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Current issues

Did You Know?

Did you know... that Misplaced Pages, the free encyclopaedia, placed on its front page DYK section an article about Dave Teo, a Singaporean conscript whose court case has not yet even started, let alone furnished a conviction? "We will laugh at your calamity: we will mock you when your fear cometh" (Wikiproverbs 1:26) Guy (Help!) 20:39, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

• Oh, please note, this is not a dig at anyone, updating DYK is dull handle-turning and nobody loves a dull job, I was just thinking that perhaps we should all have a look at some of the DYK noms from time to time and decline some of the more contentious ones. Including election candidates in current elections. Guy (Help!) 20:44, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
  • More screeners are always welcome at T:TDYK, a reasonable objection usually keeps a nom from reaching the main page. Anyone can make comments there, even IPs... screening is a pretty dull process though, as you say, but if no comments there in the 5-day period... it's hard for admins to catch everything, unopposed nominations are added by default unless there's a backlog. In this case, no one objected, although interestingly the original nom didn't mention the conscript's name. It's now off DYK altogether. --W.marsh 21:57, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

(ec)Sadly, DYK has joined WSS as the hive of instruction creep here in the last year. Both processes, when I last used them in 2006, were simple "post a line here, work done by others there, output to be seen here" things. A year later, both require their blocks lined up in a neat row and fuck the rest of the 'pedia, both are effectively being run by a tiny community with nothing better to do, both have huge hurdles to climb to get anywhere, both slap down anyone who complains with the crappy and creepy "well, other people manage okay so there isn't a problem (except with you)" rubric, and both make egregious errors that it is impossible to challenge safely.

The result is a process so in love with the process itself that awful rubbish is given priority without review because someone active in the clique in question has given it the nod without really thinking about it.

Root and branch reform is needed in DYK and WSS, but the clear fallout deters many people, myself included.

And, random surfers, please note the lack of personal attacks here. I'm stating my opinion and naming no names (I don't even remember any names), so save yourselves the threatening emails. ➔ REDVEЯS isn't wearing pants 22:07, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I only became involved with DYK in the last three months or so and I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. As far as I can tell it's the least bureaucratic project on Misplaced Pages. I have no idea who the ruling community is. Maybe give DYK another chance? Whatever problems you have with it must have changed. --JayHenry 01:23, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

And I don't mean to be dismissive of your concerns, I just don't know what DYK was like a year ago, so it's hard for a newcomer to see what the problem is. The whole reason I like DYK is (what I perceive to be) the complete lack of bureaucracy. There are no votes, although certain lengths of hooks and articles are suggested, anyone can do the updates and ignore the suggestions. I've frequently updated articles that are shorter than suggested, have too long of hooks, were written too long ago, or whatever, and nobody has ever given me any grief for it. --JayHenry 01:35, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Re: Dave Teo ... article was created by an administrator and there had been a comment/suggestion from a known DYK participant, so it was reasonable to assume it was up-to-snuff. As a side note, I don't do much DYK updating these days, but it had been 17 hours (!!!) since the last update and I'd had enough spare time to get that done. howcheng {chat} 22:53, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I might be considered part of the DYK Cabal. I would have more time for checking items like Dave Teo if I could get any interest in automating some simpler edits I do routinely, most of which aren't even in the instructions but draw complaints if they aren't done. My main contribution to instruction creep is User:Art LaPella/Long hook, but that's good instruction creep - it doesn't pop up unless it's needed, you usually don't have to read beyond the first couple sentences, and it's better than the previous un-system of constant complaining that selecting administrators should edit more for brevity. I'm puzzled by "egregious errors that it is impossible to challenge safely" - I've never worried about anything other than accuracy when challenging an error, so come on in, the water's fine. Art LaPella 01:34, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Sure. At the risk of more instruction creep, though, I think we should strongly discourage DYKs about people actively running for office, people with legal cases in process, anything where there is even a faint whiff of WP:BLP issues. My own view is also that allt hose cases where ten possible hooks are suggested by a single editor looking to get his own article on some wrestler or college baseball player on the front page should be speedily rejected, but that's just me :o) Guy (Help!) 12:05, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

whats wrong with having dave teo on dyk? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.126.19.150 (talk) 03:32, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

FWIW, I think WP:DYK does a pretty remarkable job at spotting some of the newer gems amongst the dross and keeping the Main Page interesting. The DYK section on the Main Page is completely rewritten at least once, and usually two or three times, every day. It brings 5 to 8 new articles to general attention each time - around 20 per day; most are improved even further by the increased eyeball; and very very few are subsequently deleted (just look for the redlinks in the archive). Compare WP:TFA and WP:POTD, which change once per day and can be set up several days in advance; WP:ITN, which turns over perhaps one, two or three bullet points per day; and WP:SA, which now has complete annual coverage.

I have no idea what the complaint from User:Redvers above is about. DYK is one of the lightest processes on Misplaced Pages I know: write a new article (or significantly expand an existing stub), add a hook to T:DYKT, and wait. -- !! ?? 11:13, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm back!

Hey everyone, I'm back from a wayyyyy long wikibreak (over a year!). I'm going to get back into the swing of things and hopefully be editing on a somewhat regular basis again as well as doing RfA promotions and name changes and the like.

Could someone be so kind as to inform me of any major changes that have occurred during the year that I was gone? Linuxbeak (AAAA!) 01:03, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Welcome back. There's always a need for active admin and crats... WjBscribe 01:51, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Um. Do you want to read 52 issues of the Misplaced Pages:Signpost? :-) I can't actually think of what the major things were that happened. As always, check the CSD wordings and policies, as subtle changes might have happened that could trip someone up. Oh, there was a Community Sanctions Noticeboard that opened and then closed. There was an Essjay controversy. Something called WikiScanner caught loads of people, including the US Congress, editing their bios to make themselves look good. I'm sure others will add some of the more important stuff I've forgotten. Oh, RfA is (still) "broken", but managing to function OK despite perennial calls for reform. There were a few controversial RfAs. Oh, and the first adminbot got approved a few weeks ago. There was a big kerfuffle about something called Misplaced Pages:Attribution. There were also ArbCom Elections nearly a year ago, and you are back just in time for this year's elections. Jimbo also pulled a few rabbits out of hats every now and again, to keep everyone on their toes. What else happened? Did Esperanza close this year, or was that last year? Ooh. Need to start keeping a diary! :-) Carcharoth 21:01, 3 November 2007 (UTC) Misplaced Pages Yearbook, anyone?

You guys forgot Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Jimbo Wales. Welcome back! Neranei (talk) 21:03, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh look! Another adminbot RFA! Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/TempDeletionBot. And anonymous page creation is about to be turned back on in a few days, so people are gearing up for a big flood that might never arrive. Carcharoth 21:10, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Wow! Welcome back indeed. Your reputation precedes you :) It's hard to know where to start on the news, though. WP:SIGNPOST and its archives? - Alison 21:08, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Seriously, we need to start hiring historians. bibliomaniac15 A straw poll on straw polls 22:12, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

They are currently busy writing our encyclopedic content on history... Carcharoth 23:13, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Claps! Keegan 22:51, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Good luck with that RFA thing, it's kind of a cabalish mess at the moment. Luigi30 (Taλk) 15:18, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Targeted sanctions for Gene Nygaard?

Header added and new section split off by Carcharoth 11:31, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I have a long history of conflicts with Gene Nygaard, although none is currently active (phew). Most of Gene's contributions to the project have been positive, but when it comes to diacritics things get ugly. I think that a probation against incivility and diacritics-warring would be the best way to deal with Gene's bad temper. A permanent ban should be issued by the arbcom, which I find unlikely. Húsönd 01:19, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

"A permanent ban should be issued by the arbcom"? I think you've got it backwards. The ArbCom issues one year bans and various probations and paroles, but rarely indefinite bans. The community is largely the other way around. Picaroon (t) 01:54, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Wouldn't a community-imposed ban on page moves be the obvious solution? From what I can see (looking at his logs), he moves pages from spellings with diacritics to those without. He is right to ask people to find references to support the spellings with diacritics. What I can see is mainly a tendency to assume he is right and move things without sufficient (or any) discussion, and (to varying extents) to be incivil about it at the same time. He is quite right to insist on lack of diacritics in category and DEFAULTSORT keys, as diacritics (and lower case letters) do mess up the sorting. That is in the category sorting guidelines. So, again, a targeted community sanction based on page moves and incivility is probably what arbcom would come up with, so why don't we just do that now? He should still be part of the discussions on the topic, if he can be civil in those discussions. This is also complicated by the fact that he does lots of perfectly good page moves as well. It seems that the diacritics is really the bone of contention here. All this would only work, though, if he agreed to it, so maybe this discussion should reconvene when the block expires? If the community can't agree on a targeted solution like this, then take it to arbcom. Carcharoth 11:31, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to pile on but I've also had a couple run-ins with Gene Nygaard where civility has gone out the window from his first edit - and those run-ins go back years! Blocks of escalating lengths should have begun a long time ago IMHO. I can think of a few editors - Tecmobowl (talk · contribs) comes to mind - who were permabanned for similar levels of incivility over far smaller ranges of time (months instead of years). And Tecmobowl/Jmfangio was creating GA and FA-level articles during his tumultuous time here. —Wknight94 (talk) 13:41, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

