I've asked this user if he would consider a name change as I'm concerned that the name is a violation of WP:USERNAME, specifically, names which "Imply the user is an admin or other official figure on Wikipedia, or of the Wikimedia Foundation". --kingboyk 21:09, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Not common coin (as much as "sysop", "bot" or "admin") but still has a potential for abuse if the human at the other end is so inclined. Endorse this course of action in hope user agrees.   REDVERS ↔ SЯEVDEЯ  21:42, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

As the user in question, I understand the problem, I'd prefer not to change if possible but of course will do so if something can't be worked out - perhaps a disclaimer on my User page? To answer Redvers' point, I'm not 'so inclined' - of course you don't know that, but I am one of the good guys, honest :-/ I honestly had no idea that Steward even 'meant' anything on Wikipedia, I used it because it's a name I use on a couple of other sites. In fact it's a reference to a scene in Some Like it Hot :

SUGAR    I quite agree.  Tell me, who runs up that flag - your wife?
JOE      No, my flag steward.

SUGAR	 And who mixes the cocktails - your wife?
JOE      No, my cocktail steward.

My Wikimedia username is CocktailSteward..... (which you could semi-verify I guess from timing eg edits made by FlagSteward to Penfolds Grange wrt the time that CocktailSteward uploaded Image:PenfoldsGrange.jpg ) Why that scene of that film? Well it's a long story, let's just say that it made sense at the time :-)

So no, the name wasn't chosen with malicious intent, quite the opposite in fact, and the fact that this is the first time anyone's commented on it in two months and a couple of hundred of edits must surely count for something. And I'm quite happy to put a disclaimer on my user page if that helps, I'm just kinda attached to this name ;-/ FlagSteward 01:19, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh no, don't worry, I have no doubt that you chose your name in good faith nor that you're a good user. Thanks for joining the discussion. --kingboyk 13:05, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

---

Just a comment - You said on his talk page "Together these words almost lead me to believe that you were an official here" - I rather doubt that. You didn't come anywhere near believing anything of the sort. "Admin" is one thing, but I cannot for one minute believe there is any intersection between users who know what a "Steward" or, say, "Developer" is in a wikipedia context, and users who think that something appearing in someone's username mean they have an official position. Otherwise we might as well do something like SELECT * FROM USERS WHERE UPPER(NAME) LIKE 'OFFICE%' USERNAMEBLOCK --Random832 05:24, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

So you're calling me a liar? I had to do a double take: "flag steward?!", "ah, no, we don't have such official names on Wikipedia".

The problem with this name AFAIC is that it juxtaposes *2* official sounding words. If it were (as below) "Steward of Gondor" that would be one thing, but this name sounds like a steward who hands out flags (permission bits). --kingboyk 13:05, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not calling you a liar as such - being disingenuous in such a way is quite a reasonable teaching method in some circumstances, but on wikipedia it's somewhat WP:BITEy. I think it was perfectly reasonable for me to think that what you _meant_ when you said that you yourself had been confused was rather intended as a way to illustrate the implicit claim that someone unfamiliar with the fact that usernames don't imply official titles might be confused. I just don't think that that sort of example is productive, particularly when the underlying claim is flawed. Sure, you know what a steward is, but you also know that putting it in his name doesn't make you one. My contention is simply that users learn the latter before the former, and thus there's no risk of anyone being misled. --Random832 23:09, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Here's a hypothetical for those adopting a strict interpretation of the username policy: if I were to register, for example, the username "Linux Developer", should that be disallowed? If I were to register "Steward of Gondor", should that be disallowed? --bainer (talk) 08:11, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Trying to be constructive about this, is there scope perhaps for doing something at the username creation stage? So if UPPER(NAME) LIKE 'OFFICE%' then it is explained that this is a Wiki title, and that they can either change it immediately or accept that they will have to wait for an admin to OK it? FlagSteward 10:15, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Everything's possible but I doubt the devs would think that a worthwhile use of their time. No harm in asking I suppose! --kingboyk 13:05, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Apparently it would not be a waste of time, since such an extention was created in January. MediaWiki:Usernameblacklist. Note that steward is deliberately not on the list. Prodego ^talk 16:41, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

• IMO, "steward" is rather a common word, so I don't see it as being that objectionable. I thought about a flag and a steward (particularly the first and second redlinks in the meanings) when I saw this... Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 16:50, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
• This should probably go to Request for Comment/Usernames for an actual community discussion. As far as I understand it, username issues are to be taken to WP:AIV for blatant issues, borderlines (such as this case) go to WP:RFCN after concern is expressed. CASCADIA^Howl/_Trail 17:31, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

User:Phaedriel hasn't made an encyclopedic edit since November, however she only has to breathe and her talk page gets a dozen "greetz" messages. I was wondering if there is a "Wikipedia is not MySpace" template I could affix to discourage this? --kingboyk 11:50, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Much though I sympathize with this, I rather think this would be doing a Canute, without the irony. Moreschi ^{Want some help? Ask!} 11:57, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Lol, maybe. My request has a serious purpose though. 1) I had this page on my watchlist, originally because Sharon was a great editor and wiki colleague, later on because the page was vandalised very nastily when she was away. I've now removed it because I'm sick and tired of all the off topic postings. 2) If Sharon really is going to return, it's surely better to leave her to get on with some work than to have to spend her time reading and replying to umpteem messages which aren't relevant to our goals here. --kingboyk 12:04, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Then she can deal with that herself, can't she? This seems like a rather odd request. --Golbez 12:06, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I see. So it's odd than an admin would seek to remind other users that this is an encyclopedia and not a social networking site?! --kingboyk 12:08, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I see absolutely zero, even less than zero, harm in allowing people to greet someone back after they have been gone for 5 months. --Golbez 23:00, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes you just have to let the kids have their fun. I would stake both the house and my kid sister's virginity on this: you can stick whatever template you like, wherever you like, and in this case it won't make a scrap of difference. The major monster when it comes to social networking on-wiki is dead, at any rate. There are some battles that cannot be won. This is one of them. It sucks, but it's all fnord anyway. Moreschi ^{Want some help? Ask!} 12:35, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

OK, point taken, I concede :) --kingboyk 12:36, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

• You folks don't have kids do you? I suspect that Sharon is giving 100% of her spare time to Wikipedia. Guy (Help!) 18:19, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Exactly! - Alison^☺ 18:24, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

The arbitration case has closed. Billy Ego is banned for one year as the result of this case.

The full decision can be viewed at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Billy Ego-Sandstein.

For the Arbitration Committee, - Penwhale | ^{Blast him / Follow his steps} 21:17, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

This guy is a vandal, as shown e.g. by his contributions to Ernesto Che Guevara (a few minutes ago) and Steve Irwin. I know I'm supposed to give him a series of warnings and then report him to the the AIV, but I don't have the time or the patience, and being an anon myself doesn't help either. Could someone of you take the pains to warn him for Guevara, monitor his further contributions and finally get him blocked? I think that's important, because registered vandals are more dangerous to the project than anonymous ones - they are harder to spot, because registered users are usually assumed not to be vandals until the opposite is proven, rather than vice versa as with us anons. :) --91.148.159.4 21:28, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

It's been requested above, but may have been lost in traffic; User:Catworthy is a confirmed sock of Arthur Ellis, as per checkuser and needs blocked if anyone has a moment. Tony Fox (arf!) 21:38, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Another redlinked editor, account created the same day as Catworthy, reverted to what appears to be Ellis' preferred version of Warren Kinsella. More eyes would be lovely. (Though I have suspicions that the article will never, ever see peace.) Tony Fox (arf!) 23:20, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

User:Morhange seems to be leaving quite a trail of confused people on their talk page. Could someone take a look at their edits?

--Kim Bruning 23:32, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, add one more confused person to the list. What is the issue? I did a hit-and-run of random recent talk page edits by this user and they don't seem confusing. I also checked his talk page and I basically see some normal talk page stuff, with some new-user issues like image problems. Are there diffs of the problem edits? Dina 01:25, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm gonna have to second Dina. Natalie 02:57, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I have cleared the temporary userpage backlog. All pages that were in a sockpuppet category have been removed from the temporary category. All temporary user pages that have not been edited in over 31 days have been deleted. There are 2409 userpages left that are under 31 days since the last change.

No, I did not use a bot, but I did use some javascripting to fill in edit summaries and perl to get a list of urls. I will be deleting the temporary pages as they expire every few days. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 00:54, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Please help catch up with the backlog at this board. I can't do it all by myself. Durova^Charge! 04:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Name-calling, plus posting of rude and uncivil comments by Doktor Who - see this diff and this diff. Gene_poole 04:47, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Both of you could stand to be more civil; accusing someone of whacky monomania doesn't reduce temperatures. The article you two are debating doesn't cite a single reference, and it doesn't appear either of you have even edited it. THF 05:04, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

The above is part of a pattern of behaviour by Doktor Who that has been ongoing for several months on several articles related to Ambient music. They are simply the 2 most recent of many dozens of examples of out-and-out name-calling, rudeness and general incivility that I could put forward. I've ignored them until now, but it's getting completely out of hand. --Gene_poole 05:18, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Please see the relevant part of the agenda here. I first searched for Wikipedia in Google News here trying to find out what the press was lately saying about Wikipedia. I found two articles relating to SEO strategies on Wikipedia. I then found more scary articles with this search. If I had known about the conference beforehand, I would have suggested that we send some moles to New York City pronto so we could learn about the tactics SEO types used so we could defeat them. However, the relevant portion of the conference is over. I think that it would be a good idea for other administrators and other people with time to fight link spam to try to dig up what went on in the conference on April 12, 2007.

I posted a similar message at WT:WPSPAM. There is now discussion of possible moles in WikiProject Spam that joined it to try to get our trust by removing other spam so that their spam slips through the cracks and a possible need for a mole hunt.

I am afraid that the conference may result in more spam in the coming months. Jesse Viviano 15:29, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

"The growth of Wikipedia and its almost ubiquitous presence on search results pages means that search marketers can't ignore this important guide. This session looks at appropriate ways to interact with the service. It also examines if there's more that can be done to make Wikipedia editors more accepting of marketers and to make marketers more understanding of the Wikipedia community goals." -- Oh. Dear. Bubba hotep 15:44, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

What? And you don't think that's a good thing? Maybe you're just too stressed, how about some nice Lipton ice tea. Don't forget, green brings the good in.  ;-) Dragons flight 16:00, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Making marketers "more understanding of the Wikipedia community goals" is a good thing, at least. Corvus cornix 16:08, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

oh wow. Check out the summary alphachimp 16:15, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

no new tactics there.Geni 17:32, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I know that a lot of marketing types are advising clients to violate site policies, without even explaining that those policies exist or the history of media backlash against such attempts. User:Durova/The dark side is one attempt to counteract that. I strongly urge more Wikipedians to populate the conflict of interest noticeboard. Durova^Charge! 16:16, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

BTW here's what Brad Patrick had to say on this subject last September.[1] Durova^Charge! 16:38, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Right, are you sure it's not a white hat SEO conference? --Kim Bruning 16:49, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

All points of view are represented at the conference, just like Wikipedia. Jehochman (^talk/_contrib) 17:01, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi, all. I was one of the speakers at this session, and am also an admin coaching student of Durova. Rather than reading the mangled, second-hand accounts of this conference, I would urge you to look at a copy of my presentation (1 Meg PPT), which is essentially a summary of Wikipedia:Search engine optimization. There were three other speakers, and I had no right to control what they said, but I did my best to explain things accurately to them beforehand. For the most part this conference session was a good thing for Wikipedia, in my opinion. There were about 400 people in the room. We may have video available later. Jehochman (^talk/_contrib) 17:01, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I’ve looked at Jehochman’s slides and don’t have a problem with them. The only thing I’d recommend adding is that he add a chart to expand on RfC (which apparently gets mentioned only in passing on chart 9) and to advise them to be upfront and forthright about their potential for COI whenever posting on a relevant talk page. Getting “found out” after the fact will lose them good will among the other editors – if not worse outcomes. It would be a good idea, IMHO, for there to be a clear and explicit way in which SEO’s can interact with Wikipedia, instead of leaving them to their own, um, “devices”.

In fact, it might be a good idea to have an explicit area that SEO’s can go directly to – an “RfC (SEO)”, if you will – where they can raise such issues and post a link to on appropriate articles’ talk pages. (One thing these promotional guys can do is identify independent sources which have commented on their business or product.) If you bring the whitehats in in a constructive fashion, there will be less need for them to be tempted to “black”. (After all, Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anybody can edit.) Askari Mark (Talk) 23:35, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

That's a very interesting idea. It certainly would address concerns about the time delays for review at low traffic pages. I'm on the fence about its potential for getting gamed, but on the whole I like it. Durova^Charge! 02:27, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

A user who asks for this type of help is inviting a thorough review of their contributions. Although there is a risk of bad faith editors abusing the system, they probably won't because of the risk to them in drawing attention and leaving a trail. The page probably shouldn't be called "SEO" because there are some people who think all SEO is evil. How about RfC/COI? "A page for people affected by COI to get help with editing." Jehochman (^talk/_contrib) 12:09, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

The backlog on Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images is now almost an entire month old. Just asking for some help here. :) Part Deux 19:03, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Image deletion of any sort (slow, speedy, disputed, undisputed) automatically unleashes a shitstorm on any admin who touches it. The community won't support an admin caught in that shitstorm. Even admins won't support other admins caught in that shitstorm. In fact, admins are frequently to be found ringleading the shitstorm. It may have escaped peoples' attention that image deletes are undoable now... but deleting is still subject to threats, accusations of WP:BITE, complaints elsewhere, RfCs etc.

Until the community cuts people some slack over the issue of images, nobody's lining up to volunteer to do the job. All of the crap, none of the glory.   REDVERS ↔ SЯEVDEЯ  19:12, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Ain't that the truth. Guy (Help!) 00:15, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Well there's some pretty unambiguous ones on there. It would be nice if someone would at least tackle the obvious ones. Sorry, I've been on here a while, and I haven't seen this witchhunt you're talking about. They can take it to deletion review if they want. Part Deux 13:59, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Some shitstorm examples you may have missed: On this page someone suggests we delete a bit more often. Wikidrama follows. On my talk pages, just from deleting CSD-I3 images - failure to think things through, bemused despite several attempt to contact, a "justification" that makes no sense to anyone and my favourite fellow admin hasn't read the policy, assumes rouge intent. I'm happy to clear the I3 category, but for anything that requires fine judgement (==repeatedly defending Wikipedia policy)... all of the crap, none of the glory. I'm not alone in this experience.   REDVERS ↔ SЯEVDEЯ  20:28, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

There was glory? I thought anything an admin did was liable to incite a lot of controversy. I thought that there was no safe house. hbdragon88 23:46, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

There is no safe house with deleting images for sure. :) I did a few days of the backlog, but there is still plenty to do. Garion96 (talk) 02:10, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok, the backlog is gone. There are only a few images left on which I would like a second opinion. So any administrator reading this (this is the administrator's noticeboard after all) please have a look. Garion96 (talk) 15:57, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

DPeterson has been harassing Grace E. D. Sample: [2] and two harassing threads on AN/I: [3] and [4].

Grace E. D was a valuable contributor [5][6] who voted on CfDs and a Tfd. This would be defending each other. --Mihai cartoaje 21:06, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

She had been acting in a very uncivil manner and what led her to "leave" was the actions of an administrator who was responding to her inappropriate behavior. See following diff: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AGrace_E._Dougle&diff=110857263&oldid=110462902

In addition, she left in response to this and deleted all on her talk page. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AGrace_E._Dougle&diff=110864213&oldid=110857263 DPeterson^talk

Mihai cartoaje continues to make Wikipedia:Personal attacks against me by making false accusations of sockpuppetry, and the above such comments. I have repeatedly asked him to stop and his only response is to remove my request from his talk page and then file various fruitless charges against me that only get dismissed or ignored. Please make him stop. DPeterson^talk 23:15, 14 April 2007 (UTC) As evidence see the following diffs:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Schizophrenia&oldid=109788765
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ASchizophrenia&diff=122828278&oldid=122780232
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ARequests_for_comment%2FUser_conduct&diff=121844612&oldid=121719195

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Schizophrenia#POV_tag
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Schizophrenia#Vandalism_by_User:Mihai_cartoaje
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Mihai_cartoaje#FINAL_WARNING
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/schizophrenia
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2006-02-12_Schizophrenia
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2006-06-29_Schizophrenia
7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Schizophrenia#DISPUTED_MATERIAL
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Schizophrenia#Violence_and_schizophrenia

See RfC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Mihai_cartoaje DPeterson^talk 23:18, 14 April 2007 (UTC) He also makes the same attacks toward me. JonesRD_talk 18:26, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

- or rather, user blocked as disruptive. Part Deux 15:21, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

One of the users created this template at the Polish Wikipedia. The user created also the proper category called: Category:User EX.

Immediately, the template and the category were permanently removed by the user known as Roo72. Roo72 did it with no explanation. He even did not nominate the template to be discussed by other Wikipedians! I think the action by Roo72 is a shame for the respectable Wikipedia project.

The creator of the template managed to place two messages ([7] and [8] at the Roo72's discussion page before the creator of the template was blocked. For sure, you should read the latter words as: before the creator's mouth was closed because this user has got all the rights to create this necessary template and place it at his user page if he/she thinks it is proper and necessary for him/her. The blockade was commented with Roo72 with the following words: omijanie blokady ??? and this "respectable" user Roo72 placed the following words at the discussion page of the blocked user: [10].

