Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents

Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents
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User:Wasserman

This user has been made aware at least once previously that a number of editors take issue with his aggressive communication style. Personally I feel like some editors are far too thin-skinned about supposed incivility and have no particular opinion about the previous incident; I provide it only for informational purposes. Recently the editor has decided that there is an insidious conspiracy to eliminate the categorization of Jewish people as Jewish. Here he accuses User:William Allen Simpson of "rampant" and "blatant" censorship because that editor has nominated a number of "Jews by occupation" categories for deletion recently. In five CFDs from June 11 he copies and pastes substantially identical comments in which he accuses WASimpson of engaging in a "pathetic attempt to justify the continued censorship and eradication of ... Jewish categories" along with accusations that WASimpson and I are engaged in a conspiracy against Jewish-related categories. Wasserman has crossed a line here and while I don't know if a short chill-out block is in order here, at the very least the editor needs to be put on notice that hyperbolic and unsubstantiated allegations of conspiracies constitute a failure to assume good faith and constitute incivility. Otto4711 (talk) 23:07, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

• In accessing the editor's page to advise him of this notice, I found this. User has a history of crying "censorship". Otto4711 (talk) 23:12, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
• Comment I have been a participant to those discussions and as such have been able to form an opinion about Wassermann. He seems genuinly distressed by certain nominations for deletion connected with "Jewish". And it is true that quite a number of these have been tagged for deletion lately. And it may even be that William Allen Simpson (with whom I have an issue here on wp:ani) is trying to tag as many ethnicity related categories as he can, in accordance with what he thinks is the right thing to do. But accusing editors of conspiracy, in the way Wassermann does, that is a little out of line. Nevertheless, in view of the emotional issue involved and in view of the fact that we all have been created by G-d with a different way of expressing ourselves, and for some that way is more emotionally loaden than for others, I hope we can suffice with a verbal explanation to Wassermann of the proper way to behave in discussions. Debresser (talk) 23:27, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

• Is there any proof of validity of this users claim of "censorship"? Triplestop (talk) 00:41, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

• Not really. Debresser (talk) 02:23, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
• Ill-advised, maybe. Deletionism gone a few steps too far, perhaps. Countered by reliable sources, likely. But there is no evidence of censorship based on religion here, and problems with deletions at CfD are a rainbow assortment crossing categories based on all races, religions, creeds and national origins, including claims that it is impossible to determine race, religion, creed or national origin for anyone without resorting to original research. A reminder that WP:COOLDOWN, clearly specifies that "Blocks intended solely to 'cool down' an angry user should not be used, as they often have the opposite effect" and that such blocks should not be proposed as a solution. CfD is in desperate need of greater outside participation to help produce consensuses that are representative of the community as a whole, and all necessary efforts should be taken to bring User:Wassermann productively into the CfD fold, rather than trying to push out and away those who disagree with some CfD regulars. Alansohn (talk) 15:47, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

• COOLDOWN also says that if an angry editor is being disruptive they may be blocked. Accusing editors of engaging in conspiracies is disruptive. This is not a question of "push[ing] out" an editor on the basis of disagreement; that is not even close to an accurate assessment of the situation. Otto4711 (talk) 18:04, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

• "Wasserman has crossed a line here and while I don't know if a short chill-out block is in order here" are your words. Policy is very specific that cool-down blocks are prohibited. Alansohn (talk) 18:46, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

• Oh for god's sake. COOLDOWN says that they "should not" be used, it does not say that they shall not or cannot be used. It is advising against their use, not prohibiting them. And of course my words also say that he's crossed a line into incivility and disruption and COOLDOWN specifically states that blocks for this sort of behaviour are appropriate. Does there really need to be this constant parsing of everything everyone says?

• Otto's (I assume its Otto's) comment above this one may be a clue as how he could have led Wasserman to feel upset and frustrated. Does anyone, other than Otto, believe that a guideline that says "x should not be used" means that "x may be used"?
• I'm a bit confused about how we use the word "should" here in Wikipedia. When WP:RS says that "Wikipedia articles should rely primarily on reliable, third-party, published sources" does "should" mean that if one doesn't want to add sources that they are not required, and when WP:N states "Articles should verify that they are notable, or 'worthy of notice'" does "should" imply that there is no obligation to establish notability if an editor decides not to? Alansohn (talk) 19:04, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

• I had to censor one of Wassermann's sub pages. Is Jayjg still around, he has had interaction with this user? --Tom (talk) 16:01, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

from his user page it looks like jayjg blocked him repeatedly but he disappeared completely at the beginning of the judea/samaria arbcom case and hasn't returned since then. untwirl(talk) 16:09, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I had a look at that userpage a yesterday, and did not understand the reason for its "censorship". Clearly User:Wassermann is smart enough that conversation, perhaps by more than one editor, should be able to explain him what and why. Debresser (talk) 16:27, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

From the peanut gallery: I noticed this thread because of a whimsical "Recent changes" excursion a few hours ago. Some of Wassermann's recent edits do seem to be a source of concern on the basis of WP:BLP, because of the insertion of unsourced Jewish-related categories into biographies of living persons. He has in the past been blocked for exactly this sort of infraction. Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:49, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Seconding this. See this and this, where there are no reliable sources saying these people are Jewish, and obvious BLP concern. He's had so many problems with this before, for which he has been blocked, that I can't imagine he's unaware that this is a problem. Recommend a block. – Quadell ^(talk) 18:46, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

And upon investigation, I see that Category:Jewish Economists was deleted in 2007, and then Category:Jewish economists was deleted just 4 days ago. This looks like an attempt to recreate and repopulate a deleted category. (Not exactly the same category, but the same arguments apply.) – Quadell ^(talk) 18:57, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

It looks like the majority of people in the category are not said to be Jewish in the article. This is a serious BLP problem. – Quadell ^(talk) 19:00, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

At a guess, Wasserman has used Catscan and/or AWB to intersect Category:Jewish Americans/Category:American Jews with Category:American economists (as the ones I looked at are also in the former, eg Kotlikoff was already in a Jewish category). It is something of an attempt to subvert the speedy deletion of Category:Jewish economists. Occuli (talk) 01:10, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, read his comment there. Sheesh. – Quadell ^(talk) 16:13, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

In a related note, I have come down on User:Epeefleche here about attacking the nominator rather than the nomination, with what I perceive to be a direct intimation of anti-Semitic bias. This followed Wassermann's allegation of the conspiracy on Otto's part. I'm not sure if Wassermann realized that could be a direct result of his careless word choice. I consider these actions to be on the other side of a line that cannot be crossed here. I won't weigh in on a block motion yet, but I'm certainly monitoring the situation with both these users. (I'm also not a fan of the words Otto has used in this discussion here and elsewhere, but that does absolutely nothing to justify the negative behavior on Wassermann and Epeefleche's parts.)--Mike Selinker (talk) 07:04, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

• Mike fails to point out: 1) that I raised the issue of a dishonest statement by the nominator, which I substantiated with references to the nominator's statements and the nominator's diffs -- Mike seems to both think that it is fine for the nominator to be dishonest, and a breach of Wiki guidelines for another editor to point out that dishonesty; 2) that all of the nominator's requests for deletions of categories of any religions/ethnicities/nationalities in those of his last 500 diffs related only to Jewish categories, though the proferred reason would have suggested that if the nominator was not singling out Jewish categories he would have been seeking deletion during that time of other religions/ethnicities/nationalities. I would also point out that incendiary language has been used by the nominator (calling others paranoid, etc.), but not by me. Mike has sought (both in his "come down" note and though comments of a person he invited to join the discussion) to chill my right make a legitate point as to a series of dishonest statements by the nominator. He has also sought to chill my right to ask a question as to motive. In both cases, with a heavy handed threat, completely innapropriate, of a block. I'm surprised, quite frankly, by what I consider to be heavy handed innapropriate behavior on his part.
• As to Wasserman, I'm not sure that use of the words "blatant" and "censorship" are punishable offences in this context. It seems more likely that the nominator's use of the word "paranoid" to describe Wasserman is more innapropriate than anything Wasserman wrote. As far as assuming good faith is involved, that is a presumption under Wikipedia:Assume good faith that can be rebutted by the nominator's and WAS's actions. The policy does not require editors to continue to assume good faith when there is evidence of bad faith. I would posit that when someone lies, that is such evidence, and when they seek to delete a dozen "Jewish" categories but not other categories of religions/ethnicities/nationalities -- using an argument that is not Jewish-specific, that may well also be evidence of good faith that rebuts the assumption of good faith.--Epeefleche (talk) 04:51, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

• This page is not about a motion to block you, and it is most assuredly not about what I think is "fine" (which you have misrepresented, in a developing string of misrepresentations). My comment was about the possible effects of Wassermann throwing around anti-Jewish conspiracy allegations.--Mike Selinker (talk) 05:46, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

• Just some comments:

• JAS has certainly been working his way through Jewish categories, but has also been giving the Tamils some stick too. There are genuine issues as these are nations or ethnicities with categories sometimes in "by nationality" trees. Both he and Otto have claimed an element of Jewish descent in the course of these sometimes snappy debates.
• The Jewish economists example is somewhat untypical, and in many of these debates (but not the economists) there have been very many editors also opposing deletion (including me), indeed a clear majority of those commenting in several cases.

Johnbod (talk) 01:37, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Plagiarism, persistent attempts at promotion

Psikxas (talk · contribs) has for the past six weeks or so been persistently trying to use Wikipedia to promote a non-notable headlight bulb company called Kärheim. His initial attempt was a mainspace article, Karheim, which was speedy deleted for violation of NOTE and SOAP (with great difficulty; Psikxas & socks repeatedly removed SD notice — see SPI). Deleted article retrieved and moved by admin Jayron32 at Psikxas' request to his userspace. I objected at that time; no consensus for removal was reached. Psikxas moved the article text to his main userpage, which is its present location. Retrieving admin reiterated RS, CORP, and NOTE to user. User now bases notability claim on a plagiarised version of a copyrighted work evidently created for the purpose of promoting Kärheim: A new title page was added, the copyright notice was removed, and the name "Kärheim" was spliced into the text of the report. But although the plagiarised research is claimed to come from Aristotle Univerity of Thessaloniki in 2008, in fact it was done by the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York in 2001. Whoever plagiarized the report did not change the text referring to the experimentation having been carried out at facilities in Schenectady, New York — a strange location for a study carried out by a university in Greece. The legitimate, real version of the research is here on RPI's site. It can be read in HTML form here.

Did Psikxas him/herself commit the plagiarism? It's not possible for me to say with certainty, but it does seem to quack: Psikxas' username and usage of English (evidently as a second language) strongly suggest Greek as a first language, which accords with the location of the plagiarised document in the home directory of a user at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The plagiarised study is also the only document in its directory, and its last-modified date, as of right now as I type this, accords with the time when it was placed as a reference in Headlamp (where I have removed it) and in the pseudo-article text at User:Psikxas (where, as a userpage, I don't feel I can touch it).

Psikxas' contrib history shows similar behaviour patterns in other articles, such as LAZER helmet (request for reinstatement here): persistent, evidently willful efforts to promote particular companies, interspersed (when questioned or confronted) with claims of ignorance, accusations of harrassment, and effusive thanks (e.g. here, here, here) to admins who grant Psikxas' requests. FTR, my reaction to this type of persistent apparent attempt at promotion, continued disregard for community standards, and evidently disingenuous behaviour would be similar no matter who would do it — registered editor or IP contributor alike. It looks more and more to me as though Psikxas is intent on damaging the project, and I'm not comfortable sitting back and letting him or her do so. Obviously there are fine lines between article ownership and article stewardship, but this latest plagiarism exceeds my ability to assume good faith on the part of Psikxas. —Scheinwerfermann ^T·_C21:47, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

• Scheinwerfermann, check here I3E.org to see how many articles are re-posted from other universities, maybe with some additions.Maybe now you doubt even for I3E, for sure you have a good reason for this, but anyone can find there articles reposted again and again, givven each time the references. Do they violate any policy you think? As far as i can see, the article has all the refferences, EVERYTHING, cause im very carefull after your vendeta as Jayron32 also mentioned User_talk:Jayron32#Plagiarism.

I dont know where you aim with all these lies, LIES, you find a scientific article, with all the references, and then you accuse the university of a practise common all over the world for many thesis? you know how the community in universities work? or you know and on purpose dont refer it? MAYBE... you doubt for the reliabilty of the university Aristotle_University? Just to know, this is one of the biggest universities, and when you graze sheeps in the mountain barbarian, Greek Aristotle had monuments and produced civilitazion for you-language and maths and so more! In what point you doubt? never are you tired to see you are wrong all the time? Maybe you get extra job for good admins, but.. a]the article has the references you mention and has the refferences you mention with additions, so stop lying. As fara as it has the old references, its acceptable . - b]its on the domain of this big university, have you any doubt of this too?? c] if you are so silly to believe anything else, report it to the international community,not wikipedia only, to the university, but please tell us here the reply you may get then, make us laugh.

Please stop. Thanks god, there is history in wikipedia, ANYONE can see that whenever i asked you a question, you NEVER replied. NEVER! But in order to tell lies and report anything i do, to continue your vedetta! ! ! you act instantly..isnt? This is your contribution? Maybe i cant use my english very well to defend myself and this admin is better in speaking, but any smart who read these can understand the truth.Bad faith, yes, now, im sure you act in bad faith. Your contributions show us anything different? im tired with this tone and vendetta of him, one admin maybe think he can cause more troubles here than he has the ability to solve.

As far the LAZER helmet you mention, again lying!! Didnt the article reported restored or not??See there my reply here), see my argument about other articles, then come back to tell us why you think other articles are more notable, and that sharp.gov.uk, if you insist that this site also doesnt proove anything. But we know your practise, here you never help, you never reply to questions, and by not telling the Whole truth (= its lieing this too, isnt? ), you try to fraude all the wikipedians here who maybe they dont know your vendetta, your bad faith of you promoting bulbs in many forums (google search for this admin to find everythin, i mentioned it to previous posts) , and you care so so much to make them change desicion. They dont know the full history but hope they can find it in all this mess. Hope they will find all my messages to you that you have deleted all this time..(again, hiding something isnt a lie?).You do every effort.Here is an example [[1]], okay, promote your products, make with your "power" as an admin whatever to block anything else Psikxas können Sie eine Google-Suche finden Sie Infos über die Firma, warum bin ich angeklagt? (talk) 22:11, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Wow, that "report" at [2] is obviously not just plagiarism, but serious fraud: plagiarism would be if it said the same things as the original, but it was faked to say something different – the original mentions the test was run on a different brand of lights. Scheinwerferman is right, we have no proof that the forger is the same person as the editor here, but the suggestion of a connection is certainly strong enough. (BTW, to put one concern to rest, I see no indication that the university on whose site the fake report is hosted has anything to do with it. It looks more like it's been put there by some student in their personal web space; no indication of an alleged academic author at auth.gr.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:15, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Fut.Perf. can you tell us, which is this 'different' brand? try to respect at least, if you dont respect me cause you dont know me of course, the whole academic society. If something is posted in auth.gr, what you would say? Does it belong to one of its members or not? anyone.

pls, with a simple google search, look what you can find from this domain, something very common in universities all over the world, they use their domain to upload ([3] :

• [4]
• [5]
• [6]
• [7]
• [8]
• [9]
• [10] Every university has the control of its members, can we judge and conclude something different?

please review the WHOLE conv between me and the admin. Take the time. Maybe, have you seen this ? Consider with google search how many times this admin promotes other brand in many forums, consider how insane he became when it proved that he was wrong by Miscellany for deletionof the article, imagine why he tries by all means to take revenge. Why?

Try to find everything and then judge. Review some links i posted here, review the department of electrical engineering (by the way, how you concluded that the university has nothing to do with it?) What you think is better? Knowing nothing, or know the half truth and then judge? Maybe admin is true i dont use my english very well, but this is for or against because i cant defend they way i could? Someone else here though uses bery well the language, and easily could spread the half truth, isnt?

At the time, i marked my article that its under investigation. In the past, i stopped my contribution. This bad admin will not stop, if he could, he would have banned me already. Is this a coincidence that an article restored after deletion and stayed intact more than 2 weeks, that was marked for deletion AGAIN User_talk:Psikxas few minutes after the admin here started this issue? Of course, nothing happened...but this avoid me to offer in wikipedia, and the impression givven is that i only cause troubles. because of one only article, because of infos everyone can find by googling —Preceding undated comment added 18:38, 17 June 2009 (UTC).

• Oh, just to add..try not to believe anything they say to you. Because someone told "its last-modified date, as of right now as I type this, accords with the time when it was placed as a reference in Headlamp (where I have removed it)" ..have you checked both dates? where this admin refers too? cant you see that submission date is different?? a full year! not few days! year! Anyway...ill wait for some serious reply, not from someone so credulous pls...Psikxas (talk) 01:16, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Looks pretty criminal to me – Greek editor needed

From section Methods of the original paper [11]:

The HID system employed a Philips DS2 lamp. The measured illuminance distribution for the HID headlamp system is shown as an isolux diagram in Figure 1. The halogen A system employed an H7 Philips lamp. The measured illuminance distribution for the halogen A headlamp system is shown as an isolux diagram in Figure 2. The halogen B system employed an H4 Philips lamp. The measured illuminance distribution for the halogen B headlamp system is shown as an isolux diagram in Figure 3. (my bold)

From section Methods of the plagiarised paper [12]:

The HID system employed a DS2 lamp. The measured illuminance distribution for the HID headlamp system is shown as an isolux diagram in Figure 1. The halogen A system employed an H7 Philips lamp. The measured illuminance distribution for the halogen A headlamp system is shown as an isolux diagram in Figure 2. The halogen B system employed an H4 Philips lamp. The measured illuminance distribution for the halogen B headlamp system is shown as an isolux diagram in Figure 3.

