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Wikipedia talk:Notability (species)#Proposal to adopt this guideline

(Initiated 83 days ago on 9 August 2024)

Wikipedia talk:Notability (species)#Proposal to adopt this guideline is WP:PROPOSAL for a new WP:SNG. The discussion currently stands at 503 comments from 78 editors or 1.8 tomats of text, so please accept the hot beverage of your choice ☕️ and settle in to read for a while. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:22, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Elon Musk#RfC: Infobox image

(Initiated 55 days ago on 7 September 2024) Survey responses have died down in past couple of weeks. CNC (talk) 02:42, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:International Churches of Christ#RfC: Referring to International Churches of Christ (ICOC) as a cult in the lead

(Initiated 43 days ago on 19 September 2024) Legobot removed the RFC template on 20/10/2024. Discussoin has slowed. Can we please have a independent close. TarnishedPath^talk 23:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Doing... I've read the whole discussion, but this one is complex enough that I need to digest it and reread it later now that I have a clear framing of all the issues in my mind. Ideally, I'll close this sometime this week. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 20:23, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. This issue has been going on in various discussions on the talk page for a while so there is no rush. TarnishedPath^talk 03:26, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Assassin's_Creed_Shadows#RfC:Should_Assassin's_Creed_Shadows_include_the_Re-enactment_flag_controversy_and_Japanese_reaction?

(Initiated 37 days ago on 25 September 2024) Last addition/comment was a week and a half ago (October 4th). As far as I can tell all those involved with previous discussion have responded. Relm (talk) 10:43, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive 194#Notifying_Wikiprojects_and_WP:CANVASS

(Initiated 157 days ago on 28 May 2024) Latest comment: 3 days ago, 79 comments, 37 people in discussion. Closing statement may be helpful for future discussions. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:29, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Doing...— Frostly (talk) 22:35, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Frostly Are you still planning on doing this? Soni (talk) 16:57, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Soni, yes - have drafted close and will post by the end of today. Thanks! — Frostly (talk) 17:56, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I wanted to note that this is taking slightly longer than expected, but it is at the top of my priority and will be completed soon. — Frostly (talk) 05:14, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Frostly Just checking, would you like someone else to help with this? Soni (talk) 07:31, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Frostly: also checking in. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:33, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Voorts and Soni, thanks for the pings! I've unfortunately been in the hospital for the past week but am now feeling better. I apologize for the long delay in putting out the close and appreciate your messages! Best, — Frostly (talk) 03:59, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry to hear that; a week-long hospitalization is not fun. But, I'm glad that you're feeling better. Best, voorts (talk/contributions) 19:06, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ping @Frostly again (I saw you've been editing Commons). Hope your still better, and if you don't feel like doing this one anymore, just let people know. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:02, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Archived. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 13:32, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note here that Frostly has not edited in over a month. Might be best for someone else to close. --Super Goku V (talk) 07:45, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can't touch that cos I !voted, but although that was a productive and thought-provoking discussion, it's not a discussion that has an actionable outcome. I personally feel it can lie in the archives unclosed.—S Marshall T/C 11:36, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't a priority given S Marshall's input, but I'll save it for offline reading. If I have time while I'm in Cuba next week, I'll take a look at it and see if I can't summarize some of the broader points and ideas potentially worth pursuing. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 23:27, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I haven’t accomplished anything on this. I couldn’t find a way to save a readable copy of the discussion to my iPad, and the government of Cuba has disabled the Internet nationwide to suppress news of the ongoing blackout. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 22:46, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Suga#Requested_move_21_October_2024

(Initiated 11 days ago on 21 October 2024) Could an uninvolved editor please close the discussion :) 52-whalien (talk) 06:01, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done by BD2412. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 13:53, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Nasser Hospital mass graves#Merge proposal

(Initiated 192 days ago on 23 April 2024) Opened for more than six months now, no new comments. CarmenEsparzaAmoux (talk) 06:27, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Place new discussions concerning other types of closing requests above this line using a level 3 heading

Proposal to ban JOttawa16 from political articles

JOttawa16 is topic banned from political articles. Number 5 7 10:24, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

User:JOttawa16 has proven not to be able to be neutral when editing political articles. He has created "Decade of Darkness" twice and "Harper Derangement Syndrome" both of which were basically attack articles against liberals. Since the deletion of decade of darkness he attempted to add it to several articles, despite being told not to. It seems to be clear that he cannot edit political articles without being bias. JDDJS (talk) 03:18, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support topic ban. "Harper Derangement Syndrome" was an eye-opener for me because it was such a blatant, even laughably biased attack article, from an editor who has been around long enough to know better. He knows full well about WP:NPOV. But I'd say he's demonstrated most recently that he doesn't really care much about it. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 03:30, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My only other comment is that we'd also need to watch out for more WP:COATRACK articles like "Decade of Darkness," which was ostensibly a military article, even as it was clearly another anti-Liberal Party of Canada attack page, at least when I saw it. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 14:06, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support topic ban. I really can't understand how any user could possibly create such a biased attack article. You don't have to be a long-time user, overly familiar with Wikipedia guidelines and policies, or even particularly knowledgeable about Wikipedia decorum. Common sense would seem to indicate that this kind of disruptive trolling would be unwelcome anywhere. It shows an inability to edit political articles and a complete disdain for NPOV. To me, his behavior with respect to the "Decade of Darkness" is secondary, but it shows how determined he is to use Wikipedia as a soapbox. He seems to see nothing disruptive about his behavior and quotes "the truth" as his justification (see the discussion at the recent AfD). I don't think he's going to change. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 04:57, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support topic ban - Interacting with this user and the many pro-Conservative Party of Canada and anti-Liberal Party of Canada articles he has created and then which had to be deleted, it has become very clear that WP:NOTHERE applies. From his edit history this editor is clearly using Wikipedia as a WP:SOAPBOX to promote his own political agenda and in a very blatant and unsophisticated manner as well. His user talk page has a list of these articles. The Canadian news media has carried stories discussing how the Conservative Party of Canada pays its members to flood forums, news and discussion groups, news site comments and other user-created content websites with pro-party propaganda and the behaviour of this user is consistent with such practices. - Ahunt (talk) 12:58, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment I would like to see your evidence that I'm a paid person of any political party. Otherwise, I suggest you retract your ridiculous statement immediately. JOttawa16 (talk) 22:49, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  - Comment - If you actually read what I actually wrote I didn't say you were a paid political contributor. - Ahunt (talk) 14:06, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Seems reasonable to me. That is quite a blatant attack. -DJSasso (talk) 13:34, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comment While I think it is good to be concise, I also think some evidence should be submitted in the form of diffs/links to support the proposal being sought. Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:18, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- Both Decade of Darkness and Harper Deragment Syndrome have been deleted, so I could not provide links to them. JDDJS (talk) 16:34, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I looked at Harper Deragment Syndrome here, courtesy of google and it doesn't appear to be an attack page. He's writing about what has already been written, in fact, his sources show that it's a neologism covered by more than one source source 1 [ http://princearthurherald.com/en/uncategorized/james-the-harper-derangement-syndrome source 2 ] [ http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/05/24/peter-foster-get-stephen-harper-duffy-affair-has-exposed-a-pandemic-of-harper-derangement-syndrome/ source 3 - and yes this is an opinion , written by a staff writer ] passing mention occurs here where another politician is described as having harper derangment syndrome and finally this one - this one might not be reliable

His first link is broken to be sure , but it's easily fixed or replaced with this one . The article itself says what the sources themselves said, no coatrack, no syn nor any or. Now, I wasn't able to find the second article, but the first article appears to be ok and not an attack. KoshVorlon Angeli i demoni kruzhili nado mnoj 16:25, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

- I disagree with you. Just because it is sourced, does not mean it's not an attack article. He wrote the article as if it was an actual mental illness. If saying that people who disagree with you are mentally ill is not an attack, then what is? JDDJS (talk) 16:34, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  - Are you shitting me? "Harper Derangement Syndrome (HDS) is "a mental illness that affects Canadian supporters of the left-wing New Democratic Party of Canada and Liberal Party of Canada'..." isn't an attack page? It goes on and on like this, in just that tone. As I said at the Afd, yes, "foo derangement syndrome" is a widely used term. Plug in Bush, or Obama or yes, even Trudeau, and you get Ghits. But this article was written as a pure attack page. It wasn't about the term, it was using Wikipedia as a WP:SOAP for the term, in it's most extreme POV way. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 16:59, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Shawn I assure you I'm not. However, just so you know, I'm not a Harper hater, nor a supporter, I hadn't heard of him until this report. Howervr, a description of Harper's Derangment appears here and he didn't quote it word for word. He paraphrased it. Could that description be worded better ? Sure! However, it's not an attack page. KoshVorlon Angeli i demoni kruzhili nado mnoj 19:10, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I won't badger on this point. IMO it could not be more clearly a textbook Wikipedia:Attack page. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:13, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, I don't know what KV is talking about, clearly an attack page. BMK (talk) 00:33, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

When are we going to delete Campaign for "santorum" neologism and War on Women as an attack pages, then?--v/r - T P 00:43, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Never? The lead to the second one begins quite neutrally "War on Women is an expression in United States politics used to describe..." This is not at all what we have here. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 00:49, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"...certain Republican Party policies..." All article start out neutral, at least until they get to the "..is.." or "...used to..." And the Santorum page? Wikipedia should not be writing articles about all the crap that gets created and spread on election years to smear others.--v/r - T P 00:50, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have changed the lead on War on Women to include "perceived" to clarify that it is opinion. As for Campaign for "santorum" neologism, it's well sourced and simply documents the facts that happen. It is very significant. The article is the first result when you google Santorum. JDDJS (talk) 02:04, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't neccessarily have done that. I'd just look at focusing "War on Women" to the feminist movement and remove the political coatracking. Then I'd delete Santorum altogether. Although I very much doubt it'll get deleted, my point is that all it takes is for a well known politician to bash their opponent and all of that politician's supporters to raise the banners and blog about it before the mainstream media reports on it and whatdalyahave - a fully sanctioned attack page. Our policies fully support this.--v/r - T P 02:33, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. It might be useful if an admin could copy these deleted pages to a temporary space so that people can see them. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 19:54, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support topic ban - this is an editor who, alas, seems unable or unwilling to drop the stick regarding the particular point of view that he's been pushing. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 21:38, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support topic ban - per Bushranger et al. BMK (talk) 00:33, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support topic ban HDS was a clear attack on the opposition parties and their supporters. TFD (talk) 01:30, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support block or topic ban Wikipedia is not a political toy for bashing others. It's bad enough when new editors think it is, but when established editors demonstrate clear abuse of this project while knowing better, they need to be removed from areas where they can not display proper judgement.--v/r - T P 01:31, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support topic ban Laurentian consensus seems to be the latest example. The user seems intent to make articles where they can put forward their bias. If you make an article on a term used only by people with your bias, you know that all the "sources" will agree with your bias, and you can pretend that you're just following the sources. This problem can't be dealt with by just AFD'ing each case. Because, the user still gets to put out their bias for as long as the article lasts, and then a new one is created after that. Editing an established article means an instant revert, but that's not possible with new articles, where all the content is bias, and there's no neutral version to revert to. At a minimum, there should be a limit imposed on creating new political articles. --Rob (talk) 17:07, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support topic ban. Seems obvious this editor is not cut out to edit in this area. --John (talk) 17:40, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose This is ridiculous. I have a Masters degree in political science and I love helping my community however possible. I have only ever written non-partisan articles that are well-researched and supported by ample evidence. At the same time as this individual nominated me for a topic ban, he also nominated several of my articles for deletion, clearly as a form of harassment and attempting to silence the truth. This is obviously a violation of WP:PA and WP:HA. JOttawa16 (talk) 22:46, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly oppose, qualified. If the material is reliably sourced, then the wording may need to be changed to make clear that it is a section or article about ideas that are held by particular individuals. The narrower the segment holding them, the narrower the media and public interest, the less space should be given, but no one should be banned from a topic because they wish to report on unsavory perspectives. Specific sets of American attitudes in the South regarding slavery were abhorrent; no one would ever suggest we should not allow coverage of them. If, however, other interested editors provide necessary balance, and Mr Ottawa reverts or wars, then that would change matters. Bottom line, if reputable sources are talking about these subject, however ludicrous or offensive we might find them, it deserves mention here, with space allocated on the basis of the importance and magnitude of the discussion. (We need people to relay—not champion, but relay—reputable reports about Lars von Trier words at Cannes in 2011.) To not allow such perspectives to be voiced, or to slay the messengers (which, at times, will agree with the message, other time not) is a frightening course for Wikipedia. Rather than ever put this forward in the affirmative, I would elevate this. To topic ban for an editor's for choice of material alone is very troubling. There are things that each of us might wish silenced, for unsavoriness, at WP. Don't do it. Silencing dissent is a pernicious temptation. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 05:21, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- The main issue was neutrality in the articles, rather than whether they should have been written. One article for example began, "Harper Derangement Syndrome (HDS) is "a mental illness that affects Canadian supporters of the left-wing New Democratic Party of Canada and Liberal Party of Canada'..." In fact, the "disease" is not listed in the APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. We do not begin the article on Von Trier by saying he is the best director in the world, just because he said so. TFD (talk) 15:19, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- What you're proposing is that it's okay for politicians to use Wikipedia to gain coverage for whatever kind of foul sewage they spew as long as they can get the media to report on it. No need to worry about facts or truth, we're just going to be a gossip blog from henceforth - a reliably sourced gossip blog. The solution isn't to write "the crap stinks" in neutral words, the solution is to not allow the project to be used to bring attention to mudslinging in the first place. The BS that comes out of election years ins't at all notable. New BS will come out 2 - 4 years later that will get just as much "ooo" and "awe". WP:NOTPOLITICALTOOL.--v/r - T P 19:58, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- The problem here, Prof, is that the articles are not written as netural analyses of the subjects. They're written as attack-and-slander POV-pushing pieces, and the editor in question continues doing this, repeatedly, despite having been told in no uncertan terms that it's unacceptable. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 03:42, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support - this is obvious and the editor will get off lightly if this is all that we do. Anyone who can create articles saying the Harper thing is a mental illness is probably shouldn't be here at all, but perhaps this will turn him into an acceptable editor. Dougweller (talk) 20:55, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support topic ban or site ban. I wasn't familiar with any of this, so I read some of the deleted articles, and was appalled. Harper Derangement Syndrome was a no-holds-barred piece of political much-spreading. The sheer dishonesty of it was staggering, claiming that HDS "is a mental illness" without any attempt to offer any evidence of any medical support for the term, let alone evidence of a clinical consensus in support of it. Decade of Darkness did it at least start by acknowledging that it "was a term coined", rather than presenting it as a fact, but it used the term as a coatrack for a highly partisan analysis of Canada's defence budget. In some ways this was worse, because it had better chance of sneaking under the radar. Some of the material might have been have usable in a broad article on military spending in Canada, but this was a blatant POV fork.
The reason that I support a site ban is that an editor who does sort of thing in one topic area is quite capable of doing it elsewhere, and I see no benefit to the community in simply displacing this activity to other topics. JOttawa16 claims above to have a Masters degree in political science, and if it's true that they are educated to that level, then they will know perfectly well that what they have been doing is unacceptable. This is an editor who is clearly WP:NOTHERE, and the project should take an unequivocal stand against editors who abuse Wikipedia's purpose in this way.
However, if there isn't consensus for a full site ban, I will support the proposed topic ban as a lesser but important step. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:00, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
User's edit here[1] shows that he cannot understand consensus. Six votes for deletion (two of them suggesting speedy), two weak keeps (one from an IP) and a keep from the creator. And yet, he can't see the clear consensus for deletion. JDDJS (talk) 06:19, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you TParis I wasn't going to mention the Santorum article, but yes, I agree, it's an attack article and needs to be delted as such. KoshVorlon Angeli i demoni kruzhili nado mnoj 10:54, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't going to mention the Santorum article, but yes, I agree, it's an attack article and needs to be delted as such.

Wrong. Completely wrong. Look at the list of references. The Washington Post, ABC News, Time magazine, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. Routledge, Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, ricksantorum.com, Seattle Post Intelligencer, Chicago Tribune, Fox News, PC Magazine, MSBNC, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The New York Times, ABC News, The Wall Street Journal, .... — goethean 15:10, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

my point is that all it takes is for a well known politician to bash their opponent and all of that politician's supporters to raise the banners and blog about it before the mainstream media reports on it and whatdalyahave - a fully sanctioned attack page. Yes, we know there are sources. Any politician who opens their mouth will get repeated in reliable sources. That's a weakness and loophole in our policy.--v/r - T P 17:36, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Are you replying to me? That may be an issue with the media, but Wikipedia can't fix the media. — goethean 18:09, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I was replying to you, and yes I know. Which is why I don't normally bother arguing the point. But a fix in policy specifically aimed at election years would go a long way toward these 'fully sanctioned attack articles' and the editors who battle in political topics to create and bias them.--v/r - T P 18:13, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What's interesting is that even the media which wants and intends to be neutral (i.e. they aren't running with the story because it supports their intrinsic POV) will repeat the story because it's "out there", and failing to report it would leave them open to charges of bias from the ideological media. The end result is that there's no longer any real barrier that prevents those kinds of stories from running pretty much everywhere. That is a systemic flaw created by the contemporary re-introduction of ideological mass media outlets (something which had almost disappeared), the 24 hour news cycle (which creates the need to fill time) and instanteneous reporting from practically anywhere on earth (which puts a premium on delivering stories and doesn't allow time for them to be checked before airing) - and we suffer from the fallout. BMK (talk) 19:48, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, there are huge problems with the contemporary mass media, and BMK rightly notes some of the big ones.
But Wikipedia is not just another mass media outlet struggling for market share, nor is it like journalism the first draft of history; it is an encyclopedia, striving to document topics of long-term significance from an NPOV perspective. That means, for example, that we approach a topic from an NPOV perspective, rather than doing what JOttawa16 did, which is to take a soundbite and use it as a coatrack for a POV-fork of an encyclopedic topic. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:52, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It reminds me of a programming principle: Garbage in, garbage out. If the media is producing the crap and that is what we use the develop articles, then are we really producing a high quality encyclopedia or a one-stop-shop archival service of crappy news? We have to have some kind of editorial filter, as we do for every other topic (notability guidelines), for election/politics related neologisms and political attack platforms. WP:Political Platforms (notability) would be a start.--v/r - T P 22:05, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WP:POVFORK covers a lot of this already. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:18, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

12 editors in favor of ban, only three editors against it, and that includes the editor in question, and the discussion has died out, so can we close this and institute the topic ban? JDDJS (talk) 04:01, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, this has reached a conclusion. Please do. - Ahunt (talk) 11:29, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No. Your censorship of topics you don't agree with is not cause to ban someone from writing about anything in that field ever again. JOttawa16 (talk) 13:54, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not censoring topics I don't agree with. I don't know or care about Canadian politics at all. What I do care about is articles that are written clearly to insult the opposition, by saying things such as people who don't like a politician are mentally ill, and people who clearly don't understand when to stop beating a dead horse. JDDJS (talk) 03:56, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

Category pages will be movable soon

Effective May 22nd, category pages will become movable. Although members of the category will still have to be fixed manually, the revision history of the description page can be preserved when renaming categories. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:27, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. Is there more info on this? Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 09:47, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There's bugzilla:5451, bugzilla:28569, and gerrit:111096. Jackmcbarn (talk) 14:49, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It would be better if the new right move-categorypages was restricted to admins; the linked page says it will be available to all users. Currently, categories are moved only through WP:CFD, and the page which instructs the bots to do this (WP:Categories for discussion/Working) has been full-protected since 2007. Allowing any editor to move the category pages (without a corresponding ability to fix the category entries) risks causing havoc :( --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:57, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Agree - should be restricted to admins. DexDor (talk) 15:12, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep in mind that all editors can already cut-and-pasmove category pages. All this would do is let them bring the category page's history with it. It wouldn't let them perform mass recategorizations. Because of this, I don't see a need to restrict the right, but if there's consensus to, I will prepare a configuration change request. Jackmcbarn (talk) 17:35, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, they can cut-and-paste, but not many do, because experienced editors know that cut-and-paste is deprecated. Removing that barrier will increase the number of c+p moves of categories. I do think it should be admin-only. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:05, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So at the moment only inexperienced editors get the "right" (through taboo) to move categories? Extending to experiecned editors sounds good.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:16, 13 May 2014 (UTC).

(Sigh). Inexperienced editors do all sort of things they shouldn't do; that does not mean that they have a right to do them. It just means that we don't WP:BITE them too hard while they learn the ropes. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:34, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe a separate group for this; it wouldn't be suitable for inexperienced editors, or for all administrators, but could be useful for editors involved in categorisation but not interested in adminship, or who would fail RFA for reasons such as lack of article writing or AFD experience (similarly, "suppressredirect" could be useful for experienced editors involved in reviewing articles for creation or new page patrol). Peter James (talk) 21:25, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe. We'd need broad consensus for that though. Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:30, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's "assigned to user and sysop by default" - will that be the default here or will it not be assigned to any group here without consensus? Peter James (talk) 21:41, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It will be assigned to user and sysop here unless we get consensus to change it. (The move right is still needed as well, so you'll need to be autoconfirmed to move categories even though the "user" group has the move-categorypages right.) Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:58, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

gerrit:111096 mentions a category-move-redirect-override option. Will it be implemented here? - Eureka Lott 20:32, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. It's already set up at MediaWiki:category-move-redirect-override. Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:36, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent, thanks. Would it make sense to add {{R from move}} there? - Eureka Lott 20:42, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think so. We don't do that for category redirects now, and it's not a "real" redirect. Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:42, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No reason not to - maybe display or categorise them differently with a new template "Category redirect from move" or added parameters based on namespace detection. Peter James (talk) 21:25, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe we could add a move=1 parameter to Template:Category redirect. Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:30, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's probably better, if it will only be used on pages containing that template. Peter James (talk) 21:41, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with BHG: this needs to either be an 'Admins Only' right, or something along the lines of the 'Template Editor' special right - and if it's the latter it needs to be the former until the "broad consensus for that" is achieved. As it is, this is going to allow the sockvandtrolls to willy-nilly move categories about; we shouldn't wait until we see Category:Presidents of the Royal Statistical Society renamed to Category:Crap to acknowledge that is is otherwise going to happen. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 03:34, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- How is this any different than what the (autoconfirmed) sockvandtrolls can do to articles, templates, user pages, and anything except categories and files today? Also, the damage would be no worse than if they copied and pasted the description to the "new" name and replaced the old description with a redirect, which they can do anyway. Jackmcbarn (talk) 04:05, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  - @Jackmcbarn different from what they can do today, because editors know that copy-paste moves are not accepted, so most are reluctant to do it. Adding a move button makes it appear legit.
    Different from articles in several ways: a) categories pages are rarely edited, so they are on very few watchlists; b) moving an article affects that article, but moving a category page can wreck the navigation system for many articles.
    Different from templates, because high-visibility templates are routinely protected, whereas categories are not.
    Please, Jack, there are probably only a dozen or two editors who routinely monitor large swathes of the category system. Bushranger and I are both amongst that number, and we are both alarmed about this. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:50, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've submitted bugzilla:65221 and gerrit:132947. Jackmcbarn (talk) 14:41, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Jackmcbarn. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:42, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@BrownHairedGirl: Note that it's been decided that with the new discussion here, we don't have a clear enough consensus to make the change. See the bug for more details. Jackmcbarn (talk) 17:05, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, if anyone wants to play with this to see exactly how it works, it's live now at http://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/ (note that accounts aren't shared between here and there). Jackmcbarn (talk) 04:13, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure the new right should be admin only - instead it would probably make sense to be admins & trusted users. That is, admins should have it by default, and admins should then be able to turn it on for trusted users who ask for it, and take it away upon misuse or complaint. That scheme seems to work OK for other rights. If moving cats is a particularly sensitive area, then the bar for who gets it should be set fairly high. BMK (talk) 04:49, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Going to agree with BMK because this opens to more issues and some really difficult headaches if anyone wanted to be malicious. A minimal dose of caution until the ramifications, exploitation and countermeasures are better understood is not a bad thing. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 04:58, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Going to disagree here. Moving categories is essentially bypassing WP:CFD where renaming categories is discussed. Moving categories should only occur after a CFD discussion has been closed. The reason why this step is essential is, unlike articles, categories do not stand alone, they exist in a hierarchy, with parent categories and child categories. Changing a category name might seem like a good idea but if there is already a category system where the categories are named "X of Y", it doesn't make sense to change one category's name to "Y's X". In a CFD discussion, the context of the proposed renames, mergers and deletions is looked at as no categories exist in isolation (or if they do, they shouldn't be!).

What I'm unclear of is how "moving" is different from "renaming", both of which change the title of a category and retain the edit history. And with a rename, it is not necessary to go and change the category names on all of the category contents. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 12:29, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

When CfD renames a category, they move the description page (today by cut-and-paste), and then use bots to recategorize all members of the old category into the new one. The only difference is that the move (of the description page) will be normal. The bots will still have to do the recategorization to finish the rename. Jackmcbarn (talk) 14:41, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Are the bots programmed to handle this configuration? –xeno^talk 14:51, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Right - but if someone renames a category and neglects to kick off the bots, then hundreds or maybe thousands of articles could have redlinks and/or soft-redirects (which require an extra click) at the bottom of the page.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 14:54, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Xeno: It looks like the bots will need to be updated. I've posted a link to here on their operators' talk pages. @Obiwankenobi: The redlinks are a legitimate concern, but the soft-redirect issue could happen anyway, so I'm not as worried about it. Jackmcbarn (talk) 15:11, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Jack, can you give an example of what would happen if I were to move Category:Living people to Category:Dying people? What would we see on all of the 600,000 biographies in this category immediately after it was moved? Would there be a redlink, or a bluelink towards a soft-redirected category? Also, what happens if you attempt to rename it to a category name that already exists? I love the idea of saving history of a category instead of copy/paste renames, but I'm just not sure it's a tool random editors should have - making it a permission one could apply for would make more sense.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:14, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Obiwankenobi: On the articles, nothing would change at all. It would be a bluelink towards a soft-redirected category (which looks exactly the same from articles). The soft-redirected category would still retain all of its members, so readers would just see a confusing message in place of the description, and everything else would be normal (and a vandal could cause that even without this functionality). If you tried to move a category over an already-existing one, it would fail just like trying to move an article over an already-existing one would. Jackmcbarn (talk) 15:19, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Jack. I think that's problematic - as BHG points out, there are categories that are applied to hundreds or thousands of articles, whereas the category itself may only be watched by a few editors. This provides too much opportunity for large-scale troublesome moves - or even incorrect/undiscussed moves of categories. I believe that bots regularly clean up soft-redirected categories and move articles automatically, correct - that means someone could do an incorrect category move and then a bot would actually move the articles, which editors may ignore since they usually trust bot edits more.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:24, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In light of the way the bots (and category move system in general) are currently setup, I think it would be best if a staged approach were used to roll out this new functionality. –xeno^talk 15:46, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The rollout won't break anything. The bots can be updated at any time to use the new move method, and until they are, everything will keep working as it always has. Jackmcbarn (talk) 16:11, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There is one effect of leaving soft redirects that hasn't been mentioned yet - normal users won't be able to revert category moves. If we left a normal redirect then it could be reverted by any autoconfirmed user - providing no-one else edits the page in the meantime - but moves leaving behind a soft redirect will only be revertable by admins. — Mr. Stradivarius on tour ^{♪ talk ♪} 16:06, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(Of course, this won't matter if/when Jackmcbarn's patch goes through, as then only admins will be able move categories anyway.) — Mr. Stradivarius on tour ^{♪ talk ♪} 16:14, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'll also agree with BHG that this should be restricted to admins. Once the tool is in place and understood, then there may be a need to review the CFD guidelines to see what if anything needs to be changed. It would also be nice to create a permission list so the bots can do the moves. This should at some point be expanded to additional users. But that would require an approval process. Not even sure where to start on that. Vegaswikian (talk) 17:19, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It would probably be fine to include the permission with 'administrator', 'bot', 'bureaucrat'. at the outset. And then expand to other userrights as necessary. –xeno^talk 17:36, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still concerned about this, even if this tool is restricted to admins or permissions granted to a few experienced editors. Right now, we have two processes, a) speedy renames and b) CFD. If ANYONE objects to a speedy rename, the editor proposing the rename is directed to file a CFD proposal. Let's say, it's a category call "U.S. Interstate Highways in Virginia". If it goes to a CFD discussion, the creator of the category is notified, the relevant WikiProject is notified, there are notices sorted to other, interested WikiProjects so they can all participate in the discussion over whether the rename is a good idea. This might be a cumbersome process, but it allows ordinary editors who are experienced in editing in the category area to weigh in with their opinions. Some of these discussions get heated (like the one concerning Category:Pseudoscientists) and the result is "no consensus".
The idea that any admin could bypass this discussion process and move any category they choose, is very disruptive to the system that exists. As BHG states, there are a small number of editors who focus on categories and the chances that these moves would be seen by others is very small so there would be, in effect, no oversight. This isn't meant to be a judgment of administrators, just that the structure of categories on Wikipedia is quite different from other areas (like main space, talk pages, user pages, Wikipages, FAs, etc.). Editors have received blocks because of their lack of competency in creating or editing categories because bad edits to a category have a potentially greater impact than an edit to an article.
The only way I can see this tool being effectively used is after the outcome of a CFD, if the decision is to rename, a move can be done instead. Otherwise, editors can simply ask an admin or editor with the permission to make the move and skip over the discussion part. The admin may be uninvolved but it is very likely that the editor requesting the move is involved and there could be even more editors who would contest the move.
I really understand that this tool was created to make editors/admins lives easier, not more complicated, but I see an uptick in activity at Wikipedia:Move review unless this tool is thoughtfully and carefully rolled out. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:32, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Alternate userright proposal I propose renaming "templateeditor" into "trusted maintainer" and merge this userright into that bundle. Could also merge reviewer and account creator into it as well, just throwing the options out there. A trusted maintainer would be a perfect userright for gnoming work.--v/r - T P 20:28, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think if it was this simple for "trusted maintainer" to move a category, they will just do so without checking to see how their move impacts related categories. I think when an editor has a right, they might be cautious using it at first, but soon are likely to trust their instinct or judgment instead of actually checking to see if the move makes sense from the category hierarchical structure that exists for that subject. It's crucial not to consider a category in isolation from other categories, they are part of a system. But I've had my say and will let others weigh in. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:38, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't like the idea of bundling, personally, especially with the userrights that don't have much process attached for requesting them. We lose any ability to differentiate between them, as far as requirements go; someone who just wants to be able to review pending changes to articles isn't going to necessarily have the skills to be a template editor, but because we've (hypothetically) bundled them, we can't just give one without the other, and so we have to deny them for no real reason.

