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Well-meaning, but chronically disruptive, editing from TheNuggeteer
TheNuggeteer (talk·contribs) is topic-banned for six months from content assessment processes, broadly construed. This is explicitly noted to include: GA nominations and reviews; FA nominations and reviews; FL nominations and reviews; DYK nominations, reviews, and other participation; Peer review; and AfC/NPP. Where a 'contest of any kind' has any level of overlap (as per 'broadly construed') with any of these explicitly-included processes, this topic-ban extends to that contest. Daniel (talk) 21:25, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I am here after every alternative means of intervention has been exhausted and with extreme disappointment that it has come to this. TheNuggeteer is a newer editor who has been getting involved in several content processes and some administrative tasks. While without a doubt approaching their work in good faith, they have consistently displayed a lack of competence in meeting community standards. They have received numerous warnings from numerous editors, most of which received no response, acknowledgment of error, or commitment to improvement. Below are the most recent of them.
Freedom4U: "I believe you need to learn more about the GAN/article-writing process first before taking on [the GARC coordinator role]".
Drmies: "I don't think the editor should be reviewing GAs" (message).
Rollinginhisgrave: "Please gain some more experience with Wikipedia and improve your writing skills before you review or nominate articles at FAC/FLC/GAN" (message).
Thebiguglyalien: "I don't believe this user is ready to participate in the GAN process quite yet" (message).
Wizardman: "you seem to be taking on more than you can chew", "not wanting to listen to the constructive criticism you are getting".
Asilvering: "I think you should step away from Good Articles entirely for now", "avoid all content review, contests, and editathons for a while" (message).
September 21 discussion opened by Mike Christie, asking "You've had some experienced editors telling you you need to slow down, but you seem to be ignoring them. Can you tell me why?"
September 22 discussion opened by myself, advising "that you immediately disengage from content quality–related processes on Wikipedia and focus your efforts elsewhere for some time", which I meant as a final warning.
September 27 Talk:A Boy Is a Gun/GA1 quick-failed by PSA, stating "You should hopefully know this by now, but you have to slow down".
TheNuggeteer has been given every opportunity to receive guidance from more experienced editors, but shows no signs that they understand they are being disruptive, nor that they are taking steps to prevent it. I cannot in good conscience recommend an indefinite block against a good-faith editor, so I propose an indefinite topic ban from good article nominations and reviews, and possibly other content venues as well. (please mention me if you need my attention) —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 05:55, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I'm not sure I'd say you "deserved it", but you did have a lot of opportunities to get off this path, and you didn't take them. But it's going to be okay. Mostly what you've done is driven a bunch of people crazy, and we'll get over it. Let's find you something else to do. @Matticusmadness suggested copyediting, or maybe you could "adopt" some other backlog. How about de-stubbing? I see you're in WP:PHILIPPINES, and they have a whopping 10779 stubs that need expanding. You won't run out of those any time soon, and it will be good practice. -- asilvering (talk) 09:51, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A good plan, I think. The open-ended nature of an indefinite ban would be extra stress for this particular editor, and would probably lead to unban requests that made everyone unhappy. I would broaden the topic ban to include contests as well, since I think they share the same perverse-incentives problem. -- asilvering (talk) 09:31, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Rjjiii, I agree with you that it would help with familiarizing one with GA, FA, or FL criteria, but at the moment I don't feel comfortable letting them proceed without the guidance of mentors, which to me is a less destructive alternative than independent reviewing. Also @Cullen328, you used "template" and your ping did not work.Elias / PSA 🏕️🪐 [please make some noise]01:51, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support For me, I suggest two months or three. I definitely don't want it to be indefinite.
A thought occurs. If you like doing GA Reviews, what else would be up your street, on-wiki? Let’s find Nugget something else to do, that they’ll like. Preferably something that is easier to pick up, and less damaging if it goes wrong. If it’s the “reading long things” aspect, the COPYEDIT drive Category:All articles needing copy edit still has a few days left. MM(Give me info.)(Victories)08:46, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I do see that most people are in agreement about a topic ban but I would also like to suggest that upon returning @TheNuggeteer does a review with a more experienced reviewer. I know co-reviews aren’t common with GA but I think this could be really helpful in the learning process. I did try to reach out with this idea but didn’t get much of a response. Either this or if they choose to do reviews after their ban someone checks over their first review back before final decisions are made. I know this creates extra work for others but personally I’m more than happy to take on this extra responsibility and I think it would be beneficial for everyone in involved. IntentionallyDense (talk) 17:03, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I want to comment that TheNuggeteer has chosen to take a wikibreak. In view of this, I will outline some of their pending nominations or reviews at GAN, DYK, and FLC. Anybody is welcome to volunteer to take over them.
Talk:Tumor necrosis factor/GA1 (review, with assistance from IntentionallyDense, although he has said onwiki and offwiki he would appreciate another pair of eyes due to the subject's medical nature)
of course i am not happy to see it come to this board, but i have to corroborate the issues raised here. i'd support a 6-month restriction from content assessment (GAN, FAC, PR, etc). i want to emphasize to TheNuggeteer that everyone here wants the best for both you and the encyclopedia. de-stubbing sounds like a great way to continue contributing :) ... sawyer * he/they * talk12:55, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
as an aside, i don't feel comfortable weighing in on a restriction on contest participation as a current coordinator of one (WP:DCWC). i mostly just want to encourage them to slow down and focus less on points or green circles and more on substantively improving articles without incentive. i also completely understand how nerve-wracking it can be to be taken to this board, and i appreciate the kindness shown here by everyone. ... sawyer * he/they * talk16:44, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've recently seen some TheNuggeteer's contributions and warnings they received. I personally wanted to weigh in and recommend them to step away from what they've been doing at GAN, though I ultimately didn't because of the lack of responses at previous warnings. Despite everything they've done, I don't think that this user deserves an indefinite ban from GAN/FAC/FLC/PR/DYK. I'd support a 6 month restriction that sawyer proposed instead. TheNuggeteer should in the future address concerns and constructive criticism from other more experienced contributors instead of ignoring them. During this 6 month period (if approved), they could work on improving other parts of Wikipedia such as those that asilvering proposed. I feel like you've also received enough information on what things you should improve on from your GANs. The main concern seems to be the prose and the use of non-encyclopedic tone. As a side activity, I'd strongly recommend you take a look at our other (recently promoted) GAs and FAs, read the criteria more thoroughly, and learn how those articles were constructed. The restriction could possibly become indefinite if others conclude that you did not improve after your first temporary restriction. Vacant0(talk • contribs)15:53, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A six-month restriction from content assessment processes, broadly construed seems appropriate; they're clearly well-intentioned and willing to work on improvement and I think will become a valuable contributor to the project. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:28, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My mind is sufficiently convinced: I support a six-month topic ban from article quality assessment as well as related contests. A focus on other endeavors, like expanding stubs, is highly recommended. Elias / PSA 🏕️🪐 [please make some noise]16:36, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I support a six-month ban too. I just don't understand why these things that were referenced above had to be said so often, why it had to come to this. Drmies (talk) 20:53, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As someone who has been involved in this often the person in question wouldn’t be very communicative and often didn’t respond to talk page messages or would just not seem to take other advice on the topic. IntentionallyDense (talk) 21:34, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have been watching this situation from a distance over the last week. At this time, I support a 6 month topic ban from participation in featured content assessment processes (e.g., DYK, GAN, FA, FL), broadly construed, at a minimum, based on the totality of what I have seen. Regardless of where TheNuggeteer chooses to work on Wikipedia moving forward, it is clear that they need to improve their communication with and ability to accept feedback from other editors when valid concerns are being raised. They seemingly ignored or did not pay serious attention to the issues that were raised on their talk page several times and the GAN talk page, and did not appear to take the feedback they were receiving on board. That is why this ultimately ended up at ANI. If this persists, I'm afraid we might end up back here again at some point in the future. In addition to temporarily stepping away from featured content processes, it is my hope that TheNuggeteer also uses this opportunity to make constructive changes in their approach to communicating with other editors and responding to their concerns. MaterialsPsych (talk) 04:40, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 6 month topic ban from content assessment. I also think that TheNuggeteer needs to address their lack of communication with others as well as how they have seemingly ignored feedback from others. Their lack of communication is ultimately what led us here and I don’t feel that a topic ban will be sufficient without them improving this pattern of behaviour. Additionally I think they should do a co-review or at least have someone checking over their reviews if/when they return to the GA process. IntentionallyDense (talk) 05:21, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to second @IntentionallyDense's point here. While I generally take care to avoid discussions regarding other editors' actions I felt compelled to speak here. The Nuggeteer was very poor about communicating with me and fellow WPTC editor IrishSurfer21 during a long GA review for the fairly short Tropical Storm Harold article and ignored discussion about their actions (as well as frequent pings by me) on both their own talk page and the aforementioned article's talk page. I believe something needs to be done to address their lack of communication with others and the issues it's causing. Finding out that I'm not the first editor who's had problems with their reviews and purposeful ignoring of others was disheartening. JayTee⛈️ 04:16, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Explicit topic bans
Okay, it looks from the above that we have a general consensus that a six-month topic ban is in order. I do not think that a "broadly construed" topic ban is going to be helpful for this particular editor, so I think we ought to be very specific about which processes that TheNuggeteer should avoid for the next six months. Here is a list of everything that has been mentioned:
GA nominations and reviews
FA nominations and reviews
FL nominations and reviews
DYK nominations, reviews, and other participation
Peer review
AfC/NPP
Contests of any kind
We have clear consensus for the first item. What about the others? I add AfC/NPP work here as I believe these are plausibly "article quality assessment, broadly construed", though they haven't been specifically mentioned here yet in the context of a topic ban. If I missed anything else, please let me know. -- asilvering (talk) 21:06, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Treating all the quality processes together is sensible. It would be good (regarding ultimate broadness) if the contest ban is noted as not including cooperative drives for content development (eg. destubbification) on Wikiprojects etc., where the Nuggeteer seems to have been an enthusiastic participant without causing the issues raised for quality reviews. CMD (talk) 10:01, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think in effect what this would mean is striking "contests of any kind" from the list above, since I can't think of any contests that aren't content development or any of the otherwise-listed review processes. Am I missing any? -- asilvering (talk) 11:44, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
would a de-stubbing drive not count? or those unsourced article drives? i feel like those are perfectly fine. ... sawyer * he/they * talk12:12, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I personally would be okay leaving out the contests part wince they wouldn't be allowed to participate in any contests involving good articles, where this editor has had issues with. IntentionallyDense (talk) 12:19, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure they are, since I think they can encourage speed and sloppiness over attention to quality, which seems to me to be the underlying issue here. -- asilvering (talk) 16:40, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm somewhat ambivalent about lumping AfC/NPP into this topic ban, given that no really substantive issues were brought up with TheNuggeteer's participation in either of these areas on here, although there is at least one thread on their talk page that brings up an issue relating to NPP that appears to have been ignored/not addressed by TheNuggeteer. If we think that there are serious issues with their activity at AfC or NPP, I think it would be better to have a discussion about removing their NPP rights and/or AfC access, and that is something I would not be comfortable with supporting without more evidence. I'm also ambivalent about a topic ban from Contests of any kind, as that seems excessively broad, although I would be in favor of a topic ban from contests that involve participating in any of the other named areas (which should naturally follow from a topic ban in any of the other named areas anyways). So besides the last two items on the list (AfC/NPP and Contests of any kind), I'm in favor of the topic ban covering other named areas. MaterialsPsych (talk) 02:59, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agreed with the contests restriction above, and I understand the concern about contests -- there's always a risk that editors motivated by contests might fail to do as thorough a job as needed. However, on reflection I think we don't have enough evidence to justify such a ban, even for a few months. I am also now wondering if it would it be a good idea to leave GA nominating out of the ban? Getting one's own articles reviewed is a good way to learn content quality norms, and nobody is obliged to do any reviewing of their articles, so maybe they would be picked up by those with an interest in mentoring. Perhaps with a limit of a small number of simultaneous nominations -- five? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:54, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Mike Christie, that sounds good to me on principle, but it's my understanding that they were also nominating a number of very unready articles, which does start to get somewhat vexatious. -- asilvering (talk) 15:21, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't reviewed every single comment, but the main threads seem to be about reviewing. I think a cap on nominations would address the issue of unready articles. Perhaps a cap of just one or two then? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:48, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we should make an exception to allow them to nominate GAs at this time. The whole point is that their participation at GA has been problematic and that they don't listen to feedback. Time off to learn how to contribute without worrying about formal review processes will give them a chance to learn to listen to feedback in an informal, no-pressure setting. Once they can show they've been able to do that, participating in things like DYK and GA will be more appropriate. ♠PMC♠ (talk)01:29, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
AFC and NPP seem the most critical of the content processes mentioned, if an editor is unfamiliar with en.wiki content standards to the point of disruption, they are unlikely to be very familiar with AfC/NPP considerations. CMD (talk) 13:29, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Steven1991's continuing misleading edit summaries
Steven:1991 continues to use misleading edit summaries, referencing substantive edits as "fixed grammar," as seen here. The User has been warned that this is misleading before. When I tried to inform them that this was not an acceptable edit summary, I was told that I was not assuming good faith and further accused of wiki lawyering, even after presenting evidence in the form of a diff.Insanityclown1 (talk) 20:54, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I apologized for the inaccuracies in the editing summaries. I promise that I would be more specific in future editing summaries to avoid misperceptions of them being "misleading", but I do hope that the phrasing of any reminders on my Talk page can be improved. Steven1991 (talk) 21:01, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I will withdraw this, but misleading edit summaries are disruptive by nature, and when someone warns you, its best not to accuse them of "wikilawyering" when they bring evidence to support a claim. Insanityclown1 (talk) 21:03, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My intention is to clean up the article, keeping relevant content as precise as possible, i.e. reducing redundancy, while adding content that can provide more information related to subsections with which it is associated. Steven1991 (talk) 21:04, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The atrticle is a highly controversial subject and massibe deletion is a cleaar red flag. You have to be careful with edits. Ideally you have to split your edits in two: (A) remove redundancy (B) do additions and fixes. It is insanelyt difficult to track and verify in the article diffs what exactly was done. --Altenmann>talk21:11, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Noting here for ease of reference that CU did not find convincing evidence of socking, and the old 72-hour block has been restored. The warning to avoid deceptive edit summaries stands. As a side note, Steven, this is an example of why misleading edit summaries are a bad idea; it erodes the community's faith in you, and makes it easy to believe the worst. EducatedRedneck (talk) 11:39, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think the sudden (un-)ban (*note that the IP is still blocked as a LOUTSOCK of the editor's) is very concerning. In reality, the Rochester IP is almost certainly part of a different LTA case.[2] I don't know about the other account involved, but this is all a fair bit negligent. Biohistorian15 (talk) 19:50, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
User:Mikeblas replacing incomplete citations with citation needed tags
Mikeblas(talk·contribs·deleted contribs·logs·filter log·block user·block log) seems to routinely remove incomplete citations and replace them with {{cn}} tags. For example, in this Sep 28 edit, Mikeblas replaced {{sfn|Penslar|2017|loc=Staging Zionism}} with {{cn}}. In this case, the "Penslar 2017" incomplete citation was a simple error: it's Penslar 2023, not Penslar 2017. Penslar 2023 was already listed in the references section of the article at the time Mikeblas removed the citation. But instead of fixing the mistake, or tagging it with {{full citation needed}}, or pointing it out on the article's talk page, Mikeblas deleted the incomplete citation and replaced it with {{cn}}.
Mikeblas made similar edits at the same article: 2, 3, 4, 5, and recently at other articles: 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.
This is a problem because (1) the statement was not unsourced, it's simply that the {{sfn}} had the wrong year and thus didn't correctly link to the reference in the references section, (2) for any other editor seeking to fix the broken {{sfn}}, including bots that "rescue" these incomplete citations or orphaned ref names, it becomes much harder to find the correct citation and repair it if we remove the incomplete citation altogether, and (3) an incomplete citation is still of more value to a reader than no citation at all. Mikeblas knows that orphaned refs can be fixed by going into the article history, as evidenced by this comment and this edit summary (and apparently many others like it; Mikeblas sometimes rescues the citations rather than removing them).
Other editors have complained to Mikeblas about this on his UTP at least one (relevant edit), two (edit), three (edit), four (edit) times in 2024 (I didn't look further back than 2024). I posted a fifth complaint on Mikeblas's talk page a couple of days ago at User talk:Mikeblas#September 2024. I suggested if he didn't want to fix the broken citations, he tag them with {{full citation needed}} instead. He did not agree.
I checked his contribs today and saw that he did this again here and here. Without doubt, Mikeblas has done more good volunteer work on Wikipedia than I will ever do. But I think he's damaging articles by removing incomplete references and replacing them with {{cn}}. He clearly thinks what he's doing is right. What say the community: cool or not cool? Levivich (talk) 21:28, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Looking through the talk page here and some of the related links, it's not clear: how am I meant to respond to this? Maybe not at all? -- mikeblas (talk) 22:01, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Personally I didn't have a problem with Mikeblas' action. The responsibility of editors adding citations is to make sure they work properly. It's easy enough to add a cn tag and easily enough removed or reverted with a proper cite. Andre🚐22:06, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Andrevan: I'd strongly disagree. How are editors supposed to know that cn means there was a citation which might be easily fixable but it was removed? Simple answer is they won't. So they're not going to look through the history to find this possibly easily fixable citation. They're going to have to find it again, or another citation instead of just fixing this potentially easily fixable citation. Even if they did know there was a potentially easily fixable citation, looking through the history to find this is far more difficult than just fixing the citation in situ. Your comment might make sense if mikeblas was adding the cn tag while leaving the flawed citation although some other tag might be better than cn. Nil Einne (talk) 22:48, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) To put it a different way, what's the advantage of removing the potentially fixable citation and replace it with a tag? Readers looking at the article should be able to recognise there's a problem when it's tagged as suggested by Folly Mox below, or frankly even with the cn tag. I don't know if you can even say it's "clearer" with the cn tag without the flawed citation. Yes it might be less confusing why there's a cn tag but seems to be a citation. OTOH, readers might believe there never was a citation and this is more likely to be just nonsense rather than there was but it was broken so perhaps this is more likely to be true. And if the flawed citation remains and they are confused so want to check, when they try to access the citation, they'll encounter the problem and so better understand what the problem is. (Which could be reduced by using a better tag like those suggested by Folly Mox.) If an editor wants to fix the citation, if it's tagged better as suggested by Folly Mox, it's easier for them to find such problems although again even with the cn tag it's still marked as something they need to look into the same way when the citation was removed. But now with the flawed citation remaining, they can then decide whether it's worth fixing the citation or just finding a replacement. If they find a replacement and chose to remove the flawed citation that's fine then but they at least had the choice. If they fix it, their work was presumably made easier by the citation remaining. If the citation is just removed, as I mentioned above they don't really have a choice. I mean they could look through the history perhaps because they're wondering who added that detail so they can ask them, but more likely they just won't bother, as I think most don't. So instead only thing they can do is find a citation anew. Nil Einne (talk) 23:13, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The only advantage I can think of is that it's a quick way to clear a citation-error maintenance category. Actually repairing the citation would take significantly longer, and tagging it with {{fcn}} would not clear the error. Personally, I don't think the benefit of clearing the maintenance category outweighs the harm of removing the incomplete citation.