The Tecmobowl decision is here. It seems that was more for the sockpuppeting (not a consideration here, obviously). Before the sockpuppeting, it seems that a topic ban was being considered, though I haven't read the whole debate. Talking of escalating blocks, it would help if people clarified where the jump-off point to indefinite is. Tecmobowl seems to have been another case of various 24 and 48 hour blocks, followed by a one week block that turned into an indefinite one, in his case when he carried on his edits using sockpuppets during the CSN discussion (I think). Carcharoth 15:46, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Gene took a five month break. Since returning in September, he's made about 5,000 edits. Of those, 59 are page moves, and of those 26 involve diacritics or oriental characters - this includes talk pages - usually with good edit summaries. So in 5,000 edits, he's moved about 14 pages with diacritics (approximate counting). The dispute that spawned this section had nothing to do with diacritics (I think it was the kilogram page and Wikiquette). Husond comes here and asks for a community imposed diacritic-related sanction - and offers not a shred of evidence why it is needed. There is no need for any diacritic-related page move sanction. --Duk 00:37, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Gene Nygaard ALREADY HAS A MOVE BAN: Misplaced Pages:Community_sanction/Log#Gene_Nygaard_is_banned_from_non_consensual_article_moves_until_further_notice. For additional info, see: Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive141#Is_this_disruption.3F, Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive141#Implementation_of_Gene_Nygaard_article_move_ban, Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive130#User:Gene_Nygaard_pages_moves, Misplaced Pages:Community_sanction/Log#Gene_Nygaard_is_banned_from_non_consensual_article_moves_until_further_notice, User_talk:Gene_Nygaard/2006Aug-2006Oct#You_are_banned_from_non_consensual_article_moves_until_further_notice, Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive210#User:Gene_Nygaard, Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive227#Blocking_User:Gene_Nygaard. — Rlevse • Talk • 13:58, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Right, I see that now. All I was working from was his block log, which has no mention of being blocked per such a sanction. Is there a place to check for such community sanctions (I see there is a Log subpage - is that easy to search?), or did they all go out of the window when the noticeboard was closed down? I also see that the previous discussions didn't mention the CSN discussions. Did you only just find them? And why, oh why, did no one actual enforce those previous sanctions?? I still think that escalating enforcement is a good idea, but that jumping from one week to indefinite is too soon. Is there a scale somewhere that people use? Can you block for a month, two months, a year? I know Arbcom use (or have used) such lengths, so why does the community seem to jump from 48 hours to a week, and then straight to indefinite? Carcharoth 15:46, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

All one has to do is check "What links here" (what linked to Gene's userpage), and filtering to show only Misplaced Pages pages. Why no one has enforced this, I don't know. The community sanctions are still there and they are still in force. I only came across Gene recently. — Rlevse • Talk • 17:42, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe Lar, who wrote up the CSN topic ban, can enlighten us? It is possible it was only a 6-month topic ban and has since expired, but the note doesn't mention that. Thanks for the tip about using what links here restricted to WP namespace - that will owrk well in some cases. We should still have a better record of these things - that is what block logs are meant to be used for! Carcharoth 18:51, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

What was the question? (this is in response to a request to turn up here) It was a while ago but I think I was trying to capture the consensus that I think had formed, see wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive141#Is_this_disruption.3F particularly toward the bottom. The ban was "from non consensual article moves until further notice". That seems to suggest that it's indefinite, not any particular time (in particular there was not support for a 6 month period) but that if a new consensus forms, it could be changed. It also seems to suggest that it is limited in scope, if there are other issues (civility or edit warring or whatever) those are to be addressed separately The enforcement mechanism was short blocks, escalating if they didn't work. So what's the question? Is it "whether that move ban is still in force?" I'd say it is, until consensus forms that it shouldn't be. Is such a consensus forming? I see Duk making some good and valid points about how this is an important issue and how we need editors who can work these technical matters, but not a consensus yet. Anything else I can't really speak to. Hope that helps. ++Lar: t/c 19:08, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe why it took us so long to find the previous topic ban? :-) Do people really use that log page of the defunct noticeboard? I saw a mention in that thread you linked to where you said

"There has to be an exit strategy... does this ban last forever? That's why I suggested clear consensus. If he is absolutely banned we will never know if he has changed his ways. That said I'm not driving here, just supporting what I see consensus forming to be and I am, as we all are, open to discussion, I would think. Community bans or article bans are an area we are still feeling our way about, so I'm not sure where this would be recorded even... seems impolite to hang it on his userpage forever, but it will get lost here quickly. No idea what to suggest (maybe there already is a page and i forgot)" - Lar 18:04, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

That was followed immediately by a suggestion of a 6 month probation. I find it ironic that you emphasised not having an open-ended ban, and then that was what resulted (though as you said, you were not driving the discussion), but the bit about not being sure where to record it, and it "getting lost here quickly" is ironic. The page it is on is now marked "This Misplaced Pages page is currently inactive and is retained primarily for historical interest." It was found again, but it seems people did forget about it! Carcharoth 19:18, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

(partly outdent) I supported the CSN and in particular the log subpage, when it was first created, as a way to not lose things. AN/I runs so fast it is very easy to lose track of long term probations, community topic bans and the like. What CSN mutated into is a different topic but to have a ban get lost as it seems this one did, just seems a bad outcome, so I do not support the marking of that page as historic. It logs bans that are still in force, in some cases, and the tag ought to be removed. I'm not sure what else you're asking though, if anything. If the community wants to change the terms of this particular move/topic ban around, they should feel free to do so, and this seems the place to discuss it and reach a consensus. I haven't thought deeply enough about this recently to have a strong opinion about what the right thing to do is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lar (talk • contribs) 19:41, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, things seem to have slowed down again with this discussion. Did the CSN discussions have a set time to run, or did they just reach a natural conclusion? The old CSN Log page should probably be moved, or the current logs copied, to a Log subpage at AN, or wherever AN keeps its records... There definitely needs to be somewhere for community bans to be logged. You mentioned not putting them on user talk pages - well, there is some logic in putting a notice there, like for warning templates, but then you will get people saying that users have the right to remove them, just like they can for warning templates. An argument could be made that community sanctions are more serious, and so the notice should stay for the duration of the topic ban. It could be controversial though. What do others think? Carcharoth 21:51, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't recall how long things ran for before consensus was called on the CSN. But I think that irrelevant in this case, as this particular move restriction was arrived at, as I recall, at AN/I and only documented on the CSN. This is water over the dam at this point but I favoured the CSN for documenting things. Not necessarily for the later elaboration of being a place to arrive at things to document. There needs to be somewhere for bans to be logged that is independent of the user's own talk page, I think that is a better approach than saying "we have this rule about talk page removals which applies here and here but not there warnings are OK but ban notices aren't, except as applied under paragraph 3C but not in subsection 41g " :) ... ++Lar: t/c 01:29, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I've been looking into this a bit more deeply, and Gene does have a point. Not many people are aware that redirects are needed from non-diacritic titles, and that category sorting keys need to use non-diacritic characters (please be honest and say whether you knew the latter point about sort keys before reading these threads). Gene's method of using page moves to draw more attention to this sort of thing is not good, but rather than block him and brush this under the carpet, we need to consider how to make more people aware of the need for non-diacritic redirects and non-diacritic sort keys. I know a bit about this, because I recently suggested a bot to fix the use of non-diacritic sort keys (the bot would also need to make lower case letters at the start of words, into upper case letters, an eliminate punctuation like apostrophes). I also read Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive141#Is this disruption?, and one point Gene raised there was not addressed. Does anyone know whether search engines ignore diacritics or not? Gene's point was: "Redirects don't solve all the problems; articles can still be hidden from many search engine searches as a result of these moves accompanied by spelling changes within the article itself." Could someone try and address that, please? I did a test search for Ramūnas Šiškauskas, by searching for "Ramunas Siskauskas", and the Misplaced Pages article still appeared at the top of the search results (Google). I think that if we get a bot correcting the sort keys, and make an effort to encourage creation of redirects (a thankless task, but one that is needed), then we might be able to get somewhere. A similar case is for redirects involving middle initials, or forename initials. These too are desperately needed to turn redlinks blue, and this should be separated out from the disputes over where exactly among a plethora of alternatives the article should reside. Carcharoth 16:17, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Again, Husond, you are mixing the civility dispute with the diacritics dispute. Separate the two, and focus on Gene's recent edits to make your case. Otherwise your request for a targeted sanction isn't credible. more comments to come... --Duk 17:35, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Carcharoth, you're right that the diacritic indexing is little-known. But the correct way to educate people is not by calling them simplistic or calling them fools (that last talk page is a nice example of Gene Nygaard's diplomacy skills). —Wknight94 (talk) 17:58, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Hey I didn't start all this! :-) But be it, Gene's incivility comes from his views on diacritics so these issues can hardly be dissociated. I don't even think that there's much point in focusing much on recent events, as Gene's misbehavior has remained unchanged for years. Block after block, here we are. I think it's time for an effective remedy to be found. Húsönd 18:03, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. It strikes me as odd that he mixes the two. How diacritics are sorted in a category hardly seems worth warring over and yet he has done so for years. I once suggested that he request a bot to take care of those but was met with yet another snippy response. If a bot could do something, it can't be worth getting uncivil for. —Wknight94 (talk) 18:12, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me, Husond, that your remedy is to silence an editor with views different than your own. You are using argument B (incivility) to win argument A (the content dispute). Have you no shame? --Duk 18:14, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me, Duk, that your comments will henceforth be largely ignored by me. Húsönd 18:47, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Hey, can we concentrate on Gene, and not you two, please? :-) Carcharoth 18:54, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Some comments:

1. Gene's incivility - This is highly subjective. It has never bothered me in the least - even when directed at me. For others, it is highly upsetting, and I respect their feelings. Others probably don't really don't care. And still others play up the incivility because they didn't do well in a content debate with Gene, even if these people can't recognize or admit it. Since this is highly subjective, there needs to be many views heard. This is a case where it is not acceptable for off-wiki collusion among buddies to make these judgments. There seems to be a growing consensus here for simple blocks of varying duration every time Gene pisses off enough people.
3. Content disputes - In the past, I've seen people in content disputes with Gene who don't do to well debating him, so they switch to his incivility - trying to use argument B to win argument A. I hope we are all smart enough here not to accept this. Many of Gene's battles revolve around his familiar refrain "why the hell isn't the English Misplaced Pages written in English". Husond gets close to mixing these two in the first paragraph of this section. They need to be separate, and Gene has done well lately, I believe, in not revert warring over page name moves. Therefore, I don't agree with a diacritics-related ban. If Husond wants to make a case for this, he needs to separate the content dispute from the civility dispute, and to look at recent editing. It seems to me that Husond just wants to silence an editor who he has a content dispute with.
5. Making a place for technical editors - I've seen many editors that are detail orientated. They tend to work hard and specialize in a focused area, becoming highly skilled in that particular area. They shoot for project-wide consistency, which inevitably brings conflict. These editors are generally non-social. They don't hang out in irc or come to the project to make a lot of friends, which puts them at a natural disadvantage when disputes arise. These types of editors also tend to be stubborn as hell, but valuable to the project. They are immune to social pressure and only listen to logic. There is a lot to gain by finding ways to include these types of editors, but many people don't understand how to interact with them. In a few cases, I've seen editors like this become embroiled in ever growing conflicts over amazingly trivial stuff - and eventually leaving. The important thing to realize here that both sides of the dispute were being stubborn. The inability to get along wasn't one-sided.
7. All that being said - I support Guy's latest block of Gene and hope he comes back with better behavior. --Duk 18:31, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Duk's points here. I too see people (not specifically in this case, but it might apply), getting upset when they are shown that they have been doing something wrong. Wounded pride and that, but so unnecessary. It doesn't help if the person pointing out that you have done something wrong is being rude or uncivil, but words like "fool" and "simple" can be shrugged off if you take a philosophical view - though I can understand some people getting upset with that. The best response is to swallow your pride and thank the editor for pointing out the mistake. The next point is crucial (though it doesn't work well if no-one is watching): let someone else call the offending editor out on incivility (ironically, I think wikiquette alerts are meant to allow this, which is what started all this). As the person who has just been hurt, you won't be the best person to deal with the situation. If anyone then "uses argument B to win argument A", well, I agree with Duk, that is indefensible (note that I'm not saying anyone has specifically done this). Finally, Duk's point about technical editors is an excellent one. Good contributors are sometimes naturally cranky people, and not good at social interaction, preferring to call a spade a spade. If that spills over into incivility, it does need to be restrained, but, like Duk, I think technical editors are invaluable to the project. Strong warnings when they are incivil, rather than immediate blocks, might be best. A strong warning probably helps more than a block in some cases. Anyway, if anyone is interested in the bot proposal, it is linked from User talk:Gene Nygaard. Carcharoth 19:06, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I understand that some people are cranky by nature, but that doesn't mean that others have to put up with their crankiness. Strong warnings have proved useless with Gene, as he never apologizes or makes the slightest effort to change his behavior. On Misplaced Pages, all users have the right to communicate with Gene Nygaard (or any other user) without being spit on. Húsönd 01:11, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Husond, I partially agree with you here. I've never shortened or unblocked Gene, nor have I condoned his incivility. He doesn't get passes, unlike some of our more high profile admins. As for his being able to change: in his last 5,000 edits he's moved 14 pages with diacritics - all apparently straight forward, with proper edit summaries and no warring involved (as far as I could tell). That's a change, wouldn't you admit? Yet you come here asking for diacritic-related community sanctions. Things like this makes it very difficult to take anything you say seriously when it concerns Gene. Mayby Gene isn't the only one who needs to change a little.

Now, back to that high profile admin I mentioned - not going to mention his name because he's a great guy and I've no desire to run him down. There was an ANI discussion a while back about when to block for "persistent personal attacks". I noted that it was never a part of the blocking policy until recently. I went and found out who added it, then looked at his recent edits. In a period of three days I see him making the following comments:calling someone's opinion "ass clownery", "delete nominator", "Shut up and quit being a disgrace", "Ah, I see you're a different attention-seeking pissant entirely. My mistake." Suffice it to say that he is a well connected and popular member of the administrator community with a spotless block record. Again, I'm not trying to legitimize this behavior, but rather to put it into perspective.

I think we should drop these outdated diacritic-page-move charges, they are currently being used as a bludgeon with no facts to back them up. His category/page sorting is fine too. Hunsond should stay away from Gene and stop filing complaints. An impartial admin should hand Gene blocks with a minimum of fuss and drama when merited - call it a community sanctioned civility parol if you like, but I don't think the pomp is necessary. --Duk 03:32, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the incivility and the content/formatting issues should be separated as much as possible - there is enough of a problem with the former, and that's what we are dealing with here. I made this post to WP:AN/I with just a selection of Gene's interactions - just from the last month. I don't think you should underestimate quite how many editors have had problems with his incivility, and something really needs to change here.

• Incivility may be "subjective", but how many editors' "subjective" annoyance are we going to ignore?
• The problems may surface in content disputes, but there are always going to be such disputes - which is exactly why WP:CIVIL exists. He has every right to hold strong views, but he only has the privilege to edit and express them civilly.
• I don't see why "technical editors" should be awarded privilege over other content-producing editors. Here we have Gene telling a new (and now valuable) editor to stop contributing new articles in an area Misplaced Pages was weak on, just because he didn't know about sort keys. The motto of Misplaced Pages is certainly not "The 💕 anyone who knows our MOS and formatting rules can edit". How many new editors stopped contributing because their first interaction was with Gene? Is it worth losing all their possible contributions because they haven't read about DEFAULTSORT, or format a unit incorrectly? Is it worth losing them because we can't tackle one user's incivility?
• If you want technical editors who tend to be "stubborn as hell" and who we "don't understand how to interact with them" to be better integrated, might it not be an idea as a first step to tell them not to pick numerous fights by placing rude comments on people's talk pages out of the blue? If they have already been asked not to, but still proceed to do so as in this case, how else are you going to persuade the rest of the community to get on with them?
• "just let other people call him on his incivility" - isn't that exactly what we're doing now, anyway?
• This guy has been here a very long time. Over this time he has had bans, blocks, warnings and complaints from more people than I have had any interaction with. And he hasn't changed a bit, he's still doing it. So, what is the plan? Mondegreen 13:18, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi Mondegreen - some of your post is correct relevant and I agree with it. Other parts are just fantasy. Nowhere did anyone say "technical editors" should be awarded privilege over other content-producing editors. Not even close. Or this: you want technical editors who tend to be "stubborn as hell". Where did you get these ideas? I'm quite sure no one is suggesting anything of the sort. I see where you picked and chose some of the words, but you present them with a completely different meaning than they were offered. Mis-representing what people say might be valuable as propaganda, but it won't help to reach a rational consensus. Please, lets try to be accurate here.