As far as the actual catmover right itself goes, I don't really see any reason to restrict it; while it's certainly true that maliciously moving a cat description page can affect many articles, it will only affect them by proxy (i.e. the cleanup is still limited to just that one cat description page; you don't need to go through and fix it for each of those thousands of articles), and it only affects them in an extremely minor way; most likely, no readers would even notice. On the whole, I don't think the potential for damage is particularly higher than pagemover, which might only affect one article, but will do it in a much more visible way (and there are articles that are just as unwatched as categories, of course). Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 20:54, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think there's also the question of norms. Pages can be moved by anyone in most cases, but it would be rather daft to move Ireland to Ireland (island) unless you have a death wish - a norm, and indeed a set of community agreed sanctions, has made individual editors moving such pages verboten. We could do the same with category moves - unless the category was created by yourself, or the move is to correct a typographical error, no matter what your role you should not move it, but rather seek consensus for the move at CFD or speedy CFD. A log of category moves could be reviewed to ensure that people weren't abusing this. Thus, in spite of what userrights we attach, we may also create a community norm that says, in general, categories should only rarely be moved without discussion - which would be a more restrictive rule than that which covers articles currently.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:11, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think that moving category pages will be useful for multiple reasons – keeping the category history visible, and being able to trace the new name more easily given the old one – but IMHO it should be restricted to admins. I can't think of any gain from making it available to others. (Writing as an editor who became an admin mainly to help with closing CFDs.) – Fayenatic London 21:37, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
So yet another user "right" that administrators want to keep to themselves? Soon it will only be admins who are allowed to edit anything. Eric Corbett 21:42, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Eric Corbett: No, Eric, it's a new tools which is not initially being rolled out to non-admins. No editor is losing any ability to do anything they can do now. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:45, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Not yet, no. But my fundamental objection is to the accretion of user rights to admins without any assessment of whether they have any idea of how to edit templates, for instance. I'm not interested in getting into a discussion about this self-evident truth here however, in the camp of the enemy. Eric Corbett 02:00, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No, users currently do not have this right. There is already a process to move categories and that is in place for several reasons. So the comments here simply are saying we need to install this feature in a way that supports the existing guidelines. If and when that process is changed, then the rights could be extended. Vegaswikian (talk) 17:44, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Kind of misses the point. While WMF is trying "make it as easy as possible to contribute knowledge" -- as evidenced by the fact by default the right goes to users -- the admin community is trying to decide a priori, without any evidence, that it should be restricted. Meanwhile, in the thread above I pointed out about 36 hours ago that our existing categorization of Pseudoscientists / Paranormal investigators -> James Randi is a WP:BLP, but admins here seem more interesting in haggling about this, and the Cfd and the blah blah blah whatever, than actually fixing the encyclopedia. (I've attempted to do so at Category:Paranormal investigators‎). NE Ent 01:50, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@NE Ent: Same question for you as for Green Giant below. Why do you want to give editors a tool to perform a task which they are not supposed to perform anyway?
How would this help anyone? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:02, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Incidentally, this is why non-admins need to be on WP:AN -- there's zero justification for admins deciding something like without getting input from the rest of the community. NE Ent 01:50, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support a wider group for this right. The best venue for this would have been the Village Pump, but seeing as the discussion is already underway there is no point moving it now. I can see two camps forming, one side would like to restrict this to a small number of trusted users, the other to keep it open to a wider group. Personally I think it is a significant new right and it will see many simmering disputes spill over, particularly real world issues like the Middle East, the former Yugoslavia, the current Russia-Ukraine problems etc. If we open this new right to a wide group of editors, it will cause chaos because people will engage in POVish edit wars just like they do with article names and content. However, it isn't beneficial to Wikipedia if the right is resticted to just admins, because then it will be no different to the existing mechanism at WP:CFD/WP:CFDS i.e. you propose a rename and if approved it gets done by an admin/bot. The above idea of merging it into template editors and renaming that group has some merit but it begs the question of "why limit it to just that group?". I think the most beneficial route will be to add it to the widest possible group of trusted users i.e. admins, autopatrolled, file mover, reviewer, rollback and template editor groups. That would help build more confidence in each others abilities compared to the snarl-match taking place here. Cheers. Green Giant (talk) 16:17, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

While it could be a useful tool for users other than admins to have, I am opposed to adding the right to groups like Autopatrolled, file mover etc. as Green Giant suggested. Rollbackers (such as myself) often will have no clue about category maintenance, and it should neither be assigned to thousands of users who could misuse it (in good or bad faith) nor should category knowledge be a requirement to attain rollback. I would support a user group such as category mover, to be assigned like file mover to users experienced in category maintenance who can demonstrate their need for the tool by having demonstrated understanding and activity at WP:CFD. BethNaught (talk) 16:30, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

BethNaught, I would support a new user group just for this right but my point was that all of these groups are effectively trusted users until they give a reason not to be trusted. It makes no sense to reserve it just for admins when really categories are a content-building activity. The obvious solution to vandalism would be protection in the same way articles can be protected. Green Giant (talk) 20:56, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I see where you are coming from, and on further consideration I don't believe there would be any danger in assigning the right to already trusted user groups. I guess I'm just the sort of person who likes to keep unrelated things separate. Given that categories are content building, I would therefore be happy for the right to be assigned to autopatrolled users (and perhaps template editors), but the other groups you mentioned are more about maintenance, which makes them a bit distant for me. BethNaught (talk) 21:49, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Green Giant: Moving categories is not a WP:BOLD issue, and has never been in the 8 years I have edited Wikipedia. They should be moved only after a discussion at WP:CFD, or (for a few speedy criteria) after listing at WP:CFD/S. That's not because of any technical restrictions; it's because changes to categories affect many articles, so prior consensus is required before renaming or depopulating any existing category.

Giving this tool to admins will not allow them to go moving categories around without prior consensus. It will merely allow them to implement CFD decisions; but the vast majority of CFD decisions are implemented by bots, so in practice this is a tool which will be used 95% of the time by bots.

Please can you explain why exactly you want a wider group of editors to be given a tool to do something which they aren't supposed to do anyway, because of its ramifications? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:59, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@BrownHairedGirl:, the essence of this debate is whether the right should be just for admins (which is unlikely to gain consensus) or should anyone else be allowed it. The sheer fact that the issue is being discussed here rather than at the village pump is perhaps a sign of the times. I disagree with just giving it to admins and template editors, because it has precious little to do with just templates and affects everything we do. You mentioned WP:BOLD as not involving moving categories but in fact it encourages caution for all non-article namespaces, not just categories. [[WP::BOLD#Category_namespace]] in particular says "if what you're doing might be considered controversial (especially if it concerns categories for living people), propose changes at Categories for discussion". That doesn't mean that every category change needs to go to CFD, just the controversial ones. Like you yourself say further down, what if someone creates a category with a spelling error? It has happened to me sometimes. Wouldn't it be easier to just be able to move the category in a matter of seconds, rather than listing it at Categories for discussion/Speedy, where requests sometimes take days depending on the admins workload. Certainly I agree that this right shouldn't be handed out like candy to just any auto-confirmed editor, but equally let's not restrict this solely to admins. Beth's idea of a separate user group is the best way to go. The two most trusted groups after admins would be filemovers (373) and template editors (75 excluding two bots) (although at least 23 are also file movers), so why not have a third similar group? Let it be granted by an admin at requests for permissions if an applicant meets reasonably stringent criteria. Green Giant (talk) 23:56, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Green Giant: I am not implacably opposed to the idea of a special group like the one you mentioned, tho I do question whether its utility for the very small number of legitimate uses outweighs the risk that it becomes a way of bypassing the consensus-forming process at CFD. I think it would be great to have a wider discussion about this.
But the immediate issue facing us is that the categ-move facility will be rolled out on 22 May, only 8 days. As set up, it will be available to all auto-confirmed users; as patched by Jack, it would be available to admins only. So we have a choice about what happens next: roll it out to a more limited set than you would like, and discuss extending it, or roll it out to a much wider set. The option of holding off pending consensus is not on the table.
Woukdn't it be much better to start with the more limited change, and then consider the wider change? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:09, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that initially it should be just admins because of the absurdly short notice (or lack of) by the developers. However, call me a pessimist but where would we raise the issue of extending the right to non-admins? Certainly not here and the village pump proposals board is just a talking shop where any decent idea winds up in the archives somewhere. Once the dust settles, it is highly unlikely any proposals to extend the right will be successful. As an aside, I note that apart from Jack, very little effort seems to have gone into raising the issue over at Meta, because this affects every project, not just en-wiki. Having had a quick look through several other village pumps/cafes, I don't think I've seen any discussions outside of en-wiki and commons. Additionally, is there any chance of someone archiving some of the older posts because this board is absurdly large right now (getting close to 500k). Green Giant (talk) 00:53, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like my words of caution aren't having an impact on the discussion. So, my final comment is a straight-forward request:If you make this tool available, whether just to admins or to a wider group, please maintain a log of category moves so that there can be some record. Right now, we have CFD that acts as an archive one can refer to but if any admin can move a category, without providing any reason at all, there should at least be a log of these moves so that the community is aware of these changes. As BHG has stated, few editors have category pages on their Watchlist, there are tens of thousands of categories that exist and it is likely that category moves will go unnoticed if there isn't a log recording them. It should also record the name of the editor making the move so that any questions can be directed to them. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:00, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

They will be logged. See [2]. Jackmcbarn (talk) 17:05, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Category moves: this is looking bad

A reply above by @Jackmcbarn: says "it's been decided that with the new discussion here, we don't have a clear enough consensus to make the change". The bug link is bugzilla:65221.

So it seems that what is now happening is that the new feature will be rolled out on 22 May, with no restrictions on its use. For all the reasons set out above, that is very bad news, because this new tool could be used to create serious damage to the category system, which could be enormously time-consuming to repair. A moved article affects one article; but a moved category can affect hundreds of articles. If an editor moves Category:French people to Category:Cheese-eating surrender monkeys, a soft redirect will be left behind, and the bots will then recategorise all the articles. This is wide open to exploitation, and it the vulnerability it causes should be fully assessed before such wide deployment.

I think it's a mistake to read the discussion above as no consensus for restricting this to admins only ... but there is also no consensus to roll this out without a restriction in place.

There are only 9 days until the planned rollout, which is too soon for an RFC to conclude. So it seems that the technical people are just going to impose this new tool as a fait accompli, without giving the community time to assess whether it wants it, and whether access to it should be restricted. Is that correct?

I it is correct, then the techies are about to impose a huge vulnerability, despite the warnings :( --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:05, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What's to stop a vandal today from creating Category:Cheese-eating surrender monkeys with some random text, and replacing the contents of Category:French people with {{Category redirect|Category:Cheese-eating surrender monkeys}}? That would also cause the bots to miscategorize everything. Jackmcbarn (talk) 18:07, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also, note that Parent5446 questioned including the option to restrict this functionality at all ("Just wondering: why would you need a separate permission to move category pages? I mean it's not an expensive or destructive operation or anything like that.") Jackmcbarn (talk) 18:11, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree fully with BHG, this potentially powerful tool should be restricted to admins only. Giant Snowman 18:13, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I agree with Jack: the potential destructive power of this tool doesn't actually lie in any function of the tool itself; it lies in the naivety of the bots that handle category redirects. restricting the use of the tool would be treating the symptom, not the cause, and as a general principle, we shouldn't be restricting permissions any more than is necessary. Perhaps we should think about a better way for the bots to work, instead. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 18:16, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever the solution(s), they should be discussed before the tool is deployed. What we face now is its imposition before the community has fully assessed its impact, despite a significant number of experienced editors expressing concerns. That's appalling. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:20, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this definitely required more, detailed discussion before being thrust upon us. Giant Snowman 18:22, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Think of this, please: The editors who put their hours into WP:CFD are saying that this is a bad idea to implement without restrictions and this whole process is being rushed. This tool has not been created because those involved in category renaming asked for it. Editors who know the ramifications of sloppy or whimsical category moves, made without consensus, are saying, "This will not work out well." Why is their experience being discounted? Can you imagine telling the folks who work on the main page that any admin could make an article a featured article? Or, say, let's just eliminate WP:AFD discussions and let's just let admins delete whatever articles they feel don't "fit" within Wikipedia? Of course, there would be objections from the editors who know these areas well and work on maintaining some standards and fairness about the process. This tool would bypass all discussion by regular editors on whether these moves are a wise idea. The impact of this on WikiProjects alone could involve a massive clean-up.

I don't mean to sound alarmist, it's just that this tool throws out a long-standing consensus process at Wikipedia in one swift move. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:53, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Jackmcbarn: notes the bugzilla post ("Just wondering: why would you need a separate permission to move category pages? I mean it's not an expensive or destructive operation or anything like that.") That has been answered repeatedly in this thread, but it seems that some editors prefer to keep this as a technical discussion on bugzilla, rather than joining in the community discussion here.

This discussion-forking is no way to reach consensus. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:26, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That wasn't discussion-forking. That was an old post (posted February 3rd), while I was writing the code for the functionality. Jackmcbarn (talk) 18:27, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for clarifying that, Jack. But we still need this functionality to held back until there is a consensus on how to deploy it. Please can you or someone else with access to bugzilla make that request? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:36, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The sysadmins definitely won't go for that. The best thing that there's chance of consensus of in time is to make it admin-only, but even that doesn't look likely. Jackmcbarn (talk) 18:40, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Jack, I'm not sure what you mean there. Do you mean no chance that the sysadmins will agree to holding it back? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:43, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Jackmcbarn (talk) 18:58, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How can this be true? How can the introduction of a new tool be forced on the Wikipedia community without considering the impact it will have or listening to the community's concerns? This is really crazy, Jackmcbarn! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:57, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If there were consensus here to make it admin-only, they'd be fine with that. Since we're divided, they're not going to change anything yet. Jackmcbarn (talk) 01:19, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No need to rush Jack, I think you make a fair point - it is possible that someone could replicate the move functionality through a copy/paste + creation of a redirect, and then the bots will stupidly comply and categorize everyone as a cheese-eating surrender monkey. However, there is a certain element of security-through-obscurity here - most rookie spammers may not know about the full mechanics of a successful category move, whereas now it will become accessible in one click. As a developer, I'm sure you know the difference between one click and three in an interface can be massive. Nothing prevents people from doing copy/paste moves in article space, but we still restrict page moves for some users and even have the ability to lock page moves, with good reason - as such moves can be disruptive. More importantly, you have to understand the context of categories - which those of us who work in this space are well familiar with - if category moves were permitted by anyone, or even by people who had demonstrated X or Y, I'm still not convinced they should be using such powers - indeed if someone did this today, and tried to rename a category from Category:Bill Clinton to Category:William Jefferson Clinton using the redirect trick, it would be rejected and reverted and that person would be told to go to CFD. We have only one case right now where a regular editor can determine the name of a category, and that is at creation time - once that category is created, any changes need to be discussed. It's a bit burdensome, but it also avoids a lot of trouble - we already have a great difficulty in managing the flood of new categories - if we also had to be worried that users were changing existing category names willy nilly in the same way they move articles around - especially given that so few people watch categories - that could cause potential chaos and massive inconsistency that may only be discovered years after the fact. At CFD we regularly come across categories that are so brain dead it is painful, and sometimes these have been laying around for years before anyone noticed them. I think if this is rolled out, even just to admins, the admins should NOT use this tool unless there is an obvious typo, or unless there is consensus at a discussion somewhere. As a different example, Brownhairedgirl as admin has the right to delete categories right now, she could go and ice Category:Living people if she felt up to it, but she *won't*, she won't even delete obviously bad categories (unless they are blatant spam or violating of BLP), instead she will bring them to discussion and let the community decide. It's just the way CFD works, and by putting this tool in the hands of everyone, you are bypassing the whole CFD process. There's a certain stability that comes with categories and a need for consistency; knowing that a given tree won't be gutted or destroyed or renamed without some oversight and more than one pair of eyes is key. Categorization is tricky and category names are quite different beasts than article names, so we shouldn't treat them the same. I'm saying this as a user, not an admin, and while I think it's reasonable to consider adding permissions for certain non-admins to do such moves, there need to be strong norms around when any such moves can be performed, and I can think of very few cases where even an admin should move a category without discussion (unlike article titles, which can be moved much more freely). If it needs to roll out right away, fine, but restrict it to admins, and let the community discuss greater permissions and attendant norms in the meantime.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:49, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- I agree with all that Obi has written. The only situation in which I as an admin move a category without discussion is when it is one that I have newly created, per WP:C2E. As an admin, I would use this new tool in only three situations: 1) to implement a speedy move of a categ I had newly created; 2) to implement a speedy move after unopposed listing at WP:CFD/S, 3) to implement the result of a full WP:CFD discussion. In practice, I would very rarely do either of the 2 or 3, because in nearly all cases it is much easier an to let the bot do the work; the bot also makes fewer mistakes and logs its actions consistently.
  So if it is used properly, this new tool will overwhelmingly be used by the bots. That raises the option of making it a bot-only right. I would be quite happy with that, it might allay some concerns about accretion of admin powers. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:23, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think that having a discussion proposing limiting something to admins should be on WP:VPP not in the admin secret hidey-hole club treehouse basement. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:18, 13 May 2014 (UTC).

these actions are already limited to admins by longstanding consensus. Editors, nor admins, are not allowed to rename a category except in a very small set of circumstances, and if someone did rename through copy/paste they would be reverted. This tool simply makes it easier. I want to address a point Liz made above, which is that no-one asked for this feature - on that I disagree, the ability to move categories and thus keep their history has long been requested and I'm very glad we'll have it as we'll be able to see the whole history of a category including renames which previously we couldn't, so thanks to the devs for making this happen - however we have existing norms that any such moves happen at CFD or CFD/S, and giving users permissions to do this while skipping those venues throws out longstanding consensus. Since there seems to be a push to roll this out we must remember en wiki is not the only one affected, and there may be other patches that need to roll at the same time so I see no reason to block the rollout, just a suggestion that permissions be limited - for now- and then we can in parallel have a deeper discussion about who else should have these permissions and when, if ever, users should be allowed to use them.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:34, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Obiwankenobi: What you're suggesting is basically what they said no to. Jackmcbarn (talk) 01:27, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Who exactly is "they"?

Why is the default assumption that a powerful new tool should be handed to everyone, without a consensus to do so? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:47, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"They" are probably the sysadmins, and the default assumption was that category moving is no more powerful than page moving, so it should be distributed to the same users that pagemove is. And to be fair, they're not wrong from their perspective; it's only the bots that make it powerful here, not the tool itself. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 01:50, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Correct on both accounts, Writ Keeper. Jackmcbarn (talk) 01:53, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Writ Keeper: @Jackmcbarn: I disagree strongly with that default assumption, because a category page has a very different function to other pages. The consequences of moving a category page are very different.

But I am even more concerned about the apparent determination to ignore the huge weight of evidence in this discussion that those who do the greatest amount of work with categories foresee huge problems arising from wide deployment of this tool. When a theoretical perspective about a tool discounts the practical effects of its deployment, we are in trouble. Did none of the developers even stop to ask why category pages had been unmoveable until now?

The bots do valuable job of fixing the minor errors in categorisation which would otherwise leave category entries pointing to redirects. This new tool turns them into a vulnerability, which will give huge power to vandals and to editors who are reckless. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:47, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@BrownHairedGirl: "a category page has a very different function to other pages. The consequences of moving a category page are very different." The only reason that's the case is because of our bots. From the developers' perspective, our bots aren't a reason to change the software. Did none of the developers even stop to ask why category pages had been unmoveable until now? The reason category pages were immovable for a long time is because they wanted to avoid confusing users by letting them think they were moving the category when they were in fact only moving its description page. This new tool turns them into a vulnerability, which will give huge power to vandals and to editors who are reckless. As I pointed out before, vandals can abuse the bots by cut-and-paste moving a category, and the bots will do just as much damage that way. Jackmcbarn (talk) 14:48, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Jackmcbarn: It's not just because of the bots. The bots add an extra layer of vulnerability, but don't let them obscure the underlying difference, which is why we have the bots.
If I move an article or a template or a Wikipedia page, a link to the old title takes me via a redirect to the page as it was; the only change is to the title, but in every other respect the page looks the same. That is not the case with a category, where we don't use hard redirects. If I have the tools and the inclination to move a category page, then when I visit the old title I do not see what I would have seen before the move. I see the same list of pages, but not the parent categories, the explanatory text, the table of contents etc. If I follow the soft redirect, I see the Toc, parent categs etc ... but not the list of pages. The bots exist to bridge that gap.
Once again, the consequences of this are well understood by the editors who regularly participate at CFD, and all of those CFD regulars who have posted here (including non-admins) agree that this tool should be restricted. It is frustrating to find that all expertise is being ignored :( --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:26, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a great new possibility. I am not an admin, and one time I was very active on Cfd and many times wanted to be able to move categories.

Nevertheless, I am strongly convinced it is a really bad idea to implement this feature and not restrict it to a small group of users. I foresee a big mess and serious disruption from all kinds of impetuous and/or tendentious editors, as well as vandals. I think that either this should not be implemented at this time, or restricted to admins until such time as a broader discussion establishes which other users may be allowed access to this feature.

I strongly agree with BrownHairedGirl and disagree with Jackmcbarn: developers have no right to implement a feature while there is no consensus who should have access to it, unless it is restricted to the largest cross-section everybody agrees upon, which in this case is admins. Debresser (talk) 08:53, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Debresser: Actually, they do. Developers aren't bound by community consensus. If we establish a consensus to restrict the tool, they'll restrict it, but they don't have to do anything now. Jackmcbarn (talk) 14:48, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm reminded of the scene in Raiders of the Lost ark - "our top men are on it?" "Who?" "Top... Men." The arrival of a new permission implicitly indicates to the user that this is an acceptable action to take - but we have no policy around user-led category moves. It's almost as if 'delete' were added to all editors toolboxes without the attendant training and infrastructure for its use. As has already been noted, on en.wp, no regular user has ever had the right to move a category, and now it will show up their menu as a new toy to play with. This is a bad idea, and I disagree that the sysadmin's position is reasonable since rollout of an IT system change must take account of the local technological (eg bots) and social (eg norms) context. That wasn't done here. I'm sure they are acting in good faith but I would also be surprised if this was the only wiki where regular users weren't permitted to muck about renaming categories, etc. we don't need to establish a new consensus here that only admins can move categories, this is LONG standing precedent and we have policy documentation and years of evidence to prove it, so if this must roll plz restrict to admins as that aligns with the current consensus of who can actually move categories today. The fact that a few editors here are grumbling does nothing to upend that long standing consensus.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 10:09, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There's a lot of actions that are technically permitted but aren't allowed by our rules, like sticking editors on Wikipedia:Editing restrictions unilaterally. Any misuse of this tool is a social problem, not a technological one. Jackmcbarn (talk) 14:48, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Jackmcbarn: Wikipedia has technical barriers to many other social problems, such as a bar on IPs creating pages, and on non-admins deleting pages, and on editors using rollback without first seeking permission.

There is an existing technical barrier to category moves. You are entitled to the view that the barrier shouldn't exist, but a change requires a community consensus rather than a unilateral imposition by the devs. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:37, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No consensus

Last I recall, Devs don't implement something unless there is consensus to do so. Doubt that? Go have a look at how long it took for Rollback to be implemented for anyone besides admins. (Including several discussions.)

So the standard SOP afaik, is that they add a new tool to admins (user-right group: sysop), and IF THERE IS CONSENSUS, then that tool may be allowed to a broader user-group (whether to an existing group like autoconfirmed, or a new one like how rollbacker or template editor were created after a consensual discussion).

So if we follow the past model, then this ability should be given to admins if the Devs so deem, and a consensual discussion would be required before granting it to a larger userbase than that.

If someone else has a different view of wikipedia history or policy, I'm all ears, but as far as I know, that's how things have been done for some time.

And note, this is a functionality that I have been wanting to see for some time. I have never liked that we do cut-n-paste moves when implementing a category move. (I seem to recall that once-upon-a-time we could move category pages IF we removed all the category members first. But that was deprecated in some update in the long past.)

And yes, category moves can be done boldly, but due to the large number of page changes to the category members which is sometimes needed, WP:CFD is the typical venue for discussing a category move.

What I think is not being understood by those who are not regularly involved with categories is that the name of the category is much more important than the name of an article (for example). If you read over WP:CAT, you may note that the name is often the only way to determine inclusion criteria for article membership in a category. And as well, as the main purpose for categories is navigation, category names need to be clear.

And categories do not allow for referencing, so they rely on the references of the member articles. So category names NEED to be neutral, unbiased.

And now couple this with the fact that categories tend to be the most unwatched pages, and you have a recipe for disaster here waiting to happen.

And so if you look at the discussion above, you may notice that those who are active in CFD are the ones who are most concerned about this. As they are obviously the ones who not only presumably know and understand category policy, but also are the ones who regularly deal with implementation, and further, who regularly have to deal with cleaning up the messes of well-meaning (and sometimes not-so-well-meaning) category editors.

I'm still waiting for a way to block hotcat and twinkle from malfeasant editors for these and other reasons. There are several editors whose prolific category creation continually create a lot of work and headaches for those at CFD. And if this is implemented, this will be a huge mess.

This simply should be a separate user-right, just like template editor. And the community needs to come to consensus on who should have this right and how it should be granted.

This is the way we've been doing these things, there is no reason to not do this in this case as well. - jc37 20:21, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, I'll give you a different view of Wikipedia history and policy:

Anyone can edit. The default state is that anyone can do anything, unless we specifically find that it's necessary to restrict that. For those who weren't around and haven't heard the stories, it was originally the case that anyone could delete pages. It used to be that non-autoconfirmed users could move pages. We've restricted a few processes in response to real problems, but we have generally avoided doing so merely for speculative problems.

