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For urgent incidents and chronic, intractable behavioral problems, use Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. If you are new, try the Wikipedia:Teahouse instead. Do not report breaches of personal information on this highly visible page – instead use Wikipedia:Requests for oversight. For administrative backlogs add {{Admin backlog}} to the backlogged page; post here only if urgent. Do not post requests for page protection, deletion requests, or block requests here. Just want an admin? Contact a recently active admin directly. When you start a discussion about an editor, you must leave a notice on their talk page. Pinging is not enough. You may use {{subst:AN-notice}} ~~~~ to do so. Sections inactive for over three days are archived by Lowercase sigmabot III.(archives, search) Start a new discussion

Google Web Accelerator

Ok, I was just auto-blocked for having the Google Web Accelerator recently installed. It also stated that my IP was User:64.233.173.85, which my IP is always in the 216.75 range or in a 209 range, so why is it readling like I'm from an entirely different range? Am I missing something about Google Web Accelerator? semper fi — Moe 05:20, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

When you use Google Web Accelerator, your IP goes through Google's proxy, which has been blocked as an open proxy. Naconkantari 05:23, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, no matter then, uninstalled.. semper fi — Moe 05:26, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't uninstall it - just disable it for *.wikipedia.org. The below link from Hbdragon has the step-by-step. It claims to have saved me 5.1 days of loading time (out of 435 days total loading time), so I guess it has at least some benefit.... —AySz88\^-^ 06:31, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Google Web Accelerator for the gory details. Hbdragon88 06:03, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

My advice is to leave it uninstalled, this is not the only website it causes problems with. I used it for about 4 hours before getting sick of it. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 17:05, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Same here. —Mets501 (talk) 01:30, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

And if you want to save loading time, just install the FasterFox extension and use an optimized build of Firefox. Combined they can make browser loading times basically instant on any broadband connection. — Dark Shikari ^talk/_contribs 16:06, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

New anti template vandal feature

I just noticed that a feature which Ligulem requested last week has already been implemented. If you click 'edit' on a page and scroll down to the list of pages transcluded onto it you will now see "(protected)" or "(semi-protected)" next to those which have such status. This is a quick way of identifying any templates on the Main Page, Main Page/Tomorrow, the 'article of the day', or any other page are vulnerable to vandalism. Good job by the devs. --CBD 13:52, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Lovely! Thanks for pointing that out (and thanks to the developers, of course). -- Natalya 14:06, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Nice! HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 16:55, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Very cool. It woudl be even more awesome if it showed a (redirect) for those who are redirect templates so I could eliminate those (while I'm editing the page, of course, I wouldn't edit a page just to fix the redirect). Hbdragon88 23:28, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of which, what is with User:Jmax-bot/FACount.js, why is it listed there, why can't I find the results of the include, and why is it not protected? What is it being used for and how is it included? -- Renesis (talk) 18:19, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

It seems to be listing the current number of Featured Articles, so the number only has to be updated in one place to fix all places where the number is used. It is a .js even though it isn't a JavaScript for one simple reason: .js pages are effectively protected for all users except the user whose subspace it is in. Thus, Jmax-bot doesn't have to have the sysop bit to update the count, but every other user does. --Cyde Weys 18:29, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

On the Main Page it is specifically used at the bottom of the 'Today's Featured Article' section in the link to 'All XXX featured articles'. I expect alot of vandals will see that it is 'unprotected' and be very disappointed when they can't edit it. :] --CBD 11:23, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining that. That protection without needing to be a sysop idea is a smart one. Sheesh - where do people think up this stuff? -- Renesis (talk) 03:44, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

It won't look that smart when the vandals work out how to use this 'feature'. It is an incredibly kludgy workaround and something else should be sorted soon. Carcharoth 04:10, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how that is a significant problem - they would have to transclude one of their own js pages onto another page, and even though non-admins will not be able to remove the bad content from the js page itself, they can remove the transclusion — this doesn't seem to me as any different from regular vandalism. -- Renesis (talk) 07:33, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

True. Though I'm sure there are several other possible tricks I'll WP:BEANS here. Carcharoth 11:51, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Neat! I've also seen the template vandal strike talk page templates. Is there a reason for leaving these unprotected? The talk page of the current main page FAC has quite a few of them...at least semi-protection would be good in my opinion. No reason why new users would need to muck around with any of those. Gzkn 05:25, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Speedy Deleting Articles at AfD

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Ant Bully (TV series) contained a discussion of whether it was appropriate to tag pages already at AfD wth speedy tags. I had always thought that that was the appropriate course of action of you actually wanted a speedy to go forward if say a page eligible for G10 is nominated or an author blanks a page while it is at AfD (G7). That way admins who do CSD patrol and see the page and evaluate it in a timely fashion (either deleting it or removing the tag and letting the AfD continue). Otherwise a speedy delete "vote" is unlikely to be acted upon because AfD's are very often not very active between days 2 and 4. What is the consensus of admins in this area? Eluchil404 16:51, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

If it is a clearly speadyable item then most admins think nothing of closing the AfD early with a speedy delete. I don't think putting the speedy notice there is wrong as long as the AfD notice stays. After all, if it qualifies for speedy deletion then the discussion is not relevant. Just my 2 cents. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 16:53, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

If it qualifies for speedy deletion then there's no point in wasting editors' time with an AfD. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 16:54, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Concur with the above, leaving a note with User:Ceyockey. -- Steel 16:56, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I normally just put a "Speedy Delete" vote on the AfD (or did before I got the mop, anyway), rather than adding a speedy tag, but either works. --Tango 16:57, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

If it's at AFD I think you can add speedy tags to it. Just make sure that as an admin you close the AFD at the same time as "speedy delete". There's nothing against speedying an article under discussion at AFD. AFD doesn't exempt an article from speedy deletion. -Royalguard11(Talk·Desk·Review Me!) 20:32, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

It's okay, but I'm wondering if it would be worth trying to discourage it. One would think that, if it's made it to AfD, the tagging person did not feel it necessary to rush it, so why should we, especially when we might learn something? --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:34, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

It depends on the speedy criterion I would think. I purposely didn't use A7 as an example because I agree that little to nothing is gained by speedying on notability rather than waiting 5 days since new evidence might emerge. I do, however, think that there is a real gain in speedying a G10 rather than letting it wait and the same applies to, say, G1. The deletion debates are pretty crowded and there is no need to clutter them up with easy cases. And thanks to eveyone for the feedback. Eluchil404 22:01, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Some of them are just because someone has gone to Wikipedia:Deletion policy or some other page and seen "Articles for deletion" and thought it was the appropriate place. Something being on AfD does not necessarily mean that the nominator was familiar with the speedy deletion criteria or thought that the deletion would be controversial. —Centrx→talk • 11:04, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd say that tagging an article on AfD for speedy deletion is indeed appropriate in cases like this, where the article turns out to be speedy deletable for some other reason than what it was put on AfD for. However, if the article is on AfD because it's not clear whether it meets a particular speedy criterion or not, I'd recommend expressing your opinion on the matter on the AfD page. Generally enough admins do look at recent AfD nominations that any "speedy delete" comments there do get noticed and acted on fairly promptly. Of course, if it does happen that an article lingers on AfD for more than a day with a clear consensus to speedy delete, tagging it with something like "{{db|see AfD page}}" may be a good idea. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:36, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

If speedy was already considered by an admin and declined and proded or AFDed instead, then don't tag for speedy deletion again. If new information has come to light, for example that it was newly discovered to be a repost or blanked by the author, then tagging for speedy is appropriate. —Quarl ^(talk) 2007-01-01 22:36Z

I think that adding a speedy tag to an article undergoing an AfD process is an open invitation to delete the article out of process and leaving this door open is an invitation to conflict. However, as there is wide consensus here that it's ok to have an article coexist in multiple deletion processes, I won't act in a manner conflicting with that consensus. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:27, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Speedy deletion is a process too, so provided the article meets the criteria for speedy deletion, I don't see how speedying an article while at AfD is "out-of-process". The speedy criteria are intended to describe the sort of articles that we do not want under any circumstances; if an article meets the speedy criteria, it should be deleted – Gurch 20:43, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

User who repeatedly uploads untagged images

I was wondering what should be done about Abono para sembrar flor (talk · contribs). They have repeatedly uploaded images without providing copyright or source information and have ignored (and possibly cannot understand in this case) all messages left on their talk page. It appears as if their native language is Spanish. Right now all the images they have uploaded have been tagged for deletion unless information has been provided, and if this continues it will just create unnecessary work for admins who have to delete these images later. VegaDark 08:49, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Warned him in Babelfish Spanish. I really need to practice more :(—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 08:55, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

If the warnings do not work, I would suggest an indef. block for the user. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 00:23, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Spanish wasn't perfect, but it was definitely good enough to understand. :) -Patstuart^talk|edits 17:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia promoting small wikis

Unfortunately some Iranian wikipedians has started another wiki for Iran related articles. The reason seems to be that wikipedia guidelines and policies was not tolerable for them. For example User:Zereshk wrote on his talk page:

"I may manage to spend the time editing some articles on the WikIran project. WikIran is a far more reliable source on Iran, far from partisan propaganda editors and sadistic admins." [1]

And he wrote on Persian Wikipedia village pump:

این حقیر و برخی دوستان دیگر که جانمان از ویکیپدیای انگلیسی به لبمان رسیده خود دست به راه اندازی پروژه جدید و مشابه ای زده ایم تا بلکه بدور از هیاهو و جهت گیریهای سیاسی به نوشتن یک دایره المعارف بی طرف, غنی, و ویژه ایران بپردازیم.

means that:

We (He himself and his friends) are completely hopeless from English Wikipedia so we are going to start a simillar project to...

And that project is WikIran. Most of it's articles are completely copied from english wikipedia. I have no problem with that project but they are abusing wikipedia to promote their website. As it said on WP:EL#Advertising_and_conflicts_of_interest:

Due to the rising profile of Wikipedia and the amount of extra traffic it can bring a site, there is a great temptation to use Wikipedia to advertise or promote links. This includes both commercial and non-commercial sites. You should avoid linking to a website that you own, maintain or represent, even if the guidelines otherwise imply that it should be linked.

It's against guidelines to put huge number of links to that website. I informed that user about this two days ago [2] and today I removed those advertising links to that wiki (about 50 links) Special:Contributions/Armandeh But now User:Khodavand (which he is from that wiki as he stated on his talk page) reverted them all. I don't want to start an edit war. Please warn those users to stop advertising on english wikipedia. Forgetting that guideline, I remember that when I started to conribute on WikiTravel they told me not to link to LonelyPlanet website as we are trying to write the same things here. This is similar to what is happening to Iran related articles on English Wikipedia. Hessam 23:58, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

There is a built in way to cross-link...why don't they use that? ---J.S ^(T/C) 05:18, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by built in way? You mean interwiki? Hessam 08:36, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Isn't the right to fork true of all Wikimedia projects? That site will still be GNU licensed since it borrows existing GNU material, which means Wikipedia can use any improvements they create. Please explain further if I'm missing the point...I don't see a significant difference from other forks and mirrors who accept advertising. Durova^Charge! 06:57, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem is when the forked project tries to add links to itself from Wikipedia. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 07:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Taking into account the number of links being inserted, and the fact that User:Zereshk, an experienced editor, created a blatantly unacceptable (notability guidelines) article about his wiki (which is being discussed on AfD), I can't help thinking they're trying to use Wikipedia as free publicity/a recruiting ground for their wiki. yandman 08:45, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I see what I missed... this project is not an official wiki. Never-mind about my suggestion. Nuke any wiki-spam as if it wasn't wikispam. No special rules apply. ---J.S ^(T/C) 15:57, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Just for the record here, I can safely claim that over 75% (if not more) of the entire content of English Wikipedia's articles related to Iran was written or coauthored by me. Before I came, all of Iran's articles were mere stubs or non-existent. You can check my content edits, which near 20000. So the least I expect, if not any gratitude for helping turn WP into the first source of information for Iran, is for people to stop using WP as vehciles of personal vendetta against me. (Ive already posted an example of admin User:Armandeh's vulgar posts to me here). If you want to accuse me of something, at least have a good reason, and accuse me of something, not because I helped expand WP and WikIran.--Zereshk 03:55, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I consider this as a Personal Attack. Experienced users know that If someone has huge number of contibutions on wikipedia it doesn't mean he is good user either. For example they will look at your block log and find out your spamming background. As I'm an administrator on persian wikipedia I know what you do to gain votes from other projects to destroy AfDs or Arbitrations.[3]

I want you (All admins) to watch this AfD against invited voters as spamming is going to happen again [4]. Hessam 08:51, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

See here for a more general question. yandman 09:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

{{bite}}

Hey peeps. I got fed up with WP:BITing, so I created {{bite}}. Use it on those overzealous NPP individuals who mistag newbies' articles within seconds of creation. See e.g. my inaugural use of the template here in response to this. Emendations and feedback on the text of the template will be appreciated etc. The syntax is ths usual: {{subst:bite|article name}}. Thanks. - crz crztalk 02:35, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

The stop sign and the "completely unacceptable" might be a little too aggressive. After all you don't want the template to break WP:BITE for the newcomers to NPP ;-) Prodego ^talk 02:40, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Personally, I don't think such a template is helpful. Even if the wording ("completely unacceptable", threatening a block) was changed to be less confrontational in tone, I think a personal note of why you disagreed with the tagging of a speedy deletion is much better than placing a template that really doesn't explain much, especially given that the person who tagged the article in the first place may be inexperienced, and the template itself may be seen as a form of biting. Thanks. Flcelloguy (A note?) 02:42, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

A block threat too? I didn't notice that, that is a bit over the top. Prodego ^talk 02:44, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

• (arg 3x edit conflict!) I already changed your wording [5] to avoid biting NP patrollers. :) —Quarl ^(talk) 2007-01-03 02:41Z —Quarl ^(talk) 2007-01-03 02:43Z

(edit conflicts) If this is your first template, will I be in trouble if I speedy it? I would modify some of the language in the template a bit (unless you are going to create multiple levels of warning here, which would probably be overkill). Here are my first-cut suggestions (language suggested to be deleted in strikeout, to be added in italic), I'm sure there will be some others:

"Please do not bite newcomers! Wikipedia grows by making new editors feel welcome and giving them time to learn how our website works. See WP:BITE. Your tagging of /article name/ for speedy deletion was completely unacceptable not appropriate because its author is a newbie relatively new editor and had not had time to develop the new article, or the tag was applied inappropriately page did not warrant speedy deletion, or both. Mistreating newcomers discourages them from contributing and becoming productive editors here. Repeated instances may result in a block. Thank you and please let me know if you have any questions."

