Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard

Welcome – post issues of interest to administrators.

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

Current issues

BetacommandBot's notices becoming more difficult to parse

Is it just me, or is this bot leading us to the point where we would need a lawyer to a. formulate a fair use rational for usage on Wikipedia; and, b. parse out what the codified objections are based on. See my query on the bot's talk page for detail. El_C 05:31, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:NFCC#10c is a stupid and pointless concern to address, especially since all media files include a "File links" heading that lists all uses. If any specific usage is unsupported by the rationale, simply remove it. Tagging these images as having "bad" fair use rationales is counterproductive. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 05:35, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

The "file links" answer doesn't work. For example, if the image is removed from its original article usage and placed in a completely unauthorized and unjustified article, the original rationale no longer applies. This is why the rationale needs to specify the article usage per WP:NFCC#10c. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 06:01, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that many images are deleted every time the rules are changed (i.e. every Thursday); and why couldn't the bot just add that link we both did? ^{[1] [2]} El_C 06:06, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe that WP:NFCC#10c is a new requirement, it's been around for quite a while so far as I know. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 06:12, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, Videmus Omnia explained/fixed this. But there has to be a more straight forward way to explain such matters, from the outset. This codified language seems to broaden the gap between image editors/enforcers and everyone else. El_C 05:36, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I was JUST having a quarrel with this bot myself. Challenging my fair use?!?! You can't do that if you're not human! -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 05:38, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Why can't BetacommandBot just automatically link to it? I'm concerned that a lot of images are going to be deleted because of that. Now, granted, I possess a below-average intelligence (so bear with me), but I've been staring blankly at this so-called WP:NFCC#10c, and I still have no idea what it is. Actually, I'm inclined to draw the conclusion that it contains a Martian invasion plan of some sort, so I'm off to arm my cat! El_C 05:42, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

It can't automatically link to it because it takes a human to determine whether the usage is valid. If I uploaded a Ford logo and included it in the Chrysler article, should BetacommandBot automatically rewrite the rationale to say it is a good usage? Videmus Omnia ^Talk 06:12, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I have been preparing my squirrel army ever since I first saw that. I have no idea what it means either. Viridae^Talk 05:44, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

There has to be a way to stop fair use trimming through such underhanded, superfluous rule-making. If that is what's happening here. El_C 05:57, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

The bot checks whether a rationale links to an article the image is used on. In Theanphibian's Image:NCSU R1.jpg, the rationale linked to NCSU Reactor Program (a redirect), whereas the actual usage occurs at North Carolina State University reactor program. It then "disputes" the rationale because something doesn't add up in its little automated mind. In a few weeks, when it's time to clear the disputed rationale backlogs, I wonder how many admins will choose to fix the trivial concern rather than just deleting the image. This is a bad, bad idea which is going to clog up the deletion queue with many valid fair use claims. (e/c) ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 05:48, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I keep hearing what a great job this bot does in clearing backlog, but if it's doing this, is it not adding more backlog than it is clearing? And even worse, behind deleting encyclopedic images (logo for that party, for example) due to trivialities, which are a product of...? El_C 05:57, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I have ambivalent feelings about the bot and its tasks. Some tasks, like the identification of orphaned fair use images, are extremely useful, others, like the NFCC#10c tagging, are of dubious utility. Betacommand has a very linear and detail-oriented approach to the bot, which is good for a programmer, but has flaws when it comes to the overall impact to the project. The deletion of a fair use image sans proper rationale will not necessarily encourage users to upload an alternative which corrects all foreseeable concerns. Maintenance of fair use images requires informed editorial discretion, leaving such tasks to a bot is like using a streetsweeper instead of a broom. BTW, the redirect bug just earned bcbot another emergency stoppage. (e/c) ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 06:06, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Yet another bad block of BetacommandBot. Those are always quickly reversed. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 06:12, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

• Wait. BCBot is tagging bad fair use claims? I understand having a bot tag images lacking a rationale, or license tag, or some other component, but bots should not be evaluating the validity of those things. -Amarkov moo! 06:00, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

The bot is making a very simple check - does the rationale include the name of the article in which the image is to be used per WP:NFCC#10c? This is a very easy requirement to understand, I don't get the pretended confusion. If an admin deletes the image rather than fixing the problem (which is what I normally do, if the usage is valid per WP:NFCC), then the problem is with the deleting admin, not the bot. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 06:05, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Spreading blame to the deleting admin ignores the bot's role in eliminating valid fair use images. I've ran across whole discographies where the individual entries lack album covers thanks to BCBot's grand no-rationale cleansing earlier this year. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 06:10, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but what about images that really do actually pass the muster of NFCC10, like this one: [3]. Of course, Betacommand doesn't have a problem creating hours worth of work for others, but he can't be bothered spending a few minutes making sure a the page is listed via a redirect. The Evil Spartan 06:17, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

That is no pretended confusion. How can anyone who reads that new NFC#10 knows to do what you just did? Be sensible! El_C 06:19, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

[Copied from ANI (I was told the action was here)] I didn't jump into the previous Betacommandbot rows because the bot was doing painful, but necessary, work in clearing out images with grossly incomplete fair-use rationales, images with a real possibility being liabilities. However, this just popped up on my watchlist. It is an image into which actual work was put into setting up a fair-use rationale (valid and perfectly defensible, by the way), but whose rationale was still imperfect per the current fair-use guidelines.

This image will have no problem beating its 7-day execution deadline, because it is on a high-traffic article on many active users' watchlists. What is going to happen, though, to all the images with usable, but not perfect, fair-use rationales, whose placement on obscure articles means many of their deletion-taggings won't be discovered until it's too late?

Is our new standard for image deletion that fair-use rationales must be perfect by the standards of our current fair-use doctrine or else face quick deletion, regardless of how "fixable" and otherwise-valid those rationales may be? I know this has been discussed to death, but Betacommand's bot is starting to paint with such wide, nitpicking brushstrokes that we could soon lose a large chunk of our legitimate fair-use content. We're talking about images uploaded in good faith by editors who added good -- but not lawyer-perfect -- fair-use rationales, the imperfections of which have nothing to do with the prima facie legitimacy of the images' use on Wikipedia. --Dynaflow babble 06:10, 16 September 2007 (UTC) {EDIT:] What is our purpose here? Are we most concerned with whether images are actually usable in Wikipedia, or are we more concerned with precise compliance with our own self-made rules, with trying to make it maddeningly difficult to get any bit of non-Creative Commons media included in the encyclopedia, or what? --Dynaflow babble 06:50, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Certainly, the nitpicking is going out of hand BcB has been tagging at a ridiculous rate, at least five pages on my watchlist received image deletion notice in less than ten minutes, I understand the bot tagging images with no rationale but I don't think the bot has the required reasoning to know what can be considered a "Bad rationale", I can see this situation being particulary troubling with the new users that aren't well informed about the "copyright paranoia" in Wikipedia. - Caribbean~H.Q. 07:07, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Here's an example of that: diff. A user wished to add his own work to the encyclopedia and release it into the public domain. In an attempt to comply with policy, he added an extra template, stating that te image was fair-use because it was his own work. Betacommandbot zapped the image anyway, because it expects that template only on non-free images.

Wikipedia is supposed to be the encyclopedia anyone can edit, but this zero-tolerance policy undermines that promise -- only those well-versed in Wikipedia's internal culture and policies can upload an image without there being a serious chance of someone's automated script just coming along one day and summarily sending it down the memory hole. Either every step of the upload process needs to be carefully structured so that a user can't help but add tags a machine would interpret as perfect, or we need to take a second look at the apparent policy to shoot first and ask questions later when it comes to images and fair use. --Dynaflow babble 07:22, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Bad block of User:BetacommandBot

User:RockMFR has blocked the bot, although it is doing it's function as designed. If a non-free image rationale is written for a redirect page, this is not a correct rationale - it needs to be fixed per WP:NFCC#10c. The bot is performing its function as approved. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 06:16, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

But the bot has the capacity to simply fix this on-the-fly, does it not? At least provide a better explanation (see my question to you). El_C 06:22, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

How is this confusing - WP:NFCC#10c - "The image or media description page contains the following:...The name of each article in which fair use is claimed for the item, and a separate fair use rationale for each use of the item." All I did was add the name of the article for which fair use was claimed, pretty easy stuff. The bot cannot make the changes itself because it cannot determine whether the usage is valid, as explained in my Ford/Chrysler example above. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 06:27, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

If we follow common sense it's easy, but this is the weekly-image-policy! The name of the party was noted, in the description field. El_C 06:34, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

The name of the party, but not the name of the article. And, per the Foundation's licensing resolution, the data needs to be put into a machine-readable format. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 06:40, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I explained my block on the bot's talk page. I'm well aware that the bot is correctly following WP:NFCC#10 as it is written. However, adding support for redirect detection is a relatively simple technical fix, and from what I can gather above, there is some support for allowing redirect titles to act as substitutes for the article name provision at WP:NFCC#10. --- RockMFR 06:26, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

This could have been addressed without blocking the bot, which is doing necessary work. And WP:NFCC#10 doesn't currently contain any exception for redirect pages. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 06:28, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Common sense does. A bot's inability to use common sense is the most common reason for admins having to push the big red button. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 06:33, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Can you specify exactly how the bot was deviating from its approved function? Videmus Omnia ^Talk 06:37, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Was the bot really approved to tag images that contain incorrect references to the article in which they are used? I'm not saying anything but....It seems like a relative cost/benefit question to me. Which is worse in terms of time spent, errors, disruption, annoyance, etc? For the uploaders and deleting administrators to deal with this and fix images if necessary, or to reprogram the bot to follow redirects (and perhaps fix on the fly)? Ideally the image should be fixed because that's better for record-keeping. The best approach, if anyone wants to do that, is to write a new helper bot that will go in and fix use rationales by replacing article names that are redirects, with the name of the redirect target. And another to do this whenever a page containing non-free images is moved. Even better for saving time, how about a bot that grabs the article name from the "what links here" and slaps it onto the use rationale whenever the rationale is missing the article name or has the wrong one....perhaps with a question mark indicating that it still needs a human to check it over to make sure that's right. Anyway, I'll propose something more detailed along these lines over at NFCC within a few days regarding the legacy images. For the new images, the uploader just hast to be careful. Is that so much to ask? Wikidemo 06:39, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

How is the bot supposed to tell if the usage is valid or not? Compliance with WP:NFCC is the responsibility of the uploader (or anyone else with an interest in retaining non-free content), not the bot. Regardless, the block was bad. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 06:42, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

By your logic the bot has absolutely no interest in retaining non-free content. Such an antagonistic approach is a bad thing. I think there's merit to eliminating all fair use claims on Wikipedia, but not by a bleedin' campaign of attrition! ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 06:47, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Lets say that a bot is programmed to methodically blank every third sentence in an article. While it may be performing the requested function, that doesn't mean the function itself is well-defined or sensible. C'mon V.O., you can't seriously believe that using a redirect runs counter to fulfilling the intent of NFCC#10c. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 06:44, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

No, I'm saying that the idea did not justify a block of the bot. Of all the images it is tagging, what percentage were to redirects? 1%? 5%? Wikidemo's idea has merits, but it requires a process to be developed for human interaction. (And humans are already being notified to check the images via copious warnings, and only a human can actually delete the tagged images.) In the meantime, the bot has been approved to label images with noncompliant rationales, and should be unblocked to continue. Have you looked at the bot's block log? The blocks are virtually always overturned as bad. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 06:49, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

It's not like blocking a person. It's just stopping a machine until we figure out if what it's doing is right. If what it's doing isn't right, then the longer we let it run, the more damage it'll do. Since Wikipedia has no deadlines (unlesss you've uploaded a picture with an imperfect fair-use rationale), no harm is done in pausing the bot's work. --Dynaflow babble 06:53, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, there is a deadline - March 23, 2008, per the Foundation. And we have hundreds of thousands of images, with thousands more uploaded every day. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 07:17, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Right. That's why it's to the community's detriment for the bot to waste our time by forcing us to check and correct image pages that it shouldn't be tagging in the first place. The bot should simply check the links contained within the rationale. (I'm not even suggesting that it check for non-linked redirect titles.) If one of them is a redirect to the article containing the image, it should then update it accordingly. —David Levy 07:34, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Any instances of improper tagging due to the presence of redirects formed sufficient basis for forcefully pausing the bot, as all tagging prior to the block will have to be reviewed. The presence of a substantial block log indicates an unreliable track record, no bot gets a free ride because of good intentions. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 06:57, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

My 2 cents is that tagging bad fair use rational templates by bot is counterproductive to the wiki community at large. I can agree that it makes some sense to tag images completly lacking fair use rationale templates (although I fail to see why not an enhance version of the boilerplates could just do that), but he current order, where editors have to watch the images they've upload constantly against arbitrary deletions is just creating a feeling of repulsion towards the very idea of a community wikipedia. The task of improving fair use rationales has to be done through manual editing, by motivating why there are faults in the rational on the image talk page. --Soman 07:00, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

(ec)Reviewed how? If a rationale points to a redirect, the rationale needs to be fixed per WP:NFCC. I think you're overlooking the fact that the bot does not delete anything, it simply identifies problems that need to be fixed. Is it better if we just pretend the problems don't exist? Videmus Omnia ^Talk 07:03, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to disagree here. No, this is not a problem that needs to be fixed. In common Wikipedia practice, citing a redirect title generally works just fine as an unambiguous reference to a page. There is no practical problem I can think of, except in vanishingly rare cases. If I move a page, that does not mean all references elsewhere on the wiki to the old title become invalid. If it works without a problem in articles and talk pages, why shouldn't it work in image description pages? I'm normally the first to press for the strictest possible application of NFCC, but I think we ought to concentrate on the content of what kinds of non-free content we want to have, not on formality hair-splitting. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:15, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I can buy into this, as I stated above, but I don't think this justified shutting down the bot. No reasonable admin is going to delete an image just because the rationale points to a redirect. The rationale should be fixed to get the rationale into a machine-readable format per the resolution, but nobody will delete because of that. I just don't understand the aversion to using the bot to identify the problem. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 07:22, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Unless the admin is deleting images with a script (which has happened before). The point I see here is that the images were indeed in machine-readable format, and were brought out of it by a move by a third party. In that case, the uploader of the image did not do anything wrong, yet still may see his image deleted. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 07:25, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