The actions of Roo72 are another reason to hate Wikimedia projects and are another proof the created template is necessary both there and internationally!

Opinions are appreciated. --Annrex 12:00, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, my English is not so good. I would like someone of the English Wikipedians to translate the template info and the Polish words which were used in the discussions linked. Thank you! --Annrex 12:02, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

If this was at the Polish Wikipedia we have no jurisdiction there. You should take your complaint to the admin board at that wiki. If you meant Polish WikiProject on this wiki, the template should be in English so we can all understand it. --kingboyk 12:09, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

• In what way is this relevant to the English Wikipedia? administrators Guy (Help!) 12:11, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

My mouth was also closed at the Polish Wikipedia because my ideas differ and are dangerous for the Polish and the international projects. I would love to present this thread at the Polish ANB page to be discussed - unfortunately, I am not able to do it.. I have placed this thread here e.g. to raise the consciousness of the Wikipedians all around the world. Bye! --Annrex 12:15, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

• The template reads: This Wikipedian permanently left the wikipedia project and he/she informs that they have nothing in common with the Wikimedia Foundation projects and with the Foundation itself. --Annrex 12:17, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

• This is not only the Polish wiki situation - I do not ask you to intervene - it is a dangerous thread, isn't it? :) --Annrex 12:22, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

This really has nothing to do with the English wiki! If you feel there is an issue for the Wikimedia Foundation, contact the office directly or try meta or Wikimedia wiki. This noticeboard discusses administrative issues on the English-language Wikipedia, no more no less. --kingboyk 12:29, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I ask you to create such a template (listed above in the New template at the Polish Wikipedia chapter) available in the language of English. I would love to use it myself. --Annrex 12:27, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, first I gotta know what it says... :) —Pilotguy cleared for takeoff 12:54, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

It translates into something like "This Wikipedian permanently left the wikipedia project and he/she informs that they have nothing in common with the Wikimedia Foundation projects and with the Foundation itself.", or something like that. — Moe 13:18, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

• To Pilotguy and Moe: I've noticed you have problems with reading comprehension and with translating (to Moe, exclusively). :) Well, it may be typical for some Wikipedians (even administrators?). It is another reason I must have the template listed above at my discussion page.

As a reminder: I have placed the following words a few lines above the "statement" of these fellow users a long time before they started to speak: :) --Annrex 13:32, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

*The template reads: This Wikipedian permanently left the wikipedia project and he/she informs that they have had nothing in common with the Wikimedia Foundation projects and with the Foundation itself since the time of their leaving. --Annrex 12:17, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

(sorry for the translation corrections - but now the translation is perfect) --Annrex 13:35, 14 April 2007 (UTC).

Excuse the many (broken) languages I speak, which all of them are broken except English :) — Moe 13:39, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Excuse granted. :) --Annrex 13:46, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

• OK. Discussion FOR or AGAINST the template can be placed here:
• 'Keep' which is create, polish and keep. - --Annrex 13:49, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
• Suggestion Perhaps having a link to the meatball goodbye would be appropriate. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 13:54, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so. I want to use the English version of the template at my English Wikipedia user page and, then, leave the same style with the very information. --Annrex 13:58, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

But the attention seeking nature of this template begs for the clarification this link provides. Is there a polish equivalent? - CHAIRBOY (☎) 14:02, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Why are you so keen to say goodbye on the English Wikipedia when as far as I can tell you've never actually contributed here? --kingboyk 14:03, 14 April 2007 (UTC) (e/c)

Fortunately I did not start to make greater contributions. I have changed my mind after looking closer at your discussions and ways here. Admins are like big trolls themselves. They are misleading, too. They cannot be trusted. That's all from me. I am waiting till the discussion over the template is finished and, then, I will decide what to do next. Bye (for now). --Annrex 14:09, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah, so the meatball it is, then? - CHAIRBOY (☎) 14:13, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

There is already a template called {{User EX-WP}}. If you add {{subst:User EX-WP}} to your userpage, you can customize it to say anything you want. There is no need to vote on the creation of a template with your particular text. Once you have the template substed, you can copy and paste the code to your Polish page if you would like. --BigDT 13:57, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

As stated by me above. --Annrex 14:00, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Roo72 is the Polish Wikipedia administrator - I wonder why he is so modest here because in the Polish Wikipedia he is the "shiny", "clever" and "brave" user: [11]. --Annrex 14:34, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Annrex (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has been blocked per discussion at WP:ANI, as her only purpose here seems to be to rant about Wikipedia in general and specifically the Polish Wikipedia. --kingboyk 14:48, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

What does this have to do with administrators? If you want a userbox, create one in your user space. Corvus cornix 23:06, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Mmm-hmm, not a bad idea. Play with your space, not ours. —Pilotguy cleared for takeoff 14:41, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm somewhat disturbed to see that a week after I requested a user to be blocked on this noticeboard, [12], not only has no action been taken, but more disturbingly, not a single admin has yet bothered to respond to that request, on this noticeboard or personally, even to tell me that they didn't think it was worth taking action or even to say I was placing the request in the wrong forum. This is troubling, because while problems have not yet recurred, it hardly instills confidence that if they had, the wikipedia administrator community would have responded like the well-oiled machine one would expect of it. I'd appreciate it if an admin could explain why no one bothered to respond to the original request, and what the right forum fo filing banning requests is, since this clearly isn't the correct one. Simon Dodd 04:55, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Blcoks are preventive, not punitive. Admins will not block for infractions that are two weeks old. In order for anybody to be blocked, he or she must have been conintued to vandalize after being served up with a fourth-level warning (see WP:WARN for specific warning templates), and if that occurs, report it to WP:AIV. hbdragon88 04:58, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

The request was intended to be prospective, to prevent future vandalism. I don't care about "punishing" past violations, and it's a mystery to me how Wikipedia can seriously maintain the idea of "punitive" sanctions for trolls (as compared to regular editors). In any event, the more important question is how, procedurally, I bring to an administrator's attention that a user should be sanctioned and/or blocked (third-level warning, fourth-level warning, people's front of judea, popular judean people's front, whatever). If this noticeboard isn't the place to raise that, where is? Presumably not WP:AIV if that, as you say, is only after a "fourth-level warning." What's the process for a first-level warning? A second-level warning? How do I avoid getting myself barred under 3rr for reverting this user's crap while filing for 1st, 2d, 3d, fourth and barring level violations? I mean, this seems absurd and overly complex. There has to be a more sensible way to deal with a user who is persistently determined to use wikiepdia as part of an ongoing smear attack against a Wikipedia:living persons.

Secondly, while I appreciate your swift response to this query, hbdragon88, and please don't take this personally, the question still stands: I regard it as a serious problem that it's taken any admin over a week - and only then when prompted by a third prod by me - to respond to the request, regardless of the ultimate disposition of that request. Simon Dodd 05:23, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, sometimes things get lost in the many posts to these boards. Secondly, IP addresses are never blocked indefinitely unless they are open proxies. So there is a good chance that by the time admins saw the request, there was no point because too much time is past. Thirdly, 3RR does not apply to reverting vandalism, so revert away (just make sure that the edits are obviously vandalism). Fourthly, people generally aren't blocked if they have never been warned, so you should have given them at least one warning before reporting them. You do not always have to start at level one; if the vandalism is particularly gratuitous or seems to show an understanding of Wikipedia you are welcome to start at level 3. There is also a level 4 immediate warning, which says something along the lines of "this is the only warning you will receive", which covers this situation as well. And finally, WP:AIV is a better place, because reports are cleared as they are handled, so there is no piling on of new reports.

As far as your frustration about the lack of response, please remember that admins are human and are volunteers, like any other editor. Most likely, this particular request got lost among other requests, and by the time it was noticed, too much time had past. Natalie 05:32, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Yup. The job is hard and the pay sucks. Guy (Help!) 07:55, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, it seems that the anonymous user stopped edit warring and instead took his/her concerns to the talk page. For serious violations, WP:BLP/N is the place to report such infractions. Removing info that violates BLP is technically exempt under WP:3RR, so in that case you should be covered. hbdragon88 05:29, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

This article was created by a known blocked user. I placed a {{db-g5}} notice on the page, but the user keeps on removing it. Could someone please delete this page? I know it's up for deletion, but it was created under a troll account, and g5 purposefully exists in order to avoid feeding the trolls. Part Deux 11:55, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

There's an AfD under way, with a clear "keep" consensus. Why do we wish to short-circuit that?   REDVERS ↔ SЯEVDEЯ  12:26, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I now see that an administrator turned down the g5 request. Thanks. Though I do think it's a bit silly to keep an article that was by someone who not only was a sockpuppet, but made it incredibly obvious by his username (was User:Dog cicero instead of User:Cicero dog). Part Deux 13:23, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Lol, here is how he got blocked[13], almost creative. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 13:24, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Please see his block log Alaexis (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), now he makes again edit wars. He made now Meatpoppetry by asking his friends to come there and revert on the page of Transnistria--M-renewal 14:04, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I have blocked M-renewal for edit warring and attempting to game the system by forum shopping. – Steel 14:25, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and his familliarity with Wikipedia after only a few edits suggests the account is someone's sockpuppet. It might be worth upping the current 24 hour block to indef. – Steel 14:31, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Over on Talk:Gibraltar, a Gibraltarian user is objecting to the inclusion of the template for Wikipedia:WikiProject Spain on the grounds that it's a "foreign project" and that it includes an unacceptable "nationalist symbol" (i.e. the Spanish flag). In conjunction with this, he is attempting to remove either the template or the flag from the template. Bearing in mind that Wikipedia is not censored to meet particular points of view, I'd be grateful if previously uninvolved admins could take a look and provide advice at Talk:Gibraltar#Flag. Thanks in advance. -- ChrisO 15:08, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I think there is an image of the map of Spain on the Commons, so maybe if the Spanish Wikiproject doesn't mind, they could change it from the flag to the map (which can easily be edited to have the flag pattern). As for the "foreigness" of a Wikiproject, Spain is still trying to assert its claim over Gibraltar, so it is relevant to keep the banner there. Since it would be useless to project the page, block the user when needed. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 15:16, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

The only real purpose of these wikiproject templates is to save typing. If the flag is a problem, subst the template and remove the flag from the result. This won't affect the usefulness of the boilerplate text significantly. Anybody who wants to know what's up on the wikiproject can find out by visiting it. --Tony Sidaway 15:17, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. Re your suggestion, Tony, the flag appears to be a problem specifically in relation to a Gibraltarian nationalist POV (in the same sort of way, I suppose, that Greek nationalists object to the term "Republic of Macedonia" or Chinese nationalists reject the existence of the Republic of Taiwan). I don't think we should be encouraging local POVs to dictate content in this way... -- ChrisO 10:44, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Gibraltar nonsense? Might be Gibraltarian, but I don't have enough experience with the user to say yes or no. ~Crazytales 23:09, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

No, its Gibnews (talk · contribs). Gibnews, however, is not entirely NPOV, though not as POV as Gibraltarian. --Iamunknown 23:12, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Iamunknown. I had a small suspicion that Gibnews was the same user or had relations with Gibraltarian. Must be that he just had relations with him. ~Crazytales 23:15, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Gibraltarian is still regularly attempting to edit (or deface) articles through anonymous IP addresses, often on a virtually daily basis. Considering he was blocked in 2005, he's certainly persistent. However, he's definitely not the same person as Gibnews. In my experience Gibnews is (or at any rate was, until his recent bout of Hispanophobia) considerably saner and more open to reason than Gibraltarian ever was. -- ChrisO 23:21, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I think either my nominator or I has made a mistake in processing my RFA with respect to saving my old RFA. It seems the new one has been saved over the old one. Is there a way to properly archive the old one and move the new one. I have tried to correct it, but the edit history ended up with the wrong version. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 19:39, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

P.S. see Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/TonyTheTiger2 and Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/TonyTheTiger TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 19:40, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Lemme get this one straight. You moved your RFA from December to ...2, then wrote the new RFA over it at ...2? Is that what Imm seeing here? Metros232 19:44, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Should all be sorted now. Looks like the nom overwrote the original and you then moved that to the 2 version, restoring the original as a copy of the final state of that. You should have just reverted the nom and got them to create the new page. I've done the appropriate move/delete shuffles to split them up, so the histories should be correct. --pgk 20:14, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. There seems to be a vandal participating in my RFA. It is probably a procedural violation for me to remove votes from my own RFA, but someone has voted for and against and in the against he stated neutral and that he hates me. Is this vandalism? TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 20:44, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Um, are you accusing El C of being a vandal?--VectorPotential^Talk 20:46, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

It's a joke it appears. The way the formatting of the RFA is, it has "oppose neutral" rather than "oppose *BREAK* neutral". So I think he's joking that he "opposes neutral" because he hates him, him being "neutral." Metros232 20:48, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

User:El_C is a fairly well established editor not a vandal, a friendly question on his talk page asking about what he means would probably clear it up. It looks like a joke since the "oppose" and "neutral" headings appear to have been combined. His statement is that he opposes neutral (i.e. as if there were and editor "neutral") at it is "neutral" who he "hates"... --pgk 20:49, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

There really is an editor called Neutral, although that editor has not edited since 2002. — Armed Blowfish (mail) 21:25, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Gah, I didn't mean that user! Alas, at least one person found it funny, vs. the ten who found it lame. What do(n't) I win? El_C 02:00, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

It's okay.  : ) Given that the editor has been gone for the last 5 years, I doubt he or she will mind. — Armed Blowfish (mail) 02:56, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Can someone help making User:WikiLeon respect WP policies? I received two threats of ban, latest here. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 23:59, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

That's not a ban threat, it's a boilerplate warning suggesting that you may be blocked. There's a difference. Natalie 03:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

See the diff, it says: "you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia". This for me looks like threatening. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 19:45, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

As mentioned, it's a template warning. Tobias, if you don't stop trolling and wasting people's time, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. Newyorkbrad 19:49, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

So, threats inserted by a template are in line with WP policies? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 21:46, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd call that a promise, not a threat... -- ChrisO 21:47, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

'Can someone help making User:WikiLeon respect WP policies?' [14] *cough*potcallingthekettleblack*cough* HalfShadow 19:56, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Overt personal attack, name-calling, profanity, rudeness, incivility, blanking of WP:NPA warning notice by Harvardy - see this diffthis diff and this diff --Gene_poole 05:25, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Repeatedly accusing Harvardy of being a sockpuppet of Wik or Johnski, edit warring on said user's userpage for six months, tends to do that to people. hbdragon88 06:32, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Particularly if the accusations are well-founded. He wouldn't be issuing so many shrill denials otherwise. Aside from which WP policies apply to all editors, equally, not some editors when it suits them. Johnski / Harvardy has been actively harassing, making sockpuppet accusations about, posting personal abuse about me and other editors, and causing massive disruption to WP, for well over 6 months, and yet those affected have somehow managed to maintain their composure. Are you suggesting that I can start swearing and saying what I really think of him whenever it takes my fancy now? I didn't think so - so stop making excuses for him. --Gene_poole 07:45, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

This is my view, based on just this conversation. If Harvardy really is a sockpuppet, I assume that you have already gone through the official channels (ArbCom enforcement, CheckUser) and had him checked out. If he was a sockpuppet, I know I would be seeing {{indefblocked}} on his user page and a ban in the block log. I do not. Therefore, I assume that he was proven innocent or there was not conclusive evidence that he is a sockpuppet, and that your repeated edit warring over the inclusion of the suspected sockpuppet templates on his user page is causing him stress. I am not making excuses for him, but I am just wondering why you're being so aggressive over these accusations. hbdragon88 01:02, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems that the block has been enacted, therefore my original assumptions were incorrect. hbdragon88 01:03, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your considered response. Sometimes, when it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims like a duck, it really is a duck. After 4+ years at WP I've developed a good nose for ducks. --Gene_poole 02:40, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

User:Anacapa has disrupted feminism and gender studies related pages from November 2006 - Feb 2007. Signing-off with the moniker "(drop in editor)" using multiple IPs they have made spurious accusations of misconduct against "feminist" editors; pushed POV edits on gender studies pages that warp articles such as women's studies into critiques of women's studies; and multiposted an extract from a book by an antifeminist on at least 4 talk pages.