This template would only be appropriate in clear BITE cases. In good-faith cases, a more tailored warning should probably be used. Newyorkbrad 02:46, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

(lotsa conflict) Well... Have you not seen those certain users who bite by the dozen without so much as a note? I think the eventuality of a block is not farfetched, though I've certainly never done it nor seen it done. It's been removed, regardless. - crz crztalk 02:47, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think anyone disagrees with the concept of telling the recidivist biters to ease up. I think WP:BITE when correctly applied is a great thing about this site. It's purely a question of style and wording. Newyorkbrad 02:49, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Especially to the extent that the present version contravenes WP:TJATTBDWBSI (that would be, FWIW, the Jews are trying to bring down Wikipedia by splitting infinitives). Joe 04:38, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I made it much less confrontational (perhaps too much so), so take another look. Prodego ^talk 02:51, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Awww peeps - you have emasculated my baby. Now the warnees would simply scoff at it. At least put back the hand! - crz crztalk 02:53, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

It's an issue of irony/hypocracy - biting someone when asking them not to bite. I suppose we've inadvertently bitten Crzrussian with all the edit conflicts here, biting him when asking him not to bite when asking others not to bite, sorry about that :) —Quarl ^(talk) 2007-01-03 02:58Z

P.S. "new levels of meta-irony" —Quarl ^(talk) 2007-01-03 03:00Z

's ok. I am not a newb. I am unbitten. I will probably create a private text that's a lot stronger than this and use it on severe offenders. I think y'all are way too soft on these people. They are seriously the #1 bane of Wikipedia, worse than the edit warriors. n00bs are our biggest asset, and I have already heard a hundred times on and offwiki that we are regarded, rightly or wrongly, as a bureaucratic morass where good faith contributors who don't know our ways have to put up with overzealous NPP goons competing as if for first place in some perverted contest with their fancy Javascript tools. I have posted last week about WP:NPW, asking if people thought that thing was deleterious to the project overall - there were no takers. Seriously though, the problem needs solving. I've been making trouble at RfA with it for a couple of months now, but that apparently did not strike enough fear into the relevant hearts. If the crz problem-solving methods are too rough-hewn for all of you, I understand that, but then do better things yourselves, please. - crz crztalk 03:06, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

btw, does anyone know the definition of "hypocracy"? Does "rule by the lowly ones" fit? lol - crz crztalk 03:10, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Noob-biting is the number-one bane of the 'pedia? I would've said lack of sources, but maybe that's just me. Anyways, I understand where you're coming from about the NPP thingy - this automated new-page-patrol tool surprised me too. (The again, I couldn't even figure out how to install AWB once I downloaded it, so maybe I'm not one to comment on these tools.) But giving stop-hand emblazoned, robotic, and somewhat patronizing warnings to contributors who are working, in good faith, to clean up the encyclopedia isn't going to help. Why not just type them an explanation of what actions of theirs that you disagree with, direct them to the relevant policy, and save block warnings for when they haven't stopped after two or three personalized, situation-specific warnings? In short, I think the template isn't really going to work out. Picaroon 03:16, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

(de-indent) I've said this on a couple of RfA's, but nowhere more public: as much as I agree that some of the NP patrollers think they're playing an MMORPG and are leveling up by racing each other to bad articles, is quick speedy-tagging really "biting"? If I were a newcomer who had written a blatantly deficient article, I'd like to be informed of it quickly, rather than coming back a few days later to find my one creation swept into the wastebin hours after I considered it "finished". We'd also like to see enthusiastic newbie effort going toward something productive - even a well-written and polished article about a lame garage band is still an article about a lame garage band; no sense in letting them pour more time and effort into something that is never going to pass muster. Also, obligatory general objection to talking in templates. Opabinia regalis 03:24, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

It's mostly the immediate mistagging that I am worried about. "Jane is stupid" can be tagged before creation for all I care. It's good faith legitimate efforts that are getting swept up. As for refernencing, we can always fix it up over time in established articles. But without contributors we are dead. - crz crztalk 03:34, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I've seen the kind of biting you describe sometimes, but agree with Picaroon that it's not the "#1 bane". I think the first message should be a very friendly reminder, not a threat to block. Anyway, you're free to use stronger wording, I just wouldn't put it in a template. —Quarl ^(talk) 2007-01-03 03:54Z

But there are plenty of "good-faith" but totally misguided new articles created - mostly people's garage bands, from what I've noticed. Does tagging these fall under your definition of biting? To pull a random example of the speedy queue, I doubt the creator of Phazm meant it in bad faith, but there's nothing encyclopedic about it. It was tagged 3 minutes after creation and a talk-page template was left for the author: is that a bite situation in your view? Opabinia regalis 04:09, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is having a problem with incivility in general (anyone biting anyone, not just newbies) and with oversensitivity about being bitten (Bob:You were rude - you should be blocked for always being so incivil. John:No I just disagreed with you. Tom:Well as his friend but uninvolved in this fight, I'm going to block you. ...) I'm not sure the problem is getting worse, but we certainly aren't handling it well. WAS 4.250 04:49, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

• Two things: First, repeated and unashamed WP:BITEing is disruptive. We can block for that. A personally written warning is likely to be of more help than a template, though. Second, placing obstacles in the way of patrolling and tagging new pages might well be counter-productive. It has been noted that spending too much time at The Frehose Of Crap makes one jaded. We should recommend that people take time off to do Other Stuff^TM. It is not easy to tell the difference between version 1.0 of a band vanity article and version 1.0 of a valid article, so perhaps we should soften the wording in the {{db}} class templates to point out that this is not personal. Guy (Help!) 12:43, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

• • Hahaha - crz crztalk 13:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Isn't this a simple rehash of the perennial proposal that articles may not be deleted within a certain time period after their creation? >Radiant< 14:01, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't it take like several hours before an admin even sees a speedy tagged article nowadays? Anyway stuff that really doesn't meet a CSD is still hopefully untagged by the admin. I create plenty of articles and nothing ever gets tagged for speedy deletion... create decent articles (formatted, categories, etc.) and you don't have to deal with people on the lookout for bad articles. Pretty simple. --W.marsh 14:08, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

No. Herbert Saffir was tagged within 20 minutes of my re-creating it, and speedied 3 minutes after it was tagged. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Argyriou (talk • contribs) 17:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC).

Looks like you lost the csd lottery then. Lame, yes, but I'm not sure there's much we can do about it. Someone has to go first. --tjstrf talk 18:12, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

An incivil template is not the awnser to incivility. Part of the problem with wikipedia is TOO MANY DAMN TEMPLATES. :p Just say what you want to say. ---J.S ^(T/C) 15:54, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Somebody drops that nasty template on me and it will be deleted without comment. Removal of garbage is not biting newbies, it's cleaning up trash and vandalism. User:Zoe|(talk) 20:17, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

• Well, it can be both, I guess. People doing new page patrol should take care when deleting a page to welcome the users and try to leave a friendly and positive message (I use {{chinup}}). Pages can be trash but their creators may still have potential. You never know who's going to grow into a good contributor. Herostratus 05:36, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I got jaded doing new page patrolling, but a monh or two ago, I tagged many, many articles within a minute of creation, and yes, quite a few withing seconds and often got beat to it by others doing NPP. Apart from obvious spam, I tagged many articles with db-bio for being non-notable. Now one could argue I should wait an hour or two and come back and see if the user added more info, but the whole system of tagging gives the user a chance to say they are going to add to the article with a holdon. Sometimes admins would remove the speedy tag and change to a prod if they felt there was some doubt and I think this works well. If I have to wait an hour to check the article again, it's a no go, on a busy night I might tag 50-100 articles, and there is no way to keep a notepad of articles and wait and see if certain articles improve. If I felt that I'm going to be tagged for biting when I'm doing vandal fighting and new page patrol, I would be hesitant to bother to do the work. --ArmadilloFromHellGateBridge 06:07, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree that many articles can and should be speedy tagged instantly, but for those where additional work may show the required notability (say, articles about bands), waiting a bit can't do much harm. However, this means that we need more people doing time-delayed new page patrol (TM), i.e. going to the new pages, moving down to the 500th or 1000th most recent raticle (some 12 hours old or so), and start digging through those. It is amazing how many of those pages are still fit for either speedy, prod, or merge... Fram 09:52, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Selective deletion for vandalism?

I have a question about version deletion. WP:DGFA#Version deletion says only to do version deletion for vandalism in extreme cases like where personal information is revealed, etc. Is it a common practice? Does it have to be agreed on somewhere? If there's an article whose last 50 edits going back 6 months is nothing but simple vandalism, is it okay to delete those last 50 edits? —Wknight94 (talk) 15:53, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

• Generally it's seen as a waste of administrator time to delete simple vandalism. There's no real harm in leaving it around... and there are literally millions of instances of it sitting around. I mean, if you really want to I seriously doubt you'll catch any flak, but it just is a bit unusual. I don't really see the point though personally. --W.marsh 17:22, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Does it cause any GFDL issues like WP:DGFA mentions? —Wknight94 (talk) 17:42, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Not usualy... unless the vandalism was "fixed" and incorperated into the article. Otherwise, if it's just reverted it's not part of the chain of edits. ---J.S ^(T/C) 17:45, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
• It would be wrong to do so: a) there is no need for 'tidy' page histories (have someone use their WP:OVERREACH if really earth-endingly important) and being able to see how a page is edited is useful; b)more importantly, it also removes those edits from the editors' contribs lists. Then their editing histories and patterns cannot be seen (without admin rights) and this has obvious consequences, particularly if an admin needs to evaluate whether/when/not to apply a block. 137.222.189.198 16:45, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Modify template

Could someone please modify Template:DANFS, a protected template, so that it adds all pages on which it's used to this category? Nyttend 20:03, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Done – Gurch 20:27, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Protection

Kriss Donald Re: Users cannot get along obviosly angry. Tried to help but seems like there is not much I can do. Request protection for 1 day at most to let them cool down. Thanks for your time, --Darkest Hour ^$_$^$_$ 20:09, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi Darkest Hour. I have avoided editing the article so far so do not really need to cool down. The other people who have edited are an unregistered user and "strothra". If anyone would care to go through the discussion page they will see that I have had lengthly discussions with those who disagree with me. I have outlined my position and where I believe undue weight policy supports it. I think it would be more useful for people to contribute to the discussion and address the issues on policy, rather than locking the article. --Guardian sickness 21:04, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Be ready for some POV edits to narcissism articles

Hi folks, apologies for the long post. The following is a chopped-down letter sent by a "Sam Vaknin" to some of his mailing lists... the general gist of it is that we can expect several POV edits to List of further reading on narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder, Narcissism (psychology), and Narcissistic personality disorder. Some would be good, but I think we should put these three articles under greater scrutiny for a little while. --Deathphoenix ʕ 20:20, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

... BUT

There is something you can do.

The Wikipedia entries for Narcissism (Psychology) and Narcissistic Personality Disorder are laughable and contain numerous inaccuracies, urban legends and utter nonsense.