We don't preëmptively protect anything—much less entire namespaces!—based on some editor's speculation that there might be vandalism (vandalism, that to judge from the above comments, will simultaneously affect huge numbers of articles and also be completely invisible because nobody's watching the cat pages). The system of protecting after a concrete problem has been demonstrated seems to be working pretty well for today's featured article, so I don't really see why Category:France really needs to be handled any differently, and I certainly don't see why we should protect thousands and thousands of them just because there might be a problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:45, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing: This is not about creating a new protection; it is about the devs imposing the removal of a protection which already exists.
The risk of not just of vandalism, but of good faith actions where editors don't understand the consequences, in a namespace where pages are rarely watched. With so few watchers, who is going to monitor the hundreds of thousands of category pages for any problems which might occur?
Unilateral bold moving of categories is something which editors should not be doing anyway. We have a well-established consensus-forming process at WP:CFD, and a speedy one for uncontroversial actions at WP:CFD/S. Why create a tool to bypass these processes? And why on earth is being implemented with out a consensus to do so? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:31, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion is about creating new protection. Previously, deficient technical design prevented people from doing what they should have been able to do from the beginning. The technical problem is being fixed. Now we should be going back to the normal default for this community: anyone can edit.

As for "without a consensus", there are 800+ WMF wikis, and many, many thousands of MediaWiki installations all over the world. Fixing this bug affects thousands of communities. The views of some people at just one of them should not prevent everyone else in the world from having the bug fixed. (Personally, I'm quite looking forward to this for use at a private wiki; it will enable me to clean up a minor mess left by someone else without having to agree to an admin bit there.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:37, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion is not about the other 800+ Wikis; it is about en.wikipedia, which isn any case is by far the largest wikimedia project.

Whether you regard the existing setup as a bug or a feature, it is one which has defined how categories are maintained. There are a significant number of editors who do have posted here to say that the "fix" poses significant problems for em.wp procedures, which is that in the case of category moving, the normal default is not for editors to act unilaterally. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:24, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I thought I'd chime in here as a non-administrator. Currently the consensus-established policy is that regular editors should not move categories (via copy-paste or any other method). I don't see the point in giving every editor access to a tool that policy forbids them to use. The burden of establishing consensus is on those changing the status quo, and without consensus the status quo should be maintained. Therefore, the rights to use this tool should either be limited to administrators and bots (who are implicitly trusted enough not to use them to circumvent policy) or not given to any user groups until consensus is established to do so. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 23:05, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, the current "policy" is that copy-paste "moves", no matter what the page, violate the CC-BY-SA license, and that, as a result of cat pages being developed separately, and therefore having strange limitations, no other method of moving is possible for non-admins. There is no "consensus-established policy" (I notice that you have provided no link to this alleged policy) that says that it's a bad idea for non-admins to be able to move category pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:45, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Another non-admin (and former CFD regular) in favour of great caution here. I'd be very happy for the right to be admin-only, & might be pursuaded for a very small group of others to be given it. But as I understand it, this will make things easier, and there is no vast backlog for CFD-agreed moves anyway, so I'd wait to see if there is a problem before trying to solve it. Agree with User:BrownHairedGirl all the way. User:WhatamIdoing is completely missing several points: nobody watches the category pages mainly because they are very rarely edited. But many people use the categories all the time. Anybody who has spent any time at CFD will have seen many manic/enthusiastic nuisance category creators and won't doubt for a second that if they could move categories they certainly would. The whole point about categories is that they are connected up to other categories in structures that have often been the subject of protracted and fierce discussion, which can often only be traced through "what links here" - there isn't even a record of CFD debates on the talk page. Johnbod (talk) 01:18, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I favor great caution, too. I also favor not assuming that our editors can't handle this, especially once a few "hot button" categories get move-protected.
I've got a bunch of cat pages on my watchlist, but you're missing the practical point: if the cat gets moved and every single article in that cat gets an edit to place it in the new category name, then one move could turn up on watchlists for dozens or even hundreds of pages. That means that cat moves are likely to be far more noticeable than regular page moves, even if absolutely zero people are watching the cat page itself. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:37, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I am in general agreement with those who have written above in favour of caution: User:BrownHairedGirl, Johnbod, and others. Yes, I'm an admin, and yes, I close a lot of discussions at WP:CFD. Users could try to argue that I'm just trying to protect the "sphere" where I do a lot of admin work, but really that's not my concern at all. (Frankly, I would love for the load at CFD to be lightened, but I'm afraid this would NOT accomplish it. Quite the opposite, I'm guessing!) My concerns have been well set out by the others above. I do think it is telling that those who tend to be more involved in category editing and organizations are the ones pushing for caution, whether or not those editors are admins. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 05:18, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Just a note that there is a vote going on about this same issue at the Commons ...some of the same concerns being voiced. I didn't realize that this feature change would affect all of Wikimedia. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 14:20, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, as I and other people said last week, this change affects 800+ wikis run by the Wikimedia Foundation plus many thousands of non-WMF wikis, both public and private. This bug fix is really not about the English Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:13, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Only admins to move categories? Really?

With the massive backlogs that exist at other admin-esque pages, isn't this over-kill? If users can move pages, then why not categories too? I doubt many people will even be aware they can move categories straight away. Leave it as it's planned to be, and if it all goes tits-up, round my house with your pitchforks and effigies. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 06:36, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose we can write an admin-bot to move-protect all categories (or, perhaps, all categories over 1-3 days old). Or, alternatively, disable all the category-rename-handling bots until they are also programmed to revert improper moves, rather than follow them. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:04, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Lugnuts, giving all editors, including overenthusiastic newbies with idiosyncratic ideas about categorization (example), this facility is likely to increase the workload on those who repair disruption to categorization and hence make backlogs worse. I'd support move-protecting all (reader-side) categories more than a few days old. DexDor (talk) 05:35, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure how attractive a vandalism target category moves would be, but it should be simple enough to disable them for non-admins by adding a <moveonly> entry for the Category: prefix to the title blacklist. That's a bit of a hack, of course, and would only work if Category: pages can only be moved to other titles in the Category: namespace (can they?), but it might be worth considering as a stop-gap while a broader consensus is figured out for who should ultimately be able to perform these moves. 28bytes (talk) 04:50, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just noting that that would also allow template editors and account creators to move pages as well as they both have the tboverride userright. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 05:44, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, good point. 28bytes (talk) 05:52, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not necessarily a bad thing or reason not to add it to the blacklist, just a note that there will be an unintended consequence. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 11:56, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. 28bytes (talk) 12:54, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed topic ban for 2 editors

Enough. Please find something productive to do. Please. NAC Dave Dial (talk) 16:25, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

The article Jews and Communism is currently going through a second nomination for deletion. After several ANI incidents and lots of discussion, two editors stand out as being extremely disruptive to the Wikipedia community. Instead of rehashing the arguments here, I would like to nominate two editors for a topic ban. WP:TBAN I'm asking for community consensus from involved editors to determine whether a topic ban for one or both editors is appropriate action. Comments from the community are welcome. USchick (talk) 17:48, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Background. Recent threads at AN/I: [3] and [4]. Discussion at Jimbo: [5].

Proposed bans for topics on Jews and Communism

First nominee

Strong support for a topic ban for the topics Jews and also for Communism. Potočnik, formerly PRODUCER, is topic banned from making any edits on any page on Wikipedia, with the exception of an appeal on WP:AN or WP:Arbcom/R, related to Jews or Communism. To be clear, these are two separate topics and this topic ban should not in any way be construed to only be applicable in topics about Jews and Communism together. This topic ban will last until removed by community consensus. Enforcement may be made by escalating blocks.--v/r - T P 19:40, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

User:Potočnik - Previously named Producer. Original creator of the article Jews and Communism

Support as nominator. USchick (talk) 17:48, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support for disruptive editing in this area. However, this TBAN should not be closed until the AFD is closed. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:44, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support for the decision to reproduce a vitriolic article on Wikipedia, and for the disruptive protection of it. Binksternet (talk) 19:20, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support (Judaism solely) for creating an antisemitic article that relies heavily on Neo-Nazi sources [7], such an editor should be prevented in any way possible from editing further articles relating to Judaism --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 19:40, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support based on the fact that this editor copied over to Wikipedia[8], in substantial part, an article that ran on a notorious anti-Semitic website. See analysis at [9]. There may well be other reasons to topic-ban this editor, but this is enough. No, more than enough, to topic-ban this editor from any subject even remotely related to Judaism or Communism. Coretheapple (talk) 19:42, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support a block for Potočnik if it can be established that he copied non-free content into the project. This is sufficient reason for an indefinite general block, in my opinion, actually, given the context. However, if it cannot be established that non-free content was copied, then the case is a bit muddier. Certainly Producer showed tendentious behaviour at many points during the discussion, but whether it raises to the level of a topic ban, especially given that he has been quiet for some time now, is uncertain. I'd certainly like to see him blocked for bringing this garbage into the project, but having an objectionable stance on an issue is not sufficient policy reason, so I think this all hinges on the nature of the content copied (in terms of ownership, not odiousness) and how close the material added conformed to it. Snow talk 19:53, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support Creating an article that presented an anti-Semitic view is disruptive. Even if the article itself was justified, beginning it in such a POV tone makes it much harder to improve it, thereby wasting the time of dozens of editors at various noticeboards, including an RfC and two AfDs. TFD (talk) 20:17, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support: Not only was the article creation immensely disruptive, but the persistent, unrelenting and determined defense of that article against any change or improvement, or any lessening of its anti-Semitism or attempt to balance its neutrality, was terrible damaging to the project. Indefinite site ban. MarkBernstein (talk) 20:25, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose No evidence provided of problematic behaviour. Linking to discussions that failed to gain consensus is not evidence. Only in death does duty end (talk) 20:39, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

He was warned on his talk page with examples of diffs [10][11][12][13][14][15] USchick (talk) 20:59, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support ban and block if this is shown to be copyvio. Dougweller (talk) 20:54, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support. The evidence that Potočnik plagiarised an antisemitic source without attribution is indisputable. This is about as gross a violation of WP:NPOV policy as one could imagine, and I find it difficult to believe that Potočnik could do so without being aware that it would be seen as such. Frankly, I am having difficulty understanding why this was done in the first place, given that the article was plainly going to be controversial, and accordingly subject to close scrutiny. One has to conclude that Potočnik either lacks the competence and understanding of elementary policy required to edit in such sensitive areas, or understands policy full well, but chooses to ignore it. Either way, we can manage well enough without such 'contributions' on these topics. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:00, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I would also support an indefinite block for from editing altogether, copying content from extremist websites without attribution should not be tolerated.Smeat75 (talk) 21:20, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support -(of a topic ban, for Producer only). This user CREATED the article, an embarrassment to wikipedia, and has demonstrated a heavy ownership of it since. For him to claim that he had no knowledge of the content of the article's origins is outrageous. He refused to listen to any and all outside criticism of an obviously troubled article. He obviously is incapable of providing NPOV on any subjects related to Judaism.. he (supposedly) copied content from a strictly anti-Semitic website, and then continued to edit war and initiate massive conflicts when editors tried to neutralize or, god forbid, actually remove the inaccurate content, as proven per what USchick provided above. Even if he didn't copy the content (I'm at odds as to who would have, if not), his ignorance of the concepts of consensus and the 3RR demonstrate the need for a topic ban. Flipandflopped (Discuss, Contribs) 21:56, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support per nom. I also think a sock and/or meat puppetry investigation is warranted, as explained here. [16].--Atlantictire (talk) 22:13, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There's already been an SPI filed concerning the pair, deriving from problematic editing on an older article; the conclusion was that they are not the same person. Meatpuppetry remains a strong possibility, of course, but having reviewed the evidence, I'm doubtful of the strength of the case to be made, beyond suspicion. Snow talk 23:05, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Snow, I'd really appreciate your participation in the discussion of this.--Atlantictire (talk) 00:25, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support for POV-pushing, pure and simple. Miniapolis 23:21, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support – Given his almost certain knowing creation of an article based on anti-Jewish sources, and consistent intellectual dishonesty, I cannot see any future edits by him edits in these areas that would be productive. RGloucester — ☎ 04:05, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support. POV pushing, tendentious editing, dishonesty about sources, and other disruptive behavior. He would be lucky to get off with a mere topic ban. A block or site ban would also be appropriate for someone with this history. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 05:49, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - the formulation of this proposed ban does not make much sense to me. It is clear that the greatest issue by a huge margin is the anti-Semitic material that was adapted. Why a topic ban on communism is necessary is beyond me. A topic ban on Jews would automatically encompass a ban on anything involving Jews AND communism, or Jews and anything else. We are surely not suggesting that because the two subjects intersect in the article in question that it is necessary to topic ban him from communism as well? Topic bans should be carefully and accurately targeted. This one is not, and it should be refactored. Regards, Peacemaker67 (send... over) 06:36, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Per my explanation below, I am opposed to suggested topic bans from thousands and thousands of articles, either existing or potential, based on "one spat over a single contentious article". If serious accusations are justified, it should be easy to present evidence which would reveal all members of their traveling circus and all topic areas they operated. Only based on such evidence uninvolved administrators can determine who should be topic banned and from what topic areas. --Antidiskriminator (talk) 07:03, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"spat" ?? Balaenoptera musculus (talk) 10:07, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support per warnings by User Jehochman (talk · contribs) [17] [18] [19] to PRODUCER (as he was known at that time)/Potocnik: 1 "Do you have a connection with User:DIREKTOR? I find it odd that both of you show up with the same Jews and Communism dispute. Jehochman ^Talk 16:14, 28 April 2014 (UTC)" [20]; 2 "In any case, your account is blocked indefinitely, not for the sock or meat puppetry which is a strong possibility and also good grounds to block, but for tendentious POV pushing. The account will remain blocked until there is a discussion about how to prevent further recurrences...Jehochman ^Talk 16:17, 28 April 2014 (UTC)" [21]; 3 "...The following diffs show inappropriate editing. [22][23][24][25][26][27] Should you accumulate more examples of a similar nature, you may be subject to a sanction...Jehochman ^Talk 14:17, 29 April 2014 (UTC)" [28]. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 08:21, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support a ban on anything to do with Jews, Judaism, or anti-semitism for reasons given by many editors above. Balaenoptera musculus (talk) 09:54, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose a topic ban on communism, the case has not been made out by the nominator or supporters, per my comment above. The admin Jehochman acted prematurely and excessively, and their conduct should be examined closely to determine whether they should continue to wield the mop. I do not have a view on whether a topic ban should be implemented regarding the topic of Jews, but I caution the closing admin that this proposal was essentially canvassed in the battleground only, and that should be taken into account. Peacemaker67 (send... over) 11:53, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose more or less exactly as Peacemaker67 and also per Onlyindeathdoesdutyend (diffs are in the "so what?" category). As pointed out in the additional discussion sub-thread, the supports come out of a highly charged content dispute and a lot of the other behaviours (notably the proposer's, USchick) deserve at least equal scrutiny). DeCausa (talk) 12:01, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support As per obvious anti-semitic POV, evident on the creation of a WP:FRINGE article copied from an anti-semitic source. GreyWinterOwl (talk) 12:04, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose procedurally as one-sided. There has been ugly, nasty behavior around this article and related AfDs over the months and it would take the Arbitration Committee to look into everyones behavior to determine who is at fault and who needs to be pried out of the topic area. Atlantictire "I will continue to be so and have no interest in being polite or editing Wikipedia until the community figures out how to deal with editors like Director who abuse Wikietiquette in order to advance a racist agenda", is one from the "other side" that come to mind. This is not the type of thing where one's wiki-enemies should be able to propose and vote on topic bans. Tarc (talk) 14:28, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tarc is a great ally to Potočnik and Director. I would encourage him to read the essay on User:MarkBernstein's page. I don't have a problem saying things that are true, and this positively nails Tarc and his kind.--Atlantictire (talk) 18:39, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Atlantictire, I am an ally to no one, other than to those who may be railroaded by blood-boiling hysterics and lynch mob mentalities. If either of these editors, or others, have run afoul of this project's policies, then the project has the means to determine this and act accordingly. At no time, throughout any of this, have your screaming "eat my fuck" antics produced anything but disruption and distraction. If the article is to be deleted and/or if editors are to be sanctioned, it will be due to the diligence of sane heads and sound minds taking the lead. Tarc (talk) 18:50, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tarc—I responded to you here on the Talk page of Jimbo Wales. This was on April 29, 2014. You are saying there "…too many editors playing up the victim card just as they do in real life. None of this is genuine encyclopedic editing, it is just another front in their war". I am assuming those thoughts represent your true feelings, that editors are "playing up the victim card" and that this is a "front in their war". Bus stop (talk) 19:03, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Intersting. Tarc, who are "they," and what do you mean by them playing up the victim card "in real life"? What "victim card" are you talking about? Coretheapple (talk) 19:06, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Per request of Jehochman (User talk:Tarc#Over the top), I retracted & redacted that comment, as can be verified by how the thread appeared when it was archived. It was a heat-of-the-moment thing that added no value to the discussion. Tarc (talk) 19:12, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well OK, but what did you mean? You're sorta begging the question. I take it you understand the kind of implication of the word "they" in this context? Coretheapple (talk) 19:26, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I am well-aware of what you are implying . "They" is a 3rd-person personal pronoun, and it was used by me as such. Nothing more. Tarc (talk) 19:58, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If an editor is considerate enough to strike something, please don't bring it up again. We want people to recognize if they "go over the top" and back down. If they do, that is good, and the matter should not be raised again. Jehochman ^Talk 20:00, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oh brother. OK, that's fine. I think people know what he meant. Coretheapple (talk) 20:03, 14 May 2014 (UTC

Coretheapple, Jehochman, I think Tarc has mistaken you for people who confuse Wikininnying about Wikietiquette with having principles. I'm sure all of you agree that Wikininnying that sanctions and enables antisemitism and allows racists to manipulate the whole project can eat our collective fucks. Now good day to you fine sirs (or madams as the case may be) .--Atlantictire (talk) 20:46, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support as POV pushing & in general disruptive editing. →Davey2010→→Talk to me!→ 15:22, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support topic ban for both Judaism and Communism. This has been an exercise in blatant POV-pushing, and a topic ban is the bare minimum action needed. I would also support a site ban, because I don't think that an editor who been POV-pushing so hard in one topic is going to be editing constructively elsewhere. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BrownHairedGirl (talk • contribs) --15:45, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support - There is no way you can convince me the the original version of the "Jews and Communism" article was not an attempt to legitimize the Antisemitic canard of Jewish Bolshevism. I mean, does the editor want us to believe that they just had all of those sources lined up, many of which are lined up elsewhere, by the Holocaust denial Institute for Historical Review, with no intent? I support a site ban, or at the very least a ban on all topics related to Judaism, Jewish People and Communism. Dave Dial (talk) 16:22, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - the article has been blanked by an admin as "substantial plagiarism (and therefore copyright violation) going back to its creation".[29] Producer, the creator of the article, says he has retired but I think he should be given an indefinite site ban in case he changes his mind.Smeat75 (talk) 19:48, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support Been staliking and reading up on this. Would advocate site ban. We are here to create articles, not shit-pits of racist POV. Irondome (talk) 23:00, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support a ban on Jews and Judaism, but oppose a ban on Communism. The editor has been contributing in the highest quality there for years. Regarding myself, I already said I have no intention of entangling myself in this ugly business again, and do self-ban myself from any topics relating to Judaism. But honestly I don't know why a ban on Communism is being proposed at all, it seems a very simplistic copy-pasting of the article's title. -- Director (talk) 11:44, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support per the admission found at the post by Potočnik (talk) 10:49, 14 May 2014 (UTC), in the discussion below. No user should think stringing articles together from an (uncited, mis-cited, masked) antisemitic source on these topics is not prohibited. How is one to trust anything this User has written, if that is his method. Site ban would be reasonable for this. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:20, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support. In all honesty I feel these users should be pleased if they only get handed a topic ban. Calidum ^{Go Bruins!} 17:46, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

*Oppose Little evidence presented. Verycarefully (talk) 19:17, 15 May 2014 (UTC) -This user has been blocked as a sockpuppet - Smeat75 (talk) 12:22, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

— Verycarefully (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. The preceding unsigned comment was added at 19:25, 15 May 2014 (UTC) (UTC).[reply]

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

Second nominee

No consensus, especially among uninvolved editors, for a topic ban on Director. Director has apologized for his defense of the recently deleted version of the article and AGF'd that the sources were legitimate. I expect he will take a more cautious and open minded approach to the concerns of other editors in the future.--v/r - T P 19:36, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

User:Director - Blindly supported Producer and now changed his mind. Has a history of disruptive editing.

Support as nominator. USchick (talk) 17:48, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support for disruptive editing in this area. However, this TBAN should not be closed until the AFD is closed. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:44, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support a topic ban on subjects related to Judaism or Communism. While it may be true that he was not aware of the origins of this article, the fact is that he blindly and unreasonably supported the article after it was created by Producer. That is evident by simply reviewing his actions after the article was created. See[30] and in particular his rollback of 14:01, 3 March 2014‎[31] with the edit summary "standard USChick nonsense.." Eh, no. It was not USChick's nonsense or anyone's nonsense. It was an effort to reverse some of the damage that Producer was causing to the project by copying over text from an anti-Semitic website and creating an article that quickly passed muster with Metapedia and was reproduced there. Producer put in motion this effort to make Wikipedia a part of this daisy chain of drivel-producers, and Director became his right-hand man, fighting alongside him in the article and, on the talk page. But you don't have to wade through all the verbiage on the talk page, all the nastiness, all the threats, all the boorish behavior, all the saber-rattling. This is enough. I appreciate that he now favors deletion of the article, but his behavior in this article is such that it cannot be ignored, and a topic ban is necessary to protect the project from further such behavior. Coretheapple (talk) 20:01, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The case is presently unclear for Director as well. More so than anyone, Producer included, his behaviour reflected battleground mentality and a lack of appreciation for our non-negotiable civility policies and had I been asked to respond to this proposal a few days ago, I would have given unequivocal support for not just a topic ban, but probably a general block. However, I question the wisdom of blocking a user just as they've proven that they are capable of having their mind changed on the matter (albeit only by a lightning bolt revelation), and have backed off from their combative behaviour some, even expressing mortification over the whole affair. I know it's a risk, given past patterns of behaviour, but I wonder that maybe the best approach, and the one suggested to us by policy, is to give this user a chance to assimilate the obvious lesson here, rather than assuming he can't, given his change in position. I said it in the AfD already, but it bears repeating here: it's easier to change a person's approach to a situation than it is their motive and while Director exhibited considerable problems in his approach, it is clear his motive was not antisemitism. I think I (narrowly) support leaving Director's editing privileges intact, as per WP:Rope; if he exhibits the same problematic approach to contentious issues in the future as he did in the present article (and apparently in the past on others) then I would whole-heartedly support a general and indefinite block and will participate with vigor in the process to see it done. Snow talk 19:45, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support at least a broad topic ban. Director's dropping of his determined opposition in the face of conclusive evidence of the article's toxic sourcing is commendable, but comes after months of vitriolic posts and even more vitriolic disputation and incessant edit-warring. If Director and Producer were not in fact sock puppets, observers may be forgiven the assumption for they frequently acted in close concert, dominating the page and effectively shutting out alternative voices while threatening to "report" almost everyone who ventured the slightest disagreement. Even after his recantation, for example, Director asserts on the AfD page that my own précis of WP:FRINGE makes it impossible for him to WP:AGF [32]. Director has burnt countless hours of time and irreplaceable reservoirs of good will; had this received broader publicity, the damage could well have been much worse.MarkBernstein (talk) 20:36, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose No evidence provided of problematic behaviour. Linking to discussions that failed to gain consensus is not evidence. Also, accusing an editor of a history of disruptive editing without providing diffs is a personal attack. Only in death does duty end (talk) 20:41, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It really doesn't matter how many diffs are posted if no one is interested in looking at them. At one point, he was blocked indefinitely. USchick (talk) 20:52, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Uhh, no, the position expressed in that latter statement is not at all reflected in policy, that I know of anyway; failure to provide a diff is at most an inadvisable oversight. Knowingly constructing a specious claim for which absolutely no evidence exists at all could arguably be considered a personal attack, but even then, it would be be better described as just general bad-faith behaviour. Let's be careful about misrepresentation of policy to suggest inappropriate behaviour here, in a situation which already has enough fuel. Regardless of how each of us feels about the advisability of the posting, and regardless of how many diffs USChick put into her initial comments, there is a significant issue of ongoing disruption being discussed here that has been agreed to be an issue by dozens of involved editors. Suggesting that there is bad-faith at work in attempting review of the issues is not going to help. Snow talk 21:01, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What is considered to be a personal attack? "Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence. Serious accusations require serious evidence. Evidence often takes the form of diffs and links presented on wiki." I have yet to see any evidence. Diffs or otherwise. It is a personal attack without evidence. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:13, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, accusations that lack evidence altogether, not accusations for which the evidence was not immediately proffered at the arbitrary point at which you happened to enter the discussion. In order for it to be a personal attack, the claim has to have no basis in fact and be made as part of bad-faith activity. Failing to provide that evidence is an oversight, one that can be (and should, and has been) corrected, but it is not a personal attack if it was based on an informed perspective of the matter, least of all when there is massive support for the position amongst involved editors also familiar with the circumstances. You specifically implied that failing to provide diffs made any comment they would have supported a personal attack, and that is simply not true. Besides, it's not just diffs alone which make that case, but, as the very section you quoted shows, and linking to relevant discussion. There are a variety of links and diffs in this thread which direct to voluminous discussion across a variety of venues. These are not spurious claims being made by parties on a whim and without any substantial reason for concern, which is the only situation in which the policy you quote would apply. There is no bad-faith activity at work amongst those who brought this topic for discussion - your argument in that direction has no merit. Snow talk 21:30, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your interpretation is not what the policy says. You could make an argument not providing evidence at the point of asking for the ban was an oversight, but that is not an excuse given it was three hours before I asked for it and multiple people had voted support already. Only in death does duty end (talk) 06:33, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In what way does my interpretation depart from policy? Please be specific. You made the very precise claim that "accusing an editor of a history of disruptive editing without providing diffs is a personal attack." and I called you on that. No one is saying either A) that diffs and other solid evidence aren't recommended if you want your claims of bad-faith behaviour on the part of another contributor to be taken seriously, nor B) that it wouldn't be a personal attack if one manufactured non-existent complaints for which they never will be capable of giving evidence. But you've synthesized these two principles into one notion that if an editor makes an accusation of impropriety and they don't immediately make their case with evidence, that is a personal attack, regardless of whether they are in fact correct about the purported behaviour and acting in good faith. That idea is just not supported in policy. Anywhere. But to an extent it's a moot point, since this diff demonstrates there were in fact a dozen-plus diffs and links in this thread supplied as evidence of the behaviour and circumstances being discussed supplied by parties to the discussion, previous to your first post. Mind you, I don't want to get into an endlessly recursive discussion here with you, as it would serve little use to the broader issues here. And I have misgivings about how things have been handled too. But the statement you made was categorically false, and not in a trivial way, since through it you implied that another contributor was engaged in personal attacks. I didn't see that as particularly helpful to the current circumstances, whatever your feelings about whether or not the instigation of this process was well-advised. Snow talk 10:17, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Yes, Director's behaviour was very bad, however he has apologised. I would suggest keeping tabs on his activities in related articles and putting him "on probation", as it were, rather than a ban right now.Smeat75 (talk) 21:24, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I partially agree with Smeat75's proposal. Director has apologized and admitted his fault in the article. Support (for Director only) the figurative "probation", if not that, then a temporary Topic Ban.. oppose anything else as Director's involvement is unclear at the moment, it seems as if all he did was behave in a slightly unorthodox way whilst defending the article from the likes of Atlanticire, and that doesn't warrant a topic ban. Flipandflopped (Discuss, Contribs) 21:43, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Snow Rise wrote "they've proven that they are capable of having their mind changed on the matter". I can't agree. Director collaborated on this polemic before Producer uploaded it.[33][34] The lede was not the beginning of a neutral encylopedic article; it was recognisably hate literature. It began "A near majority of Jews dominated the top ten to twenty leaders of the Russian Bolshevik Party's first twenty years and the Soviet Union's secret police was "one of the most Jewish" of all Soviet institutions", the entire lede continued that litany, and the rest of the article followed in that vein.[35] In discussion, he insisted it was neutral, that it was American bias against communism that rendered his opponents unable to see the true neutrality of the piece. He insisted that oppression of Jews under communism was outside the scope of an article called "Jews and Communism", but would not describe the scope except as "an article that lays out the association between "Jews and Communism""[36]. He only recoiled when he was busted, and not from the language, not from the framing, not from the purpose, not from the sourcing even now, just from it becoming publicly known that the creators of the Wikipedia article - Producer and Director together, that we know of - had taken this polemic from an article written by a known Holocaust denier and defended it to the hilt. Is it "clear his motive was not antisemitism" because he expressed mortification for being deceived, mortification that's already been succeeded by resentment at being taken to task for fighting so bitterly for such malicious trash? No, it's not clear. NebY (talk) 21:56, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Director doesn't strike me as the type of contributor who changes his perspective based upon the general community consensus of his character and behaviour, no matter how overwhelming. Of course, if your assertion that he and Producer collaborated on the page before it was introduced into article space, or more specifically, that he knew the material was being plagiarized from the source from which it came, can be supported with evidence, that would be a different situation entirely and would generate an instant change in position on my part. However, the diffs you provide are only for a previous implication of this fact on your part and his denial of said claim, which is not really evidence of any sort either way. On a side note, though, I never saw a version the article that far back until now; I had thought the current version was problematic, but that version is truly hideous. As if the obviously fringe and distasteful wording of the prose aside, the use of images to create the implication of a rogue's gallery is itself unsettling, as if meant to say "Look how Jewish all of these communists are." Still, nothing I see screams out as proof that Director wasn't just blind to rampant synthesis at work. While it may seem inconceivable to you or I to not be able to appreciate the hate-mongering that must have been at work in the ultimate source of those claims, it's entirely feasible Director did not. My view of him is that he is simply a problematic editor in general who does not like be disagreed with, and once the situation on the page reached a certain level of heatedness, he was lost to discussion on the matter and inclined to view opposing views as nonsense by default, until incontrovetable evidence as the source of the content snapped him out of it. That's a serious issue in itself, but one not well addressed by a topic ban. Which is why I've advocated giving him a chance to learn a lesson here, but with very little tolerance for anything approaching that kind of behaviour again, which should be met by a general indefinite ban from the project. Snow talk 22:31, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What would your opinion be if it was proven that Director knowingly added a source from an anti-semitic "hate group" onto the article (not that I suggest he has, I only mirror what previous editors have said). Would you support a topic ban then? My position of current, based upon the evidence provided, is that Director is just adamant and stubborn, and perhaps a bit offensive in general. I haven't seen any specific links to a personal attack he made, or to unacceptable contents/sources he uploaded.. although I highly suspect he has done one of the two, that's just speculation.. as much as I would like him to be blocked, and as much as I disagree with his ethics, we're not in a position to do much yet.. Flipandflopped (Discuss, Contribs) 22:40, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, my perspective on that matter would depend highly upon the nature of the source and the manner in which it was added. After-all, it's entirely within the realm of possibility that a source used in some context by a hate group could be used for quite a different purpose as a reliable source on Wikipedia. On the other hand, if Director quoted a source from the same hate group from which Producer plagiarized his content, then it would suggest he was fully aware of Producer's activities, but I've yet to see any evidence of such. If the source came from a different locale entirely, but was not an appropriate source, then that would also raise the spectre of his inability to edit in the topic area in a way consistent with NPOV; but once again, I must stress this is a response to the hypothetical -- all evidence suggests to me that, as you said, he is simply stubborn and determined to get his own way, once he's determined that it's the way. Though I would add "arrogant, dismissive, and combative" to the list of applicable descriptors. Snow talk 23:17, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just briefly, because it's late: I found Director's "to all intents and purposes" phrasing curious and so I tried to make my question precise, asking "whether you were involved in writing or reviewing any of this material before it appeared as an article in mainspace on the English-language Wikipedia?". He didn't say if he reviewed it but he did say that "I think I maybe wrote one sentence, and added three or four images." so yes, Director worked on it before Producer uploaded it. We now know that much was adapted from the original Weber piece or some intermediate version. I can't tell you if Director was slyly alluding to that when he said he maybe wrote one sentence, whether Producer prepared the adaptation and hid its origins from Director (which I don't think Director has offered as an explanation), or whether they collaborated in the adaptation just as they collaborated in the defence (which seems the simplest explanation). As for the images, that collection was not the synthesis of another hand. There are just five in the article, of which Director admits to "three or four" - most of the work. He also says the sources "checked out"; someone did put in the effort of adding ISBNs as the references in Weber's piece don't have them.[37] NebY (talk) 23:28, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, it does seem to raise the question of how much they collaborate which is germane to other areas of this discussion, but still is not a smoking gun as regards Director knowing the work was plagiarized from an antisemitic source. And lack of foreknowledge of this aspect would explain why he would later say he felt like he needed to take a shower when he learned the true source of the material; that is, he lent his support and collaboration to Producer from the start without knowing of this fact and was disturbed to learn he had been used to further an antisemitic agenda. Snow talk 00:41, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I wanted to say I didn't "write a word of it", but then I remembered I added some images and introduced a brief sentence to the lede, and I didn't want to turn out dishonest. So I said "to all intents and purposes". The edits I referred to were done well after the article was created. I can't believe all the nonsense that's being drawn from that.. -- Director (talk) 18:11, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I for one am inclined to believe you on this point and I think this line of discussion should be shut down unless more than speculation can be offered. At the same time, it's not exactly "nonsense" for the question to have been raised to begin with, given the circumstances. Honestly, I don't know what to think about your relationship with Producer, but if you two do have an off-wiki friendship, I imagine you have some choice words to share with him over this whole affair. Snow talk 00:15, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Support per nom. I also think a sock and/or meat puppetry investigation is warranted, as explained here. [38].--Atlantictire (talk) 22:13, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support (Judaism solely) After reading through both the Jews and Communism talk page [39] and its archives [40], [41], [42], [43] and [44] I have changed my mind on the matter. The users attitude was incessant and unwavering. It definitely constitutes disruptive editing. That said, I don't think a topic ban on Communism would be helpful here, as the issue largely relates to the antisemitic content that was defended for so long, and the users lack of comprehension as to what the articles greater message was --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 22:18, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support While I commend Director for his change in view on the article, bans are meant to be preventive. There is nothing that he has to offer to this subject area and his track record shows that disruption could continue. This is certainly a more favorable decision for him than a block, which is probably warranted by his comments on other editors which he continues in this discussion. TFD (talk) 23:31, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose How did he "blindly" follow the other editor when he even reversed his position completely? Please, provide diffs for comments that you feel were inappropriate and worthy of a topic ban. There just isn't any evidence here. Just because you disagreed with him in the AfD is not a reason for a topic ban. The discussion at the talk page and the first AfD did become lousier at points, but especially with this dicussion the blame could be equally put upon this ANI topic ban nominator USchick who kept insisting communism doesn't have anything to do with socialism or the Soviet Union with some no-true-scotsman argument that became very tedious. Director kept replying and atleast that following conversation was rather low-quality. Actually, in every "bad" discussion I can find from the archives Drowninglimbo linked above USchick is the other party, both engage with similar style. And USchick is the one suggesting a topic ban for Director? Objectionable. --Pudeo ' 01:42, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