The plagiarised paper does not show an author but claims to be from "Lighting Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki". (This is strange, because the Lighting Laboratory is at National Technical University of Athens. [13].) It consists of:

• A new abstract replacing the original on. It says:

  An experimental field investigation is described below, based on a study of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York in 2001 that compared the off-axis visual performance of HID forward lighting systems with comparable halogen systems to determine the relative visual effects of HID lighting. [...] In this study three high quality current production European headlamp systems, Kärheim HID and two Philips halogen, are compared. (my bold)

• An almost exact copy of the plagiarised paper. The only difference that I have seen is the omission of Philips (see above) in a context where we would expect to read Kärheim if the original study had had the claimed scope of the plagiarised study.
• A sequence of slides added at the end. These are a variant of the conference slides presented by Constantinos A. Bouroussis and Frangiskos V. Topalis at the Balkan Light 2008 conference in Lubljana. [14]

I do not know if Scheinwerfermann got the date stamp of this file [15] wrong, as Psikxas claims. It currently says 13-Jun-2008 00:12, which is 1 year + 22 hours before Psikxas' edit [16] pointing to the document. I do know that it is trivial to change time stamps on Unix-based web servers such as this one. And I do observe that the creation time of the PDF file itself, which would be a bit harder to fake, is 18 June 2008, i.e. 5 days after this document was supposedly put on the web server.

Add to this Psikxas' very first edit [17] and it looks like a case for the relevant research institution's fraud department. Perhaps a Greek editor can contact the admin of of http://users.auth.gr ? The next question is whether we should notify Kärheim, Philips, or both. --Hans Adler 15:55, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Note, incidentally, that the fake report from the alleged (but apparently non-existent) Photometry Lab in Thessaloniki has also stolen the logo of the real Photometry Lab in Athens. The authors of the 2008 conference paper you mention above are apparently well-established researchers at the genuine Athens lab. – Personally, I don't much feel like bothering to mess with the real-life dimension here, fraud department and whatnot; let's just get rid of the disruptive editor, salt the pages and move on. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:32, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

It appears the account at AUTH has been suspended, perhaps in response to notification sent to that school's administration regarding the fraud. It also appears Psikxas has blanked his/her user page, blanked his/her user talk page, and blanked the Kärheim subpage, but continues to edit disruptively and complain about administrative correction of his/her disruptive edits. I see/hear more quacking in Psikxas' apparently keen interest in presenting a particular point of view on a political matter involving Macedonia. Generally matters of this nature are a hot topic in Greece, and nowhere else. Correlation doesn't imply causation, of course, but it does wiggle its eyebrows and go "Psst! Psst! Look over there!". —Scheinwerfermann ^T·_C18:25, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Psst psst! Scheinwerfermann! Its true that university decided to suspend the account, but perhaps after the investigation(?), they decided to keep it as it is. Of course everything is as before with the PDF, the page etc. What made me delete my pages, was that after what Fut.Perf. told here, once i thought that we should consider maybe that server keeps track of the very first upload (really, Fut.Perf. you that always give examples, can you create for us now an example of how "time stamps on Unix-based web servers" can change? Personally, i think its impossible if you are not the admin, if you can tell us how else, okay then, but i bet you cant, and you wrote it just to create impressions) , but then believed that i cant trust whatever i find in google and maybe i shouldnt insist, maybe im wrong. Now that university decided to keep it, i dont know what to do. I would be silly if i thought that admins can not find how articles were before, eh? If you can find previous revisions through "history", then anyone can do it ! Anyway, if your only interest here and contribution is to keep tracks of what i do, if this doesnt show your vendetta , if my last contribution has anything to do with my article we are discussing here, at least work and correct my articles with my poor english, or else another admin should ask you STOP now from the revenge you are mad to find all this time!Psikxas (talk) 23:10, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Barefaced alteration of a published paper to support promotion of a company's product. What the university does its its own lookout. What we do is ours. Block and salt. DGG (talk) 01:22, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Ancient Egyptian race controversy

The administrator User:Hiberniantears has reverted and protected the article Ancient Egyptian race controversy. This in my opinion appears to be a violation of WP:PREFER.The administrator has reverted to a version that is four months old. Regular editors to the article had worked to build a consensus over the last four months, and within one day it has been reverted. A thread was posted on the fringe theories notice board Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy. But user who posted this thread, Dbachmann, didn't make any notification on the Talk:Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy. So to our surprise, all of a sudden we have users reverting to a four month old version without even discussing on the talk page. [18]. I believe that such type of editing is inflammatory. We have not had edit warring on this article for two months and it has been resurrected by users who are not willing to reach a compromise and gain consensus. Wapondaponda (talk) 20:35, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

AGF, Wapondaponda. I am uninvolved in this article, and took action based only on my review of the thread at the Fringe Theories board, the ArbCom case, and the article history. I was operating off what I found in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Dbachmann, which led me to restore the version I reverted to as it appeared approximate to the version mentioned in the case which Moreschi put in place. Hiberniantears (talk) 20:49, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I want to assume good faith, but it is not helpful if an administrator reverts and protects an article. It just does not leave a good impression at all when there is a content dispute. There is no reason to believe that Moreschi's version is as good as any other version, he is an editor like the rest of us, and I will argue that we have proved him wrong. We have worked on this article for the last four months, we have not had edit warring, and the last time the article was protected was four months ago. Within one day Dbachmann makes some unilateral edits and the everything falls apart. I think it is pretty obvious who is causing trouble here. Wapondaponda (talk) 21:12, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

That is a ridiculous response, quite honestly. What you would have seen at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Dbachmann is clear evidence that Dbachmann is an over-opinionated editor who has been sanctioned previously for making disruptive edits, including to this very article. Moreschi has not been involved in this article for a long time, and if you had read the Moreschi version you would have seen that it is seriously incomplete and in fact contains numerous tags calling for more info - which your protection now blocks us from adding. If you had Assumed Good Faith yourself, and actually read the latest version (i.e. excluding Dbachmann's damage) you would have noted that there is no unbalance in the content, the mainstream opinion is clearly stated in all sections, all content is closely referenced, and all content closely links to the title. Why did you instead revert the article to an arbitrary, seriously-incomplete and useless version, without engaging the many editors who actually worked on this article? Please unblock this article, re-instate the months of work that have built this article up since this deliberately-useless version, and instead block Dbachmann from making unilateral edits to this article without first achieving consensus. Wdford (talk) 21:12, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

What is ridiculous is any claim of consensus. You seem to misinterpret a bad case of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. The article has for months been an example of WP:SYN and not so subtle POV-pushing. Good action. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:25, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

It is not a good action, because you know very well that protection is just temporary. There were no problems on the article until Dbachmann showed up. Of course WP:CCC applies to any article, but Dbachmann, just posted comments on the talk page and made unilateral decisions about content. There are several editors who don't and won't agree with this. Wapondaponda (talk) 23:19, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, User:Dbachmann "showed up" 4 years before the first edit ever to the current article, so your comment probably refers to some recent event. And if you think the article was fine in this version, you are very wrong. That article is not about the Ancient Egyptian race controversy, it is refighting it. It's full of original arguments and WP:SYN. It does contain very few sources about the controversy, but is a collection of otherwise unrelated facts that support one side or the other in the controversy. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 00:00, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

You are entitled to your opinion, but I felt the article was quite comprehensive. I didn't agree with everything, but that is the essence of compromise. If anyone wanted to know anything about the race of the Ancient Egyptians, it was found in that version. The current version is just a topic on Afrocentrism. A topic on which many contributors have little interest in. Furthermore, many reliable sources deal with the topic of the race of the Ancient Egyptians, in the same manner as the consensus version. The facts remain that there is a content dispute and there are ways to deal with content disputes, discussion and consensus building. Going behind the backs of other editors to get a particular version protected is somewhat disingenuous. Wapondaponda (talk) 00:24, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

What is weird here is that an administrator reverts then protects a page! What kind of neutrality is that? I can understand if the administrator wants to protect (I may disagree, but I understand). But I fail to understand why the administrator reverts! --Lanternix (talk) 23:15, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Hiberniantears, I'll accept your justification for your actions however what your actions resulted in was fulfilling a deliberate attempt by Dbachmann to sabotage months of work by other editors on this page. I recommend that the user Dbachmann be permanently banned from the article and that it be unlocked so that we can continue to build on and refine an article that was showing alot of progress. AncientObserver (talk) 04:31, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Seems like a bad case of WP:WRONGVERSION. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 07:01, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Support the action by Hiberniantears to prevent this article being hijacked by POV-pushers. --Folantin (talk) 07:39, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Hiberniantears action itself hijacked the article in favor of a biased POV. How do you justify reverting months of work on which the current editors have reached consensus in favor of an older version of the article which does an inferior job of addressing the topic? This is censorship. So far there has been no attempt at a civil discussion about the credibility of the material in the recent versions. Dbachmann came to the article started making disruptive edits without attempting to reach consensus with the other editors and has now sought the aid of Admins to do his dirty work once he realized that he could not have his way. AncientObserver (talk) 10:59, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Once upon a time, back in Wiki pre-history, this article was a section on the Afrocentrism article. It became obvious that it was uncontrollable, and it was spun off by an Afrocentrist editor (user:deeceevoice) to became a separate article. There Afrocentrists and White Supremacists, Arab-Egyptians, and anyone else with a racial axe to grind, battled incessantly over how white or black the Egyptians were - usually projecting modern Euro-American categories onto ancient peoples. The article became a complete and utter mess, with quotations from Herodotus intermingled with genetic studies, and with no sense of the changing contexts in which ideas about race developed and how this applies to the various modellings of 'race' in Egypt over history. The minimal version preferred by dab is one solution. The other (which was preferred by User:Zara1709) is to contextualise the debates clearly by showing how they emerge from race-politics and 'science' at various times. Unfortunately the "true believers" will not have either of these arguments, and the article invariably sinks into a morass of claims and counter-claims, competing pictures of "white looking" and "black looking" pharaohs etc. Paul B (talk) 11:13, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Paul, alot of progress have been made on this article. Attempts have been made to address all aspects of the history of this debate. There has been very little edit warring and a consensus was made on the direction the article would take. The latest action has set the page back not just in terms of material progress but intellectual maturity. The content of the article can be disputed in a civil manner on the discussion page. There is no justification for reverting months of progress because of the complaints of a certain editor who is clearly threatened by the material that has been presented. I agree with Wapondaponda, this action was uncalled for and needs to be corrected. AncientObserver (talk) 12:08, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

On the contrary, the article has become gibberish. Let's look at just the opening sentences:

"The Race of the ancient Egyptians is a subject that has attracted some controversy within mainstream academia and the broader society. The ancient Egyptians depicted themselves as having a different appearance to the other nations around them. The modern mainstream opinion is that the ancient Egyptians were a mixed race, being neither black nor white as per current terminology."

Being neither black nor white does not make you a "mixed race"! What is "the broader society"? The is virtually no useful meaning to this phrase. Paul B (talk) 14:06, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

This appears to be one of those things where there's a request for comment which does not get anything solved which is followed by a request for comment after another month or so which results in several users being banned from editing anything involving ancient Egypt. Is there a way we can cut out the middlemen here and simply allow the community to dole these things out, thereby preserving the content of Ancient Egyptian race controversy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) from point of view editors?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 11:44, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Given the fact that an article was created with the title in reverse, and redirected to another page where editing can proceed, my guess is that we can't control the problem at the admin level. See: Controversy surrounding the race of the ancient Egyptians vs Ancient Egyptian race controversy. Forking seems to be one of the issues surrounding the problem. Hiberniantears (talk) 12:40, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Ryulong's assessment. Let the editors police the article, only if there is excessive edit warring should middlemen intervene. Wapondaponda (talk) 03:15, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Protection Policy break

From WP:Protection policy:-

When protecting a page because of a content dispute, administrators normally protect the current version [ ... ] Since protecting the most current version sometimes rewards edit warring by establishing a contentious revision, administrators may also revert to an old version of the page predating the edit war if such a clear point exists.

Speaking as someone who has experience in this field, I think that the administrative actions of Hiberniantears were clearly a good faith attempt to follow policy, and thus the original complaint is unfounded. If there are any other immediate issues, perhaps they could be discussed in a separate thread. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 14:52, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

No such clear point exists. The version protected by Hibernantears is just as equally controversial. Wapondaponda (talk) 16:05, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Blueboar had previously reverted to the same version with a similar intent, so it's easy to see why Hiberniantears chose it. Wapondaponda, when you find yourself arguing that the wrong version of an article has have been protected, you are probably directing your energies in the wrong direction. You'd be better off spending your time on the article talk page, discussing what improvements should be made, with reference to reliable sources. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 18:46, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Precisely. My aim was not to reward any one group of editors with the correct version of the page. Instead, I looked at the ArbCom case, as well as the edit history to see which version, or relative example of a version, was being reverted to, and thus chose the February version because it does predate the sudden growth in the article which a casual reading revealed had very wide variance in subject matter from the February version. Hiberniantears (talk) 18:50, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

SheffieldSteel, the majority of people who regularly edit the article are in general agreement on the preferred version. Blueboar is not a regular editor to the article. His revert was based solely on the posting at the fringe theories noticeboard, the posting to which none of us regular editors were notified, ie Dbachmann did not post on talk page of Ancient Egyptian race controversy, that he had a thread on fringe theories noticeboard. He went behind our backs. We already have five pages of talk page archives on content, we don't need to re-discuss this. When the article was placed on probation there was a blocking spree of users and Moreshi took advantage to institute his "preferred version".These threats of blocks and other draconian measures basically scared away all editors to the article. In February a bunch of us editors who were not involved in that probation dispute started working on the article. We looked at what Moreshi had termed the "Afrocentrism meme" and we concluded that it was original research because we had clear evidence that scientists and scholars have been interested in the racial and ethnic origins of the Ancient Egyptians and a lot of this controversy had nothing to do with Afrocentrism. If you read the Descent of Man from 1871,Charles Darwin discusses the controversy, and yet he is not in any way connected to Afrocentrism. So our decision was to expand the subject to cover, anyone who has discussed the topic. This is clear in the talk pages archives. During these four months, Dbachmann had ample opportunity to share his views on the subject, I am sure he watches the page, he could have expressed his opinion at any time. Then one day in June, he unilaterally decides to revert four months of editing. Of course Administrators 99% of time back each other up, there is a little bit of old boys network, and Jimbo Wales has specifically said Admins shouldn't disagree with fellow admins, except in the most egregious cases. So I naturally expect a favoritism toward Dbachmann's opinions as opposed to us nobodies. Wapondaponda (talk) 19:17, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Immediate attention needed

Immediate attention is needed at Population history of Egypt and User:AncientObserver, who is reverting this article which is not about Afrocentrism or controversies to the preferred (massive, filled with fringy OR and SYNTH) version of Ancient Egyptian race controversy - he had previously moved the article to a new title, where he placed a draft of Ancient Egyptian race controversy, which was, again, the massive, fringy OR an SYNTH version. Weren't admins empowered to ban people who were disruptive from this entire topic area? Why are SPA's allowed to run roughshod? Hipocrite (talk) 12:45, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes. As per Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Dbachmann, User:AncientObserver has been blocked for 24 hours. Hiberniantears (talk) 13:05, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

If it's not broken, don't try to fix it

There was no problem beforehand, and admin intervention was unnecessary. As I mentioned previously, there was no edit warring for at least two months and the last time the article was protected was four months ago. We regular editors have started to self police the article because we find admin intervention tends to unnecessarily raise temperatures. We recognize that the article is on probation and we always stress that the article is on probation when edit wars seem apparent. I think a lot of the editors involved exercise a lot of restraint when working on the article.There are some editors who don't like the subject and the content, but it's a controversy, we shouldn't expect everyone to love it. The article seems to always invariably converge on roughly the same content, which means that the content is actually a fair representation of the controversy. Whether the article is protected for a week or 3 months, when the period expires, editors will be prepared to restore the content. Administrators should not take sides in content disputes, because the admin may have no knowledge whatsoever of the subject matter. Rather administrators should enforce policy. My advice is if it's not broken, don't try to fix it. Wapondaponda (talk) 15:45, 18 June 2009 (UTC) Already Administrators have started blocking users, such as Ancientobserver, totally unnecessary controversy. There is no need to raise temperatures and get editors upset causing them to make errors. Let sleeping dogs lie. Wapondaponda (talk) 15:48, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

The block is not punitive, but merely a means to temporarily stop disruptive editing. In this case, I protected a page in line with an ArbCom case, and when an editor created an alternative page in order to get around the page protection, then I blocked that editor for disrupting the page protection. Hiberniantears (talk) 18:53, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you did what you had do. But this was after the horse had left the barn. My point is that these editors put a lot of work into researching these articles and trying to reach a consensus. If you simply revert four months of work, its not surprising that someone makes a mistake. In other words you may actually be causing editors to break the rules. Wapondaponda (talk) 19:19, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Please explain why some admins have a problem with this article at all? One disruptive editor (with a long history of disruptive editing) should not be allowed to undo months of genuine good faith edits - why then is this bad behavioiur being rewarded like this? A succession of admins have exercised their own POV here to censor valid and referenced information purely because they don't agree with the content - why is this allowed? This topic is of much general interest - Google it and see how much interest you find - so why should there not be an article which discusses the actual content itself? If certain admins think a particular sentence is SYNTH then point it out and let's fix it, but a general statement that the "whole article is full of SYNTH" is unhelpful at best and dishonest at worst. If there is any merit at all to the suggestion that this article "needs" to be about merely the history of the controversy rather than the substance thereof (and I see no such merit, but whatever) then why can there not be a complementary article that does focus on the substance of the controversy? It seems that whichever way we turn there stands some admin with an array of WP:WHATEVER-THE-HELL to block that avenue, all seemingly aimed at preventing the substance of the debate from being aired. Scientology has an article that dicusses in detail the substance of the viewpoint, as does Timewave Zero and many others. Why should this particular controversy be so ruthlessly suppressed? Wdford (talk) 11:29, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Re protected

Whilst I'm quite happy with HT's protect, others seem to be using it as an excuse to complain. So I've reprotected it in my name [19]. All happy now? William M. Connolley (talk) 21:44, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

What difference does that make? The problem the majority of editors have is that the article has been reverted 4 months back and locked in the first place. We are very unhappy with the protection regardless of whose name it is under. AncientObserver (talk) 22:02, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

William, so now that you have protected the article, what are your plans and how long is it protected for. Are you the go to guy now. Wapondaponda (talk) 22:06, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

@AO: the difference is, you now have no case to make at ANI. Please go back to the article talk page and discuss substance rather than process. @W: I plan to watch the article talk page and see how you get along. The protection period is as before. Yes William M. Connolley (talk) 22:10, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

This is unbelievable! What "substance" should we discuss on the talk page? This perfectly good article was reverted and then blocked without any discussion on substance, based on the disruptive editing of a known disruptive editor. Apart from that one editor, who refused to discuss anything before making his disruptive edits, the other editors were working constructively on the substance of the article. Surely the correct approach would be to restore the article, and then challenge Dbachmann (and any others) to validate his proposed changes to the article on a case by case basis? Does Dbachmann have veto power over this article now? If not, then why is he being rewarded for breaking policy and accusing constructive editors of being trolls, despite several formal warnings on this very issue? Please could you clarify what "substance" you think we should discuss, and who we should be discussing it with? Wdford (talk) 22:20, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

How is it that the one "disruptive" user is the only one not an SPA? Hmmmm.... Auntie E (talk) 00:01, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Hiberniantears

The aforementioned administrator recently reverted to a four month old version of Ancient Egyptian race controversy and protected the article. It appears that the administrator has gotten too personally involved in the controversy to be impartial and objective. He is recently quoted as saying[20].

