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continual lack of good faith and WP:OWN displayed by one editor

I wish to report the behaviour of user User:Mathsci who continually has tried to discourage me from contributing and editing articles on French localities in a significant display of WP:OWN and particularly WP:OWN#EVENTS. This first started with accusations of being lazy and unconstructive and being disruptive and having no "special knowledge of French or France" and then reverted a legitimate edit of mine which I believe this was solely done as I did that edit. This developed into a personal attack as shown in the edit summary of and still displaying WP:OWN in . And then accused me of "not aiding the WP project" today at At no point has this editor assumed good faith about my edits. I have tried to reason and warn about lacking good faith on numerous occasions to no avail , , and given warnings , . Michellecrisp (talk) 02:31, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I have hardly edited recently because I am busy giving a graduate course/preparing a book. I did buy an 800 page book on the history of Marseille (in French) on a recent brief trip back to France: I have used this a little to check historical details mentioned by other editors on the page of Marseille and have suggested using it as the source for a detailed article on the chronology of Marseille (a similar article already exists on the French WP). Michellecrisp appears to have followed me to Aix-en-Provence. I own neither of these pages but have them on my watchlist. Much local information (eg detailed local history) on both these places is only available in French. If dates are added which contradict the chronology in an authoritative and encyclopedic history they will be corrected using the reliable source. Michellecrisp seems to have gone on a tagging spree on information added mostly by other editors long ago and has not tried to source the information on her own (such as population estimates from INSEE). Often sourcing information is not hard to do with a knowledge of French: the official information is often only available in French. I have no idea why she has brought this to WP:AN/I. Her choice of the word "continual" is odd considering my recent wikibreak. Mathsci (talk) 23:29, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

My original comments stand. I am not questioning Mathsci's knowledge of French topics. but the violation of principles of assuming good faith and clear WP:OWN (I have given seven examples above of this which has occured over the past month) which has regrettably developed to personal attacks. It is against Misplaced Pages principles to discredit or put down other editors for lacking knowledge. Michellecrisp (talk) 23:44, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Your content dispute does not represent what happened on the actual pages, where you added faulty information (mistaking a TGV station for an SNCF station, quizzing the climate of Aix, dismissing the ancient monuments of Marseille, getting dates wrong). I have no idea why, without adding any significant content to either of these pages but merely tagging indiscriminately, you have seen fit to bring your grievances to WP:AN/I. You have not made any very clear arguments on the talk pages and most of your taggings that I have had time to look at are easy to justify. They mostly concern long standing additions by other editors. If you tag without discussion and add faulty information, is it not to be expected that somebody with access to detailed information will check the information and add sources? That does not constitute ownership of an article: it merely means that sources are being provided. Data from dubious websites that contradict acknowledged encyclopedic history books will be corrected in this process. This "dispute", of your own making, should never have been brought here. Your tagging was provocative: you seem now to be objecting when proper sources have been added to justify material of long standing by other editors. That seems unreasonable on your part. It seem odd that you have been tagging with no intention of checking the information for yourself, which cannot be so hard, even in Australia. I think you have misrepresented the recent editing history: you seem to be making a mountain out of a molehill. Mathsci (talk) 01:35, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

This is not a content dispute but an issue of user behaviour. My issues is here are your comments that you have directed to me that violate assume good faith and WP:OWN#EVENTS. ownership of article includes trying to discourage others from editing not necessarily "owning" in the literal sense. Please let this be reviewed by an administrator.Adding faulty information such as the SNCF edit was done in good faith. I have never deliberately added faulty information. Feel free to check the history of Marseille or Aix-en-Provence where I have found some references and tried to improve wording. I have brought this grievance here because after repeated warning you fail to assume good faith and have developed into personal attacks, and a deliberate campaign to dissuade me from editing articles. Michellecrisp (talk) 01:45, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

"a deliberate campaign to dissuade me from editing articles"? On the contrary you have chosen a very public place to misrepresent my WP edits. Bonne nuit. Mathsci (talk) 02:36, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

This is very clearly a content dispute. Please take follow the policy Misplaced Pages:Dispute resolution in resolving this issue. Your dispute does not belong here. If necessary, please request mediation. ···日本穣 05:32, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Please clarify how this is a content dispute? I am reporting the issue of user behaviour, specifically WP:AGF and WP:OWN#EVENTS as evidenced in my diffs in the original post. This is not related to specific content. I am not disputing the content of any article mentioned, I am disputing the validity of editors asking other editors not to contribute to certain articles. One of the things Mathsci is questioning is my right to tag articles. Michellecrisp (talk) 05:39, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I have removed "content". You still need to work through dispute resolution to get this taken care of. That's what it's for. So far, I don't see anything that specifically needs an administrator to do anything. Any user can warn another for violating policy or guidelines. You are having a dispute with Mathsci, and the steps on WP:DR are there to help you work through the dispute. Please take advantage of that information and the steps found there. ···日本穣 07:37, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I have said that I am on a wikibreak because I am otherwise occupied in real life. Michellecrisp is needlessly wikilawyering here because I have added "of note" after the word "fountains" in Aix-en-Provence to describe two particular fountains, picked out in the cited Guide Michelin for Provence. From her contributions here and on my talk page, she is simply trolling to make a highly ill-conceived point that appears at the bottom her user page. She is being highly disruptive. The presence of this inappropriate report suggests that she is set on harrassing me and does not properly understand how WP works. I unfortunately have no time at present to engage in interactions with Michellecrisp unrelated to actual content in WP articles. Thank goodness she has stayed away from mathematics articles. :) Mathsci (talk) 07:58, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Michellecrisp has added fresh citation tags to Marseille. She has inspired me to prepare a WP article on Pierre Corneille's play Médée when I return to France. Can someone please award her a barnstar? Mathsci (talk) 09:54, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone note the continual lack of good faith displayed by Mathsci towards me and less than subtle personal criticism in their above comments? Could an administrator please read my original post? I have attempted to warn the user in question of potential WP:AGF and WP:OWN#EVENTS violations and only came here because the user persisted with this behaviour to this point with no cessation as shown in the rather rude edit summary here . I have made several warnings which I stepped up to higher levels (the next level being reporting here) but this behaviour towards me continued (as shown in the seven comments I have provided in diffs above). I would like to continue editing or tagging article I see fit without being rudely discouraged each time I edit an article. With the exception of Masalai I have never experienced this in the 20 months I've been on Misplaced Pages. An example as shown in my original post was Mathsci reverting one of my edits simply because it was me, I changed some text to conform to policy WP:LAYOUT and removed non-relevant links . is not a content conflict but one based on one editor disliking me editing French geography articles. Where is the evidence of my disruptive behaviour? Tagging is not disruptive but as per WP:CITE and WP:PROVEIT Michellecrisp (talk) 10:29, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

There has been no revert war. One revert of your edits does not warrant the needless and inappropriate drama you have been creating here. You are behaving out of all proportion, apparently because you have been upset when some of your errors have been corrected. Please desist. Normally people with some knowledge of France or the French language edit pages related to France (the pages on Aix-en-Provence and Marseille are not "geography articles" as you quite wrongly suggest). When this is not the case, such errors are to be expected and should not be taken personally. Now you seem intent on exacting some form of revenge, quite outside wikipedia rules. Why not make yourself a nice cup of tea instead? Mathsci (talk) 22:57, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

This is not a revert war, therefore not a content dispute. The above comments still reflect a lack of good faith and WP:OWN#EVENTS as displayed continously despite my repeated warning. This continues with Mathsci's recent revert of my comment. I might have said geography but perhaps more broadly cities and towns fall under a category of geography and places. My original complaint stands as a violation of WP:AGF and WP:OWN#EVENTS. Comment on content not editors as they say. Michellecrisp (talk) 08:07, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Michellecrisp, please, please, please, take some time to learn about WP. I can remove any comment on my own talk page if I wish. Your complaint is absurd and, as an administrator has already said, whatever your grievances, no administrator can help you. One remedy is to get a detailed book on the history/recent history of Marseille or Aix-en-Provence, read and digest the contents and then transfer that information to the English wikipedia. If the only books are in French, polish up your French. Become an "expert" on the topic. You are wasting time, space and energy here. Go and have that nice cup of tea now, it's starting to get cold :) Mathsci (talk) 08:53, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

BTW you risk being blocked if you continue publicly harrassing me here. You have read but ignored that I am on a wikibreak. You are starting to be extremely disruptive. If I am not editing/reverting how can you continue to make these very unreasonable claims about wikiownership? Please stop now. Mathsci (talk) 08:59, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

This is not harassment, I am reporting your behaviour of accusations of being lazy and unconstructive and being disruptive and having no "special knowledge of French or France" and then reverted a legitimate edit of mine which I believe this was solely done as I did that edit. This developed into a personal attack as shown in the edit summary of and still displaying WP:OWN in . And then accused me of "not aiding the WP project" at At no point has this editor assumed good faith about my edits. I have tried to reason and warn about lacking good faith on numerous occasions to no avail , . Become an "expert" on the topic. is classical WP:OWN#EVENTS. Please provide diffs of harassment to back your claim. I have provided diffs of violation of WP:AGF and WP:OWN#EVENTS Michellecrisp (talk) 13:49, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

An administrator has intervened to tell you that you are mistaken and yet you persist. This might suggest that you have some kind of personal problem. Kindly address this problem in private and stop using this page as a WP:FORUM. Since I am not editing mainspace or talk pages at the moment (that is what "wikibreak" means), your behaviour here constitutes harrassment. You raised your points three days ago and nobody has agreed with you. What exactly do you expect to happen? If you have difficulty understanding these issues, please seek help privately elsewhere. Your comments on my advice "Become an expert on the topic" seem quite unintelligent. You should probably also remove this inflammatory comment on your user page:

One thing I don't like is when editors display WP:OWN. No one owns articles on Misplaced Pages and no one can dissuade other legitimate editors from contributing. There is no hierarchy for more "experienced" or "qualified" editors.

It suggests that you are looking for "test cases" in your own faulty misreading of WP policies. You are acting as a vigilante and that is quite a serious offense. It suggests that you are set on disrupting the project to satisfy your own personal agenda. Mathsci (talk) 01:56, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

With all due respect (and noting full well I used to do the same in 2006 when I didn't know any better) administrators are merely users with extra rights and there's about 1,500 of us, so citing one of us is not going to mean much. However, you're of course welcome to cite *me*, as I like feeling important. :P Orderinchaos 19:09, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you: I am quite aware of this. The editor User:Michellecrisp seems to be wikilawyering. In the two articles under discussion, she has not added any actual content and seems intent on creating some kind of dispute. As I have already said, I am too busy at the moment in real life to edit the wikipedia, except en passant. Mathsci (talk) 21:20, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

with regard to your claims to harassment, unless you can provide diffs (which you have failed to) then it's WP:KETTLE. Secondly, an admin made a comment, but haven't you noticed that generally a resolved icon is shown to close off the incident report. Michellecrisp (talk) 06:51, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I think you are a particularly persistent individual who has made a faulty accusation that you are incapable of supporting. Since there has been only one reversion so far, your behaviour here seems to be highly irrational. Please nurse your bruised ego elsewhere. Mathsci (talk) 21:09, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

BTW, without making any attempt to analyse your mental processes, the fact that you have posted this non-existent "incident" is a proof of harassment. You have given no evidence of repeated reverts (because there have been none) or any other abnormal behaviour. You merely seem to be inordinately displeased and now seem intent on extracting your revenge. Is there something I might be missing? I am all ears, Michelle. Mathsci (talk) 21:38, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

 ;)Mathsci (talk) 21:54, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not questioning any reverts except one. "Incapable of supporting" my claim? My complaint centres around your seven comments to me displaying WP:AGF and WP:OWN#EVENTS that's in my original post. It's that simple. It's plan to see that you have assumed bad faith about me all along.Michellecrisp (talk) 08:05, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

For the record, Mathsci claims above that "the two articles under discussion (Marseille and Aix-en-Provence, she has not added any actual content". Well I've added a few references to strengthen the articles, , , , , , how is that not helping? This is again another example of bad faith of MathSci. Michellecrisp (talk) 08:29, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Another example of Mathsci's assuming bad faith with their edit summary of which another editor commented as "these citation tags are more to do with your dispute with MichelleCrisp than anything else" . May also be considered evidence of WP:POINT. No coincidence that Mathsci wanted to disrupt an article that I was editing earlier that day? Michellecrisp (talk) 14:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

11,000 images tagged NFUR in one day

This discussion has been moved to Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Betacommand#11,000 images tagged NFUR in one day. 15:34, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

More V-Dash socks

User:Supertoolbox is going around and changing the userpages of User:V-Dash socks to make it appear as if they were Jeske socks. Anyone want to handle this? shoy 17:26, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Blocked. But, we should ignore these to whatever extent possible. I see no value in bothering to create userpages for throwaway troll accounts. Revert, block, ignore. Creating a collection of trophies only encourages them. Friday (talk) 17:32, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

(merging duplicate threads)

User's talk page has a personal attack against Friday and Jeske... dont know how this started or who's sock this user is, but it should be investigated. Queerbubbles (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 17:39, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for letting us know! The user has been blocked. ➔ REDVEЯS knows how Joan of Arc felt 20:33, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, guys. It's nice to know that I can sit down and play a video game without worrying about getting blocked due to this guy. -Jéské 19:19, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

User:Jeke_Couriano is another V-Dash sock who is going around...he just tried to say I was Jéské sock. -Sukecchi (talk) 19:02, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Another...MatthewCouriano (talk · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)—Ｌｏｖｅはドコ？ (talk • contribs) 07:09, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

He's been blocked. Please only report unblocked socks, and, as Friday says, please do not tag them as V-Dash socks - he's taken to altering sockpuppet tags (meaning tagging them gives him more targets), and I notice he's now waiting until I'm not on. -Jéské 07:13, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't realize it was already blocked. I'll go change that tag, since Slakr just banned it without a word (no offense)...—Ｌｏｖｅはドコ？ (talk • contribs) 07:17, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

SqueakBox and Personal Attacks

FInally, I have got to ask for help on this. In spite of agreeing in the past to leave me alone and to cease personal attacks in general, SqueakBox (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is back, editing my talkpage (something I had requested he not do and I have agreed not to edit his...which I have abided by) multiple times, removing an obvious self-deprecating joke, and now is making his personal attacks on me again. This user, with a long, distinguished list of blocks and interventions, has been begging for a indef block forever. Granted, he's not calling people "Nazi scum" or even calling people "rude brat". Now it's these: "I would sum up your comments as trolling" "your foramtting is lousy and your refusal to fix it is typical of your arrogant behaviour". Can something be done? He has worked very, very hard to antagonize, vilify, harrass, and belittle many users on Misplaced Pages. Something has got to be done about this highly disruptive, verbally violent user. VigilancePrime (talk) 21:27, 15 February 2008 (UTC) if more links and diffs for history of attacks is needed, let me know... but they'd fill up an entire page.

I think it's safe to say that the patience of the community is wearing thin. I, for one, am very tired of seeing the same names appear at AN/I with issues. I recommend that both parties find a way to solve this on their own, because I have a feeling that if administrator action is required, it will be of a grave nature. - Philippe | Talk 22:09, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

We did, and he is reneging on it. I leave him alone, I do not edit his userpages, but I cannot get rid of his following and attacking. I have worked hard to not be involved with him. VigilancePrime (talk) 22:15, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I've looked through some history and at the risk of taking sides, I have to say it looks to me like SqueakBox is the short fuse in this dispute. He's very quick to use colorful adjectives to describe other people and their actions, in statements that could probably often be considered personal attacks. I think at the least, he could use a stern reminder about civility from an uninvolved admin. Equazcion •✗/C • 22:47, 15 Feb 2008 (UTC)

Squeak is a decent person. I blocked him in the past, and he impressed me with his ability to understand that a time out was right in that case. What SqueakBox doesn't like, being a decent person, is any hint of the promotion of pedophilia, racism and a number of other things that decent people don't like. Each time I've investigated an issue with Squeak recently, it's turned out that the problem was excess of decency. Make of that what you will. Guy (Help!) 22:54, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Translating that into objective terms, he acts inappropriately but since he does so in accordance with your POV then it must be okay. In the interest of neutrality I don't think the cause he's fighting for, even if it's the majority POV, should be a determining factor. Considering blowing up at people as an "excess of decency" means little since "decency" is subjective, and even if his views were considered decent by matter of fact, you can be excessively decent and still conduct yourself appropriately. We don't judge people based on their views but on how they act, the two being mutually exclusive. Equazcion •✗/C • 23:44, 15 Feb 2008 (UTC)

Not quite. Pro-pedophile advocacy brings the project into disreupte and has led to bans. Guy (Help!) 00:46, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

POV-pushing, not pro-pedophile advocacy or anti-pedophile advocacy in particular, leads to bans. And regardless of the reasons, inappropriate behavior is still inappropriate behavior. You can't justify it by saying you were acting for the good of Misplaced Pages. If you want to do good things, you do it the right way, or you leave it to someone else. Equazcion •✗/C • 01:00, 16 Feb 2008 (UTC)

The history is perhaps more complex than you have seen, Equazcion, this is perhaps a case for dispute resolution (possibly arbcom) and I have initiated that while also resolving the current flame at VPs talk page. Thanks, SqueakBox 22:55, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

It may be more accurate to say that Squeakbox has a long fuse, but that it's been re-lit over and over by a succession of POV warriors. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 23:37, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

• Rules should be applied consistently - you get the same sentence for assaulting sinners as saints... oh, and assaulting a sinner makes a sinner of the assaulter. i.e. If you are on the side of the angels, then act like one! LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:28, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

• That's a denial of human nature. Guy (Help!) 00:47, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

• this is wikipedia, not the nsdap. its not the job of any editiors on here to attack verbalyl any users that he doesnt like just becuase he feels that they are "acist" "pedophilic" or any other pejorative. Smith Jones (talk) 00:52, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

• Spot on , as usual, Smith Jones. Thanks for cutting through the "acist" crap, again. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 04:17, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

• I guess I just don't understand why it was necessary for Squeak to even edit Vigilance's page. I didn't see any attacks, I saw the (rather odd) addition of a template. How does that involve Squeak at all? Why even get involved? Frankly, if I were he, I think I'd have walked away from that, even if I thought it was incredibly offensive, because of previous involvement with Vigilance. Strikes me as an astonishingly bad choice to even engage there. - Philippe | Talk 00:56, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree with SJ and other users. As demonstrated in a (now deleted) subpage of VP's, this user has a history of disruption and repeated harassment of editors on stigmatic, personal grounds. I would not personally support an indefinite block, but see the umbrella WP:PAW as a good dividing line when it comes to what articles this user should e allowed to edit. Lambton /_C 01:22, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

• VigilancePrime's deleted subpage was an attack page against Squeakbox that contained similar content to the material currently on VigilancePrime's user page. The subpage was deleted by MfD:
  • Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion/User:VigilancePrime/Doc:SqueakBox

with comment from the closing admin that : " The subpage is serving no other purpuse besides serving as a attack page against another editor..." When content is deleted by MfD as an attack page, what is the policy on re-creating that content on a user page? --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 03:45, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

He appears to be holding up a mirror on his talk page. It is not disruptive to simply list edits that you dislike. Lambton /_C 03:57, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

You're entitled to your opinion. You brought up the deleted subpage, not me. So I provided the MfD link and the quote from the closing admin, who found that consensus in the discussion considered it an attack page. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 04:11, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

• I guess I should note, though I had hoped to stay out of this, that EVERYONE in that discussion saw it as an obvious keep except: SqueakBox (of course, as it quoted his poor word choices), you, Jack-A-Roe (always jumping to his defense and a partner with him in deleting content you don't like), Will Beback (same difference), and Pol64 (who was very soon after permablocked for the same type or aggregious personal attacks). As one user said, "Quite frankly, I just don't see how accurate quotations (supported by diffs, no less) constitute personal attacks." Other comments about the former page: "The piece is neutrally worded and consists almost exclusively of literal quotes with links.", "no apparent policy vio", "does not violate bad faith or civility", and finally "This is not an attack page; it makes no decisions or judgments about the comments themselves, merely puts them on display in a concise manner. There is no reason for this page NOT to exist, and quite frankly, looking at the diffs on display, it's a wonder such a page hasn't surfaced sooner. Clearly something needs to be done about SqueakBox's conduct." VigilancePrime (talk) 05:13, 16 February 2008 (UTC) :-)

You're entitled to your opinion too, sure. In the situation with your user subpage attacking SqueakBox, the MfD consensus did not agree with your interpretation. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 06:33, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I brought it up because it demonstrated something (listed edits, just like his user page), not to discuss its creditability as a project, which I would have to look at in further detail. Lambton /_C 04:18, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

In point of fact, the MfD Jack refers to was closed against consensus, with comments 2:1 in favor of keeping the page. It went to DRV, and VP, in the kind of selfless act I'd like to see more of, agreed to withdraw their DRV request in exchange for SqueakBox's agreement to stay away from VP's userspace. It's not a matter of opinion; it's reading the MfD & DRV. I believe Jack-a-Roe's description above is inconsistent with the facts. --SSBohio 19:16, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

• That's the third opinion expressed here about the way that MfD was closed. Everyone is entitled to their opinions. The process of the MfD resulted in deletion of that page, and the closing admin described it as an attack page. That's the history, not an interpretation. If someone wants the facts they can view the archived page directly, and they can check the DRV too. They don't need me or anyone else to interpret it for them. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 03:13, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

• I applied arithmetic to the situation; Referring to that as mere opinion is like saying that evolution is just a theory. A 2:1 ratio in favor of keeping is no demonstration of consensus to delete; Therefore, the MfD was closed against apparent consensus. The deletion review was tied 7:7 when VigilancePrime stepped up and ended the drama by agreeing to the deletion per user request, provided that Squeak were to leave VP alone. A consensus in support of the MfD closer's point of view has never been demonstrated, and was, in fact, explicitly opposed. --SSBohio 07:59, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

• I feel I must say a few words here. I'm sure SqueakBox will believe I'm persecuting him but he still has not offered me (or anyone else he has unfairly stigmatized) any sort of decent apology for labelling me a passive supporter of pedophile activists (because of I speedy closed Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/North American Man/Boy Love Association), repeatedly calling a now deleted Category:Rape victims "your beloved category" (because I asked him to nominate it for deletion rather than unilaterally depopulate it). He has unfairly accused Haemo (talk · contribs) of pedophile sympathies, during his RfA no less. This is the umpteenth ANI thread about his short fuse and while I understand that it's not always easy to deal with POV warriors and the typical sockpuppeting nonsense that surrounds many of the PAW-supervised articles, his behaviour cannot be tolerated. Guy, I've told you this before and you refused to listen . Now all I can do is repeat it and you'll tell me again "ah, deep down SqueakBox is a good chap" and of course, I can't even disagree with that. But tell me: how many times can you say this before doubt starts creeping in that maybe a good chap can sometimes go overboard, way overboard. If need be, I'll go back and dig out all the diffs that have popped up in the numerous ANI threads and User talk threads where SqueakBox's behaviour has been utterly unacceptable. There are many people who have the courage and patience to work with PAW but somehow, SqueakBox is the one that keeps generating ANI threads. Where does it stop? Fighting the good fight doesn't buy you a get out of jail card. SqueakBox has got to stop or leave. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 04:21, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

PS for Guy. It had been a while since I got involved in that crap. But I just looked back at the details of our last conversation about SqueakBox. I was trying to explain that SqueakBox was not a good idea to mentor Pol64 (talk · contribs). As far as I can see, that experiment did not work out so well. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 06:47, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Stop editing altogether or be blocked from editing PAW? For me, based on his disruption and its rather narrow focus, a modest and workable solution would be a permanent curfew on PAW. I have saved quite a few of his mistakes, and would be happy to set up an e.mail so that I can communicate them to you off wiki. digitalemotion 06:43, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Pedophilia Article Watch needs more good-faith editors like SqueakBox, not less. Those topics are difficult areas for Misplaced Pages. More editors participating can help air out what otherwise might be a dark corner. Concerns about those topics affect the whole community, so the community is best served by more people becoming involved. It doesn't matter what POV editors bring, more participation is better in highly polarized situations. With more editors, it's less likely that discussions devolve into POV-pushing arguments. With more editors, it becomes easier to find actual community consensus, because there's less chance of getting sidetracked into arguments between indivudals or small groups.
• Whatever else comes of this AN/I report, I hope that more administrators and other editors visit the WP:PAW project and bring their skills to the various articles involved with those topics. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 07:12, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

• Jack should probably specify that he/they only want editors that will edit to their liking. NPOV is not the goal, "SPOV" or their POV is. Fair warning: If you have even the slightest disagreement, you'll be labeled a pedophile, vilified, harrassed, personally attacked, and listed at Wikisposure. Contribute at your own risk, as this phenomenon has been widely documented (though much of it has also managed to have been deleted). VigilancePrime (talk) 07:16, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

• Don't twist my words. Your opinions and ideas are yours, not mine. I wrote what I intended to write. All POVs are welcome - a wide cross-section is preferable, to avoid POV-pushing - the editing must be NPOV of course. Broader attention on these topics can only be a positive thing for Misplaced Pages. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 07:24, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

• I agree that it comes across as assuming bad faith. Beyond that, I made it clear to VigilancePrime that the Arbitration Committee is willing to provisionally open any related case put before them, but that such a case needs to be submitted privately via email. VigilancePrime, however, does not wish to disclose his email address to the Arbitration Committee. Which is his right. I, for example, refused to disclose my real identity to the OTRS (a condition to joining), therefore, I don't do OTRS (although, it isn't as if VigilancePrime disclosing an email account amounts to the same thing, privacy-wise). But there's no way around this: arbcom-l is the venue for complaints about these topics (and, yes, it being a private procedure is not optional), so, VigilancePrime may wish to avoid editing that set of articles, because the constant public complaints are becoming increasingly disruptive. Thx. El_C 07:41, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

1. I twisted nobody's words. I added my own. Stop the false-issue whining.
2. How is this complaining? Oh, "I was asking for it", eh? And reporting abuse is wrong now?
3. I have stopped contributing to those after being driven off those articles by Squeak, Jack, Will, now-perbablocked Pol, and the admin Herostratus. This choice was made after all the above actually happened to me and a couple other editors. If we don't edit to their satisfaction (meaning their bias rather than to actual neutrality), WP:STEAM and WP:PA become the license of the day.