Some parts of the entries are borrowed verbatim from my work (without attribution or credit, without my permission, and despite numerous protests and notices of copyright infringement issued by my publisher). But about 60% of the text require urgent revisions or outright deletion.

Anyone can edit the entries. All you have to do is click on the edit button in the upper navigation bar of the article. You can change the text, add external links, add references to literature, citations, and anything else you deem relevant. I encourage to give it a try.

Click on these links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_further_reading_on_narcissism_and_narcissistic_personality_disorder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_%28psychology%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder

Have a great year!

Sam Vaknin

--Deathphoenix ʕ 20:20, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

• If the article really is based mostly on a copyvio we should reduce it to a stub and just start over. --W.marsh 21:28, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
  • That's assuming it's true. If it is, I'd agree, but I'd like to see what portion of our text he feels is copyvio before we start stubbifying it. --Deathphoenix ʕ 21:31, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

• Yes, he may mean that 60% he agrees with so assumes is based on his work :-) Guy (Help!) 22:33, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

As you can see from these diffs, most of the complainant's work has been expunged from the articles

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Narcissism_%28psychology%29&diff=98281543&oldid=30605408

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Narcissistic_personality_disorder&diff=98238115&oldid=34362845

mostly on the grounds that it was neither accurate, cited nor verifiable, and replaced by accurate, verifiable text instead from a number of sources.

I have personally asked the poster, on more than one occasion, to specify any text he feel is in copyvio and I will, remove it (which he cannot do himself as he is on indefinate ban for repeated sockpuppetry see User:Samvak) I have yet to recieve an answer. --Zeraeph 00:09, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I have just blanked a small section of Narcissism (psychology) [6] that he might claim was a copyvio (see [7], though he reposted it himself after it was blanked due to copyright concerns [8]. It seems best to blank it, partly for the sake of peace and quiet and partly with the intention of re-writing it in a properly cited and verified form. It is the only possible copyvio I can find in any of these articles --Zeraeph 06:22, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Threats

Editor made a veiled threat to have me blocked [9] and again another veiled, but somewhat more direct, threat [10]. --Strothra 20:31, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I was just trying to let you guys know that things did not have to be so heated. If you did not realize I spoke to the other guy(i dont know who)at the help desk. Now I would like to state my comment again, Can we talk like civil humans with out acting liking raging hulks? One last thing I am quite new (2 or 3 mths). Now all I wanted is to settle this nicely. Now this is not a threat, I will bring in some one I know will help. She is quite kind and patient. So just stick it out, have fun. Thanks guys, --Darkest Hour ^$_$^$_$ 20:40, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

It should be pointed out that this issue arises from the article on the racist killing of Kriss Donald. An unregistered user had been reverting this article, which I have contributed to in a lenghtly discussion. I am still learning about Wikipedia and its policy, but have never come across a user like Strothra. He has threatened to have me blocked from editing for removing information which does not conform to the undue weight policy [[11]]

He seems to have contributed about 8 or 9 words to the discussion and considers himself not just beyond reproach - but beyond discussion. It just won't do. I have tried for many months to achieve balance in discussing this article with those who disagree with me, but Strothra and an unregistered user have other ideas on "civilised discussion". --Guardian sickness 20:53, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

As a yank, I am unaware of the circumstances surrounding this murder; however, based on the article itself (the sections OTHER than the one disputed), it seems that removing an entire section based on the debate regarding racial motivation is NOT in line with the undue weight policy (at least, not in the way you are applying it). It seems to be far too long in comparison with the rest of the article and should be trimmed and significantly rewritten, but I don't think it should be removed entirely, unless your position is that a negligible number of people call the murder racially-motivated, which if true makes the uncontested sprinklings of racial motivation/tension throughout the article incorrect as well. —bbatsell ¿? 21:30, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I re-read that and am not entirely sure I conveyed what I wished to express clearly. Basically, it's okay to have minority viewpoints in articles as long as they are sourced and they are not misrepresented as majority viewpoints. It seems that your argument has been that the views are so far in the minority that they should not be represented, but the section you have removed cites some fairly notable sources espousing that viewpoint. Thus, they should be represented, but the section should be slimmed down significantly. Regards, —bbatsell ¿? 21:36, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi Bbatsell, you will see in the discussion that I have taken issue with the inclusion of those who claim the murder was not racially motivated on the grounds that they are a tiny minority. Wikipedia policy states “If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents.” The crux of this issue is whether one professor of politics, and one BBC investigative journalist can be described as "prominent". My contention is that they are not prominent and in the waves of coverage surrounding the case in the UK their views constitute those of a tiny minority.

The policy seems quite explicit and I do not believe my interpretation of it is flawed. I would like to ask you and anyone else who reads this how that section of the article can possibly be consistent with the above Wikipedia policy on "prominent adherents"? I just don't see it and have consistently argued my point based on policy. --Guardian sickness 22:01, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I guess it would depend on how prominent those two particular people were (if there really are no other people espousing that viewpoint). I did completely misread your position, though; I thought you were advocating that the majority position is that the murder was was not racially motivated, so for that I apologize. I think a small section on the opposing viewpoint is going to be the easiest solution and will garner consensus, as long as (as I wrote above) the text does not represent that the debate is a large or contentious one, but rather one held by a few, and then they would be named. I think the reason this particular debate became a larger one is because the section (which was long) was removed entirely, rather than edited down to be a more accurate representation of the truth. That is what I think is the best course of action to take. —bbatsell ¿? 22:12, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

“ Please be aware that these pages are not the place to bring disputes over content, or reports of abusive behaviour — we're not referees, and have limited authority to deal with abusive editors. We have a dispute resolution procedure which we recommend you follow. Please take such disputes to requests for comment, requests for mediation, or requests for arbitration rather than here. Please do not post slurs of any kind on this page, and note that any messages that egregiously violate Wikipedia's civility or personal attacks policies will be removed. ”

Thanks, ---J.S ^(T/C) 22:32, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

User:Squidward Tentacles

Came accross Squidward Tentacles (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) on WP:AIV after s/he got blocked. It seems to ring a bell about my early wiki days when there was a Squidward vandal. Coincidence or pattern? Agathoclea 20:58, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I've been talking to the blocking admin about this, and I'm not sure. I don't think its SQUIDWARD as the deleted LTV page on them said it was entirely an open proxy ip vandal. Page is [12] if other admins want to look at it, it was blanked by Jimbo as a courtesy when he was having conversations with the vandal. Syrthiss 21:02, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

A petulant and totally unjustified block

User:InShaneee blocked me for 24 hours, accusing me of vandalism [13]. I just wanted to bring to someone's attention the fact that this was utterly untrue, and InShaneee blocked me simply because I removed a tag claiming an article for his 'paranormal' wikiproject, because the article had nothing to do with the paranormal. I found this extremely offensive and would like someone else to offer their opinion on this admin's actions. It really won't take you long at all to assess whether I vandalised anything - I've got very few edits. Special:Contributions/81.178.208.69 lists all of them (less than 10). Thanks. 81.178.208.69 23:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Well just to note that Red Rain in Kerala does seem paranormal. You should first discuss the changes on the talk page first. — Arjun 23:53, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

• Eh it really doesn't look like the anon did anything but edit war with Inshanee on the talk page. InShaneee shouldn't have blocked someone he was in a dispute with, such as it was, and shouldn't have said it was a block for vandalism when it clearly wasn't. The anon should have discussed the issue rather just edit warred. But the block has expired and there's no sense crying over spilt milk, really. --W.marsh 23:56, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I would have discussed, if I hadn't been prevented by being blocked. The point is less whether red rain in Kerala is paranormal or not (and I don't see how organic material in comets could remotely be considered paranormal), than whether this admin acted appropriately by a) blocking someone he was in dispute with, and b) giving a dishonest reason. I think it's very patronising to talk of spilt milk, when this is not about my block but about an administrator who directly contravened policy. That's rather more important and should, I think, be taken a little bit seriously. 81.178.208.69 00:01, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

No, the point is if the article is under the umbrella of a project your not associated with at all. InShaneee should have gotten someone else to block you, but the block was valid. ---J.S ^(T/C) 00:15, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict and beaten to the punch by JS) Please keep in mind that the template you removed simply indicated the article was being watched or edited by a Wikiproject; in this case, it does NOT mean that the incident is definitively related to the paranormal or any such thing, it simply means that the Paranormal Wikiproject has agreed to contribute to the page (because of the proposed theory discussed on the article page). Removing content from talk pages while not refactoring or archiving is vandalism and you should have been blocked in my view. With that said, InShaneee should have asked another administrator to review the situation and take appropriate action. —bbatsell ¿? 00:16, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

What utter rubbish. Wikipedia:Vandalism says nothing about removing things from talk pages automatically being vandalism. You obviously don't understand the policy. Did you look at my edit summaries? Did you notice that I am not the only one who doesn't agree with this wikiproject sticking their noses in? And the article was getting on just fine without 'paranormal' people getting their project onto it. It's not like anyone asked them to help, as you seem to be implying. 81.178.208.69 00:27, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Separate from the merits of the block, I'm concerned that this editor apparently posted the "unblock" template at 11:38 (UTC) today, no admin reviewed it, and the block remained in effect unreviewed until it expired by time at 23:34. I am wondering if there was some problem with the unblock template, or whether the requests listed in "category:requests for unblock" should be listed in time order or should have the time of the request accompanying the username/ip. Newyorkbrad 00:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I normally review the unblocks each morning, but today I was working on my new bot. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 00:23, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

The template isn't "broken" ... it's just that, honestly, who are these admins who are updating the What links here to {{unblock}} often? I haven't seen them. HighInBC says he reviews them once a day. That's more often than 99% of the other admins out there. --Cyde Weys 01:04, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

As I understand it, an admin doesn't have to check for links to the template; aren't all pending unblock requests listed at <category:Requests for unblock>? I still think it might be helpful if they could be listed in the order the request was posted, or marked with which ones have been reviewed by a previously uninvolved admin and which haven't, or something. Newyorkbrad 01:09, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Explaining to 81.178.208.69 why the Wikiproject tag is no big deal is all well and good, but I'm afraid it doesn't do much to address what I'm having a rather hard time not interpreting as an abuse of the block button by InShaneee. Instead of criticizing 81.178.208.69, we should be apologizing. As far as I can see, he wasn't even warned about our policies regarding edit-warring; and to call what he did "vandalism"... well, go read Wikipedia:Vandalism if you think it might have been. It wasn't. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 00:23, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I have to concur. Initially both this IP user and Inshanee were using Edit Summaries to discuss the issue, rather than using the talk page. That's a bad idea, but far more forgivable for a newbie than an admin. Inshanee then both warned and blocked the IP at virtually the same time - telling him that he was the only one who disagreed, and for the first time telling him that he should take it up on the discussion page. [14], [15] (I've got to wonder how the IP was supposed to do that given that he was being blocked. In any event, Inshanee hadn't followed his own advice, so it's hard to expect a newbie to know to do so.) Look, we've been over this ground before - it's "spilled milk," but I'm afraid we do need to address this incident in at least some form (particularly since it involves biting a newcomer). Just my two cents.--TheOtherBob 00:26, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I've left a note drawing InShaneee's attention to this discussion. Newyorkbrad 00:28, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Concur with Bunchofgrapes and others above. Even if it had been vandalism, this block would be wrong, and criticizing 81.178.208.69 when he takes it to the administrators' noticeboard is even more wrong. Admins are supposed to be held to a higher standard, newbies are supposed to be cut extra slack, and all editors are supposed to be warned before they're blocked, unless there's some extraordinary hurry about it. 81.178.208.69, I apologize for Wikipedia. Bishonen | talk 00:49, 4 January 2007 (UTC).