So, what is the plan? several people have made suggestions, including myself (see the end of my previous post). What's yours? --Duk 14:39, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

• The "stubborn as hell" is a pure misunderstanding due to my unclear wording - it would have been less ambiguous if I had written "you would like us to integrate better with even those technical editors, who are "stubborn as hell" and "who we don't understand..". Hopefully that makes it clearer, and easier to understand what I intended.
• As for the technical editors' "privilege" - I just couldn't see why in the section "making a place for technical editors" we were making a distinction, perceived or otherwise, between "technical editors" and the rest whoever they may be. I think it's an untrue generalisation that people who specialise in detail, formatting and technical issues are different to interact with than other users. If someone places a rude comment on a talk page, we shouldn't feel less aggrieved because their contributions indicate a knowledge of the intricacies of punctuation/diacritics/formatting/units/etc.
• I wish I had a foolproof plan - if I had one, I would present it. However, I don't feel what was presented will work for the reasons I gave above. Still, there is a lot of possibilities offered by the structure here - hopefully someone can find a creative solution somewhere between the unhappy extremes of "chastise, cross fingers and hope he'll learn" (tried, failed, the encyclopaedia risks losing contributors) and an indefinite block (the encyclopaedia loses Gene's skills). Mondegreen 15:18, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

The problem is not about whether he likes or dislikes diacritics —being the first person to have mentioned them by name a few paragraphs up I wanted to clarify this—, but the fact that he can get incredibly uncivil, accussed other editors of bad faith and upset many good editors non the way. He may think he has a point but there are many ways to do things. Regards, Asterion 21:37, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Duk has left a note for Gene on his talk page which I believe sums up the situation and what the community wants from Gene almost perfectly - correct me if I am wrong, and many thanks to Duk for that. (I personally just disagree with the statement "a lot of people want to see (Gene) banned permanently" - I think the vast majority want his continued contribution, just without the rudeness). The response to this should dictate what happens next. Mondegreen 17:05, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Husond has left a message for Rlverse in which he credits Gene's break for a refreshing lack of diacritics conflicts. This is an outright bald-face lie. I earlier pointed out (here) that since Gene's return he's made over 5,000 edits with vastly improved behavior on the diacritics front. But this isn't enough for Hunsond: After losing his diacritics-ban request on merit, he then goes and tries to win it by unfairly maligning Gene behind his back. I'd like to ask that Hunsond stay away from Gene, cease filing frivolous complaints against him and stop misrepresenting his behavior behind his back. --Duk 17:28, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the problems with diacritic page-moves were solved by User:Lar and the discussions at AN/I and the then CSN. Hopefully the current and more pressing civility problem can be sorted just as effectively here. Mondegreen 17:41, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Duk's talk page message for Gene is a good one. I too share concerns about Husond's over-emphasis on the diacritics problem. I have taken another look at Gene's move log, and checked Duk's statement "in his last 5,000 edits he's moved 14 pages with diacritics". Going back around 14 diacritics-related moves, I get to 11 April 2007 (when 5000 edits takes us back to October 2007), so in my view Gene has been more restrained even than Duk is saying. Duk is right that most of the moves have informative edit summaries (eg. "revert undiscussed, unreferenced change of spelling of this Canadian's name which is contrary to that in all cited sources"). There are several moves I agree with. I think Husond will have to make a better case than he has made so far. Carcharoth 18:14, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

While I agree that Gene tends towards incivility and that the incivility is made all the less necessary by the triviality of the subject (at least that's how I view the diacritics issue in general and the category sorting even more so), I don't think those add up to a topic ban. I think the civility issues are unrelated to the topic and that he would have civility difficulties no matter what room you locked him in. Block him outright or don't block him - but a topic ban is not appropriate in this case. —Wknight94 (talk) 19:56, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

The community ban is still in place afaik. It's merely a sympton of the larger problem of disruption and incivility. He's had plenty of chances and warnings. If after the 1 week block is over, he continues in this pattern, he should be indef blocked. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:58, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Rlevse, I've been reading through the previous discussions you linked to further up the page, and I think what we have here is a case of the people who have dealt with Gene in the past not wanting to rehash the same old arguments, and calling for a block because they are unwilling to work with Gene any further, and pointing to his past behaviour as a reason for the block. In all the discussions I've read so far, Gene has argued his side well (even if he might not always be right), and sometimes (in my opinion) others have been wrong when he is right. Also, I'm not finding the massive incivility some are claiming here. More diffs on that would be appreciated. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I have an interest in sortkeys and naming conventions, and I appreciate the type of work Gene does, so I would be prepared to work with Gene on these issues, and to try and calm down any future disputes that may arise. If Gene accepts this (I'll leave a note on his talk page), would that be acceptable to those with an interest in this matter? Carcharoth 00:06, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Duk, please stop it. You should be well aware that users wishing to take part in a constructive discussion must assume good faith, so I ask you to please cease your accusations. It disturbs me that you decided to pick a comment I left on another user's talk page to fabricate a series of far-fetched judgments regarding my conduct or my intents. I'm not setting out to create a backstabbing complot against Gene Nygaard. Nor have I lost any diacritics-ban request, I just proposed something of that kind as a possible remedy for discussion. Again, assume good faith and refrain from accusing me for no good reason. And since I'm being pushed into this discussion again, here are my views on this matter very clearly detailed so that there's no further misinterpretation of my acts or position:

• Gene Nygaard is an uncivil user who'll treat any users disagreeing with him with snideness at best, gross incivility at worst.
• Gene Nygaard does not assume good faith.
• Gene Nygaard is impervious to arguments but his own.
• Gene Nygaard will exhaust other users with endless discussions around his very same point.
• Gene Nygaard does a good job on Misplaced Pages when he's not butting heads with other users for his views on diacritics.
• Gene Nygaard's conflicts are always related to diacritics usage.
• Gene Nygaard is clearly not worth discussing with after this.
• Gene Nygaard's has wasted countless hours of users' precious time in discussions about his behavior, most of which were fruitless.
• Gene Nygaard should be indef blocked from Misplaced Pages for the benefit of the project and its participants, unless he stops mistreating other users (unrealistic option) or is banned from dealing with diacritics (an option meant to hypothetically eliminate the root of all problems).

These are my views, which were already well known by users who were involved in previous discussions where I participated about Gene Nygaard's conduct. I would now appreciate if the subject of this thread keeps focusing on Gene instead of shifting to me. Thank you. Húsönd 23:53, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Janitorial tasks from multiple accounts

An editor recently requested my assistance when Resurgent insurgent (talk · contribs) reviewed and declined WP:CSD taggings. When asked why he noted "Well, I'm an admin." . The editor noticed Resurgent insurgent was categorised in Category:Misplaced Pages administrators, but not listed at Special:Listusers/sysop, leading to the editor suspecting Resurgent insurgent was impersonating an admin. Anyway, turns out Resurgent insurgent is one of a number of declared socks of Awyong Jeffrey Mordecai Salleh (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) which does have the tools. Both accounts are currently active and appear to be used interchangeably. While I don't think this set up is used with any intent to mislead, it nevertheless appears to be contrary to the spirit of Misplaced Pages:Administrators: "Although multiple user accounts are allowed on Misplaced Pages in certain circumstances, only one account of a given person should have administrative tools." and Misplaced Pages:Sock puppetry#Administrative sock puppets: "The community has strongly rejected users having more than one username with admin powers... only one account with access greater than that of a normal user account should be operated." I asked Resurgent insurgent if he would consider restricting the janitorial tasks we ask of admins (such as declining CSDs, protection requests etc) to the account with sysop status, if only to stop this type of confusion happening again. He doesn't appear particularly amenable to this, suggesting his account is "policy-compliant". I thought wider opinion may be of value. Rockpocket 21:07, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

I think the main issue that causes confusion is not appropriately labeling or declaring these sock accounts. For example, I have a secondary account that I use on public computers, but this account is clearly labeled (and even has the same signature), so any confusion should be short-lived if I chose to do admin-like tasks with this account. As long as the user does some kind of step like this to reduce ambiguity, I don't think occasionally using a secondary account for janitorial tasks should cause too many problems. Eric (EWS23) 21:27, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

To be fair, he does list all his sock accounts on his Resurgent insurgent user page, and all accounts redirect there. The problem is this account is not the one with sysop status. I don't really have a problem with declared socks doing the odd non-controversial janitorial task, but I would expect the principal account, the puppeteer, to be the one with the tools. That isn't the case in this instance. Rockpocket 21:57, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

any user can remove CSD taggings, not only administrators, per WP:CSD. Thus he was technically not using the tools on the other account. I agree, though, that it is a little confusing. 00:24, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I really don't think there is any administrator action needed. The person has the tools at his disposal even if the account does not. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 19:58, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