If you want the littany of diffs that demonstrate the longstanding harrassment and name-calling and personal attacks (getting back to the issue at hand, from which many seem to be trying to distract), let me know and I'll post them all right here.

VigilancePrime (talk) 16:13, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd gladly act as a go-between: If VP wants to make any submissions to ArbCom, they can email me and I'll pass them on. --SSBohio 19:16, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

In one edit to my talk page, Squeak described me as a troll, an idiot, hysterical, uncivil, a liar, disgusting, intolerable, rude, and a brat. In his defense, he did end his comments by saying thanks. I could cite multiple examples of similar commentary and worse, either in edits or edit summaries. Part of that history is hidden by deleted edits, however. I've tried very hard to assume good faith in Squeak's conduct, since it's motivated by pure motives. But, at some point, even the most ardent and righteous zealot must forswear zealotry in favor of harmonious editing. I sympathize with SqueakBox's frustration, but not with how he expresses it. In my view, he doesn't understand that his approach to these conflicts creates a vicious cycle whereby his sharp comments don't get him the outcome he seeks, which frustrates him more, so that his next round of comments is even more strongly worded, and so on. His ArbCom case and his history of warnings and blocks bear out my concerns about his conduct.

There's another side to SqueakBox, however. He's got a significant contribution history (41,415 edits), largely undeniable improvements to the encyclopedia. Similarly, he's undeniably passionate about the topics he covers, and about this project. One example that springs to mind is when he & I worked out our differences on the inclusion of a photo in a biographical article. We started on opposite sides of the question, but we maintained open communications and worked things out. Over the time we've collaborated here, I've had several thoroughly enjoyable interactions with him, and, aside from Misplaced Pages work, he's been patient enough to help me with my Spanish.

I'm honestly in a quandry . He's made multiple contributions to the encyclopedia and I have a good deal of respect for him. Conversely, he's engaged in the same pattern & practice of contentious commentary and tendentious editing on multiple occasions over multiple subject areas. He's been warned; he's been blocked; he's been to ArbCom. None of these have worked to modify his behavior. No matter how good the reason, we all have to play nicely if we're going to play in the same sandbox. SqueakBox does that, for the most part. But, when he breaks from that, he does so spectacularly. --SSBohio 18:08, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Amen to that SSB. There's no denying that Squeak can be a positive force. It's also clear that one can only sympathize with the frustration that comes with editing and policing delicate articles. But random insults and accusations don't help, they make things worse. SqueakBox tends to get away with it because powerful admins like Guy protect him as a useful guardian of these delicate articles. Similarly, ArbCom doesn't want to intervene (I did ask), lest they be accused of supporting pedophile activists. It's just oh so easy to look the other way. But many have demonstrated that it's entirely possible to counter extremism on Misplaced Pages without resorting to insults, accusations, blatant contempt for Misplaced Pages processes, etc. It's not too much to ask of SqueakBox. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 19:04, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Pascal, I've been tarred with that brush too. It's perhaps the most personally painful accusation I've ever had leveled against me, in any forum. I give no quarter to any harm inflicted upon a child. Those that know my personal history know why. A friend of mine, raped as a child, survived two unsuccessful suicide attempts, but did not survive his third. I've assisted SNAP in my own small way in investigating and bringing to justice Catholic priests who had abused children, including schoolmates of mine. Accusations of pro-pedophile activism against you, me, and others has been part of the problem, to be sure. --SSBohio 19:40, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Wow... that's interesting. I admit until now I had you pegged as a PPA, and I don't even edit in the area - had just watched contribs, the kinds of editors (including now-indefinitely-banned ones) and proposals you supported and opposed etc. :/ Certainly says something for assumptions that can be made (and also how important it is to be careful in a place like this what impressions one gives off). Orderinchaos 03:34, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

In my view, one of the big problems with discussions around this topic is that any perspective other than absolute deletionism is tarred as PPA. I find it disgusting that I even have to assert that I oppose the sexual abuse of children. For the record, I oppose murder, arson, and jaywalking, but I never need to assure anyone of that. I've faced repeated intemperate remarks from Squeak and others, and been forced to defend my commitment to child safety more than once.

I think that the pro-pedophile viewpoint is notable, and I see zero chance that someone would read an article that neutrally covers that view and come away thinking that child sexual abuse is a good idea. We've been shooting mosquitoes with an elephant gun in this topic area, largely initiated by Squeak and editors in league with him, and enabled by sympathetic admins and editors swayed by pejoratives. That all of these are well-intentioned is beside the point. Well-intentioned people have done some pretty unwise things throughout history. --SSBohio 07:59, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

VigilancePrime has been canvassing around this, as around so many issues , hardly the act of a good faith editor. I am extremely unhappy to not only have to put up with VPs abuse but also his canvassing his friends. This kind of behaviour is not acceptable, will an admin do something about it or will people just allow him to troll me off the site. Thanks, SqueakBox 18:23, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Having been on the receiving end of some of your comments, I'd view VP's action more as a case of victim notification than canvassing. Despite your insinuation, VP & I are not "friends;" However, I'm glad VP let me know about this because, while I don't agree with VP's methods, I agree that your actions have been problematic. --SSBohio 19:16, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I'll tell you one thing I find rather irritating right now, no offense, but it's that damn "thanks" in your signature. It's like, dude, what are you thanking me for? If you say "thanks" at the end of each one of your comments during a heated argument with a person, it makes it sound as if you think you've "won" something with each comment you make. Believe it or not, and some might disagree with me, but removing that "thanks" would really help ease some tension in your exchanges with people. Thanks, Equazcion •✗/C • 18:44, 16 Feb 2008 (UTC) (see what I mean?)

I agree. To thoroughly insult me, then thank me doesn't come across as polite, but rather as rubbing salt into the wound. I'd recommend saying thanks only when it appears not to be meant sarcastically. --SSBohio 19:16, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Not only that, but where does Squeak get off saying people are behaving hysterical. As far as I know, he can't see me on his monitor. How does he know one is hysterical, without seeing the person's face. Thanks :) Fighting for Justice (talk) 22:39, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Why doesn't someone start an RfC on this? —Whig (talk) 22:50, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Nobody wants to start an RfC because it's not really an effective process to resolve this kind of problem. It's not like SqueakBox just suddenly started having problems controlling his temper. There was an arbitration process a while back that resulted in him being on civility parole for a year. He was blocked 3 times for violating that parole. After he told me and I quote, "if you think there is anything frivolous about propmoting pedophilia perhaps you would care to explain it", he was asked by arbitrator Morven (talk · contribs) to get a grip and tone it down. A few weeks later there was the Haemo incident, Morven asked him to tone it down. A few weeks later, Guy assigned him as Pol64's mentor. The result was SqueakBox encouraging Pol64 to have SSB desysopped. And that's just the incidents I remember hearing about. There have been countless threads on his behaviour here and they always end up dying out because no admin has the guts to say "enough is enough". I can tell you exactly how an RfC will end up: the two conclusions will be "SqueakBox is unacceptably rude and uncivil. He should get a grip" and "deep down SqueakBox is a good chap and he often faces trolls and sockpuppets". And then nothing will happen and new ANI threads will appear periodically. Bottom line is that as long as we continue to tolerate crusaders which are fighting the good fight through unacceptable means, no ANI thread, RfC and I even suspect arbitration case will really make much of a difference. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 20:53, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Just for the record, I'm not an admin (though I'm open to being drafted). I think that Squeak was intending to encourage the desysopping of SGGH or Gonzo fan2007, but I'm not sure since it's 100% based on my recollections. Squeak has successfully advocated the banning of certain users based on their supposed status as pedophiles, pro-pedophile activists, or sockpuppets. At least one of these accusations has been erroneous, based on my investigation. I wonder how many other contributors have been driven away by the civility and abuse issues raised here. --SSBohio 07:59, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Userbox!

No, not that sort of drama. Just a userbox for all you guys.

User:Dihydrogen Monoxide/Wikidrama
Cheers, dihydrogen monoxide (H₂0) 03:00, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Ooooooooooooooooooooooh that one's for me! Thanks :) Merkinsmum 03:19, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Me plz. Will 03:39, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

The real question is, can we put this on other users' pages as needed? :) MastCell  04:02, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

(outdent)Adding it to my userpage now :-) Wildthing61476 (talk) 04:13, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

That is just awesome. VigilancePrime (talk) 04:57, 16 February 2008 (UTC) :-D

Agreed. To my subpage! Malinaccier (talk) 15:07, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Sweet, I was looking for the right place to advertise my userboxes. Now I know that it's Misplaced Pages:ANI 72.193.12.47 (talk) 16:19, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Works for me!

This user is tired of hearing about "lieking Mudkipz".

-Jéské 23:18, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Can you make one for the opposite point of view as well?  :) Antandrus (talk) 21:43, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I know this is sad, but I can see a range of T-shirts being made lol Merkinsmum 00:57, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Deletion of pop culture lists

WillOakland (talk · contribs) has been removing "in pop culture" sections from articles unilaterally. Charles Stewart (talk) 09:00, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

That's right. WillOakland (talk) 09:01, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

He also took it upon himself to do this . Charles Stewart (talk) 09:09, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Yep, I changed the passive "could be" (by someone else, it always seems) to "please do." —Preceding unsigned comment added by WillOakland (talk • contribs) 09:14, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I urge you to discuss these removals on the talk pages of the applicable articles, as large-scale removal of such sections generally results in a widespread edit war, which is very much unwelcome.--Father Goose (talk) 09:27, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

This edit summmary, being WillOakland's third edit since registering, and the user's general behavior strongly suggests this is a sock account.--Father Goose (talk) 09:38, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree Will seems pretty familiar with the swing of things which does suggest a previous incarnation. Though that in itself is not an issue unless it was a banned person. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:49, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

This WillOakland is also deleting large amounts of information in Trivia sections as well as taking it upon his/herself to change the trivia template without discussion so it appears that damage is being done on a large scale in different sections. I am talking about referenced items being removed unilaterally not long after a trivia tag is applied also. I really think Admins need to intervene with this person. UB65 (talk) 09:54, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I honestly did not imagine that a mere change in tone of the template would be a problem. WillOakland (talk) 10:09, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Trivia and "In pop culture lists" are almost always bad news - they trivialise important and serious subjects and make wikipedia look stupid and tacky. The pop culture list creators make the mistake of saying their subject has something to do with their pop culture item, when plainly it is the other way around *only*. If some video game has the Eiffel Tower in it for example, that is not a fact about the tower but a fact about the game (and thus should not go on the tower page). Further, their inherent listy nature (rather than seamless prose) is a major detraction. People don't read lists, but (bored teenage?) editors love adding their personal favourite pop culture tid bits. GAH!!!

But my rant above is not what ANI is for. Thus, let me say that WillOakland would likely have a better impact on wikipedia if he went about these removals in a more consultative rather than combative fashion. Sudden removal can really annoys people (who otherwise might have been persuadable), entrenches positions in place of reason, and starts edit wars. If he made a clearer case for removal first, and brought people with him, he'd have more luck, create less agro, and improve wikipedia. regards --Merbabu (talk) 10:22, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

PS, removing trivial trivia and pop culture additions when they appear is a lot easier than removing established lists which require more consultation. That's where your more likely to get quick results.--Merbabu (talk) 10:26, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

• I have reviewed some of these edits - Kermit the frog, Leonard Mccoy, Dilbert, parsec. He goes further than I would but they seem to be reasonable edits made with some care, rather than unthinking slashes. Colonel Warden (talk) 10:25, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

rg ::PS, Ah, maybe that was what he was thinking in the case that I was mostly concerned with. The information had been a part of the article for some time as far as I can tell and then somebody added the trivia tag a few days ago and so boom, he removes all of it. UB65 (talk) 10:33, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

FYI at that point I was just going down the list of article that link to Family Guy. WillOakland (talk) 10:40, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

That's exactly what I guessed you were doing. FWIW, my method was to review your contributions and then look at the few articles which interested me. Colonel Warden (talk) 10:47, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

• It really boils down to retaining the information rather than just deleting it. Incorporating the information into the article takes a few minutes but is much better than losing it by cutting. I agree with Merbabu's statement:

...would likely have a better impact on Misplaced Pages if he went about these removals in a more consultative rather than combative fashion. Sudden removal can really annoys people (who otherwise might have been persuadable), entrenches positions in place of reason, and starts edit wars. If he made a clearer case for removal first, and brought people with him, he'd have more luck, create less agro, and improve Misplaced Pages. regards --Merbabu (talk)

PS, articles do look way better with the information incorporated into the article rather than set apart as tivia and pop lists , etc..

UB65 (talk) 11:23, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

• In the end, it boils down to "does this information enhance the reader's understanding of the subject?" If the answer is no, then excise it. After all, this is (or was last time I looked) an encyclopedia. (And if the answer is yes, include it in the main article, rather than in a separate section). Black Kite 11:53, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

• Having done it a few times before, it is not that easy or quick to integrate trivia into prose. MickMacNee (talk) 14:14, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like Burntsauce reincarnated. Baseball Bugs 15:35, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Obviously, disruptive editing. I'll start to revert these. This kind of disruptive editing does call for administrative intervention. We've been through this nonsense several times before already. If the user won't stop he needs to be blocked. Wikidemo (talk) 15:58, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't support sockpuppets of banned editors, but I fully support the outright, unilateral removal of poorly written, indiscriminate pop culture sections. When there's mostly bathwater and very little baby, sometimes it's best to start from scratch.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 16:04, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

On the other hand, you can only prune an overgrown bush when you've actually got a bush. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 16:08, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Please do not simply revert these. In some cases, you have reverted original research and unsourced speculation right back into the article. By all means put back specific references if they're notable, significant, encyclopedic, and well-sourced. While I disapprove of this guy's methods, on the whole his edits are improving the encyclopedia. And that should be the bottom line. Nandesuka (talk) 16:06, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Agree with the Fat Man and Nandesuka; such content is rarely useful, and if it could have been integrated into the article, it should have been. Reverting all of them makes no more sense than deleting them to begin with did. And I'm not comfortable with logic like "sounds like" referring to previous banned users. Haven't we learned? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:08, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Of course I will simply revert these. I am looking through them and selectively reverting - a number of the deletions are clearly inappropriate. In many other cases there is no useful content there so I'm leaving them as is. It's not up to me to chase behind disruptive editors with a broom cleaning up their messes. The editor admits here that he is conducting an "intervention" on Misplaced Pages. Again, we have been through this ridiculous thing before, and it resulted in arbcom cases, administrators being de-sysopped, and so on. We don't need that kind of thing here. That is not what this project is about. Wikidemo (talk) 16:11, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Nor is this project about defending the inclusion of unsightly, unencylopedic garbage in articles. I have no comment on the editor but generally support the edits.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 16:24, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, actually, it is. Keeping up the encyclopedia always involves being on the lookout for people who are more interested in making points than actually contributing. I'm not defending bad content, just dealing with a disruptive editor who is causing unnecessary drama. Again, we have been through this issue before. The issue has been settled already, which is why we have a guideline on the subject. This kind of nonsense always causes trouble. Wikidemo (talk) 16:31, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

That's unfair to the editor. What point is this editor trying to make other than every article should be readable, well-organized and well-written? The editor is greatly improving the readability and presentability of articles in a minimum amount of time; I have a problem scolding anyone for that.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 16:45, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I'm done. I've looked through and carefully read most of this editors content deletions over the past few days, and reverted perhaps 1/3 of them. As a rule I've reverted when I saw that the deletions eliminated a substantial amount of encyclopedic material, and let them be in cases where there was very little or nothing salvageable. One thing that he, and some other users, gravely misunderstand is that many of these articles (e.g. Kermet the Frog) are pop culture phenomena to begin with, so that the subject's place in popular culture is part and parcel of their notability. For an actor to participate in popular culture (e.g. taking a role, voicing a character) is what they do. An important event such as the Tiananmen Square massacre is important not because people were killed and jailed but because it reshaped culture. To actually deal with the articles this editor disrupted would take days...and that's what we do here, deal with and improve articles. To go about deleting content you don't like is a lazy, pointless exercise that does more harm than good. If you don't like trivia, edit articles for real but don't come here to cause trouble. Wikidemo (talk) 16:37, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Deleting useless information is "editing articles for real." The text you restored contains encyclopedic gems like: In October 2005, Kermit embarked on a tour visiting 50 "incredibly fun - and some just plain strange - places around the world to celebrate my 50th year in show business." You're pouncing on an editor and calling him names for trying to keep articles free of this nonsense.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 16:45, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Quoting a piece of material you object to is besides the point. If he had wanted to delete that particular line he could have. He didn't though. Instead, he deleted a bunch of other material that another editor partly restored, including some encyclopedic content such as "On Kermit's 50th anniversary in show business, the United States Postal Service released a set of new stamps with photos of Kermit and some of his fellow Muppets on them" and "A statue of Henson and Kermit was erected on the campus of Henson's alma mater, the University of Maryland, College Park in 2003." I did not touch the Kermit article, and nobody deleted or restored the section you quoted. Deleting large swaths of content as "trivia" is a disruptive activity that serves no valid purpose and sets us back instead of forward. It is counter to guidelines. Please don't encourage people to make disruptive edits. Wikidemo (talk) 17:40, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Including large swaths of content as trivia is also a disruptive activity. Simply reverting removals of it is even more disruptive. It's a very good thing you selectively reverted them, rather than just blindly reverted everything. ⇒SWATJester 04:02, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

No, good faith edits aren't disruptive nor are rollbacks of disruptive edits. When someone makes a large number of improper edits all at once, the simplest thing to do is simply restore the old version and I wouldn't fault anyone for that. But with trivia it's worth the extra few minutes to see if there is anything worth saving or not because 90% of all the content in trivia sections is usually useless.Wikidemo (talk) 19:41, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

It's too bad people choose to just delete content instead of fixing it. I know it's easier to delete...that's plain enough, but some effort needs to be put into improving articles by integrating content that belongs. No doubt, some content needs to go but it's a little lazy to just delete everything unilaterally. Put a little work into it and you end up with a better article, which is why we're here! RxS (talk) 18:05, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

So we've got a red-linked user, brand new on February 5th, and his first activity is to immediately start to whack trivia lists. Sounds like hosiery of some kind, eh? Aside from that, the meataxe approach contributes nothing. It's the lazy way, the "I don't like it so no one else can have it" attitude. Because actually working on the articles would require a time investment and would not be nearly as much fun as chopping. I feel like I'm repeating myself here. Oh, yeh... words like or similar to what I said about the now-banned user called Burntsauce, whose attitude and approach were similar (though maybe not identical) to this current red-linked user. Baseball Bugs 20:13, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

It's worth pointing out to Mr. Redlink that the reason Burntsauce was banned was not because he deleted trivia lists, as such, but because he didn't care what anyone else thought about it and wouldn't take any corrective action to work with the wikipedia community. And Mr. Redlink's most recent edit as of this writing does not look encouraging in that regard either, with its "I'm right and everybody else is wrong" stance. Baseball Bugs 20:27, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

He's already been warned, so the above is overkill, as of the moment. Baseball Bugs 20:31, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Just so we're clear... yes, trivia sections should be dealt with... with a scalpel, not a meataxe. Baseball Bugs 20:33, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Swatjester, removing large blocks of material deliberately on the basis of ones personal opinion about content without prior discussion is vandalism; that is not the way toward cooperative editing and is destructive of the encyclopedia. (As you say, the same would apply to similarly reckless additions--and we revert them as spam with hesitation, and block for them to prevent further damage). Vandalism can be reverted. If one doesnt think it vandalism, then it's B as the first step in BRD, and the second step is R. Either way, BB would have been fully justified in just reverting back these deletions, and suggesting that if it were constructively intended, they be done more reasonably. I'm not all that happy with the entire principle of BRD, which i think leads to just this sort of problem, but if B is justified, so is R, as a necessary part of it. The rule does not read BD. The Bold may be necessary to provoke the discussion, and the R shows it is not obvious, and lets the discussion proceed in a hopefully peaceful spirit. Its the subsequent insistence of repeating opposed Bold moves that turns it into edit warring. The plain meaning of "It's a very good thing you ... " is as an attempt at intimidation. DGG (talk) 06:33, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

No, editing pages with the intent of damaging Misplaced Pages is vandalism, editing pages because one believes that they should be one particular way and disagreeing with everyone else is disruptive and/or tendentious editing. Neither is acceptable, but calling good faith but disruptive editing vandalism is not an assumption of good faith, and tends to engender bad faith in the person you accuse of being a vandal. I am also of the belief that while "In popular culture" sections are bad, but that wholesale deletion of such sections just because they include a "referenced in Family Guy, South Park or the Simpsons" entry is a bad way to go about it (personally, I'd like to see an external PopCultureWiki developed that houses these sections, since it is occasionally interesting to read them even if they're not encyclopedic). Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 01:22, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

That's the best idea I've heard all day. Just as there is a separate wikisource and wikiquotes (the latter filled with unattributed stuff), there could be a wikitrivia, and then the stuff that's either questionable or "unencyclopedic" could be moved there, and then theoretically everyone would be happy. What would it take to get something like that going? Baseball Bugs 14:20, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I vote we call it 'WikiPop'! We could then port over the WikiPop deletionist editors' versions to yet another version, called 'DietWikiPop'! (end humor.) ThuranX (talk) 14:26, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I also think this is a superb idea. I would totally contribute there.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 14:30, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Nihil novi on Spiritualism

I want to flag up a persistent pattern of reversion by Nihil novi on the Spiritualism topic. , , , , .

As one proponent in the development of the page, I am doing in an attempt to "do the right thing" and out of a wish to avoid flaming any further fires by dropping vandalism or WP:3RR warning on an other editors' talk pages.