• Project Gender studies,
  
• WP:GS again,
  
• on women's studies
  
• and on feminism
  

Anacapa/(drop in editor)'s complex vandalism persisted until February 2006 when they misrepresented sources and factual information on Feminism attempting to create two criticism sections in the one article. a similar tactic was used on women's studies where the criticism section was longer the rest of the article. A few days ago User:Cailil identified the same editing style and pattern, as well as 2 shared IP addresses between (drop in editor) and User:Anacapa. Since February 2007 User:Anacapa/(drop in editor) has been dormant.
See also: User:Cailil/Complex_vandalism_on_feminism_and_gender_studies_related_articles

After asking User:Durova for advice I reported the situation here.--Cailil 15:30, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I think Calil has put a lot of good effort into this report and I ask the participants at this board to give it an evaluation. Does this merit a community sanctions discussion? Durova^Charge! 16:27, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

The summary of the vandalism you (Cailil) wrote certainly shows a lot of disruptive editing by Anacapa (particularly attempting to unilaterally change the goals of a WikiProject). I'm a little confused as to what is being asked for here. Natalie 18:08, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

To submitter--what exactly are you asking for? A cursory look makes me think a community ban is in order.Rlevse 18:16, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for responding so quickly. I am requesting a community sanction discussion for User:Anacapa. Apologies for not making that clear from the start--Cailil 19:50, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

In that case, I would suggest reposting this to the community sanction noticeboard. Natalie 00:21, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

This AFD has been prematurely closed twice, as I noted over on the incident board, but just in case that wasn't the right place, I decided to post here. The first time was by an admin who agreed to the revert, the second time by a nonadmin in violation of Wikipedia:Deletion process#Non-administrators closing discussions which I have since reverted. To avoid this happening again, I ask that a non-involved neutral admin step up to take responsibility for closing this discussion at the appropriate time. FrozenPurpleCube 16:00, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, I believe you were correct in reverting the early closure of that AfD. Secondly, an appropriate administrator will close that discussion at the end of the period, there is no need for a note here :-) --Deskana (fry that thing!) 17:14, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, the problem is, it happened not once, but twice, so I hoped to avoid it a third time, because frankly it's a bit of effort to go through. Just once, easily resolved, twice? Brings up some warning bells. FrozenPurpleCube 22:06, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

This was crossposted to Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Premature_closings_of_Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion.2FAlekhine.27s_defense.2C_Modern_variation.2C_4...Bg4. --kingboyk 17:15, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

We're getting on to a month of backlog there - I'm about to start on it, but we need a good number of admins acting there to get it done. Thanks, Martinp23 21:23, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

May as well take this opportunity to mention NPWatcher, which can seriously help with orphaning these images. Martinp23 21:24, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

The Behnam has been blocked by Dmcdevit for edit warring while dealing with attempts to insert material that, per The Behnam, were possible violations of WP:COI. The Behnam has requested unblocking, and this was turned down by Yamla. The Behnam has explaned the situation in detail on his talk page, the following is Copy/Paste quote from his talk page:

It is clear from the blocking reason above that I didn't actually violate any WP rules, such as 3RR. Furthermore, the reverts are completely sensible as the others were reintroducing non-RS, possibly COI sources, scriptural misquotes, and other OR into the article. Please see Talk:Iranian women for the discussions, which, by the way, the reintroducers haven't taken any constructive role in. They even introduce false references [32]. The Iranica source says nothing about Iranian women. This kind of dishonest editing needs to be reverted to preserve the integrity of the articles. My reverts are what any objective and honest Wikipedian would do, and I didn't break any rules. These people blindly revert, saying 'seek consensus' but don't actually raise any specific objection. They ignore the edit summaries and talk page discussion. There is no justice in me being blocked. The Behnam 18:11, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Need some assistance, The Behnam? (talk page watchlisted) CASCADIA^Howl/_Trail 21:18, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean. If he'd actually look into this situation he'd find that the reverts were completely justified. What is the point of setting a 3RR rule anyway if I'm going to be blocked on Dmcdevit's whim without any regard to the context? I see well-established editors (some admins) who revert like this all the time; the articles are compromised by the kind of dishonest editing seen from the other party. They work together to keep tripe in the articles. In any case he obviously messed up when it came to User:ParthianShot because somebody allowed that user to change user names and thus escape his past record. If anything that editor should have been blocked longer than me under Dmcdevit's personal blocking policy. Consider [33][34][35]. There are serious issues put forth on that talk page that haven't been addressed by the restoring party, including possible COI. This block is ridiculous. Besides, if you look at my last (3rd) revert, I said that if they blindly revert again I will seek higher authority on the issue [36]. Isn't that enough indication that I don't plan on keeping the revert fight going?

I'm requesting that an uninvolved admin please review the block, and subsequent denial of unblock. Thank you. CASCADIA^Howl/_Trail 21:50, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I can see a case for unblocking on this record, particularly in view of the edit summary for the last revert, as noted by the user. However, the blocking administrator should first be notified of this discussion and given an opportunity to comment. Newyorkbrad 22:45, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I see at a glance the opposite. COI issues aren't an exemption in WP:3RR, 3RR is quite explicit on it's intent and that 3 reverts aren't an entitlement. The final edit summary seems to be indicative of a willingness to just push the bounds of 3RR rather than actually work within the intent. --pgk 22:55, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

There was at least soem attempt to discuss on the talk page. There was not an actual violation of the 3RR. There was at least soem indication in the 3rd revert of an intent to rpesume other emans, and not continue reverting, which is what The Behnam now indicates were his/her intentions. I support an unblock, perhaps with a limited time 1RR or 2RR parole. DES ^(talk) 23:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

To me, it seemed that The Behnam was escalating the conflict to three reverts in quick succession. He ma very well have planned on stopping then, but this is problematic. As I said in my block message, this is the third time that I know of in a short while that The Behnam has made three reverts in 24 hours in an edit war. I agree with Pgk: "My 3 reverts are up, now I will report you if you continue"-type edit summaries are usually a point against you, not in your favor. Dmcdevit·t 23:12, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I would agree with you if the user had written "everyone's reverts for today are used up and we end on my version so I win," but this was more along the lines of "I will seek wider attention if needed because I believe you are violating policy," which is quite different. I do acknowledge the prior block history, however. Newyorkbrad 23:23, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

This looks like a "Last defender of the wiki" problem. If there's a problem that you feel must be corrected, then communicate that problem to others. If you feel that you and you alone must insert yourself into the breach, you're almost certainly wrong and probably a couple of days' holiday from editing will be good for you and everybody else. --Tony Sidaway 23:55, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

After reviewing everyone's comments, I have to second Pgk's remarks. Three reverts aren't an entitlement, and edit warring in itself is a blockable offense. However, I'd have given him a second chance (on the condition that he not revert the article until he has consensus), but while going through the edit history of Talk:Iranian women, I noticed The Behnam calling another editor a "hypocrite" in an edit summary ([37]). IMHO, it's probably best that he sits this block out so he can cool down. Khoikhoi 00:00, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I ditto Tony Sidaway, in particular, in expressing my endorsement for the block. This user was being disruptive by not discussing the reverts on the talk page of the article and/or the user talk, and this was adversely affecting the project. Daniel Bryant 00:03, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

"Adversely affecting the project" is an exceptionally harsh judgment, but I defer to the consensus that the block stands. Newyorkbrad 01:39, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

It was just brought to my attention that ParthianShot, who was given a strong warning only, because I didn't see past blocks, is actually the new username of Surena, who has two blocks, the same as The Behnam. The warning was probably a mistake then. See Wikipedia:Changing_username/Archive20#Surena_.E2.86.92_ParthianShot. Does anyone feel like blocking him as well? Dmcdevit·t 00:38, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

User:CarlKenner, who was banned several months ago (and whose user talk page is still locked), is back making edits. His most recent edits are to the article International Vietnamese Youth Conference, adding biased and false information. These edits are discussed in the talk page, but he could not produce any proof of his assertions. He's been re-adding this information to the page every time it's removed, and putting the summary "rvt vandalism". He's reverted the page 3 times in a 24-hour period now. In the talk page, he's twice removed comments from other users DHN 06:24, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

The user was blocked for 24 hours on 5th May. If you're requesting a further block, please do so at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR. Waggers 14:32, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

User:Alastair Haines seems to be on a biot of a spree, moving articles by cut-and-paste. A lot of these are disambig articles that (IMHO) should take preference over his prefered article to begin with. I'd ask that someont give him a bit of a talking to, and that his changes be reverted for now. Artw 17:33, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Possibly I was hasty posting this to admn - the user has asked to see the relevant guidelines and I've given them to him. Still some help with the cleanup would be appreciated. Also it's possible that a firm indication as to whether moiving the articles in the first place was appropriate or not would probably be beneficial (my take would be No). Artw 17:41, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Instantnood (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was placed on general probation by this arbitration case, for continued edit warring and misconduct, allowing a ban to be set upon agreement of three administrators. Since then, only more of the same has been happening, including the use of sockpuppets to duck the arbitration remedies and blocks placed for violating them (see the checkuser case), and has been blocked several times [38] for repeated edit warring, stalking editors to edit war with them, and block evasion. Given his conduct and apparent lack of intent to change it, I believe it's time to set a ban. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 00:23, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Haven't been involved, but I reviewed what you have presented and I agree: the user seems more interested now in avoiding restrictions than in being a productive part of Wikipedia. We might as well make it official and set an indefinite ban. Mangojuice^talk 01:23, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

In the circumstances, a ban would be a formality. Just up the block to indefinite, watch for socks, and ask the arbitrators to re-open the case if the block should ever be challenged. --Tony Sidaway 01:28, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't this be at the community sanction noticeboard? Khoikhoi 01:33, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Figured it should go here given the circumstances (that admins would have to agree), it could go there too I suppose. Not sure what the exact procedure is for that, but it's not exactly a community ban. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 01:40, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I think this belongs over at WP:AE, not the AN. Luigi30 (Taλk) 12:16, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Per Instantnood's general probation, under which he may be banned from wikipedia upon the agreement of 3 admins, he has been so banned, and the ban recorded here as required. Thatcher131 23:44, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I haven't fully followed the whole "should we allow/disallow categories for children" debates, but I thought I'd bring this category to attention, as I recall similar categories being deleted in the past per related concerns. This category is specifically for 8-12 year olds. VegaDark 04:53, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Honeslty, what's the point of these absurd range categories? 1990-94 and 1995-99? There's only about 10 users who have identified as being born in the 1990s. Just put them all into one category and let them state what year they were born on their userpage. hbdragon88 05:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

• Meh, just delete the lot of those as they're not particularly useful to encyclopedia writing. Move everybody to Category:Wikipedians born between 1795 and 2199, problem solved. >Radiant< 10:33, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Gah, how often do we have to kill these things. These categories serve no use, except social networking. That in itself isn't a reason to delete ...perhaps. But the mere possibility that grouping child wikipedians might have a negative effect (on PR if not in reality) then the outcome must be kill kill kill. I can't find the diff, but I know Jimbo shared that response. Speedy delete and salt the earth - DRV has always endorsed that type of action, so we have a defacto policy here.--Doc^g 10:38, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

• Kill with fire and salt the earth. El_C 10:41, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

If the editors are living people and the information (age) is not sourced by a reliable published source then apply WP:BLP ? WAS 4.250 10:45, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Apply common sense. Dosen't matter if the the information (age) is sourced. El_C 10:56, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes. It is common sense to me and you. But not common sense to those who are creating and populating categories like that. So what objective general rule can be agreed on that solves this and hopefully other cases as well? "Objective" so we are not merely replacing one subjective judgement for another and "general" so we have as few rules as possible rather than thousands of specific rules for specific cases. I believe that WP:BLP fills the bill. WAS 4.250 11:28, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Apply common sense. I don't think that WP:BLP applies here. Regards, Ben Aveling 11:38, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not entirely familiar with the US schooling system, but doesn't Category:Wikipedian high school freshmen raise the same issues? As might other subcats of Category:Wikipedian high school students... WjBscribe 15:56, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

High school freshmen (with notable exceptions) are usually at least 13 (in most cases in my area, 14 or 15). 8th grade or lower, or any cats abut middle schoolers would probably be worth deleting. Ral315 » 01:35, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Is there any reason that we shouldn't move these pages to Wikipedia:Protected titles? Cbrown1023 talk 21:31, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

None at all that I'm aware of. Feel free to go through the masses if you like. I think they still are there because there are or seem to be so many. --Iamunknown 01:39, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Category:Protected deleted categories should be moved over as well. VegaDark 02:04, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

So is the transcluding way the preferred way to salt pages? WP:SALT isn't clear on whether there is a preferred method, or even why there are two methods. Natalie 02:11, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

The category was the previous method, before this method was even possibly with the use of cascading protection. With the category method, the pages can be arrived at by Special:Random and are indexed by search engines. We normally do not want this for maintenance pages. Currently, there aren't any drawbacks to the Cascading solution, so it is the preferred way. Cbrown1023 talk 02:13, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I'll work on that all tomorrow... It'll be fun... a lot of stuff, but fun. :) Cbrown1023 talk 02:14, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I was in a content dispute (if you can call an external link 'content') with 75.84.156.180 (talk • contribs) over at Fertility awareness. The editor has refused to talk things out and was edit warring (and I was reverting maybe a bit too much as well). That, however, is not why I am here. The editor has added a comment directed towards another user (a personal attack, if you will) that has inflammatory and racist language. I reverted it on sight and warned the user on talk. However, the user has simply reverted the questionable content. So I am asking for admin help in analyzing the situation, and recommending a course of action (if any is needed). Thanks for your consideration.-Andrew c 22:44, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi, can someone help to make admin User:Grandmasterka respecting WP policies? I think it is against WP policies to call someone who made a very normal statement a troll. [39] Or is calling other people troll, now in line with WP policies? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 23:55, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry. I see no need to get involved in this dispute. The complainant (Tobias Conradi) accused User:Danny of speaking rudely to him on the phone, and other users questioned the legitimacy of this accusation, and accused Tobias of trolling. Given the suspicious nature of the originial accusation against Danny, and the tone of the general discussion thread, I think the best thing to do is just to move on. YechielMan 03:25, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

User:Tony Sidaway calls the discussion rubbish [40], User:Newyorkbrad calls it trolling [41] .... I do not understand how such way of talking helps WP. Also they should respect WP policies. Also admins should respect policies. Thank you. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 19:52, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps a provision of WP:DICK comes into play here. When multiple people call you the same thing, probably you should take a look at your own conduct instead of calling everyone else blind fools, hm? —²¹⁰physicq (c) 20:11, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

You are absolutly right. And this belongs to section #Tobias Conradi. But here the talk is about admin conduct. Admins should respect the WP policies like others. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 21:50, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, and so should you, right? Following policies is a two-way street. —²¹⁰physicq (c) 21:51, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

And do not tell me where to post. If you post here, your actions will also be under scrutiny here. —²¹⁰physicq (c) 21:52, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Like articles have sections for different topics, so it is usefull to seperate topics in other places. I do follow the WP written policies. The above metnioned admins should do so too. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 22:07, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

What's up with this guy? Did he not get that pony he wanted for his eighth birthday or something? HalfShadow 20:14, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Its time to reign in Tobias I think - see Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/User:Tobias_Conradi. ShivaIdol 06:51, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Resolved

 – Actually a dispute resolution request... but resolved. Sancho 04:38, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi folks. Would love a bit of insight from the admins and others here regarding a dispute at Shemale. User:Patrick80639 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (a new editor and self-described pornographer) is seeking to establish that the term 'Shemale' is either not derogatory (or "not derogatory in a 'porn context'", whatever that means) and has edited the article to remove the reference to the term's derogatory nature.

It's been clearly established that the term is derogatory by numerous references (Wikidictionary and reference.com list the term as 'pejorative' and 'derogatory', respectively) but despite being relatively new to WP, User:Patrick80639 insists on reverting to a version 1, 2, 3 minimizing the derogatory nature of the term by trying to claim that the pornographic usage of the word is somehow 'not derogatory'. He avoids the Wikidictionary and reference.com links, pointing instead to 'WordWeb Online', which lists the term as 'sometimes derogatory', as justification for this artificial distinction. I don't edit war, would like to avoid edit warring on the article completely and so I would appreciate any and all insight into this area. -- User:RyanFreisling @ 02:06, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it 'resolved' per se (there's still an open issue or two) but I'm very grateful for Sanchom's help. Sanchom - can you chime in on the talk page regarding the issue I mentioned? Thanks. -- User:RyanFreisling @ 04:40, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Seems like there is a term of art (so to speak) involved. I.e. there is a pornographer's designation that isn't intended to offend the actors and actresses. Well, ok, but isn't, umm, pornography already pejorative? I.e. turning someone's body into a commercial venture seems to me to be already a bit, uh, disrespectful, and a tender hearted pornographer worried about his brand name being offensive to the performers is just plain weird. Imagine the maker of "Sluts in Heat" trying to argue that, well, yes, he did try to find the youngest looking women he could and did subject them to degrading on-camera acts, but "slut" isn't a bad word! If it's not a bad word, then the marketing fails. (In this case, can't the dude be satisfied with "pornographers employ the term when marketing their product" without any appeal to their desires to be nice or not?) Geogre 11:48, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if that's quite what it's called, but it's what's happened to nebular hypothesis. It was formerly a redirect to planetary formation, which is now a redirect to Nebular hypothesis. Planetary formation, in turn, was moved from solar nebula, which has since been reborn as a stub. That page has the history of the big, important page going back to 2003. Can an admin move the relevant history to Nebular hypothesis? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Zenohockey (talk • contribs) 02:22, 17 April 2007 (UTC).