So, the tools are given to a person then, and not to an account? That surprises me. How do we find out enough about a person to decide about Adminship, then? It would mean that any admin could open up mutliple accounts and use them all as "pretend" admin accounts? That's going to be very confusing to the average editor, I think. RFAs seem to be very much focussed on a single account. Perhaps I am missing something basic here. Bielle 20:49, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

No, the tools are given to the account that is owned by the person, that's why you can have multiple accounts, but not multiple accounts with sysop rights and why you can't have shared accounts. I have a sock account that I use for testing things that I need a second account or a non-admin account to do. Even if I made thousands of construtive edits on it, I could not get admin tools on it. You can't have pretend admin accounts because only the account with actual admin tools can do the admin actions, the rest can only do administrative tasks that any user, admin or not, can do. Mr.Z-man 20:57, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the simplest way to avoid this sort of confusion is to require admins with sockpuppets to have the account with the tools as their primary/default account and all socks directing towards that. This way anytime a sock claimed "I am an admin", when someone went to query it they would end up on the talkpage of an account that actually was an admin, rather than the page of someone who maintains an admin sock. Rockpocket 21:54, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Whenever anyone is operating a legitimate sock they realy should make it clear on each sock's page who it belongs to. This common-sense approach shouldn't be limited to admins. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 22:03, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

If any editor claims to be an admin (that is, as in Rockpocket's diffs #4, above, says on the editor's user page "I am an admin") when it is not, to this unsophisticated editor, that is an impersonation. The fact that the editor making the claim is a sock of an editor who is an admin, and claims that makes it all right, borders on wikilawyering. While there may well be degrees of culpability that mean this sort of claim is not as bad as impersonating an admin when neither the puppetmaster nor any of its socks is an admin, is still unnecessarlly confusing. Any solution that makes it clear to any editor who checks just which account is an admin and what that admin has done has to be better than confusion. Rockpocket's solution would achieve this; perhaps there are others that will do the same. Bielle 22:26, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

No one has done anything wrong, and the goals of the encyclopedia are being met in a good user who happens to use multiple accounts in a way that may sometimes be slightly confusing. I do not recall any limitations in process set up for admins and admins only to fulfill. Though I do not remember where I saw it, or if it has been removed, but something that is inherent or, at least should be, in the spirit of Misplaced Pages is that any user may act in a way befitting an administrator. Certain tasks in process usually fall only to administrators because they are the only ones with the tools to perform the task - you cannot fully close an AfD as delete without the mop, but anyone is allowed to close a discussion as keep if the consensus is clear (unclear nominations will be squabbled over because the point doesn't appear to have been arbitrated). Any user can and, in an ideal world, should behave in a way befitting an administrator.

That being said, I do think that it is a good idea for administrators who maintain alternate accounts to have the administrator account remain primary - people tend to anthropomorphize accounts as the presence of the person at the keyboard, and using a secondary one as a front to the powers of the primary does seem somewhat questionable if not actually a bad thing. Nihiltres 22:42, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it may help if I explain how I came to end up using 2 accounts in the first place.

In August last year I asked to be renamed from "Kimchi.sg" to the more real name-ish "Awyong Jeffrey Mordecai Salleh". Very quickly I realised it is a mouthful and problematic for users passing messages. So I asked last November if I could swap the two accounts again, (I had created Kimchi.sg again, to prevent impersonation.) but the 'crats declined. So I've used an alternate account for much of the past year mainly to make my user name more readable. (I know people will just say "You could have signed as...", but how do you sign in the page history or move log?) I've never intended this to confuse other editors, thus I've asked again to usurp the Kimchi.sg account. Resurgent insurgent 08:10, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Reviewing speedy deletions isn't always an admin task in the first place. Personally, I'd say away from grey areas since I'm not an admin (let them take the heat :) ), but I've gone through speedy deletions before and either removed them or listed them for AfD instead when they didn't meet WP:CSD. -- Ned Scott 08:41, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

みんなはこの”神との対話”を読む。いや、読まなくても良い。

Could an admin who reads the above language take a look at the deleted edits on User:Akanemoto. This user has requested the deletion of his/her user page nearly 50 times. Curious, I submitted some of the text to a translator, and Akanemoto appears to be using the page as a way to communicate with somebody. Interesting stuff (phrases such as "everyone is healthy", "I want to be free"), but this page may need to be protected from recreation or the user blocked. Comments welcome. - auburnpilot talk 22:55, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

That "somebody" seems to be God (神). --BorgQueen 22:59, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Babelfish, always useless even between related European languages, suggests Everyone reads "the conversation with this God". Well, you do not read and also the is good. Which makes a certain gnomic sense. Personally, I'd undelete the entire page, then blank it, then protect the blank version. Most work, but least trouble and eliminates the problem in future. ➔ REDVEЯS isn't wearing pants 23:04, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

(ec)Appears to be Japanese, as it usually makes more sense when spit through the Japanese translator than the Chinese option. Either way, I've protected the page. Akanemoto requested yet another deletion just minutes ago. - auburnpilot talk 23:06, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

The sentence is somewhat non-sensical. It says, "Everyone is reading this sentence to God, or, you shouldn't read it." It is Japanese, using Kanji and Hiragana script. Cla68 00:07, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Okay, so put this down as someone who likes to talk to Kami-sama. — Rickyrab | Talk 04:42, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

WP:SSP backlog

This is starting to back up again. Can we get more admins involved? Tks. — Rlevse • Talk • 23:25, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Fuck SSP, check out the backlog here. It would be greatly appreciated if any admins who are even remotely versed in image policy could help out. east.718 at 05:27, 11/4/2007

that's not very appropriate language, esp for an admin. Pointing out other backlogs is fine, but disparging another admin task is hardly appropriate. — Rlevse • Talk • 11:50, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't disparaging anything; sometimes you can use profanity to humorously make a strong comparison. east.718 at 19:05, 11/4/2007 19:05, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I really don't appreciate the use of foul vulgarity. Please refrain from it in the future. I am disappointed it came from an admin. Bstone 01:19, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

New user closing AfD Discussion after 2 hours

I was just looking at the AfD list for today, and Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Lee Jones (author) has been closed as a Speedy Keep, after less than 2 hours, by User:Icestorm815, a user who had only been editing actively for about 2 months. I have no opinion on outcome of the AfD itself, but this nomination was made by an admin in good faith. Even if another admin had closed it so quickly it would have been suspect. Two of the four keep !voters have edited the article, so not exactly unbiased consensus either way.

The point is, a relatively new user should not be closing good faith AfDs after less than 2 hours. Could an admin deal with this and possibly let User:Icestorm815 how things work there? If this continues we'll be getting users closing any AfD they disagree after a couple of hours just because someone said "speedy keep". Crazysuit 05:36, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

• It's a valid speedy keep, but as usual (frustratingly) the assertions of notability and the claim of many sources have not translated into edits to the article. This often happens with AfD, and means that it might all happen again. So if you'd like to encourage the keep advocates to improve the article, you'd be doing the project a service. Guy (Help!) 08:52, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Please also note comments being made at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Poker#Lee Jones.--Alf 09:04, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I have no major problems with non-admins and even new users closing discussions as long as they follow policy. The main concern is the possibility of abuse, by closing discussions prematurely or closing with a COI. But we have Misplaced Pages:Deletion review for that, and users are warned or even blocked if they abuse the process. Apparently, this particular case warranted a Speedy Keep, so no harm was done. - Mtmelendez 11:06, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but how exactly did this qualify as a speedy keep? It comes nowhere close, as far as I can see. There was nowhere near enough time for discussion whether the (admittedly many) web sources do indeed constitute non-trivial coverage in reliable sources. Most web hits seem to be from either booksellers, or private blogs or commercial sites. Do any of these qualify as reliable sources? I'll have no problem if it should in fact be determined that they do, but it's not something about which a SNOW-like consensus can simply be assumed. Recommend overturning this invalid non-admin closure and waiting out the discussion period. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:59, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Yep, it's one of those where if you know who the subject is, the nomination appears ridiculous, but if you don't... ELIMINATORJR 12:10, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

...then knowledgeable folks should add information to provide context to the article. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 12:16, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. ELIMINATORJR 14:02, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

That's why I said apparently. (:-) - Mtmelendez 14:19, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment on the main topic here: has anyone determined whether or not this new user is actually an old user wearing a new coat? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 12:16, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

