Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents

Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents
This page is for urgent incidents or chronic, intractable behavioral problems. Before posting: Take a look at these tips for dealing with incivility If the issue concerns a specific user, try discussing it with them on their talk page Try dispute resolution Just want an admin? Contact a recently active admin directly. Be brief and include diffs demonstrating the problem Do not report breaches of personal information on this highly visible page – instead go to Requests for oversight. When starting a discussion about an editor, you must leave a notice on their talk page; pinging is not enough. You may use {{subst:ANI-notice}} ~~~~ to do so. Closed discussions are usually not archived for at least 24 hours. Routine matters might be archived more quickly; complex or controversial matters should remain longer. Sections inactive for 72 hours are archived automatically by Lowercase sigmabot III. Editors unable to edit here are sent to the /Non-autoconfirmed posts subpage. (archives, search)
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User:MarphyBlack

MarphyBlack (talk · contribs) I find a comment on the [Ermac] page that is questionable. The line "This is the only instance in the history of Mortal Kombat where a rumor led to the creation of an actual character." is untrue as the game series has one more such instance (Evidence: [1] ) The character was only a rumour in Mortal Kombat 2 But he was developed into a character later. So Ermac was not the only rumoured character to be developed into an actual character. I've tried deleting the line, rephrasing, and adding a fact flag to the line but they've all been reverted by marphyblack.--Iamstillhiro1112 02:33, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

tried to discuss apparent personal attacks, editor dismissive

I've been trying to engage with a user about apparent personal attacks,[2] and in reply I'm getting only a reiteration ("proof of concept").[3] I'm at a loss. Any input or assistance would be appreciated. — coelacan talk — 11:09, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't go looking for things to be offended by. If you can't get along with that user, avoid them. Jkelly 17:35, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

And can you suggest a list of other things I should ignore in the future, besides X? Should I wait for Y, or should I set the bar even higher? — coelacan talk — 21:33, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that reply was thoroughly inappropriate, Coelacan. You should fix that. However, the editor in question, CyberAnth, has been up on this talk page three times now in as many days for problems. He was supported by Jimbo Wales for his actions in enforcing WP:BLP, and since then seems to be increasing in hostility. It's probably a good idea for some admin to make clear to him that being right once doesn't make him right always, and the behavior on Coelacan's talk page is certainly a personal attack. ThuranX 21:49, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. Sorry. — coelacan talk — 22:06, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

ThuranXm, Sir or Madam, that is nonsense. The post to my userpage in question was made some 10 days prior the WP:BLP incidents. See here. Also, this situation is someone writing words, and then claiming that the very words they wrote, when quoted, constitute a personal attack. That is nonsense. I suggest that if people do not wish to have their irresponsible words, spoken in deeper recesses of WP, displayed in more noticeable places, the way to avoid it is to avoid writing such words in the first place. CyberAnth 23:20, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Just what are you talking about? I came to your talkpage and asked you to explain why you called me a "fuckwad".[4] The whole conversation is right there on your talk page,[5] so I don't see how you could get this mixed up. I don't care about the quote on your userpage and I've never complained about it to you or anyone. Quit changing the subject. — coelacan talk — 23:44, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

User:CyberAnth It does look to me like you did call this fellow a "fuckwad". Could you please apologize? That would be most appropriate now. --BenBurch 05:44, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd be happy to, if only I did. CyberAnth 07:06, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I did a little more digging. And indeed you did not. --BenBurch 17:26, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Now I'm confused. How is this not calling me a fuckwad?[6] What exactly is it, then? What does "look at this person's actions, they are best explained by fuckwad syndrome" mean, and how can it be construed otherwise? I don't understand why I'm seeing this, you were seeing it, and now you're not. Help? I mean, WP:NPA, what does "Posting a link to an external source that fits the commonly accepted threshold for a personal attack, in a manner that incorporates the substance of that attack into Wikipedia discussion, including the suggestion that such a link applies to another editor, or that another editor needs to visit the external source containing the substance of the attack" mean if it doesn't refer to this?[7] And when I try to engage with this user and ask about it, I get it thrown back in my face ("proof of concept", CyberAnth says), Isotope23 brings it up and the only reply is "It's all just Coelacan. Trust me" and then CyberAnth deletes the whole thing from that talk page instead of engaging with myself or Isotope23. So what are you seeing that I'm not? If I'm thoroughly failing to comprehend something here, I'd appreciate a tip. — coelacan talk — 20:00, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Please go read WP:AGF and apply it to your issue. Thanks! --BenBurch 21:31, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Go read AGF! It's all just Coelacan.

BenBurch, I'm afraid that in order to do that, I need someone to explain to me why calling me a fuckwad is not the same as calling me a fuckwad. You know, it's an honest question that I took to CyberAnth's user page. You can see it all there in the links above. I ask this user if this is a personal attack and if not, how not, and instead of getting an answer I get told the same thing again, that by asking, I'm being a fuckwad: "proof of concept". So I see that User:Daniel.Bryant is active at that time, and I ask Daniel just for input or assistance or something because I'm at a loss for words; I don't know what else to say to someone who just keeps dismissing everything I ask. And Daniel doesn't want any part of it.[8] Tells me to take it to ANI. Where I ask again, repeatedly, for some clarification or input or assistance, and I'm told to ignore it, I'm told it's nothing, but no one will actually explain how this namecalling and refusal of discussion is anything but precisely that. What is the problem here? Is it "all just Coelacan"?[9] If this is not a personal attack, why won't somebody actually bother to try to explain why, instead of dancing around my plain and simple question. I'm being nothing but perfectly clear here, and I'd appreciate it if someone, anyone, would bother to do the same. — coelacan talk — 23:52, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Don't worry Coelacan, it was a personal attack, and if it was not intended that way, CyberAnth could have apologized for the misunderstanding and explained clearly what he intended. Since he hasn't done that, you have no reason to assume good faith in this case. An "explanation" to a third editor asking about it which just says "It's all just Coelacan. Trust me"[10] says it all: instead of adressing the (real or perceived) personal attack, he blames the other person (not much WP:AGF there). I would suggest to just drop the matter and try to ignore the user, as it isn't worth wasting your time on anymore. You are right, he is wrong, and I suppose it is no coincidence that he has removed the matter from his talk page alltogether instead of archiving it, but continuing this discussion will not benefit anyone, I'm afraid. Fram 09:09, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

• It was archived days ago.[11]
• I explained.
• I ceased replying extensively to this user because of repeated evidence from weeks back that I could not AGF with him, which has been confirmed to me by multiple users with the same issues with him.
• I have better things to do with my time than take the matter further.

CyberAnth 09:51, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

No, you have not archived it, it is not in the archive and you deleted it without comment a day after youcreated that archive. I'll assume good faith and suppose that both the deletion and the insistence that it was archived are a honest mistake. As for your other points: as I said above, at this point I think it is better to use everybodies' time for better things. However, this is not about assuming good faith with Coelacan, but about you making an intentional or unintentional personal attack on him/her. Your "explanation" was clearly insufficient and looked more like a confirmation of the attack than anything else. And it has been perceived as a personal attack by Coelacan, me, Janusvulcan, ThuranX, and (to a degree) Isotope23, so there must have been something in your choice of words that could easily lead to the conclusion that it was a personal attack, even after you explained it. Fram 11:13, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

It is about a history of this user you have no knowledge of whatsoever and of which I do not wish to take the time to document. CyberAnth 11:36, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I have no reason to believe you on your word, and the history of this user is irrelevant to any personal attacks you made. You are not addressing anything I said here but seem to only try evading answering. That's a clear enough answer for me. Fram 12:48, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I think Fram is correct that continuing this discussion here is unbeneficial. It occurs to me in retrospect that I should have just gone to RFC instead, as this wasn't quite "administrator intervention" material. I was a bit distracted. My apologies to all for misdirected effort. — coelacan talk — 17:06, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Like Fram, I feel this was a personal attack. However, CyberAnth has made it clear he is NOT going to dialogue in this in a positive and meaning ful way, so I suggest we all drop this. He's laughing at us wasting our time trying to 'prove' what we ALL know to be true. Coelacan, avoid this editor. If you find him to be 'pursuing' you hrough pages, bring it to RfC. I've certainly learned a lot about CyberAnth in the last few AN/I things he's been the subject of. ThuranX 04:20, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Gosh, was that a personal attack? CyberAnth 06:37, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Folks (not aimed at CyberAnth, this is regarding the board in general) please don't throw out personal attack calls if another user has made an opinion of editing that is disfavorable. A personal attack as defined by the policy is an attack on the contributor, not the contributions. In this specific instance, ThuranX is uncivil but it is not a personal attack- he's commenting on his perception of contributions and responses. I wish to note that I have been on the opposite side of CyberAnth vehemently before, but that has nothing to do with this comment. This improper use of personal attack has gotten out of hand lately with PAIN being gone. Teke ^(talk) 06:33, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay. This seems a completely fair and helpful distinguishing between policies. Thanks. CyberAnth 09:48, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Stalking by User:Friday

I feel Im being stalked by Friday. He turns up almost everywhere I go now. Can anything be done about this as I feel threatenede by his constant attention to my every move. I have asked him to stop it a few times [12] but he just carries on.

[13] [14] [15] [16] To which I replied with this trying to warn him off:[17] He then deleted one of my comments on a talk page. here:[18] More diffs to follow as I find them --Light current 12:19, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

• Dispute resolution, second door on your left down the hall. Guy (Help!) 12:22, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

• You give no actual evidence of stalking, just of two articles that apparently both of you have edited. Contribs logs are public for good reason, and even if he had looked through your contribs (which is not a given; you'd be amazed at the amount of stuff some people have on their watchlist) that isn't necessarily bad. For instance, in the Jester case, he appears to remove a non-standard header, in that most articles don't start with a "description" header; is that problematic? Is that an attempt to improveme of the encyclopedia, or an action made solely to annoy you? WP:FAITH suggests the former. >Radiant< 12:38, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Hes following me alright. ill prove it. Since I put the hdg in, its obviosly to annoy me --Light current 12:40, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

• Well, that depends. It is apparent that his removal of the heading did annoy you. However, it is also apparent that we do not in general employ such "description" headers. So it would appear that the intent was to bring the page in line with our standards. >Radiant< 12:47, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes indeed. But why should he suddenly jump onto the Jester page like that? I did because someone accused me of acting like a court jester and I just wanted to get the right defn. I also tried to tidy the article whilst I was threr. Why did Friday then go to that page and revert my edit? And why has he suddenly become interested in Valve audio amplifiers?--Light current 12:54, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

He reverted your edit because it took out the lead of the article. I would have done the same. Trebor 13:05, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Ok but why did he follow me there if not just to stalk?--Light current 13:12, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Harassment:

Following an editor to another article to continue disruption (also known as wikistalking)

The term "wiki-stalking" has been coined to describe following a contributor around the wiki, editing the same articles as the target, with the intent of causing annoyance or distress to another contributor.

This does not include checking up on an editor to fix errors or violations of Wikipedia policy, nor does it mean reading a user's contribution log; those logs are public for good reason. The important part is the disruption - disruption is considered harmful.

Just following you isn't stalking. --Onorem 13:16, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

But he is harrasing me. Has been for months. Ive tried to ingnore him becuase if I say anything , he blocks me>I have had to give up my important word on Audio amplifier pages becuase he has followed me there and started to criticise my posts.--Light current 13:27, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

That last diff you provided also shows an uncivil comment you made. While I don't think removing comments from talk is correct, I think you shouldn't be making uncivil comments in the first place. Jeffpw 13:35, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Admitted. But what has this to do with the current stalking problem?

He's hardly the only person who has blocked you. He most likely looked over your contribution log, saw a change that was contrary to style guidelines and reverted. That is not stalking, nor is it disruptive. Trebor 13:38, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

OK then what about his sudden appearnce on trhe Valve audio amplifier talk page?--Light current 13:40, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Explain how his comments there are disruptive. They look pretty reasonable to me. The fact that he may have got there through your contribution log isn't relevant if he isn't doing anything unreasonable while there. Trebor 13:44, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Hes starting to cause trouble by interefering in a long running discussion between me and another difficult editor Tubnutdave. Ive given up oin those pages now as its just to stressful to deal with 2 awkward customes. So he has effectively disrupted the progreess on all those articles. --Light current 13:50, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Again, I can't see any evidence of interfering. If you want to give up on them, that's your choice. Trebor 13:53, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

So you dont give a shit about anyone else causing actual disruption when Im accused of it almos frigging daily??--Light current 14:13, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Show me how is he is being disruptive. Trebor 14:16, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

• Perhaps Friday is attempting to resolve the problems between you and this Tubnutdave? If there is an underlying content dispute there, you could request a third opinion or comments at any time. >Radiant< 14:10, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes but youve got to ask yourself why has he suddenly taken an interest here when the situation was under control, and I had asked another Admin to advise me on proper action I should take on these pages.

I'm sorry but you can't ban editors you dislike from editing certain pages. Unless he's doing something wrong, then what do you want to be done? Trebor 14:16, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

People (like me) have been blocked for much less then Friday is doing. Im not asking for that. I would like Friday to be advised to stop folowing me around and harrasssing me . Thats all! --Light current 14:28, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

It is not harrassment. Proto::► 14:38, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Why so bold a statement?--Light current 14:51, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Watching the contributions of a disruptive editor is not stalking or harrassment. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 15:20, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

watching is not. But commenting IS--Light current 15:25, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

No it's not. If an editor is disruptive (which you often are) then it's perfectly legitimate. You could, of course, stop being disruptive and watch the problem solve itself... Guy (Help!) 15:32, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

How am I disruptive within the WP defn?--Light current 15:48, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

• Well, for one, you make ungrounded accusations of stalking and harassment. >Radiant< 15:49, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Circular argument!--Light current 15:52, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Only if you can show these accusations are legitimate. An editor editing a few of the same pages as you isn't stalking or harassment. Trebor 16:06, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

If you've been labeled as a dick, especially if you have been told this by several people in a particular community, it might be wise to consider the possibility that it is true. Proto::► 16:10, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Were all dicks. It takes one to know one!-Light current 16:12, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

How old are you? Trebor 16:19, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

If thats not an impertinent Q, Im as old as you want me to be!--Light current 16:53, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

How do we get Light current back on the straight and narrow?

I'm actually at a loss as to what to do about Light current. He's obviously a very intelligent person, but his inability – feigned or genuine – to respond to any sort of criticism in a productive way is poisoning his ability to participate in Wikipedia.

Gentle suggestions, polite reminders, and detailed explanations of why his behaviour is problematic have all failed, repeatedly. His response to any such advice is almost always rudeness (rm less than useless post, rm noise) often with a dash of I-dare-you-to-block-me-so-I-can-cry-admin-abuse-again thrown in for good measure: "Gonna block me again?" "Why so impatient my furry friend?".