"Likewise, maybe RfC isn't exactly the thing, but we need something that allows us to enforce the ArbCom sanctions, while also having the authority to say "we won't say what the correct version of this article is, but we are saying that the current version is plainly wrong". As you note, no matter how many people we block or ban, new socks or meat puppets will always be hovering around waiting for us to take our eye off the ball, or to engage us to the point that we could be viewed by ArbCom as "involved". Unfortunately, it looks like those of us admins who feel this way are becoming an increasingly rare breed around here lately (Moreschie, Fut. Perf., ChrisO, etc)."

It's very telling that the administrator thinks in terms of "us" and "them". The administrator seems so willing to pull the trigger and block or ban users. Hiberniantears also seems to think that he has the knowledge and expertise to determine what "is plainly wrong". Unless he is an Egyptologist anthropologist or archeologist, he doesn't have the authority to determine what is plainly wrong. That is not for him to do, it is the community's role to determine content and the community has agreed to follow wikipedia's policies and guidelines when doing so. Finally the admin appears to disparage other administrators believing that only him and a select few (Moreschie, Fut. Perf., ChrisO, etc) know what they are doing.

It is clear that Hiberniantears has become personally involved. Wapondaponda (talk) 21:32, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I think you've misinterpreted the above post in every major respect. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 21:39, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I second SheffieldSteel. The evidence presented here so far is of an administrator using good judgement within policy, not anything abusive. Wapondaponda - please take this to the article talk page. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 21:47, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Isn't this already being discussed? Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 21:41, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't think I have misinterpreted the post, there are his own words. Wapondaponda (talk) 21:47, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't sound to me like he is using good judgment. It sounds like he has become personally involved, doesn't appear to show good faith in his fellow Admins and is branding the other editors on the article as troublemakers without just cause. He's not being objective at all. AncientObserver (talk) 21:54, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I would urge anyone reviewing this matter to read the entire post. This is an admin discussing how best to enforce NPOV policy while avoiding giving the appearance of being involved. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 21:56, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The best way to enforce NPOV policy is to point out specific instances of POV, and either reword them correctly yourself or else tag them and then challenge whoever to fix it up. Reverting four months of work back to a crippled version and then blocking it, is not going to fix anything. How could this be considered appropriate? Wdford (talk) 22:23, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

User:Swancookie and buzznet generally

User:Swancookie, who had not edited for 10 months, reappeared Tuesday and reopened a set of edit wars regarding several minor league celebrities associated with buzznet.com and Clint Catalyst. Between Tuesday's and today's edits, User:Swancookie has:

• violated 3RR on the article Jessicka
• reinserted an obvious copyvio/imdb cut-and-paste on Christian Hejnal [21]
• reinserted an conspicuously inaccurate, obviously unsourced "discography" listing Hejnal as performing on all the releases by bands with which Hejnal was ever affiliated, even when he had no involvement in the releases [22]
• reinserted various BLP-violating texts where the sourcing is either conspicuously unreliable or the text does not match the sourcing [23] (blog sourced criticism of ex=boyfriend for supposedly copycatting his public image); [24] (similar issues)
• repeatedly reinserted various promotional quotations from consipicuously unreliable sources (including a Wikipedia mirror, an obvious fan-site, and a music retail site (emusic.com) -- the last being flagrantly inappropriate, since the quotation isn't even found on the emusic page, nor is any mention of the musician involved) [25] [26]

and on and on . . .

To cap these efforts, User:Swancookie then posted an attack on his/her talk page impugning the good faith of three users/admins, "Rickey, Big Daddy or Bali" who had been involved in resolving editing disputes on the Clint Catalyst and now-deleted Lenora Claire articles. two members of the same community of self-promoting would-be celebrities. "Rickey" is User:Ricky81682; "Big Daddy" is User:Bigdaddy1981, and "Bali" is User:Bali_ultimate. (There's also an attack on me, of course -- actually more than one.) The user then added a "helpme" template accompanied by a not so terribly subtle insinuation that the three other editors/admins and I were acting out of anti-"LGBT" bias, which, given the complete absence of any basis for the claim, should be treated as a major civility violation [27].

I don't think it's an accident that Swancookie's activities today follow in the wake of attacks by various anons and SPAs on those of us who've been trying to clean up a surprisingly large walled garden of mutual/self-promotion -- note, for example, the attacks on Bali ultimate by User:Fairness Is A virtue and the particularly nasty attacks on Ricky81682 by User:POVbattler. There's been a fair amount of sockpuppeting in this dispute, which has been going on since early April. It's virtually a trademark of the other side in this dispute to accuse everyone who tries to clean up this rat's nest of bias and COI, but, as every uninvolved editor who's commented has noted, the claims have been made in the complete and absolute absence of any supporting evidence.

Cleaning up BLP problems is one of Wikipedia's more thankless tasks (just check out my talk page, I still take flak for an edit that Jimbo Wales said I might well have been thanked for). And removing BLP-violating promotional material is an easy way to become a target, as these disputes and the Clint Catalyst affaire make clear. (Even though removing BLP-violating material, including RS-violating promotional material, is exempt from 3RR restrictions, I try to stick to the 3RR/24hr standard to avoid opening unnecessary avenues for disputes, although I occasionally slip from that timeline, like I may have tonight. But Swancookie's edits included copyvios and clear non-promotional BLP violations, which called for an immediate response.)

Therefore, given all of the above, I'm asking for a (standard-length) block on Swancookie for edit warring/3RR, BLP/RS violations, and the implied personal attacks on the three editors/admins not directly involved in tonight's dispute, attacks which were particularly uncalled for.

I'd also like to see some wider discussion of the underlying issues regarding the problems coming from buzznet. Buzznet is a social networking site that encourages feral narcissists, and its standard page templates encourage its users to use Wikipedia to promote themselves and their friends. For examples, note on this page [28], under the "Promote Clint Catalyst" headline, the link to Catalyst's "WikiPedia" page (towards the lower right); similarly here [29] (Lenora Claire) and here [30] (Jared Gold) and here [31] (Jessicka) . I stumbled into this mess a few months back by removing inappropriate external links from one buzznetter's article, and I've been harassed by partisans recruited through that site ever since -- as have the admins and other editors who became involved in resolving that dispute, and followups. We need to stop this nonsense before buzznet makes MyWikiBiz and other sorts of paid editing look benign. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz ([[User talk:Hullaballoo Wolfowitz|talk]]) 02:03, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to try to not get into a long defensive diatribe here. There's a lot to say but I'd like to stay on topic. First and foremost neither article I edited has anything to do with Buzznet. The whole Buzznet tangent User:Hullaballoo Wolfowitz wrote has absolutely nothing to do with the articles I am editing. Neither Jessicka or Christian even have Buzznet accounts, I checked. I'm sorry but even mentioning Buzznet in this case is grasping at straws. There's no promoting of "Clint Catayst" either - the sections I was editing do not even mention that person.

"a music retail site (emusic.com)" The section is not a retail site it's a music review section. [32] removing section as I see the Scarling. review is not there. I will replace when it's re-added. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Swancookie (talk • contribs) 04:37, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Asking for a LGBT friendly editor/ admin. had nothing to do with you. I was going to ask them about something completely different. Is killing two birds with one stone against policy??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Swancookie (talk • contribs) 04:45, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

All I am doing is re-adding sections that User:Hullaballoo Wolfowitz blanked when they clearly had proper references. I left some of his edits as they did make sense but re-added sections that I thought necessary with proper references .

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not as well versed to wikipidian policy as User:Hullaballoo Wolfowitz but I am trying to strengthen articles not vandalism them in any way. Why call for a block? It's this type of behavior that is exacerbating some weird us against them mentality. New users are being bullied and talked down to by editors' like Hullaballoo Wolfowitz and some other editors who are very condescending and unhelpful.

I have not been recruited by anybody. I had worked on some these articles before and noticed some sections needed references. I also discovered that User:Hullaballoo Wolfowitz was spending a lot of time on certain articles and their edits were very aggressive. I investigated further by reading some of the comments made by other editors and decided to be bold an help edit. I was immediately scolded by this editor and now he is asking for a block just because we don't see eye to eye?

I did not personally attack anybody. All I asked is is to have an neutral administrator who was not one of the ones I mentioned as I believe that are all a little to close to this subject, might have a bias after dealing with other editors, and are not as patient with newer users as some other administrators might be.

I think you'll see the articles Jessicka & Christian Hejnal meet wiki standards. I am waiting for one reference link to be re-uploaded within the next 48 hours. [33] The rest of the reference links are solid. I in no way deserve a block because I don't agree with this very aggressive editor. Swancookie (talk) 04:05, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

If you haven't edited the article in months, how can you have an issue with me? I haven't touched the other articles unless your issue is that I've messed with your work at Clint Catalyst from last August. Assuming good faith seems like an unclear concept to you. Just state what your issue is and we can discuss it. Also, before any admin listens to the COI complaints, see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive193#COI_User:Hullaballoo_Wolfowitz for our most recent round of accusations. Wanting reliable sources and keeping the article in accordance with WP:BLP is NOT a COI problem. This kind of stuff is why we have a COI problem, and the fact that it comes directly from the people who are the subjects of the article is just the kind of intimidation we really should not be having here. I've received emails from someone claiming to be one of the BLPs at issue and it's all the same kind of speculation that Hullaballoo and everyone who disagrees with adding details about his amazing beautiful wedding speeches and the like are all out to personally get him, because of some nefarious secret personal COI. I've noticed you've readded the name-dropping of who attended the wedding again at Jessicka here, along with a mountain of other content. I suggest someone semi-protect (or even fully protect) all those pages and we can start the cleaning process yet again. This kind of nonsense needs to end. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:37, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree this nonsense needs to end. I don't have an issue with you. I just wanted an admin. with a clear head/clean slate on this topic. I've read all of the nonsense, it's easily accessible. You don't need to edit an article to know what's going on. Please see my reasons above of why I wanted a new neutral party. I have no recourse here as you are an admin. and I'm just an editor. There's no reason to semi protect these articles as I'm not vandalizing them. I really think you are overreacting and making an example of me because you are frustrated with this situation. Swancookie (talk) 04:52, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to ask you again: what is your issue with me that you want a "neutral" admin around? You cannot just go around saying you need someone new to review and not at least answer that question. So what exactly is going on that concerns you? You may as well respond here as anyone else is going to ask the same thing. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:16, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Also note that if you have a specific discussion on a talk page, you can always ask for third opinion. That might be more useful than simply asking for an outsider to get involved. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:26, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

So let's get this straight, Swancookie. You don't deny violating 3RR, you don't deny that you added back an obvious copyvio, you don't deny reinserting improperly sourced material, you don't deny that your editing violated WP:BLP and WP:RS the only thing you deny is that describing four other editors as biased and insinuating that their bias involves "LGBT issues." And now you demand the right to approve the admins who evaluate your behaviour. Your only substantive response is "Hey! Wolfowitz is a bad guy, leave me alone!" That's absolutely ridiculous, and a strong signal that you're not editing in good faith. You deserve the standard 3RR and civility bans here, and I don't see why you haven't already had them handed to you. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 12:55, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I've stopped editing (scrambled my password to avoid temptation) but am still looking at my talk page every day or so (habits are hard to break). What really prompted me to post is, wolfowitz and ricky are not getting any back up, this thread isn't even attracting any further comment from good users. The lack of backup from the wider community in dealing with the whole cabal of C-list celebrities and fanboys, their sockpuppets, their meatpuppets, the sockpuppets of their meatpuppets and their endless accusations/reversions/reinsertions of sources to buzznet, myspace and the like, is why i quit (among others). There is a whole culture here that, for some reason, coddles vandals, allows unacceptably sourced information to persist and tells users who have a grasp on and commitment to the core idea of wikipedia that they must either engage in endless, circular, illogical and fruitless conversations with users that have no interest in the encyclopedia and its broader interests or just give in, allow the promotional, unverifiable crap to remain. That's not only personally frustrating, but i increasingly came to see myself as a fool for engaging in this project; the project's stated goals are one thing, but in reality if fails them at a systemic level every day. My loss is no big deal -- users leave all the time, and i'm sure a few good users are picked up every day. But this is the environment that is being allowed to persist. This specific case is just one of an endless number of examples. Over time, people with a commitment to holding the line against this kind of garbage will give up, and myspaces takeover will be one step closer. Quoting some other user i saw somewhere, wikipedia is not supposed to be "jimbo's big bag 'o trivia" but that's what it looks like, more and more. (bali)24.185.240.180 (talk) 13:11, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Hullaballoo you are not innocent in this mess no matter what wiki policy you spout. All you have to do is go on your talk page and see how you have upset other editors by your very aggressive behavior. You have certainly exacerbated this situation. I understand that cleaning up BLP problems is one of Wikipedia's more thankless tasks but in doing so be prepared to discuss why you made your edits especially with newer users whom may not completely understand wiki policy you are spouting at them. I'm not asking you to dumb it down but why not at least try to be civil?

I never said any editors including yourself had any LGBT bias. This is something you are making up and are using in order to get people to see me a vandal or manipulator. I am neither. I want to ask an admin. versed on that topic a question. (this question is separate from our issue) I am asking you to assume good faith that I am telling you the truth and stop accusing me. Please don't put words in my mouth I added back content that I thought strengthened these articles. This content had valid references attached. My only crime, not agreeing with you.

Yes, I believe that you have a bias. Sorry but I do. You edit any articles attached to/mentioning Jessicka or Christian in order to discredit them because you had some altercation with editor Xtian1313 who claims to be Christian Hejnal. I feel you are gaming the system. I feel you are editing these articles until you can get them to a state where they can be deleted for lack of content.

You can't even admit when you are wrong. The whole Buzznet rant above has nothing to do with the articles I am editing yet you lump them in because they might have a link on a website to Clint Catalyst. These people are musicians not C-list celebrities and I don't think they need to be lumped into category because they have some loose association with people I believe you have a bias against.

Understand this, I expect civility because I think that's what wikipedia is built on. I am not demanding anything. I am not threatening anybody. Rather then have any civil discussion about content with me (actually explaining why you made your edits) you spout wiki policy and come here requesting me to be blocked. That's civil?

Ricky, Like I said above. I don't have a problem with you specifically. I just feel it would be best in this case to have a different admin. to review this situation. It's not because I feel you are not capable or a decent administrator, I believe that your patience has been tested by other editors here and that perhaps some of your frustration on this situation may spill over when dealing my issues. Is that feasible enough of an explanation? I don't mean any disrespect it's just how I feel.

