbu.edu.[10] This seems pretty open and shut. -- Kendrick7^talk 23:46, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Heh! Carcharoth means Louisiana Baptist Diploma Mill, which has the merit of accuracy :-) The issue os not whether they call themselves LBU, which they do, but whether anybody else cares enough to do so, which it appears they don't, the obsessive efforts of alumni notwithstanding. Guy (Help!) 23:48, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I still like Our favourite fundamental baptist diploma mill. Daniel 23:49, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

It's their domain name regardless. If I got an e-mail from someputz@lbu.edu, I'd want to know who I was talking to, and I'd want wikipedia to be able tell me when I type lbu and hit "go." -- Kendrick7^talk 23:53, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't whois. The initialism doesn't appear to be used by anyone outside the "alumni". — Coren ^(talk) 00:07, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

What was the initial reason for not creating a redirect? Even if it isn't commonly used, it seems like a reasonable one to have. I guess it could be paid advertising, but if you type LBU into Google, the first hit is the school [11]. "Louisiana Baptist University" gets 59,500 g-hits. LBU and "Louisiana Baptist" gets 877, or 1.4%. By contrast, "Virginia Tech" gets 7.5 million g-hits. "Virginia Tech University", an INCORRECT name for our school that is neither an "unofficial" nor "informal" name for the school - purely an incorrect one used by people who are uninformed - gets 216K g-hits, or 2.8%. So while 800 g-hits is pretty small, proportionately, it's pretty close and "Virginia Tech University" was kept at WP:RFD nearly unanimously. --B (talk) 04:34, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I think the more appropriate comparison is not 1.4% versus 2.8%, but 800 ghits versus 216,000. Raymond Arritt (talk) 04:58, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

What is the justification for keeping it off the dab page listing? It seems harmless enough there, we have plenty of dab page entries with fewer ghits, and the part about how it's a low-repute diploma mill smacks of IDONTLIKEIT. Keeping it there seems like a much better solution than a redirect. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:02, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Good lord this is petty - it does no harm whatsoever to have "Louisiana Baptist University" on the LBU dab page. It doesn't matter if "no one else calls them LBU" (untrue - the IANA do, at least, considering they granted them www.lbu.edu - see .edu), nor does it matter if it's a diploma mill, it's a disambiguation page. We have an article on a topic with the initials L-B-U, so it should be on the relevant dab page. This smacks of personal distaste for a topic swaying people into cutting off their noses to spite their faces. I've put the link back there. Neıl ☎ 11:41, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

The "disambiguation" page contained four items, two of which appear to be astroturfing (the diploma mill and [{Liberty Union Party]], 769 and 10 Googlehits respectively), and was proposed by Ra2007 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). Guess what someone found in this user's user space? User:Ra2007/JCSM. So: looks like Gastroturfing, precisely as I said above. Guy (Help!) 14:42, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

As hilarious as that is, why is "Jason Gastrich wants it" a reason not to have it there? Either delete the article or list it on the dab page - one of the two. Even if it is a self-identified abbreviation, it is still an abbreviation for the school and if the article exists ought to be listed. Other than pettiness, as Neil pointed out, I'm not sure what the reason for not having it is. If the article is free advertising for a non-notable "school", delete the article. But if the "school" is notable enough for an article, it belongs on the dab page. --B (talk) 14:50, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Guy, what does that have to do with anything? Comment on the content, not the contributor, please. Agree that there's no real reason for Liberty Union Party to be there (if dabbed anywhere, you would image it should be at LUP), but I still don't see a good reason to keep Louisiana Baptist University off there other than "Guy doesn't like it". How is it astroturfing to have a functional and correct disambiguation page? Neıl ☎ 14:50, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Like I said, it's the subject of perennial POV-pushing and astroturfing, the user also created a page on Gastrich's vanity ministry, no iteration of that page has ever existed that was not used to promote the diploma mill, and Wikipedia is not supposed to be the place toi promote your diploma mill. There are fewer than 800 Google hits for LBU + "Louisiana Baptist University", and all opf them seem to be the result of alumni trying to boost the place. Well, congratulations to them, now we'll be blazing the trail on their behalf. Wikipedia rewards persistent vanity spammers, great result for the project. Guy (Help!) 16:03, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

This is insane. If the article is spam for a diploma mill, delete it. It doesn't make sense to have the article, but not the dab link. --B (talk) 16:08, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

If this article is supposed to be "promoting" the school, it's doing an awfully poor job of it by including extensive discussion of the school's non-accredited status. Looks more like a good snarking to me. Raymond Arritt (talk) 16:17, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree. As long as the article exists, there's no reason the dab page shouldn't point to it. Whether the article deserves to exist is an entirely different question. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 17:10, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Checkuser requested, by the way ... if you know of any non-stale socks that could be used for the check, feel free to add them. --B (talk) 15:28, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Given that they own lbu.edu it seems like an unfortunately reasonable dab to me. Of course, we should still block all LBU related crapspammers on sight. Any even suspected Gastrich sock or similar spammer should be blocked. Period. JoshuaZ (talk) 16:19, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, lets fight the right battle here. The LBU article in its present form will not be useful for advertising. We need to keep it that way unless their standards suddenly rise unexpectedly. David D. (Talk) 16:24, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Yup, I'm a'clicking that good ol' "watch" tab now... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Raymond arritt (talk • contribs) 16:37, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the article appears to heavily dependent upon WP:NOR and WP:SYNTH on the one side, self-claims on the other. I'm concerned that many editing the content there are behaving more like promoters or consumer activists or investigative reporters than encyclopedia editors. If the institution deserves note here, secondary sources are the key. If the institution needs to be "exposed", it needs to be exposed by the published authors like Steve Levicoff (who is a good reference there), not wikipedia editors. The battle over the initials is silly. The focus is way out of whack in this "LBU" dab squabble. The initials aren't a problem at all. The problem is WP:SYNTH is ignored throughout the article, and there is way, way too much promotional-type self claims taken straight from original sources without independent references for verification. (And please folks. Snarky digs against the topic or editors set a bad example, and don't help to achieve article NPOV in any way shape or form.)Professor marginalia (talk) 17:05, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Correction: even Levicoff is apparently a self-published source. The article says way too much considering its very skimpy WP:RS. Professor marginalia (talk) 18:04, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

So is anyone going to nominate it for AFD? There seems to be broad support for deleting it, based on what people have said in the discussion here and at the dab, and that would get it off the dab list. —Random832 20:50, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

AWB waiting list

There are some people waiting for an admin to add them to the AWB check page.

See Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage#Requests for registration.

Please address the requests and add the page to your watchlist.

The Transhumanist 19:21, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

There are currently two users and a bot waiting for approval. How is this an important backlog that urgently needs clearing, let alone necessitating a notice here? —Kurykh 19:53, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

The instructions on the registration page state "If the list contains entries that are over 24 hours old, please mention this (nicely) at WP:AN" --Stephen 00:22, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

That is not an instruction for random users to check the page and report the backlog here. The instruction is meant only for a user who is awaiting access is is getting impatient. No admins should ever feel pressured to clear this backlog. If it piles up too large, it may be better to try to contact an AWB mod on their talk page or on IRC. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 16:57, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The perhaps the instructions could be modified to read, "If the list contains entries that are over 24 hours old, please mention this (nicely) at WP:AN. Just don't expect people to be nice in return". Sheesh. Jeffpw (talk) 17:07, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi I've been waiting to be approved on the AWB waiting list for some time now, so this is a polite request that a nice admin person could approve this request. Thank you in advance. Jdrewitt (talk) 21:50, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Overuse of logos

Please have a look at Compact Disc and tell me wehter the use of logos there is allowed in their context, or that it is just plain overuse of logos. Over the past few months, I have removed them twice, but a Jnavas (talk · contribs) keeps putting them back in, sustaining that fair use criteria are met. I (and others) don't think so; they serve merely as a gallery, but John refuses to acknoledge the fact. See Talk:Compact Disc for the discussion. I want some objective views from other admins. — Edokter • Talk • 21:21, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, overuse of those logos. Secret ^account 21:38, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree. There really isn't a good reason to place an image of every single variation on the logos; and given that they are trademarks as well this makes fair use even more tenuous. Besides, they make the article look like crap. — Coren ^(talk) 21:40, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

This isn't actually an issue for admins, but I'm not really sure what every slight variation on the logos gives us. They all seem pretty bland variants of the original logo. Secretlondon (talk) 21:49, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

It may well turn into an admin issue if Jnavas keeps reverting their removal. It may help if others tell him why the logos are not suitable. — Edokter • Talk • 22:05, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

From a purely editorial standpoint, they add nothing to the article and make for awkward formatting. Looking at the issue through the prism of WP:NFCC, their usage fails criteria #3 & #8. If you want to remove them permanently, WP:IFD may be a better fit. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 21:57, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that we need only the main "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo. That logo is extremely common, and its inclusion provides information that a textual description could not easily do. The rest are all unnecessary and excessive since they are non-free content. *** Crotalus *** 19:22, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Could you help me please?

Resolved

 – WinHunter ^(talk) 04:49, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Hello. Jerry, newbiee admin here. I speedy deleted Moon Tower as patent nonsense. The article was also nominated as Afd, but not properly, not indexed, not templated correctly. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Moon Tower. I closed the AfD as speedy delete, but I don't know how to do it right. Should it just be deleted as a malformed and unnecessary AfD, or should it be templated and indexed? Thanks, JERRY ^talk _contribs 03:01, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The same user tagged another article, Flatout toys that needs to be speedied, but I don't know how to disposition the malformed AfD's. JERRY ^talk _contribs 03:21, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I've put the closure templates, I would leave it there. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 03:39, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Another admin speedied Flatout toys, so I closed out Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Flatout toys similarly to as you did the one above. Thanks. JERRY ^talk _contribs 03:46, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I see I missed the bottom tag. Thanks for catching that, snowolf. JERRY ^talk _contribs 04:08, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I would have thought that they could be deleted as there was no discussion, but that's fine. Should they be transcluded onto today's AfD log? WODUP 03:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

That's what I was asking when I said should it be indexed. I believe Snowolf's reply I would leave it there was a "no". nevermind he probably meant don't delete itJERRY ^talk _contribs 03:59, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I transcluded them onto today's AfD log. Cheers, WODUP 04:12, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The moon towers were a lighting system in Austin, Texas. I've redirected the redlink to Moonlight tower. -- Kendrick7^talk 22:24, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Harassing

Resolved

User:Betacommand is harassing me, but reverting edits that have nothing to do with him. [12] most likely due to this and this debate. he is clearly trolling Ctjf83 ^talk 03:55, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I see neither harassment nor trolling in the diffs you provided. It looks to me like Betacommand is trying to show you which policies apply to your situation. If you have better diffs, feel free to share them, but as it is I would suggest that you read the policies he has pointed out to you. - Kathryn NicDhàna ♫♦♫ 04:16, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

it is relating to the first link...another user and i were rvting each other for the simpsons project about the inclusion of a quote. beta comes in, not having anything to do with the simpsons project, and this edit not having anything to do with pics, and just rvts me, so the other user wouldn't get a 3RR Ctjf83 ^talk 04:19, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I saw a rude threating uncivil comment when a user reverted, without explanation, against the consensus of at least 2 other editors. I happen to have some simpson and other keywords on an IRC Recent changes feed. (I catch a lot of stuff with that filter) it was a standard edit. If I wanted to harass you, you would know it. this is in no way harassment, β^_command 04:24, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

whatever you say, u could have discussed it with us, but your sill mad from our argument earlier...but oh well, this is another one of my useless tyrants Ctjf83 ^talk 04:28, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I see no harassment, only you having trouble getting up to speed on an important but labyrinthine policy. You have also been sniping at Betacommand for a while on multiple places for a while now, and it stops here. BC's hard work on images and their surrounding issues is not a license for you to continually make querulous complaints in an attempt to paint him as the village scapegoat. east.718 at 04:32, December 21, 2007

Ctjf83, do I read you correctly, and are you calling Betacommand a "useless tyrant"? - Kathryn NicDhàna ♫♦♫ 04:40, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

no you didnt not...it is my bad vocabulary...i meant tirade...but i'll rephrase it..."one of my useless bitch fests" Ctjf83 ^talk 04:44, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

but just put the {{resolved}} template, i'll be the adult and ignore him Ctjf83 ^talk 04:46, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Ignore someone helping you to understand policy and improving the encyclopedia? Thank God you're doing the mature thing. Once again, Betacommand makes the encyclopedia more free, and someone hates him for it. J Milburn (talk) 15:02, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

We know, Betacommand can do no wrong. Carry on. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 15:12, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I hardly think him deleting pics improves anything Ctjf83 ^talk 19:46, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Betacommand doesn't delete images, as he's not an admin. Acalamari 20:11, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

from the articles i mean Ctjf83 ^talk 20:51, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Betacommand has contributed more than any other editor to applying image related policies, so remember that he knows a lot about it now, and is unlikely to be wrong or doing it for the fun of trolling anyone. He often removes images from articles, and is almost always right in doing so as far as I can see. Even faced with people reporting him here every other week he remains calm, and doesn't give up, + his bot does an excellent job and despite what some users may think has a very low error rate from what I've seen. I honestly don't think he is targeting you in particular, he just happened to notice the topic and tried to help out, by enforcing the policy that consensus decided upon. Note that there is also a strong consensus to forcefully apply policy if needed. Jackaranga (talk) 22:50, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Good article nominations

Just letting you guys know that there is a backlog of 229 articles over there. Davnel03 09:38, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Anybody can review GAs. This doesn't really need urgent administrative action. east.718 at 10:01, December 21, 2007

This is a good place to announce a backlog. Many editors watch this board, not just administrators. You might also try the village pump. - Jehochman ^Talk 10:03, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I suggest the village pump next time for this. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 10:11, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

WP:GAC has been backlogged since time began, a periodical announcement of this isn't really necessary... Anthøny 18:46, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

IfD discussion due for closure

Resolved

 – IfD has been closed. 18:42, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Can someone close Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion/2007 December 15#Image:DW Fear Her.jpg? This IfD has some quite heavy discussion, so I appriciate a specialist having a look at is. — Edokter • Talk • 14:32, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

 Done, by Uncle G (talk · contribs). Anthøny 18:42, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Cut and paste move

I noticed that the discussion page for the third AfD for a, now deleted, article had been placed over the first Afd Discussion - See [13]. As I think it's important to be able to keep and view all such discussions for future reference I reverted the page bck to the original discussion ([14]), created a new, approproately titled page and copy-pasted in the information from the new discussion (See the new page here). As the original page was going to stay in place and their was no talk page I didn't really consider this to be a typical - and so discouraged - copy-paste move. Now however I think I may have acted hastely and incorrectly, would it be possible for someone to clear up the mess and fix it so that an appropriate page history is viewable at both locations. Sorry for the trouble. [[Guest9999 (talk) 16:02, 21 December 2007 (UTC)]]

The history is split and merged appropriately, now. Although I notice there doesn't seem to be a Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Differences between book and film versions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2nd nomination)? If not, the 3rd could possibly be moved to that location (which anybody can do, now that the history is arranged correctly). – Luna Santin (talk) 19:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the help, the second nomination was as part of a group under a different title: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Harry Potter film/book differences (2nd nomination). [[Guest9999 (talk) 01:45, 22 December 2007 (UTC)]]

Expungement?

Is there, or does anyone imagine there will ever be, a method in which one may go about expunging previous blocks from their record? I have a 3RR block on my record, something which I am seriously not proud of. I will admit at time I didn't realize I had gone over 3RR and honestly thought I was reverting in good faith. Be that as it may, might there be some mechanism for minor violations like these to be removed from one's record? It can potentially derail a future RfA. Bstone (talk) 18:42, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Logistically, no: the only method one can scrub a block log is by being renamed (or usurped). Fundamentally, I disagree: transparency is important on any community, and removing a block log entry because "it makes you look bad" really isn't an acceptable reason for dodging that transparency requirement. Furthermore, if you are requesting adminship from the community, you will get it on the basis of how trustworthy you are, and whether or not you will use your tools; a block log entry, even if its effect is negative, must come into that process, unfortunately, whether you like it or not. Anthøny 18:45, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

And don't try to hide it. - Rjd0060 (talk) 18:54, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

What's that supposed to mean? Bstone (talk) 18:57, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Don't try to hide the fact that you've been blocked (ie: by a usurption), as that really will "derail" a future RfA. Essentially, I am just saying I agree what Anthony said above. - Rjd0060 (talk) 19:28, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Heck, I was indefblocked as a vandal at some point, and I seem to do fine. There might be a few people who would blindly rush to conclusions based on a single 12-hour block from several months ago (whenever you plan your RfA), but I'd like to think the far more important consideration is what you learned from that event, and how you've applied that lesson to your behavior around the wiki since then. We shouldn't expect people to be perfect. – Luna Santin (talk) 19:41, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Expungement of block logs has happened only once, and I hope the circumstances surrounding that time never occur again. east.718 at 20:09, December 21, 2007

I'm aware of at least one case where a user requested renaming, after a serious dustup, and in the renaming process severed any and all available link to his previous block log. Whether any link to prior blocks exists after renaming, or whether you get a clean slate, is apparently up to the bureaucrat who handles the request, but in at least some cases it appears to essentially expunge a block log. MastCell ^Talk 23:56, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

You musn't worry, Bstone. When you go up for RfA, people won't oppose for one 3RR block. They look at when you were blocked, why you were blocked, and more than that, what you have done since. Now, if you were a persistent edit warrior, there'd be a problem. However, it doesn't appear that way. Expungement is only for cases where we must oversight the block. Maser ^(Talk!) 20:27, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I wouldn't worry about a single 3RR block very much. Far more worrisome was your taunting of another editor on your user page, and your repeated complaints of "vandalism" when I removed it. Friday (talk) 20:38, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Wow, Friday, talk about a completely inappropriate time and place to bring up accusations. I really don't know what to say or how to respond. Bstone (talk) 20:46, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

You're specifically asking about this in the context of passing an RFA. I gotta be honest here, if you ran, I would oppose based on that incident. Friday (talk) 20:49, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

No, I was asking if it was possible to have previous blocks expunged. I merely mentioned how it might work in an RfA. Friday, I really don't wish to converse with you as it only ends up in dispute and personal debate. While I have no way in forcing you to do this perhaps you can at least respect my wishes. Thank you. Bstone (talk) 20:51, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to but in, but you did ask about expunged blocks because of a future RfA (at least that is how you worded your original comment). Friday may have been blunt, but I agree with him on that issue he has pointed out. Talk about beans. I am sure you'd like to know how to improve your chances of a successful RfA, no? - Rjd0060 (talk) 20:54, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Hey, nobody's perfect. I heard a rumour admins make mistakes occasionally, but I can't believe that. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 21:50, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