See also this thread on SCZenz's talk page, where (until SCZenz erased the insults and trolling) Light current was attempting to goad several admins into either another pointless argument or outright blocking by accusing us of 'fuzzy thinking and of course cowardice' for ignoring his taunts.

A word of caution; Light current takes a very active hand in the maintenance of User talk:Light current (check out that history tab) and it may be rather difficult to follow the conversations there. While he does not alter anyone's signed remarks, he does freely rearrange comments and delete remarks that he doesn't like. While it is probably permissible for him to do so, it may give the casual reader a somewhat skewed perspective of what conversation actually took place.

So, how do we get LC back on the straight and narrow? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:07, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

We can't do anything. The ball is in LC's court. At some point, and probably soon, LC will run out of community patience and this will no longer be an issue. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 15:20, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Light Current twice deleted this thread, by the way. Thatcher131 15:41, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

You mean ADMINS will run out of patience? I didnyt know that Admins represented the whole community; comprising as they do only about 0.1% of it!--Light current 15:42, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Are you saying there are other users who would think differently? I would love to hear from them. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:45, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, if you want a non-admin view, I would say that judging by that block log it really is only a matter of time. Anyone with a block history like that needs to have a very serious rethink of their conduct here. Moreschi ^Deletion! 15:48, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes and who is the cuase of the long block log. Not me, but erroeous Admins who dont know the blocking policy!--Light current 15:50, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

There's your problem right there: anyone who has attracted as much criticism and comment as you have and still believes that the problem is other people is headed for trouble. Guy (Help!) 17:59, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

You wouldnt be an A****n by any chance would you?--Light current 20:16, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I find it very unlikely that so many admins were wrong about you so many times, is it even a little possible that you may have earned a few of those blocks? HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:52, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes about two. Where I was very offensive to some editors. All the others have been setups and well outside blocking policy.--Light current 15:55, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Since persuasion hasn't worked, the remaining option is coercion. Various forms of coercion are available, such as civility parole, revert parole and general probation. They could conceivably be applied by community (admin) consensus, but I'm sure Light Current would not respect that. So that leaves us with arbitration, which can apply those coercive remedies. Arbitration would also give Light Current a chance to contest the blocks he thinks were inappropriate. I'm not sure that the case wouldn't turn into a train wreck, but I don't see the (admin) community being able to apply any useful remedies, short of a permanent ban, which seems much too drastic at this point. Thatcher131 16:04, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Could we have some unbiased non admin comment here please?--Light current 16:11, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay, here's one: Light Current, you are acting like a classic paranoid conspiracy theorist. It will be very difficult for you to get much real sympathy as long as you continue to act this way. —Steve Summit (talk) 04:01, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Clarification requested, are you suggesting that all admins are biased against you? - CHAIRBOY (☎) 16:22, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Im sure not all are. Only the ones whove blocked me plus SCZ (who hasnt yet -I dont think so anyway)Light current 16:25, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Hang on, you said just a few lines up that two of the blocks were justified. So are the admins who justifiably blocked you biased against you?? Trebor 16:35, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

The situation is clear-cut, Thatcher. Whatever we decide to do, including community sanctions, we should just do rather than using up ArbCom's time. -- SCZenz 16:22, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

And what trumped up charge are you going to use this time?Light current 16:25, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Assuming that you have enough community support for an escalating series of blocks to enforce a civility parole or probation, LC still has the option of appealing to arbcom. Something tells me that he won't meekly accept the judgement of the "community" here, so it will end up there one way or the other. Thatcher131 16:35, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

If Light current appeals to ArbCom, that is fine; they will take up the case if they think it's worth their time, or let the community's decision stand if it looks ok to them. I'd rather let the arbitrators judge what they should pursue than use them as a crutch for things we can handle ourselves. -- SCZenz 18:27, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

You seem to be assuming that admin comments are biased, LC; that in itself is an assumption of bad faith. Ok, here's a non-admin observation. Your talk page has been on my watchlist since November 6, when you dumped an off-topic debate onto Talk:Saddam Hussein. I reverted it; you reinstated it. I went to your talk page to explain to you why I was deleting it. Your response was aggressively argumentative. I've been looking in on your talk page from time to time since then, and I'm at a loss to understand the situation. It literally does not seem to ever occur to you that you might be wrong and that someone else might have a valid point. What I see here is a textbook case of exhausting the community's patience. It might help you to voluntarily take yourself away from Wikipedia for a week or two to get some perspective. -- Jim Douglas ^(talk) _(contribs) 16:35, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

You mean ;

Please read the RD rules. Discuusion should be moved to the approprate page. is aggressively argumentaive? Howzat?--Light current 16:50, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Read the whole thread, please, and don't think of this as a debate in which you are trying to score points. Think of it as an adult conversation in which the community is trying to show you how you are repeatedly going wrong. A few points to consider about that particular situation: What makes you think that everyone on Wikipedia knows what "RD" means? And what made you so utterly sure of your position that you continued to argue it after I removed the thread dump twice, then repeatedly explained to you that off-topic talk page postings could and should be deleted? You were so focused on your perspective (moving a thread from the reference desk) that you found it literally impossible to consider that the person you were talking to might have a valid point. It still does not seem to occur to you. Even now, you appear to be trying to score debating points, as opposed to considering what I'm telling you with an open mind. -- Jim Douglas ^(talk) _(contribs) 17:01, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Another non-admin opinion here: I agree with Jim Douglas above. From my observations (reading here and other boards, as well as watching the reference desk debates), it seems that LC obviously perceives a conflict with a number of admins sparked from the reference desk concerns, and when challenged on those conflicts immediately goes on the defensive. I personally find his responses to many of the comments that people make regarding his actions to be rather unnecessarily argumentative, even when people are trying to offer positive assistance, and would agree that he could do well to take some time and think about the situation before continuing in that fashion. Barring that, arbitration may be the next necessary step to clear this up. Tony Fox (arf!) 16:53, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

THe 'solution' is simple. People back off! I back off. We all live happily ever after!--Light current 16:55, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

OTOH maybe we need something that has been suggested before: an RfC. I wasnt keen on it before, but I think it may give a broader picture of feelings pro and anti. So if anyone wants to start one, be my guest.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Light current (talk • contribs) 11:58, February 2, 2007

I would hope an RFC would be unnecessary, but you are able to open one on yourself if you so choose, Light current. In fact it would be a sign of good faith in the community's ability to police itself if you did so, since you seem to believe that the administrators are biased against you. I believe that you are intelligent enough to see that what you are doing is at times disruptive and rules lawyering without an RFC, but it's up to you (or some other user) to take that step if necessary. -- nae'blis 17:34, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

My non admin opionion is that for some of the blocks I would not have blocked as soon. However, given the repeating cycles of bahviour the blocks were probably inevitable. No one action leads to these blocks but rather a persistent nipping at the heels. Such behaviour becomes less and less tolerable as time marches on. It is certainly disruptive as seen by the reams of discussion devoted to general behavior on the ref desk (admittedly not all due to LC). LC is always looking for loop holes in the rules. The problem is that in wikipedia the rules are interpreted but not necessarily literally. This seems to be a lesson that LC refuses to learn. Another lesson that seems to not sink in is that persisient niggling is a culmulative offense. The slate is not clean after each block but rather patterns of editing are acted on to prevent further disruption. In LC's case the patterns are so clear that he is no longer has the benefit of the doubt given to other editors. Yet, he seems to think he should be treated as a newbie for each new interaction despite his huge block log and masses of experience here it wikipedia (>30,000 edits). To say that LC does not adapt to the wikipedia environment would be an understatement. David D. (Talk) 18:01, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Open a frigging RfC on me. I demand it! Then ALL the shit can be brought into view! ¬Light current 20:12, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I thought you wanted to wait until your shoulder had healed? David D. (Talk) 20:17, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I am in pain yes having just fallen out of the chair onto my bad arm. But I think its important to persue the convo here. BTW Im impressed with your neutrality, lack of bias, and maturity so I would like to nominate you for Admin If you dont mind! We need more of your sort in admin positions!--Light current 20:23, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Community Ban for User:Light current?

Now I haven't had the pleasure with this gentleman yet (denied unblock once, I think), but after looking at that block log, and finding this wish for another user to die on the first glance at his contributions, my only question is: why are we still wasting time here and not ban him for good? (I've issued an one week block for that attack, incidentally; feel free to shorten or lengthen it if deemed necessary). Sandstein 20:32, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Ban him for good. Arbcom is not needed for obvious cases like this. WAS 4.250 21:59, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Seconded (or third-ed). User's behavior seems to be an ongoing problem and a major time-sink, with no light (no pun intended) at the end of the tunnel. Turn the page. | Mr. Darcy talk 22:07, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Fourthed (or seconded again, if one prefers). No need to waste ArbCom time, and an RfC would just be treading water. If Light wants to help us build an encyclopedia, it would probably be better to do so with a fresh start and without all this behind them. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 22:51, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not an admin, but I completely agree - he has exhausted the community's patience. CharonX/talk 01:28, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Sixthed. —bbatsell ¿? ✍ 04:22, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

LC's having a bit of a tantrum on his user talk page about a lot of this. probably needs a good community supported cool off, if not more. ThuranX 05:06, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I've protected his talk page, to prevent him from issuing a third unblock request after two were denied and to stop him from getting into even more trouble for incivil edits. Feel free to undo if you believe the tantrum is over. Sandstein 07:19, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Per consensus here, I have changed the duration of the block to indefinitely. — Nearly Headless Nick 13:58, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

As the target of his threat, I'd like to reiterate that I think this might be excessive. Hipocrite - «Talk» 14:00, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I concur. Indefinite blocks for community pain are really not for established users who speak unpopular opinions, but rather for the trolls who play with the wiki. I'm no fan of this user, haven't had pleasant interractions, but going to infinite is excessive. Geogre 14:34, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Judging from my admittedly limited interaction with him, this is not a case of suffering for unpopular opinions (except if that counts as an opinion for you), but a case of incessant disruption. Given his history, he is unlikely to heed yet another warning, and so I fail to see what other measure will stop us from ever having to waste more time on his misconduct. Let him seek the attention he appears to need somewhere else. Sandstein 15:23, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm seriously torn here. There's no question that Light current is a major pain in the ass. And yet, he's got over 30,000 edits, and his mainspace edits appear to be valuable contributions to electrical engineering related topics. Here's the current summary for User:Light_current, run at Sat Feb 3 18:08:12 2007 GMT:

     Image talk:               4
     Image:                    51
     Mainspace                 11716
     Talk:                     7012
     Template:                 6
     User talk:                3415
     User:                     340
     Wikipedia talk:           2089
     Wikipedia:                5730
     avg edits per article     7.40
     earliest                  05:33, 1 August 2005
     number of unique articles 4105
     total                     30363

It appears that he's never actually been blocked for more than a week at a time (he's been blocked for as long as a month, then paroled after a few days). And he's never really been blocked at all, as he uses his talk page as a soap box through his blocks. He appears to have been a valuable contributor for a year before the civility issues started last August. It may be that he has personal issues that he needs to work through. I've had almost no contact with him, so I could be completely off-base here. But if the admins who have been dealing with his crap think there's any possibility of salvaging him as a useful contributor, then we should try a longer block, for at least a month or two, with his soap box locked down, with a clear understanding on his return that the community's patience has run out. -- Jim Douglas ^(talk) _(contribs) 18:41, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I would tend to support a longer cooling-off period, so that Light current can deal with whatever demons he has at the moment. There is no question that when LC is being productive, he is an asset to the encyclopedia. (Note, however, that the edit counts above may be somewhat misleading—LC doesn't seem to make effective use of the preview button or the minor edit tick box.)

After Light current's initial 3RR block last August, it looks from the block log like he got himself rather worked up and started making additional personal attacks, which led in turn to longer blocks. It appears that we have a similar situation here. Light current failed to respond to warnings, was blocked, and then decided to climb the Reichstag. In the August case, he eventually cooled off and went back to being a productive contributor. As short blocks haven't been working here, perhaps a month will allow him time to gain some perspective. I hate to write him off completely at this point.

Note that it will probably be best to leave his talk page protected during this period. As Jim Douglas has noted, Light current has a history of using his talk page to rant, soapbox, and work himself up while blocked. (Sometimes this behaviour has led to extensions of his blocks.) Looking at his edit history, the last couple of times he was blocked he was racking up about a hundred edits per day on his talk page before it was protected. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:06, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I second TenOfAllTrades's assessment. As someone who has been keeping a close eye on LC for a period of time now, I believe he needs a significant time away from WP to realise that this isn't a game. Moreover, I also think any block now, or in the future, should be accompanied with by talk page protection, as he uses that to build up an head of steam which makes the problem worse. I would support a month block and, on its expiry, it being made clear to LC that should his disruptive behaviour continue it will be indefinite next time. Rockpocket 19:42, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I support this course of action, although I think it is rather unlikely to work, because I see no reason not to try. Maybe a month or two off, with a clear statement that he's going to be indef blocked if he continues his previous pattern of behavior, will change, his mind. I don't want him gone if it's at all avoidable—and if he comes off his block and behaves poorly, then he'll be just as indef blocked as he is now. Perhaps we should also consider a community ban from pages that lead him into trouble, if that's possible—although I think it would be difficult, since the page that leads him into trouble the most is his own talk page. -- SCZenz 21:25, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I would support a longer cool-off period, but not an indefinite ban; that seems too much like retribution. Remember the starting header was "How do we get Light current back on the straight and narrow?" which I think is a far better aim than "how do we remove him as a problem?" Trebor 21:32, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this comment is fair to those supporting indef blocks; I'll write a more detailed note on your talk page. The gist is: our ultimate aim is to write a quality encyclopedia, and either of the two goals you quote may become necessary in order to achieve that end. -- SCZenz 22:18, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Is there a real downside to trying the month instead of an indefinite block? If it goes negative after that, it'll be indef soon enough, and not many people here have contested the value of contributes made. Bitnine 22:26, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

And I've responded more fully on your talk page.I apologise for characterising the motives behind people's opinions of the length of bans; given my limited involvement, I will let others decide. Trebor 22:36, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with SCZenz's comments on Trebor's talk. If all of you would like to spend your time babysitting looking after this editor instead of, well, writing a quality encyclopedia, it's not my business to tell you not to. In the case that we do not have consensus for a ban, which I still think is the sensible thing to do, I support SCZenz's proposal: a longer cool-off period, combined with the prospect of an immediate indefinite block in the case of any further disruption. Consider, though: It's quite apparent from his behaviour that Light current has not just poor social graces, but substantial personal issues (of whatever sort). Wikipedia is not therapy, and I'm not sure that his continued stay here would be of benefit to him (let alone to us, of course). Sandstein 22:43, 3 February 2007 (UTC) — Addendum: "Babysitting" was a poor choice of words, sorry. Sandstein 22:46, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

(Resetting indent) I agree with the above, that a longer cool off period, but not an indefinite block, is the best solution. Light current has been a productive contributor and could be one again. I think there's consensus for resetting the block timer to one month, no? One thing that would be helpful is telling, no, urging, him to do his absolute best to not interact with Hipocrite, Ten, Friday. What do people think of this? Picaroon 22:55, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Agree with reducing the block to a month. When he returns, I would suggest that interaction with Hipocrite, Ten, Friday should be avoided completely. Addhoc 23:15, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Two of the users you listed are part of the team of administrators who've been dealing with his behavior; they can't very well avoid interacting with him unless there are replacements for them, and frankly I don't think they've done anything that would justify asking them to avoid him. And if they're not avoiding him, I don't see how exactly to tell them to avoid him. -- SCZenz 23:34, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Agreed that they should avoid each other, and this includes them not following LC around and correcting everything he does. If he makes mistakes, let others correct them. StuRat 23:31, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I have several comments:

1) If somebody files a complaint at AN/I, the responses should either be to support the complaint or oppose it, but in no case should the user who issued the complaint be blocked as a result of having made the complaint. Such an action makes people feel they can no longer request assistance here. This is a disturbing pattern I've seen here. Remember, just because a user may have engaged in uncivil behaviour doesn't mean they lose the right to complain if they are, or feel they are, in turn, treated uncivilly. This should be a "safe place" to voice concerns, not a place where issuing a complaint gets you blocked. This is an important safety valve.