He blindly followed the other editor by not having his own opinion about the content as POV, FRINGE and SYNTH. To the point that no one was allowed to fix a math error except Producer. No one else can count? [45] Then he cried crocodile tears when he was exposed. Read through other people's comments please and feel free to nominate me for a topic ban as well if you feel it's warranted. USchick (talk) 02:01, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, I don't think you should get a topic ban. I just think that the most disruptive process in this, if any, was discussion between you and Director. --Pudeo ' 02:22, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I understand your concern. I was stooping to his level in order to even have a discussion with him at all. I was reprimanded by an admin for doing that. Neither one of us took it personally and we continue to joke around about that. Like we do here for example Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Jews and Communism (2nd nomination)#Proposed sanctions USchick (talk) 02:33, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - Keep an eye on him, as Smeat said above: "probation". I'm sure he knows what's happened, and he has even evidenced disgust on the matter. Let him start fresh, and if problems arise, then action should be taken. At yet, I think he deserves the chance to make a fresh start. I think I can tell, personally, that he knows what happened, and how he got caught up in it. RGloucester — ☎ 03:56, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Note that an old version of his user page had the text: This user is not a racist, but does support James D. Watson's statement on racial scientific facts. This user does not believe scientific facts can be "improper", or "morally unacceptable" Agreeing with scientific racism or being a racist is not a reason to topic ban someone. But when they have a history of tendentious editing in articles based on racist sources, this is a good reason for a topic ban. I don't think we can trust this user to edit articles that are sensitive to race issues without POV pushing and other disruptive behaviors. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 05:58, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - I repeat the comment I made about the proposed ban on PRODUCER. The formulation of this proposed ban does not make much sense to me. It is clear that the greatest issue by a huge margin is the anti-Semitic material that was adapted. Why a topic ban on communism is necessary is beyond me. A topic ban on Jews would automatically encompass a ban on anything involving Jews AND communism, or Jews and anything else. We are surely not suggesting that because the two subjects intersect in the article in question that it is necessary to topic ban him from communism as well? Topic bans should be carefully and accurately targeted. This one is not, and it should be refactored. Regards, Peacemaker67 (send... over) 06:37, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Per my explanation below, I am opposed to suggested topic bans from thousands and thousands of articles, either existing or potential, based on "one spat over a single contentious article". If serious accusations are justified, it should be easy to present evidence which would reveal all members of their traveling circus and all topic areas they operated. Only based on such evidence uninvolved administrators can determine who should be topic banned and from what topic areas. --Antidiskriminator (talk) 07:04, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support per User Jehochman (talk · contribs)'s prior warning to Director [46]: "I am alarmed by this edit [47]. You should never reference another editor's religion, race or nationality to challenge their edits or worse to suggest excluding them. This diff is ground to ban you from Wikipedia. Please remove it swiftly. Jehochman ^Talk 16:44, 2 May 2014 (UTC)". Thank you, IZAK (talk) 07:43, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support a topic ban for any content relating to Jews, Judaism and anti-semitism, user contributed to and supported the initial wildly anti-semitic article as documented by NebY above, then defended it at all costs. WP:BATTLEGROUND and WP:TAGTEAM also seem relevant. Balaenoptera musculus (talk) 10:03, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose a topic ban on communism, the case has not been made out by the nominator or supporters, per my comment above. I do not have a view on whether a topic ban should be implemented regarding the topic of Jews, but I caution the closing admin that this proposal was essentially canvassed in the battleground only, and that should be taken into account. Peacemaker67 (send... over) 11:53, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose more or less exactly as Peacemaker67 and also per Onlyindeathdoesdutyend (diffs are in the "so what?" category). As pointed out in the additional discussion sub-thread, the supports come out of a highly charged content dispute and a lot of the other behaviours (notably the proposer's, USchick) deserve at least equal scrutiny). DeCausa (talk) 12:02, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support because of the user having defended anti-semitic content for so long and so fiercely, that it's impossible to believe that there is no personal POV involved, even after the user claimed to have changed his mind. GreyWinterOwl (talk) 13:56, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Director's primary mistake was really a matter of WP:AGF, by trusting that the primary source was legitimate. Everything else was based on an attempt to enforce policy and find appropriate resources for the subject. And once the WP:BATTLEFIELD broke out, it's not unnatural to feel backed into a corner and have a few choice words. When the actual source of the work came out, Director apologized and agreed to deletion. That's not the action of an unreasonable editor, and I don't see anything to be gained by sanctioning him. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 15:11, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per comment in section 1. Tarc (talk) 15:21, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - He has apologized which is better than nothing, but anyway we should just keep on eye out for now. →Davey2010→→Talk to me!→ 15:31, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - There is no question the editor was disruptive on the article, but that in itself does not rise to the level of a topic or site ban. Most especially the latter. I choose to assume good faith that this editor is just passionate about the topic of Communism and has no interest in trying to legitimize antisemitic canards. I think many well intentioned supporters of this should rethink their support and try to put themselves in the position of having to defend something you believe is being wrongs associated with. I think we would all feel attacked. And even though the editor was wrong, they apologized when the origins of the article were revealed and reversed themselves. That should be good enough. Thanks. Dave Dial (talk) 16:28, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've been thinking a bit about how to assume good faith in this situation and what the consequences of that assumption are. IMO the bias in the article (primarily cherry-picking and weight) was so self-evident to a reasonable person that, assuming the editor was engaged in a good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, the issues raised in COMPETENCE#Bias-based come into play. Balaenoptera musculus (talk) 18:37, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Because Wikipedia errs on the side of assuming good faith, the chorus of people opposing a topic ban for Director will probably prevail. In any case, I encourage you to read User:MarkBernstein's essay on his user page. That someone would spend weeks, day in day out, aggressively defending Producer's anti-Semitic POV without recognizing it for what it is seems highly improbable. If you operate on the principle of "do unto others as you would not have them do unto you," then you're counting on people to mistake deviousness for contrition.--Atlantictire (talk) 18:21, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support six month site ban and subsequent topic banning for a period to be decided to community consensus. I find the editor's epithiny unconvincing. Irondome (talk) 23:06, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
oppose User has now realised the questionable sources involved and has apologised. Nothing to be gained by any ban/blocks. The agenda now appears to be driven by a group of editors using Foxmanesque smear tactics. 94.195.46.205 (talk) 04:20, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe when someone makes a full time job of defending blatantly racist content we ought to stop "assuming good faith" with this person. Maybe consider the possibility that they're a, I dunno, manipulative bigot with an agenda and their apology is probably not sincere. Maybe take a look at the Stormfront links posted to Jim Wales' talk page asking like-minded individuals to edit Wikipedia, consider the possibility that they're here, and think about the extent to which you want to allow them to subvert a process such as this one. --Atlantictire (talk) 11:39, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, long on fantasy..short on facts. Who knows, maybe they are even participating in a secret email campaign against Wikipedia to contaminate it with lies, hate, and deception? As I said, Foxmanesque. 94.195.46.205 (talk) 12:38, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Except that it's not...

... you get the idea.

Sorry, what are you implying here? Care to explain what you think this CAMERA project you linked to has to do with the current discussion?--Atlantictire (talk) 13:40, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As this is a section concerning User:Director I naturally assume that all your frothings are accusations against him personally. Have you evidence that those posts are by him? As for the link to CAMERA's attempts to subvert wikipedia, that was alluding to user:MarkBernsteins handwaving a few paras down. 94.195.46.205 (talk) 17:16, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Let's be very clear, 94.195.46.205 . Are you suggesting that user:MarkBernstein is in any way associated to CAMERA, or is WP:NOTHERE to benefit the project? What are you suggesting? MarkBernstein (talk) 17:37, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support Along with agreeing with TFD about disruption and knowledge issues, I find remarks like [48] - really malevolent, nasty- and the POV complaint is 'projecting', in Jungian terms imo Sayerslle (talk) 16:46, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support. In all honesty I feel these users should be pleased if they only get handed a topic ban. Calidum ^{Go Bruins!} 17:46, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

*Oppose Little actual evidence based on user behavior. Verycarefully (talk) 19:18, 15 May 2014 (UTC) -This user has been blocked as a sockpuppet-Smeat75 (talk) 12:25, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

— Verycarefully (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. The preceding unsigned comment was added at 19:25, 15 May 2014 (UTC) (UTC).[reply]

"This user is currently blocked. The latest block log entry is provided below for reference: 20:57, 15 May 2014 Timotheus Canens blocked Verycarefully with an expiry time of indefinite (account creation disabled)" (Special:Contributions/Verycarefully) Balaenoptera musculus (talk) 10:25, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

Additional discussion

First, I think you should be looking for feedback from uninvolved editors. Secondly, if you want to hear from the Wikipedia community, WP:AN/I is a better forum for this than WP:AN. You will also need to present diffs outlining specific acts of disruption. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:58, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This noticeboard is for ban proposals. ANI is for specific incidents. This proposal spans lots of incidents over a long period of time. USchick (talk) 18:17, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Liz, it's patently obvious that Director and Producer need to be banned, and maybe not just from this article. But they're really symptoms of a bigger issue: how admins enforce the rules. Both Director and Producer are counting on admins who don't really investigate an issue before acting, and who become indignant at suggestions that they've made an ill-informed decision or acted defensively/impulsively.

I'd be in favor of a checklist of inquiries that ought to be made before punishing someone in response to a complaint. Maybe blocking shouldn't be at the discretion of just one admin.--Atlantictire (talk) 18:34, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Either is allowable (to be fair to both of you, the guidelines in the headers have a bit of an identity crisis, between the version on the viewable page and the one on edit page), but I daresay you'd get more involvement if this were on ANI. Snow talk 19:45, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note for admins: An in depth discussion of the behaviour of these two has already been discussed at a controversial afD page in which these two were VERY involved (and, in my opinion, overly controlling of). The discussion led to a near-consensus there calling for a topic ban to be made on Director and Producer/Potocnik. Flipandflopped (Discuss, Contribs) 18:04, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Summary: Jews and Communism was adapted in late February 2014 by User:Potočnik, then known as Producer, from an article found on the site of a Holocaust denier. Producer and Director worked tirelessly and in concert to avoid changes to the article, almost invariably adopting a combative and threatening tone in Talk and edit comments. Despite its very evident problems, its rancid anti-Semitism, and the discussion at Jimbo, the article survived a March 2014 AfD as No Consensus. The article is again at AfD, where many thousands of words have been expended and where the article has attracted negligible support after the revelation of its roots. Director changed his position from Strong Keep to Delete; Potocnik has been silent.

The Problem: Literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of volunteer hours have been spent, and tens -- perhaps hundreds -- of thousands of words have been written, in order to keep a vitriolically anti-Semitic attack page off Wikipedia, or at least to reduce the worst aspects of that page. This is a terrible waste. It is clear that two or three dedicated and sophisticated editors, working together and cooperating closely, can tie the project in knots. This page would have been terribly embarrassing to the project if it had received wider media attention but it was also a comparatively easy call; we may not be as lucky in the future. The community needs a forum to consider and address the problems this episode so clearly presents. There will always be anti-Semites and zealots and conspiracy theorists and fanatics eager to spread The Word and capable of "following the sources" to cram racism, anti-semitism, fringe science, and fanaticism into Wikipedia, and where just two or three are gathered together they are extremely difficult or impossible to oppose. We have strong policies against socks, but two or three coordinated ideologues can assume ownership of a page and do nearly anything provided they take care to cherry-pick sources and avoid concerted opposition. If Wikipedia does not address this problem, it will have no future. MarkBernstein (talk) 18:27, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, let's not panic here. Wikipedia does have processes for handling these situations, processes that have not even been exhausted in this case; ArbCom, for example, was never brought in on matters though I think a number of us anticipated it heading in that direction. For that matter, no manner of formal mediation was requested, though postings were made to ANI. It strikes me as a bit histrionic to prophesy the doom of the project over this scenario. You're of course more than welcome (encouraged even) to take any proposals or discussion about new guidelines to WP:Village Pump (policy), but I suspect you'll get mostly comments along the lines of what I have to say here -- that is to say, this situation is well-covered in existing policy and this situation became the chore that it did because those policies were not applied as elegantly as they could have been (venues that could have been explored weren't and administrator involvement was not what it could have been, both of which happen from time to time). Let's also remember that, meatpuppetry (for which we also have policies) aside, two or three editors working ardently against prevailing consensus is not in and of itself problem behaviour -- it's just the reality of Wikipedia and something we depend upon really. That said, clearly there was problematic behaviour involved here, but again, that can all be addressed through existing process (as is being done in this very thread for example), and it makes little sense to me to try to reinvent the wheel when only a portion of the possible solutions we have at our disposal have been tapped. Snow talk 19:45, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I personally think that article is appalling, as was the behavior of these two editors. During the brief time I was involved in that article, I was attacked by the two of them, and threatened by one. I didn't like some of the talk page comments I saw; I felt that some of them were ugly, raising, in one instance, the religious background of an editor in a gratuitous fashion. Even so, I'd like to see some diffs. Who did what. There is new evidence that much of the article was copied from a racist website. Whoever did the copying should be topic-banned. Whoever abetted that action, ditto. Other specific evidence of bad behavior should also be introduced. Similarly, I'm not sure the timing is correct, though I admit that it is easier to engage in this discussion now, while the article and its talk page still exist. Coretheapple (talk) 19:19, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The demonstration of the original version's reliance on an article from the Institute for Historical Research is [49]. The talk page's numerous archives -- all since February 2014 -- speak for themselves, as does the outcry at AfD. I'm very concerned by the amount of volunteer time and energy this is requiring, with seemingly unbounded demands for further demonstrations of diffs, evidence, argumentation, surely to come. What is to be done? MarkBernstein (talk) 19:30, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There are lots of diffs listed in the ANI examples. For anyone interested, they can see them there. My concern is with the attitude of the two editors and their tag team effort to shut down any discussion on the talk page and block other editors from participating. This is also documented in the archived talk pages of Jews and Communism and Jewish Bolshevism. USchick (talk) 19:46, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It didn't require that much of a deep-dive into the evidence to see the justification for topic bans for both editors. See my comments above. Coretheapple (talk) 20:05, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Coretheapple, can you elaborate? Was it producer or director that threatened you? Also, can you provide diffs to the talk page comments you speak of? My current opinion is that of a topic ban for Producer, and a 'temporary topic ban' for the likes of Director, but I could easily have their roles the wrong way around.. Flipandflopped (Discuss, Contribs) 22:08, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Director. See the repeated "warnings" and threats to "report" me at [50], especially the "Please consider yourself formally warned" at 07:27, 27 April 2014. These are the kind of bullying tactics that I found especially dismaying from Director. I don't recall if they came from the other chap too, but to be frank I found their tactics interchangeable. Coretheapple (talk) 23:53, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I could write an entire essay here about the highly inappropriate behavior of a large number of editors on that article, the flaming, the accusations of antisemitism, the incessant use of edit-warring as a substitute for discussion, the accusations of sockpuppetry, etc, etc.. But I won't. #1 because the article is being deleted and this is a dead issue, #2 because I just now went away on business and hace nothing but my phone, and #3 because I don't care, tbh. To single out Producer and me for sanctions, imo, defies all logic. The article did turn out to be based in part on some IHR essay - but nobody knew that at that time. I didn't; and the sources checked out. When the IHR thing was revealed, I immediately supported deletion and repeatedly apologized to everyone. If someone wishes to "take revenge" for my defending the article, fine, I won't offer any kind of detailed defense. -- Director (talk) 19:31, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I respect that you may not have known but it is highly unlikely that the Producer, who created the article, did not --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 19:55, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Director, I deeply appreciate your change of heart on the article. But the fact remains that the article that Producer created was, on its face, an act of anti-Semitic propaganda. One did not have to know chapter and verse or its precise origins to see that. But you dove right in and acted as his trusty right hand, Robin to his Batman, or perhaps the second Batman. I don't think that you should be punished. But I do think that you need to be separated from articles on this subject for the good of the project. Coretheapple (talk) 20:10, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also, and this is why we're here, it is not a dead issue. If indeed this article is deleted, as is entirely possible as it seems to be a WP:SNOW situation, I am sure Son of Jews and Communism will rear its ugly head in the blink of an eye. Coretheapple (talk) 20:35, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Director, has it not occurred to you that the recurrent suggestion of antisemitism at work in the motives of those defending the content might be related to the fact that the content itself was perceived to be indicative of the type of synthesis of facts consistent with an antisemitic view, a fact that was borne out once we discovered the origins of the content? Other contributors saw that at once. You interpreted the content differently and did not detect that underlying motive at work. That's fine, and nobody expects every editor to catch something along those lines, and I for one take it on faith you were operating as to what you thought was the approrpiate approach to the content. But is unreasonable in this context to not understand the suspicion of others, when there was promotion of obviously antisemitic material at work and when you would like, presumably, for others to be understanding of your good faith support of that material. You may notice that, despite having considerable reservations about your behaviour on that article and it's talk page, I've gone out of my way to advise restraint in regards to sanctions against you, on the hope that your change of position reflects that you're capable of reforming your approach a little. But you're not helping the case for that approach when you don't own up to how you contributed to the mess that became of that situation. And here I'm not longer talking about the antisemitic issue at all, but rather your tendency to see everyone else as the problem and you as the besieged party. You went into full-on battle-mode on that page. You were unreceptive to opposing arguments and frequently uncivil, both in terms of denigrating your opposition's perspectives and, most especially, ignoring WP:AGF, the very principle to which you would now like to appeal, constantly. Having seen this situation play out many, many times on the noticeboards, I'm telling you that you have a very limited window here to get out ahead of things, but it requires owning up to your mistakes in full (that is, not just as regards being duped by material), and commiting to another approach. If editing on Wikipedia and in these areas is important to you, I'd do it fast, before the votes stack, even if your circumstances allow only a small message. Snow talk 20:14, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To justify a topic ban from 'Jews' and 'Communism' evidence needs to be presented of significant disruption in the topic area. One spat over a single contentious article is not enough to justify a topic ban from thousands and thousands of articles, either existing or potential. Only in death does duty end (talk) 20:48, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Disruption spans across Jews and Communism, Jewish Bolshevism, and Leon Trotsky with many discussions about What is Communism, [51] Who killed the tzar [52], Who is a Jew [53]. I would say a broad range of topics has already been covered. USchick (talk) 21:40, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's also worth noting that, while Only in Death's perspective (that disruption on a single, or low number, of articles does not constitute cause for a topic ban) is valid personal position on what is appropriate here, it is not a bar which is required by policy or the block process itself; many topic bans have been instituted for editors whose contentious behaviour was linked to a particular inflexible perspective deemed likely to spill over into other articles. I will say though that OiD's point as to the breadth of topics that would be banned is worth taking under advisement; between those two topics, a significant number of articles would be barred to the editors. That's part of the reason I have reservations in Director's case. With regard to Producer, I dare say it's obvious his issues with NPOV on the Jewish people are problematic beyond repair. Director, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have come into conflict with other editors because of a devotion to the subject matter; rather that conflict stemmed from what he perceived as a matter of editing principle. His issues are more with general civility and the ability to collaborate harmoniously with other editor's and are not tied up with any one particular topic. Which makes a topic ban a dubious solution for dealing with him. I think what is called for in his case is outreach as regards general behaviour and, if that fails in the long-run, a more general sanction/block. Snow talk 21:59, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Precisely for this reason I nominated them separately, for individual consideration. Thank your for putting it so eloquently. USchick (talk) 22:02, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Snow, my opinion is practically a mirror of yours. I concur with Snow's stance on Director precisely. Flipandflopped (Discuss, Contribs) 22:12, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is there anything in Director's editing history that makes you believe that his future contributions to Wikipedia outweigh the risk episodes like this one pose to the project? Yes, Director was staunch in defending policy and standing by his sources -- but only his sources were permitted throughout the article's regrettable life. Only two days ago, he prepared a spirited defense of the page, stating that the entire nomination was deceitful: "Folks, you're being lied to regarding what the article is and what its about. The deletion rationale is an appeal to emotion, and is aimed to gather WP:VOTES on such a basis. Nothing in it is accurate nor factual…. Furthermore: such ridiculous accusations push forward a right-wing, practically Reaganite political agenda.[54]. I particularly draw attention to the dog-whistle allegation about vote-gathering, but more generally to the tone and incivility. This is not the language of an editor who is working collaboratively to improve the encyclopedia. MarkBernstein (talk) 22:14, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Like I said before, the problem I have with the whole situation is that it IS largely unclear who did what. I'm not saying I agree with Director's ethic, but he has a right to say what he said on the afD discussion (no matter how mislead it may be) - we can't punish him in that regard. It's his opinion, and it may be blunt, but it isn't so far as being a personal attack. If you were to provide diffs and references proving that only his sources were permitted through the article's agreeably regrettable life, my opinion could easily sway.. but from an NPOV, I don't think we can judge his behaviour unless more raw proof is provided. Then again, if Director had been making these edits behind an IP rather than a fancy account, he may well already have been banned entirely by now.. all in all, I just don't want to judge pre-emptively.Flipandflopped (Discuss, Contribs) 22:24, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And, much as I like to avoid using an essay in circumstances where a very fine policy determination needs to be made, it's rather hard to imagine a situation to which WP:Rope would better apply. I'll be clear on this -- I stuck to the ANI discussion and avoided the talk page and even a firm position in the AfD outside of behavioural arguments until the eleventh hour for the very specific reason that I was more concerned with the constant breaks with general civility than anything else and I anticipated that an uninvolved editor would be required to take the matter before another administrator or even ArbCom. I fully expected to have to take that action within a few days. Director's reversal in the AfD backed me away from that perspective, ever so slightly -- just enough that I felt it warranted to give him another opportunity to digest the situation and learn better of boring full steam ahead, deflecting the concerns of large numbers of editors and viewing such contributors as obstinate obstacles rather than collaborators with whom he must work. I am not in any way yet convinced he has taken that lesson to heart, but I think policy and the circumstances compel us to give him one very limited opportunity to prove that he can before we condemn him outright. If he can't do that, then the topic ban proposed here in insufficient and not well-targeted at his style of disruption, and a general block of at least six months to a year, if not indefinite, is what I would view as the recommendable course of action, though course, if it comes to that, the exact sanction will be at the discretion of the reviewing admin or committee. Snow talk 22:56, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

All I saw was "sources - reliable - attacked - defend!", and by an editor I've known for years to be highly careful about sourcing and very neutral in his approach (not just me either, see Peacemaker's input) - and the topic was one that could only be expected to draw emotional reaponses no matter how reliable and thorough the sourcing. There really was no evidence for SYNTH, or any kind of serious wrongdoing - until months have past and some really impressive detective work uncovered the collection of sources to have been those cherry-picked by a racist essay. At that point I actually felt physically ill, not only at discovering the source, but also at having wasted so much effort at being so utterly wrong. I had previously said I'd move for deletion myself if something like that turned out to be the case (I checked the sources, found them to be reliable, and was confident), so when it did turn out that way, I did a 180.