You aer korrect - Admeens are inkaparable of makn misteaks. I shud no! LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:03, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I think we're chewing up and spitting out any admins who are capable of making mistakes, so soon we'll be left with only infallible admins, right? MastCell ^Talk 23:52, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Alternatively you could wait 4-5 years or so for it to fade of the face of the encyclopedia. This editor was banned in 2003, but it seems old logs disappear after a while and they need to be placed back in the logs. I'm guessing that would be your only shot at it actually being removed from the log history. — Save_Us_229 23:38, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

No, that won't work. They simply weren't logged before December 2004 in the way we imagine now. Blocks from November 2003 to December 2004 can be found at Wikipedia:Block log and blocks before that needed someone with direct access to the servers. Anyway all logs are available for download along with the Wikipedia database, so someone could back them up. Graham87 05:45, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

You're making too much of this. Many of our best editors and admins have been blocked for 3RR at some point. If you had multiple such blocks it might cause for concern, but you don't, so it isn't. Raymond Arritt (talk) 00:00, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

No big deal, as they say. I make mistakes all the time. :-) We need more sysop closing discussions at WP:AFD anyway. Bearian (talk) 01:29, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Another thing, which I am not sure if it was pointed out; if the account is renamed, the people who perform the moves can have the ability to block for one second to show a previous block history. So even if you want to hide from the block log, there is no way to do it now. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 05:56, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, blocks can be completely expunged, but it requires a developer to manually delete the rows from the logging table (and you'd probably need some oversighting on your talk page to remove all the evidence), but you would need a really good reason for it to be done. Mr.Z-man 06:31, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Closing of discussion

Will someone come close this merge discussion? It's been about a month since it started, and since I was the one who started it, it would be best for someone else to close it. Thanks! ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 01:18, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I've closed the discussion as merge. There is a majority in support, and while statistics alone cannot be the indicator of consensus, they assisted in getting to it. The reason is that the supporters are arguing that the article has a section that deals with prostitution and that "Geesha" is an intentional mispronounciation of "Geisha," and while the two are separate topics, they were viewed to be related in the section that discusses prostitution. The opposers, on the other hand, were simply stating that the two are separate, but did not verify these claims. Difficult consensus. Maser ^(Talk!) 01:50, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Not so much an intentional mispronunciation, but rather an uninformed or "misheard" mispronunciation. That happens a lot with Japanese words being pronounced by non-Japanese. (^_^) ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 03:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Malfunctioning Bot (ImageBacklogBot)

Resolved

 – Bot triggered due to FU images being used in template space by accident. Will ^(talk) 01:54, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

The bot ImageBacklogBot has removed various Fair use images that, in my opinion, were used legitimately in articles. See here. I'll leave a notice on the bot's talk page, but the bot maintainer wants me to go through a convoluted registration process that I don't have time for to tell him about it, so I'm mentioning it here too. If those images are not speedily undeleted, I'll probably take it to DRV if I get around to it. 98.16.161.161 (talk) 01:47, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. See resolved note above. Will ^(talk) 01:54, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Articles erroneously listed in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion a glitch?

Resolved

 – Inadvertant transclusion of CSD category to pages that linked to a template. Protected and semi-protected pages required a null edit to force the server cache update.

JERRY ^talk _contribs 04:08, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Jerry, newbiee admin here. Sometimes there are articles on the category candidates for speedy deletion project page that I just can not figure out why they are there, or how to get them off. The articles themselves are not, and have never been tagged. I checked all transcluded templates, etc... and I still don't know why they are there. I have purged the page, and <ctrl>F5'd my MSIE, but they stay stuck there. A current example is Big Syke. Anyone know why this happens? Is it just on my end? Thanks. JERRY ^talk _contribs 03:55, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

• Template:Thug Life seems to be the issue here, but the problem is solved now. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 03:59, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
  • (blush)... it was one of the things I checked for, but somehow missed. Thanks... I would not have slept until I knew why it was there. JERRY ^talk _contribs 04:01, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
    • Yes, was going to point out that template had a CSD tag for a while. It's one of the few non-protected templates on the page. Occasionally there are also .js pages, which typically happen because some string intended for an edit summary or tooltip contains {{delete}} or similar. Gimmetrow 04:04, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
      • The Thug Life-related pages are still showing up in CAT:CSD. I've refreshed a few times, no dice in getting rid of them. Tony Fox (arf!) 04:07, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
        • Cache-purge is your best option. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 04:09, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
          • Still a problem. I have server-purge-cache'd all of the transcluded items, the article, and Category:CSD. Thug Life-related articles remain listed. JERRY ^talk _contribs 04:16, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
            • I see it still on my side...hmm...maybe just a DB lag, I don't know. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 04:19, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
              • Sometimes, it seems semi-protected and protected pages need a null edit to nudge the caching to update. Gimmetrow 04:24, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
• Fixed now. Tony Fox (arf!) 04:27, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

JoshuaZ and Daniel Brandt

At the recent DRV of Daniel Brandt (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), it was decided that the deletion of the redirect was to be overturned, but the moving of the editting history of the article was placed at Talk:Public Information Research/merged material (which was itself a redirect last week) was not determined to be overturned or endorsed at the DRV discussion. This was the status quo until JoshuaZ (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) replaced all of the editing history of the article back in its original title and then restored all of the history of the title. JoshuaZ has restored the editing history of the article three separate times. JoshuaZ has argued that this is a necessity for keeping the GFDL requirements in place for the article, but as it stands it has been decided at DRV [insert number] that the content of Daniel Brandt be solely a redirect, which is what the closing admin (Xoloz) had done to the content of the page as it had been deleted.

The issue stands that JoshuaZ has had more than his share in undeleting a very controversial page that has had a lot of deletions and undeletions. I am unsure as this can be construed as wheel warring, but I am fairly certain that several administrators in that delete log have been desysopped for their actions in conjunction with the deletion and undeletion of the article (Geni and Yanksox, in particular, were desysoped solely because of the wheel war at Daniel Brandt). I will notify JoshuaZ of this discussion so he may state his part.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 04:45, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Incidentally, Talk:Public Information Research/merged material is now a simple text dump of the history, which is enough to satisfy the GFDL without making available any potentially libelous/contentious/whatever-adjective material. —Random832 04:49, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

For various reasons no it isn't.Geni 18:25, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

• I simply do not understand the purpose of restoring the history of the article. Keeping it as a redirect to Public Information Research is a rational decision, even if some disagree, and was the decision at Wikipedia:DRV#9_December_2007. However what is the purpose of restoring all the article history? That perpetuates the problematic material that was the subject of the June AfD and DRV that resulted in the merge in the first place. GFDL? Redirects don't need a complicated history for GFDL purposes. Joshua also cites Previous breaks many links to by people linking to difs of this article in the archive and makes it hard to find. Well, shit, every deletion breaks a link somewhere, let's never delete anything! If someone has a link to Daniel Brandt and we have chosen to delete it (for whatever reason) then the link should be broken. This latest restoration is completely unexplicable to me. Thatcher131 04:50, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

• Timeline
• 19:58, 14 June 2007 JoshuaZ ( restored "Daniel Brandt" ‎ (2,667 revisions restored)
  • This overturned the AfD closure by A Man in Black without DRV; DRV later endorsed the closure.
• 03:13, 10 December 2007 JoshuaZ restored "Daniel Brandt" ‎ (2,674 revisions restored: Out of policy deletion, against previous compromise and consensus,and violation of the GFDL. Restoring)
  • This restoration overturned Doc Glasgow's deletion of the redirect in violation of the BLP policy which mandates that BLP deletions must not be overturned without consensus. DRV reversed the deletion on Dec 14, keeping Daniel Brandt] as a redirect but said nothing about the history.
• 7:45, 14 December 2007 JoshuaZ deleted "Daniel Brandt" in order to move the history back over the redirect, then he protected it.

There is no pressing need to maintain a history of potentially libelous information. The history should be deleted again and reverted to the status quo as of June. east.718 at 04:53, December 18, 2007

• Joshua is simply mistaken about GFDL. As long as the history is clear, it doesn't matter where it is. See Wikipedia:Merge and delete for a full discussion. If there is indeed a GFDL problem the history could be moved to a subpage, or--I think this would be best--the list of usernames and dates could be copied to a subpage, and the history itself deleted. Chick Bowen 04:53, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) I agree that there was no need to restore the history. Broken links aren't exactly a reason to do so, and GFDL concerns here are fairly minimal, particularly if the history contains content that some (including the subject) consider libelous. Dumping the history to a subpage (maybe removing edit summaries) might be the best idea to satisfy whatever GFDL concerns might be there, as Random832 seems to have done. --Coredesat 04:57, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
    • Yep, names and dates, that's all that's needed. Chick Bowen 04:59, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Try again. And this time really read the GFDL.Geni 18:26, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

The status quo between June 2007 and the 1 December deletion by Doc was an undeleted history (per the log). The move of the history to another page took place only after Doc's 1 December deletion was questioned. We should keep that in mind when we talk about the status quo of the article. Another deletion would probably mean another DRV, not that that is a problem. I just wanted to note that there has never been a deletion discussion that resulted in the decision to delete the entire history. Something to ponder. NoSeptember 05:25, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

As NoSeptember says, there was no consensus to delete the history. And as I explained earlier, doing so breaks the spirit and possibly the letter of the GFDL. There's no content in the history that the subject considers libelous. All such content has been oversighted. The DRV closer specifically had no objection to this, and the DRV restored the status quo more or less- so the status quo is as we have had for sometime, the history is there. Unecessary deletion of histories that breaks literally hundreds of links simply damages are transparency and accomplishes nothing else. JoshuaZ (talk) 05:33, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

The GFDL is not intended to and should not impinge on our editorial discretion. If there are editorial reasons to keep it, fine. But the GFDL issue is not a big deal. Chick Bowen 05:38, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

The GFDL is most certainly intended to infringe on your editorial discretion. You can no more use editorial discretion to ignore the requirements of the GFDL than you can to ignore copyright law. Fortunately, I don't think deleting past revisions is a violation of the letter of the GFDL, though it certainly seems to be a violation of its spirit. (It wasn't really designed to be used in the way Wikipedia does.) - makomk (talk) 15:01, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

It is a violation of the GFDL however since most people have never really read it and made a solid effort of understanding it I doubt many people would get all the reasons why.Geni 18:32, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I've re-deleted it, as per the reasons Doc, Alkivar, and Dmcdevit deleted it before. There is wide acceptance that the GFDL is already satisfied by the history on the talk subpage; GFDL compliance is not a reason to restore fragile BLP material. --krimpet✽ 05:47, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Is this really happening? Do we have to have controversy over this again? Deleted histories are still kept in the database and are available by administrators willing to provide them. This s compliant with the GFDL. Oversight is a different issue. But I'm preaching to the choir; these are things we all know.

Why wikilawyer all of this? This question is for both sides.

We can policy wonk this until the cows come home, the foundation runs out of cash, the internet es'plodes, or our motherboards burn themselves out with the kilobytes of typing. If you want to provide the Brandt history to users interested, make yourself available. Let us not get into this for the nth time. Sleeping dogs should lie, this discussion does not serve the principles of our project in a positive manner. Keegan^talk 06:02, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

The entire history has been deleted? WTF? That certainly did not have community consensus. -- Ned Scott 11:32, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:BLP#Disputed_deletions, deletions of biographies citing BLP concerns do not need consensus but undeletions do. Perhaps you would care to explain how concerns about BLP (including unfairness to the subject, undue weight regarding single negative incidents, possible libel, etc) are served by keeping the history. Would you be in favor of retaining the history of any deleted biography, or just this one? Thatcher131 11:44, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

"BLP concerns" do not extend to deleting the entire history of an article because Daniel Brandt doesn't like people talking about him. Merge was the result of the last AfD, and most everyone involved were under the impression that the article history was never in danger of total deletion. Problematic revisions can be removed, as cited by the deleting admin. -- Ned Scott 11:55, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 December 18#Daniel Brandt. -- Ned Scott 11:51, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Now at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Daniel Brandt 3. It's going to need it eventually anyway, so I figured it made sense to go ahead and set up the subpage. —Random832 16:58, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Can someone explain how deleting the history violates the GFDL? My impression was that only the history section itself (names, date, and edit summaries) was required, not the revisions themselves; this is, as far as I know, routinely done for moving images to Commons. —Random832 13:26, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it does, but you may also have to include

(The line above starting "I don't think it does..." wasn't by me). If this goes much further I can foresee arbitration looming, and you don't need a crystal ball to see how that would go. Please let this die. --Tony Sidaway 16:42, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

The reason is that when the GFDL was put together no one really thought about what the phrases used really meant. In this case the killer is "Preserve the section Entitled "History", Preserve its Title," A couple of other elements of the GFDL means that the history section has to stay under the name of history. There are other issues but those are the simple ones.Geni 18:32, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but you can probably handle that by simply labeling the top "History of X" or "blah blah blah (History)". In any event, the matter is now at DRV. JoshuaZ (talk) 18:43, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Nope. Remeber in order to get your head around how the GFDL you have to view each article as in effect a collection of books. Kinda messy.Geni 23:12, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Just another reminder, the GFDL was not the concern for the new DRV. What we have here is something that failed to get a consensus to delete, so it was merged, and then black-door deleted during the redirect fiasco. That's gaming the system, and it's unacceptable. -- Ned Scott 01:47, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Can someone pretend that I have no clue regarding Wikipedia, Brandt, etc., and explain what the biggie is here? There's much sound and fury, but there's little substance. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 01:18, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Assuming you understand our concept of AfD, and community consensus, and BLP issues: The community holds several discussions regarding if something should be kept or removed. The last big discussion on it, someone decided to "kinda keep it". The argument to delete it did not gain sufficient support. Another admin thought we should delete the redirect that resulted from the merge, but moved the page history to another page so that it would be kept (the page history is what the actual article is, the title is just a title). The community saw this and thought it was wrong, and took it to DRV, where it was shown that it was indeed wrong. We expected to see things back how they were, but other users felt they could take advantage of the situation. During all this, the page history that we were all told was not going to be deleted got deleted anyways. Even though the argument to delete it, when presented to the open community, failed. No one really noticed this right away, because we were already talking about restoring it to how it was with the old title anyways, so it's not like it mattered, because the DRV overturned the deletion. But other users, who disagree with these outcomes, are manipulating the situation so that the article gets deleted anyways. I don't care what article it is, that level of manipulation is simply not acceptable, not by anyone. -- Ned Scott 04:46, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

"Pretend that I have no clue" doesn't mean "be condescending" (see first sentence above). Anyway, it seems to me that there's a bit of an interpretation issue regarding the DRV, GFDL, BLP, etc., which is rather common. Rather than Ryulong making big chest-beating sounds about it, a simple discussion would likely have sufficed. (Interesting how much trouble Brandt has caused and continues to cause even indirectly.) In any case, I dislike the removal of page histories -- it reminds me too much of 1984.

BTW, if you want to see manipulation in full bloom (and the Nrandt article ain't it) hang around the image deletion pages.

Finally, as Tony said above -- let this die. Move along, time for a new horse to flog. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 10:33, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, my intention was not to be condescending, but to simply present the situation in a hypothetical "if one didn't know" kind of way. -- Ned Scott 09:21, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Banned users question

Guess I misplaced this question. Your input is appreciated. - Rjd0060 (talk) 19:15, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I am copying the question here:

If a user is banned, or indefinitely blocked (and there is absolutely no chance the user will become unblocked), are their subpages (talk page archives, sandbox, etc..) going to be deleted? - Rjd0060 (talk) 15:10, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Usually yes. If the user is indef-blocked for vandalism or sock puppetry or other blatant violations of policy, his userpages are deleted as part of Wikipedia:Deny recognition and Wikipedia:Revert, block, ignore. See also Category:Temporary Wikipedian userpages. There are cases in which the userpage can be kept. Shalom (Hello • Peace) 20:00, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

The status quo is that when a user if normally indef-blocked, all pages in the account's userspace are deleted. If the user is a blocked sock, a page is preserved with the appropriate notice of sockpuppetry. If a user is banned, the user page and talk pages are normally preserved with the appropriate templates (the talk page is preserved for reference). Of course, in some cases, the m:Right To Vanish is invoked. This isn't instruction creep, just merely an observation of current practice. —Kurykh 20:07, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

There are some pages from indef banned user Kirbytime if anyone would like to delete these. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Matt57 (talk • contribs) 20:32, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Deleted. DrKiernan (talk) 08:34, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Would a list of pages out there be something a bot could do? I'd imagine a bot could easily "check indefinitely blocked user pages, see if other pages exists, list the user name." -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:45, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't really think having a bot do it would be a good idea. The reason is, we have to make extra sure that the user is not returning. That would mean a rejected unblock request, if the user wasn't officially "banned". - Rjd0060 (talk) 15:51, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I just meant a list being created; would it be a bot or just a generic program, something, what's the term? From there, admins could decide. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:58, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry. After re-reading your comment, I understand what you mean. Maybe a bot to categorize (is that the term you were looking for?) all the pages / subpages of blocked indef/banned users. Good idea! - Rjd0060 (talk) 04:19, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I really just meant someone to create a list of the page/subpages. It wouldn't be a bot per se, but just a list created. That way, people could check it and strike names out that shouldn't be deleted yet. I worry about a category as to what to do for ones that aren't appropriate. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:45, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

A bot was proposed for this, but was rejected. It needs human thought and assessment to pick up the pages that actually document useful stuff for the encyclopedia. Some "good" editors turn "bad", but (unless they invoke 'right to vanish') there is no need to clear out the good pages that existed before they went "bad". For this purpose, replacing the userpage with "indef blocked" or "banned" is not helpful. Adding a notice at the top of the page is better. Consider User:Giano II (this example used as an extreme example and due to recent comments made by Jimbo). Even if something happened in future and the user was banned, I would strongly object to replacing the page with an indef blocked template, putting in the "temoporary Wikipedians" category, and seeing the user page and its subpages deleted. I'm sure others would object as well. There is a spectrum, and the reasons for deletion depend on the reason for blocking or banning. Sometimes those carrying out the blocking or banning use the wrong template, and that causes problems further down the line. If the editor was always "bad" (vandal, troll, etc) then the indef blocked template and page deletions are usually appropriate. For borderline cases, "|category=" can be added to the template to prevent the page ending up in the "temporary wikipedians" category. These would be cases where someone thinks preserving the pages is worthwhile, or where the user might be unbanned and unblocked in future (relying on being able to restore deleted pages is not good practice - better to get it right first time round). Carcharoth (talk) 09:30, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Edit Warring on Peter Yarrow Page

Resolved

Page has been protected by User:LaraLove -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:57, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I whole lotta people worked out consensus language on Yarrow's conviction, incarceration and eventual grant of clemency.