2) An indefinite ban should only be used on people who solely engage in vandalism. This is not LC, he has made thousands of useful contributions.

3) If LC's complaint about Friday doesn't fall within the technical definition of Wikistalking, perhaps the def should be a bit broader. If I, for example, followed Friday around and made trivial changes to each of his contributions (added a comma here, changed a word to a synonym there, etc.), this wouldn't qualify as Wikistalking either, but it would likely annoy Friday, so I wouldn't do it. Think of real world stalking. If a person follows you into every public place you go, wouldn't that make you nervous ?

4) To take an example, if Friday hadn't reverted LC's insertion of the "Description" header in the jester article, what would have happened ? Perhaps another user would have removed it, or perhaps they would have improved the situation. I do tend to agree with LC that the detailed description of the clothing of a jester wasn't appropriate for the intro, yet some intro did need to remain. Had Friday left LC's addition in place, we may have ended up with a better article, with a new intro that didn't go into that level of detail on the clothing, and the detailed description properly listed under the "Description" header LC added. Friday should try to see what LC was trying to accomplish and assist him (by writing a new intro that didn't get into clothing details, in this case), rather than just deleting LC's contributions.

So, to conclude, can't we all just be a bit more patient with people who disagree with us and try to cool things off rather than trying to escalate conflict ?

StuRat 23:31, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I absolutely agree that if the end result when user A issues a good-faith complaint at AN/I about user B is that user A gets blocked, that's exceedingly unfortunate and gives the appearance of punishing whistleblowers, etc. Unfortunate as the pattern is, though, we can't just say that "no one who issues a complaint at AN/I may himself be blocked", because we would then set ourselves up for (a) endless abuse by trolls who would issue good-faith complaints and then turn into royal pains in the neck, and (b) people issuing non-good-faith complaints.

(I'm not saying that Light Current was being an annoying troll, or that his complaint against Friday was not in good faith. I don't know about either of those.)

However, a bit more needs to be said about the allegation of stalking. All of us care about this encyclopedia. If I (or anyone) notice a conspicuously bad edit, I/we are quite likely to check that editor's contribution log to see if any similarly bad edits have been made by that same editor elsewhere. If so, I/we are going to fix them. What else can we do? Tie our hands and avoid fixing them, let a pattern of bad edits continue, just to avoid being labeled a stalker? No, of course not. It's a wiki, anyone can edit anything at any time in order to make it better. How you got there doesn't matter.

(I'm not saying that Light Current was performing "conspicuously bad edits". But as several people have pointed out already, it's only stalking if done to harass or annoy. Making a simple improvement shouldn't be construed as harassment.) —Steve Summit (talk) 04:22, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I have elaborated in his talk page, but I wanted to note here that StuRat's interpretation of the build up towards this action is not accurate. LC's block was not in response to his complaint here. A number of admins have been discussion a solution to LC's disruption for a while now, one recent exchange where indef blocks were discussed (see User talk:SCZenz#Blocked Light current) started before LC's complaint was made. Rockpocket 04:27, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Though I have no opinion on whether LC should be banned or not, I have to object to your second point above. Per WP:BAN, users whom the community has deemed disruptive or those who have exhausted the community patience may be banned for such. I myself had mixed interactions with LC, some good, some bad, and so do not wish to pass judgment on his worthiness on Wikipedia. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 23:37, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I concur with Physicq's comment on point 2; Wikipedia policy in regard to community bans is well-established, and for good reasons. I object to point 1 rather strongly: Light current was not, in fact, blocked for issuing his complaint, but it was a symptom of a broad overall pattern of problematic behavior and has been treated as such in these discussions. If you think his accusations toward User:Friday are the primary issue here, then you are barking up the wrong tree. -- SCZenz 23:43, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Come on, now. There has been no mention of LC here since a thread way back in the archives that started Jan 18th (again in response to a complaint about another user, in this case one I added). Then, immediately after LC made a complaint here, there is talk of an indefinite community ban on LC. It's even titled as a subsection of the original complaint to show that this ban is, in fact, related to his complaint. To say that this is all just a coincidence and LC would have been blocked at the same time had he not issued a complaint here simply isn't credible. Issuing a complaint should not be seen as even a partial cause for blocking the complainer, all that does is silence the discussion, which isn't healthy at all. And LC, in particular, hasn't been making large numbers of complaints here, in any case. StuRat 02:24, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

What isn't credible is any notion that issuing a complaint here, or anything other than LC's own consistently over the top behavior [19], had anything to do with it. Any user is free to raise any complaint they'd like here, and if anyone is ever blocked for raising an issue here please let me know (I will personally unblock them). What they're not free to do is belligerently argue about it, repeatedly delete relevant commentary, and tell other editors to drop dead. Anyone who does so risks being blocked. Anyone with LC's history who does so risks being banned. He exhausted my patience quite a while ago. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:36, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Block has been changed to a month. Talk page will remain protected for LC's own safety during that time. pschemp | talk 23:39, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a good reflection of the consensus here to me; although many prefer an indef block, it's best to err on the side of giving him one more chance. -- SCZenz 23:43, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay, that's not a bad solution. I've now extended his talk page protection accordingly. Sandstein 00:11, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I think Light current shouldn't be community banned. Okay, so I've had no experience with this user, but based on his contributions to electrical-related topics have been useful, not disruptivr, maybe he should be given another chance. --sunstar net^talk 01:19, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

A while ago, I recall someone having suggested mentorship/adoption/whatever-it's-called for Light current. I think someone gave it a go. Did that lead anywhere? Might this be an option when he returns to editing? ---Sluzzelin 03:18, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• I also do not consider a community ban to be an adequate resolution to the issue at this stage. The block seems ok; I may even reduce it to two weeks, as one month still seems a bit harsh to me. But I do think that perhaps the best solution to this may be for it to end up in ArbCom's court. I'm not sure how helpful an RfC would be, and there have been repeated attempts to bring closure to the RD debate, and all the issues that sprang up from it, by unaffiliated third parties. The lack of results from those discussions tells me that mediation will not work. I sure would hate to lose a qualified user over this, but there may be a need for gradual, enforcable restictions to be placed on him. Titoxd^(?!?) 03:59, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

  Please don't reduce the block duration to two weeks. I strongly believe that LC needs at least a month away from Wikipedia to clear his head and gain some perspective. Reducing the block to two weeks would not be in his best interest. -- Jim Douglas ^(talk) _(contribs) 05:22, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

  Please don't do that, TitoxD. Consensus in this discussion is pretty clearly for a month. I'll leave a more detailed message on your talk page. -- SCZenz 10:46, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• I agree with StuRat. Indef is absurd, and a month is harsh. As for it being a reaction to his filing a complaint here, hey A then B. Amazing time correlation for it to be a mere coincidence. And he has made many valued contributions. Edison 05:41, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

  Indef isn't "absurd"; it was a reasonable proposal, and it may still become necessary. In my opinion, though, it's premature to write off a contributor who has made valuable contributions in the past, and may still do so in the future. The block was not a reaction to LC's posting here; it was in response to a long history of civility problems. Blocking him for a month is a reasonable compromise under the circumstances, and I hope it will give him the time he needs to gain some perspective. It's not punitive in any sense; it's a measured response to a history of disruptive behaviour. -- Jim Douglas ^(talk) _(contribs) 06:00, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

  Of course it's not just a coincidence, Edison. Light current was having substantial civility problems, and he decided to post here to counter what he feels is harassment (namely, administrators intervening with regard to his behavior); he behaved rather uncivilly in the process of the discussion itself, which brought his behavior to the attention of various users, who looked at his contributions and proposed that an indef ban might be appropriate. A month is harsh for any particular action he's taken, but not at all when taken cumulatively. Unless you've gone through the literally thousands of edits, since August, that some of us have been dealing with, and believe that Light current does not have a substantial and continuing civility problem, it would be good of you to assume good faith and not make barely-veiled allegations of administrative misconduct. (If you have evidence of administrative misconduct, please file a request for comment and include diffs.) -- SCZenz 10:43, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

  To be clear, Light currrent was making a concerted effort to raise the hackles of several other editors – I was one – through a series of attacks and insults. (A non-exhaustive list appears at the beginning of the section #How do we get Light current back on the straight and narrow? above.) Having seen that particular pattern of behaviour before, we were ignoring it, in the hope that Light current would cool off and go back to constructive editing. We were trying not to indulge his penchant for wikilawyering and wilful ignorance of the problems with his behaviour. When presented with criticism, Light current's response is often very hasty and often rude. This happens even with neutral third parties who attempt to give him good advice. This incivility tends to get worse if one gets sucked into the discussion; we hoped to turn off the taps and encourage him to calm down. I know that I considered posting about the problem on this page, and I imagine that some others did the same. Nevertheless, it didn't strike me as likely to help Light current calm down—so I refrained.

  Instead of finding more constructive pursuits, Light current decided to bring his message here. He decided to cast the dispute as solely a problem with him and Friday. He decided to argue with the advice of several other editors, and he decided to refuse to let the matter drop. At that point it seemed reasonable to broaden the discussion to properly include Light current's own conduct. Yes, I'm sure that Friday was watching Light current's edits; no, I don't think it was stalking. It was an administrator keeping an eye on an editor who had been engaging in very rude behaviour, and who in the past had deliberately damaged articles (while angry) to make a point (see the history of You have two cows). No editor should be particularly surprised to find that posting on the Administrators' Noticeboard might prompt an admin or two to look at their behaviour—particularly bad conduct that has happened in the preceding twenty-four hours. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:42, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• Ten, I just don't think that's proper behavior. If we are going to do that, there should be a warning: "any non-Admin who issues a complaint here will have their contributions reviewed with a fine-toothed comb and will be blocked if any justification can be found". StuRat 21:40, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

But I think you're hyperbolizing again. The warning would be, "If you're engaged in contentious battles with numerous other editors, and if you bring a complaint about one of them to AN/I, and if you continue your contentious rhetoric during the AN/I discussion, it's possible you'll find the administrators at AN/I determining that you're at least partially at fault." (This is of course similar and analogous to a warning which I believe is explicitly stated for RfC.)

But I have to disagree with one thing Ten said, too. It is not clear that Light Current was "making a concerted effort to raise the hackles of several other editors". We can't know his motives for sure, and even if we somehow could know, AGF and/or Hanlon's razor suggests that we keep mum about that aspect, and merely observe that he "is raising the hackles of several other editors". —Steve Summit (talk) 21:55, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Dweller's proposal

I'd like to chime in. I'm not an admin, so I don't know if I'm "speaking" out of turn, but because LC is (between the sniping) a generally positive contributor on quite a prolific level, I'd like to suggest a shorter block if LC agrees to the following:

1. not debating issues regarding his behaviour to date (ie letting it lie - and it would help, good behaviour permitting, and be fair if everyone else did the same)
2. accepting a parole period with full knowledge that any flagrant bad behaviour will bring an extremely lengthy or indefinite block
3. accepting mentoring from an admin not previously involved in this conflict for the duration of the parole period
4. not posting to any Ref Desk at all, (or talk page thereof!) for the duration of the parole period

I would hope that such restrictions will help LC focus his attention on productive editing to the mutual benefit of all. I would hope that those who have been in conflict with him would avoid edits that may provoke him. Please do consider this proposal. --Dweller 11:04, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Of course you're not speaking out of turn; this page is used by everyone to discuss issues requiring administrative action. Proposals on ways forward are definitely appreciated, since we're kind of out of good ideas.

I support all those conditions once he's unblocked, but I do not support a reduction of the block time, or at least not a substantial reduction. The reason is that this block is not punitive; it is rather a chance to give Light current a chance to cool down and reflect on his participation in Wikipedia, and it is my opinion that his chances of successfully turning over a new leaf are much higher if he takes a substantial cool down period. -- SCZenz 11:22, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Here's the challenge. (I'm speaking generally, not trying to disagree with any of the above.) The hypothesis is that admins have not been ganging up on Light Current and that the block is not punitive. The problem, of course, is that when a user has become convinced that admins are ganging up on him, it's next to impossible for that user not to believe that blocks are punitive. It's also next to impossible for that user to ever realize that the admins were not ganging up on him in the first place. Therefore, as we've seen all too many times, these things usually go from bad to worse, with Arbcom cases and bans at their end. I wish this outcome weren't so inevitable; I wish there were some alternate path along which the disillusioned editor could realize and accept the more positive reality of the situation. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:56, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Part of the problem is the language we use. There may not be any "ganging up", and the blocks may not be punitive, but the whole tone of the debate is that the disillusioned editor is wrong, that his behavior has been unacceptable, that he needs to change whether he wants to or not. There's a subsection above titled "How do we get Light current back on the straight and narrow?" which is an example of this. In the previous paragraph I wrote of the disillusioned editor needing to "accept the reality of the situation", which is another example of this. (I tried to soften it by adding the words "more positive", but it's still too harsh.)