It's not the rationale that needs to be fixed, it's the bot. Once the bot is taught to recognise references through redirects, all is fine. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:29, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

That is a mistaken inference. If the letter of NFCC does not adequately address redirects, then it must be changed, not the other way around. Redirects are going to occur, they are a necessary byproduct of constructing a wiki-based encyclopedia and therefore trump minute incongruities presented by hyper-prescriptive rationale formatting. BCBot, in effect, created a problem where one did not exist. (e/c) ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 07:18, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Let me make sure I'm understanding here, if an editor decides to disambiguate a page which has a FU image and then moves the original page to the dismabiguated title without also editing the image page to include the new 'target', no matter how properly rationaled the image page was, it'll get tagged as not correct?--Alf ^melmac 07:06, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Yup, this was the reason behind blocking beta's bot. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 07:21, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, the bot doesn't recognize redirects and has been tagging images as having a bad rationale because of this, wich means that at the rate that the bot works hundreds if not thousands of images with good rationales are going to be tagged as having bad rationales probably resulting in the project losing a big piece of the "good" fair use content. - Caribbean~H.Q. 07:23, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

The bot does not delete anything. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 07:26, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

That's obvious, that's the reason I said "Probably", why? because not all admins assess the situation before deleting a good number of them just deletes when they encounter a tag telling them to do so. - Caribbean~H.Q. 07:29, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

To expand on the above, while it's true the bot doesn't actually do the deletion, it still initiates the process of deletion and creates the kind of administrative backlog that encourages the quick deletion of images by whatever admins end up having to tackle it, to the detriment of the slow and careful process of putting the quasi-legal verbiage of the image page into a robot-acceptable format. --Dynaflow babble 07:39, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I think many people are missing the point that, per the Foundation, all non-free media that doesn't meet the criteria will be deleted after March 23, 2008. That leaves less than 200 days for the "slow and careful" process of getting the data into the right format, a process that is constantly slowed by constant bickering over simple things like including the name of an article in a rationale. And countless new noncompliant images are uploaded daily. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 07:43, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Said criteria are determined and implemented by the community under an "Exemption Doctrine Policy" (NFCC). Out of all present criteria I would ascribe the lowest priority to NFCC#10c, and I can't think of a worse method for addressing that concern than the indiscriminate automated tagging of useful images for deletion. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 07:59, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

It's painfully obvious by now that we're missing a stable, clear, easy to use machine readable EDP. The idea of letting a bot, in the absence of such a stable, clear, easy to use machine readable EDP, tag things for not having one... is insane. If we need to have one it is absolutely the wrong thing to do to start trying to get one by blasting images. Halt the bot until there's one defined, communicate the definition to everyone, then give everyone time to tag as required. Georgewilliamherbert 08:44, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Adding a proper FUR should be a option when uploading an image, maybe something simmilar to how the copyright licence is presented, the user uploading is presented with a blank FUR that they fill up in accordance to the image they are uploading (this should only be available if the uploader selects one of the FU licenses of course) I know this might take some time to format but it would be a great addition to the uploading formula and would reduce the ammount of images with "Bad rationales", thus giving the bots less work and eliminating images missing FUR. - Caribbean~H.Q. 09:48, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Here's what we should do: Since the license tags must be comprehensible to our robot overlords (sorry; Slashdot moment), in the future the tags' creation should be mediated by machine, in a way that won't let an uploader proceed until all required information fields for the type of file being uploaded have been filled in to the machine's satisfaction. I'm sure it is within the Developers' capabilities to redo the upload dialogue that way.

As for the current slew of problematic images, we do seem to have a deadline. However, the deadline is in two hundred days, not seven. Betacommandbot could tag each image with a big, red threat as it does now, but set the date for deletion to, say, four months from the date tagged. That would allow the bot to index all the problematic images now, and leave sporadic contributors, people on wikibreaks, etc., time to come back, discover their images have been tagged, and fix them.

Also, it would be good of the bot to leave some sort of marker on the images themselves when they are displayed on their pages, similar to what the {{tfd-inline}} template does. Wikignomes casually reading through articles could then spot images in peril and take a crack at fixing them. If the original uploader is no longer active, the only places anyone is likely to stumble across Betacommandbot's warnings now are on Talk pages and on the pages for the images themselves, places most Wikipedians won't go unless they happen to be actively working on that particular page. Realistically, for images appearing o i articles with little or no Talk page traffic, no one is ever even likely to see that something needs to be fixed. --Dynaflow babble 10:13, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

BCbot has been out of control and should be permanently shut down. It should not be evaluating validity. Rlevse 11:37, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

The situation in a nutshell: Betacommand makes a bot to do something. It often enforces policy, and is very hastily written, without worrying about people's concerns. Then people get mad when the bot either a) does something it should, b) does something it's supposed to by the letter of the law if not the spirit (would someone read freakin' WP:IAR?), or c) it does something that it shouldn't. The problem is that people often get mad at it (rightfully) for doing b or c, but it's always assumed by everyone else that people are mad for a. Capiche? And thus the bot is always unblocked, and the many calls for "knock it off Betacommand, and write a bot that works" are completely unheeded. Bad system. The Evil Spartan 11:51, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Uhh... c)? Can I have the evil, laconic version, please? El_C 11:58, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm tempted to add on behalf of TES "molon labe", but that would not help towards reaching an amiable compromise on this issue. -- llywrch 19:39, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Bad block - we don't block Bots because they lack a feature we think they should have. As ever the Bot was doing what its approved to do. If people have a problem with the Bot, they should discuss it with Betacommand or have its approval withdrawn. Being an admin is not a license to shut down Bots one doesn't like. WjBscribe 12:06, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

It is a license to do so when it does damage, such as placing hundreds of images on the deletion cue when it fails to recognize redirects. El_C 12:10, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I've only seen a couple of examples above - not hundreds of images. And in some of the cases the Bot's input will have been helpful. If the name of the article has changed signficantly during a move, I for one would have appreciated the Bot letting me know my rationale needs to be updated... WjBscribe 12:17, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

You would have appreciated the Bot letting you know your rationale needs to be updated? I don't know how to respond to that. El_C 12:28, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree the Bot has at time been heavy handed but it has also shown that users are showing a considerable lack of care when uploading non-free content. In a free content encyclopedia, uploading copyright works should be done with the utmost care - in a lot of (even recent cases) it has not been. I understand people may not be able to write a valid FUR the first time round - I have assisted numerous users with writing rationales, but I don't understand the hostility to the Bot. If I have erred in uploading content, I appreciate that being brought to my attention whether by another editor or a Bot. If a rationale is deficient, I will correct it. I also think that users should take an ongoing responsibility for fair use uploads - is the image still being used? If not, should it be deleted or restored to an article? If the former, please tag it. Has your unfree image started being used on a page other than the appropriate one? If so, please remove it. Has the page its on been moved to a new title? If so, please update your rationale. We have a vast amount of unfree images that are to all intents and purposes "unattended" such that we now can only regulate the matter with a Bot. That is not a failing of the Bot, but the fact that non-free images were allowed to multiply out of human control. WjBscribe 12:36, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree that fair use rationales need to be carefully constructed from the get go, and should be kept accurate. I agree putting an image into a new article not mentioned in the rationale is cause for concern/investigation. But I do not agree that a redirect is not a valid reference to an article. A redirect is eminently valid, just as valid as the real title. We in fact have been admonished by developers to NOT bother fixing them at one point in the past, as being more of a load on the server than leaving them. The bot needs to be fixed, and should not run, should remain blocked, until it is fixed to either honor, or itself fix, redirects in rationales. I have deep respect for Betacommand, his efforts on behalf of the project, and for his bot, but I do think blocking this bot over this was appropriate in this case.

On the matter of helping uploaders get fair use rationales right in the first place, it is very doable to give assistance in the upload screen itself with this. Consider the Commons upload page: commons:Commons:Upload it has a menu, which by (a perversion of :) ) language codes, steers you to various upload pages. At one point, some of those pages even had javascript that would help you fill out various things, IIRC. That technical approach could be used here if desired, and it would not require developer intercession to make it happen, just carefully planned creation of sub pages and changes to the main upload page. ++Lar: t/c 15:13, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

We have something like that at Wikipedia:Upload, though I wish there was a section for Flickr images. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 19:01, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, everyone seems to think that things are black and white, either a bot doesn't tag images at all, or a bot has to tag images for deletion. How about a "this particular image needs some further human review" tag (with associated category) instead? This would probably already cut down on the amount of work humans need to do, since they only need to check the needs-review tags. At the same time, there's no danger of admins sweeping by and deleting things. If we make the wording of the tag really friendly, we could even draw people into the community instead.

Something similar can be done for the User talk message: —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kim Bruning (talk • contribs) 19:01, 16 September 2007 (UTC) "Hello! this is your friendly local Betacommandbot, I'm checking images to see if they are all legally shipshape and in order. There may or may not be some small amount of work to still be done on Image:Yourimage . It's probably nothing, if anyone does shows up to take a look, please be kind and give them a hand! Thank you!"

Even bots can be friendly. :-) --Kim Bruning 19:00, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

My 2 cents - failing to recognize redirects is a massive bug and something easily fixed. Consider that for merged lists, I've often used redirects to anchors in the FU rationale - that way, if the article is ever spun off on its own again, it points in the right place, and if the article stays merged, the link goes directly to the usage. Tagging such images with a *better* link is clearly ridiculous, as is tagging images for whom the article has moved. I'd also like to note that this policy is likely to hit obscure foreign topics with images uploaded by people with shaky commands of English harder than well-visited English topic, making the Systematic Bias group's job even harder. If Betacommand wants to actually *fix* this problem rather than simply willy-nilly nominate for deletion, may I recommend having his bot add these images to a maintenance category with a name along the lines of "Images whose article rationales may be invalid?" Then, humans can examine each image over the course of a month or whatever and decide whether it can simply be fixed, or if there's actually a problem with the image. SnowFire 22:52, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. See below. ++Lar: t/c 14:19, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Every tag that BCBOT puts on an image categorizes the image into a maintenance category. See Category:Images_with_no_fair_use_rationale for an example. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:22, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

My 2¢ about User:BetacommandBot--it should be stopped immediately.

I posted the following at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content and was directed to this page by Kim Bruning, who also informed me that this bot had (much to my disappointment) evidently been approved or endorsed by some sort of administrative committee. Anyway, my 2¢, plus a few questions: I happened to log in today to find a note from "Betacommand bot" ordering me to write a little essay, lest a photo I posted months ago (and fully in compliance with the policies at the time, as far as I know) be deleted. The language of the message was pompous and insulting (announcing that "there is a concern that the rationale you have provided ... may be invalid"). The larger point is that such a notice was entirely uncalled for. Leaving aside the ex-post-facto nature of the demand, the fact is that the image in question, [4] is not problematic. It is the front cover of one issue of Aspen magazine, a defunct magazine, used as the sole illustration in the article about that magazine, and in no other articles. As it happens, there is a longstanding and well-known web site (ubu.web) that reproduces in detail the entire contents of every issue of Aspen magazine. "There is a concern..." Who is concerned? Does anybody really think this image presents a copyright problem? Does anybody think the article will be improved by removing the image? It appears to me that this user is a wildly aggressive rogue, a self-appointed sheriff indiscriminantly shooting up the town in the name of the law. In other words, this bot is damaging the quality of wikipedia and probably driving contributors away. It is unlikely I'll ever upload an image to Wikipedia again: good job, Betacommand. Shouldn't this user be stopped, perhaps suspended from Wikipedia until that bot is reconfigured to send out letters of apology? Am I missing something here? Do people actually think this automated vigilantism is a good thing? BTfromLA 19:04, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Re "Does anybody really think this image presents a copyright problem?": Yes. The image you posted is copyrighted; it needs either an appropriate license or fair use justification to be part of Wikipedia. The existence of other sites reproducing the copyrighted content with or without permission does not change this. However, if Betacommandbot's wording prompts this sort of outraged reaction rather than getting you to just write the necessary fair use justification, perhaps there is room to tone down its language. —David Eppstein 19:11, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment. In this particular case, the user uploaded an image, added the magazine cover template but failed to include the required rationale which, I believe, was required by the template he added. There is no foul here. We are glad to have you as an editor but we really must insist that you follow the rules and policies of Wikipedia even if they are sometimes uncomfortable. --JodyB _{yak, yak, yak} 11:25, 17 September 2007 (UTC

If there was a policy in place at the time (nine months ago) that required a "rationale" beyond the magazine cover fair use licensing template, I was not aware of it. Certainly, no such thing was requested during the uploading process. If users are required to delve into the arcana of shifting policy pages before they edit, that's a serious adminstrative failure, isn't it? I think there's a serious problem that is damaging Wikipedia and is not limited to the issue of this bot: people whose mentality is oriented toward rulemaking and law enforcement are making the enviroment inhospitable to people who are interested in creating high-quality article content. Those who are primarily interested in writing and research are unlikely to spend their time in policy and procedural discussions. The more heavily bureacratized and legislated Wikipedia becomes, the more mechanically and aggressively the laws are enforced, the less attractive this environment is for those interested in writing articles. You personally may not be as interested in the nuances of the writing and illustrations as in the efficiency of the programming or consistency of policy, but surely you recognize that the article contents do matter at wikipedia, and that the interests of volunteer writers (and contributors of relevant images) should be a consideration in all administrative matters. As to this bot, I think anetode has it right: "Some policies should not be handled by a bot. ... There are obviously flaws in image policies which should be addressed and enforcing a hyper-detailed version of a fluid policy is unwise." Amen. BTfromLA 17:59, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. A license template saying, in part, "It is believed that the use of low-resolution images of magazine covers to illustrate the publication of the issue of the magazine in question with the publication name either visible on the image itself or written in the image description above, on the English-language Wikipedia, hosted on servers in the United States by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law" was posted as part of the original upload. I still fail to see where the problem is. If one image of the cover of one issue of a magazine being used to illustrate an article about the magazine doesn't count as fair use, what does? I'm not an attorney, but this seems like an absolutely unambiguous example of fair use, and the fair use rationale (with a warning against other uses) was already clearly posted. BTfromLA 19:29, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Did you look at it? The justification for this magazine cover's use is already provided, in detail, in the tag BTfromLA added to the image page. That's why the tag is called "Magazine Cover." Badagnani 19:16, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