I am perfectly happy for material to be removed from the topic that others do not feel is supported by the references and citations provided. I am cognizant of the relative policies and need for consensus but I have made the point that if they wish to remove offending content, they can do so with reverting entirely good reference formating ], improved images , or versus and layouts . Indeed, the removal of the Feminist, Abolitionists or religious principles sections is being done with any discussion and that where references were requested for Post-WWII section they were provided .

My feeling is that this a particular situation is being contrived with two or more editors performing identical and total revisions as a provocation, e.g.; Nihil novi and Anthon.Eff , etc and that the reverting have now become "personal" rather than topic related. There can be no rational reason for removing formatted references, improved images etc.

I offer that the edits I have done stand as good and I would appreciate practical assistance in this matter as it has gone beyond a mere content issue. --Lucyintheskywithdada (talk) 12:06, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

A quick response. User:Lucyintheskywithdada is doubling the size of the article with one edit, in the process removing preexisting text and images. Concerns have been raised that she has copied and pasted material verbatim from websites (if interested, here's where she was told), and that her "sources" don't say the things she claims they say (some discussion of that here). She has therefore been asked to bring in a little new material at a time, to give us a chance to build consensus, both with regard to her additions and her deletions. So far, she's not listening. --Anthon.Eff (talk) 18:11, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Anthon is the other party engaged in persistent reversions not just on this page but also over the mass deletion of an infobox from every page it was on. An infobox which he referred for deletion and which failed and so he responded by repeatedly removing every example of it. See 31 Jan to 2 Feb .

Anthon refers to a paraphrased section of a book I quoted ON A TALK PAGE to support the use of the term spiritualism in philosophy as having an entirely different use. (This has since been accepted and included in a disambiguation page).

Anthon repeats what he knows not to be true, as we discussed this before, by suggesting that it "came from a website" he found. An assertion I have clarified for him in discussion ... . I took it from a copy of the book, hence the paraphrasing. What he seeks to do here is avoid reference to the fact that the quote entirely contradicted his assertion of the lack of connection between spiritualism and E. B. Tylor.

I want to underline that, in essence, the issue here is of WP:BIAS with two or three editors wishing to pursue the generic term in use for the American movement only. I gave the example of the Football page but no one seemed to want to discuss it. Only two editors, Anthon and I formally discussion in move on the proper admin move page. --Lucyintheskywithdada (talk) 10:46, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

User:Martinphi removal of POV tag

Martinphi removed a POV tag at Yi Ching. Despite being asked to replace it, he has not done so. Instead he has place a citation template there (my edit was cited). I do not want to edit war with this user who also wikistalked me to the Project Misplaced Pages:Words_to_avoid and reverted me there.I'd be grateful if someone could help. Mccready (talk) 23:53, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

At the moment, this is not a drawn out edit war, and does not need admin attention. I would suggest politely pointing out that the POV tag should remain so long as one editor thinks the POV is present. That said, I also think you two should just stay away from each other and each other's talk pages: use the community talk pages. The Evil Spartan (talk) 01:31, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

User has been trolling on multiple articles which I happen to watch. He makes highly POV, pseudoscientific, or non/against consensus edits, then reverts, then goes to your talk page to scold as if you've broken policy (he apprently learned a small bit from all his blocks, but his basic manner remains unchanged). In the current instance, he is acting as though the whole article is POV because the lead does not mention criticism; the criticism at the time consisted of one sentence. This in spite of an {{expansion}} tag on the section. POV tag was removed per general consensus that it shouldn't be there. And I placed no {{cite}} tags on the article. Look at his block log and edit history Mccready (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). ——Martin ☎ Ψ Φ—— 05:11, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Martinphi is correct in removing the neutrality tag, IMO. Mccready has not explained what aspect of the article's neutrality is in dispute. He has been asked to state the neutrality problem in respect to: WP:NPOV, WP:VER, and WP:NOR. This he has failed to do . Sunray (talk) 06:49, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Could an admin now have a look at this. Both and User:Sunray have reverted the POV tag despite advice above in this thread and despite advice from another user on the talkpage. of Yi Ching. User:Sunray is also inserting OR. I have requested an apology from Martinphi for his inflammatory, uncivil and wrong accusation of trolling. Mccready (talk) 08:58, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I didn't remove it again. ——Martin ☎ Ψ Φ—— 01:00, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I've restored the tag, but only under the condition that you hash out your arguments on the talk page, and then abide by the consensus. If you believe more of the community needs to be privy to the argument, try WP:RFC. The Evil Spartan (talk) 09:34, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

This should be referred to arbitration enforcement. Martin is under restrictions for making disruptive edits per Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Martinphi-ScienceApologist. ScienceApologist (talk) 12:53, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, just a bit disturbing.

I came across IP 72.130.32.142 making some death threats during their vandalism, as seen in their contributions. I have blocked them for 48 hours for the time being, and come here to ANI as I honestly do not come across these everyday, and am unsure of where else to turn/go. What is the next step (if any) in this situation? Jmlk17 00:25, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, 99% chance it's just run-of-the-mill vandalism. If you feel like reporting it to the authorities, go ahead, but there's almost no chance it's serious, and the authorities might not be able to do much anyway. Then again, I might be biased; my friends and I used to joke around all the time in high school that we'd kill each other, and my one time best-friend got caught doing so on a webpage and was hauled before a judge... The Evil Spartan (talk) 01:36, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I think any death threat that names a specific individual should probably be reported. Reporting to the ISP is easy enough, but can anyone narrow that IP's location down further than all of southern California? Someguy1221 (talk) 01:46, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Narrowed it down some to Orange, California. 33.7949, -117.8410. I think that is specific enough. The same search came up with "Is proxy: false" and a Certainty rate of 99%. Regards, — Save_Us † 01:58, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Just to make sure, you're referring to the city and not the county? Someguy1221 (talk) 02:04, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the search resulted in the parameter "city: Orange". — Save_Us † 02:09, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Alright, I've contacted the police and the ISP's abuse address. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:54, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Ugh, we should have coordinated our timing, I've done the same. — Save_Us † 03:01, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Question: where did you get this place information? It isn't on the WHOIS and it gives a probability (I would like to have that, as I know WHOIS is often wrong). The Evil Spartan (talk) 03:55, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Geobytes. I've found it mostly reliable for static IP addresses, but Geobytes is mostly useless for open proxies or dynamic IP addresses, which results will be misleading. — Save_Us † 04:40, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

(slightly offtopic) I just tried Geobytes with a static IP and it got the country right, but the city was way off. Ros0709 (talk) 10:36, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Really? hmm... awkward, maybe something changed with the IP? — Save_Us † 03:57, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

BetacommandBot is malfunctioning again

This discussion has been moved to Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Betacommand#BetacommandBot is malfunctioning again. 15:34, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Crum375 meatpuppeting on WP:LAYOUT

SlimVirgin has been edit warring on the layout guideline page. She wants an expansive view of "see also" sections. She started nitpicking the section in December. Earlier this week she made an undiscussed change and it was reverted. Today she inserted disputed text. The text she proposed two days earlier on the talk page had ZERO positive remarks before she edited the page. Two editors told her this was disputed text., . Her text was removed, and she reverted.. She was called out for edit warring and inserting non-consensus text again . When it was removed again, she made a disruptive WP:POINT removal of the admonition not to make see also into a link farm.. This material has, in one form or another, been in the guideline for nearly two and a half years. When this edit was reverted as POINTy, rather than go through another revert, she had Crum375 come by and perform the edit for her..

This pattern of gaming revert wars by SlimVirgin and Crum375 is well known. Crum375 has never edited this page. Crum375 has never edited this talk page. Quite simply, Crum375 has no dog in that fight and is there to act as a warring proxy so SlimVirgin doesn't cross 3RR. This behavior is the definition of meatpuppetry. This behavior is deliberately gaming 3RR to make a disruptive pointy edit.

Something needs to be done to break up this tag team meatpuppetry. SchmuckyTheCat (talk) 08:29, February 17, 2008 (UTC)

Admin action suggested? Any misuse of admin powers? Do you seriously want them blocked for meatpuppetry? (I strongly object to the removal of the section that represents a long-standing consensus as well, as would most people, I think, but seriously - meatpuppetry?) Relata refero (talk) 10:02, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Clearly no abuse of admin powers, but I have to say I'm curious about the pattern of editing you describe. I've seen other similar reports about these editors; I'd be interested to know what the story is here. -- ChrisO (talk) 11:30, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I have that page, along with most policies and guidelines, on my watchlist, and have been following the issues there. I happen to believe that "See also" contents depend on editor discretion and talk page consensus, not on rigid rules. I made an edit to that effect, noting my opinion in my edit summary. This was not based on any communication or coordination with anyone. If Schmucky has a problem with my edit, the article's talk page is a better place to address it than here. Crum375 (talk) 13:42, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

SchmuckyTheCat is in fact saying he has a problem with what he perceives as meat-puppetry, rather than merely a problem with that specific page. The problem is that shared interests leads to the appearance of meat-puppetry among people who agree and the appearance of wiki-stalking among those who disagree. One must AGF as much as possible or one will see conspiracies everywhere. WAS 4.250 (talk) 14:47, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that clarification, Crum. -- ChrisO (talk) 15:33, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

There are (at least) three issues here. First, as an experienced editor, SlimVirgin must know that WP:3RR doesn't allow her to revert three times, particularly without consensus. (In this spirit the rule does not convey an entitlement to revert three times each day, nor does it endorse reverting as an editing technique.) After SV reached three reverts, Crum375 appeared. Second, SV often claims "stalking" whenever someone else edits an article for the first time; Crum375 had never edited WP:GTL before. Third, this type of editing is occurring on other guideline and policy pages, for example WP:CITE, where SV even started a section heading naming another editor to discuss sockpuppetry (subsequently changed when I pointed out SV's violation of WP:AGF and WP:TALK ). There appears to be a double standard; the WP:3RR violations and SV's accusations of "wikistalking" and sockpuppetry should stop, and extra eyes are needed on these policy and guideline pages, where ownership tendencies are apparent (reference the numerous past similar issues at WP:V, WP:RS and others). Policy and guideline pages benefit from stability, yet SV edit wars on them to instate her preferred versions. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:56, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Crum375 and SlimVirgin have established this pattern dozens of times before. Edit wars are bad. Meatpuppetry, even the appearance of it, is bad. I don't think it is out of line for administrator intervention to tell these two to stay out of each others edit wars. If one sees the other in "trouble", they can use the talk page to gain consensus rather than continue the poor behavior of edit warring. Two simple and well established rules: 1. Don't edit war. 2. Don't edit war for your friends. Why should this pair be immune to that? SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

I think we should assume good faith here, the Crum375 and SlimVirgin accounts do overlap a lot in their editing interests, and invariably back each other up in editing disputes. However, these accounts are probably just two close friends who talk to each other, not the same person. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:51, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Tim, I'm not alleging they are the same person. Close friends who talk to each other and whose interests overlap should not be tag team edit warring. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

Ah, sorry, I misread your post. I agree that since Crum375 has never made an edit to that page or its talkpage before intervening in this current dispute to revert for his friend, the claim that he "had it on his watchlist" is highly unlikely. I believe that he either followed another editor's contributions to this page, or was contacted directly and asked to intervene. Any other hypothesis is pushing AGF to the point of credulity. Therefore if revert-warring on this guideline continues, SlimVirgin and Crum375 should be regarded as a single account. Tim Vickers (talk) 19:09, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Great. Here's witchhunt #3141529. Will 19:22, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Requiring editors to play fair isn't a witch hunt. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

That Crum is Slim's meatpuppet most of the time, I think has been said by various people, many times before. Good luck getting anything done about it, though :) 'Meatpuppet' is a controversial word if you think about it, and it's usually used towards new users or those who work on a very limited type of articles. Merkinsmum 21:21, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Slim's postings are far more subtle, cogent, and bright than Crum's, so I just can't imagine they're the same person. There's too much stylistic difference. The duckling editing is obvious—Crum will show up whenever she does, on disputes. I basically agree with Merkinsmum and earlier comments: most everybody knows he follows her around, and that they must communicate off-site (which isn't disallowed).

But what to do? Admit they have a six-revert rule, and...? *Shrugs.* I mean, really, what can you do? You can't police that stuff.

I think it more important that people know Crum's signature. Slim remains herself: an intelligent, informed, and sometimes maddening presence on policy. Crum is a duckling—ignore his edits, because it's always "per her." That's my policy. Marskell (talk) 22:35, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

"what can you do? You can't police that stuff." If this behavior is recognized and it's bad, then it's blockable. It's disruptive, it's pointy, it's 3RR, it's gaming. 3RR is an electric fence, not an entitlement. If Crum and Slim are acting together and they go over 3RR, collectively, then block one or both. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

Are you an admin? Want to watch their edits together? Block on the first breach of 3RR? Feel free. Marskell (talk) 22:58, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Here's a recent example from Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources/Noticeboard - Animal Liberation Front references, Crum375's sole contribution to the discussion was a post that began with - "I think SV is right" Tim Vickers (talk) 22:57, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I guess my point was lost in the shuffle; even without Crum's additions, SlimVirgin edit wars on policy and guideline pages. WP:3RR is not an invitation for SV to revert three times; talk page discussion was underway, and there was no consensus for her version. The double standard troubles regular editors like me. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:09, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

The solution is aptly described in User:Dmcdevit/On edit warring: "Block for edit warring, not 3RR." The double standard troubles me too. Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 03:42, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

It's rather unfortunate to see SandyGeorgia, TimVickers, and Marskell join forces yet again for another attack, and somewhat ironic given the claims of meatpuppetry. Sandy, I thought you and I had agreed to stay out of each other's way. There were 11 editors on that guideline's talk page wanting a change; just because you didn't get your own way doesn't mean there was a conspiracy to deprive you of it. SlimVirgin 05:09, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Nice dodge SV. You're defending yourself by putting Sandy on offense based on the content dispute. What is at issue here is the behavior of serial tag-team edit-warring. Care to comment on the behavior? SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

Schmucky, if anyone's behavior needs correction it's yours: you start an ANI thread about me for having posted an edit expressing my view to an article on my watchlist, with an appropriate edit summary. If you don't like my edit, the proper place to address it is on the article's talk page, not here. Crum375 (talk) 05:32, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not taking your bait to defend myself Crum. You didn't use the talk page. You dived straight into an edit war to defend SV. This is a pattern that has occurred dozens of times, and I'm calling you on it. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

I wasn't "defending" anyone, and I didn't see a need to add anything to the talk page, as my edit summary said all that was needed to explain my view. You, on the other hand, attacked me for my edit, with no evidence to back your assertions, and a complete lack of good faith. That is behavior that requires correction. Crum375 (talk) 06:09, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Schmucky, you made 3 reverts of your own in about 10 hours. Takes two to tango. Gimmetrow 06:21, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

No, in this case it took 3. But this is a single instance where I am involved with those two. What I pointed out, and what several others have agreed with, is that this is pattern behavior by SV and Crum. That's why it's an incident needing community attention, and not just a one-off dispute. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

And I'm saying that you have your own reversion issues in this very dispute, and you were the only one reverting SV. Gimmetrow 07:07, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Is this going anywhere? Everyone knows that Crum follows SV around, everyone knows that SV tends to over-revert because she never "loses" editwars while Crum's around, everyone, apparently except Schmucky, knows that nothing's ever going to be done about it, because its not technically illegal, and because SV's paid dues. Can I close this before people begin snapping at each other worse than they are already? Relata refero (talk) 08:56, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

(od) As he contacted me, I must admit that I came down rather hard on Crum. I don't suggest ignoring the sum of his contributions here and I don't mean to denigrate mainspace contributions he has made independent of Slim. But there is zero daylight between these two editors on policy, and when they do run up to more than three reverts in tandem, it should be called out. (Gimme does point out the obvious: you can't have an edit war alone, Schmucky. My own record, admittedly, is not umblemished on P&Gs.)

"It's rather unfortunate to see SandyGeorgia, TimVickers, and Marskell join forces yet again for another attack." I must address this. TimV and I rarely interact and it would be hard to construct an argument that we conspire. I do, often, wind up on discussion pages with Sandy. But I never, ever follow her to revert disputes. I have never gone to the medical articles she works on, for instance, even when I know she's having difficulty. I make a point of not doing so, precisely because people view us as friends. I've actually been watching the LAYOUT dispute unfold on my watchlist, and haven't commented for this reason. It would be wise, Crum, to adopt a similar strategy. Marskell (talk) 09:07, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you Marskell for your partial retraction. I believe that editing Misplaced Pages should be a fun process — I can't see another good reason for investing a lot of effort over a long time for free. If I see an issue that I have a strong opinion about, anywhere on this site, I believe I should be able to contribute, regardless of who else has reverted or edited the entry previously. I do agree that canvassing of others for help, e.g. by putting out a call on IRC or elsewhere, is wrong, especially if the others have no particular interest in the issue. I don't see a problem with like-minded editors working on a given entry, however, if this is something they are interested in and enjoy doing. Crum375 (talk) 15:54, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

The problem, Crum, is that you seem to suddenly have a strong opinion whenever Slim gets into a revert dispute. Schmucky is right, no doubt: a look at your contribs would turn up dozens of examples of this sort. Between you, she, and Jayjg, there's likely hundreds. A reasonable person is going to call this gaming of 3RR.

Simply offering an opinion in support of a wiki-friend is not something I have a problem with, as far as it goes. It's what human beings tend to do. But reverting has specific policy implications. I'd advise, bland as it sounds, that you pause and ask yourself whether you should revert to Slim the next time you notice something like this (or have it pointed out). Maybe, instead, you should just move along and leave it. As I've just discussed with you off-site, I don't think you're insensible to the fact that people view you and Slim as tandem reverters, and I don't think you're unconcerned. Marskell (talk) 19:16, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Marskell, you need to stop the poison. This is one of several poisonous threads you've either started about me or gleefully joined in. It has been going on ever since I opposed you changing the content policies many months ago. Since then I've had nothing but the drip, drip, drip of toxicity from you, SandyGeorgia, and Tim, and from one or two other of your friends, but especially from you and SG. I would say there's much less harm in following someone's edits to articles than turning up, as you do, to attack people simply because your friend disagrees with them about a content issue or admin action. If I'm wrong about this, I hope you'll prove me wrong in future.

That's hopefully all I have to say about this. Crum is a good editor, and a kind, decent, and intelligent human being, who does not deserve the abuse you've heaped on him in this thread. SlimVirgin 19:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Block review

User:81.145.242.67 (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

This user has just been brought to my attention. He has a long history of vandalism and unconstructive editing. WHOIS shows this is an ADSL connection, which I believe to be static, but the pattern of edits is more than persuasive that this is one editor. He has had numerous warnings, and stops when warned only to return with the same pattern of editing. My view is that we could do with a rest from this and have blocked him for a week (I was considering a month) to prevent further disruption and to bring home that his style of editing is unhelpful. There has already been discussion between two editors here, but my opinion is that this cannot continue. Would anyone care to review this block to make sure I'm not out of line please? --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 13:35, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

That's a BT IP and probably dynamic. With those you're better off just blocking for short periods. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 13:39, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

IPs in the ranges 81.145.240 - 81.145.242 are dynamically assigned by BT/AOL and best served by blocks lasting 31 hours at the very most. -- zzuuzz 20:41, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

BetaCommandBot and NFCC10c - New discussion page

This discussion has been moved to Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Betacommand#BetaCommandBot and NFCC10c - New discussion page. 15:34, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Block review

Since this is my first block, I want to make sure I did it per protoccol. I've blocked Bamford (talk · contribs) for 24 hours as he's fresh off a block for disruptive editing and started blanking pages and and removing tags he's the subject of and . Of course, if I was worng, feel free to unblock. MBisanz 15:17, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I added my $.02 on the above thread about Bamford, however this comment here makes me wonder if 24 hours wasn't long enough. Good catch those for at least the 24 hours, some cooling off is definitely needed, especially with being warned about the removal of the COI tag. Wildthing61476 (talk) 15:25, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Support block. I suggest to anyone else reviewing this to have a read through his talk page, and a look at his contribution history. He's also made a specific threat to evade any block using different IPs . We don't need this kind of hostile, disruptive editor here. Antandrus (talk) 15:26, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Yea, over at Misplaced Pages:COIN#National_Policing_Improvement_Agency, we've caught him or meatpuppets using over 30 different IP addresses. I'm beginning to wondering if this isn't a long-term abuser whose figured out how to spoof an NPIA IP address. MBisanz 15:35, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd have blocked at least 72 hours. The short ones seem to have no effect. — Rlevse • Talk • 16:33, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure why we WP:AGF with people who are obviously just here to make trouble. This should have been indef IMHO. JuJube (talk) 18:00, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind and will try to be around tomorrow when the block comes off to watch things. My rationale was that if he is associated with a semi-governmental law enforcement body (what WHOIS said), we really don't ned them getting mad at wikipedia. But he's obviously used up his good faith and hopefully knows it by now. MBisanz 01:13, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

His block is over in a bit over five hours. He's made quite a mess of his talk page; it's rather bizarre. If he goes at it again, I say block him for a week and blank the talk page except for a fresh note and then protect it. Cheers, Jack Merridew 11:53, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

User:Mattisse

User:Mattisse continues to attribute to me actions I've never done, attitudes I've never had, and opinions I never held or voiced. Her behaviour has escalated over the last two weeks. It seems like she is either unable or unwilling to check edit histories, and instead holds me reponsible as a scapegoat for any activity she disapproves of in the vicinity of the article Uvs Nuur, no matter who actually did what. A listing of the diffs disproving her numerous false accusations would fill several pages by now, but can be provided if necessary.

Her crusade began after I reverted two of her changes to Uvs Nuur (change a, revert a, change b bordering on vandalism, revert b). Before the second revert, I initiated a conversation on her talk page. Although I basically agreed with her intention to split the information about the Uvs Nuur basin from the lake Uvs Nuur, her responses turned increasingly hostile and accusatory, blaming me for a merge that another user had performed a year ago among other things. Other editors tried to explain to her what had really happened, which eventually resulted in an apology, which I accepted. Unfortunately, her false accusations didn't stop after that. After a while she even retracted her apology, for reason that in reality I had nothing at all to do with. She kept accusing me of "unilateral actions" that either other people were responsible for or that never even happened.

After all normal reasoning didn't result in any change, I formally warned her to stop the badmouthing. in her responses, she didn't seem to understand the problem, and tried to present herself as the victim. Other editors tried to talk sense into her, but without success. Caught in her assumed role as the "innocent victim", she continued to attack me with unsubstantiated accusations. At the same time, she announced she would leave the topic for others to edit, even though nobody had asked her to do that.

A number of editors have participated in editing the related articles recently. That activity also triggered some content disputes. I am not directly involved in those content disputes myself, mainly because I haven't formed a final opinion yet on the matters involved. Other than adding some information on the lake, I've primarily done minor formal edits to the related articles. Most of what I did in the respective discussions was to ask questions. The latest episode of those debates has evolved on Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Central Asia#Trying to make sense of the Uvs Nuur situation. This discussion was overshadowed by an independent user conduct conflict between two other editors. When I tried to get the discussion back on topic, Mattisse took that as an opportunity to attack me once more, as if the uncivil behaviour of another editor had been mine.

