Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Pumpie

Is pumpie a possible problem? Sennheiser ponders this perplexity
He keeps creating articles with basically no content. I don't know if I want to add him to Conflicts between users(im afraid of hurting his fealings), but this little bugger is getting on my nerves. It seems as if he is a 6-8 year old with an overactive imagination (the kind of child who gets pummelled in the school yard). I don't know if he understands how to login. (he usually edits as 67.60.27.122. He also keeps asking to be an admin, and has this misconecption that he will become one soon as long as he keeps pestering others and promises to create "en.wiktionary.org" and bots that translate things.  He seems to be a problem at wiktionary(i don't contribute there so I cant say).  Pumpie also keeps creating articles about HMS's which have basically no content. He has repeatedly been asked to include a stub message, but he seems unable to grasp the simple concept.  Look at the article HMS Hermione, for an example of the kind of articles he creates. (this was created today and he wasn't even logged in) (notice it says "HMS Amazon" instead of Hermione).  As I said, I am weary about adding him to the conflict page, but I don't know what else to do. --Ed Senft! 23:22, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * He does that on the Latin wikipedia as well. I can't expect people to communicate in English there, of course, but when I've tried he doesn't seem to understand what he's doing at all. Adam Bishop 04:09, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * I note the image at HMS Hermione has no provinence. Doubt he took it himself, but no documentation as to source is provided, which could be worrisome - Marshman 05:37, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * I added that image. It was taken around 1910 I believe. --Ed Senft! 12:40, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I moved the discussion from village pump. Optim 00:58, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I am going to remove this from the RfC page and make it into a redirect, unless there is some activity on this page in the next few days. Maximus Rex 17:14, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * I've added my own request for comment on the RfC page. Somehow, I'm not surprised that this subject has been addressed before.  Lord knows I've tried to be nice but the guy just plain refuses to either answer or cooperate.  He's also leaving one hell of a mess for others to clean up.  Dude's like the "B-Movie Bandit" times ten and with a user page at that!  :^)  - Lucky 6.9 20:15, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * I don't feel qualified to second this nomination (so I'm not), but I must comment that a lot of his page creations have been controversial. Pumpie's awful babelfish translations from German appear to have singlehandedly prompted User:Voyager ch to create an account in the English Wikipedia where he nominated deletion of his own poorly translated articles. Pumpie promised to stop doing computerized translations from German, but I don't think he has. (Wipptal, for example appears to have identicle content to the German wikipedia, but it's translated and wikified like hell.) My mistake, that appears to have been created before his promise.
 * Will alert User:Voyager ch about this as I'm sure he'd offer a strong second. Cool Hand Luke (Communicate!)  07:21, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You asked for my opinion, and here it is. Pumpie has been annoying me for a couple of weeks now. I started noticing these "translations" when Pumpie was adding links from my German articles to the absolutely horrible Babelfish versions (can't even call them English). I asked him several times to stop, first in German (which he doesn't seem to understand at all), after that in English. There was barely a reaction and so I put some of those articles (not even half of them!) on "votes for deletion". Thanks to User:Rhymeless and others, these articles have more or less been repaired. Pumpie promised me to stop doing more machine tranlations. But it seems he wants to become a politician in a few years ;-) Anyway, Pumpie has been very active again which prompted the creation of the "rough translation footer" (see Schloss Lenzburg article). Pumpie doesn't seem to be bothered by other people's complaints, he is simply annoying and causes a lot of cleanup work. His contributions to Wikipedia are totally useless. The best solution would be to delete his account permanently. --Voyager ch 08:33, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * I too must say that Pumpie is creating huge amounts of work for others with his mass article creation, and doesn't seem to care at all that he is doing so. Because all of his articles are being brought across from other language Wikipedias, he is creating a lot of interwiki links. However, he is not fixing up any of the cases where the links don't work thanks to other Wikipedias using Unicode for article titles whilst English does not.


 * I explained this to him and pointed him towards a couple of articles that I'd fixed so he could see what needed to be done. He acknowledged what I said.. and then kept on creating broken links. I asked him again to please show some consideration for other editors. Now, looking at his contributions, I see yet more articles being created with broken Interwiki links - see for example Königerode and Straßberg for two he has created today.