I still think I acted correctly given the information I had, but I nevertheless apologize for the sheer gravity of the error. I am always annoyed, perhaps to an undue degree, by arguments that I perceive to be borne out of prejudice or bias, hence my strong defense of the sources. It felt weird to me to, but ignoring my gut and going with cold principles, following protocol, its a big part of what I do in real life. And for that I don't apologize, that's how science works, that's how medicine works, that's how Wiki works.

At the AfD I apologized to anyone offended by my conduct, which, admittedly, stripped as it is now of its "righteous cause" (of defending reliable sources), does indeed render into sheer rudeness. But viewed in the context of what we had in terms of evidence at that time, I can't bring myself to view it as "disruption". I shall not grovel, nor will I now attack my fellow Wikipedian of many years, regardless of what he put me (and others) through. I find kicking one when he's down distasteful, regardless of whether he deserves to be down. -- Director (talk) 19:59, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I know you like to present yourself as a scientific kind of guy. But then you let slip something like this: IZAK is a religious Jewish person with an agenda to disassociate Jews and Communism to the best of his POV-pushing ability. That's a fact. He should leave. Yeah, I know, you deleted it, you hoped people would forget you ever said it. But you did, and I have to tell you frankly that your entire approach seemed to reflect the kind of viewpoint that is reflected there. I.e., that your "opponents" were "religious Jews" and "emotional" and ought to get the hell out of the article. That's not what you said, except in this instance, but it was your attitude. It's not a very nice viewpoint, and in fact, I think it's downright ugly. Scientific? A product of "cold principles"? Eh, not exactly. I would feel a lot better if you were a little bit more upfront about your actual attitudes. Coretheapple (talk) 19:44, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yah. If you're a member of a group, any group, and if you're religious, you're likely to be offended by your group being connected to Communism - completely regardless of whether that's actually warranted or not. That's an objective fact, "scientific", if you will. And the comment was posted in light of yet another of IZAK's edit wars to introduce changes without consensus, or even proper talkpage discussion. Introducing lists of his favorite religious leaders and whatnot. I said he should leave because he just stopped discussing and simply reverted to edit war. Religious bias is not new as a problem this project has to face. Note also that I have not infrequently called out my own countrymen for nationalist bias when I see it blatantly raise its ugly head. The lesson there is: "science" (or rather objective observations) by no means need be pretty. -- Director (talk) 20:09, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The thing is, editing on Wikipedia requires more than just a nominal dislike of bias; it requires genuine patience with views you don't ascribe much value to. This need for tolerance of opposing perspectives is not just a matter of maintaining civility and keeping discussions from blowing up as they did in this case, though that role is crucial to our work here; it's also useful because sometimes you're really, really sure that you right about something...when in fact you aren't. You've just described the sources that informed upon the article as "cherry-picked" - that is in fact the precise argument that a number of involved editors used to call the article into question, suggesting that selective sourcing of trivial facts were being used to formulate a notion not supported by legitimate sourcing on the topic. High as your regard is for your approach as scientific, your empirical nose failed to detect the odor rising from these claims, whereas some of your fellow editors did sense it, many of whom you actively derided for the position. So it doesn't really serve to excuse your excesses in terms of defense against bias, especially given the level of virulence involved, when it seems that you were applying the most bias yourself, albeit partially as a result of an exercise in trust.

I come from a background in science myself, and I know of no academic or research institution, not any organization devoted to a genuinely "scientific" approach to tackling problems, that would have allowed you to try to make your arguments the way that you did in this case -- that is, in such an obstinate and uncivil manner; those kinds of attitudes are viewed very dimly in scientific literature, in lecture halls, at conferences, in debates, and anywhere else where scientific consensus is typically formulated. I wish I could say such attitudes and personal arrogance were absent entirely from the process of contemporary scientific process -- they certainly aren't -- but they aren't typically tolerated as appropriate to public discourse at least. And, thankfully, neither are they welcome on Wikipedia. Anybody can state that they have depersonalized "scientific" way of approaching problems, but the mere proclamation doesn't necessarily make them a particularly good standard-bearers for those ideals in reality, and I've often observed that those who make such announcements outside of context of actual science often have the most tenuous grasp of such notions.

And on the topic of empirical validation, I don't really have enough prior experience with you to know if this is an isolated incident or typical of your approach to discussion, but I do think that your perspective as voiced here...

"At the AfD I apologized to anyone offended by my conduct, which, admittedly, stripped as it is now of its "righteous cause" (of defending reliable sources), does indeed render into sheer rudeness. But viewed in the context of what we had in terms of evidence at that time, I can't bring myself to view it as 'disruption'."

...is really at the crux of the matter. You should be writing every single posting in a Wikipedia discussion, every last one, so that, if it is stripped of its "righteous cause" (or any motivation, virtuous or petty), it still will not come across as rude. Because if it's rude when you're in the wrong about the matter being discussed, it's almost certainly still rude if you're in the right; rudeness is not really directly correlated to the strength of your factual or policy argument -- it's about respect and how you make your argument. And if your comments aren't composed to avoid incivility, regardless of the strength of your positions, the behaviour is disruptive, by default. It's not really my place to lecture you sanctimoniously as to what lesson you should learn here, but if there is one I would hope you should learn from this fiasco, it's that. I certainly can't think of a better general piece of advice to give any contributor. Snow talk 01:05, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'd put it this way. I find that Director's continued ignorance of the ugliness and unacceptable character of his words, his utter absence of respect for other editors, his judging of them on the basis of their religion, his stratospheric arrogance, to be nothing less than chilling. I must say that I am starting to have a lot of trouble accepting the sincerity of his mea culpa. It strikes me as being purely expedient and not in any way reassuring that he won't "objectively" decide someday to go on the offensive in an article like this again. Coretheapple (talk) 04:27, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, only time will tell. Snow talk 05:30, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@"You should be writing every single posting in a Wikipedia discussion, every last one, so that, if it is stripped of its "righteous cause" (or any motivation, virtuous or petty), it still will not come across as rude." - That would be the ideal, and I did apologize for the conduct you refer to. However, that is just not how the human mind perceives rudeness.. or else you would be reporting MarkBernstein for his outrageously offensive conduct, in my view far more vitriolic than anything I ever wrote. Of corse, him being right, it seems its ok if he repeatedly claims I support antisemitism, implying I knowingly did so. That's personal attack and slander of the highest order. Why isn't he "on trial" here? I'm not saying he should be, but I hope I got my point across. If I was "right", and I was opposing censorship of reliable non-cherry-picked sources against biased POV-pushers deliberately disrupting the article, then I doubt my conduct would be perceived in such a negative light.

@Coretheapple, I think I have explained exactly and honestly what I'm sorry for, and what I'm not. I don't see what there is for you to speculate about. I'm not sorry for calling on an edit warrior to spare us his disruption, or to stop pushing a POV. You can perceive that as whatever you like, I can't alter your preconceptions. What I am sorry for is wherever I was unduly zealous in defending the cherry-picked sources, as well as for the error itself. -- Director (talk) 11:28, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a question of "sorry" as much as it is one of whether there will be problems in the future. As I keep saying, the aim of a topic ban is preventive, not punitive. I think your declaration on your talk page [55] and above [56] that you're "self-banning" from topics relating to Jews is a positive step. Coretheapple (talk) 13:52, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I pretty much said so from the start.. Didn't I say I had no intention of restarting all this? -- Director (talk) 14:39, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Spat" - seriously? You're characterising antisemitism as "a quarrel about an unimportant matter"? Balaenoptera musculus (talk) 12:01, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Two editors who edited wikipedia for many years are faced with very serious accusations for travelling circus and all kind of disruptive behavior. Editors who made such accusations (and maybe administrator (Jehochman) who indeffed them) should present evidence (in form of diffs) for their accusations within reasonable period of time.
1. I agree with opinion that "disruption on a single, or low number, of articles does not constitute cause for a topic ban". That is why it would be good, if accusations would be proven, to check if there are more members of their travelling circus (this should not be difficult because there are efficient tools for interaction analysis) and to define what topic areas they covered. Based on this it would be possible to determine who should be banned and from what topic areas.
2. If accusations remain unjustified within reasonable period of time, something should be done to prevent unjustified accusations against those two editors in future.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 22:39, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Additional examples:

In this lively debate [57] Director provides a source to prove his point about Lenin. Then when I attempt to use the same source to prove a different point, he wants to shut down the discussion.
In a discussion about Secret Police there was a math error. [58] Director claimed that no one was allowed to make any edits until Producer showed up. Like no one else can count?
Atlantictire was blocked over a dispute that was content related. And then he lost it. I tried to console him and Producer took me to ANI over this statement on his talk page [59]. I don't know how to find the ANI discussion. Really, there are plenty of diffs linked in this discussion already if anyone is interested in following them. USchick (talk) 22:50, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Trotsky poster discussion [60] went to ANI [61] and showed up again in an unrelated article. [62].

Director had a right to disagree with the AfD nomination, but he did not have a right to call it a lie. It was not. He did not have a right to claim that nothing in the nomination was accurate or factual; that claim was untrue. He did not have a right to call them ridiculous, or to characterize them as a right-wing; that's both untrue and a personal attack. Read the whole sorry talk page -- it's only two or three months, and you can read it all in a few hours. Director and Producer are counting on you not to bother. They can and will issue, just as they have repeatedly issued, personal attacks without sanction against any and all editors trying to improve their articles, and it seems people will continue to ask for more evidence and more WP:ROPE. Please turn out the lights when you leave, OK? MarkBernstein (talk) 22:47, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WP:ROPE can be better applied in case of the editors supporting these suggested topic bans from thousands and thousands of articles, either existing or potential, based on "one spat over a single contentious article". If your accusations are justified, it should be easy to present evidence which would reveal all members of their traveling circus and all topic areas they operated.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 23:03, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't personally believe such a cabal of editors exists. Frankly, I think that the collaboration between Director and Producer alone has been overemphasized, a determination I make from my own observations of the present article as well as procedural discussion of their past behaviours. An SPI failed to find an geolocative link between them, and though this does not rule out meatpuppetry, neither have we firm evidence along these lines that I have been able to turn up. There's also this discussion, in which the link is explored and users DeCausa and TParis imply that the two have frequently been at eachother's throats in other discussions pertaining to Eastern European articles. There were past issues referenced by FkpCascais concerning Director and Producer in this discussion on Jimbo's page, surrounding a past discussion surrounding Chetniks and collaborative behaviour between the two, but he references no other parties and I never dug up the discussion to observe the nature of their interaction there.. I don't know what to make of the ultimate likelihood that meatpuppetry is at work here. I rather get the feeling that what we are talking about is two very tenacious and combative editors who work in similar areas and that sometimes butt heads, but when their interests converge, they have no qualms with combining their considerably dogged (and frequently vitriolic) efforts to try to tear down any dissent to their preferred approach. They could be collaborating off-wiki, or these combined efforts could be the result of entirely incidental cross over in interests, but I think their motives at the very least could be said to be very different in most cases. In any event, I don't think a link needs to be established to prove that their behaviour has been collectively disruptive and generally inappropriate, but their violations of policy are not identical in form or context, so I'm doubtful of the "traveling circus" hypothesis or that it can inform significantly on how to deal with them. Snow talk 00:16, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Many, maybe most, of the editors supporting these suggested topic bans I have never seen at AN befroe, which worries me. How did they get here? Were they canvassed? Was the canvassing of all' participants in the various discussions, or only those on one side? If this truly a fair hearing or a kangaroo court? BMK (talk) 22:53, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The only place this discussion was announced is here Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Jews and Communism (2nd nomination)#Proposed sanctions. Everyone commenting was personally involved in some way. USchick (talk) 22:58, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So, what you're saying is that almost everyone -- or let's says a large percentage of everyone -- who has commented here is on the opposite side of the issue from Producer and Direktor. yes? Doesn't that strike you as a problem, that the people who will decide if those two should be topic banned are those who strongly disagree with them on that topic? BMK (talk) 23:06, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To make matters worse, they are proposed for topic ban from Jews and Communism although the most important point at related AfD was that it is wrong to connect Jews and Communism.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 23:10, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Don't you think it's strange for 2 people to have created so much animosity toward themselves? If you can find any supporters they have, feel free to canvass for them. The people here all have different opinions about the topic, but strangely enough, they all agree to ban 2 very offensive editors. USchick (talk) 23:14, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I had no association with Director or Producer before the AfD. Most people who have voted thus far first met the likes of Director and Producer at the AfD page, with a few exceptions. After making judgement there, as seen on the AfD page, we decided the best thing to do next was to pursue a topic ban. No "personal biases" against Producer nor Director existed for the vast majority of us, as most of us (I'd think) stumbled upon this whole fiasco via the Articles for Deletion page.. our initial judgement was made there and then was carried here. Flipandflopped (Discuss, Contribs) 23:20, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Sorry, but I see a lot of personal animosity and groupthink in your statement above ("the likes of...", "we decided", "our initial judgment"). I agree with Liz that we need the opinions of uninvolved editors in this matter. BMK (talk) 23:25, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

By "we", and "our", I meant those who came here from the AfD page by the means of consensus, not the entire group, although I do recognize your point.. from your perspective it's understandable. As you can see by the intense debate above, there isn't really any 'groupthink' amongst those who came here from AfD. I'm relatively uninvolved in the whole fiasco, and in fact I came in to contribute to the AfD as someone who was precisely that; uninvolved. Obviously, it would be better for more uninvolved users to come and contribute.. but just because a user has contributed to a discussion on an AfD page doesn't render them illegitimate in the regard of offering their opinion about related topic bans.. my choice of the word "we" held the meaning of "those who came from the AfD page", not "We, the group of collaborators". Flipandflopped (Discuss, Contribs) 23:40, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Animosities are not valid arguments for a ban. Not all editors here agree about the ban. At least not such widely defined, unless evidence is presented about members of the circus and all topic areas they covered. Only based on such evidence uninvolved administrators can determine who should be topic banned and from what topic areas.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 23:24, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

BMK, "the people who will decide if those two should be topic banned are" certainly not "those who strongly disagree with them on that topic". That's not how Wikipedia works and I suspect everyone here knows that - yourself included. NebY (talk) 23:48, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean. Can you be clearer? BMK (talk) 23:56, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'll try. You asked "If this truly a fair hearing or a kangaroo court?" and "Doesn't that strike you as a problem, that the people who will decide if those two should be topic banned are those who strongly disagree with them on that topic?" I'm answering that your premise is wrong: the editors who are making a case for bans or other measures know full well that they will not get to decide, that they will not have the opportunity to be the judges in a kangaroo court. They are making a case - or rather several cases, as usual - and discussing the matter. This is normal, this is how the process works. You've been around a long time and I think I've seen you participating in ban discussions before, so you know this already. Or am I wrong? NebY (talk) 00:08, 14 May 2014 (UTC) Ah - I see I was. One editor didn't quite grasp the need for uninvolved editors to participate. Sorry. NebY (talk) 00:17, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What bothers me is that Director emphatically stated that the article was neutral and impugned the motives of editors who said it was anti-Semitic. Even now he suggests that there was no way of knowing this without seeing the comparison with the IHR article, and that editors who recognized this weakness in the article before the comparison was presented were acting in bad faith. He stubbornly defended the article instead of doing basic research to see whether this presentation was consistent with academic literature. I commend him for finally backing down in the second AfD.

But I think a break from this topic is in order. If any editors plan to revisit the topic and create new articles, I think his participation would continue to be disruptive. Furthermore, he has no particular expertise in the area and has not done any in-depth research. His participation was mostly fighting to maintain the status quo in the article.

TFD (talk) 23:23, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm confused - what is being asked for here, a topic ban from the intersection of the subjects "Jews" and "Communism", i.e. everything to do with the relationship between Jews and Communism; or a ban from the combination of those two subjects, i.e. everything to do with Jews and everything to do with Communism? BMK (talk) 23:32, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Both subjects. Everything to do with Jews and everything to do with Communism. As stated in the original proposal. USchick (talk) 23:36, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't submit the report, but I think a topic ban for Judaism is more appropriate than Judaism and Communism, due to the main issue being the promotion of antisemitic views on the website --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 23:39, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not everyone agrees that antisemitism is a problem in this case. Just like not everyone here agrees on the topic of Jews and Communism. However, everyone agrees that Director and Producer should be banned form these topics (Director to a lesser extent). USchick (talk) 23:44, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Everyone agrees" - So, you're ignoring the one oppose !vote? BMK (talk) 23:58, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The one "oppose" vote is a non involved party. As the nominator, i specifically asked for involved parties on both sides of the Jewish/Communist argument (yes there are both sides) to comment. Maybe that's the wrong approach? Maybe only non involved parties should comment? The problem with that, is Producer/Director are very skilled at policy and at tag teaming against everyone else to the point where lots of us have been sanctioned because of this ongoing situation. Some people have been banned and are not here. My intention is to see if there is any community consensus for a topic ban and to do it while the evidence is still here. (Pending AfD) What's funny, is that early on, people were worried that no one would find this discussion to participate in it. USchick (talk) 00:08, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, you've just proved me wrong - I told BMK everyone here seemed to understand the process. Everyone can comment but no decision to ban will be made without the participation of uninvolved members of the community. NebY (talk) 00:14, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Non involved members voted here as well. But the one "oppose" vote is from a non involved party. To see who is involved or not is very easy. Anyone not voting on the AfD is not involved in any way. Here's a link of people voting in the AfD [63] USchick (talk) 00:23, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be massively oversimplifying if I said that the closing administrator will look for consensus among the uninvolved editors and ignore the involved ones. But you might do well to continue as if that was true. NebY (talk) 00:25, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I made the nomination, but I honestly didn't expect this much support. I'm not looking to sway the jury, let the community decide what to do. USchick (talk) 00:31, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's worth noting that a number of editors who responded to the AfD had no previous involvement in the article or the caustic situation on its talk page. Still others came to be involved through the ANI postings and did not contribute opinions to the content of the article itself so much as the behaviour of certain parties already operating there. A look at the talk page suggests that involvement in the discussion here does not seem to rely exclusively upon those who were already in conflict over the article, though of course those parties are welcome to have their say and their knowledge of specific incidents of disruption is necessary to make heads or tails of this situation. Snow talk 00:51, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that with a topic ban discussion which appears, from the nominator's comments here, to have been set up in a deliberately partisan fashion, it's likely that the closing admin will note the lack of !votes from uninvolved editors and close it without action -- especially when there's a distinct lack of evidence presented. BMK (talk) 03:15, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That would be unfortunate. Instructions at WP:TBAN don't explain that only non involved editors are allowed to comment. No where does it say how to nominate someone for a topic ban or what will be considered, only that it takes community consensus. So basically, you have to be an experienced admin to understand the process. Producer and Director are allowed to get away with terrorizing editors simply because they have experience with the system as repeat offenders and bullies. I don't know how many more diffs I could possibly provide as examples because no one seems to care about the examples already provided. I hope admins will consider the volumes already written in previous ANI complaints and the time required to babysit these 2 editors on complaint boards, not to mention wasted electricity by the combined effort of all involved. This is a recurring complaint, and if I knew how to link to all the other similar complaints, I would, but seriously, unlike the 2 editors nominated, who have lots and lots of Wikipedia edits, I have a life. Unless questions are directed at me personally, I don't plan to contribute anything else to this discussion. I trust that the Wikipedia community will do the right thing, whatever you decide that to be. I hope by bringing this to light, enough people are aware now of the Producer/Director duo. Save this link, because someone will want to link to it again in the near future. USchick (talk) 04:27, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

p.s. Some of the complaints can't be found because they happened at The Jewish Bolshevism article which has since been deleted along with the edit history. This is why this nomination is taking place now, before the AfD for Jews and Communism is finished. USchick (talk) 05:34, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have to say that in my decade on Wikipedia, I've rarely or never seen any discussion which was primarily lead by "uninvolved" editors, at least not if one uses such a narrow definition of "involved" as "voted a particular way on deletion of an article". I've been at the article in question since April 28th, in response to an ANI discussion asking for more eyes back then. I've seen Director (mostly) and Producer (a little) in action, and that enables me to have an informed opinion about their behaviour in this topic. Does that make me "involved" or merely "informed"? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 05:22, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the nom's original posting may not have made the case it might have, lacking diffs, but there are now dozens of diffs and links to discussions above which supply a pretty cohesive picture of the behaviours being weighed here; I'd say there's as much evidence as you're ever likely to find for such a proposal, whatever one's disposition to that evidence. Mind you, I'm one of the few editors who has commented so far who doesn't feel that the case is an open-and-shut one for both editors, but even I don't contest that the behaviours of both have been disruptive in the extreme -- one need only look at the one talk page to establish that much. I'm simply uncertain as to whether the solution being proposed here is the ideal one under the circumstances. With regard to Producer, my hesitation hinges on the fact that I have not seen the side-by-side of the source which the article was apparently lifted from and the article itself, but if blatant plagiarism is involved (from an antisemitic fringe source, no less) then it's unlikely the responding administrator will find reason to stop and count !votes as they aren't particularly necessary or relevant in that context. Director is a more nuanced case, and though I would have preferred to have waited to see whether he would continue to operate in the same manner as he has before launching such a discussion as this with regard to him, it's hard to fault those who wanted to curtail his combative behaviour.

In any event, I must, with respect, also disagree with your characterization that there is a dearth of uninvolved editors voting, as a number of those who have commented here were not involved in any form of content dispute with either editor, and commented here seemingly as a result of coming to a dim view, through the prism of one of the ANIs or AfDs, of the pair's tactics. Editors who were not involved in said content disputes, or who gave only an opinion within the narrow context of the most recent AfD without having had any opportunity to come into conflict with either party, can generally be said to be about as uninvolved as anyone who came across this matter just by checking the noticeboards. Administrators operating in this venue are familiar enough with this song and dance to know how to review the pertinent discussions in enough detail to see which editors have a truly neutral disposition to the matter, and which might have been biased by the ongoing arguments surrounding the article, and weight their perspectives accordingly in determining the broader consensus. Unless unduly influenced by our very conversation here on the matter, this is not an example of a situation where I anticipate the responding editor would be likely to dismiss the concerns raised as not backed by sufficient neutral voices or as generally lacking in evidence. I still don't favour a topic ban for Director at this time, not under the circumstances, but at the same time, I hope your concerns as to the prospect of a non-committal close prove unfounded, as process has already failed to arrest this situation at several points where it might have and I am concerned the situation will only renew itself without some form of finding, whatever the sanctions or lack there-of. Snow talk 06:03, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I find the call for involved editors to reach a determination on this strange and unusual. A TBAN needs to be determined by the community at large whether involved or univolved. Sure, AN discussions are typically led by the involved, but that's something different. I tend to agree with BMK that it sounds like a partisan call to their enemies at the AfD. ~~I doubt it's so bad that it invalidates the apparent consensus - most likely, in this case, uninvolved would have appeared here as much if the involved call had not been made - but,~~ IMO, any closing admin should make it clear it was incorrect to launch the discussion in that way. DeCausa (talk) 06:10, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am highly suspicious given I have looked over the diffs that have been presented as evidence. At the worst they consist of multiple people edit-warring to add/remove reliably-sourced information. The repeated bandying about of that ridiculous indef block is certainly interesting given the strong consensus it was ill-thought out in the first place (see why it was removed), but also in the sheer amount of editing that went on while it was in place. Unsurprisingly more than a few of the support voters above are represented there. A good sign of tendentious editing is seeing what happens when one party to a dispute is unable to edit. Only in death does duty end (talk) 06:45, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I'm inclined to think the same. I've just been looking through many of the diffs, having not been involved before, and a big "so what?" is growing in my mind. I've had tangles with Direktor before (not on this) and yes he can be dogmatic and a pain in the rear sometimes, but frankly in the diffs presented I'm seeing similar from his opponents. DeCausa (talk) 07:09, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A few points. I am uninvolved in this case, but have edited alongside both editors for over two years in the Yugoslavia in WWII space. They are neither socks nor meat, they regularly disagree, sometimes vehemently (as do I with them on occasion). I recently watchlisted PRODUCER's talk page because I had left a comment there about an unrelated issue, and that is how I come to be here. I have made a comment above on my view about the scope of the proposed bans. IMO there is insufficient basis for a ban on the topic of communism, regardless of the success or otherwise of a push for a ban on the subject of Jews. This is a similar concern to that expressed by Drowninginlimbo above.

I note that Antidiskriminator pops in now and again to try to get some interest in other areas that these editors edit in the apparent hope of expanding any bans to other topics and other editors. So far, unsuccessfully, although I note that he has now opposed a ban unless his "travelling circus" allegation is properly explored. All I will say is that this is a blatant attempt to "pile on" and stick the boot in to two editors he has sparred with over a number of years, and the attempt does not paint him in a good light. His allusions to a "travelling circus" is an allegation he has made in the past when disputes have arisen. He has significant history with both editors, and his comments about them should be assessed with that in mind.
I have edited alongside both of these editors in the Yugoslavia in WWII space, and while I occasionally find Director's approach to certain matters frustrating, I have found PRODUCER and Director to be meticulous about using reliable sources, and was very surprised to read the allegation that PRODUCER had used an unreliable source and that Director had defended it (at least until he became aware of its origin).
PRODUCER and I have collaborated on several FAs and MILHIST A-Class articles, and he has always been a stickler for reliable sources in what is also a controversial area.
I agree with many of the comments made by Liz, Snow Rise, Flipandflopped, DeCausa and BMK, and urge caution here. I will observe that USchick comes across (rightly or wrongly) as harbouring quite a bit of personal animosity, despite saying that "I'm not looking to sway the jury, let the community decide what to do". Descriptions like "terrorizing editors simply because they have experience with the system as repeat offenders and bullies", "Producer/Director are very skilled at policy and at tag teaming against everyone else to the point where lots of us have been sanctioned because of this ongoing situation" and "Don't you think it's strange for 2 people to have created so much animosity toward themselves? If you can find any supporters they have, feel free to canvass for them. The people here all have different opinions about the topic, but strangely enough, they all agree to ban 2 very offensive editors". There is a level of personal attack that I consider unwarranted, and it was continued with dubious accusations about Director's apparent admiration for Watson and "scientific racism".
I am also very concerned that the only place this ban proposal was advertised (by the nominator, I understand) was on the talk page of the article about which the dispute arose. This was problematic, because it drew editors that were already involved, with the fairly predictable result above. There do not seem to be many really uninvolved editors here, to me at least. Regards, Peacemaker67 (send... over) 07:46, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I hadn't realised that last bullet point - and have struck my comment that the call for "involved editors" wouldn't affect the outcome. The avalanche of "supports" is, I think, the grinding of axe's from that article talk page. (Btw, I too have seen Producer and Direktor squabble - I assumed that sock/meat allegation had been burried. If not, it is ridiculous to anyone who's been around Eastern european articles for the last few years.) DeCausa (talk) 08:22, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That comes close to dismissing everyone who's contributed to the article or discussions on it as axe-grinders, bearers of long-standing grudges and the like. I only came to the article a week ago and the last time I looked at contribution histories I was struck by how many had also arrived quite recently - long after the first AfD and the ANI discussions and so on. Again without running checks with wikitools, I think I've never interacted with Director or Producer before and I suspect that's true of others here. (I had seen the names on the drama-boards before, true, and had a vague impression that they often squabbled.) NebY (talk) 10:37, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't referring to long-standing grudges (although that may be present in some cases) but to the preponderance of opponents of Direktor and Producer on the article talk page appearing here and the lack of signifificant univolved comment, until recently. In other words, the axe to be ground originated at that article. That's not to say that every post in support is grinding an axe, but, taken overall, this AN thread supposedly about behaviour is largely (but not entirely) a mirror of the content dispute with the content majority on one side and the content minority (a very small minority) on the other. There are editors within the content majority whose behaviour at the article talk page is at least as problematic as the content minority's behaviour, but there appears no interest in holding that up to scrutiny. DeCausa (talk) 11:15, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I just noticed that Director expressed below far more succinctly what I meant by axe grinding: "The vast majority of editors commenting here were just now on the opposite side from me in a highly contentious and emotional content dispute". DeCausa (talk) 11:41, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I also agree that USchick's involvement is problematic. One of the relatively few diffs prsented by them is this: "In this lively debate [64] Director provides a source to prove his point about Lenin. Then when I attempt to use the same source to prove a different point, he wants to shut down the discussion." But I would characterise that diff as Direktor rightly ddismissing an off-point and tendentious response to him by USchick. In fact, much of the disruption around this article seems to be generated by USchicj - see this. DeCausa (talk) 09:16, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Peacemaker67, Thank you for pointing to the collaboration between you, Director and Potočnik in ARBMAC topic area which paint all of you in a good light. You somehow overlooked to say that you were blocked at Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia (link to your block log). Three of you are top three active contributors of this article (link) whose title remained unchanged because three of you opposed on the talkpage, where you and Director alone made 1649 comments.link. --Antidiskriminator (talk) 09:05, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That is barely worth responding to. All I will point out is that Antidiskriminator was ARBMAC-banned from an article for tendentious and disruptive editing. He comes here with unclean hands, and should be pointedly ignored in this case. Peacemaker67 (send... over) 10:51, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. The vast majority of editors commenting here were just now on the opposite side from me in a highly contentious and emotional content dispute. If the community wishes to impose sanctions I would appreciate it if the decision was made by uninvolved editors, objectively evaluating the exchanges in question - not a collection of biased, angry editors quite possibly out for revenge after my having dared to oppose their positions on an article talkpage.