Someone who firmly believes that he is in the right and his detractors are in the wrong, and who for whatever reason entertains the thought "and they're ganging up on me" before ever considering "but I might be wrong", can very easily fall into a trap in which every new voice that's trying to help him, no matter how gently and compassionately, is heard to be yet another gang member joining the chorus of "you're wrong and you need to change". The disillusioned editor does need to change, and in many cases the change isn't even a big or difficult one, but the editor needs to make the change because he wants to, not because he's being told he has to. And it's not easy, in that situation, to get to the point where you want to make the change. —Steve Summit (talk) 14:11, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that is the problem. Since he is wrong, his behavior has been unacceptable, and he does need to change, I am not sure how to solve it. Based on my experience, pretending these things are not true would only serve to embolden him. -- SCZenz 14:33, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

LC is intelligent and has admitted to being occasionally been out of line. The admins have also made admitted to occasional mistakes. But I believe that the real key here is to draw a line and move on. There's no point in a to and fro debate on what's gone on. The steps I've suggested above (now flatteringly named after me, lol) are intended to restore a status of useful contribution without conflict. It's also about perceptions of reality on both sides, as much as objective truth. To summarise:

• The admins need to feel that LC won't be disruptive
• LC needs to feel that he is not being stalked

Debating endlessly the rights and wrongs of behavior by all parties to date won't solve either of those situations. --Dweller 14:44, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Your thoughtfulness regarding the situation is appreciated, as is the effort you've put into your analysis. I'd like to offer a couple of observations that might affect your suggestions above, however. First, Light current has a definite tendency to not only assume bad faith, but even when given opportunities essentially identical to what you describe, he keeps sniping at the people he disagrees with. It's not always in the form of posting to their user pages, but he'll make snide little "asides" when talking to other people, he'll post rants on his usertalk, and in the end result is that he's actively poisoning the community. I don't think he intends to do this, but for whatever reason, he seems unable to stop. Look at the edits he makes to his user_talk whenever he's blocked. He begins "churning", for lack of a better word. The pace of his vitriolic edits escalates to a fever pitch and never abates. He'll rules-lawyer things well past resolution when he doesn't like the answer, makes progressively worse attacks on the people he feels have 'wronged' him, and more than one person has ended up protecting his page to, as has been noted above, protect him from himself and prevent further disruption of the project. Before meeting him, I didn't realize it was possible to disrupt the project from a single user talk page, but Light current has enlightened me.

Based on my experience with this user, I predict that the following would happen if your proposal was adopted directly:

1. He would start out by thanking everyone and promising to edit good. And he would, for about a day. Maybe 10-20 articles about electrical engineering would see improvement.
2. He'd begin to assert within a day or so that the decision of the abusive administrators had been overturned, using his shortened block as example.
3. He'd start injecting snide comments into user_talk pages about how he was "banned" from RefDesk, and imply that the man was keeping him down. At this point, he'd be working himself up about the subject.
4. After 5-6 days, he'd start posting to user talk pages or AN/I messages to the effect of "Hey, look at how good I'm doing, can I come back to RefDesk now?".
5. If folks said "No", he'd escalate the pitch of his corrosive attacks on the people he feels have 'done him wrong'. He'd start making references to how he's going to RfC them, but won't follow through. Any time someone calls him on this downward spiral, he'll aggressively rules-lawyer them. "Tell me specifically what part of that sentence was in violation of the rules" is a sentiment anyone who interacts with Light current encounters, and it sometimes seems that no matter how many times you answer, he'll ask for the same information again the next time.

I worked with Light current last year to try and get him back onto the path so he wouldn't fall off the cliff. There was a one week block involved. but I kept up the assumption of good faith, I actively worked with him via e-mail to try and keep his spirit up, I did everything I could to make it clear that it was not punitive, and explained the community reasoning behind it. I treated him with respect and kindness, but I stuck to the plan. At the end of the block, his page was unlocked, he was unblocked, and he did great for a while. I think the elements of success are clearly defined in the current plan that the blocking admin is following. At this point, a reduction in the block length will reinforce the feeling that he was 'wronged' and the blocking admin was 'chastised' and will result in a poisonous mood when he returns. But if community consensus remains behind the admin making the difficult decision (which I fully endorse, an editor with such a rich block log really can't assert that he or she 'doesn't get it' at this point), then it has a better chance of being successful when it concludes (defined as Light current returning as a productive editor who has a real understanding of the community's disapproval of his recent actions who can grow as an editor and improve the health of the project, not hurt it). I know Cardinal Richelieu said that, given a letter written by an honest man he could find something in it with which to hang him, and I'm sure I've said something above that will spark controversy, but I'm writing from the perspective of someone who has experience with the user and would like to try and help him get on track again. I've asserted to Light current before that many other users doing the same things he has might have been indef blocked and forgotten ages ago, but it's important that he understand that we really _do_ want him here as a productive, healthy editor because we value his contributions.

Readers digest version of the above: Let the current block duration stand. Don't shorten it, it will hurt Light current's chances of coming back healthy because it will reinforce his belief that he was unjustly blocked in the first place, and this is based on past interactions with him. I like him and don't want him kicked off the project, but he's on a train to perdition without thoughtful admintervention. I support the current blocking admin because I think his plan is the best for bringing Light current back from the precipice. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 15:57, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Chairboy, I just don't understand how it's possible to disrupt Wikipedia from a user talk page. What's to prevent everyone from just ignoring whatever he writes there ? "It takes two to tango", after all. StuRat 21:51, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Why should he be allowed to use his userpage to call TenOfAllTrades a nazi? (See this edit summary.) That's talk abuse and a severe personal attack rolled into one, and whether you want to call it "disruption" or "just plain outrageous," there's no way I would ask any editor to ignore it. -- SCZenz 22:26, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Here is how. When the idea of ignoring LC's talk-page lawyering in response to warnings was floated, LC himself suggested that "If you cant provide expalnations, you shouldnt be accusing me in the first place. Lack of explanation shows fuzzy thinking and of course cowardice" [20]. In other words, he refuses to accept the validity of requests for him to change his behaviour unless you fully explain your position. This appears reasonable, unless one is familiar with LC's unique brand of lawyering on his talkpage. Every explanation leads to another attempt to point out an imagined flaw (usually involving his interpretation of some policy). This has sucked God knows how many hours of my time, not to mention Friday, ToaT and SCZenz. When this happens ad infinitum, it becomes disruptive. Rockpocket

At some point, you just have to say "No, you are wrong. Bye." —Centrx→talk • 04:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. And that is exactly what has happened with the lengthy block. Rockpocket 05:26, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

You guys should be able to ignore it if he calls you a Nazi on his talk page. Since it's obvious you aren't actually a member of the German Nazi party, that makes it a rather mild insult. StuRat 08:27, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

One of my intentions, as I posted to SCZenz was to show LC that there's no admin plot to "get" him, but if there's prior form for that pattern of behaviour, your words are persuasive. Thank you for the detailed reply. It does seem as if there's a strong consensus for one month. I want a positive LC back on the Project. This really saddens me, but if there's no other way... --Dweller 18:48, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

(No admin, but have been interacting with LC for a couple of months). I think Dweller's proposal is worth considering (all four bullet points, including the comments in parentheses) regardless of whether the duration of LC's block stands or is reduced. ---Sluzzelin 20:04, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Chairboy's summary of the situation. I support a one month community ban, enforced by a block and talk page protection, aimed at giving Light current time to realise that the community (not just a group of admins) are serious about not tolerating this kind of behaviour. Carcharoth 23:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Real Social Dynamics

An AfD on Real Social Dynamics was recently held, the closing admin (Royalguard11 (talk · contribs)) closing it as delete. He then apparently received a message from someone offering a new citation, and he decided that this meant that he should change his decision, go back and edit the closed AfD, and undelete the article (presumably he thought that, if those participating in the AfD had seen the new evidence, they'd have changed their minds).

It seemed to me that that was not only out of process, but also not excusable on grounds of avoiding unnecessary bureacracy, etc. I therefore deleted the article (as illicitly recreated after an AfD), and prevailed upon Royalguard11 to go to WP:DRV. He did, but within twenty-four hours, and before there had been a chance for real discussion, Coredesat (talk · contribs) closed the discussion and undeleted the article again. No explanation was offered.

I've left a message at his Talk page asking what's going on, but what do other admins think? Is this acceptable, and if so, what's the justification for it? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:44, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

You have been a bad boy Mel. Edit-warring again. :(. Royalguard closed the discussion and upon other user providing reliable sources and evidence to establish the notability of the subject, he undid his prior closure and kept the article. If it should have been kept even on DRV, why did you bring it here? Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. — Nearly Headless Nick 12:12, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

True. But every single article on the so-called "seduction community" is, without question, vanispamcruftisement :o) Guy (Help!) 13:16, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I have taken some stabs at solving this. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:18, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Then we should do what Newyorkbrad does. Take the article to AfD again, after a considerable time-period. :) — Nearly Headless Nick 13:22, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry that User:Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington didn't understand my point or question, and slightly saddened that he thinks that one revert of an edit to a closed AfD makes an edit war. Still, perhaps someone else might read what I wrote, and help me on this? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 14:14, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I just meant that you should wait for some more time and then try to go for an AfD again. Best, — Nearly Headless Nick 15:04, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

That would be great advice if I'd asked what I should do next — but I didn't. I asked whether it was acceptable for an admin to go against what he'd said was consensus at an AfD because he had personally changed his mind in the light of new evidence, and whether it was OK for another admin to close a DRV request early when this had happened. If the answers to these questions are yes, I'd like to know the reasoning (though whatever the reasoning, it seems to me to tarnish the process). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 16:09, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

AFD is not a vote. As a general comment, circumstances sometimes change, and AfD consensus should never override common sense. In this specific case, the correct thing to have done in the would have been to reopen the AFD, which is what I will do now. (The current page looks like a delete to me. I've defluffed and despammed it and I still don't think it's a keep.) I'm not sure DRV is appropriate, given that we aren't trying to overturn an AFD, but to get it enforced. In either case, why isn't there a note on the RSD talk page mentioning the AFD and the DRV? Regards, Ben Aveling 00:08, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for doing this. The DRV page was an issue, because I'd redeleted the page (as recreated after AfD) and persuaded User:Royalguard11 to request undeletion. I don't know why he didn't explain at the Talk page what he'd done; I didn't notice that, I'm afraid. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 00:13, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Not a problem. I wish we could always back up and have another chance at things! Yet another reason that wikipedia is better than real life... Regards, Ben Aveling 00:32, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

They have not forgotten

See peppersreturns.ytmnd.com - my view on this is that if they can take multiple non-trivial reliable sources to WP:DRV then we can discuss it, otherwise per WP:BLP it should stay deleted. Regardless, I think DRV is the first and only place it should be discussed for now, and if others agree I will help to police that. I also think we should not remove the links from WP:DT until after a deletion review. Guy (Help!) 12:52, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Wasn't he (Peppers) deleted per an Office action? I'd think mystical legal incantations trumps any chance of recreation, neh? Syrthiss 13:04, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

It was Jimb0wn3d with the comment that it should not be re-created before Feb 21 07 at the earliest. Guy (Help!) 13:13, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Someone should remind Jimbo of the approaching deadline. He has every right to just extend it. Chick Bowen 16:23, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Would somebody mind linking me to the decision on this? :: Colin Keigher (Talk) 19:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

See this link. Chick Bowen 23:40, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

(looking at the log entry) Hm, it doesn't look like he said "it can be created again after 2007-02-21". Jimbo said "[...] and if anyone still cares by then, we can discuss it" (emphasis mine). Which I believe means the page stays deleted unless a pretty good argument is made otherwise, on DRV or elsewhere (RA perhaps). --cesarb 07:37, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

DRV strikes me as the right venue as well, and the standard should be, as stated above, multiple non-trivial reliable sources. WP:BLP should be good. Expect a lot of trolling.--Jimbo Wales 14:45, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

This controversy predates my becoming active here, but I have now read the entire history of this matter, which I find exceedingly sad and disturbing. Sourcing, important as it is, is only one of the issues. There is also the matter of whether this article can ever be anything other than an attack page against a non-notable person, subject to immediate deletion in any event. It can't, and therefore, inviting an attempt at re-creation to be followed by further discussion represents an invitation to drama while serving no useful purpose. Newyorkbrad 16:15, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, the snopes article is a reliable source. Also, the website that has his sex offender info is obviously reliable, but that can only be used to confirm minor details on his page. Another source would be the news article about the state of ohio sex offender's office getting too much traffic to his sex offender page they were considering shutting the service down. The problem with that link is the page was taken down, but from my reading of WP:RS websites that go down can still be used as reliable sources as long as you state they are no longer working. So no, I don't see a sourcing issue with Mr. Peppers. The other issues are what we should focus on. VegaDark 19:35, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Legal threat by CyberAnth (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

This user made a legal threat on Talk:Ejaculation. Per Wikipedia:No legal threats, "Users who make legal threats will typically be blocked from editing indefinitely, while legal threats are outstanding." John254 15:24, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't see CyberAnth threatening to sue anyone. Could you explain to me where he does so? Kusma (討論) 15:30, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

CyberAnth's legal threat is phrased implicitly, but the meaning is obvious. Merely re-working the sentence structure of a legal threat to avoid the use of the personal pronoun "I" does not make it any less of legal threat. John254 15:42, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

So if I say that Wikipedia could get sued for having libelous comments about a specific individual, that is grounds for me to get in trouble? Considering that CyberAnth is an established editor like yourself from the looks of contribs, I don't think he is implying what you're stating. :: Colin Keigher (Talk) 15:50, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

If one is complaining about libelous comments in an article, one should merely state that the comments are libelous and should be removed, without any discussion of a lawsuit. Explicitly invoking the prospect of a lawsuit, both against the Wikimedia Foundation and the editor(s) who inserted the comments, would be considered a legal threat. John254 16:08, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think you're reading what he stated properly, because what he states is this, "BTW, did you all know that anything beyond a clinical drawing in this article places not only the person who added the content but Wikipedia at risk for a lawsuit?" He is not making the threats himself, but pointing out that someone could. :: Colin Keigher (Talk) 16:15, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Explaining that certain actions may expose Wikipedia to legal problems is not a legal threat, even if that claim is incorrect. A threat implies some sort of... intent. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:37, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Do you see a difference between "Look both ways when crossing the street or you might get hit by a car" and "Look both ways before crossing the street or I'll hit you with my car"? CyberAnth's comment was a caution, not a threat. Frise 05:15, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I was reading through the commentary in the talk page and on Jimbo's talk page, and I honestly feel that there needs to be some sort of intervention on this article. i am not certain if a penis shooting its load is appropriate for the article, but others may feel reason to differ. I believe that instead of trying to get users permanently blocked that you should be trying to take this issue through some sort of mediation process instead of edit warring. Honestly, it's a penis, get over it. :: Colin Keigher (Talk) 15:41, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that these two links could be relevant in this discussion: [21] [22] 193.219.28.146 15:53, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't see what relevance these two links have to do with this. :: Colin Keigher (Talk) 15:57, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

CyberAnth's statement isn't an attempt to make a legitimate complaint about a legal problem. He isn't saying "the picture is obscene, and should be removed", but is instead invoking the spectre of a lawsuit against the editor(s) adding the picture to the article in an attempt to intimidate them. This isn't acceptable behavior, even if, as an editorial matter, the picture is inappropriate. John254 15:58, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Gee, I am not sure what I would expect to see on the ejaculation page, but a picture of an ejaculation would not be something that surprises me, considering it is the subject of the article. But then, this is a very old argument. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 16:00, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I think I am a bit worried over getting sued from having a penis in Penis (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)! :: Colin Keigher (Talk) 16:04, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Umm, were you kidding? If not, then no we cannot be sued for that. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 16:23, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

John, I would certainly agree it is not a legal issue. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 16:01, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

• The real problem is that illustrations in sex articles divide into three classes: drawings, copyright violations and vanity. Some fit more than one category. Guy (Help!) 17:32, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

• That is probably the single most succinct description of the problem that I have ever seen. For some reason, discussions on topics like this one tend to bring out the WP:DICK in people. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:11, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with John254 that this is not acceptable behaviour, and I also believe WP:LEGAL doesn't cover it yet, so a discussion with the user is all that's called for. From what I've seen, this is a common type of intimidation and we need a policy or guideline for it. I'll start a discussion at Wikipedia talk:No legal threats now. Kla'quot 05:06, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Without investigating further, it is difficult to say whether CyberAnth is genuinely pointing out legal concerns, or raising them as a threat to persuade people to change their minds. On the issue of medical drawings and photos, genuinely free photos will always have a taint of "possible vanity" attached to them, unless they are set up in as educational and clinical a way as possible, rather than designed to show sexuality. I added the links at the bottom of the current article to a set of medical illustrations. Someone on the talk page then tweaked some free pics (well, I hope they were free) to show an erection, which seems to miss the point to me. Tweaking pictures like that is actually misleading, as the new picture fails to show all the physiological changes from non-erect to erect status. I am sure a professional anatomist/medical illustrator would pick several large holes in what the current image is showing. Carcharoth 13:56, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Giano (for the nth time)

Well, Giano has done it again. Is this acceptable behavior?