Two days later a single editor started unilaterally changing the page.

Please read the history of the article and its talk page. David in DC (talk) 02:09, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Note, per above, this noticeboard is NOT for content disputes, so I'm going to close this. If the user continues to be disruptive, then start by going through any of the options at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution before coming here. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:57, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Did You Know needs updating

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Did_you_know/Next_update is 6 hours overdue.--293.xx.xxx.xx (talk) 10:49, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Done, thanks for the note. Daniel 11:30, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Supparluca

In regards to Category:South Tyrol, I received a notification on my talk page from Chris - It seems that Supparluca emptied and redirected Category:South Tyrol despite consensus at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 November 28#Category:South Tyrol to leave it alone. This, in itself, should be punished - IMHO. Rarelibra (talk) 17:14, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

School Threat

Resolved

 – Drama has subsided; authorities notified, and peasants are merrymaking after the storm

58.109.120.73 made a treat this morning (their only contribution) against a school in Australia. Is it practice to make notification to the school administration regarding threats such as these? Brianga (talk) 10:22, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Since this is an overt threat, somebody familiar with Australia who can identify the city should contact the police. - Jehochman ^Talk 10:36, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The school is located in Victoria, Australia. Telephone is (03) 9430 5111, email is info AT elthamhs DOT vic DOT edu DOT au. The police phone number is (03) 9247 6666. Who wants to call? --Haemo (talk) 10:43, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Could do with notifying the foundation and possibly User:Mike Godwin via e-mail. Pedro :  Chat  11:04, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I think this needs an immediate response. I am not capable of calling Australia right now, tho. Brianga (talk) 11:13, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh for goodness sake, this is schoolboy vandalism. Ignore it.--Doc^g 11:30, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

That's what I think too, but I went ahead and asked for any active Australians an the mailing list so that we can at least say we tried. John Reaves 11:34, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Jimbo has repeatedly said that issues like this are to be taken seriously. What should be done is an LEA decision, not ours, and this applies equally to suicide threats. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 11:43, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I can't believe this thread. The threat is ridiculous and anyone contacting the school is being a melodramatic fool. There's thousands of these type of thing every day. Forget it and move on. --Doc^g 12:00, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

You might not say that if there was another school massacre. Seraphim ^Whipp 12:05, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Or if you'd seen Jimbo's interventions in previous cases. Not our decision. Period. End of. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 12:10, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Get a grip. This is just silly now.--Doc^g 12:13, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Jimbo's view is that, yes, it may be silly. But it's also a criminal offence. I've seen similar cases here where the FBI have been involved. Now, do you want to take responsibility for the headline "Wikipedia fails to prevent school massacre"? Hmmm? --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 12:18, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

(ec)So, phone the school and say "hey, some anonymous person blanked your article with a threat to hunt down and kill every single one of your pupils in some unspecified way - they implied they wanted to warn you by being one of the millions of people who vandalise us every day. Actually, we get stuff like this routinely on wikipedia mostly by 12 year old trolls. Mainly we ignore it but, in this case, we thought you'd want to know....(click)"--Doc^g 12:29, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Agree that it's almost certainly unnecessary and commonsense says 99 out of 100 times it's a childish post. Also underline "almost". As far as I know, WP practice is we do take such statements seriously, regardless, and let the school or lEA know. They're not naive either; a school or LEA that sees that will often say "thanks for letting us know" and then make their own decision if it's childish or not. But that's their choice, not ours. And email, not phone. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 12:26, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

• I'd love to know what qualifies DocGlasgow to assess this type of risk. The school and their local law enforcement agencies will have people trained to make appropriate risk assessments. In a country like Australia they are likely to have already developed protocols for dealing with threats of this nature - if we do not tell them, then we deprive them of the ability to make their own judgment. If we do tell them, they can assess the situation and take whatever further action they deem appropriate. DuncanHill (talk) 12:41, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Qualified or not, we have to do some limited assessment. We get thousands of silly "die scum" vandalism every month - should we report every one? When someone blanks George W. Bush with "I'll do this asshole in", do we run to the FBI? (We're not 'qualified' to say he isn't the next Lee Harvey Oswald are we?) Certainly, some threats should be reported. But whether you think this one should or should not, you are making some for of assessment, unless you are seriously suggesting we report every one? That would need a wikiproject in itself.--Doc^g 13:06, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
    • Really lousy example - Bush has the Secret Service to take care of him - and I suspect the FBI and the CIA and the NSA and others have lots of very clever tools to detect threats to his person. Remarkably few schools enjoy this level of support. DuncanHill (talk) 13:13, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
      • You are almost certainly correct; but you have just made a risk assessment.--Doc^g 13:27, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I've now emailed Mike Godwin about this situation. A last resort, obviously, but it seems the Foundation's message is not getting through. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 12:42, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I think as a matter of policy someone relatively local to the site of the threat should notify the school. MikeGodwin (talk) 12:58, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Did anyone email the school? info (at) elthamhs (dot) vic (dot) edu (dot) au--CastAStone/^/(talk) 14:08, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

If no one else does, I will - but I'm sort of in Ohio, so I'm not sure that I'm the best person for this sort of thing. ZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 14:14, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem with this is - what if ClueBot or VoAbot reverts it? There's not even a guarantee any human ever sees the threat. —Random832 14:26, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I revert stuff like this all the time - it's childish vandalism, we really don't need to be taking such measures - so IMO, we don't need to worry if one of the bots revert it. Ryan Postlethwaite 14:28, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with Doc glasgow and some of you are saying. All threats should be considered credible until they are resolved by who are trained to respond to it. Those of you saying that it is nonsense to report it or it's childish vandalism wouldn't be laughing when either someone went through with it or Wikipedia was blamed for its non-response to it. Lets face it, this is the one of the most popular websites on the Internet, and the chances of someone posting a real threat is probable. If you want to choose to ignore it, that would be your choice, but there are some (including me), who are not afraid to call authorities when murder threats or similar things are reported. Considering I have reported just as serious things as this and the FBI was interested in the threat enough to approach the editors house and question him about the credibility of the threats he made, then things like this definitely need to be reported to by authorities. Doc, etc. you are not exactly qualified nor in a position to define what is a serious threat to report and what is not. — Save_Us_229 15:10, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

And FYI, I have contacted the authorities and the police in that area for this threat if no one did so already. — Save_Us_229 15:23, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

• For the love of all that is good and holy, report this to the Australian police now! To the naysayers, all threats of harm to self or others must be taken seriously. If it was an empty threat then there is nothing to worry about, right? Just imagine if this is the real thing. Recall, the Virginia Tech guy put videos on YouTube before he went on his spree. Bstone (talk) 15:23, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

It's already been reported. — Save_Us_229 15:27, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Save Us. I'm sure this will all be an overreaction, but I dread the alternative. Brianga (talk) 15:38, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I point out that anyone who does feel this to be real can perfectly well call by themselves, and would only need to tell others to prevent duplication. DGG (talk) 15:57, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Save Us, can you please clarify who this was reported to? Thanks, Sarah 16:06, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

It was reported to the school and authorites in the area. — Save_Us_229 17:03, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I understand that but can you please clarify what that means exactly? I guess I'm trying to find out what you mean by the "authorities in the area" because the phone number given above isn't correct. That phone number is a number for the state's Police Centre, the Commissioner's offices in the city. The phone number for the 24 hour police station in Eltham is 61 03 9430 4500. I don't know who you reported this to or how, and that is what I am trying to clarify. Did you ring the police on the phone? If so, what police did you ring? Did you email the school or leave a message there? Sorry if it sounds like I'm interrogating you, I'm just concerned that the info gets to the right people and I know it is difficult for people overseas to make contact, especially because the Australian police forces are somewhat different to the American's. Sarah 17:54, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I e-mail the school with the above e-mail, given that the e-mail address is right. I called the Victoria Police by phone and told them about the threat to Eltham High School, the IP address, the link to the threat and that I already e-mailed Eltham High School about it. As far as I know, they are looking into it. — Save_Us_229 18:18, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

For informational purposes, it is 3:08 am in Melbourne (Eltham is a suburb of Melbourne) on Saturday morning. Yesterday, Friday, school finished for the year. As in the school year, not just for Christmas. School is now out for the summer and won't back until February next year. Whoever did this should watch the news more. Just a couple of weeks ago, a guy was arrested in Frankston, about 40 minutes from Eltham, for posting a shooting hoax threat on the internet. [15] Sarah 16:06, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Sarah, is there any chance we could record advice in an essay to avoid these long threads in the future? We can discuss appropriate ways to respond at the essay. Then, when there is an incident, we can have less drama. - Jehochman ^Talk 16:28, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

We have WP:SUICIDE, which deals with threats of suicide or personal harm. Surely, a similar essay - or an expansion of that one - would be appropriate, especially if there are hard and fast policies from Jimbo and the Foundation, as there appear to be. ZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 16:33, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Try this. And with respect to Doc's opinion, he may be right this time and the next time. He might even be right every instance he sees. But once we open the door to making threat estimates ourselves, eventually one of those threats could very well be real and someone who isn't quite so wise would follow precedent and call it a hoax. It only takes one missed warning to result in tragedy. Durova^Charge! 16:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Responding to threats of violence -- So we can record the consensus advice once and reference it in the future. These long threads violate don't feed the trolls and don't stick beans up your nose. - Jehochman ^Talk 16:54, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Most of the essays and proposed guidelines that spring up after these events violate both of those principles also. Durova^Charge! 16:59, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Agree with Durova. An essay is just asking for anonymous kids to blank their school's page with "let's kill them all" in the knowledge that a wikimop will be phoning the headmaster pronto. It's like being able to set off a rogue fire alarm with no consequences.--Doc^g 17:07, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

No consequences? I hardly would say the police or the FBI knocking on your front door step to be a lack in consequences. Good-faith editors are timid to report these. Do you honestly think someone is going to blatantly take the chance that the FBI may or may not show up? — Save_Us_229 17:12, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I've agreed with DocG in the past but then I saw User:Vampire Warrior II and changed my mind. The idea of the police actually hunting vandals down and knocking on their door tickles me to no end. I say call them in every opportunity. —Wknight94 (talk) 17:05, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

This definitely needs to be reported. 4chan#Pflugerville High School terrorist threat. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nmajdan (talk • contribs) 17:18, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

First, if the foundation wants to take threats seriously, then we simply need to know how the foundation wants us to respond. That's simple enough. As for why we should bother to report each instance? That's easy. While we can't reasonably differentiate hoax from threat, local authorities (school and police) may well be aware of a pattern of behavior from a particular individual that indicates a genuine threat. Our notification then provides one more piece of the puzzle for them. It may even provide them with the clue (IP address) necessary to identify the culprit. To us, a threat is a puzzle piece without context. To the authorities, a reported threat could be the one piece that allows them to complete a puzzle they've been working on. Now if DocG would like to argue that we should not assist the authorities in any manner, then that's different point entirely. As for flooding the police and schools with useless reports from pranksters, I think we should let them tell us what they want us to do. To date, I haven't heard the authorities make any statements along the lines of "please do not report threats or suspicious activity to us – we really don't want to know." Rklawton (talk) 17:41, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Heavens above, isn't this getting blown absolutely out of proportion? If you observe suicide claims being inserted into an article, take a logical and considered decision over whether to contact the local authorities or not; don't spend numerous bytes of discussion debating the decision itself. The contact itself only takes a few moments, so yes: err on the side of "yes, contact the police" rather than "no, don't". But screeds of squabbling are unnecessary. Anthøny 18:40, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Where ever you are in the world, you can and should call your local police immediately. You don't need to track down a foreign phone number. Such threats even if hoaxes carry penalties in most places. Your local police will make the necessary contacts. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 02:27, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

The reason to call police is primarily because we as Wikipedians are not trained to properly determine what is a legit threat and what is not. Police do not mind being called out for things which were not in fact real threats - they want to be the ones to investigate and make the determination of what was and what was not something they have to handle. If you see it, and you're concerned, notify law enforcement, and the Foundation Office / legal staff. Let them handle it. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 22:23, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree with the above that with the seriousness of the situations involved and with the Foundation's stance clear, I think we have to report incidents like this when we come upon them. Someone above said doing so would require a WikiProject. If such is the case, then I think we ought to get to founding it and finding members. SorryGuy  Talk  06:31, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I really don't believe that there needs to be a WikiProject for this. Just a little common sense and, agreeing with AGK/Anthony, erring on the side of caution is all we need. No, not every dumb vague threat will require notifying the police, but if you think there might be something more, go ahead and make the call, or send the e-mail, or get someone else to. Of course, usually, thankfully, the threats are not acted upon, but again, I would err on the side of caution and let law enforcement deal with it. If you see something suspicious in real life, you call the police, right? If it turns out to be nothing, do the police say, "Boy, you really wasted our time with that, didn't you?" No. They let you know that it's nothing, but they thank you for being alert and tell you that if you see anything else out of the ordinary, give them a call back. WODUP 06:54, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Detwinkling

Per some rather dubious use of TWINKLE by Neutralhomer (see also the top of his talk page), I've blanked Neutralhomer's monobook and protected it for 96 hours. This is not what mock-rollback tools are for. Moreschi ^{If you've written a quality article...} 20:16, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Yup, those reverts didn't need an automated tool, and should have been done with a valued edit summary. 96 hours is nothing at all, I hope Neutralhomer can refrain from misusing the tool when he gets it back. Ryan Postlethwaite 20:27, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Based on this edit it seems that just simply removing TWINKLE will do nothing to help Neutralhomer be more civil. Metros (talk) 20:46, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

For further reference, would you all mind telling me what is vandalism and what isn't? Per the reason of my "de-twinkling", I seen that JPG had a station marked as owned by Cumulus, when the FCC said it was Clear Channel. I Warn2'd, cause he should know better. He reverted, Warn3, and so on. I thought, that when someone is vandalising a page, we issue Warn1, 2, 3, 4, etc warnings? Obviously, I was wrong. So, what is vandalism? - NeutralHomer ^T:C 20:50, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi, did you visit the station website to confirm the content JPG-GR was adding was clearly being added in bad faith with the intent of damaging the article ? Nick (talk) 21:01, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I was just going to say what Nick said. He was editing based on that source, so I don't see how you can insist this is vandalism and not stop to talk to him about why you believe it's vandalism. Metros (talk) 21:03, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Is this a content dispute, or an allegation of a long-term problem? Wouldn't RfC or other dispute resolution be a more appropriate venue? Videmus Omnia ^Talk 20:55, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Are you asking me or the others above? - NeutralHomer ^T:C 20:58, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Simply put, he was reverting good faith edits - it was a content dispute not vandalism. Because he used twinkle to aid that, he got the tool removed. There's no need for an RfC, we sorted the problem out for now at the root. Ryan Postlethwaite 21:03, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Block review

Just posting this for review. I blocked Codykylefinke (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) as a sockpuppet of MascotGuy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) based on Codyfinke (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). See also Wikipedia:Long term abuse/MascotGuy. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 02:01, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't see anything at all wrong with the block. And even if he's not a sock, the username may confuse people into thinking he is. Endorsed. Maser ^(Talk!) 04:18, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know, but I guess that one of Barneys friends is a WP:DUCK? Good block. LessHeard vanU (talk) 10:58, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Irish football merges

There has been a discussion on the topic of merging various articles relating to international football(soccer) in Ireland at Talk:Ireland national football team (IFA), the majority of editors support a merger, but there is one very vocal detractor. It is not a simple issue, I would appreciate it if some one external could could come in and look at closing the discusssion, thanks Fasach Nua (talk) 10:15, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

• The three editors who are supporting mergers have displayed a blatant lack of knowledge of the subject. I urge that common sense prevail and that the relevant pages be protected from merging and not just be merged on the say of three editors who have made no positive contribution to any Wiki article I can find. To allow these mergers would open the door for small groups of editors to get together and censor Wiki. Where would it stop. Djln--Djln (talk) 17:34, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

School Threat

Resolved

 – Drama has subsided; authorities notified, and peasants are merrymaking after the storm

58.109.120.73 made a treat this morning (their only contribution) against a school in Australia. Is it practice to make notification to the school administration regarding threats such as these? Brianga (talk) 10:22, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Since this is an overt threat, somebody familiar with Australia who can identify the city should contact the police. - Jehochman ^Talk 10:36, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The school is located in Victoria, Australia. Telephone is (03) 9430 5111, email is info AT elthamhs DOT vic DOT edu DOT au. The police phone number is (03) 9247 6666. Who wants to call? --Haemo (talk) 10:43, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Could do with notifying the foundation and possibly User:Mike Godwin via e-mail. Pedro :  Chat  11:04, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I think this needs an immediate response. I am not capable of calling Australia right now, tho. Brianga (talk) 11:13, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh for goodness sake, this is schoolboy vandalism. Ignore it.--Doc^g 11:30, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

That's what I think too, but I went ahead and asked for any active Australians an the mailing list so that we can at least say we tried. John Reaves 11:34, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Jimbo has repeatedly said that issues like this are to be taken seriously. What should be done is an LEA decision, not ours, and this applies equally to suicide threats. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 11:43, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I can't believe this thread. The threat is ridiculous and anyone contacting the school is being a melodramatic fool. There's thousands of these type of thing every day. Forget it and move on. --Doc^g 12:00, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

You might not say that if there was another school massacre. Seraphim ^Whipp 12:05, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Or if you'd seen Jimbo's interventions in previous cases. Not our decision. Period. End of. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 12:10, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Get a grip. This is just silly now.--Doc^g 12:13, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Jimbo's view is that, yes, it may be silly. But it's also a criminal offence. I've seen similar cases here where the FBI have been involved. Now, do you want to take responsibility for the headline "Wikipedia fails to prevent school massacre"? Hmmm? --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 12:18, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

(ec)So, phone the school and say "hey, some anonymous person blanked your article with a threat to hunt down and kill every single one of your pupils in some unspecified way - they implied they wanted to warn you by being one of the millions of people who vandalise us every day. Actually, we get stuff like this routinely on wikipedia mostly by 12 year old trolls. Mainly we ignore it but, in this case, we thought you'd want to know....(click)"--Doc^g 12:29, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Agree that it's almost certainly unnecessary and commonsense says 99 out of 100 times it's a childish post. Also underline "almost". As far as I know, WP practice is we do take such statements seriously, regardless, and let the school or lEA know. They're not naive either; a school or LEA that sees that will often say "thanks for letting us know" and then make their own decision if it's childish or not. But that's their choice, not ours. And email, not phone. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 12:26, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