On a related note, it's a truism on Wikipedia that most article content that doesn't have a citation or is tagged {{cn}} is actually correct. I wonder if that's because the content used to have citations but the citations were removed. I worry about how many citations we've lost this way. Levivich (talk) 23:19, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think the reason is because if an editor sees something uncited that they feel is clearly wrong or which no citation could possibly exist for, they're more likely to just remove it. When I tag something with {{cn}} it's usually because I believe a citation might exist; if I'm reasonably sure none exists then I'll just delete the uncited text instead. This dynamic would tend to bias CN-tagged stuff towards things that are citeable. To your first point, I wonder if there is a technical solution to this. Could {{full citation needed}} be given an argument that could allow it to wrap a partial citation so it no longer shows up as an error? (And would that even be desirable?) --Aquillion (talk) 01:45, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Mikeblas: Best way to respond would be to recognise you should have responded to the concerns earlier, but made a mistake and did not, but you're going to now and change what you're doing going forward. Nil Einne (talk) 22:51, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I responded to Levivich several times on my talk page. I was reading up on how to take the matter to WP:THIRD when they said they were not really interested in an extended debate about this, so I thought they were no longer going to pursue the matter. Instead, they escalated it here. It sounds like you're saying there's no room for my side of the story, and no way for me to clarify some of the substantive misrepresentations, misconceptions, and assumptions being made here and on my talk page, including repeated accusations of vandalism, disruption, and dishonesty. Is that the right takeaway? What about clarifying questions about what to specifically do going forward? -- mikeblas (talk) 00:09, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Mikeblas is right about this part. The other day, when I saw the edits on my watchlist, I thought WTF? and assumed it was some new editor making a newbie mistake. When I looked at Mikeblas's userpage and read "admin, 19 years 2 months old, with 78,854 edits", I thought WTF?!, and looked at his recent contribs to see if this was a one-off or a regular thing. When I found six more examples at six different articles just in the past week, I thought WTF?!?. Then I looked at his user talk page archives to see if anyone had raised this issue with him before and found multiple examples in the past year including a template from another admin, so by the time I started writing my message to him, I was at "WTF?!?!", and that's not a good place to start a conversation. Starting at "WTF?!?!" was not going to be effective. Looking back, I realize I should have taken a minute in between reading and writing, and I apologize to Mikeblas for coming in so hot, that wasn't cool of me. Sorry. Levivich (talk) 00:26, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd appreciate your apology if it weren't for its condescending and self-aggrandizing tone. No editor should ever be subject to the kind of treatment you have shown me in this process. -- mikeblas (talk) 15:36, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
mikeblas, there's space for your side of the story. I doubt people will change their minds about this sort of activity, but I recognise everyone in this thread so far as being a respectful adult, and I'm interested in hearing your clarifications. Folly Mox (talk) 03:08, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Mikeblas: Sorry I assumed someone had already told you when they approached you. You need to stop doing what you are doing right away. If possible you should try and revert any cases where you've done this. Going forward, instead of removing a broken citation, please tag it with some appropriate tag, probably {{incomplete citation}} or {{full citation needed}} so someone else can fix it in the future. Alternatively you can try and fix it yourself. If you're unsure what tag to use, feel free to seek help at WP:Teahouse or WP:Help Desk. However using the wrong tag isn't such a big deal, provided you do not remove the broken citation. Although if someone approaches you and says "you used this tag {{abc}}, you really should use {{xyz}} instead", do take their advice on board. If you feel their suggestion on which tag to use is incorrect feel free to discuss it with them and if you're still unsure, feel free to use WP:Teahouse or WP:Help Desk for further clarification. Generally speaking is a bad idea to ignore advice unless you're sure it's wrong according to our norms, and going by your confusion here, I do think your understanding of our norms is limited so I'd strongly suggest you never ignore advice until you've come to better understand our norms; hence why I'd suggest you seek further advice from others if you think you've been given bad advice rather than just ignore it. Although just to repeat, I wouldn't be so worried if the issue was you were using a less suitable template even after someone had suggested an alternative. The main concern is you removing broken citations, potentially making cleanup of these problems far more difficult. If for some reason you're unwilling to keep such broken citations when doing such work, then your only option is to cease doing such cleanup work point blank instead of removing the citations. If even that isn't something you can do, then the only real option I can see is for you to cease editing all together. Nil Einne (talk) 04:04, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just to further explain, it's not such a big deal if an inexperienced editor ignores advice or concerns raised about their editing because they wrongly think it's incorrect or they don't understand it, and so continue to make mistakes. But as editors gain experience, we expect them to start to learn for themselves when something they've been told is incorrect or unhelpful and so they can ignore the advice given; and when it's not. Likewise if an editor doesn't understand something it starts to become incumbent on them to recognise this. This doesn't mean they automatically know what to do. They may need to read the relevant policies and guidelines or seek further feedback such as in the manners I suggested. In your case, since multiple people have approached you on this, if you were an experienced editor it would be very concerning that you just ignored those concerns and advice since it was correct. But if you're not experienced, then just take this as part of learning to edit here. Nil Einne (talk) 04:17, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Looking further, I'd only count the User:Joseph2302 (two (edit) example as the same thing (replacing a potentially fixable ref with a cn) so it's more accurate to say "two people" than multiple. However Levivich's approach in particular, was IMO clear enough on the specific issue of replacing broken citations with cn, even if they were more aggressive than needed be, so it was really time to either change or at least seek further feedback if you felt Levivich was wrong (which they weren't).
I don't think it'd necessarily count the User:Elinruby example (one (relevant edit)) as even wrong since deciding to accept Elinruby's judgment that the source was unreliable and so remove anything referenced to it seems acceptable.
The User:GiantSnowman example (four (edit)), well I don't think that should have been removed however removing the entire thing is a little different from replacing a potentially fixable reference with a cn tag since if you have strong doubts it's correct, it's might be okay to remove it even if it's possible there is a reference when you can't even be sure the reference is reliable.
The User:Kimen8 (three (edit)) is a little different but also potentially the most concerning. @Mikeblas:, I can see there were other references for every sentence hence I guess why you didn't add a cn tag [3]. But did you verify every single detail given there was supported by at least one other reference that you didn't remove?
Because it's very common someone might write "Nil Einne is widely regarded as the stupidest Wikipedian of all time and has been banned multiple times from the English Wikipedia. ref A, ref B". But ref A might only support Nil Einne being widely regarded as the stupidest Wikipedian of all time and ref B might only support Nil Einne being banned multiple times. So if an editor removes ref A but leaves ref B, suddenly we end up with a situation where only part of the sentence is support by a reference when the whole sentence was sourced before.
So unless you verified every detail was in another reference already cited, just removing the pmid19584973 was even more problematic. Potentially you changed an article from one where every single detail in that those sentences were supported by a reference to one where they weren't. Further since there are references there, people are going to assume that every single detail is referenced when perhaps some aren't. No editor is likely ever know this even needs to be fixed until someone tries to verify the detail in the future. At the very least you should have added the {{verificationneeded}} tag so editors know there is a possible problem although as per the cn example, that still isn't the correct course.
Instead just tag the broken reference and leave it be. You cannot assume pinging whoever added it is sufficient. They might miss the ping, ignore it, (suddenly?) become inactive, forget about it, not understand it, not care, or whatever. As you've said every editor is responsible for their edits and so this means if you're removing a citation no matter if it was broken because another editor made a mistake, it's you're responsibility to ensure you aren't make the article far, far worse by doing do.
Note that pmid19584973 was surely trivially fixable. Logically this must mean the article with the PMID (PubMed ID) which is [4] which unsurprisingly has a title strongly suggesting it was the intended reference. So personally, even if every detail was in some other ref, I would not have removed it. However if you verified every single detail was supported by another ref, then it's a fair enough judgment call to condense refs so we can leave that example aside. Although you really should have said you did so in the edit summary to prevent another editor checking out the history seeing it, getting concerned and spending their time redoing your effort of verifying every detail.
Hi. Have not been following this but in the example above where I am mentioned, I removed Jewish Virtual Library because it was (and still is) my understanding that this source was deprecated in an RfC because it cites Wikipedia. I have only quickly looked at the mention, but I would have left the claim and added a cn tag if I was fairly certain the claim was accurate, but being left uncited because I removed Jewish Virtual Library, and could not for reasons of time or whatever immediately find another source.
It looks like the issue here is replacing incomplete but valid citations with cn tags. I personally think that this should be avoided in most cases, and that the citation should be fixed if possible. If this is not possible for reasons of bandwidth or time or whatever, I think it would be better to leave an incomplete but valid citation alone than to remove it. I hope this comment is helpful. Elinruby (talk) 07:10, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
on looking further, I do not think that the example where i am mentioned is an instance of what the OP seems to think it is.
The reference should *not* have been rescued, assuming I was correct to remove it in the first place, which I think I was. The only device I have access to right now is mobile, and my complaint on his talk page says that the table will not display on my phone, so I cannot double-check, but it sounds like a bot restored a reference that should not have been restored and mikeblas removed it again. According to me, that was the right thing to do. Finding another reference might have been better, but I had noticed the reference problem as an incidental finding while doing something else, and the same may have been true for him. My complaint on his talk page was not that he removed the reference. I simply had an issue with the tone of his notification, but patroller notifications do tend to come across as patronizing, and I would not say that his was unusually so.
Bottom line, I would like to disassociate myself from this complaint and do not think my issue is a good example of what is being alleged here Elinruby (talk) 11:04, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for chiming in, Elinruby. Indeed, at least a few of the examples given were not accurately described by the OP and this is one of them. I am sorry that you were caught up in this mess and completely understand your desire to distance yourself from it. I do very much appreciate you having the courage to point out that the reports made here aren't completely trustworthy. -- mikeblas (talk) 15:28, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That question is replied to in full just above in this thread you are replying to. The diff in Other editors have complained to Mikeblas about this on his UTP at least one (relevant edit) is not a complaint about "this". It was indeed a complaint, but not about what you say, and I would have told you so had you asked me about it Elinruby (talk) 19:05, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And answered even more broadly by Nil Einne's analysis of Levivich's examples, also above. I'll be WP:BOLD and post my own analysis of their claims:
two: This user did say that they wished I fixed the reference instead of just adding a template, but didn't say it was wrong not to do so. In my response to them, I explained that I couldn't fix their reference name and what I had done to try. Sure: I just missed it. But since I pinged them about the error, they were able to immediately make a fix. Point is, tho, this writer indicated they were upset about being pinged and didn't offer specific and prescriptive advice of not replacing broken footnotes or using some specific tag instead of {{cn}}.
three: This user simply asks how they can spot their own errors -- Is there a way to tell that it was never defined ...?. Super constructive and very positive: they turned down the free fish and now have a new lure for their tackle box. They do not ask me to change anything about my editing style.
four: This user posted {{uw-vandalism2}} but didn't explain why when I responded to them. With no explanation, I figured they were just upset that I reverted their unreferenced edit and lashed out.
Thus, none of these users prescriptively indicated that I should be doing something else, and didn't direct me to any Wikipedia policy or essay or even template documentation about handling broken footnotes in some different way. Because of Levivich's representation of these posts and my edits here, other participants are working under their false implication that I don't try to find a fix before doing so. And have started telling me that I have competency issues and doubting my responsiveness to feedback.
Further to this point, I do not agree with the way my interaction with Mikeblas is being represented here and do not have an issue with his behaviour in that instance. I took a huge amount of grief for trying to address some Jan Grabowski's more valid criticism from people who had uncritically read him, then found me editing in the area and ascribed responsibility to me for what I was trying to fix. With some distance on these events, I would say that I identified a genuine issue with the article but because of the table format did not completely remedy it everywhere in the article because I did not see all instances of it, it looks like. Which Mikeblas fixed, it seems. So again, I do not appreciate my complaint on his talk page being used against him in this way, since in retrospect I think I was unnecessarily defensive and more hostile than I like to remember. I apologize for that. I do not think the interaction should have been depicted as it has, and believe that Mikeblas reacted quite well considering. Elinruby (talk) 18:01, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For sure, I can use {{fcn}} to mark broken footnotes going forward, and will work to clarify the documentation so that others know that template is appropriate for that usage. And a majority of the changes I made are already "fixed" by the editors I pinged to notify them of the problem at hand. But I'm still wondering how to address the misinformation and uncivil accusations posted here and on my talk page. Why do you seem to be ignoring that question? -- mikeblas (talk) 15:37, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm having a hard time telling who you were replying to, but is Why do you seem to be ignoring that question? a general question, or specifically to one person?
If it's a general question, and you believe someone has intentionally posted misinformation and made unsupported accusations on your talk, you can bring that to AN or ANI. I'd recommend starting a new section so that this one can be archived promptly. Valereee (talk) 15:48, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm responding to Nil Einne. Sorry -- I thought that would be made clear by using the "Reply" link under one of their comments. Is that not the way replies are meant to work? -- mikeblas (talk) 15:58, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's the way it works! The problem is the indent that I had to try to follow up thread to see which post you were replying to, and when it's that many intervening posts it can be hard to figure out. Valereee (talk) 16:10, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, got it. Indeed, my vision is quite poor and using this interface is very difficult -- particularly when the discussions become incredibly giant. -- mikeblas (talk) 16:25, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, Mikeblas, I don't want to pile on here, but in addition to rescuing or tagging instead of removing, it would be helpful if you'd be aware of where you're working. The edits that ended up with you here -- which is a good thing, it's good you're getting this advice here -- were at an article that is the locus of ongoing intense drama over...wait for it...sourcing. :D If you land on a page that is within a CTOP while in the course of doing what you believe is routine maintenance, it's never a bad idea to take at least a quick look at the talk. The drama there doesn't need anything to fan the flames, and it's likely made the drama here more than you were expecting, too. Valereee (talk) 11:59, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So in terms of that article... those errors were caused by someone recently rewriting or adding new additions to large portions of the article. That user should not have put so many broken sfns because it is making it hard to follow along, check their work, check the quotes and the page numbers, and generally have the page still be working and not throwing a bunch of harv errors. They are a pretty new user so maybe that's why. However, it shows that maybe they were being a bit hasty. Could Mikeblas have instead, looked at the bibliography and fixed the cites himself? That would be better, but I think the original user causing the broken cites had a responsibility to know that. Even now there are at least 4 broken citations that still haven't been cleaned up. Andre🚐10:33, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Around ⅓ of no-target errors are trivially fixed using a source already cited in the article: usually the problem is a typo in the year, forgetting to use a custom |ref= parameter, or one pipe too few in the template call. A further ⅓ are easily fixed by looking at related articles linked in the same section as the broken footnote (often in a hatnore) whence text has been copypasted. The remainder are usually cited fully somewhere unexpected, but findable using Special:Search, but some require checking offsite. Folly Mox (talk) 22:57, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is exactly analogous to removing uncited but clearly citable material per WP:BURDEN—if it is clear an edit (1) makes the article worse for readers and (2) makes the article harder for other editors to improve in the future, then it is an indefensibly bad edit, regardless of what policies an editor thinks they can point to. Remsense ‥ 论05:31, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, that seems entirely contrary to WP:BURDEN. How would you clarify the wording at that policy in order to make your interpretation clearer? -- mikeblas (talk) 15:32, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Broken citations to legitimate sources should be fixed, not removed. Removing them just makes it harder for other editors to fix the problem. It's much easier to correct a typo or other minor problem than it is to dig through the page history or try and find a source from scratch. XOR'easter (talk) 23:51, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've fixed thousands of no target errors, and would be happy for editors to take them more seriously. A short form reference without anything defining what it means is worse than no reference, as it fools readers into believing it is a valid reference. Saying that, removing the reference should be a last resort after all other avenues of correction have been tried (of which there are many), including trying to find a different source to replace it entirely. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°11:59, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with everyone above that Mikeblas' behavior is a net negative compared to the status quo before he touches these articles. Mike, if you're not going to understand the issue when multiple editors are repeatedly telling you something over the course of years, that's a competence issue on your part. If you can't practice better discretion, then stop doing those edits. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchstalk16:04, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wrote on your talk page before raising this at ANI:
What I'm looking for here is for you to commit to not doing this again in the future, and to fix the ones you already did (including diffs # 6-11 and any others you can fix).
Did you miss this comment? Or are you subtly saying you deserve more than that? By my inspection, the problems you've reported have already been fixed, and mostly by the editors who created the referencing errors in the first place. -- mikeblas (talk) 16:42, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I posted 17 problematic diffs. I checked before I wrote the above comment, and I just checked again: they are not all fixed. Please go through them and ensure they are all fixed. Levivich (talk) 16:44, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I see diffs numbered 2 through 11, so there are ten. You're asking for seventeen. Sorry -- this leaves some confusion for me in what it is you are demanding. I'm sure you have the list handy since you're able to check it so rapidly, so if you could just post it that would be helpful. -- mikeblas (talk) 17:16, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here are all 17 of your article edit diffs I posted in the OP:
I don't know which of those have been fixed, but I'm sure that the ones where your edit is still the current revision have not been fixed. Levivich (talk) 17:33, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
please cross "relevant edit" off the list. As discussed above, Jewish Virtual Library is not a valid source and he was correct to remove it. Elinruby (talk) 18:13, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm confused by diffs #6-11, as there's nothing to fix. These are undefined refnames that cause an error message, unless it's possible to find a recent reference that was removed they should be replaced with citation needed tags. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°16:43, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
They should not be replaced by a citation needed tag, that's sort of the point here. They should either be repaired, left alone, or tagged with {{fcn}}. Gosh, AD, please don't tell me you've been replacing incomplete refs with cn tags, too? Levivich (talk) 16:46, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is no full citation, so fcn would be inappropriate. This is just an error stating that the citation details are missing completely. If editors don't want there errors to be replaced with citation needed tags they shouldn't add errors to articles.
These are not the same as incomplete short form references, that gives some idea of what might complete them. If there isn't a matching reference that has recently been removed these could be literally anything.
What do you mean, There is no full citation, so fcn would be inappropriate.? {{fcn}} is short for {{full citation needed}}, it's specifically for use when there is no full citation. A full citation is needed. And no, it could not "literally be anything." Take a look at this edit, for example: Special:Diff/1216711110 with an undefined ref name. Do you know what citation that is? Yes, of course we all do.
And another thing you're very wrong about: these errors aren't created because people are "adding errors," that's ridiculous AD. You're highly experienced, you know how these come about: somebody adds a complete reference, then later somebody else removes something including the full reference definition, without moving the full reference to another instance of the ref name being called. That's why these undefined ref names can be recovered from article history, and we have bots that do this. That's why removing them is bad.
Seriously, do not remove undefined ref names, please. This is kind of a big deal because it makes articles much worse to remove undefined ref names or incomplete sfn's. Levivich (talk) 17:12, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I do know how these come about, the way you give is but a small subsection of them. Most of which are fixed automatically by Anomiebot. If you want to know how to fix them see my edit between creating an account and sometime around May 2022 when I cleared the historical back log of them.
Undefined refnames that can not be fixed should be replaced with citation needed tags, if only because as this very thread proves it actual causes people to pay attention. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°17:20, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Once again, this edit: Special:Diff/1216711110. Is that an undefined refname that cannot be fixed? I don't think any of my examples are undefined refnames that cannot be fixed. I think in each and every single case, if you dig in the history, you'll find what that undefined ref was. Levivich (talk) 17:23, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And yes when the refname is "pmid19584973" it can be easily fixed, but how about the much more common ":0", "auto" or "ReferenceA". As I've repeatedly said, they should be fixed if possible, and if your not going to try you should leave them alone, but they can be replaced with citation needed tags if they can't be fixed. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°17:23, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Are any of the diffs you mentioned, #6-#11, ":0", "auto", or "ReferenceA"? (Do you think I'm dumb enough to bring this to ANI if the refs were ":0", "auto", etc.?) And anyway, if you look at the article history, you can find even a ":0" ref. It's just a matter of finding the revision before the reference was removed. Levivich (talk) 17:27, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No but I see "term", "MCUphase6" and "BBC Iran", so nondescript names seem more the norm than a PMID. And no not all missing references can be found in the article history, or sometimes anywhere. Not all of these errors are created by removing a reference, and most of the ones creacted that way are fixed by Anomiebot.
I think we're getting off topic. mikeblas shouldn't remove these unless they have tried to fix them, but I stand by replacing them with CN tags if they can't be fixed. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°17:39, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I agree with you about that: try to find it and if you can't find it, then cn it. Although... "MCUPhase6" is a reference to Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Six, so that's an example where, if you leave the refname, at least it gives me some indication of what reference I'm looking for (one about MCU Phase 6). Similarly, "BBC: Iran" at least tells me the source is BBC Iran (although it doesn't tell me which article). These are examples where {{fcn}}, rather than removal, would be helpful. It gives the next person something to go on. "Term", however, is too generic to be helpful. If MCUPhase6 and BBC: Iran were removed and replaced with cn, it'd at least be helpful to post on the talk page, "I removed these undefined ref names..." Levivich (talk) 17:56, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for this observation, and your other comments. Despite the sentiment built here, I do go out of my way to try to find suitable references. Sometimes I miss, and sometimes I make mistakes. But more often than not (who knows what the quantitative answer is), I can find something that works. When I can't, I've either reverted the change entirely (per WP:BURDEN) or replaced the broken reference with {{cn}} or {{cn span}}. When I do so, I ping the editor who made the change causing the error, and they very often fix the issue. And quite promptly.