I was in the process of asking for a third opinion when Hullaballoo brought this issue here and asked for me to be blocked. Swancookie (talk) 15:03, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

There's desperate promotion of fading C-list celebrities here. (That's very LA; anyone who's spent time in the LA club scene knows the type.) The Clint Catalyst article is full of links about the guy showing up at some club. I took out a few of those. The articles mentioned here could all use some trimming. When in doubt, go back to WP:BIO and look at what Wikipedia considers notable. --John Nagle (talk) 16:38, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Understood. I have spent time in the LA club scene and have not experienced what you are suggesting but hey different experiences, right? Just to be clear I am currently not editing the Clint Catalyst article. Is anybody associated with this person now a "buzznet junkie", Myspace celeb, c-list celebrity, or a LA scenester? This is the bias I'm speaking about. There's no reason to lump these articles together. I am editing articles of notable musicians / artists / producers whom are not C-list celebrities. I'll check out WP:BIO. Thanks John. Swancookie (talk) 17:25, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Below is an example of why I didn't want certain editors involved. HW is bringing the very editors I asked not to be involved while falsely accusing me of "insinuating that they have an anti-"LGBT" bias". I feel there's a high level of frustration and resentment dealing with certain articles that they feel are related to Clint Catalyst, buzznet, LA scenesters, Lenora Claire (the list is endless).....? I want to deal with a neutral third party from here on out. Swancookie (talk) 17:45, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Proposal going forward

Swancookie, I think it would be more productive if you could simply say what you want. If you concern is that discussions for new editors are going to like Talk:Clint_Catalyst#Jessicka_and_Christian_Hejnal_wedding, well, that's going to happen until they learn what the standards are here. I personally would be nicer if one talk page alone didn't have three sections collapsed because of nothing but incivility and personal attacks. If you want to deal with a neutral focus, then that means following policy. Neutrality doesn't just mean including every single flattering thing in these article with a neutral description. To keep on driving away everyone who disagrees and demanding someone new come in and have to repeat the same arguments again and again is exactly why those articles are in terrible shape and why we get these divergent views. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:04, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Understood. I realize you are giving me an example of behavior here, but again that is the Clint Catalyst talk page and I am not editing that article - nor do I plan on exhibiting that behavior, I assure you. I do plan on being bold and finding references for articles I feel are being (how can I eloquently put this without upsetting anybody) toyed with because of a personal bias. Moving forward can we all please try to not lump these articles together just because certain editors believe them to be in same LA cliche outside of wikipedia?

I agree attacks here are not necessary but I feel as if (Catalyst) editors are responding negativity because calling people they might respect c- list celebrities, worthless scenesters, and buzz net causalities- it's simply rude and counter productive. Sadly, these editors are responding to condescending tones used within the talk pages and in doing so violating wikipedia policy which is also counter productive. A little tolerance and patience goes a long way? That's why I was asking (not demanding) a neutral third party - in order to diffuse an already out of hand situation. Understood?

I believe the articles I am editing aren't in terrible shape, quite the contrary. Again, I can't speak for the Catalyst article as I've mostly read the talk page arguments not the actual text on the article itself.

I'm glad I'm no longer being threatened with a block. I also assure you that I was in no way insinuating that any editor involved in this mess has LGBT bias, that would just be out of line, unwarranted, and just stupid on my part.

I'm glad we are moving on from here. Not sure what the policy is on ignoring certain editors who refuse to have any rational discussion with you but I'm going to try doing that from here on out.

Swancookie (talk) 03:24, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

"these editors are responding to condescending tones used within the talk pages and in doing so violating wikipedia policy which is also counter productive." Are you referring to me? I must say that I am surprised given that I haven't the slightest idea who you are and have never come across you before. Moreover, my only substantive involvement with any of the existing articles you mention has been an attempt to improve the structure of the Clint Catalyst article. And that (now obviously moot effort) was limited to discussion on the talk page. Bigdaddy1981 (talk) 17:47, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

A fine example of fake civility from User:Swancookie. The user presents no evidence of bias, no evidence of the abusive behavior he/she claims, and complains about a block request for conspicuous, undenied 3RR violations. Note that while Swancookie complains about being associated with the Clint Catalyst article, he or she was the article's creator, and responsible for no small share of the inappropriate content in its bloated form. Swancookie, like several of the previous SPAs in this parade, regularly ignores WP:RS and related policies and harangues rather than engages in policy-based discussion regarding the removal or wretchedly sourced and unsourced claims. Bali ultimate said it perfectly: Swancookie is one of those people who demands that legitimate editors "engage in endless, circular, illogical and fruitless conversations with users that have no interest in the encyclopedia and its broader interests," and makes groundless accusations when his/her chants amounting to "I WILL NOT BE IGNORED" are ignored. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 19:30, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Like I said I'm not editing the Clint Cataylst article at the moment as there are a lot of editors already on the case and I'm hoping it can all get sorted out without my help. I've read it's talk page and seen all the "players" in this cluster...K. I don't want that circus brought to other articles. I'm trying to separate these articles so they can be edited properly and accordingly.

User:Bigdaddy1981 No, I'm not referring to you. I'm mistaken. Forgive me for dragging you once again into this Hullaballoo/buzznet/BS./False accusation/Clint Catalyst nightmare.

Hullaballoo, I'm not demanding anything. I'm requesting you be civil and stop overreacting. There's a difference. You are grouping me in with a group of individuals/SPAs because you don't like that I'm standing my ground. Just like you falsely group articles Clint Catalyst, Christian Hejnal, Jessicka, Lenora Claire together into Buzznet celebs because you feel these people are not notable.

[34] Here once again Hullaballoo describes the articles I'm editing as those of "certain minor-league celebrities" This is really getting tiresome. Hullaballoo, I'm asking you to be civil, I'm asking you to engage me editor to editor, I'm asking we both work toward improving this articles, I'm asking you to stop wasting other people's time. I'm asking you to stop getting other editors whom might be frustrated with this situation to side with you get involved. If you are truly interested in improving these articles (and don't have some agenda or bias against them) and are not planning to widdle them down to nothing and then nominate them for deletion, then show a sign of good faith here.

I can't find the page on 3RR violations- You've not denied that you have a bias here and are slowly working towards deletion of these articles because you deem "certain minor-league celebrities" not notable.

PS. I am a "legitimate editor". Who gives you the right to say I'm not.

Swancookie (talk) 19:46, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Stop making things up. Your false charges of bias are tiresome. Your claim that describing minor-league celebrities as "minor-league celebrities" is somehow inappropriate is nonsense. Removing large quantities of badly sourced, promotional content from articles on minor-league celebrities improves those articles, in terms of what Wikipedia policy calls for -- and, in fact, under WP:BLP, it's required. You have never made a single, substantive policy-related comment in these discussions. And until you do, and until you stop making your continuous string of false personal attacks, Wikipedia policy does not require anyone to "engage" with you. In other words, until you discuss actual Wikipedia policies rather than tossing insults around, you pretty much will be ignored. Notice your complete lack of support from the community. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk)

20:12, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Stop making things up."

You've made several false accusations about me, but that's alright because you can quickly spout policy? You accuse all articles involved to be self promoting-Buzznet related. When you are proven wrong you spout more policy! Again , take your own advice. You told three editors that I insinuated that they had LGBT bias, which I never did!!! I don't see anybody supporting you? This is not a popularity contest. Once again, for the 100th time. Jessicka is a musician/ artist.. and Christian Hejnal is a musician/ visual effects producer. There's not one article ANYWHERE that claims them to be celebrities, "minor-league" or otherwise. I am trying to be civil. You have no interest - probably because of what I've suspected from the get go. You have some weird agenda and will edit these articles until the can be nominated for deletion. Asking me to be banned only helps you with your agenda. This isn't a game. You clearly can't admit when you are wrong. In my opinion that's not a trait of an editor suited for wikipedia.

I'm delighted you'll ignore me. I will do the same. I will find references for these articles and be the best editor I can be. Swancookie (talk) 20:54, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Anyone with expertise in Portals and categories

Gregbard (talk · contribs) has recently created at least two new portals, Portal:Social and political philosophy and Portal:Philosophy/Subportals and is busy changing and adding categories at a very rapid rate. His justification is at User:Gregbard/Concepts and theories. I found him at Uniformitarianism (science) where his edits were twice reverted by two different editors when he tried to rewrite the lead to make it fall in line with his pov on science and philosophy. Another editor has expressed a bit of unhappiness on his talk page. I'm concerned that he is making a very large number of changes in a very short period of time that may be problematical. Dougweller (talk) 07:50, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

The "portals" and "theories" are two unrelated activities. I invite any questions about either of them. Does anyone have a particular complain other than "Uniformitarianism"? It is, in fact, a theory, btw. That is a more proper and neutral way to describe these things. Please do offer input on the whole concepts and theories organization. Be well (and don't overreact next time) Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 07:58, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

My point there was about the way you handled it. Everyone is entitled to a pov, but you made a major change to the lead without discussion. I've seen uniformitarianism described as a philosophy, a theory, a null hypothesis, a creed, a principle, etc. I only raised the example because that's where I ran across you and you did, after all, do a major rewrite of the lead without discussion. Maybe that's just you being Bold. I don't think I'm over-reacting in asking for advice. I may be quite wrong, but I'm willing to be wrong about areas of Wikipedia I still don't know that much about. Dougweller (talk) 10:23, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I am less concerned about the portals than the categories. Gregbard has been doing many changes in advance of Cfd nominations that have then failed, like this this and this one. Unfortunately there seem to be few other editors in the area. He invites comment and collaboration but can be very bitey when others do comment - eg (not to me or Doug) here. Superior knowledge is often claimed, and a very high-handed approach taken. A consistent trend is to bring almost everything under his philosophy scheme; this time it is Category:Theories, which has expanded to cover most of science, religion, politics and the arts. Last year his Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy/Aesthetics tagged vast numbers of Visual arts articles (but not others), but seems to have done little else. I wouldn't mind so much if the "theory" initiative was restricted to grouping existing categories, but he is now making many changes to the contents and arrangements of categories further down the tree to match his grand scheme at User:Gregbard/Concepts and theories, which seems to include a good deal of OR to me. Johnbod (talk) 11:48, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Background information on Gregbard

Gregbard has also caused a lot of disruption around mathematics articles in the past. Normally he stays around mathematical logic, where we are all familiar with him. I think he has an ideology that every word that was ever used by a logic author has only one, very specific, very technical meaning, which is usually one given to it by a philosopher who wrote on mathematical logic. In the past (April last year) he has gone as far as spamming completely unrelated topics with an Easter egg link. This is how our article consistency (to which consistent redirects) started at the time:

In mathematical logic, a logical system is consistent if it does not contain a contradiction, or, more precisely, for no proposition φ is it the case that both φ and ¬φ are theorems of that system. [35]

On 17/18 April 2008 he created 200 links to consistent, sometimes in contexts where it is not reasonable to argue that this technical sense was meant, and sometimes also in literal quotations or inappropriately on disambiguation pages. [36] Some example snippets, starting with some of the most atrocious (note the link for "interpretation"):

• This is in the vicinity of the former Pelusian arm of the Nile and is thus still consistent with the traditional interpretation. [37]
• The first principle that all Web design should understand when they are creating an effective web based UCD is navigation aids that are clear and consistent. [38]
• those attitude objects which directly implicate personal consequences on the behalf of the individual are more likely to produce consistent behaviors (Crano, 1995). [39]
• NIEM was designed as a core set of building blocks that are used as a consistent baseline for creating exchange documents and transactions across government. [40]
• They found that the SNC meteorites possess chemical, isotopic, and petrologic features consistent with data available from Mars at the time [41]
• Under this approach the traditional models of modern financial economics can coexist alongside behavioral models in an intellectually consistent manner. [42]
• After some delay, the U.S. Administration accepted the amended Australian legislation as being consistent with implementation of the agreement. [43]
• believes that Herbert "develops the Spencerian idea of equal freedom to its logically consistent anarcho-capitalist end" as noted in a bibliography. [44]
• "The libertarian, if he is to be logically consistent, must urge zero crime, not a small amount of it." [45]
• Some libertarians argue that anarcho-capitalism is the only logically consistent form of libertarian belief. [46]
• Such a time frame is logically consistent with the aging of the series' characters between Half-Life and Half-Life 2. [47]
• Many do not believe that generic classification of musical styles is possible in any logically consistent way, and also argue that doing so sets limitations and boundaries that hinder the development of music. [48]
• Kardec also argues that what makes the spiritist doctrine reliable is that it is not self-contradictory: the elevated spirits, channeled by mediums of goodwill all gave the same message and this message is logically consistent both internally and with what Christ taught. [49]
• In the second stage he argues positively that the existence of God and the existence of evil are logically consistent. [50]
• The historical research behind the series overall is impressive, and for the most part, historic characters are given believable and logically consistent roles and personality characterizations consistent with the historical record. [51]

For his reactions to complaints, see complaints on his talk page and discussion at WikiProject Mathematics.

In July 2007 he started attacking the article Theorem. Here, over a period of almost 2 years but thankfully with a low intensity for most of the time, he has been pushing the eccentric POV that a theorem is primarily a precisely defined technical notion in logic. Against a large number of professional mathematicians, including several mathematical logicians. See Talk:Theorem for his occasional filibustering, and [52] for a related discussion with CRGreathouse.

Gregbard has been a long-term problem for some of the more serious areas covered by Wikipedia. Mathematics is relatively well represented on Wikipedia in terms of editor numbers, but I am worried about the time he is wasting for other editors and the damage he is doing in philosophy. Perhaps a mentor could help? --Hans Adler 18:54, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Any actual wrong doing?

I am a good faith editor. I am not perfect, however I am still very productive for Wikipedia. I do a lot of work in many and varied areas. This complaint originally arose because of a series of edits at Uniformitarianism (science). At that time I was working on categorizing a long list of "isms" so as to make sure that the appropriate ones were accounted-for within the category tree of Category:Theories. I had appropriately placed Uniformitarianism in the Category:Metatheory, a category for theories about scientific theories which is under the "philosophy of science" category. (Perhaps the category should be called "metatheory of science" so as to be perfectly clear.) Shortly after, I saw that it was reverted with the explanation that it wasn't a theory, which is incorrect. I decided to take the time to establish in the lead the format I have proposed at User:Gregbard/Concepts and theories. In general, articles should somehow justify the categories they are in, so therefore it is also part of my plan to go through and make that they do. However I was only taking the time now at uniformitarianism because of the revert. Well I had no idea that "uniformitarianism" was such a hotbed of concern with a pocket of editors. After all, I have just finished a very long list of isms, that took a few days with no special incidents like this.

I think the original complainant is over-reacting. Concerning the two reverts, I am mainly concerned with it being properly placed in the "metatheory" category with the rest, and I will be doing that presently. I'm sure we can come to an understanding about the lead paragraph if we can have a civil discussion about it. For the record "reporting an incident" is not a civil relationship. I haven't engaged with you on any uncivil level, and I don't see why you have escalated this to the level of "incident." There are apparently NO issues arising from the portals so calling that into question really just supports my claim that you are over-reacting. I will be removing the unproductive discussion at Portal talk:Philosophy.

Please be assured. Yes uniformitarianism is a theory. There is nothing wrong with being a theory especially a very good theory like this one. Your accusation that I am trying to insert a POV is precisely wrong. Not just any formulation or terminology you don't like is pushing a "POV". "POV" means something specific. Now I realize that some people use the word "theory" negatively as in: "Evolution is just a theory, that means it not true!" This is an improper analysis that is very popularly held because of the misunderstanding about what a theory is. Certainly evolution, (and uniformitarianism) is a theory. However it is a strongly supported theory, as is uniformitarianism. "Creation science" is also a theory, a very weak theory, and a non-empirical one at that. All of this consists in a proper analysis of things.

So, in reality your accusation that it is "POV" itself is POV. Calling it a theory is the proper, neutral term, and all the other formulations are attempts to impart a POV. I'm sorry, but this is the proper analysis also. We have to make sure to frame up the situation correctly so that articles communicate what needs to be communicated. I.e., every article about theories should:

• tell what it is a theory about
• tell what the theory is trying to explain
• tell what observation or idea the theory is based on

Is that so mush to ask? Is that POV? No. It is actually a well thought out guideline for organizing things so as to prevent POV.

At this point let me state officially here at "incidents" that Hans' campaign of high rhetoric, trumped up accusations, a drumbeat for my being banned, have risen to the level of bullying harassment. This is a request for an administrator to specifically tell him to knock it off. He has been told to calm down by other editors on more than one occasion and by myself several times. He is an ideological editor. He is overly combative, and I have no choice at this point, but to site this attack on me given this weak opportunity at "incidents" as supporting my claim of on-going harassment.

Johnbod, your account of things is greatly exaggerated. It seems to me that you like Hans have decided to use this opportunity to release your bowels. I don't think that's very honorable quite frankly. I find your disparagement of my work in the philosophy department to be very unfortunate. I have not done anything wrong. You should be ashamed to be attacking me at "incidents" when there is no incident.

If there are no further complaints, I would invite a discussion about these issues from any admins monitoring this discussion who have not previously had any issues with me. I invite a full investigation. I stand by my contributions.Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 20:00, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The only reason Uniformitarianism (science) comes into this at all is because that is where I noticed you. Everyone has a pov, a conceptual framework through which they view the world, and you aren't an exception. What I noticed first was that you had decided to act unilaterally on the lead. Which of course is also ok, after all, we have WP:BRD - but still, discussion on the talk page is a good idea on an article which is actively being edited. Still, no big deal, and you are making far too much of it as it is not particularly a concern of mine and is something that should be discussed on the article talk page, not here. It was only when I looked at your edit history and saw such fast moving activity that I became concerned. I wanted advice from Admins with more experience in these fields and who could intervene if they saw a problem, which is why I came here. I will add that if you want good faith to be assumed about your work, you should offer it to other editors as well. Methinks you protest too much. Dougweller (talk) 20:43, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Your use of the term "POV" is not appropriate. Yes everyone has a POV, but it is not POV to call uniformitarianism a theory --it's the proper term. I'm sorry, but we really need to be clear about that. You also now have accused me of not having good faith in others which is also not the case. I object to the accusations, I haven't attributed any ulterior motivations about them. You are not careful about the accusations you make. Furthermore, I have had repeated accusations leveled at me of equal non-validity. I'm quite tired of it understandably. So do I protest too much or should I just let the unfair accusations stack up? That's a bit of an unfair position to be in. So far we have no wrong doing, and a lot of bowel releasing. So this has been a big waste of time Doug. Be well, Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 21:06, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Whatever, as I said, that was not a big deal for me. I see now that you have deleted my comments on a talk page [53]. Dougweller (talk) 21:12, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I absolutely did remove those comments not relevant to the portal as previously noted here that I would. I would like to engage you in a civil discussion in the future perhaps at uniformitarianism, however you are still demonstrating a need to disparage me. I would like to get along, but you obviously not gotten the clue to knock it off. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 21:23, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

User:Wikidea, personal attacks and harassment

User Wikidea (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is currently under community sanctions because of incivility. During last month he began to make some, in my view, disruptive and uncivil edits on talk pages. Here he accused editors for "screwing it up", making the edits that are "very, very, very dumb", and to one editor he said "I'm staggered by your bias, and lack of knowledge". After ten days he returned with comment how we are "still screwing up this page" and "giving into stupidity because I'm afraid you don't know better". He also seems to have something personally against me accusing me of "inserting rubbish into this encyclopedia" and "bring nothing". After his comment was removed and he was warned by other editor [54] he left this satirical comment on article's talk page.

