User talk:Iazyges/Archives/2023/January

December greetings
Latest pics, with an opera discovery and some snow. Today my talk has a DYK that was planned for 22 November, among the recent deaths the author of Duck, Death and the Tulip, and now a choir pic of "our" concert last Sunday, likely to become next year's lead image. Enjoy. Best wishes for the season! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:11, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Today, pictured, the soprano of our choral concert of the year. More in the context: User talk:Gerda Arendt, in case of interest. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:57, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Precious anniversary
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:48, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Happy New Year, Iazyges!


Happy New Year! Iazyges, Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.

Abishe (talk) 21:24, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

Abishe (talk) 21:24, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2023 WikiCup!
Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2023 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page ready for you to take part. Any questions on the scoring, rules or anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: and. Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:16, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2023
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2022).

Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg ComplexRational · Extraordinary Writ
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Stephen
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Andrew Yong · Dbenbenn · DESiegel · GlassCobra · Joe Decker · Nancy · Pathoschild · StuffOfInterest · William Pietri · Wwwwolf · Xdamr

Interface administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Nihiltres



CheckUser changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Moneytrees


 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Ivanvector · SilkTork

Oversighter changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg GeneralNotability · Moneytrees
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Guerillero · SilkTork

Guideline and policy news
 * Speedy deletion criterion A5 (transwikied articles) has been repealed following an unopposed proposal.

Arbitration
 * Following the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee:, , , , , , ,.
 * The 2021-22 Discretionary Sanctions Review has concluded with many changes to the discretionary sanctions procedure including a change of the name to "contentious topics". The changes are being implemented over the coming month.
 * The arbitration case Stephen has been closed.

Miscellaneous
 * Voting for the Sound Logo has closed and the winner is expected to be announced February to April 2023.
 * Tech tip: You can view information about IP addresses in a centralised location using bullseye which won the Newcomer award in the recent Coolest Tool Awards.

Discuss this newsletter

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Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:08, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

New Pages Patrol newsletter January 2023
Hello , The October drive reduced the backlog from 9,700 to an amazing 0! Congratulations to who led with 2084 points. See this page for further details. The queue is steadily rising again and is approaching 2,000. It would be great if <2,000 were the “new normal”. Please continue to help out even if it's only for a few or even one patrol a day. won the 2022 cup for 28,302 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 80/day. There was one Gold Award (5000+ reviews), 11 Silver (2000+), 28 Iron (360+) and 39 more for the 100+ barnstar. led again for the 4th year by clearing 49,294 redirects. For the full details see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone!
 * Backlog
 * 2022 Awards

Minimum deletion time: The previous WP:NPP guideline was to wait 15 minutes before tagging for deletion (including draftification and WP:BLAR). Due to complaints, a consensus decided to raise the time to 1 hour. To illustrate this, very new pages in the feed are now highlighted in red. (As always, this is not applicable to attack pages, copyvios, vandalism, etc.)

New draftify script: In response to feedback from AFC, the The Move to Draft script now provides a choice of set messages that also link the creator to a new, friendly explanation page. The script also warns reviewers if the creator is probably still developing the article. The former script is no longer maintained. Please edit your edit your common.js or vector.js file from  to  '''

Redirects: Some of our redirect reviewers have reduced their activity and the backlog is up to 9,000+ (two months deep). If you are interested in this distinctly different task and need any help, see this guide, this checklist, and spend some time at WP:RFD.

Discussions with the WMF The PageTriage open letter signed by 444 users is bearing fruit. The Growth Team has assigned some software engineers to work on PageTriage, the software that powers the NewPagesFeed and the Page Curation toolbar. WMF has submitted dozens of patches in the last few weeks to modernize PageTriage's code, which will make it easier to write patches in the future. This work is helpful but is not very visible to the end user. For patches visible to the end user, volunteers such as and  have been writing patches for bug reports and feature requests. The Growth Team also had a video conference with the NPP coordinators to discuss revamping the landing pages that new users see.