The question of whether to allow copyright tags as use rationales, either standing alone or with a very brief template, is something we have yet to discuss seriously but we will probably do soon. For the moment the rule is and has been for more than a year that this requires a separate use rationale. It's not a copyright problem but it is a deficiency via-a-vis the image data requirements on the subject.Wikidemo 19:19, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

We're all about practicality, and though I understand your concern it does sound a little vindictive to punish a user. Having been away from the debate, there are some ins and outs to image use policy and deletion you may have missed. Nevertheless, I do think this points to the need for better oversight of any bot that's going to automate image use and deletion. I'm pretty sure that the bot's original approval (which didn't follow process to begin with) was limited to tagging images without any use rationale. It was not approved for tagging images with use rationales that were determined by machine to be defective. This isn't a simple innocent mistake. Betacommand knew about the redirect issue and apparently chose to ignore it. The messages given in the latest round are hardly adequate to inform users that the reason their images are tagged is that the statement of where the image is used is missing or (the machine has decided) incorrect. I don't see how anyone planning to tag a bunch of images for a reason could miss the fact that the tag doesn't tell people the reason. So...blame the message, not the messenger. No reason to lash out against Betacommand, but specific actions of this and other bots should be reviewed and approved in advance, and our image deletion policy overall ought to be supervised in an orderly way rather than left solely to individual users to program bots as they see fit. Wikidemo 19:19, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

In this case the bot acted well, though the language it uses is indeed irritant. About Betacommand he was de-sysoped I don't think he deserves further punishment. - Caribbean~H.Q. 19:22, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Punishment? For running a bot which is doing what it is supposed to do? Corvus cornix 21:10, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Huh? was that directed at me? I wasn't the one that suggested suspending him from Wikipedia. - Caribbean~H.Q. 21:23, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not proposing punishment either. The bot is well intentioned. It has obviously acted up, but not in this case. Wikidemo 21:40, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Looks like the bot did what it should do. People keep complaining about the bot, but I don't see any proposals to change the policies the bot is based on, so it seems more like people are complaining about having to follow our own rules. ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 21:46, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Some parts of some policies should not be handled by a bot. Can you imagine a bot for evaluating article neutrality? There are obviously flaws in image policies which should be addressed and enforcing a hyper-detailed version of a fluid policy is unwise. Out of the dozens of thousands of fair use images with rationales there are obviously many different rationale templates/phrasing, it makes no sense to place some in a deletion queue because a bot was not able to decipher them. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 22:20, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

BCBot does not try and decypher the rationale, Instead it checks for a few items, A.) is {{non-free rationale}} used on the page, B.) if that is not there is the page at least 20 characters long excluding templates. (that checks is there any rationale). it then checks for the name of any use of the image. If a image is used on 20 pages but only one is mentioned on the image page it doesnt get tagged. As long as there is any article name that it is used on its not tagged. those few key parts are needed in ANY rationale. As for redirects I am trying to detect them. I thought I had that fixed, Im trying to add that in, its not as simple as most people would think. As for images meeting NFCC#10c that is an absolute necessity. If we dont enforce that we will have images used on 20 pages before we know whats happing, see User talk:Betacommand/20070901#Potential_crisis... for a perfect example of a NFC image that was used on about 30 pages. </end rant> β^_command 00:38, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

A.) and B.) are fine if they exclude CD covers / logos / any other copyright tag where the rationale is the same in 99% instances of use. The NFCC#10c issue, IMHO, should be addressed either through a novel tag which doesn't place images in a deletion queue, or not trusted to the bot at all. By your own admission the recent round of bot-tagging will not fix instances where images are used at 20/30 pages (which is certainly a problem) because it only checks for one linked instance. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 01:22, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I do have plans for identifying the abused non-free images. And No it does not ignore albums and others, Just because its an album cover does not by default give us the ability to use it. NFCC 10c is a key part of the rules and there are no exemptions from that. (PS Im only currently targeting images uploaded after January 1, 2007 per agreement with Wikidemo and plans on attempting to clean up the disaster that we call our current image usage, and organizational system. β^_command 01:29, 17 September 2007 (UTC))

NFCC 10c compliance is a low priority issue. Lets continue this at WT:NFC. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 01:34, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I've made a proposal at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content to change NFCC#10c. --- RockMFR 01:06, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Aside from the discussion on fair use itself, is Betacommandbot even authorized to be doing what it's doing? The closest thing I could find to approval for the task in question was this, giving the bot permission to tag images for deletion if they have been uploaded without any fair-use rationale at all. It says nothing about allowing the bot to assess fair-use rationales and add images to the deletion queue based on its assessment. Is there some sort of parallel process to expand a bot's mandate that I'm not aware of? --Dynaflow babble 07:39, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

• I searched and came to the same conclusion. The only relevant page on the list of approved taks is the one Dynaflow noted, here. BetacommandBot is not authorized to tag images for having unsatisfactory fair use rationales. One could possibly interpret Betacommand's description as such, but the strong implication was that the bot would only deal with nonexistent rationales (since that was stated clearly multiple times). I strongly suggest that the block be reapplied. — xDanielx ^T/_C 09:39, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Oftentimes, where a task has been approved, very similar tasks do not require an additional approval request: In this case, that's what happened. Betacommand asked me, and possibly others, whether it would require additional approval, and since it still followed policy and was now enforcing policy, I said that this approval was more like an update than a new task. It is performing as intended, and more importantly, it is following policy, and improving Wikipedia as a project. Imagine the nightmare if even 1/10 of these images were complained about to OTRS. --ST47Talk·Desk 10:42, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

The last statement doesn't really apply to this case. No one is going to complain to OTRS on the basis of an image not fulfilling the exact requirements of NFCC#10c (that criterion is meant for managing internal use_. Wrongful attribution of copyright and compromising market value are much greater concerns to fair use on the project, and those are outside of the scope of this discussion and BCBot's operation. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 00:34, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

No, BetacommandBot should not be disabled. It's that simple. If you don't like having to abide by our policies and are blaming the bot, then you should question exactly why you're here. --Deskana (talky) 11:05, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I would ask that people not provoke each other by suggesting they don't belong on Wikipedia. Many people who are unhappy about the Bot are old time, productive Wikipedians. Personally, I like abiding by well thought out policies. I do not blame the bot for people's noncompliance. I am here to participate. However, it is fair to question what the bot is doing. It has been blocked perhaps a dozen times, usually for producing unexpected results. More discussion and upset has revolved around this than almost anything else in the past several months. It's clearly doing something it was not approved to do, and the original approval wasn't clean to begin with. Note from the approval log the lack of discussion, waiting period, and detailed notice about what it was going to do. That doesn't mean I favor disabling it, if we can all agree on some ground rules. We can discuss how it should be operating, not just lash out. But a discussion is always appropriate.Wikidemo 11:48, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

You misunderstand, I am not saying that people do not belong here. But if you've got some sort of fundamental problem with the NFCC, then I think the problem is deeper than just a problem with fair use. --Deskana (talky) 12:13, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I think saying "there is a problem with how Betacommandbot (BCB) does things, and it's serious, and likely to bite newbies badly, but simple to fix, and therefore BCB should be disabled until it is fixed" (which is what I and I think others are saying) is not at all the same as saying that "there is a problem with NFCC". I have absolutely no fundamental problem with NFCC. But I nevertheless think BCB is broken, and should be disabled until it is fixed. Not honoring redirects is a fundamental, but ultimately simple to fix, flaw. Redirects are the lifeblood of the encyclopedia. Longer term, I think the suggestions being made that BCB not run outside its charter suggest that the charter be reviewed and perhaps clarified, and I think the suggestions that BCB place things in categories that mean things need fixing, categories which any interested volunteer can work on, instead of just leaving notices, might be a better approach. Those are 3 different points being made (short term breakage, out of charter, long term approach change) and none of them in any way are about not fully supporting NFCC. Suggesting that they are may not be the most useful debate tactic. Hope that helps. ++Lar: t/c 14:17, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

de-indent BCBot does now see redirects and follows them. two tagging and saying that that we will get to it, just doesnt work. they will just sit there tagged and rot until the end of time. We have tried generating lists, those go nowhere. only when you put some teeth into the tagging does anything happen. β^_command 14:25, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

It's awesome that you fixed redirects, but if you had said they were going to be fixed at the first sign of someone saying they seem off, that would have been better than waiting till now, I think.

I think something with NO fair use rationale is deletion fodder, and putting it in a speedy category is fine. But a finer discriminant is needed here, because I think something where the bot thinks the fair use rationale is flawed, for whatever reason the bot has been programmed to come up with, is NOT deletion fodder. It needs to be put in a different category, one that doesn't have speedy attached. (and one displayed on the backlog list as a different category too) If desired, let the bot take a second pass after some number of days, and THEN put the item up for normal deletion (not speedy). But marking things for speedy deletion because the fair use rationale isn't quite right seems off. As for notifications, why not, in addition to notifying the uploader, notify everyone who has edited (within the last month, say) any article the image is used in that maybe they might want to take a look. Do it in a nice and friendly way... not the current style of wording. (Note: this is really Lar posting this, crosslinks prove it is me) ++Larbot - run by User:Lar - t/c 17:26, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree with Lar's assessment. "Put[ting] some teeth into the tagging" directly translates to "getting rid of useful images for the sake of making a point". Immediate placement in a speedy deletion queue because of NFCC10c should be out of the question, if a valid rationale is invalidated because of two sets of brackets, then I see good faith flying out the window. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 00:43, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

The bot does put things in categories; that's what the deletion tags do. For example, anyone can look through the images listed as having no fair use rationale and add rationales. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:19, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I think we're mixing a couple issues. The person who started this section was having a heated "bot moment" and lashed out some over an image that was simply not compliant. I think we've long since set that straight and I hope the person gets the message. What to do is a different issue. We're talking about making some improvements. Speaking of which, if an image gets tagged for not properly listing an article in which it is used, can we PLEASE use a tag that is clear that's the reason, not just call it a 10(c) violation? Wikidemo 14:36, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Going forward... let me once again recommend that BetacommandBot tag images with a maintenance category and/or "rationale cleanup" template in the future, assuming we want to actually fix the problem. User:CBM pointed out above that the bot is already doing this; this is technically true, but they're also categorized for speedy deletion in a week, which is silly. To compare to article space... the {{Notability}} tag is often left on articles for three months plus to give it time to improve and assert notability. The complaints that BCBot is tagging for speedy deletion are the image equivalent of a "copyedit" or "wikify" tag in article space, which are almost never reasons themselves for deletion. There are people who are genuinely interested in helping out with fixing rationales, but requiring them to do it all in one frenzied week (considering the rate the Bot tags at) is not a good idea. SnowFire 15:26, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

tagging with a maintance category wont do much that has been tried with no success, unless we have a deadline for deletion it will not get fixed, we will just have thousands of images tagged and no one trying to fix them. β^_command 17:38, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

What skin off your nose is it to simply wait? I'm certain that you could go around with a bot after X amount of time is up and update the tags to the "delete in 7 days" variety. That way there will both be a deadline period as well as a longer period to give contributors who only log on to check Wikipedia once a month a chance to notice. Moreover, as noted above, I sincerely doubt the reasons you are tagging for are actual deletion reasons in any case! It's too scattershot as many will in fact have perfectly valid rationales, and just no or a wrong wikilink. SnowFire 03:05, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

BetacommandBot was only approved to tag images with no fair use rationales, but it was not approved to tag images with fair use rationales it thinks are invalid. It is difficult for a bot to judge whether a fair use rationale is invalid, and it has made a lot of mistakes already. Also, the way it works bites a lot of users - both newcomers and experienced editors. Please shut it down immediately. --Kaypoh 04:53, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Redirects acceptable or not

[rm straw poll, I hadn't noticed the issue was already fixed. Random832 14:29, 17 September 2007 (UTC)]

Why exactly did we start a straw poll on this? — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:22, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Because it needs to be clear that THIS is the issue, and that the bot needs to be blocked until this is fixed no matter how much good it might otherwise do. Silencing any criticism (and reversing any block of the bot) with a cry of "You're just trying to enable image-copyright-violators" has gone on long enough--Random832 14:27, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Putting aside the [now-fixed] redirect issue, the fact that there is a significant faction that believes "BetacommandBot can do no wrong" belongs here. If a bot has bugs, it should be blocked until they are fixed, no matter how important its task is. Bots don't have feelings, a block of a bot does not have the same emotional payload as a block of a person; so admins can afford to be quick to block and slow to unblock in these cases. --Random832 14:33, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, yes and no. The BOT may not have feelings, but the bot author could well take offense at people's apparent irrational dislike of his pride and joy. So I'll reiterate, I think this bot is nifty and doing important work. I just think a few changes are needed in the approach. (yes, it's me typing this, not my bot) ++Larbot - run by User:Lar - t/c 18:46, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Exactly it pisses me off when admins block a the bot for no valid reason. Most of the time im online and a note to my or the bots talkpage in a calm, pleasant manner, (Not screaming and attacking as what a lot of users do, because I guess WP:CIVIL doesnt apply when talking to me) will often result in a very quick answer. If Im online I know about a new message in either place within 10 seconds. Random832's Point of View most people dont read the messages, and tags that are left on their talkpages or images, instead they come screaming at me, WHY DID YOUR F*&^ing BOT TAG MY IMAGE?, such messages are useless for me and just seem to be the user venting anger at me. Instead when coming to a talk page you should be calm civil and informative, Why did your bot tag <INSERT IMAGE NAME HERE>, It has <RATIONALE OR IS USED>, not sure why it was tagged because I cant find anything wrong with it, it has a rationale and is used in an article. <<== that message will get you a prompt clear answer, Admins and users who fail to communicate with me (IE straight to AN OR ANI) or leave unclear messages tend not to get responded to well. . β^_command 20:52, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I left you two messages stating that there was a problem with your tagging images as orphans when they were not and someone else also left you a similar message. You were online when your bot was working yesterday and you saw the three messages, yet you ignored them. All three were civil, informing you that there was a problem with your tagging images as orphans when they were not, yet you ignored them. Why? --Bob 14:56, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Bot tagging images as orphans when they are not

