Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive114

Watch this please
Help desk. Someone watch this, please no blocking. Thanks, I have to go. Prodego talk  21:07, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee Elections December 2007
Voting for the 2007 Arbitration Committee Elections has officially begun. Visit the Voting page for more information. Thank you. - Mtmelendez (Talk) 00:02, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Requests for arbitration/Asgardian-Tenebrae
This arbitration case has closed and the final decision is available at the link above. User:Asgardian is subject to an editing restriction for one year. He is limited to one revert per page per week (excepting obvious vandalism), and is required to discuss any content reversions on the page's talk page. This notice is given by a Clerk on behalf of the Arbitration Committee. Newyorkbrad 01:56, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Requests for arbitration/Macedonia closed
The above arbitration case has closed, and the final decision may be found here. Any uninvolved administrator may, on their own discretion, impose sanctions on any editor working on Balkans-related articles if that editor fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, the expected standards of behavior, or the normal editorial process. Discretionary sanctions imposed under the provisions of this decision may be appealed to the imposing administrator, the administrators' noticeboard, or the Committee. For the Arbitration Committee, Picaroon (t) 02:41, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Some advice on talkpage deletion, please

 * - and courtesy blanked. —Random832 14:52, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Serious CAT:PER backlog
Can someone please deal with the major backlog at WP:PER? There are a dozen edits requested since last Thursday. Od Mishehu 09:25, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Working through them... Neil   ☎  09:32, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I've got some as well. Many of the remaining requests need further discussion or are too vague for me to want to attempt immediately. --ais523 09:59, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * ... and now cleared. Neil   ☎  12:06, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Old WP:PUI stuff
Anyone know anything about Italian copyright law? If so, Possibly unfree images/2007 October 2 could do with your input. Is the Trading with the Enemy Act at all relevant? Angus McLellan (Talk) 12:21, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee remedy on Community Bans
Regarding the recent Arbitration Committee remedy, I have started a discussion of community bans at Village pump (policy). Please discuss there. Mahalo. --Ali&#39;i 17:28, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Sneaky vandalism since 2006
I have blocked all of the above accounts (that weren't already blocked) and deleted several variations of a clearly bogus autobiography for this person. Uncle G 18:07, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

"Private" Checkuser use

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

Banned user logged out (confirmed by previous checkuser results), banned user also contributing via now-blocked sockpuppet.  Daniel  05:39, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I have sent this to a Checkuser ombudsman and the Stewards:

"In regards to:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CHECKUSER

Privacy violation? If you feel that a checkuser has led to a violation of the Wikimedia Foundation privacy policy regarding yourself, please refer the case to the Ombudsman commission.

Please note that so-called "private" uses of check user are occurring as seen here. How can someone report a privacy violation if they do not know that checkuser has been used?

How widespread is this so-called "private" misuse of Checkuser? 64.229.31.192 (talk) 20:48, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
 * According to the policy, notification of the check to the community is not mandatory. Checkuser activities are logged, and it is possible to know which checkuser performed which check. -- lucasbfr talk 21:17, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
 * That assumes that private use is misuse -- policy as it stands currently makes no such statement or implication that I'm aware of. The much greater concern has always been release of private data. – Luna Santin  (talk) 22:32, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
 * See also this statement by recently-retired Ombudsman Commission member, Arbitration Committee member and checkuser .  Daniel  22:42, 29 November 2007 (UTC)


 * The vast majority of checks are run following talk page, email or IRC requests to the checkusers. WP:RFCU is a backup; its use is not mandatory.  The checkusers are supposed to follow the policy and turn down improper requests, and all checks are logged so there is a record of who checked whom.  If someone is blocked and no reason is given, then it will be disputed and possibly overturned.  If checkuser is given as the reason, then any other checkuser can look at the log to see who ran the check and then ask them why. Thatcher131 04:02, 30 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't believe this process is acceptable and I have also alerted the Wikimedia Foundation. It's silly to pretend(as does the wording atWP:RFCU) that there is a method for the Targeted User to report a privacy abuse (which could mean simply the unwarranted use of Checkuser) if the process can be done without the Target's knowledge, PLUS it is deceitful to the public to even have WP:RFCU if it's being regularly circumvented via backroom conversation on IRC followed by a "private" Checkuser use. This is quite disappointing and clearly an abuse of the power to invade Users' privacy. From the comments above it does appear this practice is rampant and from what Thatcher is saying, it appears that if the "private" Checkuser results are in the Target's favor then the Target may never know it was even used. Think about the type of political systems that employ such "private" personal background checks? "Private" Checkuser usage is clearly a disappointing, unethical and deceptive process and I wonder what % of Wikipedia Users know that it is happening. 64.229.30.210 (talk) 09:56, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Mmm, in my opinion, publicizing Checkuser results leads to a bigger privacy violation (when the result is negative, or inconclusive) than when they are kept private. And you wouldn't know that a check has been done on you if you weren't monitoring WP:RFCU. and checkusers only do checks when there is sufficient concerns, onwiki ot not) (funnily enough since you are not logged in, a checkuser might help understanding what is the matter here ;)) -- lucasbfr talk  12:36, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
 * A:What is the objection to requiring informing the User when Checkuser is used on their account? B:Why need there be WP:RFCU at all if it is not necessary? C:Should Checkuser requests be processed within IRC conversation? 64.229.30.210 13:34, 30 November 2007 (UTC)


 * The vast majority of checkuser requests I put in, the user does get notified. sockpuppet and indefblockeduser are the most usual notifications. Guy (Help!) 19:09, 30 November 2007 (UTC)


 * This is interesting - can anyone who is knowledgeable (checkusers or devs, respectively for each issue) discuss whether it would be reasonable / possible to allow each user access to the checkuser logs for their own account? It doesn't seem like it would be a privacy problem - the only privacy problem I've heard for releasing checkuser logs in general is that people would be able to correlate what names and what IPs are examined in a given time period to figure out what someone's IP is indirectly, and that wouldn't apply if each user only has access to their own data. —Random832 14:00, 30 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I am not knowledgeable, but I don't think this is a good idea. When you have a shared IP (like, e.g. apparently half of Qatar), it would not be good if one user could learn this way who are the other users on this IP address. Privacy, security (on-line, but in some countries certainly also offline), ... may be in danger. I may be overreacting, but at first glance this looks to be a potential big problem. Fram 14:51, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Don't reveal _anything_ concerning any other username. Just list, to User:Example, A) when a checkuser was run on User:Example B) when an IP check was run that resulted in a hit on User:Example. Absolutely no other usernames (except the checkusers who ran the check) would be disclosed. Any IPs disclosed would be IPs that the account had logged in from. —Random832 19:33, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
 * It occured to me that a compromised account could be an issue, but someone who compromises an account could (hypothetical method not revealed in public per WP:BEANS, but they definitely could find out the user's IP via other means without raising any suspicion) - but anyway, if that is a concern, simply don't reveal the IPs. —Random832 19:37, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
 * As far as I'm aware, this isn't possible on a technical level. I once asked for a searching feature (so you can extract logs for specific wikis), and I was informed that due to the nature of the log, it is not feasable to implement search functions, which would mean there's no way to give people the ability to only track the log on their own account. --Deskana (talk) 19:46, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, you can certainly find all checks on a given IP or username (though it will be on all wikis), which can be useful for checkusers looking to see if a check was performed earlier and/or elsewhere. There's really no need to post anything at all about it unless the results are both positive and needed as evidence.
 * Running the checks isn't really the issue with the privacy policy. Publishing the checks is definitely an issue, which is why only checkusers can see checkuser logs. In fact, the best way to protect privacy might be to get rid of WP:RFCU alltogether, and limit requests to email.-- SB_Johnny | talk  13:15, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I think another primary issue is whether the User checked should always be advised that a Checkuser check was or is being run. I think the answer to that is an obvious "yes". Mentoring07 15:37, 1 December 2007 (UTC) (original nominator of this topic).
 * There are privacy problems inherent to that, too, though. "Hey, I checked you." "Why?" "Well, uh, this other disruptive guy is on the same university IP as you." -- any conversation of that nature will inherently risk revealing private information about another user, any conversation which lacks that sort of information strikes me as probably less than useless. Open to ideas, but it seems like a tricky problem to get past. – Luna Santin  (talk) 08:18, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * My idea would be to stick exclusively with the WP:RFCU process(with a notice to the User's talk page if they have one) and scrap the "private" option. Mentoring07 23:43, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Since I was blocked by Durova, in error, and then again, in error by "FloNight" as if she had checkuser status, when she clearly did not, I concur with the statement above.(by Mentoring07) JzG, blocked Once and Forever with no evidence and then I was blocked as a sock of Once and Forever. (Once and Forever is an established user? The evidence I presented at Durova's Arbcom. hearing is proof that "Flonight" did not have checkuser status but claimed to have "access" to same. This is not ending here, right?  It is clear that the privacy claimed by someone like "FloNight" is clearly not in keeping with a transparent system. I want to see the evidence that was used against me. Everyone is entitled to that much clarity, I think.  User: Songgarden.   70.253.99.219 18:52, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Most CheckUser requests do not go through RFCU, FloNight knows enough CheckUsers that it's far from implausible. CheckUser is not 100% reliable, it links edits to IPs, IPs can be dynamic.  It's an inexact science.  Guy (Help!) 11:59, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

This is a WikiMedia Foundation matter. It doesn't much make sense to discuss such policy at this level. --Tony Sidaway 17:08, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Tony you seem to be everywhere at the moment commenting very authoritatively. Could you just confirm are you an admin, a 'Crat or an Arb? In what capacity are you making these statements. Giano 17:14, 2 December 2007 (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.

Question on tag for image.
I am about to upload an image of a billboard for Pinoy Big Brother: Celebrity Edition 2. I took it using my cellphone camera. But I don't know which tag I will use: "free image" or "fair use"? BTW, I haven't uploaded the image yet. - 上村七美 (Nanami-chan) | talkback | contribs 05:09, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Are you retaining ownership of the image, or releasing it into the public domain? If you wish to donate your work, you could use PD-self or one of the GFDL license templates such as GFDL-self or GFDL-user.  If your picture is copyrighted and uploaded as a fair use image, please note that it may be tagged as Replaceable fair use and later replaced with a free photo.  --Kralizec! (talk) 20:43, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * If it's a billboard, that means it would have to be fair use, since it'd be copyrighted by whoever makes the billboard. —Random832 20:46, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Problems with Pigman
I believe that Admin:Pigman is abusing his authority. He recently filed both Requests for checkuser/Case/South Philly and Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Evrik against me. The "checkuser showed the South Philly and Evrik accounts unrelated," but had some concerns. After that Pigman filed the Sock charges over a user blocked

To my knowledge I have never interacted with Pigman before but in reality this is retaliation, and an abuse of process. Recently Pigman said, "After his recent appearance in a few RfAs, I decided to look into what User:Evrik has been up to lately." Well, what he is referring to is my "oppose" vote in Kathryn NicDhàna's RfA. Pigman and Kathryn NicDhàna have worked together closely in the past. This is clearly retaliation for that vote. My simple vote was responded to by pigman with this screed. Also, the claim of meatpuppetry was made a user who also supported Kathryn's RfA.

Is there some sort of statute of limitations? Most of the activity listed by Pigman at Requests for checkuser/Case/South Philly happened 8 months or longer ago. None of this was brought up at the time by any of the involved parties. I'm concerned though because Pigman claims to have gone through twenty months of my edit history and done a side by side comparison with the alleged sock. Well, I don't know what to say, perhaps "OMG, did you really waste hours of your life doing that research?" So far though most of the evidence is supposition and circumstantial.

How many bites at the apple does he get? What really concerns me is this comment, "While this is circumstantial evidence, it is extremely strong evidence. To be blunt, as an admin I believe the evidence is strong enough for me to block you without bringing it here. I'm bringing it here in the interest of transparency and your long history on Wikipedia." These claims were filed by Pigman, and he intimates that could act as both judge and jury of he so chose.

Pigman started all of this more than a month after the alleged sock was blocked. No one else complained. I was not involved at all. I believe that what he charges is without merit. I'm disturbed that Pigman feels so strongly about this. I want Pigman to stay away from me and stop filing these baseless charges. He may be willing to spend hours of his life obsessing over my edit history, but I don't want to have to waste my or anyone's elses time having to defend myself.

Thanks. --evrik (talk) 04:38, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Left him a note so we could hear his response. It does a bit overboard to jump on all of this and I'll admit, it looks biased.  Frankly, I hate all this 'secret sockpuppet searches', behind the scenes, look into people's edit summaries stuff when no one has actually complained about it stuff but I'll wait to see if someone had actually complained before saying more. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:56, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * "Also, the claim of meatpuppetry was made a user who also supported Kathryn's RfA." - I appear to be being discussed at WP:AN without having been informed of same :) How and ever, I was the checkuser who made the determination in this case. This case was interesting in that I required a second checkuser opinion before making the call of meatpuppetry above and, unfortunately, due to privacy concerns, I cannot release further information on the matter. However, I will discuss the details with the corroborating checkuser so they may also make a statement. Thanks - Alis o n  ❤ 06:20, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh No!  Not secret evidence again!  KoshVorlon  ".. We are ALL Kosh..."  15:17, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You misspelled s3kr1t :) But no, the problem is if I reveal further information as to a likely connection, I risk revealing personal info on Evrik and I don't want to do that - Alis o n  ❤ 17:45, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The secrecy concerns is not "S00per S3kr1t 3vid3nce", it's revealing personally identifying information, such as IP Address (Track to an ISP, etcetera). That is a big time no no, and if a Checkuser did reveal that publically without due cause (and I can't think of anything off hand that would be due cause), they'd likely have their CU rights taken away. SirFozzie 17:59, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Pigman responds: There was no secret information that I used in coming to my conclusions. Checkuser info was not shared with me. I looked only at what is in the editing record and histories available to any editor on Wikipedia. I'd also like to state emphatically that this was not a retaliatory response to Evrik's opinion in Kathryn NicDhàna's RfA. Please note that Evrik was the sole oppose opinion in that RfA and I answered his objection thoroughly there. However, I recalled quite well the kerfuffle over the WikiProject Awards at the time and the suspicion then that Evrik and South Philly might have been the same person. South Philly certainly seemed to act as a "bad hand" in these matters. I didn't participate but I did observe the events at that time.


 * While Evrik seems to indicate my following up on his appearance at a few RfAs is sinister, I don't think it's unusual to sometimes check out accounts which are voicing opinions in RfAs, particularly when it's possible they seem to be considering an RfA run themselves. Evrik and South Philly had caught my attention with their rather striking and unified behaviour in the WP Awards scuffle. I did not follow up on it at the time because I wasn't that interested. The exceptionally draining and consuming Starwood Arbitration (which I had initiated) had just closed with disappointing results from my perspective. I was at an ebb of my confidence in Wikipedia processes to enforce policy.


 * When I saw that South Philly had been indef blocked for sockpuppetry, it reminded me of my previous suspicions. The technique of comparing edit histories was one I observed User:Blnguyen using which resulted in the blocking of a group of accounts engaged in massive sockpuppetry. Yes, it's not exactly an easy way but it can yield significant results. In this case, the result was unmistakable. My findings can be found at Suspected sock puppets/Evrik (2nd).


 * It isn't unusual to file a Checkuser as well as a sockpuppet report. The most significant data for Checkuser was probably out of the cache/buffer.


 * As to Evrik's statement "... he intimates that could act as both judge and jury of he so chose", my understanding of admin responsibilities is that, when unmistakable violations of policy have occurred, I should act decisively. Wikipedia is not a court of law. If anything, I may be acting too cautiously in this matter. My decisions are, of course, subject to review and revision by other admins, just like almost everything on Wikipedia is subject to revision by other editors. Evrik would undoubtedly have appealed my decision if I had blocked him directly from my findings, so I thought it best to bring it to a public arena to get more input. And, as I said, Evrik has a long history on Wikipedia and I took that into consideration when I decided to post the case to the Sockpuppet forum. I also knew he would bring in the retaliatory angle on my actions so I preferred to have a more transparent process to look at my findings.


 * I view the evasion of an indef block to be a serious matter which is why I took the time to gather this evidence. I have experience with the damage such evasions can cause to the encyclopedia and to other editors.


 * I'd be happy to answer any questions about this matter. Pigman ☿ 21:20, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I am nobody's sock, nor am I their meatpuppet. South Philly 00:44, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I've taken the liberty of blocking User:South philly as this user is almost certainly evading the block on User:South Philly. I assume this is a correct response? Or should I let someone else do it? Pigman ☿ 01:10, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It would be better if an uninvolved admin did it. Given this, the conclusion is obvious.  Let me adjust the log.  GRBerry 01:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)  (For the avoidance of doubt, I haven't reviewed the main pile of evidence. GRBerry}
 * Thanks GRBerry. I'm a little thick sometimes and I failed to consider how it would look in this situation. Duh! Pigman ☿ 04:01, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Edit war on Johnny Sutton
Dear sirs,

The help page on dispute resolution says step 2 is here.

I have posted a concern on the Johnny Sutton talk page. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AJohnny_Sutton&diff=175531104&oldid=174895041

The problem I see is that despite a group of editors doing a large amount of reverting, they with one exception have not made their concerns clear on what they object to and they have continued to remove even attempted compromise versions of the page. The page is shortly to need updating as the appeal hearing in the Ramos and Compean case started today and news reports will come up very quickly.

The page needs help, what is currently present is very inaccurate and missing a large amount of information despite there being a very strong and unanswered analysis on the talk page by Mr. Billy Hathorn.

Please assist, thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fixthepedia (talk • contribs) 18:22, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The above is a single purpose account and probable sock. There have been a stream of brand new account making identical edits which violate WP:BLP. Please see more here. IrishGuy talk 18:24, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Dear sir, I have not made "identical" edits. I tried to work on the page as per the analysis by Mr Billy Hathorn and the items listed by Mr Jons63. I cannot do any more for the page if I cannot get you to say what you find to be a problem and discuss it. Please tell me what you are claiming violates the policy so that it can be fixed because it just looks stupid to constantly try to fix a page and have someone pushing it back claiming the edit violated a policy but not saying why or how to correct it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fixthepedia (talk • contribs) 18:29, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Point of fact, WP:DR says to bring concerns here if it is urgent. I'm not seeing the urgency. Natalie 21:57, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Sock creators
Probably a dumb question but what do we do about folks who create an account and immediately create a bunch of other accounts as well. Examples are here and here. There is nothing more than a few test edits from one of the accounts above (the rest have no contribs at all) but I've seen people blocked - at least short-term - for nothing more than creating a bunch of accounts like this. —Wknight94 (talk) 21:22, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't know if there's been one standard reaction. If I recall correctly this is really up to individual discretion and interpretation - it could be someone creating a bunch of vandalism sleeper accounts, someone confused by the interface, a classroom project that's creating an account for everyone else, etc. Natalie 22:00, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I didn't get a feeling of obvious bad-faith but creating more than one - or maybe two - seems a bit over-the-top to me. —Wknight94 (talk) 22:05, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Ask them what they're doing? John Reaves 22:18, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I haven't. I figured if no one here cared, I'd leave them alone entirely.  —Wknight94 (talk) 22:21, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It seems to me that they're probably kids registering all the names they like "just in case". I did that as a kid, although not on Wikipedia as it did not exist, and I can only assume that kids still do this. The accounts don't need to be blocked, but I don't think blocking all but the first account would be out of line if you explain it to them. Natalie 22:28, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Some contributors also create sockpuppets for a specific purpose, such as an account for use on public computers.  As long as they are legitimate, I'd suggest not blocking them. 哦，  是吗？  (review O) 22:34, 03 December 2007 (GMT)

I need some admin review
Over on the erotica page there was an edit war. An anon user started editing in some text under

When told to register, they did so as:

In the end, Student Erotica got blocked as being my sock. Not so. There was nothing proven, just alegations. I got blocked. I gave up editing Wikipedia a while a go because I wasn't enjoying it. I don't necessarily plan to continue ever again, but this block annoys me, and it is being used against another user, who I happen to have worked with alot.