Well he did edit war rather than discuss. I don't buy that admins are never allowed to critisize new users/whatever subset of users, the new user here was acting in good faith but still sort of in the wrong and that he was edit warring. This was a situation where you expect an admin to try to help a new user understand what's going on and the need for discussion, rather than just block them and walk away. Still, if you get reverted, new user or admin, the best thing to do is post an explanation and request an answer, not just keep reverting back and arguing in edit summaries. --W.marsh 01:05, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

This seems to be an increasing problem of administrator's overstepping their charge. (I expect this will be reverted simply for saying this). --FuitOfTheLoon 01:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Administrators are human beings. Some make mistakes once in a while. There are over 900 of them and it's unfair to characterize the good, hard-working administrators that are out there like this. --BigDT 01:10, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I did just block said user. However, he's Cplot (talk · contribs), so he's used to that. Cheerio. Mackensen (talk) 01:14, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

LOL, well, at least you didn't revert him just for saying that. ;) --BigDT 01:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

No good faith edit is ever vandalism. But more importantly than that ... any time we add categories or talk page headers, we need to keep things like this in mind, because they can be offensive. If you add something to a Wikiproject, you are characterizing that topic, even though that isn't necessarilly your intention. If you characterize something that is important to someone (like their religion, culture, viewpoints, etc) as something that it is not, that can be offensive and should be discussed. --BigDT 01:10, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I think the project template thing is getting out of hand. I have removed a project template from an article talk page[16] because I thought it was completely inappropriate to the article. -- Donald Albury 02:41, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Good grief! Blocking someone because edit warring over a template? What the...? No. Just plain no. Even if a person is 100% wrong according to every reliable source, you talk. You try to explain. You work with them. You listen. You do not block. I'm with the above. We draw breath only as long as we keep conversing, keep learning, keep improving. In this particular case, things are even worse. Unless there is a massive history here that the blocking administrator didn't feel like sharing, these blocks are out of line. Geogre 03:40, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

If this isn't reason enough to form an RfAr, I don't know what is. - A Link to the Past (talk) 04:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

An arbitration case about a 24-hour IP block, no matter what the circumstances, will more-than-likely be summarily rejected by ArbCom. They gave their thoughts on a similar, yet arguably more severe, case[17], two days ago; (0/7/0/0). Daniel.Bryant ^{[ T · C ]} 06:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

This is just the straw that broke the camel's back. This is certainly not the first thing he's ever done, and not the worst thing - and considering that this block is so unbelievably illegitimate and wrong, that speaks to the severity of his other actions. Wheel warring, vindictive blocks, punitive blocks, edit warring, abusing AWB, calling people vandals when he disagrees with their edits, criticizing people for calling others trolls when he does it often, protecting pages to suit his wants and needs, and of course, assuming bad faith. After all of this, I cannot see how he can be allowed to be an admin. He clearly hasn't shown ANY caution after receiving an RfC, where he had many people supporting the idea that he has at least done something wrong, with many agreeing he has acted poorly as an administrator. The man thinks that his role here is to govern the lesser Wikipedians, which he has shown by his constant demands for non-admins to show him respect. - A Link to the Past (talk) 08:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

He's right; that's exactly what I think. --InShaneee 13:45, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

The above comment by InShaneee is why he is soooo bad an admin, he banned me for 72 hours for the crime of incivility and not respecting him and THEN called me a Douche! The admins here must look into his history as an admin then strip him of that rank and position. PS when is he going to get his ban for calling me a douche? 72 hours is the minimum i want! Hypnosadist 01:15, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it should be pointed out that, contrary to statements made above, this was not a case of biting a newbie. Worldtraveller (aka 81.178.208.69) [18] has been a registered user since August of 2004. — MediaMangler 14:06, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

• Was it WorldTraveller? Did he know that? If so, it would have been really helpful to use the noticeboards to seek input. That's what AN/I is supposed to exist for. On-wiki, not off, and with consultation, not without, and with discussion. Geogre 14:29, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the anonymous editor in this case was me, dropping by after a few months away and wanting to do so anonymously. InShanee is not really guilty of biting a newbie, though he had no way of knowing that he wasn't, and I was guilty of making my case via edit summaries instead of on the talk page. What doesn't change, though, is that InShanee's block of me was unjustified, he used his administrating tools to gain the upper hand in a dispute, and the reason he gave for the block was dishonest. Worldtraveller 15:41, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. What he was doing could be said as attempting to bite a newbie. InShaneee could not have known that this user was not a newbie - he blocked him thinking of him as a newbie and ignoring a spotless block log (that, if this really were a newbie, would now blemished by an abusive and, let's face it, mediocre administrator). I don't blame anyone for thinking that Wikipedia is getting worse by the day - people like InShaneee ruin it for everyone but themselves. - A Link to the Past (talk) 23:19, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't know anything about the history of InShanee's interaction with the various others posting here nor why such a level of hostility has been expressed, but this attitude of "I've already made my judgement, don't bother me with facts" is troubling. The claim has been made that InShanee could not have known that he wasn't dealing with a newbie, but I don't understand how anyone could have failed to recognize it. It seems obvious to me that a newbie's first action is not going to be to assert ownership of an article to the extent of removing a project template from a talkpage without any discussion. Clearly InShanee should not have labelled the block "vandalism", but I'm not sure I see any other fault in his action. Worldtraveller, on the other hand, does not own the article simply because he wrote the original and he should not be given a pass on WP:OWN just by using an anon account. — MediaMangler 08:34, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Well I don't think it's terribly relevant whether anyone knew whether the IP was someone old or someone new. The fact remains that this block was completely outrageous. If you can't see anything wrong other than the dishonest labelling, let me outline what I see as wrong with it:

Going through WP:BP, let's see whether the block was covered by it. Was the block to protect the rights, property or safety of the Wikimedia Foundation, its users or the public? No. Was it for personal attacks or making threats? No. 3RR? Not by a very long way. Was it for disruption? No, because Disagreements over content or policy are not disruption, and this was a disagreement over the content, not even of an article, but of a talk page. Was it because I am a banned user? No. So, there were not any legitimate grounds to block me. Now, let's look at 'when not to block': Blocking to gain an advantage in a content dispute is strictly prohibited. Did InShaneee do that? Yes he did. Sysops must not block editors with whom they are currently engaged in a content dispute. Did InShaneee do that? Yes he did.

As has been noted, I've been here a while. In all that time this is probably the worst abuse of administrative powers I've had any direct experience of (though not nearly as bad as the outrageous block on Giano that kicked off a massively destructive chain of events). In addition, it seems to me that InShaneee treats his fellow editors with some contempt, as you can see by his assertion that he does indeed see it as his role to govern them, and he treats his fellow administrators with contempt by ignoring this discussion and conspicuously failing to justify his actions. If this isn't his first abuse of administrative tools then I think there is a problem that needs to be resolved. Worldtraveller 12:04, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Please be careful tossing around terms like "dishonest". Note the disparity between your own claim at the beginning of this section "I've got very few edits. Special:Contributions/81.178.208.69 lists all of them (less than 10)" and your current "I've been here awhile". I assume you simply misspoke the first time and actually meant "the account that was blocked has very few edits", just as I assume that InShanee simply made a mistake in labelling and had no intent to be inaccurate. — MediaMangler 12:33, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, given that there was no justification in the policy for the block, and given that even if there had been, InShaneee would have been prohibited by the policy from applying a block, and given that one would expect administrators to have read and understood the blocking policy quite thoroughly, I think InShaneee quite consciously ignored the policy. Not much room left for assuming good faith on his part when that much is clear, I'm afraid. I am interested to know whether you stand by your claim that there was no fault in InShaneee's actions. I'd also like to hear InShaneee's justification for the block. Oh, and by the way, in what conceivable way is removing an inappropriate tag from a talk page trying to own an article? Worldtraveller 13:23, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I didn't say there was no fault in his actions, only that I'm not sure I see any fault. I don't feel qualified to judge how well his block complies with every jot and tittle of policy. Given WP:IAR, I'm not sure I can ever understand Wiki policy well enough to make such judgements. My concern was that those making the judgement have the full facts in hand. It is your opinion that the tag was inappropriate, several others disagree. (Frankly, if I ever experience blood-red rain falling on me, my first thoughts are likely to be about something paranormal!) You removed a tag from the talkpage of an article which you have no current intent to edit (since you claim to be on wikibreak), thereby disrupting the efforts of that project. Tagging the talkpage was simply an indication of the intent by members of that project to edit. You certainly have no right to tell the members of that project that they may not edit the article. You're free to argue that the term "paranormal" should not be associated with this article, but surely you should discuss that with those others who also choose to edit the article. — MediaMangler 14:06, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, did my explanation not help you see where fault might be percieved? If you don't feel qualified to judge whether or not the block complied with policy, then why are you participating in this discussion? Sorry to be blunt, but this forum is not to discuss what you or I think of red rain in Kerala but to discuss whether an administrator's actions were justifiable. How about sticking to talking about the merits of the administrator's actions, and stopping accusing me of trying to own things, of trying to tell people what they can edit, of disruption, and whatever other offensive and untrue accusations you might be thinking of making. Worldtraveller 15:11, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

You asked me for my opinion of the merits of the block. I fail to see how anyone can evaluate the merits of the block without evaluating the appropriateness of the actions for which you were blocked. I tried to present my opinion of your actions in as diffident and diplomatic manner as I could. I'm sorry that still managed to offend you. In answer to your question of why I'm participating: I have long monitored these types of Wiki disagreements, since the psychology and politics involved fascinate me. When talk of "biting a newbie" first started to be discussed, if you had come forward to clarify that you were no newbie, then I would have been more than happy to remain an observer rather than a participant. If you wanted to remain anonymous then all that was needed was a simple "I'm not a newbie" in order to forestall the misconception. — MediaMangler 16:43, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

The 'newbie' thing is irrelevant to the central point, which is that an administrator abused his position, contravened the policy, and gave a dishonest reason for a block designed to win the upper hand in a content dispute. Whether he thought I was new or not, the action was still wrong. There is absolutely nothing in existing policy which could justify this block, and in fact existing policy specifically precludes this type of block. And yet you can't see any fault? If you don't feel qualified to discuss whether a block complied with policy, I can't really understand why you're taking part in a discussion about whether a block complied with policy. What you seem to be doing is just slandering me, rather than offering any constructive appraisal or criticism of the administrative action under discussion. Worldtraveller 18:22, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with the premise that "a newbie's first action is not going to be to assert ownership of an article to the extent of removing a project template from a talkpage without any discussion." That seems to me exactly like a newbie thing to do - because they come across a template they don't agree with on a subject they feel strongly about, don't understand what the template is meant to do, and don't understand how Wikipedia works. (In this case I guess it wasn't a true newbie- and I'm not happy about being fooled - but the behavior was definitely newbie-esque.) Remember Hanlon's Razor, which could be considered a part of assuming good faith - "Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice." The job of an admin is to steer that "stupidity" into productive editing, not to assume malice and toss out blocks. --TheOtherBob 14:15, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

There was no intent to 'fool' anyone. Just someone editing anonymously, who happened to have once edited with a username. Worldtraveller 15:11, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Um, excuse me? Only members of the WikiProject may remove the template? Isn't this a violation of WP:OWN? User:Zoe|(talk) 23:28, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Regardless of the validity of the block, the fact that an admin who clearly knows his actions are being questioned hasn't offered any kind of explanation is very concerning. It shows a complete disregard for discussion and concensus - and that is worthy of desysopping, I think. --Tango 16:16, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree, it's unbecoming of an administrator to simply ignore a discussion about his actions. Worldtraveller 18:22, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Fraternities and sororities

What do you all think of the massive amounts of external links that are contained in a traditional Wikipedia fraternity or sorority article such as Delta Sigma Pi, Alpha Kappa Psi, Phi Kappa Psi, or Alpha Epsilon Pi? Is this appropriate at all? I posted this to WT:EL a month ago and get a few responses Wikipedia_talk:External_links/Archive_11#Fraternities_and_sororities. I just removed the lists at Delta Sigma Pi [19] and registered a whopping (-23,730) on the removal according to the big bold red numbers on my watchlist (now, granted, that was a large table and I'm sure the fact it was a table added to the size of it). I figure I should probably get a little bit more of input on this before I go any further with such large removals.

I believe that they are unacceptable under WP:NOT as they are collections of external links used to formulate a directory of chapters. It encourages each chapter to post their own link and, for large organizations, that could mean 100+ schools. Thoughts? Metros232 02:38, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. -- Donald Albury 02:43, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

That is not what external links are for. EL should be limited to articles that are clearly justified. The national chapter for instance. I don't think any individual chapters could justify a link, unless perhaps there is something extraordinary about them that is 3rd party verifiable. - Taxman ^Talk 02:46, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely, those are not valid. We used to have chapters writing breathless articles about themselves. They'd go to VfD (it was back then), and the advice was always, either put it in the college or just delete it. So now it seems that they're linking from their national frat/sororities. That's better, but it's still unacceptable. The chapters have plenty of linking-to from the national organizations' own web pages and their colleges' web pages. They don't need to be page rank boosting with us. Geogre 03:35, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

While we're talking about these, there are also articles for the sub groups of the organisations. I had a quick hand at fighting back the bloat with redirects, but appeared to be going it alone and was mostly reverted. - brenneman 03:46, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

{{Beta Theta Pi Chapters}}

I appreciate the feedback so far and hopefully will lay my hand at removing a lot of these sometime tomorrow. What is the thought on the lists in general? Is it only to have a list of the chapters without external links? Beta Theta Pi (as shown in the template above that Aaron Brenneman just provided, has a full list of their chapters on their article but no external links for them. Should lists like that go as well as those with external links? Metros232 03:50, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

• I note that the (few) bluelinks in that template are redirects to the main article. I don't think we need articles on each individual fraternity chapter; for most of them there is little to say beyond what it says in the main frat article. I think this template should be removed. >Radiant< 12:02, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
  • It really seems excessive still, to me. I know it's harmless to have a list of "all chapters of X," but it's only harmless until people treat it like the infamous (and a pox eternally be upon it) List of high schools and argue that the presence on the list means that there should be an article on every one. I.e. lists are sometimes used in circular logic to argue that there must be an article on each item on the list. Therefore, I still maintain that the national organization's web page is linked from the article on the national organization, and that should serve sufficiently for anyone seeking chapters. If the chapters don't achieve fame/standing outside of their campus communities, then they're not encyclopedic, in my view, in a list or an article. Geogre 14:25, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Per this discussion, I have nominated the template for deletion. Metros232 14:22, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
    • I did about a dozen or so so far. A good tool to see articles on frats and sororities is to look at {{North-American Interfraternity Conference}} or Category:North-American Interfraternity Conference. I did basically the bottom two rows of the template. I'm going to take a break for now if anyone wants to step in to continue. Metros232 16:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

If anything the {{Beta Theta Pi Chapters}} should go. Individual chapter articles of national/international fraternities are completely unnecessary. Wikipedia is not a webspace provider for individual chapters. --† Ðy§ep§ion † ^{Speak your mind} 18:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Feel free to voice your opinion at Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:Beta_Theta_Pi_Chapters. The template was nominated yesterday for deletion. Metros232 18:49, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Are just simple lists okay?