 * I have fixed a couple of dozen of these, and would be willing to fix a couple of dozen more, but there are literally hundreds of these articles with broken Interwikis, and I can't see any way it will ever be cleaned up other than by someone writing a bot. &mdash;Stormie 04:37, Oct 22, 2004 (UTC)

Pumpie's behavior on User talk:Andre Engels looks very much like trolling. &mdash;Lowellian (talk)  00:47, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

I think we are all being fooled by a very elaborate and sometimes subtle troll, he is much smarter than he is trying to portray himself. Apart from WP he is on the loose on The live WP status page. The sarcasm oozes from his comments. -- [[User:Solitude|Solitude\talk]] 10:03, Oct 28, 2004 (UTC)

I regret finally to have to add my voice as well. I do want to say quite clearly, mind you, that by my lights the addition of all those geo-stubs is per se useful and a good thing, and eventually I certainly hope Wikipedia will have a thoroughly detailed atlas; BUT the cleanup time is about as much as the time to create the articles from scratch, i.e., everybody's time is being wasted, including Pumpie's, especially if it all gets deleted. I've tried to get him to clean text etc. but he hasn't so much as acknowledged the problem, and has continued exactly as before. I've done preliminary cleanups on maybe 200 or 300 of these things. &#8212; Bill 09:11, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Not only are these bad translations, but they aren't even correct. I happened upon Friedrichsbrunn, and found several factual errors in the table (I checked against the original on the German wikipedia). Frankly, I think we need to check every article he's done to make sure the information is correct, and that's bloody annoying. Mackensen (talk) 22:14, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

He's still at it. Now he's doing taxoboxes which take up a lot more server space. What is up with him? - Lucky 6.9 21:36, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I can't help but think that we've blocked people for far less aggravation than this...Mackensen (talk) 00:07, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I am a genius. and now this time, I will fix some link problems like Category:link and I will not translate poorly. This isn't probably taking most of the server space. Pumpie, 19:58 (UTC)

He's pretty weird, and IMO almost certainly a kid. An adult couldn't fake that sort of behavior. I don't know if banning would help, but words don't get through to him. Isomorphic 15:58, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Maybe, but in my experience, even kids notice when other people are trying to get through to them. It's weird: it's like Pumpie's too knowledgeable in certain ways but completely oblivious in others, almost like an online autistic savant. And while that's one way to interpret his/her behavior behavior, there's another: a clever, calculating troll who has mastered the art of feigning ignorance and selective tuning-out-of-comments in order to cause as much trouble as possible, for as long as possible (since the behavior skirts the line of vandalism closely enough to make others reluctant to implement an outright ban).  &mdash;Lowellian (talk)   01:13, Nov 28, 2004 (UTC)


 * And yes, I do think an adult (or a teenager) can fake this kind of behavior.  &mdash;Lowellian (talk)   01:15, Nov 28, 2004 (UTC)

I think a ban is appropriate at this point. He's still at it with the cut-and-paste Brazilian and European geographic substubs. Our "genius" is becoming quite a pest. - Lucky 6.9 00:07, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Got an answer this time. He promises not to post any more nanostubs.  I certainly hope he keeps this promise because he has a lot to offer given some self-discipline. - Lucky 6.9 00:27, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * He promised several things many times before. Don't rely on it. --Voyager ch 11:13, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * He might be annoying to you, but let's stay civil and assume good faith. He can always be banned if he breaks this final promise. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 20:57, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

he is, as he says on his user page, certainly a kid. I don't know, 12? 13? Anyway, he seems to be concentrating on boring-but-useful geographical additions now (which should all be verified; sigh, I wouldn't trust a single population number he uploads). However, I do think his behaviour has been harmful, to a high cost of WP's most precious resource, time and patience of good editors, that he should be given a warning that further addition of nonsense will lead to "block-on-sight". But I guess there would have to be an AC decision for such a course? Or what is the proper Wikicracy procedure for something like that? [[User:Dbachmann|dab ( T ) ]] 16:59, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Pumpie's stubs on Royal Navy ships are utterly useless. They contain no information, and will eventually all have to be rewritten from scratch. Take HMS Hermione for example (Pumpie's version: ). The smallest amount of research will establish that there have been several Hermiones, including a fifth-rate, an Astraea-class cruiser, and a Dido-class light cruiser. Even the link to Hermione is useless; it should be to Hermione (mythology) instead. Gdr 22:25, 2004 Dec 28 (UTC)