I am sorry for being a contentious editor, please unblock me. Before you say anyhting, i am not trying to avoid my blocking by using this account, but I wanted to be heard. Cordially, South Philly 00:42, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * This diff was added by User:South philly, an admitted (since 2006) doppleganger account of the signing user. I've blocked the doppleganger.  The unblock request templates on the main account's talk page both had far less commentary than this.  I do suggest further review by uninvolved admins, but doubt that an unblock will be forthcoming.  If an unblock occurs, the doppleganger should also be unblocked.  GRBerry 01:30, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Gadgets extension
mw:Extension:Gadgets has been installed on the English Wikipedia in 12190 per this discussion. This extension allows administrators to edit MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition to add javascript tools that users may easily enable via Special:Preferences. I recommend you look at mw:Extension:Gadgets for more information on how to use this new extension's capabilities. Fun Pika  00:56, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I've updated the popups tool page to reflect this, since popups is the only gadget available. &rArr; <font face="Euclid Fraktur"> SWAT  Jester    Son of the Defender  03:02, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I've started WikiProject User scripts/Gadgets in an attempt to identify more scripts that might make useful gadgets. --ais523 17:47, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

French Wikipedia administrator's help needed
I'm not sure where the best place to post this is. I have an account on the French Wikipedia that uses my real name. I no longer wish to have that name displayed there, and I would like the user page to be deleted. I haven't made any significant edits on the French Wikipedia. I'm having trouble making heads or tails of the French Wikipedia's deletion process, so I was hoping someone here might be an admin on both the English and French Wikipedias and might give me some advice on my talk page regarding how I should proceed. Thanks, er, merci, for any help! — Amcaja ( talk ) 02:17, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Anyone on this list with an "(en)" next to their name should be able to help :) ( <font color="#483C32" face="Verdana">ar <font color="#483C32" face="Verdana">ky ) 02:49, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not an administrator there, but what you want is the equivalent of speedy deletion -- Wikipédia:Demande de suppression immédiate. Yours is a case six as a user requesting deletion of their own pages. Shell babelfish 02:56, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah, thanks for the help, everyone. — Amcaja ( talk ) 04:47, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Orkut forum and meatpuppetry
Ezhava again. This follows from my question about handling Vvmundakkal (result: looks like content dispute). Frankly, I find someone saying they are planning on contacting a federal minister way beyond a content dispute and a WP:LEGAL issue. Still, basically a user (now a number of users) are trying to insert some language into Ezhava that is not only unsourced but all an complete misrepresentation of the sources, and keep recreating the unsourced (twice AFDs to redirects) List of Notable Ezhavas. First, it was Vvmundakkal, then User:123.236.218.13 and then User:125.99.225.216, who informed me that the "issue is being discussed there among 1000s of members in the forum....I have edited as per the request from forum moderator.". I have asked everyone to stop simply reinserting the test but I don't know what to do other than semi-protect all the articles and try to force discussion. The article was fully protected for a month but none of the edit warriors wanted to comment on it (even went to their talk pages to warn them that I knew they weren't even trying to discuss), so I fear that removing the protection will just be more of the same. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:18, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, there's also a content fork being created at Thiyya, using an old badly sourced version. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:20, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That now redirects to Ezhava and is protected at that. Can anyone think of an appropriate dispute resolution process here? Or should we just topic-ban the POV pushers? Guy (Help!) 11:47, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * It seems like what I feared.  According to User:Vivin, "Basically one user has been posting on all Ezhava-related forums there, asking for help against 'vandalism' by Nair editors."  I put a section on talk page if the more moderate ones want to actual talk (maybe we'll get a few new users that way) but any larger ideas?  That entire article seems to just get like that with certain users just coming in screaming about Nair vandalism and then leaving in a huff; maybe this will simply require a stronger hand.  Anyone else willing to help out, so it doesn't always look like a single admin against the tide all the time? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:41, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Its true that the article need more attention since edits of Ricky81682 and User:Vivin biased. A simple example List of Nairs alive while List of Notable Ezhavas are deleted.Is this Wiki the forum to hurt sentiments of millions of ezhavas or just right place to give in formation to the whole worldTn pillai 05:05, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I'll repeat this again. List of Notable Ezhavas is a recreation of a list that was decided for redirect at Articles for deletion/List of Ezhavas and at Articles for deletion/List of Ezhava Tharavads.  I chose to redirect by JzG chose to delete (it was just a edit war anyways).  As I pointed out to everyone, go to deletion review or find me a single source.  The one sourced name on the page was already inserted into the article .  List of Nairs has been discussed extensively.  At this point, my patience is gone with this article.  This is the 3rd biased accusation I've received from a group of people who don't discuss, revert without explanation, don't provide any sources (or completely make them up) and scream about bias at the drop of a hat.  Suggest full protection and indefinite blocks on the whole lot.  There doesn't seem to be an ounce of interest in creating a neutral article. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:18, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * "There will 100s of people who might be joining to target biased edits." Perfect. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:23, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * See here,  and herefor all the List of Nairs discussions. Tn pillai 05:27, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I had been working on the Ezhava page for a while and I was waging a one-man battle against editors who accused me of being a "Nair vandal", having "Nair bias" and a bunch of other things. Ricky came over and protected the page and he has been doing great work on the article since. Ever since he unprotected the page, a particular user and some anonymous ip's (probably socks) have been reverting the page to the poorly written, and poorly sourced, POV version. The problems that Ricky is facing are the exact same problems that I faced when editing the article. They revert without explanation, refuse to discuss their changes, and accuse you of bias. When Vvmundakkal said that there were discussions being conducted on Orkut, I went ahead and conducted an Orkut search (you will need an account to see the search results) for the terms "Ezhava wikipedia". I found numerous posts by a particular author on numerous Ezhava groups asking for assistance in fighting (Nair) Vandalism. I received a message on my talk page from an anonymous IP's saying that if I didn't stop editing Ezhava pages, they would be "forced" to include information about Nair women being "prostitutes" (blatantly untrue, and this is because I am a Nair and they automatically assume I am biased against them). This is a spillover from the Ezhava issues and this same editor in particular has been very keen on harping on this particular point at the Nair talk page. I think this represents a rather serious issue. Obviously these people are not interesting in discussion changes and making the article better. They are simply pushing POV. -- vi5in [talk] 05:32, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * One correction. Per the bias allegation on this article, I did not protect this article.  User:Nishkid64 protected it a while back. My first edit there was to remove an editprotect request and asked that people work on discussing how to word it (man, can I take that back?).  I'll readily admit that I have been the only admin involved in the whole thing but this is seriously out of control. I think I've seen everything though.  -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:13, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * A lot of referenced information has been removed from ezhava article. A lot of unreferenced information is still there in that article too. There were so many content dispute with User_talk:Vivin by many editors and he seems to be having biased editing in ezhava article(Editor himeslf accepted that he is nair editor! and ezha-nair fight has a long history). Most of the content were properly referenced with discussion going on talk page of the article. Many article in wiki is written without much or no references. for example Nambiar (Nair Subcaste), Menon, Kurup . Nambiar (Nair Subcaste) has large list of family names and list of people, none could be varified, even the content are unverifiable. Still the article is there in wikipedia. I have brought this to attention ofRicky81682 and he has put Refimprove template there. Same thing can be done to Ezhava article too. There are some content which is accused of not having proper references. Just wait and allow the editors to bring some references. Simply removing content is not the proper way handling the dispute.Vvmundakkal 10:29, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

(undent) I will simply respond by noting Vvmundakkal has complained about this exact same thing to WP:ANI on October 19th which got the article protected. Since then, there has been no edits from him to the talk page until after the protection was removed and just an unexplained reversion of a month's work and then just started edit warring, including the Orkut forum and threats to talk to Federal Ministers. Frankly, I suggest a long block (he's been blocked a week once before for disruptive behavior) to make it clear that this is highly inappropriate. I should blame myself for not blocking these characters a long time ago but at this stage, it would be better if an uninvolved admin got involved. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 11:04, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, I would suggest that as a response to his comment, that we remove all the unsourced text from Ezhava which would leave a very bare bones article (I was giving everyone a month or so before attacking the article but that got me nowhere). My only concern is that it has been clearly shown that many of the books cited have been completely fabrication of their text.  I also see that WP:POINT AFDs are starting from him as well. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 11:08, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, i have requested for protection since there large scale vandalism from many users. I wanted other contributors to get involved. I though they will come back and contribute. I am working for Consulting co Mumbai and may not be involving when i have too much work. Could you please tell me any reason for blocking me? i have never threatened you of any legal problem. But there was some issues being discussed in some forum talking about taking wiki issue to higher levels. i have informed about that. Thats just FYI. not for threatening you. why i do threaten you?Vvmundakkal 11:29, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with Ricky. These editors have no interest in creating a factual and neutral article. Any edit that doesn't agree with their POV is called "vandalism". Yes, I did say I am a Nair, but that is not an "admission" of anything, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion. I have always given proper reasons for my edits to the article. The version that they keep reverting to is frankly, quite terrible. It has terrible spelling, atrocious grammar, peacock terms, OR, and POV. -- vi5in [talk] 18:07, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I just want to ask Vvmundakkal a single question: is everyone who edits against you a vandal? Because I just want to make sure I understand because you've labeled that accusation against every single edit without a moment of thought.  Also, telling me that "we have planned to contact Mr Vayalar Ravi GOI Federal minster,(in order to reach a amicable solution)" is obviously an attempt at intimidation to get the edits you want (which is the point behind WP:LEGAL, not so much specific legal threats).  Last, since you were the first to mention the Orkut forums, I would highly suggest that you make a note there that this type of "editing" is not appreciated nor appropriate and honestly counterproductive . -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:08, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * No comments abt all this but i wud just like to mention that there is need for betterment of the article..on many occasions and even now it appears more like a website for the ezhavas and their present idealogies rather than a detailed encyclopediac article. I had, for instance, added info, quite rare actually, giving information on the subcastes of Ezhavas long back. It was dutifully reverted by the usual editors of the article giving reasons like "ezhavas dont believe in subcastes" or "we dont follow them today" etc...thts wht i mean by saying that its more like a website for the caste rather than an informative article that offers maximum information..though ofcourse its much better now ... Manu —Preceding comment was added at 08:52, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

DYK +8
8 hours past the last update. I am nudging any admin interesting in performing the update. :) <small style="background:#ccc;border:#000 1px solid;padding:0 3px 1px 4px;white-space:nowrap;"> spryde |  talk  12:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

SUGGESTIONS
I've archived this thread, having read it through for at least the the third time; it's already been discussed in thepast, including twice being on the Signpost: Wikipedia Signpost/2007-07-23/In the news, Wikipedia Signpost/2007-08-13/In the news. There is no action we can take right now based on what happened then, we now have a COI guideline, the problem was in any case more one of WP:NPOV and the rather unwise whitewashing of articles from an easily traced and identified IP address. The article on the hapless staffer has been deleted, which was a principal part of the request.

What remains is to ensure that we take reasonable care whenever real-world identities are involved. As far as I can tell it was not Wikipedia that named the individual; the irony of Giano being lauded for publishing private email while Durova is simultaneously castigated for an apparently quite unintentional piece of whistleblowing is not lost on me here. Guy (Help!) 23:26, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

WP:POINTy or otherwise strange action
I am not sure what these three edits were supposed to mean. I noticed them because after a previous encounter with the said editor I thought it necessary to wathclist the then red Requests for adminship/Dorftrottel as an editor seemed "admin material" enough, so to speak (This was rather exceptional. I do not normally watchlist non-existing RfA's.) Anyway, I am now watchlisting Requests for adminship/Dorftrottel 2 to be safe. Not sure on what to do with the joke RfA as this is yet a new type of a joke. --Irpen 01:22, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Userfy. GRBerry 01:33, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I have done this. Chick Bowen 02:32, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Why? What's the harm? A real real RfA would be much more of a disruption. How isn't this legitimate (setting aside for a moment that I created, withdrew and closed in one single edit)? Do I really have to open a real RfA? What for? It would fail anyway, I just wanted the page.
 * One reason not mentioned there is that recently someone told someone else that he'd watchlisted the page. Since I intend to never seriously run at RfA, I thought I could at least create the page, include serious criticism, oppose myself, withdraw and close. No harm done, or is there? I dorftrottel I talk I 02:37, December 4, 2007


 * Nevermind, the friendly guy who had watchlisted the page incidentally is the one who first posted here. Btw: previous encounter with the said editor is not the full truth. At our last encounter (the only one I remember), where he was grotesquely uncivil without ever getting so much as a warning, he alluded to me (or so I think, he never answered my according question to him) as "the admin material editor" when he told Mikka he'd watchlisted my non-existent RfA page and suggested that Mikka do the same. So, Irpen, maybe you can tell us now what you meant with that? There must have been at least two encounters, the earlier of which I honestly can't remember. I dorftrottel I talk I 02:41, December 4, 2007
 * I reiterate my question to Irpen. I don't do it at his user talk for obvious reasons. I ask him to unwatchlist any RfA pages with my name in them or to give a proper explanation what he meant with "admin material editor". What was that about? I am not willing to just let this go, not in the face of him posting sanctimoniously here as if he hadn't been unnecessarily and unprovokedly uncivil to me. I dorftrottel I talk I 02:49, December 4, 2007


 * We've had joke RfAs before. The general rule use to be more or less what the US courts seem to use in deciding if something constitutes legitimate parody of another work, that is, is something funny? However, at this point the project doesn't tolerate much humor (certainly much less so than it did 1.5 years ago or so). There are a handful of joke RfAs, but they are generally kept in user space. See for example the indefinitely open Bishzilla RfA (formerly in Wikipedia space). I don't see much of a problem leaving them in Wikipedia space but I suspect that many straight-laced editors will object, so it is probably best to leave them in userspace. In any event, Irpen your behavior looks close to Wikistalking. I suggest you leave Dorftrottel alone. JoshuaZ 03:07, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I suggest we consider this resolved. The RfA wasn't really valid, but it's not a big deal and it's dealt with now.  As for Irpen, I agree with Joshua that he should best avoid escalating this conflict. Is there anything else that needs to be addressed?  It doesn't appear so. Chick Bowen 03:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * It's December 4, dorftrottel; save the jokes for April 1. --bainer (talk) 03:26, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It wasn't really intended to be a joke. Or disruptive, for that matter. Btw, I just db-userreq'ed it. Who has their RfA page in their userspace? As for Irpen: I'm trying not to escalate this, but I have no idea what he meant with that "admin material" remark, and I would really like to know. Also, I would much appreciate his confirmation that he unwatchlisted the pages. Not talking wikistalking, but it's kind of annoying, and it's a first to me. I dorftrottel I talk I 03:50, December 4, 2007

What stalking? I thought my original post is clear on what prompted me to the page. I did not get to the link by clicking on his contributions and have no intentions to do so.

I am most adamant opponent of stalking and would have no objections to even eliminating the "user contributions" button or having it coupled with a feature that a user is always notified by email of who and when clicked on his/her contributions. Vandals, copyvio uploaders and their likes would then still have been checked but real abusive stalking would have stopped like magic.

I have no beef left with Dorftrottel. We actually have no common interest to even interact. I also appreciate a good joke and the Bishzilla RfA seems like one. But this one did not seem amusing enough to warrant being kept in the Wikipedia space. Besides, neither was Bishzilla's RfA.