Although I have no idea what Mattisse is trying to accomplish with all that hostility, I don't see any sign of her stopping any time soon. After I and several other editors have exhausted our good will in trying to talk with her, I have now finally to ask for admin support. Sorry for the lengthy explanations, and thanks for any constructive ideas. --Latebird (talk) 16:59, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I've interacted with Mattisse on occasions prior to this event (which I have no knowledge of) - I don't mean to come to an assumed position where I am "protecting" her, but in consideration of the much effort you've already put into this statement, could you provide some diffs for the turning responses which were becoming "...increasingly hostile and accusatory, blaming me for a merge that another user had performed a year ago among other things". I know this case is already pretty apparent, but would appreciate some further diffs for clarification, even though we have a sufficient amount of other arguments being presented here, the additional elements can help for the conclusion. Thank you. Rudget. 17:08, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Her user talk page below our initial conversation contains a sizeable chunk of that stuff. Interestingly, in her very first response, she already suggested to "have an RFC over it" (over naming questions that I wasn't actually interested in at that time). In my next contribution I stated that I'd support a split of the topics. A little later she claimed "I see you have merged many articles I wrote", which is utter nonsense. It just went downhill from there. Other relevant discussions can be found at the following locations:

• Talk:Uvs Nuur
• Talk:Uvs Nuur Basin
• Talk:Ubsunur Hollow Biosphere Reserve
• Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Central Asia (starting here)
• my user page (specifically: User Talk:Latebird#Please do not make unilateral decisions without consensus)

Fortunately, most of the article talk pages (and article edit histories) are not very long, so that it's relatively easy to find most evidence. But of course, I'll be happy to provide other diffs as required to clear up specific questions. --Latebird (talk) 18:05, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not all are sure what it is you're asking for. The options which appear open to me are Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment, Misplaced Pages:Third opinion, Misplaced Pages:Wikiquette alerts, and maybe Misplaced Pages:Mediation Committee. The editor appears to have an opinion, perhaps based on some evidence, perhaps not, and seems to be regularly insulting you. Some of the insults might qualify as personal attacks, some might not, but I'm far from certain that anyone would block her on the basis of them alone. John Carter (talk) 18:14, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Dear John Carter, while your comments may look reasonably neutral on the surface, I still suggest that you leave this issue to other admins, who haven't also recently insulted me. --Latebird (talk) 19:40, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I asked you a reasonable question about what you wanted to see done. You chose to respond with a completely off-topic snide remark, which was the result of your own irrational and summarily closed request for deletion of several pages because you were "pissed off" at their existence for no acceptable reason, despite having been told in advance that your original basis for complaint was not a valid one. I realize you may have some difficulty in general in assuming good faith, but you still haven't indicated what you seek to gain from your own posting here. The options I indicated are, basically, the only ones available barring some specific outside intervention for cause. Are you indicating that you see some specific cause for action from an administrator? Please respond directly to the question, so that people can know what it is you are seeking to achieve by posting here. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 20:19, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

The purpose of a report here is to bring an issue to the attention of administrators, both to get their opinions and possibly their assistance. Then, out of more than a thousand at least theoretically available admins, the single one who was recently involved in a conflict with me and has explicitly stated to hold a low opinion of me, enters the stage and gives the appearance of trying to help. Independently of any assumptions of faith or any potential grudges, just plain common sense tells me that this is not a good idea. In the interest of avoiding even the appearance of a conflict of interest on your side, I ask you again to stay away from this issue. If another admin needs help in understanding the purpose of ANI, I'm sure they'll let me know. --Latebird (talk) 06:19, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Wow, this does not surprise me. I knew Mattisse would eventually push someone to the point where they would have to come here to settle a dispute. What you, User:Latebird, described about her attributing edits to people who never made them is exactly what she did to me on the talk page for Chinese architecture. Have a look. As to her playing the role of the "innocent victim" in talk page disputes, look to her several-month-long quibble with User:PalaceGuard008. I've noticed she has a bizarre habit of accusing people on talk pages for articles of a certain topic, playing the "victim" while everyone else is out to own and destroy articles she is interested in, and then shifting on to a completely different subject where she unfortunately repeats the process. Just my 2 cents on the matter in order to give wider context.--Pericles of Athens 08:45, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Pericles. I tried once to get involved and all I got a page-long complaint, then when I first attempted to assist, a complete striking out of the whole thing and a "looks like everyone is going to attack me so I'll go do something else." This is just her habit, and as I've learned, you just accept it or others will attack you for picking on her. You just have to accept that being passive-aggressive tends to actually work in this environment, so I'd suggest a detailed timeline of diffs, Latebird, to make it harder for others to complain about you being too thin-skinned. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:26, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Set expiry date on protection of Misplaced Pages:Association of Members' Advocates and Misplaced Pages:Esperanza

I originally posted a request at Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Unprotect_Wikipedia:Esperanza, thinking that this needed community consensus. But after looking again at Misplaced Pages:Page_protection#Content_disputes, this seems to me like a clear-cut issue of policy application. An expiry date needs to be set on protection of these pages. Ron Duvall (talk) 18:17, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

aside from arguing process, is there a reason you want the protection altered? Spartaz 18:21, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I am also concerned for the reasons listed in m:Protected pages considered harmful. And the language currently on the Esperanza page, "This essay serves as a warning to all editors that existing projects must be open and transparent to all editors at all times, not to be overly hierarchical lest they are to meet a fate similar to Esperanza's" seems like uncalled-for obiter dictum that should be edited out, although that is a separate issue from page protection. Ron Duvall (talk) 18:28, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Er, please lets not rehash the esperanza deletion debates. I can't see any benefit of restarting the arguments and the reason why it was shut down is nicely captured by the wording of that essay. There is no good going to come from trying to rewrite history after all this time. I'd say you need to get consensus to rewrite the essay before trying to get the page unlocked. Spartaz 18:35, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

The page goes beyond saying why it was shut down to warn that if people start something like it, their project will get deleted too. I don't propose getting in an edit war over the content but permanent protection is not allowed for content disputes. The standard process, even with sometimes-contentious pages like policy and guidelines, and certainly with essays (which is what Misplaced Pages:Esperanza purports to be), is to allow users to be bold (within reason), experiment with tweaks in wording, and work things out on the talk page as necessary. Ron Duvall (talk) 18:57, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Its not a content dispute. Its a locked page that we don't need any more drama over. Spartaz 19:01, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

So basically you are saying we should apply WP:IAR in this instance? Ron Duvall (talk) 19:15, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

No that's not what I'm saying. There is a community consensus to leave things as they are. If you want to change the page you need to change the community consensus first. Spartaz 19:37, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

What about Misplaced Pages:CONSENSUS#Exceptions? "Consensus decisions in specific cases are not expected to override consensus on a wider scale very quickly - for instance, a local debate on a WikiProject does not override the larger consensus behind a policy or guideline. The project cannot decide that for 'their' articles, said policy does not apply." Why should the consensus expressed in the MfD override the larger consensus behind the policy that protection is only to be temporary, with an expiration date? Interestingly, neither of those two project pages are listed at our "list of pages that are permanently protected or semi-protected, in line with the protection policy." Maybe it's because their permanent protection was not in line with our protection policy. Ron Duvall (talk) 19:54, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I would only comment that the Association of Members' Advocates may have been substantially replaced by Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Accessibility. Maybe it could be turned into a redirect there? John Carter (talk) 18:23, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

They don't seem to be that similar and there are so many internal links to ama that I would be very loath to endorse a redirect. Spartaz 18:37, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Concur - wikiproject accessibility seems to be trying to improve the project - let's not make any suggested link between their good works and the vile waste of space that project:wikilawyer was. --Fredrick day (talk) 18:40, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I see no reason why an editor would need to change the esperanza page, the community consensus on this matter was very clear and no good reason has been presented to revisit the matter. Tim Vickers (talk) 19:31, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

• Given the extensive warring that occurred over these two, I would say the appropriate date for protection to expire is three days after the fifth of never. I also wonder about a new user raising this topic. What was your old account, Ron? Guy (Help!) 20:19, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Agree-ish. It is not the case that all protections should usually have an expiration date. Quite a few pages are permanently protected. Merkinsmum 21:40, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Really? You mean, not just deleted and salted against re-creation, but we actually protect them and put up a notice like that? What's an example? Ron Duvall (talk) 22:56, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Well I thought there were lol, the one I meant seems to have been unprotected, I bet there are some, though. I don't see why you want this unprotected, except you want to remove the statement thing at the top. But it all reads as very ironic in the light of recent debates about the wikipedia IRC channel :) Perhaps just ask for the bit at the top to be removed, as you would ask for a change on any protected page? Is it not NPOV, what's written there? Looks like it. It just says the concerns people had about it. Merkinsmum 23:33, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

(un-indent) From m:Protected pages considered harmful, "What about theoretically already calm third parties who will be turned off by the inability to edit?" (That would be me; I was not involved with Esperanza at all but I'm considered about the impact of that notice on freedom of association here in general. I realize we do not have rights here other than the right to leave and the right to fork, but as a practical matter, it is useful to extend freedom of association for non-disruptive purposes. Arguably, the disruption from Esperanza may have been caused primarily by people freaking out about it; and accordingly we reward the fomenters of wiki-drama by letting them successfully use the drama they caused as an excuse to delete a project?) Other disadvantages of protection listed: "Difficulty of editing; Legitimate community policy changes, and even minor spelling corrections and linking, have to be mediated through sysops; If there is low sysop interest in some page, requests may not be noticed (sysops as bottleneck)" all of which represent a disruption of the normal WP:BRD process. The WP:AMA statement seems fine to me (although I favor eventual unprotection because policy requires it and because of those protection disadvantages listed above) but the Misplaced Pages:Esperanza one should just provide the information given in the first couple paragraphs and briefly explain the reason why it was deleted, rather than saying that it's a warning to others not to do something like this. It's the wrong place for such directives. Ron Duvall (talk) 00:25, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

The issue is that the community has largely agreed that AMA and Esperanza were harmful to the community and should not be recreated. Granted, the wording is POV against the projects, but it's projectspace and the community consensus is against the organizations anyway. Why would the wording need to be changed? Unlocking it just invites more drama over the /precise/ wording when that drama is un-needed. (Personally, I'd rather not drag through AMA again). ^demon 02:28, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

And if anyone genuinely believes the wording to be a problem there is always {{editprotected}}. Regardless, the long history of bitter dispute is a powerful argument for leaving this closed at a point where most people (I'd have said all, but then we had this pop up) have moved on. Guy (Help!) 12:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

User:Mctrain

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

McTrain currently blocked due to unacceptable over-reaction, everyone encouraged to use a term like "functionally unverifiable" or something similar instead of hoax, since it is clearly causing McTrain to go completely overboard.

This fellow has gone off the deep end—ranting at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Grace Talarico di Capace‎ and on users' talk pages, removing valid tags from unlicensed images here and here, etc.—to say nothing of the damage that he's been doing to the article Barbaro family in this and previous guises. Can he be stopped, at least for a while, to give others some peace? Deor (talk) 18:30, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

• Untrue, nonsense, all of my good work is being destroyed because of a belief in a hoax that does not exist. I proved to Deor early on about Vitus as being a real person in www.avoision.com, and you can go to Deor's talk page and get the details on that, details which he choses to gloss over becasue it meant people who wanted to say that he wasn't a real life person, were in fact wrong. I even consulted with Deor early on on his talk page under "please advise" in fear that any work on that particular article was going to be deemed as a hoax- and what has happened exectly that, as it has for any person of good faith working on that topic. Now, Thorp Academy has been flagged, for no good reason, just becaus I worked on that too- give me a break- you people shout hoax, destroy good work that took days and weeks to build, and then you expect people to just be happy with what you did to their work. You people lie, set up arguments that are not based on fact, slander peoples reputation and then don't even have the class to make things right after their work becomes flagged. I see, massive gross mistakes on Misplaced Pages, attributing families to other families , etc.- but this one topic always gets picked on- enough is enough. Misplaced Pages is no longer a joy to be involved in, and if Deor can't be fair enough to correct all of the damgae that he created by perpetuating the hoax stupidity- I am gone for good, as have many others before. I have proven that the so called hoax person is in fact very real person, not a hoax at all, and I have also proven that there were people out there who wanted to play games with him by the very crude comments that were made about a very innocent person on www.avoision.com- the source of where all of this hoax garbage started.Mctrain (talk) 19:42, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I left the user a note to calm down and approach this calmly, but as you can see, it's not working well. As for the 'hoax' charge, I don't think that's true at all, but it's really riling this user up, and he's playing right into a block for incivility and a cooldown. Not a good situation. ThuranX (talk) 20:11, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

All edits to Barbaro family and any associated articles must be very carefully examined due to the history of hoaxing surrounding this and other related articles. Corvus cornix_talk 20:28, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I can't read the signatures on Image:Gilbert Julian Snowbirds Seriograph.JPG‎ and Image:Gilbert Julian Riverboat lithograph.JPG‎, but they sure don't look like they read "Gilbert Julian" to me. Plus, Mctrain repeatedly removes a request for copyright information from the two image pages, claiming that the claim that they are owned by the artist's descendents is sufficient, despite the fact that there are watermarks on the images which clearly show that the images themselves were downloaded from an ebay sale. Corvus cornix_talk 20:34, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the Fulco Ruffo di Calabria information from Skull and crossbones because two of the links are dead and one is not reliable. Corvus cornix_talk 20:39, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

The Gilbert images were put up by the "Joel Gilbert archives" themselves, go check, and people question the images authenticity?. I said many times that if you just search "Ruffo di Calabria skull" you will have your pick of many refrences to chose from that talks about his symbol-and this is what I mean, no matter what anyone does, no matter what anyone proves- a culture of a hoax mentality will continue to exist on wikipedia- and that is proven time and time again. That is why I will not participate with Misplaced Pages any longer, it is just a waste of time. Final closing remarks.Mctrain (talk) 20:50, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

The links you provided for your claims were not reliable, don't tell other people to go search for reliable links for the claims you make, that's your responsibility. Corvus cornix_talk 20:53, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't aware that the links weren't working right when I put them in, but I can fix it. All of my work doesn't have to be removed and flagged and everything else that is going on. In any normal situation if there is a problem, one just puts a citation notice- not removal and everything elese that is happening. Things that you know, as well as I, that are only occurring because of some supposed hoax with Vitus. A hoax that only started because people saw his name in www.avoision.com when he posted to take on his title, which is normal. Then they found him in Misplaced Pages and chose to make him a traget for placement in bogus articles. The guy is proven to be real- and is and was always innocent, and I discussed everything with Deor pior to any work in that area, to avoid just this situation.Mctrain (talk) 21:03, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Admin eye needed at Grace Talarico di Capace's AfD which is rapidly spiraling out of control between Deor, Mctrain and their meatpuppets. his meatpuppets. I was about to come file that here when I saw this thread. Can someone rein it in? Travellingcari (talk) 23:58, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

"Their" meatpuppets? So anybody who agrees with Deor is a meatpuppet? I would also like to mention that Mctrain has removed the AfD tag from the article, and has removed the puidisputed tags from the image pages above. Corvus cornix_talk 00:04, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

struck it, someone's meat puppets. Kids? I can't tell to say the least since the AfD has turned into their war over another article or two. Since it takes two to have an argument, I blame them both, but struck the 'their' since I'm not sure whose meatpuppets they are but the AfD is a disaster at the moment. I am a disinterested party who was reading today's AfD log and thought it could use some help. Travellingcari (talk) 00:26, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

You haven't read it very carefully, then, apparently, since the only people who think this hoax should stick around are Mctrain, his sockpuppets (who he claims are his daughters), and ThuranX, who has apparently not read the nomination very carefully. There are no reliable sources. The person does not exist in any Google searches I can find, except for the name of a Chicago-area realtor. There are no references to any of the supposed other members of the family that appear to be reliable, although there are some Italian refrences which I can't read, so I don't know if they're any good or not. But look into the history of the Vitus Barbaro hoax and the Barbaro family hoaxing and the Fenwick High School (Chicago, Illinois) hoaxing (as well as the Pugalist Club (sic) hoax and the The Sacred Order of Skull and Crescent hoax). Its hard to keep assuming good faith considering this history. Corvus cornix_talk 00:39, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

• • • There is no hoax with anything that I have written- why do you keep saying that lie! How can also Vitus be a hoax when I have also proved to you his existence by www.avoision.com, and how can you also gloss over the four letter words used to talk about him in that source, isn't quite clear that someone was out to play a prank with the guy when they found him listed in wikipedia, they found his name referenced in a legit wikipedia articles and placed him into a bogus one. You are the guys that probably ruined the Fenwick High School articles yourself. This sacred order of skull and crescent sounds like stupidity, and that is where your hoax garbage is probably coming from, his name was probably plunked into some bogus page- the guy is real, and the work I done is correct- also, what is this focus with this Vitus dude anyway, he is not listed in any of the articles I worked on. This is all stupidity, moreover, check every source I gave, what I wrote is in the sources, so whats all this BS. irrational fears on your part, do not constitute a hoaxMctrain (talk) 01:15, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I think you may be misunderstanding me. I !voted delete due to a lack of sourcing. I don't know the life story of the hoax, but I didn't think this article was notable.My issue with the AfD is it's an absolute mess right now and consensus can't come from something that can't be read. Mctrain is responding to himself in several places. It seems clear the subject is nn, but that doesn't mean the AfD can't have an eye at it -- plus it broke the formatting of the day's deletion log due to the headers in it. That's what I was talking about. Travellingcari (talk) 00:52, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, but you said that Deor is equally at fault, and I strongly disagree with that. Corvus cornix_talk 00:58, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I've reviewed Deor's contributions up to now, and I disagree as well. Deor is acting rationally and appropriately. Travellingcari, could you have another look at the (admittedly messy) situation, and consider revising your apportionment of the blame here? Darkspots (talk) 02:10, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I struck it. I still think it takes two to argue and while it's 99% Mctrain flooding it, I think responding is encouraging him. I wasn't around for the start of this so I don't know the full history between the two. Deor is clearly more in the right but I still think something needs to be done to fix the mess that is that AfD, and spilling here per Mctrain's comments in the middle of this discussion. At this point it's going to spiral for five days? At least it seems a clear case for WP:SNOW to get the issue taken elsewhere and off the AfD log, which now has a few more headers to break the whole log. Travellingcari (talk) 02:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Let's examine the arguement

Ok, Deor is right for having an unfair prejudice in his mind about certain topics being "hoaxes", and all of my good work is punished because I happen to unknowingly be interested in these similar "taboo" topics- even though I have no record of hoaxing, a stronmg commitment of editing on Misplaced Pages, and have written with full creditable sourcing- but that makes me guilty of hoaxing- or my good work deserving to be destroyed, flagged etc. So I guess if anyone ever writes about these topics, they are going to be labled hoaxers automatically- which in fact is what has happened when you check the back log, I have, do you know how many good editors by people like Deor and Gustave and Corvus and Gianno etc. have been labeling peole as hoaxers because they are interested in these topics. Why does Corvus keep flagging the images to the Julian Gilbert page for deleation, when it was even the joel gilbert group themselves that posted it with full rights into the public domain to be used- why was half of all of this stupidity and lies being perpertuated- because these guys want to perpertuate hoaxes. Now you tell me, how a person who is a baroness of Alaric, linked to the fashion house of pucci with interelation to other noteworthy fashion groups is not deserving of an article on Wikipedidia- Bull Shit! this page would never be an issue, if these guys like Deor and their meatpuppets didn't already have prejudices of hoaxes in their mind- and nothing more. I saw the House of Borghese page that has two people on there listed as being of significance to the Borghese family that are not even y related, and we have Vitus, the real deal, being picked on, because someone up and decided to use his name in a bogus secret order whatever BS society article- what is the justice in that. The article I have worked on has better sourcing than most anything that I have scene on Wiki. This is all BS. The whole premise to this page is BS, she is sourced in those sources listed. This whole witch hunt is BS. And every editor that has experienced this injustice has wlaked away angry and HATING WIKIPEDIA. YOU ARE ALL TO BELAME FOR THAT, and no one else. A person writes an article with perfectly good sources and that is not enough becuse you have hoax issues and prejudice- a therapist can help you deal with that. you say that Vitus doesn't exist, he is proven to exist, and then you try find another avenue to justify destruction of good work that took hours and research to put together. It is not right and you are all to belame, GO TO HELL Mctrain (talk) 02:58, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I find nothing in Google for the existence of a "Joel Gilbert Group". And even if there were, there is nothing to prove that the person who uploaded the images had the rights to the images. You keep avoiding the question as to why the images are watermarked with the mark of the person who is selling them on ebay, and who is not the "Joel Gilbert Group". Corvus cornix_talk 03:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

First of joel gilbert is Joel Gilbert- as for ebay I have no idea what you are talking about. The single person that has fueled my interst in this topic is the artist julian gilbert, of which I became interested about Grace and her family through him because she is talked about and her family in the bio listing of her portrait. That is why I wrote about Gilbert and Thorp etc. She was talked about in the catalogue, and then I did some additional research in to it more- i'm into art. And why don't you go send a message to joel who put the images up- I wasn't the one who did that- I just hate seeing the images destroyed- Why don't you get off of my case and leave my good work alone and go pick on that crappy House of Borghese article or something else to focus your hoax theories on, that borghese crap has no real sources and at least two people that are clearly not related, not to mention lorenzo who is a shame, while Vitus is listed as completely the real deal in my sources- but I guess in Amerca, fame and google searches is what counts, not listings in creditable, and official sources- enough- life is too short to deal with what began on nothing more than a BS premise and a witch hunt. Mctrain (talk) 03:36, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I've been viewing the development of this thread with some interest. Does , perhaps, finally merit administrator attention? Deor (talk) 15:50, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

LET"S ALSO TALK ABOUT ALL OF THIS BS HOAX GARBAGE

I just got a message from ThuranX that also said I was a hoaxer, What BS!!! All of this stupid hoax trash is pertaining to some some BS frat group, Sacred Order Skull Society that used Vitus' name as their head- is that not the truth where all of this started- of course it is! Then, the society is proven to be BS, and every reference that Vitus was attached to went through the grinder- did it not, of course it did, becuase Vitus was "Not Real", but he is very real, www.avoision.com proves that the guy exists- as well as strongly indicates where the hoaxing came from, these guys found his name in Wikiedpia in "LEGIT" articles and placed his name into a bogus frat article. Now you administrators target unfairly any artcle topic that has a correlation to Vitus,or you also love to target 65IP's, which is a general IP for Microsoft service, and you love to also pick apart everything unfairly, beyond the scope of reason. Why the hell was Thorp Academy attacked, you know why, becasue the topic has corellation to Vitus, why was Grace TdC and Julian Gilbert attacked, becasue it has correlation to Vitus, and no matter that sources check out, and info is cited from reputable sources- you still will always say that there is a hoax with Vitus. THERE IS NO HOAX WITH VITUS. Just his named was put into a BS frat article- when will you get that reality, the guy is proven to exist. I am sick and tired of anyone who is intersted in a topic of overlap is called a hoaxer- grow up!!!! What audacity you have to place belame and ruin people's reputations based on your own ignorance. You were the ones that went and trashed countless articles based on not even understanding what the nature of the hoax was, it was a BS frat society that was desperately looking for a cool figurehead to give their group some noteriety and found the name of Vitus that they could use- that is it, get over it- they guy and his family is real. Enough with the hoax BULL SHIT already.Mctrain (talk) 16:22, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

JK Cromwell

Despite having been previously blocked for edit warring, JK Cromwell has continued to disrupt and add unsourced information to multiple articles. For more information, see her contributions. I believe her block should be reinstated and extended. Serendious 18:44, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I have re-blocked and extended this to 48 hours. Returning to an edit war once a 3RR block has expired and replacing unsourced material is disruptive editing. Tim Vickers (talk) 20:13, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Sockpuppets of UkraineToday

UkraineToday is a banned user (I don't know how to format a link to a block, but here is the line from Yamla's log: # 20:02, 7 September 2007 Yamla (Talk | contribs) blocked "UkraineToday (Talk | contribs)" (account creation blocked, e-mail blocked) with an expiry time of indefinite ‎ (violation of WP:NLT, continuing email harassment).

Now UkraineToday's socks are springing up really quickly. We have Misplaced Pages:Suspected sock puppets/UkraineToday (3 named socks, 3 IPs) from January 18, then this Misplaced Pages:Suspected sock puppets/UkraineToday (3rd) (2 named socks, 7 IPs] from January 26, then Misplaced Pages:Suspected sock puppets/UkraineToday (4th) (2 named socks and 7 IPs) from February 2, and Misplaced Pages:Suspected sock puppets/UkraineToday (5th) (1 named sock) February 17, and two more IPs (one blocked by Jehochman, the other, User:80.97.94.178 I have not reported yet (the IP has been used by other editors in the past).