A litle AGF is needed here. The bottom line is to determine whether the speedy closure in question was valid, which I think it is. If anything, we should be pleased that there are experienced non-administrators who are willing to help out with the AfD backlog. PeaceNT 12:43, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

interjected comment I was not failing to assume good faith; I was pointing out that one reason why a person might do a complex or knowledgeable task "right out of the gate" is that this might be an established user with a new name; not accusing of sock-puppetry as there are good reasons why people abandon one name in favor of another. Sorry it I came off as failing to assume good faith; that was not my intention. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:56, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

end interjected comment

I've overturned the closure. There's no harm in having this go through the full process. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:26, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I support your action. If the Speedy Close rationale is contested by good-faith users, it should be overturned and relisted, but not just because of the user who closed it. However, I imagine further discussion on this issue is needed, maybe at a later period. - Mtmelendez 21:24, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I agree, it was closed prematurely and incorrectly. But I do believe that this is a case that WILL snowball. Right now the !vote is at 8-1, and the 1 is a "conditional delete" asking for reliable sources---not realizing that Cardplayer Magazine is the magazine authority in Poker. Before closing this AIV, I would ask other admins to revisit the AFD to see if should be snowballed afterall. I believe that while it was closed early, that this is still a candidate for snowball.Balloonman 23:27, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

It looked like the added sources put it well into WP:SNOW territory, so I did another non-admin close. Hope that's ok...--uɐɔlnʌɟoʞǝɹɐs 19:11, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Needing some Help

I want to request permission from WikiMedia to allow the use of a history written by someone else. A gentleman at the Newtown History Center in Stephens City, Virginia, wrote a very detailed, very well written history about the town of Stephens City and I would like to use it. The permission I sent (by email from NHC's Adminstrative Assistant) was not valid according to the rules. Could someone tell me if this is what I need them to fill out? I don't want to have to ask them a 3rd time for permission if this try doesn't work. I appericate any help I can get. Take Care....NeutralHomer 23:49, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think that would work. Replace "LICENSE " with "GNU Free Documentation License (link)" (as the all textual content must be submitted to Misplaced Pages under this license). --Iamunknown 00:28, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Many thanks! :) - NeutralHomer 06:52, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Should today's Featured article be protected?

Since it has been protected and unprotected and protected again once already, i feel this should be decided by consesnus. Todays FA GameFAQshas revieved a bit of vandalisim due to the fact that its a) The FAOTD and b) the last day of the character tournement. Should it be protected or not? I oppose protecting it, but am open to disscusion to cahnge my mind. The Placebo Effect 01:00, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

TFAs are protected when they're subject to insane levels of vandalism... like now. There are currently several thousand teenagers wetting themselves because their home website is on Misplaced Pages's front page. Unprotect if you feel like reverting all of them. – Steel 01:05, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I think all FAs on the main page should be protected, they're nothing but vandal magnets and it's ludicrous to proclaim it as wiki's best when they are vandalized so much. We sure want new comers to come see the main page FA as our best when it has profanity, porn, etc on it--NOT. — Rlevse • Talk • 01:42, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Almost one a minute. Ouch. I think this is appropriate. --Haemo 01:45, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Our policy is very clear. FA must not be protected unless there is reason beyond doubt to do so, like adding libel information. -- ReyBrujo 01:49, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Just to head off the inevitable admin who'll unprotect it with the summary "We never protect the main page FA", they should read Misplaced Pages:Main Page featured article protection first. The old axiom isn't really true. --W.marsh 01:50, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I think this should be unprotected. We've had much worse hit FAs than this one. Vandalism was being reverted quickly and protection being determined in less that an hour seems very hasty. This is far from insane levels of vandalism - we could cope with this by watchlisting and reverting. WjBscribe 01:52, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Heh, apparently my attempt didn't work because it's now been unprotected with pretty much the edit summary I predicted. --W.marsh 01:54, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Did you think Wii fare much better when it made it the home page? ;-) -- ReyBrujo 01:55, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

If the article suffered, leaving it unprotected was probably a bad idea. Some people seem to enjoy leaving articles unprotected like they're the guy who stands in front of a cannonball at the state fair... we don't allow IP editing to show we can take a beating, we allow it (in theory at least) only because it usually tends to improve articles. In cases where improvement doesn't seem to be occurring... it's just masochism. --W.marsh 02:01, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, while I understand your position, I am one of those who still think a good anonymous contribution is worth the hassle. What I would change in the policy is that those who deface the page (replacing it with another text) should be warned just once and then blocked, or just blocked, depending on the administrator's judgment. This is because the user is vandalizing a very transited page in order to gain notoriety. -- ReyBrujo 02:07, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Can anyone name the last FAOTD that was semi-protected for more than an hour? The Placebo Effect 03:05, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Islam? Anyone who thinks "we never semi-protect the main page FA" should look at that one. --W.marsh 03:13, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, both the articles on Gerbils (I think?) and the article on Intelligent Design were protected a third of the day last month. We shouldn't do this; it is bad for the project long term. -- Kendrick7 03:18, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

What's bad for the project, protecting them or leaving them unprotected? Mr.Z-man 03:20, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Protection is bad. -- Kendrick7 03:28, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

W.marsh, let's not compare the vandalism an article like Islam, George W. Bush or similar could get with the one GameFAQs gets. This one is childish vandalism, by young people with a lot of free time to browse internet but little to think. The others border libel and racism. -- ReyBrujo 03:26, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I just object to people saying "we never semi-protect the FA" when we obviously do sometimes. --W.marsh 03:27, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Featured article is aways hit the hardest because it's the first thing the little bastards charming young souls see. HalfShadow 03:30, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Again, I understand. And I used to think we should protect them (I even reported once that it should be protected before realizing there is a policy against it). You must excuse my behavior, I believe the perfect article must not be protected, and therefore vouch for the unprotection of featured articles, unless there is something more than childish vandalism. However, that is just my point of view, if vandalism reaches a high peak and cannot be controlled, it could be protected for a few minutes. We cannot know if they have posted a note at the boards pointing to this article (although I am almost sure they did). -- ReyBrujo 03:51, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Eh, s'alright; I felt the same way for the same reason, once (first thing seen=hardest hit). Of course, it also means closest screened... HalfShadow 03:58, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Apologies for unprotecting during this discussion. I didn't realize this was going on. (I need to pare my watchlist down a bit). I haven't noticed that the vandalism level is particularly higher than usual main page FAs, eh? —Wknight94 (talk) 03:42, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Semi-protected - I'm a regular RFPP patroller and in all my time, I've not seen a mainpage article get so beaten up. As this is an extreme case and because we've had precedent before, I've upgraded protection to semi-prot, sysop move. Anyone can feel free to review and change this at any time but for the moment, give the article a chance. It's being vandalised faster than it can be reverted and the brakes need to go on, even if for just an hour or so - Alison 04:18, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

sic transit gloria mundi. -- Kendrick7 04:22, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

And now here come the sleeper socks. When is the last time we needed full prot on a main page article? At that point, it might need to be taken down IMHO. —Wknight94 (talk) 04:23, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

The more sleeper socks we block, the better IMO. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:25, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Zero tolerance on the sleepers. I would have prefered to keep the page unprotected longer though :(. Ah well, we can try unprotection again in a few hours... WjBscribe 04:27, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

On the contrary, they are likely creating accounts which become sleepers because they can't use them right now ;) -- ReyBrujo 04:39, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

• Normally, the main page isn't protected. But come on, this amount of vandalism is ridiculous. It should slow down once all the GameFAQs migrators get it out of their system. Leave it sprotected for 2-3 hours I'd say. Wizardman 04:33, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

well, if it is that bad, fine. But an hour or two is stretching it. -- Kendrick7 05:29, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

PalestineRemembered‎ (talk · contribs)

I was under the impression that PalestineRemembered (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) had been placed under community mentorship. He was assigned Zscout370 (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) as his mentor, but Zscout370 has since resigned from this role, leaving PalestineRemembered with no mentor. I'm a little concerned that he now seems to have chosen his own mentor (Kendrick7 (talk · contribs)) to replace Zscout370. If my memory serves me correct, I've seen Kendrick7 come out in support of Palestine remembered on a number of occasions, most notably his request for arbitration. I think it's best if a neutral mentor is assigned, and one chosen by the community - thoughts? Ryan Postlethwaite 02:02, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm willing to do it as long as someone will familiarize me with the history of the dispute. east.718 at 02:06, 11/5/2007

Mm, I wonder where a nice, neutral mentor could be found **looks at Ryan** :] I Like To 02:09, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

To be fair, I volunteered. As far as support, I may have assumed good faith beyond what others were willing to assume at certain points. But having worked in the past in the same series of articles as PR, which are a uniquely troublesome area of the wikipedia to work in (involving an ongoing civil war), I had hoped I'd be uniquely qualified for the job. But, whatever is clever. -- Kendrick7 02:20, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

(ec) Kendrick7 volunteered when nobody else did; he wasn't selected from among multiple volunteers. See User talk:PalestineRemembered#Can I be your new mentor?. A dual mentorship might be best; Kendrick has more recent editing experience in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict areas than Ryan does, so he definitely brings an experience of what the mud in the trenches is like that Ryan doesn't have. Ryan is an admin, which Kendrick7 isn't. The combination could be good. We have one other dual mentorship in this dispute area; Isarig is being mentored by FayssalF and Avi. GRBerry 02:26, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

1. I could not agree more with Ryan and I note that PR's suggestion that he's already got a mentor confuses me.
2. I have no qualms with Ryan's suggestion that he'd mentor PR or with East718 for that matter, however i fail to see how Kendrik7 is a qualified well established admin of the caliber of Avi and/or FayssalF. His initial statement that, he's "always taken a shine to (e.g. PR)" and that he does not understand the last block (intentional repetition of WP:NPA despite warnings from mentors and non-involved editors) was enough to illustrate a would be problem.
3. I still believe PR should be topic banned until some mentorship rules be established. as of now, he continues to soapbox and shows a strong disregard to context despite explanations .