• I'd love to know what qualifies DocGlasgow to assess this type of risk. The school and their local law enforcement agencies will have people trained to make appropriate risk assessments. In a country like Australia they are likely to have already developed protocols for dealing with threats of this nature - if we do not tell them, then we deprive them of the ability to make their own judgment. If we do tell them, they can assess the situation and take whatever further action they deem appropriate. DuncanHill (talk) 12:41, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Qualified or not, we have to do some limited assessment. We get thousands of silly "die scum" vandalism every month - should we report every one? When someone blanks George W. Bush with "I'll do this asshole in", do we run to the FBI? (We're not 'qualified' to say he isn't the next Lee Harvey Oswald are we?) Certainly, some threats should be reported. But whether you think this one should or should not, you are making some for of assessment, unless you are seriously suggesting we report every one? That would need a wikiproject in itself.--Doc^g 13:06, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
    • Really lousy example - Bush has the Secret Service to take care of him - and I suspect the FBI and the CIA and the NSA and others have lots of very clever tools to detect threats to his person. Remarkably few schools enjoy this level of support. DuncanHill (talk) 13:13, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
      • You are almost certainly correct; but you have just made a risk assessment.--Doc^g 13:27, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I've now emailed Mike Godwin about this situation. A last resort, obviously, but it seems the Foundation's message is not getting through. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 12:42, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I think as a matter of policy someone relatively local to the site of the threat should notify the school. MikeGodwin (talk) 12:58, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Did anyone email the school? info (at) elthamhs (dot) vic (dot) edu (dot) au--CastAStone/^/(talk) 14:08, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

If no one else does, I will - but I'm sort of in Ohio, so I'm not sure that I'm the best person for this sort of thing. ZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 14:14, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem with this is - what if ClueBot or VoAbot reverts it? There's not even a guarantee any human ever sees the threat. —Random832 14:26, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I revert stuff like this all the time - it's childish vandalism, we really don't need to be taking such measures - so IMO, we don't need to worry if one of the bots revert it. Ryan Postlethwaite 14:28, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with Doc glasgow and some of you are saying. All threats should be considered credible until they are resolved by who are trained to respond to it. Those of you saying that it is nonsense to report it or it's childish vandalism wouldn't be laughing when either someone went through with it or Wikipedia was blamed for its non-response to it. Lets face it, this is the one of the most popular websites on the Internet, and the chances of someone posting a real threat is probable. If you want to choose to ignore it, that would be your choice, but there are some (including me), who are not afraid to call authorities when murder threats or similar things are reported. Considering I have reported just as serious things as this and the FBI was interested in the threat enough to approach the editors house and question him about the credibility of the threats he made, then things like this definitely need to be reported to by authorities. Doc, etc. you are not exactly qualified nor in a position to define what is a serious threat to report and what is not. — Save_Us_229 15:10, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

And FYI, I have contacted the authorities and the police in that area for this threat if no one did so already. — Save_Us_229 15:23, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

• For the love of all that is good and holy, report this to the Australian police now! To the naysayers, all threats of harm to self or others must be taken seriously. If it was an empty threat then there is nothing to worry about, right? Just imagine if this is the real thing. Recall, the Virginia Tech guy put videos on YouTube before he went on his spree. Bstone (talk) 15:23, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

It's already been reported. — Save_Us_229 15:27, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Save Us. I'm sure this will all be an overreaction, but I dread the alternative. Brianga (talk) 15:38, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I point out that anyone who does feel this to be real can perfectly well call by themselves, and would only need to tell others to prevent duplication. DGG (talk) 15:57, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Save Us, can you please clarify who this was reported to? Thanks, Sarah 16:06, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

It was reported to the school and authorites in the area. — Save_Us_229 17:03, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I understand that but can you please clarify what that means exactly? I guess I'm trying to find out what you mean by the "authorities in the area" because the phone number given above isn't correct. That phone number is a number for the state's Police Centre, the Commissioner's offices in the city. The phone number for the 24 hour police station in Eltham is 61 03 9430 4500. I don't know who you reported this to or how, and that is what I am trying to clarify. Did you ring the police on the phone? If so, what police did you ring? Did you email the school or leave a message there? Sorry if it sounds like I'm interrogating you, I'm just concerned that the info gets to the right people and I know it is difficult for people overseas to make contact, especially because the Australian police forces are somewhat different to the American's. Sarah 17:54, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I e-mail the school with the above e-mail, given that the e-mail address is right. I called the Victoria Police by phone and told them about the threat to Eltham High School, the IP address, the link to the threat and that I already e-mailed Eltham High School about it. As far as I know, they are looking into it. — Save_Us_229 18:18, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

For informational purposes, it is 3:08 am in Melbourne (Eltham is a suburb of Melbourne) on Saturday morning. Yesterday, Friday, school finished for the year. As in the school year, not just for Christmas. School is now out for the summer and won't back until February next year. Whoever did this should watch the news more. Just a couple of weeks ago, a guy was arrested in Frankston, about 40 minutes from Eltham, for posting a shooting hoax threat on the internet. [16] Sarah 16:06, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Sarah, is there any chance we could record advice in an essay to avoid these long threads in the future? We can discuss appropriate ways to respond at the essay. Then, when there is an incident, we can have less drama. - Jehochman ^Talk 16:28, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

We have WP:SUICIDE, which deals with threats of suicide or personal harm. Surely, a similar essay - or an expansion of that one - would be appropriate, especially if there are hard and fast policies from Jimbo and the Foundation, as there appear to be. ZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 16:33, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Try this. And with respect to Doc's opinion, he may be right this time and the next time. He might even be right every instance he sees. But once we open the door to making threat estimates ourselves, eventually one of those threats could very well be real and someone who isn't quite so wise would follow precedent and call it a hoax. It only takes one missed warning to result in tragedy. Durova^Charge! 16:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Responding to threats of violence -- So we can record the consensus advice once and reference it in the future. These long threads violate don't feed the trolls and don't stick beans up your nose. - Jehochman ^Talk 16:54, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Most of the essays and proposed guidelines that spring up after these events violate both of those principles also. Durova^Charge! 16:59, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Agree with Durova. An essay is just asking for anonymous kids to blank their school's page with "let's kill them all" in the knowledge that a wikimop will be phoning the headmaster pronto. It's like being able to set off a rogue fire alarm with no consequences.--Doc^g 17:07, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

No consequences? I hardly would say the police or the FBI knocking on your front door step to be a lack in consequences. Good-faith editors are timid to report these. Do you honestly think someone is going to blatantly take the chance that the FBI may or may not show up? — Save_Us_229 17:12, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I've agreed with DocG in the past but then I saw User:Vampire Warrior II and changed my mind. The idea of the police actually hunting vandals down and knocking on their door tickles me to no end. I say call them in every opportunity. —Wknight94 (talk) 17:05, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

This definitely needs to be reported. 4chan#Pflugerville High School terrorist threat. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nmajdan (talk • contribs) 17:18, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

First, if the foundation wants to take threats seriously, then we simply need to know how the foundation wants us to respond. That's simple enough. As for why we should bother to report each instance? That's easy. While we can't reasonably differentiate hoax from threat, local authorities (school and police) may well be aware of a pattern of behavior from a particular individual that indicates a genuine threat. Our notification then provides one more piece of the puzzle for them. It may even provide them with the clue (IP address) necessary to identify the culprit. To us, a threat is a puzzle piece without context. To the authorities, a reported threat could be the one piece that allows them to complete a puzzle they've been working on. Now if DocG would like to argue that we should not assist the authorities in any manner, then that's different point entirely. As for flooding the police and schools with useless reports from pranksters, I think we should let them tell us what they want us to do. To date, I haven't heard the authorities make any statements along the lines of "please do not report threats or suspicious activity to us – we really don't want to know." Rklawton (talk) 17:41, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Heavens above, isn't this getting blown absolutely out of proportion? If you observe suicide claims being inserted into an article, take a logical and considered decision over whether to contact the local authorities or not; don't spend numerous bytes of discussion debating the decision itself. The contact itself only takes a few moments, so yes: err on the side of "yes, contact the police" rather than "no, don't". But screeds of squabbling are unnecessary. Anthøny 18:40, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Where ever you are in the world, you can and should call your local police immediately. You don't need to track down a foreign phone number. Such threats even if hoaxes carry penalties in most places. Your local police will make the necessary contacts. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 02:27, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

The reason to call police is primarily because we as Wikipedians are not trained to properly determine what is a legit threat and what is not. Police do not mind being called out for things which were not in fact real threats - they want to be the ones to investigate and make the determination of what was and what was not something they have to handle. If you see it, and you're concerned, notify law enforcement, and the Foundation Office / legal staff. Let them handle it. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 22:23, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree with the above that with the seriousness of the situations involved and with the Foundation's stance clear, I think we have to report incidents like this when we come upon them. Someone above said doing so would require a WikiProject. If such is the case, then I think we ought to get to founding it and finding members. SorryGuy  Talk  06:31, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I really don't believe that there needs to be a WikiProject for this. Just a little common sense and, agreeing with AGK/Anthony, erring on the side of caution is all we need. No, not every dumb vague threat will require notifying the police, but if you think there might be something more, go ahead and make the call, or send the e-mail, or get someone else to. Of course, usually, thankfully, the threats are not acted upon, but again, I would err on the side of caution and let law enforcement deal with it. If you see something suspicious in real life, you call the police, right? If it turns out to be nothing, do the police say, "Boy, you really wasted our time with that, didn't you?" No. They let you know that it's nothing, but they thank you for being alert and tell you that if you see anything else out of the ordinary, give them a call back. WODUP 06:54, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Foreign languages

I've always been curious about articles that contain foreign languages. A good example is at Jat people in Mahabharata period. How do we know what the foreign language really says? How do we know Al-Qaeda isn't communicating via WP disguised as an article? I know, I know.. just was curious. -- ALLSTARecho 09:37, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I can assure you they don't. east.718 at 10:07, December 22, 2007

lol! ;) -- ALLSTARecho 10:08, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Lol, simple learn to read it. Jackaranga (talk) 14:26, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

They could be... but frankly I'd expect them to be using YouTube and/or myspace more since they could keep their messages up indefinably whereas it may get removed fairly quickly here. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 03:35, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Detwinkling

Per some rather dubious use of TWINKLE by Neutralhomer (see also the top of his talk page), I've blanked Neutralhomer's monobook and protected it for 96 hours. This is not what mock-rollback tools are for. Moreschi ^{If you've written a quality article...} 20:16, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Yup, those reverts didn't need an automated tool, and should have been done with a valued edit summary. 96 hours is nothing at all, I hope Neutralhomer can refrain from misusing the tool when he gets it back. Ryan Postlethwaite 20:27, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Based on this edit it seems that just simply removing TWINKLE will do nothing to help Neutralhomer be more civil. Metros (talk) 20:46, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

For further reference, would you all mind telling me what is vandalism and what isn't? Per the reason of my "de-twinkling", I seen that JPG had a station marked as owned by Cumulus, when the FCC said it was Clear Channel. I Warn2'd, cause he should know better. He reverted, Warn3, and so on. I thought, that when someone is vandalising a page, we issue Warn1, 2, 3, 4, etc warnings? Obviously, I was wrong. So, what is vandalism? - NeutralHomer ^T:C 20:50, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi, did you visit the station website to confirm the content JPG-GR was adding was clearly being added in bad faith with the intent of damaging the article ? Nick (talk) 21:01, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I was just going to say what Nick said. He was editing based on that source, so I don't see how you can insist this is vandalism and not stop to talk to him about why you believe it's vandalism. Metros (talk) 21:03, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Is this a content dispute, or an allegation of a long-term problem? Wouldn't RfC or other dispute resolution be a more appropriate venue? Videmus Omnia ^Talk 20:55, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Are you asking me or the others above? - NeutralHomer ^T:C 20:58, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Simply put, he was reverting good faith edits - it was a content dispute not vandalism. Because he used twinkle to aid that, he got the tool removed. There's no need for an RfC, we sorted the problem out for now at the root. Ryan Postlethwaite 21:03, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Block review

Just posting this for review. I blocked Codykylefinke (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) as a sockpuppet of MascotGuy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) based on Codyfinke (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). See also Wikipedia:Long term abuse/MascotGuy. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 02:01, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't see anything at all wrong with the block. And even if he's not a sock, the username may confuse people into thinking he is. Endorsed. Maser ^(Talk!) 04:18, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know, but I guess that one of Barneys friends is a WP:DUCK? Good block. LessHeard vanU (talk) 10:58, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Irish football merges

There has been a discussion on the topic of merging various articles relating to international football(soccer) in Ireland at Talk:Ireland national football team (IFA), the majority of editors support a merger, but there is one very vocal detractor. It is not a simple issue, I would appreciate it if some one external could could come in and look at closing the discusssion, thanks Fasach Nua (talk) 10:15, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

• The three editors who are supporting mergers have displayed a blatant lack of knowledge of the subject. I urge that common sense prevail and that the relevant pages be protected from merging and not just be merged on the say of three editors who have made no positive contribution to any Wiki article I can find. To allow these mergers would open the door for small groups of editors to get together and censor Wiki. Where would it stop. Djln--Djln (talk) 17:34, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

FreeRepublic

I came across an article today that used a post on FreeRepublic as a source. The post looked like a copy-paste from a local news report. Curious, I tried a linksearch. Friends, we have 1,273 links to FreeRepublic, many of them as sources.

Is FreeRepublic a reliable source? As a forum, and one which espouses an explicitly politically polarised agenda, I would say not. An example: Eco-socialism sources several sections to blogs and forums, including FR. Those sources look polemical to me, and the inferences drawn may therefore be novel or synthetic in nature. We should be very wary of any information which is available only by analysing and comparing different politically motivated primary sources, no? Guy (Help!) 13:47, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Do they publish their own news or are they just linking stories from elsewhere? --B (talk) 14:03, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Neither, it's an internet forum and chat site for right-wingers. We say about it that "due to copyright restrictions (see below), posted articles are often excerpts from originals" (see FreeRepublic). Which means in my book that anything usable should be cited to the original source not the copy-paste excerpt on a politically biased internet forum. But removing it would cause a shitstorm, I'm certain. Guy (Help!) 14:18, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

This is a huge problem, I think. I agree with Guy that "anything usable should be cited to the original source" but I also think this part of Verifiability ( one of Wikipedia's core content policies): "Articles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" provides us with an obligation to completely remove FreeRepublic as a reliable source as I see no claim even by [www.freerepublic.com/home.htm them] that they have a robust fact-checking policy. Mr.grantevans2 (talk) 14:36, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

FreeRepublic is not a RS, except as a SPS about FR itself, IMO, and should never be cited outside Free Republic and related articles.

One possible reason for linking to FR is that they used to copy news items, op-ed columns, etc onto their forums for discussion. (After a 1998 lawsuit, they changed to linking instead.) The result is that Googling for a particular pre-1998 item will often find a free copy at FR, whereas the original is behind some subscription wall. Thus the temptation to link to that copy. In my limited experience, FR was fairly good at saying where they got stuff from, so replacing the links with {{cite news}} etc should be fairly easy in many cases. Cheers, CWC 16:06, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Much like sites like Digg, which do not hold their own content but instead cite others, we should link to the real source instead. I think we should begin trimming down these links. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 16:40, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

It's going to be a mammoth undertaking, especially if we are going to try to replace each one with {{cite news}}. Perhaps we should create a {{deprecated source}} template and ask people on the talk pages to fix it, and see if the number goes down in a week or two? Guy (Help!) 17:30, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I just checked out at random a few of the places they are being used as a source. In the cases I saw, they are either copy/pastes of news stories in which case we should be linking to the news story itself or they are blogs about the news story in which case, again, we should be linking to or citing the news story itself. We don't link to sites that violate the copyrights of others, so even if we have no reason to believe that the story isn't transmitted accurately, we still don't link to it. --B (talk) 18:43, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

My understanding is the we dont place external links to copyvio, but that we cite both the original sources, and wherever we did see the article. I would not remove the Digg links without verifying each article. DGG (talk) 20:32, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't Digg link back to the original? This is copy-pastes of the original on a website without permission, and a b iased website at that. Guy (Help!) 23:26, 23 December 2007 (UTC) -- If they linked, it makes it easy to check.DGG (talk) 00:30, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Digg linking to user talk page

User talk:63.162.143.21 is being linked from Digg's homepage right now. Since a {{high-traffic}} tag is not available for user talk pages, keep an eye there for children playing pranks. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 16:43, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Why not just s-protect it for today? Presumably, nobody is at work at the homeland security office on a Sunday and in the off chance that they are, since they have only edited that talk page once ever, they will probably manage to get along without editing it today. ;) --B (talk) 18:09, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

nobody is at work at the homeland security office on a Sunday Great, now the terrorists know that :-< -- Kendrick7^talk 20:36, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't be opposed to an indef AO block on this IP; We know with near almost certainty that it's permenantly DHS, and I daresay that they have more important work to do than editing Wikipedia. Will ^(talk) 20:42, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Except there could be a registered editor who shares the IP. Wouldn't they get blocked too? We wouldn't want to incidentally "out" anybody. -- Kendrick7^talk

Hence why I said "AO" - I should've been more clear, "AO" is a AIV/HBC abbreviation for "anon only". Will ^(talk) 21:09, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Ah. OK, got ya now. -- Kendrick7^talk 21:19, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, it's not really our business what DHS does on their lunch break. *shrug* Just treat the range like it was any other range. ---J.S (T/C/WRE)

There's a page where blocks of "sensitive" anon IPs should be reported. I can't for the life of me find it, but this is one that should be there. Corvus cornix_talk 05:53, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

You are looking for WP:SIP. east.718 at 10:24, December 25, 2007

User:68.42.35.66 and Seaside High School

Several days ago, I reverted edits by User:68.42.35.66 to Seaside High School which added unsourced information. Today, I found the following unsigned message (left by User:68.42.35.66) on my talk page: "Kurt, First of all, I attended Seaside High School and I did not vandalize the page. Second, you can verify the demographic breakdown of the student body by vistiing the official Monterey Peninusula School District web page for Seaside. It does not have a large or high percentage of African American students. If that particular comment is not changed officially, I will go on a blitzkreig on all of your sites."