Scraping away all the anger, derision, inflated claims, and harmful accusations, the issue just comes down to: what should be done with broken footnotes when an editor finds them? I don't think anyone disagrees that an attempt at a replacement should be made. But what if a fix wasn't found with reasonable effort? Since the {{fcn}} doesn't mention this usage in its documentation, I'm surprised there's this informal consensus about using it. Is there other guidance (policy, RFCs, ...) that support that practice? -- mikeblas (talk) 17:57, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I know I'm wasting my time saying so, but I disagree. By my read, that text doesn't describe a broken footnote. It describes an incomplete citation. -- mikeblas (talk) 21:22, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think "{{sfn|Penslar|2017|loc=Staging Zionism}}" is a case where a reference is alluded to, or given in part, but not specified in enough detail. "Penslar," "2017," and "Staging Zionism" are all parts of a citation. Similarly, "<ref name="pmid19584973"/>" is a reference given in part: "pmid" and "19584973" are parts of a citation. But I doubt anyone will object if you want to expand on the template instructions to say that it includes broken footnotes. And @Mikeblas, please don't ping me in your edit summaries for your correction edits, that is not necessary or helpful, thanks. Levivich (talk) 21:44, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The 5 Zionism ones (the first five in the OP) definitely show that they haven't tried to fix them first. They even posted on the talk page at Talk:Zionism#Referencing problems, I have cleaned up several referencing problems in this article. Yet the source they removed: Penslar, Shimoni, Masalha, etc., they are listed on the same talk page. IMO, not enough effort at finding the citation before removing the sfn. Levivich (talk) 18:04, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How about the undefined short forms in that article are fixed, rather than having this discussion. Short forms without definition give the false impression that content is properly sourced when it isn't, and it is on the editor adding the content to do it properly. That editor are creating such errors in such an article at a time like this is a reason for those editors to be brought here, rather than the editor pointing them out. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°18:58, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly disagree. First, those are sourced. A citation like "Masalha 2016" is still a citation. It's incomplete, but it doesn't make the statement unsourced. And somebody removing that and replacing it with "cn" is not "pointing out" errors, but rather, making the whole situation much worse. Somebody who is in the middle of an article rewrite and adds some broken citations does not deserve to be brought to ANI. Somebody who replaces incomplete citations with CN habitually and refuses to stop when asked, does deserve to be brought to ANI. We really need to all be on the same page that like this and this are never supposed to happen. One of the reasons is because those kinds of edits make it harder to fix the problem! We need to all be rowing in the same direction: towards improving the article, not un-improving it. Levivich (talk) 19:16, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Rather than waste time with this thread I've fixed what I can and have asked the editor who added the broken references to add the required cites. This is what should have happened first rather than this mess. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°19:30, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As someone who has fixed ten of thousands of such errors, the idea that such edits are always a net negative is just wrong. Especially in high profile articles have a much citation needed tags lead to the issue being corrected much faster than fcn, as in within days rather than languishing in the article for decades. If the end goal is to improve the encyclopedia I would have {{Full citation needed}} deleted. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°19:44, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Edits like this and this do not improve the encyclopedia; in both of those cases, the page was better before the edit than it was after the edit; those edits should not have been made. Levivich (talk) 20:06, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think the initial framing of this report was a little unfair to mikeblas. I could have done a better diligence and checked more of the diffs, but describing only the removal of a broken {{sfn}} where the source was already listed in the article, while leaving out mention that a lot of the removals were undefined refnames that didn't obviously refer to sources already cited in the articles— that was also pretty not cool.Fixed a few of the affected articles. Folly Mox (talk) 12:33, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Folly Mox: leaving out mention that a lot of the removals were undefined refnames? I didn't leave out mention of that, the OP mentions orphaned ref names and orphaned refs. The pmid example I and others have brought up multiple times--the most egregious one IMO--was an orphaned ref name. Levivich (talk) 13:17, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I probably didn't use the clearest phrases I could just above, since I was hurrying to get to work on time. I mistook "orphaned refs" to refer to broken shortened footnotes (I ageee technically AnomieBot uses this term to refer specifically to undefined refnames), and I probably should have used description for mention. Anyway we've all agreed that these edits are disimprovements, and I wish mikeblas's own explanation hadn't been eaten by oversight. Folly Mox (talk) 16:20, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
None of his content appears to have been oversighted, just the diffs that included oversightable material by other editors that was removed. As stated below, it was a misunderstanding. --SarekOfVulcan (talk)17:00, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wrote responses to the claim that Other editors have complained to Mikeblas about this on his UTP at least [...] four times, showing that those instances did not clearly ask me to stop doing what I was doing, nor did they offer prescriptive advice about what to do instead. This demonstrates that the claims in the opening post are at least somewhat inflated.
An un-discussed issue here is the difference between a citation (as used here: remove incomplete citations) and a "footnote" or a "reference" (wihch to me is a link to a citation). I believe that in no cases involved here did I remove any citation of any sort, and instead removed only broken footnotes -- either {{sfn}}s or <ref> tags that referred to undefined references. Again, this is counter to the accusations in the opening post.
If editors are meant not to remove broken references and replace them with some variant of {{fact}} tag, that's fine, and I've already indicated I would comply with that going forward. But if that the case, the decision should be codified. That would make me happy, as it would mean this arduous process produced some meaningful and positive outcome. -- mikeblas (talk) 17:54, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You're one of the few people here seeking depth and balance, and I greatly, sincerely appreciate that. It's the coolest. Even if you tripped over your keyboard, I don't think you have anything to apologize for. -- mikeblas (talk) 18:04, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
please do not resign over this. As it is source verification is very fraught, especially in contentious topics, and will become even lonelier if people are driven out for doing it. I have not in investigated, but I give great weight to AD's opinion that some of the other examples were not erroneous either. I have not investigated enough to say that no errors were committed at all, but I don't think that should be the standard for.adminship and losing someone who is at least trying to do the right thing would deeply sadden when the incentives are already so stacked against trying to get the facts right on difficult topics. Elinruby (talk) 19:33, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Elsewhere in this thread, I refute Levivich's claim that four other users complained about this. (I can't link directly to that, since it was suppressed.) The premise set by those questionable claims seeded a belief that I wasn't listening to feedback offered to me and significantly biased the conversation against me. No surprise -- the very structure of ANI biases toward the aggressor.
The tone of Levivich's introduction here further sets up the belief that I wildly replaced citations that I thought were broken with {{cn}} tags, or similar (like {{cn span}}). I do replace broken footnotes with fact tags, and only after I make an effort to fix them. Sometimes, my effort is Herculean and correct. Sometimes, I make mistakes. Sometimes I'm impatient, sometimes I miss possible candidates. Usually (far more often than not) though, I think I do the right thing.
In Levivich's flagship example at the Zionism article, they say that I replaced {{sfn|Penslar|2017|loc=Staging Zionism}} with {{cn}}. And I sure did! But this is not replacing an incomplete citation, and is not a simple error.
Why? There's an important point here: I think that "reference" or "footnote" means a footnote. The "[15]" part. A citation is the actual meat of the citation: an author, a link, a page number, a title. The real citation of the published fact. A footnote is broken when it references no citation: when we have something like {{sfn|Penslar|2017|loc=Staging Zionism}} and no citation that matches, there's a visible error in the references section of the article.
Unfortunately, that still leaves the "[15]" superscript. To a casual reader, then, the text still looks like it is supported with a reference and therefore trustworthy. But it's not. The public puts a high amount of trust in Wikipedia, so much so that citations are often not verified. Just the presence of the footnote number infers that trust, and I think it shouldn't. That's why I think an explicit "[citation needed]" superscript is safer than a footnote number that doesn't lead to an actual citation.
In that example, the Penslar|2017footnote was used three times. Beyond WP:COMPETENCE and WP:BURDEN, the editor who placed it didn't check their work and left it there. In fact, the article had twelve footnotes which were broken for different reasons: no target, multiple targets, undefined altogether. Were this fix so simple, why weren't the people tending to the article taking care of it, or the others?
And simple it wasn't. The article had *three* similar citations for an author named "Penslar":
Penslar, Derek J., "Zionism, Colonialism and Postcolonialism", in Israeli Historical Revisionism: From Left to Right, Psychology Press, 2003, pp. 85–98
Penslar, Derek, Israel in History: The Jewish State in Comparative Perspective, Taylor & Francis, 2007, p. 56.
These citations are all adequately complete so I'd never consider using {{fcn}} for them. I never removed or replaced any one of them -- just the footnote, which matched none of these three. Was one of these three intended? Or maybe some other work published by Penslar in 2017? Or maybe some other work published in 2017 by some other author? Only the editor who added that footnote knows. So I replaced two of the footnotes with {{cn span}}. And removed one, since it was correctly supported by some other footnote. I did not remove a citation, as Levivich claims. And when I made that edit, I pinged the editor who added that footnote so they knew what I did to try to fix the problem they had created.
Turns out, that referencing error was introduced a few days eailer than my change. Where is Levivich's unbridled outrage for that change? After all, didn't it also make the article worse, and harder to fix?
Anyway, the rest of his examples are similar. (Except the one where he didn't consider that I was following policy to remove a bad source, as listed at WP:RSP.) Maybe I missed a more obvious source that I just didn't see, maybe I could've dug into something more thoroughly. But I only replaced broken footnotes and didn't delete any citations. Maybe I misspelled "Pansler" and didn't find the "Penslar" texts I was hunting.
While my work isn't perfect, the tone that Levivich established here -- and flame that he subsequently fanned -- is that I don't make an effort to find replacements. That's objectively not true: I chase down edits, fix problems left behind by AnomieBOT and Visual Editor, and untangle constructs involving definitions passed through layers of templates, transclusions, and excerpts. I've fixed broken references, resurrected dead links, sorted out typos, sorted out duplicate definitions, and more.
Another errant notion in this thread is that it's hard to find and fix errors once I've made these changes. Why didn't Levivich notice that I ping editors (who aren't anonymous) when I replace their broken footnotes with maintenance tags? Those editors aren't surprised somewhere down the line: they're pinged immediately with the change. They were already shown their errors by the red error messages shown in the {{references}} section after their change went live, but now they've got a second indication to follow. In fact, the posts on my talk page that Levivich linked to mention my pings!
But this is all fluff.
The very core issue here is borne from differing definitions of what a "citation" and a "reference" and a "footnote" are: what should be done for broken references? There was some talk here agreeing with me, in that explicit "[citation needed]" markers are safer than dead "[15]" footnotes. I don't think that anything is made more difficult when something broken is removed and replaced with a marker as anyone who knows how to use the editing tools knows how to recover the diffs.
But maybe other people think differently. I don't know of any policy or previous consensus about the issue, and for sure Levivich themselves didn't point us to any. So at the heart of it Levivich is asking me to conform to his preferred style rather than to conform to widely-accepted policy or convention. What obligates me to do that? Just him yelling at me, and accusing me of disruption and vandalism and threatening me with bans?
In other words, Levivich is demonstrating that they're unwilling to consider any other opinion than their own. I don't agree with Levivich's opinion, but I don't think it is unreasonable. It's quite clear that Levivich thinks my opinion is unreasonable and is unwavering obstinate about that. How can someone find common ground with another that's so entrenched in their own?
That issue, about what do do with broken 'footnotes (not citations) as a best practice, is an issue this ANI might have productively solved.
At Levivich's repeated demand, I still agree to abide by the promise to not remove broken footnotes and instead augment them with {{fcn}}, even though I think its use would be incongruous. And, again at Levivich's repeated demand, I executed on replacing the referencing errors in the articles that weren't already properly fixed, even though I felt like replacing referencing errors into articles -- something I've spent thousands of edits fixing -- felt completely counter-productive.
I don't know how things are meant to proceed here, but I think now it's time for my own demands, responding in kind. Levivich should:
Renounce and correct the false and bloated accusations they made on my talk page.
Review and explain the reasoning for the faulty examples they gave of my previously being told to correct this issue.
Commit to seeking compromise by always listening to the other side, considering it earnestly, in his future interactions.
Write and sponsor an RfC for the practice they've demanded of me (and presumably every other editor) to codify it for all to come.
I don't think many would disagree with me that the ANI environment is flying goat rodeo. I don't think it produces productive consensus and instead is based on the duress established by the threat of castigation. Or the social pressure against dissent and questioning. Throughout this process, I felt that any question I asked would be used against me. If you think that this process does not entertain diversity in approach or thought, and does not foster evolution, then your views align with mine. In this experience, I learned that this non-process does not build trust or seek truth. I find it utterly unfair, significantly biasing for the aggressor rather than giving equal voice to the defendant. What good could become of mob-driven reviews where gang tackles like this are institutionally normalized?
I regret that my work on Wikipedia caused me to be involved in it, and am sorry that people who have shown me kindness and support have had to spend time and effort on it. If Levivich can execute on those requests, then I think we can all say something positive has come of this arduous and embarrassing event. Can we salvage just this one?
Until then, this user's treatment of me (and others), their overly-aggressive approach and refusal to pursue compromise or understanding, and Wikipedia's harboring of their behaviour through this frenzied free-for-all has -- at least for the foreseeable future -- intimidated me from contributing anything. It's just not worth the risk or effort, it's not safe.
Thank you for hearing my side of the issue. While I still don't know what puts this not-process to an end, I'm looking forward to the closure of this matter. -- mikeblas (talk) 19:19, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can just about guarantee you that saying that you're doing everything right and someone else has to do a lengthy 4-part mea culpa is absolutely not the way to end this quickly. --SarekOfVulcan (talk)22:12, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, what a surprising comment! Never said I was doing "everything right", at all. Explicitly stated quite the opposite, in fact. Seems like a disingenuous read, but I can understand that given the severe bias here. I've just expressed my reasoning for doing what I did, which has not previously been examined here. Is there really no room for that?
In the above post I said I'd abide by the editing changes, and I've already done the fixes. Third or fourth time I've pointed that out -- still no response. Why, after the huge rush to open the issue in the first place?
If Levivich gets away with his distorted narrative and abusive posts, that's fine: I already know Wikipedia implicitly condones that behaviour, no surprise. I still comply, and we can close the issue. I've imposed no conditions on my compliance. OTOH, it would be a shame if that happened. -- mikeblas (talk) 22:38, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Y'know what? I'm coming in here for fun to add my two cents. Let's just go with should auld acquaintance be forgot, and start this thing back over radically.
@Mikeblas, please do a quick bit of skimming over a ref when it seems to be not correct, before removing it outright.
A discussion of content removal has turned into a civility dispute EIGHT MILLION MILES LONG. This should not be happening. Boys, it's time to turn the slinky of dispute back into a simple ring that gets to the root.
Yes, a lot of good faith all around could be useful. I think Mikeblas is suitably chastened, looking to learn, and next time he'll do a skim or use a different, more specific template. Andre🚐22:54, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Now, I see that my two most recent contributions here appear to have been suppressed. I've not received any notification about or explanation for that. One was a post that I made in my defense -- so my only takeaway is that is not actually allowed and was summarily removed. But why the lack of transparency? (Please see [5] and [6].) -- mikeblas (talk) 16:36, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you look at the page's history, a number of unrelated posts were caught up in a suppression of possible outing (in a different thread). Schazjmd(talk)16:44, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One was a post that I made in my defense -- so my only takeaway is that is not actually allowed and was summarily removed. I would not expect to read such a comment from an advanced rights holder. Mackensen(talk)17:10, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But they should know how suppression works: even non-admins can see that your comments were not summarily removed, they're still on this page. Levivich (talk) 17:25, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You're gas-lighting again: telling me what I do or "should" know isn't productive or WP:CIVIL. While I did eventually find my changes were intact, I've never before come across suppressed edits and certainly am not aware of any other edit I've made being suppressed. Again: I've been forced to participate in a process that's very serious, but for which I discover no documentation about how I should (must, could) participate. That leaves me feeling tremendous trepidation -- particularly in light of your tremendous anger and aggression -- and I hope you can find some empathy for that. -- mikeblas (talk) 17:36, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Is this the first time you've ever met someone who didn't know everything? [7] But maybe it would be more productive to consider my repeated plea for help and guidance. -- mikeblas (talk) 17:49, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Create a template - inability to use edit summaries
Editor user:Create a template has a very low percentage of using edit summaries when editing pages. Per WP:FIES, "According to the consensus policy, all edits should be explained (unless the reason for them is obvious)—either by clear edit summaries, or by discussion on the associated talk page." User Create a template does neither.
Examples of particularly large edits which lack a summary are [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13]. At the time of this notice, zero of their most recent 100 edit contributions have had edit summaries.
User Create a template has been contacted by three different users on their talk page to politely ask them to use edit summaries. Instead of making any behavioral changes or replying to these attempts to educate, User Create a template deleted all these comments in the following three locations: [14], [15], [16]. They proceeded to immediately make more edits without an edit summary, including [17], [18], [19], [20]. At this point we are running into a WP:CIR issue. I would like an admin to ask Create a template to increase their usage of edit summaries from about 10% to an acceptable number, perhaps 80%, over an appropriate time period. This will dramatically help other users who are interested in editing the same topics, which generally include speculative fiction literature. Michelangelo1992 (talk) 01:55, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have no history for the most part because I do not like other editors. I have only ever had bad interactions with most editors, or 90% of the time, and it's not because I've done anything disruptive to pages. They arrogantly demand to be heard, believe that their way is always best, and edit war if we deviate in preferences of what should be said. I give summaries when my edits are getting reverted or when there's a good-faith confusion about something. Other than that, I don't bother with explaining because the edits are all pretty self-evident. This is especially when the edits are smaller. My history speaks for itself that every edit I make is good-faith and constructive, even the longer ones, so if people are seeing me over and over and noticing that I haven't done anything very wrong with the content, then I don't see why I need to . And the more I get bombarded with demands, the less I want to hear them out anyway, since I've never made a bad-faith edit or an edit that's completely unsupporrted by refs or at least a basic google search. also i make complex edits in which many different improvement are made; writing a summary of those is annoying, taxing, time-consuming, and could be inaccurate or not complete. What am I supposed to do in those situations, just talk bout the most major thing?
I also view the report as an aggrievance of not being listened to, rather than anything practical. Shouldn't those boards be for people who are causing chaos on the website? which I clearly am not.
If I need to give supplementary rationale for every or almost all edit going forward, and banned if i don't comply, then that annoys though doesn't surprised me, and I may be amenable. This talk of sanctions and official notice over such a low-priority complaint is ridiculous and from my standpoint unwarranted, though given all of wikipedia's user rules I expected something dumb like this to happen every few weeks.
Create a template, I resemble that remark! Seriously though, this is a massive collaborative enterprise, a little tolerance of your fellow editors, please. And while I also tend to make big sweeping holistic edits and therefore sympathise with the challenge of summing up everything I did, it's basic politeness as well as self-protection to explain a bit of what you did and why. Your edit summary usage is 11.6%, 9.3% for major edits. That's awfully low. On the other hand ... not long ago I was involved in a section on this noticeboard concerning an editor who also rarely uses edit summaries (as well as misusing the minor flag), and there was disagreement about the need for edit summaries. The closing statement includes the sentence: All editors should, as a matter of helpful and collegial editing make best efforts to use edit summaries and other tools to accurately describe their edits, but they are not required. That may partly have been because that editor took on board the advice to start using edit summaries and to turn on a reminder widget. Create a template, will you undertake to try to craft an edit summary, maybe with a lot of abbrevs about ce, refs, rem'd and + like some of mine, especially for your big edits? Yngvadottir (talk) 10:13, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
should not shall, so I won't do it most times, though if you all want me to, if it's one of these I'll do it, large edits of 800+ bytes, major reorganziation of the page, potentially cont ones, reversions, special cases. is that reasonable?
I thought rare usage of edit summaries wasn't something ANI-worthy based on a response I got for a similar report of mine. But it is concerning that Create a template did not respond in any form to recurring notices about their behavior. I believe they should assume more good faith in other editors and at least give very brief responses to address others' concerns. Aintabli (talk) 14:08, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Aintabli, re: I thought rare usage of edit summaries wasn't something ANI-worthy based on a response I got for a similar report of mine., it depends. If you'd like to leave a link on my talk, I'll take a look. Valereee (talk) 16:28, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I like to be left alone. most of the time I can do my edits without people getting in the way or complaining about anything. I ref well most of the time and know how to organize and opt the pages I work on.
it was not worthy of this, you are right. the reporter is angry that I didn't pay attention to what he had to say, it was partly motivated by ego.
While I understand the desire, ultimately Wikipedia is not yours. It is sometimes required that editors communicate with one another, because we are accountable to the community for our actions. You are not entitled to total quietude because you trust your own judgment. Remsense ‥ 论09:22, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
this was about edit summaries, though. it had nothing to do with content. what I was saying is that I make it so that most of the time people don't have to complain about anything that I've done in terms of content. so when someone does finally complain and it has nothing to do with content, I'm like "I'm going to ignore this". I'll avoid saying it's "justified" or whatever.
I understand, I just hope you understand that as others aren't living in your head with you, they would often like to share your level of confidence in the changes you're making. Edit summaries are often very effective in transplanting understanding from one user's head to another's. Remsense ‥ 论09:48, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Create a template, maybe it would help you to understand that when you don't include an edit summary, you may be wasting other editors' time. That's because editors see an edit on their watch list with no edit summary and feel like they need to go check it. Sometimes multiple editors will go check it. If you'd included an edit summary, they might instead look at the diff and think "Sounds about right."
As a general concept, edit summaries are just as important as edits. And, yes, complex edits need them, too. It doesn't have to be exhaustive. When I make a complex edit, I might use the edit summary "reorg sections, rem trivia, exp + ref". But even for tiny little edits, leaving an edit summary will help prevent other editors from wasting their time checking your edits.