Do you know when I look at edits like this [23] I think you are such a nasty little troll it is amazing nobody has given you a Sicilian haircut on your cone shaped little head. LOL so pleased to have found someone like you who shares my outrageous sense of humour. Giano 20:54, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what a "Sicilian haircut" is, though it does sound like a threat of physical violence to me. Also, I don't think it's acceptable per WP:NPA to call other users "nasty little trolls". So, what can be done? We've been going round and round with ArbCom on Giano for months, but no remedy ever sticks, and Giano just keeps on being Giano week after week. What to do? --Cyde Weys 19:04, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Damned if I can tell you what to do. The last thing I want to do is go near the Giano mess; I duck and cover whenever I see another thread. About all I have gleaned from the edges of it is that Giano and Ideogram have been being assholes towards each other for at least the last few weeks, and probably longer. I don't know who started it. It's possible that Ideogram really is a nasty little troll; it may be that Giano is an abrasive dick. It's even possible that both of those things are true.

I wish they'd both stop it, though. If there's an ongoing ArbCom case(?), I would be just tickled pink if someone could request an injunction that puts all of the involved parties on a very short-leashed WP:CIV and WP:NPA probation for the duration of this case. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:15, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) For context, Giano's attention was caught by this, and the matter appears to have been addressed here. FYI, there is no pending ArbCom case at the moment, nor do I think there should be, although there has been some ongoing discussion on the "ArbCom views of IRC" talkpage which is where this stems from. Newyorkbrad 19:17, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

My suggestion is for Cyde to just ignore Giano, and for other users, such as Ideogram, to stop baiting Giano and just maybe this will descalate in time. Catchpole 20:57, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Why should it? Nobody ever seems to ask Giano to stop, at least nobody he considers worth listening to, so why should he not simply continue? What's the advantage to him of simply "giving in" when there's no penalty? —Phil | Talk 21:49, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

• Warned both. They are behaving like children and need to stop. Guy (Help!) 23:04, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I agree with Catchpole, and would add a suggestion that people also refrain from using template warnings on the pages of established users, as Ideogram did yesterday. It's rude and provocative. We know that Giano is an established user. Without wanting to be sarcastic, I think we can assume that he is aware that there are some administrators who will block for real or imagined "personal attacks". Also, I fail to see how the "Sicilian haircut" reference (and I don't know what it means either) could be taken as a threat of physical violence. Giano is not one of my buddies; nor are the people that he's in dispute with. But I've observed a lot simply through having certain pages on my watchlist. His huge crime at the moment seems to be that he's continuing to squabble with people who are continuing to squabble with him. Everytime someone provokes him, he responds. I've yet to see one person who genuinely wants to be left alone by Giano, but who is being constantly harassed by him. I have seen some rather bitter remarks made against the ArbCom, but (a) Giano has some reason for having resentment, and (b) when I vote people into the Arbitration Committee, I expect them to be among the best Wikipedians, which means that they should be able to cope with an occasional snide remark, even if they feel it's unjustified. And the ArbCom members do seem to be able to avoid rising to the bait. Show me one single person who is genuinely trying to edit Wikipedia articles peacefully, and who is being prevented from doing so by Giano, and I promise I'll block Giano myself. Musical Linguist 23:23, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Very good points, ML, though your arithmetic is off: Giano doesn't respond every time someone provokes him, he responds about every fifth time. It would certainly be better if he didn't respond at all. For Ideogram versus Giano, it might be interesting to glance at say the last 100 edits of both users [24] [25] Note especially the last edit by Ideogram (at this moment) where he follows Giano to a page he (Giano) has just created and obviously hasn't polished yet, and (Ideogram) copyedits it. Article history here. To help Wikipedia, to please Giano? You be the judge. Giano is a user he (Ideogram) has stated needs to learn to edit Ideogram's way or leave, along with the other problem users branded as Giano's friends--me, Geogre, Ghirlandajo, Irpen.[26] (Ghirlandajo actually already left a month ago.) And of these two, it's Giano people want to ban? I don't feel I understand this place any more. :-( Bishonen | talk 02:00, 4 February 2007 (UTC).

Sicilian haircut - I think it refers to the slashing of the face with a blade - it could be the throat - I vaguely remember an italian with a blade offering to do it to me when we had a gentleman's disagreement about something. --Fredrick day 23:32, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

To get you hair cut is slang for shooting the top of someone's head off, I assume this is a variation on this. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 23:33, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Gee, my take on it was that a Sicilian haircut was one where the aim of the "haircutter" was about 6 inches too low, getting your throat instead of your hair "by accident". Curiously, searching on Google or Yahoo provides no information. Wiktionary doesn't have an entry but perhaps they don't do slang over there. --Richard 23:42, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Gee, yes, if that isn't curious, I don't know what is. But why would the non-existence of the term (which I invented myself, and even I don't know what it means) stop a storm of speculation about cut throats and slashings across the face? Hey, I've got one, just as likely: I think Giano was getting his heritage haircut confused with a Brazilian waxing. Bishonen | talk 01:24, 4 February 2007 (UTC).

Possibly, "Sicilian haircut" isn't inherently menacing, but, when the immediate context of that enigmatic remark is: "I think you are such a nasty little troll" and that he should get said 'haircut' on "your cone shaped little head", we can perhaps understand why the above users have so foolishly and mistakenly assumed incivility, personal attacks and bad faith. The clear fact is, any other user would be blocked (or at least universally criticised) for this, regardless of the context or the excuses. And as long as experienced users make light of it, it will continue, and those who feel angry about that inconsistency will vent their utter contempt. I submit it is time to say 'enough', and excuse it no longer.--Doc^g 02:32, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

To echo Doc above, the fact that we allow users to get away with such comments, the fact that users do not care whether or not it is incivil, and the fact that the community is completely oblivious to such a comment being a personal attack, is shocking. We should not, and do not, tolerate such attitudes towards others; we are supposed to be a friendly and welcoming place, and that trend has slipped away. As long as we allow this to continue, we will only be further denigrated into a cesspool of hate. Let me remind you all that this is an encyclopedia. We are supposed to be helping each other to expand this place, not fightint with each other about minor issues occuring on the side. —Pilotguy push to talk 03:07, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

What is it with all the hyperbole lately? 'Cesspool of hate'? Come on. The remark Cyde linked to is your standard 'I'm going to kill you' non-threat, and generally a non-issue. More generally, can we not be digging around through people's contribs looking for things to be offended by? Opabinia regalis 03:36, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh, for gods sake let this drop. Giano has gone back to editing in his areas, and the broader dispute is, for the most part, seemingly over. There is no pressing need for Cyde (or, for that matter, anyone involved in the recent disputes) to have anything to do with him on-wiki unless they have some as yet undiscovered interest in architecture. There is absolutely no reason for this to continue on any longer - simply leave each other the hell alone. Rebecca 03:49, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I intentionally did not draw anyone's attention to this affair besides Paul August. Cyde, I appreciate your attempt to help, but I really do think we can drop this and the affair will be over. --Ideogram 06:08, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

You didn't draw anyone else's attention? Tsk tsk. [27] And why mount a show on Paul August's page in the first place? Bishonen | talk 09:58, 4 February 2007 (UTC).

Sorry, I meant I intentionally didn't post to AN/I regarding Giano. When Geogre decided to talk to me I thought Aaron might be able to help in such a conversation. --Ideogram 10:02, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• Ideogram, you are on thin ice. Giano is a great contributor but has a tendency to rise to the bait when trolled. As far as I can tell, you started this - and it looks as if it was pretty deliberate. Giano can be rude and obnoxious, but I don't see him setting out to be rude and obnoxious unless provoked. Solution: do not provoke him. Like you say, drop it - and make sure it says dropped. Guy (Help!) 09:44, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

? I thought it was dropped. Trying to put the blame on me is a great way to undrop it. --Ideogram 09:52, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

?Nor is trying to have the Last Word.--Doc^g 09:57, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

You can have the last word if you like, Doc. --Ideogram 10:04, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Maybe I can have the last word instead? I used to comment on all this sort of stuff, but a few weeks ago something snapped mentally, and I just mostly ignore it now. I engaged Giano as an editor, talked to him about a few articles, and he kindly came up with some new articles. Absolutely no problem working with him. I found all this much more satisfying than the endless repeating cycles of sniping and gnashing of teeth and wailing. My feeling is that this has all become a bit of a sideshow - Wikipedia is quietly being written in the background while people bicker over stuff like this. So I'm going to go back to the articles, article discussions, content policies, content policy discussions, and ignore (as far as possible) the user disputes. Unless they are both persistent (the case here) and serious (not the case here), ignoring them is best. Carcharoth 13:23, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Editor A calls editor B an "asshole". Editor B snaps back. Then Cyde comes here indigantly asking what can be done about editor B. He doesn't mention editor A. And so its been going on for months... I agree with Rebecca above, particularly the part about Cyde not involving himself with this dispute. Giano has stated over and over again that he want's to let all this drop and get back to editing, and that he'll only defend himself when attacked. He's been as good as his word. --Duk 17:25, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

User:Booze broads and bullets

I want to bring to attention the user User:Booze broads and bullets. The user has a track record of uploading copyrighted material (images, text copied verbatim from websites, etc.) to WP. I'm not sure how long ago the user has been doing this but the earliest on his/her talk page is July 2006. The user has been warned several times on his/her talk page and has been generally (completely) unresponsive. The user has also uploaded copyrighted images without sources, fair use rationales and often uses inappropriate tags (logo for a photo of a person). In addition, the user also consistently removed AfD tags from articles he/she edits even though the AfD articles have not finished yet. His two latest, most blatant ones are in Magic Kamison and Super Twins. In the latter case, the user removed the AfD tag twice, the second time after his previous vandalism was reverted. User has also vandalized several articles (including Sana Maulit Muli) by changing numbers in the article repeatedly even after his vandalisms were reverted. Honestly, I don't know what exactly to do with the user but I can honestly claim that we do not need uncooperative, unprocedural editors such as these on wikipedia. Shrumster 20:35, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

After some more poking around, the user vandalized the Little Big Superstar, Walang Kapalit, Rounin (TV series), and Pinoy Big Brother (season 2) articles by pasting the AfD that he had cut from one of the previous articles mentioned. The user clearly has an agenda, as the article he vandalizes in a negative way are about TV shows by the ABS-CBN network while the articles he vandalizes positively are about TV shows by the competing GMA network. Possible WP:COI? Shrumster 20:55, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Nah, everyone has his/her biases, WP:COI can't be applied here, unless s/he's a GMA employee or something. Also, some "vandalism" has a point; (although I haven't investigated that much) there no sources for nationwide ratings, and the Mega Manila ratings are the ones that are always published in the tabloids. --Howard the Duck 05:14, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

"Vandalism", by definition, doesn't really have a point though. While everyone has biases, they would do well to keep that bias off Wikipedia. And whether what info is appropriate isn't really the issue here. It's the seemingly arbitrary changing of supposed facts without sources that bothers me. Shrumster 06:14, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

The point is does s/he include a source on his/her contribs? Are the text in question sourced? If the answer on both questions is no, remove the ratings, if yes for the first question, retain the Mega Manila ratings, if the yes for the second question, retain the Philippines ratings, if both yes, retain the Philippines ratings. --Howard the Duck 06:27, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Since both appear to be unsourced, I have commented out the entire section until a reliable source can be found for either. That should stop this from turning into an edit war for a while. Shrumster 15:40, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

In line with the official Incident Report, User:Booze broads and bullets has removed the AfD tag again from the Super Twins article, twice, after Howard the Duck restored the AfD tag that Booze deleted before. Edit history. I placed a level 3 (assume bad faith) warning on his talk page. User seems to be uncooperative and ignores any attempt to communicate with him by any editor. Shrumster 15:40, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Block Bahrain!

No one responded when I attached this report to an earlier Iraqi dinar vandal section, so I'm putting it in a new section.