If the community considers user conduct on that article worthy of review, then I suggest the whole mess be brought before ArbCom for an objective overall assessment of everyone's conduct, rather than singling anyone out like this. -- Director (talk) 09:53, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have some support for this notion. There's no guarantee they will take the case, but if they did, there'd be some genuine resolution. You should bear in mind though, Director, there is an outside chance this approach could end with more significant actions than just a topic ban. As an observer to that page, I'll be blunt with you -- you didn't come off well, especially in the civility department -- to my assessment anyway. Utilizing this solution may serve to spread the blame around a little, but if it's pure vindication you are looking for, I think you're likely to be disappointed. Right now, in the present discussion, a lot of energy is being wasted on the debate concerning whether the fight to introduce and maintain antisemitic material disqualifies you and Producer from contributing in certain related areas. ArbCom is unlikely to be distracted for long by such red herrings; they'll focus very quickly on the substantive policy matters, and I should be not at all surprised if WP:Civility becomes the chief issue in that discussion, whereas it has been severely underrepresented so far in discussions about what went wrong on that talk page. That being said, you will at least be afforded every opportunity to defend your position on equal footing with your detractors. In that respect, I think it may be the best way forward for all parties. Snow talk 10:51, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I said "if". I don't care about "spreading the blame", I just care that we do this fairly, objectivity is kind of "my thing". I don't care if I'm the only one who gets sanctioned, but I don't want it to happen because biased users with a specific interest gathered and posted a lot of "Support" votes. Input by new, uninvolved editors should be what matters here. The term "kangaroo court" does come to mind. -- Director (talk) 12:55, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I feel I need to state a few things: This pdf that is being persistently pushed is by some individual named "Valdas Anelauskas" and titled "Zionism and Russia" and readily available on Archive.org alongside thousands of other works by various authors. In any event I did not know that reliable sources are absolutely off limits if they've happened to have been quoted elsewhere by less reputable sources. For what it's worth my interest on the subject was piqued by Stanford University's "Jews and Communism" publication (hence the article name), later Slezkine, and more later by other sources. All that being said this article and this area of Wikipedia has put out such a toxic environment with its nonstop drama that, regardless of the outcome above, I'm willfully barring myself from editing in it ever again. I had been contemplating retiring from Wikipedia for a while now even prior to this whole ordeal and have chosen to follow through with it and do so. Therefore I am retiring indefinitely and am ceasing all further editing on any portion of Wikipedia. This my final and only comment on the matter and on Wikipedia. --Potočnik (talk) 10:49, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think that is sad, because en WP has lost a productive editor who contributed to featured content of which en WP should be proud. Editors bringing such matters to this or similar fora should remember that throwing a WP:BOOMERANG can result in your being hit in the back of the head when you least expect it. Some of the above has not been done in good faith, but in pursuit of personal agendas. This discussion has only included a very narrow and largely involved slice of the en WP community, and this should be taken into account by closing administrators. Peacemaker67 (send... over) 11:36, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You mean Valdas Anelauskas, member of the white nationalist Pacifica Forum? --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 11:30, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If we can hold Producer/Potočnik to his self imposed exile, I think that in itself will make many people very happy. No further action will be necessary. USchick (talk) 11:51, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I personally don't care about the exile either way, I still think the user should receive a topic ban for Judaism to prevent them spreading further ideas about the Jewish people at their discretion. It would otherwise be a good thing if they were able to edit other parts of the website. I think the very least administrators should do is show initiative and prevent the potential circulation of further anti-Semitic propaganda on the website? --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 12:01, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's true. A person who retires can unretire. Coretheapple (talk) 14:01, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I still fail to see the supposed "animosity" that Peacemaker67 and Antidiskriminator speak of. Where has any any one on here expressed any strong hostility towards director? Just because I have an editing history on the afD page for Jews and Communism, one of the several articles in question, my opinion becomes invalid? My first direct interaction with Director happened after the creation of this topic ban proposal, so how could I have had a "vendetta" against Director? In fact, at this point, I don't even agree with the nominator in regard to giving Director a topic ban, only Potocnik. The notion that an editor has to be entirely clueless of a situation when he joins the discussion associated with it in order to have a valued opinion makes no sense. Flipandflopped (Discuss, Contribs) 15:05, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there clearly isn't all that much animosity toward Director because, at the moment, a plurality of people oppose his topic ban. He has definitely won over a lot of people by his apology, and that is how it should be. The question is whether a topic ban is needed to prevent further damage to the project, not whether he needs to be dragged to the town square and horsewhipped. Coretheapple (talk) 17:42, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There is some animosity, especially between Atlanticire and Director, but not enough to render the entire topic ban irrelevant, or to render the opinions of everyone who contributed to the afD page irrelevant (as some people above have suggested). My opinion on Director has been that I'm incapable of judging him because no one is on the same page as to what it is he actually did, but to me it's clear that Potocnik/Producer is incapable of editing Judaism related articles from a NPOV. Flipandflopped (Discuss, Contribs) 18:08, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To User Potocnik @ 10:49, 14 May 2014 (UTC) above. Sorry to see you go. Somehow I suspect it is just a case of a "broken-wing defense". Time will tell. You know, whenever I see you or Director edit or opine during this entire laborious labyrinthine byzantine Jews & Communism discussion, the words of an English poet I studied many decades ago come to mind:

"...A truth that’s told with bad intent

Beats all the Lies you can invent.

It is right it should be so;

Man was made for Joy and Woe;

And when this we rightly know

Thro’ the World we safely go..." (From William Blake's "To See a World..."[65]).

Based on the unyielding ongoing self-righteous defenses you and Director offer up all the time, evidently you fail to grasp the profound import and implications of what the words "...A truth that’s told with bad intent Beats all the Lies you can invent!" mean. If you would, or could, then none of this horrendous and divisive debate would be necessary as the discussion would stop being one of "chalk and cheese" as the two of you try making it all about "sources" when the real problem is one of the core underlying negative and malicious intent of the way it's set up that comes across based on its presentation and your torrid defenses of what is ultimately indefensible. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 06:24, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Good point on a "broken-wing defense".--Antidiskriminator (talk) 08:25, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Systemic failure to provide oversight in this case

The article "Jews and Communism" was created, as we know now, using material from an extremist anti-Semitic website as a source without attribution. Two days after its creation, it was nominated for deletion but the result was "no consensus"[66]. I find it disturbing that closing admin RoySmith says in his closure that one of the charges against the article is that it is "Attack page (anti-semetic)" but does not address that in his remarks, saying "what this really comes down to, is this a POV fork of Jewish Bolshevism?" and the answer is that there is no consensus, so he allowed this very clearly anti-Semitic attack page to continue to be promulgated on this site. Then there was a deletion review, closed by Sandstein as "no consensus" [67], again, the very clear anti-Semitic content did not seem to be disturbing any admins or oversighters on this site. A long AN/I started by Director [[68] with the stated aim of removing "those folks who hang around being disruptive obstructions" from the article and which developed into a discussion of his behaviour, was eventually closed by v/r as "no consensus". "No consensus, no consensus, no consensus, not to become an anti-Semitic website, go away and leave us alone, and don't edit war or call each other names or you will be expelled from school for a day or two." I must say I was very disappointed that Jimbo Wales, in the discussion on his talk page, said he would look at the article and give his opinion, but he never did, and the discussion was archived with no further comment from him [69]. All this did attract the attention of two admins who honourably did try to intervene and improved things a little,Jehochman and Stephan Schulz, but what were all the rest of you doing? Another AN/I I started about edit-warring [[70] was also just ignored by admins for days and days until it was closed by Spike Wilbury as, guess what, "no consensus" [71], but at least he did then step into the article talk page and try to do something. Maybe because I know a little about early 20th century Russia, that stuff in the article about Jews killing the Tsar immediately indicated to me that this was as clearly pushing extreme anti-Semitism as if there were an article on WP about the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" saying that it shows a Jewish plot to take over the world. I said so over and over but no one in authority seemed to take any notice, you would have hoped that someone might have looked into it. I am the person who found the connection between the article on the white supremacist website and the original WP article, and it really wasn't that hard,all I had to do was google the quote about "Jewish violins" killing the Tsar and there it was. All these bureaucratic procedures, lists of rules, blah blah blah, should not have prevented somebody doing something to remove poisonous racist crap from this website but the people who could have done that seem to be timid and afraid of doing anything and wait for someone else to deal with it or for it to "go to ArbCom", oh yes, spend five months collecting "evidence" and going through infinite quasi-legal hoops. The article is still onsite, though at least without the horrible "Jews killed the Tsar" stuff. Please excuse the rant, I needed to get that off my chest, it can be hatted if someone wants to do that.Smeat75 (talk) 12:58, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Smeat75 identifies the central issue in this matter: Can Wikipedia resist concerted efforts to contaminate it with lies, hate, and deception? In the time from February through May 2014, it signally failed to do so. The virulent anti-Semitism of the original article should have been evident to all, and much of it persists to this day despite the efforts of literally dozens of editors and the investment of hundreds of hours. The attention of administrators, and indeed of Wikimedia board members, should have been focused by the original AfD, the Jimbo discussion, the two long, long threads at AN/I, and plenty of direct correspondence.

This was not an obscure or difficult issue requiring expertise, some dispute about mathematical series or the best name for some forgotten Balkan outpost. The article was filled with evident canards -- and it linked to a fairly extensive Wikipedia article filling in the historical background on the smear! We have the whole cast: the ugly Jews, the Jews in banking and finance, the secretive Jews, the Jewish traitors. We argue that all sorts of people were really Jews because their ancestors were Jewish. And on the talk page, as here, we have the repeated dismissal of opposition because, after all, it's just those Jews again coming to WP:VOTE, and everyone knows how they stick together.

Wikipedia is in serious trouble. It is hemorrhaging editors. Its reputation is already low, and scandals like this page diminish it. Worse, it seems clear that Wikipedia cannot and will not resist serious efforts by a small team of concerted editors who, as was the case here, can easily override policy and consensus by pretending to adhere to the forms. I've used Wikis since Ward’s Wiki was new; I've been keynote at WikiSym and I've been program chair; I’ve written wikis. Never -- not even during the great wiki mind wipe of 1999 -- have I so completely doubted the efficacy of the WikiWay. The conclusion seems inescapable that Wikipedians have lost the ability to distinguish routine contention from opposition to racist and anti-semitic distortion; if we cannot do that (and I see scant evidence that we can), the wind will blow through the empty corridors of Wikipedia?

Could it happen? If you think not, think again. Events like Jews and Communism bring Wikipedia into disrepute. If Wikipedia becomes sufficiently disreputable, an engineer at Google can press a button and, overnight, Wikipedia could go back to Page Rank 3, taking our traffic. If Wikipedia becomes sufficiently disreputable, donations will dry up. If Wikipedia becomes sufficiently disreputable, the remaining editors will be even more dominated by the hacks and the charlatans, the zealots for obscure movements, the gamified WikiLawyers looking for one more scalp and one more barnstar. This can still be fixed, but it can not be fixed by kicking the can down the road and nodding sagely that, if the anti-semites were regrettable, some of their opponents were sometimes intemperate. MarkBernstein (talk) 15:25, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, with our current policies and guidelines, Wikipedia can not manage this, even if it had the manpower. Part of what I believe is required is no more and no less than a very careful reconsideration and revision of WP:BLPGROUP. Legal systems around the world have often recognized that marginalized classes of people are the subject of a systemic bias (in fact, this is almost tautological), and respond to this fact with positive (that is, proactive) structures, such as heightened scrutiny, which attempt to address said bias.

The belief that one can address this bias with better intentions but without that sort of teeth has been disproven time and time again, there's quite a bit of research that a blind approach leads to likely unintentional (if not intentional "turning a blind eye") discrimination (e.g., [72]. See the research on stereotype threat, not just our article, but the actual research, to understand one of the dynamics that may underly this intractability.)

There are very, very difficult questions ahead if people were to agree with me, about how to construct such a system. Legal systems in the United States and around the world continue to struggle with those same questions, in part under the guise of standards of scrutiny. I don't know what the best solution looks like, one that actually provides some reasonable protections but that is resistant to gaming. But I think it has finally come time to admit that we need something more in the way of policy than what we have. Propagating this material has and continues to do harm to living people, even if that harm is diffuse. BLP requires we do something, but BLPGROUP denies us the tools required to do anything. If months of propagating Nazi hate literature isn't a good enough reason for change, I don't know what the (redacted) is. --j⚛e decker ^talk 15:42, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the above two comments. I am not Jewish, by the way, so not recognising that article as horrendous anti-Semitism because how are you supposed to know if you're not Jewish, is no excuse. All anyone had to do was google "Jews killed the Tsar" and see what sheer evil they were confronted with, but it seemed no one wanted to make that small effort and almost all just looked the other way.Smeat75 (talk) 17:12, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - This is the portion of this issue that concerns me the most. We had over two-thirds of editors stating in the 1st deletion attempt that the article was an attack page based on the antisemitic canard of Jewish Bolshevism, but User:RoySmith overruled the community and ruled "no consensus". I am well aware of the fact that admins have to take all relevant arguments into consideration, and that AfDs are not a vote. But when you have two-thirds of the community pointing to what looks exactly like what it was, Roy should have been damn sure he was right with his overruling. He was not. And that should have been obvious to people who are informed about these types of issues. If he wasn't(or isn't) then he should not have taken the AfD. If he was, then I have to firstly question the competence of someone who couldn't see the obvious. Then to see it discussed in multiple venues, with no action, was disheartening. To say the least. If editors think it's just melodramatic for the editors who stated they don't want to edit someplace that would allow such malfeasance, they haven't been involved enough with the disgusting minds of the Institute for Historical Review(shudder). The worse kind of antisemites. Smart, educated, informed and with a hatred of Jews that can't be matched. Like Uncle Bilbo one minute, and then when they see the ring/Jew, they attack. Should never have gotten to this point. Dave Dial (talk) 23:24, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Been following this with increasing horror in the past few days. Made my first edits tonight, though recall having a brief run in on this a week or so ago on the articles for deletion discussion. I left before a closure was made. (I think I was in denial since) :/) Has the closing admins given a full explaination of their rationale in closing? If the admin have clue - I have always respected Sandstein's judgement before - then they showed a huge lack of horse sense and gut based clue. Shit stinks. We can all smell. Sounds like the majority of the community smelt the stench. The admins didnt get it. This shows a worrying insensitivity to elements of the comminity IMO Irondome (talk) 23:39, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It does show significant oversight in this instance, I don't think having an attitude that the article is only antisemitic because an antisemitic source was found to scapegoat is a good thing, although it certainly proves it without question. I think I speak for many editors, at least reading through the comments here, in saying that the article read as antisemitic propaganda before the source was found that designated it as such, and the admins in question should have listened to the communities outcry concerning it. After all, one of the principles of the website is ignore all rules if a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, and the policies of the website were definitely used intelligently here to defend the article. I'm not sure whose discretion it is whether or not a particular group is worth defending from hate speech, or if this website, with its global influence, should have a clear stance on this, but if I were asked, I would certainly say that antisemitism has no place here, and that it should indeed make rules against hate speech --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 01:56, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That will just lead to the circular argument, already represented on that talk page ad nauseum -- that it wasn't really hate speech, just sourced facts that happened to make some uncomfortable for "personal" or otherwise small-minded reasons. Look a number of people here have commented that this situation was more complicated than it needed to be and that we ought to have new rules to deal with this type of situation, but there are two problems with that as I see it: 1) It's all well and good to make such a statement, but no one has proposed specific mechanisms or procedures that could be employed for such scenarios that wouldn't cause more problems than they solved and that wouldn't be subject to the same kind of mental/semantic gymnastics that kept this article alive for as long as it was despite being in conflict with existing policies. And 2) Complicated is just the way Wikipedia is sometimes. We had a heated content discussion compounded by battleground behaviour; welcome to the project and bear in mind that such debates have gone on for a lot longer, including on topics of significant social sensitivity. As of today, the page is blanked, likely to be briefly deleted. It won't be coming back in it's recent form, though I daresay claims found within it will rear their ugly head elsewhere. And there will be dedicated contributors with common sense and the will to protect the project in those scenarios too. Yes, administrators acted with perhaps an excess of caution, but don't we like (and demand) caution in our admins, typically? They balance a lot of different considerations, and possible vandalism for the purposes of fringe ideologies are just one of them, if one of the more serious ones. If anything I'd say this situation is just reflective of the need for more admins, as they do seem stretched thin at times of late, and getting administrator attention, let alone attention admin possessing both the time and will to weather the storm of a situation where they can only choose amongst courses of action that are all going to be contentious with one group or another can be difficult at times. But I don't think we need new policy for this contingency, and if we do, it needs to be more refined than "Do something!". If anyone feels the need for new more specific rules is pressing, though, take the matter to WP:Village Pump (policy) after the conclusion of this discussion and the AfD, and don't forget to ping me. Snow talk 02:40, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there was an argument earlier in the debate that suggested a revision of WP:BLPGROUP. That may help in this instance. I think you're probably right about the request for more admins. It's possible that they simply didn't have the time to look it over properly. It's a difficult situation and I guess that returns to the matter of Producers disruptive editing. This sort of behaviour generally leads to admin response, and events such as this will serve well as an example for future possible article creations --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 03:20, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's right, I forgot about the BLPGROUP suggestion. Well...maybe. It's quite difficult to say anything definitive about how useful it would be without knowing the exact change proposed. And altering BLP to include protections to broad groups would redefine the concept of uphill battles. Now, as I said above, I'm not sure what change is warranted by these circumstances, but if someone were convinced that a new level of oversight was required here, I'd suggest they look in the direction of the recently updated discretionary sanctions system. It could be put before ArbCom that Judaism (or more specifically, the Jewish people) should be added to the "current areas of conflict" list for the DS system. This would allow admins to apply discretionary sanctions relating to activity on the topic without as much concern about fall-out, since sanctions are allowed for even moderate violations of policy in such cases. Using it to combat the creation of an undesirable article would be a little bit of a twist on the system's usual purpose, which is to maintain and protect existing articles from disruptive activity, but I daresay the general function -- protecting the project in a specific content area prone to heated debate, vandalism, and general disruption, are the same in both cases. I think if you take this and the related discussions to ArbCom, you've a decent shot at getting some significant oversight. Snow talk 06:09, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You do raise some good points. These things aren't always the fault of admins. Once enough of the community had been made aware of the article, the consensus seemed to sweep towards delete. Maybe we could also push to using Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias more frequently as a resource? It has some utility on the Talk page but not a significant amount. If it were more popular and had an amount of active watchers, it could help deal with the creation of articles such as this --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 14:36, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I see it differently. The decision to close the AfD as "no consensus" was perverse. 9/10 administrators would have closed it as "delete." Let's hope the current AfD is not also closed as "keep." At DRN, many of the "Endorse" keep votes said they thought it should be deleted but respected the discretion of the closing administrator. To me that makes no sense, because what then is the purpose of DRN. Add to that many of the regulars there are "inclusionist" tipped the balance. But it's precisely because many editors are sensitive to anti-Semitism that most editors favor deletion.

The main policy reason for deletion is notability. If the topic were notable, we would be able to identify a body of literature to use as a source and could determine what was significant to the subject and what the different views were. It would not be possible to base the article on an IHR article, because it would not reflect the weight shown in a hythothetical article about the subject in a reliable source.

The problem I see is that there are lots of articles that are just synthesis, where someone picks two words and puts them together and creates their own topic. Generally these pass AfD where the odds of getting an article deleted that should be deleted are about 50%. For example left-wing nationalism and right-wing socialism have survived AfDs, although no one has agreed the definition or scope. So a libertarian writer said the Republican Party is right-wing socialist because both parties are socialist, and a New York Times reporter in the 1950s said Peron was a right-wing socialist because he was right-wing and his policies seemed socialist. And of course Tony Blair was on the right of the nominally socialist Labour Party so that's multiple uses of the term.

TFD (talk) 02:48, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

agreed,'Wikipedia's existence is contingent on preserving a modicum of respect from the mainstream public. One more episode of wikipedia's admins deciding to tolerate a bit of "well-sourced" racism could well land the uproar on the front page of he Times or Le Monde. the next day, Google demotes wikipedia's page rank, and it's all over. Easy calls need to be easy; this was not a tricky question, and the corps of admins failed abjectly. If we can't find policy to bar anti semiotic and racist cant, what the *** are admins, or policy, for? — Preceding unsigned comment added by MarkBernstein (talk • contribs) 03:08, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I hardly think that "anti semiotic" writing would cause Google's algorithms to react that way. Bus stop (talk) 03:27, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just for the record, a deletion review is only to determine if the closing admin acted within policy. Not for deciding if the AfD was decided "right". Most closing admins know how to close an AfD or RM within policy so that it cannot be overturned by review. So I wouldn't spend too much time focusing on the review, because even if the closing admin used IAR, it would be within policy to endorse the close. Dave Dial (talk) 03:11, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Question - can anyone suggest an appropriate venue to continue to discuss this issue once this thread is closed? By "this issue" I mean the failure of the system to remove gross racist/anti-Semitic material, the reluctance of admins to deal with the matter and what I would describe as a widespread tendency among them to avoid contentious disputes and leave those to someone else.Smeat75 (talk) 04:14, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Smeat, the appropriate locations for such a discussion are WP:Village Pump (policy), or this very noticeboard (in a new thread, of course, though I do tend to think the Village Pump is a better location in general and especially under the current circumstances). Wherever you host the discussion itself, a posting concerning it at WP talk:Centralized discussion is advisable to increase participation. I've also suggested above that those looking for additional oversight in this area might consider viewing the recently overhauled discretionary sanctions system, with an eye towards petitioning ArbCom to add topics concerning the Jewish people to the list of topics covered by the system. Snow talk 06:21, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Many thought that the article should stay, but that the content should be modified to be more appropriate. So the first AfD wasn't only about "removing gross racist/anti-Semitic" content but whether the topic itself should stay. You are not summarizing the first AfD accurately. Content can be always modified later. If you are claiming that everyone who voiced that the topic of Jewish people in historical communist movements is a notable topic are racists, anti-Semitic and somehow linked to sites like Stormfront, you are bordering on a personal attack. --Pudeo ' 22:44, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that there is something disturbing in how long time it took to root this out, including the first failed AfD. I think that Jimbo Wales and others who feels some overall responsibility for the project should look into this and in general we as a community should do an evaluation of what went wrong like it’s done here by Smeat75 and Bernstein It’s a case that deservs broad attention so people keep it in mind if something similar happens. Some kind of formal recognition that this was something else than an ordinary content dispute may be in order One point of learning may be that when there is sincere concern that an article is fundamentally flawed and unsound (extremism, hoax or similar) the concern can not be put aside by «no consensus»; one solution would be to direct such cases directly to ArbCom (and blank the article until the case is settled). In this particular case there most probably was a consensus to delete, but the point is that "no consensus" with no formal follow-up shouldn't be an option when there is very deep concern for the state of an article. Iselilja (talk) 12:53, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the comment Iselilja, I think that is an idea worth pursuing. I noticed that on RoySmith's talk page, he is the admin that closed the first AfD, there are two warnings from bots telling him that he shouldn't have removed the template for Articles from Deletion from Jews and Communism the day it was nominated for deletion and he shouldn't have removed other peoples' comments from the discussion. I looked at the edit history of the deletion discussion and the article and talk page but I could not see any edits from him removing comments. I don't know if there is some way that admins can erase things from edit histories as well as removing comments. I have asked him to explain on his talk page [73].Smeat75 (talk) 14:44, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Forget that comment above, he has replied and it seems to be confusion caused by a malfunctioning bot.Smeat75 (talk) 17:39, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please see this edit for what appears to be a logical explaination for how this happened. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:43, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi User RoySmith (talk · contribs), a few points:

Until this moment I had no idea you were an admin, why don't you indicate that on your own user page with some sort of icon or statement so that it avoids confusion and misunderstanding and it be clear you are one when you get involved in controversially closing controversial AfDs such as the now notorious Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jews and Communism especially? In some previous discussions I had no idea you were an admin, and now I had to do a special search to find out and confirm that you are an admin. Or maybe I am missing something and my PC just doesn't pick up the icon?
It would be fascinating to know your thoughts now that as a direct result of your initial decision to override a clear more than two thirds majority, actually almost a two to one majority (22 in favor, three to merge into other articles, and 14 to keep) of many users in the original AfD -- who all said then what is now going to happen as a result of the second AfD (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jews and Communism (2nd nomination)), i.e. WP:TNT because the original article is a direct copy of material taken from a bunch of disgusting neo-Nazi pseudo-research -- it has now come to this sorry state that has created so much bitterness, a huge split in the WP community and possible sanctions against the creators and defenders of the Jews & Communism article. Just look at what they are going through now, they could have been prevented from harming themselves had you nipped this in the bud based on a solid majority, not to mention what this is doing to WP as this cancerous topic metastasizes and grows even more toxic in its ongoing mushroom cloud radioactive fallout.
It is not too late to explain yourself. Even Director it's staunchest defender now realizes the sheer blunder and sees the wrong of it and calls for the article to be blown up, even though he was obviously very fond of the topic and fought to the death to defend it regardless of how rotten it all was as anyone with a working nose/conscience could smell that. There needs to be a rational answer that shows some remorse and retraction on your side and not some gibberish about "policies" or whatnot in a distracting flurry of WP:LAWYERING as to how you could have allowed such a disaster to go on and unfold as it has been doing still with no end in sight (and certainly no responsible oversight) at this time. You overlooked a simple rule of real life or in any democracy as Abraham Lincoln put it "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." [74]
You must take your share of the responsibility for what has transpired and you must offer an unconditional apology for allowing neo-Nazi hate onto WP, even if out of massive ignorance or well-intentioned motives, but there cannot be any excuse for a gross failure of judgement on your part and your part alone. If you don't you should be subject to some sort of very serious sanction for your failure and the damage it has brought upon WP and its good name.
You should also reverse your closing of the first AfD with the simple explanation that it was taken from an indefensible source and had you known you would never have done what you did.