I have applied for semi-protection (granted a few hours later - jd2718) for the article WP:RFP#Ukrainian Parliamentary Election, 2007 he has been trying to edit. Do I just keep reporting the socks as they appear? Is there something else to do? Jd2718 (talk) 19:10, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

User:Mikkalai

User:Mikkalai has been leaving rude remarks and accusing of be a sockpuppet at my talk page. This was after a Wikiquette alert was filed by User:Hux. I proceeded to become a mediator in the situation by leaving calm warnings at both of their talk pages. User:Cheeser1 suggested bringing the incident here. Thank you, Southern Illinois SKYWARN (talk) 19:37, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Please note that I have not, nor will I, endorse either side of this dispute. I simply suggested that since SISKYWARN wanted administrator attention, and was in a dispute with an administrator, that he bring his complaints here. The WQA isn't the place to hash out issues that (at least in his opinion) require admin-on-admin intervention. --Cheeser1 (talk) 20:24, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I tried to stay neutral initially, but when User:Mikkalai left the messages on my talk page, I stated that on the WQA page and left the user a kind warning. Also at that point, I asked for administrator intervention. Southern Illinois SKYWARN (talk) 20:29, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

As Southern Illinois SKYWARN says, I was the one who opened up the original WQA. When I first saw that this ANI had been opened, I was going to post to say that I didn't think it was necessary at this point. However, having seen Mikkalai's reaction to that WQA (which I described here), I concede that this ANI probably is necessary after all. Hopefully we can resolve this issue to everyone's satisfaction. I really hope it doesn't escalate any further. :( -- Hux (talk) 21:29, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Mikka knows what he's doing, and he's (wisely) decided to take a break until things cool down. I think you guys got what you wanted. --Haemo (talk) 22:10, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

With respect, I don't think you're right at all. His response to this ANI and the original WQA is indicated by what he posted to his user and talk pages: "Taking a break until wikilawyers move onto other victims. Have fun with cangaroo courts." This is not the actions of a person who recognizes that he is in any way at fault. As such, there is every reason to believe that if this just silently blows over he will continue attacking people and abusing WP:OWN. -- Hux (talk) 02:13, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I am trying to stay cool, but I find the above response outrageous. I was initially a mediator in this case. I left calm warnings on Mikka's talk page, and he responded by attacking me on my talk page. His comments are illustrated here. He accuses me of being a sockpuppet, and calls WQA "Cangaroo courts". Thank you, Southern Illinois SKYWARN (talk) 22:30, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Edit warring to repeatedly add templated warnings to the Talk page of an admin (after he has acknowledged the templated warnings by removing them from his Talk page) is not the way to go about winning friends and influencing people. Corvus cornix_talk 23:28, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

There has been no edit warring here. Southern Illinois SKYWARN left two separate warnings on Mikkalai's talk page and Mikkalai reverted them both (as he's entitled to do, although imo doing so while the dispute is ongoing tends to look pretty bad, as if the reverter is trying to hide something). But the more important issue is the incivility and the WP:OWN stuff. Perhaps you could comment on that? (Details at the WQA link above, if you need them.) - Hux (talk) 02:20, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I left two warnings on Mikkah's talk page (one of them for ownership, the other for personal attacks). I added my own words to the first warning in addition to the template. I believe that warnings should be left on talk pages unless they have been rectified in some way so other editors are aware of infractions. If anyone has a problem, please say so, but also back up your argument. Thank you, Southern Illinois SKYWARN (talk) 01:44, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

You may believe that, but Misplaced Pages:USER#Removal_of_comments.2C_warnings disagrees. Corvus cornix_talk 01:47, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I am sorry I had never seen that essay. Southern Illinois SKYWARN (talk) 01:51, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I want to repeat that I was initially an outside mediator in this case. I knew that I should have never gotten involved with dispute resolution even though it usually does not turn out like this. Also note that this was my first mediation ever. Southern Illinois SKYWARN (talk) 02:03, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

User:Mikkalai has had trouble with civility before. Given the number of long-term users who are having real trouble with civility, I'm beginning to think our current policy on this is completely broken. Relata refero (talk) 17:56, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Bot is not marked as a bot?

There doesn't seem to be any bot involved or other intervention required. --Tikiwont (talk) 09:30, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

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

User:Blofeld of SPECTRE appears to be a bot but it is not marked as one. What's the deal with this account? Gary King (talk) 20:35, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

• we did this before. Its just an extremely productive editor iirc. Spartaz 20:42, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
• We had the discussion about a fortnight ago; it is not a bot, but way more productive than I can ever be. User:Zscout370 20:45, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
• Productive, terribly prolific, whatever adjective you want to use. Not sure why it was confused for a bot though. Even people can be formulaic or robotic. The individual was creating articles about communes and towns that were obviously missing from wikipedia. Wisdom89 _{(T / )} 20:53, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
  • BEEP DOES NOT COMPUTE --Haemo (talk) 23:11, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

There have been bot requests for this: Misplaced Pages:Bot_requests/Archive_16#EditorBot. Link to former AN/I thread: Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive362#French_village_stubs. Gimmetrow 21:25, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

What makes every last village in France notable? Last I checked, WP is not a directory. rudra (talk) 23:28, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

How can a town, village, or any other location where people actually reside fail notability? Wisdom89 _{(T / )} 00:23, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

• The notability of villages in France has been discussed before, at ArbCom, who agreed to it. Evidently, they are, I dunno why. And I can attest that Blofeld is not a bot. He is just an editor whose total edits have passed 100,000, including a lot of images, and an extremely productive editor. He decided to create articles on villages in France, for whatever reason, and he did so. If I could prove they weren't notable, I probably would, but I can't. He might not be the only editor who has had many of his edits of strikingly similar phrasing. I have too. And we're not the same person, trust me on this. You aren't tied to MI6 at all, are you? :) John Carter (talk) 23:40, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I can attest that Blofeld of SPECTRE has a sense of humour, or at a minimum, is programmed to display what appears to be a sense of humour. If you wish to enquire further, I suggest posting a Turing test on his/her/its talkpage. Tim Vickers (talk) 23:53, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I happen to be lightening quick. The fastest editor on here. Infoboxes will be added later and translated from French. Basically I am half way through putting 36,000 new French articles on wikipedia to develop and I should be thanked. Notability is without question if you saw these places you;d realise you could actually write many articles on places within the towns. Fast forward a year or two and theres no reason why most of these stubs can't become decent articles. As for a robot, I must be the least robotic person on here. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ 00:00, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

If ArbCom has opined that WP is a directory, then ArbCom has lost its way. rudra (talk) 00:04, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

They have not opined that. What they have said is that, basically, given the amount of information available out there on France, it is, basically, a given that each village, based on the virtual certainty of each village being written about in one or more WP:RS-qualifying newspapers in France often enough to establish notability, as well as any number of French tour guide books, that it is a moot point. Yes, probably the same thing could be said about towns in the US, UK, Canada, and anywhere else in Europe. And, if in time the notability is not established, then it will be possible to nominate the articles for deletion individually. However, there is no reason to believe that they have said it is a "directory", and that actually is a bit of a misrepresentation. When several of these articles were being suggested for speedy deletion, Blofeld appealed to ArbCom, presented his reason for saying they were notable, and his arguments were accepted. Could this flood us with a lot of bad articles if the pattern is followed elsewhere? Very easily. But our policy WP:PAPER indicates that we should not worry about whether the articles will be long enough before they're given a chance to be developed. Otherwise, about half the articles we do have would have been deleted by now. John Carter (talk) 00:18, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Does Ottrott look like a directory. Have some sense. They are being blue linked en masse ready to build full content on ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ 00:15, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive362#French_village_stubs, we've done this before. Tim Vickers (talk) 00:19, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Normally I wouldn't evne think about not adding some facts but because of the sheer amount missing it is quicker to ge them up and running to develop first. I'm more than half the way through now ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ 00:22, 18 February 2008 (UTC).

OK prime example. A typical "directorial" stub like Albas, Lot. Now see this, the French equivalent and tell me wikipedia wouldn't benefit from 30,000 new articles in english like this ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ 00:54, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Will the next project be every last street in France? (After all, people live on them, so how can that not be, um, notable?) rudra (talk) 03:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't see much point in creating such bare stubs as Albas, Lot. Why not slow down and do a decent job?

I'm doing something similar to you at the moment, making sure that every settlement in New Zealand large enough to have a primary school has an article. At the moment I'm writing one or two articles a day. Today, I wrote Aranga, New Zealand, and I significantly expanded Tangiteroria. Neither are good articles - the first is somewhere on the cusp between a stub and a start-class article, and the second is a little more meaty but I haven't bothered to fix up the poor quality prose that was already there. However, these are useful articles for an encyclopedia to have. Albas could as easily be created at the time someone is ready to spend some time adding content to it.-gadfium 06:07, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Most creative use of a thesaurus in a post?

You gotta love this guy's use of adjectives not sure whether it should be viewed as a personal attack..what do other folks think? cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:37, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Those words reflect accusations of bitching, whining and moaning. I would label it as uncivil. Personal attack? The user is definitely treading the border. I would take offense to such "adjectives". The user is also acting pretentious for even bothering to use those words. Wisdom89 _{(T / )} 20:49, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, umm... I don't like it. It's unlikeable, deplorable, belated, encrusted, bejesused, detrimented, and xenophobic. It is however incidental, occasional, decapitated, rejuvenated, ambiguous, pansexual, accelerated, and altruistic. I would not be opposed to describing him as stingy, cleansed, adamantine, fallacious, erudite, descriptive, infertile, and a whole other mess of adjectives that have nothing to do with him (I don't own a thesaurus. those are just big words I know). Justin_(u) 20:57, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

<chuckle> Are you kidding! It's a linguist's dream come true. — Zerida ☥ 23:42, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Clearly someone in the 1800s has devised a time machine for the express purpose of coming to the 21st century to insult Misplaced Pages users. Genius! Editmaniac (talk) 09:50, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Avoiding User:Douglasfgrego scenarios

There has been a fairly unpleasant incident this weekend with this user getting indefinitely banned as a result. I don't question the process as the user used, to say the least, 'intemperate' language. However, the reason I'd like to broaden the discussion from what anyone can read above - and it's a given that we'd prefer to avoid banning contributors - is that the situation clearly spiralled out of control before everyone's eyes. Nobody wanted the matter to end up as it did but it ended badly because everyone got mad.

Feelings were running high on both sides and I'd suggest that we need a 'red button' that anyone can hit in any such situation. This 'red button', a chill-out button, when pressed, would prevent any addition to any discussion for 24 hours. An enforced time out. Then everyone can come back a day later to sort things out. By button, I don't necessarily mean a red thing on the screen; just perhaps an admin, or maybe any participant, to intervene arbitrarily to shut a heated dialogue down. I think if this had been present yesterday, we'd have avoided the fracas we had. We need to avoid driving contributors away. AlasdairGreen27 (talk) 21:24, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Threat of violence

Corvus cornix_talk 00:00, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

And another - The guy's jumping IPs.Corvus cornix_talk 00:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Five different IPs in total, two appear to be proxies, two are dynamic (Verizon and AT&T), but the fifth is interesting - a college IP from Indiana 137.112.141.232 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log). Match anyone we know? Black Kite 00:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know. Does it?  :) Corvus cornix_talk 00:20, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know. That's why I asked. :) At a guess, probably an off-wiki co-ordinated attack, I know this editor has had problems with this before, as have many others. Black Kite 00:31, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

(ec) He's been harassed for a long time; look at the history of Jack's user page and take your pick, though I suspect those are mostly the same person. It might be related to this; they're tagged as sockpuppets of "Grawp" but I don't know if that's significant. Antandrus (talk) 00:33, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm... Maybe it means that we've found the specific location and institution of one of our most prolific current vandals. I don't know if this was known before. Grandmasterka 00:47, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

It's just Grawp posting calls to vandalize on 4chan again... nothing to see... although the recent history of my user talk page is amusing... east.718 at 01:05, February 18, 2008

That's been going on for a couple of months. Frankly, if life is this empty for 4-chan members, one wonders why they don't consider suicide... HalfShadow (talk) 01:36, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Ironically, they probably say the same about us, but with this significant difference: we have created the largest encyclopedia in the history of the human race, while all they have done is ... is ... :) Antandrus (talk) 02:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Started their frontal assault on Scientology. bibliomaniac15 03:36, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Norman Rogers

• There is a complete moron vandalizing this article from various IPs and accounts with the name "Norman Rogers" in them. The article should be semi-protected and usernames with "Norman Rogers" in them blocked immediately. JuJube (talk) 00:32, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

The article has been protected and if such users continue to vandalize, please report them to WP:AIV. SorryGuy  Talk  00:59, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

(ec) I've semi'd the page for now (with full move protection), but I expect we might want to extend it to long term full protection in the near future. More about this rather old meme can probably be found on Google. -- zzuuzz 01:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Triberocker feuding

In a discussion of -puppetry by Triberocker, I noted

And he appears to look at this situation as a feud. For example, after the checkuser result, I gave myself a temporary link to his block log, so that I could see what (if anything) followed. He responded as if this were a tit-for-tat thing.

I now note an edit in which Triberocker appears to declare just that.

(The administrative action taken in response to the -puppetry was to temporarily range-block anon edits from some Valparaiso University IPs. No block was applied to the Triberocker account itself.) —SlamDiego_←T 01:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Marvellous.

Could someone close the 'tardgate, please? HalfShadow (talk) 01:54, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Semi-pp for three hours. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 02:06, 18 February 2008 (UTC)re

It seems our immature interlopers may have some sleeper accounts, one of which I have just blocked indef. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 02:15, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

User: Sarvagnya

This editor's obnoxious behavior towards several editors and articles is appalling and out of control, and needs to stop. It's steadily been escalating to a point that requests, warnings and alerts have not deterred the editor from changing his/her ways, even after a number of months.

The editor has made it a habit of being incivil with editors who make edits that he/she disagrees with. The editor has been requested and warned on several occasions. Once here, and on another occasion, I myself requested the editor to stop being so overly-critical of others contributions and start giving some recognition so that editors don't leave as a result of the unnecessary incivility (evidenced here). There are several other examples which can be found through this editor's talk page history (unfortunately, this editor has made it a habit to delete many of the comments on his/her page) and through some article talk pages where this editor has made comments.

However, he/she continues to resort to using a judgemental tone in edit summaries evidenced-here, assumes bad faith, is rude, calling others contributions names, and making it a priority to direct personal attacks at editors who do not support his/her edits and/or reasoning. The editor also forces others to the point of breaching civility without seeming to commit such a breach themselves. This can be seen as he/she scatters some valid points among an extensive attack on an article or on those who have contributed to it. This is evidenced especially here. Again, there are other examples, but i cite only this one as it was the final straw that prompted me to report such behavior. (On a separate note, he/she has also made other attacks on the article and its contributors over the last couple of years, and yet, in all this time, has made no actual positive contributions towards improving the article significantly. In stark contrast, the editors involved have made a major improvement from the nonsense it was to begin with.)

The editor uses mannerisms like 'I'm just obsessed with improving this article', 'This article is dear to me' and 'I am just as frustrated with the state of the article as you are', or the like, as a justification for the impolite, incivil and inconsiderate communications he/she uses, when really, such communications are unwarranted under any circumstance.

This editor in addition to often assuming bad faith, often assumes WP:OWN over the articles he/she concerns himself/herself with. He/she has vandalized articles (or blanked material without explanation), and when left a warning about it, has deliberately deleted the warning (seen here). Similarly, the editor removed a request (that an otherwise reasonable editor would have taken the time explain to the concerned editor who made the request) labeling it 'trolling' here. It is ironic that he/she expects reasoning from others, when he/she often fails to provide any when he/she makes edits or removals of information. He/she in effect thinks its justifiable to do anything as he/she sees fit, without any explanation to support it. For example, the editor has blanked out entire references in an article without properly explaining how or why the references are 'extremist' (as he/she indicates in his/her edit summary here), perhaps in an attempt to advance his/her position that content from this article should not be mentioned in another article, Carnatic music. Having deleted these references, the editor then goes one step further and adds tags that there are no references for the article here. In several other instances, editors have requested for some sort of explanation for his/her reverts and edit wars evidenced-here, but again, no explanation is given as he/she asserts WP:OWN over these articles. Similarly, when an editor has requested that he/she stop making derogatory statements, his/her reply involves telling the other editor to stop whining evidenced-here.

Shown here and here is the manner in which this editor has (consciously) chosen to interact with another editor recently, in response to being told to be more civil and assume good faith. This display (on another noticeboard) is yet another example of his/her hostility (or troll-like tendencies) and lack of regard or respect (as well as any sense of etiquette or civility) towards editors who disagree with him/her at Misplaced Pages.

This overall style of interaction between editors has resulted in driving away some contributors. Whether it is a lack of patience, or just a deliberate attempt to assume WP:OWN over certain articles he/she concerns himself/herself with, driving away editors is the direct opposite of a postive contribution. It is a serious issue that us editors have been forced to tolerate such incivility, disrespect and persistent assumption of bad faith by him/her, when it shouldn't be happening in the first place, (nor is it necessary).

For these reasons, I request that this editor be blocked for a period of time, both to prevent this happening again (until he/she cools off), and to make it clear that such behaviour is not tolerated at Misplaced Pages. This editor needs some time so that he/she can refresh his/her style of interacting with other editors (this would involve learning to show more respect for other editors contributions to Misplaced Pages, and also, learn to show more control over what he/she edits and how emotionally involved he/she gets in disputes). Warnings and requests have clearly not worked, and I, nor any other editor, wishes to stoop to the same obnoxious level as him/her, nor would any editor like to leave as a result of such obnoxious behaviour, or gaming of the system. Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:45, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Huh! So, here is an ANI which is a result of content dispute from Carnatic Music.

Ncmvocalist, how did you conclude expressions such as 'I'm just obsessed with improving this article', 'This article is dear to me' and 'I am just as frustrated with the state of the article as you are', etc as " unwarranted under any circumstance" ? I do not see any logical reasoning why they are unwarranted under any circumstances.

Regarding removing the warning, I would like to see the policy which states not to remove the warning. On the other hand, Ncmvocalist has been templating the warnings on a user who has written almost a dozen FAs!

And again what is all this with this diff? Those tags are completely relevant to that article, and Sarvagnya has done a good job to that article by those tags. By addressing those tags, the article can only be improved further. Oh, yeah, I observed the previous diff given above, regarding extremist ref. Thats again a content dispute, and a prolonged discussion had happened tamilnation.org and other such sites.

And the plain allegations of assumption of bad faith is just reciprocative on Ncmvocalist's conduct here. Where is the assumption of good faith here? - KNM 15:50, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Stop twisting my words out of the context in which they were used - such mannerisms are unwarranted (under any circumstance) as an excuse/justification for incivility. Civility is not an optional policy. Most editors feel the same way about Misplaced Pages articles in terms of how much they value them or care about them, yet, they are more than capable (and make it a habit) of interacting and behaving in a much more desirable, and appropriate manner, whether it is a content dispute, or just a basic discussion or edit summary.

Again, just because an editor has contributed to some FAs, does not mean that behavioural policies and standards of etiquette are optional.

By addressing those tags? If this editor was truely concerned about improving the article, he/she would've at least opened a topic on the article's talk and then would've been bold and begun actually improving the article rather than expecting others to do it after he/she has done quite the opposite to what existed. The same applies for several other articles. He/she has not been bold enough to add any noteworthy material. Tags don't automatically improve an article.

The assumption of good faith has been prevalent over this period of a couple of years, where such behaviour was not reported in the false hope that it would eventually change, as he/she had been reasonably alerted of his/her civility and behaviour. Yet, this hasn't happened, and it seems to continue to escalate out of control rather than improve, which is why I've reported it now. Ncmvocalist (talk) 09:59, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I've added one other para to the original incident report, above. Ncmvocalist (talk) 15:04, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I've just taken this out of the archives as it has not been resolved. The editor has clearly refused to respond here, even after being informed on his/her talk page. I request that appropriate action is taken against the editor. Ncmvocalist (talk) 02:26, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I regret to say that, based on the above and my own limited knowledge of these matters, what seems to be the case here may not be necessarily one which is best resolved here. I do certainly think that maybe a User RfC and/or Misplaced Pages:Wikiquette alerts might be in order however. Then, there might be other actions taken thereafter as well. But I'm not sure that there have necessarily been such obvious breaches of policy that any block is likely to occur right now. John Carter (talk) 18:15, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Tasc0/Payne2thamaxx

Payne2thamaxx (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

Payne2thamax (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

Same As It Ever Was (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

Tasc0 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

This whole thing is one big mess. Tasc0 was a good faith albeit somewhat short tempered editor. My only two encounters with him ever were at recent AN3 reports. He was indefinitely blocked by Ronnotel (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) following this death threat against Ronnotel's family. A quick glance at this evening's history of User talk:Tasc0 will show you what blew up, but basically, Payne2thamaxx made a trolling comment , Tasc0 responded in kind , Ronnotel blocked Tasc0 for the personal attack , the unblock was declined, and Tasc0 left the aforementioned parting shot prompting the indefblock.

Tasc0 has been in a long-term dispute with Payne2thamaxx going back at least to October 2007 .

It seems at least possible that Payne2thamaxx and Same As It Ever Was are one in the same. Payne2thamaxx admits at that he follows the edits of SAIEW. At , 12 days after registering, SAIEW is familiar with a dispute between Kemor (talk · contribs) and Payne2thamax from some time before.

Payne2thamax (of whom Payne2thamaxx is an admitted reincarnation) was indefblocked for making a death threat. Payne2thamaxx was indefblocked for harassment, then later (September 2007) unblocked after he promised to reform. I see no evidence whatsoever of reform and have therefore reinstated that block.

I have filed a checkuser request at Misplaced Pages:Requests for checkuser/Case/Payne2thamaxx to confirm whether Same As It Ever Was (talk · contribs) is related.

For now, pending the results of that check, I would like to ask for a review my block of Payne2thamaxx. Thank you. --B (talk) 02:30, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't in a long-term dispute with Payne2thamaxx, he just wanted to make false accusations of me attacking another user, which I clearly did not do it. It was a NY IP address, that can be seen here.

I also would like to ask my e-mail feature back, I can't e-mail nobody. I don't think that's very fare.

I sent an e-mail to my blocking admin apologizing for the threats and seconds after, he blocked my e-mail feature. I did not harass him over the message and I didn't get any response.

I have to admint that I don't even knew who Payne2thamaxx was before this situation. Now that I see, it's clear he's a sock of Same As It Ever Was. B's proves this with the diffs.