Now, it is entirely possible that my cleanup actions were ill-intentioned, but I am not sure that User:68.42.35.66's response is entirely appropriate, either; it is not in keeping with Wikipedia for something to be "changed officially". I'm not sure if the appropriate response is WP:SOFIXIT or if there is a WP:NPA concern here as well. In short, I would like another pair of eyes to look over this for me. -KurtRaschke (talk) 21:31, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is over-reaction - but likely because the editor is unfamiliar with wiki policies. The comment about blitzkrieging the sites possibly falls under WP:HARASS, so I will leave a comment on the talkpage. If you note any actions that appear to be this or any other editor carrying out the threat then report it here or at WP:ANI. I will also remove the sensitive comment, since it also appears unsourced. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:04, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Nancy Reagan today's featured article

Hello. I'm writing this message regarding some wording and gramtical problems with Nancy Reagan's today's featured article entry for tomorrow. I was going to change the problems, but the page is protected and it appears only admins can edit it. I have worked extensively on the article, getting it promoted to GA and later FA. Earlier today, I changed the article's lead to reflect some of Nancy's fashion interests and glamor and I have improved the sentence structure. I think something like what is below would work better for the main page entry:

Nancy Davis Reagan (born Anne Frances Robbins on July 6, 1921) is the widow of the former United States President Ronald Reagan and was First Lady of the United States from 1981 to 1989. She was an actress in the 1940s and 1950s, starring in films such as Donovan's Brain, Night into Morning, and Hellcats of the Navy. She married Ronald Reagan in 1952, who was then president of the Screen Actor's Guild; they have two children. Nancy became the First Lady of California when her husband was Governor from 1967 to 1975. She became the First Lady of the United States in January 1981 with Ronald Reagan's presidential victory, experiencing criticism early in her husband's first term due largely to her decision to replenish the White House china. Nancy restored a Kennedy-esque glamor to the White House following years of lax formality, and her interest in high-end fashion garnered much attention. She championed recreational drug prevention causes by founding the "Just Say No" drug awareness campaign, which was considered her major initiative as First Lady. More controversy ensued when it was revealed in 1988 that she had consulted an astrologer to assist in planning the president's schedule after the 1981 assassination attempt on her husband's life. The Reagans retired to their home in Bel Air, Los Angeles, California in 1989. Nancy devoted most of her time to caring for her ailing husband, diagnosed in 1994 with Alzheimer's disease, until his death in 2004. As of 2007, Nancy Reagan has remained active in politics, particularly as relates to stem-cell research.

I only added in one more sentence (technically per WP:LEAD) and improved wording of the First Lady of California bit. These changes would improve the article's main page entry, so I am asking an admin to please consider making the changes as they are beneficial and I cannot edit the page. I left a similar note on Raul654's talk page. Thanks, Happyme22 (talk) 22:40, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any protection in the logs here.[17] You shouldn't be having any problems editting. -- Kendrick7^talk 23:31, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Happy isn't talking about the article; he's talking about the mainpage blurb. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:32, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Casliber fixed it; thanks though. Happyme22 (talk) 00:31, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

A bit of help

Hi,
If an administrator becomes inactive or retires from wikipedia does their admin status get revoked? I.e. if they ever choose to return are they still and admin or not? --121.219.224.205 (talk) 00:31, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

They do not lose their admin status unless they specifically request it or if their account is compromised/hacked into. —Kurykh 00:32, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

And if they ever come back, they can request the status to be given back, provided that they didn't give it up in controversial circumstances. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 00:56, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

As an FYI for those who might not know of it, there was a proposal to "demote" admins for inactivity which was rejected by the community back in Jan 2007: Wikipedia:Demoting inactive admins. I wasn't involved in the related discussion; I just came across this the other day while looking for something else. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:09, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Many people leave for a short period for pressures of school or work or illness or whatever, and come back and continue to do good work--andthis applies to admins as well as editors. DGG (talk) 04:20, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Dominionism

A few months back there was a thread here related to the template on dominionism, this eventually led to an AfD which found that said template needed to be watched for BLP issues. This template has since been forked into a "list" which continues to display the same BLP issues the template did and lists the same persons who were removed from the template with extremely weak sourcing while being away from the eyes which were watching the template. This material has been removed from the list due to BLP issues and continues to be replaced into the article. Can we get some more eyes, preferably ones with BLP experience to watch this list? Thanks. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 21:46, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The list is List of people and organizations associated with Dominionism. -- Kendrick7^talk 21:54, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, sorry. I was distracted in the middle of writing that out by this. [18] *sigh* Its a bad day when well established editors start yelling at people and labelling their edits as falsehoods and lies. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 21:57, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

It's a bad day when established editors repeatedly make obviously false claims, even after they were called on their falsehoods. Kyaa is clearly intent on disruption here. Guettarda (talk) 22:08, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

This appears to be venue shopping since it was already brought up at the BLP noticeboard and elsewhere. JoshuaZ (talk) 22:14, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Seems Kyaa is prowling for an opinion to match his own. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 22:38, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

No actually, I have a couple people on the talk page which agree with me. My goal is to get more input than the five or six people who have commented on the talk page involved. But thank you for assuming good faith regardless. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 22:49, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Really? So why then are you slinking from venue to venue with this pathetic argument of yours? Oh, BTW, we are only required to AGF so long as there is no presence of evidence to the contrary. You kinda blew that one by being more disingenuous than Joe Isuzu. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 23:09, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

That article really is a joke. List of people and organizations associated with Dominionism#Usage_not_embraced_by_the_subject says, "Some social scientists and writers describe the following as Dominionist" and then proceeds to brand people as "dominionists" based on either TheocracyWatch's say so or, in one case, on Rolling Stone's say so. It should say, "at least one person has called these people dominionists". The TheocracyWatch attack piece being used to source most of those listed doesn't even call them dominionists. In the case of Roy Moore, the one and only time he is mentioned is in this sentence - "While media attention focused on the two-ton granite monument of the Ten Commandments placed in the lobby of the Alabama Supreme Court by its Chief Justice Roy Moore, little, if any attention was focused on a House measure that passed by a vote of 260 - 161." Yet that's being used to source a claim that he is associated with dominionism. In the case of Karl Rove, it uses a quote "We need to find ways to win the war" out of context that if you google it, he was talking about abortion, but falsely claims, "He was talking about the war on secular society." But somehow, that's a "reliable source" for proving that Karl Rove is associated with dominionism. In the case of Ralph Reed, who, lets face it, nobody in their right mind would deny he is a dominionist, the article only talks about his ethically questionable campaign tactics for Republican candidates. It doesn't once call him a dominionist or even describe dominionism when talking about him. The whole point here is that even if you take the TheocracyWatch source at face value, it doesn't say what it is being used to source. --B (talk) 19:29, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

This article is a POV fork and should simply be deleted. There are some users who keep inserting BLP-violating original research over and over again. *** Crotalus *** 20:37, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Agreed but I've been threatened with blocking if I follow the requirements of BLP on the article. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 22:59, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

By whom? *** Crotalus *** 00:44, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Some admin(his name is not important). Not a big deal, just... annoying that they refuse to follow the BLP and prefer to back those who disregard it and boldly make an effort to continue replacing BLP infringing material counter to the rules that allegedly apply to everyone. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 00:47, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I have been too. Guettarda (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA), and for what its worth, this isn't the first time he's violated policy that, as an admin, he really should know. Or the second... Will ^(talk) 15:54, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

ROFL. B shows his colours again. Ho hum. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 01:49, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Even I don't taunt admins. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 16:48, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Question about TV series episodes

Hello, I was just wondering if I missed something in the last few months ? Before making a massive AfD I would just like to check that unsourced, original research articles on TV series episodes are still against policy ? I see there are some series that have 1 article for every single episode, with no sources given, or assertion of notability. However as I see administrators contributing towards them, I was wondering if policy had changed ? Before I make an AfD I would like it someone could take a quick look at The Kindness of Strangers (Heroes) for example, and tell me how come it is tolerated now to make so many individual articles ? The only source for this one is a link to a forum for example, and all the rest seems to be OR, please help I'm confused. Has anything changed in policy since I nominated Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/3-2-1 Blast Off! ? Jackaranga (talk) 13:23, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

WP:FICT and WP:EPISODE are disputed right now. Even so, episode AfDs are discouraged now, and merge proposals are used instead. There's also a RfAr about it too. Will ^(talk) 13:31, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! I read a bit more of the recent discussions, perhaps its better to just nominate on notability, original research, and unreliable sources grounds. I think there is more than enough for many of the articles based on those alone. Jackaranga (talk) 14:25, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

What's wrong with merging? WP:NOTE says "If appropriate sources cannot be found, consider merging the article's content into a broader article providing context." If there are unreliable sources, ask for more reliable ones before nominating for deletion. If there is original research, just remove it or request sources. Again, do this before nominating. If a week or a month has passed with the tags on them, make one last appeal on the talk page, and then go to AfD. If you follow this process, you will have a stronger case for deletion. Carcharoth (talk) 18:58, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

True but it worked for the other ones I mentioned above without having to wait, also I don't fancy redirecting because it seems WP:EPISODE is kind of ignored, and you can be sure someone will just revert all my edits anyway. Jackaranga (talk) 20:43, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

One of the reasons merging doesn't work, is that if you just cite WP:EPISODE someone will revert you and say you must gain consensus. So then you go to the talk page and propose a merge, in the case of South Park for example you end up having to go through 400 discussions, only to find that the only persons watching the page are those who wrote it (obviously), and so they all oppose a merge anyway. The only way to get a discussion involving people who didn't edit the article is AfD. Believe me there is so much effort put into TV series on wikipedia that if they really did think the articles should be merged they would have done it long ago. Take the heroes wikiproject for example, they acknowledged on Wikipedia:WikiProject Heroes that they should merge the articles into one, but they were still creating articles just as full of OR and just as unsourced more than a month later. Basically some users don't know about policy and are like "omg I'm not hurting anyone leave me alone", and others acknowledge the problem, but then just continue as they were anyway! I'm all for leaving people time to fix it their way, but they have to show good faith by changing their behaviour as soon as they acknowledge the problem. Jackaranga (talk) 20:59, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Send the fancruft to Wikia. That's what they're there for. They'll happily accept thousands of episode articles, which Wikia will monetize with ads. --John Nagle (talk) 05:07, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

This entire issue (amount of content of fictional universe material on WP) is coming to a head very fast; not just episodes (though through User:TTN, that's the larger area) but any fictional aspect. I'm working with others to try to rewrite WP:FICT to help mitigate issues (merge or transwiki) but there's larger issues that many seem to have with WP:NOT. Also, I've seen more than a few editors that wonder if sending material to Wikia (which seems to be the general encouragement for transwiking) is a conflict of interest. I know the ArbCom case that still is presently open is more directed to TTN's actions and not so much policy, but I have a feeling we're going to need to be prepared for some sort of potential backlash should we not be able to come to some resolve soon. --MASEM 05:25, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I made a pump post (towards the end) about the link-prefix "wikia:" not using rel="nofollow" and how this will result in Wikia getting a huge PageRank boost from the many episode articles that have (and will) end up trans-wikied there. This is a huge conflict of interest for those with their hands on the controls of both entities. --Jack Merridew 08:23, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

True. We're going to need some kind of destination-neutral transwiki policy. Fancruft articles could be exported to both Google's Knol and Wikia, for example. Wikipedia can't favor Wikia; it puts the Wikimedia Foundation's tax-exempt status at risk, especially with the interlocking director problem. --John Nagle (talk) 20:04, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Knol is not yet ready to accept articles; it is in private beta. But anyone can export articles from WP wherever they please under GFDL already. DGG (talk) 23:53, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

though I do not agree with Masem on what the policy would best be, we do have to resolve it. (And I do agree with him that a real source of the problem is disagreement about WP:NOT, in this and other respects--I'm glad someone has come right out and said that. That, and a radical disagreement about what our actual policy should be, not merely problems on wording.) What we need to to solve this one way or another, and continue discussing it in a cooperative way until there is some general community consensus. I certainly think Masem is one of the people who is doing the best to solve it in a way compatible with the best methods of working at Wikipedia. What I do think clearly obvious,and I hope those who disagree with me about what the policy ought to be also think obvious, is that massive deletions of fiction articles at this point are WP:POINT and will disrupt the process of the encyclopedia. I would very strongly urge Jackaranga not to try to do anything of the sort. But he did very well to come here to discuss it first. . DGG (talk) 23:47, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Vispec

Commons and en.wp Per a suggestion by Commons:User:Herbythyme, I decided to post about User:Vispec here. He has has several sock puppets blocked on Commons and is engaging in some Moroccan nationalism on Commons and here. Pasting from my post on Commons: Contribs, such as mass deletion on a WikiProject (twice) insisting on using a redundant image (in several other places as well), politically-motivated attempts to divorce any mention of Western Sahara with the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, and using deliberately ambiguous maps for nationalist purposes. He has also mentioned that he is on ar.wp, but I don't understand the language, so I can't review his edits there - can someone else? -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 04:20, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

While you, koavf, were edit-warring against Vispec on Commons, he wrongly took you and Reisio for sock puppets of the same user, because of the identical positions of both of you on pro-Polisario images as you were reverting him in tandem. So, in a desperate move, he thought he would use the same "manner", which was wrong. However, that has nothing to do with the disputed content itself. In the diffs you provide he tries to correct the name of the flag and coat of arms of "the sahrawi arab democratic republic" to read exactly what they stand for instead of "western sahara". Actually he is not the only one to think that way. So using an isolated desperate sock puppet case (he himself did not deny, but he mistakenly thought his opponents were doing the same), to condemn vispec and his edits in this wiki and others,is a failed attempt. Many articles regarding WS, including the ones he was editing that you reverted, will be the case of review by admin FayssalF and other admins shortly after the holidays. See you then.--A Jalil (talk) 12:43, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Christmas and spamdexing

If any admins are reading this: be warned, Christmas and the post-Christmas week appear to be the worst time for spamdexing, according to a survey I read. Now's as good a time as any to take part in Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam...

This is a Christmas Wikipedia public service announcement. Thanks, --Solumeiras ^talk 10:19, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Amending a guideline

Could an administrator please close the process of guideline amendment at Wikipedia talk:Romanization of Russian#Proposal to re-define the criteria of conventionality? As someone who submitted this proposal for voting, I am hesitant to close it myself. It's been open since November 21, and there has been no voting activity in the past several days. Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:28, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Rachel Marsden (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) stubbified.

For fair notification...

About 40 minutes ago, I stubbified the article Rachel Marsden (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). The article in question has had near persistent edit wars and has even been request for arbitration, which evidently has not been effective in any way. I request that all users, admin and IP and the rest alike, do not revert back but to constructively edit so as not to violate any policies with regards to living individuals.

Thanks,

Will ^(talk) 23:43, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

• Good call. Guy (Help!) 21:08, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Results of Fall 2007 survey

Sorry if this is the wrong place for this message, but it seems to be the most appropriate place to me at the moment. Some weeks ago, I conducted a survey of Wikipedia administrators which I was permitted to publicize for recruitment purposes on this board. At least one admin requested at the time that I put up a summary of the results on my wikipedia user page when the study was complete, which of course I am happy to do.

Here is the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Zhanliusc/Results

Thanks again for the help and participation.

Happy Holidays! Zhan Li (USC Anneberg PhD Student)

Zhanliusc (talk) 03:02, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the update and good luck with your studies! ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 03:31, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Seconding the thanks. I had not heard of the Decision Sciences journal before; both that journal and the reference you provided might be of some use to me in some of my paid work. Regards, --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:49, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

User requesting unblock

Resolved

I promised I would bring this up on this noticeboards: User talk:Arceus fan. Appears to want to contribute in good faith. Was a solid user, descended suddenly into vandalism at one point. The Evil Spartan (talk) 21:37, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism can be easily reverted. Good editors are hard to find. If you think it's worth unblocking and there's no (more) skeletons in his closet, I'd support. Nick (talk) 21:41, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I support his request for unblock. He has owned up to what he has done and agreed never to repeat it. Bstone (talk) 22:06, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Support unblock. One (indef) block only in the log, reasonable spread of fair edits before going rouge, and I agree with Nicks opening two sentences. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:24, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

• There hasn't been a negative comment, or indeed any here, for over 2 hours. I shall unblock. LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:43, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Reggae

Resolved

 – Answered on user's Talk Page

Is there an admin who knows all about reggae musicians and reggae musics? I need help. He leave a message on my talk page, please. I need to mail him because I have some questions. I'm searching a reggae music all the time. I don't no the title of this song but only the text approx. I also tried google and so on to find the music but nothing went on. Please leave me a message on my talk page as a reply. Thanks and happy Xmas. D@rk ^talk 22:19, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

• Answered on talk page --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 22:25, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

RtV Clarification

I would like input on an issue that I think many editors may have come across before, to get clarification. At times, editors, for whatever reason, will cite RtV and rename themselves, asking that their previous username not be disclosed. RtV states that this can be done for two reasons: 1.) There is personal identifying information that puts the editor at risk. and 2.) The editor plans to permanently leave the project, with no chance of return. However, when neither of those apply, and it is done as a renaming to have a "clean slate", so to speak, would the confidentiality still apply? I realize that someone who digs could probably figure the old username out, but if an administrator were to request the disclosure of the person's previous username, would that be a violation of RtV if the reason for renaming had nothing to do with personal information, and the editor obviously had not left the project? Thanks in advance for any and all opinions on this! Ariel♥Gold 17:50, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

RtV also says that talk pages which contain multi-party discussion should NOT be deleted. Although, IAR in exceptional circumstances of off-wiki harassment may override this.--Doc^g 18:26, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that happens as well. But my question isn't so much about deletion of pages, but about someone simply renaming to have a "clean start", and then cites RtV to "protect their identity". It seems to me this is not an appropriate action per RTV, and that if an administrator requests to know their former username, it would not be an issue to tell them, as it was simply a renaming for reasons other than RtV covers, not related to personal information or harassment. I'd like this confirmed by an administrator, though. Ariel♥Gold 22:16, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

That doesn't count, there's no vanishing occurring. --Golbez (talk) 22:20, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

The right to vanish is a silly-assed concept that accomplishes nothing useful that I can see. We should not use it as justification for anything. We should, of course, respect privacy concerns when it comes to deleting individual edits which may identify an editor. Friday (talk) 23:26, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

RTV is only a right if there are details tying a person's account to their real world identity. It is an abuse of the right to execute it to bypass a block or other community ill will. EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:51, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I completely concur with Ariel on this matter. This is a clear abuse of a privilege that is supposed to be extended only to editors who are permanently leaving, or have had personal, private information revealed about them on-wiki. I would thus like to seek consensus from the community to redirect the user and talk pages of editors who misuse RtV to their new accounts. GlassCobra 05:56, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Keep in mind that the blocking policy allows for short blockings to denote the user's old account and long block log, so there are plenty other ways we can use to tie old accounts to new ones. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 08:29, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Another trick that works (as per a conversation in the en.wp admin IRC channel) is to set the block to expire "yesterday", thereby netting absolutely zero actual time blocked, but still gets put in the log. However, I'm largely just mentioning it because I think it's nifty; feel free to ignore me. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:18, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I have witnessed abuses of RtV, in which editors with an history of disruption make claims of off-wiki harassment (when actually there is no info that ties the user to a real-world identity), and gets his user and talk page deleted by a willing admin, only to continue editing in the same range of articles, hiding the checkered past, and misleading in his new user page about the length of time editing Wikipedia. Yes, we err on the side of caution when off-wiki harassment is claimed, but we should not be so naïve as to be taken for fools. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:28, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

The idea of back-dated blocks is very good. At least it keeps it on the record that the user has a past of disruption. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:32, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:BLOCK#Recording_in_the_block_log will need to be adapted for this idea to become enforceable. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:36, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Blocking_policy#Recording_in_the_block_log_after_username_change, just added. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 18:03, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Jossi, I moved your proposal to the talk page for discussion. I don't think we should be so quick to make new policies on a major holiday. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 19:18, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Sure, no problems... I have amended and self-reverted. Discussion is at Wikipedia_talk:Blocking_policy#Previous_username_blocks, for those interested in debating this. I think the proposal has merit. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 20:40, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Paul Vogel

This user has been banned for over three years, now his ban has expired a few days ago. Just wanted to bring this to your attention. Maser ^(Talk!) 01:19, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

It would appear that Vogel has not violated his ban in the last 12 months, which was what arbcom stated was necessary for him to get editing rights back. However, "Paul Vogel" is not an actual account this individual used. To allow Vogel to edit again would force editors to monitor the pages he frequented again for antisemitism and holocaust denial, white supremacy, etc. - his trademarks. While he technically has met the criteria to come back to Wikipedia, I strongly suggest we Ignore this rule and continue his ban. I also suggest we take a vague poll on the matter, because it's an anagram of Paul Vogel. But seriously, please continue his ban. --CastAStone/^/(talk) 01:54, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

He did the time, so let him out. It's not like he can't be reblocked again if he causes trouble. Jtrainor (talk) 05:47, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Jtrainor. We are the good guys, and we keep our word. Let him edit, and if there is any repeat of the editing that got him blocked before we do the dropping like a ton of bricks trick. LessHeard vanU (talk) 10:52, 23 December 2007 (UTC) (like the pun!)