Image:Indiarugbylogo.jpg, Image:NZ7s.gif, Image:Stemma Petrarca Rugby.png, Image:Mexicorugby.png, Image:Amatori.jpg, Image:FCGAlpes.gif, Image:Heartland XV logo.png amongst others were tagged as orphaned by this bot today, when they are all in current use on articles, in some cases, for almost a year as is the case for Image:CASI.jpg. Fair use claim in place, in use on article since November 9, 2006, yet tagged as an orphan today. Yes, some didn't have fair use claims, but they majority did. Can the bot be stopped until the bug is sorted out? --bob 15:01, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, shows that Betacommand bot, at the time of that edit, was not functioning in accordance with claimed design, and shows why I think placing images like that into a category that is deletable in 7 days may not be the right approach. On the other hand, anything deleted can be undeleted so it's not the end of the world, as long as newbies aren't bitten too hard. I just don't see why the bot can't place images like that one into a different category than ones with no FUR at all. (that the placement is via a speedy template is a red herring at best... at worst it's a design flaw, use of the template as the sole way to place the image into a category may not be the best approach) I think that the speedy category is a slushpile, and asking admins or volunteers to look through the dross for images that were placed there incorrectly isn't ideal. A finer grained approach is needed. If there are multiple sorts of problems, place the images in multiple sorts of categories, making it easier to work on specific problems, instead of one huge category with many different problems all lumped together ++Larbot - run by User:Lar - t/c 19:23, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Note BCBot has a triple orphan check, BCBot did not make any errors MediaWiki made the errors. Some images were not showing up in the file links section. Please do not complain to me about that, I will take this to the devs and see what can be done. β^_command 20:33, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

User:Lahs08 and continual uploading of copyrighted images

I'd like some advice on how deal with Lahs08 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) who continually uploads the same copyrighted images (Image:Nfl on fox 2006 logo.jpg) without proper licensing (now calling it user-created public domain to avoid the issue completely). As seen the user talk page [5], there have been a number of images uploaded without sources, improper licensing, etc. This user simply continually uploads the same images in part so that the article NFL on FOX has images about the banner used. Admins should look at deleted edits to see the large number of images that have been deleted as well. There's been no responses to any discussion, just simply reuploading of images and now using different licenses to avoid the issue. I'd recommend at least a few weeks block but I'm open to suggestions. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 20:32, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

You can deal with it the hard headed way: leave him uw-copyright, and report him at WP:AIV if he does it again, he will just keep getting blocked longer and longer. The odds are though, that he pays no attention to his talk page, because he always gets loads of messages about images being deleted, and he can't be bothered to take the time to understand why. Jackaranga 22:51, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Look at this example. The user repeatedly re-uploads deleted content without making any effort to comply with the non-free content policies. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 00:46, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I've left him yet another warning, but if he continues with the copyright infringement that account will have to be blocked. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 03:17, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I reported him at WP:AIV. He's had plenty of warnings. The fact that he has re-uploaded the same images repeatedly, but has changed the licenses from non-free to fradulent free licenses, tells me he is intentionally evading the copyright policies despite a pageful of warnings. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 03:24, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Just to share my experience with Lahs08, I've brought up his vandalism previously in regards to changing the names of sports announcers to Simpsons characters within articles, and posting images on WGBH and Viacom (1971-2005) without any sort of context within the narrative (or one written incomprehensively), or attribution to other websites. The editor has not listened to my warnings in the past (between April-June) and did not respond to me at all. He is non-communicative and disruptive, and seems to not respect any sort of copyright. Nate 23:50, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in feature discussions

Just like we have Arguments to Avoid in Deletion Discussions, I suspect that writing a similar page for FAC will help address the apparent problems with feature discussions (FAC, FLC, FPC, etc). It seems that several pages have been featured while failing to address important problems, or not featured for spurious reasons, such as whether their en-dashes were "properly spaced". Please contribute to the above page, and give comments on its talk page. >Radiant< 13:46, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Oppose, period is outside the quotation. Luigi30 (Taλk) 14:09, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Period should be outside the quotation, as Radiant was not quoting a full sentence. Carcharoth 16:19, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Why would we poll such a stupid thing? Write the damn articles, stop caring about features, and stop wasting people on WP:AN's time with spurious polls. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 14:31, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

... I am fairly certain Luigi was being facetious and did not intend to start a poll ... --Iamunknown 14:52, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

To my knowledge, there has never been an article denied featured status based on WP:MOS issues (sorry, now a stalled link because of Radiant!'s move of the page in which he's involved in a dispute without discussing it at the page, now a reverted mess); although I've repeatedly asked for an example, one has never been provided, and to my knowledge, no such beast exists. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:04, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

The concerns that some articles are promoted because content spun from whole cloth, speculation, and/or inaccurate misleading references, are missed during the review, is of more concern. It is undeniable, if completely regrettable, that an over-emphasis on WP:MOS issues can lead to less emphasis on content issues. I personally think that advanced copyediting for style should have a separate process within FAC, coming before the main FAC process, which should concentrate on the main goals of readability, comprehensiveness, balance, and credibility (verification through the references plays a part here, but credibility also requires resident presumed subject experts to be called in - usually through notification at various WikiProjects). Even this will miss stuff but is the best Wikipedia can do at the moment. But please get the copyediting part of FAC separated from the content review part of FAC. Carcharoth 16:29, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I think we call that Peer review in these places... sadly, it is perennially understaffed, and often neglected. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 16:31, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I fully agree that the FAC should focus less on presentation issues (like MOS) and more on content issues. Perhaps having objections labeled as being either style or content? Raul654 16:32, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

• I think separating the two could work, yes. Perhaps create two sections. >Radiant< 08:32, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict reply to Carcharoth) Absolutely agreed that POV is getting through FAC, but this is a long-standing problem not only at FAC but throughout Wikipedia; undermining an inhouse writing style won't solve that very old problem. (Not to mention that when I used to exhaustively review sources for reliability I was one of the few reviewers doing that, and that was criticized as much as these new MOS criticisms :-) The most glaring example of POV getting through FAC I've ever seen was Hugo Chávez, defeatured within six months. It certainly didn't get by FAC because of an overemphasis on MOS issues; it got by FAC because most of the Venezuelan editors who knew how POV the article was had been silenced by the time the article came to FAC, or couldn't keep up because of ESL issues. It got by FAC because, at that time, Chávez wasn't receiving a lot of international press, and there weren't enough knowledgeable editors to balance the article. How are you going to solve that? The lack of knowledgeable reviewers in a given topic area is *not* a new problem. Undermining good writing style will not solve the POV, comprehensiveness or systemic bias. That is, weakening featured article criteria 2 won't encourage better review of 1b, 1c or 1d; those have always been problems. When we built the {{articlehistory}} for FAs and FFAs, I spent months in FAC archives building the pieces of history, and I will assert that FAC reviews are now far more stringent on 1b, 1c and 1d than they've ever been. In the past, lots of articles got featured based on a regular FAC group saying "I like it". There are many red herrings and straw men being thrown up in this discussion, which is a most curious one, considering some of the irregularities that are occurring in an effort to undermine an inhouse writing guide. I suggest instead we focus on ways to strengthen reviews for 1b, 1c and 1d. Certainly chewing up a lot of editor time in meaningless discussion of dashes and admin irregularities and editwarring won't work towards the goal of improving FA content. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:46, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand why there is this knee-jerk rejection of MoS issues in FACs. Copy editing is an essential process in any serious form of publication, so I'm not sure why Wikipedia should be any different. But in the end, either an article follows the MoS or it doesn't; either an article is an example of our best work or it isn't. — Brian (talk) 23:47, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

And the fundamental problem is that, in the end, it's impossible to draw a distinction between style and content. There may be a continuum from one extreme to the other, but there's no boundary. Tony 00:47, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Brian - yes, but it's not a knee-jerk reaction. It is rather an attempt to focus more on content and less on endashes, because several people have complained that this focus at the moment is wrong. It's a bit like the bike shed effect. >Radiant< 08:32, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean the color of the bikeshed effect? :-) Carcharoth 09:59, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Precisely. People who aren't knowledgeable about the subject of a FAC nomination will make somewhat arbitrary comments on the form instead. It is nearly the same effect as on RFA, where people who aren't familiar with a nominee also make up somewhat arbitrary benchmarks to judge them. >Radiant< 11:27, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

In all fairness, you shouldn't really be complaining about un-knowledgeable reviewers and arbitrary benchmarks on FAC while simultaneously attempting to prevent knowlegeable editors from coming up with usable guidelines. Kirill 11:35, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

• How is that even remotely relevant? Not to mention that it was resolved long ago. >Radiant< 11:54, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

(partially copied from Radiant!'s talk page) You can't really have a setup where editors knowledgeable on some topic are expected to check an article on FAC yet not given the authority authority to make their points stick. The correct way to space en-dashes happens to be a part of the MoS (or a guideline, or a policy, or whatever the tag of the day is); whereas the material WikiProjects produce (which one would expect to be rather more topic-oriented) is being relegated to the status of "stuff you might consider doing, should you be so inclined, but can ignore as you desire". Kirill 12:21, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

• That is still not really relevant, since most style guidelines are in fact written by the relevant Wikiprojects. The issue back then was a wikiproject designing its own merge and delete process. >Radiant< 12:39, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

• My view is that anyone who cares about endashes should simply go and fix the article. 99.9% of the population wouldn't even know what an endash is, let alone care how it's used. But I have worked with movable type and platen presses, so I'm one of the 0.1% :o) Guy (Help!) 18:05, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I concur with Guy. My pet peeve concerns the proper placement of "AD" -- but my solution is to make the edit, rather than argue over what is proper usage. (And if the article uses BCE/CE, I have no reason to change things.) -- llywrch 23:31, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Kiev/Kyiv RM

Request withdrawn. 199.125.109.35 05:48, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

A request has been made to rename the article Kiev to Kyiv because it conforms to the preferred spelling. First it was difficult to even open the RM because a small number of editors did not want to discuss the issue. It was finally officially opened by placing a notice for it on the Kiev talk page (that wasn't deleted)[6], including a clearly defined timeframe for discussion [7]. So far so good. The purpose is to allow discussion in a controlled manner for a week in order to arrive at some sort of consensus. However, before the process was complete, El C disregarded both notices of the timeframe for discussion[8] and closed the RM stating that there was no consensus. The problem is that consensus requires two things, participation and time. Participation requires proper publication of the RM, which was done. Time was not provided, as the RM was closed less than 48 hours later.[9] I would like to request that the RM be reopened or actually just extended to remain open for a minimum of five days from the date it is reopened in order to finish the process in a fair manner. However it also has come to light after the RM was closed, as pointed out by Jehochman that we should use Kyiv, which is actually supported by official Wikipedia policy at WP:Naming conventions which states "Except where other accepted Wikipedia naming conventions give a different indication, use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things." In this case there is an other accepted naming convention, also an official policy on the same page: Ukranian names: "For geographic names in Ukraine, the Ukrainian National system is used." In addition, "For historic reasons, many names are also presented in Russian, Polish, etc." Which would indicate that a redirect needs to be included from Kiev, and that Kiev appear in bold as well as Kyiv in the lead of the article. 199.125.109.35 01:07, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Seeing as this is the English Wikipedia, the common usage in English is "Kiev" and not "Kyiv". Google shows over 8 times as many usages for Kiev over Kyiv (42M vs 5M), so because there is no consensus to move the page to a less commonly used name, the page should remain as it is unless consensus changes.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 01:19, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

And Wikipedia:Break all rules as well, not just this one? 199.125.109.35 01:36, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

This is covered at WP:LAME the common name in english is Kiev. As far as wikipedia is concerned that is the end of the debate.Geni 02:22, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

And you think that a page should be followed that starts out by saying "This page contains material which is kept because it is considered humorous. It is not intended, nor should it be used, for any remotely serious purpose." Instead of a page that starts out by saying "This page documents an official policy on the English Wikipedia. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow." Your humor escapes me. 199.125.109.35 02:33, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Ukraine became an independent country, and now wants place names transliterated from Ukrainian to English, rather than from Russian to English. The US government officially uses Kyiv, so this idea isn't completely crackpot. Rulong, Google counts aren't so useful, because they include historical web pages that don't account for current usage. In a similar case, Gypsy is used slightly more often than Romani, but our article is correctly titled Romani people. We could use some fresh views at the naming discussion page. Let's NOT discuss this here. - Jehochman ^Talk 02:42, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

And we use the common name in English usage, which according to 42M+ Google results says "Kiev" over "Kyiv." "Gypsy" is an atypical choice for an analogy, but yes, it is inappropriate to discuss this here, particularly because the IP user wanted to get his way in the dispute.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 04:35, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

This is not the place to discuss the naming of Kiev/Kyiv. This discussion is about the actions of El C and whether the RM should be kept open. 199.125.109.35 05:05, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

El_C acted entirely properly and within his discretion. The continued pursuit of this issue across multiple venues is beginning to approach disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. Raymond Arritt 04:47, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:BURO, sometimes you just have to admit consensus is against following the exact pre-determined rule. Jackaranga 04:53, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

One thing I should point out is that I am an impartial observer in this discussion, and could care less what title is used. The only thing I care about is the process used to determine the title. 199.125.109.35 05:10, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Consensus. Jackaranga 05:42, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

So you are saying that there is consensus to my request that the RM be extended? Consensus to what? The process used? Sounds good. However aborting the process prolongs obtaining consensus. 199.125.109.35 18:59, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

What is there to do here? Ukraine = independent nation, wants names in English. Kiev = English version. en.wikipedia.org = English encyclopedia. Therefore, Kiev. I'd imagine then if someone forced a rename to some other format, it would be vandalism that needed admins, but otherwise, what is the point? Case settled, or am I incorrect? • Lawrence Cohen 13:36, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps you meant to write "Kyiv"?[10] The purpose of this discussion is to request holding open the RM for Kiev to Kyiv until it has been open for at least five days. 199.125.109.35 05:15, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

There has been what looks like weeks of discussion with no headway. Stop bringing this issue up outside of the talk page of the article or you will be blocked for disruption.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 05:33, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Blocked for disruption? You surely are joking. There are any number of people I would love to block for disruption, and yet there is no policy in place to allow that. However, if it makes you feel any better, I am striking all of the above. 199.125.109.35 05:48, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