As for my explanation in the thread starter about having his RfA page watchlisted, it was made exclusively to explain how come I saw it and to avoid precisely the stalking accusations that were nevertheless brought up. If anyone needs background on my one time experience with the user this thread from ANI archives would provide some insights. I did not seek retribution (for what?) as there is no issue that I see unsettled. Neither I stalked the editor. I saw the created page out of place and brought it up here for attention. The rest in my original post is merely an explanation on how I found it. --Irpen 07:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * You guys don't really have to reach for your guns. I don't think there's trouble down at the OK Corral.  Anyway, Dorftrottel can keep his RFA in his user space, if he wants.  I'm not sure it's a parody, and the distinction between parody, satire, and mistaken wishful thinking is unclear enough that Irpen could be concerned and the rest of us aware.  Geogre 11:07, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * That's not the problem. The page was userfied, then speedied on my request. All done. The other problem remains as I described above. Irpen talking about "stalking accusations" is really nothing but a bad joke. I did not make any such accusations. I merely asked him to please finally disclose what he meant with that "admin material" remark, and also to unwatchlist the non-existant RfA pages. He appears unwilling to disclose, and I'm frankly disappointed that no admin is willing to really help resolve that situation. Whatever he says above, Irpen surely acts like he despises me for some reason, and I would like to know that reason. In other words: I assume there is a reason for him to pre-watchlist my RfA page and recommend that others do so as well, talking about me as "that admin material editor". I assume there was indeed a reason beyond mere incivility on his part to revert my innocuous question what that was all about from his user talk with the edit summary reading "rm obnoxious rant". And finally, I do assume there is a good reason why he instantly posted here, alerted by his questionable watchlisting of my non-existant RfA page, instead of contacting me first. I do assume good faith on his part. But I really require some sort of intellectually honest explanation for Irpen's behaviour towards me in order to sustain the assumption of good faith on his part. What can I say? Any admin, please assist in resolving this for good. He still has my non-existant RfA page bookmarked, I want to know why, and I want it to stop. I dorftrottel I talk I 11:47, December 4, 2007


 * Incidentally, it's good that Irpen linked to this thread from ANI archives, demonstrating e.g. how I instantly notified him of that thread while he did nothing of the sort when he started this thread here. After El_C had directed me to WP:DR, I posted there (to no avail, since it's only for content disputes) and immediately notifed  Irpen again. He removed my good-faithed notifications here (please take a look at the edit summary, if you will). I was really friendly all along, yet his unexplained behaviour was and continues to be less than civil, to say the least. I would like to know why, and I would like it to stop. I dorftrottel I talk I 11:58, December 4, 2007

Please. Let's not get into what we think of each other. Let's focus on the issues at hand, and this seems resolved. --Irpen 12:26, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It isn't until you give an honest reply and unwatchlist my non-existant RfA page. I have diffs on my side and have been open and polite about everything. Time for you to do likewise. Please reply to all the points raised by me directly above. E.g., why didn't you contact me first beofre posting here? Why, after you decided to post here, didn't you notify me? What did you mean with "admin material editor"? Why did you remove my polite posts and notifications as "obnoxious rant/stuff"? Do you still have my non-existant RfA pages watchlisted or not? I dorftrottel I talk I 12:48, December 4, 2007
 * Dude, what's wrong with being called 'admin material'? Isn't that a compliment? --Masamage ♫ 19:10, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * "Dude", please read before posting. Irpen meant that remark in some way that made it clear he had picked up the word somewhere and did most obviously not agree with it. He watchlisted my page so he would be notified in order to oppose me. He even suggested to another user (an admin) that they watchlist my page as well. I'm not paranoid, and please don't call me that, I'm just annoyed by Irpen's utterly uncivil behaviour. I dorftrottel I talk I 23:20, December 4, 2007
 * From context, it looks like he watchlisted your non-existent RFA so he could vote for you immediately if someone nominated you. Why are you getting offended over that? You seem a bit paranoid. I can't see how it could possibly not be a compliment (even if you don't want to be an admin, hearing that someone thinks you could be is still a complement)—Random832 20:03, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Please read before posting. Irpen meant that remark in some way that made it clear he had picked up the word somewhere and did most obviously not agree with it. He watchlisted my page so he would be notified in order to oppose me. He even suggested to another user (an admin) that they watchlist my page as well. I'm not paranoid, and please don't call me that, I'm just annoyed by Irpen's utterly uncivil behaviour. I dorftrottel I talk I 23:20, December 4, 2007


 * For those admins who are incapable of understanding this: What Irpen effectively did, besides his unprovoked uncivility, is that he canvassed against me before I ever ran for adminship. He did so with the malicious intention to distress me, and he refuses to unwatchlist any non-existant RfA page with my username in it and give me some explanation as to why he pre-canvassed against a potential future RfA of mine like that. I dorftrottel I talk I 23:38, December 4, 2007

Creating, opposing and withdrawing your own RfA is quite thought-provoking, if somewhat idiosyncratic (shades of the tree falling in the forest...). I think it makes a valid point about adminship and those who do and don't want it. I don't think anything further needed to have been done there, though that is a bit late now it has been userfied and user-db'd. As for watchlisting of possible future pages, that is a useful function. Asking someone to de-watchlist a page (any page) is a bit like asking them to stand on their head. They can say they have done it, but you can't see whether they have done it. So it's a bit pointless really. Whether watchlisting certain pages counts as "stalking" (and I'm not expressing an opinion on what happened here) is also interesting. I think what Geogre said was best "You guys don't really have to reach for your guns." If both of you walk away now, everything will probably be OK. Carcharoth (talk) 00:49, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks. I dorftrottel I talk I 01:25, December 5, 2007

Proposal for ANI clerks - discussion on talk page
Please contribute at Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard. Thanks. Carcharoth 17:46, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I've created a proposal Administrators' noticeboard/Clerks. The proposal envisions an open process where any editor in good standing can participate.  - Jehochman  Talk 18:32, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Discuss exact proposal points here. Thanks,  Dav <font color="Green">nel <font color="Blue">03   19:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * And to those who may be interested, there is a list where you can volunteer. - Jehochman Talk 23:29, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Excessive merge nominations
User:Ejfetters just nominated a large number of Star Trek articles for merging and/or deletion (another user counted 102). It's kind of hard to defend that many articles at once...--uɐɔlnʌɟoʞǝɹɐs 01:38, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Honestly, what is with the mass rush to get rid of character and episode articles lately? We're not paper, we're both a general and a specialized encyclopedia and these crusades are getting a bit out of hand.... Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 02:18, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I think it is users enforcing WP:FICTION -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:26, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * All these minor articles have no place in an encyclopedia, all fancruft, we should get rid of them all, there is no need for multiple articles on Star Trek, for example, all the information should be put into one article, keeping only the most important, if someone wants to know more they can just watch it, or look it up on the Star Trek wiki, I'm sure it exists. Also see WP:NOHARM.  There is way too much about random fan boy stuff on wikipedia.  The goal of this place is not to make a detailed explanation of every single detail of every fictional universe.  Please re-read Notability (fiction) is the reference~, consensus is that we just don't want all that here.  Jackaranga (talk) 02:35, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Also what do you want administrators to do about this ? You posted this here, but did not say what you were expecting to get out of it, so it's unlikely anyone will be able to provide you with whatever it is you want. Jackaranga (talk) 02:37, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure - a hint to the editor in question to take it easy would have been nice. Noticing that WP:FICTION may be overused as a deletion excuse would also be nice.--uɐɔlnʌɟoʞǝɹɐs 05:45, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

deleted ArbCom voting page
Why was Arbitration Committee Elections December 2007/Vote/Mercury deleted? Who did it, and how is this being justified? I know the user left, but there are certainly many who have not been on in the last few hours and now they know nothing. I dorftrottel I talk I 05:48, December 3, 2007
 * It seems he is exercising his right to vanish. SlimVirgin  (talk) (contribs) 05:56, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Right to vanish does not apply to project-space pages. The page should be restored and protected.  Blank is fine, but it should not be deleted.  I will undelete it myself unless someone provides a very compelling reason not to. Chick Bowen 05:59, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I deleted it. Mercury used his "right to vanish and had the page deleted.  From Meta:

"The Right to Vanish is a long standing right of any user on any Wikimedia project. It means that under certain conditions, a range of material testifying to your actions and existence on the project may (at your request) be removed or obscured."
 * John Reaves 06:00, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Chick, he's just upset. I don't see a compelling reason to restore it. SlimVirgin  (talk) (contribs) 06:01, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't this deletion for right to vanish falls under the Wikipedia namespace that attachs his name to it. This is like deleting a Request for adminship, it should be overturned. Courtesy blank if you like, but it should not be red-linked cause he didn't like the results of it. — <font color="007FFF">Save_Us _ 229 06:03, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The compelling reason to restore it is that, if we take these elections seriously, we ought to maintain a record of what happened in them. Similar things have happened before and we have not deleted the vote page, merely closed the voting and protected it. Chick Bowen 06:06, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Falls within spirit of the right to vanish, if not the rules. So best to leave it as it is. But John, as a candidate, you really shouldn't be editing the vote pages. Bring it to Talk, ask the election officers... Jd2718 06:10, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * As a compromise, I have created and protected a placeholder page. But I still think the history should be restored.  I don't like the precedent here. Chick Bowen 06:13, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Probably because they didn't request that the pages be deleted. It's just a page full of signatures.  Can't we let him leave in peace? I really don't see how my candidacy is a COI except maybe as a mere technicality. John Reaves 06:14, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Other people have withdrawn from elections before because of bad results, and those vote pages haven't been deleted. I see no reason to do the same here. But maybe wait until the elections are over and (hopefully) Mercury has returned. Then it can be undeleted for the record. At the very least, the Signpost will probably say something about this, if only reporting who withdrew. Having no page to point at will look silly. Carcharoth 06:26, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I think the restored page with the concise explanation of what happened is a good idea for the time being. For the record: I posted here under the assumption that he left because of the vote, not because of any other more pressing issues. I dorftrottel I talk I 06:29, December 3, 2007

I wouldn't necessarily oppose recreation, it just seems unnecessary. John Reaves 06:47, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I think the voting page was useful, insofar as it was something of a referendum on the sleuthing meta-issue.  We shouldn't seek to rub Mercury's nose in it or anything, but at the same time--  50+ straight opposes in less than 6 hours was a pretty substantial record of the amount of opposition to sleuthing.   Perhaps scrubbing Mercury's name from the page and replacing it with "Candidate M" or something, so that he can vanish without people's comments vanishing along with him?   --Alecmconroy 08:13, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * If Mercury wishes to leave to leave the project (Something I hope he'll reconsider, he is a good admin), I see nothing of much interest in the content of the page worth arguing over restoring it if he wants it deleted. It's nothing more than a vote page. -- lucasbfr <sup style="color:darkblue;">talk 10:24, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * One way or another, it should be part of the record. Deleting the page here creates the appearance of impropriety; it suggests that we are trying to hide unpleasant recent history within the project. -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 12:05, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It was not just votes, I had commented too which was moved to the talk page, and other people had placed small comments next to their votes to indicate their reasons. And they weren't all exactly the same reasons.  It does hide what people think, and no doubt Mercury will be back- well I hope so anyway. It is not 'his' page- we keep Requests for Adminship, RfCs and Arbcoms etc- dozens of people had commented/voted on that page. Me  rk  i  n  s  m  um  13:50, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I support not restoring the history until after the election. It takes courage to offer to serve the community in such a public way, and giving candidates some grace here is good for all of us. Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 17:28, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

(Entered after the resolution) To be fair, if Phil Sandifer and Danny are allowed to blank their vote pages, shouldn't Mercury? Or, to turn this the other way, shouldn't all vote pages be kept intact as a permanent record of the vote? -- Robster2001 02:39, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Blanking is fine. Mercury unblanked it himself.  It's deleting the history that some of us are queasy about, but Mercury has eased all concerns about that through his actions here, which have been entirely proper. Chick Bowen 03:38, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I had it deleted for my right to vanish. I'm back per this.  So I'm not vanished.  Leave it be please and thank you for the concern. :) Regards,  M er cury    04:02, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Good to have you back. -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 17:16, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

User:H ?
I suppose this belongs more at WP:VPM but I figure I'll have more luck getting someone knowledgeable here... I totally missed that User:H left. Apparently someone making threats? It's quite sad. Could someone please tell/direct me to a (privacy sanitized) summary of what happened? <font color="#00F">&mdash;dgies tc 19:02, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure there are any more publically-known details than what're on his user page, but I guess I could be wrong. --Masamage ♫ 19:05, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Looking into it, it looks like personal information was given away and it was used against H. See, this is why you should try to remain at least partially anonymous, so you can avoid threats. Maser  ( Talk! ) 22:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * He's returned under a different account. I won't say which for fear of being crushed by an elephant. Shalom (Hello • Peace) 17:55, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

WP:AFD
Over a 100 nom backlog. Bearian (talk) 02:42, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The backlog at Articles for deletion is being cleared, but the "purge" function does not work. Please, can someone clear the list of closed debates? Bearian (talk) 17:24, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I think I need some help from someone who can create a bot
I'm a new administrator and this is my first time dealing with this situation. An editor who does a lot of work with the taxonomy of various snakes and has a solid background with the relevant project came to me with this request: "I need to move everything in to  and everything in  to  ," and asked me to help him do it. I spent an hour or so doing the first task by hand and managed to complete the letter "A", with more than 300 to go; it's a huge task. I strongly suspect that because this is a repetitive task it could be automated, but I haven't the least idea of how to do that. (a) Do I need a "bot", or is there a tool/toolkit of which I'm not aware? (b) Is this the right place to find someone with that enviable skill-set of creating a "bot" or equivalent tool? If I've ignorantly come to the wrong place or asked the wrong question, I'd appreciate guidance. Thanks in advance for any help you all can provide. Accounting4Taste: talk 05:46, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I think WP:AWB can make a list of all articles in Category:True vipers by taxonomic synonyms and replace it with Category:Viperinae by common name. <font color="#4169E1">W<font color="#191970">ODU P  05:52, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Heh, actually, you want WP:BOTREQ... :) SQL <sup style="color:#999">Query me!  05:52, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Wow, fast, accurate and two different ways. Many thanks... I wasn't aware of WP:AWB because I'm the old-fashioned type that does things by hand.  I think I will lead the user to that tool and put them together; if that doesn't work, I'll go for the WP:BOTREQ.  Your assistance is greatly appreciated.  Accounting4Taste: talk 06:02, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * If the first doesn't work, I'd suggest you just use WP:CFD which comes complete with a bot to do exactly this kind of thing. Splash - tk 13:09, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Clarification of copyright needed
Hi All, Sound_from_ultrasound is one of the pages on my watchlist due to its historically high rate of vandalism. Recently a new user User:Skinduptruk has added a large amount of good material (about 1500 words), in a single edit. He says it's a cut-down version of his graduate engineering thesis. Is this likely to be a problem? Regards AKAF (talk) 08:25, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, it needs formatting, but if it is his thesis then it's fine, I believe. He needs to provide a link or a reference to his thesis, however.  Neil   ☎  09:54, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Fine from a copyright perspective (unless someone funding the work has claimed ownership as happens sometimes), and since it appears to be a factual work rather than a research work, it's probably ok from that perspective too. However, a graduate thesis is not a properly peer-reviewed work (they are unpublished) even though it has been assessed by a university somewhere. Which is to say, the claims it makes still need citing to properly reliable sources as appropriate. Splash - tk 13:08, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The assessment by the university is similar to the process of peer review. Most graduate theses are read and critiqued by multiple people, and a degree isn't awarded until errors and problems are corrected, so I'm not sure that these would not count as reliable sources. But that's probably a discussion for the WP:RS talk page or similar. Natalie (talk) 13:27, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It should be pointed out the section added did have 20 or so citations within it. Neil   ☎  14:16, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Duh, I scanned the page really quickly, and didn't see any little blue numbers, so thought the obvious. My bad. Splash - tk 17:19, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Problem at Card sharp (reopened)
Thoroughly-sourced changes at Card sharp (and Card shark redir) are being reverted by who labels his reversions "Rvv". Not a huge deal, but could probably use a talking to about what "vandalism" means and how reliable sourcing vs. personal PoV works. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 07:51, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, it looks like already talked to  about it.  Avec nat...Wikipédia Prends Des Forces.  08:03, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Similar but unrelated incident, and it hasn't stopped. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 21:58, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Ok, I left a level 3 warning on that user's talk page. Carlossuarez46 03:35, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Does not seem to have had an effect; User:2005 is now deleting my posts from the article's talk page, evidently simply because they are critical of his reductio ad Hitlerum and WP:NOTing. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 08:33, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Blocked for 24 hours. Neil   ☎  10:48, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Hey, the friendly message I was leaving him now goes to waste! ;) -- lucasbfr <sup style="color:darkblue;">talk 10:52, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Friendly messages were tried and, sadly, didn't work :( Neil   ☎  11:09, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I went over there and it's not that simple. The so-called "thoroughly sourced" changes are an argument made on a talk page to support an out-of-process redirect/deletion by User:SMcCandlish. This isn't about reliable sourcing or verifiability in article space, it' about User:2005 and SMcCandilish disagreeing in talk space about what to do about an article, and both of them engaging in simmering borderline incivility. 2005 deleted some hostile comments by SMcCandilish. After reviewing the matter I think 2005 is correct as to the substance and process of the proposed deletion, and SMcCandilish is taking a rather eccentric and confrontational approach to arguments in talk space. Nothing here is remotely appropriate for a block. Both editors ought to simmer down. Wikidemo (talk) 12:25, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with you that the matter is not simple. User:2005 requested unblock on my (and Neil's) talk page using an IP. Since I have no reason to believe this is someone else posing as User:2005, I think this should be considered as a formal unblock request (and let's let the block evasion slip please, he only used the IP to post the unblock request) -- lucasbfr <sup style="color:darkblue;">talk 12:43, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, having said what I did, it's reasonable to ask 2005 not to call people fascists, not to delete content from a talk page (even if he takes offense), and not to engage in contentious editing. I think the block was a premature and too harsh, but it was for a real problem.  Sorry if this sounds like wishy-washiness but SMcCandilish is a solid, experienced Wikipedian who was operating in good faith, and nobody should have to put up with being called a fascist and having constructive talk contributions deleted for that.  Wikidemo (talk) 13:00, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism on User talk:Christian07TARDIS
(blocked for being a sockpupet) - placed a note on his talk page (change here) which is not allowed after block. Stuart DD  contributions 13:20, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * He is allowed to write on his talk page. As part of Appealing a block he is allowed to edit his talk page to ask for an explanation of his block. It is not vandalism as far as I can see. Woody (talk) 13:32, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Agree - It's clear that the only reason for that edit is to understand the reason for the block and/or appeal it - which a blocked user is allowed to do on his/her own talk page. Od Mishehu 16:11, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Block & Protect
Sorry but I've decided to leave Wikipedia because I don't have enough time to work on this website yet. Please block my user indefinitely from editing Wikipedia and protect my user and my talk page. I'll let an admin know if I decide to continue working on Wikipedia. But please accept my request and do so. D@rk talk 16:34, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I've protected your userpage and talk page, but I'm affraid we don't block accounts on request, also this would make it extremely difficult for you to return should you wish to (as you would find it hard to request an unblock). Best of luck in the future, and I hope you decide to return one day.  Ry an P os tl et hw ai te  16:37, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what this person is doing =S  §  Eloc   §  18:09, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Nor do they, by the looks of it. I think they're trying to use the talk page as a means of communication with someone else but not getting any reply.  I wouldn't worry about it.  BLACK KITE  18:35, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Moo Duk Kwan
There has been some controversy at Talk:Moo Duk Kwan and over trademarks, can someone look into it please. It may need someone familiar with copyright/patent law. From a brief search here a registered trademark exists, the numbers given in talk match if you remove the comers. --Nate1481(t/c) 10:38, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Send the article to WP:AFD, as it looks NN to me. Bearian 14:24, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Not really helpful. --Nate1481(t/c) 17:32, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * p.s. We have a basic notability guide for the martial arts project here which this article meets. --Nate1481(t/c) 10:03, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * User is now making borderline legal threats (I've sent a warning, not blocking since the wording isn't 100% clear as a legal threat) —Random832 21:41, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Protecting policies
Village pump (policy)

This appears to me to have gained a rough consensus, but as proposer I may be seeing what I want to see. Are we ata point where we can try, for a while, protecting the main policies which lead to blocking and sanctions? I'm thinking here about WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, WP:CIVIL, WP:SOCK, WP:NPA, WP:HARASS, WP:BP, WP:BLP and WP:BAN. There are others in Category:Wikipedia_official_policy, I wonder if some of those should be marked as guidelines, or whether they should also be included. Guy (Help!) 21:25, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I for one don't think it's a good idea to implement this without a clearer idea of what we're implementing. There are many unanswered questions about how this should be done.  First - should we protect all policies or only ones where there is not active editing?  Second - what does that protection mean?  Does it mean that admins should reject suggested changes until they've been thoroughly discussed and have gained consensus?  Should the implementation of changes be up to admin discretion?  This isn't like the "stable revisions" feature that might be coming because it leaves no room for a "current version", just the stable version -- so are we trying to simulate "stable revisions"?  If so, how can ordinary editors work on the drafts, and does this entail moving the meaningful edits out of peoples' watch lists?  I would say, write the overall idea up as a proposal and move from there.  Mango juice talk 21:42, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * It means policies marked policy, and yes it absolutely does mean no changes without consensus on Talk, all edits via editprotected. Guy (Help!) 23:50, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay, then, I definitely don't support it. There's really not much wrong with the way things work now - yes, anyone can edit policy pages but off-the-wall changes get reverted fast.  And anyone can do those reverts, whereas under the new system admins will be required for every change: I'm sure this would triple the workload at CAT:PER.  Besides, I don't think the policy pages are so great that we should be crystallizing all of them, and I really don't like how discouraging this would be to non-admin users who want to get involved in policy writing.  Mango juice talk 03:44, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I would support this. If we're protecting frequently used templates, we shouldn't be leaving the core policies open. SlimVirgin  (talk) (contribs) 23:55, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I would oppose this, as it tends to make adminship more of a "big deal", which we are often told it shouldn't be. It increases the seperation between ordinary editors and admins, and will increase the disgruntlement of those who are less than happy with the behaviour of certain admins. Policy shouldn't be up to admins, but if only admins can edit policies, then in effect policies will no longer be written by the community, but only by a select few.DuncanHill (talk) 00:00, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I guess I understand you concern, but I think it will rather help facilitate productive discussion and determining consensus in little, better traceable steps. I for one think it's a great idea, and I'm not an admin. I dorftrottel I talk I 00:07, December 5, 2007