Note, yes: this is my IP address. It's the only way I have to comunicate. Tasc0 07:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Just check my edits and you people will see how vandal am I. I enjoy vandalazing Misplaced Pages so much. Tasc0 07:38, 18 February 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.172.186.126 (talk)

Tasc0, I've responded to your remark at my talk page, too, but I'm going to make a couple of the same points here:

• I don't think anybody's saying that you were a vandal. In fact, User:B says the opposite, calling you "a good faith albeit somewhat short tempered editor". I would agree that I never saw any evidence of bad faith or vandalism from you; in fact, you did some good work fighting vandals.
• That said, if any editor - you, me, B, Jimbo, anybody - posts the kind of thing you did directed at User:Ronnotel, that user should expect to be blocked. That sort of comment is - and this shouldn't even need to be said - totally unacceptable, no matter what the circumstance.
• You should be aware that what you're doing here is technically abusive sock-puppetry, since you're evading your block. That said, I do agree that if you haven't abused the e-mail function, that should be restored. I won't do so unless I hear from Ronnotel, though. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 08:19, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Checkuser results are now in - Alison 10:20, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I remember thinking there was something fishy with Payne2thamaxx. His most recent contribs against Tasc0 came after long inactivity. I think 166.109.97.107, 166.109.0.247, and 166.109.97.168 (IPs which pretended to be Tasc0 on User talk:Real Compton G) could've been used by Payne2thamaxx. The IPs lead to New York, where he says he lives. And Tasc0, it's unfortunate this happened considering you're a productive editor. No matter what personal attacks you get, you have to keep your cool. I'd support an unblock, but first you really owe an apology to User:Ronnotel. SAIEW was also productive, but it's unfortunate he used abusive socks. I guess personal vendettas bring out the worst in people. Spellcast (talk) 14:33, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I very strongly oppose an unblock. Maybe a lift on the e-mail block, so he can plead his case, but death / rape threats (directed at children!) do not warrant a drop of consideration from me, and they shouldn't from anyone else either. - Revolving Bugbear 17:41, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Red links (Category:Rouge admins)

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

I'm confused. Is this(diff no longer exists due to User:East718 deleting his userpage history) and this some sort of adding of categories to make a point, only this time by admins? Should they be blocked for edit warring over a category on their user pages? If a category gets deleted, especially for the reasons this one was, should admins (especially) be insisting on keeping it on their user pages? I'm just curious. This is very confusing to me, considering what I've been through over this. Equazcion •✗/C • 02:44, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

This is really pointy in my opinion as someone involved in the CfD. 03:00, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Having a red link isn't disruptive whereas lying about being an admin is. John Reaves 03:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

The reasons the category was deleted still apply to having it posted after it was deleted. Equazcion •✗/C • 03:08, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

Yes it is disruptive and disrespectful, and he wasn't lieing about being an admin "IT WAS ONLY A JOKE CATEGORY HONEST". 03:10, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Ahh, so they can be rogue admins and have a rouge category to prove it, nice. Well, I don't really see the deleted category anything to fuss over, it's deleted, so lets move on. — Save_Us † 03:04, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

The Cat was banned because it was disruptive to wikipedia by setting up a class structure. This new "Joke" the rouge admins have come up with is less funny than the first and is a clear demonstation of the their attitudes to wikipedia process. 03:07, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

No. The category was not banned. It was deleted. It is still deleted. There is nothing wrong here. Move on.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 03:10, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

No its still on pages and its still disruptive. Something wrong here. Stay here. 03:12, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure how it makes a difference that it was deleted if it's still posted on user pages. The deletion basically just got rid of the category page. If people are going to have the link and be included in the list, what was the purpose of deleting it? Do we need to create a new process, "Categories for banning"? Equazcion •✗/C • 03:13, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

If you want the category on your userpage, you can put it there, there is nothing wrong with that. I may go make this point by adding it to mine now. Prodego 03:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

← Just want to reiterate how entirely inappropriate this is. If the category is still posted in admin pages, the problem still exists. This seems like an act of defiance. You can bet that if a category the admins didn't like got deleted, they'd make a huge stink about editors continuing to post it. Are we all allowed to continue posting categories even after they get deleted? Just trying to understand this. 'Cause I've got a hankering for some deleted categories myself. Maybe I'll take a look through the category deletion archives and see what might tickle my fancy. Equazcion •✗/C • 03:33, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy)/Archive 19#Categorizing in a deleted category. - auburnpilot talk 03:38, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to be any conclusion there... Equazcion •✗/C • 03:40, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

You know, I supported you whenever you got blocked for when the whole fiasco occured, but honestly your stated intent to readd deleted categories that could be contentious, may be the kind of disruptive behavior that administrators were pointing out beforehand when got you blocked. The deleted category serves no purpose and them having it is literally harmless now as the category is now obsolete and is no more. You pursuing the matter could make you wind up on a path you don't want to travel on. — Save_Us † 03:45, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

But it wasn't actually deleted, now was it? The category page was deleted, but if you click the red link or go to a page with the category posted, you'll see that it's alive and quite well. And me posting deleted categories on my userpage shouldn't be seen as disruptive... I'm not interrupting or wasting the time of others, like creating XfDs for things I don't actually think should be deleted, etc, as is the spirit of WP:POINT to prevent. I would just be adding deleted categories to my own userpage. No one should actually mind that, no matter what my reasons, if it is indeed okay to post deleted categories. I appreciate your past support, but disgusting behavior like this, especially by those "in charge", is worth making a big deal over, for precedents' sake. In my opinion. Equazcion •✗/C • 04:02, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it was deleted, and I will repeat this again, the category is now meaningless as the category page is now deleted. The page was put up for deletion because it gave a false sense of "authority" among those in the category and because it was a category meant for humor but was used seriously. The page deleted was in no way contentious material (or at least from what I saw before it was deleted). What I'm saying is if your digging through CFD to find deleted categories to add to your userpage, I would be very wary of deleted categories that were deleted because of them being offensive or contentious in some way, or otherwise you could be on the path to the similar-style dispute you were already in once. — Save_Us † 04:33, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Would I be on a path to a similar-style dispute if I now posted Category:Rouge admins on my userpage? Because if I would be, then the deletion meant nothing, as it was done to prevent that disruption. If I can now post it then fine, the deletion served its purpose -- but I have a feeling I still can't, and it IS still being taken seriously. Don't you see? Deletion means nothing for categories if people still have them posted. Equazcion •✗/C • 04:36, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

No, I meant other categories that were deleted other than this one. Anyways, while the categories very existance is now deleted, identifying as an administrator when you are not one is not something that would be encouraged. I'm sure others (not so sure about you Equazcion) would agree that if another user said if they were an administrator in plain text on their userpage, that they would have been treated the same way (the text in question removed and warned them about it, and if they persisted, a block). Identifying as an administrator is not funny or seen as humor when you are in fact, not one. It doesn't mean the person who said to remove the text and blocked you didn't read the humor box or is trying to be particulary spiteful, it means that identifying as an administrator when you aren't one, period, isn't allowed, and shouldn't be allowed. — Save_Us † 04:48, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

And therefore, a joke category for making such an identification shouldn't be allowed, because regular editors can't be in on the joke, which is why it was deleted, yet it still exists (for all intents and purposes, despite the fact that MediaWiki's definition of category deletion is simply deletion of the category page), and it is still a joke exclusive to admins. Equazcion •✗/C • 04:55, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

How is it even a joke category or a category meant for humor anymore? It's deleted. Now it is simply a category that identifies an administrator as rouge (or red? ironic to the red-link, no?). It makes since that an administrator can identify as a administrator and a non-administrator can't. To put it quite frankly Equazcion, there is no reason for you to identify as a adminstrator, the only thing coming out of it is someone mistaking you for an admin. — Save_Us † 05:03, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

You seem to be focused on the "delete" nomenclature, but try to look past that. What is a category? What does deleting it mean? The only difference between then and now is the category page. That's it. We can call the category "deleted" all we want, but if a category is defined as a named grouping of users or pages, then the category is still very much there. I'm not saying I want to post it again on my page -- I'm saying the deletion meant nothing and, if I can take that a small step further, isn't being respected; The page was removed, but that was never the problem; the grouping itself, which is what caused the problems noted in the deletion discussion, is still there. Equazcion •✗/C • 05:09, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

Do you not find it ironic that you want all the other editors removed from the category, and you want yourself to be in the category, making Category:Rouge admins consist of a sole editor, you? Your logic is flawed by all means. I understand your intentions, your intent is to not have the category cause you any trouble if you get added in it. You seem to be missing the very important element of being added to a category that has the word 'administrator' in it, you're not an admin. It's not about a joke, its not about being excluded from a joke, it's not even about the category itself, its the fact you're being called an admin when you're not. — Save_Us † 05:15, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

"I'm not saying I want to post it again on my page". No that's not my intent in not "having" the category, but whatever my intent or your disagreement with it, we shouldn't "have" it anymore anyway, because it has been deleted. This isn't about me wanting to be in the category -- that's long forgotten. I don't want to be in the category. I thought this was clear but if it was not, I hope this clarifies things. Equazcion •✗/C • 05:21, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

Its not really edit warring if they've only made one revert. Mr.Z-man 03:45, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

The only point worth making here is that some of the arguments for deletion were based on the assumption that people can't or won't tag their user pages into a category that doesn't exist. Those arguments are now shown to have been spurious. Hesperian 03:53, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Hm, I don't see a problem with my being in a nonexistent category. (For what it's worth, there's Category:Rouge non-admins, but it can't be deleted...) Keilana| 04:03, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

If you're in it, then it exists. Only the page is gone. Hey aren't you the one who offered me an RfA? How do ya' like me now? :) No seriously, I appreciated that, but still, this needs to be dealt with. If people are still in a category, with a listing and all, the concerns addressed by the closing as delete continue to persist. Equazcion •✗/C • 04:08, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

This isn't actually a problem, and there should be no concern. Take Category:Gayass Wikipedians for example. The cat was deleted, yet there are still 6 editors who have chosen to reinclude themselves in the redlinked cat. It doesn't cause any harm. - auburnpilot talk 04:22, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

That's debatable... And the reasons the rouge category was deleted didn't have as much to do with the page as it did with the problems the grouping itself caused. So now that it's deleted, can regular editors post it too? Or would that cause the same trouble again? I'm not saying I want to post it again myself, but if doing so would still cause the same trouble, then the so-called "deletion" didn't actually do anything. Equazcion •✗/C • 04:31, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

There is nothing short of an ArbCom decision that will stop anyone from including themselves in a category that does not exist or has been deleted. There is nothing that is within the purview of an administrator's duties here. Have you tried asking them to remove themselves from the category instead of coming directly here to complain about it?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:04, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

No, they had it removed once already, and their edit summaries when re-adding it told me that that would be a fruitless attempt. Besides which my problem isn't with one or two specific users. I'm sure not all the admins who had the category posted prior to the deletion are online now, and I find it more than probable others will revert the removal once they see it, so I wanted to deal with this centrally. If it's true that people can still post deleted categories, CFD is a complete sham and a waste of time. It should be called "category pages for deletion", and in that event, you can bet it would almost never get used. Equazcion •✗/C • 05:14, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

Did you ask them to remove the category, or did you remove it yourself and then they reverted you? Because that's what I get from your response.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:27, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I didn't do anything. The admin who closed the deletion discussion removed it, and they reverted it. Equazcion •✗/C • 05:30, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

Well, did you ask them to remove it this time?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:33, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

No, for the reasons I just stated above. Equazcion •✗/C • 05:35, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

All this appears now is a "If I can't be in it, no one can" mentality.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 06:03, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome to think that, but my motivation doesn't matter, as the decision has already been made. There should no longer be an "it". Equazcion •✗/C • 06:06, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

Deletion does mean something when it comes to categories: the page can no longer be reached through the category system nor found via a search. – Black Falcon 05:38, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

In other words, the page is deleted. The category is still there. Equazcion •✗/C • 05:43, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

Essentially, yes... Technically, a small grouping still exists, but it's not publicised and is significantly more difficult to find. With articles, I think it's worthwhile to insist that all deleted categories be emptied; with user pages, I don't feel that it's a worthwhile endeavour. Black Falcon 06:07, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

However, I don't think it's a reason to give on CFD (or UCFD). In most cases, deletion results in emptying without any objection. This type of situation is relatively rare. – Black Falcon 06:12, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Maybe it's finally time to put WP:UCFD up on WP:MFD SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

Perhaps as a compromise, and assuming we don't have an inclusive category:Rouge Wikipedians, then perhaps those with redlinks on user pages would agree to change them to category:Rouge Adnims, allowing the extension of th "joke" both to an entire extra word in the category name, and to the inclusion of non-admins. Of course, we would need to make sure that no one was blocked for claiming to be an adnim without proof. Jay*Jay (talk) 05:25, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Should editors (inclusive of admins) keep on their userpage a category that has been deleted? Probably not, since it clutters up Special:Wantedcategories. Is it worth trying to force editors to remove a redlinked category from their user page? Probably not. – Black Falcon 05:38, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Maybe so, but it would be nice if we didn't need to force people to do the right thing, least of all admins. Equazcion •✗/C • 05:44, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

By the way, the technical problem really is that non-existent categories still produce a listing. This basically means anyone can create or revive pretty much any category, and no process has any control over their existence. If that functionality were disabled, the problem would basically be solved -- although I think even in that event, it would behoove admins, as well as editors who consider themselves in good standing, to not post deleted categories. Equazcion •✗/C • 06:05, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

Why is this such a big deal to you? SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

(ec) I'm not sure how easy or difficult it would be to disable that functionality, but I don't think it's worth the effort required. In addition, the functionality can be useful at times (for instance, when a user adds a category to various pages but doesn't create the category page itself, the fact that the non-existent category page has members helps other editors to find and create it). – Black Falcon 06:12, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Frankly, I'm amazed at the mileage Equazcion and his cohorts are getting out of this assault on anything funny about Misplaced Pages. After the Rouge Admin cat, I now see they're going after any essay or guideline that's funny. This is me calling for a community ban on two editors who seek to disrupt as much of the project as possible to ruin the experience for anyone else. I can't take their actions as seriously being made in Good Faith. ThuranX (talk) 06:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I second this motion. I had not even heard of Equazcion until he was only temporarily blocked, and my patience has been exhausted. The category is gone, and the page is at MFD as we speak.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 06:15, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

• (many ec's -- this response is to SchmuckyTheCat)Because I feel that in similar reverse situations, admins would make a similar-size deal, and get their way. Ie., if there were a user category admins felt strongly against, it got deleted, and a few select users continued to post it in a kind of pointy protest, I seriously doubt that's something they'd let easily go. As I said earlier (above somewhere), this is more about precedent than it is about this particular little scenario. A wise man once said my mistake was bringing a knife to a gunfight. Well, maybe their guns shouldn't be quite so big.
• (and to Thuranx) I voted to Keep the Rouge page.
• (and to Ryu) Get me banned if you like. My crime is not blindly yielding to the status quo. I care much more about Misplaced Pages than I do about my own personal ability to edit it. If you find my comments unhelpful, simply ignore them. Ignoring someone is the first step towards eliminating their "disruptiveness". All I'm doing is talking -- you don't need to listen. Equazcion •✗/C • 06:19, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

I've yet to see you touch an article page since your block expired.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 06:21, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Then you're not looking close enough. Equazcion •✗/C • 06:23, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

My bad, I thought the block had been more recent. Then I've yet to see you touch an article in the past 48 hours.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 06:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

That could be true. Although I doubt I'd be the first person to go 48 hours without editing an article, or even the first person to go 48 hours only participating in discussions rather than editing articles. I don't quite see anything wrong with that. Equazcion •✗/C • 06:33, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, you're really the bigger man for voting keep. I suggest that before you run to nom WP:DICK, you read it while holding up a mirror. ThuranX (talk) 06:24, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

No no, you are definitely the bigger man here, as evidenced by this comment. I was responding to your citing the rouge page discussion as part of my disruptiveness, so my Keep !vote would preclude that, or so I had thought. Perhaps I misunderstood. Equazcion •✗/C • 06:28, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

I do believe we have a dead horse here. The animal is expired. It is an ex-horse. It is, indeed, quite beaten into a paste. Equazcion, you may put down your club. Thank you, Antandrus (talk) 06:26, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't. I'm quite confident that if Equazcion is not made fully aware of the bad faith his continued actions engender, he will continue to go after various policy, guideline and essay pages, until all the humor is expunged. I've got no interest in seeing that happen. This is an editor who has decided that bringing down the big bad elitist system of Admins is his priority. My only comfort is that this sort of stupidity usually precludes an editor from ever getting the Admin nod. ThuranX (talk) 06:32, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Accuse and indulge in bad faith in the same comment. I like that. Equazcion •✗/C • 06:35, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

I'm archiving this, as it's going no where fast. If Equazcion is causing disruption to the point that it is exhausting the community's patience, post a separate thread to gauge community consensus on the matter. As far as the category goes, get over it. It is a dead horse and the one that shot it should really stop beating it. Lara❤Love 07:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

No it's not. Equazcion •✗/C • 18:51, 18 Feb 2008 (UTC)

Wikistalking by a 75 IP

I've blocked the same 75 dynamic IP a few times towards the end of 2007. Apparently this IP has been stalking me, with these mysterious edits - (these are users that I indefinitely blocked) - - this is suspicious as well. This IP has been causing more trouble, see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_U.S._Roads#75_IP. Could someone look at this situation? --Rschen7754 (T C) 02:52, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

User refuses to communicate, continues to introduce possible copyvio images and mos issues.

I've reported this twice already, but as of yet, nothing has been done and the user continues to cause issues Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive363#Problem_User_follow-up. This is the last report with a link to the first. I first took this to village pump but a suggestion was made for me to take it to AN/I. Marcopolis (talk · contribs) has uploaded many copies and parts of an image which I'm sure are a copyvio (can't find the original, but another editor also agreed these were likely not his own work) yet he's claimed them as his own work. He continues to insert them in to the Seoul Metropolitan Subway which also introduces some formatting issues in addition to the questionable origin of these images. Links to several copies of this image are to be found in the first report. User claims to speak English, but I cannot continue to assume good faith at this point. I've continually used edit summaries, made posts on the article talk page, and made comments on his talk page, but he hasn't responded to a single one of them. Nor does he use edit summaries to do anything except label the photos he uploads. Another editor had previously asked him a question in English but I can find no evidence that he ever answered them. It seems the ONLY conversation he's engaged in, has been in Korean with another Korean editor. He claims to be going to school in Montreal and a native french speaker. Someone who can speak either Korean or French well enough needs to get through to this editor, or he has to prevented from continuing to edit wikipedia since he either refuses to or can't communicate over issues he's creating.--Crossmr (talk) 03:07, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

These two edits on the same day seem extremely questionable. In one article he tries to introduce improper formatting , and yet in another article he removes it --Crossmr (talk) 03:18, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. I speak neither Korean nor French, but I wanted to suggest that we might find somebody who does at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Korea. I have previously had to hunt down translators to help with editors who do not speak English, and I've found the WikiProjects a helpful way to do so. Elsewhere, I see these individuals are listed as willing translators from Korean. Most active among them seem to be User:Styrofoam1994 and User:PC78. Perhaps if we approached one of them, they might be able to help you open a dialog with this user to clear up questions about his image use. I'd be happy to approach one of them about it, if you'd like, or you can try it yourself. Alternatively, perhaps a French/Korean speaking administrator will come along who can handle things without the need of a go-between. :) --Moonriddengirl 14:27, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Looks like PC78 just has a page for holding templates, I'm not sure he actually speaks korean. The other fellow has a notice up about being tied up for a couple weeks. I'll try asking to get started though.--Crossmr (talk) 15:44, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I saw the notice on the other fellow's page, but his contribution history suggests he's doing stuff anyway. I hope he has the time to help out. :) --Moonriddengirl 15:51, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm a Korean editor and don't see any big problem on the mentioned user. The format looks not good, but I think he intended to put more contents in the spaces. Some of his pictures don't look like professional photos. Admin, BorgQueen can speak Korean. --Appletrees (talk) 16:48, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I'am just asking him, in french, to be more precise on the origins of his pictures. Wait and see .... Yves-Laurent (talk) 17:53, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Slow Motion Vandalism IP 70.185.238.178

IP 70.185.238.178's sole contributions are slow motion vandalism. The IP has targeted Josh Cobb 2nd and 3rd over the last two days. ClueBot got his Legacy Five vandalism and then he moved to my own user page as I'd been the one to create the original re-directs. Have had no contact with this IP but am trying to avoid 3R and don't want to spent a week reverting clear nonsense. Apparently AIV is not the place as it's slow-mo vandalism. Thanks! Travellingcari (talk) 04:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Seems to have stopped now but have left a warning & will monitor this IP's activity. Reverting clear vandalism does not invoke WP:3RR, so you're OK on that one.--Rodhullandemu (Talk) 04:17, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Travellingcari (talk) 04:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Spamming from different IPs

220.224.204.* has been inserting *.brainbubbles.biz under external links for various articles (particularly kindergarten). This is just some kind of search engine. IPs that have done this so far include:

• 220.224.204.17 - Kindergarten, Medical gloves
• 220.224.204.67 - Kindergarten
• 220.224.204.70 - Golf courses
• 220.224.204.194 - Kindergarten, Pre-kindergarten

I'm not sure what to do about these. WP:SPAM doesn't really provide a course of action for where to report SPAM that isn't current and persistent, so I'm listing these here. —Torc. 04:45, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

The IP looks pretty solid. What sort of damage would a lock do? HalfShadow (talk) 05:04, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

not much, unfortnately. is there any way to report this infomration to his ISP and get his connection yanked??. Smith Jones (talk) 05:58, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, also don't forget to check Special:Linksearch (he'll change to a log-in soon enough), and if nothing else, blacklist time. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 10:03, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

http://spam.brainbubbles.biz

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

In the future, you should report these to WT:WPSPAM. MER-C 10:46, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

User:Sunray

This user is reverting material at Yi Ching claiming it is sourced.. I have tried to explain on the talkpage but he keeps reverting. He claims the source is at the end of the paragraph. When this is checked it does not support his inclusions. Grateful for help. Mccready (talk) 06:44, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I've given him a 3RR warning. Its a content dispute. Use WP:DR or if he continues file a report at the 3RR noticeboard.--Crossmr (talk) 06:49, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Crossmr, I cannot see why you have given me a 3RR warning and not Mccready. He has reverted exactly the same number of times as I have. Actually, though, neither of us has violated 3RR. However, if you read the talk page carefully, you will see that he has been acting alone and I have been working with other editors on the talk page.

Some background: I re-wrote the text in that paragraph in accordance with long-standing concerns raised on the talk page here and here. The text I added contains the quotation from Needham that he likes but provides an online source and gives it context (per discussion on the talk page referenced above). My addition is a paraphrase of an article, which I cited. Mccready reverted me here, , but kept my citation, calling my addition "original research" (it is not, as I and another editor have explained to him on the talk page . He reverted a second time , as did I . I make that two reverts.

In addition, I reverted his insertion of a neutrality tag . I did that because Mccready failed to give policy-based reasons for placement of the tag. I make that three reverts. However, following further discussion, I restored the tag . Thus, no 3RR violation by my count. Sunray (talk) 08:16, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Quite simply because you performed 3 reverts in a 24 hour period on the same article. , , . As for McCready I didn't notice that his first edit was to restore a tag that had been removed a few days prior so I didn't realize it was a revert.--Crossmr (talk) 15:25, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that is what I said: three reverts. And, since in five years of editing, I've never broken the WP:3RR and Mccready has many times, I am still unsure why you gave only me a warning. Sunray (talk) 16:26, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

. ——Martin ☎ Ψ Φ—— 07:00, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

User:David Shankbone "anger" photos

User:David Shankbone has uploaded pictures of himself in a political gathering and added them to various articles on wikipedia such as Anger, Body language, Gesture, Index finger, Type of gesture, Logical argument‎, Eye contact, Staring (please see the history as well, as I have tried to remove the pictures from some of them now and on some I have not been successful). Because of the large number of these articles including his pictures and that they follow the same pattern I'd like to notify the community about them.

For example, please take a look at this section in Anger article: . It is my belief that adding political-flavored images to articles that are not notable or known for any political issue is not appropriate. The concept of anger itself is rather independent of politics; If the images were notable (they are not), they were only justified to represent the concept of anger in the context of politics (but there is no such section there); and lastly the image is not historically notable; there are thousands of images available on the internet that do not have political flavor but represent the matter and I believe there are already such images in the article.

User:Durova proposed other historical and notable images like but David rejected this approach saying: "We need a modern example that isn't a statute."

There are already similar images on the same topic here --Be happy!! (talk) 07:04, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry but this is not the venue for content dispute, please go to WP:Dispute Resolution. nat.utoronto 07:10, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Nat, I brought the case here because of the large number of articles involved. If it was one, I would not have brought them here.--Be happy!! (talk) 07:19, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

None of those pictures even have David Shankbone in them. You should thank him for the pictures, not complain here. John Reaves 07:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

John, both pictures involved are of the same man who looks similar to him. Be it himself or someone else, my point is something completely different. I would thank him if he adds his pictures to the relevant articles (not on general concept such Anger etc ). --Be happy!! (talk) 07:19, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

How can this be encyclopedic? --Be happy!! (talk) 07:21, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

This is David Shankbone, those pictures do not have him in them. John Reaves 07:24, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

That guy is certainly angry, what is the problem with it being in the article? John Reaves 07:25, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

John, thank you very much for the link but my argument here does not revolve around the identity of the person in those images.