To speedy or not

I came across Lollyblue (talk · contribs). She has created Ivana Đokić, Glembay Theatre‎, Triznakinje, Saša Numić, Tijana Stević‎, Zoran Pajić, Letnje Večeri, which I believe all fail WP:CSD A7. I just wanted to run it by someone else before I was too bold and went on a deletion spree. Lollyblue appears to be the same person as Tijana Stević, which brings up WP:COI concerns. I intend to contact the user about these issues. One other thing, the user has uploaded a whole bunch of photos to go with all these articles. It seems like nearly all of them have come from myspace. While she can release images that she owns (such as those found on her own myspace page) into the public domain, I fear that some of these images she doesn't own and is tagging them improperly. Anyway, just wanted to get a second opinion on all this from the admin perspective. Thanks.-Andrew c ^[talk] 01:31, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I haven't looked too closely but in similar cases, I've been told that coverage of foreign movie people is a bit weak on the English WP. Still, these seem too stubby to survive. Might be worth an AFD just in case. —Wknight94 (talk) 01:36, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I think the main concern is the user using wikipedia as myspace, The name was derived from "The Glembay Lords" (Gospoda Glembajevi) by Miroslav Krleža, which is by Lollyblue's oppinion the best drama ever written. and all the pictures uploaded, I think most are probably tagged with incorrect licenses, apart from being unecessary. Jackaranga 02:43, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I will readily concede that the coverage of foreign movies is weak on WP, but this is definitively the wrong end to tackle that problem. Serbian internet is not that undeveloped, and the phrase "Letnje Veceri" (Summer nights) gets noble 700 GHits, of which only the MySpace site among the first 10 pages is devoted to the film in question (it's a student film). An AfD or speedy is definitely in order; based on a quick research, only Tijana Stević has some media coverage along with the Kučka show (a musical based on Kučka is said to be produced during the next spring) (I found 3 short news articles, one of those a city guide). Duja► 09:53, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Bah, I went on a deletion spree myself. It's a promotional walled garden, and Lollyblue (talk · contribs) is obviously Tijana Stević [11]. I wish them well, but Wikipedia is not a vehicle for promotion. There are some traces of notability, but I think that AfD would be a waste of time; I hate articles written for blatant self-promotion. I don't mind DRV btw. Duja► 11:19, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I was about to do the same thing. I would say that DRV wouldn't be necessary. If the topic is notable, then a user can create an entirely new article which explains the notability and cites source and wouldn't need any of the original text in order to do that. The articles are so short and say so little that they are basically useless. Thanks for going ahead and doing this.-Andrew c ^[talk] 22:19, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

E-mail address form validation

There's a small link in the Signpost to a blog post about a newbie getting his article deleted as advertising, unjustly he says.[12] I'm willing to have a look at it. Would someone please place a copy of the deleted E-mail address form validation in my user space with its history intact? Thank you. ←Ben^B4 02:40, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

The user in question is Badcop666, and I would just like to say that User:Michaelbusch treated him with a lot of aggressiveness, leaving him a uw-bv, as first contact is never good, especially when he did not reference a particular page. Also User:Michaelbusch has been giving him incorrect impressions such as "Alabamaboy has Admin authority and is authorized to delete articles at his discretion.". However User:Badcop666 has made a troll like edit in the past diff. Still no reason to be so aggressive. Jackaranga 02:54, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Ben, request handled. Vassyana 05:23, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I gave it a makeover and put it at HTML form e-mail address validation‎. I am sad to say that there was no advertising, blatant or otherwise, in the original article. The incident was a big WP:BITE and I hope someone will encourage the involved parties to try hand-holding instead of slapping. ←Ben^B4 13:29, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone for sorting this. Have to agree with the above. . ... dave souza, talk 14:04, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I had a somewhat similar experience as a new user some time back, and it really made me not want to be involved. Only after I tried again and had some kinder elder editors give some positive feedback did I decide to stick around. I think we all should take heed to the power of our (seemingly innocuous) actions. (I'm not an admin, but as a HS English teacher, I'm sort of an IRL admin for the classrom.) Cheers. -- Scartol · Talk 14:12, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I've written a new "Validation" section at E-mail address, loosely based on the page discussed above, and redirected it there. In any case, I do fully agree with BenB4 that the original deletion was completely uncalled for, not to mention having absolutely no connection that I can see to the criterion it was claimed to have been done under. Or did someone seriously think the article was written to promote quirksmode?? —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 03:00, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Copyvio

Travb is warned about posting copyvios.[13] He then re-adds the copyvio[14][15] he originally added in 2005[16] which is stolen from this website.[17] Perspicacite 03:07, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

But there is no copyright violation ... Jackaranga 03:14, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually there appears to be a single sentence copied; well within fair use, but should be reworded as a paraphrase on principle. It should not be used to try to get another editor in trouble. ←Ben^B4 03:26, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure it doesn't qualify as fair-use if it's not attributed. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 03:37, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I thought it was attributed, but I'm not following the article, and could be wrong. ←Ben^B4 13:27, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

If the similar part is indeed that short, I think we can safely say that it doesn't matter. After all, there are only so many ways to arrange the words in the first place... —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 03:07, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Use of inflammatory language in user space

I feel like such an ass bringing this up, but User:Alvis has some blatantly offensive pejoratives on his user page. I have brought this up politely as I could and promptly forgot about it. But it's been some time and as they are still there I would appreciate it if this could be remedied, as I'm sure he could express his opinion without calling others: "gay-homosexual Nazi-plagirising acid-washed neo-luddites with mother-complexes and acne." Thanks for your time, VanTucky ^Talk 06:41, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:USER says "don't put inappropriate content on your userpage". Will ^(talk) 08:03, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Bad revisions deleted from history. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 14:29, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

You'd think the acid-washing would have cleared up their acne, at least... AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 15:28, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Ah, well the mysteries of acne prevail. My user page - that at least has changed. Alvis 08:58, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Role accounts?

I've seen a number of account creations recently of the form "word1word2word3word4". On the basis of some off-Wikipedia vandal chatter, I suspect that these may be multi-user role accounts deliberately created with easily guessable passwords: an experiment with the account User:Oli1oli2oli3oli4 (password: "oli" -- now blocked) appears to suggest this may be the case.

Perhaps we need to tighten up the password strength requirements to prevent this, and check for the use of substrings of a username (in whatever capitalization) as a password at account creation time?

-- The Anome 09:06, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Having said which, an automated search for similar accounts, followed by manual test logins, has so far failed similarly weak passwords for other accounts with similar names. However, my comment about password strength checking stands. -- The Anome 09:44, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

There are too many weak passwords to check for them all. ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 14:31, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, but it would be reasonable to check the strenghth of new accounts. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 17:54, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not really sure about that. It doesn't really prevent any vandalism, even through role accounts, because anyone can get an account and anyone can sign up for as many accounts as they want. All it would really do is inconvenience people who don't think their Wikipedia password needs to be super hard to guess. And honestly, I can understand why a first time user would not think their password should be particularly strong. It's not their bank account, after all. Natalie 03:05, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, but thats just it... it's not for their protection, it's for ours. We've had a number of admin accounts get "hacked" and I think having some basic industry-standard password tests is reasonable. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 07:38, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

But you're suggesting checking new accounts, which obviously don't have a sysop flag yet. Hopefully by the time they are standing for adminship they have understanding of how secure their password should be. I guess I don't feel that we should be checking new account's passwords on the off chance that they may stick around long enough that they might be nominated for adminship, get nominated, accept, and have a successful RfA. And I'm not sure what technical thing could check new sysops passwords, unless every new sysop were required to register a new password. Natalie 02:32, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

IP address indefinitely hard-blocked per request of a school supervisor

For the record, I have indefinitely hard-blocked 75.139.45.247 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) per request of the Technical Services Supervisor - Shelby County Schools. A request was made at my talk page and I followed with an e-mail to verify (the request as well as the sender's identity) and to ask about soft-block vs. hard-block. The response confirmed the request and further requested a hard-block. Please advise if I should forward the confirmation e-mail somewhere for future reference. Also advise if I should take any further action or modify the block in any way. (Possibly asking the supervisor to let us know if the IP address changes?) Thank you. —Wknight94 (talk) 19:52, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd go with asking him to let you know when the address changes. Also, if I were you, try enabling the autoblocker to see if you can get any sleepers or vandal users from this address. As for forwarding the message... I don't know if anyone would really need it. Maybe forward to Jimbo and the Arbitration Committee? Thats about all I can think of for now... except wish that we could indefblock all abusive school IP addresses. I wouldn't be surprised if vandalism went down as a result of that. Nwwaew (Talk Page) (Contribs) (E-mail me) 21:06, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I would concur except that first message really doesn't sound like a message that would be sent by an educator. I am assuming you sent the email to the address found on their website? Perhaps I am paranoid but just wanting to make sure. That's not some man-in-the-middle thing going on here. Thanks. --JodyB _{yak, yak, yak} 21:28, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I thought the message seemed odd as well. But according to this the phone number and name matches up. R. Baley 21:37, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

The message is a little strange, but it sounds more like someone who is not that comfortable communicating online. I've noticed similar patterns with some of my older and less tech-savvy professors, who are used to either communicating informally face-to-face or formally in writing. I think if it was actually, for example, a child, it wouldn't have any issues with word usage, but would probably have a few misspellings. Nor do I think they are teaching kids how to write business letters these days, so the formatting of the signature block seems to read "adult" to me.

As far as the length of block, though, I concur that you should ask them to let you know if the IP address ever changes. If not I would suggest putting the block at one year, or some similarly long time, and then just double check that it was still registered to the school. I'm also assuming that you explained to Mr. Alexander that everyone at the school will still be able to read Wikipedia. Natalie 01:53, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Get sure to inform WP:ABUSE, they keep track of that kind of stuff. -- ReyBrujo 02:02, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

You know, regardless of his wishes, I may have chosen a soft block... editing through accounts should be fine enough, and there has not been enough vandalizing to hard block it. Anyways, remember to leave a note at ABUSE, I think they have a list of all the ips they have blocked for network administrator's wishes. -- ReyBrujo 02:06, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Since I live in Alabama I'll give him a call tomorrow if no one objects. My son is in an Alabama high school and its pretty easy to spoof or swipe addresses. I sure don't mind the block but I would hate to be blocking people as the result of a "joke" message. JodyB _{yak, yak, yak} 02:09, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I will contact folks as advised. I'm not sure what folks found odd about the message on my talk page but the e-mail address matches Mr. Alexander's as shown on this page. I'm quite confident it is the correct person. Response to Natalie: Yes, I mentioned twice in my e-mail that no one at the address will have any problems reading Wikipedia regardless of whether a soft-block or hard-block were applied. I will try to get a sense from him whether an indefinite or long finite block would be more appropriate. I understand ReyBrujo's concern about the hard-block but I explained the difference in detail and he was pretty clear about his preference. If JodyB wants to further confirm, feel free, but I could understand if he didn't want kids from his school district responsible for any vandalism - logged-in or otherwise. —Wknight94 (talk) 02:18, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Jody, I think calling would be a great idea. A quick, cheap, and easy way to verify this. Natalie 02:26, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but why do we block addresses at external requests? If the school wants to block Wikipedia, they are in control of their computers and firewalls. I would not block an address at all without either legal reasons or Wikipedia-intrinsic reasons. I don't know what the motivation for the block request is, but it is not our purpose to enforce the wishes and policies of external entities, wether it's a school adminstration in Alabama, the government of China, or the State Island Fire Brigade. --Stephan Schulz 02:33, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Schools can't block kids just from editing. Only we can do that. If they want read-only access to WP, that's on us. —Wknight94 (talk) 02:36, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Of course they can. Just have the firewall catch http post requests to Wikipedia, or any request with a "submit" in the url. And even if they could not: It's not our job to enforce their policies.--Stephan Schulz 02:45, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

That would kill the Go and Search and preferences, etc... The guy could get us to enforce their policies the hard way if he wanted - just keep vandalizing over and over until we block long-term. This is the easy way. —Wknight94 (talk) 02:49, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't get the impression that editing Wikipedia is against the school's rules, but rather that this guy just wants to keep his kids from messing up Wikipedia, which is a great impulse that we should be encouraging. And even if we don't have to do something doesn't mean we shouldn't do something. I think this is a good faith request and we should honor it. Natalie 02:54, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I think there is precedent for this too (although I wasn't able to find an example). —Wknight94 (talk) 03:00, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Filtering all post requests might kill essential functionality for reading. Filtering URLs for "action=edit" and "action=submit" would certainly not. What I am concerned about is that we are potentially implementing their censorship. Maybe pupils want to add non-complementary information about the school or the headmaster. Or maybe they just waste time and vandalize Wikipedia, and the request is completely benign (looking at the actual request, that looks quite likely). But still, it is not, and cannot be, our job to enforce the access restrictions of external entities. There is neither a technical nor a moral justification. --Stephan Schulz 03:01, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

If the kids are being censored at school, they can edit Wikipedia from home, from their friend's homes, from a library, or from Starbucks. And yet again, no one is saying that we have to honor these requests, which do occasionally come in, but I would argue that it is potentially all right to honor such a request. You're absolutely right that it is not our job. But really, claiming that this is somehow immoral is a bit rich. Natalie 03:12, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not claiming blocking is immoral, I'm claiming that there is no moral requirement for it. The question is where we start and where we stop. We do not have the resources to evaluate every request, and to continually monitor the situation to see if the block is still applicable. If someone wants to limit access to Wikipedia, they should (and can!) implement it. And the argument "they can use some other venue" didn't work out that well for segregated schools and toilets and beaches. Some kids do not have access at home, or can affort going to Starbucks, or frequently visit a library that has internet access. --Stephan Schulz 18:12, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

We should honor all such requests. If anyone wants their single IP blocked - even hard-blocked - it would be very easy to force us to do so. Just get a user account blocked and then try to perform an edit from the IP every once in a while to cause an autoblock. Why force people to go through all that when they're asking nicely? —Wknight94 (talk) 03:41, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) I don't think this is "immoral", however I understand we should aim to keep the site as open as possible, and that means softblocking instead of hard blocking. Finally, while blocking is not punitive but preventive, I think we are "preventing" too much, considering the rather short vandalism background of the account compared with other school ips. -- ReyBrujo 03:46, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I have a call in to the Tech Services man and expect to hear back soon. I appreciate keeping the site open, but at the end of the day it is the school's IP address and if they request it legitimately we should cooperate. --JodyB _{yak, yak, yak} 15:51, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm slightly uncomfortable with the idea of indefblocking an IP, given the possibility that the school might change IP address some time and forget to tell us. Perhaps it would be better to block for a few months at a time, renewing on confirmation that the school is still at that address? David Mestel^(Talk) 17:21, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

That is one of the problems. It's the school's IP address - they control their traffic. As I said above, its not our job. We cannot do it well, and we should not do it at all --Stephan Schulz 18:12, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I can see both sides. It should be the school's responsibility to control access. But lots of schools don't have the technical expertise to do even the most basic networking tasks. I suggest we be sympathetic toward verifiable, good-faith requests. Raymond Arritt 18:25, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

A semi-permanent block (lperhaps the remainder of a school year) from any consistently abusive IP is within the administrators' rights, and is being done pretty well on average. This block might set an example. It should be considered a duty of administrators to report egregious school-based vandalism to the school's website. School administrators need to be informed that the school's reputation is becoming tarnished. --Wetman 18:39, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

An arbitrator I contacted (per a suggestion above) suggested waiting a month or so and then quietly unblocking. Unless something else changes, that's my current plan. —Wknight94 (talk) 18:45, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

That is an eminently reasonable plan. How dare you stop this discussion with pragmatic solutions! ;-) --Stephan Schulz 19:15, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

That's why he's an arbitrator!  :) —Wknight94 (talk) 20:19, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

No comment on the should/shouldn't question... but there is precedent for blocking (in various permutations of kinds and durations) school IPs per school IT/admin request, I can recall at least one such request coming to the unblock-en-l mailing list. As to what to do with the request itself, perhaps archiving the relevant emails inOTRS might be a good approach? The IP pages could then be tagged with the OTRS ticket number and anyone with OTRS access could then verify. This would avoid publicly publishing the exact email used and the system supposedly has permanence. ++Lar: t/c 19:35, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

The gentleman called me back and we had a nice conversation. He confirms that the system has requested a hardblock and advises that the IP address will not change for at least two years. He has a file on Wikipedia and knows how to contact us if there is a need for editing privileges.