An example that I saw recently play out on my watchlist was when an editor removed a sentence without an edit summary. Another editor reverted the unexplained blanking. The first editor removed the sentence again, but this time used an edit summary explaining that it was a duplicate sentence. Time would have been saved if they'd done that initially. Schazjmd(talk)16:29, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For both editors, too. Cat, think about the amount of time you feel like you're wasting here in this discussion. Edit summaries can prevent a repeat. Valereee (talk) 16:37, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
yeah. this was definitely a waste of time having to def and worry about potential conseq. though I'm not going to do it most times. I'm thinking of other solutions, like using my page and article pages to organize and communicate my updates instead. the edits that I do are uniform across hundreds of articles. the goal is to standardize every relevant page, explaining the same edits 1000x is not happening. Create a template (talk) 09:10, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Create a template: if you're making the same updates to many articles, you can just use the same summary for each of them. You don't need to type out a unique summary for each edit, so long as it applies to all of them. "Standardize to XYZ, see <link to explanation>" is a fine edit summary. Elli (talk | contribs) 16:50, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
yes, though I completely disagree with "edit summaries are just as important as edits". there's no way that can be true. sure, it can save others time, so I'll acknowledge that, though the crucial thing is editing accurately
In my mind, the crucial thing is consensus, through which editors can collaborate to build the encyclopedia. Accuracy as such can be collectively assured if we communicate enough to explain to one another what we're doing and why. Remsense ‥ 论09:26, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Create a template, if an article you're editing is on the watchlist of 20 people, and 8 of them have visited recent edits, that likely means those 8 people came to check those edits.
If you make an edit that takes you three minutes to research because you had to check the source, and the actual edit takes you three seconds to make, and you leave that edit without an edit summary -- something like corrected per source which might take you another three seconds -- and those 8 people come along behind you and need to do that same three minutes of research, you have wasted 24 minutes of other editors' time in order to save yourself the three seconds of writing the edit summary. So you've spent 3 minutes and 3 seconds instead of 3 minutes 6 seconds, and you've potentially caused the waste of 24 minutes of other editors' time in order to save yourself 3 seconds. If the number of editors who have visited recent edits is 200, that timewasting expands. And that's assuming they came in and decided to guess that you were making the change per the source and immediately went and read it; if they have to ping you to ask about your reasoning, then read your response, that's going to waste even more time. For both/all of you.
I have no history for the most part because I do not like other editors. I have only ever had bad interactions with most editors, or 90% of the time, respectfully, there's a common denominator here ... sawyer * he/they * talk11:02, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While it's true that edit summaries aren't explicitly required, WP:UNRESPONSIVE DOES require you to explain your edits. Be helpful: explain your changes. (Emphasis original.) If you leave a talk page post, that works as well, even if edit summaries are preferred. Per Valereee above, the edit summaries (or other means of explaining your edits) are part of using all volunteer time effectively. I understand this is not what you want, Create a template, but this is a collaborative project. WP:NOTHERE point number six, Little or no interest in working collaboratively, is grounds for a block. I can't stand crowds, so I don't go to music concerts. If you won't or can't stomach working with other editors, this is not the project for you. EducatedRedneck (talk) 11:34, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
User:Sinclairian
Pasting from attempt at Helpdesk. I've warned Sinclairian about the biased, inaccurate, and harmful edits they've been doing. These are on very niche topics that nobody's ever, ever going to notice. Like who's gonna actually check the source translation on the Arslan Tash amulets? Well, I did because the translation is so scrabblingly amateurish, (Also because I always look lately when I see that username on one of my watched articles) and the user's rendering of it actually had some "improvements" that might make the scholar look better or worse. The reader would think the translation has been accurately copied and pasted when that's not the case. The other translation's even worse by some scholar I don't know. Someone legitimate, I'm sure, but not good. I think questionable artifacts should be categorized as such and noted in the first paragraph, and translastions of questioned items and forgeries shouldn't be included for obvious reasons. Anyway, I think the user should be banned. Inaccurcies on minor Semitic languages that a dozen people know will stick around forever; the quietness of it means the ripples on public knowledge will spread with no end. Very subtly destructive stuff. Temerarius (talk) 00:35, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What, the user's poor conveyance of an S David Sperling 1982? It was what might have appeared to them as cleanup and clarifying what's on what line, but it's harmful, was changed without note that or why, and I get the impression the user knows a modern Semitic language and inappropriately extrapolates, with a heavy dose of "should". Or something, you can't know what's in someone's head. It's the pattern and the fact they weren't careful enough to back off right after I yelled at them about it, clearly not gonna change, I said this has to go to administration now.
I really don't want to spend all night getting a headache looking at the posting history, but this is characteristic: user removed the famous Yehud coin with the "wheelchair" and the Soleb inscription from Yahweh. Some of the most universally agreed upon for earliest and most meaningful pieces of evidence of Yahweh. I mean, the coin's not that early. The Soleb inscription is still missing from that page. And, somebody apparently made a page for the coin and called it God on the Winged Wheel coin, and somebody called "Fraud monsoon" added this AI garbage as a supposed reconstruction. Ugh. Anyway, Sinclairian doesn't want to believe those are attestations of Yahweh for personal reasons, and is hurting Wikipedia for that bias.
Do you have any evidence demonstrating that their reasons are personal and not rooted in site policy and reliable sources? Remsense ‥ 论02:08, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Beg your pardon? Are they making arguments rooted in site policy, or are they dismissing site policy in their arguments, and instead arguing based in "personal reasons"? There should be examples demonstrating your point that you can show here. Otherwise, you're casting baseless aspersions. To be clear, if they're providing shoddy translations that is an issue, but if you're insinuating the reasons you need to justify that. Remsense ‥ 论02:26, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Damn, am I ever sorry I used the phrase "personal reasons." Pretend I didn't. Pretend I said "NPOV problems."
There's nothing to do here if you can't point to specific evidence that demonstrates the issues you're talking about. Remsense ‥ 论02:28, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm gonna go crazy quick if that's how you do things around here. Get me some serious admins. This is the first time I've reported anybody; I'm not a dossier maker. My first complaint above is passing one's own translation off as a scholar's work. That's not against policy?
Every single solitary edit you have ever made to this site has been a dumbfounding tapestry of OR, SYNTH, broken English, and profanity-laden rage at the slightest challenge or questioning. I have and will continue to ignore your rationale until you present a calm, legitimately grounded basis for a single supposed "improvement" you seek to make to any article on the site. I do not need to have "are you a fucking idiot" plastered on my talk whenever someone calls you out on your mistakes. Sinclairian (talk) 03:22, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's also a callout for potential sockpuppeting on user's talk page from earlier this year. I agree that new people don't typically make 365 edits in their first 19 days. I know socks are frowned upon, it'd be worth looking into other username from same IP--or however you investigate them.
You'll need evidence and a specific user that is sockpuppeting, but vague ideas that they might be socking aren't evidence. WP:SPI is thataway. You can't handle that here. Andre🚐03:42, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A sockpuppet investigation starts with magically knowing who a user was before? I'm learning a lot today.
Yeah, SPI is not for fishing. You'd need to use a tool like the editor interaction analyzer and show they are a WP:DUCK ie a close match to another blocked or banned user. Andre🚐03:50, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why fish when we can ask? We're all adults. User, is @Sinclairian your first account?
I don't want to distract attention from a separate issue, providing translations for dodgy artifacts and likely fakes. I think we should develop a policy discouraging it. We should categorize and mark prominently disputed items. Going back and forth on inevitable "issues" or "difficulties" in their inscriptions is big waste of good brain power. The Arslan Tash article is small potatoes, but it reflects a problem that'll come up again.
So that is really a content issue. The issue you want to focus on here is the behaviorial stuff. WP:CIVILITY, for one. Or if they are misrepresenting the sources, that is a problem. I think they should explain or rebut that point. No admins have commented on the thread yet, by the way. Andre🚐03:48, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good point on civility, user is freely calling people dolts, idiots, and trash. The insecurity of someone without an argument. The defensiveness of the defeated.
A couple people have told you this already, so I don't know how to convey to you that this is a serious demand and not simply a vague suggestion: stop saying stuff like this. At the talk page you opened a section called "ReConSTruCTioN" with the text What the fuck is this garbage?. Here you say "The insecurity of someone without an argument. The defensiveness of the defeated". You are beseeching people to volunteer to help you settle a dispute with another user. This does not help them do that. This actively prevents them from doing that, by creating other problems that they must deal with. For all of the complaining you're doing about people not being "serious" enough, you seem to be remarkably comfortable wasting their time by making silly hostile comments consisting solely of insults to other editors.
We have enough of a policy against it, in that faithful translation is specifically excepted from being considered original research. I don't really feel we need a separate guideline saying "don't translate material from a language you don't speak". Remsense ‥ 论04:35, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, Temerarius, I'm an admin and you should listen to the advice you have been given. Here's how noticeboards like ANI work. You are concerned about an editor's behavior, you post a complaint giving specific examples (what we call "diffs" or edits) that illustrate the problems you are describing. An editor bringing a complaint always has to provide evidence so that interested editors can investigate and see if a problem genuinely exists. Complaints that are just narrative statments typically do not get much feedback or action taken on them often because it become one editor's word against another's. Also the editor bringing the complaint always has to inform the other editor that they have filed a case to give them the opportunity to respond. We see a lot of complaints brought to ANI that just go to the archives because necessary information is missing that would allow editors to evaluate the problem you believe exists. LizRead!Talk!06:31, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The closest thing to a specific claim I'm seeing here is ... something about the translations on Arslan Tash amulets? I'm not entirely sure what. However, it was easy enough to find the diff in question and Temerarius is correct that the translations given in the cited sources aren't exactly the same as those in Sinclairian's edit. For instance, line 9 of AT1 in Sperling's translation reads "Eternal covenants were made for us." but in Sinclairian's edit the equivalent text spans lines 8-10 and reads "A cov- / -enant to u(s) was made, / eternal". It looks to me that Sinclairian has taken the Phoenecian text from those sources and provided their own translations? Which, unless there is any reason to believe that Sinclairian is deliberately mistranslating, is a content issue (should Wikipedia include translations of these texts and if so which ones) and not a conduct issue. That should be discussed on Talk:Arslan Tash amulets, which nobody is doing. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 09:08, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sinclairian did attribute the text to the referenced author even though it is Sinclairian’s translation, so that’s at best sloppy editing. — rsjaffe🗣️16:40, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, it's sloppy, but hopefully a curable issue. @Sinclairian, do you agree? If you're going to clean up the translations yourself that might be problematic if you attribute them to the expert. Wouldn't it be easier and cleaner to just use the expert's translation without improving it yourself? I mean, someone else mentioned that simple translations aren't considered original research, but translating an ancient language is not simple. Andre🚐21:17, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Returning to the issue of the translation, which as I read it was Temerarius' main point, the policy against original research explitly prefers published translations over Wikipedians' own translations: Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians, but translations by Wikipedians are preferred over machine translations. (The section is specifically about quotations from cited sources, but I would be very surprised if policy was more lenient about primary sources such as this text in the article about the text.) Moreover, in their editSinclairian cited the translation they added to the Sperling article: Per Sperling. followed by the reference. That's falsification. It fails WP:V and it's dishonest. They didn't misread a letter or two in copying Sperling's translation; they deliberately changed it (or they actually copied a different translation that was derived from Sperling's, and copied over the citation from their actual source; but the inclusion of the JSTOR link would suggest they were in fact looking at Sperling.) Pinging Caeciliusinhorto, Florian Blaschke, Andrevan because I disagree strongly with the views you've expressed on Sinclairian's edit—despite the dog's dinner Temerarius has made of this report. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:59, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hm, I don't know that I've expressed a view yet, Yngvadottir, for you to strongly disagree with. I was trying to get Sinclairian to clarify their intentions with that edit, which they may not realize is a good idea or something strongly recommended to do (clarify, I mean). Well, I'd say it's benefit of the doubt or a misunderstanding until proven otherwise, but I did try to ask Sinclairian. I'll note that prefers doesn't mean categorically mandates over the alternative, I did agree with @Rsjaffe that it is sloppy at best, and I also agree with you, assuming this is your point, that the "official" translation should be used when possible. For a new user, not understanding this could be excusable. To me, what's less excusable is the incivility, so I'm not sure why that's not really attracting a lot of attention. At any rate, as was pointed out, Temerarius also has some funny stuff they've written (to me, much less bad than calling someone a dolt or trash, but interesting) and they also failed to substantiate their report adequately at first. But, I agree with Remsense as well, a translation is not original research per se. The bottom line is, as Caeciliusinhorto says, the question of whether the translation is accurate or whether the original must be used is a content issue that belongs on Talk:Arslan Tash amulets, whereas any behavioral problems, such as WP:CIR, failures to communicate or gross personal attacks should be addressed here. Andre🚐00:08, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your responses. I'm reading and absorbing them. I don't understand if @Liz above is telling me there's a problem with my user page. The profanity is to prevent it being rolled into AI datasets and output into sophist nothings of statistically unique phrases and citations so niche to be otherwise unknown in the open web. At the reweighting stage they--why am I explaining this? Is there a question about my page? About why I'm "interesting?"
Less your userpage and more the "What the fuck is this garbage" comment, though honestly, I kind of understand the strong reaction to that terrible AI-generated image. Andre🚐00:53, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Gezer calendar
Tabnit sarcophagus
The Arslan Tash amulet translation is a small matter on a minor artifact. But it was what made me report Sinclairian after seeing a pattern that made me sick to my stomach. He's an editor with a POV problem and the smarts to hide it. Nobody else is gonna notice because nobody but me edits so many pages in common so carefully. So the bigger problem is the harm to the community not to mention personally, me having to be on alert when I see user's name in the edit history, having to do careful and time consuming work like checking that translation source instead of contributing new things. That's the kind of thing that makes editing no longer fun.
The bigger bigger problem isn't "phony" translations but phony artifacts. An item like the Gezer calendar is widely referred to, no authenticity concerns mentioned among the huge number of citations. It's enigmatic with many translations available, an array appropriate and edifying becuase it may be poetry with multiple meanings and sophisticated wordplay. (I could come up with a better example in terms of appearance; any amateur knows immediately the Tabnit sarcophagus is genuine: its ancient majesty is self-evident. The Gezer calendar isn't like that, it's small, ugly, and would be easy to fake. Scholarship wouldn't have left it without question if it had been from the market.)
Anyways, then you look at the less cited and more questioned Praeneste fibula. Hoving talks about it being fake in a how-could-we-be-so-foolish tone.[1] Items like that with "Authenticity" subsections shouldn't be overlinked and shouldn't include translations at all. Look at all the air over the Duenos inscription. Would you want a translation section that long for fake items? Obviously a waste. The Arslan Tash amulets are ugly, amateurish, and egregious to the point of sadness. Wasted effort on them and tainting the pool of public knowledge, allowing the confusion to escape academic confinement, is even sadder.
The Arslan Tash amulets, inscribed at two scales, look like they were whittled from petrified butter for the world's worst county fair. The forger doesn't know a k from an m or a d from an r--identical and open at the top--and accidentally includes a modern q and a modern shin. Look at table 1 to see what I mean.
Disputed items should be categorized as such and treated differently from provenanced and unquestioned evidence. Our requirements to the public are maybe higher than academia's in some ways; their audience is presumed to have certain knowledge and a critical eye baked in. Almost any kind of paleographic evidence is so lonely and priceless that pushing modern misapprehensions into scholarship can have a huge effect creating lasting ignorance. So items like the amulets should not only not have Sinclairian's translation, they should have a warning and none.
PS I can't help but mention that totally nonsensical English translations like Sperling's and all of those of the amulets can be a clue there's a problem with the item itself. Good scholars with meaningless translations = bad artifact.
once again, though, this is a content issue. You haven't really explained how Sinclarian adding these translations for the dubiously provenanced or possibly fake artifacts is pushing some kind of POV. The issue of possibly passing off his own translation as the scholarly translation is closer to being a problem. But all this discussion of how Wikipedia should handle fake artifacts isn't really helping elucidate that point. Andre🚐02:53, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(I have no idea whether I'm allowed to shoehorn this response in above, so I won't.) Andrevan, presenting one's own translation as being a published translation by a scholar is not a mere content issue. Contrary to its characterisation as such by Caeciliusinhorto—who maybe missed the reference preceding the text and translation? The reference—which is in the text and not just the footnote—cannot be taken to apply to the text alone. One conduct issue—Temerarius' incivility—does not justify ignoring the other, particularly since Sinclairian's directly affects the reader. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:16, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
First of all, Sinclarian was the one being incivil in the original diff. Second, I did not say that presenting one's translation as being a published translation is a mere content issue, but Sinclarian hasn't done that in so many words, he simply included the transliteration and the translation and then cited the source, "per Sperling." It's conceivable that the "per Sperling" was the transliteration which he then re-translated, which again I agree is discouraged, but it's not at all clear that there is a behavioral issue with misrepresenting sources since it's ambiguous; technically, if a translation is explicitly not OR, I can see how he might say well he's still citing where he got it, and it doesn't say "the translation was done by Sperling" explicitly. Meanwhile, Temerarius is arguing that no article about a fake artifact should include the translation, which is indisputably a content issue, that is why I'm trying to steer him back to behavior, such as Sinclarian not communicating or collaborating. Caeciliusinhorto correctly explains that as yet there is still no thread on the talk about any of this. Andre🚐04:26, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If what Sinclairian is intending to do is to pass off their original translation as Sperling's, then yes that is a conduct issue. My initial (possibly naively optimistic) reading of their edit was that their intention was to convey that the translation was of the text as edited by Sperling. If that's the case then the solution is to explain to them how to be clearer about attribution. (The fact that they have dropped out of this discussion without addressing this, despite Andrevan's ping above, doesn't inspire confidence however. They made several edits yesterday after they were pinged, so it's not as if they haven't been online.)
Temerarius' view that articles about disputed or faked artefacts should not contain translations of their texts is a content issue. I'm not at all convinced that should be a general rule, and it certainly isn't currently. Edit warring on Arslan Tash amulets appears to have stopped, but if there is still dispute about whether a translation should be included (and whether it should be Sperling's translation, or an original translation of Sperling's edited text, or something else), that is also a content issue. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 08:41, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah. I apologize for not responding to the previous ping, the notifications had become so frequent that I stopped actually looking at their contents.
As for the content of the edits – originally I had used Köllig's transcription and translations of both AT1 and AT2 – his work, however, was not only outdated, but entirely in German, which itself required translation. It seems the "personal flair", if you will, remained even after I found and then cited Sperling/Häberl/Belnap's English transcriptions and translations. That was an error on my part. Sinclairian (talk) 13:34, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for responding and clarifying. Does this mea culpa clear things up, satisfactorily, everyone? We're all going to be more careful in the future, more collegial, and discuss things on article talk. Righto? Andre🚐21:08, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No. Andre, I still haven't learned why you're posting here, and so repeatedly. This would go smoother without your contributions. What is it that fires your interest up to pile on, yet doesn't move your curiosity enough to peruse Sinclairian's edit history?
Temerarius, the admins already advised you to listen to the advice I gave you regarding your report. Sinclairian has admitted their error here. Feel free to bring up new diffs. I already tried to throw you a bone about civility, but you seem unmoved. I'm an involved user based on the dispute you referenced above, preexisting edits on Yahweh and God on the Winged Wheel coin. Andre🚐01:33, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Since I happened to be looking at the page, I remembered the user removing explanation of a word meaning priestess specifically of Yaho (Yahweh) on papyrus Amherst 63. The source was clear and explicit about this, and removing the religiously touchy part (tradition doesn't see priestesses of Yahweh; even the best that scholarship sometimes sees is temple prostitutes) was removing what's remarkable and relevant to scholars. The existence of the priestess of Yahweh is an important discovery that can put all kinds of evidence in a different light; its removal serves no good faith, serves no honest curiosity. It serves the sensitive constitution of the nervous traditionalist. Again this one is subtle enough to miss or confuse for copyediting. It's a huge tiny detail. It has no explanation or scholarly reasoning. It's feelings and a POV problem. The pattern continues with as I mentioned earlier the senseless removal of the universally-regarded-as-consequential Soleb inscription from the Yahweh page. The biased motivation is clear. The effect is whiteknighting for poor, defenseless tradition; -- O lonely hegemony!
The source is explicit that the masculine form, khn, specifically refers to priests of Yaho; as far as I can make out it carefully avoids saying that khnh specifically refers to priestesses of Yaho. Maybe Sinclairian has an agenda but that diff is hardly compelling. On the other hand, Talk:Papyrus Amherst 63 gives another example of your own uncollegial behaviour. It doesn't matter how right you are: this is not acceptable behaviour. (Similarly, when you post on a well-trafficked board like ANI, anyone who is reading it might weigh in; complaining about Andrevan doing so and making vague aspersions that something "fires up [his] interest" is not going to make anyone look more sympathetically on you here.) Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 19:16, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Gotta love how the prospect of me having an "agenda" is still somehow being legitimately contemplated given Temerarius' chronic lack of CIVILITY and AGF being exemplified in nearly every single reply and posting they've made in this report. Sinclairian (talk) 21:11, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
References
^Hoving, Thomas (1996). False Impressions. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. ISBN978-0-684-81134-5.
Vast majority of edits reverted [21], click here and then Ctrl + F "reverted"
And for good reason, they're disruptive. Their talk page is full of warnings (I count 10 [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]) by four different users, including me. They managed to do that with only 53 edits thus far. Some examples of their disruptive editing;
They randomly reverted me twice at Uzbek language[33][34], amongst other things restoring info not supported by WP:RS and in reality heavily contradicted by it per the talk page section [35] I made before making those edits, all which I mentioned in my edit summary.