I would appreciate if some administrator could have a look into this and maybe put me on the list of people to whom Wikidea is banned from interacting with or commenting on. -- Vision Thing -- 09:05, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Persistent, disruptive editing by User:Vision Thing, again

Replying to the above, you can see the latest page on Talk:Paul Krugman where I noted him doing the same as he always does: this was my response in support of him stopping continuing to mess around with the page: here; and then he asked me a straight forward question, "do you have something against me". When people ask me straight forward questions, I reply. I don't think that's wrong. Here's my first reply, and second reply. If he didn't want a reply, he should not have asked. If he didn't want criticism, he should not continue, persistently, disruptively to edit this encyclopedia.

But guess what, it's not only me who thinks this! Here was my last forced complaint on ANI. But surprise, there are stacks of others! I suggest those interested people do a search. Just three examples from the top of the list:

• Here's a complaint about pushing a POV on what appears to be his favourite topic of Anarcho-Capitalism.
• Here's a complaint about Vision Thing being the same user as a banned user
• Here's a complaint of him knowingly inserting false info on Herbert Simon.

And have a look at the extraordinary level of belligerent behaviour right through Talk:Economic freedom. As you can see, he is now messing around with the Paul Krugman article. I don't think he brings anything to this encyclopedia. On the contrary he aggravates people everywhere he goes. He has not made any positive contributions that I can see at all. I have called him a WP:Troll before, and whatever misunderstanding I have of that word, it is true that his behaviour is persistently disruptive. So I think he (and whatever sock puppets) should be removed. Wikidea 10:51, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I have been editing Wikipedia for over three years. Of course I had disputes with other editors over that time but they were all settled in a civilized way and I have never insulted anyone. Also, you are insulting not just me but other editors as well which indicates that there is a larger problem here. -- Vision Thing -- 12:04, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Basing myself on three (And likely four) diffs you have added i cannot say you are exactly innocent yourself. I see two cases of borderline civility behavior: [55] [56]. Then i see that you have openened an ANI topic about the same editor before: [57] 6 months ago - With all due respect, but do i see an example of hounding here? . And last i see this sarcasm towards Vision. [58]

I have been checking random edits for the both of you, and in all due rights i cannot say that either of you qualify as vandalsm or bad faith editors (At least on first sight). My conclusion would be that this is simply a dispute stretched out over multiple article's. Asking for an outright block based upon an unproven case that is a little under three years old is a bit over the top, don't you think? I would suggest trying to resolve this apparently long standing dispute trough WP:WQA, or in case you cannot agree on a non binding resolution, trough WP:DR. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 12:54, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

You might have a point with wikihounding. According to the article's talk page history he had never made one comment before two days ago. And then he made 3 comments all directed against me personally and unrelated to the topic [59], [60], [61]. Here are my previous two reports on him that were followed by blocks and community sanctions: 1, 2. -- Vision Thing -- 08:48, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

WP:COI issues re plastic surgery articles

User:Bhalberg has made a series of edits that primarily seem to be related to promoting a particular plastic surgeon that either is the user or that the user has a close connection to. Even the relatively innocuous File:Dr. Dayan Rhinoplasty.jpg has a description of "Dr. Steven H. Dayan Board Certified Facial Plastic Surgeon http://www.drdayan.com See our rhinoplasty video featured on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ln4w9dOJK4". Other edits have been even more explicitly spammy, such as this one at Rhinoplasy which asks readers to click on a photo for more information. The pictures upload are useful and may well be relevant, but all seem to be done so as to promote the services of Dr. Dayan. Alansohn (talk) 18:12, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

The image also has copyright/licensing issues, as it claims to have permission from the original owner but provides no evidence for that claim. Shereth 18:23, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Have tagged the rhinoplasty before and after for PUI: regardless of licensing it lacks model permission. Durova^Charge! 20:06, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

There's a somewhat related discussion of "Private practice 'Before & After' shots" here, where after making a change one editor was contacted by a plastic surgeon who said he was "there first", and would appreciate it if the editor would leave his work alone. --CliffC (talk) 22:48, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, in principle there's no need to outright reject this material as long as the personality rights issues are properly addressed via OTRS and the hosting page description doesn't amount to blatant advertising. But a heavy-handed approach isn't welcome. Durova^Charge! 16:01, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Unresolved - 66.190.29.150

66.190.29.150 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) 66.190.29.150 (talk · contribs) is edit-warring on several articles & the talk pages of those are full of PAs from him, mainly him accusing others of British POV pusshing. (The funniest one is on Slick tyre where rather than try to get the article's title changed he keeps changing 'tyre' to 'tire' within the article). His talk page is littered with warnings. He hasn't actually gone over 3RR yet, and I'm involved in one of the articles. Dougweller (talk) 01:35, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to add to this. He is continually posting at Talk:Amesbury Archer in a way that I would call spam more than anything else. I know enough about the subject to be able to work out that he clearly doesn't know anything about it. At the risk of making a personal attack (not my intent here, I just want to tell you how I see it) judging from his methods of ignoring questions raised on the talk page and trying to extend an argument, I think he's only here as a persistent vandal (or WP:troll), not to contribute anything meaningful to articles. This would seem to be backed up by the problems other editors are having with him. I have no intention to hide facts about the article and would only welcome its expansion in a logical and meaningful form, unfortunately his edits seem designed to antagonise other editors so that he can have an argument. His insistence that anyone disagreeing with him is pushing a British POV is totally nonsensical on an article about Ancient History, yet he's doing it. I'm happy to be open about the facts of the Amesbury Archer and have even incorporated some of his views into the article, but his offensive tone, continual PA's and questioning of other editors knowledge and motivations is pathetic. Even got me a bit annoyed for a moment. Cheers Ranger Steve (talk) 19:45, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Agree. The consistent personal attacks and offensive tone has become disruptive on several articles. He has continued posting personal attacks, I note, after a last warning to stop or else be blocked. I would suggest we carry through with that.

Note that the IP was blocked for 6 months in February 2008 as a sockpuppet of banned User:Ernham (see here. I don't know if that's still relevant, but I think it's worth mentioning. Pfainuk talk 20:27, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Agree. Ah yes, I've seen this one as well and had half a mind to raise it here. Clearly someone who knows wiki policies and only seems interested in trying to start pointless arguments. Sails close on 3RR but doesn't make the 4th edit. Bizarre, seems to set out to disrupt. Justin talk 22:41, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Definite intent to disrupt, I would say, based on attitude and approach. Language changes at Slick tyre ("It is not my problem the first person to start the wiki used the incorrect variant spelling"), removing properly cited material at Falkland Islands ("now like a pack of wild dogs people swarm to push a British POV"), several nasty attacks against Justin ("abusive, british POV pushing wiki stalker"), and so on. --Ckatz^chat_spy 23:08, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth I think he just likes arguing with people on talk pages. He'll ignore your questions and then accuse you of exactly what he's guilty of, constantly trying to get people to rise to his baits. At Amesbury Archer it looks to me as if he watched a BBC Timewatch program called Stonehenge Decoded (I think it was broadcast in the States with Carrie Fisher narrating it) and is basing all his arguments off of it, trying to come across as an expert. I can see from his comments that he knows very little beyond this, and I suspect the same is true at other articles he edits. It's amusing that one BBC article is Gods truth, but another is totally wrong because it disagrees - but only he is in a position to judge this for us. That alone shows his intent I think, and leads to his next ploy to start a fight - insulting everyone he can as quickly as possible Ranger Steve (talk) 23:40, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Is it possible to get some sort of consensus here folks? It seems to me that if this user is merely a sockpuppet of an already banned user, then the logic of originally banning him still stands. Different account, same user. No change in ways either! Ranger Steve (talk) 21:02, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Hello folks. I notice this issue had been archived but was not reolved, so as per the instructions above I've reinstated it. Is there any chance an uninvolved admin could have a look into it? This guy did seem to push it too far after all, he's a sock puppet and kept overstepping the mark despite final warnings. Cheers Ranger Steve (talk) 19:17, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Indeed he feels emboldened to return and try to restart old arguments see [62]

This needs more diffs. I looked through today's edits for this user and saw only positive contributions and civil discourse. – Quadell ^(talk) 23:27, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Consistency of editor interest suggests this really is User:Ernham, editing in spite of being banned in 2007. The original ban discussion is here. Ernham followed tennis and auto racing, and here we have the IP working on tennis articles and arguing about Slick tyres, which are used in racing. Note that no checkuser is required, since this is the same IP than Luna Santin blocked for six months as Ernham early in 2008. I suggest that a new 6-month block be imposed, and we agree to let Ernham ask for unbanning on the talk page of his registered account. His quarrelsome return to editing suggests that not all the original issues have gone away. EdJohnston (talk) 00:00, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Agree His contributions aren't positive, he seeks to start an argument, targeting controversial topics. His antics wast valuable editing time and needlessly create conflict. Justin talk 00:05, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Certainly he has the whole anti-British thing going on that Ernham did. If the IP is a known venue for ban evasion, and if it is exhibiting that same behaviour, lets block it again for another few months if that is the case. Ban evasion is bad, mmkay? --Narson ~ Talk • 07:34, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd agree. His extremely discriminatory comments, insults, vandalism and disruption were reason enough to ban him several days ago and I really think the warnings should be stuck to. I imagine he'll be back again though... Ranger Steve (talk) 07:38, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Double Checking

I noticed this diff which basically retired User:Neurolysis using an IP. The edit summary says to email for confirmation if required. Probably all on the up and up, as Neuro hasn't been extremely active lately anyway. Just thought it best to bring it to attention to be on the safe side. — Ched :  ?  00:12, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Yawn... :-) Tan | 39 00:23, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I think it is Neurolysis. The IP geolocates to Irlam, Manchester, and Neurolysis is, AFAIK, from the general area, because he came to the Manchester Meetup a few months ago. Sceptre ^(talk) 00:29, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

ChildOfMidnight

Please deal with this in all due haste, please. ChildOfMidnight is re-introducing text lifted entirely from an AP story, with a few words changed here and there, but not enough to meet the threshold of originality. It's still copyright infringement even if you put "According to..." before it. (This reminds me of a Little Britain sketch where a Barbara Cartland parody used to pad her books out by out-and-out plaigarism). Sceptre ^(talk) 00:18, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Did you bring it to article talk or discuss it with the user? It doesn't appear he has even been notified of this thread. Law _{type! snype?} 00:36, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this requires administrator attention right now. The material inserted by ChildofMidnight clearly has copyright issues (e.g. compare the addition of "Johnson and St. HOPE agreed to repay half of the $847,000 in grant money they had received from AmeriCorps between 2004 and 2007" to our article with "Johnson and St. HOPE ultimately agreed to repay half of $847,000 in grants they had received from AmeriCorps between 2004 and 2007" in this AP article), and that editor cannot simply re-instate that information without doing a much better job of paraphrasing/writing original text.

But I don't think this needed to come here - talk page discussion should have been able to clear this up but that has not happened so far. If ChildofMidnight continues to add this info as is we have a problem, but I'm guessing that the edit summary in this edit by Sceptre may have brought home the point to C of M that there are copyright issues here. I'll try to keep an eye on the situation over at Gerald Walpin firing but otherwise I think we can mark this resolved. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 02:07, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Action at this point is unnecessary - CoM will be topic banned from Obama-related topics (which this clearly is) sometime this evening, when a clerk closes the Obama arbitration case. Nathan ^T 02:45, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

• I disagree. Action is clearly needed. Sceptre is in violation of edit warring and 3RR guidelines and his editing is disruptive and used to win a battle against policy instead of reaching a consensus. The article has been edited by numerous editors who added and reviewed the content, and he has no business making wholesale changes repeatedly without any discussion.

His first edit summary was misleading, he said the content wasn't attributed ("asserted") when it clearly was with both a citation AND a statement of where it was from, his second edit didn't even have an edit summary, and then he reverted again a third time. Sceptre never posted to the article discussion page, where one of the bits he removed is actually discussed.

I didn't add the content originally, but clearly it's attributed and well sourced. If someone wants to rework it they're welcome to it, but drive by POV pushing by an abusive editor who leaves edit summaries like this one [63] clearly isn't helpful. It verges on vandalism. Bigtimepeace, a frequent aider and abetter of this type of editing, left out the beginning of the sentence where it said: The "AP reported that...". But I'm sure it was a harmless oversight. He also missed the other bit that Sceptre removed that is discussed on the talk page where consensus is that it's reliably sourced. But nevermind. No one's perfect. Meanwhile another POV pusher, Tarc, is trying to have the whole article deleted. Such is the world we live in on Wikipedia. And yes, Arbcom has chosen to punish me. So much for NPOV. Oh well. Cheerios! ChildofMidnight (talk) 05:32, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The text is a clear copyright violation. Attribution and sourcing are not any sort of defense for copyright infringement, it's a defense for plagiarism. You need to understand the difference if you are going to make contributions here. DreamGuy (talk) 12:58, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes CoM I do believe that it should be deleted, but thankfully for all involved I don't get to decide things by fiat. :) The AfD is trending away from my point of view that the literal "controversy" of the firing is chiefly supported by non-reliable sources, while RS mainly report the incident of the firing itself sans Watergate-like overtones that some editors are looking for. But such is life in a collaborative editing environment, eh? Not to be (overly) snarky, but perhaps if you understood that better then you wouldn't be headed for a 6-month topic timeout. Tarc (talk) 13:24, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The pith is, if you want to lift a sentence or two, ok, put it in quotes and give the source in the text along with a citation. If you want to lift more content than that, you must thoroughly rewrite it in your own words from beginning to end and still cite it to the source. A paraphrase stirred up by swapping out a few words along with a bit of jumbling here and there will not do, even if it's cited to the source. Gwen Gale (talk) 13:08, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

{{Sofixit}} This is a collaborative encyclopedia. ChildofMidnight (talk) 15:40, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The {{Sofixit}} reply isn't adequate here; it gives the impression that ChildofMidnight confuses matters that touch upon intellectual property law with minor formatting concerns. Durova^Charge! 16:08, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

With all due respect, I'm sure I'm not the only one who possesses the capability to add quotation marks? Saying "The Associated Press reported that..." is also very strong attribution. My point was that it's best to improve the encyclopedia collaboratively and that we are all empowered to do so and to fix a problem when we see it rather than engage in needless dramatics. ChildofMidnight (talk) 17:18, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

What people object to is when one editor habitually creates messes that other editors are required to clean up. If somebody tells you that you are doing something the wrong way, and multiple other editors concur, then you need to acknowledge their concerns and undertake to improve your editing. Jehochman ^Talk 17:22, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Do you even understand that what you did violates someone's copyright? This is not a matter of telling someone else to fix it. Shell ^babelfish 17:36, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I clean up messes all the time. My reversion of Sceptre's attack on content is just one example.

The idea that a sentence starting with "The Associated Press reported...", and then describing what they reported, is a copyright violation is an interesting assertion. I think those issues should be discussed on the wp:plagarism talk page.

I have attempted to do some fixing on the article in question. Generally I try to avoid those topics because the POV pushers are so hostile and nasty, and no admin or arbcom has been willing to do anything positive to help solve the problem (and many such as BigtimePeace actually contribute to it and reinforce the inappropriate behaviors).

If there are editors who want to beat me up go for my good work here that's up to them. But I'm very concerned that the editing process that Durova advocates amounts to wp:snyth. I've tried to look through her article contributions to evaluate her approach, but I couldn't find very many articles and the ones I found have offline sources. So maybe someone can point me to other articles or content she's written?