-- Jaakobou 02:51, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I actually and literally did not understand the last block; I hadn't been paying attention for a while, and was oblivious to the exact circumstances even after reviewing PR's talk page. I am paying attention now however and was meaning to mention to PR to be kinder in his edit summaries. Topic banning PR does little good, as he is a permitted WP:SPA which only edits in this area. (If I had such wisdom long ago, I'd be an probably be an admin by now.) -- Kendrick7 03:09, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't mind that idea, GRBerry. Between myself and Ryan we could be the old carrot and stick. -- Kendrick7 03:09, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with the specifics, here, but I generally trust Ryan to be neutral, experienced, and even-handed. No disrespect intended to East, I'm just not as familiar with you, personally (yet!). Kendrick sounds willing and familiar with the matters at hand; it may not hurt to have a sympathetic mentor, provided there's also some balance to the mentoring. If everybody's open to trying a new way to solve problems, I'd say I could think of much worse arrangements. – Luna Santin (talk) 06:39, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

• Mentee speaks - I have a concern that each of my mentors has been bombarded with volleys of baseless allegations, both against me and against the mentors. As each of these people has shown their commitment to the process and project, each has suffered increasing degrees of personal harassment. In each case, this harassment has escalated to such a degree as to adversely affect their own participation in the project. One of these mentors was forced to resign, one was de-syssoped and one has been blocked permanently (only the last of these for reasons generally understandable to the community).
• Needless to say, the harassment of mentors has largely been carried out away from the public eye - but see here for two public examples of this nastiness. And see User:Jaakobou/GeniVolunteering for a page that was created (but then deleted by administrative action) as an "Attack Page".
• Furthermore, this pattern of harassment is not new to me and my "mentorship" - it's engulfed everyone who has sought to defend my generally solid editing. Every one of the (very largely) evidence-free and inconclusive "disciplinaries" brought against me have led to many other editors themselves suffering immediate personal attack. When these editors are not silenced immediately by this treatment, then in many (all?) cases, further "disciplinaries" have been opened - this time against them. These payback attacks have often been on grounds so trivial as to amount to malice.
• I'm nervous of documenting behavior so unpleasant and inimicable to honest editing because doing so is bound to make these other editors feel still more uncomfortable. However, there is one individual who has been so patient with his attackers, whose scholarship is so obvious and his value to the project so great that I'll link to the attack on him. I fail to understand why the individual who made that complaint hasn't been summararily ejected from the project.
• Back to my own case - it's not even as if this harassment is confined to editors expressing their opinion that I've done little or nothing wrong. An early attempt to get rid of me permanently was a transparently false accusation I'd used the Holocaust Deniers for information. I was effectively blocked for weeks - a complete stranger came forwards to act as my "advocate" during this time. Amongst other time-wasting unpleasantnesses, this person was aggressively grilled by an administrator in good standing for coming forwards. My advocate answered the questions in detail and then quit, not surprisingly.
• The time must soon be coming when people who set out to make accept good faith impossible in these ways suffer the consequences. Any real or potential problems with my participation couldn't possibly be doing as much damage as this harassment of me and others. Some readers of this might even think my only crime is putting good information into articles and the accusations against me come entirely from editors who have content disputes with me.
• Finally, I put it to the community that my mentorship (which could only have been of limited use in the first place) has been rendered impossible by the reckless behavior we're seeing. A mentor has come forward and I'm grateful to him - but a wave of poison will make his best efforts (and his very participation) impossible unless and until real problematical editors are dealt with. PR 12:04, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I would support a dual mentorship. Ryan is an experienced admin while Kendrick is an experienced editor of Israeli-Arab subjects. -- FayssalF - 10:40, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

As Kendrick7 seems to have edited many of the same areas as PalestineRemembered, and has been involved in disputes with some of the same editors, I don't think it would be a very good idea for him to mentor. A mentor with not even the appearance of any possible involvement would be the best move here. One that has had community trust confirmed with the mop or beyond, like Ryan, may be even better. Tewfik 11:09, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Tewfik that Ryan and an uninvolved editor would be a better choice. ~ Riana ⁂ 12:03, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Assuming Ryan wants to, he'd be a good choice. I think the other also needs to be an admin, and not an "ally". I think the "Isarig model" was a good one and it should include a topic ban like Isarig's did. I'm interested to see how it works out in both cases. Hopefully, it will be to the projects's benefit -but if not, we need broadly respected mentors who will have creditability if they need to say that the experiment has failed. <<-armon->> 12:35, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Please remind me what PR ever did that would merit a topic ban? (I believe, by contrast, Isarig was caught sockpuppetting?) I do get concerned that, because of the steady drum beat for sanctions like topic bans just being casually tossed off towards PR, that some flyover admin might hear those drums from 20,000 feet and believe they portend more than they do, and not give PR a fair shake. I've at least gone native long enough to know that editors in this topic area simply enjoy banging on drums, even though this may have resulted a handful of editorial disagreements (none of which I would call a "dispute") I've had there. -- Kendrick7 13:11, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

That bad, huh? I guess since I haven't put in work like Ryan like or FayssalF, I'll defer to them, especially since FayssalF has a much stronger history of mediating disputes than me. east.718 at 15:21, 11/5/2007

Yup, really that bad. The situation is that three editors have now attempted mentoring of me and none saw any reason to vote me off the island. Two of them effectively had no complaints. The last of my mentors declared I should be temporarily blocked for a genuine (and only slightly tongue-in-cheek) attempt at dispute resolution here: "Tell me your problem". Why that should be blockable is quite difficult to understand, it's the fifth (and mildest) consecutive complaint on that editors TalkPage about his conduct. See Warning, Junk mail, Stop harassing me and Stop, so 4 other editors had simultaneous problems with his conduct, perhaps even more severe than the problems I was having.

But two of those three mentors were sanctioned severely within a few days of coming forwards, and the third lasted 3 weeks under increasing unpleasant harassment before being bypassed completely with another worthless "disciplinary" on me. I was going to say it's become effectively impossible for anyone to come forward and offer to honestly mentor me. However, Kendrick has done so, and (although I know almost nothing about him) I believe him to be genuine, as I'm quite sure you were.

Fortunately, the conditions of my mentoring are that I get to choose who does it. FayssalF has only blocked me once and did not harass my "advocate", so I might choose him if you and Kendrick have really been bullied into withdrawing before you've started. But if you ask me, it's farcical to expect anything worthwhile to come out of a system so entirely dominated by harassment. PR 16:19, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I haven't been bullied into anything, I'm pretty much flameproof. It's just that I agree with Luna Santin and Tewfik's sentiments. east.718 at 16:27, 11/5/2007

I'm all good here, though I get the sneaking suspicion that Category:Israeli-Palestinian conflict has officially entered project phase six.... -- Kendrick7 18:27, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm with FayssalF (talk · contribs) on this one. Kendrick hasn't actually demonstrated any negative actions here, and we really are dealing hypothetically. However, the concerns raised by Ryan are something we'd best nip in the bud, just to be on the safe side, so I definitely think a joint-Mentorship between an experienced Administrator (best-case scenario, Ryan, if he's up for it), and Kendrick. The combination of trust and article experience here would be the best course of action. Anthøny 19:04, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd really like to see someone who is neutral involved in this, even if it is a joint-mentorship. -- John Reaves 00:12, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm obviously happy to act as PR's mentor - consensus here seems to suggest that there should be a dual mentorship put in place with someone familiar with the articles in question - I'll take a look to see if I can find someone neutral (I'll take a close look at Kendrick7 as he may or may not be suitable for the role). Ryan Postlethwaite 18:01, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Mentorship may no longer be viable

Recently, PR approached me on my talk page to contibute here. However, the method by which he did so, which is, unfortunately in line with many of his edits since the discussion regarding his potential ban, leads me to believe that mentorship may no longer be capable of serving its intended function.