UPDATE: I asked to have a checkuser done, and jpgordon found dozens of socks Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/Iraqi_dinar_vandal. They all come from one IP block owned by Batelco, the government-owned Bahraini ISP. I have emailed Batelco and asked them to stop their abusive user and haven't even received a reply. So -- can we block Batelco? Can we block the creation of new accounts and stop anonIP editing from those blocks? Can someone with more clout than I have contact Batelco and tell them that access to WP will be blocked unless they police their users? We've blocked whole schools for continuing abuse. Zora 09:15, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh dear...I've issued some controversial blocks but I wouldn't go near this one with a ten dinar pole. Durova^Charge! 00:08, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

One of the devs preferably should contact Batelco to get them to start sending XFF headers. Outside of that, no, we should never, ever intentionally block entire countries. This happened accidentally about a month and a half ago when the entire country of Qatar was blocked for a couple of hours; disregarding the PR backlash (which was not insignificant), it simply shouldn't happen because it doesn't help the encyclopedia. —bbatsell ¿? ✍ 01:06, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Explain the XFF header bit. I want a solution to this -- because it's been a year and I'm darn tired of being harassed. Furthermore, I think there's a strong chance that other vandals will pick up on the angry Bahraini's tactics. Zora 04:22, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

m:XFF project. —Cryptic 05:11, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, that looks promising. Has this been added to someone's TO-DO list? How long might it take to implement? If it isn't on someone's list, do I post on the project page for that wiki to ask someone to do it? Zora 05:29, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki has supported it for ages, it's up to the ISP to implement it on their end, then let us know so that the devs can verify that they are doing so correctly and add them to the trusted senders list. —bbatsell ¿? ✍ 20:31, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Gilbert Wesley Purdy spam + outing editors

I came across this spam while reading the Coal mining article a week ago:

• http://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com,

It turns out there were links to this ad-heavy literary site all over Wikipedia. Mostly to authors but others too like Hawksbill turtle. My personal favorite was Longwall mining, a coal mining method invented decades after the time period covered by the ad-heavy historical piece he linked to. You can check out my 25 January diffs to see what I'm talking about.

He's linking to copies of things like famous poems on his web site, but I think these are probably out there on line with a lot fewer ads -- take a look at this edit[28]

He used a bunch of different IPs (many of them shared) to add these links -- I wish I'd recoded them last week.

I deleted 60 links, but I notice he's been adding some back using 63.3.17.129 and 63.3.17.1.

This editor turns out to have some history with Wikipedia over spam-links, outing editors and making legal threats -- see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive92#Legal threat against editor.

That dispute led him to create:

• http://vgs-wiki-watchdog.blogspot.com

I only skimmed this briefly; it's a long page and the meet appears further down the page. It appears he used it to attack Wikipedia and Dalbury in particular. Note that he also posted stuff from wikitruth about another editor's real life identity.

Related websites -- some of were also linked to Wikipedia, some weren't:

• http://gilbert-wesley-purdy.blogspot.com
• http://vgs-index-and-specialty.blogspot.com
• http://vgs-pbr-reviews.blogspot.com
• http://vgscomputerarchive.myblogsite.com
• http://virtual-grub-street.blogspot.com
• http://www.catalyzerjournal.com

As for the name "Virtual Grub Street" -- there was a prominent article written in the 90s entitled "Virtual Grub Street" but I don't think it had anything to do with Purdy:

• Paul Roberts, "Virtual Grub Street: Sorrows of a Multimedia Hack," Harper's Magazine (June 1996), 71-77 (http://www.salon.com/media/media2960521.html)

--72.149.166.221 23:19, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

See also this 2006 discussion

• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2006 Archive Mar & Apr#Repeat spammer on dynamic IPs

Partial list of accounts and articles edited (I only got about halfway through my list of articles despammed last week):

• 216.114.80.202 (talk • contribs • count)
  • W. S. Merwin
  • James Garfield
  • Ulysses S. Grant
  • St. Johns River
  • Seminole
  • History of Florida
  • Seminole
  • Apalachicola River
  • Fort Gadsden
  • Sidney Lanier
  • History of slavery in the United States
• 216.114.80.209 (talk • contribs • count)
  • Economy of the United States
  • John Burroughs
• 209.214.14.184 (talk • contribs • count)
  • Wild Turkey
  • Seminole
  • Canaan
• 209.214.14.15 (talk • contribs • count)
  • Wild Turkey
  • Seminole
  • Claudia Emerson
• 209.214.14.138 (talk • contribs • count) -- blocked twice -- see talk page exchanges
  • Claudia Emerson
  • Wild Turkey
  • Seminole
• 209.215.55.111 (talk • contribs • count)
  • Naomi Shihab Nye
  • Hawksbill turtle
• 216.114.82.71 (talk • contribs • count)
  • University of Mary Washington
  • Claudia Emerson
• 209.214.14.108 (talk • contribs • count)
  • Michael Parenti
  • Robert Jensen
  • Ted Kooser
  • Marge Piercy
  • Ruth Stone
  • Wendell Berry
  • Alberto Ríos
  • John Balaban
  • Roland Barthes
• 216.114.80.210 (talk • contribs • count)
  • Northern Flicker
  • Bobolink
• 216.114.81.226 (talk • contribs • count)
  • Rutherford B. Hayes
  • Henry Adams
  • Ulysses S. Grant
• 216.114.81.228 (talk • contribs • count)
  • Jim Harrison
• 216.114.80.203 (talk • contribs • count)
  • Federico García Lorca
  • Michelangelo
  • Federico García Lorca
  • Potawatomi
• 209.215.55.47 (talk • contribs • count)
  • John James Audubon
  • William Bartram
  • John Burroughs
  • Guy Philippe
• 216.76.208.49 (talk • contribs • count)
• Guy Philippe
  • 209.215.55.85 (talk • contribs • count)
  • Reconstruction
• 209.214.14.130 (talk • contribs • count)
  • History of slavery in the United States
  • Kemble family
  • American literature
  • Reconstruction
• 216.114.80.207 (talk • contribs • count)
  • Fanny Kemble
• 209.214.14.89 (talk • contribs • count)
  • St. Johns River
  • History of slavery in the United States

--72.149.166.221 00:41, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice, Mr/Ms/Mrs. IP, that is a good find. It's not even that COI is the issue, links to blogs are not allowed by external link policy guideline. I'll browse around the contributions. Teke ^(talk) 06:43, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh my! I thought he had gone away. It is kind of silly of him to 'out' me, as I have been very open about my real name (which is fairly uncommon, just 3 or 4 of us with any Google hits). I'll continue to remove spam from the articles on my watchlist, but I will also continue to avoid any other contact with him. -- Donald Albury 15:00, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Flashing message?

The text "Jimbo rapes babies" is flashing at the top of the page. I can't identify where it's coming from and I don't see anything suspicious in the history. John Reaves (talk) 00:14, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, it appears to be gone now...weird. John Reaves (talk) 00:16, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

It was our old friend the template vandal: most recently Ryan_the_Tank_Engine (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Antandrus (talk) 00:17, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Ah, how creative. John Reaves (talk) 00:22, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

The worst part, the vandal didn't provide references. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 03:06, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Sent to checkuser. MER-C 10:00, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

And {{Emot}} sent to TfD, since we have deleted more than one such in the past. Guy (Help!) 13:50, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Personal info of a young editor, need oversigh#t?

There is a (relatively veteran) user Patricknoddy who, on their user page, identified himself as being 9 years old and provided his full real name and city of residence. I cautioned the user on their talk page and removed/made unspecific some of their information. Another user wrote me to ask about deleting previous revisions. Since this personal info was in many many previous revisions, I am asking for advice here rather than going straight to ask for oversight. Can someone familiar with the debates over Wikipedia:Youth protection and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Protecting children's privacy please provide some guidance? —Dgies^t c 01:41, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I've had a couple of these problems before and the easiest thing to do is just have an admin delete any diffs with the personal details visible. That will hide the diffs from all editors (but not admins). That's normally enough in these cases. -- Heligoland 01:47, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

So... where would I make such a request? —Dgies^t c 02:44, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Done. Ta/wangi 03:08, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

In the future, you can also try WP:RFO. Khoikhoi 03:10, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Got there before me :) and also thanks alot for reporting this Dgies.--Jersey Devil 03:11, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

And for everyone's info... I just removed all versions bar the current one, since this is not a mainspace article and we don't need the logs... /wangi 03:13, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't this be deleted from here as well? John Reaves (talk) 05:08, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes it should. The age is still visible here. It says at the top of the page: "To request oversight, please see WP:RFO". Still, requests still pop up here occasionally. If you look at WP:RFO, it says "Do not post oversight requests on this page, instead, use the "Request removal by email" link below." - something similar should be added above, trying to get people to not post sensitive information on this page either. Carcharoth 12:55, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

acceptable?

[29] in which I was called "donkey's son" and "moron" by user making 7 reverts on a page who is throwing around shabby accusations of sockpuppetry (see above discussions).Bakaman 04:40, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I think all but a few admins won't be able to act on this without a full translation - all I can get out of it is that he claims to be Bangladeshi, while BhaiSaab is a Pakistani, and something about you editing some subject. And I'm probably wrong. Picaroon 04:57, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

user:MinaretDk has been blocked by me for disruptive editing and personal attacks. Rama's arrow 15:23, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

It reads

“ Ari Gadha'r baccha, ami BhaiSaab na. BhaiSaab shaheb ekjpon Pakistani, Ami Bangali. Thor user page bole thui naki Bangla'r project'e, Bangla bujos? Na beakkol'er mothon edit koros je subjecte thui kicchu janos na? Bangali'r and Pakistani's parthokko bujish na? ”

[30]

Hey you son of a donkey. I am not BhaiSaab. BhaiSaab is a Pakistani. I am Bengali. (Derogatory form of your) userpage says your a member of the Bengal project. Do you even speak Bengali? Or are you just a dumbass who edits things you know nothing about? Don't you know the difference between Bangladeshi and PAkistani?

There. Ask Tarif Ezaz (talk · contribs), Dwaipayanc (talk · contribs), Usingha (talk · contribs) or Antorjal (talk · contribs) to verify the translation.Bakaman 21:56, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

User:Rob110178 Page Vandalism

My user page has been vandalized several times today. I am fairly certain that the vandalism is being conducted by puppets of BWCNY since a few days ago I launched an RfC on him. He claimed to be taking a break but shortly after the RfC and subsequent announcement of a break, my User Page has become semi-regularly vandalized. BWCNY has also made some comments that seem to allude to the fact that even though the user is on break, they knew about the vandalism on my user page. The following users have received UWs from myself, but I wanted to know how to check to see if it is not one in the same:

User:Rob110078a

User:Release4mars54

User:Indigo547

Any assistance provided would be appreciated! Rob110178 05:03, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

If I understand your question correctly, you would like to see if the listed users are the same user. Request for checkuser may be a place to start. Regards, Navou ^{banter or review me} 05:42, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• Request listed at checkuser. Navou ^banter / _{review me} 16:58, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
  • The RFCU has confirmed two names. Where do we proceed from here? It appears that these actions show that the point of an RfC is now moot due to BWCNY's actions. Rob110178 21:50, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Block review/answer unblock request please

Can someone look at the block of Sable232 (talk · contribs) for 3RR on the page Mercury (automobile). He and the other involved user MercuryLover05 (talk · contribs) have been blocked by seperate admins for 3RR, after I warned both of them. If you concur with my block and with my opinion that it was a content dispute, you might like to address the handing out of vandalism notices during said dispute as well. All opinion appreciated, I am going to notify the user of this thread. Viridae^Talk 06:17, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• At first glance, it appears to be a content dispute. I would also support cautioning Sable232 (talk · contribs) against calling a content dispute vandalism. Also I would support telling them both about mediation, either formal or informal. Good call. Regards, Navou ^banter / _{review me} 06:25, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I'm not so sure - Sable232 is a well-established good-faith user who specialises in this kind of article, and there's what looks like a pretty clear case earlier in the article history where he successfully headed off some sneaky vandalism. He may have some genuine basis thinking he's dealing with another vandal, but it's hard for us to just take his word for it when he's done nothing to substantiate it - just edit warred - and any vandalism is not obvious. On that basis, I can't see anyone undoing this block. It would have helped a lot if there had been discussion on the talk page. Metamagician3000 11:11, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Would you be willing to answer the block request? Viridae^Talk 11:19, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay ... as a bit of leniency, I'll reduce the blocks slightly (to run for 3 hours from now ... given that they've already been blocked for some hours). I left some comments on Sable's talk page and will also comment on the other one. No criticism of you; as I said, it's just a bit of leniency. We'll see what happens. I'll check their behaviour tomorrow. Metamagician3000 13:40, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Sable has apologised. I think that area is going to be all good. Viridae^Talk 20:27, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Being harassed by anons

Okay, first up I am actually an administrator on Wikipedia. Right, I have recently started to be harassed by a series of IP addresses, all with the same prefixes, the 201.71.156. range with some nasty remarks and vandalism. These edits each time consist of replacing my talk and user pages with items along this line [31]. This has happened 4 or 5 times now, all from the same root IP address. Now as far as I can tell the IP addresses are originating in Brazil, but maybe someone has more experience of tracking these things down. Normal vandalism I can deal with, but this seems to be a concentrated campaign by someone with a grudge for some reason who obviously isn't happy with my Northern Irish related neutrality. Is there anything that can be done about this? If the IP range is all owned by one person or area can the range be blocked? Ben W Bell talk 08:16, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, seeing they are anonymous IPs, wouldn't semi-protection solve that problem?-from K37 08:21, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

At the risk of breaking WP:BEANS I'll add: It's not good to semi-protect your talk page, which is a likely future target. —Dgies^t c 08:25, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I could semi my User Page, but I can't do any protection on my talk page so that wouldn't solve that problem. Ben W Bell talk 08:29, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Since the frequency is only once every couple days and it looks like all the same ISP, my guess would be it's just someone getting different DHCP leases and not a proxy or botnet problem. —Dgies^t c 08:24, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Maybe it's time to take this to WP:ABUSE? :: Colin Keigher (Talk) 08:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

This is a wireless provider in Brazil. The only edits from this range (201.71.156.0/24) in the past three months (since November) have been from the very same person, alternatively vandalism and POV pushing. I have blocked the IP range for three months. —Centrx→talk • 09:10, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay, thank you very much for that. I was unsure how to go about checking the ranges out myself. I'll let you know if there are any more that appear. Ben W Bell talk 09:39, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism on Deborah Frisch?

I was patrolling (for the first time) on anonymous edits and found that Deborah Frisch appears to be vandalized. But as I don't know the subject matter, I can't really tell:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deborah_Frisch&curid=6915928&diff=105534060&oldid=103053547

Could somebody investigate?