WP:NPA/WP:ASPERSIONS (despite being told several times to refrain from it, eg by myself [36]):
Diffs of the editing in question:
[49][50][51][52] ...and so on and so forth. 15 such edits by my count. Same behaviour as @Stats&Data:, e.g.:
[53][54][55][56][57]. 31 such edits over the span of just under two months. User has been warned multiple times and advised not to insert self-published data to no avail:
[58][59][60][61][62] (full disclosure, last one was me).
Ah, the source is statsanddata.my.canva.site, I see why you think they're the same person. There's also this summary: "I predicted 2024 Uk ge with 94% accuracy which was highest then I do not know what is the issue in my content than other polls" – Special:Diff/1249261236. For reference the account said pretty much the same thing in Special:Diff/1239312774.
Edit warring and LOUTSOCKing to add their own website/predictions to various election pages (well, logged out to do it to this page at least, but the account tried to push their predictions to multiple pages)... have I got everything? Seems pretty damning. – 2804:F1...A9:C75B (talk) 02:11, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Review of their edit history on both wikipedias indicates they are WP:SPA. Sometimes editting near WP:ARBPIA topic area.
approximately 300 of their edits have been to the Antisemitic tropes, where approximately 100k characters and ~400 additional sources have been added nearly unilaterally (at least 95%) by single user. I don't have the time to go through all 300, but here are some highlight diffs I can find.
Article has significant issues of WP:OVERCITE as a result of citation inflation. First sentence has 8 different sources.
this edit by user includes a 5000 word deletion and significant content change with the only summary as Fixed grammar[63]
I did bold WP:TNT to previous version before all this fiasco[64] which immediately got reverted back.[65]
Got template warned by user for blanking on my talk page [[66]] even after discussion on talk page of the wikipedia article[67] and NPOVN [68]
Further discussion on talk page about issues is immediately shut down by user who reposts the same template warning 3 times on all my replies on the talk page of article [69]
I can't agree that the editor is NOTHERE; editor appears to be very much HERE to write and add content. You perhaps have a dispute, but you didn't post any discussion on the article talk before your TNT, which I would say is actually disruptive. Now this has been WP:FORUMSHOPped here from WP:NPOVN with not much of a basis since Steven1991 agreed to remove the unreliable sources in that discussion. Andre🚐06:20, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, that's not quite a fair assessment to claim they reverted without discussion. I brought the issue to WP:NPOVN, a small discussion was had where rollback was suggested, I & @Bluethricecreamman agreed. They remarked as such on the talk page, then WP:BOLDLY made the change themselves.
It's also inaccurate to call this forum shopping when I was the one who made a post regarding article issues, then Blue made this separate post here about Steven's conduct. Those are 2 separate issues that have both been brought to the appropriate forums respectively & I think it would be highly unfair to call Blue's conduct disruptive. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 06:34, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I meant discussing it with the user in question. Discussing means more than just saying you're going to do something and doing it. Sounds like you reverted 100k of text, the editor was (justifiably) a bit annoyed, and then, after that discussion at NPOVN, they agreed to remove the unreliable source material and are already complying after agreeing to do so. It doesn't really seem that the discussion had concluded at NPOVN, that's what I mean by forumshopping it here, though you are correct that it was not the same person, so I apologize for being inexact there. Andre🚐06:37, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The user reverted over 100,000+ bytes of my edits that I have made over the past few weeks to which I have dedicated a tremendous amount of time and effort. The user didn’t even discuss the issue with me on the Talk page, while I humbly acknowledge all of their concerns and have been removing all the sources not being considered as reliable. I have shown all the willingness to improve the article, but it seems they are doing this over some political disagreements and trying to get me ousted from the platform, which is totally unfair and making me think that it is a form of harassment instead. Steven1991 (talk) 06:42, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd advise you not to characterize other users' activities as vandalism or harassment. I understand you're feeling a bit annoyed but it will be ok. WP:NPA does include talking about editors' mental states or motivations. See also WP:AGFAndre🚐06:47, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I started contributing edits last month – after a few years of break – as a hobby, but that these issues seem to have created a hostile environment for me. I only want to contribute just as anyone else does and I believe that this complaint is unfair to me when I have shown more than enough willingness to remove the disputed content as much as possible. I have the right to disagree with the user’s unilateral WP:TNT action when a substantial amount of the article’s content has my contributions. Steven1991 (talk) 07:13, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You don't have a right to do anything here, you do so at the pleasure of the community, whose knights are the admins. If you're at this board it's because someone else thinks you aren't following the norms adequately - while I also do not think their report has merit, don't give people a new reason to criticize your actions. You don't have a right to do anything, but you certainly can, within reason, discuss, make edits, and seek a consensus, and you might have to compromise or change things, WHICH YOU ARE, which is the important part. So, just take a deep breath, read a few wiki articles, like WP:COOL is a classic (or WP:KEEPCOOL), go take a walk or have a smoke or imbibe or whatever you do to relax, and then come back prepared to deal with constructive criticism on the article. You don't have a right to edit here - but, if you listen to what I'm saying, you may enjoy the privilege. Andre🚐07:18, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that the user reversed all of my edits, which I have taken almost a month to make, without discussing on the Talk page of the article. Even for the concerns raised by other users, I acknowledged very politely and promised to try my best to rewrite the content, including removing sources not being deemed reliable. I have done everything I could, but I simply have the perception that such complaint is being made over political disagreements rather than issues related to the article itself – it is not accusation to make a judgment based on personal observations and feelings. Steven1991 (talk) 06:53, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You can have whatever perception, just don't talk about it! People are paranoid sometimes when they're upset. Or maybe gremlins. Regardless, just don't write it here, because it's against the rules and decorum. You have a right to remain silent. I agree with you that the TNT and this ANI report were not justified, since you're cooperative and trying your best, and I trust you'll take the advice to heart. But keep in mind that includes being studious of Wikipedia's norms of communication. Andre🚐06:56, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It wasn't TNT, the article was not started from scratch. It was simply reverted to a more neutral version. If any useful edits were undone, they can be added back later, but right now the current article's state is worse then it was before. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 07:00, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's a question to discuss at the article talk page, not here. This is about behavioral issues. It was charged that Steven1991 was NOTHERE and BATTLEGROUND. That charge rings false as he is clearly cooperative and has both the appetite and the ability to defend his edits, which appear to be good-faith improvements, with excessive citations. Now the 3 of you go back to the talk page and discuss. I'll join you there. If you want to show some maturity Bluethriceman could withdraw this meritless report. Andre🚐07:03, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am not disputing that my revert of 100,000 words added by a single user was not WP:BOLD.
Arguably, the addition of 100,000 characters and 400 sources over three weeks by a single author on a page that originally only had 200 sources is just as WP:BOLD. I think editor got away with it because nobody could review all the changes.
My point in bringing this report is that I don't know where else to bring this and what next steps are.
1) A relatively newbie editor has been rapid fire editting significant portions of articles since at least Sept 12, potentially contentious WP:ARBPIA,WP:ARBAP2 articles, without anyone noticing for a few weeks.
2) Edits show significant signs of not full understanding of Wikipedia policies including reliable sourcing,WP:OVERCITE, copyeditting etc. Thats ok, newbies learn over time if given time but...
3) Edits are at such volume and speed that it remains difficult to give advice or inspect. dozens of gigantic 300+ byte edits with no edit summary are all added in within short time periods, which makes inspection harder to figure out. the few that do may have misleading titles such as "grammar fix".
4) There was approximately 400 added sources, and 100,000 added characters by Oct 3. Upon a bold attempt at reverting to previous version, given some discussion and reasoning on NPOVN, it gets reverted back which is fine, WP:BRD cycle, but then...
5) Get template warned on my User talk page.
6) Claims of vandalism, etc. are bandied about, and my replies on Talk page are answered with template warning three times in a row
7) User continues to show significant defensiveness when advice is given, claims harrassment above. New edit summaries since this are mostly "removal of allegedly unreliable sourcing" or "removal of allegedly excessive citations"
This is hardly a content dispute, and I never posted this as a content dispute.
I saw some of the complaints about NPOV, but when I attempted the bold TNT reversion, the response back was significant defensiveness. WP:DONTBITE and all, but getting template warned by a newbie on my talk page, and on the article talk page, being accused of harrassmnet [70], and dealing with a newbie who was no WP:LISTENing to feedback and ploughing through with dozens of 100+ word edits per day makes it impossible to work on the article, and impossible for newbie to take real advice.
Steven appeared to be showing WP:OWNING behavior, and current article has been tremendously unstable for past three weeks at least for anyone else wishing to edit the article.
To Andre: I don't get what you are talking about with this complaint being "meritless". I am not withdrawing my report until an uninvolved admin provides next steps on how to proceed. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 01:10, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It looks to me if you look at Steven1991's contribs he's been spending most of the day fixing the issues you pointed out. I suggest you collaborate constructively instead of arguing here. Andre🚐01:13, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I choose which pages I want to edit on and will take a break from that page for now. I'm glad Steven seems to be fixing issues.
Because the relevant users engaged in actions that appeared to be edit warring, one of them even personal attack on me and several other users. I guess it is important to look at the context? Steven1991 (talk) 01:44, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If there are further concerns related to the content, I recommend you taking it to the Talk pages, i.e. mine or the article’s, as it would look more constructive. Steven1991 (talk) 02:04, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Steven1991, it's not an accusation. You were understandably upset when all the edits you made were reverted. Now we are going to constructively engage to make good changes. Right? Maybe take a break and walk away for a bit and come back feeling less put-upon. I get it, I really do. This can be overwhelming for a new user and you're in a controversial area where you may not be familiar with the rules of engagement. That's why the best advice is 1) keep fixing the problems with the article constructively, but slow down so others can catch up, 2) don't take it personally when people criticize your edits, 3) focus on the content not the contributors. Andre🚐02:02, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I am not quite new though. I have been on Wikipedia since the 2000s, but didn’t set up an account on English Wikipedia until 2018. I rarely edited until recently, so effectively, I need time to pick up the rules and expectations. Steven1991 (talk) 02:06, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, showing up at an the talk page of an editor that you're in a dispute with to comment on a three month old warning is picking a fight. If this continues you'll be topic banned for battleground behavior. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 02:03, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As you can check again, I politely acknowledged almost every single suggestion and already removed most of the duplicate or “unreliable” sources from the article. The article is much cleaner than it was yesterday. I am still working on it and would need more time to sort that out. Also, you can’t claim that I am “defensive” just because I hold my ground on some of my edits and respond to comments that I find difficult agreeing with. For content disputes we are allowed to disagree. It is unfair to me when you label all responses in kind as “defensive” or interpret it as any signs of being “unwilling to listen”. Steven1991 (talk) 01:20, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I want to be clear: I am not making this ANI over content disagreements. This is not the place to discuss content disagreements; this is report is solely about behavior.
The user in question has been unnecessarily aggressive in discussions. They have a relatively new account and are unfamiliar with Wikipedia policy and style; both of these things are fine, but the issue is that they've immediately decided to edit controversial pages on World War II and get angry at people who disagree with their edits.
This behavior is making it really hard to discuss content. Every comment is loaded with sarcasm, baiting statements, or even insults (although they're mostly indirect). Disagreement is a normal part of editing Wikipedia; it shouldn't be so hard to discuss things. No writing is immune to feedback, and getting immediately angry at feedback (even when you disagree with it) is not helpful.
I don't know what kind of disciplinary action would be appropriate; at the very least could an admin reinforce that this kind of dialogue isn't helpful? seefooddiet (talk) 06:38, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I believe your response to me was very rude and provocative in the first place. Firstly, I want to make it clear that I only wish to discuss the content itself, but you, based on your own subjective inclinations, condescended to me and constantly making accusations against me personally rather than discussing the content itself and even directly claiming my edits are not worth taking serious therefore can be rolled back at will, which is annoying of course. I think your attitude and mentality has obstructed the peaceful discussion and dialogue on the content itself, as well as the way the other party responds.
Btw I think it's normal to feel annoyed when you spend a lot of time and energy on certain contributions and then have somebody rolled back without a second thought and with very lame reasons, especially when the excuse seems involve clear double standard.
To be clear; this is the first response I gave to the user. My note about being skeptical is because I saw these edits, which I found alarming. I wasn't alone in feeling this way; 3-4 other users reverted this user's edits. You saying "subjective inclinations" is meaningless; all we have on Wikipedia are subjective analyses. Everything is a matter of perspective and is filtered through human narrators here. And alledging that I didn't discuss the content is patently false; I absolutely did in basically every comment I made.
Btw I think it's normal to feel annoyed when you spend a lot of time and energy on certain contributions and then have somebody rolled back without a second thought and with very lame reasons, especially when the excuse seems involve clear double standard. Why would you double down on this kind of rhetoric on the ANI board? This is exaclty the kind of problematic behavior I reported you for. seefooddiet (talk) 08:09, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear, this is the your first response, not that one. You assert that I violated the principle of neutrality without pointing out any specific issue (actually you didn't read it at all, as shown in the later conversation). It is arrogant and condescending. Put this aside,
This edit should alarm any person without pre-existing propositions. Take a closer look for yourself to see how many unsourced assertions, factual errors, unexplained deletions, and biased, non-neutral language were added in this single edit. If you had people evaluate the two versions independently and in parallel, I think the results would be obvious. Let's be honest.
Which "3-4 other users reverted this user's edit"? Don't make up disinformation, please. As for Ash-Gaar, we have talked in the talk page that this user's reason for reverting isn't convincing. You can't explain why, after I revised his (subjective) complaints about minor wordings and grammar issue, he still obstructed the addition of information about the scholar's own opinion on his own page. How could merely adding the live person's own opinion, be labeled as a tendentious edit? Even you would agree it is absurd.
"You saying "subjective inclinations" is meaningless; all we have on Wikipedia are subjective analyses."
So you finally acknowledge that certain users' retraction of new versions (that have improved neutrality or accuracy) can be regarded as a tendentious editing behavior based on its inherent biases? Since you admit every edit is subjective, it is meaningless to make generalised accusations like "tendentious" without talking about specific concrete issues. Artificialrights (talk) 13:09, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's not condescending; I don't know why you're getting that reading from that. I am calling out objectively bad behavior; you're demanding that others fix your work and you clearly still don't own up to the fact that your writing has had POV issues and that you don't really understand Wikipedia policy. My tone was a reflection of me seeing your behavior elsewhere and judging that it was poor.
I didn't have to provide evidence because Ash-Gaar did. Even though you fixed the POV issues later, that doesn't change the fact that they existed in the first place. Your edits having been reverted by other users is not misinformation, here's evidence: 12 and 3. What's absurd is your continuous rudeness.
In basically every comment I've outlined why your behavior is rude. I don't have to repeat myself. Reading comprehension is on you, not me. Whether the final J. Mark Ramseyer edit should have been reverted is debatable, but what's clearly unacceptable is your behavior all along the way, even here. seefooddiet (talk) 23:09, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As someone who's been tangentially involved in one of these discussions so far, I hope it comes off as intended when I say that both seefooddiet and Artificial rights clearly seem like they're trying to do the right things and make quality contributions in good faith. Just as much, I understand the reasons for frustration stated by both of them: Artificialrights is a bit newer and is still learning the ropes, and I see them trying to do that and apply policy more consciously in their contributions. As someone who reverts a lot and gets reverted a lot, I also understand it is not fun, and the realities is that communication surrounding reversions often doesn't leave all parties in a zen state of mind. That is to say, I do not want to come off as dismissive or patronizing when I say "everyone seems essentially fine and perfectly able to work together here"—I'm chiming in with the hope of perhaps disengaging future misunderstandings. Remsense ‥ 论00:54, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate the input and understand the intent; considering that the user still rejects the feedback about POV that was given [75] and only begrudgingly made it to get their edits through, all while insulting the parties involved along the way, makes me still feel skeptical about their behavior. seefooddiet (talk) 01:05, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I totally get why, as the tone was significantly harsher than I would expect. With that said, I feel like with the content question itself in mind, I see their reasons for a bit of confusion and consternation, and see their begrudgement nonetheless as fundamentally in good faith, and would likewise ask them to please take a breath next time, as we're all on the same team here. Remsense ‥ 论01:11, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I did come off firm, although I don't think I was unfair or rude. I regret making a few mistakes in my feedback, but ultimately every other point of feedback I stand by. If the topics weren't so contentious, I probably wouldn't have been firm or gotten involved at all; this user made the choice to immediately jump to these topics while not understanding Wikipedia policy.
Regardless, this kind of feedback will happen over and over on Wikipedia; it is a required experience of editing on the website. It is not acceptable to get so belligerent when running into disagreement. seefooddiet (talk) 01:17, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's a perfectly cogent reflection. @Artificialrights, like I said above, I totally understand your situation as well and take you to be taking all this in stride—again, do not want to condescend here but editing is hard—and sometimes editing in certain areas can result in hackles being raised that wouldn't otherwise be for reasons that aren't anyone's fault. That is not at all to dissuade or discourage you: quite the contrary, we likewise always need more dedicated editors in these areas and you're already doing a lot right. Hopefully it's understandable how slightly sticky situations like these crop up, and that we're pretty well-suited to smooth this one out with that mutual understanding of good intentions. Is that alright with you? Remsense ‥ 论01:23, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm alright with that. I have no problem with Seefooddiet as long as the user don't suggest something like "This page may need improvement but that one shouldn't be you". Artificialrights (talk) 16:52, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am not an admin but please refute the central issue you have with someone, and state what they need to do to fix it. Also avoid assuming things about others except WP:Good faith. Please tell me if I'm wrong.
User:Superastig posting references that don't line up with their edits
User:Superastig has been posting information, along with references that don't line up with each other. The episode titles, the user has been adding in multiple articles don't match up with the references that the user also added. So, I'm wondering where is this user getting the episode titles.[76][77][78][79] The links I've posted are just recent examples, and there are plenty more in the past several months. I've already discussed this issue in their talk page and the editor said they would "try". Only for the user to continue the same habit. For the second time, I warned the user about this through their talkpage, the user then made this comment in their talkpage through their edit summary - "Make stricter rules. I'll not tolerate any hissyfit regarding episode titles in my talk page."[80] How is this okay? This breaks the rules of posting reliable sources, when the references added don't even match the content posted in Wikipedia articles.Hotwiki (talk) 06:59, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Firstly anyone who uses "I know what I'm doing" as a justification for anything doesn't know what they are doing, and secondly recent editing by this user is nothing like what was promised in their block appeal. Phil Bridger (talk) 11:00, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Should be reblocked indefinitely. (Disclosure: was original blocking admin, this was the straw that broke the camel's back. Looks familiar?) Daniel (talk) 11:47, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've just indeffed them. Clear violation of their unblock conditions that they agreed to. They knew what they were doing, there's no ignorance excuse here. Completely incompatible with a collaborative editing project. Canterbury Tailtalk13:44, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Hotwiki Getting back to the original complaint - on their talk page Superastig seems to be saying that they got the titles from unreliable sources like IMDB, but because they've gotten into trouble for citing unreliable sources in the past they've been adding fake citations to the other websites to disguise where the information has come from [87]. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 17:16, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't recall Superastig getting their references from Imdb. Superastig was using Facebook links of GMA Network for their contributions in the past.[88][89] If I remember correctly, the issue about Superastig using facebook links as references for episode titles, was brought up by me in ANI. I think someone responded to my complaint and said "Facebook isn't the best source for Episode titles, but Facebook could be used". I didn't comment after that. I don't remember when Superastig started using gmanetwork.com as their source for episode titles. From my recollection, Superastig just stopped using Facebook. I also didn't know Superastig was using IMDb as a reference until their account was blocked. Hotwiki (talk) 18:13, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Disruptive editing by user @Jayanthkumar123 despite consensus achieved through RFC
I am writing to bring to your attention an ongoing issue involving disruptive editing on the RRR article, specifically related to the inclusion of content regarding the reception by international filmmakers.
The background is as follows:
Consensus Achieved: Following extensive discussion, the community reached a consensus on including this content. This was determined after multiple levels of formal dispute resolution: Long discussions on talk page, 2 dispute resolution processes which user @Jayanthkumar123 refused to participate in. And then finally a month long RFC where a clear consensus was achieved.
Disruptive Behavior: Despite the above formal processes resulting in a clear consensus for inclusion, User: @Jayanthkumar123 continues to remove the section repeatedly. I anticipated this behaviour and talked with the admin of RFC user @Robert McClenon and he advised specifically to reverse such a disruptive edit once and cite the RFC and if that doesn't work either then to raise a report here, which I'm now going ahead with. (Link of discussion with the admin: User talk:Robert McClenon#Closure for RRR RFC ) As mentioned earlier, user has evaded participating in 2 dispute resolutions so far and once RFC went against his position, has decided to completely ignore RFC. I kindly request administrative intervention in this matter. The user is deliberately ignoring Wikipedia procedures and making edits despite consensus being against him. Specifically, I seek a block for User: @Jayanthkumar123 to prevent further disruptive removals.