Someone really made a mess of this. I reverted Nebular hypothesis back to 11th February and it's back as a redirect to Solar Nebula. Planetary formation was reverted to May 2006 and is back as a redirect to Protoplanetary disk. Solar Nebula was reverted to 18th February and is back as a full article with complete history. Sigh. – Steel 11:36, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Can I get a view or two about this:

• Peaches1018, Mnkyfnky7, Spaz109

Three related user accounts that refer to one another, all consist entirely of User Talk "contributions" that are an ongoing chat among some kids in class. As "vandalism" goes, it isn't the highest priority, as they aren't wrecking the encyclopedia, but it is a misuse, and warnings were ignored. I blocked the accounts, but was wondering if going after the underlying IP to prevent account creation is warranted, ie a checkuser, to lead to some kind of schoolblock. Thanks, Kaisershatner 14:52, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I removed the chat texts. YechielMan 14:57, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, but what about the main issue? Kaisershatner 14:59, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

There's not much we can do to stop someone creating an account and writing stuff on their user talk page. Like any other form of vandalism, we just have to be vigilant, revert or remove such edits and warn the vandalising users, going on to block them if necessary. This isn't really anything new. Waggers 15:04, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Don't think we'd need a checkuser for just that, it's not a terribly hideous instance of vandalism, and there's no hint they've come back using sockpuppets. (If the school shares an IP, like a lot of them do, they'll very likely have gotten bored and moved on by the time the autoblock expires anyway.) I've run across that type of thing before-just first politely inform them that we're not a chatline, and if all they want to do is chat, they need to take it to email, IM, or some other venue. Everyone I've talked to has stopped at that point anyway (I think at least a couple of them were under the impression that their conversations were for the most part private, and left immediately upon finding out otherwise), but if they don't, I guess that'd be like any other vandal. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 15:21, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

It appears that this is 22113itshouldsnow (talk · contribs), 22113letitsnow (talk · contribs), Itshouldsnow22113 (talk · contribs), Letit22113snow (talk · contribs), etc... I remember when they were first around using talk pages for chat rooms, and I was able to figure out which school they were at by googling combinations of the names of the teachers they talked about. Looking at one of these recent pages, and googling panasuk horn, the second result is a teacher page from the same school, Guerin Catholic. --Onorem 16:17, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Coltsfan8893 (talk · contribs) seems to be their latest. Still active as of an hour ago. --Onorem 16:41, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
I would say that Shortie1018 (talk · contribs) is also due for a block. one of theirs. --Onorem 16:43, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Fascinating. Googling, led to this:The IT Director of that school Kaisershatner 16:47, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Got it. [42] Kaisershatner 16:53, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

One IP address would seem to be 216.117.140.169 Kaisershatner 16:54, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

70.225.145.209 should be another, but that doesn't appear to fall into the range of that whois... --Onorem 16:56, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok, see my req for checkuser, there are many accounts.Kaisershatner 17:09, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Jeffshark (talk · contribs) may be one too. I saw him a couple of days ago on RC patrol when he blanked his talk page and I left him a note this morning. He deleted it a few moments ago. I spent 15 minutes of my life politely wording a "don't do that" message, and I even gave him the 'cookies' welcome template first. Sigh. I need chocolate. KrakatoaKatie 17:15, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

This article is suffering from WP:OWN issues, and a complete lack of understanding of Wikipedia policy and how to write an encyclopedia article by User:Milliot. He considers non-contextual quotes to be cohesive information, and has pasted entire articles into the "external sources" section, among other things, which I removed and he has replaced twice (after its removal by others). He also claims the page is maintained by "those who knew Rocchi," which is COI I'm willing got overlook because the sources are there.

However, it has been explained to Milliot at least twice what the problems are with the article, and it hasn't really helped. For example, a user working on the article tagged it lehgitimately with a citation needed tag. said user changed his name, and Milliot apparently thinks that since the old user "is no longer valid", the tag isn't either. Could an admin take a look at this and take action if necessary? Apparently regular old users aren't having an effect. MSJapan 15:50, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Cho Seung-hui temp move → Cho Seung-hui. (→Netscott) 18:48, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

'sdone.   REDVERS ↔ SЯEVDEЯ  18:55, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok, it is all mixed up now... there is Talk:Cho Seung-hui Cho which has to go to Talk:Cho Seung-hui. And there's a page history missing. (→Netscott) 18:58, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

This is the article's proper history. :-/ (→Netscott) 18:59, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for eveyone's mop assistance there. :-) (→Netscott) 19:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• Oops spoke too soon, the talk history has to be merged back together with Talk:Cho Seung-hui. (→Netscott) 19:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Please see WP:CSN. Cheers, Moreschi ^{Want some help? Ask!} 19:49, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

User:Tobias Conradi, once ranked 87 in en:WP, is indefinatly blocked. One admin reached a consensus for himself ;-)

And since when did edit count rankings matter? If he has indeed exhausted the community's patience, we have the right to toss him out the door irregardless of contributions. Note I am merely affirming the right to do so, not whether said sanctions be applied. —²¹⁰physicq (c) 01:01, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

c.f. Special:Contributions/84.190.67.186 --Iamunknown 01:03, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

he exhausted the patience of _some_ admins. To say "of the community" is false. Why it was exhausted is not clear. Maybe lack of patience? The murderers get annoyed by the police hunting them. But who committed the crime? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.190.67.186 (talk) 01:11, 18 April 2007 (UTC).

The block is discussed here. Continue there. --Ezeu 01:20, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

As you may know, Cicero Dog (talk · contribs) was blocked indefinitely for disruption (and at the same time a check user showed him to be a puppet-master). Since then there have been rather a lot of sock puppets (1, 2). I recently blocked Dog cicero (talk · contribs), and 3 unblock requests have been refused by different admin. I write to notify that I have indefinitely blocked CDMS (talk · contribs) as a sockpuppet (who has contested Dog cicero's ban, and has stated on his userpage he wishes to start a "Cicero Dog Memorial Society", which relates to the name CDMS). Ian¹³/t 21:19, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Would someone like to close this as a Speedy Keep/WP:SNOW per the strong consensus at AFD? I would, but I already voted in the AFD. Thanks, NawlinWiki 22:55, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

The thumbnail at Stereo Realist is only half-loading. The image itself is fine. Can this be re-generated or something? Thanks... —Chowbok ☠ 02:39, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Fixed; it needed a purge. Probably best to put such things at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) in the future. —Cryptic 02:53, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah, okay, I'll do that from now on. Thanks! —Chowbok ☠ 03:32, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

If we can have "Photo credit: Fir0002" on our front page why not "Photo credit: IBM" in exchange for a "donation"? WAS 4.250 04:16, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

• The credit is on the featured picture, which is almost invariably a one-man act; it credits the person who made the picture. If IBM donated a picture to Wikipedia that was then featured, then a photo credit might be warranted. —Centrx→talk • 04:22, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
• (ec) If IBM is willing to donate copyrighted content under a free license for everyone to use for unrestricted commercial reuse and derivative works, hey I'd totally be willing to have a byline say, "Photo: John Doe/IBM". Are they? --Iamunknown 04:24, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

It is really simply, we allow attribution on images. If the image is from IBM, and IBM has donated it to a license compatible with Wikipedia that requires attribution, then we attribute. Donations do not enter into it, we attribute when it is a requirement of the license. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 04:27, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

We shouldn't be discussing broad policy matters like this on the administrators' noticeboard. Hesperian 04:30, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I hereby resolve to transfer the GFDL/CC-BY 2.5 copyright of the next featured picture I take (OK, make that the first featured picture I take) to IBM or any other major corporation, in exchange for a $10,000 donation to Wikimedia :)--Pharos 04:53, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I have applied the Dmcdevit solution to edit warring at 1929 Hebron massacre (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). Several editors have reverted at least 12 times over the last 4 days over the insertion of the term "ethnic cleansing." The first step of the Dmcdevit solution is protection for 3 days (the article has not been previously protected). If the edit warring resumes I will enforce a 1 revert limit, and if that doesn't stop it, a zero revert limit. I would appreciate extra eyes on this when the protection expires. Thatcher131 16:33, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Does it actually work? I've been the victim of this, but the other users involved weren't properly affected due to an oversight caused by a block log obscured after a user name change, so now the other guy is just going around to a bunch of articles and RV, usually calling legitimate edits "vandalism." He is restoring copyvios, OR, non-RS (and possibly COI) sources. His 'discussion' on the talk page is usually just insults against other users and Parsis. Also, on ANI I have asked whether or not I can transfer his sockpuppets from old user name to his new user name to prevent confusion. I'd like an answer on that [43]. Applying the method doesn't make sense unless it is applied fairly.

Also, how is 0RR a good alternative to full protection? There has long been an editprotected mechanism for requesting simple improvements. I don't see what Dmcdevit's 'thoughts' are adding aside from yet another arbitrary dimension to the system and something of a trap (in my first experience I thought it was 1RR for some reason and got hurt). The Behnam 19:44, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

While I probably couldn't win any debate over the topic since I am not expert here, I think that these 'thoughts' deserve community discussion before being applied as policy to the articles. Editors aren't guinea pigs (I hope); an actionable rule needs community consensus. The Behnam 20:20, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

The general idea that, if one person edit wars, block him; if several people edit war, protect the article, has a significant downside. Protecting the article harms all editors as it prevents anyone from editing the article. There are too many articles that undergo a constant cycle of edt war--protect--edit war--protect--edit war--protect. This helps no one. It rewards the edit warriors (or at least lets them off scot-free to edit, and possibly edit war, on other articles), while driving away reasonable editors who aren't interested in edit warring. Protecting the article is supposed to give the editors a chance to work out their differences on the talk page. If the editors go right back to edit warring, then they didn't use the time well, and need stronger measures to convince them to work within the system. 1929 Hebron massacre has been a problem for a while, and even after banning User:Zeq from the topic, at least 5 or 6 other editors are edit warring without using the talk page to discuss their dispute. Now they have a chance to do that. If they can't come to a reasonable compromise and continue edit warring (protection having failed its purpose), I see no reason to protect again. I have taken this approach before (applied 1RR to an article) with no complaint, and it actually seemed to work. Dmcdevit's essay is a formalization of an approach that many admins have used from time to time and it is not at all a new policy, simply a different approach to enforcing the same policies. Thatcher131 20:15, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I don't have any problem with 1RR, but basically this is 0RR, and I think it encourages sockpuppetry. Back at Azerbaijan (Iran) when I mistakenly interpreted "Repeat edit warriors will be blocked from now on" (from edit summary) as 1RR and forgot about the more 0RR-like wording on the talk page, I reverted an IP that was a possible sock and ended up getting a day's block. I think it is more of a trap that will encourage sockpuppetry. Also, it seems apt to allow people to add tripe but not remove tripe. The Behnam 20:28, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm starting off with 1RR. Dmcdevit's essay is an essay, not an instruction manual, and every admin has to use his or her own discretion. I don't think it will lead to adding tripe unless there's a tripe pile-on; if one user adds crap twice, it can be reverted by two different editors once each and the crap adder gets blocked. Also, editors should use the talk page, if there is good discussion and consensus about an edit but actually making the edit would be a technical violation for someone, then of course I'll overlook it. Thatcher131 20:33, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

OK, well I think 1RR is much more reasonable of you. But really this should go to community discussion if its going to start getting applied to articles, though I do agree that testing is necessary to see if there are loopholes or other possible problems. The Behnam 20:39, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

The Benham points out above that the editprotected tag is available to request edits to protected articles. From my perspective, articles that have been recently blocked for edit warring should not be significantly edited by anyone, admin or not, until the protection is lifted. I tend to disable the editprotected tags on such articles and decline to make the edit. The only thing that needs to be edited during a three-day protection is libel, copyright violations, etc. -- everything else can wait until the article is unprotected. In my mind, one benefit of stopping edit wars more quickly is that it may reduce the amount of time that these pages need to be protected. CMummert · talk 12:29, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

That's not a completely unreasonable approach, but Wikipedia policy is that editing of protected pages for minor errors and whatnot can continue while the article is protected because of a dispute. The protection is solely to stop edit warring, it isn't to prevent editing (which would be a very bad thing indeed). --Tony Sidaway 12:46, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Art Institute of Chicago talk pages are merged (via redirect). I would remove the redirect myself, but there must be some historical talk page for the Art Institute. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 18:13, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Please refer to WP:RM. El_C 17:48, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Seeing how this entire topic came up as my mis-interpretation of a statement by Jimmy, I'm taking the step of archiving it, if people don't mind (to try and prevent confusion) -- Tawker 19:56, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• Tragedy knows no borders. El_C 17:47, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is the best place for this, the village pump would probably also be a good place for this, but I'd like to gauge other editors opinion on the state of WP:COI, especially the admins. For those of you unfamiliar with this, COI was basically drafted up in a knee jerk reaction to User:MyWikiBiz posting articles that he'd been paid to write by their respective subjects. An interesting background piece on this is the Arch Coal DRV which was one of the triggers for the creation of COI.

Originally, COI started out as a conversation between Jimbo and MyWikiBiz, and somehow came up with the worst possible solution. That of MyWikiBiz posting paid for GFDL articles off site and allowing others to copy them over to Wikipedia in an impossible to trace mess. Since then, it's evolved, but it no longer includes any procedure or rules, it lacks teeth. Originally intended to stop what Jimbo labeled as immoral editing, it now seems to say "It's OK but we/you might not like the results". So if I am paid to write an article by its notable subject, is that OK if the article is sourced and neutral? Do I even have to tell anyone? I am in favour of disclosure, I'm also in favour of allowing paid-for editing, but judging by the Arch Coal scenario, I'm not sure if the higher ups like Jimbo Wales likes it, at all.

I'm mentioning this again, because I've just recently learned that online data broker Intelius owns more than half of the people search market from the front page of one of the world's most visited websites. It's quite possible that the Intelius article was written in good faith without pay, personally, I don't care, as I mentioned, I am in favour of allowing Paid-for edits. What I care about is what Wikipedia's position on this thing is. What bought this case to my attention was that it's a very press release sounding WP:DYK snippet, and a user with not too many edits has somehow managed to incorporate and find the inappropriately tagged Image:New Logo.JPG, which was uploaded by a user who has only uploaded Intelius images[44].

I think there should be a framework for paid-for edits, I believe it is an inevitability that this will take place, and I want to know when and where it happens. After scrapping the frankly detrimental off-site posting, Wikipedia still hasn't come up with anything to replace it. - hahnchen 21:41, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• And I hope that Wikipedia actually tries to address this, and that an admin doesn't just come up with a ill conceived cop-out reason for removing the Intelius link, citing something like "Crap DYK". Personally, I don't actually think it's a paid for article judging by the author's editing patterns. But this can and will happen in the future. Jimbo Wales flat out deleted Arch Coal as a fluffy PR piece (he was wrong), and yet similar in style Intelius is front page. - hahnchen 21:44, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• The great thing about allowing paid for editing is that it encourages the belief that writing articles in whose content you have a vested interest is fine and dandy. Oh, wait, no, that's a bad thing isn't it? So the advantage is that companies get to have their articles started in a guaranteed favourable tone. Oh, wait, that's not so hot either is it? Er.... Thing is, we're all volunteers. Pitch in paid editors, paid to edit on company time, and the dynamic changes, and in a direction which is away from neutrality. They will have more time, more determination and more resources. Guy (Help!) 21:54, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• Frankly i think that paid for editing, if proved or strongly suspected, should be a bannable offence, adn I would summariuly speedy as spam any articel i suspected of being so written. DES ^(talk) 21:57, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

FYI There's another aspect that's missing. WP:COI is also a redrafting of WP:VANITY, which was deemed to have an impolite name. -Will Beback · † · 22:00, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Theoretically, a company could decide they wanted to give back to the world and hire a few people to improve Wikipedia. This has happened with other open source projects, like Linux. Many other times, a company will ask one of their employees to make sure the company is shown in a positive light on Wikipedia. One is a good-faith effort to improve the encyclopaedia. The other is corporate interests. A number of cases will fall in between. — Armed Blowfish (mail) 22:09, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• The majority of cases which are identified as COI are so identified precisely because they are biased. Guy (Help!) 22:15, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• (Remarking on Armed Blowfish's comment) I don't think there's an inherent problem with being paid to edit Wikipedia. However, there certainly is a problem when the people who are being paid are writing about the people who are paying them. For example, if IBM paid editors to write about mathematics that'd be OK, but when they start getting into something like mainframes or other products/technologies associated with IBM, it becomes problematic. So, basically, paid-for-edits are OK imo, as long as the company thats paying for it is not even vaguely related to the article subject matter. Even with good intentions though, I think companies paying for edits to their own and related articles is still a bad idea and leads to a natural (possibly unintentional) bias and COI. If companies want to give back to Wikipedia by paying people to edit, they should make sure the subject matter is not in their field. Wickethewok 22:31, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• Maybe it's just my paucity of imagination but I have trouble imagining almost any company paying anyone to write articles just for knowledge's sake. If it can happen, I think it will be the exception. If any official line is taken for this hypothetical do-gooder, that it is okay "so long as...", I foresee a very slippery slope, with companies claiming that a paid for article is unrelated, where it may not be so easy to see a connection, which nevertheless exists.--Fuhghettaboutit 22:45, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

What if somebody is paid to research a topic, uses Wikipedia as a source and notices a spelling mistake, or decides to add some info that he found in another source? What if somebody is paid to create page for a technical support website and wants to link to a useful article in Wikipedia, such as network address translation, notices some minor problems with the article and decides to fix them. I think we are risking instruction creep here. Judge the edit at face value. Jehochman (^talk/_contrib) 22:54, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment - Do you guys see a marked difference between the instantly deleted Arch Coal and the current Intelius DYK? The Intelius logo at Image:New Logo.JPG seems to have been uploaded to an unconventional filename by a user who has only uploaded Intelius images and then disappeared. There should be a framework for COI editors to upload their paid-for articles on Wikipedia. There should be some kind of vetting process as in WP:AFC. Much rather have this, then having them uploaded on the sly. I don't care about the biased majority of COI articles, they can be deleted or stubbed just as the vast majority of crap articles. What I do care about are the ones that are satisfactory for an encyclopedia, uploading these are OK now? COI doesn't seem to have any sort of bite to it any more. Banning paid-for editors is just going to drive them underground, and you can't stop the train of inevitability. - hahnchen 00:12, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I prepared a rewrite the conflict of interest guideline recently, and there's been some discussion on the talk page following this. I tried to say that editing with a conflict is broadly discouraged, but that anyone willing to contribute content is encouraged to involve other editors in some way, by using talk pages, for example.