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The Bugle: Issue 201, January 2023
The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here. If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 19:46, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

South Asian river dolphin c/e request at GOCE
Hi Iazyges, you recently removed the request for South Asian river dolphin from the GOCE's copy-edit request page. I've reverted your edit there. While I understand your reason, we usually allow only requesters and coordinators to remove articles from the page without extraordinary reasons. If you think it should still be removed, please open a section at the Requests talk page so it can be discussed there; if you can show where the requester has discussed this removal with you, please post a diff there. Thanks for your understanding and cheers,  Baffle☿gab  02:12, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Basiliscus (Caesar)
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Basiliscus (Caesar) you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Ealdgyth -- Ealdgyth (talk) 15:00, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 54
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes

Issue 54, November – December 2022 
 * New collections:
 * British Newspaper Archive
 * Findmypast
 * University of Michigan Press
 * ACLS
 * Duke University Press
 * 1Lib1Ref 2023
 * Spotlight: EDS Refine Results

Read the full newsletter Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --14:15, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Promotion of Constantine (son of Basil I)
A new FA is a good start in the year! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:24, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It is indeed! Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  13:19, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

January 2023
Hello. This is a message to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions, such as the edit(s) you made to Marriages of Pompey the Great, did not appear to be constructive and have been reverted. Please take some time to familiarise yourself with our policies and guidelines. You can find information about these at our welcome page which also provides further information about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. If you only meant to make test edits, please use your sandbox for that. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you may leave a message on my talk page. Thank you. Avilich (talk) 03:41, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The article is clearly not finished. There is no reason to publish it now. Please desist from doing so, especially in malformed ways such as leaving redirects behind in draftspace. Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  03:44, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * There are no obvious mistakes and the article cites good sources. Omissions are resolved with article expansion and improvement. Take it to AfD if you disagree. See also WP:OWN. Avilich (talk) 03:46, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Except the fact that it obviously isn't finished (hence no lead, among other things) and the person working on it didn't want it published yet. Yes, per policy anyone can. There is also genuinely no reason to and I have no idea why you did, given how clearly disruptive it is. Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  03:48, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Correction: you removed the lede and made it one of the subsections. Either way, the article is perfectly readable and with no noticeable mistakes, and it's in a better state that many published drafts -- enough so that it can be accessible to the general reader. See WP:NOTPERFECT on it not being finished. Feel free to add tags and use the talk page to discuss improvement. Avilich (talk) 03:53, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Correction, it wasn't the lede on account of it not being the lede. No amount of mental gymnastics will get around the fact that it was not the lede; first section? Sure. But never the lede before you made it. At least I now understand that you did so quite blatantly to force a victory on your Articles for deletion/Antistia (wife of Pompey)... Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  03:55, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Please be careful about what you say to people. Some remarks can easily be misinterpreted, or viewed as harassment. Wikipedia is a supportive environment, where contributors should feel comfortable and safe while editing. Thank you. Avilich (talk) 04:02, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * "Harassment". You moved the page and then two minutes later argued that the page should be deleted because the draft was "ready". Please cease dropping templates on my talk page. If you want to talk with me you are free to do so, but passive-aggressive templates are decidedly not the path. Wisdom upheld in WP:DTR. Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  04:06, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Avilich (talk) 04:20, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Harbor of Eutropius
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Harbor of Eutropius you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Ealdgyth -- Ealdgyth (talk) 17:01, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Advice on Possible Sockpuppets at Sponsianus
A couple of days ago I deleted a long section of apparent nonsense by User Bedoyere from the Sponsianus article. While the quotations did apparently come from the cited source—badly copied, with several mistakes—they had no clear relevance to the article, concerning a different hoard and including anachronistic references to Austria-Hungary, and all of it was cited to a YouTube video by "the Historian Guy de la Bedoyere", which I deemed a non-scholarly source being cited by an editor who seemed likely to be that very source (since confirmed).