He is angry but the image has an additional political flavor. This relevant section explains how body reacts when a person becomes angry (but nothing more). I of course agreed with User:Durova proposal of focusing on the angry man itself by cropping the picture (focusing on the emotion itself) and rename the image title to something neutral. --Be happy!! (talk) 07:33, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't see the problem with these, Aminz. The images aren't being used to promote any particular POV. They're just images of angry people. SlimVirgin 07:36, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Please zoom on the image or See the Image title. These are good for a section on "Anger in the context of politics" if there was such a section and if the pictures were notable. Another thing is that there are many other non-notable images that do not have political flavor.

But yes, of course they do not promote a POV except that they link and reinforce the concept of anger with politics in reader's mind. --Be happy!! (talk) 07:41, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Why does a political context disqualify a photo? That doesn't make any sense to me. Any photo of someone who is angry is bound to have a context behind it. R. Baley (talk) 07:39, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

The images don't even have an overt political context. It seems like you're just grasping at straws for a reason to delete. John Reaves 07:46, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if the images have overt political context. By adding them, we are providing a specific strong connection between contemporary politics and the concept of anger in the subconscious of the readers if not in their conscious. The images are not encyclopedic at all. --Be happy!! (talk) 07:50, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

That's utter nonsense. John Reaves 07:54, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I can refer to related experiments in psychology and neurology if you are interested. For user:David Shankbone, there might be some correlations between concept of anger and politics just as for a football player there might be similar correlations in the context of his life but these connections are specific and have irrelevant component to the topic of this article: that is body's reaction to anger. This has been already shown using encyclopedic and historical artworks. My logic here and elsewhere is that when an image is not related to politics, it does not have to involve it.--Be happy!! (talk) 07:57, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

The picture doesn't cause me to relate politics to anger. I see an overtly angry man, and nothing more. It isn't our job to worry about the subconscious mental health of the reader; our job is to inform the reader, which this picture does by showing a man with physical signs of anger. SexySeaBass 08:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

There is another picture in the same section that expresses the body's reaction when someone is angry(and the person is nude) . What's the point of adding that particular image that shows more than what it is supposed to show.--Be happy!! (talk) 08:07, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

David Shankbone is an interviewer and photographer. That is obviously not him in the photo, unless he suddenly aged about 20 years, besides which he apparently took the photo. That dispells the original complaint. And tell me if I'm wrong (my PC won't play the sound bite), but I don't see where he's taking sides on anything, he's just illustrating anger, finger-pointing, etc., so the complainants can't make the "POV" argument either. The picture's title simply identifies where it was taken, it doesn't say who's right or wrong in the argument. And it's a lot more interesting than some statue. I don't get what's up with wikipedians. They've got robot jobs clobbering thousands of fair-use images on the grounds that they only want "free" content in wikipedia. So here's a bit of "free" content and wikipedians are trying to shoot it down. Baseball Bugs 08:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

One Wikipedian is making a completely illogical and desperate argument, and a group of other Wikipedians are putting a stop to it. Don't stereotype, SexySeaBass 08:08, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Hold on thar. Is there anything about the photo or the sound bite (which I can't hear) that suggests whose side anyone should be taking? Because if there is, the complainant has a legitimate complaint. If not, then not. Baseball Bugs 08:12, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I can not open that file but my point is about its political nature. --Be happy!! (talk) 08:14, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

The Hybrid, Please tell me what aspect of anger is that picture supposed to show? --Be happy!! (talk) 08:14, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm assuming this is a WP:OWN issue since you brought Anger up to GA status. John Reaves 08:16, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Why are you not assuming good faith? I am simply more concerned about the quality of this article simply because I spent much time on it and want to see it in a good shape. That picture however lowers the quality. I am however completely open to any addition that can help the article become FA. --Be happy!! (talk) 08:22, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Body language, I haven't checked the sound file, but if anything is wrong with it, then it can be removed. The sound fil I assume is to show verbal signs of anger, such as a raised and combative voice. BTW, something being political in nature is irrelevant so long as it doesn't push any one POV, which this does not. SexySeaBass 08:19, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

If the article is about anger, body language, etc., why does it matter what he's angry about? It's a good generic illustration of anger. And the statues don't necessarily work. The statue of the Biblical David, alleged to be anger, looks to me like "concentration". He looks like a lot of photos I've seen of baseball pitchers in mid-delivery. As for the "fury" statue, it doesn't say "anger" to me. But the photo does. And who cares what he's angry about? He could just as easily be yelling at somebody for blocking him into his parking space... or for deleting his fair-use image on wikipedia. Baseball Bugs 08:20, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm bowing out now, BTW. I also suggest undenting this whole thing, as John did. SexySeaBass 08:21, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd agree 100% with Baseball Bug's comment. It doesn't matter if the guy is upset because of something political as much as it be if he was upset because he only got two pickle slices with his burger instead of three. It really should be a moot point. David's photo is very encyclopedic in content and serves as a worthy illustration for the concept of Anger and in some of the other articles it was added to. As for the statue pic, it is certainly an interpretation piece. I see more agony rather than anger or fury, but that is me. David's pic illustrates anger much more clearly. Agne/ 08:27, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

User:David Shankbone gives his perspective on this dispute in Misplaced Pages talk:Images. Apparently the "political" context of this image is the protest against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University last year. Shankbone has changed the image caption and retitled the image to accommodate User:Aminz, but apparently this is not enough. / edg ☺ ☭ 08:49, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

The compromise that I agreed to was to crop the image and include only the man. And also change the image title to something related to the emotion. --Be happy!! (talk) 08:53, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Shankbone's reasons for having both disputants in the image are given in Misplaced Pages talk:Images#Do we not use images because we don't like the circumstances.3F. He proposes Aminz is trying to get the barely legible flyer on the bottom right removed from the article, at the expense of showing both disputants. I'm going to stop arguing Shankbone's position now. / edg ☺ ☭ 09:08, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I confess, as yet another argument starts up about David's images, that I really don't understand what's going on. And I'm not saying this because I am David's friend; as time has gone on, and David has been hauled into disputes for illustrating topics as diverse as public hair, Orthodox Judaism, and now anger, I find myself more and more baffled as to why people are so determined to harry an editor who has done nothing but provide good quality images for Misplaced Pages. Call me stupid, but when people claim that, say, a drawing of pubic hair, or a statue expressing anger, or unbelivably, no image at all, is preferable to one of David's images of a real life person illustrating the article in question, I really, truly do not understand why they think this makes sense. Is anyone on here to write an encyclopedia any more?

To move to this specific case: why this man is angry is utterly irrelevant, as stated above. Few things get people so riled up as politics, so why not show it? Yes, David suffixes all his images with "by David Shankbone". So what? The man has spent hundreds of hours developing free images for us, is it so awful that he might want some credit? Do we not release images under the Creative Commons licence for this exact same reason?

Again, I am astonished that David has yet again come under fire for illustrating an article with a better image than what there was before. Seriously, what the hell. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 08:45, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

A vaguely related question: there are identifiable minors in the image, does that matter at all, or since it was at a public place we are okay using them? Jd2718 (talk) 08:58, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Another issue, the sound file gives out the names and locations of these two people (though the man gives an obvious fake name). At the very least, this should be edited out for the sake of privacy. --MPerel 09:00, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

How do you know it's fake? What is it? I can't play the thing. Baseball Bugs 09:12, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm just guessing that Rumpelstiltskin was a fake name : ) The woman seemed to give her real name though. --MPerel 09:17, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

He looks more like an Ichabod Crane than a Rumpelstiltskin, but you never know. Maybe her name should not be made available, though, unless she gave permission. And if not, it's probably a little late now. Again, it would be best to check the policy manual. Logic tells me if you're in public and someone is photographing or videotaping you, you might assume that's going to be published somewhere. But I don't know the law on that matter. Baseball Bugs 09:23, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Cropping is inappropriate, as it amounts to censorship. The viewer might be interested in who he was yelling at and why. As far as privacy goes, I have raised this question before. In a public place, there is no particular right to privacy in terms of simply being photographed. And since this guy was drawing attention to himself by yelling, he has even less grounds to claim privacy. Baseball Bugs 09:12, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Censorship is a spurious argument in this case. The expressed aim of the photo is to illustrate the emotion, not the event. Just imagine David having used a higher zoom level (for a smaller field of view) when taking the picture - would he be censoring as well? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:21, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

If the photographer decides to crop the photo, that's his editorial judgment, and is only an issue if cropping it makes it misleading. If someone else tells him he has to do it, just because he doesn't like what's in the picture, that's censorship. The photo is a good illustration of anger, regardless of the context. And someone who might be interested has the right to know why he was angry. Baseball Bugs 09:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

So if David crops it, that is editorial judgment, but if we do it, its censorship? Sorry, no. We want to use the photo not to describe the event in question - this is purely coincidental. We use it to shown the emotion of anger. In this context, the user does not have the right or even the expectation to know why the user is angry - and in fact, the photo is useless in telling us the reason. He may very well be shouting at the woman because her minivan scratched his SUV on the parking lot. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I was asking about the privacy of the two young people watching the dispute. Jd2718 (talk) 09:14, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

They are not identified, and I expect you'll find other photos that show minors. However, it would be best to consult the policy manual, wherever that may be. Regarding the flier in the lower right, as someone brought up earlier, Mr. Shankbone could perhaps be persuaded to blur it out, but I say again that it doesn't really matter. Whose side would the picture compel the viewer to take? The viewer might feel sympathy for the woman who's being yelled at. Or the viewer might side with the guy because he thinks he's right. It's not our place to tell the viewer what point of view to take on a political topic. Baseball Bugs 09:18, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

There are thousands of non-political drawings, pictures and statues of people expressing anger. Why is it necessary to use the controversial ones? --Be happy!! (talk) 09:31, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

What's controversial about it? What are you seeing that I'm not seeing? And how do those non-descript statues express anger better than this photo does? Baseball Bugs 09:35, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Something tells me that had the picture been taken at a rally against, say, George W Bush, this thread would never have happened. rudra (talk) 09:28, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

This is frankly bonkers - David spends a lot of time providing good quality photos and other material to the encyclopaedia and the thanks is that some users want to kick him in the bollocks. --Fredrick day (talk) 09:38, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

We are specifically talking about addition of certain pictures to certain articles. That's all.--Be happy!! (talk) 09:44, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Which you examined so closely, you concluded that David was in them! I can see nothing wrong with any of those photos and there placement on the anger article, nobody else here seems to have a problem. This is a content dispute and does not actually require admin action BUT this thread shows that current community thinking is that there is not a problem with including those pictures. --Fredrick day (talk) 10:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Anger is anger. It doesn't matter where it occurs. Editmaniac (talk) 09:48, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I would like Mr. Happy to explain what it is about this specific photo that he has such a problem with. As the Editmaniac said, and I sort-of said, anger is anger. And there is nothing in that photo that inherently pushes a point of view. Baseball Bugs 09:53, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

It isn't the point of view. It's the associations. rudra (talk) 10:07, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Can this be clarified a little? I may have "associations" with all sorts of images. Perhaps because of this I have objections to any depiction (implicit or explicit) of a certain thing. What demands can I make of Misplaced Pages on behalf of my associations, and those of people like me? / edg ☺ ☭ 10:16, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

You all are kind of talking in riddles here. I infer that the original complainant is sensitive to the fact that this rally has something to do with that Iranian guy. But that's not the focus of the picture, and there is no justification for censoring it. Actually, as someone suggested, the minors being in the picture might be a bigger issue. But this is the American-English wikipedia, which is not censored just because someone doesn't like something. The photo does not inherently take a viewpoint on the subject of its participants' debate. Baseball Bugs 10:13, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Not the Iranian guy, but the religion the Iranian guy professes. Yes, that's tangential. Yes, that's a stretch. But... It's there, and that's enough for Aminz. rudra (talk) 10:24, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Again, please, only in plain and forthright language as to what the exact problem is. I'm not very good at reading between the lines. Baseball Bugs 10:26, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I do not fully agree with the Iran's president nor with many of his opponents outside Iran. But this is aside the point. When you mention X and Y together, one's brain associates them and strengthens the connection between them. That's the basic principle of learning in neuro science. --Be happy!! (talk) 10:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Excellent! I'll take the opportunity to mention "wikilawyering" and "kitman" together. Maybe we can all learn a basic principle. rudra (talk) 10:42, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know from neuroscience. All I see is a photo of an angry guy yelling at a woman. If you think the photographer is trying to promote a point of view, then you've got something. But you haven't made that claim, you're making an argument on some kind of theoretical grounds about nerve endings or something. If you can persuade him to slice the bottom of the photo or to blur out the illustration that bothers you, that's fine. But you're making way too much of this. P.S. You would be well-advised to remove or reword your initial statement about the photo actually being of the photographer. It's clearly untrue, and it undermines your argument. Baseball Bugs 10:37, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

As I mentioned earlier aside from the political associations, I have no objections to the image. Thanks also for the advice. My argument didn't depend on that point. --Be happy!! (talk) 10:42, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing. And I don't agree that political associations is what the photo is about. It's about anger, and it just happens to be at a political rally. That's American free speech at work. But if you think the photographer is trying to push a particular viewpoint, you need to raise that issue. P.S. I'm as WASP as they come, and I've got no use for the Iranian president, but my initial reaction to the photo was sympathy for the one being yelled at. Baseball Bugs 10:53, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Just to say, not everyone would agree with Aminz's beliefs about what he says is "neuro science" to him and how it works, nor even about the belief that there is such a thing as the unconscious mind. As to cropping the photos if anyone wished to do so- they are under a free license, so we can edit them mercilessly, and the artist will have known that. :) Merkinsmum 12:35, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I think the images are very useful and nicely done. I see nothing wrong with the association of anger (or whatever the subject is) with politics because there is always some context - if we show someone angry over losing his keys, we're associating anger with keys. However, if we do get a preponderance of similarly-styled and themed images from the same editor (I'm talking hundreds or thousands, not just a few) or it begins to look POV then it's fair to make an editorial decision that we don't want the encyclopedia to take on that flavor. I'm concerned over the incivility directed to the poster for bringing the question up, and the attempt to simply shut down the discussion. Yes, it is a matter of general interest that potentially raises behavior concerns, so please don't WP:BITE anyone, old or new, for bringing something up here in good faith. If you don't want to deal with it, you can skip to the next section.Wikidemo (talk) 16:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Jakew and Avraham

This really would not be a dispute if Jakew and Avraham did not try to control an entire article and bully everybody else from editing. The article is circumcision and it is well-believed by many or most doctors that circumcision can reduce a man's risk of getting HIV but can INcrease a man's risk of getting chlamydia and herpes. Jakew and Avraham WILL NOT allow me to add ONE SENTENCE about the chlamydia and herpes, even though it is verifiable and provable that many doctors feel this way. Circumcision article mentions HIV probably 100 times (I'm not joking) and mentions herpes or chlamydia not once. The entire article is an advertisement for how the procedure MAY decrease HIV. That's all it is. Why can't I add ONE ARTICLE to Misplaced Pages here?? Anyway, I'd greatly appreciate anyone who wants to help balance this article. Also there's hardly any discussion about the sexual effects of circumcision, they want to you to link to an entirely new article. But shouldn't the Whole HIV and circumcision connection simply be put into a separate article too? The entire circumcision article is really only about HIV. Help would be much appreciated. LPRABCMP (talk) 07:20, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I really don't see what you are claiming here. You added a reference that suggested the chlamidia/herpes connection which has been removed several times, when you added it as an IP address and now as a logged in account, and "HIV" is only used a little over a dozen times. Please bring controversial material to the talk page of the article first, as it is already being described on the talk page. Continue there, gain consensus, and then add it to the article.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 07:24, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I guess canvassing dozens of random uninvolved admins didn't suffice. Frankly, the only one I see bullying other editors is yourself . ˉˉ╦╩ 08:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism from 217.70.244.236

I've run across several items that this person has vandalized, and have now told him/her twice to stop. Inks.LWC (talk) 08:58, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Reports like this generally belong on WP:AIV. Cheers, SexySeaBass 09:00, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Misuse of Privledges

Hi, I started discussion on Talk:Muhammad/images and User:Jmlk17 removed that discussion, claiming it was general which most of muslims would not agree on, when I reverted his edit and placed {{Uw-tpv1}} on my talk page, he issued me a warning that I will be blocked. If I get blocked, It will most definately be misusage of his priveledges. Are my actions eligible to get blocked? Thank you XubayrMA 10:16, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

• It would probably have been a good idea to read the huge pink box at the top of that page, before starting a new thread which has been said hundreds of times already. Black Kite 10:36, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Yeah sure, you complain about censorship on the article page, but are censoring the talk page yourself. There is no reason to stop the discussion. Those huge pink box is illegitimate as it hinders consensus building and violates WP:NBD. --Raphael1 10:49, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Dozens of people turning up and starting the same thread over and over again is not furthering the discussion - it just clogs up the page and obscures the useful material. That's why the warning box is at the top of the page. Black Kite 11:44, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
      • Sure. And big censors like you decide what is useful material, aren't you? If you are not interested in improving the article go somewhere else, but let those who want to improve that mess discuss their issues.--Raphael1 17:30, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I admit that the thead was repeat of older discussions. I must have missed the pink box. XubayrMA 12:00, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

There used to be a subpage there recently for newcomers to the article to talk about their opinions on that issue. Don't know if it's still there. The thing is the debate was taking up all the space on the talk page so it was hard for it to be used for article changes to be worked out. Merkinsmum 12:41, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I haven't checked in for a couple of days but all mo stuff about the images was being moved to the sub-page intended for that purpose, all general chat that wasn't about the improvement of the article was being removed on sight in accordance with policy (a bit more quickly than on a normal page because of the need to stop it being swamped with crap). --Fredrick day (talk) 15:35, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Betacommand's use of bot on MickMacNee's talk page

This discussion has been moved to Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Betacommand#Edits by Betacommand to MickMacNee talkpage. 15:27, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

It should be noted that this incident report is only a few hours old, and there is disagreement over whether it should have been moved to the subpage. Also, for some reason, the other report below, also about Betacommand and his bot, was not moved. Carcharoth (talk) 15:53, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Non-notification

This discussion has been moved to Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Betacommand#Non-notification. 15:27, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Unrealistic timestamp to fool the archive bot -- lucasbfr 15:53, 18 February 2018

User:Fenderesk

First of all, this user has removed tags that marked his uploads as having no copyright info. See diffs: , , and .

Second, Fenderesk created four articles on seemingly the same article: ShirAbad Waterfall, Shirabad, Shirabad waterfall and Waterfall shirabad. I saw this, and put merge tags on three of the articles, and a {{mergefrom}} on the first. See diffs: , , and . I even left a message on Talk:ShirAbad Waterfall explaining the tags. Fenderesk removed all those tags too. Diffs: , , and . I have since returned the tags.

I do not know the proper course of action here and haven't found much in the Help or Misplaced Pages namespaces. Please advise/help. Thanks, -Reuvenk_{T C} 13:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Just appears to be a good-faith editor with no knowledge of our policies. I left them the stock welcome notice, tagged or delete some images, and redirected all the articles. east.718 at 13:59, February 18, 2008

require assistance

I'm requesting admin assistance with this. I'm not sure this doesn't go too far into the direction WP:NLT. User:Dorftrottel 14:56, February 18, 2008

Not a legal threat but worth keeping an eye on. Stifle (talk) 15:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Nope, no threat as Stifle says - commenting on a legal matter doesn't make it a Legal Threat. Neıl ☎ 15:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok thanks. I thought better to err on the side of caution. User:Dorftrottel 15:58, February 18, 2008

Does Misplaced Pages want David Shankbone or should we just tell him to leave?

I think that's the question that needs to be answered.

I really appreciate the words of support above and on my Talk page, but I'm at the end of my rope on this website, and to be honest, on Wikinews as well. The last few weeks have been a bit too much for me. I started to edit Misplaced Pages and contribute to it because I can't stand the narrative that is force-fed the public in the mainstream media. In addition to scoring in the 95th percentile on the LSAT and going through law school, I also have a lot of energy, talent and creativity. I felt I brought a lot to the Misplaced Pages table. Two years ago today I did not own a camera until my sister bought one for my birthday, a cheap 2.1 megapixel Fuji camera. Some of you may not remember that back in 2006 there were very few photos on Misplaced Pages, and I thought I could contribute that way. Since that time, I have purchased PhotoShop, new camera equipment, new lenses, audio equipment. I have kept track of how much I have spent contributing to Misplaced Pages and Wikinews, and it is just under $5,000 (I can PDF you the receipts). Yes, I put my WIKIPEDIA name (everyone from the Misplaced Pages Review to Wikinews knows that's not my birth name) in the files - you spend the money, effort and time I put into it, you can name files the way you want as well.

With over 3,000 photographs on Misplaced Pages. 10 to 20 have been controversial. And this is a mark of a spammer? Of a COI? Of someone who routinely inserts POV? I dunnno - the Anger photo has now been twice removed by User:Nandesuka, who is perhaps still upset that few people agreed with him over on Talk:Pubic hair about my photo.

Since August 2006 I have taken over 3,000 photographs that illustrate articles in almost every language. I don't "hold back" in what I give this site. You aren't getting 100KB-size photos while I keep the 7MB versions in case I want to sell them. Indeed, when the brother of the kid on my Bong photo wanted to buy it from me, I told him he could have it for free. Additionally, when better photos that are superior to mine are put up, not only am I okay with it, but I at times congratulate the photographer. (See Catwalk, Sean Combs, Kerry Washington, John Waters (director), Michael Stipe (I actually liked the other photo better, but someone liked mine better and re-replaced it), et. al.)

In the last few weeks I had User:Georgewilliamherbert and User:Mangojuice block me on a whim when I violated no policy, simply because I allowed a page owner on Guy Fawkes to get me in a revert war over a title in the Talk page (even though he had been blocked for that behavior just a few days ago, and the non-3RR revert war was over a Talk page heading the disparaged me, I still got blocked). When the Israeli government invited me to their country specifically to take pictures for Misplaced Pages to improve how Israeli articles look, I had someone raising COI, ANI, BLP and writing all over my Talk page and on article talk pages that I was getting fucked up the ass by a porn star. Few admins took notice or even cared. Same thing with the Guy Fawkes issue, where it raised it on ANI and nobody did a thing (and then I got blocked by Georgewilliamherbert, who by the way, wanted me blocked for a few months back at ArbCom when nobody else thought that was an insane suggestion). I had User:WAS 4.250 (who thinks he is Jimmy Wales) threaten to 'punish' me on User:Jimbo's page, saying that you all "let" me contribute (essentially).

I don't get involved in the politics on this site (you notice I'm rarely involved in voting or any of the other drama), so when I need help I don't have a "network" I can turn to. I apparently am one of the few contributors left that if you look at my contributions, they are almost all content and not talk page arguments. Then when a handful of my photos out of thousands become become an issue, suddenly I'm tarred.

I have over 3,000 photos on this site that illustrate major concepts, people, places and things. I don't have my own website; everything I have done has been for this site.

But seriously, I have a lot of talent, I have a lot of intelligence, and I have been offered to be paid for everything I do on this site (but I make too much money on my day job). So, you guys should maybe figure out if you want to find someone else in New York City, who has the access I have, and is willing to spend 20 to 40 hours a week (every week, since I started) trying to build this site up because they believe in the Free culture movement. I don't know about anybody else on this site, but I have other things I can do with my time, and that would be more lucrative. I just happen to believe in the principles of this project; but I'm beginning to feel like human nature may doom it. I know I feel too battered from the last few weeks to want to continue. Really - some of the attitude toward me, some of the vile things that have been said about, and some of the ridiculous reasoning against work I put a lot of thought, time and money into, is not worth it. So vote away and let me know the results. Because the last few weeks working on Wiki have been about the shittiest, kick me in my teeth.