• I think we should draw the line at a list of chapters without external links. It is encyclopedic to have a list of what colleges and universities have these organizations, because that is what the organization is all about. When it is a fraternity/sorority with a lot of chapters, a list page is appropriate. However, I don't think external links to the chapter websites or articles about the chapters is appropriate. --rogerd 17:48, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree. It's entirely relevant to the existence and mission of the organization in question (fraternity) to be associated with colleges. How else would one illustrate this without using a list? The external links thing, I agree with, we can get rid of those. But a link to the Wikipedia articles about the colleges themselves is appropriate. --Htmlism (talk · contr) 23:01, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
• This has been brought up here a few times and at my talk page User_talk:Metros232#Fraternity_Chapter_deletion.28s.29. It appears the consensus is beginning to form that the links are to be removed but simple lists are okay, is that what I'm seeing? Metros232 23:26, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I can understand the reasons for removing the links (though I don't agree), but there should be a list of chapters. These are the most important aspect of any national fraternity/sorority. Greek organizations measure their size by the number of chapters and initiates as well.

Repeated link spamming on Phonetics

The account User:Ygwnkm has been used exclusively to repost an external link to Phonetics in violation of WP:COI and WP:EL. I've left detailed edit summaries and multiple messages on the user page. I stopped reverting and another editor took up the challenge only to have it rv without comment by anonymous user Special:Contributions/58.143.172.67. I've entered the case into mediation where it was suggested I bring the case here. Not sure what to do from here. Nposs 02:51, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and given the IP a good faith spam warning. :: Colin Keigher (Talk) 03:15, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it appears that the anonymous editor is keeping with his consistent link spamming. I have given him a spam 2 template, and if he does it again, I would probably go report this to WP:AIV. It is more than likely that the anonymous editor and the registered account are the same. :: Colin Keigher (Talk) 03:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

If anyone is watching, there is a trainwreck going on at the Phonetics and Talk:Phonetics page. The linker has returned and become beligerent. He has not only repeatedly linked the site on the talk page, but now linked the talk from the external links of the article. It would be nice to end this soon. Thanks. Nposs 06:02, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

It appears that the link-spammer is still at it, and has now done 4+ reverts. Any chance an admin could step in? (I'm leaving it alone for a while in the spirit of not feeding trolls, but have the feeling that this person won't ever stop until blocked.) Thanks. --TheOtherBob 14:12, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Blocked the most recent IP for 24h. There had been previous warnings. Let's make sure the block is enforced both on any new IPs and on his original account. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:25, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Looks like 58.143.171.176 (talk · contribs) is doing the same task again. :: Colin Keigher (Talk) 17:09, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Offensive picture in Hillary Clinton's wiki

Offensive picture in Hillary Clinton's wiki —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.246.53.173 (talk) 02:59, 4 January 2007 (UTC).

Could you be more specific? This is likely vandalism to a template that has since been reverted (and a "wiki" is not a page, too :))—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 03:02, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't see vandalism on the page at all nor do I see anything in the recent changes for templates to suggest any of the templates used on the page were vandalized. Metros232 03:04, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, found it. It was Image:Senator Clinton Hillary.jpg. It sat for over an hour in a vandalized state too, *sigh* awesome. Metros232 03:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

That should more than likely be deleted then...—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 03:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Cite template

I need a bit of help at {{mathworld}}. Linas keeps trying to change it to "Firstname Lastname" which is NOT the style we use on Wikipedia (see for example any of the cite templates, where it goes "lastname, firstname"). I don't want to get into a revert war, but he just won't listen on his talk page or from other editors at Template talk:Cite web about a month ago. —Mets501 (talk) 03:11, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

195.188.152.16 blocked

Good evening fellow administrators. I come here a man much vexed. I have blocked 195.188.152.16 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RBLs · proxy check · block user · block log · cross-wiki contribs · CheckUser (log)) indefinitely. This is not the first time that I or others have done so. Many of you have unblocked this IP in the past, no doubt with the best of intentions. It is true that we generally do not block shared IP addresses for long periods of time, and certainly not indefinitely. This, however, is a different situation. This is where the real Willy on Wheels edits from. If you unblock this IP, the real Willy on Wheels will create accounts and vandalize Wikipedia. I cannot put the matter any more plainly than that. Now, it is true that this is a shared IP address. However, I and other checkusers can verify that there is little to no activity from this address that does not come from Willy on Wheels. Most of the unblock requests are from Willy's socks. If you really feel that you must tinker with this block in any way, please contact a checkuser and got his or her permission before doing so.

Yours, Mackensen (talk) 03:27, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Mackensen, I suggest that you put a specific note to this effect on the talk page and in the block log, as otherwise no one will remember which specific IP you warned about. Newyorkbrad 03:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I copied the above note there. However, I've done that before, and been ignored. Mackensen (talk) 03:35, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Good ... except I equally doubt that admins expect to find useful content on an IP's userpage, so they're not going to look for that either. I suggest an entry in the block log itself along the lines of "Repeated creation of Willy on Wheels accounts, should remain blocked indefinitely, see user page for info" or something like that—in that location, an admin considering unblocking would certainly see. Regards, Newyorkbrad 03:58, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

You might also want to change the userpage, which says "This IP address has been blocked temporarily."[Emphasis mine] 68.39.174.238 04:48, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I've left a better block message. Hopefully nobody will unblock after that. --Cyde Weys 04:16, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure all caps all the time is the best block message, it's hard to read and I suspect it will send some people into vandal-reversion mode. 68.39.174.238 04:45, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Image:Thomas Sowell.jpg

Not totally sure what to do about this. Twice I've marked this for deletion under {{rfu}}, and both times it was deleted. User:Ccmg has now uploaded it a third time. He never disputes it, just re-uploads it after it's deleted. I was going to tag it {{Db-repost}}, but that doesn't seem appropriate here. Can an admin give some guidance here? —Chowbok ☠ 05:48, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Given that it's a new user I suggest giving a stern warning that if it happens again, he should be blocked. And while db-repost doesn't officially apply, it might work anyway under WP:IAR. Just my lousy opinion. Patstuart^talk|edits 16:58, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I just deleted the image again. We're not under any obligation to keep hosting media that we've already deleted for lack of licensing information for another week just because someone uploaded it again. Jkelly 17:48, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

CantStandYa blocked

Due to his long term sock abuse, incivility, edit warring, and 3RR violations I have blocked CantStandYa (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) indefinitely. Back in March 2006 we blocked about 30 socks, as reported Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive82#Socks of Shran/CantStandYa, while leaving active one account for him to use. He abandoned that account anyway and promptly created a new set of socks that we only discovered recently (Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/CantStandYa). His various accounts have been blocked many times, for as long as 6 months in one case.[20] Though I expect him to make further attempts to edit he has shown that he can't be trusted to follow community polices and guidelines. -Will Beback · † · 06:51, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

He wasn't blocked?! He's been listed on WP:LTA for AGES. 68.39.174.238 07:04, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Please block him for good. I almost left the project because of his stalking and incivility. Jasper23 07:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

At least his username is accurate ... Cyde Weys 16:09, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah. I guess Wikipedia can't stand him, either. Hbdragon88 18:36, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, seems like a good block, if that description and the LTA one are accurate. Thanx for cleaning up the LTA entry too. 68.39.174.238 23:36, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Foreign Language Wikipedia articles

After reading one of the later comments in this debacle of an AfD, I found this category. Browsing through the stubs in question, I reached the conclusion that very few of them satisfy WP:WEB. Is there something I'm missing (i.e. is the foundation notable enough for every one of its "children" to merit its own article)? If not, can a mass AfD be considered (for all except the most active 'pedias)? yandman 08:15, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree, being a Wikimedia project shouldn't automatically entitle you to a Wikipedia page. There are tons of tiny wikis no where even near WP:WEB. However, might I suggest seeing if this sort of material on the history and milestones of individual minor wikis would be welcomed if transwikied to Meta? Dragons flight 08:26, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

It's already here on meta. yandman 08:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

While it's not much content, some of the little wiki pages do have some content not duplicated in that list (e.g. Albanian Wikipedia). So I am wondering whether it would be worth dedicating a page on meta to each project for milestones, history, etc. Dragons flight 08:38, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Just a correction, WikIran is not a Wikimedia project. User:Zoe|(talk) 23:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, OK. Sounds like a good idea. Anyone here who can move it all to meta before we start? I don't want the lack of a meta page to be a reason for keeping these NN articles. yandman 09:11, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Or we could listify it, with wikilinks to the main pages of each. We don't need to do the job of maintaining the "about" document for every language Wiki, though, and that's for sure. Guy (Help!) 12:50, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

How should we determine which ones should be included in the mass AfD? Maybe a first batch containing all those having less than 10k users (per the ranking at meta)? Or less than 20k articles? Or less than 50k edits? Or all three? Any otherwise notable wikis could always be undeleted (in case we find out that there's been significant coverage of one of these very small wikis). A quick strawpoll, please? yandman 12:57, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

• My advice is to tread carefully, and be conservative. If you nominate forty articles, and four turn out to be somewhat notable, the Afd will trainwreck, with some people voting to delete all, some to delete none, but most to delete all but three, with different people selecting a different three... you see the problem. Several of these have survived previous AfDs, for example Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Urdu Wikipedia. Chinese Wikipedia is notable due to being repeatedly blocked, and ripped off by Baidu. Spanish Wikipedia is notable due to an editor revolt and fork. German Wikipedia is notable due to multiple print versions. Russian Wikipedia is notable due to winning a national prize. Polish Wikipedia may be notable due to one print version. In short, go through every single article and only include the ones which have no mention in the outside community, otherwise I strongly suspect the Afd will fail. AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 14:43, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Good advice. I came across this AfD. Although I don't agree with the arguments given, I'm now 100% sure any attempt to apply our notability guidelines to these pages will fail horribly. yandman 14:54, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd say only mass-AfD ones that are purely stubs (Ukrainian Wikipedia, Neapolitan Wikipedia, etc) first, then put up the slightly more developed articles one by one. –  Anþony  talk  01:33, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

YouTube and copyrights

You will remember, I think, that a group of editors set off to remove links to YouTube, requiring that before they went back in we clarified the copyright status and encyclopaedic merit of the links. This met with some resistance. There appear to be two camps now, which might be summed up as follows:

• those who believe that YouTube links should go in unless you can prove they are violating copyright
• those who believe that YouTube links should stay out unless you can prove they are not infringing copyright

Guess which group I'm in. The argument rages at Wikipedia:External links/Identifying copyrights in links, Wikipedia talk:External links/YouTube, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington and various other places. It's been moved out of WP:EL/WT:EL.

WP:COPYRIGHT makes it clear that knowingly linking to infringing material is contributory infringement (also that linking to copyvios makes us look bad). Given that many YouTube vids are copyvios I don't think it's excesive to require people to clarify copyright before adding, but there is a small and committed group who are insistent that the default should be the other way round. More input required, I think. Guy (Help!) 10:34, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up, Guy. --Woohookitty^Woohoo! 12:30, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll admit to disliking them for other reasons, namely their tendency to turn up in lame SPAMs. You might want to see the history of User:J.smith/YT for other (less legal) problems they often cause. That may or may not be helpful. 68.39.174.238 23:42, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Liisenber uploading copyright material

(moved from WP:AIV --Deathphoenix ʕ 14:41, 4 January 2007 (UTC))

• Liisenber (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - User continues to upload copyrighted material even after many notifications and after final warning. According to WP:VANDAL, "Repeatedly uploading images with no source and/or license information after notification that such information is required may also constitute vandalism."--NMajdan•talk 14:38, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Blocked for 48 hours Martinp23 14:43, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Close poll

Can someone please close the straw poll over at Pontic Greek Genocide? There has been total inactivity in the poll since Dec 27 2006. Thanks. NikoSilver 15:43, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Done. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:47, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Personal attacks by JFBurton

(moved from WP:AIV --Deathphoenix ʕ 16:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC))

• JFBurton (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) General trolling, personal attacks on other user talk pages. User has been repeatedly warned. Fan-1967 16:18, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

• Latest edits this morning were a number of vandalism warnings ([21], [22], [23]) against users who had in fact made legitimate edits (one of these users, after the warning, then responded by vandalizing JFBurton's User Page). Fan-1967 16:24, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I've blocked the user for a week for personal attacks and disruption. -- Merope 16:41, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Redirect Deleted?