So I guess there is nothing left to see here? I'll stop rubber necking and move along...--Tom 16:29, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Blu Aardvark

Aardvark sent me an email today requesting that I help get his account unabnned so that he can participate in the Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Attack sites discussion. Information from the community would be greatly appreciated. Lulles 01:40, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

The above account has been blocked for editing on behalf of a banned user. Blu Aardvark was before my time or I wasn't paying attention, so I am going to refrain from commenting on unblocking his/her account, but I don't feel there is any harm from this thread continuing. Natalie 02:30, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Blocked users can still email the arbcom-l with any comments they might wish to include, and may request there that they be unblocked to participate. WilyD 02:31, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Banned users may participate in their own Arbitration process by emailing a clerk or Arbitrator. There is nothing in the Arbitration policy allowing banned users to contribute in other cases. Banned users are banned because their contributions are unwelcome. Period. Thatcher131 10:48, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

• Plus Blu Aardvark can email the arbs if he really needs to, but I'm guessing they won't be especially interested this time since all they are supposed to be doing is clarifying the previous finding, not rolling it back (however much Dan Tobias might wish otherwise). Guy (Help!) 17:59, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

AfD in need of closing

Resolved

Just wondering if an admin could look at (and close) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Seth Asher. It's approaching 7 days, and is becoming a real mess with a bunch of SPA's, and meatpuppets. Thanks, Leuko 02:53, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Done. -- Merope 13:33, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Leuko 03:00, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Review of deletion

I speedy deleted Every time you masturbate... God kills a kitten under WP:CSD#A7. It makes no assertion of notability, in my view. It's been requested that I undelete it, as an editor feels it was improper, due to the previous AfDs on the article.[18] If another sysop feels this was indeed improper, please restore the article. Vassyana 08:04, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest a WP:DRV for this one. As for if it is a good deletion or not, I will need some time to get some sleep then give a good answer. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 08:22, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

It is improper to speedy an article that has survived 3 AfD's, the last being closed with a consensus 'keep'. Please reverse yourself and put it up for AfD (if you so desire). R. Baley 08:33, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

If you think the article should have been deleted but AFD resulted in "keep", the correct thing to do is to ask for a review of the last "keep" decision at DRV, not to just delete it anyway. Kusma (talk) 08:37, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah overturn per above (and since when did web pages that don't assert notability morph into being web content that dosen't assert notability?) Viridae^Talk 08:47, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

The reason for speedy deletion is to avoid the need for beaurocrocy for deletion of articles which have no chance of passing an AfD. In fact, at WT:CSD, it says that new CSDs "should be uncontestable: it should be the case that almost all articles that can be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to general consensus. If a rule paves the path for deletions that will cause controversy, it probably needs to be restricted. In particular, don't propose a CSD in order to overrule keep votes that might otherwise occur in AfD.". This means, in my opinion, that an article should never be speedied after surviving an AfD. Od Mishehu 10:12, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree. This was, IMO, an abuse of admin tools. When something has already survived AfD, it is highly improper to delete it out-of-process. Speedy deletions are entirely appropriate for obvious, non-controversial deletions; they're not a device for admins to circumvent community consensus. Admins are given the deletion tools in order to carry out the will of the community, not in order to simply delete anything they wish. Walton^One 10:24, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Vassyana has already restored the article. No more need to talk about abuse and rub more salt in the wounds. Kusma (talk) 10:27, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, I accept that, and I commend Vassyana for recognising his/her mistake. To clarify, I don't think this was deliberate or bad-faith abuse, and I don't mean to be condemnatory. Walton^One 11:03, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Why do people always assume bad faith from admins? We screw up as much as the other guys. We don't get up in the morning wondering how many valuable articles we will delete and how many valuable contributors we will block before getting caught red handed. -- lucasbfr ^talk 12:52, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, calling it "an abuse of admin tools" is just silly. It's at worst a poor exercise of judgement. WilyD 13:06, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Not really relevant to this thread, but looking at the title of this article I thought there existed another article on the meme "Everytime X, God kills a kitten", so I did a search on "God kills a kitten". Two of the first ten results were pages containing the phrase "in large quantity and other types of sadistic deaths". is this an example of cruel & fuzzy logic? -- llywrch 20:21, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

User Kekrops

Kekrops doesnt discuss his reversions, often doesnt even bother to explain why he is making these reversions, and deletes properly sourced content..Here [19] and there [20] and in many other places..Can someone, not necessarily an administrator, check these articles and give a third party opinion about them? it is virtually impossible to discuss anything with this user, since he simply discuss nothing but just reverts anything that he doesnt like to see..See the talk page [21].. --laertes d 12:15, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand what kind of administrative intervention you actually demand. Anyway ... In a (maybe potentially) controversial article the demand for dialogue before editing goes both ways. And checking for instance some of your (reverted) edits in Chios massacre I read: "Referring to the atrocities committed by Greek rebels against the Turkish civilian population, Phillips claimed that: Everywhere, indeed, the conduct of the insurrection was characterized by the same treachery and unbounded cruelty." What has this to do with the article itself? Why do you feel the need to act as an apologist of the Ottoman side in each separate historical article, even with irrelevant to the content edits? And this is what seems to happen also in Pontic Greeks, where you were told that "we are talking about Pontic Greeks, not all the populations of the exchange." And Kekrops explains there his positions, and why he acts the way he does. In the other article he doesn't, but neither you bothered to explain your initial edits! You don't even have proper edit summaries!!! And this final comment brings me back to the problem I posed with my opening sentence.--Yannismarou 13:54, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

`Why do you feel the need to act as an apologist of the Ottoman side in each separate historical article`-Yannismarou

First Yanni, i dont act like an apologist, massacre is a massacre, however i do want to point out that there were wide scale massacres committed by greeks against turks in both these periods..the citations are from non-pro Turkish academical sources, whats the problem with citing them? In the Pontic Greek article, it is actually only me and user denizz who is discussing the possible edits:[22]..About the Chios massacre, if you think some parts of it are unrelated then you made the necassary changes, instead of an unexplained complete reversion..

About the question you asked, what i want a third party contribution to these articles in question..Your previous records clearly demonstrates that youre not a third party opinion..Anyway, if you want to discuss about these articles then use their separete talk pages..Regards..--laertes d 14:37, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Massive spam campaign on athlete articles

I don't really know where to bring this up ... but something isn't right. I have noticed over the last month a lot of "fan sites" for individual athletes being added to articles. I have probably removed 15 (give or take) links over the last month. These fan sites are mostly link aggregators. Some of them have content copy/pasted from Wikipedia. See [23], [24], and [25] for a few example sites.

On a couple of occasions, I noticed that the spammer added an interwiki link to the Tagalog language Wikipedia, which I thought was strange, but after verifying that the article did not exist, I would remove the spam link and the interwiki link.

Well, this afternoon, I saw this category tl:Category:Living_people on Tagalog (permanent link in case someone decides to purge that category after seeing this). There are a lot of athlete articles there. All of the articles look like they are copy/pastes of the en versions that were run through some kind of automated translator ... a lot of words didn't get translated and they are all verbatim where they are in their respective sentences.

All of these articles have a link to the respective athlete's "fan site" at the bottom of them.

The Tagalog Wikipedia has 7000 total articles and I seriously doubt that anyone would consider a few US college athletes to be among the most 7000 important topics for that language.

I don't really know where to report this, but it looks like someone is trying to use the Tagalog Wikipedia to promote their websites. --B 17:17, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I can't read or speak Tagalog, but is there perhaps a page of administrators at Tagalog Wikipedia? This seems like something they should know about, if they don't already. Natalie 23:29, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I looked through recent changes, found an admin who speaks English, and left him/her a message at tl:User_talk:Jojit_fb#Spam_on_sports_articles. There hasn't been a reply yet ... I have no idea what their equivalent of ANI is. --B 23:32, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually ... upon further review ... tl:Wikipedia:Kapihan#Spam_on_sports_articles is their village pump. I have left a message there too. --B 23:36, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, hopefully someone who speaks English will come across it. I speak reasonable Spanish, which is spoken in some parts of the Philippines, so I may post something offering help to a Spanish speaker. Natalie 02:36, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Please report at WT:WPSPAM. They are working similar cases with sites related to models/actresses/porn stars, and can likely resolve the site IPs and have the bots block their links. If there's cross-wiki spam the Meta spam folks can do something. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 02:41, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I already removed all the fan site links in tl:Category:Living_people but not the articles themselves. I consider them legitimate articles because it can still be understood by a Tagalog/Filipino reader, although, those translations are considered Taglish and needs cleaning-up. So, I inserted a wikify/clean-up tag. Actually we are prioritizing vital articles in the Tagalog Wikipedia but we accept anything that a volunteer wants to contribute. Also, the Tagalog Wikipedia has only handful of active volunteers and only 1 very active administrator (User:Bluemask) (I'm only semi-active). Most Tagalog or Filipino Wikipedians are busy writing articles here in the English Wikipedia rather than in the Tagalog wiki. Some of them frown on writing in Tagalog. --Jojit fb 06:22, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Jojit for taking care of this. I am busy with real life for the moment.

If there are concerns on the Tagalog Wikipedia or any Philippine-related Wikimedia project, drop a note at the Philippines notice board so that more active Filipino Wikipedians can have a look on it. --bluemask ^(talk) 23:37, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Template Deletedpages redirected

As per the outcome of this TFD, I have now redirected the old, depricated {{deletedpage}} salting template to WP:PT. Template talk:Deletedpage, towards the bottom, shows the steps I have taken to implement this change. This is a notice to let admins know that the old salting templates are no longer going to function, and that any new saltings really need to be done by way of cascading protection and WP:PT. - TexasAndroid 18:12, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Ugh ... I really wish we had a way of salting an image that didn't take the user to the upload screen. Maybe that's a bug fix that could be requested? If a well-meaning user clicks on an image and sees a SALT message, they understand that uploading the image is a bad idea, but if they see an upload screen, then get an unhelpful error when they try to upload the image, they do it with a different filename. --B 18:23, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that probably ought to be fixed. Anyway, I wonder if that shouldn't be a "soft redirect"? The problem with redirects out of Template: space is that when a redirected template is transcluded, the target of the redirect is shown instead. This might be somewhat confusing, both to those who might not notice this message and try to use the template, and to those who might stumble across it in (possibly deleted) page histories. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:00, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

That very issue was brought up in the TfD nomination. It was decided that since Deletedpage is such a widely used template grounded in so many admin's memories, and has been in active use forever, the unusual transclusion of an entire page, in this case, Protected Titles, would be necessarily jarring to inform such admins that there is now a different method for salting pages. RyanGerbil10(C-Town) 20:16, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, there is a more elegant solution. Use parser functions to check the namespace ... if it's an image, then display the deletedpage template or something like it, if it's anything else, then display a flashing neon sign telling you to use protected titles. I guess there's no real harm in making {{saltedimage}} to serve this purpose for images. (deletedimage is something else) But I would rather see clicking on a redlinked image enforce the protected title policy ... that would work even better. If you click on a redlinked image, give you the salt message. --B 20:30, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I handled it a little differently. Still intentionally jarring, but hopefully a little more explanitory for the admin who tries to use the redirected templates. I placed the existing contents of WP:PT within <noinclude> tags, and added a new set of <includeonly> tags at the bottom of WP:PT, that display a large, red text, bolded message warning the admin that the template has been eliminated, and that they should follow the instructions at WP:PT for how to use cascading protection to do their saltings. If anyone wants to edit the message, they are obviously welcome to do so. If anyone disagrees with my general methodology, then I suspect the talk page of WP:PT would be a better place to discuss that than here. :) The text I used for the warning was: "The template {{deletedpage}}, and all variants, has been removed. If you wish to protect this page from recreation, please follow the instructions for using protected titles and cascading protection available at Wikipedia:Protected titles."- TexasAndroid 20:39, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Is there going to be any effort to change all of the pages that currently use the deleted page template to cascading protection? Natalie 23:32, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Already done. There were only 40 something pages actually using the template, in part because every other month or so all were already being converted to cascading protection, and I had last converted less than a month ago. There are hundreds of pages that link to it, and the redirection means that those remain as blue links, now pointing to it's replacement system. - TexasAndroid 02:12, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. Wouldn't it have been simpler to just put the big bold red text on the template page, though? —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:59, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

The main benefit of the redirect is for the hundreds of pages that still link to the template, without actually transcluding it. Without actually using it. The redirect gives those pages a permanent place to link to. The warning is for the (hopefully) small number of admins who try to use the template after this point. The noinclude/includeonly trick makes the WP:PT page work for both situations, and honors the closing result of the TFD, which was to redirect. I envision that in 3-6 months the noinclude/includeonly stuff can be safely removed from WP:PT. - TexasAndroid 02:12, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Not while the template remains a redirect, unless we want to mess up any old revisions that contain the template. Unless you meant that we can delete or unredirect the template then? —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 02:52, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