 * Codifying this will help prevent any abuse of it from anyone. (Unlike, for example, WP:AGF, which codifying only made more capable of being abused.) Why not write out the general principles on a Wikipedia page, for future reference (village pump archives are only kept for a short while, and digging out a link might be tedious)? In the WP:VPP thread, people seemed to agree with their own version of the proposal – better that they agree on a centralized one, especially if/when this system is used.
 * I don't think it's developed enough at this point: who reviews? Can any editor decline a request? Suppose two admins disagree on whether to implement a change, or a change is implemented unilaterally, or only two hours is given for discussion, and some one disagrees strongly after three. How soon after a developing page is marked as policy does it become protected, if at all? Will all policies be protected?
 * Another suggestion: use a different template from editprotected, for example editpolicy (not yet created), to separate mostly technical and article-related requests from standard policy-updating procedure. Grace notes T <span title="Wikipedia:Administrators&#39; noticeboard">§ 00:24, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I already see discussion is starting up here, kind of fracturing the discussion, but I'll restrain myself and save my comments for the village pump. But to answer Guy's original question, I read the thread on VPP, and while you certainly have a (Father forgive me for I am about to sin) majority, I'm not sure you have a consensus to just do it.  Many of the more recent comments seem to be against it, at least in its original form.  I would say you have widespread interest (or even a rough consensus) to pursue something further, perhaps as a trial.  Would it be wise to consider this AN thread a notice for interested people to wander over to the VPP thread, rather than fracture it further? --barneca (talk) 00:59, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I feel that this is a really, really, really bad idea. It seems like protection for it's own sake. &#10154; Hi DrNick ! 03:20, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

This would kill the process as stated on Consensus, which requires open editing. Right now, policy/guideline/essay maintenance is a hell as it stands. Consensus is fundamental to how wikipedia works, and I'll go down fighting defending it! ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 03:48, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with Kim. Our whole freakin' encyclopedia is built around the idea that anyone can edit, and we're talking about putting something in that would potentially dissuade people from editing our very policy pages?  Madness.  - Philippe &#124; Talk 04:04, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * But then we have the absurdity of ArbCom linking to the version of the policy on 3 October 2006 in order to discuss whether it was violated. Guy (Help!) 12:49, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * But then, certain finer points of policy do actually change over time. And also, that "absurdity" doesn't have much effect on anyone except for arbcom and the few people involved in the case.  This proposal will affect a lot more of the community.  Mango juice talk 15:11, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

This is a profoundly bad idea that fails totally to connect with how consensus editing and development works. Insisting that you must have an admin's permission to update policies either by way of correction or bold proposal is wrong and creates a police-guard around the policies in question. Anyone can edit this encyclopedia, and its policies exist and mutate only because of that fact. If the motiviation to this is vandalism, then you know where to get off, and if it's bad changes to those policies well, just revert then discuss. There is no effect to either vandalism or a non-consensus change since neither carry any actual weight at all. Splash - tk 13:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I find the arguments against protecting the policies here more compelling than those for. Any vandalism will be quickly reverted: minor modifications will come under "Consensus can change." I see nothing absurd about the ArbCom linking to a particular revision of a policy, as long as that's the revision that was in effect during the offense.--uɐɔlnʌɟoʞǝɹɐs 15:41, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It isn't a question of vandalism. It's more that every so often you get someone out at the barn wall with a ladder and a can of paint and nobody notices. Other times people do notice and there is a huge fight back and forth about which version is 'the policy'. This kind of thing has brought us such 'policy' gems as 'you may be blocked for removing warnings from your talk page - even completely bogus warnings' and 'you may be banned for linking to Michael Moore's website if Moore says something bad about a Wikipedian'. Currently we have this philosophy that 'real' policy reflects standard practice, but we find that people have different ideas of what standard practice IS. Requiring consensus before policy updates are made would allow us to actually decide as a community when policy should change.... rather than individuals making it up on their own and then insisting that their changes are 'consensus' because they are on the policy page. --CBD 16:15, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * People having different ideas is fine, though. Certainly, sometimes people get all carried away, but even when they do it doesn't actually change the policy - the words on the page don't mean anything if noone is going to stick by them. Policy is as policy does, not as policy is temporarily written. If some new editor sees a badly drafted version of a policy page, we just leave them a note explaining what happened. The upside of badly drafted policies existing for short periods is that we get the chance to demonstrate the more clearly that they are indeed considered bad. And note that this proposal is not to require consensus before policy updates, since that is an underlying pre-requisite anyway, the proposal is merely to construct an enforcement of the status quo in preference to changes in consensus. It's far too easy to stifle a talk page debate if the ability to execute the changes being proposed is not there in the first place. Which is precisely the idea of the proposal. But life's tough on a wiki somtimes. Splash - tk 16:31, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


 * On just a handful of pages, this is a very good idea, because some of our policies are eroded by constant rewording (or attempts to reword) by people who disagree with them. As the ArbCom noted, it sometimes becomes difficult to ascertain if someone has "violated policy" because it takes some time to figure out what the policy exactly was at the time the alleged violation took place.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  23:09, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Userwho
I don't have much experience with usernames, so I'm hoping someone can help out. What to do with User:Userwho, considering User:Who is already in use by an admin? --Kbdank71 (talk) 18:56, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * They're not that similar - I mean, you could possibly confuse Userwho with User:Who, but in any given context you know whether the prefix is likely to be used or not. —Random832 19:43, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Image:Takezo Kensei.jpg
The original file and description was overwriten. Can anyone check it and restore the old version please. Thank you. --GeorgHH (talk) 20:18, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I have moved the overwritten version to Image:Adam Monroe2.jpg. —Random832 20:54, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Billy Hathorn
There are two issues with this user. First, he is a prolific creator of non-to-barely notable obituaries. As in, articles combined from obituary notices in the papers, originally just copied and pasted but now copyedited a bit to avoid WP:CSD. Look at his deleted contributions. I have never seen a non-vandal with so many deleted articles to their name.

Second problem: he is citing "Billy Hathorn, "The Republican Party in Louisiana, 1920-1980," Master's thesis (1980), Northwestern State University at Natchitoches" in articles. This tells us, I think, where the vast swathes of marginally notable people are coming from.

There is a request for comment: Requests for comment/Billy Hathorn. He ignored it. There are many, many AfD and CSD notices on his talk page. He ignores them. There are earnest attempts to engage him. He ignores them. His only participation in discusison seems to be to defend his articles at AfD, and he doesn't always do that.

I hate to see all this effort go to waste. I've suggested he start a Louisiana Wikia, there is not one yet, but no response. What can we do? Guy (Help!) 21:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Looking at his contributions, I would suggest Texas or East Texas as his location (I was born and raised there). I guess the problem is they are notable to him the local area but not on a National/International scale. I don't want to seem like I am butting in but mind if I try to talk to him? <small style="background:#ccc;border:#000 1px solid;padding:0 3px 1px 4px;white-space:nowrap;"> spryde |  talk  21:26, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Please do. Guy (Help!) 21:37, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I've seen several prolific, content-oriented editors before that were just plain stubborn about following all our rules. I've come to the conclusion that we're best off grinning and bearing their idiosyncracies, working around them as necessary. It's like "dealing with the creative talent" on Madison Avenue.


 * From what I've seen, you guys are doing a good, patient job. I have a couple of comments:
 * I suggest you userfy any deleted articles. Then they're around if someone does start a Louisiana Wikia
 * I think we can get overly aggressive on notability of local historical figures. I submit that one of our best uses is serving as an online source for the less famous, local historical figures. I wish someone like this was doing this sort of work for the area I grew up in.
 * We're biased toward stuff we can find reliable sources for on the Internet but paper meets WP:RS just as well. I think we can assume that any paid elected politician from earlier years has a media trail in a library even if we can't find it online. I suggest giving this guy's articles the benefit of the doubt whenever possible.
 * That's my 2 cents worth. Thanks for your and the other RfC participants' efforts working with this person. -- A. B. (talk) 05:54, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Coveritus
I just ran across this edit. Is there any process for verifying the death of a User and/or protecting or archiving their pages? Corvus cornix talk  23:12, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Given most users are anonymous, no. It could quite possibly be a (rather lame attempt at a) joke. Since the user in question has only 30 or so edits, I wouldn't worry about it.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  23:15, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Confirmed deaths of established editors are preserved at Deceased Wikipedians and it is customary to indefintely block the account and protect the user/user talk pages from editing. In this circumstance, I wouldn't do any of it. It was made by an IP address saying that he died. We get quite a few of those, most are either sick joke or unconfirmed. There is nothing that actually confirms this users death. — <font color="007FFF">Save_Us _ 229 03:48, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Voretus is apparently a friend of his. We might be able to find out from him/her. Corvus cornix talk  17:01, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Can't sleep, clown will eat me
Has clearly shown abuse of power by locking RD Reynolds completely, and not following proper procedure. Also, keeps removing info before we have a chance to source it. --- Silent RAGE! 14:17, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * There appears to be a content dispute going on, he protected the page under the basis of "BLP issues" wich is plausible seeing that the entirety of the material removed is unsourced, I suggest that the users interested in the addition of said material find some references to avoid further conflict, if the refences are found and are reliable drop me a line and I will unprotect the page to allow for sourced inclusion, please note that I may be inactive later today so if the references are found before tommorow please contact another admin if its inclusion is considered that urgent, otherwise I will be available to attend this case from tomorrow onwards. -  Ca ri bb e a  n ~ H. Q.  14:27, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * (ec'd)Looking at the history of the article you kept on adding an unsourced fact. Would not the better method have been to find a reference before adding this "fact" rather than engaging in a revert war? Protection seems sensible to me in light of this. Pedro :  Chat  14:28, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I think that protecting the article was the right thing to do - but that shouldn't have been the admin to do it. This is because it seems like this was a dispute that he/she was involved in. Od Mishehu 14:37, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't see a problem. CSCWEM is not an involved editor on that article, as far as I can tell; he's simply enforcing WP:BLP. We don't need to jump through hoops in order to prevent repeated reinsertion of unsourced material into a biography,and frankly those who were edit-warring over it should count themselves lucky not to be blocked. I don't think edit-warring to insert unsourced material in a biography is in the least tiny bit appropriate. Guy (Help!) 21:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * /me reads first sentence. Troll. Move along. (and by the way, removing BLP violations is not a content dispute ) Will (talk) 14:40, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Anythying involving that many reverts is a content dispute regardless of its nature. -  Ca ri bb e a  n ~ H. Q.  14:46, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * No. Removing BLP violations isn't a content dispute. If it was, it wouldn't be a 3RR exception. (The same applies to copyvios, vandalism, and banned user contributions) Will (talk) 14:54, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * As I said BLP violations within this text are plausible, however this is not a obvious BLP violation and the admin involved should have tried to resolve this before doing several reverts. -  Ca ri bb e a  n ~ H. Q.   —Preceding comment was added at 15:02, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * "Not obvious"? I think the text " " about ten times is pretty much obvious. From BLP, "Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material — whether negative, positive, or just questionable — about living persons should be removed immediately and without discussion from Wikipedia articles.", emphasis policy's. Will (talk) 15:07, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok I must admit that the fact templates weren't particulary noticed by me, but you are just giving to much emphazize on this, the issue here is concerning edit warring which is not apropiate of a admin, and any kind of edit warring is a content dispute that is logic whenever a editor may have policy on his behalf or not, why because there is actually some material being disputed we are wasting our time discussing the proper definition of this kind of revert war here anyways, I doubt that this will help the case in any way. -  Ca ri bb e a  n ~ H. Q.  15:18, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It isn't an edit war when an admin, or anybody is trying to enforce policy.  Corvus cornix  talk  17:08, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

SilentRage, the best advice I can give you is to not revert war and find sources. So what if the material isn't on the current revision of the article? Once you find sources, revert and add the references. I would prefer if the article wasn't protected by CSCWEM though. CSCWEM was actively revert warring on the article and he should not have been the administrator to add the protection if it was nessecary. — <font color="007FFF">Save_Us _ 229 14:58, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I concur with Can't sleep, clown will eat me's actions in this matter, the aggressive removal of material that violates WP:BLP is allowed and is not subject to WP:3RR. Can't sleep's protection of the page to prevent continued addition of unsourced material to a BLP article was the right move according to WP:BLP.  There’s no abuse of power here, just an administrator doing his job.  Dreadstar  †  15:24, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * It wasn't a revert war, it was an attempt at enforcing policy.  Corvus cornix  talk  17:09, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Investigation of alleged RD Reynolds revert warring


Here are diffs showing unsourced biographical material being added:   Don't be fooled by the fact tags. Those don't make it kosher

Here's a spot of nasty vandalism: 
 * Accounts that have been blocked thus far by User:Can't sleep, clown will eat me:

We know that a certain banned user has a fixation on wrestling articles and likes to mint sock puppets. I am not sure if these are socks belonging to him, or if they are others behaving the same way. After these accounts were blocked, twice tried to add policy violating material  and was reverted by User:Can't sleep, clown will eat me. I think page protection is appropriate and that CSCWEM has done nothing wrong. I do not see CSCWEM editing the article, except to enforce WP:BLP policy or revert vandalism; he does not seem to be involved in a content dispute at all. - Jehochman Talk 15:08, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually we have at least two known puppeters that enjoy adding nonsense to the wrestling pages, however this appears to be quite common even by users that aren't proven as puppets of either. -  Ca ri bb e a  n ~ H. Q.  15:25, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Indeed. This creates a confusing situation.  Perhaps we should request a checkuser on the above parties and the two known puppetmasters. - Jehochman  Talk 15:26, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It's almost certain that and  are sockpuppets of each other  . A CheckUser to see which sockpuppeteer this is might be in order. — <font color="007FFF">Save_Us _ 229  16:04, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Would you like to file the request? You may copy a portion of the material above as your evidence. Add the third account as well. By going through with WP:RFCU, the Checkuser may discover additional, unknown accounts operated by the same party, thus helping prevent future disruption and confusion.  - Jehochman  Talk 16:07, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Well I'm skeptical about whether a checkuser would accept it, but it's worth a try. Although it's fairly obvious that the sockpuppeteer is User:ECW500. What is the name of the other puppeteer on wrestling articles that was mentioned above? — <font color="007FFF">Save_Us _ 229 16:11, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * User:JB196 <small style="background:#ccc;border:#000 1px solid;padding:0 3px 1px 4px;white-space:nowrap;"> spryde |  talk  16:16, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Aye. -  Ca ri bb e a  n ~ H. Q.  16:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I've worked with JB196 several times now and his modus operandi is usually removing large amounts of text (falsey) citing WP:BLP and adding a reference tag at the top. This user appears to be doing the opposite by adding the material.
 * Also I'm considering the contributions of User:ECW500 which include edits to WrestleCrap and RD Reynolds (same location as the suspect users' edits) and the article Fruity Pebbles (i.e. User:Pebblesmaster and User:Barney Rubbleton) — <font color="007FFF">Save_Us _ 229 16:23, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * If I recall correctly JB had a stage where he would actually create false promotions and championships just to mock how long it took for someone to figure it out. -  Ca ri bb e a  n ~ H. Q.  16:27, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I'll file the CheckUser to check for sleeper accounts, but JB196 seems like a non-factor here. — <font color="007FFF">Save_Us _ 229 16:29, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I know it seems unlikely but it may as well be him trying to spread misinformation again, I'm just saying we shouldn't discard him until a CU proves otherwise. -  Ca ri bb e a  n ~ H. Q.  16:31, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

CheckUser has been started at Requests for checkuser/Case/ECW500. Feel free to comment and add on at your own discretion. — <font color="007FFF">Save_Us _ 229 17:02, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I need help
Hello. An admin must contact me on my talk page. I have serious problems and I'd be pleased if an admin would listen to my problems. I need to contact an admin privately with an e-mail. HelpMe114 (talk) 20:02, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/Jacob Richler
Since I nominated this article for deletion, information on the notability of the subject has come to light that I think makes the grounds for my nomination inappropriate. I would like to withdraw my nomination and have said as much in the AfD discussion. Would someone mind closing the debate without prejudice - as seems to usually be the case with withdrawn nominations. Guest9999 (talk) 21:17, 6 December 2007 (UTC)]]
 * I've closed it as withdrawn. The discussion, after Bearcat's additions to the article, seemed to be moving toward keep as well. <font color="#3D59AB">Leebo  <font color="#2A8E82">T /<font color="#2A8E82"> C 21:49, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * From past experience (see this) it is never a good idea to close a AfD as "withdrawn" if there are any delete votes. In theory, the deletion discussion should stand, and the nominator shouldn't have "veto" power over everyone else just because they change their mind.-Andrew c [talk] 02:57, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Admin Gadgets
Now that Gadgets have been enabled, I've started a thread at MediaWiki_talk:Gadgets-definition regarding including admin-specific gadgets in the list. Comments there would be welcome. Thank you, — xaosflux  <sup style="color:#00FF00;">Talk  04:23, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
I am very sorry about the circumstance that I have to come to this site back again. It seems that this article is an advertisement for the living person with information coming from his personal homepage. The whole article is missing sources and is not balanced. I therefore inserted today a neutrality box. Also missed is essential information (like birthday and birth place) which is easily found, because it is published. Beside the fact, that one IP tried to intimidate me and threaded me (see talking page); it seems that there is a group of friends of the living person, which are thinking that the article owns to them. They deleted the neutrality box and some information I inserted today and I do not want to start any Edit-War or something else. I would be very appreciative if an administrator (ore more) can have a look on this. Kind regards--KarlV 09:40, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The static IP making some nasty legal threats has been blocked (I don't think this is a WP:DOLT issue!). I've tagged the unreferenced statements with fact as they aren't particularly contentious, restored the DOB (of course we include it if we have it!), and restored the neutrality tag, as it really does read like a resume.  If edit warring starts up again, you'll have to ask another admin to step in and take action, though.  Neil   ☎  10:22, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the instance, unfortunately I should contact another admin (I did it already). Regards --KarlV 10:39, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * As and  have continued to edit war without trying to discuss it with each other, either via their talk pages or the article talk page, I have restored the version that has fact tags and the DOB and blocked them both for 24 hours (they'd both breached 3RR, but that was, frankly, incidental).  Hopefully the article can be put in shape now (I'm not editing it again).  Neil   ☎  11:00, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * And now an IP is making the same edits Gancefort did.  I rather suspect sockery is afoot, but the IP's already been blocked.  Neil   ☎  14:29, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I was asked to take a look at this. Just to let you know that I will as soon as I have some spare time. SlimVirgin  (talk) (contribs) 06:09, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I suppose people have already noticed, but "Gancefort" also seems to be (I am being careful here - google finds only one internet Word document not connected with Wikipedia) a pseudonym of De Zayas and in view of the fact that this info also seems to have been deleted quietly (in any case not being called a lie on the talk page, as far as I see) and that many of the IPs editing the article are from Switzerland, perhaps there is some COI involved here?--Paul Pieniezny 16:27, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