Can an admin please tell me why Clemson Tigers football was deleted? I believe it was a redirect that redirected to Clemson Tigers. Was the redirect deleted by someone's request so they could create an article there? If not, could it be restored please? Thank you. --MECU≈talk 17:12, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

It appears the article was originally created as a redirect. Later someone decided to expand it into an article. After starting the editor realized that the work was redundant and put the article up for speedy deletion with a "db-author" tag. An admin then came along and carried out the requested deletion. Unfortunately, it appears the admin did not check the article's history or see that there were several incoming links to the originial redirect page. I've restored the redirect which should accomplish the original editor's intention. Thanks for pointing it out. --StuffOfInterest 17:18, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Close survey of proposal

Hello, I was hoping an administrator would be willing to officially close a survey that has been idle for a few weeks now. It can be found at Wikipedia talk:Fair use/Fair use images in lists sections 1-5. Thank you. -- Wikipedical 18:45, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I may be missing something here, but administrators are not in the business of "officially closing" any discussions except where policy provides for it, as in WP:AfD discussions. I see nothing in the straw poll you link to that requires an administrator to do anything. Any user may close the poll if there is consensus to do so on the talk page. Sandstein 23:11, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

PS. See also the proposed Wikipedia:Straw polls. Sandstein 23:14, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Deletions, a statistical review of 24 hours

(From 1/3/2007 21:00:00 PM to 1/4/2007 21:00:00 PM)

Often the media quotes us as deleting 100s of articles a day. Well, I decided to check out those stats... I pulled up the delete log and did some searching and sorting in excel to get a general feel. Yeah, I know the numbers aren't the most reliable, but it's mildly interesting.

General

• Total actions in log: 4007
• Restores: 36
• Deletes: 3971

Namespace

• Talk: 975
• User: 101
• User_Talk: 36
• Wikipedia: 26
• Image: 625
• Category: 65
• Category_talk: 3
• Mainspace: 2146

Criteria For Speedy Delete

• CSD G1: 49
• CSD G2: 3
• CSD G3: 26
• CSD G4: 28
• CSD G5: 11
• CSD G6: 6
• CSD G7: 44
• CSD G8: 213
• CSD G9: 0
• CSD G10: 40
• CSD G11: 81

• CSD A1: 56
• CSD A2: 1
• CSD A3: 47
• CSD A5: 5
• CSD A6: 6
• CSD A7: 428

• CSD R1: 93
• CSD R2: 5
• CSD R3: 2

• CSD I1: 5
• CSD I2: 0
• CSD I3: 98
• CSD I4: 5
• CSD I5: 0
• CSD I6: 0
• CSD I7: 89
• CSD I8: 0

• CSD U1: 26

(Some of the CSD counts might be overstating... I was getting a lot of false-positives with the simple excel search)

Other searches

• "{{db": 745
• "{{delete": 74
• "CSD": 813
• "Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/": 123

Top two deleters

• Teke (talk · contribs): 497
• Fang Aili (talk · contribs): 442

Does this have any deeper cosmic meaning to wikipedia? Not likely... but at-least we can tell the press people slightly better numbers. ---J.S ^(T/C) 22:10, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

How about a list of the top ten deleters? Are they all above 100 articles a day? Also - CSD A7: 428 - not surprised. I used to do some Newpage patrolling, and there was a lot of vanity articles. Hbdragon88 22:24, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Order	Name	Total
1	Teke (talk · contribs)	497
2	Fang Aili (talk · contribs)	442
3	Centrx (talk · contribs)	177
4	NawlinWiki (talk · contribs)	143
5	Gogo Dodo (talk · contribs)	140
6	Merope (talk · contribs)	137
7	Kungfuadam (talk · contribs)	128
8	Jimfbleak (talk · contribs)	126
9	Tonywalton (talk · contribs)	115
10	Shyam Bihari (talk · contribs)	103
11	Chris 73 (talk · contribs)	102
12	Angela (talk · contribs)	100

Everyone with over 100 deletes and/or restores. Took me a while to get Excel to make the counts for me. :) ---J.S ^(T/C) 23:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

• Interesting, but in fairness I spent several hours following Meno25's user request speedy tags because of AWB talk page redirects he made. 400 of 'em. Teke ^(talk) 23:32, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

While this isn't cosmic meaning, the deletion numbers do have some interesting peaks, such as the massive number of articel talk pages that get shot. Also, the large amount of user space redacting. 68.39.174.238 23:47, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

134 or so user pages... it looks to me like most of them were deleted at author's request and some of the reset were either a mix of MFD or speedy as attack pages.

Alot of CSD have article-talk pages assosciated with them. Not realy sure how much that screwed up my CSD numbers. ---J.S ^(T/C) 00:50, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Execution of Saddam hussein

This guy uber or something keeps on reverting everything and does everything to his liking. Even time of death... http://www.dailynews.lk/2007/01/01/wld02.asp which has been confirmed by iraqi government, he keeps on reverting, siting his silly sources, can somebody watch over and block this guy? Also original saddam site does not have hanging video, sure, wiki is open place for source, but this creates hate and violence, this dude keeps on putting it back, this should be final appropriate version http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Execution_of_Saddam_Hussein&diff=98515213&oldid=98514518 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.107.220.181 (talk • contribs)

Looking at the history of the page, I'm not sure what to think. You don't seem to be using the talk page to discuss this though, rather, just warring in the edit summaries. UBeR appears to be doing the same and was caution about the 3RR rule on this article a few days ago. Anyone else have thoughts about it? Metros232 22:58, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

The page was just fully protected by William M. Connolley (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) Metros232 23:01, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, 64.107.220.181 has some major issues with civility and personal attacks...

Other then that, I'm not sure how the cell-phone video of Saddam's hanging counts as a "hate video"? ---J.S ^(T/C) 23:01, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I protected it due to excess reverting. Perhaps more controversially, I then removed the execution video links. I'm not sure whether this is considered OK or not, so I invite people to check William M. Connolley 23:02, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Protection is a good call. I think removing the link is too, in these particualr circumstances. Let a consensus emerge on the talk page, and then it can be linked to if that's what people want. I want to say too that the people on that page have done a good job under difficult circmustances. Tom Harrison ^Talk 23:32, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not censored. I think the question has already been answered by consensus long before Saddam was sentenced. Reswobslc 23:39, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Sure, and that's as it should be. I'm just saying let the people on the talk page talk about it and decide if they want to include it or not. Tom Harrison ^Talk 23:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Civility or not, if the other guy accuses you of non sense how are you to react, ok, here, saddam executed at 6:10, i kept on reversing that... and also video and it needs to be reversed to this version http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Execution_of_Saddam_Hussein&diff=98515213&oldid=98514518 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.107.0.85 (talk • contribs)

Take it to the article's talk page Talk:Execution of Saddam Hussein and discuss it there. Metros232 23:14, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

So I did, look over there, this did not give me any results, this dude kept on reversing self evident truth, 6:10 is also on the main article on saddam hussein on wiki.

http://www.dailynews.lk/2007/01/01/wld02.asp

Please. There has a been discussion on the time of execution. It is in the archive. Since I felt many people did not feel like they had to go to the archive to see previous discussions, I reopened the topic on the talk page. I've discussed that various sources say do did indeed say he died at 6:10. However, there are twice as many sources that say he died at a different time, which why I was reverting the original version of the article that stated he was executed at "approximately 06:00 local time." That is consistent with all the sources. It removed the problem of conflicting reports. Mostly 64.107.0.85 is making unsourced, irrational, or irrelevant edits. I've tried to explain to him that there have been discussions on things he is vandalizing/removing. He ignores the discussions and replaces previously discussed content with the way he, and only he, feels the way the article should reflect his own views. I believe this is a direct violation of Wikipedia's NPOV policy, nevermind his incivility. As for the video, this was discussed as well. ~ UBeR 23:30, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Reply to vandal uber.

Ok, assuming I am not civil towards Uber, since he is doing his truth, fine, who cares... http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/03/africa/web.0102saddam.php OFFCIAL DEATH CERTIFICATE says 6:10., this guy has some private agenda here and I will never allow that. Video is not on original saddam page, should not be here, his links about 6am death are initial links, 6:10 was confirmed by Iraqi government. Videos like this can not be shown, except cnn version, up to the point before hanging, we do not want to create hate and mistrust and confusion, wiki must abide by its policies, people like uber have their own polocy, sure the guy is civil and all, but being civil DOES NOT MAKE YOU RIGHT OR WRONG, And he is wrong... civil? Calling my links vandalism... check this out, wiki administrator reversed everything and ignored Uber's version...This reversal is by Sfacets, reverting Uber's vandalism... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Execution_of_Saddam_Hussein&diff=98511889&oldid=98511559 You can follow the history and look for sfacets edits, clearly he agreed with me on every single issue. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Execution_of_Saddam_Hussein&action=history Uber has time on his hands, but he should be closely watched by you guys. Do something right for a change...

Well, which one is it? Which link is correct? This claims that Saddam was pronounced dead at 6:10, and that he died at 6:00. Meanwhile, This claims in passing that Saddam was hanged at 6:10. (This could mean the time when the hanging was over, and when he was already dead for some time, or, as you claim, the time when the hanging started.) You provided the first link yourself, now read the article that you linked to:

"It was very quick. He died right away," an official witness told Reuters, adding that the body was left to hang for 10 minutes and he was pronounced dead at 6:10 a.m. (0310 GMT). [emphasis mine]

Also, please stop cycling issues. One moment you speak of the time issue, then someone responds to that, then you talk about the appropriateness of the videos, then someone responds to that; then you repeat. This is not a healthy way to go about either issue. Please answer specific arguments that those who are against you make, rather than flitting from issue to issue. I apologize if I am not assessing your actions correctly. (And note that I am talking about your actions, not your intentions.) Furthermore, if one issue were resolved before going on to the other, that would be ideal. Gracenotes^T § 00:11, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you 64.107.220.181. I understand your concerns. But without the a source to official document that states his death at a certain time, it would be imprudent to to cite a specific time based on one or even two reports. You have one or two sources that really do say he died at 6:10 or 6:05 (you can't make up your mind). However, for each of those, there just as many that say he died at a DIFFERENT time. Your source does not say "the official death record by the Iraqi government for Saddam Hussein is 6:10." No, it say "he died at 6:10." So now it is a case of he says she says (hearsay). Why? Because other sources say he died at exactly 6:00, others say before 6:00, some say 6:07. It ranges. It's best to say approximately 6:00, because, that, we can all agree on. As for the video, I respect your concern. However, I, and the rest who gave their consensus on the discussion page, feel the video does not "promote hate." It's an accurate and historical representation of the occurrences of December 30, 2006. If you do not wish to view the video (which was described factually and accurately so that one may understand what they were going to watch), then please do not click on the link. However, your opinion of the video should not deter deserving readers and editors of Wikipedia if they do not agree with you. Wikipedia makes that clear in various policies. ~ UBeR 03:37, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Who cares? —Pilotguy (ptt) 02:39, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I disagree, like i said on saddam execution talk, we can put official cnn video, not illegal, ugly and tormenting, it does promote hate, you remind me of that iraqi puppet who said now that saddam is dead we can reunite, lol. Sunnis are really suffering. However, on talk page i also gave other links that proves he died at 6:10, also other sources say he was on the rope 5 minutes, it says died at 6:05, pronounced dead 6:10, so, even if he was on the rope 20 days, but pronounced dead at a certain time, that is what counts. And by doing the video, wiki promotes hate. No censorship? Then I can put just about everything and say... hey this is rape in action, see the blood and screams, mutilation, etc... I can say, well, I am only explaining how it's done. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.99.3.118 (talk • contribs)

Gödel's incompleteness theorems

Someone want to take a look at the edit war going on here? It's all pretty much Greek to me. Fan-1967 22:56, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

User:Germanium appears to be attempting to edit war blatant original research into the article and has been blocked for 31 hours. I'm going to check his contribs (of which he has less than 100) to see whether an indefblock is warranted. -- Steel 23:03, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