Clemwang 09:00, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's a case of vandalism, but it's certainly not NPOV. I've excised most of the addition, and requested a citation for what remains. Shimeru 10:36, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Good work. I removed a bit more per our policy on biographies of living people. With something like that the citation needs to be added when the material is added. If not, the material needs to be removed until a citation is provided. Tom Harrison ^Talk 14:54, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Hm, true. I'd intended to leave it for a day or so because there had apparently been a source, though it was a dead link when I checked it. I suppose the removal is more prudent. Thanks. Shimeru 20:01, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Admin attention required

Can another admin review this unblock request please? Thanks. Viridae^Talk 10:06, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

See discussion above. Metamagician3000 14:10, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Nkras

I know Nkras (talk · contribs) has been here before, but the situation at Marriage, Traditional marriage movement and associated articles is getting ridiculous. Nkras appears to be a religious Jew who is deeply upset by the presence of same-sex marriage in the articles and has been edit warring for some time to minimise, if not to eradicate its mention. He's started creating articles such as Marriage (Judeo-Christian) and Marriage (post modern) specifically to separate SSM from "normal" marriage. He has repeatedly referred to "GBLTIXYZ POV pushing" and has announced his determination to "edit the article to protect it's credibility, and will remove any edits that are attempts to push a POV and violate the NPOV of the subject matter."User_talk:WJBscribe#Marriage_.28Judeo-Christian.29 He's also making personal attacks, not only on editors because of their sexuality, but also with comments like "colecan is an exceptionally vicious editor, selectively edits a quote to defame, and is a real passive-aggressive thug."User_talk:Rbj#Marriage_edit_war. It's nasty, unpleasant and I would appreciate an admin warning/blocking him. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 11:25, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• Comment Thank you for your compliment describing me as a religious Jew. I take that as high praise. Concerning this current action, the block is retaliatory. I am being considered disruptive because I oppose a number of editors' POV pushing, and they are gaming the system in order to exercise prior restraint. It is a misrepresentation of fact that I dare to eradicate mention of the Ssm sacrament from Article:Marriage. My edit comments prove otherwise - I am in opposition to giving Ssm undue weight. Leaving that, coleacan should be read WP:NPA, WP:CIVIL and the Riot Act, for posting ""Eating pork is kosher.... You have been so advised. Be guided accordingly." — Nkras, on kashrut and the Talmud" on coelacan. Will you have him remove his absolute misrepresentation and resulting slur, then will an admin take appropriate action against coelacan for WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL? This has not been noticed by established editors. No wonder. It's not even on your radar screen. You quote WP:CIVIL, WP:NPOV and WP:NPA for your own ends and to rid your walled garden of editors with who question your authority and hegemony. It's probably time to move on anyway. I can see that opposition to the cultural nihilists at wikipedia is met with unrestrained fury. coelacan, jeffpw and any other random editor or can game the system against anyone who dares to breach their authority or politics. Oh well. Welcome to my auto-da-fe. Nkras

Above comment made by IP 216.207.146.74. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 20:04, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I was just going to make a post about him myself. I am an admin, but I've been involved in the situation before, so I want another impartial admin to take a look. Nkras was indefinitely blocked earlier and unblocked by Theresa Knott who gave him a second chance but has declined to get involved this time. The indefinite block was for repeatedly reposting a deleted POV fork Traditional marriage at various titles, and making comments to the effect that he will never accept a "consensus" that defines marriage differently than the biblical definition he prefers. Although some of his opponents stuck up for him after the indefinite block, saying it was too harsh, Nkras has never retracted his effective threat to continue POV pushing, and has in fact continued the behavior, "teaming up" with User:rbj to continue trying to cleanse the lead of Marriage of mentions of marriage other than man-woman marriage, and has effectively recreated Traditional marriage at Marriage (Judeo-Christian). Not to mention his consistent incivility and frequent personal attacks. In my opinion, we should return his indefinite block, as nothing that led to the block has really changed. Anyone wanting to investigate should note that he blanks his talk page, and much of the history is buried in the blanked archive of his talk page. Mangojuice^talk 13:45, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Note previous discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive172#Disputed indef block of User:Nkras. Mangojuice^talk 13:54, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• Blocked. We really do not need people whose sole purpose here is to mount a crusade to fix things which they think are "broken" in the outside world. He had a second chance - he blew it. Theresa said: "What he does now will prove me right or wrong". Sorry Theresa, he proved you wrong. Pity. Guy (Help!) 13:59, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I was one of his opponents who challenged the last block he received, in the hopes he might come around and become a positive contributer to Wikipedia. I see now I was not only overly optimistic, but wrong. I support this block, and thank the administrators for this action. Jeffpw 14:18, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

After a glance at the history of this editor, that indef block appears to be a good call. Sandstein 15:36, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh well I've been wrong before and no doubt will be again. I too support the block. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 16:43, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I followed this when User:Rbj was reported for a 3rr violation (whom I subsequently blocked for 48 hours). Rbj had apparently told this user to attempt to game the system by "team[ing] up our quota of reverts" [32] and the ensuing edit wars were a product of that. All in all, I am in accordance with JzG's decision to block.--Jersey Devil 19:03, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I endorse the block, given that he failed to meet the conditions for his previous unblocking. --Coredesat 19:49, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Endorse, as original blocker of Nkras the first time around. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 19:52, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely, 100% endorse the block as someone who attempted to engage in discourse with him/her the first time around. Clear POV pusher who would edit war and POV fork his/her way to getting his definitions of marriage in, believing them to be immutable truth, and, as above, refusing to accept any contrary consensus. —bbatsell ¿? ✍ 20:01, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

"The only people I fear are those who never have doubts." --John Kenneth Fisher 23:42, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Tommypowell (talk · contribs)

I'm involved with a conflict between this user so I'm bringing this here.

Tommypowell (talk · contribs) has been strongly enforcing listing the dates of birth for figures whose notability has been questioned (as evident by recent AFDs that did not reach a consensus), in particular Kara Borden. In this case, while it is nearly impossible to locate any source to verify her birthday, in addition to the fact that Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons specifically says to ere on the side of caution when the notability of someone is in doubt, Tommy Powell continues putting the date of birth of the subject of the article as found by an unverifiable source only in google results that cannot be accessed without a subscription and leaving the results in the edit history ignoring the guidelines to ere on the side of caution. This wouldn't be a problem if there were multiple other sources to verify that source, but the fact that no other source can be located that is verifiable and easily accessible would mean, in my opinion, that the date of birth for the subject of the article is best left out. Multiple users have been reverting Tommypowell's inclusion of this source despite being asked to find a better source, so I'd like to see if someone thinks something should be done. There is also a similar story in Shasta Groene where the date of birth is listed only in a passing mention of the births section of a newspaper, which is borderline acceptable at best as it shows the difficulty of obtaining any sort of a date of birth put forward to the media. Once again the AFD debate in that article was no consensus. Cowman109^Talk 16:03, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• Tommypowell (talk · contribs) has been notified of this discussion. Navou ^banter / _{review me} 16:30, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• I would like to see a clear policy statement on dates of birth. My reading of the BLP is that they are included where "widely available" to the public. I would hazard to say that if I can find a suject's birthdate within 90 seconds using google it is "widely available". If the subject isn't notable they shouldn't be in Wikipedia in the first place. I will note that the dates of birth for both Kara Borden and Shasta Groene have been in their articles since 2005, without complaint. They were not put there by me in 2005 but by other users. The couple of pro-censorship editors first tried to take town both articles on grounds of "notability", only to be shot down by the majority-noteability is not temporary. The concern about dates of birth on Wikipedia is identity theft. Where the date of birth of a subject is readily available to anyone in the world with internet access that concern is moot. We had a vote on this in the Shawn Hornbeck discussion and these handfull of censors were voted down by the consensus. I will abide by whatever decision Wikipedia makes though it seems absurd to me to censor birthdates readily available on google. Tommypowell 20:11, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• This appears to be a content dispute. Additional listing if WP:BLP is applicable may be appropriate at the BLP notice board. Additionally I would recommend some sort of informal or formal mediation regarding this. Failing mediation, WP:BLP intervention, and other measures at dispute resolution; an Arbitration case may be necessary as this appears to continue as an ongoing issue. Navou ^banter / _{review me} 20:37, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• I've posted this to the BLP notice board, and don't particularly like being referred to as "pro-censorship". Any efforts to remove the birthday were done in an attempt to follow my interpretation of WP:BLP, and there certainly wasn't any shooting down at the AFDs, as they were closed with no consensus. AniMate 01:59, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Booze broads and bullets

Booze broads and bullets has removed AfD notices again and again, despite severla warnings and even though the AfDs on the articles for which he removed the notices are destined to be Keeps (because of new, verifiable (though lacking sources) information). --- Tito Pao 16:50, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

user:Booze broads and bullets was fully warned, and continued to remove the AfDs, so I blocked him for 24 hours. If the user continues, the next block may be longer. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 16:54, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Article created for client

We have a new user at deletion review saying that they created an article for their client [33] This makes alarm bells ring in my head, but I can't find the relevant discussion which led to MyWikiBiz being blocked. If nobody who knows more adresses this item soon, I'm going to overturn the prod (per policy) and list at AFD because I'm not certain that WP:CSD#G5 applies. I hope someone that knows more can sort this out first, given the volume with which those bells are ringing. GRBerry 16:59, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

See [34] for the link to MyWikiBiz's community ban. This account has vandalized WP:V, see [35]. Vandalizing, trolling sock, probably. Anyone want to drop the banhammer? I really don't think we need users like this. Moreschi ^Deletion! 17:13, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

The article is copied from [36], and is a biography of a living person with no reliable sources, so it should not be undeleted. —Centrx→talk • 17:16, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

What Centrx said, and even from that notability look dubious at best. Moreschi ^Deletion! 17:21, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I've dealt with the deletion review, redeleting as a copyright violation. I haven't dropped the banhammer or flagged as a sockpuppet, leaving that to an admin with more experience in those areas. GRBerry 17:29, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• We Assume good faith. Does the new user know about the applicable policy(s)? It appears Marion Mayger (talk · contribs) perhaps made this edit in error rather than as blatant vandalism. I believe a judgment to the otherwise could be assuming bad faith. I could be wrong. Navou ^banter / _{review me} 17:26, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• Meh, come on. How many people are there out there writing WP biographies for money? And if you can find your way to DRV you know enough not to insert some promotion into WP:V. AGF does not mean we abandon common sense. At the very least we should give out a final warning that writing articles for money is not on. Or maybe WP:RFCU? Moreschi ^Deletion! 17:37, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

We agree that at least, a final warning would suffice on the user talk page. However, I am thinking that with the limited contributions with this account, perhaps this user may have other interest in editing and improving our encyclopedia other than promotion. I don't think one incident (if I understand this history correctly) is banworthy/blockworthy, unless there is a precedent or policy I am unaware of. It is my hope the user will understand the warning and not write further promotional articles. Navou ^banter / _{review me} 17:42, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

The new user has since described herself as the article subject's "Personal Manager". I now believe we have a typical case of a PR person with a conflict of interest, and I am proceeding on that basis. GRBerry 19:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the link is at WP:AUTO against vanity pages, and that's really just getting back to the fact that no interested party (employee, consultant, child, spouse, survivor) should be writing a biography or corporate profile. Essentially, violation of this principle is not a blocking offense by any means, if it's an article. If it appears to be an organized campaign (which is often the case when a person is hired to mess with us), then we block to prevent future disruption of our policies. Needless to say, we are victimized by employees pretty regularly despite our wariness. So many people chase the vandals that we're missing some of the sneaky self-promotion. At this point, Wikipedia's Alexa rank means Google page rank boosts, and therefore our articles are money. Since we don't accept pay, we're not going to start offering free advertising. Geogre 19:56, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Request for analysis

Could an admin see this discussion and how it applies to this CU request? See does any action need to be taken? Regards, Navou ^banter / _{review me} 17:39, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

AstroTurf and FieldTurf

There is a minor revert war going on at AstroTurf and FieldTurf due in part to a user (Tygast411) who is an admitted employee of French, West, and Vaughn, the PR firm handling the re-launch of AstroTurf by its manufacturer.[37] Someone with more authority than I have should probably take a look. --Selket ^Talk 17:40, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• Note posted on user talk. Should be fine as long as he sticks to Talk pages. If not, then we have to... help him learn. Guy (Help!) 21:13, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Sockpuppets of User:Himalayanashoka

Indef. banned user User:Himalayanashoka has been using sockpuppets to push disputed POV edits on the India page (see page history) and personally attack editor User:Fowler&fowler (see edit summaries and the most recent example). Any suggestions about what can be done ? Abecedare 18:00, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

FYI, checkuser requests have been filed and semi-protection requested. The article is currently (full) protected, which prevents any useful edits from being made. Abecedare 18:03, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

See this archived thread. -- Jim Douglas ^(talk) _(contribs) 18:09, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. The questions I still have are:

• Is there a way to deal with the sockpuppets en masse (IP range ban ?) or do they have to be dealt one-by-one ?
• Can edits by these sockpuppets be undone without fear of violating the 3RR rule, under the "Reverting actions performed by banned users." - or do we have first have to wait for the checkuser results in each case?

I am still waiting for the page to be semi-protected rather than full-protected. Abecedare 18:17, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

He's not making any effort to be subtle. As far as I've seen, every one of the socks has showed up out of nowhere and proceeded to make virtually the same series of POV edits with identical edit summaries. When it's that blatantly obvious, I'd go ahead and (a) revert the edit with an edit summary indicating that you are reverting edits by a sockpuppet of a banned user; (b) report the sock to WP:AIV with the diff that demonstrates why it's obviously a sock of an indef'd user; and (c) add the new sock to WP:RFP for official confirmation. -- Jim Douglas ^(talk) _(contribs) 22:52, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Persistent begging to be allowed to spam?