There are some OTRS tickets going on about this article; apparently the German wikipedia is having the same problem over the article there. It appears that the subject, KarlV and possible others are edit warring in both places. Shell babelfish 17:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I note that de:Benutzer:Gancefort edit warred in an identical manner on the German article to the extent it has been protected, also (see ). I'm going to ask a German admin how they are dealing with this, as my German sucks.  Neil   ☎  09:31, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The administrators in Germany dedicated to the article are Achates and Seewolf, please contact them. Anyway I can confirm that on de:WP we have problems because of (I think you named it) COI (Conflict of Interests?). Before doing allegations due to edit warring (I was convinced that I was restoring the version of Neil), please have a careful look, what is going on there. Regards--KarlV (talk) 10:56, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I've left a message on Seewolf's talk page, as he has an account on this Wiki also, and speaks good English. Thanks Karl.  Neil   ☎  11:20, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The single point of contact for the german OTRS-Tickets is Unscheinbar, he will probably tell you more about how the german OTRS-Team deals with the Spam. Best regards Achates (talk) 11:34, 5 December 2007 (UTC) (en-1)


 * Hi, the case is disputed also on the German administartor notice board. Regards --KarlV (talk) 10:49, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * As best I can tell from the de.wiki discissuion and what I have garnered here, the problem is that over the last few years, de Zayas has become quite right wing, to say the least, including supporting David Irving. This has attracted attention.  His article is now replete with self-interest (there's even an article here on his writing club, the United Nations Society of Writers‎ which was (not now) terribly self-indulgent).  It is also the stomping ground of a number of IPs and SPAs who will revert anything that could be seen as remotely critical, keeping the article as a glowing piece of self-promotion. The fr.wiki article is also suffering from the same problems, but they have not yet taken any action. Any advice on how to proceed would be welcome.  Neil   ☎  11:51, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Most recently this article was unprotected by Admin Richardshusr, who did some formatting & added a source or two after Gancefort added several. According to the talk page, he is monitoring the article. -- llywrch (talk) 19:49, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Hello, I would like to inform you shortly about the status report of Unscheinbar on theadministartor notice board, who is member of the OTRS Team Germany and the person in charge of this case. He reported that until now no letter sent to OTRS was written by WP users, so a mediation committee in Germany appears not to make any sense. The indication that these activities are “lobby managed” seems to be justified. All letters contain the same wrong assumptions and claims screamingly the same. Letters of different senders contain sometimes the same typing errors. He poninted out that one cannot rule out a central exertion of influence. Regards--KarlV (talk) 12:03, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Controversy tag
I saw this on a talk page of a living person's bio and tagged it as controversial, but it was removed. Is this the appropriate use of such tag? Was it wrong for the other (newbie) editor to remove the tag from a talk page? I feel the whole article and its talk page has a distasteful POV. Please advise what to do. Bearian 14:22, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * No, not wrong at all. But templates often annoy - especially if a user doesn't understand the purpose of talk pages. I've replied to their post on Talk:Priscilla Painton and offered to help with any article problems they perceive. If there are none, we can ask for the post to be removed by the author (or I'll remove it myself if it is actively unhelpful).


 * But no, you did nothing wrong by Wikipedia rules. However, it is always preferable to use real discussion rather than templates on article talk pages. ➔ REDVEЯS likes kittens... and you 20:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * On 1 December, User:Nbahn added a 'Controversy' section to Priscilla Painton that seems highly POV, saying of an article by Joe Klein that he may or may not have 'deliberately published false information'. Bearian added a POV tag to the article but Nbahn removed it. Bearian and Squiggleslash have been trying to restore some order, but I believe there is still work to do there. I support Bearian's judgment (above) that the whole article has a distasteful POV. It remains to be seen whether Nbahn will obstruct the rewriting of the offending paragraph that he himself added. EdJohnston (talk) 03:20, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I freely admit that I'm a neophyte to this editing business. Do you wish a line-by-line justification of the paragraph in question as it currently exists?  (By the way a comment left in the explanation section had me in stitches -- to wit, that because Wikipedia does not follow TIME's policy of merely repeating allegations, an offending sentence had to go.  Very funny; and I have to concur with that particular sentiment.)
 * --Nbahn (talk) 14:15, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I think the section can be expanded, but I'm not seeing anything that's POV at the moment. It was POV (and speculative) with the "may or may not" stuff, but once that was removed it became a factual story about an actual controversy that Ms Painton is embroiled in. What are you seeing that's POV or "distasteful"? Can whatever it is be fixed by adding more background?


 * Your last sentence is somewhat unfair on Nbahn. While he may or may not (heh) have been wrong to remove the Controversy tag, he thanked me for the rewording I did, and I see no evidence that he's hostile towards people cleaning up that section. --Squiggleslash (talk) 14:23, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The article now asserts that Klein published false information. We could easily have quoted somebody else who holds that opinion, but the way it reads now, Wikipedia is asserting that Klein's information was false. That appears to be forbidden by the language of WP:NPOV: None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being judged as "the truth". EdJohnston (talk) 15:05, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * There is no real debate any more as to whether Klein published false information, that has been admitted now by Time Magazine and Klein himself (however reluctantly). The statement is cited, citing a Greg Greenwald article that quotes Klein and the FISA amendment itself, Klein makes the claim, the FISA bill clearly contradicts it. It would be a violation of WP:NPOV to give undue weight to the few statements that exist suggesting Klein was actually originally right given the circumstances.


 * It is not our job to religiously quote every contradicting opinion about a subject with equal weight when the facts are known. This violates the undue weight aspect of NPOV, it would do a disservice to our readers, and arguably constitutes original research. --Squiggleslash (talk) 15:23, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Banned user talk pages
I know we often protect banned users' talk pages, especially if they abuse the unblock template. I'd like to suggest that we put an expiry on this in future; six months should be sufficient for a community ban or indefinite block, the duration of an ArbCom ban less a month or so for those banned by ArbCom. We allow for the possibility of redemption, I think. I've had several rational conversations with long-term banned users who seem to have done some growing up. Thoughts? Guy (Help!) 19:02, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * If banned for a specific time, I can see this. If indef banned, no. — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 19:05, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Worst that happens is they abuse the unblock template once every six months. If someone was banned for harassment, posting personal information, etc, I could see why not, but if it's for edit warring, persistent vandalism, etc, less of a problem. Maybe it should be something decided on when discussing a ban. Consider that the oldest bans are over five years now. People can change in half a decade.—Random832 19:49, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree, unprotecting those does little or no harm (and if we delete the page, it has the added benefit of not making a permanent memorial to the vandal).  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  23:16, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Indef blocked users (not banned) talk pages are normally tagged with CAT:TEMP, and are deleted after a month, which resets the protection anyway. -- lucasbfr <sup style="color:darkblue;">talk 00:14, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I thought that was only the user page and not the talk page? In any case, where there is a constructive editing history and the talk page contains history of talk page discussions, and the user page contains details of the user's interests and editing areas on Wikipedia, the pages shouldn't be deleted. Use "|category=" to remove the "temporary wikipedians" category. Deletion should only take place if it was a vandalism-only account or other throwaway account. Carcharoth (talk) 01:22, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a good idea, to me. Forever is a long time, after all, and while a blocked user's talk page isn't strictly their last line of communication, it's probably one of the last easy or public ones, and that has its importance. As Random said, it'll probably be a rare case where somebody comes back in six months to troll on some random page (I have seen it happen, but there's another six month lock, or a year, or I suppose eventually indefinite). We can leave open the possibility of escalating durations. – Luna Santin  (talk) 10:54, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I think we should go ahead and try timed talk page protection. People change, and even the worst of vandals can someday become excellent editors. We should always try to assume good faith, unless we have very good reason to do otherwise. Maser  ( Talk! ) 06:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Intuitionz (aka: User:68.111.191.29)
Can I get some other opinions on what to do with this user/users? This diff connects the two accounts. The whole account seems to only used for trollish activity on the talk pages and their edits to add similar nonsense (that they'll try to argue on the talk pages) like that the Thirteen Colonies declared themselves provinces and not states (here) and here or that Canada should be refer to as The American State of Canada (diff) and another example. He also claimed to have some personal knowledge that disputes birth records in the Hitler article here. This editor has been accused or troll activity before here and was warned to stop adding nonsense here. What should we do? The whole account seems to be set up to troll and make sneaky/nonsense vandalism. Can we just block both the ip and the user account indefinitely? &mdash;MJCdetroit (talk) 16:54, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * At this point, a block would not be appropriate. The editor has received a final warning, and has not transgressed since then. Blocks are not punishment, but are intended to be preventative, and hopefully this editor will "get it" and not continue with the disruptive actions. If he does, however, he just might "see the Jolly Roger on Regina's mighty shores" (if this doesn't make sense to you, don't worry, Intuitionz will understand).  AK Radecki <sup style="color:#62BB32;">Speaketh  05:37, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * If he was a constructive full time editor that would be fine, but look at both contribs you'll see that the contributions are sporadic with sometimes months in between edits and none of the edits in the past have been constructive. Hence, my point that the whole account appears to be set up for trollish/disruptive activity and it maybe better to just block the user now than have to deal with the same stuff again in the future.  &mdash; MJCdetroit (talk) 13:03, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Bahnstormer
Recently this user left a message on my talk page accusing me of using a doppelganger account for editing. He left the following message on my talk page: "They should be marked with the doppelganger or doppelganger-other tag, or simply redirected to one's own userpage. Such accounts should not be used for editing."

I did re-create the account to prevent impersonation, but it has no edits at all, and is now blocked indefinitely.

I have let the user know on his talk page. The user's only contributions appear to be to my talk page, the BMW E34 talk page, and his userpage.

I assume he must have seen old posts I signed with my previous username, SunStar Net, before I changed username.

How can I educate this user better?? I don't want to assume he's a sockpuppet or SPA, as that would violate WP:AGF, but his first contributios appears to be a bit odd.

I'm not sure what to do about the situation, it's not a major incident, but at the same time, I don't want to assume bad faith about the user either. Thanks, --<b style="color:green;">Solumeiras</b> <sup style="color:blue;">talk 11:04, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * It seems to me that a note at the talk page is the right first response. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:40, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that. It's just I was worried about harassment as I didn't expect a user to just post at someone's talk page for their first edit. --<b style="color:green;">Solumeiras</b> <sup style="color:blue;">talk 13:48, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

User redirecting Talk page to User page
I have encountered a User who keeps redirecting his User Talk Page to his User Page. I tried to explain to him that he needs a Talk page for others to communicate with him, but he wants me to point to a policy that requires this. Is there one? Corvus cornix talk  22:38, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I didn't find anything specifically saying that a user must have a talk page. However, it is clearly a necessary tool for maintaining other policies. Without a talk page, it is difficult to notify a user of violations of policy, or request their participation in resolving a content dispute on a page they have edited (that is, working toward consensus). I think anyone who must notify this user for these legitimate purposes would be justified in creating or editing their talk page, and persistent reversions of such edits would constitute incivility. I would also favor rewriting policy to explicitly bar deletions of an active user's talk page. Nick Graves (talk) 23:34, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Assuming the user is active, that's pretty disruptive (though I'm not sure what could be done other than full protecting the page if he won't listen). John Reaves 01:15, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Any talk page is present to facilitate communication. Barring unusual circumstances, deliberately preventing other users from communicating with oneself strikes me as pretty blatantly disruptive. – Luna Santin  (talk) 01:33, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It's not a problem unless the user objects to people posting their messages on his user page. Well... come to think of it, it is a problem if it confuses the bots. Hesperian 01:35, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * If a bot isn't programmed to follow the redirect, the bot would most likely tack any notices after the redirect text, and the user should get the new-message orange bar. Human editors will probably end up at the redirect target and put talk comments on the userpage. Is this really a problem? Gimmetrow 01:50, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Would you say the same for article talk? "Oh, they can just post on the article." There's a user talk namespace for a reason, this redirect seems more confusing than anything. But, if the user clearly indicates that messages should go someplace, and is responsive to whatever messages they receive, I suppose it's not as important. – Luna Santin  (talk) 01:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Article and talk space have clear uses. A fair number of editors have no use for userspace. If such editors choose to use it for talk, are responsive, and don't claim they don't see warnings, I might suggest they do it the other way around (redirect userpage to usertalk), but it just doesn't seem a big deal. Gimmetrow 03:30, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Many scripts and bots are counting on that user talk page being present, though. I'm not sure how a newcomer might react -- would they be confused and turned off? I would strongly prefer a redirect in the other direction. Perhaps I'm reacting more strongly than I should be, because in the past when I've seen users do this, it's almost always been in a move to try and avoid getting any messages at all. I feel it needs to be clear, to anyone wandering past, where messages go; the user talk page is certainly the standard, but if we have a redirect to the userpage, I'd at least insist on some indication messages can and should be left there. – Luna Santin  (talk) 10:44, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * (ec) The problem is that he can claim he didn't see a message (being it a warning or request), something he would not be able to if he had allowed others to contact him through his talk page. I have seen some vandals redirecting their talk page to another page, making all vandal bots write warnings to the wrong page. I would question the user why he wants to redirect that to his user page, instead of explaining why he should not. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 01:58, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * A lot of people do the opposite (redirect the user page to the user talk page), which I also don't understand, but at least that doesn't cut off communication. *Dan T.* (talk) 02:11, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Corvus: I would suggest pointing the user here and telling them that they're being disruptive. John Reaves 02:33, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I hadn't thought of the orange bar situation. Yes, this is a problem. Hesperian 02:34, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * What we should do is to politely tell this user that his talk page is necessary for communication, and thus, collaboration between him and fellow Wikipedians. However, if there is any good reason to redirect his user talk page, then by all means he should be permitted to do so. Maser  ( Talk! ) 04:05, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Point out to the user that it is more acceptable to redirect his user page to his talk page? -- SEWilco (talk) 07:04, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Even though there isn't specific mention, pages in user space still do belong to the community (User_page). I'd think any form of consensus/vote by the community on this situation would result keeping the talk page accessable to facilitate communication--Hu12 (talk) 07:22, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Responding to the question of is it a problem if users post messages/earnings on the userpage instead of the talk page, I do see that as a problem. That will not trigger the orange bar, and unless the user has watchlisted the userpage s/he will not notice the communications. With that being the case, should any action need to be taken as a result of nopt heeding warnings, the user can say "but I didn't see them". For that reason alone, I think the redirect should be stopped. Jeffpw (talk) 09:16, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I think this is all very speculative. If the user is not directly disruptive, there is no problem. If the user reacts to posts on his user page, there is no problem. If he is disruptive, an "I didn't see the warning" is not going to protect him from the consequences. That said, I think it might be a good idea to point him to this discussion and also point out the advantage of the talk page (i.e. automatic notification about new messages). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:31, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * can we not cut this off at the pass in future by adding a line to the relevent policy page, saying that while you are under no obligation to respond, talkpages should not be redirected (userpage to talkpage does not seem to be a problem) because the channel needs to exist. --Fredrick day (talk) 11:01, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I never thought I'd see the day where we have to add to our policy "you must have a Talk page". Which leads to the question: which policy page would this best fit under? Username? (Probably best to discuss this over at the Village Pump.) -- llywrch (talk) 20:07, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

CSD backlog nav templates broken?

 * crossposted from VPT, discussion should take place there. This is just so people know there are backlogs

Is there something wrong with these templates? They're all showing up as empty (except the replaceable fair use one, which is a separate template) when there are plenty of files in the actual backlog categories. I tried to add parameters to let you manually specify a backlog that's "fallen off the back of the list", but then I realized there's no reason the one I was looking at shouldn't have been showing up.—Random832 16:58, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes. There has been a software change, and basically, those templates no longer function because they were making too many server requests, and there is now a cap on those.  See User talk:Gracenotes.  If we want to keep track of the backlog, we'll have to do it in a clumsier way, or get someone to write a bot to help out.  Mango juice talk 20:08, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I screwed up
Hi

I submitted an edit to the Isuzu Bighorn topic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isuzu_Bighorn and I hate to admit it but I submitted faulty information. I don't see my changes and am hoping that I made some sort of mistake in the editing process. But I'm concerned that my changes are somewhere in the works and will eventually be included in that page. This would not be good.