What's clear is that we have a group of non-article contributing editors who "patrol" our political content and attempt to enforce their personal point of view on article content. This is a grotesque and unambiguous violation of our Neutral Point of View policy (a core policy) and it should be addressed. That Arbcom has failed to do so is a very bad reflection on them, but I'm well aware that the world and Wikipedia aren't perfect. Cheers! ChildofMidnight (talk) 17:51, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Assumptions of bad faith and accusations of grand conspiracies are not helpful, especially when you fail to present any evidence whatsoever. If you do not understand the advice given, ask politely for clarifications and examples. Don't attack the editors who are trying to help you. Jehochman ^Talk 18:04, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

That's just about as clear an "I don't get it" as ChildofMidnight could have possibly offered. This wasn't a description of what was reported this was a clear copy/paste issue. Unless I'm missing something here, I'm pretty concerned about this apparent lack of understanding when it comes to copyrights. Shell ^babelfish 18:36, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

<outdent> Actually Shell, unlike the rest of you, I made a good faith effort to address the concerns expressed some time ago. I guess you just didn't notice? ChildofMidnight (talk) 18:41, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed that you did very little to resolve the issue, stubbornly pretended that other editors were the problem and continued to reinsert what a fair number of people have told you is a copyright violation. None of that strikes me as good faith or addressing the concerns, but please, is there's someone in this thread you haven't attacked yet, keep at it. Shell ^babelfish 18:47, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

That's absolutely 100% false. I took note of the comments and as was suggested by Gwen Gale, I reinserted the sentence as a quotation. I haven't reinserted it otherwise since the start of this discussion. This contrasts with Sceptre who is now reverted a 5th time. Take your smears elsewhere. ChildofMidnight (talk) 19:05, 19 June 2009 (UTC) <clarified and updated>

Returning after a few hours and am quite concerned to see the direction this has taken. Childofmidnight now appears to be confusing copyright with POV. Also the "group of non-article contributing editors" statement. Who would that be? I have 273 featured credits; had a GA promoted last week. No one is colluding to press the copyright issue; this is something that encyclopedia editors need to understand enough to comply with on a day-to-day level, without the review and assistance of other editors who would rather be building their own aricles. Durova^Charge! 22:29, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Sceptre now on his fourth revert

To address the concerns raised in the above discussion, I modified the content in question a while ago by adding quotation marks. Sceptre has now removed the well sourced content again (this is the fourth time now). I trust the appropriate actions will be engaged. Cheers. ChildofMidnight (talk) 18:20, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

An editor who is removing copyright violations BLP violations, or blatant vandalism is exempt from WP:3RR. An admin should know that. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 18:28, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

It's tough to argue a quote is a copyright violation, and no assertion has ever been made that there is a BLP violation. Who would the BLP violation be against? Are you calling the inclusion of content from the AP blatant vandalism?

Listen, if y'all want to censor stuff just do it. But don't pervert our policies and pretend you're abiding by our guidelines. I try to avoid these subjects for just this reason. It's obiously not about copvio, it's about imposing personal points of view on article content. NPOV is a core policy, as SheffieldSteel should know, violating it and engaging in censorship under vaious guises of policy enforcement is inappropriate. ChildofMidnight (talk) 18:38, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Because, as we all know, reality has a left-wing bias. Sceptre ^(talk) 18:46, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I've struck out part of my former post to make it a lot harder for anyone to misinterpret. ChildOfMidnight, you knew that this was a copyright issue here, when Sceptre made it quite clear, but you continued to revert take part in the edit conflict. Considering that this isn't the first time your conduct has been raised at ANI, and that you're about to receive an Arbcom ban for your conduct at Obama-related articles, I would like you to seriously consider whether it wouldn't improve the reputation of the Wikipedia admin corps if you were to voluntarily resign the bit. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 19:05, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I just looked at the diff you provide and I want to make it absolutely 100% crystal clear that never reinserted it after that edit or this discussion except once in quotation marks per the suggestions and discussion made here. I trust you will refactor to correct your mistaken impression and statement that I "continued to revert". This is simply inaccurate. ChildofMidnight (talk) 19:37, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

It looked to me like you reverted the edit and then added quotation marks. Of course, our diff tool is rather primitive so I could be wrong. But that was secondary to my point. You accused Sceptre of breaking WP:3RR and I pointed out that removing a copyvio is exempt from 3RR. Perhaps this entire section should be struck? SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 20:05, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Were there a recall process I have several admins I would like to nominate. I like to think I'm among the most honest and hard working Wikipedia editors, and I've taken on many thankless tasks to try and improve our content and operations.

Sceptre's edit sumamry (he never engaged in any discussion) suggested the content wasn't attributed ("asserted") when it was by both openly stating "The AP reported" and by the use of a citation. As the consensus here seems to be that this isn't enough, I responded by putting the sentence in quotation marks. He removed the content again, and your comment is still misleading because it suggests he's reverting a copyvio. But a sentence in quotation marks with an appropriate citation isn't a copyvio as far as I can tell.

Dealing with the POV pushers is one of the most unpleasant parts of Wikipedia. We see the problems of COI and POV pushing on Barack Obama and articles like Equality Mississippi. I try to leave my personal views out of my editing, and have often helped to restore and improve content on subjects I find distasteful or to include critcism or controversy on a subject I admire. But integrity matters to me, and it should matter to others. ChildofMidnight (talk) 19:19, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Sheff, are you taking the mick? CoM isn't an admin. –xeno^talk 19:54, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Apparently I am on crack. I would like to apologise to CoM, the admin I am confusing them with, the admin corps in general and xeno in particular, crack addicts, the Academy, my agent, and anyone else who might feel offended. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 20:08, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Certainly I should be an Admin. And you're welcome to nom me in a few weeks. We need more admins with integrity and good judgment who are devoted to Wikipedia and its core policies and mission. ChildofMidnight (talk) 20:16, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The last one was a fiasco, and in the time since, the nominator has been banned as disruptive troll, and you have been sanctioned by ArbCom. No offense, but please do not waste the community's dime with another RfA. Tarc (talk) 01:48, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

quatrain from sceptre

Hey guys, I'm writing a new play. I've just started on the prologue. Can you give me your opinions on it?

    Two households, both alike in dignity,
    In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
    From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
    Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
    From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
    A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
    Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
    Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.
    The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
    And the continuance of their parents' rage,
    Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
    Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
    The which if you with patient ears attend,
    What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

Thanks, Sceptre ^(talk) 18:42, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Too full of quatations. Collect (talk) 18:45, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Is this WP:PLAGIARISM I see before me? – Toon^(talk) 19:04, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Bravo, brilliant. If it had begun, "As Shakespeare said," it would even be relevant...

I jest, but I also agree with the main idea of this thread. If enough people are objecting to something, CoM, then it's time to put down the editing buttons, and try to gauge consensus, and then defer to it. Maintaining a position in the face of enough opposition is not a winning strategy. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:44, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

If CoM is right, then he certainly shouldn't conform to the wrongness just because it has a majority. II | (t - c) 20:05, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

And how is "right"ness determined? I mean, I agree that we should argue for what we think is right, but if it's eventually you versus the world.... is it better to go out in a blaze of glory, or to choose one's battles? -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:21, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

In this case, rightness is pretty easily determined. As I've already shown, this whole thread was based on a false premise from Sceptre: CoM didn't copy/paste the AP article. Some of it is a copy, but the article is here, the language inserted by CoM is here. The word discovered is not in the AP article. The other language is. OK, CoM should apologize and use quotation marks, but there's no need for punitive damages and a thread on ANI, and there's no justification to keep the content out. It's very difficult to rephrase that text from the AP without making it read worse. This whole thread is pointless. II | (t - c) 20:32, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, since you've "already shown" where correctness lies, I'm sure (unsarcastically) you will be able to persuade a consensus of editors of that fact. We tend to get things right, eventually. I agree that punitive damages are pointless. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:38, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I owe an apology to CoM, since I thought that he introduced the text, when he didn't. Grundle2006 did [64]. CoM simply worked to keep it in, which he should be applauded for, since the content clearly adds to the article (which I just voted to delete). No offense, but I'm not confident that "we [the admins, I presume] tend to get things, eventually". CoM is about to be topic-banned from Obama-related articles while Sceptre isn't, while Sceptre is in my (admittedly limited) experience the most immature, disruptive, and annoying editor on those pages. He should be blocked right now, perhaps for sheer punitive reasons (the standard 3RR block I consider to be largely a deterrent through its punitive and record-keeping effect), and I don't understand why he isn't. And now, I'm back to article space. II | (t - c) 21:18, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Regarding "we [the admins, I presume]", abso-freakin'-lutely not. I meant the community. We admins are pretty annoying, when you get right down to it. Sceptre's just a kid, and we're all eagerly awaiting the onset of good judgment. Sorry, Sceptre, but it's true. -GTBacchus^(talk) 22:06, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Hang on, hang on. I haven't reverted it since this ANI report (despite the many false and misleading statements to the contrary) except once with quotation marks, as was suggested. So accusations of my refusal to abide by consensus are "greatly exaggerated". The content was yet again removed (for the fourth time) by Sceptre. Let's stop jumping to conlusions about my supposed refusal to abide by consensus. I LOVE consensus and am happy to abide by it. That's why I'm so troubled by the refusal of Bigtimepeace and others to honor our core policy of NPOV that is a consensus policy at the core of our integrity and one that should always guide us in our approach to content inclusion. ChildofMidnight (talk) 20:12, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I hope I didn't accuse you of failing to abide by consensus. That certainly wasn't my intention. I have jumped to no such conclusion. If there's a question of how to apply NPOV in this case, then that's what the discussion needs to be about. It's almost never a matter of someone "refusing to honor" a policy, and almost always a matter of someone disagreeing about how to interpret policy. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:21, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

• Looking at this edit, what I see is Sceptre removing basic cited information in quotations. His edit summary seems disturbingly bad faith. As someone who has been accused of plagiarism simply because I tried to stick closely to the wording of the sources and avoid original research, I find that disturbing. In the medicine area that I work most in, there are some highly respected editors (eg User:Eubulides) who will often use language nearly identical to sources, without quotation marks, and will accuse you of original research if you do otherwise. Anyway. Clearly there's a big problem with the edit that I linked above, showing that Sceptre is probably lying in his edit summaries, showing major bad faith, and wikilawyering to keep out content he/she doesn't like. Since in these Obama and political-related articles there is a heavy amount of polarization, short attention span, and petty political bickering, this is pretty bad, and it has apparently fooled most of the people commenting here. If he's disturbed at how closely the text (in quotation marks) matches the cited source, why doesn't he just rewrite it to his satisfaction? II | (t - c) 20:05, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

  It's not our information; it's the Associated Press' information. It's lifted directly from the AP story, which makes it a copyright violation. Why is this so difficult to understand? Sceptre ^(talk) 20:12, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia. We report information, from the AP and elsewhere. It was not lifted directly from the AP, it was quoted from the AP, and in fact some of the language in quotes wasn't even in the AP article (the word discovered is not in the article; presumably CoM's mistake). Please stop your reverts until you can come up with valid reasons [65]. This puts you well into very disruptive edit-warring.

Further, this edit summary from you suggests that you don't really understand how Wikipedia and original research works. We don't insert our own "comments" on sources in the articles. We report their information, and that is all. If changing a word from the one they used changes the meaning of the statement, then we must use their word. Therefore, one could make an argument that much of our articles should actually be in quotations, particularly since good writing can only be written in so many ways, and good journalists often "steal" the most concise wording. Stylistically that would be annoying, so many editors use the sources' words without quoting them. It's an ongoing Wikipedia controversy. II | (t - c) 20:32, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I have, in my bookcase, a book about the fourth series of Doctor Who. Now, if I were to write about what was said in that source, that would be fine. But it's a violation of copyright for me to lift entire passages from the text without commentary. Compare:

• "Walker said that 'very much in the episode's favour...'" is violating his copyright.
• "Walker wrote about several of the episode's highlights, characterising the production decisions in creating a "perfect impression" of the 1920s as "working very much in the episode's favour", such as Harper's direction, Woolgar's "sensitive" performance as Christie..." is not violating his copyright, because we add significant, non-OR commentary, on the passges in the source.

You see? Sceptre ^(talk) 22:07, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, there's a de minimus to copyright. Thus for example, if you said "hello". Simply quoting Sceptre as saying "hello" with no commentary isn't going to be a copyright problem. Quoting the AP wire in this form may be similar. Although a paraphrase is certainly possible. Your example however is off base. JoshuaZ (talk) 22:32, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

They still have de minimis for copyright infringement? The problem is, though, that the content either was not quoted, or was quoted but didn't say who was quoted. And even if you do say "The foo reported bar", where "bar" is what foo said word-for-word, it's still plagiarism and, arguably copyright infringement (as it neither provides commentary for fair use, nor is it in an original enough form). Sceptre ^(talk) 22:39, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Completely correct except that you apparently continued reverting after the relevant sections were in quotation marks.[66]. JoshuaZ (talk) 22:54, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The problem is, it just shows that editors are being lazy by just putting quote marks in instead of just tweaking the text as much as needed to meet the threshold of originality. Sceptre ^(talk) 23:08, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

If you think quoting someone is plagiarism ... please, just stop the infollution. II | (t - c) 23:17, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

There's nothing in the U.S. statute about fair use about commentary. What case on fair use are you referring to? (See summaries of the cases. None mention commentary.) If you were to add your second example to Wikipedia, there's a good chance it would be deleted for being essayish and excessively wordy. Fortunately for Wikipedia, we don't need to add superflous wording to avoid violating copyright. I wouldn't worry about whether directly quoting a couple key sentences from a newspaper is fair use or not, because it clearly is. The irony is rich when you consider that one of the bigger controversies in fair use and copyright is over whether Google can display several pages of books without the permission of the copyright holder, and with no "commentary" whatsoever [67]. II | (t - c) 23:17, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

It is a bit more complicated than that. Commentary isn't necessary but having something resembling it makes a fair use defense a lot more likely to stand up in court. See for example the Yoko Ono case against Premise Media described at Copyright controversies of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. The existence of implicit commentary was a major reason the use of "Imagine" was considered to be fair use. But yes, there's no requirement in the US for commentary in order to trigger fair use.JoshuaZ (talk) 00:45, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I long for a day when more editors who bitch about copyright know about it, than don't. Wuotes with attribution which are not inordinately long aren't plagiarism - Quoting more than a paragraph may be a problem, but quoting a paragraph, even two closely related ones, is almost never an issue. I've seen some guidelines issued by colleges over the years that suggest that no more than 15% of any given paper be direct quotes, as a measure of how much material should be original research and interpretation of sources, and so on, but it's fine to use a paragraph here or there so long as it's attributed. Good writing styles properly contextualize it, but that's another matter. Can we stop the damn bitching and moaning, Sceptre? It's attributed? Yes. Is it in quotes? Yes. Then is it plagiarized? No. Further, so long as it's properly contextualized, it's also fully fair use. Were one to quote another for profit on say, postcards, you'd have issues of copyright violation. Here, it's included in a far larger encyclopedia article, making it fine under fair use. Really. Learn about IP law before you talk about it again. Seriously. You've created a great deal of drama here, with little foundation once the original problem, which you apparently wrongly fault CoM for, was solved. It's fine in that form. End of story. Move on or please, get yourself banned from political articles. ThuranX (talk) 00:56, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Legal threat at my talk page

Resolved

Abercrombie and Fitch "Brand Protection Team" left an interesting message on my talk page. Don't have much time right now to post specifics. Also here. Gotta go! --œ^™ 00:27, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

User has been indef blocked. Tan | 39 00:32, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism of Robin Van Persie page

Sorry, don't know the right place to put this. Robin van Persie has been vandalised partially repaired, but the sections on his personal life and early life are still messed up. I'm not sure how to put it right without reverting the wrong edits. Can someone more experienced take a look? 92.234.8.173 (talk) 00:33, 19 June 2009 (UTC) Josh

Looks as though ThaKid555 has taken care of it. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 00:46, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Brain and microchip implants

This may be the wrong place, but I bring this problem here because the issues are a bit complex. As background, a relatively common symptom of schizophrenia is to develop a delusion that some sort of device is implanted in one's brain. People with this delusion often are very motivated to convince other people that it is true, and may go to extraordinary lengths to do so. We have such a situation right now at Brain implant and Microchip implant (human). The IP who is trying to link to his sad story seems to have a pretty wide range of addresses available, so the best approach might be to semi the two articles for at least a week, and see how things develop. Looie496 (talk) 01:05, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Would that or adding http://www.scribd.com/doc/16390476/Biotelemetry-Brain-Implants Biotelemetry Brain Implants - Documents to the blacklist be more useful? It's just a regex, we can add a specific page, right? I have a feeling he'd merely go to another page if we semi-protected it. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 01:20, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Couldn't hurt, I guess. If that doesn't work we can try something else. Looie496 (talk) 02:46, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

It felt slightly premature but I went ahead and sprotected due to the nature of those documents. Blacklisting the links is probably a better alternative, however, because those documents are never going to be acceptable on any page of Wikipedia. Sarah 04:10, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

It's hard to say, but I have a feeling semi'ing might work better. There are a thousand other places to upload files, but there aren't many other Wikipedia articles that will be so attractive to this editor. Looie496 (talk) 04:18, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Child account with personal info

Can an admin look into User:Rayizcoolio's User page and see how it stands in accordance with WP:CHILD? Thanks, ThemFromSpace 02:21, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Toddst1 has already deleted it. Looks like he's talking to himself, btw :) Chamal ^talk 02:26, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Deleted per WP:CHILD and left warning about that page and the social networking on the talk page. I'm not sure about talking to myself 8-) Toddst1 (talk) 02:28, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

No, I was talking about the kid. Chamal ^talk 02:33, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't talking to you. 8-) Toddst1 (talk) 04:58, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Vandal block request

Could someone temporarily block User:76.193.77.139, as they've made several obscene and racist edits in the past hour. Thanks VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 02:40, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I have issued a final warning, but vandalism seems to have stopped. You can use WP:AIV to get a quicker response! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:20, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! I'll use WP:AIV in future (I didn't know about it).VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 03:29, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Copyright problem at Brand Hong Kong

A new user User:PMJ Regan keeps copy and pasting text from [68] to Brand Hong Kong, despite my explanations on his talk page that he cannot do this. Reverting his edits have proven futile as he just reverts back. I'm not sure what the next step is as I've never handled this before. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 03:12, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I've left a note that I hope explains things further. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 03:22, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Calling Sherlock Holmes (or anyone with a brain and integrity)

Relieve yourself, get some coffee and bare with me - I'll try to interject some humor so it isn't too boring.