The point being that, since the warning is there for those admins who might continue to use the deprecated template, and in 3-6 months IMHO the vast majority of such admins will have seen the warning at least once and hopefully changed over to WP:PT, the need for a specific warning will dwindle to nothing, and the warning can be removed. - TexasAndroid 11:24, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

• Good work! >Radiant< 13:57, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Josh Gibson Page

I am simply looking into someone helping us at the Josh Gibson page find some kind of reasonable solution. We tried to file for an RFC but that hasn't seemed to help. The page was protected and that doesnt seem to help. I tried to ask around for help, but I believe that is canvassing. We have 2 administrators looking into this, but we are at a stalemate. Is there anything anyone can do to help? YoSoyGuapo 20:24, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I think you'd get more interest if you could briefly (a single sentence or so) describe the issue. I see a 115k talk page that personally just makes me cringe. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 03:00, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I suggest archiving as much as possible of the current page and opening a more organized RFC: set forth the conflict in a neutral sentence or two and give each side one or two short paragraphs to explain their position. Then establish a separate subsection for comments. Durova^Charge! 04:15, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Anti vandal bots

Has an admin blocked the anti-vandal bots or something ? Organism was left as "An organism eats little boys named timmy at night. RUN TIMMY RUN!", for 40 minutes. How come nobody noticed this was strange and no bots noticed either even though it went from 41,000 to 65 bytes. I thought there were several bots that searched for such patterns. Jackaranga 21:37, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I just checked the block logs for ClueBot, MartinBot, and AntiVandalBot, and none have been blocked recently. Perhaps they are not just running right now. hbdragon88 22:52, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Whoa. AVB hasn't been running since 4 April, while MartinBot hasn't been run since 2 September. (Has AVB been superseded by something else?) ClueBot was active at the time, but it doesn't do a huge amount of reverting. hbdragon88 22:57, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, the most obvious answer is that it's night and the bot was named Timmy. Next question. --B 23:16, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

User:Jaranda

Sigh. Jaranda has left the project because of some more intemperate comments made by Jimbo. Corvus cornix 23:47, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

And pretty soon, we're going to be getting comments rationalizing it by "but he was PROVOKED!" -Amarkov moo! 00:03, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this is the appropiate board to throw blame around, Jaranda was de-sysopped following the use of right to vanish, right? - Caribbean~H.Q. 00:08, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Clarify, he requested de-sysopping, vanishing itself doesn't revoke the tools. As for Jaranda, I'm not so sure he's fully gone. hbdragon88 00:10, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

That's why I'm asking if he was de-sysoped, I would hate to see someone hack into the account while he is gone and have admin tools available. - Caribbean~H.Q. 00:16, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

By the way, I'm referring to the last time he left about three? months ago. He apparently was de-sysopped this time for deleting the article. hbdragon88 00:14, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Who was provoked? Jaranda or Jimbo? Silly me. Both, of course. Carcharoth 00:12, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

And on the way out Jaranda deleted the article he was upset about "to make sure I get desysopped". That has to be one of the more dramatic exits I've ever seen (a similar one was when User:Zoe left under similar Jimbo-induced circumstances). My opinion is that people take such comments by Jimbo too much to heart. It should be easily possible to recover one's wiki reputation after such an episode, but less easy to avoid accusations of being a drama queen if you leave under such circumstances. For those behind the curve, see here, here (the second comment by Jimbo), here and here for most of the story. Carcharoth 00:12, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

It's totally illogical on one hand people are saying Jimbo is not above the rules, and then he says Some people should excuse themselves from the project and find a new hobby, and all of a sudden his every wish is an order. Jackaranga 00:18, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

It was Jaranda's decision to leave and no-one else's. I think he is over-reacting to what Jimbo said. For the record, Jaranda is (at the time of writing) still an administrator on en-wikipedia (see here). I haven't found a formal desysop request (from him or anyone else), and I think it is best to leave things to settle down now. Hopefully Jaranda will come back when he has calmed down. At the moment, his final deletion logs for his user and talk pages have the summaries "right to vanish" on them. Carcharoth 00:21, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Getting reprimanded by Jimbo hurts, as Zoe's departure has shown. hbdragon88 00:24, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

It probably does, and that's not a good thing, really. But in the long run I have more respect for people who stay or leave on principle, not according to what Jimbo thinks of them. Carcharoth 00:32, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Jaranda made mistakes but hasn't been emergency desysopped because he was no threat to the project other than the one grossly inappropriate deletion. He's made a bit of a fool of himself in my opinion, which is very unfortunate. He is at present still welcome to come back. --Deskana (talk) 00:27, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Maybe closing this thread would be an idea? Carcharoth 00:32, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Who really cares? Pilotguy 00:28, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Jimbo and Jaranda, apparently. But I agree, storm in a tea-cup and all that. Carcharoth 00:32, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Jaranda left. What's the news? How many times has he left in the past? Jaranda leaves. Thats what he does. He'll be back. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 00:37, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

The right to vanish, I'm pretty sure, doesn't cover user talk pages -- and certainly not by user hisownself. --Calton | Talk 01:29, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Past practice seems to have been to leave user talk pages deleted, unless the user returns, at which point all revisions should be undeleted again. Natalie 02:27, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Lucky 6.9 (talk · contribs) appears to buck this trend, as his user talk page was restored after he deleted it. Werdna attempted the same thing, was denied. E Pluribus Anthony (talk · contribs) was so persistent in adding speedy tags that his user talk page was eventually fully protected. It's a tossup, really. hbdragon88 04:27, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I certainly won't be restoring it. ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 04:36, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

My personal opinion is that it is rude to delete, or request deletion, of your own talk page. Other people's edits are there as well. Your user page, fine, but not the talk page. As has been pointed out, though, we are inconsistent on this. Carcharoth 10:12, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Note I was desyropped less than an hour ago, I purged the password so that's an indication I don't want to do nothing with the site anymore. Being insulted by Jimbo, I want nothing to do with wikipedia. I left before because of school isses, etc, and came back but this is a different story. Jaranda 131.94.55.77 18:36, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Link for verification. Keegan^talk 04:39, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Also I asked for my talk page to be restored while saying my last goodbyes in IRC. 131.94.55.77 18:37, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

What I really came here for! (Burger King and McDonalds)

After getting distracted by the storm in a tea-cup above, I wanted to point out the following:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Burger King menu items (February 2007) - delete
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/McDonald's menu items (2nd nomination) (February 2007) - keep
• McDonald's menu items (obviously still there)
• Burger King products (April 2007, seems to be a recreation of the menu items article that was deleted in February 2007, but someone needs to check the deleted version to check this)

I'm having trouble tracking down the history of the Burger King products article (due to a rash of redirects and page moves), but I think the recreation is here. The original page was deleted (see here), but was recreated as a redirect on 1 August 2007 (see here).

Several things:

• (0) No knee-jerk "delete, it is a recreated article" reactions, please. :-)
• (1) Could someone look at the histories and see if the early version of Burger King products I found here was a recreation of the article deleted here? If so, the history needs restoring and merging, and the previous AfD noted on the talk page.
• (2) If it was a recreation (I'm not sure if it was), could someone drop a note to the recreator (who I believe took part in the AfD) and tell them not to do this sort of thing (if it was)?
• (3) It is silly to have one article of this type survive AfD and the other not. I personally believe both should be kept, but it is desirable to be consistent in cases like this.
• (4) The names should be standardised.

I think that's it. Carcharoth 00:56, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

1) It isn't an exact copy, but the majority of the text is the same. The histories do need merging. I will work on that. Whether this needs to be speedied and sent through deletion review, or have another AfD is still up in the air, but I'll work on fixing the history, and moving everything back to Burger King menu items.-Andrew c ^[talk] 01:26, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

In regards to your concerns: yes I did cut and paste the lower portion of the article from another source, but the source was the main article itself not a Google cache or mirror. The information from the deleted article (List of Burger King menu items) was merged back into BK article after the request for deletion. When the Burger King article grew past the 50 KB limit and I sliced the BK menu items section and the BK Advertising section out and created the current two articles. (the three main articles now total about 120 kb in size and would be unwieldy)

As to the line break issue, I do not know what you are referring to.

I would also like to say that the top half of the article I pretty much added in the past 30-90 days. I made sure to properly cite any sources I used. Please understand that the whole article is not the same as the original one that was merged and deleted.

In conclusion, I was not trying to recreate the old article, but cut down the size of the main article in a logical and rational way.

Jeremy (Jerem43 03:08, 20 September 2007 (UTC))

OK, when splitting out text like that, it is important to link to the source article in the first edit summary. Something like "creating new page as a split from Burger King", and when removing from the original article, say something like "splitting out to new page at Burger King menu items". I also think the "products" title is better, and I'd support keeping both of these articles at any AfD or DRV. Carcharoth 03:23, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

That is why I named the article BK products instead of BK menu items as it just more than a list of items but a full description of there nomenclature, cooking methods menu targeting and more. If possible, could Andrew please put it back to the BK products name?

When I created the article, I was not as familiar with the proper procedures for moving articles, creating new ones etc. I had only primarily added stuff to existing articles. Life is a learning process.

Jeremy (Jerem43 04:24, 20 September 2007 (UTC))

I agree about the "products" name. Do you know much about McDonalds? Would moving that page to "products" be a better way to treat that one? As for the BK one, talk to Andrew about it on his talk page. He has tried to sort out the page history, and it would be best if you helped him out by explaining the history (as you have done above). Carcharoth 10:14, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I replied to Jerem43's talk page. I looked into this page merge/spinout claim, and could not find any diffs at Burger King to support this claim. Not saying it isn't true. There are at least a hundred edits in the 2 months between the AFD and the new article creation, so I couldn't go through them all. So I have asked Jerm43 to post the diff where the old article was merged with the parent, and the diff where the product content was spun out. From the looks of things, the product section remained unchanged for those 2 months (besides the addition of Chicken Fries and video games). Another concern is merging content from a deleted article. This violated the GFDL because the original authors need to be credited, (we do this by either merging histories, or NOT deleting the original article and leaving it as a redirect to preserve the page history). At the very least, that did not occur in this case. Furthermore, the AfD notice on the talk page should still stand because, as seen from this diff, the vast majority of the deleted article is now incorporated in the current revision. After we get this straightened out, and the move isn't controversial, I'd be more than happy to move the article back to another title. But it was easier to get everything back in its original place while doing the histories merge. Thanks.-Andrew c ^[talk] 15:19, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

• The only thing more baffling than the question of who eats this crap, is the question of who writes this crap. For the love of Jimbo, are we really here to collect all of BK's press releases and menu sheets and pretend that makes an encyclopedic topic? Where are the books on "the history of Burger king menus since 1972"? There are none. BK's menu is important only if you happen to be going to BK and - guess what? - every BK has a menu right there!. Guy (Help!) 21:36, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Is it me or is the comment by Guy excessively rude? He just nominated the article for deletion as well while we are working on it. I am on break at work and have not had the chance to fully respond to Andrew's requests. Could we please put RfD off for a little while?

Jeremy (Jerem43 00:17, 21 September 2007 (UTC))

Someone's fantasy life...

...or so it appears, has erupted on Wikipedia. A whole series of linked "users" and their elaborate user pages has cropped up documenting what looks like a wholly imaginary life as a pop star. The ones I've found include:

• Explode24 (talk · contribs)
• Explode25 (talk · contribs)
• Sweet24 (talk · contribs)
• Wind24 (talk · contribs)
• God24 (talk · contribs)
• All24 (talk · contribs)
• Clumsy24 (talk · contribs)

...plus an assorted of fake album covers uploaded, such as Image:Sdfdsgagawg.JPG‎ and Image:All Good Things (Come To An End) (Front cover).PNG. I've been bold and blanked the pages, but deletion/blocking may be necessary. --Calton | Talk 01:24, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok here are all the images:

• Image:All Good Things (Come To An End) (Front cover).PNG (which is a clear copyvio of Image:All Good Things (Come To An End) video2.JPG) uploaded by All24
• Image:Personal (Front cover).JPG uploaded by Sweet24
• Image:The Dutch Of York - International Tour Edition (Front cover).JPG uploaded by Explode24
• Image:The Dutch Of York (Front cover).JPG (Explode24)
• Image:In God's Hands (Front cover).PNG (God24)
• Image:Jakerlicious (Front cover).JPG (Wind24)
• Image:Gvcgh.JPG (Explode25)
• Image:Sdfdsgagawg.JPG (Explode25)

I say delete all of them as either G12 or G3 (maybe G1?). I would also suggest possibly indefinately blocking all of them, except Explode24 as sockpuppets, who appears to be the puppetmaster. Not sure what else, just leave a personalized (i.e. non-templated) message to the user to try to discourage this sort of editing, but encourage productive editing. What do others think?-Andrew c ^[talk] 02:14, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I also noted that Explode24 write very poor fair use rationales (usually uses a template and writes only a word or two after each field).-Andrew c ^[talk] 02:22, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Looks like Ryulong (talk · contribs) has deleted all the images are hoaxes, and blocked everyone indefinitely as part of an elaborate hoax ring. I think this is a bit harsh, because the activity was not occurring in the main article space, and the user hadn't been contacted for an explanation/warning.-Andrew c ^[talk] 15:13, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Mitchell Henderson

Wikipedia has an article on Brandon Vedas so why can't there be an article on Mitchell Henderson (aka an hero)? He's at least as notable as Brandon, his article (or lack thereof) should be unprotected so someone can create a quality article about him.

--RucasHost 11:19, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Deletion review is --->> thataway. If you have reliable sources indicating that Mitchell Henderson is notable, take them over there to argue for unsalting. Tony Fox (arf!) 16:06, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Automated warnings and intelligence gathering after Undo

(Cross-posted from Wikipedia talk:Vandalism)

Most editors have clicked the Undo button to remove vandalism. But many (most?) don't follow through and post a warning to the vandal's talk page, or to raise the level of warning, or to post a notice to WP:AIV.

It would be a big help if we tied some automation to the Undo button:

• If the editor's talk page is empty, then automatically put a uw-test1 warning on the page.
• Slightly harder: if the talk page already has a recent warning, then add a higher level warning.
• Also hard: if the talk page has a last warning, then automatically submit a report to WP:AIV.