Sorry to be a problem. —Preceding unsigned comment added by LongOfTooth (talk • contribs) 21:35, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Your contributions don't show an edit to Isuzu Bighorn, and there have not been any IP edits to the article for a month (and it was only renamed yesterday), so it looks like whatever you did wasn't saved. I'll leave some more info on your talk page. --barneca (talk) 21:43, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Leaked tv episode
So a TV episode of a show has been leaked early. What is worse, is that both the date, and the title were not confirmed by the network. If I wanted to protect these pages for a certain amount of time, would it be OK if I made a sub page, cascading protected it on a time limit to prevent the articles from being created? If not, what should I do? Just delete whenever it is created? The Placebo Effect (talk) 02:14, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * We, Wikipedians, don't work for TV. If we know information and can locate reliable sources, then revealing the plot before the TV show is broadcast is fair game.  It is OK to "spill the beans".  It is bad to restrict information just because it hasn't been shown on TV. Congolese (talk) 02:27, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * So you are saying if I can point a link where it has been leaked online, it should have an article and a summary? Cause that doen't make sense. In a case like that i would just IAR and remove the info. The Placebo Effect (talk) 02:31, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I may have misunderstood. WP doesn't care if it is secret information.  If there is a reliable source, you can cite it.  If you work for TV and know of a plot, you shouldn't do original research and write about it.  If this is a case where you know the plot, title, and date of a TV show, WP prefers that you cite references to back it up.  Nearly all articles have statements that lack citations, but not having citations should not be encouraged.Congolese (talk) 02:41, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * IAR is not an excuse to have your way when you don't like the rules. IAR is to streamline procedures to improve WP.  Not having an article is not improving WP unless the article is a BLP or attack article. Congolese (talk) 02:43, 8 December 2007 (UTC)  Discussion between PlaceboEffect and me continued on user talk pages.  Situation clarified between us.  Good luck! Congolese (talk) 03:04, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Kyle Rae Article
Before I get myself into trouble for violating WP:3RR can an admin please confirm if this violates WP:BLP? Thanks. -- Neil N  <sup style="font-family:Calibri;"> talk  ♦  contribs  03:39, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is a violation of WP:BLP, as the edits come from different IPs I have semiprotected the article Alex Bakharev (talk) 04:15, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much. -- Neil N  <sup style="font-family:Calibri;"> talk  ♦  contribs  04:18, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Question Concerning WP:RIP
I have a question concerning the Deceased Wikipedians article. Technically, doesn't it goes against the policy of Wikipedia not being a memorial ? The page itself states that its a memorial, and the people listed aren't notable beyond being former editors. I'm interested to hear everyone else's thoughts about this page. I didn't want to bring this up at WP:AFD because of fear of being labelled as insensitive to others (the recent deaths of User:Coveritus and User:Baderimre). If I'm entirely wrong, please be Nice! Thanks, Icestorm815 (talk) 03:54, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * WP:NOT is to deter people from creating mainspace articles for their non-Wikipedian friends and family who have died. WP:RIP is a Wikipedia namespace page for Wikipedians who have died.  Apples and oranges.  Besides, WP:RIP isn't hurting anyone and is a good place to employ WP:IAR even if a rule can be found.  —Wknight94 (talk) 04:01, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * It does no harm, and can help those grieving their colleagues. DuncanHill (talk) 04:03, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree. It's for Wikipedians only and exists outside mainspace - A<font color= "#FF7C0A">l<font color= "#FFB550">is o n  ❤ 04:04, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. I guess that makes sense to me. Thank you for the explanations. Icestorm815 (talk) 04:11, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Heavy backlog at AfD
Can a few people drop into AfD and help clear out the backlog? Some discussions have been waiting six days for closure, and almost 200 discussions need attention. Thanks Caknuck (talk) 06:08, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposing unblock of User:RS1900
I am asking the community to consider allowing RS1900 (FKA Devraj5000) to edit again. He was banned for leaving a harassing message on my talk page. He has since apologized, and I accept his apology. I do not believe any other users were harassed. He has had a number of sockpuppets, which were used in two AfD discussions, and was also uncivil with me on a few occasions. I am unaware of any other misbehavior. I know him to be a generally constructive and prolific editor who has made positive contributions to articles in many areas, particularly physics. He has also added many valuable citations to the List of atheists article, on which we cooperated in the past. I understand that I am not the only one affected by his behavior, but I believe his pledge to no longer engage in such behavior is sincere, and that he will prove to be a constructive editor again. Nick Graves (talk) 18:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmm, unblock an editor with a record of harassment and abusive sockpuppetry because he promises to be a nice boy. Sure, why not. Raymond Arritt (talk) 19:01, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * While I appreciate your expression of goodwill toward this editor - and your word goes a long way in this - it simply has not been long enough to make me feel comfortable, given the level of harassment in which this user engaged. I, personally, will not unblock this user. Other admins may, of course, have other opinions. As of now, I think this user deserves a good long break. It speaks highly of you to request this, however. - Philippe &#124; Talk 19:03, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I note Suspected sock puppets/RS1900 and Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive304 as prior related discussion. GRBerry 19:15, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Has he pledged to stick to one account, and will he accept mentorship? If the only target of the harassment is willing to let bygones be bygones, then I'd support a trial if the banned editor agrees to reasonable steps. The ban can be imposed if problems resume, and maybe the gesture of reconciliation will turn things around. Durova Charge! 21:59, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * He has not made such a pledge yet, though that would be a natural prerequisite for unblocking, and mentoring is a good idea too, along with the "good long break" advised by Philippe above. He has not responded to my latest message, and may have left Wikipedia for good. I will leave him a link to this thread once it is archived, to give him an idea of what would likely be expected of him before he could return to editing, if he happens to check the latest messages there. Nick Graves (talk) 11:11, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I declined his unblock request the other day but now that he has clearly acknowledged the inappropriateness of his comment and you have accepted his apology and are advocating for his unblock, I would be willing to unblock him after he has sat out a fair period of time on the understanding that any return of such behaviour or use of sockpuppets outside policy will result in the block being reinstated immediately. Sarah 12:48, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Baderimre passed away
Dr. Imre Báder passed away some time ago, his funeral was on December 3. Besides being a professor of the University of Miskolc he was also an editor of the Hungarian, English and German Wikipedia and a contributor of Wikimedia Commons. His user name here is User:Baderimre (hu:User:Bader in his "home wiki"). May he rest in peace.

I'm not sure about the exact procedure in situations like these (protecting and blocking his userpage etc.), so please help me with that. The discussion in huwiki about him is (mostly) here, though in Hungarian. See also: request on Admin Noticeboard in Commons Thank you! --Hu:Totya (talk!)  22:32, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Note left on user and talk pages, and both pages protected.  BLACK KITE  00:03, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I've blocked the account indefinitely as well to prevent any possibility of the account resurrecting itself with someone who shouldn't have access to it. -Jéské ( Blah v^_^v ) 00:14, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Dying is not a reason to be blocked. This was removed from the blocking policy over a year ago. I feel user talk pages should be left open so people can leave memorial-type messages there as they did for Caroline Thompson. (It would be good to stop the bots adding things like "orphaned fair use image" warnings to such pages though.) See also Deceased Wikipedians. Angela. 00:23, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I ditto that; block if there is some future abuse of the account, but not preemptively. There's always a chance of erroneous reports in such matters (Saint Francis and Mark Twain both come to mind). -- Kendrick7talk 00:28, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * We have 3 different sources (collague, social networking site and an obituary notice), so I'm afraid it's not erroneous report. Still, I respect your decision and the policy. And thanks for the note and protection on his user page. --Hu:Totya (talk!)  00:44, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I asked about this last time someone died and was pointed to the fact that everyone in that category is blocked as the precedent. Also, if you were to unprotect the talk page, you could add nobots to stop the bots. John Reaves 01:20, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * We have proof that someone died. Do we have proof that that person is Baderimre?  According to Angela and Kendrick7, this person should be unblocked. Congolese (talk) 03:10, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I am not sure it is a good idea to prevent bots from leaving messages on a deceased wikipedian talk page. If somebody monitors the talk page they would fix the fair used images, etc. Otherwise the images would be slowly  get deleted and I guess it is not the deceased would want Alex Bakharev (talk) 04:29, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The dead don't monitor their talk pages, and no one else will be doing it for them. If images are being deleted when the person who uploaded them disappears, then something is seriously dysfunctional about the image deletion process. - Nunh-huh 04:46, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Can someone e-mail me or post to my talk page a translation of the relevant info at so I can add him to Deceased Wikipedians?--Alabamaboy (talk) 17:45, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Deletions - one way to help reduce stress
Hi, I'm sure many readers here will be aware that there is sometimes a certain amount of heat generated by deletions. I've just learnt that we have something like 1400 active admins. Might I ask that some of you consider adding yourselves to the 58 admins who will provide copies of deleted artices? These admins provide a valuable service, enabling users to rescue articles which have been deleted, but which, with work in userspace, can assume a form more fitting to the Wikipedia. This can help reduce the stress and argy-bargy which sometimes comes from deletions - and which takes up too much of so many people's time. Thanks for your time, DuncanHill (talk) 03:16, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * While there are around 1400 total admins, just under 1000 of them are "active", depending on how you count. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 05:00, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I was told 1400 active. But 4% ->5% ain't a huge difference. DuncanHill (talk) 05:05, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The bot that updates List_of_administrators gives one count of active admins: 982 today. (Also, 1400 and 1000 differ by 40 percent.) &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 05:23, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, obviously my fault for believing what another admin told me. Stupid of me I know, especially to then think anyone might be interested in helping out. DuncanHill (talk) 05:26, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Um what? I don't get it. Anyway, I added myself to the category. James086 Talk &#124;  Email 05:34, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry - I was mainly trying to give a link to where an answer could be found, not claiming nobody told you wrong, but I see my comment could be misread. I have been a member of the deleted articles category for some time. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 05:49, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you. And thanks James too, it's up to 60 out of 982 now, that's a whopping 6.1%! DuncanHill (talk) 05:52, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * 61 :)-- Kubigula (talk) 05:57, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Is this category generally seen as important? I've never regarded it as a big deal.  Anyone can list an article through Deletion review#Temporary_review and, barring copyvio, BLP, or frequent recreation problems, it will usually be provided to the requester as soon as someone notices it. Chick Bowen 06:02, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I think many users - especially new users - would find it much less intimidating to directly ask someone to help rather than trying to edit a bloody great page like Deletion review where the instructions are (as with so many similar pages) somewhat less than clear. The category helps editors find someone who has upfront stated a willingness to help, and this I believe, helps reduce tensions in the community. DuncanHill (talk) 06:12, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Indeed. looking at deletion review now there is a comment from an editor who says he "doesn't have time to understand all the complicated instructions". I can't provide a diff, as the page history doesn't seem to show them properly. Easiest way to see it is to click on the "edit" at the top of current discussions - because of the way the page is formatted, his comment doesn't appear where one would expect it to. DuncanHill (talk) 06:17, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Have managed to find the diff DuncanHill (talk) 06:40, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, the category itself states "Requests should be made at Deletion_review". So even if these people do put their names on the list, anyone who wants the history put on their user space needs to go through the DRV section.  Metros (talk) 06:20, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I doubt many new editors who have had articles speedied will want the history - just the article text to work on. Also, I think one can safely assume that admins in the category may be helpful to editors who, like myself, find the instructions and structure of the page at deletion review very user-unfriendly. I must say that I am disappointed, tho' not surprized, by the apparent negativity of some of the reactions here. All I am trying to do is suggest one possible way for admins to help stop deletions turning into battlegrounds. If you don't wish to be in the category - fine, there are many tasks for admins to do, and each admin will have their own priorities, skills and interests. But don't knock a resource just because it's not for you. DuncanHill (talk) 06:30, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Except just giving them the article text would violate the GFDL. We have to give them the full history.  Metros (talk) 06:48, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I've been given texts of speedied articles before (not my own creation either). DuncanHill (talk) 07:01, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Metros, why don't you just propose deletion of the category? Or is it because it's me asking for recruits that you are being so negative? DuncanHill (talk) 07:03, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism report
<Report removed to clear name from archives. Original report by John Nevard (talk) 07:05, 8 December 2007 (UTC)>
 * Image deleted, vandal warned. Please use WP:AIV for such reports in the future. Thank you, Kusma (talk) 07:11, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Unprotect my pages
Hi there. Well, I'm back again. In future, when I decide to leave, I'll enter my breakmessage on my userpage. OK, please unprotect my talk page and leave my userpage protected only for normal users. Admins and I should be able to edit my userpage. D@rk talk 12:46, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Done. NoSeptember  13:02, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

SKS Copyvios
After coming from the recent shooting article, I found a copyvio tag on this article. After a little investigating, some portions of the article were direct word-for-word copy & pasted from the website http://www.gunnersden.com/index.htm.sks.html. I had to cull much of the article and I believe that I got most of it, but someone else should really take a second look.

Second point here, how in the world did we not pick this up before? The entire article on that website was incorporated into our article! This is copyvio at it's worst! Some of it was incorporated in the middle of a legitimate looking paragraph. This is quite alarming, given the copyright paranoia we have around here.

Anyways, the SKS article is now in need of a ton of TLC, so someone with much more knowledge than I have about weapons and guns (which is nill) needs to make this their top priority. -Royalguard11 (T·R!) 17:17, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * How long has the copyvio been in the article? Is it possible that gunnersden.com could have copied it from the Wikipedia article?   Corvus cornix  talk  17:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, now that you mention it, that's a real possibility here. From what I can see, our page dates back over a year with some of that information. Hmm. -Royalguard11 (T·R!) 17:37, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I've requested help at WT:GUNS SQL <sup style="color:#999">Query me!  18:10, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I've looked into this a little more, and it appears that they are the ones infringing on our copyright (the GFDL). I compared our article on the M14 rifle which theirs. Some sentences are the same again word-for-word, but I think the chances of us having directly copied two articles from them is slim (these are the only two similar ones I've found so far. Maybe looking way back in history's will revel more though?). I'm tempted to just restore the SKS article right now, but I'd like a second opinion before I go ahead. -Royalguard11 (T·R!) 18:01, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * archive.org shows that gunnersden.com only recently added the text to that page. Definitely sounds like a reverse copyvio, though I haven't looked through the history to see exactly when they may have copied our article. Someone may want to examine any [ existing links] to gunnersden.com to see if they are being used as references. --- RockMFR 20:43, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

We are being talked about
We are being talked about: today's Technology Guardian. (To be sure, they're not mentioning any names, but there are links to diffs and stuff.) 131.111.8.102 (talk) 18:33, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * And what administrator action is required here? --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 18:34, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * While perhaps - like sausages- it's better not to see the product being made, any familiarity with how Wikipedia operates should give rise to enormous scepticism about its alleged example of harmonious collective action. I find that to be a very accurate description of Wikipedia. Let's face it, it gets ugly behind the scenes. If people really thought that it was all peace, harmony, and cooperation happening here then I'd ask them what fantasy they're living in. If people can't accept that we're not perfect, then that's just pathetic. -Royalguard11 (T·R!) 18:55, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It's mainly slagging against Jimbo, and has to be taken with a grain of salt (or maybe a full shaker). But the statement that Jimbo is skillful in "knowing how to sell a dysfunctional community effectively" hits uncomfortably close to home. Raymond Arritt (talk) 19:05, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, he is. We're here, after all, and this place is damn dysfunctional, when you think about it. We just sort of manage to rise above it most of the time. &spades;P M C&spades; 06:42, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

The WP:AN pages are the worst of all for exposure to the dysfunctional elements of Wikipedia. If you spend a lot of time here, you may be getting an unbalanced perspective. Vast areas of Wikipedia are very close to harmonious a great deal of all the time. Try editing articles on plants, for example, or invertebrates, or weather or shipwrecks or heritage places or postage stamps or any other subject that people generally don't get hot under the collar about, and in general you'll find the place quite genteel. Hesperian 06:53, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I tend to hang out in rough neighborhoods. The global warming related and pseudoscience articles see some of the worst that Wikipedia has to offer, though it's not as bad as certain ethnic and national rivalries. Raymond Arritt (talk) 07:09, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

being employed to watch WP:AN would seriously suck.Geni 01:11, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Deleting User Talk pages
I was on break for 6 months, so I may have missed a policy change here. But I'm noticing an increasing phenomena of usertalk pages being deleted citing "right to vanish". Now in some case of harassment this may well be necessary, and in the cases of accounts that have contributed little it may be harmless. But I think it can be very harmful where the talkpage contains a long record of community discussion. Unlike userpages, usertalk pages don't belong to one user - and their deletion, as opposed to blanking, may well prejudice others users who have posted there by removing the context for undeleted posts elsewhere.

I note the meta right to vanish page states: "Your user and talk pages, and their subpages, and other non-article pages that no others have substantively contributed to and whose existence does not impact the project, may be courtesy blanked or deleted." But, with users who have been substantial contributors that doesn't seem to apply as 1) others HAVE substantially contributed 2) it may well have impact on the project. There is certainly no WP:CSD authorising administrators to delete on a RTV demand. These deletions breaching standing policy.

I'd like one of the following to happen, either: --Docg 12:16, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Cease the practice, unless there is WP:OFFICE or WP:OTRS testimony that, in a particular case, the existence of the pages is thought to cause a real issue for privacy, harassment, or other abuse. Not just user request, unless the pages contain no substantial discussion.
 * 2) Or develop a clear policy and amend the WP:CSD. I've read the meta page carefully, and I see no foundation mandate here that overrides this community's right to decide.
 * I think it's not really an English Wikipedia issue (m:Right to vanish), which states that it is a "long standing right of any user on any Wikimedia project". x42bn6 Talk Mess  13:36, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Read that page - it clearly states that the scope for the deletion of user talk pages under this "right" is very limited. There is no foundation policy that mandates this. See my direct quote above. I'm quoting from m:Right to vanish: "Your user and talk pages, and their subpages, and other non-article pages that no others have substantively contributed to and whose existence does not impact the project, may be courtesy blanked or deleted.", and note "may be" and "blanked" - there is no right to have talkpages deleted on request here..--Docg 13:38, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Alright. *strikes previous post*  x42bn6 Talk Mess  13:42, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed this recently, when I denied a db-usereq on a talk page but courtesy blanked it instead (which to me seems fair enough). A minute or so later, someone came along and deleted it anyway, citing Right to Vanish. It wasn't worth wheeling over, but I was pretty sure I had policy on my side. I'll second either of Doc's potential solutions. ➔ REDVEЯS likes kittens... and you 13:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I believe courtesy blanking should be enough. What would be the advantages of deleting rather than a simple courtesy blank? Mahalo. --Ali&#39;i 14:16, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree, in my opinion long standing user's user talk pages shouldn't be deleted if there is no privacy concern. -- lucasbfr <sup style="color:darkblue;">talk 14:16, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I also think that we shouldn't delete user talk pages, however the user could have personal information on there (not necessarily stuff for oversight, but things like real name, approximate location etc.) they might not want that available. I think that blanking would be enough but that's a concern that some people might have. James086 Talk &#124;  Email 14:21, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Anyone with such material can ask for the appropriate revisions to be deleted (or oversighted) and that can be done. But total deletion, removing all discussions, for the sake of a revision or two, is overkill. ➔ REDVEЯS likes kittens... and you 14:29, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I also find deleting talk pages to be problematic, and have declined many CSD tags on talk pages. The db-userreq even says "User talk pages are generally not speedy-deletable per this guideline". Natalie (talk) 16:19, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I think Doc makes good sense here -- blank, don't delete. One problem in deleting Talk pages of departed users is that we might inadvertently remove important chunks of conversations that helped to determine consensus. This is very important the further back one goes, when the rules were very loose. And remember that although an Admin can undelete a page, this is entirely at the developer's whim. Some day the developers might decide that they need drive space on the server &, without warning, purge all deleted pages that had been deleted more than 30 days before! -- llywrch (talk) 20:19, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I disagree with Doc, because I think that calls for unnecessary bureaucracy. If someone is actually leaving Wikipedia, and says they want to delete their own user talk page to protect their privacy, I would rather just do it than make them jump through hoops they may not ever hear about.  Blanking a talk page doesn't remove things from the history from being visible to anyone who wants to look for them.  That said, I have noticed some cases where such users then came back to Wikipedia, and I would like to see the user talk pages either restored in such cases, or be given a good reason why they need to remain deleted.  20:28, 7 December 2007 (UTC)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mangojuice (talk • contribs)
 * I'm not sure how many people actually claim that they want to delete their page for privacy reasons. Most people seem to just tag everything, usertalk included, and never mention privacy. Natalie (talk) 21:57, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think they need to explicitly invoke "right to vanish" or specifically say they have privacy concerns. I'd rather assume they want the page deleted, not blanked, because that's what they asked for and if they're leaving I see no reason not to simply respect the request and comply with it.  All of these editors know how to blank the page themselves, but that's not what they're doing.  Mango juice talk 16:54, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I fully agree with Doc. While privacy reasons would be a good reason for deleting somebody's talk page, such concerns are quite rare. It seems much more common for a user to, in effect, storm off in a huff, and want his stuff to be removed. I have seen several of such pages turn up on MFD and/or DRV and end up restored; in general, I believe that as long as they contain community discussion, they should be restored.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  22:50, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd have to say that the majority of the requests that I see, especially through OTRS aren't privacy concerns. In fact, usually its "I did something silly or said something I'm not proud of now and I want to make it go away". We can always oversight any particular privacy concerns; this doesn't require deleting an entire talk page. Shell babelfish 03:14, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Do we have a compelling reason to keep embarrassing stuff around about a user when they want to leave? Deletion is no big deal.  Mango juice talk 16:55, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Agree with Mangojuice here. Sometimes we take ourselves a bit too seriously. That cute kid in the charity ad isn't going to die because we deleted a userpage squabble about a Pokemon character. There's not going to be a geopolitical crisis because we deleted a flamefest over the proper capitalization of a word in some obscure article. But real people can be embarrassed, or even actively harmed, by stuff left on their talk page. The default should be that we respect people's wishes on this point unless there's a compelling reason to do otherwise. Raymond Arritt (talk) 17:10, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I also share this view. I have deleted a small handful of user talk pages under the right to vanish (more accurately under Ignore All Rules), and in each case the user had picked a username too close to their life, and due to experiences here or elsewhere they had come to regret it. I don't see the need to require extra bureaucracy and sworn 'testimony of real issues' sent to the Foundation Office from a verifiable email address. I would delete the pages again if I was asked again, using common sense and an amount of human decency (BLP?). As long as we remember that we are talking about pages which "contain a long record of community discussion", and this is no outright prohibition. Remember there has never been a CSD for user talk pages, and there is always Deletion Review for deletions which are out of process. -- zzuuzz (talk) 17:57, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