You beat me to the block Steel... Certainly "trollish" behavior: user was copying people's edit summaries when he reverted. ---J.S ^(T/C) 23:06, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I just AFD'ed one of his contributions. You blocked him one minute after he removed the Prod. Blatant OR. Fan-1967 23:10, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I get the impression of a college freshman who has just discovered that math isn't what his high-school teachers said it was, or one who smoked too much pot over winter break. He's probably redeemable, but not yet. Perhaps he should be told to go away, read Russell's Principia, then come back. Argyriou (talk) 23:19, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the IP's he's used support that. Early December he was posting from school, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. Today's edits show Charter Communications in St. Louis. He does have the absolute assuredness which only a freshman or sophomore can manage. I love his view of Reliable Sources on his User page. Fan-1967 23:41, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm open to suggestions on whether to see what happens after the block expires or just indef him now as a throwaway troll account. -- Steel 23:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I suggest giving a stern warning (well, I guess the block is a stern warning) and give them one more chance. ---J.S ^(T/C) 23:23, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Looks like he's been here several times before. I was leaning towards giving him another chance before but now I don't think it's worth it. -- Steel 23:41, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Note that I earlier deleted The irony of truth by guess who? He recreated it an User:NawlinWiki deleted it again. Both times it was deleted for the patent nonsense it was. I know a fair deal about Godel's theorems and I'm afraid Germanium's additions are not only blatant original research but quite unsupported in Godel's work or any know version of math. Gwernol 23:27, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, but Gwernol, he's really and truely an expert on the subject of the theory of everything and the reason is because he has made an amazing discovery that is so profound you can't even imagine. Modest too, by the looks of it. -- Steel 23:41, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

WOW. That is priceless. I'm tempted to save that one for posterity. -- Fan-1967 23:43, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Just blocked Somemoron

I've blocked Somemoron (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log) for an indefinite period of time. Please feel free to review the contributions of this account and adjust block parameters as necessary. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 23:47, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2006 December 30

I need a backup closer for some discussion which I nominated or in which I participated, while I'm reading through Wikipedia:Deletion review/Category:Child Wikipedians. Note that Brendan Alcorn (talk · contribs) has commented on most discussions during the day but no other edits outside DRV. Thanks, trialsanderrors 01:35, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

/* hangs head */ You're just mocking me now, aren't you? - brenneman 01:40, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Why? ~ trialsanderrors 01:41, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, that was tongue in cheek: While the pseudo-debate is lengthy and sadly devoid of much actual thoughtful exchange, the results sticks out like a dog's: It stays deleted. I won't grouse any further about it. - brenneman 01:44, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

The result sticks out only if we're counting heads and not arguments. DRV is about the process, and isn't another CfD. If we're judging arguments, the "keep deleted" people have none at present - the deletion was wrong. Another CfD would almost certainly occur, and if the activity at DRV is any indication, a deletion would be forthcoming, but it would at least be legitimate. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:21, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry? There's not a single reason to keep this article been given at DRV. I think you have that the wrong way round. The DRV shows that the CfD got the consensus of Wikipedians wrong and Cyde got it right.--Doc^g 02:28, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, there was one argument given: That it provides a way for people to co-ordinate editing activities in the same way that other user-definition categories do. That's a very small benefit, admitted, it's simply that the stated risk of predation was never discussed rationally, so if we're measuring arguments I'd have to agree with Jeff. The real issue was never presented, though, that there is a reputatinal risk in having this category. Since on-wiki we can't seem to get our brains to engage with the facts, neither should I expect someone looking to savage the Founation for not "protecting children" to be rational. - brenneman 02:36, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

• Oh, and I (pleasantly) got my first ever hate-mail retraction following this bit of wiki-drama. - 02:38, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

And I see that we couldn't come up with a legitimate close. Whatever works, I suppose. How stupid. --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:00, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

What, pray tell, is illegitimate about it? That it didn't end the way you wanted it to? --Cyde Weys 03:23, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Hey, you got your way and you get to play on a different field than the rest of us. Congrats. Maybe the rest of us will be as lucky someday. --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:38, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

No, I mean, what part of DRV procedure wasn't properly followed? --Cyde Weys 03:45, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Considering the recent harping I've been making, I should know better than to take the bait now. Punching out. --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

That's brilliant. I ask you to provide evidence for your assertions, but apparently doing so is now considered baiting. It's gonna be awfully hard having any sort of discussion with you. --Cyde Weys 04:04, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Looks like you guys are holding coffeeklatsch here while I done my work. What about closing the remaining debates? ~ trialsanderrors 03:28, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Request for advice

At the moment, I'd like to just get some feedback and ideas. I'm unfortunately involved in what has been a rather long running situation.

It started, innocently enough, when I came upon an article which I thought would be interesting to clean up. Over the past year it has had various clean-up tags, including that it was too much like a list. So with my enjoyment to organize, I thought I would dive in and do a ReOrg of the page, and hopefully broaden it into an article instead of merely lists.

It "almost" was going smoothly, until I moved a few of the references to the disambiguation page of the same name, which brought other wikipedians who disagreed with several changes.

A lengthy discussion of whether wiktionary links should be on a page, whether real-life or fictional should have more prevalence (I felt both equally, either in the same article or in separate articles), and on, and on. A large amount of information was split (before I arrived to the page) to a list already, and I split more to a related page.

The trouble is that those who would dispute a change never were willing to offer references for such arguement, and later admitted that they weren't interested in doing so far various reasons.

And it's continued on and on.

Much of the discussion has been about semantics, but lately, since I've attempted several times at compromising, I performed various page creations, splits, and mergers, at the request of others. The discussion has devolved into where the redirects should point to, and what names of redirects are more accurate, and where should the original page history reside.

So now we come to my Request for advice. You'll note I haven't mentioned any persons, nor the pages involved. I would like some general advice for such situations.

What should I do?

I feel like I'm being attacked consistantly for trying to uphold what I presume are correct policies and guidelines and such, by those who would seem to not know understand such policies.

Of course, it is entirely possible that I'm the one misunderstanding as well. (Sigh @ "the right version".)

On one hand I would like to just "walk away", from the situation, but on the other, this should be resolved "correctly" due to possible GDFL concerns.

I think the greatest problem so far is the lack of input from "outside" opinion.

So this is what I am asking now. (To quote Jonny 5: "need input".)

I am very hesitant to raise this to the next level (mediation or arbitration), because, honestly, I think it would reflect rather badly on those who have been involved, since I honestly think that their only real mistake besides what some might call rather aggressive "POV pushing", is a misunderstanding of policies or even how some features of Wikipedia work. Though it's becoming tiresome, I'll discount their various attacks on me at this point, if it only should bring some sort of resolution.

So anyway, let me bring my rambling request to a close:

What should I do now? - jc37 04:26, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Summarise that in 50 words or less :P Viridae^Talk 08:39, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

This is to do with the vast morass of articles, redirects, and dab pages associated with Wizard. As far as I can tell, the main discussion is at Talk:List of wizards in fantasy. This is just a note to clarifiy the situation, I am entirely uninvolved with the debate. Tevildo 12:05, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I was involved, but after one of the participants objected to the way I was trying to handle it (I was initially approached on my talk page by jc37 to comment on the issues), I've withdrawn. There is a half-hearted attempt to list the pages at User:Carcharoth/Analysis of the page history of Wikipedia Magic pages, and I'm about to attempt to trace the edit history of a sample piece of text to demonstrate the issues. Carcharoth 12:44, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Massive purging of YouTube links

Special:Contributions/J.smith: A shitload of "Rm links to suspected copy-vio or otherwise inappropriate links per WP:NOT, WP:EL & WP:C using AWB"

Now, I'm fine with dubious YouTube links being removed. However, the edit that brought my attention [24] removed a perfectly valid movie: a small clip demonstrating the exact glitch being described.

I think this is a bit extreme, but I'd rather get some other opinions before doing a whole-sale revert of the edits on articles I'm unfamiliar with. Thoughts? EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:34, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, halting temperately per-request. First of all, please assume a little good faith on my part... I'm not blindly removing links. :) Mortal Kombat II is a copyrighted game and the vid on YouTube would be in violation of that copyright. WP:C prohibits us from linking to copyvio material. Are there any further objections? Can I get back to work? :) ---J.S ^(T/C)

(edit conflict)It comes down to the extremly shakey condition of copyrights on YouTube. See, uploaders release their videos up under something similar to GNU, but the problem is, that the video is alreadly copyrighted and not in fact their video. I'm not exactly a full expert on this, but that is what my understanding so far is. Yanksox 04:43, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, the TOS for YouTube requires the uploader to agree that they own the image. But, they do very little to enforce it, and they require the actual copyright owner to request the video to be taken down. ---J.S ^(T/C) 04:49, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I really wouldn't consider a video showcasing a video game's gameplay to be a copyright violation. EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:52, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

The game is copyrighted and the video is being distributed without permission. What else would you call it? ---J.S ^(T/C) 04:53, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

EVula, it is a flagrant copyvio, you're not even allowed to talk about NFL games without the NFL's permission, techinically. Yanksox 04:55, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Thats more of a trademarking issue Yanksox :) ---J.S ^(T/C) 04:57, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

EVula seems to have stopped editing... If anyone has any further objections let me know on my talk page so I notice immediately. ---J.S ^(T/C) 05:13, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm hopelessly addicted to sleep sometimes. ;-) EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:28, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Yanksox - if I remember my TV watching days correctly, it's "expressed written permission" from the NFL to rebroadcast, reshow, etc. in any method. Hbdragon88 06:36, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

The video adds nothing, in my view, and the copyright is clearly questionable. Is there no similar (but better) video on the game manufacturer's website? Guy (Help!) 09:30, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

The video, by itself, isn't much, but considering the article was talking about the very move that is shown in the clip, I'm not sure how it "adds nothing". The chances of an official video being posted by Midway (the manufacturer) is non-existant; not only is it a game long past its prime, but it is an easter egg that is available only on one console (Sega Genesis). EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:28, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, you removed two links from the Mitsubishi Delica article which, if you'd watched them, are clearly posted by users/owners and not copyvios. I don't like YouTube myself but, until there's a concrete policy from WP blocking the URL, I don't think AWB is an appropriate way to remove these links. --DeLarge 09:06, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

• It's more that the majority of YouTubes have copyright issues, so all are being removed for discussion. If copyright is unambiguously clean, the links can go back in. It's not easy to do this sort of thing on literally thousands of articles (over 10,000 at one point) without using som,ething like AWB. Guy (Help!) 09:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

DeLarge, I didn't remove those for copyright concerns. I actually spent quite a bit of time thinking of those and decided that they added little value to the article. If you wish to put them back I won't make an issue of it, but I do feel they are a violation of WP:NOT. ---J.S ^(T/C) 15:56, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Also, other then simply making the actual possess less tedious, AWB is not changing anything about how I do things. The use of AWB is literally irrelevant. I still need to read the context, cleanup the mess that AWB leaves behind, and make a manual approve each one. ---J.S ^(T/C) 16:00, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Category in need of a bit of emptying

Category:Presumed GFDL images is full of orphaned images. On the basis that WP:NOT#WEBSPACE, I'd think this category needs some emptying.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 04:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

consensus on request to move chinese-filipino to chinese filipino

Requested move from Chinese-Filipino → Chinese Filipino has reached a consensus. Request assistance in moving the page. Thank you. { PMGOMEZ } 06:47, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Done. Martinp23 12:23, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

John Bambenek is back

He just wrote an article for MercatorNet laying into Wikipedia...