Seriously, I'm at the end of my rope on this site. If there is a cabal, I wish I was part of it, because the only way to work on Misplaced Pages is to form tribes of people who actually care about the project so that they can get past the nonsense, such as "I don't like protest photos - find somewhere else people get angry." And that Fury statute on the page doesn't even look like anger, it looks like Despair.

So, you all can have this site. I have better things to do with my time instead of giving away my time, energy, money, creativity and intelligence away for free. I've given enough to the free culture movement, and I'm tired of being smacked around for it.

--David Shankbone 15:32, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Fixed a couple userlinks -- lucasbfr 15:46, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'm not surprised. I am going to refrain from saying what I think of User:Aminz and the other editors that have contributed towards pissing off our best image contributor. Neıl ☎ 15:48, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

In my opinion, you're fine - anyone who has a sysop flag anywhere on a Wikimedia project automatically gains my trust unless something happens otherwise. Will 15:51, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

This is quite sad and disappointing; malgré the brief dispute I had with him the other week about the Mike Farrell picture, I admire and respect David, and consider him to be (doesn't feel right to say "to have been") a definite asset to the project. David, I sincerely hope that at some point you reconsider your decision to walk away. DS (talk) 15:52, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

David, I don't know how other to say this but if anybody has actually suggested we would be better off if you left us, they are a fucking idiot. Three thousand free photos. Wow. Just wow. Please don't quit. — CharlotteWebb 15:55, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I must agree. I haven't had more than a moment's interaction with Mr. Shankbone but I know him to be a tireless and dedicated contributor of excellent images and common sense. He is the kind of editor of whom we need more, not fewer. I'll add my voice to those who ask him to reconsider his decision. Accounting4Taste:talk 15:59, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm with Charlotte Webb on this one. Your contributions are incredibly valuable and I do hope that anybody who suggests you leave is prepared for a brush with a cluestick. Nick (talk) 16:00, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

You are an excellent contributor of images. I don't know enough about your conflicts with other editors to comment, but the quality of your images speak volumes. English peasant 16:03, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I was going to expound forcefully on this one but I think CharlotteWebb nailed it. I hope you can think again about this. Black Kite 16:04, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

(ECx6)(!)Support per above. UltraExactZZ ~ Evidence 16:06, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Yup, Charlotte nailed it indeed. -- Hoary (talk) 16:07, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

David, you are an asset to Misplaced Pages. Please stay. But let's rename those images so "David Shankbone" is not part of the name, if you really really are not promoting yourself. (But you are promoting yourself, and we don't mind, so long as its kept within reason.) WAS 4.250 (talk) 16:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

He seems to be implying above that "David Shankbone" is just a pseudonym that he uses on Wikimedia projects. Maybe using this name, which apparently isn't his real one, in the titles of his photos would fall under a very, very broad definition of "self-promotion", I really don't know and really don't care as no photo credit or watermark is visible in the image itself (and even if this was the case, the creative commons license used would permit us to remove it). When I see an image title like "Drew Barrymore by David Shankbone" I think of it as a disambiguation scheme more than anything, an alternative to simply numbering the titles when we have multiple photos of the same subject. Harmless, seriously. — CharlotteWebb 16:28, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

His name is not Shankbone by birth, but seeing as he got a trip to Israel, while telling the press that this was his name, I'm not sure how that much it matters. He appears to be using it as a kind of photography name, which is sensible enough because his birth name is dirt common.

And David, you should stay. And I'm saying this as someone you consider (one of?) your archenemies. But stop threatening to leave every time you're not getting your way. You did this over citing your own Wikinews work on Misplaced Pages as well (which you continue to do, incidentally). You're cool. Please stay. Cool Hand Luke 17:42, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I hope David stays, and I appreciate the work he does. But even when supporting someone at a difficult time, using rhetorical labels like "Our best image contributor" and "our best article writer" (a label applied to someone else recently) insults the other people who contribute images and articles. We all contribute and we should all work together. It is very dangerous for individuals to ever think they are indispensable, or for others to state that they think someone is indispensable. Certain types of photos (even if difficult to obtain) shouldn't be lauded over others. 3,000 photos is amazing, but a drop in the ocean compared to the 2,000,000+ at Commons. I could take 3,000 free photos over the next few years (admittedly not at 7MB file sizes), but I chose not to. This is a long-term project involving thousands and thousands of volunteers. People come and go at their own time and with their own money. No single person is indispensable. When people feel they are getting upset, it is best to take a break. The encyclopedia will still be here when you get back. Carcharoth (talk) 16:09, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I would have voiced support for David Shankbone here, but Carcharoth makes it clear that any such support would be biased, and he will push for a block of anyone who does so. So see ya later, David Shankbone. ThuranX (talk) 16:14, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Where on earth did that come from? Thuran, are you attacking me here? Carcharoth (talk) 16:18, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

No offense Carcharoth, but that is the impression you tend to give off. When I read what you write about many established contributors, the attitude that comes across basically is "get the hell out we don't need you". You might want to reexamine your way of interacting with your fellow editors here, Sir. We are not all "dogs" you know.--Filll (talk) 17:01, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not attacking you any more than you're attacking David Shankbone, or Betacommand. Filll hit it on the nose. Your comment makes it impossible to support David Shankbone without obviously admitting bias as a "Pro-Shankbone" editor, and thus, once bias is admitted, such editors as voice said support are disregardable, as they are obviously biased. the only editors who 'understand' the problem are the ones who agree with you. As such, I re-iterate: goodbye, David Shankbone. ThuranX (talk) 17:32, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

What I don't understand is where you get "he will push for a block of anyone who does so" from? Is this going back further to something else before all this happened? Carcharoth (talk) 18:01, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

That's what you do when an editor disagrees with you, and you don't like their side of things. you're currently pushing for a block on Betacommand, and you're pushing David Shankbone out the door fast as you can. That said, I'm abiding by your instructions, as an admin, to not compliment one user and not all users, because is shows undue favoritism. that's your point above. I am supporting you in throwing David Shankbone's ass out the door as fast as possible, so I'm confused by your hostility to me. ThuranX (talk) 18:27, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

And if you must know, my argument is that I've seen this cycle repeat many times on Misplaced Pages. Editor digs themselves in deep, thinks they are indispensable, something goes wrong, editor gets upset, community supports them, cycle repeats. That may not be what has happened here, but it is a vicious circle that is best broken, in my opinion, with a break and a refocusing when the editor returns. Carcharoth (talk) 16:23, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

hi david, just to say that if you look at the thread Aminz started about the anger pic, hardly anyone has agreed with him particularly :) On the other hand, the amount of time you put into wikipedia is up to you, you can't expect people to fawn over you over it (though of course, some will appreciate it greatly), nor should you feel like a martyr over it. Remember that this is just a hobby. This is just the internets at the end of the day. Only you are responsible for putting your hobbies in perspective and the nature of the friendships built on the internet is pretty transient. Merkinsmum 16:22, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what Thuran is saying exactly, but your comment is a touch curmudgeonly. David should be applauded not just for his photos but his many interesting interviews. Marskell (talk) 16:24, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm assuming you mean Thuran, not I :) Merkinsmum 16:36, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I think he meant me, actually, as I was questioning Thuran's comment. Still, my comments below were a general response. Carcharoth (talk) 16:42, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

(Responding to Marskell) I agree, but my point is that you need to strike a balance between supporting people and making sure they get their contributions in perspective. Too much support at the wrong time can lead to even more angst further down the road and a departure at that point instead of now. Supporting someone can be as much about helping them keep things in perspective as it is about offering uncritical support. David's contributions are immense and valued, but he should know that without having to ask here. Does that make sense? Carcharoth (talk) 16:37, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

he should know that without having to ask here. Does that make sense? should he? after the giant timewasting exercise we saw this morning (well morning where I am), I'm surprised more GF editors don't just pack it in on account of the complete shite that is allowed to carry on here at AN/I. --Fredrick day (talk) 16:41, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

If this doesn't shut the people driving him away to shut the hell up then I don't know what to do. David's more valuable to the project than them so we can deal accordingly. John Reaves 16:38, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

series of comments removed by mutual agreement

I can see David made lots of good contributions here, tirelessly. We all suffer from disagreements, human nature, squabbles, spammers, vengeful (or just plain off-kilter) behavior, occasional bad administrative actions, and on and on. The more you participate the more you are exposed, perhaps even more so if you are prominent and stick your neck out. You may suffer sometimes from not playing the political game in a certain way, but those who live by that game die by that game. It's safer to stay neutral and fair than join a faction. Anyway, Misplaced Pages has very little politics as compared to other endeavors this big and important. Because it is a participatory project, no matter how productive and uncontroversial you are, by the odds you will occasionally find someone who misunderstands, doesn't get it, has their own agenda, is having a bad day, you just have an online personality conflict with, etc. That is the way of the world. Plus, people are free to simply disagree, and because this is a meritocracy, each person's opinion starts out with equal weight and is judged on its merits, not whose opinion it is. If you take 2,999 great photos, one is still free to say the 3,000th photo doesn't belong. David has earned the right to complain but I do think there is more drama here than necessary. Maybe that's not the intent, but when people support David to the point of singling each other out to the point of bitterness and calling names for having upset him, that's unhealthy. Wikidemo (talk) 16:47, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Are you serious? He didn't cause the drama. Aminz did. John Reaves 16:54, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Of course I'm serious. You might want to take my comments to heart too. Wikidemo (talk) 16:59, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I think that the consensus here is that David's contributions to the project have been extremely helpful over the years, and that he will be welcomed back in the future should he find that his values, lifestyle, and outlook so permit him.

Carcharoth raises the legitimate points that we shouldn't take our other contributors for granted in their time for us; that we should be proud of the project that we have all built; and that as both individuals and the project grow, mature and change, partings of ways – temporary or permanent – are inevitable from time to time.

In the meantime, personal messages to David are probably best placed on User talk:David Shankbone, both because this matter seems to be well beyond the scope of AN/I, and because David is more likely to see your comments there. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:49, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Are you saying he should leave? John Reaves 16:54, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I do get the impression some think he should leave. But this is common among a certain "in group". Established contributors are of minimal value. I do not blame him for taking a break, either temporary or permanent. I have had 3 friends leave in the last 2 months because of the same attitude. Others can see some of the discussion on a related topic at --Filll (talk) 17:08, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

A better question should be: 'Does Dave want a cookie'? Seriously, Dave, get over yourself. HalfShadow (talk) 17:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

What an idiotic thing to say, David is infinitely more valuable than you. John Reaves 17:14, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Really? Because someone who goes through the trouble of telling us how great they are sort of defeats the purpose. HalfShadow (talk) 17:20, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I think Misplaced Pages wants David Shankbone. I know I do. Enigma 17:28, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

That's a good conclusion. How about we just answer the question that Misplaced Pages can use David Shankbone, we hope he doesn't leave, we all get down sometimes, and if he ever needs help or support he can write any of us a message and we're there for him? That kind of celebrates the positive. Wikidemo (talk) 17:31, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I will be glad to support him, but I certainly understand his frustration. Particularly when someone who has 3000 mainspace edits in 2.5 years, with the largest contribution being 161 edits to a list of Backardigans episodes feels sufficiently superior to suggest that David's contribution pales in comparison to this editor's documentation of the Backyardigans, King (TV series), Fraggle Rock, and Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends. This really is uncalled for. We should be encouraging people like David, not chasing him away.--Filll (talk) 17:41, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Considering I'm not the one jumping up and down shouting 'Look at me! Oh gosh, look at all the things I've done!', yes. Yes I do. Thanks ever so for proving my point. HalfShadow (talk) 18:30, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Personal attack by User:Jayjg

I had a problem with the Khazars article. Although reliably sourced material, I believed a section to be irrelevant to the article as it had almost nothing to do with Khazars which I explained in Talk. I had agreement from several editors with one of them (User:Slrubinstein) deleting the section. It then became a very minor edit war reverting the sections deletion without comments. Instead of continuing the revert war I added a cited qualifier sentence to the section which started another revert war to get rid of that. I again gave up and took it to Talk which was suddenly flooded by editors supporting the revert, however none of these editors would explain relevance instead arguing the section had to stay for NPOV without any explanation of why despite my asking.

User:Jayjg, who had not taken part in this discussion then posted and in effect accused me of anti-Semitism despite the “debate” being up to this point relatively civil and gave "examples" of my edits that proved it. This accusation was extremely upsetting to me. The edits he gave as examples actually not only did not support his claim but several were even favourable to Israel so I asked for an apology, instead Jayjg replied and told me to accept the consensus that it was relevant (without any reason required for relevance).

I started a WP:ANI here to get an apology for the accusation but it was archived without resolution. I resubmitted the ANI but was told that as an Israel/Palestine article dispute was already being worked out in Arbcom the admins had put my case on hold pending a resolution to that Arbcom so that the result could give a guideline on how to handle my case. That Arbcom was resolved I believe but I let the apology go and hoped to get on with editing.

Then this edit was made (diff) on the Khazar page. Distortion of history is a particular pet peeve of mine so I admit it annoyed me so I reverted (diff) the edit and was in turn reverted by User:Briangotts (diff) with the comment that the sources given backed the new version. This started a minor edit war with myself, User: Schlcoh who also backed the old version and Briangotts. After Schlcoh also checked the sources (which were not online) he also found they actually supported the original version not the new one. The talk history for this is here and here.In the interests of peace (Briangotts would not accept his own sources wording) we let his version stand and I added a note to the sentence (diff) to qualify it which was apparently accepted by all involved.

Now Jayjg came along and deleted the note (diff) claiming in the summary it was OR and my own personal commentary. In fact the note was copy/pasted complete with cites from a section in another Misplaced Pages article History of the Jews in Turkey which I explained in my summary when adding the note. This has led to another edit war with Briangotts now trying to modify the note so it confirms more with his view. Obviously I’m not getting any respect as an editor and along with Jayjg’s previous accusation not being withdrawn and now with another vieled personal attack on my credibility in a summary he made, I fear I could end up permanently labelled as an anti semite.

I request this issue be resolved and Jayjg be made to apologise for his original accusation. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by WLRoss (talk • contribs) 16:17, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

This is a misuse of this board. How many times are you going to demand an apology (longwindedly)? El_C 16:22, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Why shouldn't he demand an apology? Relata refero (talk) 17:50, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with requesting an apology, so long as he does so civilly - which he has. However, I have to concur that this is not the proper forum. If discussion with the editor directly has been unfruitful, then a user conduct Request for Comment would be in order. There is no relevant admin action to be requested here. UltraExactZZ ~ Evidence 17:59, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, well, if you've seen RFC/U recently, you'll see why I think its broken. And why is there no relevant admin action? Are blocks for incivility no longer handed out? (Not that I'm saying I support one in this case, but why is discussing incivility considered irrelevant?) Relata refero (talk) 18:23, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Personal attacks by Bleek25

I've just about reached the end of my rope. Bleek25 (talk · contribs) has gone to other users talk pages and made personal attacks after the filing of a (dismissed) sockpuppet case against me failed and has also filed false 3RR reports against me. I don't mind the 3RR and the sock, they were both disproven, but the repeated personal attacks which I tried to simply remove but he puts back three times, is over the line. This and this where he returned it and called my removal vandalism, and then again . I asked for help from an administrator who helped with a 3RR issue but he continues to do this and it's gotten out of hand. I just ask he leave me alone and now he's bringing other editors in to this grudge he seems to have because he violated policy and I reported him. Could someone just warn him to stop?KellyAna (talk) 16:28, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Please note, I asked him to stop before bringing this here, but he removed the request as "vandalism." He has a gross misconception of vandalism. Apparently even removing a personal attack is vandalism according to him. KellyAna (talk) 16:34, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Kellyana must think that she is an adminstrator.she has gotten in to it with me and User:Randy Jaiyan.randy even tried to make a truce and she just slapped him in the face see here.Bleek25 (talk) 16:38, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not a gal, but I think his comments to you would be very offensive to women and they are offensive to me. I also agree you removing a personal attack is not vandalism, see . He posted at least three of these. Someone just final warned him. If he makes personal attacks again, please report here. — Rlevse • Talk • 16:46, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

User: Mctrain needs a timeout

There's a thread above, which is entirely subsumed by his ranting so I pulled this out. WP:CIVIL, WP:NPA take your pick, especially from this comment, which he'd initially done not signed in. For the sake of a reasonable discussion, not to mention WP:CIVIL, and anyone's sanity he needs a time out. Travellingcari (talk) 16:39, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

User:Mctrain

Mctrain (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Would anyone endorse a block for Mctrain based on these AFD comments and the other harassment of ThuranX? Seems somewhat focused on insulting other users. Regards, Rudget. 17:01, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

see my thread immediately above yours. I'm not an admin, but I think it's clearly needed. Travellingcari (talk) 17:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah, apologies. It seems he posted after a final warning (see history of talk page). Block is therefore warranted. Rudget. 17:04, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I was just looking at User:Mctrain's contribs and I would support a block of up to 48 hours. He has become "unstable", to say it the nice way and has spent the last 2 days ranting about leaving Misplaced Pages anyway. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 17:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Blocked for 40 hours. Little comment on his talk page regarding the behaviour. Rudget. 17:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

There were several warnings on the talkpage that he replaced with an "I'm leaving" and other such "huff". By "little comment" do you mean few warnings, or do you mean that you've left a little comment? Also, the block template or your note should be updated to say 40 hours. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 17:13, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Should I re-instate the warnings? And I mean't I've left a little comment. Updating now. Rudget. 17:15, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Nope, not neccessary --Jayron32.talk.contribs 17:46, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Need help on Jodha Akbar

Admins: A user shahid just wants his POV to be presented on this page. I have put up material from various scholars and he is removing it without providing a single reference which contradicts the references provided. What should we do? Itihaaskar (talk) 17:06, 18 February 2008 (UTC) PS: I sometimes forget to log in and my IP address 125.* shows up in edits.

Some edit warring, subject in the news, someone might want to look at it and consider semiprotection. Relata refero (talk) 17:52, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Unblock range

Hi, I seldom edit en.wiki just to add interwiki to my local wiki .
Starting from some weeks ago, in most cases, I'm unable to edit en.wiki because my IP is blocked. The page says User:Ryulong blocked the entire range 79.6.0.0/16 for a very long time (a month or even more). I don't know if this is the standard procedure in en.wiki, but seems to me that blocking thousands people just to stop a single vandal it's not the best choice... the vandal probably changed his IP the same day you blocked him, and instead I'm a good (blocked) guy ;) Regards. --87.13.52.49 (talk) 17:18, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

(relevant block log) Thanks for your message. I can understand the frustration. User:Ryulong is probably more able than I am to answer you, but apparently the vandal is especially annoying since the range has been blocked twice because of him. The good news is that if you register an account, you will be able to edit even when your IP falls within this range. I know this is not optimal, but there are other benefits from creating an account! ;) -- lucasbfr 17:26, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

IP User who refuses to use Talk pages

For about a month now, an IP user who posts from addresses in the range 156.61.xx.xx has been attempting to impose his views on the nature of Roman leap days and leap years in articles related to the Roman calendar: Julian calendar, Roman calendar, Mercedonius and as of today Leap year.

This user absolutely refuses to debate on Talk pages, he just edits the articles. He only communicates his "justifications" via the Edit Summary line. The reason I have listed so many articles is that semi-protecting an article only causes him to find another one, even when the semi-protection notice clearly states that it is being applied to force discussion to the Talk page.

His POV represents outdated scholarship. He does not respond to attempts to point out contrary data or contrary argument, he just reasserts his own views. He also does not respond to proposals to change the text to say "the ancient sources aren't explicit. The current consensus is...", which would change the text to an accurate statement of fact that does not conflict with his views.

He used to insert long rants inside the articles, mostly against me, but final warnings for disruptive editing caused him to stop doing that. He now mostly confines his edits to statements that should keep him below the radar on that. I had hoped that his toning down the edits might mean we were getting somewhere, but this is not the case. His behaviour, though low key, is very persistent and is still disruptive. It's also the kind of activity that seriously undermines any reputation WP might hope for as an authoritative source.

Please follow through on the final warnings and block this user.

Thanks. --Chris Bennett (talk) 17:36, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I've blocked a couple of IPs (the only two, as far as I know, he's used more than once). Unfortunately, blocking can only achieve so much here since he changes IP frequently, and a /16 range (156.61.xx.xx) is a bit too large to give a block of significant duration too. Assuming those four pages are the only ones he's interested in, semi-protection should work fine. – Steel 18:37, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Based on past behaviour, I wouldn't assume that. I'm sure he'll find another page to carry on with. Also, a week's semi-protection has already been tried on Julian calendar and Roman calendar, and has proven useless. He just waits for it to expire and then circles back. Perhaps a semi-protect duration of 2 months on all of these pages might have an effect.

I understand that asking for a range of addresses to be blocked is a serious step. I think I've been very patient with this guy, and I didn't make the request lightly. I honestly can't see any other way to get him to behave. --Chris Bennett (talk) 18:52, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Nepotism needs protection from WP:BLP violation

A small number of editors are repeatedly adding an uncited, unsourced paragraph containing allegations of impropriety by living people to Nepotism. By my reading this is a violation of WP:BLP. The paragraph claims as its (uncited) source "online comments", which are not even acceptable as a source under WP:SPS. Discussion on the talk page has not been adequate to stop the reverting, and at least one editor has become abusive in edit summaries over this issue. Protection seems warranted. --FOo (talk) 17:37, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

So done. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 17:43, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Unacceptable editing on talk page?

Draft of comments to be sent to an ISP abuse contact in respect of a recent incident on the tlak page for the Anonymous(group) talk page..

Dear Sirs, A user/customer of your services has made unacceptable edits to English Misplaced Pages, See: http://en.wikipedia.org/Special:Contributions/77.187.210.184 http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Talk%3AAnonymous_%28group%29&diff=192339010&oldid=192338681

Owing to the nature of the disruption the IP is currently indefinitely blocked from editing on English Misplaced Pages, which may cause inconvenience to other legitimate editors using your services.

It would be appreciated if you could ensure that the user or customer responsible is reminded of their obligations with respect to your applicable Terms Of Service/ Acceptable Use Policy. If the matter is deemed a serious abuse, then I would strongly urge you to ensure the user/customer concerned's abuse is referred to the appropriate authorities...

Figured I would mention the incident here first, before referring it to the ISP concerned Sfan00 IMG (talk) 17:46, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Due to the disruptive nature of the rendered text, I would suggest including "&diffonly=1" in the diff url. http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Talk%3AAnonymous_%28group%29&diff=192339010&oldid=192338681&diffonly=1 —Random832 17:51, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Also, your message is more likely to be taken seriously if it is spelled correctly, I have made corrections above.

There is a procedure at WP:ABREP. —Random832 17:55, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

There is no need to file an ISP abuse report, given that it is just (very creative) vandalism and nothing more. Furthermore, an IP address cannot (and should not) be indefinitely blocked, and the block on 77.187.210.184 was reduced to 1w. Seicer (talk) (contribs) 18:21, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

User:Bellwether BC seems to object to this unblock.

User talk:Thepokeratlas has created a user account and was blocked, presumably for having a corporate name and a user name that was similar.

I led a WP:AN discussion here. which said this (see below).

I notified the blocking administrator. He did not object or say anything. About 3 days have passed and still no objection.

The user has been advised on what not to edit. They have complied and not caused trouble. Should we be bitey and block the person again like Bellwether BC and Friday seem to suggest? Archtransit (talk) 18:14, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

=== Usernames being blocked, is this according to policy? ===

http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Usernames#Company.2Fgroup_names

"Use of a company or group name as a username is not explicitly prohibited, but it is not recommended..."

The policy states that use of a company name as a user name is not recommended but it is not prohibited. I used to think that all corporate names are prohibited and are to be blocked but I see this is not the case.

Should we stop blocking people for this reason? Or should we just ask that users certify that they are not a group account. Archtransit (talk) 17:14, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

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