Yesterday a new editor named "Junius Avitus" appeared, making an overly-long argument about the name "Sponsianus", which I edited down, along with some revisions from today. He then posted on my talk page, alluding to his being a published author, objecting to my treatment and characterization of Bedoyere's additions, and then saying he wasn't going to waste time on me if I was just going to "suppress" important information. All of which sounded rather familiar, as this was what AdvancingReturns was doing with Sponsianus before he was banned at the end of December: complaining that a "cabal" of editors was conspiring to suppress the truth, that he was a published author and therefore a better judge of the truth, and that he wasn't going to engage any further with such imbeciles (he then went around blanking his user and talk pages until that got him banned from editing them). AdvancingReturns also claimed that the fact that other editors on Sponsianus used Greek and Roman user names was evidence of their bias.

Now, the "published author" comments by Junius Avitus (who's never edited any other article) and AdvancingReturns (who edited three, one of them just once) suggested to me that they were the same person; and Avitus' apparent umbrage at the suppression of Bedoyere's text suggested that he's also Junius Avitus; and apparently Bedoyere is a celebrity TV historian, with his own Wikipedia article replete with his illustrious ancestry, and to which he seems to have been a major contributor. He also just yesterday blanked his user page, which previously stated that he was in fact the historian of the same name.

So, if I'm right, then AdvancingReturns, now banned, is likely a sockpuppet of Bedoyere, as is Junius Avitus—whose name seems likely prompted by the claim that editors with Latin names can get away with suppressing the truth on Wikipedia; all three seem determined to edit Sponsianus in order to prove that the coins are forgeries (something that none of us are disagreeing with, although we find their arguments insufficiently concise and neutral); the two socks have very little editing history in other articles (Avitus none, AdvancingReturns just two others), all claim to be published historians, and otherwise share characteristics of saying they refuse to engage with editors who take issue with their claims, write convoluted arguments containing poor grammar and spelling, and blank (or never create) their own user and talk pages.

My question—after this lengthy prelude, for which I apologize—is whether I should report it to anyone, based on mere suspicion (which is what I was trying to outline above). Or simply wait for something else to happen, one of the others to be warned or sanctioned or just disappear and get replaced by another sock. I really don't want to start a war, and certainly don't have the energy for one, but at the same time I find the prospect of battling the same editor under multiple names over and over quite daunting. Could you suggest a course of action, if indeed you have the patience to unravel the wall of text above? Thanks, and once again, apologies. P Aculeius (talk) 18:26, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * No problem, it's a fascinating issue. It's a difficult situation; right now it's one of the biggest newly popular discussions (if that phrase makes any sense), which has, for better or worse, exploded into the "pop historian" venue, leading a lot of people to try and make their thoughts known on the page, sometimes with little understanding of our policies. I think it's worth pursuing the three above as sockpuppets per the evidence you give; to be quite honest, sockpuppet investigations, unless against very established users, usually either end in a block or dismissal with little other consequence, from what I've seen. It's seen as more procedural, I suppose, than ANI. However, I would think that going forward no new editor should be assumed to be a sockpuppet as easily as these three; it's entirely possible he'll come back, but if he sees that he's playing a very losing game of whack-a-mole, he may desist. Most POV-pushing sockpuppets work by spreading small edits across dozens of articles, to a cumulative effect. With just one article, it's easier to manage, I would think, and more discouraging to potential socks once they understand our system as such. I would also recommend asking for semi-protection on the Sponsianus page, given the attention and number of users that are, to be blunt, trying to hit at a level above their Wikipedia skill weight class by getting involved. I've definitely been there, and users telling me point-blank "come back when you have a better understanding" was useful; if I had kept going and not been driven off, I probably would've run into a disruption block at some point. It's difficult to balance between telling people they lack the requisite skill, and pushing them away from Wikipedia in general; I think semi-protection will serve to prevent a lot of bad-faith edits, and help ease the general situation. Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  18:44, 30 January 2023 (UTC)