To sum up, not only was there no oversight when there were many chances to do so especially during the frivolous ANI requests launched by Potocnik and Director [75] [76] and others' pleadings at ANI [77] and even on Jimbo Wales' page [78] but in your case the "oversight" (and as an admin you have that responsibility at all times) that allowed this to happen was not just passive but actively counterproductive right off the bat as is evidenced right now by all the fallout from this fiasco and the abyss it has opened up at the feet of WP. Your response is awaited. Thank you so much in advance, IZAK (talk) 10:06, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm. I just assumed if people wanted to know if I was an admin, they could look me up on Wikipedia:List_of_administrators. I certainly don't make a secret of it. However, if you think it would be useful for me to put something on my user page, I would be glad to oblige. As for the rest of the rant above, my explanation was in my closing statement for the AfD. If that doesn't satisfy you, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to get dragged into this slugfest. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:54, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for that post Izak, well said, I completely agree with all of it.Smeat75 (talk) 12:12, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The issue was brought up at deletion review and there was "no consensus" to overturn the "no consensus" decision of the AfD.[79] While that is not a ringing endorsement, and does not mean the closing of the first AfD was correct, it does mean that we are not likely to get anywhere pursuing this it. TFD (talk) 18:51, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Involved / uninvolved editors

Comment on the issue of involved versus uninvolved editors:

I first became aware of this article when it was mentioned at ANI following the first AfD. The title alone drew my attention rather strongly.

I suspect a large number of editors may be in the same position, because the increase in the number of respondents between the first AfD and the second AfD is really very substantial.

I would suggest (but leave it to others to judge) that the line between 'involved' and 'uninvolved' be drawn at those editors who were involved before the first AfD, because surely part of the point of the AfD and ANI process is to get input from the wider community; it could seem perverse to then ignore the views of those members of the wider community who choose at that point to comment.

L&K, Balaenoptera musculus (talk) 18:15, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, in that case, I was made aware of it just under a week before the second AfD was opened due to the two RfCs on the article talk page. I imagine many of the "involved" editors may be recent due to the amount of controversy Jews and Communism has been generating and the different boards it had been put up on --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 18:35, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"many of the "involved" editors may be recent due to the amount of controversy Jews and Communism has been generating and the different boards it had been put up on". Exactly. Balaenoptera musculus (talk) 18:47, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's going/gone away as an issue now as "non-involved" have since posted and made the response more balanced. But the issue was not so much involved/noninvolved but one side of a content dispute (call it "involved") loading a discussion on behaviour here with little input from those who had not taken a position in that content dispute. DeCausa (talk) 18:56, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Luckily, there are very few editors who support blatant anti-semitism (or other forms of racism and bigotry), and hence in this case most editors will be on one side of the content issue. In this case, these editors also were the ones on the receiving side of Directors comments. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:43, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That is what I understood the concern to be as well. But then, clarification on this matter was ignored for a good bit as several editors pointed out that a majority of the editors who had responded to this thread (even at the time this issue was first raised) had never been involved in any form of content dispute with either party, having become "involved" at the juncture of the still-ongoing AfD. Despite these efforts at clarity, the characterization of this discussion as mostly the effort of a mob with an axe to grind against the pair being discussed persisted, and I fear it will now muddy the waters some for the duration of the discussion. I do tend to agree with DeCausa that the concern has been addressed some by the arrival of more editors through the normal noticeboard traffic, as was largely inevitable, but this aspect has now gained so much traction, I think the spectre of "revenge" votes stands a good chance of being factored into any response taken here at a much higher level than it ever should be, as the parties out to make an example of these two, while present, are only a slim, slim minority in the discussion. Two, maybe three contributors, depending on how you parse their motives.

Allow me to clarify the extent of my own involvement in the pages and discussions of relevance here -- not because I want to make the case for why my perspectives on the whole affair should be given non-mitigated weight (this whole discussion is going to get absurdly congested if each party feels compelled to delineate where they came into the matter and in what context the operated, which is what I was afraid was about to happen), but because I think my case is fairly indicative of those editors who might be described as quasi-involved -- that is to say, they participated in the most recent AfD, the ANIs, or the article talk page, but were never on opposing sides of a content issue with either of the editors who are the subject of this discussion. I came to be aware of the toxic situation on that article through the more recent of the two ANIs and I commented twice in that discussion (here and here); the gist of my comments was that, while no one should be proud of what was going at that page, the two most problematic personalities, from what I had observed, were Director and Producer, who were vastly more likely to denigrate the perspectives of their opposition, to make personal attacks, to make implications of bad-faith and ulterior motives without evidence, and generally fail to observe WP:Civility broadly. The two just seemed completely incapable, at least by that point in the discussion, of coping with the notion that others disagreed so strongly with them and every one of their responses to opposition contained some degree of vitriol. I had hoped that a little community attention, including from admins, might put the pair, and others tending towards a combative mindset, on better behaviour, but I saw no really productive benefit in getting involved in the ongoing, and devolving, debate on the article talk page over the crux of whether the content in the article itself was antisemitic and/or synthesis and stayed well-clear of it, but I continued to be concerned about the abandon with which civility standards were trampled there and the general battleground attitudes at work, so I put the talk page on my watchlist. I made one brief comment on the talk page, directed at Director after he speculated on the motives of another editor in a matter that didn't even directly concern him and then told said editor to "go away"; I informed him that neither action was in his purview, that it was uncivil and that it seemed consistent with the WP:OWN behaviour many involved editors had accused him of. I never had a direct exchange with him or any other party over the content itself, nor was I personally the subject of derogatory comments from anybody (which may make me unique in the history of that article). My last involvement with the article was inthe second AfD wherein I never made a formal vote and tried to make it clear that my main concern was not the content itself, but how broke the process of discussion itself was on the page and that, regardless of whether or not the content was antisemitic or not, or appropriately sourced, some editors there were in their right to believe the situation could never be fixed through usually collaborative effort because of the battleground mentality that presided there.

I think this type of story is much more common to the editors who have commented above than is the scenario of an editor who duked it out over the content of the article (and more lucky me, for the fact that I didn't have to step into that quagmire). Was I involved? Well, only to the extent that I observed a great deal acrimony and editors with less than acceptable stance on civility and commented as such. In the cases of others who did the same, or even commented narrowly within the last AfD and never interacted with Director or Producer, I think it's a serious mischaracterization to dismiss their perspectives as biased, given the entire point of a discussion such as this is to consider behavioural issues. Again, I think the call for a topic ban is premature, for Director at least. But that doesn't mean I want the valid opinions of other editors quashed or treated as tainted simply because they happened upon this mess a little earlier than others. Snow talk 21:32, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Balaenoptera, that's pretty much everyone. I don't agree with that. I'd rather go for the second AfD since the point of having "uninvolved" editor input is that those editors haven't been advocating content changes and hence are more objective in viewing behavior as such. -- Director (talk) 19:00, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That said, I imagine most of those involved in the second AfD had not been directly involved with you on the article, that is to say, the "history of disruptive editing" in question --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 19:29, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, I said before the second AfD, and I was just going along with the notion of an "AfD-based" criterion. Editors viewed as "involved" should I think obviously be simply those involved in content disputes on the article talkpage. -- Director (talk) 22:23, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I apologise, I misread "I'd rather go for the second AfD" as meaning those involved in it. That makes more sense --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 22:31, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think we all need to stop talking about this in terms of a timeline and specific landmarks, prior to which no editor who observed the mess is capable of being given full weight here. That approach, aside from being artificial and reflected nowhere in policy, removes any consideration of context. Administrators are not simpletons and we do not need to provide guidelines as to which editor's perspectives are to be "trusted" more than others -- nor do I think we would be welcome in making the effort. Any responding admins have every link at their disposal here to review the comments and involvement of all parties and to decided whether they are presenting a factual account of events or being led by prior bias. I don't think you have much to be concerned over, Director - as things are moving, it seems you will likely avoid any kind of topic ban, if not by the hugest margin. But regardless of whether or not that prediction bears out, it's not our place to be deconstructing the motives and general capacity for neutrality of one-another with regard to this already convoluted situation, at least not with the broad strokes that are now being suggested. Snow talk 22:42, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I'm an AfD regular. I noticed this at AfD the first but didn't comment because I didn't understand the content (so i was unlikely to provide a unique insight) and saw that there appeared to be a significant number of different voices. I'd probably do the same if a similar situation arose again with similar content and similar arguements at AfD. Stuartyeates (talk) 03:41, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, the content as presented was not understandable. That's why people were trying to edit it to something that made more sense. It says a lot about an article, when you come across an encyclopedia article and walk away with no better understanding of the subject matter. lol USchick (talk) 03:49, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note - I noticed the nomination (2nd one) on the "Articles for Deletion" page as I was defending another article that had been nominated the same day, so I suppose that would qualify me as "uninvolved"? Even so, if we are to say that only 'uninvolved' editors can exert opinions about an issue, we would have to consider that without involved parties to exert their testimony on what happened, we would be largely clueless as to what actually happened. Of course we shouldn't interpret the opinions of involved editors as a "neutral and unbiased perspective" that should directly affect the outcome of the case, but the opinions of involved editors are still valuable in the regard that they help us understand what actually happened. You're never going to have a "witness to a crime" sitting on the jury, but that doesn't mean their opinion and what they have to say shouldn't be said. Flipandflopped (Discuss, Contribs) 10:36, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- Good point.
- DIREKTOR and PRODUCER/Potočnik are subjected to very serious accusations
- it is necessary to present evidence for such serious accusations. Such evidence can, of course be presented and discussed by all editors, both involved and uninvolved. Closing (uninvolved) administrator will consider the strength of the argument when deciding if accusations are justified
  1. if such accusations are proven not to be justified all editors who made unjustified accusations should be boomeranged
  2. if accusations about some kind of travelling circus (active not only in topics relating to Jews, but also in other topic areas like communism, ARBMAC, ... ) would be proven, then all members of that travelling circus should be banned from all topic areas they were active.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 14:50, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

User Antidiskriminator (talk · contribs) cut out the hysterics and histrionics please. It's an open and shut case as anyone can see. First of all on Potocnik's current user page [80] it says he has "{{retired}}", it would seem as an open admission of mea culpa and therefore you should quit your defending him when he himself has gone and even Director admits that the original offending article must be deleted, so what you are doing now makes absolutely no sense at all! Kindly calm down and reconsider your actions or you will land up defending what cannot and should not be defended. This summarizes the situation in simple terms. On 27 February 2014‎ Potocnik posted an article on "Jews & Communism" [81]. This is what the behavior of Potocnik and Director has amounted to as evidenced by almost every diff from them since (far too many to list here, feel free to click on them all at Potočnik (talk · contribs) and Director (talk · contribs)) their behavior throughout is a classic case of violating WP:POINT; WP:DONOTDISRUPT, WP:WAR, WP:BATTLEGROUND and of violating WP:AGF, WP:CIVIL, WP:CONSENSUS and WP:NPA for which they were eventually blocked and warned [82] [83] [84] [85] by user Jehochman (talk · contribs) and that is just the tip of the iceberg. What is happening to them now can be explained in four simple steps: 1 Potocnik, then known as "PRODUCER" with lots of "citations" posts an article called "Jews and Communism" that he and Director, then known as "DIREKTOR" working in almost indistinguishable tandem like in a WP:GANG, defend to the death, ridiculing, belittling and attacking any users who get in their way to keep their WP:CONTROVERSY material up all the time in violation of WP:OWN. 2The article is eventually proven to be a proven "cut and paste" carbon copy of tendentious pseudo-research from an indefensible and hate-mongering antisemitic neo-Nazi site and organization (this is assuming you understand the implications of doing that). 3 Potocnik and Director realize they have been caught red-handed. First they change and downgrade their user names and then Potocnik says "goodbye" and Director admits his blunders and joins calls to "delete" the offending article. 4 However, every single edit, revert, rollback, attack that Potocnik and Director undertook, and a vast majority of their comments and actions on the talk pages and beyond, shows the vehemence, nastiness, downright scariness and open and arrogant disregard for the contributions of others, of the many experienced editors also too many to mention by now but they are all in the article' edit history, for anyone to see just how much effort went into salvaging even this wreck of an article and even so facing a barrage of unjustified and unjustifiable harassment from the Potocnik and Director team and a few others who thought it was just "marvelous" to help them in an effort to defend every detail and especially the original article's clear and obvious anti-Jewish and antisemitic slant (that Director euphemistically used to refer to as its "scope") all in the original article and much in it during its existence that easily can be seen by anyone with clear unbiased eyes and has the time and stomach for it by clicking on virtually most of the diffs available on their user histories at User Potočnik (talk · contribs) and Director (talk · contribs). Feel free to do so, it's all there, but please do not create panic and confusion when it is all very clear. Thanks, IZAK (talk) 11:55, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tactical Remorse

Above, Director writes:

...However, that is just not how the human mind perceives rudeness.. or else you would be reporting MarkBernstein for his outrageously offensive conduct, in my view far more vitriolic than anything I ever wrote. Of corse, him being right, it seems its ok if he repeatedly claims I support antisemitism, implying I knowingly did so. That's personal attack and slander of the highest order. Why isn't he "on trial" here? I'm not saying he should be, but I hope I got my point across. If I was "right", and I was opposing censorship of reliable non-cherry-picked sources against biased POV-pushers deliberately disrupting the article, then I doubt my conduct would be perceived in such a negative light. -- Director (talk) 11:44, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This false equivalence (and this personal attack) should make clear to any reader that Director's remorse is merely a tactic. Once again, Producer and Director are working in apparent concert here: Producer retiring in silence while Director is shocked -- shocked! -- to discover that he has been defending anti-semitic cant. Note, too, how even now Director stands by his "reliable non-cherry-picked" sources; the only thing wrong with the ghastly article, and with his staunch defense of every insinuation, distortion, and lie it contained, is that it was also plagiarized. Those, like myself, who wish to preserve NPOV are "biased POV pushers" and attempts to remove specious arguments are balance the article are "disrupting". Director sees only the technical violation -- the indefensible plagiarism -- and is expressly prepared to do it all over again. He doesn't, even now, regret the faults of the article; he regrets getting caught in a copyvio that makes it harder for him to defend it right now.

Note, too, that once more Director chooses to single out an editor he thinks to be Jewish, claims to be deeply wronged ("personal attack and slander of the highest order"!) and emphasizes the collective danger of plural "POV-pushers deliberately disrupting the article", which he intends to be heards as a reference "other editors" by admins but which will be understood as an allusion to "the International Conspiracy Of The Jews" by certain other parties [86]. And once again he threatens editors with reports, trials, sanctions (If he were I, I bet he'd point to the word "slander" above and escalate WP:NLT immediately.)

After all, how could Director be expected to know the anti-semitic leanings of an article he didn't write? How could the admins be expected to know? Perhaps by reading it? Director is correct to observe that one difference between him and me (and almost everyone else!) in this matter is that he has been wrong, and in the wrong.

Director hopes that this very limited display of remorse will save his Wikipedia account, and with it some time, inconvenience, and some small residual influence. The effort is clumsy: thorough contrition would have cost him nothing, but clearly he cannot stomach that. Whether Producer will be rejoining him here under the same name, under a new name, or whether the two were ever distinguishable, is an interesting question to which it seems unlikely we shall ever learn an answer. Once more, two editors acting in close cooperation are poised to emerge from this shameful and costly disaster with scant effective sanction.

What damage could editors this dedicated wreak if they thought things though? Director and Producer act in such tight concert that they seem to be socks; more clever operatives would adopt more distinct personae who sometimes agreed, sometimes differed, and who had distinct interests. More resourceful operatives would recruit a parcel of agents to work with them from distant locations -- a few people in Bangalore, a few in Russia, perhaps a small office in Ireland -- each editing quietly and each prepared to chime in when needed at AN/I or Arbcom or AfD to back them up. Smarter operatives would choose a cause (or perhaps a client?) less hideous. Two zealots pursuing a lost and discredited crusade have tied Wikipedia in knots; what couldn't a sensible and unscrupulous PR team with achieve with a few dozen internet accounts and a few thousand dollars? MarkBernstein (talk) 14:23, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting point. Editor who worked with them and chimed in at this AN to back them up... That resembles what one editor did here.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 15:53, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Antidiskriminator, if you have an accusation, you should be brave enough to make it. Please don't hide behind a vague allusion of impropriety. MarkBernstein is actually doing something after years of neglect from the entire community. What are you doing? You seem to be supporting people who knowingly discriminate. As Antidiskriminator, the only question is why? Does your personal relationship to their part of the world have anything to do with it? Is this some sort of nationalism? I'm not accusing, I'm asking in an effort to understand. Please enlighten us. USchick (talk) 16:14, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My comment was related to editor who is, like me, opposed to ban here. I already presented an explanation about him coming here to create a false narrative which paint all three of them in a good light, forgetting to mention their block logs. One (diff) at Ante_Pavelić article (to which three of them are one of main contributors) made me additionally worried and convinced that it is necessary to:

gather as much evidence as possible about the activities of this group and if evidence prove accusations
to reveal all members of this group
to reveal all topic areas in which they operated
to impose appropriate bans to all of them in order to prevent them to continue their activities in future

Limiting discussion only to one article (Jews and Communism) and one nation (Jews) would probably be discriminatory.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 17:09, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your explanation. Your comment "That resembles what one editor did here" sounds like a veiled accusation against MarkBernstein. Based on your explanation, that's not the case, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who misunderstood. I would caution about expanding this nomination to include other areas outside Jews and Communism, because that would be a witch hunt. They have previously been sanctioned in other areas. It appears, after that, they took their show on the road to other areas of interest, using the same tactics. My goal is to separate these two, and if they wish to separate by choice, that's fine with me. It would be nice to back it up with some sort of enforcement, just in case they change their mind. If people wish to do an in-depth investigation of a potential terrorist plot that may involve lots of other people, I think that's outside the scope of this nomination. USchick (talk) 17:36, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note to User Antidiskriminator (talk · contribs): Stop living in the past. In the past few days, much water has passed under the bridge that you seem to be blind to. Potocnik has voluntarily "retired" from WP and Director agrees that the "Jews and Communism" article must be deleted because it's essentially a fraud now proven to be copied from an article from a neo-Nazi organization. In fact, the entire article has now been completely blanked by an admin [87] as a copyright violation because the material comes from NAZIS. Do you even know what that means?? Nazis, yes Nazis, writing about the "history" of the Jews, that's like having Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf become the official WP version and the evil "standard" of all things Jewish!!! Do you even see the absurdity of that?? And that is what Potocnik wanted to sneakily foist on WP and what Director defended to the death til it blew up in his face!! At this point in time, by blindly defending Potocnik and Director you are verging into behavior than can only be classed as trolling and flaming in violation of WP:BATTLEGROUND and WP:DISRUPTPOINT. I would strongly suggest you quit whilst you are still ahead and go edit in some other non-controversial area that you enjoy. You would be well-advised to read WP:REICHSTAG that may help calm your frustrations and jitters at this point. Thank you so much, IZAK (talk) 12:55, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You did not understand my position here. I do not defend PRODUCER/Potocnik and DIREKTOR. Many editors presented very serious accusations against them for tag-teaming aimed to tendentiously edit wikipedia. My position here is that it is impossible to deal with this partially.
1. If gathered evidence justify accusations, the bans should be issued to:
  1. all members of this group
  2. for all topic areas in which they operated
2. If not, editors who wrote serious accusations without justification should be boomeranged.
I sincerely apologize if I am wrong, but I think that issuing ban only to one member of the team for only one limited topic area is what is absurd here. --Antidiskriminator (talk) 16:03, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Antidiskriminator is right; I did not understand Izak's point, it seemed way off-base. He was actually saying the opposite of what Izak was criticizing him for. Coretheapple (talk) 16:11, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

An Error, And A Shame

The proposals/discussion above is reopened Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:42, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

I don't know the correct form, etiquette, or indeed forum for posting this. Forgive its incorrect placement if it is in fact wrongly situated.

In my opinion, BMK's closure of this is a mistake, and the failure of admins to take action is an injustice. I further observe that a just-begun complaint against me at AN/I, which BMK also closed in the same manner, concluded with the suggestion that this was the appropriate venue for discussion.

It further seems prudent to maintain a discussion area on this topic and its aftermath briefly, as the AfD is due to be closed shortly. This discussion may be generating a good deal of heat, but it is in the immediate interests of the project that it take place here and not -- as may otherwise be the case -- on editorial pages and in magazines.

Finally, it astonishes me that no admin and (for that matter) no board member has seen fit to take action here. I had assumed that the delay was procedural -- that it made good sense to await the conclusion of the AfD and then to dispose of this matter. Does any admin wish now to step forward and affirm that this matter has been correctly handled throughout? That this is a reasonable way for WIkipedia to operate, and that Jews and Communism is a valuable asset to the project, one to which the community of editors can point with pride? MarkBernstein (talk) 14:54, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Mark,I also strongly protest the closure of that thread by a non-admin on the grounds that it is "disruptive". This is more of the "go away and leave us alone" mentality that has plagued the issues around this article from the beginning. If we cannot discuss those issues here, where can we discuss them?Smeat75 (talk) 15:04, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I was actually considering closing the threads last night, and decided not to purely because I didn't need the inevitable follow up drama in my life. Had I closed them, however, I would have instituted the topic ban for Potočnik, and closed the topic ban thread on Director as not having sufficient consensus, but with an admonishment that he escaped a topic ban by a thread. I will say that I feel Beyond My Ken's close to be insufficiently well thought out and his rationale insufficiently detailed. I will not, however, revert it (because I don't need the inevitable follow up drama in my life).

To MarkBernstein, I will comment that header titles like "An Error, And A Shame" go a great way towards robbing the poster's comments of any credibility. An overly dramatic, non-descriptive title does nothing except make people roll their eyes at the title, and that influences how they read everything that comes after it. Dramatic pleas and admonishments in bold text also do nothing for your case. Really, you might have actually gotten the close you were looking for if you didn't come across as being, well, a rant. Sven Manguard Wha? 15:33, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I would strongly support the line that Sven would have taken. That closure would have satisfied the evident concerns of the community I suspect. Irondome (talk) 15:45, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sven Manguard, at some point I think you have to expect that reasoned debate will devolve into outrage if unvarnished racism can be aggressively defended here without penalty for its defenders. I am way beyond furious, which is why I rescue myself from this discussion. Coming from an editor who writes mostly about guitar effects, I think this says something.--Atlantictire (talk) 15:49, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia has been marred for months Jews and Communism. The article could not be substantially improved, for its self-appointed defenders acerbically reverted any attempts to ameliorate its viciousness. The article could not be deleted because the article's few defenders were able to establish a case for the lack of consensus and ably used the project's disciplinary process against all comers. The only available recourse within Wikipedia was a second AfD that would establish a consensus. To establish a decisive consensus, it was (and, alas, remains) necessary to be emphatic.

AM I a rant? I have keynoted WikiSym, and served as its program chair. I have written and nurtured wikis since long before Wikipedia began. I have invested a great deal of time on this AfD, which I composed with great care and which has demanded constant attention. I chose to consult this forum rather than a larger and more conspicuous platform because I believed this forum would be better for the project. I have done this under my own name and on the record; any person who wished to know who this emphatic interlocutor might be has only to glance at my user page or Google my name.

I deserved better of the project. And I deserved better of you. MarkBernstein (talk) 15:47, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

An article that promotes blatant anti-Semitism is on this site for months and those who protest about it are told "don't be dramatic, don't rant, go away and shut up". It isn't right.Smeat75 (talk) 15:55, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You've gotten so emotionally involved in the outcome of this debate that yes, you are in fact, being a rant. Right now, in the post immediately above this one, you are being a rant. Before, when you started making statements expressing your outrage, using bold text, you were being a rant. Being a rant isn't a permanent thing; I am sure that in other discussions, at other times, you're not a rant. The issue at the heart of this discussion is a valid one, and your opinion on the matter is also valid. How you have chosen to express that opinion in this discussion, however, is problematic. Any uninvolved reader can tell immediately that you are putting way too much emotion into everything you say, and that reflects badly on your comments. You really do need to take a step back and let all of this play out without you, because it's very obvious that you are burning out over this. Sven Manguard Wha? 15:55, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I hope you're talking about me and not MarkBernstein. I've been spitting furry for days, but Mark has somehow managed to intelligently and patiently explain himself throughout this whole process. I can't fathom how he does it. Ok, that is all.--Atlantictire (talk) 16:02, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know who he is talking about, my guess is Mark, but maybe he means all three of us.Smeat75 (talk) 16:08, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

can we stick to the point here please. I am well aware of the intense frustration, trauma and hurt this horrible issue has generated, but can we get this closure overturned. I would favour and support a closure of the type advocated by Sven. Irondome (talk) 16:22, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you DD2K for reopening the nomination and asking for admin action. USchick (talk) 16:16, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. My guess is that BMK is just frustrated by the constant bickering. So to keep the discussion at a level below the histrionic phase, let's just let an admin close the proposals without any more back and forths. There is no need to continue pointing out the obvious, everything is there for anyone to see. So please, everyone, I beg of you to stop making one post after the other. Thanks. Dave Dial (talk) 16:24, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict):This does need an admin close, taking into account the arguments, the quality of consensus and the self-bans offered, and taking any consequent actions. Just announcing that the drama must stop, at once, won't work. But I quite understand Sven's unwillingness to take it on. Would it be easier if we - or rather you the admins - proceed as with some difficult RFCs? You could announce that a panel of three admins will share the burden of closing, indicate how long that's likely to take, and close the thread to further input pending the formal close. I suspect that would be acceptable if the delay was reasonable - and I'd imagine a couple of days or so to form the panel and deliberate would seem acceptable. NebY (talk) 16:44, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would support that approach. Lets be done with it, and not just kick it down the road. Irondome (talk) 16:49, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For my part, I am just astonished that I can now be openly called a psychotic fanatical racist by a sockpuppeteer, on this my project of many years, without so much as an admonishment. That the user MarkBernstein can write one blatant attack essay after another, deliberately misrepresenting and disregarding the facts, playing on people's uninformed outrage, without someone pointing him to NPA; pointing out that attacking a fellow user in such a manner, repeatedly, without support, is slander of the highest order. I'm just waiting for his next essay, where he will again omit basic facts, thus paint me as a monster, and "appeal" to everyone's "decency", implicitly (or even directly) calling any opposition bigoted if they do not accept his fantastical perceptions. This is highly malicious, manipulative behavior, that should not be thus tolerated on our project, under any circumstances. -- Director (talk) 17:18, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think you need worry. This thread (and others) has become no more than the "outraged" talking amongst themselves. I don't think it now attracts much outside attention. It probably is time for it to be put out of its misery. DeCausa (talk) 18:47, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Only in death does duty end (talk) 19:00, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

2014 Latakia Offensive

User:EkoGraf is persistently edit warring over the last few weeks on the article 2014 Latakia offensive to include a controversial statement regarding the supposed "continuation of the Armenian Genocide" in this article. This user is misusing references to support this statement, with one reference being a deadlink,[88] and one reference even specifically describing such a statement as a 'hoax'.[89]. This user has recently taken to deleting sources that have been added. This is an a notable example I believe of WP:SOAP, WP:SYN and WP:UNDUE. Please can someone intervene to make sure wikipedia policy is being applied correctly? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.197.120.196 (talk) 13:32, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