Essentially, what we have here is the appearance meatpuppetry, canvassing, and a dollop of abuse. The short of it, as objectively as possible, is that a couple editors haven't read up on ownership (missing that link for years apparently), reverted until one of them violated the three revert rule, and, when called on it, they are magically saved by the dynamic duo Mysterio and Enigma (admins who then proceeded to ignore their faults, threaten me, and then disappear the crimes).

It's a story you've heard a million times before right? Well, perhaps, but in this case Mysterio (as well as both of the people involved in the content dispute with me) are friends on facebook. All three of them? Yes - all three (and several other admins who aren't currently involved in this dispute). And before I'm accused of being a stalker his facebook page is linked directly from his userpage.

But it gets "better," Enigma and Mysterio, who've never edited this article before (but magically appeared to save their friends) have a record of showing up in esoteric articles in order to save their friends.

And that is the short of it to help people get the jist of things without bias (feel free to put that in a "collapsible box"). Here is the long, boring, evidence-riddled timeline that will cause a bit of a stir considering some of the parties (again, I'm trying to keep his other admin facebook friends out of the dispute if possible).

1. Content dispute at Urban heat island (erased now), which I sought outside help for at the NPOV board [69] (no responses, but it describes that quite well)

2. Editor chastised me for misspelling his odd name, I replied with a bit of light humor, some questions about the terms of his restriction of those articles, and a furtherance of the content debate. His response was to delete my comment, which is a clear violation of wikipedia vandalism policy (claiming it was a "personal attack"). I restored it (3r not applying to me since he was committing vandalism), and he deleted it three times (violating 3r in addition to the vandalism) (diffs: [70][71][72])

3. At this point Mysterio appears, pointlessly archives the 2-3 other complaints over what I tried to remove (practically emptying the talk page [73]), archives my complaint [74], and then gives me a "talkin' to" [75] and curiously doesn't give his friend any warning for his 3r violation.

4. I also get a warning from his other friend Enigma [76] - an admin who also refuses to warn of the other editor's 3r violation.

5. Now, so I'm not accused of stalking, go to his user page, click on his facebook link, and then see these two friends - "Mysterio" and his buddy who apparently follows all the same articles (astute observers will notice several other admins in there as well). Also, "Enigma" cannot be proven to be present since he admittedly uses a pseudonym [77](like most of us).

6. Obviously that, while suspicious, is not completely damning, which is why, like with sockpuppet cases, we must look for patterns. Has "Mysterio" ever shown up at odd little articles, out of the blue, to defend Bill in the past? Yes - and when called on it at the time [78] his defense to the charge of collusion [79] was was that he had this esoteric article (which he had never edited) on his watchlist.

7. Has the pseudonymous "Enigma" engaged in similar behavior? Yes - like a bolt of lightning he comes to protect Bill on odd corners of wikipedia and, oddly enough, the same page as "Mysterio" and about 6 other facebook friends of Bill (if anyone wants diffs of Baley protecting other facebook friends of Bill then let me know - I consider it a separate issue and don't want to cause too much drama (as inevitable as it sometimes is).

And so, the question is, do these facts suggest off-wiki communication, canvassing or meatpuppetry? Abuse? Also, should the 6-month restriction that Bill had on editing these articles be reimplemented? (And on a side note, I'd appreciate it if Bill's fans (protectors of his page) declare themselves to keep things honest). If anyone wants to post more evidence of collusion then feel free - I thought this had gotten too long and thought this would be sufficient for any decision-making. TheGoodLocust (talk) 03:17, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

TheGoodLocust, I believe you may need to go back and re-read All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten; I think there is a section in that book that tells the reader that name-words are important, and that calling people by other names is rude. First misspelling WMC's name twice, and then failing to heed his request that, if you don't want to (or are unable to) properly spell his full username, you refer to him as "WMC" is rude. Repeatedly calling him "Billy" is not just rude, it is taunting. As to the sudden attention to the page, it is no surprise, as it started bouncing up on Recent Changes because of the dispute; it is normal and natural that other editors and administrators will take an interest. I note that you compound your rudeness by referring to WMC as "Bill" in this very report. Stop it please, and refer to your colleague by the name he has chosen, or the alternative he has offered. Your own desires are irrelevant on this point. Risker (talk) 03:44, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Well "Risker," William's last name is oddly spelled - big deal if I missed an "l" a few a times. And last time I checked he didn't request not to be called Bill and even if he did that's his name - if he doesn't want to be called that then I suggest he change his username instead of resorting to vandalism. TheGoodLocust (talk) 04:06, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

There are thousands of other names that WMC also didn't request that you not call him, too. WMC provided you with an alternative, one that he and others widely use within the project. If you cannot make the effort to either correctly spell his full username (which you could just copy and paste) or use his preferred alternate nickname, then it is you who is behaving uncollegially. Now you are implying that it's all his fault that you can't spell his name. You have been editing Wikipedia long enough to know that there are technical alternatives to prevent misspellings of names. Risker (talk) 04:30, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry Risker but I don't buy it. I made a stupid spelling mistake and he felt the need to bash me over the head with it and used that as an excuse to end the debate. Quite simply his "request" was obviously not a request at all - it was a power trip. Again, if he doesn't want to be called by his username then William should change his username to something else instead of trying to dominate other people. TheGoodLocust (talk) 04:52, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The spelling mistake could be excused once, but the decision to call him "Billy" when he had proposed a simple-to-type alternative was unacceptable. We have hundreds, possibly thousands, of editors with more difficult to spell usernames. Your continued insistence in referring to an editor by a name he does not use to edit is unacceptable. It is not a power trip to insist that one be referred to by the name one chooses. It is, however, a power trip to continue to refuse to refer to a person by his name. Your continued argument on this point makes me wonder if your reference to other administrators as friends of Bill may not be entirely accidental. Risker (talk) 05:01, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Yep, you got me, his polite deletion of my post, on the grounds that part of it was playful in an attempt to lighten the mood was really classy on his part. I like that friends of Bill thing though - perhaps you could turn that fine eye for detail to this group of editors engaging in suspicious off-wiki communication. TheGoodLocust (talk) 05:34, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

You know, when multiple admins tell you not to refer to an editor a particular way, it really doesn't help you to make your case when you come on AN/I and keep on doing it. Asserting the existence of a cabal also doesn't help. Claiming that removing an accusation of "shoving their viewpoints onto the world" is vandalism doesn't help. Oh, and implying that anyone who doesn't agree with you is stupid or dishonest right in the title is both.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 03:45, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I didn't assert the existence of a cabal - I simply flat out proved their off-wiki communication and odd behavior. Also, your dishonest portrayal of my removed edit, which I linked in the main post, is disturbing - I'd appreciate it if you redacted that attack. TheGoodLocust (talk) 04:08, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Agree as above. With your attitude and seeming delight in prodding your enemies, it's absolutely no surprise there are other editors who take a look at your edits. Dayewalker (talk) 03:50, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

• I am not adverse to investigating the possibility that friendships among admins leads to behavior that can be abusive to other editors and harmful to collegial editing. However, you need to read up on the doctrine of unclean hands. And whenever I see someone complaining "vandalism" because their talk page comment keeps getting removed, I immediately become suspicious. Thatcher 04:11, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

As to why my comment was removed it is good of you to be suspicious. But if you look at it then you'll find that another editor (who I believe disagreed with me on the subject) was so outraged at their behavior that he went and got another admin to look into it. So really, don't take my word for it that their behavior was questionable - go look at the reaction they got when others got involved.TheGoodLocust (talk) 04:23, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

If you want your concerns taken seriously, don't bait, taunt, tease, bullyrag, tweak, poke, or deliberately annoy the people you are complaining about. It muddies the waters and gives you unclean hands. People also tend to be mindful of the adage that when you lie down with the dogs, you wake up with fleas. To pursue this successfully and attract the kind of help you want, your own behavior needs to be above reproach. And it would also help if your second example of inappropriate collusion was more recent than 3 years. Thatcher 04:35, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

And again, the same can be said of the admin, who was accused, again by others, of doing the same to me with his pointless spelling nitpicking (along with days of endlessly reverting something he had no business doing). Are admins held to a higher standard, the same standard or lower? Also, the reason the example was old is because it shows their sudden interest in articles they've never before been engaged in - and to the benefit of He Who Shall Not be Named. Obviously, for such old users, it becomes harder to find unique esoteric articles as time goes on and if I pointed to anything at global warming then they'd just say its their "common interest" or something. TheGoodLocust (talk) 04:46, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I think you are missing the point. If you behave with integrity, it will be easier to make a case that others have not. Your argument should be "I have behaved myself and they have not", not "They are just as bad as me." Thatcher 05:01, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Have I not behaved with integrity? I had a content dispute, I sought outside mediation (didn't get it) and was eventually blindsided by his friends on facebook. What exactly do you mean by integrity? TheGoodLocust (talk) 05:37, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

So you were terribly rude, got called on it and are asking for some kind of sanction because its mean for others to ask you to stop being a git? Or is it because they interacted on something several years ago? Please. Shell ^babelfish 04:40, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) As to the content dispute: I decided to take a reasonably thorough look at the debate. It seems that TheGoodLocust pointed out a source that was reasonably academic and did take a look at the temperature difference. For now, I'm making the (possibly incorrect) assumption that the source is a digest of the paper it cites at the bottom, and is therefore very valid. The sentence that is refuted by the sentence that TheGoodLocust wishes to delete states, "A view often held by skeptics of global warming, is that much of the temperature increase seen in land based thermometers could be due to an increase in urbanisation and the siting of measurement stations in urban areas." However, the source he/she cites states that climatologists recognize these effects and therefore use rural temperature records. So while TheGoodLocust is correct in his/her characterization of concern over heat islands, the source actually bolsters the argument that the aforementioned assertation is incorrect by showing that researchers take active measures to avoid such bias in their measurements. I would therefore like to thank TheGoodLocust for bringing this research forward. I'll be changing the text of the article in question to reflect this research, I invite you all to scrutinize my edits, and I hope that current unpleasantness resolves itself rapidly. Awickert (talk) 05:57, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I thank you for your interest, but again I've been mischaracterized, I did not want to delete that sentence you just cited, but (I believe) the one after it. I had no major issues with the sentence you presented and indeed it is bolstered by my source - in fact, I'd planned to use it to update the article until I was chased off it. TheGoodLocust (talk) 06:30, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

You probably read my comment too quickly: "The sentence that is refuted by the sentence that TheGoodLocust wishes to delete" is the key. So no, I did not mischaracterize you.

To bring up your comment on my talk page (in order to keep things organized), I'm actually going off of the Hansen et al. paper that the NASA doc cites. While I did not read it especially thoroughly, I do not believe I have mischaracterized their study. You say that their corrections are not near perfect. However, they also say that the anomaly is small, so it's probably no big deal either way. You also mention that rural areas are more likely inland than coastal, so they are more likely measuring warmer areas when they measure rural regions as the ground truth. The former may be the case, but the latter is wrong. Inland areas generally have a higher temperature swing due to being away from the thermal buffer that is the ocean, and are often actually colder on average because of their higher elevation. In any case, I would hope (and expect) that Hansen and others would appropriately account for these when doing their corrections; if not, they're actually estimating too little warming. Finally, you mention "silly POV nonsense" with the issues I quoted in the last post being unmentioned in scientific papers. I haven't looked for any scientific source that does say this, so I can't say if there is any that does or doesn't. However, at least as far as I've read, the source that you bring up certainly doesn't say that there were overestimations due to the urban heat island effect by virtue of the fact that they acknowledge and correct for that effect and note that it is very small compared to the warming signal. Awickert (talk) 07:58, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Tgl has multiple problems, as a glance at his block log or talk page will show. His attempts to "interject some humor so it isn't too boring" during discussion backfire. I'm baffled as to why he things that trying to tell us what has happened in terms of "dynamic duo Mysterio and Enigma" is helpful. He makes far too many errors for me to correct them all, and they are sufficiently uninteresting that I'm not moved to try. If anyone in good standing cares to extract something meaningful from the above and wishes to ask me, I'd suggest you put it on my talk page as it gets busy here and I might miss it. The claims of WP:MEAT and WP:CANVASS are baseless, and (as I'm sure you've noticed) unsupported by diffs. I also don't understand why User:R._Baley is a friend of mine on facebook. He might be, I don't track those terribly carefully, but if Sherlock is indeed here please find him for me. For good measure, Tgl misunderstands 3RR, but that isn't unusul William M. Connolley (talk) 07:03, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, my claims are completely baseless - nobody has ever noticed your "close" wiki-relationships with these people in the past and that obviously has nothing to do with your facebook communications. Oh, and I never claimed Baley was your facebook friend(impossible to prove either way since he uses a pseudonym) - just everyone else involved. I'm sure the 20% of obvious wiki-admins (more with pseudonyms?) as facebook friends is completely innocent and when you guys defend each other out of the blue it is just coincidence. And my claims are completely supported by diffs - I guess you didn't notice them in addition to the mistake you made about Baley. TheGoodLocust (talk) 07:23, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Whatever the issue at hand is, sarcasm surely won't help it. I try to unravel what's going on above, but I can't see why we have a dispute on our hands since it looks like you agree with my edits to the page, which go along with the source in being decidedly pro-AGW. My best guess is being overwhelmed with the jumping-in of admins and amigos and not quite understanding that the source didn't warrant removal of the scientific literature claim? (Though I do selfishly think that my changing of the claim from the source you pointed out made it better...). I think that simply more reading and compromise were necessary. So I guess I could sum up my confusion in:

1. Are we OK with the article as it stands now?
2. Are there outstanding issues with involved editors? (This may rest on TheGoodLocust's agreement or disagreement with my claim that the source didn't warrant removal of the sentence because it did not actually contradict it.) Awickert (talk) 08:13, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Multiracial American

It's my day for ANI, I guess. The purpose of this item is to relieve Dbachmann from the need to block somebody he has been in a dispute with. Antiedman (talk · contribs) has decided that Americans with ancestry from different European countries are multiracial, and that the article must have a POV tag until it includes this information. Unfortunately, no source has been provided to back this up, even after repeated requests and warnings that continuation of this behavior would lead to a block; instead Antiedman has edit-warred to include the tag. There are too many diffs to list, but see the Revision history of Multiracial American, Talk:Multiracial American, and User Talk:Antiedman for all the details. See also Antiedman's block log. I will notify the editor of this section. Looie496 (talk) 04:04, 19 June 2009 (UTC) These comments were struck by User:Antiedman here. Matty (talk) 04:29, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I will now leave the article Multiracial American alone as far as multiracial Americans of multiracial European decent are concerned and only provide useful & accurate information I learn about the subject.--Antiedman (talk) 04:14, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

On a semi-related note, could he plz stop continuing old arguments on the subject like he did on the Barak Obama page? Soxwon (talk) 04:40, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Will you leave the Barack Obama article and Talk pages alone, too, please? Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 07:06, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Why would anyone do that? It's an unwritten law of petty disputes that any dispute, no matter how minor (or unrelated) it is, has to involve Mr. Obama's article. As well as the talk page, and anything remotely related to him. Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 13:38, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Disruptive addition of {{orphan}} tags to {{surname}} pages etc

Postcard Cathy has been adding {{orphan}} tags to surname pages. The orphan tag generates the message "Please introduce links to this page from other articles related to it." The Surname page footer says "If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name(s) to their surname.", so they are clearly incompatible. Adding the orphan tag to these page just creates clutter and implies a problem where there is none. She has been asked several times to stop doing this, but continues, and reverts deletions of orphan tags, stating "(as long as article appears at http://toolserver.org/~jason/untagged_orphans.php it will be tagged orphan per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Orphan "pages that are orphans but aren't tagged")". The criteria at WP:Orphan have been amended, following discussion on the talk page, but she ignores this. I don't know whether a word from an Administrator asking her to desist from this disruptive activity would have any effect, but would be grateful for any help. Thanks. PamD (talk) 06:59, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Hm... for now, I've chimed in with my own two cents on PC's talk page. Will check back in tomorrow if I'm available. – Luna Santin (talk) 11:07, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, but it seems to have had no effect - one example of many similar edits this evening. PamD (talk) 19:09, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

RfC Concerns

I have been managing an RfC on terminology used to describe the Golan Heights, which was opened on 06/14/09. I am concerned that a person or persons may be trying to influence the outcome of the RfC by use of WP:Meat, WP:SPA, WP:SOCK, or WP:Canvass, as there are a high percentage of new accounts, IP addresses and apparant SPAs that are commenting in support of one particular viewpoint, all sharing similar word usage and/or feedback format. I may be wrong, but in interest of balance and fairness, I would like to request an administrator review the situation or at least give me some advice in how to proceed (or if I should at all). Thanks --Nsaum75 (talk) 07:02, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

You're asking about the RfC at Talk:Golan Heights#RfC: Terminology in regards to the Golan Heights. After a reasonable time, why not ask for an uninvolved admin to close the discussion? Since admins know how to deal with AfDs that are canvassed off-site, this should be within their abilities. If you notice any inappropriate canvassing, add a comment in the discussion to provide diffs, so that the closer can check it out. Votes by single-purpose accounts are usually ignored in AfDs and this should probably be the case here. EdJohnston (talk) 15:55, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The odd preponderance of people using the non-standard Reply to RFC to begin their comments is certainly suspicious. As EdJohnston stated, though, administrators will take this into account when reading a discussion; there's not a whole lot of action that can be undertaken at this time. On the other hand, if you believe that a specific user/users are engaging in sockpuppetry, you might want to make a request at WP:SPI to look in to that further. Shereth 16:04, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Church House

It's getting late, so I'll let someone else figure out what to do - the buck stops where, you say? Anyway User:Addyjuly seems bent on creating an article on a (planned?) Jamaican tv show named Church House but keeps deleting the content already there (a dab page). I've restored the content, but someone should point the user in the right direction. The user's user page is AFAICT the plot summary of the show or a spin-off. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 07:18, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

User:Fhue

This user has been pushing pro-environmental activist / anti-whaling POV and has developed a vendetta against me. I've tried to deal with him, but he refuses to get a clue. Now he's (slowly) canvassing against me. I'm at my wits end with this guy. — NRen2k5^(TALK), 11:38, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I would love some diffs for this case, as i see around 400 edits on this topic in the last 500 edits. Randomly diffing trough the users edits i would say that most his edits are at least sourced - and from what i can see you had extensive discussions on the exact wording of the respective article's.