I think this is the right approach (inviting people to contribute but asking that they mediate their content through the community) but unfortunately it currently suffers from a lack of mechanisms for carrying it out. Suggestions for mechanisms, or comments on the rewrite in general, would be very welcome. --bainer (talk) 12:13, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Category:Candidates for speedy deletion -- I have images tagged for speedy deletion since March on my watchlist. Can some admins please pull out their flamethrowers? Much appreciated, Iamunknown 00:49, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

• I can help with the articles, but I know nothing about images, so hopefully someone with image deletion experience will join the party. Natalie 01:16, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
  • We need help with the articles, too -- almost 500 up for deletion right now. NawlinWiki 01:48, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Let me help by patrolling Newpages again. ;) hbdragon88 02:44, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Thanks folks. There are still quite a few out there! Sorry I can't help. --Iamunknown 05:54, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
    • I just hit a bunch of image backlog from Commons, as well as some speedy articles. Will hit some more tomorrow (tired now) - Alison^☺ 06:24, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
      • I hope that you've been careful. I had to throw some images out of the speedy deletion queue recently because they hadn't been properly transferred to Commons. (The most common failure was a failure to adhere to the requirement that all versions of the image be transferred.) Uncle G 08:25, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
        • So far so good, anyways. Checking histories, commentaries, licensing, name, sizes. It's boring and tedious but I got a bunch done already - Alison^☺ 08:35, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
        • (EC) Also note that only images that are bit-for-bit copies (practically, images that are the same filename) may be deleted. So PNG files obsoleted by SVG files do not get to be deleted. --Iamunknown 08:42, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
• Please read the comments by Redvers at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive83#Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images. Despite the fact that over the years we have had strong statements from Jimbo Wales and from the Wikimedia Foundation about our mandate for free content (one of the fundamental pillars of all Wikimedia Foundation projects, note), the reactions from people, when administrators delete non-free content images that don't fall within the narrow confines of our exemption doctrine, discourage administrators from tackling what is a significant problem. (The editor reaction problem is even worse at Wikinews.) Uncle G 08:25, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Owch! Well, yeah ... all crap, no glory. Still has to be done. For a (relative) newb like me, working on WP:CSD#I8 should be an easy start .... errm, right? - Alison^☺ 08:40, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
  • (EC) I know. Thank you to all who do them. I wish I could help out and (inevitably) take some of the heat. Uncle G, the problem I see so much is that there are images seem to me to be very clearly decorative (i.e. fail WP:NONFREE#8) or very clearly lower the market value of the copyrighted media (i.e. fail WP:NONFREE#2) and people just don't get it. If we host AP photos on Wikipedia that were released, oh, say, a few hours before they were uploaded, that will cause significant market loss because people will be able to find the newest AP image on Wikipedia. Similarly, a lot of promotional photographs are simply not promotional photographs. If you wanna have some fun, try reading http://www.fox.com/corporate/terms.htm or http://www.nbc.com/Footer/Privacy/privacy_policy_2.shtml and see how very clearly they spell out that the exact type of use we often use their content is exactly how they don't want anyone using it. *sigh* --Iamunknown 08:42, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure how to handle instnaces where {{Db-copyvio}} tags are used but the source text is clearly licensed under the GFDL, like at Mono Migration Analyzer, so I improvised. Did I handle the situation correctly? Jesse Viviano 06:30, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Seems to me to be in order. I've formatted the notice to be more like {{1911}}. Harryboyles 14:26, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

You might consider putting the notice on the talk page, as OTRS do when they receive permission, for example at Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies. -- lucasbfr ^talk 15:13, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Does anyone know why and can fix why this talk page shows up cat CAT:NSD eventhough it doesn't have a speedy tag?Rlevse 10:07, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, that's a good one. Spent the last few minutes looking for a reason, notice it's gone now. Maybe a template which was transcluded on the page was up for speedy deletion and has been deleted in the meantime (or maybe a while ago and was a while before the cache caught up)? – B.hotep ^u/_t• 10:35, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Dunno, I checked every template, purged the cache too... db-nonsense was transcluded but I couln't find from where... That remains a mystery :) -- lucasbfr ^talk 12:21, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I've noticed that an anon user with the IP 213.42.21.83 is vandalizing repeatedly. (S)He is mainly doing section blanks and "childish" vandalism, and nearly all edits are vandalism/playing with edits (though checking a few of his/her edits also revealed one benign edit). His/her talk page lists a few "Your test worked, and has been reverted" messages, but nothing more (except for one blatant vandalism message). His block log is clean. --NetRolller 3D 13:14, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Checking more of his edits, there are more benign edits than what I found, and on one occasion, he/she reverted "his/her own" vandalism, so it looks like a shared IP. (Maybe we can set an anon-only block with account creation allowed, so the benign editor(s) on this IP can register an account, and if the vandal also registers, we can block only him/her, not the other user(s) of the IP.) --NetRolller 3D 13:35, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

User:Abdurahman49 recently removed the "All Movie Guide (AMG) ID" from the Infobox Film templates on about 20 articles. See Special:Contributions/Abdurahman49. Currently AGF'ing per Fru1tbat's comments at User talk:Abdurahman49, but if no response, we will eventually need to revert the changes. I am adding a note here so it doesn't get forgotten. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 14:15, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I've reverted all his edits. I don't know what his deal is, probably just trying to be disruptive. If we actually wanted to stop linking to AMG, we would start by removing the parameter from the template itself, which would make the links disappear from thousands of articles at once, but I can't see why we'd ever want to do that. — CharlotteWebb 15:08, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

User Elsanaturk diverted a whole section into bombarding me with personal attacks and making POV and OR statements:[45][46] [47] He implies that I am uncivlized and uneducated, amongst other things, and also tries to dictate what pages people should and should not edit on Wikipedia.

Some lines of interest:

Les Absents ont toujours tort, they say in the civilized world, those absents are always wrong

He implies that I am uncivilized.

your imperial dreams which are and were only the dreams

can you ever make a good thing and contribute something positive to wikipedia that it would not create dispute?

and as i see you liked my previous comments, so i think you can also like my this one and i strongly appreciate to report me on civility, or something various, but remember that sometimes you must also know that that there is something called morality, for which wikipedia forgot to make an appropriate page.

Here he implies I am immoral and he is just asking for a ban or a block. This user clearly knew what he was doing, as he even knew that his comments would get reported to the admins noticeboard. This user clearly should get blocked for these comments and have some time to cool down, in fact, he is basically asking for it by asking me to report him for comments that he acknowledges are uncivil.Azerbaijani 18:03, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

You should ask him to apologize, and forgive him. The Behnam 19:44, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

More attacks but User:Elsanaturk, view here:[48] This user is simply asking for a ban now.Azerbaijani 03:47, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I blocked User:Verne Andru for edit warring and a technical violation of 3RR when he reverted 2(one of them being me) users 5 times in 24 hours, and more before that(at 420 (cannabis culture)). All the same revert, which was to put a reference to his comic book into it.

This seems clear cut to me, but since I am involved with discussions about the topic of inclusion, I am posting here as a sanity check. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 17:23, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I have also made a post at WP:COIN regarding this user, it seems to be a conflict of interest only account, the only contribution were the creation of his comic book article(Captain Cannabis) and mentioning it in the 420 article. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 17:25, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, a 3RR block was warranted for Verne Andru. User:SqueakBox is sitting at 3 reverts right now, so a comment to avoid edit warring would be appopriate for that user as well. CMummert · talk 17:30, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Since Verne was the only person insisting on that version I think the edit war is over for at least a little while. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 18:38, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

The Kitty Carlisle article should be protected since she has recently died.--Joebengo 19:23, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Wahkeenah has violated the 3RR rule and says its "vandalism" even though citation have been proven.--Joebengo 19:27, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Where? I still don't see a citation. It's your responsibility to provide one. JuJube 19:31, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

The citation is on the page, it was in the sentence about her death. Am I the only one who sees it?--Joebengo 19:34, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Anon user 71.172.179.35 is repeatedly vandalizing the article Cory Lee, mainly by adding sexuality-related content. Action needed. --NetRolller 3D 21:39, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

JommyIshPockyLuvv is now doing the same edits as what 71.172.179.35 did. I assume that he has registered an account, checkuser might be needed.

Nevermind, I can see he is now blocked. --NetRolller 3D 21:49, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Could some kind admin please take care of it, in particular Kizenbergers Rules (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)? Thank you. Corvus cornix 23:33, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

List is empty. AQu01rius (User &#149; Talk) 00:48, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Can an administrator please assist me. There is a lot of vandalism to the Puma going by unnoticed, and I have a difficult time believing such an important topic could have such a short writeup. The current version is one sentence long and I cannot find a better version in the history. Burntsauce 23:36, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

No, I believe that they are good-faith efforts, but it appears that people are confusing Couger and Puma. Some expert needs to write this from the ground up. hbdragon88 23:41, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

What are you saying "no" to? I do not understand. Burntsauce 23:43, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

You assessed the recent edits as vandalism, and I was disagreeing with that assessment. hbdragon88 23:44, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I have a hard time believing you've reviewed the recent edits then, to be frank. Burntsauce 23:45, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Have to agree with Burntsauce, the edits being reverted are not good faith efforts, but pure vandalism. Corvus cornix 23:46, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I checked out the 50th edit (28 March 2007) and found a one-line stub similar to the current one. Your description of sneaky vandalism made it appear that it was just that, sneaky, like misinformation. The current level of obvious vandalism is not problematic and editors have been keeping up. hbdragon88 00:00, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the recent edits do appear to be vandalism, but as regards the question about a better version, I found a history entry where the page was merged to Cougar, leaving only the description of the genus at the page Puma. So, it is actually just a short article. Check the page on Cougar to make sure any additions aren't redundant. Sancho 23:50, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I saw some awful things in Nam, but you really have to wonder at the mentality that would desecrate a helpless puma. --bainer (talk) 06:06, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Jahedul (talk · contribs) needs to be blocked to get that copyrighted text and images aren't accepted here, as clearly written instructions and talk page messages won't do the job.

I've mentioned this user at noticeboard already, but the user is now repeatedly inserting copyvio text in Tracy McGrady#NBA Live 07: [49], [50].

The user has been previously blocked for repeated copyright violations, and, as I mentioned in the aforementioned ANI post, has more recently been repeatedly removing {{Replaceable fair use}} tags from images. Ytny (talk) 02:31, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I have blocked for 48 hours for the meantime, as the user's talk page makes it quite clear that he/she has been more than suitably warned. I am not opposed to a longer block and if anyone wants to lengthen the block I assure you I will not object. Natalie 02:35, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I think an extra 24 hours escalation from the first block is acceptable; if the user does it again, I think it'll be time to shuffle them off the wiki coil. EVula // talk // ☯ // 02:56, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Nitraven (talk · contribs) recently created a string of articles on types of Howitzers that were obvious copyright violations:

• Type 59 field gun, from [51]
• [52], taken from [53]

I checked into the contribution history and also found the lead section of History of the Sri Lanka Navy (article creation) was taken from [54]

Could some editors help track down and correct any other copy-and-paste's from this user? Sancho 05:18, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• I found another: Sri_Lanka_Navy_Reserve was completely lifted from [55]. I've asked Nitraven at his/her talk page to help us by listing all copy-and-paste contributions at Nitraven's talk page. Sancho 05:29, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

A real pity User:Wherebot is down, he would have caught all these copyvios. I am retiring for the night, but will check tomorrow if nobody does by then. -- ReyBrujo 05:39, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Disregard. The user didn't have such a long contribution history; about 500 edits with about 15 page creations. I have checked all the pages this user has created. A couple seemed okay. The others were lifted in part or in whole from usually a subpage of the Sri Lankan Navy or Army pages... ones that could be corrected by removing the copyvio section were corrected. The others have been marked for speedy deletion. There are many image uploads though. I'm not familiar enough with the image copyright checking process. Maybe somebody wants to look at those. Sancho 05:50, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I see a number of people talking about blocking at one revert, of people deciding that "edit warring" is the crime, not 3RR violation, etc. Well, I sympathize, and I know no one will speak in favor of edit warring. However, the idea of reducing a complex issue beyond its already reductive state (the 3RR) is completely wrong headed.

1. We have operated for a while with the 3RR, on the assumption that there is no "right version" at a wiki, that no one may "own" an article, etc. This is a rule that all users with any experience are aware of. Trying to change away from this practice to "block on sight" with any "edit warring" is to change the rules while the game is underway.
2. Our goal is to stop edit warring. The 3RR itself is a simplistic way of saying, "If we can't tell you exactly what edit warring is, we can at least agree that anyone who reverts more than 3 times in 24 hours is engaging in it." In other words, it is an exasperated way of trying to give a least/most line. It is there only because it is impossible to coherently describe what "edit warring" is.
3. No one can stop edit warring at one revert, because one revert isn't edit warring. No one can stop it at two reverts, because two reverts may be vandalism prevention. No one can stop it at three reverts, because three reverts might well be preventing an edit war between two radically divergent editors who will fight with each other to avoid the compromise version established by an RFC. You cannot stop it at four, because that might be an effort at clearing out quickly created accounts who are gaming the 3RR. In other words, "edit warring" does not occur at one revert, at two, at three, at four, at five, or at any other number. It occurs when people who cannot or will not compromise and discuss matters simply use the bytes of Wikipedia to score against each other. It is when they fight ("war") with the edits rather than their words and arguments.
4. If a person is debating on the talk page, and if the persons are seeking additional input, they're not warring. They may be struggling with each other. They may be disagreeing, or arguing, but they're not warring.
5. Any attempt to stifle the necessary role of investigation and consideration in the assessment of what is and is not an edit war is wholly wrong.
6. Blocks are evil. Let's repeat this, all together in one voice: blocks are bad. Blocks are not the default state of editors. Blocks are not power. Blocks are not tools. Blocks are a last ditch measure. Anything, and I mean anything, that people do to try to make blocks more automatic, more binary, more unconsidered is a thing that is wrong in every possible way.

So no, I do not think "block immediately" is an answer to "edit warring." I am not likely to endorse or support anyone who moves that way, and I will be very likely to listen charitably to someone so blocked. Geogre 01:39, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with this sentiment. I like hard rules and bright line tests. But I also like gentle enforcement, particularly at first. I do not believe in blocks for 3rr, unless it is egregious. Instead of 24 hour blocks I would advocate 2 day to 1 week bans from editing the article. --Blue Tie 01:57, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much for putting this out. The excessive arbitrary nature of the 0RR rule was quite troubling in an environment already prone to arbitrary measures. The Behnam 02:12, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

3RR is an electric fence. It is certainly not permissible to pass 3 reverts in 24 hours. However, note that our previous edit warring guidelines were never revoked. --Kim Bruning 02:50, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I think, if I could simplify, there is a middle way between the Geogre edit warring philosophy (blocks are evils) and the Dmcdevit one (protection is evil). While the latter articulates some interesting ideas and insights that are well worth our time examining, at the same time, we should be very careful about the implementation stage and ensure that sufficient input and discussion has taken place before anything seemingly new develops as a modus operandi. Certainly, the spirit of the law demands a certain flexibility, that isn't new and no one ever disagrees that being undogmatic is desirable. Note my recent reversion of a protected page on account that the party whose version I protected failed to engage the talk page. That probably breaks the letter of a host of rules (except for the trusted deus ex machina that is IAR), but it nonetheless makes perfect sense — although, I suppose I could have unprotected early and warned that, regardless of 3RR, if any user continues reverting without employing the talk page, they would be facing a block. That, arguably, also makes sense. El_C 03:36, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I have before said that there were interesting things in the Dmcdevit position. 3RR has become an electric fence, as Kim says, when it emerged as a rough guide. In other words, people have been using it as though any reverts up to 3RR were ok and the 4th was an automatic 24 hr block. I agree that everyone knows that the 4th is a block. However, we don't correct the reductionism of 3RR is automatic by making an even less flexible and more reductive position. I have seen, above, more and more people lauding instant blocks -- missing the point again and heading away from deliberation and discussion again. This bugs me. Yes, all should remember that we're trying to stop edit wars, not living by the letter of a 3RR law. No, the answer is not to block more quickly. (I have, for the second time in 4 years, gone to 3R just today, so that's one of life's (or Wikipedia's) little ironies that this discussion would occur just at this time.) Geogre 11:40, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, well, you are supposed to only block when people are *actually* edit warring, yes ;-) If people do two reverts a day for a week, well... maybe you should block them for a change? On the other hand, if they are constructively working on building a consensus on the actual article page, they should be left alone. --Kim Bruning 16:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC) (yes, we do have consensus building directly on articles, it's this strange wiki concept we started with, so many years ago, imagine that!)

As long as we're talking about the "Dmcdevit approach" (and can we not call it that?) I would note that "instant blocks" have no place in my approach. The idea is to stop enabling persistent edit warriors with chronic protection and repeated and punitive short blocks. It's not "block immediately" it is "block when protection would be fruitless due to a party's uncommunicativeness; block when an editor shows no propensity for understanding how collaborative editing works here, by edit warring in eh face of warnings and prior blocks". Er, that's not much of a slogan. The point about 3RR is that while I would not throw it out the window entirely (I make blocks based on 3RR occasionally) 3RR is a measure of edit warring, not the Form of edit warring itself. Admins are free to use their judgment when someone is edit warring within the 3RR boundary. Dmcdevit·t 18:30, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Protection is evil as well. Can you imagine how frustrating it must be for Newbie X who really wants to edit Article Y only to find it's been protected due to the edit-warring of a bunch of jerks? Besides this, blocking the jerks for their disruption if they've done it before/should know better, seems positively enlightened, even if they haven't violated 3RR. Moreschi ^{Want some help? Ask!} 18:37, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

"Reversion wars between competing individuals are contrary to Wikipedia's core principles, reflect badly on both participants, and often result in blocks being implemented due to violations of the three revert rule." This is what the official edit-warring guidelines say. Dmcdevit's thoughts are interesting, respectable and his interest in fighting edit-warring is laudable. But no user's thoughts can replace official Wikipedia guidelines without prior consensus of the Wikipedia community. Do we have until now such a consensus? My answer is no, because this discussion hasn't yet opened (why not?).