I've also put the "targets" of this editor on my watchlist, just in case. LessHeard vanU (talk) 10:56, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Aye, same. It's interesting to see how far Wikipedia has come since 2004, y'know. These days characters like Vogel never get anywhere near the level of arbitration, we just indefblock them straight away. I suppose back then they had more time to devote to such obvious cases. Intriguing. Moreschi ^{If you've written a quality article...} 11:02, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

The presence of a ban is moot. Vogel always used unregistered IPs, usually for just a few edits apiece. His POV contributions are just as unwelcome now as in 2004. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 21:58, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Also, he didn't "do his time". If the ban were reset every time he'd violated it the account would still have 2.5 years left. Vogel, or someone making the same edits as Vogel, was here as recently as May 2007.[19] ·:· Will Beback ·:· 22:02, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to reset the ban to May 2008 due to the apparent violation earlier this year. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 23:03, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

to block Vogel on your suspicion that 'someone like vogel' made bad edits is complete violation of WP:AGF. Also, blocking Vogel is not going to prevent all the other anti-semites from altering the pages and xtending Vogel's block so that editors don't have "to monitor the pages he frequented again for antisemitism and holocaust denial, white supremacy, etc. -" is specious argument. The editors have to monitor them anyway.207.69.137.7 (talk) 17:02, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

There may be others who are interested in making edits that promote anti-semitism, etc. However there appears to be only one editor who's interested in Cosmotheism the way that Vogel is. As I said originally, the ban is a mere formality. But, as a formality, it should be done correctly and that incldues extending it due to violations. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 19:28, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Help with Speedy issue

So what's the process for dealing with this situation? On the one hand, there's a page with what can certainly be labeled spam. But it's in user-space. And the speedy tag was placed there by an IP. And that same IP has labeled five more userspace pages that might be spam. Help? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 02:38, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

• The anon is correct in every case. G11 means that namespace is irrelevant, all of that is spam, and should be deleted. --Maxim_(talk) 02:44, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I would agree with you *but* WP:SPAM says articles - though G11 on WP:SPEEDY says "pages". I'm new at this, so I want to make sure I'm not missing anything :) When I wasn't an administrator, I kinda assumed my userspace was mine to do with as I would (within reason, of course). Does spam cross that line? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 02:55, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
    • Yes it does; from the general criteria at WP:CSD "These criteria apply to all namespaces, and are in addition to namespace-specific criteria in following sections." Also WP:CSD is a policy while WP:SPAM is only a guideline. Basically when any page is spam that doesn't have a good revision to go back to, you may delete with G11. James086^{Talk | Email} 03:48, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
    • The thing to do is not to take a simple mechanistic approach. There's a spectrum of behaviours and intents, and a range of appropriate responses. If the account is named after the subject, and has zero contributions other than repeatedly putting the same text on several pages in various namespaces including talk pages, and doesn't engage in any dialogue, then it's clear that the person using the account simply wishes the text to be ubiquitous and isn't here to do anything else apart from abuse Wikipedia as a free web hosting service for advertisements. I've zapped all of the advertisements and revoked the account's editing privileges in such clear-cut cases before now. Conversely, a quite legitimate (albeit unusual) use of a user page is as a staging area for developing articles before moving them into the article namespace. Such a person would be editing in good faith, and an appropriate response would be to tweak the userspace draft more towards how an article should be, or place a note on the user's talk page pointing xem towards the relevant content policies.

      In this case, there's not enough information to determine which of the two this particular person is, and our Wikipedia:Don't bite the newbies and Wikipedia:Assume good faith guidelines apply.

      For enlightenment on criterion #G11, and how and why it came to be a speedy deletion criterion, read Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 13. Uncle G (talk) 04:06, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, All! I'll keep that in mind in the future, and very much appreciate the input! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 06:40, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

G - General (all namespaces), A - Articles, I - Images, U - User and user talk, T - Templates. Yay for letter-code :) Daniel 11:58, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

It's a matter of degree, as UncleG says with his wide experience. (Another factor to consider is how long the page has been sitting there). In this case, I don't think the speedy was really wrong--the long list of recordings for distribution would have been inappropriate content anywhere in WP. Similarly -- and most blatantly of the ones I have looked at--

• [20] is an mere advertisement of a beach house for sale.

But several people been speedy tagging & deleting many pages that are do not reasonably fit into any definition of speedy for spam, for example:

• [21]. This can be seen as an attempt to create an article, or at least a framework where one could be created.
• [22] This would make an article that would probably pass speedy, but perhaps not AfD.
• [23] is a early draft of what looks like a supportable WP article. It can now be removed, but the speedy does not seem appropriate.
• [24] would be soap, not spam, and can certainly be seen as a draft for an article.
• [25] might not be an acceptable article, but a user might have thought it might be.
• [26] was an attempt at an article on a school play, that would not have passed AfD, but did not fit speedy

In all these cases, I think a note would have been appropriate, not a speedy. And if not responded to, then an MfD. That's what MfD is for. People will disagree on any particular one. If there can be good faith disagreement among established editors, then it goes to MfD, not speedy. In many of them, they were naive users seriously attempted to build an article, but in the wrong place. All they needed was some advice. True spam is spam, but calling it spam does not make it so. Of the ones I have examined, about half were clearly justified speedies in my opinion. Half could have been handled otherwise. That is much too high an error rate, and sufficient reason, imho, for removing such items from speedy altogether unless more care is taken. DGG (talk) 23:10, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with DGG. I have a real problem with newbies who are just trying to create a little space for themselves and don't know the ropes yet being bitten by overzealousness. A little kind note on their talk page would really do the trick 90% of the time. The other 10% of the time we could tolerate an up-to 5-day time period of MFD. The question shouldn't be "if the preconclusion is made to speedy delete a user page would a "G" series CSD code apply", of course the answer to that is yes. The question should be "should the procedure addressed at WP:USERPAGE for dealing with suspected inappropriate userspace content be followed?" , I think the answer to that is equally obvious. JERRY ^talk _contribs 00:59, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

More input please: I am not satisfied that any concensus exists based on what I read here so far. JERRY ^talk _contribs 02:20, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Here comes Santa Claus

NORAD and the U.S. Air Force tracks Santa! As I write this, he's in India, making his way through the Himalayas! Yay! -- ALLSTARecho 15:42, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

The USAF? Jeez, I hope Santa's got his IFF on the appropriate frequency... LessHeard vanU (talk) 16:05, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

NORAD is definitely a reliable source, but this seems more appropriate for Wikinews. WilyD 16:08, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Gah, NORAD got me again. I just can't gets't elf technology these days. It's me infra-red that let's me down!--Santa (talk) 16:24, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Is it ironic that in a very limited sense we could make a resonable case for the existence of Santa Claus based on the reliability of this source? ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 17:10, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

The New York Sun says that "there is a Santa Claus". The Sun is a highly reliable source: "If you see it in THE SUN it's so."[27] ·:· Will Beback ·:· 21:53, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

You can call NORAD and they will verify that they are tracking Santa as we speak (I called and they were very nice to me), but I guess that would be WP:OR :-( Jeffpw (talk) 17:19, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

They publish the tracking info on thier website and news-casts report on it. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 17:26, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

WP:FRINGE. DGG (talk) 17:47, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps you mean WP:BEARD? Risker (talk) 17:49, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

WP:It's Really OK To Believe... -- ALLSTARecho 18:32, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

This is an example where the reliable sources WP policy conflicts with accuracy. IAR? Ho ho ho. I better stop before an edit war begins with the legacy of Santa versus the current existance of Santa versus total lie debate. Archtransit (talk) 20:07, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I do hope someone has found a reliable source to document that NORAD do this, and balanced it with a reliable source that this is a recurring joke/publicity stunt by NORAD. Then we can stop having this conversation every year. Sorry, I know for some it is the first time they've heard of this, but what I'd really be interested in knowing is the first year they did this. Could whoever called NORAD call back and (in all seriousness) ask them that (if it's not on a website somewhere). Oh, I spoke too soon. According to NORAD#In popular culture, it started in 1995, due to, well, I'll let you read it for yourself. Carcharoth (talk) 09:09, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

• NORAD Tracks Santa Carcharoth (talk) 09:11, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

• There is no sanity clause. Guy (Help!) 21:28, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Admin block request for review

Resolved

 – Unblocked. Thank you for dealing with this in an appropriate manner, GDonato (talk) 23:37, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I will likely be away for the next couple of days. Please unblock if rough consensus here, I trust your judgment. GDonato (talk) 18:12, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I have blocked User:Irishguy for 24 hours for edit warring and a 3rr vio on List of zombie films. I feel it is appropriate for this block to be reviewed at this point. GDonato (talk) 17:34, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Irishguy seems to be under the impression that the anon IP was vandalizing the article. He issued several warnings on the IP's talk page. But the diffs seem to indicate an actual content dispute. Which one is the case? Bstone (talk) 17:41, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

(ec) It's a bit stale at this point. Blocks are preventative, not punitive. Sean William @ 17:41, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate that concern but it is less than a day, I would certainly agree if it was >36 hours after the event or something. GDonato (talk) 17:45, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Depends whether you view what the IP was adding as vandalism. Since they had been reverted previously and a note had been added into the article as to why it was inappropriate to add that content, I would err on the side of recurring vandalism, and thus lean towards an unblock. Since it happened 14 hours ago, though, I would definitely unblock as per Sean William. BLACKKITE 17:43, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I certainly do not believe this constitutes the blatant vandalism required for an exception, however I do somewhat sympathise with the "too old" theory, although not personally agreeing with it. GDonato (talk) 17:49, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Seems as though both should be unblocked - or neither. —Wknight94 (talk) 17:47, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

The IP was already blocked. GDonato (talk) 17:51, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I know. What I'm saying is that if Irishguy is unblocked, then so should the IP since there seems to be agreement that it was a content dispute. —Wknight94 (talk) 17:58, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

The IP could have been blocked earlier - it went to 12RR. While Irishguy could have reported the account, I don't think giving him a block is necessary. Addhoc (talk) 17:59, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Are we looking at the same history? I see maybe 9RR for the one IP and 7RR for Irishguy. Where is the difference which leads to Irishguy being unblocked while the IP is not? —Wknight94 (talk) 18:05, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) I think Addhoc is saying that giving Irishguy a block now is unnecessary - the IP was blocked 18 hours ago. BLACKKITE 18:11, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm fuzzy on why both weren't blocked 18 hours ago - or neither. I gather others are fuzzy as well. —Wknight94 (talk) 18:30, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Seeing as the blocking admin is away, and did ask for a review of this, perhaps the block should be lifted? Bstone (talk) 19:00, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I understand where people are coming from about the block being giving after too long a time, but I don't think the block was issued to prevent current edit warring, it was a block to prevent Irishguy from edit warring in the future; isn't that preventative? Seraphim ^Whipp 19:08, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with IrishGuy being unblocked - as long as the IP is unblocked as well. The history of that article doesn't show well for either. —Wknight94 (talk) 19:12, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I would like to see Irishguy unblocked, and don't have a problem with unblocking the IP. Addhoc (talk) 19:19, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I've unblocked both accounts. Addhoc (talk) 20:34, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Mainpage

Resolved

 – caching caused issues, concerns with commons images addressed. JERRY ^talk _contribs 18:46, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Why hasn't the mainpage featured article switched ? Is my clock wrong? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:12, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I've purged the page, but I'm still getting Nancy Reagan instead of Flight feathers for the 25th; is it only me? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:14, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm getting Flight feather. Be patient. Santa will be there soon! :-) Carcharoth (talk) 00:18, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Thought he's meant to leave the presents the night before? :P LuciferMorgan (talk) 02:08, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Just as a note, both for Nancy and flight feathers, I'm getting a commons version of the image. Do we have a new policy of salting the images, or are these vulnerable to upload vandalism? The Evil Spartan (talk) 04:07, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

They are cascade protected on commons via their transclusion on commons:User:Zzyzx11/En main page. —Wknight94 (talk) 04:09, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Pilotbob

Something odd going on here... it seems this guy's contrib history consists of almost nothing but AfD noms to random articles using TW. Can someone look into this? I've seen a number of almost identical AfD rationales from this guy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&limit=500&target=Pilotbob

Jtrainor (talk) 05:44, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Is it common for editors to use TW in that fashion? I have seen other editors do so as well. Best, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 05:50, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I dealt with this user in November when he started AFDs on various articles that I had worked on. He was blocked for disruptive AFDs by Guy back then after he had listed an article on a television series at AFD for his cookie cutter reasonings. Something definitely needs to be done about his activities, because he is not contributing anything (including listing an article for AFD less than a month following his previous attempt).—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 07:15, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

For fellow admins—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 07:17, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

It would appear he hasn't contributed since FT2 talked to him. Maybe he got the message. Mbisanz (talk) 07:21, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Though to be fair - and I haven't looked through them all - some of the AfDs appear reasonable, though obviously not coming one month after a previous one. BLACKKITE 11:43, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, it is winter... maybe he's just trying to heat his house by burning one page at a time from the encyclopedia. Seriously, though... seems like a well-intentioned user who found a niche for himself cleaning out cobwebs, but he has a little tough time knowing a cobweb from a roof-brace. So, we should just talk to him gently and persistently. JERRY ^talk _contribs 18:43, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I was tempted to poke him myself, but given my ongoing conflict with another user, I was afraid I'd be too bitey, so I decided to just kick it up the stairs to someone else. Jtrainor (talk) 18:48, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive323#User:Pilotbob and Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive325#User:Doctorfluffy. This is the area of interest of this user. That's not necessarily bad, it just is. As long as Pilotbob, Doctorfluffy and AndalusianNaugahyde are not editing the same article noms they are not violating the terms under which I and other admins unblocked them. I see a lot of people commenting on his AfDs using terms like WP:POINT, "sore loser", and suggestions like "should be blocked". I am by no means a deletionist but I don't really think that's assuming good faith. FT2's approach may have some merit, but just dismissing this user's contributions out of hand may not be the best approach. ++Lar: t/c 20:21, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

AfDs, like certain other Wikipedia processes, require a certain suspension of WP:AGF. It is common for voters in AfDs, apparently, to assume that facts cited by a nominator are true; this is an equivalent of a common-law principle that testimony is presumed true unless controverted. However, with an AfD, unless it is for a blatantly frivolous or offensive article -- in which case AfD isn't necessary -- there is already a level of contradiction; we should also presume good faith on the part of the creator of the article, not to mention the rest of the editors, if there are others. It's work to properly participate in an AfD, for, properly, the voter should actually review the evidence and confirm it or counter it, not merely look over the nomination and pop in with a vote. Instead, I've seen "per nom" votes entered almost immediately upon AfD nomination, too few to research notability. Article deletion is a strong measure, for most practical purposes it erases the content; redirection is far gentler and much more easily reversible, leaving the contributions in user history. The use of automated tools to nominate for deletion seems utterly beyond the pale to me. One person with a few keystrokes can create hundreds of hours of work for others. It should be stopped, or better procedures devised. If a whole class of articles are to be deleted, then some consensus should be obtained on the principle, in which case anyone could use a bot to actually accomplish it. I.e., instead of hundreds of, say, plot summaries being AfDd, one AfD that covers the entire category, or at least that addresses the principle behind the proposed deletions. --Abd (talk) 04:52, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

And what contributions would they be apart from pruning? Mass AfDs are incredibly time consuming and have caused alot of acrimony over the past several months. Several editors engaged in it have been banned and others have admitted to being burnt out by the affair. Material can take weeks to months to compile to then be nominated and often deleted on 70% consensus. Some of the worst offenders in nominating and pushing deletion do little article writing themselves. At best this results in a lack of understanding in the effort gone into article creation. Repeatedly nominating articles for AfD which have passed in the not too distant past is highly disruptive, and certainly not assuming good faith in the first place. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:00, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

PS: It could be argued that accounts which devote almost all their time to AfD of a particular topic could be considered 'single purpose' cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:01, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

What does "effort gone into article creation" have to do with nomination for deletions? If I write a bunch of unverifiable OR, it makes no difference whether it took me five minutes or ten hours of hard work. It's still unverifiable OR and must be deleted.