How much did his vanity bio getting whacked play into it you think? Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John C. A. Bambenek (3rd nomination) -- Narciblog 06:26, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

A User claiming to be Bambenek demanded that the article be deleted. Probably because he couldn't control the content. Unless the User was an imposter. User:Zoe|(talk) 16:49, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Plus the article wasn't written by him to begin with, but by another user with an axe to grind. User:Zoe|(talk) 16:50, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

DomBot

DomBot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) appears to be running tasks outside its assigned function: tagging a category for deletion [25], listing a cfd [26], reverting non-vandal edits [27] and leaving messages on user talk pages [28].I request a review of dombot's behaviour. Tim! 07:51, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

It looks to me like Chidom (talk · contribs) was simply logged into his bot account, which is approved to do CFD related work. Obviously, this violates WP:BOT, but I really doubt this is a serious issue. AWB can stay logged into Internet Explorer, which may explain the difficulty. I'd suggest addressing it with him on his talk page (which you did) before bringing the issue here. alphachimp 08:03, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

In this vein, I've left a message on the talk page of DomBot in case Childom comes back but is still logged into the DomBot account. This is why I use a virtual PC for AWB :) (and the fact I'm on Vista...). Martinp23 11:38, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

User:Khoikhoi

That's funny if you get a warning! from an admin [29] in language other than english on English Wikipedia. I suggest add some more information about this project's language on administrators reading list. Hessam 09:19, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi Hessam, I answered to your request on my own talkpage; I suggest we keep it there for the moment. No reason for big drama, as far as I can see. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:28, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

meta:Interwiki map

I just found out about this page. It allows us to make external links with a syntax such as Google:elephant. However, the list contains over a hundred of sites that can be linked like this, most of which wouldn't even remotely qualify as either a reliable source or an external link - such as third-party wikis with very few edits. The links don't seem to show up in Special:Linksearches either. This is far too easily abused for linkspamming purposes; I think the list is due for some heavy cleaning. See also this thread. >Radiant< 12:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

FYI

• http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/foi/Cyberlaw_Syllabus
• http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/foi/Day_2_Assignment:_Edit_Wikipedia
• http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/foi/Day_3_Assignment_-_Participate_in_Wikipedia_Dispute_Resolution

WAS 4.250 12:53, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

• LOL! Looked at in succession that way, it makes it look like their edits are bound to be disputed :-) I have no real problem with educated people being encouraged to learn about and participate in this project. The critiques of their edits are good - many standard newbie errors pointed out. Guy (Help!) 21:13, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Personal attacks and death threats

I noticed something while checking the Muslim article history to see the linkspamming going on. It involves these three users:

• Nehpetskenawi (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Teddierx (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• ChinChonWon (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• ShowerGel (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

From what I can see Teddierx told Nehpetskenawi to refrain from editing Muslim, "because of your limited mental abilities, anything you wish to add will be indistinguishable from vandalism." He also told User:ChinChonWon on his talk page that "our records have detected that You are a shi'ite. Since the majority of Shi'ites are black, you have been blocked permanently from our encyclopedia, just in case." ChinChonWon then retaliated, telling Teddierx "Please stop vandalising the USER PAGE! Otherwise, I will CHOP OFF YOUR HEAD!" He also posted on ShowerGel's talk page with the message "WARNING. YOU ARE TOO WIKITARDED TO CONTRIBUTE. YOU ARE A WIKITOSSPOT. THANK YOU" in large letters.

ShowerGel also faked being Teddierx, and also faked that that user was faking being WikiAdministrator, as well as Netsnipe on his own talk page here.

I'm asking the administrators to take a look at this, because I'm confused about whats going on, and maybe a CheckUser is called for? Nwwaew (Talk Page) (Contribs) (E-mail me) 14:06, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Well. I indef blocked Teddierx for impersonating Can't sleep, clown will eat me and Netsnipe, blatant personal attacks and disruption. I gave ChinChonWon and ShowerGel {{npa4im}} warnings and will monitor their activities. Nehpetskenawi doesn't appear to be involved, except as a victim of their puerile behavior. If another admin wants to overturn my block on Teddierx (he wasn't properly warned, I suppose), feel free to do so. I have absolutely no tolerance for people pretending to be other users. I don't know that a checkuser is necessary, though: my guess is that the three involved know each other off Wikipedia, and may even be all on the same school IP. -- Merope 14:28, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I fully support the indef block, Merope. Impersonating multiple admins is not acceptable. Gwernol 15:41, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest all administrators add the page to their Watchlist so they could spot the vandalism better. Isn't there an indefinite block consequence for administrator impersonations? --WTGDMan1986 (D.F. "Jun Kazama Master" Williams) 14:37, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response from the admins. This is the first time I've posted on here about something else that I've seen happening. Nwwaew (Talk Page) (Contribs) (E-mail me) 20:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Deletion of User talk:209.50.185.170

Could someone delete page User talk:209.50.185.170 per CSD G7 please ? I am the only editor, and I made a mistake when leaving a warning. I have removed it in the meantime, but don't want the user to read "You have new messages" and get to the new empty page — same reason why I don't want to tag it for speedy deletion and confuse someone. Thanks, Schutz 14:21, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Merope ! Schutz 14:43, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Edits of protected article Execution of Saddam Hussein

Can someone please explain why multiple administrators are continuing to edit the protected article Execution of Saddam Hussein in clear violation of the protection policy? Martinp23, Zscout370, WhisperToMe, and William M. Connolley continue to make non-trivial edits while the page is protected. If this were only one or maybe two admins involved I'd be happy to take this to their respective Talk pages but this is getting completely out of hand. I think it's time for other admins to step in and remedy these blatant violations of established policy. --ElKevbo 14:47, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Would you care to explain to me how the edit I made was not non-trivial (ie - it was clearly a trivial edit). Here's the diff. ZScout370, with his impeccable understanding of the relevant laws, was removing fair use images. William M Connolley was remvoing the links to the execution videos premsumably as per (an interpretation of) WP:BRDC (without the revert, but in order to get a consensus and avoid an edit war), in order to form a really clear consensus on the talk page (which has happened). WhisperToMe entered a fair paragraph on a recent event related to the execution, improving the article - I don't think that he really had to discuss the issue first - it was an undebateable paragraph not related to the previous edit war. Martinp23 15:04, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough about your edit and ZScout. However, I completely disagree with your characterization of William and WhisperToMe's edits. It's underhanded for admins to edit protected articles in all but the most non-trivial and legally required ways. --ElKevbo 15:11, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Hardly - I'm sure you'll agree that it ultimately falls to admins to keep protected articles up to date (hence Whisper's edit) and to resolve dispute (hence William's protection and edits (all in a very short time period - it's fair to say that what WMC did was in the course of WP:DR, probably after a 3RR report at WP:AN/3, and he was trying to let the dust settle and get some debate)). Martinp23 15:21, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

No, I don't agree to that. This isn't the "Admin Wikipedia." It belongs to all of its editors. If an article is in such contention that it needs to be protected then all users, admins included, should respect that. I agree that it's not black-and-white and there are clearly instances when an article should be updated, particularly when major events occur. But for an admin to make any other edits gives the appearance of abuse of power. As admins you should avoid even the appearance of impropriety. --ElKevbo 15:34, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Exactly - hence why we have as many mechanisms in place to allow edits from non-admins during the harmful spell of protection. WhisperToMe's edit was not controversial, and has only imporved the Wiki. It is regretful that, due to a content dispute, other editors couldn't add to it, but I'ms ure you'll agree that that edit only improved the article, and that it was perfectly within WhisperToMe's right to make. If protection was meant to restrict admins from editing, then it would (or we'd have another article locking feature). As it is, admins were !voted into being by the community, and are expected to show the ability to only make edits to protected articles which are uncontroversial or blatantly neccessary. As far as I'm concerned, WMC's edits immeidately after he protected can be easily ocnsidered to have occured before he protected, in the course of consensus building (which is what admins do). First, he wiped the slate clean by remving (most of) the links (I cleaned up the bit he left behind later) and then started a poll on the talk page, and discussion. This is the best way to deal with edit wars. You can also review the protection policy, should you wish. Martinp23 15:51, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Nothing trivial ElKevbo. -- Szvest - ^{Wiki me up ®} 15:10, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry - I don't understand your remark. Can you please clarify? --ElKevbo 15:12, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Nothing trivial about that. The video will be back if you just read the talk page. William removal of the video (as it is a controversial video) was a cautionary edit waiting for the voting to end. The addition of WhisperToMe is encyclopaedic and not harmful. -- Szvest - ^{Wiki me up ®} 15:19, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not discussing the video or why the article was protected - those are separate issues. What I am discussion is the protection of an article and subsequent edits made by administrators. Wikipedia is not a two-tier system where administrators get to roam free on protected articles while us mere editors only get to sit and watch. It's not even so much the particular edits that were made as the principle of admins making unnecessary edits to protected articles. If the edits were not that important, why can't those admins wait to make the edits when the article is unprotected like regular editors? It's an abuse of power.

I'm not saying it's the end of the world but it's clearly unethical and should be addressed. I am asking that the practice be stopped and the admins involved should be told, "Hey, cut it out" to their fellow admins. --ElKevbo 15:30, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

We have the {{Edit protected}} template for non-admins to request edits to protected pages. If they are uncontroversial and unrelated to the dispute, requests are usually granted. Ordinary editors are not forced to simply sit and watch and admins are not given free roam. -- Steel 15:36, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, yes, I know that. I still maintain that what has occurred was in very poor taste. I understand that apparently I am in the minority and that saddens me as I view this issue as a matter of integrity and transparency.

Unless someone has something novel to add to this conversation I'm going to drop it and move on. I've raised the issue and that was my primary intent. After all, <sarcasm>it's not my fault that ya'll are wrong</sarcasm>. :) --ElKevbo 15:43, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

That's true ElKevbo and i do agree w/ you but we can use common sense and avoid clashes. The important is that all edits were made in good faith to enhance wikipedia and not to take advantage of the situation. -- Szvest - ^{Wiki me up ®} 15:44, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I hold admins to a higher standard and I expect them to use their powers with sensitivity and care. Like Spiderman! --ElKevbo 15:48, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

If you were a real comic book geek you'd know that it's Spider-Man. --Cyde Weys 15:54, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Is it an admin standard Cyde? ;) -- Szvest - ^{Wiki me up ®} 15:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

That's my desysopped then. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 16:00, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Bah! Another example of admin ignorance of Wikipedia policy and standards! I demand a recall! :)

(No, I'm not a comic book geek. I read *real* books.) --ElKevbo 16:03, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Good job I made a point of avoiding that recall thing then :-P --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 16:05, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Why is this article protected? The event in question happened very recently, and interest in writing the article is only going to wane over time. We shouldn't be shutting it down to all but admin editing. --Cyde Weys 15:20, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

• Dunno, but I know why William removed the links - one of them is a Google Video upload with the upload comment Originally posted as a link on the Something Awful forums, I saved and uploaded it to google video before it died.. Per WP:COPYRIGHT we do no link to material which blatantly infringes copyright. Guy (Help!) 15:25, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

All is in the talk page guys. -- Szvest - ^{Wiki me up ®} 15:27, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

FWIW I've just unprotected it William M. Connolley 16:22, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Corporation account

Just a heads up to ask if an admin or advanced editor can keep an eye on RaxcoSoftware (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). It appears to be an account created by a 'representative' of Raxco Software corporation, makers of the product PerfectDisk. Their only contributions are to that article and its image, as well as this edit to Help desk which reveals their identity as Sherry Murray of Raxco Software. Now there's not rule or even guideline about companies keeping an eye on the article about themselves, but then there's diffs (and paragraphs) like this. I've given a generic advertising (should that have been NN?) warning on their talk page, but I was wondering if anyone could come up with a template similar to {{SharedIP}} for a registered user that appears to be representing a company who may have POV/advertising related interests on Wikipedia. —Vanderdecken∴ ∫ξφ 17:29, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, WP:USERNAME supports blocking the account. "Usernames that promote a company or website" and "Unique trademarked names". -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 17:35, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I block corp accounts all the time under WP:USERNAME. I usually wait until they spam once, but then POW with the blocking stick. -- Merope 18:18, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

AfD going South, can someone keep an eye on it?

The Afd at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dave Wills (wrestling) has gone south fairly quickly with off-wiki canvassing for votes, and vandalism both pro and con deletion. Need an admin to keep an eye on it if possible. SirFozzie 17:40, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I've got an eye on it. I gave Joker a final warning about vandalism. I've elected not to semi it quite yet though. I'm putting a {{not a ballot}} tag on the discussion. Metros232 17:51, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

He was just blocked by another admin for 28 days. Hopefully that'll stop some of it. Metros232 18:00, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Alright, I've got it on my watchlist. I've added unsigned comments where necessary. Cleaned it up as best I can. Joker is blocked. I think the discussion should be fine now for awhile and I'll check in on it every so often. Metros232 18:18, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I've snowed the debate as delete. Deletion review is over to the left if anyone disagrees. ---J.S ^(T/C) 18:25, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Petedaly

A little complex for AIV. Petedaly (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) creates articles that are copy/paste from government website, repeatedly removing or vandalizing AFD notices and AFD discussion, removing (but otherwise ignoring) warnings from Talk page. Fan-1967 19:10, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Annnnnnd blocked. Man, I am kicking ass and taking names today. (Serious answer: I'll continue to monitor the situation.) -- Merope 19:24, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Check user's IP for vandalism warnings?

User:MastaBaba just told me that I labeled some of their edits as vandalism, but no such warnings exist in their user account. I just started using Vandal Proof, so I'm a little concerned that I might have reverted legitimate edits they made while not logged in. Can an admin check the IP MastaBaba is using and see if I left any vandalism warnings there? Thanks. --Matthew 19:42, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Normal admins cannot see the IP that exists under the username. You'd need someone with Checkuser privlege, and I'm not sure whether this is something they would handle or not. I'd say see if MastaBaba can give you some context first. Syrthiss 19:47, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll wait for MastaBaba to respond. --Matthew 19:49, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

No, we wouldn't. Cheers, Mackensen (talk) 19:51, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Thats what I figured, but didn't want to speak for you. ;) Syrthiss 19:53, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Ask MastaBaba to point you to the warnings - ideally to diffs, but failing that, to the places where you supposedly left the warnings. Argyriou (talk) 19:54, 5 January 2007 (UTC)