We have links to user talk pages and diffs on them all over, and it's extremely annoying when they stop working. Nothing should ever be deleted without a good reason. "I did something stupid that I want to hide" isn't a good reason. Zocky | picture popups 20:30, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I am absolutely fine with them being deleted where there is a real life issue for someone. But I'm not fine with a general rule that we do it on demand. The danger here is that if admins do this lightly people will start contesting them on DRV - and since there is no basis in policy for the deletion, unless the admin details the reason, they'll get undeleted. Now, in those genuine privacy cases, the last thing the subject wants is a high profile DRV demanding reasons and lots of people snooping about. Sooooo pleeeeease only delete talk pages where you are pretty sure there's a bloody good reason - and use a useful deletion summary like "privacy concerns - e-mail me if you need details". That way we can keep the few genuine privacy deletions intact - but we can only do this if routine deletions stop now. The next deletion citing only "rtv" as a reason will be sent to DRV, since rtv DOES NOT ALLOW FOR the deletion of usertalk pages on demand (see the reasons above).--Docg 20:38, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Just what you didn't need: another sockpuppet report from Durova
This time I'm sure I'm right. And I've posted all the evidence in user space. Please block them before they can do any damage. Durova Charge! 09:05, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Block 'em. Sock 'em. — Nearly Headless Nick   {C}  09:10, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * This is a conspiracy, damnit. There's no way you could have gotten the evidence to back that up without access to the secret mailing list! ;) —<font color="#0000bb">Da<font color="#000066">rk<font color="#000022">•S hik ari [T] 09:10, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Awww. Cuuute, but you missed one :-) - A<font color= "#FF7C0A">l<font color= "#FFB550">is o n  ❤ 09:39, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Do you have any evidence of "good hand/bad hand" behaviour? LessHeard vanU (talk) 10:27, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes. This one is a conspiracy theorist.  Durova Charge! 16:54, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Object! We are all made of yarn, when it comes down to it, and so we are in no position to judge the arms, when we are all slip covers over the animating force.  Geogre (talk) 13:41, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * We are all made of yarn? I thought we were ugly bags of mostly water!?!  --Kralizec! (talk) 14:36, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Are they big enough to see from the black helicopter? *Dan T.* (talk) 14:26, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Good humor! — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 14:41, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I have uncovered the first sock... and thereby hangs a yarn! LessHeard vanU (talk) 17:59, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * (ec)Inserting a 1.4 MB inline image here seems more than bit excessive.  Can you please scale it down or thumb it?  --Kralizec! (talk) 18:04, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Um... could someone who actually knows how to reduce it - or just make a link - do it? LessHeard vanU (talk) 18:09, 8 December 2007 (UTC) Sorted... but how, I don't see any difference... er.... LessHeard vanU (talk) 18:15, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Typical admin attitude, though: when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a thumb. -- Kendrick7talk 18:18, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * No, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a window. When all you have is a torque wrench, everything looks like a redwood tree. I do not mean to be pedantic, but it as easy to get these things right as it is to get them wrong. Raymond Arritt (talk) 18:29, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I must say: your answer really hits the nail on the head. -- Kendrick7talk 19:11, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Endorse the ban of everyone involved in this thread. -- zzuuzz (talk) 18:04, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Fool! I endorse the ban of everyone in this thread other than me! -- Kendrick7talk 18:09, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm fairly convinced Socksnake is a Knee High. --Hu12 (talk) 18:15, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * All of those socks were coerced into confessing! Look at the backgrounds in the images!  It's obvious that those socks were ripped off their respective feet, dragged into a dull room, interrogated, and then photographed.  Look at the poor socksnake's eyes.  They're red and glassy, obviously sleep deprived!  I resent the fact that everybody feels socks are bad.  Socks are our friends!  If we had no socks, our toes would be cold. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 19:05, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * What do they expect? Why I've heard there are special machines for waterboarding such suspects in nearly every American home. And some are never heard from again! -- Kendrick7talk 19:16, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Looks to me like you need to go and buy yourself some decent pairs of socks, Durova. I mean, green — really?! Splash - tk 20:49, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I shop at a snail's pace. Durova Charge! 20:53, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Would red sox or white sox be better? *Dan T.* (talk) 20:59, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Neither, unless traded for Dodger blue. Durova Charge! 21:36, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Speaking for my self only, Red Sox are better then White Sox ;) Anyway.. I fully endorse Durova's investigation.. they're obviously puppets of the Sock Monster. SirFozzie (talk) 21:09, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

How many socks could sock block socks if a sock could block socks? I fear we'll be banned under WP:BADJOKES :D Ripberger (talk) 03:19, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Assistance with moving a protected page
Synopsis:
 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV series) redirects to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
 * This goes against naming conventions at Disambiguation and Naming conventions (television). I have explained this in detail here (note: this is also the location of the post-protection debate).
 * This state of affairs came about after a naming debate here which resolved to move the dab page to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (disambiguation) and thus in effect make the TV series the primary topic. However, the closing admin left a redirect rather than moving the TV series into the main slot/primary topic.
 * The page is move protected.
 * One vociferous editor (whose agenda is actually to move the dab page back to the main slot) got the page protected, and has refused to agree to my request to restore proper order per the naming conventions. This is despite my offer to immediately reopen discussion on the location of the dab page (less than 3 months after he lost out).
 * Two other editors, both admins, have stated agreement with my position that the naming guidelines are clear and no valid reason has been presented to override them.

I'm trying to implement naming conventions here, and am more than happy to discuss disambiguation when that's done, but the editor involved won't budge and has got me neutered by having the page protected. Therefore I request some third party admin intervention; preferably moving Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV series) to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It might be wise to leave the page protected for now. If this is done, I will open debate on the dab issue and advertise it at WP:RM. --kingboyk (talk) 14:42, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I would like it noted that the page with "TV series" is the way it was. The last page name debate was about moving it to just "Buffy", and there was "no consensus". King is saying that because "Buffy" redirects to "TV series", we should move the page to "Buffy" and then open a discussion to change the name to "TV series". I disagree on the grounds that the redirection of "Buffy" is irrelevant to the debate that initially lead the page to "TV series". The debate should be about moving "TV series" to just plain "Buffy" (as WP:NCTV says the page should be "TV series"), because the topic at hand is if the television show is the more well known usage (a subjective interpretation, that no one has yet to show evidence of). So, it follows naming conventions.   BIGNOLE     (Contact me)  14:49, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That's exactly what I'm saying. It's also what I've been saying here. Please don't bring the debate here, it won't be appreciated. If any helpful admin wants to help out, they know where to go to read the debate and they know which guidelines to look at. Over and out. --kingboyk (talk) 14:54, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * "If this is done, I will open debate" Rather than demanding that the page be moved before you open a discussion, why not go ahead and open the discussion? There is clearly a disagreement here, with both of you thinking guideline/policy supports your position. - <font color="#0000cd">auburn <font color="#EF6521">pilot  talk  21:46, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Page moved without talk page
Can an admin move Talk:Barack Obama Muslim rumor to Talk:Media coverage of anti-Obama whisper campaigns and merge the edit histories? The article was moved to the latter, but without its associated talk page and then some templates were added to the talk page of the new location preventing a reuniting of article and talk page. Thanks! --Bobblehead (rants) 00:26, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Done. I did the history merge, but I don't think it was really needed, all that was added were talk page headers and they were present on the old page anyway.  Ry an P os tl et hw ai te  00:31, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

A salted user talk page?
User:BobTheTomato's user page and talk page are both currently salted through User:East718/NaCl. However, East718 appears to have left the project, while BobTheTomato is active. This doesn't seem quite kosher; can someone do something about it? Merging East718's personal salted-pages list into the main list at Protected titles seems like the rational approach, but (1) I'm not an admin, so I can't do it myself, and (2) I figure this is an unusual enough situation as to merit bringing it up here. Zetawoof(&zeta;) 02:26, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Unless someone can testify that these were necessary deletions of talk pages, I'm thinking of undeleting them. See the thread two above for the reasons. No reason has been given for deleting these talk pages at all. Now, if there's a pressing privacy reason - fine. I don't even have to know it. But can someone tell me that there is one.--Docg 03:03, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * BobTheTomato edits actively under a new account name, they're using this one only to participate in the ArbCom elections. The old account name was easily connectable to their real-world identity and location, and he/she had a stalker that was using information gleaned from Wikipedia against them. Please contact Dmcdevit or Secretlondon for more information. 68.193.198.41 (talk) 12:47, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * That's absolutely fine. But, if talk pages are deleted in such extraordinary circumstances can we please not use "rtv" as the deletion reason. As is shown above rtv, does NOT justify deletion of usertalk pages on request. Usertalk should only be deleted in exceptional circumstances - and I encourage admins deleting under such circumstances to use a deletion summary like "special circumstances - e-mail me if you need details". That way we don't give the impression of deletion on demand, but neither do we end up with someone sending the deletion to DRV in cases that there are exceptionally good reasons for deletion.--Docg 17:40, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * BobTheTomato had a former name under which he wa sbeing harassed, and changed names then registered a new account. Why do we need these back? Guy (Help!) 19:27, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * OK, I think I follow now. To clarify, my issue was primarily with the pages being protected against recreation - but, so long as they're just using the account for this election, I don't see so much of an issue with that. However, my second point stands - given that East718 is no longer active, someone should probably take responsibility for the pages they've salted. Zetawoof(&zeta;) 02:58, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not dead, I'm just in hibernation. 68.193.198.41 (talk) 10:49, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Deleted page view request
An administrator has agreed to review the draft citation for accuracy. Durova Charge! 22:06, 8 December 2007 (UTC) For about six weeks now I've been in contact with a Harvard student who's writing a thesis on Wikipedia. With the deadline at hand she needs to double check her citations, but one of the pages she was referencing has recently been deleted. Would someone oblige with a temporary undelete for this academic purpose? Please contact me for details. Durova Charge! 19:33, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Which page is it? Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 19:35, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Daniel Brandt's biography. Used to be a redirect, now it's salted.  She just needs it for a couple of hours.  Durova Charge! 19:39, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I assume it's the same request that Doc Glasgow recently turned down. That user says he's doing research into Wikipedia and that he's an undergraduate at Harvard.  SlimVirgin  (talk) (contribs) 19:41, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * This is a tough one for me, if it was just about any other page, I wouldn't worry too much about it, but this page being undeleted for even a short period of time could have serious consequences.  Ry an P os tl et hw ai te  19:44, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Could you provide material privately to her? She's authorized me to give out her e-mail to an administrator.  It's an @harvard.edu and I've been working with her for long enough that I'm confident this is genuine.  Durova Charge! 19:49, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thinking about this, she really just needs to verify that the citation is correct. So perhaps you could confer with her without actually disclosing more than a few quoted words or something like that.  Durova Charge! 19:50, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Why does he need the page to be undeleted exactly? The request didn't make much sense. He says he wants to see one particular diff, but if he already knows what the diff says, why does he need the undeletion? SlimVirgin  (talk) (contribs) 19:52, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Also, bear in mind that this is (reportedly) for an undergraduate essay, not an academic paper, so there is no pressing academic issue here. I would urge caution unless the requester explains the request in a way that makes more sense, and also provided the material is not in any way controversial. SlimVirgin  (talk) (contribs) 19:54, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * (ec) Measure twice, cut once. It's a Harvard thesis not a book report. -- Kendrick7talk 19:55, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It's standard practice at this level to double check all citations before turning in the final draft. Just making sure everything is correct.  Durova Charge! 20:00, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Standard practice at which level? This is an undergraduate essay. And which citation needs to be checked exactly? If it's a citation that was in the article, he can get that by looking elsewhere for it, or just asking one of us what it was. That doesn't require undeletion. As I said, on the face of it, the request makes little sense. SlimVirgin  (talk) (contribs) 20:02, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Slim, it's a Harvard thesis. I spent a summer at Harvard; I know what their expectations are.  People have gotten expelled from that university for honestly forgetting to include citations.  They don't mess around.  And it's not about a citation that was in the article.  A diff of the article itself is being cited for analytical study of site dynamics.  Durova Charge! 20:09, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Durova, undergraduate work is pretty much the same the world over. If the student wants to use a diff as a citation, it will be useless because the article is deleted. The diff is not available any more. Even if undeleted then deleted again, the link still won't go anywhere. So the request as stated makes no sense. SlimVirgin  (talk) (contribs) 20:29, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * (ec) I think others have been right with their firmness on the policy issue. Deleted is in fact, deleted, and you might help by explaining this to the student. As to what she needs, be it for college or high school, Harvard, or East Podunk, that makes no difference to us. It would be a kindness if you could help her understand the citation difficulties. Perhaps you could suggest sources other than Wikipedia? Jd2718 (talk) 20:19, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It's not really deleted like Fahrenheit 451 deleted. It's really more like it is in a private collection; so no harm in asking for access to the resource. Even most of Harvard's libraries aren't open to the general public. -- Kendrick7talk 20:23, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I really think someone should contact this user and clarify things. But be careful, the last admin to post deleted edits to someone got desysopped as I recall. Further, this is information about an identifiable individual who disputes the accuracy of it, and believes it to be a privacy violation. Posting it to someone is very likely to upset him. Now, unless we're going in for the "stuff Brandt we hate him anyway" video-game nonsense - that should give at least pause for thought. Does this student really need this? Why? How is deleted, and thus independently unverifiable material of any academic value - I'd take some convincing.--Docg 20:12, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Speaking as an academic here, I can't imagine any need to cite the actual language of the article. All the student needs to do is indicate in the citation that the page was deleted. Chick Bowen 20:16, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It's simple enough for the student to provide the citation and just let someone say yes or no. I suspect we can work this out. -JodyBtalk 20:21, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * (de-indent+e/c) I didn't think Harvard allowed people to cite Wikipedia. But if the person wants to cite the source we cited, surely it's not a major problem for us to find the cite and send it to them?
 * If it is something in the article that they want then I would tend to refer them on to OTRS. I know that after Everyking, there is a chilling effect against admins providing deleted information. Stifle (talk) 20:22, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * When the subject of the paper is Wikipedia itself, of course Harvard allows students to cite us. Durova Charge! 20:31, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * OTRS have no more authority here than anyone else. If I were taking the OTRS call, I'd decline it.--Docg 20:23, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

She told me it's not life or death, so let's not ruffle our feathers too much. I doubt she needed the entire page or even the entire diff. Probably just wanted to check the url and a couple of words of text. If anyone's willing to do that much, I'll be back in an hour and can put you in touch. Otherwise let's let it go. Thanks for the responses. Durova Charge! 20:28, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment: there's a difference between a request from a college undergraduate and a college professor. If this is truly important and moves forward, maybe the student needs to have his/her professor make the request.