This is a content dispute about the inclusion of a paragraph on "Reception by International Filmmakers" that is being complicated by conduct. The filing editor requested dispute resolution at DRN. I had to warn the filing editor not to refer to a content dispute as vandalism. The other editor did not participate in DRN. A Request for Comments was composed and published on whether to add the paragraph. The RFC ran for thirty days, and I closed it as having found that there was consensus to include the paragraph. My involvement had been as a neutral party, and I was neutral in closing the RFC. It appears that the filing party now has added the paragraph based on the RFC, and the other editor has reverted the inclusion of the paragraph, with an edit summary that they are reverting vandalism. Both editors have yelled vandalism to "win" this content dispute. On the one hand, a reasonable argument can be made that the comments of the international filmmakers should be merged into the "International Reception" section. On the other hand, User:Jayanthkumar123 has not been discussing the content dispute, and has been editing Wikipedia long enough to know what is not vandalism. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:34, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have indefinitely block @Jayanthkumar123 from being able to edit the article as they continued with their behaviour without responding here or their talk page or the article's talk page, and also in hopes that they respond to the issue that have been brought up here. – robertsky (talk) 16:44, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Until this edit, which starts with "Rol Naath, a de facto autonomous state that was politically, socially, and economically independent until 1943 and officially became part of the Sudan political system in 1947, is now seeking to unilaterally separate and consequently dissolve that 1943 political union with South Sudan." the citation given is two YouTube videos from Nuer separatist, which does not meet WP:RS. The rest of the edit is pure synthtic, mixed with sentences like "When the world's supper powers were conquering other African countries in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Nuer carried out their own territorial conquest" etc. Below is a references analysis
1st paragraph mentioned above with YouTube references 1 and 2
2nd paragraph has the "When the world's super .. phrase referenced to a book review and an entire book with no page.
3rd paragraph mentions "The Turkish who invaded Sudan in 1821 perceived the Nuerland as a sovereign state" with no inline reference, and checking the the reference at the end of the paragraph does no mention the word "Nuer" at all.
4th paragraph mentions "It was not until 1916 that the first patrol was sent to the Nuerland. the reference again does not support this claim and nothing there about Nuer at all. Also same paragraph it mentions "The British colonial administration in Sudan acknowledged that the Nuer country was an independent state" with no inline source, and the sources at the end does not mention any acknowledged that the Nuer country was an independent state excluding the entire book to was cited which I could not skim read.
5th paragraph mentions "the Nuer political system was relatively strong" and "Fangak region functioned as parliament, the source is a comment from a Nuer Spokesmen who talks about Nuer Chiefs including Guek Ngundeng and his son. Nothing there about Parliament. Again total fabrication and by now you can get the general gist. In the same paragraph "The Ngundeng pyramid became a strong symbol of the Nuer people's" no inline source, and the source at the end of the paragraph does not support this claim at all.
6th paragraph talks about the South Sudan struggle for independence and the "Nuer nation" sacrifice until it says "Years later, the Nuer believed that their sacrifices were overlooked.". No source at all. The paragraph ends with "The Nuer people and the Rol Naath authority seek to end the 1943 de jure agreement with South Sudan and return to the Nuerland political structure that existed before 1943." sourced to YouTube (same Nuer TV) and a [Human Rights Watch] report which does no support this sentence at all
last paragraph is the most amazing one, it says "The Rol Naath leadership believed that the unification of the Nuer people with other nations in Sudan and later South Sudan ultimately resulted in a disastrous union. It costs the Nuer their lives, culture and traditions, customs, resources, and way of life, and restoring Nuerland's sovereignty is the only way toward addressing all of their problems." and has two sources after the first sentence which do not say any thing about what the leaders believed. Both articles (1 and 2) about how Arab in the North forces their identity on the South, with the word "Nuer" used twice, once with Dinka for participation in the North government (out of the other tribes) and 2nd for statistics for that participation. The 2nd sentence is sourced to a YouTube video that does not meet WP:RS.
I have removed this edit but it wad undone although I gave the editor clear warning about what their edit entail. From previous discussion, I do not think arguing with them will go any where, so this is why I came here to get a topic ban if possible given the neutrality problems (+ this) in any article that they created. Plus this extensive fake citation and not understanding WP:RS is worrying. Not to mention the earlier personal attacks (here and here). FuzzyMagma (talk) 18:04, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello there, I'm glad you started this discussion, I have been looking forward to it as there are really some behaviors from your end that have been bothering me.
Starting from the article Rol Naath, when I created the article under title Rol Naath, it was nominated for deletion simply because the editor who nominated it could not find a credible source that could back up Rol Naath but could find many many credible sources that clearly back up Nuerland. I brought it to the editor's attention that Rol Naath is Nuer language name for their land which was simply translated to Nuerland in English, mostly in the work of British Anthropologist E.E. Pritchards who spent years in Nuerland in early 1930s and 1940s and wrote books like The Nuer, Nuer Religion etc. The editor suggested the named be changed to the English name which is Nuerland instead of Nuer language Rol Naath. The title was changed and Afterward the discussion was closed and it was agreed to keep the article. Your goal @FuzzyMagma was to completely wipe the Nuerland article off Wikipedian even though you know much about the Nuer people. You was against it and you didn't like that the Nuerland article was retained to remain on Wikipedia.
Then again, you disputed the Nuer massacre original title Nuer genocide. After some discussion, we both agreed that the title should be changed to Nuer massacre because the Human Rights Watch didnot publicly recognise the December 15, 2013 Nuer massacre as a genocide. Instead of helping improving the Nuer massacre article at the time like any other Wikipedian would, you further went on and removed some contents from the article even though there are credible sources that support them. And for the second time, you used intimidation and threatening me that I will be blocked from the Wikipedia if i tried to improve the article. I begged you many time to just help like a normal Wikipedian in improving the article, something which you never did. Nevertheless, some other Wikipedian stepped in and helped improve the Article.
I have been a Wikipedian for a long time now and I have successfully contributed to the Wikipedia positively. The articles that I've brought to Wikipedia are all doing well. I have never encountered any form of intimidation or threat from any other Wikipedian or administrators except you. Concerning the recent incident that you clearly started, this article Nuerland has been included in the list of List of active separatist movements in Africa. So I added Nuerland independence section that address the separatist movement in the Nuerland article and you happen to disagree with my research. Again, you opted to your aggressive approach and tried to completely delete the whole section instead of just making some changes in paragraphs that you disagreed with like any other Wikipedian. Each of those paragraphs are backed by credible sources. To address the "The rest of the edit is pure synthtic" claims that you made. this line "When the world's supper powers were conquering other African countries in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Nuer carried out their own territorial conquest" is cleared mentioned here in the Nuer Conquest, a whole book that talk about how the Nuer people expanded their territory [1]
"It was not until 1916 that the first patrol was sent to the Nuerland" This is also mentioned in both [2] and here [3] And the rests of the paragraphs were all referenced and each of those citations clearly backed up the paragraphs.
I have been following and respecting all the Wikipedia rules and improving on some accordingly. I took some time to check your profile @FuzzyMagma and I can see that you have created too many articles about Sudan and most of those article do not have enough credible citations to back them. Some articles only have one citation and that is also very concerning.
These User @FuzzyMagma ladies and gentleman has been trying to wipe out articles about ethnic groups in Southern Sudan region. He has always been trying to erase any content that show the Northern Sudanese marginalization of the Southerners which was the biggest reason why Sudan separated into two countries. Any documented incident that address the Arab Northerners Islamization of South is not about @FuzzyMagma, he needs to relax. And the same way that he publish articles about Northen Sudanese individuals, cities, towns and incidents is the same way that the Southerners who are now in their own country should be brought to Wikipedia as well. This Wikipedian @FuzzyMagma has been intimidating me for bring difference ethnic groups from South Sudan to Wikipedia. As a Wikipedian, our purpose is to improve articles and make Wikipedia a better place for our 70 millions reader, but @FuzzyMagma has been going against that purpose for a while now. There is no rule in Wikipedia that I have broken or misuse. @FuzzyMagma has misused some Wikipedia rules like blocking [[94]] in intimidated and threatening me. I urge the administrators and stewards to look into this matter, because @FuzzyMagma actions and approaches are very concerning and intimidating. WatersignKing (talk) 00:12, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WHa..huh? you are bringing the December 2013 Nuer massacre into this? I see a problem in your approach. You've said "This Wikipedian @FuzzyMagma has been intimidating me for bring difference [sic] ethnic groups from South Sudan to Wikipedia". That is a WP:ASPERSION, and it is patently unacceptable to be writing things like that about Magma without a link to a diff (or a series of them) to back your claim up that they'd said anything in that manner about you. @WatersignKing, you can't just add a YouTube video in as a ref for a contentious claim like that. You say Magma deleted "well cited" stuff on the Nuer article? I find it hard to believe your word on that given your standard of a reliable source being as little as a random YouTube video. Any of those were like to have been no more than fringe theories or movements cited from random YouTube accounts, given what you've added in your Rol Naath subsection of Nuerland. I'd love to be proven wrong, though, but I find it hard to believe that what you added in the massacre article was of anything bearing reliability.
Also, WatersignKing, I have no idea where to start with policy about your following comment: "These User [sic] @FuzzyMagma ladies and gentleman has been trying to wipe out articles about ethnic groups in Southern Sudan region. He has always been trying to erase any content that show [sic] the Northern Sudanese marginalization of the Southerners which was the biggest reason why Sudan separated into two countries."
Also, Watersign, I'm concerned about something I've discovered upon a look on your talk page. you added a bunch of non-free files that have since been deleted to the massacre article. None of which fell under fair use rationale. Do not do that, for copyright concerns. I did see that you'd added much book-cited content on the massacre article, so that much appears to be in your favour. None of which, surprisingly, seemed to be YouTube videos.
A bit weird to accuse FuzzyMagma of incompetent sourcing when they've been helping me keep the Sudanese civil war (2023-present) and related pages readable and free of poorly-sourced content. Also ridiculous to complain about them creating too many articles on Sudan regardless of whether the sourcing accusations are true, but then again it may have been the way your counter-complaint was written which also raises more questions as to coherency. Borgenland (talk) 16:44, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Borgenland, I mean, WatersignKing is clearly not versed in the English language at a coherent level anywhere close to native-speaking proficiency, and yes, their entire argument here reads like rocky road ice cream. however, this incoherency, while comical and only just sort of difficult to understand, bears no effect on the proper way to judge this. The proper way to judge this would be by the questionable value of their contributions. Of which there are a few things to be questioned.
@WatersignKing, accusing a constructive editor–one whose merits have been advocated for here by another editor–of intimidation without explicit proof is another issue to deal with. And seriously, to WatersignKing, @-ing Magma seven times in your response was unnecessary. not an Admin, just bored and looking around. –BarntToust(Talk)17:13, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The last one was about this this edit, which as I explained at the beginning that it is totally fabricated
The other tags are for uploading images to Wikipedia that does not fit the criteria, which have all been deleted. and if you look to the talk, I already explained what was the issue which btw was also on Commons but WatersginKing seems to ignore the issue and just repeat it. See User talk:WatersignKing in commons
Just remember we edit around the same topics and frankly I do watch more than 2000 pages mostly around Sudan, and I do check any updates on these articles, approve drafts, an participate in their discussion.
As for the recent personal attacks, I am not going to respond to that but @WatersignKing"Nuer | Encyclopedia.com" is not a reliable source, and you cannot cite an entire book, you need to provide a page. Actually you cited the book review and not the book itself.
Most have been draftified as unreferenced or deleted as outright hoaxes. I've warned them about these problems, but they have continued to create these articles without responding to me (or anyone else). I think they should be partially blocked from the article namespace, at least until they are willing to communicate. jlwoodwa (talk) 23:43, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The editor has made multiple edits to American game show winnings records that have broken the formatting of the all-time winnings table, not to mention introduced numerous inconsistencies. I'll admit I may have been a bit aggressive in going straight to a level 3 warning on their talk page, but a further attempt to reach out, in which I have multiple times tried to explain my reasoning for undoing their edits, has resulted in statements from them such as "it doesn't matter," "tuff nubs," "they can't be lied too," and "EAT MY SHORTS!!!!!" all while practically daring me to block and/or report them. While the user has not (yet) restored their version of the article, I'm afraid their complete inability to have a conversation without launching into childish behavior leaves me no choice but to bring this dispute here, as I do not believe my attempt to reach out has been met with good faith. --Bcschneider53 (talk) 02:28, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Considering that @Game$howFan's account was created an hour before their first edit, and IP addresses making edits to the article date all the way back to August 25th (which is when @Bcschneider53 first got involved here), and also that Game$howFan even uses the same edit summary that this IP address does, I think there's solid enough ground to say that our friend here is very likely a WP:SPA and WP:NOTHERE to be constructive.
A quick list of all IPs potentially belonging to Game$howFan:
Persistent disruptive editing from this user via replacing sourced content with Britannica, a non-WP:RS Tertiary source -- as well as removing swathes of sourced content and then developing an edit war claiming it was unto me to discuss the edit(s) he made, and not unto him, which clearly is against WP:ONUS.
Edits seen here replacing population figures which make no sense with hundred(s) of other correlated sources on the page especially the template right below it.
[96] - "Please do not remove source material and replace it with false and unreliable"
[97] - "rm false information and unreliable source (tribune.com.pk"
He then updates the countries population figures here; [98]
I revert him and then he re-reverts; [99] "Well, provide more reliable than Britannica, but now don't remove the information that is more reliable than the previous"
I tell him to take his concerns to the talk-page per WP:ONUS, especially as Britannica is not WP:RS. - [100]
He reverts again with whatever of an edit summary this is...
[101]
He again posts his revision(s): [103] - "You can also see the comments. Sourced content should not be removed. If you have better sources than the current source, add them but don't remove anything now. Or discuss on the talk page"
Moved to Protected for having image that was deleted due to copyright. A lot of info is pending to be updated. Kindly move to unprotected. Adbhonsle (talk) 07:55, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But reason to protect was image that violated copyright and not the content which is 99%. Kindly reconsider. Updating data via admin will severely affect the quality of article. Adbhonsle (talk) 13:37, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) No you're mistaken. The protection had nothing to do with any image or copyright. The protection reason is given here [112] "Addition of unsourced or poorly sourced content: WP:CASTE". Can you briefly summarise what sort of info you want to add? Edit: Also the article is only extended-confirmed so any extended confirmed editor could answer WP:edit requests that you might make. It does not require an admin to modify the article. Nil Einne (talk) 13:53, 5 October 2024 (UTC) 14:40, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(Non-administrator comment) The correct venue would have been WP:RFPP, but like others have said, the article is extended-confirmed protected due to contentious editing on that article in the past, so changing protection levels is unlikely. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 14:13, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Unless I'm mistaken, since this is under CASTE sanctions (and yes it is logged), RFPP in the first instance isn't the best place for such a request. Instead, it would be best to ask User:RegentsPark first. If they object or otherwise don't respond, then you'd need to open a thread at WP:AN (not here). An admin who decides to reduce protection could do this themselves, but it would likely be easier for the editor wanting to reduce protection to start with RegentsPark which I think is the norm for such sanctions like with CTOP. AFAIK, unless RegentsPark agrees or has agreed somewhere that any admin may reduce this protection, either specifically or generally, no admin can unilaterally reduce the protection, and since this is community authorised you can't appeal to arbcom either; AN is the only venue. If someone asks RegentsPark and they are unwilling to reduce it themselves but agrees that any admin may reduce it if they feel it best, then it would be okay to just open a thread at RFPP. Nil Einne (talk) 15:12, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Three years is a long time so it's worth trying to see if the disruption won't resume. So, unprotected. I've also commented on the protection on my talk page (here) RegentsPark (comment) 15:53, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Possible CIR case
Background at User talk:Jeffreyerwin#Your email. I think this may be a case of competence is required. I started this conversation because they had emailed me to ask if I was currently a JW and that they were concerned that the "JW church" had written "extremely biased" content at Shroud of Turin (a topic that has almost no relevance to JW beliefs). I have tried the best that I can to help them understand our policies and guidelines, even if I'm very confused about why they reached out to me in the first place. The talk page thread I already linked has further details. Clovermoss🍀(talk)16:53, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm doubtful that anything needs to be done. You gave good advice on how they could pursue the issue.[113] They haven't edited an article in 8 years and haven't edited an article talk page in 6 years, so it's not like they're disruptive. I suggest just waiting to see what they do going forward. (Personally, I think they're just enjoying having someone to argue their pet theory with.) Schazjmd(talk)17:18, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I guess, but it's very weird that they started this out with a personal email after eight years, when I have nothing to do with any of this. Given the language they're using (e.g. I should be ashamed), I don't have much faith in this point that they'll edit collaboratively. I don't plan to really engage with them after this point but I'm concerned that this behaviour will continue if nothing happens. I've also set my email settings to prevent them from sending me anymore. If this had happened to someone else, I would be seriously considering a block. But I'm way too involved in this situation already. I would appreciate other administrative perspectives on this. I was under the impression that I was already giving them more leeway than most would get in a situation like this. Clovermoss🍀(talk)17:30, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:CIR includes the ability to read sources and assess their reliability as one of the bullet points. It's been explained multiple times to this person (not just me) that you can't insert content about burial shrouds causing a neutron radiation event. At the very least, they're an SPA for their fringe views. But emailing me (again a random person that had nothing to do with this until this email) years after the fact to interrogate them about their religious beliefs really isn't okay. I'd argue that's disruptive in itself. I had the faint hope that maybe I could get them to see why all of this is pretty problematic, but it's fairly clear based on their responses that that's not going to happen. Clovermoss🍀(talk)18:45, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(Non-administrator comment) Having read the talkpage exchange, I agree that this editor seems unlikely to become a positive asset, and that even if they were to take their concerns to the relevant talkpage, their contributions there would probably tend towards bad-faith and timewastey. I also low key agree with the above comments that the highest probability outcome is no further action from the editor in question. I don't think we currently have a consensus-based block rationale for "pretty obviously never going to be a productive member of the community", though I've seen that kind of block happen before. Folly Mox (talk) 19:44, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Given there response to my gentle suggestion they take it to the Talk page instead of harassing Clovermoss was Sir, the charachterization of a legitimate bias complaint as "harassment" is, in itself, an indication of bias.[114], I'd say the user is WP:NOTHERE and should be blocked from editing. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite20:05, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For the background, please see the recently archived discussion where Emiya1980 was formally warned by Cullen328 about their disruptive behavior around filing infobox-related RfCs, and informally warned by other editors and admins about their combative and uncivil interactions in those discussions, and their refusal to listen to multiple editors and admins all telling them the same thing about their behavior. As Daniel stated, a formal warning is pretty much a 'final chance' in terms of this editing issue, so while no blocks etc. have been placed, if it happens again the editor will very likely be blocked if it is brought back to this noticeboard with a link to this discussion.
Editors were optimistic that this edit suggested Emiya1980 was slowly taking on the advice from the ANI discussion. Instead, after it became clear their position at Talk:World War II had no significant traction, they simply waited a week and initiated a "discussion" that is yet another RfC in everything but name only, claiming that this was perfectly fine, since it's not a formal RfC. They went on to falsely claim the previous consensus discussion had no consensus (because it wasn't formally closed), that editors who don't support their position are shrilly objecting, and that the issue wasn't settled. This is a classic, ongoing refusal to WP:DROPTHESTICK situation from an editor who has been open about wanting to institute this change for a complete non-content reason: There is no good reason to list Stalin, a mass-murdering dictator with a death toll that rivals that of Adolf Hitler, at the top of the Allied Powers.
Infoboxes are already under WP:CTOPS, and persistent disruption around them (whether it's about images, or ordering of information, or disputes about categories, or whatever) seems to be more the locus of the problem here than the RfC aspect itself; additionally, it's clear that Emiya1980 is perfectly willing to engage in the RfC behavior without formally opening one. As was noted in the previous ANI discussion, Emiya1980 seems perfectly able to contribute positively elsewhere on WP, so a block seems punitive rather than preventative.
I therefore propose a broadly-construed 6-month topic ban from infoboxes and infobox-related editing for Emiya1980, with the encouragement they spend their time productively on other things at enwiki. Grandpallama (talk) 18:07, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – as someone at least moderately involved and also has strong opinions about infoboxes, I do wish that Emiya would've more quickly internalized the central point here: these things ultimately matter comparatively little, and it is more important for people to get along and be able to hash things out when it's agreed that there is a major problem. Sometimes one editor just empirically cares about specific things a lot more than everybody else does (guilty!)—and that care is not even wrong to have, at all—but it's important to respond accordingly to the expressed apathy and exhaustion of others (which likewise is their right) when the things you care about changing have highly visible ramifications or are adjacent to the existing work of others. Otherwise, disruption will ensue. Remsense ‥ 论18:30, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As I have already stated, the current discussion in which I am involved is not an Rfc. Grandpallama's attempts to characterize it as one do not make it so.