Earlier today Anonymous251 (talk · contribs) was blocked for spamming after having been warned to desist — all edits involved the addition of similar external links. The user asked to be unblocked to be allowed to place an appeal on the talk page of each concerned article whether the link should be added. Another admin turned down his reason on the basis that he had been asked to stop and didn't. Because of this the new user JamesStan (talk · contribs) is clearly the same person, and has engaged on what can only be described as spamming article talk pages with pleas to get this site included in articles. The site the user is interested in is nothing more than a glorified news search engine that gathers articles from on-line news outlets. In general, I'd say it contravenes WP:EL 9 and the links aren't worthy of inclusion. Does anyone want to work this one out? — Gareth Hughes 18:54, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, for what it is worth, I agree that it doesn't agree with WP:EL. Wikipedia is also not where news is published, as per WP:NOT#PUBLISHER. Mdwyer 19:00, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I'll rollback everything and leave him a note. -- Steel 19:01, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Agree. Post it on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam too and someone will monitor links to the sites he is spamming. --BozMo talk 19:42, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• Spamming sockpuppet? I have just the thing here... Guy (Help!) 19:56, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Repeatedly deleting CSD tags

There have been repeated deletions of a "db-nonsense" template on Jim Lethbridge. If I shouldn't be reporting something like this please let me know. Tanaats 19:28, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Page deleted. There are templates uw-speedy1 up to uw-speedy4 for warning users who remove speedy deletion tags from articles they created. Cheers, Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 19:47, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Repeatedly moving Dominator UAV

• N328KF (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - editor keeps moving the article I recently created Dominator UAV to Aeronautics Defense Dominator, while discussions about building a consensus for the appropriate name for the article are occurring at Talk:Dominator UAV. Please move the article back to Dominator UAV, warn the editor N328KF and allow us to arrive at a consensus. In addition, N328KF has moved several other related articles, without first discussing them on their talk pages, to support his arguments. Thank you Headphonos 19:29, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I have looked into this. First of all, N328KF (talk · contribs) is activley involved with wiki project aircraft which has naming conventions and such for articles related to aircraft. Also, editor Akradecki (talk · contribs),also involved with the project agrees with this move. This title moved to is in accordance with naming standards set forth by the project. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 19:48, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Need advice

82.109.42.1 (talk · contribs) has continued to change the numbers in the Baloch people article from "5 to 6" million to "12 to 15 million", although despite warnings, has failed to cite any sources at all. I'm probably not allowed to block him/her for this, but I'd appreciate if someone could give me advice as to what to do. Attempts to contact the user haven't worked. Khoikhoi 19:52, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

{{subst:uw-error1}} is a good test - if the IP in question doesn't reply, then it's likely they are acting in bad faith. If they do answer or just stop changing the info, they're acting in good faith. Simple (and all flaws are your own risk :)? Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 20:13, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that. But my next question is: what should I do if the anon doesn't stop? Khoikhoi 20:26, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Then block. What are the alternatives? Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 20:33, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Haven't a clue. :-) Khoikhoi 20:53, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Suspicious spamming

Hmmm. Would an (meta?) admin care to blacklist [38] and [39], please? Some IPs (such as 80.130.250.30 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log), 220.225.82.158 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)) have been adding the links to numerous articles. Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 19:52, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Add 80.130.218.29 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log), 80.130.249.98 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log), 220.225.82.158 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log), and 80.130.252.43 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) to the list of spammer IPs. Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 20:02, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

FYI, this is a spam war. The 80.130.xxx.xxx editor in Germany is adding .indianfootball.com links and removing those of his competitor, soccernetindia.com. The 220.225.82.xxx editor in India is doing the reverse. I've noted this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam for folks to look at.

There's a persistent rumor on the "black hat" seo forums that Google and other search engines refer to Meta's Spam blacklist as an input when compiling their own blacklists of search engine spammers for removal from search results. This may or may not be true, but usually we try to warn spammers before blacklisting. --A. B. ^(talk) 02:40, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I gathered that. However if you feel like warning 20+ users, after tracking them down, good luck ;). (Actually I don't see the point, from my experience people don't stop spamming whenever money is concerned.) I remember seeing a good deal more of this stuff a few weeks ago, but I can't remember whether I reported it or not. Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 02:49, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Strange edits from new user...

Slightly strange things going on with Paradoxdept (talk · contribs). He recently added himself to WP:LGBT/Members... along with 81 previous members. I thought this was a bit weird, so I checked his userpage and found a redirect to Konstantine Theotis, a rather bizarre unwikified POV biography, I can only presume of himself. His contribs show he wrote it. Not sure really what to make of all this. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 20:11, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Well that article is a clear WP:CSD#A7, have deleted it. Ta/wangi 20:15, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Wierd behavior, but not necessarily malicious. Perhaps asking the user why he added 81 previous members to the WikiProject might be a good start. Maybe it was an accidental revert. Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 20:17, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

That's just it. It's not possible. He must have copied and pasted them all - but copied only 81 out of the 94. He's new, so I don't want to go biting him, and I have reverted him, it's just a bit odd to find and I thought I'd mention the speedy here. I guess no harm done, and if he's part of our project we can help him be a better editor. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 20:24, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

James Buchanan needs semi lock

(I'm not sure how to report this, but...)

IMHO, the section, "Rumors and speculation about Buchanan's sexual orientation" in James Buchanan is too tempting a target for school boys. Can we semi-lock this down?

See WP:RFPP. Cheers, Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 20:25, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Repeated Vandalism by User:74.71.217.181 Talk

The user in question appears to be participating in repeated incidences of vandalism, despite being warned multiple times by various users. I request administrator intervention in this matter, and contend that a block is in order.-- EnglishEfternamn ^talk_contribs 20:37, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Go to WP:AIV. Cheers, Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 20:41, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• Sent to WP:AIV. Navou ^banter / _{review me} 20:42, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

User:Schlafly

In the course of a run-of-the-mill content debate at Talk:Jonathan Corrigan Wells User:Schlafly started making personal attacks, and with 24 hours has expanded the incivility offsite to his blog. Specifically, a reminder to him about WP:NPA and the need to follow policy [40] resulted in: [41]

This sort of behavior by Schlafly has gone on many months now; he's resorted to personal attacks directed at the editors of intelligent design-related articles, and me in particular, on his blog a number of times previously: [42][43][44] In the past this was easy enough to ignore since he clearly ignoring policy and coming off crankish, and tended to attack and then disappear for a several weeks. But the number, tone, and frequency of attacks by him at Wikipedia is increasing.

I'm done trying to show him the benefit of following policy, and I'm certain that normal DR channels like RFC would be a waste of time with him, but someone else may yet think they can salvage this situation by having a word with him about civility and resolving conflicts, not expanding them or fanning the flames. FeloniousMonk 21:24, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• I am watching him and so is JoshuaZ. Neither of us likes what we see. Guy (Help!) 22:16, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• I added a formal warning for him to follow policy after I saw him continuing to argue with uninvolved admins leaving suggestions on his talk page. FloNight 00:50, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Notability (people)

Edit-warring on Wikipedia:Notability (people). There was a brief pause but one of the parties has expressed an intention to resume here. It looks like this will continue until someone gets blocked or the page gets protected. Somebody please intervene. --Ideogram 21:29, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• I hope you call this intervention. Cheers, Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 21:44, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to note that attempted discussion so far has been unproductive, to put it mildly. There was a failed MedCab attempt here. I think the parties need some "guidance" but I am at a loss as to how it might be provided. --Ideogram 21:52, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• There haven't been any edits in two days. When I came here for intervention, I was told to go the dispute resolution route. That failed, and Radiant has apparently ceased being disruptive, so there doesn't seem to be a problem. I don't intend to "resume" anything other than institute the consensus version that existed for years, so don't worry. This is the exact same route I took at WP:MUSIC with no problems once "discussion" died down ([45][46]), and something I plan on doing at WP:WEB once things appear to be dead as well. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:57, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
  •  Note: The page has been fully protected [47] per my request [48]. Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 22:31, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Lame. Ah well, I guess I'll just have to wait until it's unprotected, then. If you want it resolved, you know who you have to go to. --badlydrawnjeff talk 22:37, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• So what you;re saying is, if it's unprotected you'll resume the edit war? C'mon, Jeff, you know that's not smart! Guy (Help!) 22:48, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• There doesn't appear to be anything to resume. Radiant has appeared to cease the disruption, so there's no apparent problem. The question should be whether he plans to continue to push his own agenda. --badlydrawnjeff talk 22:55, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• Judging from your comments, I believe it would be useful if the page stays protected until you two have forgotten the whole thing. Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 22:59, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• I have a long memory. Since I have no interest in bumping the conflict up to the next level with Radiant (this is similar to what he pulled at WP:CREEP), we'll simply sit at a stalemate. --badlydrawnjeff talk 23:01, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• Look, do you have a personal feud with Radiant? Seriously, I suggest both of you knock this off now before one of you ends up blocked. Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 23:02, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• I'm not sure what's to knock off, we haven't been in contact for three days. Maybe sometime someone will block him for the disruption and tendentious editing, but it would be punitive at this stage, so I guess there's nothing else that can be done. --badlydrawnjeff talk 23:05, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• (arbitrary undent) Kettle, meet pot. ✎ Peter M Dodge (Talk to Me) 23:08, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• Spoken as someone with little knowledge of the situation, IMO. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:57, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
• Indeed. Radiant appears to be engaged in a good faith effort to reduce the Byzantine complexity of our rule base. More power to his elbow. I'd have thought Jeff would be onside here, but apparently not. Guy (Help!) 23:21, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• Funny, I see Radiant as being engaged in an effort to simply force his view of the project on everything, regardless of whether consensus exists or not. Whether I agree with your (or his) intents here is irrelevant - those seeking the change have not made even the slightest bit of effort to gain consensus, and that's a major problem. Unless consensus is being abandoned along with everything else here. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:57, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

• And there we have the problem: I am quite willing to discuss this, but Jeff is more interested in making derogatory remarks than in actual discussion, as should be obvious from his comments here. That is precisely why mediation didn't work out. Last week, Jeff stated that he would basically continue his harassment until I gave in regarding the underlying issue. As long as he keeps up this destructive approach, I don't really see this debate going anywhere. >Radiant< 11:31, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

comment removal

This editor removed my comments here, and the same here. I did ask him about it but he removed my question. Can someone explain to him, it's not really the done thing to remove other people's comments on article pages without good reason? (the actual content dispute is a different thing and not of interest, and I've asked uninvolved 3rd parties from the music project to take a look) --Fredrick day 21:41, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I have asked him why myself. Let's see the result. Wow, ANI is busy today :). Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 21:47, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Here is ErleGrey's response [49]. That's why I find it useful to AGF. Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 22:20, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Please explain some things to this editor

Here. --Ideogram 22:29, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• What things? To which editor? Guy (Help!) 22:37, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

John Wallace Rich (talk · contribs) appears to be new to Wikipedia; he seems to be engaged in WP:OWN, edit-warring, fails to understand basic Wikipedia article standards, false accusations of vandalism. Kaldari (talk · contribs) is trying to reason with him but some admin tools may eventually be necessary. --Ideogram 22:44, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• Yes, they may. Eventually. If the content dispute escalates. And dispute resolution fails. Guy (Help!) 22:47, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

MedCab case. I'm really not sure how to handle him. I will do what I can. --Ideogram 22:53, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Roman Numerals vandalism

198.180.131.17 appears to be a repeated vandal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/198.180.131.17

I've reverted his latest edit of roman numeral L = 40, but all of his other edits appear to be vandalism as well http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Roman_numerals&oldid=105698606

Bperry7 01:41, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

WP:AIV is the place to go to for vandalism. Just a note - remember to warn vandals with an appropriate template (see WP:UWT) and wait to see if they continue before reporting them. Cheers, Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 02:46, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

When I warned the vandal, they replied with this perfectly legitimate comment. What should be done? Nothing? Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 07:13, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Super Bowl XLI issue

Someone protected this page but set it to expire way to early. Someone please re-protect for a day or so. John Reaves (talk) 04:20, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Er, WP:RFPP? My favourite page :)? Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 04:26, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

If someone brings an issue here, it usually makes sense to just deal with it and refer the person for future reference to another page. There is little point in bouncing people around to different pages. --Centrx→talk • 04:29, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I knew what I was doing, this was much faster. The page was re-protected in a matter of minutes. I'm pretty sure the protection was set to expire too early on accident. John Reaves (talk) 04:33, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Is it appropriate to delete comments (like this one and above) that have been taken care of speedily to reduce the size of this consistently long page? John Reaves (talk) 06:05, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Don't bother. The bots come along to archive inactive threads older than one day. Cheers! Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 07:12, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

User:Senthilkumaras

(Moved from WP:AIV Essjay (Talk) 09:05, 5 February 2007 (UTC))
Senthilkumaras (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) ***needs an investigation*** - I first found this page created which appears like as jibberish. User creating it has a lot of edits and a page, but appears to have injected nonsense through wikipedia on indian pages (easier to do for an english wikipedia?). Typing this I just noticed his last edit was May 2006, so probably already banned, but the page (pages?) he created still exists. I think an admin, possibly with knowledge in the indian community, needs to look at this user and created pages and possibly clean up anything left. May be the wrong place to put this but hopefully it gets moved to the right direction.

Examples: odd number changing name changing? user will add appearent nonsense without citing sourses more nonsense which is later deleted — Virek 07:45, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Move vandalism

Someone just moved Barack Obama to Iraq Saddam Hussein Osama. Could an administrator move it back, delete Iraq Saddam Hussein Osama, and protect Barack Obama from moves? BuddingJournalist 09:09, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

At the moment the page history is at Iraq Saddam Hussein Osama. Moving it back to Barack Obama will require admin tools now there is content there as well. WJBscribe 09:12, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

An admin should probably block User:HereIsJohnny as well (I've reported to AIV). Boy, this is a mess. BuddingJournalist 09:12, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Help! Special:Contributions/HereIsJohnny BuddingJournalist 09:14, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

User blocked and all page move vandalism reverted. Leftover redirects have been deleted. Sigh. WJBscribe 09:22, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Block or no block?

Can someone double check for me that User:FiLoCo is not blocked from editing? I unblocked the user 2 February, but I've had four or five emails over the weekend from him asking to be unblocked, claiming he still can't edit. Proto::► 09:23, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

He was unblocked by you on 2 Feb, no subsequent, jimfbleak 09:45, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

He has edited since you unblocked [50], there was an autoblock but that was removed on the 2nd also [51] --pgk 09:52, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Dissolving sock-puppetry

A few days ago I brought here the case of Benio76 (talk · contribs), who had been blocked as a sock-puppet of Olivierd (talk · contribs), but who had provided evidence that she wasn't his sock-puppet; after the comments here, and consultation with the original blocking admin, I unblocked Benio76. Since then, the other account accused of being Olivierd's sock-puppet, Zelig33 (talk · contribs), has been unblocked by MacGyverMagic as not sharing IP addresses with the other two. Olivierd remains blocked for using sock-puppets; now that his supposed sock-puppets have been cleared of the charge, he's asking (reasonably) to be unblocked too. I'm about to unblock him, but I thought that I'd explain what I'm doing here in case anyone thinks that I'm wrong.

I should add that, while I don't have any worries about Benio76's future behaviour (and I don't know anything about Zelig33), Olivierd's User page does suggest that an eye needs to be kept on him — but it's nothing for which he could be blocked, much less indefinitely. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 10:51, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't know how I missed it, but when I was leaving an explanation of the unblock at Olivierd's page, I found an earlier refusal to unblock by User:WinHunter, with the reason: "Checkuser block is final". This was before Olivierd had mentioned the unblocking of his supposed sock-puppets; I take it that Checkuser blocks aren't literally final, and that my unblock was warranted. I'm sorry to have trodden, however lightly, on WinHunter's toes, though. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:12, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

User:Smith_Jones

Smith_Jones (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is a persistent and insidious vandal. Does not read like a newbie and sometimes makes valid edits such as the creation of a dab page or a WP:NPA apology plus refactoring of the relevant talk page. Could be a sock puppet of a user with a grudge, might be worth a checkuser. See my recent contributions here for an overview of the repair work. This does not include vandalism caught by others. All in all a persistent vandal who ignores the warnings on their talk page and several previous shorter blocks. AvB ÷ talk 11:26, 5 February 2007 (UTC)