First, I am not the only one reverting user 94.197.120..., several other editors (at least three) have also reverted his removal of the sourced information at the article page along with its sources (this can be checked by the edit history of the article) in the same time period. I reverted him maybe once or twice over a period of several days, other times he was reverted by the other editors (who he also promptly reverted). Second, I am highly offended by his accusation that I am misusing references to support a statement regarding the supposed "continuation of the Armenian Genocide" in this article, which I myself did not edit into the article. The previous editor used even more inflamatory language, which I watered down for sake of compromise with another editor who did not like it and was in an edit war with that other editor. After I watered it down their edit war stopped. Further, the anonymous user used in-proper language during the removal of information ALONG with its SOURCES, calling in the edit summary ether us for inserting it or those that stated the information childish warmongering (violation of Wikipedia: Civility). Lastly, the sentence does not state in any way a genocide or massacre occurred during the offensive as user 94.197. is making it out. The full paragraph, properly per the sources, states that the flight of civilians and Turkish involvement during the rebel assault on the Armenian town has lead some to compare the offensive with and view it as the massacre of Armenians that occurred during the Armenian Genocide. Those some in the sources being the Armenian president ([90]), multiple US Congressmen ([91]) residents of the town themselves ([92]) and other notable personalities. I would think calling the statements of the Armenian president and US congressmen childish warmongering shows a high level of non-neutral POV. As for the broken link (which was most likely broken during the reverts) he could have just asked for it to be fixed like this [93]. And again, they were not comparing any killings to the Armenian genocide, instead they were comparing the flight of the Armenians to the forced evacuations of the Armenians during the genocide. I have now watered down the statement even more for sake of compromise that they were comparing the displacement to the exodus that occurred during the genocide, not to any killings. In any case, the comparisons to the Armenian genocide were notable enough and frequent enough in the news that in some form they need to be presented in the article on the offensive. Pushing one singular POV for the removal of the properly sourced information would not be acceptable in any way per Wikipedia's policy on neutrality. So if anybody was engaged in an improper edit war it would be user 94.197.120.... I would be gladly open to a dialogue with him on proper compromise wording of the text, but he has shown no sign of such desire. I was even thinking of reporting the issue myself to an administrator for possible protection of the page from un-registered users. But since he has raised the issue for me, I would like to formally ask what proper course over the situation could be done, or what compromise solution could be found? As for his allegation that I have taken to deleting sources that have been added I was also offended. Accidental removal of a source or two during the reverts is possible, but intentional no! Regards! EkoGraf (talk) 22:59, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Can an admin please take a look at this article? User:EkoGraf is still showing intransigence with this exact same controversial sentence, and insisting the sources state things they in fact do not (i.e. only one reference mentions offical non anecdotal Armenian concerns regarding Turkish involvement in the offensive). This is really starting to get ridiculous, making WP:UNDUE edits that have little to do with the article and arguing the minute details of Sharia law. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.197.121.240 (talk) 19:14, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To claify the problem regarding the WP:SYN sentence in the lede. The issue of present day alleged Turkish involvement—that actually relates to the article in question—and connections to past "genocides" is highly problematic. None of the sources provided state that Turkish involvement is the reason the Armenian genocide is being evoked. Not the Armenian presidential statement. Not the Armenian residents statements. Not Kim Kardashin's tweet. Not even the Armenian National Committee of America letter to Obama mentioned in the Washington Post article, which is the only source provided (other than a few anecdotal remarks by Kessab residents) that is actually concerned with present day Turkish involvement in the offensive. You need to understand that Turkish contemporary involvement in Latakia vis-à-vis the Armenian genocide is an extremely specific and controversial accusation which isn't stated in the sources. Yes, Turkish involvement in the offensive is alleged. Yes, the historical context of the Armenian genocide is evoked. But the two are never specifically linked to present day events in the sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.197.121.240 (talk) 02:07, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You don't seem to get it, I was not the one who added the part about alleged Turkish involvement, that was some other editor weeks ago. What I have been reverting this whole time is your unsourced OR about an Armenian lobby being the one who is making the comparison. Up until tonight you never voiced direct concerns specifically about the part on alleged Turkish involvement. You should have said that a week ago and I would have removed it if it wasn't in the sources, which I did tonight after you pointed that out for the first time. And if you are so bothered about the sourced part where rebels want to impose Shari law on the minorities why did you yourself add the source in the first place and now suddenly when the extreme jihadist views are mentioned you think of it as undue weight? In any case, the part about the Turks has been removed (per your wish), your part about an Armenian lobby is unsourced so it can not by any means go into the article, and the part about the sharia law I removed (per your wish, although it IS in the source) but the part about jihadi views in addition to other more tolerant rebels stays since its properly sourced. Hope the wording is finally satisfactory to you. EkoGraf (talk) 04:04, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with the sentence still exists in that it isn't fleshed out and isn't properly explained. The edit regarding the Armenian lobby in the United States is not WP:OR at all. Every representative mentioned in the LA Times article penning the official letter to Obama is a member of the Armenian caucus except for David Valadao, who is very much a prominent advocate of Armenian issues and has been desciribed as an "ally" of the Armenian Assembly of America. If the term Armenian Lobby bothers you so much the Armenian National Committee of America can be used as they are spearheading the Armenian attention surrounding Kassab. Also the jihad quotes you picked out (and used in the most scandalous way possible) are problematic due to opposition PR disagreements not being a major factor of the fighting, and the quoted Non Profit worker not at all being specific (is he referring to ISIS or al Nusru or some other faction? He doesn't say), or even explicitly talking about Latakia (rather than the Syrian Opposition in general).
Also, the small issue of personal attacks. There is no need to accuse me of wanting to add clarifying material to a wikipedia article because it the issue "hurts" me, as you did here. Then you changed this phrasing as if no one would notice here.

Who is being selective now, not all of the congressmen are members of the Armenian caucus, and most surely the Armenian president, the military analyst, Kasab residents themselves or Kim Kardashian are also not part of the caucus. So neutral wording would have been, as it is, some. and used in the most scandalous way possible You mean it was scandalous because I quoted almost word-for-word what the source says? It's your personal issue if you don't like what the source says because Wikipedia is edited based on sources not our own POV. In any case, for sake of compromise, I will attribute the scandalous part of the source to the person who pointed it out and put it under quotation marks. EkoGraf (talk) 07:09, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You are dumping all the comparisons of genocide in one quote farming sentence with no attribution. And inserting the incredibly specific views of one Middle East expert when talking about the Syrian opposition (unrelated to the article) in general is the definition of WP:UNDUE. Serious tone issues also. You have deleted the statement by the president of Armenia yet included this obscure academic? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.197.120.33 (talk) 07:52, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The statement of the Armenian president is in the foreign reaction section. You would notice this if you bothered to read the whole article. And the comparisons are not to the genocide as you claim all the time, but to the exodus during the genocide. And the obscure academic belongs to a well-know think tank. His assesment has been attributed and quoted properly per Wiki procedure. You should have maybe read the source more carefully before bringing it and inserting it in the article yourself, if you don't like the part about mixed rebel messages that much. EkoGraf (talk) 08:50, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any discussion about this at Talk:2014 Latakia offensive. That's where this conversation should begin, not at WP:AN. You need to develop a consensus about these edits since it is clearly a contentious subject. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 12:37, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Liz, I have learnt from past interactions that this editor EkoGraf has no legitimate interest in forming a consensus. You can see from their summaries on the article in question and from the argumentative responses here (as well as the personal attack linked above) that this user has not modified their behavior or sought to assume good faith in the slightest. All they seem intrested in is inserting an endless series of WP:SOAPBOX sentences that misuse the references provided to back up a specific POV. I still believe admin intervention is the only solution. At this point I am willing to let the Armenian genocide sentence stand in its current form. It is not fleshed out or specific, yet EkoGraf seems determined in retarding the article in this particular respect, so at least the previous extreme and unreferenced statement regarding the "continuation of the genocide" has been removed. If you (or another admin) could edit the WP:UNDUE qoute EkoGraf is now attempting to stuff into the lede—that doesn't specially mention any factions, or Latakia, is talking about the Syrian Opposition in the broadest sense, and is not even talking about online progranda which is the subject of the sentence/paragraph—then this issue could be resolved and I can (happily!) go about other things.

You need to sign your comments, using four tildes , ~~~~, so it is clear who is commenting here. It's impossible to follow a conversation without knowing who is speaking. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:50, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No problem, FYI it was me the IP. 94.197.121.71 (talk) 00:40, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

EkoGraf has no legitimate interest in forming a consensus Aha, yeah right, my numerous attempts at changing the wording for consensus's sake in comparison to your full reverts, which can be seen in the edit summary's, is clear indication I have no interest in forming a consensus. And the quote you keep talking about constantly that you want removed is talking about the rebels different ways of treating the minorities, which is the topic of the paragraph. And for the last time, that previous wording that you find extreme was put there by some other editor weeks ago, not me. EkoGraf (talk) 11:14, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You reinserted that exact wording about the "continuation of the Armenian genocide" (after a 70 year hiatus?) several times. The problem with the "jihad" quote is that it isn't specific and it is broadly speaking about the conflict as a whole (I.e. context was an issue). However, as long as the involvement of Shi'ite militias and Assad regime internet disruption is mentioned in the same paragraph, then it it will be WP:BALANCE and I will consider this matter closed. 94.197.120.188 (talk) 15:20, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It won't be in the same paragraph because it is not on the same subject. The source talks about the involvement of Hezbollah, Iraqi Shiite militiamen and even Iranian military advisers in the sense that they were there to bolster the Syrian military in a military sense. There is no talk about them being involved in any sectarian violence or even targeting the civilian population let alone the minorities, as you wrote in the article (totally unsourced). As for the internet thing, I'm not seeing a purpose for it to be in the article since it was going on even before the offensive and was not even a result of the offensive or even linked to it. But OK, I will let it stay in, but not in the same paragraph, because again it has nothing to do with the persecution of the minorities (subject of the paragraph). And I'm still waiting for an explanation of your removal of sourced information that the offensive has been stalled and has petered out. EkoGraf (talk) 15:49, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The source mentions the targeting of Sunni neighborhoods. But that is not a concern really. However, the source makes clear that they are identified by sectarian insignia. And the subject of the paragraph is progadana and its relation to minorities. Have added a new source to balance the previous quote. Also the "petered out" language is not needed and not a vital part of the source. How about just presenting the facts.94.197.120.188 (talk) 16:38, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I support the action of editor EkoGraf because they are logical and are absolutely justified so I fully support his actions and I also participate in the editing of this article 2014 Latakia offensive. But some anonymous editors try cause harm to this article. But the editor of EkoGraf just trying to eliminate the consequences of such actions and lead article in order. Hanibal911 (talk) 16:31, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the WP:PERSONAL User:Hanibal911. Appreciate it buddy. 94.197.120.188 (talk) 16:40, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also the "petered out" language is not needed and not a vital part of the source. How about just presenting the facts. That is a fact and a vital fact. A fact that clearly shows the offensive has ended/fizzled out. So do not remove sourced information. And contrary to your claim the source makes no mention that Hezbollah, Iraqis and Iranians targeted those areas, as you originaly wrote and obviously continue to claim. Per the source it is the regular security forces who are targeting those areas while hunting rebels, not cracking down on minorities. And their insignias have nothing to do with sectarian violence towards minorities, but rather to signify what religion the militiamen belong to and further to the point to distinguish them from the regular military units. EkoGraf (talk) 17:02, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why do they need insignia to indicate their religion? It likely has everything to do with sectarian violence, but it is easy to misread a source and yes it does say the army targeted Sunnis. Regardless, this insignia ponit is important and should be mentioned. The "petered out" claim is fine and not something to worry about. It would greatly help wrap this thing up if you assumed WP:good faith? 94.197.120.49 (talk) 02:24, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It likely has everything to do with sectarian violence In other words, its your personal opinion that it has to do with sectarian violence, and its not what is said in the source. yes it does say the army targeted Sunnis It actually says they targeted Sunni areas in pursuit of rebels, in other words, they weren't targeting Sunni's specifically. And I'm not understanding why you want it to read Iraqi militia "bearing Shi'ite insignia" instead of simply Shiite Iraqi militia. I would think my rewording and rewriting of the text at every occasion in pursuit of compromise and to satisfy you has shown enough good faith. EkoGraf (talk) 11:28, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Admin help at UTRS

Some help reviewing blocks at UTRS would be appreciated. The appeals are piling up and I can't review all of the cases awaiting review (as the blocking admin, or having declined previous requests). The last reviewed appeal was by me 24 hours ago and there are 17 appeals outstanding. Mops at the ready! --Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 22:40, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Remind me where the list of appeals is located. I'm an admin, but I usually don't look for unblock requests. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:40, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Ponyo: I knocked 10 out. @Arthur Rubin: They are on UTRS https://utrs.wmflabs.org/.--v/r - T P 06:41, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks TParis. There are still 6 appeals outstanding if anyone's game.--Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 15:43, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And now all clear! TParis and Yunshui, your CU requests are complete. Cheers for the help everyone!--Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 21:01, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to apply for a UTRS account about a month ago ... it never took the panda ₯’ 23:23, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

DangerousPanda, there was a glitch with the captcha which has now been fixed. Please try again if you're still interested.--Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 16:57, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Someone with greater power than I ...

And thus do 26,095 edits bite the dust. Talk about total drama! - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 00:32, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

While actionning Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_Total_Drama_characters_(2nd_nomination) as "delete", I obtained the following error:

Deletion error on List of Total Drama characters. Error info:bigdelete : You can't delete this page because it has more than 5,000 revisions

Could someone with Hulk-smash powers deal with the actual deletion. I'm still "happy" to be called the deleting admin in case of DRV the panda ₯’ 23:21, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've put in a request to the stewards to action this. @DangerousPanda:, what's your interface language set to – does it happen to be British English or something? The default message that you get when using the US English setting contains a link to the steward requests page. Graham87 03:11, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@DangerousPanda, would it be possible to redirect that page to Total Drama instead of deleting it? With 26k revisions, I am uncomfortable deleting it, since such pages should only be deleted in exceptional circumstances. If nothing else will work, I'll try to get in touch with a system administrator to OK the deletion. Ajraddatz (Talk) 03:33, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally, the problem with the interface message could be corrected by updating MediaWiki:Delete-toobig/en-gb and MediaWiki:Delete-toobig/en-ca (the two variants of English recognized by the software) to the same text as MediaWiki:Delete-toobig. Ajraddatz (Talk) 03:35, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Ajraddatz: The consensus was to delete, not redirect. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 08:50, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Ajraddatz: Thanks, I've done this to both the variants of the MediaWiki:Delete-toobig message. Graham87 08:58, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I understand that consensus was to delete, however, the internal policy regarding deletion of large pages suggests that there must be some important need for them to be deleted - I see no such need here, thus why I'd like to examine other options. However, the role of stewards is to implement community consensus, so if no alternatives are viable for this case then I'll continue with the deletion. Ajraddatz (Talk) 19:31, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why should the fact that it's been edited (it seems terribly) for such a long time require any additional discussion? AFD decided delete. Now all is needed is someone who can delete the page and hopefully not take down the site in the process.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 20:33, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: After (finally) getting a hold of one of the devs, looks like a shell delete is the best way to handle this. The page will be deleted shortly. Ajraddatz (Talk) 21:10, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And deleted by Hoo man. Sorry for the delay guys. Ajraddatz (Talk) 21:21, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

AIV and Abuse Filter

What is the deal with the abuse filter being tripped and reported on AIV? What do we do? It's being caught, so there is really no action to take, particularly I am getting at filter 608, blocked or banned user. Just review and delete, or what? I haven't really seen any instructions for that.-kelapstick^(bainuu) 20:00, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

IP repeatedly adding/removing trojan horse names

I was hesitant to even being this up, because the net effect to the article is pretty negligible, but there's an IP, 182.73.252.2, repeatedly adding non-notable trojan horses to the list at trojan horse (computing) and then removing them a short time later (less than an hour, and usually just a few minutes). For example, today: added and removed 32 minutes later.

The only reason I decided to start a thread here is because it seems plausible that someone might do this thinking they're boosting search listings? Or introducing the ideas in the hope that someone else will notice and restore it? Strange. --— Rhododendrites ^talk | 20:22, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Who knows? Whatever his or her reasons, refusal to discuss them in response to your polite request may be a sign of disruptive editing, but let's try again. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:15, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Martyrs infobox

I just moved {{Infobox martyrs}} to {{Infobox martyr}} (and its doc page, likewise). It's actually for groups of martyrs, so I was in error. Please will someone revert both moves? Apologies for the inconvenience. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:08, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No worries,

Done. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 12:17, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Requested edits

Category:Requested edits is badly backlogged (a request from 19 March is unanswered, for instance). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:17, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We're backlogged everywhere. We need to start nominating people for RfA. We complain that RfA is broken and people hardly pass, but if we don't nominate folks then no one passed. We've only had 12 candidates pass this year, only 37 nominated. Find someone who patrols the autoconfirmed version of requested edits and nom them for adminship.--v/r - T P 23:19, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, few specialists seem to pass RfAs. There are general expectations voters have that require substantial experience in content creation, fighting vandalism, AfD discussions, plus be an active editor for 2-4 years. I don't see more editors passing RfAs until there is a realization that Wikipedia needs more admins and the goal is acceptable not outstanding. It seems like there was a big push in 2006 for more admins and I've come across editors with 3-6 months experience being elevated to admin status. I'm not suggesting returning to that standard but maybe more active editors need to realize that the current situation, with more admins retiring, is not sustainable. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:32, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Is that a bolt-on of autoconfirmed? I would be very happy to help out if given addn tools but no way am I ready for the mop yet! My block record is clean and I do serious gnoming and generally help out and comment. Irondome (talk) 23:35, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Fancy you show up Liz. When is your RfA? I do do noms. (edit conflict) Irondome, I'd give you a review/possible nom too if you guys want. Even if you fail, everyone fails once (I did).--v/r - T P 23:36, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I wasn't fishing for a nomination! Although I created my first account in 2007, I think I'd need a year with this account and the creation of several articles. Right now, I'm focused on categories and gnomish work. But thanks, that's flattering. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:42, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Liz would make it. Irondome (talk) 23:45, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Liz, I'm not in the business of catching fish, or flattering people. I'm in the business of getting more active admins in the places that need admins to be active. It's a practical question, we all need to find good candidates. Hell, we need to find marginal to acceptable candidates to even try even if they fail once or twice; not that you are marginal. I don't care if I like the candidate personally, I don't care if they have a political POV that differs than mine, or religious differences. I only care about people who are active, level headed, and are committed to areas needing admins. Do you want a nom? Irondome?--v/r - T P 00:56, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Gotcha. It's not the right time for me but I'll let you know in the future. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 12:57, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Liz, if you have created articles with a previous account, couldn't you point that out? —Anne Delong (talk) 00:12, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's all on my user page. But I did most of my previous editing as an IP, two of which I've noted. But it was intermittent editing, not like the daily editing I do today. But, yes, I assume the previous accounts would be brought up for any editor in an RfA. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 12:57, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

TParis, encouraged by your comments I may have found another candidate (User talk:Dodger67#A fix for that title blacklist problem... —Anne Delong (talk) 15:29, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Part of the backlog has likely been caused by the serious weeding at AfC over the past year - Tens of thousands of deletion requests, hundred of history merges, etc. I'm sure that sucked up a huge amount of admin time, but should be easing off now. —Anne Delong (talk) 00:05, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Admin has absconded halfway through an SPI investigation

I filed an SPI case at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Jdogno5 last week. User:Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry started an IP check which has been running for almost a week. He has hardly edited since so I made a request at his talk page a couple of days ago for him to finish the check so the case can progress but there hasn't been a response. Since I filed the case, the editor I filed against is already on to his second block and a lot more behavioral evidence has come to light in the meantime. The problem is I need the IP check either completed or canceled so the case can continue. I understand if no-one wants to get bogged down in an SPI, but if someone could just get the IP check wrapped up I would be much obliged. Betty Logan (talk) 00:46, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

SPI is backed up, CU in particular. Since the editor in question is already blocked, it tends to get the lowest priority. Once a CU starts a check, I'm pretty sure that none of the admin or clerks can do much of anything, only another CU can conclude that portion of the investigation by checking or declining to check. There also exists the possibility that another CU has already noticed it, but thinks that since the editor is blocked for edit warring and was a sock, he will come back, so is just monitoring. Perhaps a CU will see this and revisit it. Dennis Brown | 2¢ | WER 00:54, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Quite honestly, the problem is that an answer was given, and then a lot of pressure was put on the checkuser because people didn't believe the answer. Standard practice is to block accounts based on their behaviour; if they are doing something blockable, they should be blocked for that behaviour. I've completed the check, the accounts are unrelated, and the SPI can close now. Risker (talk) 01:01, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks for the heavy lifting, ~~I will look at it for close.~~ Dennis Brown | 2¢ | WER 01:03, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for completing the IP check guys. @Risker FWIW I didn't actually request or expect a second IP check since I wouldn't have expected the result to be different (IPs can change for any number of reasons i.e. posting from a place of work/college, coming home from college, changing your ISP etc) and I actually agree with you that there should be behavioral evidence against a suspect before they are blocked. Betty Logan (talk) 15:23, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hey admins

Is 172.56.10.214 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) Kumioko? We had some of his disruption in gun-related articles, and I think this is a continuation thereof. And if it's not him, it's some other troll attempting to disrupt a couple of discussions; dropping a warning with some chit-chat on User talk:Lightbreather. Anyway, if there's an expert of some sort--whether a CU or a Kumioko expert--please have a look. Drmies (talk) 02:23, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Check the edit filter log. The "banned user" filter had been triggered multiple times... Connormah (talk) 02:25, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So, that's a yes? Please block, if so--I already filled my quota today. Drmies (talk) 02:36, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And this has nothing to do with Candleabracadabra, for sure? See this. Very similar edits, here-> Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Denise Donnelly. I am apologizing if I am wrong but it is strikingly similar edits, behaviour, style and voice. And remarkably similar misspellings, see this one of the IP, from the:

23:30, 19 May 2014 (diff | hist) . . (+372)‎ . .Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Denise Donnelly ‎ (Please respect All edotors. Thanks) misspellings, .

As far as I know there are not many editors who spell like that ( except me, of course). ^{[sorry to but in]} Hafspajen (talk) 03:28, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No Haffy, your English is fine, and it's not Candle, as the filter log suggests, though the latter has taken the IP's case to heart on their talk page. That IP, of course, could have expected to be called out on their own English when they were trying to improve "non sentences". Thanks, Drmies (talk) 04:25, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Now, I say that that IP it is User:Candleabracadabra. Same style, similar edits, behaviour, voice. Drmies, don't forget that if it is the way I say, (and it would be worth checking), Candl. can't use his/hers account right now, because you blocked that for some hours, so s/he must go IP. If I am wrong I will apologize to Candle, promise. But I don't think I am wrong. I really think that the "banned user" and the User:Candleabracadabra is same person. Same topics too, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Denise Donnelly same talkpages (yours, Drmies), same style, same ... everything. Hafspajen (talk) 04:39, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

OK, who created that article, Denise Donnelly ? User:Candleabracadabra.

Who goes and votes and turns everything upside down on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Denise Donnelly ? Banned IP.

OK, who turns everything upside down on User talk: Drmies ? User:Candleabracadabra. See also User talk: Drmies#Additional question on behavioural problem, same stuff.

Who goes and turns everything upside down on User talk: Drmies ? Banned IP.

OK, who has been blocked for harassment, peronal attaks and uncivility by Drmies ? User:Candleabracadabra.
OK, who has been blocked for harassment, peronal attaks and uncivility Banned IP. (this is I suppose, don't think it was copyvio - issue).

Who goes and turns everything upside down on User talk: Drmies ? Banned IP.

OK, so, considering same edit style, same kind of expressions and so on... Hafspajen (talk) 05:26, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Who says things that sounds like this style: This is evil censorship and bullying. I am right and they are wrong. You cannot allow lies and slander to appear on Wikipedia articles! This is censorship. This article is about a very important person, clearly 'x' (where x nominated the article for deletion) has never heard of them, doesn't like me and is pursuing a vendetta!, This is pure vandalism – nobody can read the article without these sad and pathetic busybodies graffitiing their self-importance all over the place!

Both. Hafspajen (talk) 05:32, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Above citations are from the Wikipedia:Don't throw your toys out of the pram - not what these editors actually said, but it is in the same style, if you got me.

Now let's see a citation User:Candleabracadabra: So you want to rein in the incivility? Go for it Drmies. But don't get mad at me for telling the truth. When you guys create a mess and involve yourself in it and muck it up, and you get stuck doing mopping I don't break a sweat. Cry me a river. I don't create articles in bad faith EVER and I don't edit in bad faith EVER and I try to keep a sense of humor about all the attacks I face, but I don't like it. So if I hurt your feelings, good. You deserve it. Show your fellow lowly editors a little respect in the future and don't act like such arrogant wp:dicks.

Now let's see a citation Banned user: have made several other edits that have nothing to do with this. Quit trying to win by attempted mischaracterizations. It is uncivil. Single purpose accounts only cover one subject and besides defending against your ludicris accusation I have made only one comment about this. Please read WP:SPA for clarification. Thanks and please find a better avenue than insulting editors intentions and mischarterizing their contributions.

Hafspajen (talk) 05:32, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly think this is a very good case for Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations. I would probably fill in if I only knew how. Hafspajen (talk) 05:34, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As Tarc has also noticed. And Viriditas clearly helds this user for disruptive too. Hafspajen (talk) 09:44, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Disruptive Nature

I feel this user https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Muon is making disturbing, unfounded and covert allegations. I request the administratory board to have a look on this issue. This is a serious problem. Some two are three men trying to take control of Public contents are totally unfair. I feel a strong need to give people a fair chance of reading a good and clean content. Also he tried to change the edits which were totally in accordance with wikipedia editing norms. I fully abide by wikipedia norms and regulations. Thank You. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Skandasol (talk • contribs) 05:51, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Skandasol: To go from you giving this kind of praise to you reporting the user to this noticeboard in the space of eight minutes, Muon must have done something pretty catastrophic. Considering they didn't edit during that time, please can you tell us exactly what allegations Muon made and which edits were disruptive? WaggersTALK 10:00, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have reversed this edit by Skandasol because it added a comment with what appears to be a signature of Muon. @Skandasol: Please see WP:TP for information about talk pages. On the last line of your comment, add a space then four tilde characters (" ~~~~") for your signature. Please add your comment again, with a signature. Johnuniq (talk) 11:28, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My edit history is available. Please have a look and do notify me what those disturbing, unfounded and covert allegations were. I have not attacked anyone personally and will never do so. I have reverted the edit that I believed was objectionable. This was my revert. μ Talk 13:45, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

He said the following 'You are adding sex related statements to an article about Hindu deity'. His statement indicates an action which i did not purport to do and at the same time it did hurt me lot. I kindly request the Administrators to take back his words. My point is the word with reference to the context, the word 'enticed' clearly expresses a state where a person gets sexually induced. Again the concept of Procreation is objectionable. We are talking about Mythology(it may or may not be true) the point of adding reality goes astray. Keeping this in mind i edited the content to an acceptable level. Also I ask the administrators to revert his edit. I feel the act and statement of him shows high-handedness. I feel hurt and treated unfairly. I sincerely hope I am done with an explanation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Skandasol (talk • contribs) 15:21, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not censored. If this is so sensitive a subject to you, you should seriously not be editing Wikipedia. Your edits can only be justified by citing an independent reliable source that verifies the information you want to add, and supports your reasons for doing so. They can't be justified because you find "the concept of procreation to be objectionable". I'm sorry if that sounds insensitive, but we need to edit from a neutral point of view in our articles. -- Atama頭 22:30, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Backlogged move request dealing with WP:Commonname

The discussion at Talk:The Beatles (album)#Requested move is 12 days old, and the arguments are going rather circular. The main point under discussion is whether WP:COMMONNAME is controlling for an album, or if WP:OFFICIAL can overrule it. Could an admin take a look at the discussion? Thanks, Dralwi k|^{Have a Chat} 15:03, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

User:GoodDay ban appeal

By motion, the Arbitration Committee has resolved that:

The site ban of GoodDay (talk · contribs) has been suspended subject to the following terms:
For the period of one year after unblock, if GoodDay violates any user conduct policies at any time, any uninvolved administrator may restore the ban. Furthermore, if GoodDay is given any legitimate block by an administrator during the period, the ban will be restored.

For the Arbitration Committee, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 10:44, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Discuss this

User:DeltaQuadBot (looks for inappropriate new usernames) is dead again

User:DeltaQuadBot (looks for inappropriate new usernames) is dead again, since 15:10, 17 March 2014. See Special:Contributions/DeltaQuadBot. It should list its findings in Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention/Bot. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 15:09, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

User: Alexzr88

User: Alesxzr88, who cites irrelevant sources in articles of history (books of non-historian writers), referred to me as "fanatic" You can see here. Could someone please make him stop treating me like that?--Владимир Нимчевић (talk) 15:40, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

User:Tutelary

This user User:Tutelary is idiotically showing up her nature. She's deleting a page showing fake sites. Please look up this user & take a strict action against her PrateekTamilian (talk) 15:51, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please provide some links, or diffs if possible. All I see are edits removing messes you've made, including introducing copyright infringements, which (let me remind you) make you liable to be sued or prosecuted in real-world courts. Nyttend (talk) 16:12, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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v t e Noticeboards
Wikipedia's centralized discussion, request, and help venues. For a listing of ongoing discussions and current requests, see the dashboard. For a related set of forums which do not function as noticeboards see formal review processes.
General	Administrators Main Incidents Bots Bureaucrats Centralized discussion Closure requests Education Interface admins Main Page errors Open proxies VRT Oversight User permissions
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