Basing myself on these diffs i would say that this is a content dispute rather then an ANI topic. Similarly, seeing Wikipedia:Wikiquette_alerts#User:Fhue_and_User:NRen2k5 i have to agree with the "tit-for-tat" comment BWilkins made over there. It seems that both of you are rather... fanatical in your own stance / perception and are therefor continously disagreeing about wording issues. This is quite visible when Fhue retracted his previous agreement to avoid the article and you for a week - but i hasten to add that i find it highly suspicious that this edit was made by an IP on the article in question, suddenly showing up on an disputed article after it has made no edit for three years.

I also took the liberty to inform Fhue about this ANI discussion by leaving a message on his talk page. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 12:28, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Fhue, please refrain from editing the section title; it breaks links. — NRen2k5^(TALK), 23:56, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I’ve notified a few editors who I’ve worked with and asked them to weigh in on the issue. I believe the way I did so is within the rules (WP:CANVAS). Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. [80][81][82][83][84] — NRen2k5^(TALK), 00:14, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Sirius XM Radio COI

Resolved

Just posting it here for whatever.. if nothing needs to be done, then just ignore..

EmilyWSussman (talk · contribs) is an intern with Sirius Satellite Radio according to her edit here. She has been editing Sirius XM Radio and P.O.T.U.S. (Sirius XM). I've left a note on her talk page. - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here @} 13:04, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

You mentioned it to her already, and pointed her at the policy. Nothing more we need to do now. Cheers. lifebaka++ 13:30, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

We'll keep an eye on it, thanks. – Quadell ^(talk) 13:40, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Allstarecho, are you suggesting that editors should avoid editing articles about organizations with which they are intimately involved? I wholeheartedly agree. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 14:27, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Somehow I knew you'd be at this thread hounding me again. Don't forget that Equality Mississippi is a defunct business, unlike Sirius. - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here @} 14:30, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

No one has accused me of violating WP:HOUND before when posting on ANI, which I do from time to time. Some editors may think my comment here was a cheap shot, but it certainly doesn't constitute "hounding" in any sense. The situation at Talk:Equality Mississippi has become toxic and the actual issue with the article aren't being addressed because people are too busy throwing insults and accusations at each other. The root of the problem, in my opinion, is your COI and lack of the perspective necessary to apply WP guidelines. If I can draw more eyes to the article, so much the better. Thanks. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 15:10, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

There's always a first time for everything, including WP:HOUND. The fact is, you've been, for a lack of better words, on my ass like white on rice for a few days now. But it's all good. I'm a big boy and can give just as good as I get. - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here @} 15:21, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if this is your intention, but your comment reads like a threat. I've previously explained my recent involvement with you and stated that I am not wikihounding you. I stopped participating at Talk:Equality Mississippi lest my actions be misunderstood. I doubt anyone cares to see us bicker here, so if you have genuine concerns about me, please voice them at an appropriate forum or stop making accusations. Thanks. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 15:43, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

A threat? Never. And while you may have stopped editing at that one page, you made sure to come here and call me out. Again, that's the accusation I am lodging: stop wiki-hounding me. This thread was pretty much marked resolved but there you were, Johnny on the Spot when you saw my name. You're right, let's stop the bickering.. and the only way to do that is for you to leave me alone, fully. It's getting really creepy now. Disengage from me before my accusation escalates to a worse accusation. Thanks. - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here @} 15:49, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Both of you, knock it off and take it to either of your talk pages. Marking resolved. Tan | 39 15:50, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I blocked User:Bigen182

FYI: Bigen182 (talk · contribs) has uploaded multiple images which are copyright violations, claiming falsely to have created them himself. When confronted by Dougweller (talk · contribs), he wouldn't discuss it. I have blocked him for two weeks, but I wouldn't object to an unblock if he understands the problem and agrees to stop. Previous discussion at User talk:Moonriddengirl#Bigen182. – Quadell ^(talk) 13:48, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

For blatant copyvio's I wouldn't mind an indef block. Garion96 (talk) 13:54, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Also quite a few text copyvios. His hidden contributions aren't happy reading. There are quite a few other images he's uploaded that I think are copyvio but haven't yet done anything about. Dougweller (talk) 14:08, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I also wouldn't mind if someone changed it to an indef block. – Quadell ^(talk) 14:23, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I've gone through 20 or so images now and all have been pretty clear copyvios - I put some up for PUI because they may be old enough to be PD if we can ferret out the actual source. Bigen182 seems to claim everything as his own and has even had some transferred to commons. I'm going to change the block to indef; I don't see anything in his contribs that isn't a violation. Unless there's a darn good explanation forthcoming, we don't want that loose on the wiki. Shell ^babelfish 16:46, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks everyone, and Shell, you've saved me quite a bit of time there so thanks again. Dougweller (talk) 18:02, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Concur on indef on this one. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 23:36, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

User:Athenean

Continuous edit warring in different articles

Sarandë [[85]] [[86]] [[87]] history log: [[88]]

Cham Albanians [[89]] [[90]] [[91]]

Pelasgians [[92]] [[93]]

Gjirokaster unjustified removal of IPA: [[94]] [[95]]

removal of alternative names in various islands, nationalist POV-pushing: [[96]] [[97]] [[98]] [[99]] [[100]] [[101]] [[102]]

User was warned for edit-warring just a couple of hours before this edits [103] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sarandioti (talk • contribs) 15:12, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

--Sarandioti (talk) 15:09, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Note: this is a continuation of a conflict outlined here. I'll leave someone else to comment on this one. haz (talk) 15:31, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Not really because most of these reverts/edits of athenean have nothing to do with the previous issue. Souliotes article was protected and athenean warned --Sarandioti (talk) 15:51, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The bad faith of this report speaks for itself. My edits are not edit-warring. The edits on Sarande are copyedits that improved the grammar and flow of the article, and they were reverted in knee-jerk fashion by Sarandioti [104] the minute his previous block for edit-warring expired. On Pelasgians I removed cruft that was subsequently removed by other users as well [105] [106] (the article had to be protected eventually [107]), whereas on the Greek islands my edits are in line with the consensus on those articles [108] [109] [110] [111]. Sarandioti is a relatively new national-advocacy SPA with an aggressive battleground mentality as evidenced on the thread WP:ANI#ARBMAC cluebat needed and on this one. He has already been blocked 3 times in as many weeks as he has been on wikipedia. He is angry at me and is now trying to get back at me any way he can, by using any diff he can get his hands on. After unsuccessfully reporting me at WP:AN3, he has come here to continue his vendetta. The level of disruption from this user in intolerable. Any help in dealing with him would be appreciated. If this helps, the admins EdJohnston, Nishkid64 and haz are already familiar with him, as is Future Perfect at Sunrise. --Athenean (talk) 16:46, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The admin on the edit-warring section told me to post my report here, so I reported it here. And your report (cluebat) was rejected. Nishkid btw was the one who reduced my block from one month to 3 days, so that shows a lot. Could you care to explain why you ahve removed alternative names from all these islands? And IPA from Albanian cities? And also please tell us why did you remove minority numbers and added that the greek minority in Sarande is "large" when out of 32,000 there are only about 3,000 greeks? My questions are reasonable, and you ahve been already been warned for edit-warring by the admin Yanissmarou. And in the 48 hours I was blocked you continued to edit-war or POV-push. So today I reported you. No anger or anything else you might think. --Sarandioti (talk) 16:58, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Please let an admin comment from now on, and dont disrupt my report. --Sarandioti (talk) 16:58, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Your justification is edits from someone whose admin rights were removed because he was being favourable to greek editors?hmm...Again I do not wish to comment, I leave it to the admin, who will review this case.--Sarandioti (talk) 17:03, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Another questionable speedy deletion

In light of this archived discussion, I would like to request that Wilhelm Lautenbach be similarly recreated and submitted to a conventional AfD. Note that Stanislav Menshikov was kept after it went through the AfD process. --Leatherstocking (talk) 15:22, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Typically the proper place to contest deletions is at WP:DRV - is there a particular reason this one requires immediate administrator attention? Shereth 15:26, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Eh, before Shereth posted, I restored the article and started the AfD. The precedent set with this user with Stanislav Menshikov probably warrants it. However, if this should be at WP:DRV instead, or if some admin takes serious offense to this, I'm open for discussion. Tan | 39 15:29, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I certainly don't object to it per se, I am just curious as to why this was appearing here at AN/I when there exists a process for contesting deletions. In fact, the proper first step would have been to contact the deleting administrator with any concerns about the deletion, and it does not appear the OP tried that. Shereth 15:33, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Why isn't this going to DRV? Isn't that how deletions are reviewed? I don't see anything in the policy about recreating articles so they can go to AfD.   Will Beback  talk  19:16, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

It's called ignore all rules. MuZemike 20:39, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Walter Cronkite is dying (see citation below), article needs lock

Resolved

The Chicago Sun Times reported in June, 2009 that "Legendary CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite, 92, long known as the "Most Trusted Man in America," is gravely ill, according to multiple CBS News sources and published reports." http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/1629972,walter-cronkite-gravely-ill-061809.article

I think this is not the correct spot but I cannot find the Wikipedia:Padlock board. The instructions say "everything else > this board" so here goes.

Legendary US TV journalist Walter Cronkite is on his death bed according to news reports. Even his obituary has been re-written (like to say "Walter Cronkite died on _______, 2009"). But it is too tempting for vandals to say he is dead. This looks very bad if he is not dead, but declared dead. So can we put a limited padlock for anonymous IP users, maybe for a week or two?

Thank you.

User F203 (talk) 16:03, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

You are looking for WP:RFPP to request page protection, but I can tell you it'd be declined at this point. There is no evidence of vandalism at the page at this time, and pre-emptive protection of a page is usually not undertaken. Shereth 16:07, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Edit conflict, completely agree with Shereth. I would have declined this on RFPP. Tan | 39 16:08, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I thought of it more and agree that the way things are run now, vandalism must occur before padlocking. It is debatable whether this is a good thing, but that's the "law" now. User F203 (talk) 16:18, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Boldly created WP:PADLOCK to possibly help someone find RFPP in the future. --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:21, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

IP: 68.48.205.152 removing redlinks, maintenance templates, etc

• 68.48.205.152 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

This is the second IP the editor has used, and the IP has a habit of going through pages to standardize whitespace (in itself, this is okay), and remove maintenance templates (stub tags, fact tags, {{plot}}, etc). I've templated him, and I also reached out with a personal message to explain it in more detail. The only response (so far) has been a blanking of the page. No edit summaries. At least that means they read it, right?

The IP goes at a rather high rate, so in the past I've had to do a LOT of cleanup (50+ pages). The IP is back to removing things. So far most of it has been whitespace, but here's an example of mass redlink removal, and here's an example of a fact tag removal. I haven't reverted either of these.

I'm not sure what should be done next. It isn't vandalism per se, and the IP-hopping makes it a little hard. Help? tedder (talk) 17:14, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I left a warning. I'll keep an eye on it. – Quadell ^(talk) 17:39, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Tedder: can you list a few other IPs used, so we have a sense of how big the subnet is? — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:43, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Sure, Carl. The previous IP I had seen was 68.33.50.67 (talk · contribs), and here's an example of a revert from it. My edit history from 14 Jun 2009 around 18:00 shows a decent list of what I reverted- though they were all after the IP had quit editing, apparently. It's pretty obvious they are related- I can go into detail why I think so if you disagree. tedder (talk) 18:04, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Hey, Quadell. I saw your warning there, and it seems that when you wrote "You can be blocked" it seems as if you're going to block him only if he wants you to. Just reminding you. I wonder what the IP's going to get up to now? Rory (reply on my page!) (talk) 22:19, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The IP is back editing again, this time with a redlink removal. It isn't a terrible thing, but it means the IP is around. Thoughts? tedder (talk) 23:20, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

IP Editor 128.189.232.79 continues to re-introduce inflamatory/sexual info into a BLP.

128.189.232.79 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

This user continues to re-introduce material into Leighton Meester article. The IP has been warned multiple times, but has reverted or re-introduced the section over seven times. Here is an example [112]. Could an admin please put a stop to this. Brothejr (talk) 18:11, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Blocked by J delanoy. Syrthiss (talk) 18:17, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Requesting rangeblock of 32.153.xxx.xx

From evidence on my talk page, malicious user is clearly IP Hopping. PXK ^T /_C 19:43, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I just semi-protected your talk page -- that should help matters a bit.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:05, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks SoV, you blocked the IPs? PXK ^T /_C 21:09, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Nah, just the first one. After that, I just semi-protected the pages. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:21, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The range in question is larger than we like to block. For one single incident of annoyance, this would be grossly overreacting.

However, the user who's trying to harrass you is abusing WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL pretty badly, and if they keep it up in other ways (that the semi-protection on your talk page doesn't eliminate) please let us know. I and other admins will be happy to take appropriate corrective action. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 21:40, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

98.194.124.102 removed link, Stephan Rosti article

Hello, I provided a source to the Stephan Rosti article showing he was Hungarian and a foreigner who moved to Egypt, the article has been reverted several times by anonymous:98.194.124.102 and he claims he is Egyptian without providing any source at all. He also removed my source from the article. Please look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stephan_Rosti&diff=297432764&oldid=297345968 --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 22:12, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I issued a warning to 98, but this is not something that requires an administrator action. I don't believe this would have reached this point if you had attempted to engage in discussion with 98 on his/her talk page or the article's talk page (which is empty right now). Sancho 22:33, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

My friend, it is impossible to debate with that guy, I have had problems with him for over a month now. He goes around deletes sourced info on several articles. He even uses another IP address, I am 100% sure its his soc puppet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/173.45.218.37 --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 22:38, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Troll turned harasser at 98.212.223.174

(Originally posted at AIV; Mazca suggested I bring it here.)

98.212.223.174 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log): First trolling, and now harassment. User was originally at 98.212.2.27, moved to current address between May 26 and May 30 (see history of WP:MADEUP). Edits of said article included edit summaries which made bad faith claims of racism and elitism. Since user moved away from that article, has since added vandalism of user pages, null edits to embed things in edit summaries, WP:POINTy edits to article leads, etc (the diffs are all in the user's history). But the biggest thing is that the user has now moved to directly harassing me in their edit summaries - I have no relationship whatsoever with this user beyond reverting their changes and attempting to explain why such reverts were appropriate (originally before it became clear this vandal was trolling, and now mostly for the sake of other users reading the histories). User has only made one potentially (I can't verify, as I lack access to the journal added as a reference in the diff) useful contribution to WP's mainspace, and even that used a harassing edit summary.

User has been on this slow vandalism kick for more than a month, with no signs of letting up, nor (other than the one last change) any indication of a desire to make actual contributions to WP. User's edits show obvious familiarity with WP mechanisms, so not a WP:BITE issue. Thus, I am requesting a block. John Darrow (talk) 22:51, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Blocked for 31 hours. Clearly not here to contribute productively. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 00:07, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Persistant removal of information

Aradic-es constantly removes sourced information and changes the article name, see Talk:Karađorđevo_agreement#two_other_problematic_Sources and [113]. This pertains to other articles where it is mentioned, see Template:Campaignbox Bosnian War and File:Tuđman Milošević meeting while writing the Karađorđevo agreement.GIF. I've already discussed these changes but he continues to be stubborn and changes them Talk:Karađorđevo_agreement#Name_of_article. PRODUCER (talk) 22:56, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Addyjuly

Addyjuly (talk · contribs) had made-up content on his userpage, which was successfully deleted as a hoax. Since then, he has created at least three hoax articles, including Love Circle, Higher Heights and Church House (TV Series), all of which are currently tagged (along with their episode lists) as G3. All three also had unlicensed images attached. I seriously think that this user should be indef-blocked for blatant vandalism. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Many otters • One bat • One hammer)} 23:08, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely. This guy's been doing nothing but creating blatant hoaxes; I have blocked indefinitely as a vandalism-only account. Deleting his various productions now. ~ mazca ^talk 00:53, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Think that's everything, all his various articles and their associated copyvio images are all gone. ~ mazca ^talk 01:03, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Seattle Film Critics Association Awards

Somebody is coming in and trying to repurpose this article to be about a new organization, instead of the existing one, and is not yet discussing on talk. I'm too close to this article -- can I get an uninvolved admin to take a look at it and see if any action needs to be taken? Thanks. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 00:28, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I think this one may be resolved -- looks like a case of getting references on two groups with very similar names crossed. (Thanks for fixing the link above, btw.) I'd still appreciate a look-see, but the issue I thought was there isn't.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 00:43, 20 June 2009 (UTC)