My friends, the meaning of the above two lines I quote looks to me clear: Blocks of edit-warring are implemented due to violations of the three revert rule. Where is it mentioned that with 1 or 2 reverts we can implement blocks? Nowhere! Do we want to change the current rules? Let's do it, but we do not have the right to implement rules we like but which are not yet officially approved by the Wikipedia community.

I will be straightforward here: I agree with George, and, though I laud Dmcevit's efforts, I regard his proposals concerning blockings for edit-warring as potentially dangerous, and not in accord with the current Wikipedia's policies concerning edit-warning and 3R rules. Maybe that is because I am a jurist, but I strongly believe that personal thoughts and unofficial IRC or user talk discussions cannot replace official Wikipedia's policies and guidelines.

As a conclusion, I would say that, under the current Wikipedia policies, the only case I would accept a block for edit-warring without implementation of the 3R rule is when:

1)Edit-warring is extended in an article,

2)The edit-warring users have been warned,

3)The issue has been brought by the blockng adm to ANI, and broad consensus between the sysops has been reached. Unofficial discussion between some sysops in a sysop's userpage is not enough.

In any other case, I regard blocks without violation of the 3R rule as potentially arbitrary and unilateral actions. George, I believe that blocks are not necessarily evil, but when implemented, they should be in harmony with Wikipedia's guidelines.--Yannismarou 19:08, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Good summary. I agree with Yannis' sentiment. Incidentally, I've been known to have experimented with such measures in some notorious hotspot articles myself ([56], [57]). Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:36, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, when commenting, I had also that in mind.--Yannismarou 19:37, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I would like to add an important consideration: The fact that the administration of WP is in danger of losing its credibility with such methods. A user may be blocked out of the blue for following the rules. It is inconsistent, it allows for administrative abuse, it may result in POV-pushing if not excercised by God himself, and most of all, it makes users not trust the system. We may agree on 2RR, on 1RR or whatever, but there has to be a non-subjective limit. We could also have different RR levels per article, depending on the controversy, but still, a user must know in advance where their rights start and where they end. So must an admin. NikoSilver 20:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

All admin actions, if considered abusive, may be taken to Wikipedia:Request for arbitration, SqueakBox 01:15, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

People arguing that you're not allowed to block after 2 reverts, missed the part where it says that our previous edit warring guideline was never repealed, and still applies. The three revert rule is a special case, where after 3 reverts, you (almost) always get blocked for edit warring. But 3RR does not define what an edit war is. If you are edit warring in some other way, you can still be blocked. --Kim Bruning 01:27, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Blocking policy specifically lists "excessive reverting (edit warring)" as a seperate class of disruption from 3RR. It also states that the classes of disruption which it lists are not exhaustive. To quote: "Blocks for disruption should only be placed when a user is in some way making it difficult for others to contribute to Wikipedia." That definition covers a much wider range of behaviour than 3RR, which is virtually useless against a troll who knows the system. Physchim62 (talk) 01:37, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

WP:3RR says explicitly that it is not an entitlement, and that edit warring is blockable no matter what. This is not a dispute about interpretation of the policy like people seem to think, it's a dispute about what the policy says. This discussion should be taking place on WT:3RR. -Amarkov moo! 05:01, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

For me:-

• Wikipedia:Three revert rule applies if you are discussing it on the talk page, that you can't revert four times in 24 hours (with the obvious exceptions)

  Wikipedia:Edit warring applies if you are just blind reverting with no discussion on the talk page (again, exceptions allowing), and in turn are being disruptive.

Talking and reverting is slightly less disruptive, because it gives everyone a chance to give their input in finding a solution. As quoted above, "Blocks for disruption should only be placed when a user is in some way making it difficult for others to contribute to Wikipedia" - I think that this forms the distinction between the two guidelines/policies, and the two situations.

Just the thoughts from a raving lunatic. Daniel Bryant 03:37, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• Blocking is evil. Before anyone reaches for the block button, reach for the "edit this page" button on the user's talk page. Blocking is not going to make things better. It can stop a disruption temporarily (unless you're doing indefinite blocks). It cannot make peace. Words, on the other hand, can help. If there is an edit war, talk and tell each side that it is better to have a blank than to have a hole in the paper from constant erasure. Blocking is not a quick action, and how anyone is convinced that fast use is going to help baffles me. (Obvious exceptions, etc. I quickly block "doodoo" vandals, etc. We're talking about something else altogether.) Geogre 11:51, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Who is talking about fast blocks? I (and you mentioned my name) am talking about blocks for persistent edit warriors, who continue despite gentle instruction, warnings, protections, and prior blocks. Your characterization of short blocks is much the same as mine; they don't really, and aren't intended to, solve the problem. I've also said communication is key (it's the first solution listed). So I'm not sure who you're actually arguing against, if it's not a strawman. "Blocks are evil" is simplitic and unhelpful. Dmcdevit·t 15:38, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Geogre. Dmcdevits idea specifically applies to pages and people who are persistently edit-warring, and where all else has failed. It does not apply to every single corner of the wiki, nor should it. When you read it in that context, it makes rather more sense. :-) --Kim Bruning 16:06, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure where to turn for help. It is partly about dispute of content. It is partly about 3RR. It is partly about reverts without regard to discussion requests. It is partly about another contributor knowing many more rules and being able to use them to her advantage.

I was told by one of the senior editors? administrators? to post here and someone would contact me to assist.

Unfortunately, it may also fall into the referee category.

I believe that another contributor is abusing wiki to inject wiki-legal references, and inserting subtle additional wording. It is on a much broader scale than one single article.

The other editor has been involved in numerous edit disputes as well as mediation with other users.

I do not understand wiki well enough to be able to cite the correct rules which are being abused, nor do I know where to turn when I see the abuse.

Based on the Opening requirements (above) I'm sure this is not the place to post, but it is where I was sent.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Lsi john 00:39, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• Hi John. Isn't this being handled by MEDCAB right now? - Alison^☺ 00:45, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Hello Alison. There is an open MEDCAB case. The other party has declared that she expects nothing to be gained and the case appears to have been seriously limited in scope. I suspect that I provided so much documentation and verbiage that the mediator is overwhelmed.

My request for assistance here is for assistance with the technical rules of wiki. She uses those rules to hinder attempts to remove bias from her articles and without knowing the all the rules and decisions, I am unable to successfully remove the bias that I (and others) see in the articles.

Per above, this isn't the place to discuss it all. I just know from reading the wording across the entire series of articles, that wiki is being abused and used to target companies unjustly. I'm trying to find out how wiki works. I'm trying to find out what rules she is violating and how to stop it. And, ultimately, I'm trying to find out if wiki is worth the effort that it is taking to stop what I see is insanity. Lsi john 01:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I took the initiative of posting this on the WP:ASSIST request page. Anchoress 01:57, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• Here is the MedCab page for this: Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2007-04-10 Large Group Awareness Training. Initially requested by User:Alison and User:Seraphimblade. The mediator is User:RogueNinja, who has been very fair and doing a great job of staying neutral and analyzing the information and citations. Smee 07:32, 19 April 2007 (UTC).

88.198.107.250 is an IP address that was recently banned; while it's a public IP (actually a metropipe anonymizer proxy), it is pretty much entirely used for vandalism, whether by one person or by many (about 2 edits out of every 50 are not reverted). As such, after an escalation of warnings and repeated bans, it was blocked for 2 months during a vandalism spree the other day (about 20 pages in 15 minutes, that they happened to start with a page I Watch, so I saw it and was cleaning up after them while they were about 5 pages ahead of me).

Anyway, there is a person there now who claims to have been about to do a perfectly normal edit. I'm not sure what the likelihood of the person who 'really' uses Wikipedia properly from that IP happening to just show up a few hours after the block, 6 weeks after the last time they showed, but they're being reasonable, so I've spoken with them. However, they have started asking questions akin to, 'couldn't the admins just...' and I'm not knowledgeable enough in wiki administrivia to know what the options are. If an admin could pick up this conversation with them, I would be glad. Thanks.-Thespian 06:28, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

If I were an admin, and I saw this, I would probably do the following:

1. Inform the user that you will give him one chance to create an account. Give him about 2 minutes from when you leave the message, at a time when this user is, in fact, likely to be there to deal with it.
2. Replace the block with an anon-only, account creation not blocked, block for 3 minutes.
3. At the end of the 3 minutes, set a new anon-only, account creation blocked, block on the IP address until the end of the duration of the original block.
4. Leave appropriate reasons for the block/unblock actions described above, so that any other user will see your reason for this action.
5. Inform the blocking admin of this action on their talk page.

Od Mishehu 07:23, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Why is this IP address allowed, since it's apparently masking people's real IP address? Natalie 13:01, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Blocked indefinitely. Editing from open proxies is prohibited. Thatcher131 13:23, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

What's going on? --Dweller 10:07, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• Seems to be alternating between being deleted and being vandalized. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 10:10, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

When I look at the history, it just has about ten edits, all vandalism. Karrmann 10:13, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• I am guessing that there is something wrong with the cascading protection? --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 10:17, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Among all the welter of vandalism, please will an admin single out for attention the registered user who posted "Niggermayor" on the main page. --Dweller 10:13, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

10:09, 19 April 2007 Nphase (Talk | contribs) (←Created page with 'Niggermayor.') --Dweller 10:15, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

It looks like Robdurbar (talk • contribs • blocks • protects • deletions • moves) has unprotected it, but he seems to have been desysopped now. Conscious 10:19, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

He unprotected Cheese too just before that. That's the only move that was not reverted. -- lucasbfr ^talk 10:30, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Now protected by Freakofnurture. Conscious 10:32, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Longer thread at WP:ANI#Robdurbar. Carcharoth 10:48, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Image:Jpiccolominismall.JPG is on the main page and unprotected. --Selket ^Talk 16:56, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

no it's not, never mind. --Selket ^Talk 16:57, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Can someone please unprotect South America? It was protected as a result of edit-warring over undue notation regarding it being more than a continent -- more editors apparently prefer one version over another (which is not the version currently in place) and the dissenting editor has not addressed key issues ... and whose continual reversion led to its protection and his block. Discussions have otherwise been moribund. Thanks. Corticopia 17:02, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Done. Femto 18:18, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

How are the deletions at Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship/Danny justified?

• User:Newyorkbrad 2007-04-17 01:53 [58]
• User:Sean William 2007-04-16 22:33 [59]
• User:Tony Sidaway 2007-04-16 12:40 [60]
• User:Newyorkbrad 2007-04-14 23:45 [61]
• User:Tony Sidaway 2007-04-13 18:43 [62]

02:08, 17 April 2007 (UTC) something wrong with my signature. re-sign Tobias Conradi (Talk) 02:23, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

In the edit summaries, if you so wish to read them. —²¹⁰physicq (c) 02:38, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Tobias, you're beating a patch of ground which was previously occupied by a dead horse. The RFA is over. Can we let it go? // Sean William (PTO) 02:42, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

In the thread in question, you described having called someone at his workplace without suggesting any purpose of legitimate communication. As such, the call presumptively constituted harassment, and it was inappropriate to publicize it further. I suggest, for the fourth time, that you drop this matter. Newyorkbrad 02:55, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I called the office, which publicises a phone number on the net. I did not call Danny directly. I talked with a woman and Danny rushed in taking over the phone. Then he shouted, and hang up. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 17:49, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

He rushed to grab the phone so he could tell you he couldn't speak English?? Newyorkbrad 17:54, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

No. That was in another call. He took up the phone and said somethig in hebrew. I asked whether he could speak in English, he replied "Lo". Well, as far as my hebrew goes this means "no". When he said "No ingles" I replied in spanish, because spanish is fine with me. He connected me with someone else but no real talk happend. I do not remember the order, but in one call he took up the phone and whistled. The rushing was before. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 18:19, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Its time to reign in Tobias - see Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/User:Tobias_Conradi. ShivaIdol 06:54, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I hate to say it, but perhaps a community sanction discussion is in order at the appropriate page. This just gets worse and worse and shows no sign of improving. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:58, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I think we only need that admins respect the written policies. My page is deleted and this deletion does not even show in the deletion logs. Censorship. Why are you all afraid of true and verifiable facts about yourself? Some people have a very different culture to that of truthfullness and harmony. They run around beat people. If the beaten record this, they delete it. And beat again. They invade Iraq. They kill the Indians. The aboriginans. The Africans. The Arabs. The Jews. They spread lies about weapons of massdestruction. They lie half the day. But the world goes on. There are allways people lieing and hiding truth. And deleting. And throwing bombs. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 18:20, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I actually wasn't sure about the speedy deletion, but with your last comments you have lost me extremely completely. Newyorkbrad 18:21, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

With that last comment, I think it's now come time for a community sanction. Harassing admins over the phone. Constantly ignoring community consensus. Making clear attacks against Americans in order to imply that any American admins cannot be objective. Part Deux 18:28, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

What does your comment, "Some people have a very different culture to that of truthfullness and harmony. They run around beat people. (....) But the world goes on. There are allways people lieing and hiding truth. And deleting. And throwing bombs.", refer to, Tobias Conradi? --Iamunknown 18:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Please see WP:CSN, where potential community sanctions for Tobias are being discussed. Moreschi ^{Want some help? Ask!} 19:16, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

In amongst the Godwin's Law-esque comparisons to genocides and wars, there is 1 valid point that is exceedingly well hidden, there. Today's deletion of User:Tobias Conradi is not recorded in Special:Log/delete. I've noticed this occurring from time to time myself, and assumed an occasional database problem of some sort causing records not to be appended to the log. However, this incident prompts me to ask: Have other administrators also noticed their deletions not showing up in the deletion log? If this is a problem that is more frequent overall than we as individuals might realize, it is probably worth drawing a developer's attention to it. Uncle G 18:38, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

As far as I've noted and understood, this is usually related to database replication and the missing entries usually turn up in a few days at most. Same thing that happens with articles in laggy times, though at lesser extent. If the entries are permanently lost, that's definitely a bug that needs to be fixed though. As far as developer attention goes, well, um, it might help if Wikipedia ran on something else than MySQL. (Okay, wishful thinking =) Distributed operations usually introduce weirdnesses like this and there's not that much people can do to get around this. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 13:54, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Someone placed a block yesterday, and it didn't show up, yet the AIVHelperBot removed it from the page and when I went to block the user (seeing no entry in the block log), I got the "already blocked" error message. This may be totally unrelated, but just putting it out there. The block log in question is here, and AIV removal here. Daniel Bryant 03:40, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Yup, and it's pretty incongruent that right now, the log for the page says deletion and two restorations in that order, yet the page itself doesn't exist at all - it's an easily identifiable case of an obviously incomplete log. If this escalates into an ArbCom case, as it seems right now, this is obviously going to be a key point of discussions. =) And as a side note: if this is a shadowy conspiracy thing, the conspirators obviously did profoundly sloppy job since the revisions still show up in Special:Undelete. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 19:42, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Seeing as subpages of Tobias Conradi have been deleted because of soapboxing issues before, I've decided to speedy delete this page. If anyone wants to help him restore non-controversial material feel free to do so. - Mgm|(talk) 12:25, 17 April 2007 (UTC) [63]

--- no policy for this action is cited. The deletion was proposed 2007-04-17 06:39 by User:ShivaIdol.