While I initially began the discussion with the intention of replacing Joseph Stalin with FDR at the top of a list with Allied leaders, I have since changed my position to ordering the leaders in a neutral order (alphabetical or chronological). At least three other editors have come out in support of adopting a more neutral ordering for the Allied leaders and two of the three have specifically expressed concern about arranging the list in a manner suggesting that Stalin was the most important leader of the Big Three. Therefore, this is not a concern unique to myself. Emiya1980 (talk) 18:47, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Likewise, just because you haven't labeled it as one doesn't mean it isn't an expression of the same issues people have tried to communicate to you. The conversation died down, which is very natural and should often be allowed to happen when there is no consensus unless some new argument is made. Remsense ‥ 论18:50, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Emiya1980 also continues to ping multiple projects[115] (3rd for this RFC) after stating they'd stop. This editor doesn't get it, won't get it, time to end the disruption. Nemov (talk) 18:55, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As the administrator who gave the formal warning, I Support the infobox editing restriction. The wikilawyering above is concerning. Cullen328 (talk) 18:57, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So pointing out that certain people are exploiting vagueness in the rules to silence me makes me guilty of Wikilawyering? Why don't you just come out and say that you're opting to ban me just because a select group of editors are annoyed by my editing? Emiya1980 (talk) 19:02, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Emiya1980, this is a collaborative project and that comment of yours is not collaborative and indicates that you are not getting the message. Please be aware that further sanctions are possible. Cullen328 (talk) 19:08, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Doing that to the total exclusion of engaging with what I was trying to communicate to you as if the distinction invalidated it is Wikilawyering, yes. Remsense ‥ 论19:11, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Seeing as how I am unlikely to walk away from this thread without at least some limitations on my editing privileges, I want to offer a compromise. As opposed to a broad ban on any and all edits to Wikipedia's infoboxes, I ask for one final chance with regards to my probation subject to a few nonnegotiable conditions. Until the admins on this page feel differently, I will commit to abstain from pinging any editors, opening any Rfcs, participating in any discussions regarding the infobox of any page, and engaging in any further editing to World War II's infobox.
Should I break this promise or do anything else that other editors view as disruptive to Wikipedia in the near future, I will accept whatever penalty that is handed down. In light of the positive contributions I have made to this project, I ask that the editors here please take this compromise into consideration before reaching a verdict. Emiya1980 (talk) 20:14, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to point out that your prior warning to me was limited to Rfcs. It seems unfair that you are expanding it now to include my participation in discussions regarding the infobox. I also recall that I asked you for specifics regarding what was expected for me going forward and you refused to elaborate. Emiya1980 (talk) 20:38, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that this offer came only after it was clear sanctions are likely to be imposed (rather than as a good-faith response to earlier concerns), the game-playing around the RfC-that-isn't-a-RfC, and the wikilawyering response to Cullen also makes me feel formal sanctions remain necessary over any informal, voluntary arrangement. Grandpallama (talk) 20:46, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My beliefs have not changed. It is true I still think at least some of the arguments made against me here are unfair. However, when I say I will commit to not doing something, I mean it. Emiya1980 (talk) 20:51, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I should also point out that the WP:Canvassing Page specifically allows editors like myself to notify "Editors who have made substantial edits to the topic or article" or "Editors who have participated in previous discussions on the same topic (or closely related topics)". Both of the pings I engaged in on World War II's talk page fall under these exceptions. Emiya1980 (talk) 21:39, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Soft Oppose. The project they pinged has automated article alerts for RfCs and posting to its talk page is accordingly quite unnecessary. I'm the only one replying there at the moment. It's certainly no place I would go for WP:Canvassing purposes. Biohistorian15 (talk) 20:44, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Biohistorian15 This issue goes back several weeks and the editor was advised to stop pinging multiple projects. Pinging bio is perfectly reasonable and they agreed to stop spamming others, but they went right back to pinging multiple projects anyway. Just another example of that Emiya1980 says they'll change, then they go right back to problematic behavior. Nemov (talk) 20:55, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Nemov: If I recall, I said I would narrow down which projects I would ping. Not abandon the practice entirely. Conservativism is listed as a Wiki-project with an interest in Edward Heath. Therefore, it seemed permissible to post a notice there. For the record, this is the first time it has been brought to my attention that Wiki-projects are automatically notified of Rfcs pertaining to pages they have an interest in. If I would have known that, I wouldn't have wasted the time posting a notice on said projects. However, the fact is I did not. Emiya1980 (talk) 20:59, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support It's very disappointing that Emiya1980 has continued this unhelpful behaviour after being explicitly warned to stop doing it by an admin in the recent ANI thread and several other editors also provided them with strong advice in that thread to knock this off. Their behaviour in the World War II article is particularly concerning given that they have never edited the article or its talk page beyond seeking to dispute the infobox recently (article edits, talk page edits). Despite this lack of previous interest in the article, as part of re-starting this dispute yesterday they made a range of serious attacks on editors who have been engaged with it [116]. The hectoring of most people who've commented in this thread and this other ANI thread also indicates that this editor is primarily here to argue with people. Nick-D (talk) 23:54, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support especially in light of the wikilawyering and bargaining here. With the note that if the same disruption happens elsewhere, it will be a full ban (which could well already be merited here). StarMississippi00:55, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support sometimes a forced break from editing in a particular area is needed, which appears to be the case here. This will be a chance to show the community that you can edit in other areas of the project without creating disruption.Isaidnoway(talk)08:24, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Emiya1980 suggests continuing to edit infoboxes but not discussing their edits, which is unnacceptable in a collaborative project. It's good that they recognise that we find their talk-page behaviour problematic, but it seems they don't themselves recognise that it is or appreciate that it stems from their continued (attempts at) tweaking infoboxes for infinitesimal gains – if any. NebY (talk) 15:10, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
User has been participating in numerous move discussions by intentionally forwarding opinions counter to both the overall Wikipedia MOS (MOS:DIACRITICS) and MOS:KO. They have openly admitted to doing this as a tactic to shift common practice in order to get the overall MOS shifted to be anti-diacritics [121]. Threads where they've engaged in this behavior: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Here's the issue: if you want to change either the main MOS or the MOS:KO, you should propose changes to them directly. Trying to circumvent the MOSes by making numerous posts is ineffective and blatantly underhanded. Even when this has been explained to the user over and over again, they've doubled down on doing it.
Changing the MOS is not impossible; in fact we literally pushed a complete rewrite of MOS:KO a few days ago, where surprise surprise diacritics are asked for. I've even gotten practices that weren't common approved for the new MOS just because I had good arguments ready and took the proper channels for getting things approved. You don't need to underhandedly undermine common practice in order to get things approved; just have strong arguments and make a clean proposal once.
I'm not sure what disciplinary action is appropriate. I don't know if they've been behaving poorly elsewhere. Maybe a topic ban on opposing the use of diacritics? seefooddiet (talk) 19:43, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think in the past they have been topic banned, but I do not remember for what. Also their behavior in RUSUKR discussions are substandard- they always take pro-Ukrainian position does not matter what, typically not providing any other arguments or "per topic starter" or "per excellent arguments of the topic starter" even if arguments are extremely poor), thus making an illusion of mass support. In the discussions where two-three votes typically determine the outcome this is disruptive. Ymblanter (talk) 19:51, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(Non-administrator comment) Noting that only one of the diffs linked postdates the MOS:KO rewrite, and disagreeing with MOS aspects is totally fine, the boilerplate oppose Since English language does not contain accents or diacritics, transliterations into English from languages that do not use the Latin alphabet likewise should not contain any marks that are not part of English is wrong. English has two native diacritics. Also feels like some kinda cultural superiority / device only supports eight-bit ASCII thing. Folly Mox (talk) 19:57, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
English has three native diacritics - acute, grave (blessèd, etc.) and diaeresis (e.g. Boötes). Acute accents are common in Irish proper names, and it is both wrong and insulting to omit them. I think it was writer Colm Tóibín who said he couldn't really see the point, until it struck him that his countrymen had spent centuries fighting to keep them. Narky Blert (talk) 14:36, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't quite right. Even before the rewrite, the MOS asked for the use of McCune–Reischauer, which fundamentally has diacritics. We just made the use of diacritics more explicit because of cases like these. seefooddiet (talk) 20:01, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Reply. In the nearly 19 years of my editing Wikipedia, I have been a regular voter at WP:RM. As is the case with all RM participants, sometimes I vote "Support" and sometimes I vote "Oppose". Sometimes I am part of the majority vote and sometimes I am part of the minority vote. Nothing unusual. It is unusual, however, that a nominator who is dissatisfied with a user's vote takes that user to ANI.
Since one of the above commenters mentions my "Support" votes in favor of moving main title headers of Ukrainian place names from their Russian forms to their Ukrainian forms, it should be noted that, although I did not submit any of those nominations, they were all successful in having the headers moved to the places' Ukrainian names.
As for the matter at hand, the user who initiated this ANI submission, also submitted yesterday's nomination Lady Hyegyeong → Lady Hyegyŏng at Talk:Lady Hyegyeong#Requested move 4 October 2024 and apparently believes that the sole possible vote at this RM is "Support" per "community consensus in MOS:KO" and anyone who votes "Oppose" is being disruptive.
Thus the nominator appears to posit that the "community consensus in MOS:KO" is a decree that for all intents and purposes makes this RM superfluous and the move can be simply initiated without any need for a discussion. In that case, why bother submitting the RM?. —Roman Spinner(talk • contribs)22:17, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's no issue with voting against moves if there was better reasoning or if you immediately followed up by proposing modifications to the MOS. I have not once reported someone for merely disagreeing with me; I am reporting you for conduct. Your 19 years of experience has little bearing on this discussion; if anything we should expect better from you given your time on the platform.
I am dissatisfied with your side attempts to undermine the MOS through persistent pushing of this opinion (WP:REHASH), instead of doing the obviously better practice of proposing modifying the MOS. You yourself conceded that doing so would be better practice. Instead, we have to deal with your attempts to make numerous little cuts on common practice in order to get your way.
An analogue would be attempting to change the practice of how a guideline like MOS:DASH works by editing pages in violation of the guideline, and hoping that most of the edits will stick in order to make people eventually change the MOS. That would be unambiguously considered disruptive editing.
The fact that you're questioning why I made that move discussion indicates you don't understand the MOS:KO and literally did not take the time to read it. From the MOS: Use diacritics per WP:DIACRITICS, unless you can demonstrate that no diacritics is more popular for that term per WP:COMMONNAME.. The discussion was initiated to prove WP:COMMONNAME because it's not clearcut, and because the article is relatively popular among Korea-related topics. If it was clear cut and unpopular, then yes, I'd just make the move. I already have for a similar page: Princess Ch'ŏngyŏn. seefooddiet (talk) 22:35, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Although English language has no accents or diacritics, it uses some words borrowed from languages that do use such marks, with "naïvety" or "naïveté" along with "fiancé" or "café" among the examples that have become part of English language. All such words are also acceptable if rendered in English without accents or diacritics.
English Wikipedia has numerous main title headers of articles concerning topics from languages that do use accents or diacritics, such as Czech, French, Polish, Spanish or Turkish. The main difference in reference to the subject at hand is that such languages use the Latin alphabet and therefore those English Wikipedia headers appear in the same manner as in that language's Wikipedia.
However, languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Thai do not use the Latin alphabet and therefore transliterating text from such languages into English via insertion of accents or diacritics into the English-language text appears to be counterintuitive since such marks are not part of English language readership's orthographic experience.
Even insertion of accents or diacritics into text transliterated from non-Latin alphabet into Latin-alphabet languages that use accents or diacritics, such as French or Polish, is unlikely to produce the desired result unless the accents or diacritics used in such transliteration are the same marks that are in use and understood within the alphabet of the target country.
As for this nomination having been submitted to determine the WP:COMMONNAME, the sole choice presented was diacritics or no diacritics. Per the explanation above, my vote is "Oppose the use of diacritics". Other Wikipedians may hold directly opposite views and will obviously vote accordingly.
Finally, it should be noted that I do not submit nominations to change Ukrainian names, Korean names or any other matters that involve linguistics or nationalism and take no issue with unilateral changes such as the above-mentioned Princess Ch'ŏngyŏn.
However, when such nominations are submitted by other users or other users take issue with such moves, I react and express my views at RM. As a Wikipedian, I can do no less. —Roman Spinner(talk • contribs)23:58, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Great, now why don't you make that post at the MOS-level and not at these local levels? "I react and express my views at RM" is not always innocent or helpful behavior; repeating these points falls under WP:REHASH and tendentious behavior. Furthermore, your attempting to whitewash your admitted attempts to circumvent the MOS are frustrating.
As another metaphor: imagine all of this behavior was on a single talk page. They made a proposal, it was rejected, and they continue making the proposal over and over in other threads. They'd eventually get blocked. This is very similar behavior, but because it's spread out it doesn't obviously violate the rules. It sure does smell like tendentious participation though.
I don't think either of us have much more new to add. You've made it clear that you're just going to continually push your agenda, disrupt discussions and stonewall, and ignore community consensuses. To be clear, I don't even like diacritics but I'm just advocating for them because that's what the community decided to do and because it fits Wikipedia guidelines. I have no agenda, unlike you. Can others weigh in? seefooddiet (talk) 00:20, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also to reiterate; this user effectively conceded that they didn't understand MOS:KO and didn't take the time to read it. This is all about pushing an agenda through side tactics. How is this helpful behavior to anyone but the user? seefooddiet (talk) 00:24, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Both Diaeresis (diacritic) and Grave accent are native English diacritics, although both are uncommon.For Chinese specifically, there have been attempts to capture the lexical tonality using only letters: Chinese postal romanization and Gwoyeu Romatzyh. Neither of these was ever especially popular (although artefacts of postal romanization linger to the present day, e.g. Shaanxi), and the two most successful romanisation schema both use diacritics to indicate tone.There's nothing objectionable to using diacritics in transliteration, unless you're using a typewriter or other twentieth century device that doesn't support Unicode. Using marks are not part of English language readership's orthographic experience is sometimes necessary for disambiguation of lexical differences in pronunciation that are not captured by alphabetic transliteration alone, and transliteration is always a lossy conversion.I have my own qualms with certain bits of the MOS, as I expect most editors do. But I'm not going to show up to every RM with the same off-topic philosophical boilerplate instead of either accepting consensus or working to change the MOS at the guidance level. The arguments I'm reading here also smack of linguistic nativism, about which I've deleted a further few sentences I deemed too unkind to publish. Folly Mox (talk) 02:22, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Northern Moonlight, Folly Mox, Ymblanter, do you feel a topic ban is appropriate, maybe for 1 year? As linked above, the user was topic banned before for a separate issue and they violated the ban; if we just gave the user a light warning I'm not sure they'd actually listen to it over time. They've still expressed no remorse for this behavior, and I'm not sure they understand why it's bad behavior despite having it explained to them by me and several others. And even if they do now, it shouldn't have taken a user with 19 years experience on the site multiple people telling them to stop to listen. seefooddiet (talk) 02:37, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would support a topic from RM (for the record, the previous one was lifted, so they did not violate anything now), but I would make it indefinite duration and appealable after 6 month. Since they clearly disagree with everybody else here, I would expect them sit to sit out the finite duration topi ban and then continue the same behavior. Ymblanter (talk) 05:21, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Something strange is going on here. This editor has a long history of creating draft articles about apparently fictitious "RACA" sports tournaments (e.g. Draft:Ultimate RACA Championship, Draft:RACA Cornish Tennis, etc), with thousands of edits to these articles and essentially no edits in any other namespace (including no responses to an inquiry earlier this year on their talk page).
I've noticed these RACA articles in Draft space for a while and I see I even told the editor that I would delete them all as hoax articles but the editor never responded and I guess I thought it was some sports league I was unfamiliar with so I didn't follow through with it. Is anyone here familiar with it or is it completely fictitious? I can't even tell what sport it is. LizRead!Talk!23:38, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nope, not a single source on any. Found more drafts that, also without sources, for a supposed Grand Prix and World Series' bearing the same name. Pretty certain they're all fictitious. R0paire-wiki (talk) 23:59, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
They are all fictitious. Note, incidentally, that the user claimed to be 16 years old on their userpage - which I have deleted, as it gave far too much information away, including their full name, DOB and (non-fictitious) school and sports club. Black Kite (talk)00:01, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Edit: I've deleted the lot. The last one I removed had the author's school team beating a professional club in a rugby union tournament, which would have been a story. Black Kite (talk)00:09, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
bro can't lie i have no friends and just wanted to create some fantisy world to escape my sadness. its all fake but it was all that i had. im sorry if i upset anyone but is there anyway i can retrieve it and use my sandbox CKirby09 (talk) 18:12, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is sad, but I have blocked CKirby09 as not here to build an encyclopedia. I hope that this person can find a path to feeling better about themself. Cullen328 (talk) 18:24, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
good block. that said, this is clearly a struggling kid, and in the interest of kindness and compassion, i'm going to request that an admin grant their request and temporarily restore the pages as sandboxes (i'd suggest just emailing, but they have email turned off). i've pointed them towards Miraheze, and they've indicated that they would've just used that site if they knew about it before. i don't really see a harm to the encyclopedia in allowing CKirby to transfer their creations to another site, and it's patently obvious that this is a deeply upsetting situation to them. we could really stand to use a gentler, more human touch here. ... sawyer * he/they * talk22:48, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
that is exactly the impersonal & uncompassionate approach i am taking issue with here, and is really irrelevant to what i've said - i am suggesting that we help them stop using wikipedia in such a manner. ... sawyer * he/they * talk23:27, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As the blocking administrator, I am grateful for Sawyer777's suggestion. I think that it is clear that there are several administrators, myself included, who are willing to email the wikicode if CKirby09 adds an email address to their account. Cullen328 (talk) 01:50, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This does not strike me as malicious and if CKirby09 were to promise to confine themselves to constructive editing (i.e. real world), I'd be inclined to support an unblock request. There are plenty of sport related pages that could benefit from someone with their skills in charting and tables. That aside, I strongly support giving them the code. -Ad Orientem (talk) 02:37, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Blocked. This account was created less than an hour ago, so if they did something yesterday, it must have been under a different username. — Diannaa (talk) 12:04, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If 'FiveSidedFistagon' is the original account, and if 'Fistagon Diddy gon' is a sock, then 'Bethsheba Ashe' is also a sock (as currently 'Fistagon Diddy gon' is tagged as a sock of 'Bethsheba Ashe'. I will re-tag everything accordingly. GiantSnowman12:48, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have finished the revision deletion of Diddy's Diabolical. Some of the insults are British slang and not in use in this county (Canada) so anyone who is assessing edit summaries may have to look up some of the terms to decide whether or not to rev-del. Terminology such as "nonce" and "sharing CP" look harmless but are actually quite offensive. — Diannaa (talk) 12:27, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
sorry to butt in, but, Um, I don't think there is anywhere in the anglosphere where the term "sharing Club Penguin"... is NOT automatically recognized as bad. That term has w/q meant CSAM material since the Disney game fell out. I don't think it's hard to understand what that quote means in our current day and age. not an Admin, just bored and looking around –BarntToust(Talk)17:13, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have also rev-deleted the edit summaries for Fistagon Diddy gon but that's all I can take care of for the moment as I have RL things to do. — Diannaa (talk) 12:43, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It’s really about time this user had their rollback permissions restored, with an apology for the tremendously poor judgment that accompanied the removal. 173.22.12.194 (talk) 14:35, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, second that. If what is said is true, and no other meaningful circumstances for the removal of permissions are recalled ie, unless someone brings forward explicit proof that the removal wasn't just for calling this vandal a vandal - It's pertinent that those who made the folly of the decision to remove SchroCat's permissions for their use of WP:SPADE should really be formally admonished for such poor judgement. Look at this stuff above. Restore their rights to rollback. not an admin, just bored and looking around. –BarntToust(Talk)17:21, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It was during that thread that two IPs (from, if memory serves, South Korea and proxies) started reverting and leaving insulting summaries, then (also at the same time as that thread was open), the first of the accounts WatchOutForDiddy started up. The 'coincidence' is too much for there not to be a connection. - SchroCat (talk) 19:48, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
SchroCat claims that it was a South Korea IP who was vandalising, if all is to be understood well. Need an admin or checker to check out the IP who began the listing, and corroborate that locale with Diddy-account, then. If so, vindication! if not, well, that's for the admins to decide. not an Admin, just bored and hanging around. –BarntToust(Talk)22:29, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh wait, according to the log, it looks like one of the Diddy accounts was responsible for the exact same vandalism as the IP supposedly based in Seongnam had done. It looks like SchroCat is in the right here. huh. not an Admin, just bored and hanging around. –BarntToust(Talk)22:42, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Diff/1222257939 is my explanation why the right was removed. Unexplained edits are not vandalism. That this person has persistently come back to engage in trollish harassment does not make the original claim retroactively correct. For example, if I, as a CheckUser, pick a user randomly and run a check on them to see if there's anyone else on their IP address, it doesn't retroactively justify my action if I find a bunch of a vandalism-only accounts confirmed to that user. I didn't have any justification for running the check in the first place. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 01:14, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But what the IP was doing was vandalism, and even if you want to define vandalism in an overly narrow way, it was still disruption - which can be within the remit of rollback use. The fact you didn’t bother discussing the matter with me at all or asking for clarification seemed rather odd, as does the fact that even if it wasn’t vandalism, there was no warning about it, just removal on a first offence, which is even more odd. You can blithely dismiss the fact they’re a massive sock who has been harassing and insulting me over the last five months, but it only reinforces my point about them more than anything else. All of this ignores the fact, of course, that the use of rollback is not confined solely to reverting vandalism, but as you didn’t discuss the matter with me, maybe you didn’t realise that. Looking at WP:RBREVOKE, removal of the right is for editors who are “persistently failing to provide needed explanations for their reverts” (emphasis in the original). Maybe you could explain why this was removed without discussion after you one event, for action on a disruptive IP engaged in vandalism? - SchroCat (talk) 01:33, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Liz, I wasn’t requesting it here (although is someone wants to revert the bad removal, it would be welcome). I’m just making the point that a bad decision made out of process looks even worse in the light of the fact that the disruption all comes from back to a sock. Ironically I didn’t really need or use rollback that much previously, but the lack of it over the last five months has made reverting the ongoing vandalism and incivility more difficult. - SchroCat (talk) 02:59, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see how rollback could be re-granted where per your own comment you don't know what vandalism is on the English wikipedia and so cannot be trusted to use rollback correctly. As NinjaRobotPirate has said, calling something vandalism requires there is sufficient evidence at the time rather than the editor expects there to be evidence in the future. I don't know if the original removal was correct, but it seems to me after this long any regranting of the permission requires that editors understand what vandalism is which unfortunately after these 5 months is still not there. Frankly, I'd be more worried about whether you might end up sitebanned if you personally attack editors in the future by incorrectly calling them vandals when the evidence doesn't emerge that you expect to, than trying to get rollback back. Nil Einne (talk) 06:55, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) A. "you don't know what vandalism" is so wrong it's lamentable; B. The use of rollback is not solely confined to vandalism. There seems to be confusion in some people's minds that it is. Good work in trying to defend a sock who leaves messages accusing people of being paedophiles, but I think you've missed the mark by a country mile here. I knew there was a reason I avoid this cesspit as much as possible - and it's more to do with the pointless peanut gallery than any other factor.- SchroCat (talk) 06:57, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) I'd add that assuming other editors feel you can be trusted enough to identify this sock we could I guess grant rollback under the very limited provision that you only use it to revert this sock and no one else no matter how sure you are these other editors are also "vandals". But again, I'd personally worry more about your ability to continue to edit point blank if you continue down the path of misusing the term vandalism than on rollback. Nil Einne (talk) 07:06, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Given your attempts to shift goalposts while defending a clear vandal, with some form of threats against me, I really don't care about your suggestions. Given he is a vandal and has engaged in clear vandalism (as can be backed up by any number of users involved and the admins that have blocked him), your threats are unwarranted and ridiculous. - SchroCat (talk) 07:11, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How am I shifting the goalpost? My second comment exactly concurs with that I said the first time which is that you cannot be trusted to use rollback generally since you do not understand what vandalism is, a serious problem for an experienced editor one eventually likely to lead to a site ban. However recognising you asked for the toll for a specific purpose, it might be possible for us to grant that toll for solely for this purpose and nothing else. In both my comments, I did mention that it's far more important that you desist from calling stuff vandalism when it isn't since that will eventually lead to a site ban regardless of anything else. Nil Einne (talk) 10:09, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Firstly I will repeat that it is a lie to say that I do not know what vandalism is. Secondly, I have not asked for anything, so your suggestion is rather pointless. Thirdly, I think it's clear to everyone except you that this person has been engaged in vandalism on and off for five months while calling several user paedophiles. I'm bemused you seem to be unable to grasp that. - SchroCat (talk) 10:43, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) As for my comment on vandalism I stand by it completely. You're making the common newbie error of missing the key point of vandalism. Vandalism must be a deliberate attempt to harm wikipedia. For this reason, a lot of the time it is not possible to know if something is vandalism going only by one edit. With some typical childish vandalism e.g. an editor replacing text with "penis, penis, penis, penis, penis" or an editor who says something in their edit or edit summary indicating this is their intention (e.g. fuck Wikipedia); then yes perhaps it's fair to go by only one edit. But this only applies to a small percentage of edits.