I don't know if a bot could do the above, or if it would require some developer intervention to tie into the Undo button.

There is something else that would be a big help in identifying vandals. Each edit that is undone could be marked in the user's contribution log as an undone edit. When we scan a user's contributions and see that almost all contributions are marked as having been undone, then it is easy to identify that user as a vandal.

We could also calculate for each user a percentage of "undoneness". Productive editors would have a very low percentage of undoneness, but editors with a 100% or 50% or even 20% rating are disruptive. Users with a high percentage of undoneness could be listed in something like the recent changes list, so that vandal fighters could give them extra attention.

Maybe someone could do this with a bot but my guess is that it would require developer support. I think it would be worthwhile. This kind of automation would implicitly make every other editor a vandal fighter merely by clicking the Undo button. Sbowers3 11:45, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

It's certainly do-able, as that's how Twinkle works. I'd question making it automatic, as a lot of undos aren't reverting vandalism, but removing inappropriate good-faith edits, and I could see a lot of editors being upset at having their talk page filled with vandalism warnings. Ideally, a Twinkle-style dialog box would open with options for boilerplate talkpage messages, but that would (I think) require Java, which a lot of editors won't be using — iridescent (talk to me!) 12:36, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

While I think that making sure users get some sort of message is important, I definitely agree with Iridescent that making it completely automatic is inappropriate. Often I use undo in cases where I want to leave a personalized message for the user to explain why an edit was inappropriate in a more specific/less bitey way when it wasn't actually vandalism. (Users adding their own births or those of other redlinks to date/year pages is a common one, for example.) Pinball22 15:35, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Automation (or bots) are definitely inappropriate. Undo is often the best way to reverse a recent edit that is in good faith, not vandalism. The assumption that an edit which needs to be undone is vandalism is a failure to assume good faith, and is deplorable. GRBerry 21:45, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, I only generally leave a single warning (or block notice), regardless of perhaps half a dozen rollbacks. Leaving a note for each one? Bleh. I think what is needed here is for the editors to crack down on themselves, rather than introducing a fully- or semi-automated tool to do it. Besides, sometimes a silly edit from an IP just isn't worth the warning. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:57, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

(unindenting) Okay forget the automated messages, but can't we make it a lot easier for the editor who clicks Undo to leave a message on the other editor's talk page? You would click a button that would take you to that talk page, offer you a choice of the standard warnings or a personalized warning, insert the name of the article that was undone, and sign the message - and possibly offer the choice of posting a message to WP:AIV. Many (most?) editors don't leave any message but if we made it easy, then many more might do it. Sbowers3 23:31, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Vatican Cardinal edited Wikipedia

Recently, there was a controversy over whether Vatican computers were editing our systems. That prompted a reaction from the leading church press official, Federico Lombardi.

Well, I know that archbishop and doctrinal prefect Angelo Amato, who occupies cardinal Ratzinger's former job, signed his very own name (AA Amato) in [26] on an obscure page in the French Wikipedia. This person is very high ranking and could almost be pope.

The cardinal was apparently having an edit conflict with a member of a sect. He corrected the article and said in the talk page no, come to my office and we'll talk. A statement like that is customary in the roman curia.

Now, the IP number comes from Issy-les-Moulineaux, which is the site of a major Vatican compound for sulpicians, who are leading group among clergy.

Right before the incident occured, this cardinal was giving an online interview to explain about a controversy that had occured with protestant communities. [27]

ADM 14:32, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Did he edit improperly? I would think that even if he did, this report would be more appropriate for WP:COIN than for here. Not really sure what administor action is needed here. - TexasAndroid 15:09, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Why are you phrasing this as if it's a crime of some sort? There is nothing wrong about a cardinal editing Wikipedia that is not wrong about a lawyer or a milk deliveryman editing Wikipedia, nothing wrong about people in the Vatican "editing our systems" that is not wrong about Belgian or Paraguayans editing. Picaroon (t) 15:16, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

If anything, we should be thrilled that someone that high up has taken notice of us. --B 15:39, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Apparently the IP deleted a statement, which was added back with the equivalent of the {{fact}} tag, and the IP wrote on the talk page to contact him by mail for more information. He identified himself in the first edit summary. I fail to see why such a fuss is made about that to be honest :) 207.45.248.18 15:58, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

People in the Vatican are still presumably allowed to edit, although they're likewise presumably just as bound by the same policy and community expectations as anyone else... is there some reason this particular edit was a problem (or a problem for en.wikipedia, rather than fr.wikipedia, in particular)? I feel like I'm missing something, here. – Luna Santin (talk) 18:42, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

It is a nice note for The Inquirer, send them a mail and they will likely accept it. But for us, if he did not vandalize, it is of little relevance (unless we add that to Wikipedia:List of very important people editing Wikipedia). -- ReyBrujo 19:35, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Should the Wikipedia Signpost have a story on this? Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 20:08, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Unless he changed Jesus's infobox to |living=yes, or something similar, I don't think there's really any story here, especially given that he's editing French & not English Wikipedia — iridescent (talk to me!) 20:13, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually iridescent, some of us might not argue with that! :)--JodyB _{yak, yak, yak} 20:22, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, there is a story here, but not one that directly affects us (& overlooking that this allegedly happened on fr.wikipedia): boss editting Wikipedia gets into an edit war with a subordinate. It'd be the same thing if Bill Gates made an edit, someone else at Microsoft reverted him, & Gates responded with "Please come to my office now." Not much we can do about it except to give people one more reason not to edit war. -- llywrch 21:16, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Amato doesn't appear to hold Ratzinger's old job; Ratzinger was Prefect of the CDF, while Amato's the secretary. Amato's still pretty high up in the Vatican. It's interesting... Ral315 » 00:53, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Bear in mind that each Wikipedia language version develops its own standards. The English language WP:COIN or even WP:AN has no authority over the French language Wikipedia. Although I agree this is interesting, there's not much point in discussing it here unless someone who frequents this board also happens to be sysopped on the French edition. Durova^Charge! 03:48, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

We can discuss it for kicks, but there is absolutely nothing we can (or will) do. The French Wikipedia is completely independent from the English Wikipedia. Just as we wouldn't want anyone from there interfering with internal affairs of this wiki, we need to offer the same respect over there. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 05:47, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

"Ru-sib" wiki about to be closed

Public service announcement: according to this, the infamous "Siberian" ru-sib Wikipedia is now about to be closed, after a procedure that was dragged out for almost a year. Happy news. Interwiki bot operators might want to take note. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:00, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Good news indeed, judging by all the problems this WP created. It shows how hard it is to assess whether or not a language is fake or not ;). -- lucasbfr ^talk 16:42, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Good news, though it did take a bit long to get on with it. Hopefully the dev's will be more discerning with future requests for new wikis. :) The Evil Spartan 00:28, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism at WP:Consensus

User:151.198.17.177 has repeatedly vandalized WP:Consensus and continued after being warned that vandalism can result in blocking. --Kevin Murray 22:14, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I've blocked for 24 hours. There was no "formal" final warning, but vandalism to policy pages is very disruptive. You may report simple, blatant vandalism to WP:AIV; responses there are usually faster. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 22:19, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Range block 216.76.248.0/24

I have blocked the range of 216.76.248.0/24 due to a persistent over-wikilinking vandal using a dynamic connection for a month. These unhelpful edits have been ongoing for months. The user has been warned and blocked repeatedly. The histories of the following pages are conjested due to the anon and the reverts: Alyson Michalka, Amanda Michalka, Abigail Spencer, Jordana Spiro, Devon Odessa, Lise Simms, Anneliese van der Pol, and possibly a few other. After conferring with a couple other admins who have dealt with these pages, the range block was decided. This is my first range block, so hopefully I did everything right. Is there anything I need to do besides the block (such as add templates?)

One more thing, I noticed Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Rangeblock. All of the pages listed under transclusion were created by User:Mackensen. So here is my question, do CIDR suffixes work for IP user talk pages, or are all of these user talk pages basically useless and for users that don't exist?-Andrew c ^[talk] 23:15, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

They don't as far as I know. Prodego ^talk 23:21, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm thinking that at the time (January/Feb '07) they did work. I remember that there was a software update to address a bug report that was enabled for a bit then disabled (bugzilla:1035). Perhaps it is related? Anyway, the question remains, should these just be deleted for now?-Andrew c ^[talk] 00:18, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Interesting confession

What do people think about this? I want to get some opinions. This person is clearly coming clean, and he didn't have to. But I thought the community should think about it. The Evil Spartan 00:01, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Does he appear to be telling the truth? Or is he just trying to get lots of other people blocked? I tend not to believe people who stoop all the way to vandalism, even if what they're saying is a confession. —Wknight94 (talk) 01:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Block away. Cowman109^Talk 01:34, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind, I went ahead and did it. Cowman109^Talk 01:35, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

And no idea what he was saying about doing 800 positive edits on that account. He doesn't even have 250 edits. Cowman109^Talk 01:37, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Question about people reinstating banned user edits

What is the guideline on non-banned users reinstating edits which were undone (or pages which were deleted) per WP:BAN? It seems pointless to have WP:CSD#A5, etc. if other people just re-create the articles from Google cache. —Wknight94 (talk) 01:04, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like something we might want to keep an eye on. If the sole reason for deletion is "they're banned" as opposed to "this content is problematic," though... hard to be more specific without a specific example. – Luna Santin (talk) 01:38, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

The article which instigated the question is Scott Milanovich. It was created by Jmfangio (talk · contribs) which was checkuser-proven to be banned user Tecmobowl (talk · contribs). Per WP:CSD#G5, I deleted several things created by Jmfangio and reverted a few edits. Now this one article has reappeared courtesy of Soxrock (talk · contribs) who fetched it from Google cache. That seems like a bad idea to me and certainly doesn't encourage Tecmobowl to honor his ban. —Wknight94 (talk) 01:44, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

See WP:BAN#Editing on behalf of banned users. There was a recent discussion about this issue, and it seems like consensus is that responsibility for reinstating banned users' edits lies with the reinstater. An e-mail from a banned user containing "Could you post this to WP:ANI?" is fine if at the discretion of the e-mailed user, but not "what do you want me to change for you?" Gracenotes^T § 01:47, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

(ec) As I understand it, if edits by banned users are reverted, per WP:BAN they can be restored by other users so long that users takes responsibility for the edit - i.e. its up to them to makes sure that it is accurate and doesn't violate any policies. However, if contributions by a banned user are deleted, restoring the material violates the GFDL as the edit can no longer be attributed to its original author. WjBscribe 01:48, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Protection templates, new style

The Wikipedia:Article message boxes project has now changed and standardised the styles for most of the message boxes that goes on article pages. We are now planning to change the protection templates to have a matching look when on article pages. But they will keep their old look when they appear anywhere else.

Here is an example of the new look. (Note: Exact colour for the left-side colour bar is not yet decided, and we will of course have the old full text in them, this is just a short example.)

Any input is welcome, see discussion and more examples at Wikipedia talk:Article message boxes#Protection Templates and Wikipedia talk:Article message boxes#Next steps.

--David Göthberg 02:29, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Templating the regulars

The issue of whether WP:DTTR should be a guideline or an essay is resurrected, this time by 1=2. Please comment at the talk page. --Irpen 04:15, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Admin protected his talk page

Initially, I had another issue I was going to take up with an admin, User_talk:FCYTravis, but his talk page was locked. I posted here about my original issue (it ended up in the BLP noticeboard as per FCYTravis's request) and the protection on his talk page. He replied that "...semiprotection of my talk page is not an abuse. You want to post there, register an account. Free, easy and anonymous." Wikipedia:Protection_policy states that semi-protection may be used for "User pages (but not user talk pages), when requested by the user."

Especially for an admin, as IP users might wish to contact them, semi-protected talk pages are inappropriate, and I think FCYTravis abused his power in applying the protection.

As far as protecting his own page, he claimed that "My userpage is fully protected because... it's my userpage and nobody else has any business editing it." User pages are not eligible for full protection, he's acting like he owns his user page, and he should have had another admin lock his page to prevent a conflict of interest (he may have, I haven't seen the log). Fully protecting a user page was probably also an abuse of administrator powers.

I reported this here and not the protection page because there might be a more serious issue than just protection. 69.12.143.197 05:46, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, gotta say, protecting his talk page is a bit extreme; there are plenty of good-faith reasons for a new user to drop him a line. Even if his talk page was getting hit with vandalism, it should only get locked down for a short period of time. I'm informing FCYTravis of this thread right now... EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:51, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Which I, myself, would have done if not for... 69.12.143.197 05:54, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Does appear unusual as it been semiprotected since Dec 2006 dif Gnangarra 05:56, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I recommend we firmly, but politely, suggest that he unprotect his page on his own. Then again, he'll be seeing my message... so..err... yeah. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 06:03, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I think it's okay to sprot it for a short while if there's a good reason, but it shouldn't be kept permanently protected, especially when he's actively deleting pages and blocking people. I think he should unprotect it, if there isn't a particularly good reason for the protection. We are supposed to welcome anons editing and they need to be able to leave messages. Sarah 06:05, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I have un-semi'd my user talk page. The full protection of my userpage will remain - it experienced quite a bit of nasty repeat vandalism when unprotected, and I don't feel like wasting a bunch of my time making sure it's reverted. There's nothing in the least abusive about keeping it protected, unless you think you have a good reason you need to edit it. I await hearing about said reason. FCYTravis 06:14, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for unprotecting your talk page; I can't see any problems with your userpage remaining protected. Sarah 06:19, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I have no good reason, although I think you should go to semi-protected, then see if there's a problem. 69.12.143.197 06:21, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps he semi-protected his talk page because anons repeatedly vandalised, trolled and harassed him? I used to edit regularly, but left for that reason. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.121.36.232 (talk) 06:28, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Site plagiarising Criticism of Family Guy

I don't even know if this is a problem worth reporting, but this Geocities page is using Wikipedia content to generate ad revenue, and displays none of the GFDL stuff. Is this worth reporting, and if so where? Name given, but no contact info or linkage.

http://www.geocities.com/againstfamilyguy/

All text below the image is copied from Criticism of Family Guy. Image is linked from en.wikipedia.org.

Geocities Copyvio contact: copyright@yahoo-inc.com / edg ☺ ★ 07:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)