The deletion log does not show when this deletion was carried out. [64]

As of now it only shows:

• 05:22, 13 October 2006 Robth (Talk | contribs) restored "User:Tobias Conradi" (229 revisions restored: finish undeleting accidentally deleted page)
• 05:17, 13 October 2006 Robth (Talk | contribs) restored "User:Tobias Conradi" (1 revisions restored: oops--wrong page)
• 05:16, 13 October 2006 Robth (Talk | contribs) deleted "User:Tobias Conradi" (To undelete non-copyvio revisions)

A clique of admins tries to delete any evidence of their admin right abuses. Collections of such evidences are deleted. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 18:08, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

admins cant delete the proof of admin actions, check the logs they cant be deleted. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 18:17, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

sorry this is false. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 18:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

What direct evidence, such as code in the MediaWiki software or a relevant page at http://www.mediawiki.org/, suggests that this is false? --Iamunknown 18:35, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

There is no log entry for this deletion. I would recommend contacting a developer on WP:VPT. Naconkantari 18:40, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

It may have been the oversight function. [65] You can also google for it. wikitruth has articles related to it. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 20:09, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Or if you want a more balanced view, Wikipedia:Oversight has information. Veinor ^{(talk to me)} 20:13, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

(ec) Before arbitrarily suggesting that an entire class of users are willfully removing log details, please try asking them first. You can find them here. --Iamunknown 20:15, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Tobias Conradi, please will you approach MacGyverMagic (talk · contribs) before you come here? Or at least notify MacGyverMagic that you have raised an issue here? It is generally courteous to do so. --Iamunknown 18:21, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Allow me to chime in here a little bit: If this is a shadowy evil admin cabal conspiracy, what good does the deletion of a log entry do? For non-admin users, it's apparent that something is obviously amiss: The page has deletion log entries that say the page was restored'. And if any admin - not just the shadowy evil admin cabal members, but also the high-strung goody-shoedy-boy types - hit Special:Undelete, they see the entire article history, and can restore the whole mess with simple, easy wrist action. (At least in theory. I'm not trying it - it could be that I could restore and re-delete the user page just to test the veracity of this theory, but it's possible that the Cabal has rigged the MediaWiki code with deadly explosives. Unlikely, yes, but possible.) This conspiracy has more holes in it than the Apollo hoax, and not just because the Moon is not made of cheese. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 19:52, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Regardless of notability, what's the usual course of action here? Presumably articles on en-Wiki have to have titles composed of Latin alphabet characters? I'd move it, but I'm not sure what to move it to (Emmaus plague outbreak?) EliminatorJR ^Talk 01:25, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Moved to Plague of Emmaus by Raul654. —Quarl ^(talk) 2007-04-19 02:35Z

• The answer to the question is "Yes." Wikipedia does not host non-Latin articles, and "untranslated foreign language" is a reason for deletion, both. If the article is in English but merely has a non-Latin title, do as Raul did. If the article itself is in a foreign language, tag it. If it's tagged for a good long time and remains in non-English, it can be tagged for speedy deletion. Geogre 11:37, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Someone should also add the non-Latin name into the article. I would, but I don't know what the language is! Is that an Arabic script? Carcharoth 02:05, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I've added a reference, categories, a redirect from Plague of Amwas, and a little bit more information. Looks quite interesting. I know this is the admins noticeboard, but anyone want to take this article and run with it? It still needs something saying what language that name is. Carcharoth 02:49, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Anyone know Arabic? I think this is the Arab Wikipedia page for Emmaus. This is definitely their plague article (nice pic of Yersinia pestis). Oh, someone's put a resolved tag on this section. I'll toddle off to WP:RD instead. (That Arabic font actually seems to be telling my keyboard it is a right-to-left script, as my delete and backspace key functions have swapped round! Try it yourself.) Carcharoth 05:14, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Please attend. --Dweller 16:25, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

* Um, thirteen reports, folks. Please help out. --Iamunknown 19:46, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

All clear now, thanks. :-) --Iamunknown 20:01, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Please see Talk:List of best-selling albums (UK) regarding the need to undelete the page per permission granted in OTRS to display the top 5 albums and singles. MECU≈talk 16:29, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• Someone with OTRS viewing privs will need to check this [66] - Alison^☺ 18:48, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I just closed Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Template:Uw-warn, which really should have been a TFD. In fact, it was substed on the appropriate TFD date subpage. I decided to close it using the {{Tfd top}} and {{Tfd bottom}}, since it is a debate for a template, but which debate archive template should I use? If I use the TFD one, it will take the user to a transcluded version of the page, while the MFD one will take them directly to the page. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 18:41, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Pretty long- thanks in advance. GDonato (talk) 19:50, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• yay~ all clear. --Iamunknown 20:02, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Could an Administrator remove my RfA? Thanks! --Trumpetband 22:08, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Change your acceptance statement to a withdrawal, then I can get it for you.--Wizardman 22:11, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Done. I linked to a diff of this request so it can be easily confirmed. WjBscribe 22:19, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Great, thanks for the help! --Trumpetband 22:24, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Moving this to the Brandt thread. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 23:00, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

But still worth noticing, in either place. -- Ben ^TALK/_HIST 00:01, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Are there any admins watching over this? I'd be happy to take it on, but I can't close the current discussion because I started it. -- Samuel Wantman 00:58, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Done. (You only have to be an established user to do this). MER-C 03:03, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Help, please. NawlinWiki 01:04, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm on it, this is disturbing. Darthgriz⁹⁸ 01:06, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I see progress is being made. Please note that one of the entries is a Category that I tagged G4 over 13 hours ago. (not complaining, I just didn't know if admins paid notice to the categories in there) --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 03:13, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Pssh- I found an image two weeks ago that had been in there since early January. :-P --Iamunknown 03:20, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

At the moment, there are numerous articles linked from Virginia Tech massacre, primarily of the victims, that are up for AfD. I realise this anarchic process is the way Wikipedia works, and that at some point in the future things will have settled down and articles will be deleted and/or merged, but with an incident like this that has massive worldwide publicity, is there not a more dignified way to proceed? At the moment, readers will be following links to articles and getting the large banner "THIS ARTICLE IS BEING CONSIDERED FOR DELETION" at the top of the articles. I count 6 AfD nominations related to the massacre, several of which have been speedily closed, but still, is there not a more dignified way to handle this. It is predicatable that an event like this would lead to the same old arguments over the same old things. A centralised discussion for each event would be best, and speedy closing of nominations until consensus is reached at the main disucssion. Carcharoth 13:19, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Specifically: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ryan C. Clark, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of victims of the Virginia Tech massacre, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/G. V. Loganathan, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Liviu Librescu, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Emily J. Hilscher. Carcharoth 13:26, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

And a seventh one, tangentially related: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Centerville, virginia. I may have missed one or two. Carcharoth 13:26, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

If this is a significant concern, then frankly I would speedy them all under IAR and redirect to the main article. The notability rule is "multiple nontrivial sources"; other than , "he was a witness"/"she was a victim" we are not likely to have independent sources for the rest of their lives, and an article that says "he was a witness"/"she was a victim" has undue weight problems. (There may be some specific exceptions, like Liviu Librescu.) Wikipedia is not Wikinews, and whether these people deserve separate articles will not really be known for some time. Alternatively, speedy close all the AfDs as keep to get rid of the notices, and revisit them in a couple of weeks. Thatcher131 14:35, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

FWIW (& writing a few days after this comment), to turn an article into a redirect does not need the backing of IAR; we make numerous articles into redirect every day, in order to merge information or delete duplicate articles. I think that rationale is better than quoting the sometimes controversial & (IMHO) overused IAR. -- llywrch 17:38, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

It is not the ultimate outcome I'm concerned about, more the need to prevent articles and groups of articles taking up time with the same arguments that are repeated ad nauseum each time some big news current event takes place. On the other hand, maybe it is a good way for less experienced editors to be drawn into, and to gain experience of, the way Wikipedia works. Hmm. I think the real problem is the obtrusiveness of the AfD banners at the top of an article. I wonder if there would be any stomach for a "toned down" version, to put on high-traffic articles? Carcharoth 16:16, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Be bold on these before the nomination and merge into a single article. Administrators seeing these on speedy could consider the situation and be proactive and merge rather then speedy. The problem here is with those that wind up on a full AfD. Don't know if there is an easy way to shortcut that into a merge. Actually, I guess users could merge the contents into the maion articles for each individual even if it is in speedy. I'd like someone to confirm that though. Vegaswikian 17:27, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Unless the victims are in some way notable in their own right (Weren't a couple professors killed? They might be.) then they are notable only in the context of the main event and belong solely on that page. Wasn't there going to be a wikimemorial site for Sept. 11th victims? maybe expand that to include all memorials. -M^ask? 22:30, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Some of the articles are controversial, and needs a admin to take a closer look at it. AQu01rius (User &#149; Talk) 17:35, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

• We may have to wait until things have settled down. Already Virginia Tech massacre page has had around 5000 or more edits, and it is still being edited more than once a minute. Also, I know that Wikipedia is not a memorial book, but in these emotive circumstances it might be best to wait a few days before proceeding on such deletes. Anthony Appleyard 22:28, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

For future reference, a quieter and more dignified way of dealing with articles that sprout out like this is to merge any non-trivial material and link back. It's nearly always a mistake to delete an article that sprouts out of another like this (the exception being forks to evade Neutral point of view). --Tony Sidaway 22:36, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

The sub-article process began with the creation of Cho Seung-hui, and that was possibly a mistake, but once it was created the others came inevitably from that, IMIO, SqueakBox 22:40, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Nothing could be further from the truth, Cho's article was actually the last of the subarticles to be created. For a time, every victim with more information than "was killed at VT" was getting their own article, chronicling their otherwise unencyclopedic lives. (No offense, but were it not for the "they were killed in the VT massacre", it would have looked like nothing more than a yearbook bio) The Cho article was the second (after Liviu Librescu) subarticle that actually made sense. --Golbez 01:38, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

This matter would be better delt with at the village pump.Geni 00:34, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Has the wiki-memorial gone away? I recall our having one. If it hasn't gone away, then the polite and dignified way is probably for an administrator to put a template on indicating that the article is going to be moved to the wiki-memorial and deleted from main space. That lets the grieving know that we don't hate them, but we are protecting the encyclopedia. To say that this has come up before is an understatement. When I began at Wikipedia, we were dealing with continual 9/11 memorial pages being written. As emotional as the VT shootings are, 9/11 was at least as bad in terms of mass emotional effect on the world. Geogre 11:43, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

It used to be at http://sep11.wikipedia.org/, now is at http://sep11memories.org/wiki/In_Memoriam Tizio 12:12, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Admins will want to keep an eye on Richard McBeef and Mr. Brownstone (screenplay), which are current redirects, the former of which is semi-protected. See also User talk:NawlinWiki#Richard McBeef. – Chacor (RIP 32@VT) 12:38, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

And it continues:

• Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Virginia Tech massacre
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Michael Sneed (article now at Inaccurate media reports of the Virginia Tech massacre)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Michael Sneed's rumor (related to the above)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Virginia Tech massacre timeline
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jamal Albarghouti
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wayne Chiang
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kevin Sterne
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Virginia Tech massacre (inevitable, I suppose)

And if that was not enough, the "list of victims" group of articles for different massacres (Whitman and Columbine at last count) have been thrown under the spotlight by this, and are each undergoing seperate AfDs. Haven't people heard of umbrella nominations? Actually, haven't people heard of being bold and merging and redirecting instead of nearly 20 different AfD discussions. Don't people ever discuss things on talk pages before dragging things to AfD? Carcharoth 22:49, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• Brokendownsubaruoutback (talk · contribs) was the account that was blocked. Uncle G 14:18, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems likely that after a major news event there will be a tremendous amount of activity at Wikipedia. This is a good thing, and we should keep WP:BITE in mind. Rather than try to clean things up at the start, why not let things take their course, and then clean it all up after the interest has died down. Looking over the AFDs there are hundreds of comments both pro and con. There's no need to start arguments after a few days. We can wait a few weeks. There's no real harm in waiting before nominating an article for merging or deleting. The harm in not waiting is that newcomers will be put off, and many are likely to react emotionally. After all, having some articles about some non-notable people who were just murdered will not harm the project. Trying to clean this up now is like trying to clean up a rowdy party before it is over. If you do that, you are just sending a message that you want your guests to leave. -- Samuel Wantman 01:29, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Though the corollary to that is that this is an important part of the learning process for new, and even moderately experienced Wikipedians... It's been a long time now (well, it seems a long time), but I do vaguely remember something similar (though not on the same scale) for July 2005 London bombings. I first really got involved with Wikipedia on the back of the activity around that article, well, that and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, but I can't remember whether AfD was involved to the same extent. Some of the AfDs I have pointed out are quite correct and appropriate, and some, as Sam says, could have waited. I suppose the larger Wikipedia gets, the more likely it is that high-traffic, new articles, sprouting numerous subarticles and related articles, will generate a lot of AfD activity. There are clearly pros and cons, and I suspect that getting the balance right requires experienced editors to be bold and carry out obvious merges before someone less experienced jumps in with an AfD, and for admins to speedy close obvious AfDs, and for a few AfDs to go ahead anyway to demonstrate the process in a high profile way for lots of new editors (and readers). Carcharoth 02:03, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I've been through this process several times before. During the July 2005 London bombings I spent a lot of time over several days keeping the Wikinews coverage in shape, for example. During the Jamie Kane (AfD discussion) controversy I boldly rewrote an article in an exceedingly high profile AFD discussion and even got some mentions elsewhere for doing so. (I've just done the same sort of bold rewrite at Michael Sneed (AfD discussion), as a matter of fact, as well as speedily closing Michael Sneed's rumor (AfD discussion), and I've been sitting on Michael Sneed and Chicago Sun-Times to help ensure that the soapboxing, attacks, and original research are removed.) As I said at Talk:Virginia Tech massacre in response to a comment about putting our best foot forward: I think that the fact that people can see our merger and deletion discussions underway, and see that experienced Wikipedians treat them calmly and civilly and in accordance with our policies and guidelines, aim for neutrality, verifiability, and elimination of original research, are careful about biographies of living people, and act to eliminate mis-uses of Wikipedia for attacks and soapboxing, is putting our best foot forward. Uncle G 14:18, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Well said. Experienced Wikipedians just need to be as bold as you are being, while still managing to explain things to those that haven't quite got the hang of the policies yet. What I hate seeing is the same arguments dragging on over nearly 20 different AfD discussions, and no-one stepping in to boldly close the discussions. And jumping in with merges, rewrites and redirects before someone starts an AfD, is still the best option of the lot. I just wish there was more latitude sometimes to redirect and merge while an AfD was in progress. Sometimes it is so obvious what the best course of action is, that just demonstrating it says more than a thousand AfD votes. Carcharoth 16:46, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

A relatively new user with good intentions recently attempted to move COSI to COSI Columbus via cut ([67] [68] [69]) and paste rather than the normal page move function. Can an administrator un-do these changes and put things back to the way they were before? I went ahead and left a note [70] on the user's page regarding this issue, including a link to the WP:MOVE help page. --Kralizec! (talk) 04:14, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

• COSI Columbus had not been edited since the cut-and-paste, so I deleted it, and reverted COSI to as before the move, and started again with making the new disambig stuff needed caused by COSI Toledo appearing. I found that Talk:COSI had been cut-and-pasted also, and tidied after that. Then I moved COSI to COSI Columbus the usual way. Plain COSI is now a disambig page between various meanings of "COSI" and "Cosi". Anthony Appleyard 08:56, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your speedy help! --Kralizec! (talk) 12:32, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

For those who are not willing to clear out the three day backlog of proposed deletions, the 450 or so speedies or the various image backlogs I have about 400 broken redirects for you to delete. MER-C 06:15, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

• Many of those broken redirect pages are user pages and user talk pages. Many of those user pages and user talk pages (according to their page histories) are broken redirects created by page moves and someone later deleted the moved file. Some of them have a history before they were made into redirects, and some not; sometimes that history includes messages. Some of them are of the type User:xxxxx/yyyy/zzzz, being "scratch paper" left over from user xxxx working on a page zzzz, and it was later made into a redirect which is now broken. Please recommend what should be done with them. Anthony Appleyard 13:33, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

User:Pro Game Master87 lists the full names and dates of births of a whole bunch of kids in his family - I'm guessing that this is not OK, and needs an admin to delete and then to delete the userpage history? 86.152.203.212 08:37, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I've deleted the page and restored it without personal details of minors. I don't have time to leave a message on his talk page, sorry. alphachimp 09:00, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I left a message on his talk page to explain what you'd done. Will (aka Wimt) 09:15, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I believe the autoblock locating tool is not finding autoblocks after about 2007-04-18. Could someone please check and kick it if necessary? Thanks. --Yamla 16:59, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Should be sorted now, looks like the autostart when the toolserver gets rebooted didn't work properly. --pgk 17:11, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Is it inherently a conflict of interest to relist an AFD and comment in it? Please discuss at WT:AFD#Relisting and conflict of interest. —Quarl ^(talk) 01:07, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

We do not permit open proxies to edit Wikipedia articles, as per WP:PROXY. What about an open wireless connection? That is, someone has set up a wireless access point and has specifically left it open for anyone to use. Additionally, this access point has specifically been used by a blocked vandal who has been known to create sockpuppets. Can this be blocked under the no-open-proxies or does this not count as an open proxy? If it doesn't count, am I correct in saying it should be blocked anyway as a source of vandalism, though in this case the block would be anon-only? --Yamla 01:54, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

The thing would be proving that it's an open access point. How would that work? Users have tried to intentionally get dynamic IPs blocked in the past; we can't just toss blocks out willy nilly. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 01:58, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

A person who contacted me when I refused the initial unblock states that it is an open access point. It's already blocked because it was used as a sockfarm, I'm just wondering if I can deny an unblock under no-open-proxies. --Yamla 02:00, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Is that the Starbucks WiFi hotspot thing? One IP that serves 8000 hotspots? Thatcher131 02:02, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

No, though the principle would be the same I would imagine. This particular one seems to serve one sockpuppeteer and a small number (somewhere between 0 and, say, 8, but much much closer to 0) people who aren't sockpuppeteers. --Yamla 02:06, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

The spirit of Wikipedia:No open proxies is not some abstract moral opposition to misconfigured internet connections, but rather an effort to reduce a significant source of abuse. So your interpretation makes sense to me; this is essentially an open proxy, with the same potential for anonymous abuse. If the connection can't be fixed, advise the efitor to edit through the secure gateway: [71]. Dmcdevit·t 06:15, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

It sounds like it should be treated more similarly to TOR. WP:TOR says it should be softblocked (allow users to edit, don't allow username creation or anon editing). SchmuckyTheCat 03:40, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I think the tor policy needs to be changed to a hard block. Anyone smart enough to install and run tor is smart enough to find an unblocked IP to create a handful of sleeper socks, for later use through tor. This has happened several times recently. Thatcher131 13:02, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree the idea of soft blocking is poor, the blocks aren't so soft. Since the blocking mechanism has a hierachy of blocks to apply, with auto blocks at the bottom, a "soft-blocked" IP address is essentially immune to autoblocks... --pgk 15:17, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

If it has been confirmed through CheckUser that the open access point is being used for abusive purposes, it should be hard blocked outright until the connection has been verifiably secured. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 21:16, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Special:Protectedpages has been updated, and now include many options for sorting and filtering the list, we may be able to use this to help resolve improper or forgotten protections now. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:22, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

• I like. But when can we have namespace filtering back on linksearch, I wonder? Guy (Help!) 15:42, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

  When mom and dad aren't mad at us anymore. Teke 04:24, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Is there anything I can do to help the administrators expand the hieroglyph syntax? I'm getting sick of putting (hieroglyph not found) or saying to myself "I think this is the matching hieroglyph". I'm willing to help out, scan the images or something. Please contact me on my user page if you know how this is possible. The Egyptian articles depend on this :/

KV(Talk) 01:28, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Netsnipe (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) just reverted several of my 31 hour blocks of schools and switched them to 6 month blocks. Ordinarily this type of change wouldn't be a problem, but I just took the time to check Netsnipe's block log. Over the past few weeks, he has blocked many school IPs, many with only 3 or 4 edits, for 6 months. These are IPs with little or no prior block history. Check out the following examples:

• 204.129.152.136 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log), 3 edits total, blocked 6 months
• 206.110.32.5 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log), >50 edits including vandalism reversion, 2 31 hour blocks, blocked 6 months

* 66.194.72.243 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log), >50 edits including fixing grammar errors, no prior blocks, blocked 6 months _{My mistake, linked the wrong IP alphachimp 17:59, 12 April 2007 (UTC)}

You can find many, many more such examples in Netsnipe's blocking log. This matter was discussed in some brevity on my talk page, where I decided to bring it here.