 * Also, isn't it early in the year to be actually writing up a senior thesis? I thought students did the actual writing in the last frantic month or two of their last semester. -- A. B. (talk) 20:49, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * FYI, Harvard's fall semester ends 23 January. -- Kendrick7talk 21:35, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh for Christ's sake. A student requests a copy of something, certainly possible and reasonable with Special:Undelete, and it this conversation turns to whether or not Wikipedia is cite-able and whether the "really" needs the information and whether its too early to be writing this paper during the school year. The student simply wants to make sure that the information in his / her paper is correct. Provide the damn thing or don't; put the wiki-politics and speculation in the trash where they belong. There's simply no need for over 1000 words about the issue. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:57, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * To respond to a couple of posts, actually she's putting the final touches on it this weekend. That's her deadline.  I floated the possibility of whether she could provide further bona fides for this request.  She wasn't sure on the spur of the moment how she would do that and she had to head off to the library.  The idea of her providing the draft citation to an administrator for factual confirmation seems reasonable.  Anyone up for that?  Durova Charge! 21:18, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That seems perfectly fine, and I'd be happy to verify the student's citation for her. Natalie (talk) 21:59, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * In response to MZMcBride--the drama in this case has to do with the history of this particular article, and is not surprising. Obviously if it were almost any other it would be an open-and-shut case. Chick Bowen 22:34, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * FWIW I respect the concerns here and would not have submitted the request unless I were very confident it's legitimate. Durova Charge! 23:26, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm sure, but you have occasionally been known to be wrong.--Docg 03:22, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Nods, mea culpa for that. That's why I asked her about bona fides.  Anyway, two administrators are working on it now.  Thanks for the responses. :)  Durova Charge! 03:51, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

An update, if anyone cares: I've been in contact with the student, and they apparently want to use a copy of the article to provide context for the deletion debates, which they are using as a case study. I think the student is certainly real - they are using a Harvard email address and about five seconds on Google brought up a few pages about them. I've actually suggest they contact Daniel Brandt personally, and then the two of them can work things out themselves. Natalie (talk) 04:47, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, now I've become aware of that also. That's very different from what I understood earlier.  Durova Charge! 06:48, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Er, has she tried www.archive.org? If she isn't picky about the exact version, they have snapshots of it every 3 months or so prior to deletion, although the 16 September 2006 version is scrambled. -- Kendrick7talk 06:58, 9 December 2007 (UTC) starting to hope Harvard theses aren't graded on a curve
 * Actually I wound up pulling the Wayback Machine files and that worked out fine. Everyone seems to be satisfied (except possibly Mr. Brandt, but he'd need to take that up with the Wayback folks ).  Durova Charge! 08:30, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * There is no shortage of wikipedia mirrors out there in any case. They copy of the article I have to hand comes from one of them.10:20, 9 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Geni (talk • contribs)
 * I still think the person would do well to contact Brandt:
 * Out of fairness to his concerns about his privacy
 * In order to get his side of the story if he wants to share it, thereby getting a better paper/thesis/case study. Brandt has written extensively on his concerns about Wikipedia's accuracy and ethics.
 * -- A. B. (talk) 14:03, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree, and was in contact with both of them. Brandt expressed a willingness to help, but obviously still had concerns. The student apparently also has concerns about her privacy, though, and did not want to contact him. There's really nothing more we can do at this point. Natalie (talk) 14:53, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

AWB Checkpage
Just a notice for admins - the AutoWikiBrowser Checkpage needs to be updated. I see there are requests that are about a day old. Thanks. ╦ﺇ₥₥€Ԋ (<sup style="color:#FF6600;">talk  /  <sub style="color:#00FF00;">contribs ) 22:32, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Backlog at Copyright problems
There is a backlog of over a month at Copyright problems. This message is specifically for all those new admins who stated in their response to question one in their RFA that they would work on copyright issues. :) Right now there are only about two regular admins who work on it. Garion96 (talk) 11:49, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't want to edit anymore
Block my account. This website is a waste of time; it's a bad habit, and only causes useless contentions. The Evil Spartan (talk) 08:14, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Per WP:BLOCK, self-blocks and requested blocks aren't permitted. Try the wikibreak enforcer and set it appropriately if you wish to not return. Sorry you feel the need to leave though. — <font color="007FFF">Save_Us _ 229 08:37, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Try this script, it enforces a WikiBreak.-- Sandahl 04:47, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

A really great read and analysis of wikipedia and something to point to to Register readers

 * http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~aforte/ForteBruckmanScalingConsensus.pdf

WAS 4.250 (talk) 15:07, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Way cool! Thanks for posting about it. Looks like some very interesting material. BusterD (talk) 15:14, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Awesome, I've saved it to hard drive. Excellent link, thanks.  Durova Charge! 21:39, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Angela Beesley
This article was under discussion at Articles for deletion. However, this was no consensus at that discussion to do anything at all. After closing the discussion, I have looked over our biography of living persons policy and slept on it. Since there was no consensus to do anything WP:BLP grants me discretion to consider the subjects request. I have done so and deleted the article. We are doing the right thing here. Regards, M er cury    15:36, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Should it have been deleted? Surely the nominations preceeding this one would have been able to unearth that. &mdash; Rudget speak.work 15:40, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd say so. There is no evidence of biographical coverage in independent sources. Guy (Help!) 15:43, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * At best this should be a redirect to wikia. But with no consensus that it is neccessary to keep it, going with the subject's wishes seems about right.--Docg 15:46, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Good call, if not only for this but for other reasons as well. <b style="color:#c22">^</b><b style="color:#000">demon</b><sup style="color:#c22">[omg plz] <em style="font-size:10px;">15:48, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * What other reasons are they? Spartaz Humbug! 16:06, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Please explain exactly how/why the article contravenes BLP. Specifically what unsourced questionable content was there? Mercury, you are very closely aligned with Durova. I don't believe you are sufficiently independant to have closed a discussion on an article that Durova has nominated for deletion. Especially on controversial grounds. We have been here before and I honestly do not believe that it is right for anyone who could be perceived in any way of having a bias or an interest in closing this debate. This is written from the point of view of someone who generally supports the extremee interpretation of BLP that JzG and Doc glasgow pursue and extreme interpretation of BLP in favour of the subject. For me to be raising significant levels of concern about this has to sho how problematic this deletion is. Spartaz Humbug! 15:49, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Way to go with the ad hominem.--Docg 15:51, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, I hadn't intended that to be an ad hominem and I have struck the text. I'm not sure how this can be an attack since I generally agree with your position but I'm sorry to have offended you. It was not intentional. Spartaz Humbug! 16:03, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not aligned with anyone. M er cury    15:53, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I notice you haven't responded to the request to explain exactly how the article violated BLP and you commnted during the !! incident that you had been too closly aligned with Durova and were seeking to distance yourself. I honestly doubt that closing this AFD and then deleting the article counts as distancing. If you can't explain how the article violated BLP should I feel free to undelete it? Spartaz Humbug! 16:03, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * No. Please do not restore this deletion. I have explained the applicable section above.  M er cury    16:05, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * No you haven't. You cited a policy said what you had done, made an assertion that BLP applies but haven't actually explained what the violation is. Spartaz Humbug! 16:08, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Violation? The closing admin took the liberty of interpreting the BLP policy. If you don't agree, send it to DRV. It'll save us all the ugliness. Sean William @ 16:10, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The ugliness is because Mercury closed an AFD where he could be percieved as lacking independance, made a controversial deletion citing policy but now refused to explain how he reached that conclusion. I'mn serious about requesting an explanation. Refusing reasonable requests to explain controversial decisions is one of the things that admins absolutely must not do and demonstrates absolute contempt for other users. So I repeat, please can someone explain specifically how this article violated BLP? Spartaz Humbug! 16:18, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I have never been a good wordsmith and perhaps I assume too much about what others can see. For that I apologize.  I just noticed FT2's summary on the thing, and I endorse that.   M er cury    16:20, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Do you not have anything of your own to comntribute to the reasoning? I think its very dubious that you can't explain your reasoning yourself but need to rely on an outside view from another user. You should not assume anything. The fact that other users have requested an explanation should be enough to tell you that more information is required. Spartaz Humbug! 16:24, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

(outdent)I thought I had given enough information. Ok, I was wrong. I had not given enough. But it is explained now. M er cury   16:25, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Spartaz, Please, PLEASE do not undelete the article. It'll increase the conflict tenfold. Sean William @ 16:46, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok. Now that Mercury has actually answered the question with FT2's help, there is a rational even if I'm not sure i agree with it. I agree that this needs DRV not a wheelwar but I'm not sure I want to take it there myself. Spartaz Humbug! 17:04, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * No I answered the question. Just not to the detail you required.  I just happen to endorse FT2's summary.  If you feel this needs DRV, post the templates, link the AFD, and include your rationale.  Regards,  M er cury    17:06, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You utterly failed the explain how the article violated BLP until FT2 helped you out with the outside view. In controversial cases like this the ideal is that other editors should be endorsing your explanation not the other way round. There is a point in every discussion where one of the points of view starts to give some ground. One of the dark arts of closing the discussion in your favour is to try to avoid antagonising them at that point - just in case they decide to play silly buggers for the sake of it. I'm at that point - I'm appalled that you closed the DRV and that you then took a controversial decision and failed to properly answer good faith concerns about your actions. But I'm also generally of the view that we should interpret BLP more widely then the consensus allows. I'd leave it at this moment. You really didn't handle this way and I'm not sure that you make the right call but Sean is right in that we don't need any more drama or ugliness right now. I'm on the edge of dropping this but I'm very disappoined how closed you seem to be to the notion that you didn't handle this very well and that you might learn some lessons from it. You still haven't properly addressed the concerns about the possible perception of not being suffiently independant.  Spartaz Humbug! 17:32, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I did explain at the very top of the thread.


 * There was no consensus.
 * BLP gives me discretion in a no consensus result.
 * The article's subject requested deletion.
 * There is some question about the RS, N, and V.
 * I used my discretion permitted by the policy.
 * I deleted the article.


 * I'm not sure how this is being misunderstood.


 * I don't really have to address the perceptions you insinuate. Thats your problem not mine, it does not affect the pedia.  You see the afd debate, the result was good. Regards,  M er cury    17:36, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Can you really not see the possibility that you can be perceived as not being independant in this case? Spartaz Humbug! 17:48, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Let us just focus on the merits of the decision, not my perceived alignments. M er cury    17:51, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I noticed a couple of editors suggested redirect to Wikia (including me), but it wasn't mentioned in the closing statement. &mdash; Rudget speak.work 15:50, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think it would matter if anyone did the redirect or not. Go ahead and add it, I've not salted the article. I don't think there would be any objection.   M er cury    15:53, 9 December 20e07 (UTC)
 * I've been bold and redirected to Wikia - no need for redlink.--Docg 15:55, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You got there first. :) &mdash; Rudget speak.work 15:58, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * There was no consensus to delete this page what so ever. Your actions do nothing more than to provide justified criticism and amusement at Wikipedia Review.  This may serve to reinstate Durova in the good books of the Wikipedia hierarchy but it does nothing at all for reputation of impartiality of the encyclopedia. Giano (talk) 16:00, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Who the hell cares what Wikipedia Review thinks? Since when were they a point of ethical reference? Let's keep personalities out of this.--Docg 16:05, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi Giano. You could try deletion review if you dislike the result. I voted for you.  Good luck with your campaign. - Jehochman  Talk 16:04, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

A wise choice Jehochman - there is little point going to deletion review until thing significantly change around here. If those at the top can have themselves removed at whim, it does not inspire much confidence in the place. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Giano II (talk • contribs) 16:13, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict x3) Giano, I respectfully disagree. Biographies on barely-notable people are, in my opinion, one of the biggest issues facing our encyclopedia. (I'd wager that OTRS gets more e-mails about barely-notable living people than anything else.) If the subject doesn't want the article, and the community can't agree with itself, then the article should be deleted. Sean William @ 16:08, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Not more, as such, but more troubling and more upset. Guy (Help!) 16:23, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * But didn't the AFD at least show there was no consensus for deletion? RxS (talk) 16:15, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

To reply to the criticism here, I would be happy to see this article go to deletion review. I have nothing to hide. Yes, I did mentor Mercury and nominate him for adminship. I didn't ask him to close this discussion and if he had told me he was planning to I would have advised him not to in order to avoid precisely the insinuations that Spartaz makes. I don't keep a little throng of minions to do my bidding and at this time I'm particularly interested in avoiding any appearance of that. I resigned my bit because of an occasion when I failed to assume sufficient good faith and leaped to an unjustified conclusion. If there's a lesson to be learned from that, we should all be assuming more good faith rather than trying to construe mischief. Please do not compound my error by duplicating it from the other side. Durova Charge! 16:07, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Just wondering, what part of BLP applies? RxS (talk) 16:09, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Deletion review would be a great place to ask that question. Durova Charge! 16:26, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Really? I would think that would be worked out before deleting the article. Interesting, thanks. RxS (talk) 16:39, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It was. See WP:BLP. I invite everyone to read this section, regardless of your stance on this issue. Sean William @ 16:42, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I probably wasn't clear enough, what I was getting at is how does policy speak to this deletion in particular (community consensus, subjects wishes etc)? It's incumbent on the admin performing a controversial action to not only announce it here but to explain the reasoning behind the action (and not just pointing to the policy itself). I don't have any real feelings about the article itself but  I'm tired of admins performing actions that could reasonably be expected to be controversial and not explaining them clearly (or at all in some cases). RxS (talk) 17:08, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * How is "After closing the discussion, I have looked over our biography of living persons policy and slept on it. Since there was no consensus to do anything WP:BLP grants me discretion to consider the subjects request.  I have done so and deleted the article." unclear?  M er cury    17:11, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, there was no consensus to delete the article at any of the 7 AFDs. A good start would be an explanation how no consensus to delete ends up being no consensus to do anything...generally at AFD a no consensus to delete means a default keep (unless another option that doesn't involve deletion presents itself). A more detailed explanation would help connect the dots a little better. RxS (talk) 17:25, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) Normally no consensus is a default keep. In this case, WP:BLP grants extra discretion in no consensus debates when dealing with biography. BLP is also an overriding policy. M er cury   17:28, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That's right, it is overriding policy. But you have to do more than to just invoke it. When using discretion, how does that relate to this specific case? Is it doing harm? What does the subject say about it? Is there high amounts of negative vandalism or is the subject only known for one negative occurrence? How exactly did you come to use the discretion in this case, which was bound to be controversial? I think it's important for an admin in these kinds of cases to go the extra mile to expain their actions and not just point to a policy. RxS (talk) 17:59, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Godwin's Law of Wikipedia - The further a discussion gets the more likely someone is going to bring up WR? FWIW, I think this was good call. Relevant information can be merged into Wikipedia or Wikia, there was nothing and unlikely to be anything outside of that since she is not a public person outside those areas. Shell babelfish 16:10, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Outside view: Usually an article with many AFDs ends up as a speedy keep/delete with clear consensus and rejection of abuse of process, if AFD'ed again. That this article was not, despite probably everything reliable sources have to say on the subject being dug up, and more AFDs than almost any other article I've seen, suggests ambiguity and uncertainty are confirmed to exist. BLP AFD criteria allow precisely the leeway given, for exactly the reason used, in this circumstance. Closer seems to have made appropriate use of discretion permitted by BLP, to close a deletion that was 1/ questionable anyway from a WP:N viewpoint, 2/ distressing to the ambiguous-notability subject, and which is clearly within the scope/anticipation of BLP deletion rationale as closer states. FT2 (Talk 16:17, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Daniel Brandt had more, I think, and ended up deleted. Guy (Help!) 16:24, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Well Brandt was actually subject to a "complex merge" but was in practice deleted. I was unhappy with what very much amounted to deletion (because some content such as the CIA cookie matter was simply deleted afterwards), but if Brandt was an article that should be deleted then it is hard to see why Beesley's article should have stayed. The total number of sources was much smaller. I will likely DRV the Beesley article at some point in the future after more reliable sources exist. For now this seems like a dead issue. JoshuaZ (talk) 17:05, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Just a little random thought, there's no pleasing everybody here, a few months ago, articles on barely notable Wikipedians were being kept. This was much to the annoyance of some users who considered these users only kept an article on Wikipedia because "we" liked them and showed them some sort of favoritism. Now a few months later, the deletion is seen as favoritism. There's just no pleasing some folks. Bah humbug. Nick (talk) 17:17, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Months? You might want to check the history of the previous AFDs a little more closely.Geni 17:24, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Years! I didn't realise the article dated back as far as that. It's quite clear the assertion of notability clearly grated on users as far back as the first AfD in 2005. Nick (talk) 17:35, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't have access to the deleted article so I can't see the quality of the sources myself. Assuming that as others have stated, they were inadequate to establish Angela Beesley's notability beyond some marginal level, then mercury made the right call. The BLP policy explicitly gives the closing admin discretion to "delete" in no-consensus AfDs of marginally notability people that explicitly don't want an article. If folks don't like this, blame the policy and revise it. I don't see how any of this should have anything to do with Durova, Mercury's relationship with Durova, Wikipedia Review, Daniel Brandt or the phases of the moon. -- A. B. (talk) 18:51, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * This whole discussion should be taking place at WP:DRV. -- Kendrick7talk 19:02, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * BTW, I always find the deletion of an English article when it's sitting happily in 7 other languages at little contrived. Want to know about this person? Sorry backwater English speaker, go learn a real language! But I'll wait for someone to open the DRV to make that argument. -- Kendrick7talk 19:13, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * ''This is now under discussion at deletion review. I have no opinion either way myself, but I prefer a review in the forum for, you know, reviewing deletions, than a potentially-dramatic thread here.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  19:52, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

High-speed vandalism of AIV and other pages
User appears to be vandalizing several pages. Once reported at WP:AIV, he seems to be blanking the report repeatedly. I include it here, so that someone notices it - given that it's in flux at AIV. Thanks, ZZ Claims~ Evidence 05:21, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * - On Nuclear safety in the U.S. (diff); vandalism after final warning, actions evidently indicate a vandalism only account. Sock, pushing anti-nuclear power POV, likes calling those who oppose him "ignorant right-wingers". Gscshoyru (talk) 05:10, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * ...and he's blocked already. Thanks! ZZ Claims~ Evidence 05:22, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Is BLPN dead?
I have watchlisted Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard since its inception; recently, one of the editors who started it and kept it working seems to have become disillusioned with Wiki, and the board doesn't seem to be working. I lodged a request for help and attention five days ago at WP:BLPN that has not gotten a single response. I am not an admin, I am not well enough up on legal threats and other BLP issues to know how to proceed next, I'm not even certain how big this problem is, but I'm uncomfortable with the things being posted by the COI/BLP/NPA/AGF-violating editor—Nraden, apparently the husband of T.S. Wiley of the Wiley Protocol. I'm also concerned about the messages that I removed per BLP and the subsequent talk page messages from . I had only waded in to those pages because another editor asked me to look at the sourcing there; now I'm more concerned that the BLP noticeboard appears to have died, that there is a BLP/COI issue unaddressed by admins at these articles, and that I've gotten no guidance on these articles. For all I know, I'm the one in the wrong here, and the silence means there's no issue; I really can't tell. I've seen the complaints that WP:ANI is too busy, but if no one watches the other boards, of course all the complaints will end up at ANI. If I'm wrong here, and there's no serious issue, it would be nice if someone would say so; if the BLP/COI/NPA/AGF issues need attention, it would be nice if someone would help. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 18:38, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Seems like now is a good time to seek more volunteers for it. Here would be good, but since it doesn't necessarily take an administrator to pitch in maybe a broader request would be good also (Village Pump, Community Bulletin Board?)  Durova Charge! 21:38, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I had the same thing happen at the COI message board, so I'm wondering if we have a widespread problem; if people only read WP:AN/I, these other boards are never going to work well, and we'll continue to see complaints that ANI is overburdened. I guess my question is, is it me? Are my posts to those boards not intelligible, or is there a shortage of editors viewing those boards?  It doesn't take an admin, but it does take people knowledgeable about the issues, which I'm not in either of those areas. It's the same issue that led to the demise of the community sanction noticeboard; not enough eyes on those other boards.  I'm wondering if BLPN will become unuseful without Crockspot.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 23:23, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I know I'm guilty of only checking AN and ANI. Partly because there is only so much time I want to spend on certain matters. If there was a rota to help people organise their time, I might contribute more at other boards. There are sixteen of them listed at Editabuselinks though, which does imply that some will get less attention than others. Carcharoth (talk) 23:54, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * BLPN seems pretty active to me. There may not be enough volunteers to address all of the concerns and I'm sure that issues fall through the cracks, but to be fair I've posted concerns that have been underaddressed on ANI as well. :) It's the nature of the volunteer system; people pick & choose the issues they address. It is the only way I can think to do it unless we issue job tickets, which has many other inherent difficulties (not the least of which is that not every volunteer is suited to or interested in every job and volunteer burn-out would likely be astronomical). It's also the nature of the messageboard. If you aren't addressed early, you're likely to be missed. I know that when I participate at BLPN, I tend to look at the last several entries for unanswered issues. I don't typically browse higher on the board. My general practice if I post at one forum and don't receive assistance is to either look specifically for a contributor to that forum and ask individually or, as you've done, to seek a different forum. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:20, 10 December 2007 (UTC)