A lot of the time, it's simply not possible. For example, an editor removing sourced content might be trying to fix something but just not know how to do it. And in fact, in some cases removing sourced content is perfectly justified for any number of reasons e.g. WP:Undue. As an editor at WP:BLPN, it's actually quite common that we are removing sourced content. There was just a prominent example with clear consensus to remove sourced content Talk:2024 Kolkata rape and murder#RfC: Name of victim. Yes editors do need to offer an explanation, be willing to engage in discussion, not get into edit wars etc. But since removing sourced content isn't even always against our policies and guidelines, it's even further from being always vandalism.
An important additional point here, while you might not quite make the same mistake plenty of newbies do in thinking anything I feel harms wikipedia is vandalism, thinking that anything the community feels harms wikipedia is vandalism is still wrong. Even if there is bot just consensus but unanimity that something harms wikipedia, this would still not make an edit vandalism.
I'd note that for all the focus on vandalism, IMO the worst editors and edits on Wikipedia are not even vandals or vandalism. Instead our worse problems generally come from POV pushers and others who genuinely believe they are improving Wikipedia i.e. genuinely believe they are helping to "create a free encyclopedia presenting the sum of all human knowledge", when they clear aren't.
Personally, I don't think persistent block evading PoV pushers should be called vandals. I've seen enough to believe that most of these editors still genuinely believe they are improving Wikipedia. However since it's been repeatedly explained to them and they are unable to, or refuse to accept the how wrong they are I can see how some might claim they are now "deliberately intend[ing] to obstruct or defeat the project's purpose". So it's not something I care enough to argue or would suggest a block over, but it always seems unhelpful to me. As I said, this seems to be based on the mistaken assumption that vandals and vandalism cause the worst sort of harm when they aren't and don't.
This isn't just an abstract thing either it matters since it affects how we approach stuff. The wrong approach can easily be counter productive. If an editor is in good faith trying to improve Wikipedia but for some reason is causing problems, then communicating with them why what they're doing is harmful and ways they might be able to achieve at least some of what they're trying to achieve might work. Even if they can't achieve any of what they're trying to achieve, at the very least they're more likely to be receptive to stopping and maybe even moving on to doing other things which might help Wikipedia if they're approached in a decent manner.
However if they're just called a vandal when they're trying to help and improve Wikipedia, if you're "lucky" perhaps they will just give up on Wikipedia completely. I say "lucky" with quotation marks since I question whether scaring of someone who might have been a good editor is really a good thing. But it's "lucky" since it's better than the alternative which could easily happen: An editor, annoyed by being reverted and called an vandal and therefore no proper explanation of why they aren't helping when they think they are and how they might be able to help; gives up and actually starts to engage in vandalism. Why help a project which treats you so atrociously? Some long term editors have threatened to do this when they feel they've been mistreated so we shouldn't be surprised if new editors who only barely care about wikipedia also do it.
By comparison, with an actual vandal then yes it probably does help just to convince them, look you stupidity isn't going to be allowed, you're just going to be reverted and achieve nothing. (Although with trolls unfortunately it can get complicated as that disruption might be enough. Heck the attention might be more important to them than their edits being allowed to stand.) Although plenty of good editors probably did vandalise very early on, and there's still likely to be ways to approach vandals which will help more than others.
Still the point is that there's a big difference between an editor who is deliberately trying to harm wikipedia and an editor who genuinely believes they aren't; since the former mostly needs to be stopped whereas the latter we should always try to educate first.
To give a semi real world example, recently there were problems at Eliana Rubashkyn. The edits are enough that an admin felt rev-deletion was justified. I don't know what the sourcing was for these edits, but I can see this would apply even if it was sourced. If any editor had come across these edits, they might have tried to fix it in various ways. The best thing was just to remove the problematic edits. However I can easily see a passerby just blanking the entire article or at least blanking more than they need to because they're trying to fix the problem. This editor should never be called a vandal. Any editor who sees what they did should really have noticed the problem and only done a partial revert i.e. ensured the stuff that needed to stay removed was removed.
Unfortunately experience at WP:BLPN suggests this isn't the case. Way too many RC patrollers often don't notice such things and reintroduced BLP violations. This in itself is a problem but it's compounded if they just call and treat the other editor as a vandal. (Per my earlier comment, I wouldn't call the IP who added the rev-deleted content a vandal either. They're a much worse kind of editor who genuinely believes they're improving Wikipedia by harming a living person as part of some culture war issue. Although I might still try to educate these editors, frankly I generally give them less hope than an actual vandal and they definitely need to put put to a hard stop even more so than a vandal.)
I'm not saying editor judgment can't be used. To get back to the "I was sure that the editor was a vandal and I was proven right" angle, I'm it's fine for an editor to just give a templated warning or whatever if they're fairly sure someone is a vandal but there isn't yet sufficient evidence; when this editor might try a targeted approach when they don't think this. However such assumptions should generally stay internal rather than these editors going around calling their fellow editors vandals because they're sure they are based on their experience when there isn't really enough evidence at the current time. If you're proven right then great, however for good reason we still require there to be evidence at the time rather than you generally being right. This does mean great care should be taken when using {{Uw-vandalism4im}} or similar templates although personally the thing that worries me most is not such templates but when an editor persistently calls some other editor a vandal including in their own words despite there not being enough evidence.
I'd acknowledge that a lot of the time, the evidence for vandalism can still be fairly weak i.e. all we really have is that an editor persistently did something that harms Wikipedia even when they've been told this and have offered no other explanation for what they're trying to achieve or why it benefits Wikipedia. Similar to the the case where editors have offered some explanation which suggests they genuinely thinking they're improving Wikipedia when they aren't, I don't think it matters much. And in fact, in these cases when the editor should really know by now that what they're doing harms wikipedia and they've offered no other explanation, it seems fine to me to just call it vandalism given our inability to read minds and hence why IMO we generally just accept this without issue. (Although other editors might have WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU concerns.)
tl;dr. The bit I bothered to read is patronising dross that shows you don't actually understand what this vandal has been up to and you clearly haven't bothered reading what I've been writing, or just maybe you might have recognised the Wikipedia:Vandalism#Edit_summary_vandalism that I have referred to on several occasions. I went back over a few of the sock's edits and pulled out a few of the obvious ones and I'd love you to somehow try and justify these as not being deliberate
There's also further vandalism at the following, which you can't see because of the revdel (which should be a big clue—even to anyone who is willingly trying to ignore the obvious—to the deliberately malicious nature of the edits)
These are just the obvious examples of vandalism, but there are dozens of malicious edits over the last five months from a variety of sock accounts. Some of these are just stupid ([135], [136][137], [138], etc), but at least 99 per cent of them are malicious reverts of constructive edits from numerous targeted individuals, accompanied by obscene edit summaries (the Wikipedia:Vandalism#Edit_summary_vandalism I have referred to numerous times). If you don't think these are vandalism, maybe you can take your rather silly comments to the admins who have blocked the socks and tagged the accounts as being Wikipedia:Vandalism-only account - their definition seems to coincide with mine - and having ten socks – TEN – harassing users, leaving obscene edit summaries and vandalising content over the last five months really does nail down the point of both "deliberate" and "malicious". So, yes, I understand what bloody vandalism is, so drop the lies about me and the patronising lecture. - SchroCat (talk) 11:53, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The (current) iteration of the vandal/troll has been blocked and the suggestions about how to request to regain rollback have been given - so I'll just say this as friendly advice: Saying things like "[...] a bad decision made out of process [...]" about NinjaRobotPirate's decision, without providing any evidence that that is the case, can and will be read by others as WP:ASPERSIONS if you keep doing it. – 2804:F1...32:A716 (talk) 07:46, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh tish. I've given reasons - see my 01:33, 7 October 2024 (UTC) comment where I quoted from Wikipedia:Rollback: (removal of the right is for editors who are "persistently failing to provide needed explanations for their reverts" (emphasis in the original); you can add to that the process is that "admins should normally notify or warn the editor sufficiently first": given there has been no "persistent" failure and given the lack of notification or warning from the admin, there are absolutely no aspersions in calling it a "bad decision made out of process" - it would be hard pushed to describe it any other way. Regardless of all that, calling an admin decision "bad" is not casting any aspersions: it's an opinion on a decision—and not an insulting or uncivil one—based on the facts at hand. - SchroCat (talk) 07:55, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's not a requirement for removing the rollback right, that's an example of a situation where an admin may block an editor, or remove their rollback right, or remove some other right - that is, an user who does not explain their reverts, either done with rollback or not. There was another example afterwards, where someone might lose their rollback right if they edit war (not even from using rollback to edit war, but just doing it in general) as a precaution. The first paragraph of that section says another, different, reason too, as does the warning banner at the very top of that page.
NinjaRobotPirate told you back then in the diff they linked above why they removed yours, which was mainly because you said (if that is really what you meant) that you didn't care how we defined vandalism, that you saw those edits back then as vandalism and were going to keep using rollback to revert them, again and again. If you don't believe that's justified then ask around, that clearly fits the 'admin removes rollback right to prevent its misuse' intent. (edit: calling it out of process, without evidence, is what I meant as something that, if done repeatedly, would likely be seen as aspersions - that's like saying an admin is abusing their powers) – 2804:F1...32:A716 (talk) 08:48, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You have a rather twisted way of interpreting what I have said, which is a little disingenuous: I have never said he was abusing his powers, nor did I even hint at such a thing. I do think he made a mistake, however, and didn't follow the process, or even have the common courtesy to start a discussion, let alone showed I had "persistently" failed to provide an explanation. I'll also remind you that rollback is not solely for the reversion of vandalism, which seems to be a common error round here. You can continue pushing this point as much as you want (it's not going to alter my position), but please don't put a meaning into it that is a long way from the truth. - SchroCat (talk) 08:59, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, my apologies if you didn't mean that. Admins are supposed to act to enforce policies and guidelines, acting outside of process (doing things outside of the community's expectations of what an admin should do) is at the very least WP:TOOLMISUSE - it would have been a serious accusation.
I don't see where anyone has ever claimed that rollback is solely for reversion of vandalism. For all your comments about people misinterpreting you, you seem to be misinterpreting what others have said. Rollback isn't solely for reversion of vandalism, however because it doesn't leave an edit summary, the assumption is any use without an explanation given somewhere else is vandalism. Therefore it should never be used for reverting another editor when they were not engaged in not vandalism unless some other explanation was offered somewhere else. More importantly, an editor who clearly does not understand what vandalism is should never be granted rollback. Their inability to understand what vandalism is means they revert something under the mistaken assumption it's vandalism and therefore they can just use rollback without offering an explanation elsewhere; when they can't. Since this applies to you, you cannot be granted rollback unless we can come up with some option where we can trust you to use it, without violating our policies and guidelines which would likely require use to restrict how you use it, and trust that you will abide by our restriction. Nil Einne (talk) 10:06, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. If there was misclarification, NOBODY should have jumped the gun and just removed Cat's permissions outright. Maybe a semi-strict "be more wary from here on out, Cat, alrighty?" could have sufficed? Look, plenty of escalation on either side here. But Wikipedia:COOL is something that needs a lookover all around, for sure. not an Admin, just bored and hanging around.–BarntToust(Talk)13:45, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Like, if this situation with Cat just calling "VANDAL" happened two or three separate cases, yeah, there should be consequences, and it's not good practice to assume either way that these edits were vandalism, or conversely, just misguided edits. It's good to not assume, but rather to attempt to speak with the vandalising IP, so either clarification could have happened, or so the IP could have been naturally allowed to play out Wikipedia:Please be a giant dick, so we can ban you, (which is what would have doubtless happened in this alternate history). Both Cat and the Admins made totally reasonable assumptions about the nature of the edits, but assumptions are bad when answers are a talk page away from being gotten. Not an Admin, just hanging around due to boredom –BarntToust(Talk)13:56, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I second this IP. Nil, I advise you to strike your paragraph, beginning with I don't see where anyone has ever claimed that rollback... and ending with ...and trust that you will abide by our restriction. That's a bit too heavy to be saying around here. not an admin, just bored and hanging around–BarntToust(Talk)14:23, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How do you figure? I'm not seeing any comment on a user's intelligence (which WOULD be a personal attack). Perhaps I missed it? All I see is an assertion that Cat doesn't understand what vandalism is, and then a conclusion that they should not use a particular tool to combat vandalism if it may be misapplied and why.
That said, if Nil would be willing to strike the comment anyway, PA or no, that could help ratchet down tensions a bit, which would only be a good thing. EducatedRedneck (talk) 15:07, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Everyone knows what vandalism is, but the problem here isn't Cat not knowing what vandalism is, it's assumptions that they make which are the problem; given that all sides have been making assumptions, it's fair to call BS here. Saying an editor isn't smart enough to know what vandalism is, when the actual problem is them being, well, a bit too quick to judge, is no bueno. not an Admin, just hanging around–BarntToust(Talk)15:09, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Where did it say Cat isn't smart enough? Understanding is not the same as intelligence. And no, not everyone knows what WP:VANDALISM is; it's caused problems before. Whether or not Cat does is a matter of interpretation. I agree that calling BS is acceptable, but that doesn't mean that Nil's reasonable (if possibly incorrect) interpretation of policy, and voicing Cat's stated disagreement with that interpretation, is a personal attack. EducatedRedneck (talk) 15:37, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Which is an outright lie - it could be construed as a personal attack given its untruthfulness has been pointed out several times. - SchroCat (talk) 15:11, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps someone with less than 800 edits should actually focus on improving the encyclopedia instead of endlessly focusing their attention on the drama boards? Your persistent presence here, in addition to the comment to which I’m replying, suggests that you don’t fully understand the nuances involved in matters of dispute resolution. 66.220.213.193 (talk) 15:30, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
AdeiEnnada908's very first notice on their Talk page is about unsourced edits to the BLP Shraddha Srinath two years ago, yet just about a week ago similar edits were made ([139]). The Talk page appears to be filled with warnings about such unsourced additions but no communication seems to come forth from the user, no edit summaries are apparent either. A clear example of this egregiousness, is this recent edit for example. I think a block has become necessary now, considering the ample warnings and time spent at enwiki basic policies should have been met with. Gotitbro (talk) 12:30, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My conclusion is that there are additional references in the new article with might (or might not) help it to survive AfD. I believe it is sufficiently different from the previous version and is not eligible for speedy deletion. Any administrator is welcome to disagree with me though. Ymblanter (talk) 14:50, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
After several months of ethnically-charged POV edits and attacks on other users, I reported Researcherofgreatness on this noticeboard on 19 May. After the discussion, the user was blocked indefinitely citing POV edits (example), WP:NPA (example), WP:NOTHERE (example), WP:EDITWAR (example), and WP:FAKEADMIN (example) in addition to the account's refusal to engage with the evidence presented. An unblock request was rejected on 20 May for being "clearly disingenuous." Unfortunately, the Wiisstlo (talk·contribs) account was created on 21 May and immediately started right where Researcherofgreatness had stopped, continuing to edit war on the Agbada page (examples: 1, 2), repeating the same unsourced editing on the Yoruba people from the Researcherofgreatness' WP:NOTHERE charge, and continuing the personal belligerence from the WP:NPA violations along with editing pages on Yoruba clothing, food, and culture. It was finally blocked as a clear sockpuppet on 30 September after I initiated an investigation. Now, the History Of Yoruba (talk·contribs) and Sohvyan (talk·contribs) — created on 2 October — have taken up the mantle with near-identical edits on several pages (examples: 1, 2) and continuing with the ethnically-biased POV edits (examples: 1, 2). Like I said in May, the operator of these accounts clearly has a genuine interest on Yoruba culture and history which would be helpful for Wikipedia; however, their conduct is worrying and they are clearly incapable of being objective. Thank you, Watercheetah99 (talk) 15:29, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My submission is based on the provided evidences in the wiki, this user just started accusing me of having multiple accounts out of nowhere while insisting on a submission contrary to documented evidences, they appear to have a bias on Yoruba history and seek to impose it regardless of any provided evidence. Today is the first time I am editing this post, and it was because of the inaccurate information. Sohvyan (talk) 15:37, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure if this adds to discussion, but I believe that your comment makes it six Nigerian ethnicities I have been accused of being biased against (including one of my own) for removing obvious POV violations. — Watercheetah99 (talk) 00:48, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Need PROMPT TPA block
I'm asking for a prompt TPA block for 88.92.173.16 (talk·contribs). The IP is currently blocked, so reports to WP:AIV keep getting removed by the bot. The personal attacks (including pings) are ongoing. Not to mention trying to impersonate an administrator. Thanks for attention paid to this matter. signed, Willondon (talk) 18:18, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
mention me if you need my attention) —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 05:55, 28 September 2024 (UTC)
Sounds like a duck quacking into a megaphone to me so upgraded Anzor.akaev to a month and inDEFFed the new account. Thanks for flagging (again) @HistoryofIran Star Mississippi 01:02, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
Done RickinBaltimore (talk) 18:49, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
Blocked x 72 hrs. If this resumes, an indefinite block is likely the next step. -Ad Orientem (talk) 13:34, 6 October 2024 (UTC)