I realize that no consensus exists involving blocking schools. Some administrators believe in only blocking for 15 minutes until the vandalism abates, while others (myself included) increment blocks in a similar fashion as non-shared IPs. This length of block though, seems like a completely unreasonable assumption of bad faith.

That said, I'm willing to start blocking schools for 6 months if the community wants it. Do you? alphachimp 17:26, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

If there has been little or no vandalism at an IP, then 6 months blocks on them are absolutely not appropriate. —Centrx→talk • 17:31, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Personally, before I start blocking schools for a month or longer, I like to see a history of vandalism from the IP. Chances are these are just kids in the library or classroom who had some spare time and decided to vandalize Wikipedia. Its the ones that come back time and again and continue to vandalize that are a problem. I think blocking a school IP (or any IP) for 6 months after only 3 contribs (2 obvious vandalism and 1 could be interpreted as a "test" edit) is a bit much.↔NMajdan•talk 17:32, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Centrx and Nmajdan, and with Alphachimp, who is hardly a soft touch with respect to vandals. Newyorkbrad 17:34, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that duration should be made on a case by case basis and that 6 months for a school IP would be rarely appropriate. I also agree that Netsnipe needs to stop issuing 6 month blocks until we can resolve this. Rklawton 17:41, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

FYI, I've requested that Netsnipe stop until this can be discussed in detail. alphachimp 17:35, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

The fact that Netsnipe would revert your blocks is pretty disturbing. John Reaves (talk) 17:40, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

If Netsnipe "reverted" the blocks in the sense that he replaced the initial block with a longer block, there is nothing per se wrong with that, and it would be the right thing to do if in fact the longer blocks were appropriate for these IPs, which I believe is the sole issue here. It is not uncommon that someone will do a quick vandalism block and then someone else might later find that a longer one is warranted. —Centrx→talk • 17:46, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't really have a major issue with other admins undoing my blocks and placing their own, particularly when they leave a message on my talk page (like Netsnipe did). I freely admit that I block a lot of users every day. There definitely are times when I miss some redeeming or damning characteristic of an IP. In this case, like Centrx said, I'm frustrated by the underlying assumption of bad faith. Rather than wheel warring, I'm bringing the issue here. alphachimp 17:57, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

66.194.72.243 (resnetplp1.seattleu.edu) isn't blocked at all. Are you sure you have the right example there? Anyway, before I issue any schoolblocks, the IP address has to be clearly marked as belonging to a K-12 education institution or district in their WHOIS record or Reverse DNS lookups. Now that we can clearly identify school IPs, apply anon-only blocks and provide a useful blocking reason (i.e. Template:schoolblock) which they see at MediaWiki:Blockedtext, why should we continue accomodate immature kids who continue to conduct drive-by vandalism only because their anonymity and lack of accountability emboldens them to? The vast, vast majority of our vandalism comes from primary and secondary school students. We assume good faith and allow anonymous edit from ISP proxies and DHCP pools because we know that there will always be a mature person somewhere amongst the vandals wishing to contribute to the encyclopedia. However, when it comes to schools, sometimes the vandalism is pooled together into single proxy address which will have a long and extensive edit/block logs and other times spread across a pool of IPs allocated to a school. -- but the aim is the same, to stop kids from workstation-hopping by sending the message that we have zero tolerance for vandalism on Wikipedia. The 24 hour autoblocker just isn't enough when they will return week after week because they know that they can get away with it. With regards to the "wheel warring", what do short blocks stating "Repeated vandalism" and "vandalism" do for WP:AGF if an innocent student happens to come across MediaWiki:Blockedtext? They will not assume good faith at our end and I've seen many an occasion where they post a confused and often angry unblock request on their talk page or email unblock-en-l -- even worse is that in these cases, admins will automatically decline their request to unblock their IP address and tell them to create an account which only wastes their time and/or cause confusion. We can be more helpful in the long run if we politely inform them from the outset that they should get an account in order to differentiate them from the more immature of their classmate. --  Netsnipe  ►  18:10, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

My mistake on that IP. I've striken it from my original post. alphachimp 18:00, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

These are educational institutions and do have useful, mature contributors. While your reasoning applies to an IP that is a long-term source of problems, there is no reason to block an IP for six months when it has one day of vandalism. What you are advocating is a blanket policy of ending anonymous editing from all schools; we have no such policy and we ought not have such a policy. —Centrx→talk • 18:06, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Well it's not like we're actively seeking out school IPs to premptively block. They need to be reported to WP:AIV in the first place. --  Netsnipe  ►  18:08, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

You do claim above that you make sure it is a school IP before you do such a block. While not true hunting, it is hunting within the set of WP:AIV. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 18:12, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Netsnipe has criticised long-term blocks of mine on IP addresses. Anyway, my opinion is that six-month blocks on school IP addresses, provided they are anon-only, are appropriate in cases of repeat vandalism. I believe, for example, that if this is the fifth time that IP address has been blocked, it is appropriate to give it a six month block. Do I believe it appropriate for the very first block on that address? No, probably not. In the end, a great deal of our vandalism comes from school IP addresses and I believe it is reasonable that these people need to create an account in order to edit. Or to do so from outside of their schools. The unblock-en-l mailing list regularly creates accounts for people who don't have access to other IP addresses. --Yamla 18:30, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Since I have not heard from one person agreeing with the 6 month block on the first IP with only 3 contribs, I was bold and went ahead and lessened the block to 12 hours, which is more inline with the blocking policy regarding new IP vandals. If anybody disagrees, feel free to change the block again as it will not offend me.↔NMajdan•talk 18:32, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Students can create an account elsewhere and use it at school. The fact is that these are static IPs that are accessible to a wide range of people. If very little good, and a lot of harm comes from such an IP, I see only benefit from a long anon only block. That being said I think this should only be done after several shorter blocks have failed. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 18:31, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

(double ec) Some school IPs bring nothing but pain, over a long period of time, and sooner or later a 6-month block saves a lot more resources for us than repeatedly noticing, reverting, reporting, and blocking it for 31 hours, a week, or what have you. In those cases, for static IPs that have long histories of egregious abuse, extensive block logs, and very few or no helpful contributions to compensate, I do support long blocks (provided the blocks are anon-only, and we're willing to help those who do need accounts to get them, which AFAIK has generally been the case). In less clear cases, however, I'm not so sure about it -- when I block, I base the duration off the IP's history. Some school IPs have a significant number, or even a majority of helpful edits. Other school IPs are dynamic (universities tend to have ranges, I guess for their labs and dorms). Open to discussion, though. – Luna Santin (talk) 18:35, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree, and if you look at my blocking log you'll see that I'm not hesitant about blocking school IPs with a long term history of vandalism and blocks. Here, however, we're talking about issuing a single 6 month block to IPs with no prior history of blocks (or a tiny history), some of which have legitimate contributions. I'm not trying to downplay the significance of school vandalism, I just think that we should be careful that we aren't pushing out any legitimate contributors (such as the next Nishkid64). That's what assuming good faith is all about. alphachimp 18:39, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. I agree with this 100%. Long blocks on repeat IP vandals is completely appropriate for repeat offenders or especially destructive offenders (such as a high risk template). But the IP in question has not established itself as a repeat vandal. Two vandal edits and one test edit in a 30 minute span is not deserving of a 6 month block.↔NMajdan•talk 18:45, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I tend to think that long, anon only, blocks that stop school vandalism, once shorter blocks have failed, and if there is a history of at least, oh, 2 dozen or so vandal edits, tend to make sense. I support these long blocks if account creation is possible. That said I think a nuanced approach is appropriate, going with a long block as the first thing to do (on this wiki... elsewhere is elsewhere) may not be the best first step. ++Lar: t/c 19:03, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

The question I need to ask is: do we want to keep on playing whack-a-mole for months on end while we wait for vandals to slowly get each workstation in their labs blocked one by one because there will be cases where workstations at certain schools have individually allocated IP addresses for each computer. It's rather unfortunate that currently we have no tool to view how many IPs in an netblock have warnings or current blocks in order to see the bigger picture. I guess I might have to whip something up once I graduate from uni and have some spare time. --  Netsnipe  ►  19:13, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

If a school has a different IP for each computer, then a school block would not make sense. However, I have never heard of a school that does not share 1 or 2 ips. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 19:14, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Here's one example where I recognised a pattern in the IPs after getting fed up playing whack a mole with individual IPs, I emailed the school and they consented to a blanket range block: Southern Hills Middle School: 161.97.219.0/24 --  Netsnipe  ►  19:23, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) I tried a different approach last fall and got positive responses: when I encountered a school IP that had 11 blocks over 12 months I e-mailed the district's IT department. They got back to me promptly and a polite phone conversation followed. They hadn't been aware that a problem existed, took the situation seriously, and liked my suggestion to assign student vandals to improve a Wikipedia article under teacher supervision. I could understand a 6 month block if a school is hostile or unresponsive, but why not be proactive about turning these long term problems into assets? After all, the computers are usually only a few yards away from the bookshelves. Durova^Charge! 19:35, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

The converse is also true. unblock-en-l has been contacted on numberous occasions by school IT administrators after a schoolblock has notified them of the situation. But when you're blocking 2 vandals every minute on WP:AIV, you just don't have time to fire off an email for every case. --  Netsnipe  ►  18:45, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Do schools still have bookshelves? --Mel Etitis (Talk) 19:51, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Just a comment on something netsnipe wrote: "Anyway, before I issue any schoolblocks, the IP address has to be clearly marked as belonging to a K-12 education institution or district in their WHOIS record or Reverse DNS lookups. Now that we can clearly identify school IPs, apply anon-only blocks and provide a useful blocking reason (i.e. Template:schoolblock) which they see at MediaWiki:Blockedtext, why should we continue accomodate immature kids who continue to conduct drive-by vandalism only because their anonymity and lack of accountability emboldens them to?"

This action seems to cater just for USA educational institutions, since there is no indication that other countries' educational institutions would crop up in the checks being made here. of course, speaking for the UK, I have seen many instances of vandalism from UK schools, but the policy as indicated by the quoted material seems quite USA-centric.  DDStretch  (talk) 22:05, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I've placed plenty of long-term blocks on school systems from all over the place during my time, offering an administrator at the school to contact me to have the block removed. None have done so. I've seen, few, if any cases of school's in this country contributing constructively. Long term blocks = not necessarily as bad as an idea as you're all making it out to be. —Pilotguy cleared for takeoff 13:47, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

In reading over the above, I wonder: Perhaps the solution is to set a guideline such as Netsnipe describes, but let's shorten the starter block length from 6 months to 2 months. I can see the POV of how block lengths of hours or even several days can be pretty much a waste of time in these cases. Would everyone find that to be amenable? - jc37 10:35, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes. We desperately need a uniform set of procedures and policies when it comes to identifying and blocking Shared IPs, especially schools. --  Netsnipe  ►  17:28, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

ok, What could be a start would be if you would flesh out the following reasons supporting the idea into something guideline worthy. (I'm collating your comments above - and yes, whack-a-mole made me laugh : )

• Anyway, before I issue any schoolblocks, the IP address has to be clearly marked as belonging to a K-12 education institution or district in their WHOIS record or Reverse DNS lookups. Now that we can clearly identify school IPs, apply anon-only blocks and provide a useful blocking reason (i.e. Template:schoolblock) which they see at MediaWiki:Blockedtext, why should we continue accomodate immature kids who continue to conduct drive-by vandalism only because their anonymity and lack of accountability emboldens them to? The vast, vast majority of our vandalism comes from primary and secondary school students. We assume good faith and allow anonymous edit from ISP proxies and DHCP pools because we know that there will always be a mature person somewhere amongst the vandals wishing to contribute to the encyclopedia. However, when it comes to schools, sometimes the vandalism is pooled together into single proxy address which will have a long and extensive edit/block logs and other times spread across a pool of IPs allocated to a school. -- but the aim is the same, to stop kids from workstation-hopping by sending the message that we have zero tolerance for vandalism on Wikipedia. The 24 hour autoblocker just isn't enough when they will return week after week because they know that they can get away with it. With regards to the "wheel warring", what do short blocks stating "Repeated vandalism" and "vandalism" do for WP:AGF if an innocent student happens to come across MediaWiki:Blockedtext? They will not assume good faith at our end and I've seen many an occasion where they post a confused and often angry unblock request on their talk page or email unblock-en-l -- even worse is that in these cases, admins will automatically decline their request to unblock their IP address and tell them to create an account which only wastes their time and/or cause confusion. We can be more helpful in the long run if we politely inform them from the outset that they should get an account in order to differentiate them from the more immature of their classmate. - User:Netsnipe
• Well it's not like we're actively seeking out school IPs to premptively block. They need to be reported to WP:AIV in the first place. - User:Netsnipe
• Students can create an account elsewhere and use it at school. The fact is that these are static IPs that are accessible to a wide range of people. If very little good, and a lot of harm comes from such an IP, I see only benefit from a long anon only block. That being said I think this should only be done after several shorter blocks have failed. - User:HighInBC
• Some school IPs bring nothing but pain, over a long period of time, and sooner or later a 6-month block saves a lot more resources for us than repeatedly noticing, reverting, reporting, and blocking it for 31 hours, a week, or what have you. In those cases, for static IPs that have long histories of egregious abuse, extensive block logs, and very few or no helpful contributions to compensate, I do support long blocks (provided the blocks are anon-only, and we're willing to help those who do need accounts to get them, which AFAIK has generally been the case). In less clear cases, however, I'm not so sure about it -- when I block, I base the duration off the IP's history. Some school IPs have a significant number, or even a majority of helpful edits. Other school IPs are dynamic (universities tend to have ranges, I guess for their labs and dorms). Open to discussion, though. - User:Luna Santin
• The question I need to ask is: do we want to keep on playing whack-a-mole for months on end while we wait for vandals to slowly get each workstation in their labs blocked one by one because there will be cases where workstations at certain schools have individually allocated IP addresses for each computer. It's rather unfortunate that currently we have no tool to view how many IPs in an netblock have warnings or current blocks in order to see the bigger picture. I guess I might have to whip something up once I graduate from uni and have some spare time. - User:Netsnipe
• Here's one example where I recognised a pattern in the IPs after getting fed up playing whack a mole with individual IPs, I emailed the school and they consented to a blanket range block - User:Netsnipe
• This action seems to cater just for USA educational institutions, since there is no indication that other countries' educational institutions would crop up in the checks being made here. of course, speaking for the UK, I have seen many instances of vandalism from UK schools, but the policy as indicated by the quoted material seems quite USA-centric. - User:ddstretch
• I've placed plenty of long-term blocks on school systems from all over the place during my time, offering an administrator at the school to contact me to have the block removed. None have done so. I've seen, few, if any cases of school's in this country contributing constructively. Long term blocks = not necessarily as bad as an idea as you're all making it out to be. — User:Pilotguy

The main opposition in the discussion above was that 6 months right away seemed to be too long of a block for so few cases of vandalism. Hence my suggestion of 2 months. Though the actual length of block, and the amount of edits "necessary" is obviously discussable. However, from the posts I just pasted above, it would seem that there may be a guideline to be found regarding lengthy blocking in certain situations.

Looking forward to your thoughts/comments. - jc37 10:32, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for taking this on. We do need a guideline in this area. I think a 2-month block would be sufficient in even most bad cases. -Will Beback · † · 10:41, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Still looking forward to thoughts and comments : ) - As I have not been involved in "valdal fighting" besides reverting the occaisional article, and such, I wouldn't know where to begin. I was/am hoping that at least one of those above would offer some thoughts and ideas : ) - jc37 18:55, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Eh, I'm hesitant even on the 2 month idea. Jumping immediately to 2 months really does seem like an assumption of bad faith. To be honest, my guess is that this entire thing will boil down into "the individual admin gets to decide". It's nice to know that leeway exists, but, at the same time, it worries me that we're blocking some good users. alphachimp 15:28, 21 April 2007 (UTC)