Note I'm not discussing any of the AfD at issue here (I haven't looked at them), simply expressing frustration at the oft-repeated "worked so hard on it" pseudo-excuse. — Coren ^(talk) 00:56, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not referring to OR stuff but more amusing points where AfD deleters pretend to not know about notability of obvious things like cultural depictions of frogs etc. or many other stuff as if they have been living under a rock for all their lives.cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:22, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

"often deleted on 70% consensus" - AFD is not a vote, the outcome is largely based on the weight of the arguments and less so on the numbers. Mr.Z-man 05:10, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

There is a possible component of wasting the communities time. Many AfD's articles are WP:SNOW deletes so anti-deletions already have to sort thru all that dreck to find the diamonds in the rough. I don't personally like the idea of an over-caffeinated TW-eaker sending articles over to AfD; although there's nothing generally wrong with a deletionist using automation, if some large potion of his nominations fail, then this is disruptive, and would show the user lacked good judgment. It's not been clear if this is the case here. -- Kendrick7^talk 05:56, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Dana Ullman (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) stubbified

This is notification that I have blanked the article Dana Ullman (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), for constant violations of our policy on biographies of living individuals, in particular, constant edit wars; month old orangeside box. I request that all editors do not revert, but work to include verifiable material. Will ^(talk) 18:28, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Huh, I didn't know there was a template for that. -- Kendrick7^talk 18:31, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

There isn't - it's in my userspace. Still some kinks to work out... Will ^(talk) 18:35, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

What's an orangeside box, and shouldn't it be removed by a bot if that's a problem? You also forget sockpuppetry. Can the page not just be deleted? The guy has a lot of web hits but is totally non-notable 86.146.119.116 (talk) 21:05, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

This article has had ongoing conflict of interest problems as well - User:Danaullman, before he was indeffed for disruption at Homeopathy, had repeatedly edited the page to promote himself. I tried working with him, and I asked for external input at the conflict of interest noticeboard. I even referred him to OTRS, if he had a serious BLP problem. Since his block a steady stream of new, single purpose accounts and IPs has shown up to edit war on the page - check the page history for obvious ones. There has been poor behavior on both sides of the issue - stubbification/protection was probably a good idea, and the page needs ongoing admin attention. It will be difficult to find verifiable material, due to extensive self-promotion on the internet, but the AFD that I withdrew several months ago has some sources that should be a good start. Skinwalker (talk) 21:19, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Requesting independent review

Two months ago I responded to an article content WP:RFC for the Matt Sanchez article. It's been full protected since 27 September for WP:BLP issues and various other problems.

24.18.134.216 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) is a single purpose IP with no constructive edits that has been disrupting Talk:Matt Sanchez with vulgar commentary and personal smears. I removed one of these as a personal attack[28] and addressed its content civilly at the IP talk page.[29] The IP replied twice in bad faith.[30][31] Please review. Durova^Charge! 19:57, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Semi talk page to combat said disruption. Will ^(talk) 21:02, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Durova^Charge! 21:06, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I haven't done it - I don't have the sufficient tools - I meant it as an opinion. Will ^(talk) 21:26, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the opportunity to feel useful. :) I've semiprotected the talk page for 2 weeks. The talk page was recently under siege by User:Charles Wilson 4000, a sock of User:Pwok - unclear if this is related. MastCell ^Talk 21:27, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Muhammad (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Resolved

 – User:Farazilu blocked indefinitely for a number of problematic behaviours

full-protect. High level dispute between admins and unprecedented unto by a group of admins. Faraz Ahmad (talk) 06:04, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

There is a discussion at ANI about Muhammad and the need for protection thereof, and so this concern might better be addressed there (in a usual case, one would probably note that requests for protection ought to be taken to WP:RFP, but this appears to be a broader issue and one about which discussion is, in any case, ongoing). Joe 06:09, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Suspected copyvios and spam

• ArleArt (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · blacklist hits · AbuseLog · what links to user page · count · COIBot · Spamcheck · user page logs · x-wiki · status · Edit filter search · Google · StopForumSpam)

The above user created a large amount of cookie-cutter pages on Cuban artists of questionable notability and which require massive cleanup. Furthermore, the purpose of the pages appears to be promotion of the site:

spam.cubancontemporaryart.com

• cubancontemporaryart.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

Unfortunately, such site requires registration, which confirms its spamminess and makes me think these "articles" could be copyvios. He's done this on es.wikipedia too.

The original report is at WP:COIN#Category:Cuban contemporary artists, where you should direct your comments. MER-C 13:54, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Bump. MER-C 12:26, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

These links are on about 158 pages. Anyone with a bot or AWB that could help in the cleanup... Nwwaew (Talk Page) (Contribs) (E-mail me) 16:31, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Help with an editor who ignores messages

I'm having a problem at Post-credits scene, and have been for some time now. A single-purpose IP account is continuously restoring the same indiscriminate (and wholly incomplete) list and every single attempt to communicate is an utter failure. Hidden comments blanked, talk page ignored, edit summaries, everything. The mediation case determined the same thing. I honestly know of no way to contact or stop this editor from continuing barring a block. — Trust not the Penguin (T | C) 23:19, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

• Left a final warning and watchlisted the page. Will block if disruption continues. BLACKKITE 23:56, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Edited: "unresponsive" is sometimes used to mean dead or in a coma. Archtransit (talk) 16:39, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

59.93.0.0/16

Hello,

I unblocked 59.93.0.0/16, originally blocked by Can't sleep, clown will eat me, and then the block was tweaked by lucasbfr to allow account creation. The block reason was "spam bot", but I've been unable to find any discussion anywhere to point to for the users who are affected by the block. If the spam bot returns and such a large block is required again, please be sure to link to something in the block reason that can clue in other admins as to the incident or discussion location. Thanks! kmccoy (talk) 10:28, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Some relevant discussion at User talk:Can't sleep, clown will eat me#Spam on the range; blocking admin was originally responsive, but hasn't edited for several days, now. Though I originally declined an unblock request on this range (suggesting the user could get an account), I've since had second thoughts. I don't like the idea of a spambot running rampant, but we're probably better off using the spam blacklist instead of risking so much collateral damage. If Clown comes back and is able to link prior discussion (or otherwise justify the need for a heavy block), or if the spambot seems to come back, we can revisit this easily enough; until either of those happens, though, unblocking seems to be the order of the day. – Luna Santin (talk) 10:51, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I remember discussing it with CSCWEM, the damn bot creates improbable articles (ending with a /, or with an extension for example), comes back a few days later and adds his crap as text, hopping google will catch it (if you read me, dear spammer, it won't since there are no inbound links). I don't really like the idea of a range block, but note that account creation was enabled (which is not always a good thing, autoblock wise). Let's monitor how it goes from there. -- lucasbfr ^{ho ho ho} 11:14, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Help cleaning BLP violation from history

Resolved

Could an admin please check out this BLP alert and address clearing out a BLP's email address? Thank you! Benjiboi 11:22, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• Deleted the offending revisions so that only admins can view them now. To have them permanently removed, see WP:OVERSIGHT. BLACKKITE 12:27, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• Thank you! Benjiboi 12:57, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Please correct the messages in the sidebar (Korean Version).

I set Korean (ko) as system language of my account in English Wikipedia. However, the messages in the Korean sidebar is not correct.

• Word-spacing: 문서목록 → 문서 목록, 의견교환 → 의견 교환
  • 문서 (Hanja: 文書; document) and 목록 (Hanja: 目錄; list); and 의견 (Hanja: 意見; opinion) and 교환 (Hanja: 交換interchange) are individual vocabularies, therefore the ommission of word spacing in those messages is not encouraged in the standard orthography of Korean (especially in the script written only in Hangul [see also Korean with mixed script of Hangul and Hanja]).
• The official Korean name of Wikipedia, etc.: 위키피디아 소개 → 위키백과 소개, 위키피디아 접촉 → 위키백과 연락
  • "위키피디아" (RR: Wikipidia; M-R: Wik'ip'idia; IPA: [wi.kʰi.pʰi.di.a]) or "위키피디어" (RR: Wikipidieo; M-R: Wik'ip'idiŏ; IPA: [wi.kʰi.pʰi.di.ʌ]) are vocal transliteration of the English name "Wikipedia." They're NOT official names in Korean. In the community of Korean Wikipedia has used "위키백과" (Mixed script of Hangul and Hanja: 위키百科; RR: Wikibaekgwa; M-R: Wik'ibaekkwa or Wiki-paekkwa; IPA: [wi.kʰi.bæk̚.k*ʷa]; See the official logo image of KOWP). Although a few Korean editors wants to change the official name "위키백과" to "위키피디아," but currently, the ONLY OFFICIAL name is "위키백과," not "위키피디아."
  • In addition, "접촉" (Hanja: 接觸; RR: jeopchok; M-R: chŏpch'ok; IPA: [ʨʌp̚.ʨʰok̚]; contact, touch) in "위키피디아 접촉" is not inappropriate, but I think "연락" (Hanja: 連絡; RR: yeollak; M-R: yŏllak; [jʌl.lak̚]; contact, communication) is more adequate because "연락" can allude to the nuance of "communication" or "conversation" more than "접촉." "접촉" can connotes the nuance of "physical touch."
• Messages not be translated yet: Featured content → "알찬 문서" (this is my suggestion), Donate → "기부 안내" (and it should link to the Korean version)
  • Now, Editors in Korean Wikipedia are preparing to introduce the FA system. The official Korean name of "Featured Article" was decided as "알찬 글" (RR: alchan geul; M-R: alch'an kŭl; IPA: [al.ʨʰan.kɯl] or [al.ʨʰan.ɡɯl]; Substantial Writing(s)), but ones of the other "Featured ___" are not yet decided. I think "알찬 항목" (Mixed script of Hangul and Hanja: 알찬 項目; RR: alchan hangmok; M-R: alch'an hangmok; IPA: [al.ʨʰan.haŋ.mok̚] or [al.ʨʰan.ɦaŋ.mok̚]; Substantial Item(s)) is preferable because according to the convention in Korean Wikipedia, "항목" (item, head) is used as word that means "article," "page" and "content" of Wiki.
  • "기부 안내" (Hanja: 寄附案內; RR: gibu annae; M-R: kibu annae; IPA: [ki.bu.an.næ]; the Donation Guide) is the default Korean message of MediaWiki.

Please revise the Korean sidebar. ― 韓斌/Yes0song (談笑 筆跡 다지모) 14:37, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I have to strongly disagree with some of the points above.

• Regarding 위키피디아 and 위키백과, I'll transliterate them as Wikipidia and Wikibaekgwa, respectively. While Wikibaekgwa is the preferred name of the Korean edition of Wikipedia, the project as a whole should best be kept under the name of Wikipidia. We don't need to push on the name of the Korean edition onto the English edition (or other editions) of Wikipedia.
• Regarding 알찬 문서, I must say it's based on a name (알찬 글, alchan geul) that was chosen and imposed against general concensus. To thrust it onto the English edition (or other editions) would be imprudent, IMHO. --Kjoonlee 15:35, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Above is just Kjoonlee's personal opnion, but not official and not the consensus of Korean Wikipedia. Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese, etc. Wikipedias are "Wikipedias" in English, "위키백과" in Korean, "ウィキペディア" in Japanese, "維基百科" in Chinese, etc. Every Wikipedia and other sister projects have only each one name in each languages. Both Korean and English Wikipedias are both "Wikipedias" and "위키백과." ― 韓斌/Yes0song (談笑 筆跡 다지모) 10:13, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Double check me on a block

I have given AdvisorOne (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) a 24 hour block for edit waring. He has been repeatedly asked to discuss his edits to Jazmin Grace Grimaldi on the article talk page and has not. He has added material against consensus and recently reverted by re-adding details on where a 16 year old goes to school. I think his talk page reveals ample warnings.

I am involved on the page as the result of an OTRS comment which is peripherally related to these edits.

Please review by block and discuss as you deem appropriate. -JodyB _talk 16:57, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Clear edit warring, and BLP problems to boot. No problem I can see. — Coren ^(talk) 16:59, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Does opening an account at a "bad site" get you in trouble?

Resolved

 – OK, groundless paranoia on my part. Awaiting my verification E-Mail from you-know-who. <eleland/talkedits> 02:34, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't like skulking around under a different pseudonym, but I want to register at... uhm, I'm not allowed to say it, am I... Let's just say it's a site which Reviews the goings-on of Wikipedia. Yes, I know there's trolls and stalkers and LaRouchies and banhammered ripened socks there. I'm not one of them. I've been editing this site since 2002, my only other account opened in May 2003, and this one was registered in late 2004. So, if I sign up there just to shoot the shit about Wikipedia, in a non-abusive and non-personal manner, is that a problem?

(The irony of the fact that I feel a need to pre-emptively guard against off-site stalking and harassment on the basis of a policy against off-site stalking and harassment may have broader implications for Wikipedia...) <eleland/talkedits> 02:13, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

As far as I am aware just your mere presences at WR isn't grounds for a block or ban. If you violate someone's privacy (or do something else equally silly that people tend to associate with such sites) it might result in a block or ban. I occasionally glance over there at WR and notice the occasional post from regulars here at WP. I don't have any examples off-hand, but I've seen it before. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 02:20, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

There was a list, some time ago, on WR of admins which are registered there with the same username they're here. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 02:25, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I get demonized and sneered at for my presence there, but not actually banned (so far...) *Dan T.* (talk) 02:26, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Such reactions are a commonplace of life,[32] not unique to Wikipedia. Raymond Arritt (talk) 02:32, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Many Wikipedia editors in good standing, including some arbitrators and bureaucrats, have accounts at WR or other sites critical of Wikipedia and contribute regularly there, often under the same username that they use on Wikipedia. There is no penalty of any kind for doing so. Of course, it would be hoped that unhelpful activities such as making gratuitious personal attacks on editors or seeking to expose the real-life identifying information of editors who edit here anonymously should be avoided. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:30, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

(ec)I'll put my hand up and state that I have an account "over there", and have had for at least 6 months. For honesty and openness, I have the same username there as I have here. I'm not a regular poster by any stretch of the imagination, but I've found it useful in order to reply to some things, especially if there's something I've been called on and I need to reply to set things straight. I haven't been banned here yet, on the contrary, I was made checkuser lately :) Needless to say, issues of privacy and security of information apply over there as much as they apply here. Don't reveal private or confidential info either on or off-wiki - Alison ^❤ 02:43, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, if all these Wiki editors are over there, can someone inform them I don't have Tourette syndrome or OCD, have never said I do, and I don't plagiarize? Much obliged; so much for the fact-checking and reliable sources of that Wiki editor, who went there only to malign me and claims Jimbo's blessing. Oh, 18 Brownie points if you can figure out who has a crush on me. (Honestly, the idea that you can "pre-emptively guard against off-site stalking and harassment" on the internet is a bit naive.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:52, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

When Wikipedia has issues like Durova blocking !!, the issues are poorly handled and Wikipedia does not have a place for users to discuss and criticise when such things happen, some good users will join Wikipedia Review even if there are trolls and stalkers there. I remember a newspaper article about Essjay, and another about Durova blocking !!, which say good things about Wikipedia Review. If Wikipedia is doing a bad job, the winner is Wikipedia Review. But if Wikipedia is doing a good job, why will good users go to Wikipedia Review and why will newspapers mention Wikipedia Review? Everybody, think about this. --Kaypoh (talk) 02:56, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes people need a place to air complaints when things go wrong. Sometimes people need a place to air complaints because, well, they think complaining is fun and they like taking potshots at others. I gather a bit of both goes on at WR. (Not that different from WP:ANI when you think about it.) Raymond Arritt (talk) 03:04, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

A bit? Some threads are all about how to bring about the downfall of wikipedia... Anyway, maybe we should cut this short - the issue at hand has been resolved. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 03:29, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Like you say, there is "good" criticism to improve Wikipedia and "bad" criticism to destroy Wikipedia. Wikipedia Review has a lot of "bad" criticism. But because Wikipedia does not have a place for "good" criticism, people go to Wikipedia Review to give "good" criticism. If Wikipedia has a place for "good" criticism then people who want to give "good" criticism will not go to Wikipedia Review. Issues like Durova blocking !! will also make more people join Wikipedia Review if Wikipedia handles them poorly. If you want to mark this as resolved, you can discuss my point in another thread. --Kaypoh (talk) 04:01, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Regarding your comment about the irony of feeling the need to pre-emptively mention this was pretty shocking to me. I fully expected the topic to be scoffed at as quickly as the idea of Nelson Mandella locking up people because they are white. I mean, this is a place where basic freedoms of association and speech are unconditionally supported, I thought. The fact your topic has received such comments as "I get demonized and sneered at for my presence there, but not actually banned (so far...)" tells me you had good reason to be a little concerned. And that, Id'say, does have broader implications for Wikipedia. Mr.grantevans2 (talk) 14:58, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

" this is a place where basic freedoms of association and speech are unconditionally supported" Eh? This is not a society, it is not an experiment in governance, it is not a place for free speech on any topic. This is a project to build an encyclopedia. All else is secondary. You may want to review WP:NOT, and if the goals of the project don't align with your goals, consider other venues. FWIW I actually have been (after saying I never ever would) considering getting an account at WR... Alison seems to be able to participate constructively over there without serious bad effects so far. You have to realise that there are a large number of very very confused individuals there, and a large number who mean WP serious harm for one reason or another, and a large number that no amount of fact, no amount of logical argument, will ever sway. And... some considerable number who mean well, but whose actions are a net negative. But if that's all kept in mind ?? To me, it is not opening an account that is worrisome, it is what is done with the account that would be cause for concern, in certain cases. (I most emphatically do not subscribe to the notion that your online life is subject to compartmentalization... what you do elsewhere will very much affect my perception of you there, here, and everywhere else, and that is as it should be) ++Lar: t/c 16:44, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Lar, just a friendly difference of opinion. I read WP:NOT and I do not see where it expresses what you seem to think it does. I do agree that building a NPOV encyclopedia is the #1 objective but I also think the societal and governance aspects of WP (which you bring up) are obvious while not being very experimental (its all been done before in many venues). I have never visited WR but would it not take a mindreader to say whether people at WR mean WP serious harm? and who are you to say there are "a large number of very,very confused individuals there"? Isn't that in the realm of psychotherapy? Of course Wikipedia is a place where basic freedoms of association and speech are unconditionally supported; why? because WP is part of a free and open internet and this internet is such a place in its very essence. That's my opinion on the matters you address above. Mr.grantevans2 (talk) 22:51, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I was placed under severe arbitration restrictions for making criticism intended to improve Wikipedia here on Wikipedia, so I began making such criticism on Wikipedia Review instead. My "good criticism" is a minority view over there, and I am sometimes intensely annoyed by the anti-WP viewpoints I see there, but no one there has ever taken any punitive measures against me whatsoever, making it a vastly safer place for Wikipedia criticism as long as the present political environment prevails on WP. As for consequences on-wiki, I believe that the extraordinary duration of my restrictions (two whole years, merely for expressing opinions, which I largely stopped doing well before arbitration due to controversy) is primarily a result of my participation on WR. Everyking (talk) 02:16, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

"Making criticism"? Is that what they're calling "offering to provide deleted articles" now? Will ^(talk) 02:21, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

You obviously are talking without knowing anything about the situation on which you are commenting. You should be careful: that's one of the things the ArbCom claims it sanctioned me for. Everyking (talk) 02:29, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I think I'd trust the arbcom over a user who had a significant block log even as an admin. Will ^(talk) 02:44, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

So basically, you don't know what you're talking about, but you do trust the ArbCom, even if you don't know what it is you're trusting the ArbCom about—because I got blocked for some things, related to the ArbCom issues you know nothing about, two to three years ago. Everyking (talk) 03:05, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

There has to be a reason you were banned from AN and related subboards for nearly two years. Or is that the AC out to get you? Will ^(talk) 03:08, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I didn't say there wasn't a reason, I just said you know nothing about the reason and you attacked me in this thread based on an absurdly tangled misconception of events. I even mentioned one of the official reasons above: commenting without sufficient knowledge of circumstances (exactly what you are doing here). Everyking (talk) 03:14, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Your point is? Pretty much everyone who's responded to this thread has said they've got accounts and some have even posted. If you got heavily sanctioned, I don't think you have the wings and halo you say you do. Will ^(talk) 03:19, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

After the Durova thing hit the fan, I popped over to WR to get another perspective on the issue. I stopped short of registering an account (mostly because I had nothing original to say on the matter). I was surprised, however, to see my name pop up in two threads. I thought it odd considering that I'm a relatively new admin who has thusfar steered clear of any severe ugliness. I'd recommend lurking there for a) the sake of devil's advocacy and b) to see who's been gossiping about you. Caknuck (talk) 16:19, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Totally not at all. I've actually asked there a few times for critcism about me. Will ^(talk) 16:20, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I actually have an account at WR, though I havven't used it yet. I intend to take part in discussions there sometime.--Phoenix-wiki ^{talk · contribs} 16:25, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I have an account at WR, and I also post comments from time to time. If contributing there does not adversely effect your editing here then I suggest there will be no problem. LessHeard vanU (talk) 17:22, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Wait! LessHorrid vanU is you??? I did not know that! :) ++Lar: t/c 17:50, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Er... no, I'm Foamy Semolina Jimmy Rash Is He Banned Lamented Yorkshire E H... yes LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:39, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I think WR is a great website to participate in if you want to set some preliminaries for a future lobotomy. On Wikipedia you at least have a shot at enriching your mind...knowingly conversing with the most active WR loons is not likely to increase your knowledge base. If I ever joined (which wouldn't happen, even if I was at gunpoint), I'd be banned after one comment.--MONGO (talk) 02:44, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

but let's face it, you like the hairshirt and it gets really fucking boring for rest of us. --Fredrick day (talk) 03:38, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I knew there was another reason I opened an account there. LessHeard vanU (talk) 12:17, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Re: WR: "If nobody's shooting at ya', ya ain't doin' enough things right." I heard that somewhere and I think it's true, so I look at WR as a good thing; a sign that WP might be doing a lot of things right. Mr.grantevans2 (talk) 13:02, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

• Up to a point. This is actually a function that is fulfilled by the wikien-l mailing list. The major problem with WR is its "assume bad faith and extrapolate form there" attitude, plus the fact that occasionally good people get sucked in by a small group of abusers who hang out there; this is what got Alkivar desysopped. Guy (Help!) 21:30, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, there's also nothing stopping anyone from starting a blog to post about their experience (or shoot the breeze). There are aggregators for Wikipedia/Wikimedia-related blogs at http://en.planet.wikimedia.org & http://wikiblogplanet.com. That's one reason I have a blog (which is listed in both of those aggregators). Lastly, I would have appreciated a dozen responses from other Wikipedians, whose usernames I recognize, calling me an idiot for my recent bog posts on Carolyn Doran far more than the ones I did receive. -- llywrch (talk) 20:57, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Disruptive editing (not mine) on a user subpage (mine)

Resolved

 – 98.195.24.26 given 31 hour block for personal attacks (since extended to 1 week, see below)

• 98.195.24.26 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

The above IP has admitted to being one of the editors who previously caused much disruption on Talk:0.999... and Talk:0.999.../Arguments, albeit under a different address. Recently, they have taken to commenting at a page I created, User talk:ConMan/Proof that 0.999... does not equal 1, mainly debating with User:Tango, User:A math-wiki and myself on that point. Fair enough, that is what I created it for, and since I have once again been hugely frustrated by the whole thing, I've taken a step back and decided to stop arguing his points since we seem to be at cross-purposes. However, back on the old pages he (amongst others) was labelled a "troll", and from his behaviour here it is hard to find an alternative description. From his contributions, from December 13 - 26:

• [33][34] Edits Talk:Area (geometry) for the sole purpose of disparaging the entry in particular, and Wikipedia in general.
• [35] Edits Talk:Knol, praising it as a haven away from "narrow-minded Wikipedia sysops and administrators." (And here's me not even realising they were different!)
• [36] On my subpage, refers to us (Wikipedians in general, I assume) as "fools", although admittedly uses the same epithet to disparage Cauchy, Weierstrass, and "the rest who I don't care to mention", and several other fairly uncivil remarks about several Wikipedia editors - some by name, the rest grouping us as "pawns who have to support their 'view' of the math-world".
• [37] Well, just read the last two paragraphs and decide for yourself.

Note that between the last two edits, I had placed a warning on their talk page (Permalink) which they obviously read since they responded to it, although that response was then removed by User:Fromgermany.

To put it simply, this user is not here to build Wikipedia, but to disparage it and attack its editors, and since a not-so-gentle hint that maybe everyone would be happier if they took an extended break from it, I am asking for help - perhaps a block to demonstrate just how such a break would work out. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 14:27, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

(addendum) User has been notified of this discussion: diff. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 14:30, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Have given 98.195.24.26 a 31 hour block for this [38] among other things. --Bradeos Graphon (talk) 15:45, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The block has been extended to 1 week and 98.195.24.26's talk page semi-protected due to continued unpleasantness. --Bradeos Graphon (talk) 20:09, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Template:Contents pages (footer box)

Resolved

 – template fixed/image from meta blocked)

I can't edit this template because I'm at work - and I recommend you don't if you have co-workers or people under 18 around - could someone please fix it?--CastAStone/^/(talk) 16:53, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Fixed, user blocked. Thanks! --B (talk) 16:57, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you B! P.S. Is that image on our servers? can we delete it? I'm gonna go wash my eyes out with bleach now...--CastAStone/^/(talk) 17:04, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

It is on Commons so we can't delete it - I have added it to the bad image list, so it cannot be used. --B (talk) 17:28, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that m:DICK needs expanding to include "don't upload photographs of your dick". Guy (Help!) 20:16, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

hahahahahahahahahaha...that's terrific. Seriously you have no idea how scarring it was to open List of decades and see my whole monitor taken up by four penises spraying...then I had to go revision by revision to figure out where the problem was - ahem - coming from...while I was at work no less...i couldn't look at that photo anymore...thanks for taking care of it again B--CastAStone/^/(talk) 04:45, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

75.4.0.0/16

• 75.4.0.0/16 (block range · block log (global) · WHOIS (partial))

This range was blocked by User:Can't sleep, clown will eat me, back in August, with the block set to expire in February; I see it's previously been the subject of a {{checkuserblock}}, so it seems very probable that something was going on at the time, but to block 65,000 IPs for six months, I'd hope we have some very compelling problems from the range. I would ask CSCWEM directly, but he's unfortunately been unavailable for several days, so I thought I should come here. Does anyone know the full reasoning for this block? Or, alternatively, does anyone have thoughts as to whether it should remain? – Luna Santin (talk) 22:14, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

It resolves as adsl-75-4-0-0.dsl.irvnca.sbcglobal.net. I think it's Irving, CA. That's not an unpopulated area. Perhaps it's time to unblock? Bstone (talk) 22:27, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Around the time of the ban, it appears that CSCWEM was dealing with a repeat vandal from one IP within that range (75.4.152.189) on Kia Vaughn. But that's the only IP in the range that appeared involved at that time. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 22:35, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

It's been a few months, I've gone ahead and expired the soft block. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 00:11, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Jimbo appoints new arbitrators

For those who haven't noticed yet, Jimbo has announced the results of the Arbitration Committee elections. The results are here. Cheers, Sean William @ 23:33, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Speedy deletion under the biographies of living persons policy

• Naftali Tzvi Weisz (AfD discussion)

I have deleted this news report masquerading as a biography. See the AFD closure. As noted therein, this deletion is subject to the requirements for restoration that a deletion under that policy implies. I caution against any attempts at undeletion without consensus. Uncle G (talk) 13:59, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

• I expect a rapid reversal of your decision, either here or at deletion review. It would have been enough to delete the last paragraph. The unanimous keep comments at the AfD seem better judgment than your opinion on this well-sourced article on an otherwise well known figure who would be notable anyway, and was indicted for a major financial crime. DGG (talk) 15:29, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I think you should not have done that. If you really felt inclined to so misinterpret the BLP policy (which has no bearing whatever on a properly sourced article) you might have thought to move the content to "Spinka Tax Fraud Scandal" or some such. You should consider that the article was on a topic of highly specialised knowledge, IE "hasidic Judaism", and 5 somewhat expert editors on the topic felt that the guy was notable even without the scandal. You might have at the very least let the AfD run its course, your actions seem to display contempt for other wikipedia editors in good standing, though I hope you do not harbor such feelings. What makes you think that you know so much better that everybody else what wikipedia needs? Especially in the face of experts on a topic? Lobojo (talk) 15:41, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
    • I see that some are missing the point, WP is not a news paper and that article was a news story. While the content if put under a biographic article would have and should have been allowed, on it's own (that article had nothing else in there) it violated all the policies outlined in the AFD closure.--Shmaltz (talk) 16:00, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
      • Well then, the content should have been moved to article on the controversy or moved into the main Spinka article. Lobojo (talk) 16:01, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
        • There is no controversy. As I pointed out in the closure, there have been no trial and no convictions yet. A publicly documented subject does not yet exist. Uncle G (talk) 18:21, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
          • "A "publicly documented subject" certainly does exist, and that subject the arrest of a significant religious figure by the FBI on international racketeering charges spanning a decade and relating to huge sums and his seven-figure bail bond. Lobojo (talk) 12:27, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't. You didn't read what I wrote in the closure. Deleting the last paragraph, or modifying the article in some other fashion, would not have changed it from a news report into a biographical article for an encyclopaedia. This is an encyclopaedia. Its articles are not news reports. The unanimous keep arguments are entirely defeated by policy. We do not have biographical articles that magnify out of all proportion one event in which a person is included alongside a lot of other people into a biography of that one specific person. We do not have articles that are news reports. We do not have biographies where there are no sources to actually write about the person that is purportedly the subject of the article.

    They are also defeated by actually reading the sources (which non-administrators can find in the Wikinews article) and seeing that those arguments were simply false. When one reads the sources and sees nothing about the subject in them apart from one single fact, which fact happens to be true for several other people named in those sources that no-one is even suggesting we have biographical articles on, "The article provides sources about the subject." rings entirely hollow.

    I suggest thinking long and hard about what I have regularly done at AFD for the past several years. If even I, whose list of article rewrites at AFD is quite long indeed (Start at Temporal Finitism (AfD discussion) and work backwards from there. Stop at Inaccurate media reports of the Virginia Tech massacre (AfD discussion) and Murder of Hannah Williams (AfD discussion) along the way.), cannot rewrite and refactor this from a misplaced news report unjustly masquerading as a biography of a single person into an encyclopaedia article about a case or an event, then one should consider the possibility that an article cannot yet be written with a great deal of thought.

    Speedy deletion does not preclude the creation of a different article in the future. Since this article was a news report of a news event, a proper biographical article, that actually was a biography, would not be a substantially similar article. I left the article's talk page undeleted so that people can present biographical sources there. I suggest that the editors who have noticably failed to back up their arguments with any sources at all, put their citations where their discussion comments are and cite a few articles that really do tell us about this person in depth. When they have some sources giving biographical information about this person, or when some actual case appears and has been publicly documented and reported by reliable sources, they will have the ability to be encyclopaedists rather than journalists. Uncle G (talk) 18:21, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

• If a news story calls the person to our attention, and, either, the person is notable anyway, so that we could justify an article on the subject quite regardless of the story, or the story is so important that the person will be and remain notable because of it, then the article is justified. I think we could certainly justify that someone who is head of a Hasidic dynasty--described by the NYTimes as "grand rabbi of Spinka" is appropriate for an article, and we should have had one previously. -- NOT NEWS says that "something that has been in the news for a brief period is not necessarily a suitable subject for an article in their own right.", and the key word is necessarily, and that "BLP... may preclude a biography about someone who is not an encyclopedic subject, despite a brief appearance in the news." Again, the word is "may". It says further that we reject tabloid journalism, but it also says we accept reliable sources that "practice competent journalistic reporting, however, and topics in the news may also be encyclopedic subjects when the sources are substantial" Substantial bylined stories in the NYT and the LA Times about a fraud involving several countries continuing over a decade meet that requirement. I note that some of the eds. who have sometime been hesitant about stories involving orthodox rabbis charged with crimes but arguably not otherwise notable, supported this article. BLP does not say that whoever chooses to speak up first gets to decide, it says the decision must be by consensus. Nobody at WP has a veto. DGG (talk) 17:45, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
• Strongly disagree with this deletion. I don't intend to debate the merits of deleting or not deleting here, that's what the AfD discussion is for. I believe it is inappropriate for an administrator to delete an article that is undergoing an AfD except if WP:SNOW obviously applies, and the AfD discussion shows several keep votes. I strongly believe that once an article is in AfD, administrators should be limited to closing the AfD and implementing the community's informed consensus. We need to remember that otherwise we're just editors just like everyone else and if we have an opinion we can voice it in the AfD and it doesn't carry any more weight than anyone else's. Our role is to implement the community's informed consensus and ensure the orderly working of community processes, not to ignore them and substitute our own judgment. --Shirahadasha (talk) 17:47, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I've gone ahead and proposed a deletion review as follows:

    An editor has asked for a deletion review of Naftali Tzvi Weisz. Since you closed the deletion discussion for this article, speedy-deleted it, or were otherwise interested in the article, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Wikidemo (talk) 17:54, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

  • Discussion on this specific case should go to the deletion review now, but I want to disagree with Shirahadasha's claim that speedy deletion of AfD'd articles is never appropriate. I disagree. Speedy deletion is always appropriate for articles that clearly and uncontroversially meet the speedy deletion criteria. But speedy deletion should be uncontroversial; if the AfD already contains comments clearly demonstrating that the basis for deletion is a matter of controversy, speedy is the wrong process. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:02, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

It looks like BLP means admins can delete/protect any article and block any user with no discussion and anyone who opposes that will get into big trouble. --Kaypoh (talk) 09:19, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Cunt

This article has been semi-protected for a month due to anon IP vandalism; as a regular monitor of the article, OK, it does attract a fair number of vandals with varying agendas, but semi-pp is not normally considered necessary. Major vandalism is usually caught either by User:ClueBot or User:VoABot, and anything else by myself and other watchers. recent vandalism is not abnormal for this article. I'm just posting here for opinions on this departure from usual practice. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 15:35, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Have you asked the protecting admin, User:Jmlk17, for their reasons? LessHeard vanU (talk) 15:39, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

He has been offline for about six hours, so I can't. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 15:41, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi Rodhullandemu, are there many good faith edits by IPs? Addhoc (talk) 15:43, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

A few actually, mostly referring to local custom or "in popular culture", which I try to restrict to properly-sourced & notable instances, but generally, no. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 15:45, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

This article was getting enough vandalism for semi-protection to be called for, in my judgment. The last 50 edits go back 5 days and contain only 1 non-vandal edit, which was of questionable usefulness anyway. At any rate this is really more an issue to discuss with the admin when he's online than something for WP:AN, allowing IPs to edit an oft-vandalized page is not a very critical issue. --W.marsh 15:56, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

OK, that's fine. We normally manage without pp but it will give us a rest for a while. Festive Greetings. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 15:58, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Well I respect that regular editors/maintainers of a given article are best qualified to decide on protection issues. If you really wanna revert this stuff every day I'd support unprotection, but vandalism was at the level where I'd probably semi-protect if this was an article I watched. --W.marsh 16:00, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with W.marsh; and I think, like shit and fuck, it should be indef protected as a vandal magnet. Will ^(talk) 16:14, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I certainly wouldn't object if it became indef-p. The rate of vandalism has never been so high that I ever considered requesting protection, but clearly it's on a par with shit and fuck in that respect. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 16:20, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

My two cents: While I agree that good users like Rodhullandemu help keep the vandalism down, it seemed (at least to me) that it was slowly getting a bit crazy around there. True, while most of the vandalism was reverted rather quickly, the number of vandalism edits from IPs was quite high. So while it is reverted quickly, why leave it out there for further vandalism, when a protection solves most of the problems? That's just my opinion, and definitely not the only one out there. Jmlk17 21:36, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Maybe I'm unlucky in being able to be around here twelve to sixteen hours a day (OK, I have no life), but that also means that I can react when other users are offline. Unfortunately, only being an ordinary editor, all I can do is report egregious policy violations rather than deal with them myself once my options are exhausted. Fortunately, there are also admins that, time-zones permitting, can also react.--Rodhullandemu (Talk) 02:24, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Another thing to consider when it comes to persistent vandalism. It's not always a matter of how fast the vandalism can be reverted, but also, the page history can become cluttered to the point where it is hard to locate when the positive edits occurred in the mass of vandalism. I believe for articles where this has become an issue, semi-protection is a tool to help keep the page history uncluttered (in addition to stopping vandals).-Andrew c ^[talk] 13:24, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

why a cunt and not a prick?

It seems that we have no prick article. What's up with having the 1 and not the other? Mr.grantevans2 (talk) 21:51, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Probably because it's generally regarded as less offensive and would probably redirect to penis anyway. Actually, the DAB page does that already. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 22:06, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

If the encyclopedia can get along without prick it can also get along without cunt, I think. Maybe an afd is in order? Mr.grantevans2 (talk) 11:12, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Or... start the article prick. Other than commenting that Wikipedia is not a dictionary there may be quite a few reasons why there is no such article; there may simply not be the cultural taboo's and history attached to the word as is cunt, and there may therefore not be the sources to make anything more than a stub (no pun intended, but ha ha ha ha ha!) from the subject. Prick is also just one of a number of slang terms for penis that are also a term for a useless or ineffective person - others being "dick", "tool", "cock", etc., - whereas cunt is a word of singular meaning. Finally, just because we have no article on X does not invalidate the article on Y (or should that be the other way round, as in XX and XY?). —Preceding unsigned comment added by LessHeard vanU (talk • contribs) 11:37, 27 December 2007 (UTC)