There is something that needs to be seriously considered. If a number of different people have tried to be mentors, and it hasn't worked out, perhaps the problem is not with the others? As a very recent example:

Your "mentorship" proposal might have been a subterfuge to get others to muzzle me…

— PalestineRemembered , User talk:Avraham—09:50, November 6, 2007

This is a classic example of assuming bad faith. PR were one step removed from being banned from Palestine/Israel related topics, if not indef blocked. I come along, someone whose politics and point-of-view can be easily determined to be rather different from his, and argue, successfully, for one last shot for him. If I wanted to muzzle him, all I had to to was remain quiet. Nevertheless, he found himself incapable of discussing this issue with me without applying some form of personal attack, whether implied or overt.

This is but one example of any number of incidents where he found it necessary to contribute or respond using sarcasm, implied or overt personal attacks, and otherwise demonstrate a lack of respect for his fellow editors, whether they agreed with him or not.

This is also why I begin to despair that mentorship will serve its purpose, as like the old joke goes, "How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb? One, but only if it wants to." Mentorship is used to help editors, whose editing style has been deemed disruptive enough to wikipedia that they are the topic of discussion regarding a block or a ban, to change their habits and attempt to follow the rules. In the face of evidence that the editor has no intention of abiding by the policies and guidelines, mentorship is useless. I fear that mentorship is fast becoming a non-viable option for PR. -- Avi 15:17, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry to see you misread a reasonable question posted to your TalkPage so badly. I thought you'd appreciate the heads-up. I specifically cleared you of any possibility that you'd proposed mentoring as a means to muzzle me. I thought you'd be interested to know (in case you'd not noticed) that the mentoring (which I've treated with accept good faith and even enthusiasm) has clearly gone badly wrong. But it's not me that has embarked on a reign of terror on each of the brave people who've offered their services - and I contacted you hoping for comment on what was torpedoing the process. PR 15:42, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

2) Further to the above, and to any reader who is extremely puzzled, please visit the CSN "disciplinary" that sentenced me to "mentoring". You'll find I was dragged over the coals for the only comment I've passed (in over a year and several thousand edits) that was generally agreed to be offensive (it's actually a question concerning conflict of interest, brushed off 3 times before I press it harder). Not particularily offensive by all accounts, because the important question comes down to "has PR made a legal threat"? I declare that I did not intend to make any threat, had no reason to do so and couldn't have benefited from doing so. (Others point out that it would be impossible for me to carry out any threat that might be implied). Pressed to plead guilty or not guilty, I declare that I don't believe I have made a "legal threat" - this is taken as proof that I'm incorrigible.

Look more closely - the "CSN" which convicted and sanctioned me above is/was the "Community Sanction Noticeboard". This system was cancelled shortly after my appearance there. I've not looked up the discussion on abandoning CSN, but I think the words "witch-hunt" and "kangaroo court" probably appear a lot. People might question whether any "decision" this CSN came to has any further validity - particularly when I was specifically permitted to choose my own mentor, and had done so without any problem. Look again at the allegations made at the beginning of this section. My concern (and the only reason I contacted Avi on his TalkPage) is that User:Kendrick7 will immediately suffer such severe personal harassment as to spoil (or quite likely end) his participation in the project.

Uninvolved observers might also be forgiven for thinking that a single purpose account such as this one, specifically permitted by policy, will suffer grave harassment - as will everyone defending my participation, and (most bizarre of all) the good-faith editors who volunteer to mentor me and examine my edits for the alleged but never identified "disruptive behavior" I might be carrying on in secret. What problem is it that people could possibly have with a user calling himself "PalestineRemembered"? PR 16:27, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Don't worry about me PR. You really need to learn that if people are going to climb all over themselves to twist your words (e.g. when a suggestion that an editor may have fought in the battle which article he is WP:TE editing suddenly, though a series of non sequitors, becomes a "legal threat") to give them as little ammo as possible. In other words, when you are in a hole stop digging. -- Kendrick7 17:39, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm very worried about you. Three mentors have suffered really serious harassment, amply sufficient to stop them doing the job honestly - or indeed atall. That's why you're here, remember? Two of these mentors were clearly good-faith people, but equally clearly, they buckled under the pressure. One of them blocked me for something that's never been seen as "a problem" of mine by the community (and couldn't be, referencing previous enforcement decisions is part of the dispute process). Until that last incident, all the mentorings had run smoothly and well (quite limited amount of lip-biting on my part, nothing gory). I'm clearly not the smallest bit responsible for the spectacular failure of all those mentorships - but something is, and it's not going away.

In any case, I'm trapped now, I've accepted you. The very fore-shortened (and now discredited) CSN process required me to find a mentor. If (as is almost bound to happen) you're forced out by interference, I'll probably be saddled with someone skilled in POV-driven abusive processes. You and I should now be sitting down and sorting out what you/we're looking to achieve - but then I made at least some effort to do this with SpecialJane (blocked, likely correctly), Geni (badly harassed and bypassed) and Zscout370 (de-syssoped and resigned). My efforts to make their mentorships work was time-consuming - and entirely concerned content disputes (I think, perhaps I should check my memory doesn't fail me). Content disputes are pretty much the only thing that's ever been going on here, little (if anything?) to do with "problematic behavior" of mine. Unless you tell me differently of course - clearly, defending myself (and even attempting collegiate communication with others) comes across as something of a no-no! PR 20:09, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Your personality comes off as a tad bombastic at times, and that has been your biggest problem. Of course if you weren't editing where you are editing, or even if you were editing from a pro-Israeli POV, I doubt anyone would be bringing your every offhand comment or mistaken citation up to critical review by the community at large. Admittedly, I'd be yipping and hollering bombastically too at this point if I were you, but hopefully this whole mess up to now has been sufficiently seared into the collective memory and there won't be any more problems going forward; this will require both you biting you tongue a bit more often, and the community being more committed towards assuming good faith towards you, despite your occasional bombastic remark or two. As I've said before, you're first few blocks ran fairly askew of WP:BITE, and then you were blocked for being blocked too much, and then nearly indef banned for being blocked too much twice now, and the mentorship requirement again followed from much of this same mess, and then even editors willing to mentor you got hounded off. It all seems a little absurd, but I'm confident every thing will work better going forward. If you continue to have issues with people deleting sourced content from articles, you should report them. If they believe the material is POV, it's their responsibility to bring forth sources with the opposing POV to balance the article. "The elimination of article content cannot be justified under" WP:NPOV "by simply labeling it 'POV'." -- Kendrick7 21:37, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I'll happily get back to editing, and I'm convinced things will work out too. Shall I open this User:PalestineRemembered/Kendrick7 new page? PR 21:51, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps a more generic User:PalestineRemembered/Mentorship would be better. You might still want to find an experienced admin as a secondary mentor. -- Kendrick7 22:56, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Profanity and homophobic epithets at User_talk:Sir Crimson

Sir Crimson, who has a history of vandalism and vulgarity, reverted edits I made to his talk page which contain highly inflammatory and inappropriate language for this encyclopedia. I would ask an administrator to revert and/or protect the page so he's unable to replace it. Thank you. Cumulus Clouds 02:45, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I've protected it for 24 hours and blocked the user for the same amount of time. Mr.Z-man 04:09, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Um, I thought WP:NOT censored? — Rickyrab | Talk 04:21, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

That is only for articles, and when it has encyclopedic value. Those comments aren't really needed in a talk page. -- ReyBrujo 04:43, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

IN this I'd say of greater concern ist that Sir Crimson attributed the word to another editor Gnangarra 04:52, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed! That means Sir Crimson probably holds a grudge against The Wookieepedian (talk · contribs). -- ReyBrujo 04:56, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I left a note at Wookieepedian's talk page, to see if he can identify the user. If he is a sock of a vandal he can recognize, we can indef block Sir Crimson directly. I think he should receive a warning for signing an attack comment as if he were another wikipedian, unless he can point out when TW said that. -- ReyBrujo 05:01, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

That is a concern... though even if Wookieepedian did say that, at some point in time, is it serving any productive purpose to blank one's talk page to post that sort of quote, accurate or not? I can't imagine any goal, there, except to agitate other user(s). There may be some history here that I'm not aware of, but obviously something is amiss. – Luna Santin (talk) 06:44, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

That's... very bizarre. I've never ran into the guy before. The Wookieepedian 15:26, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Insignificant Ban

Hi there. I was banned for a reason that I don't think was justified. I clearly had a direct quote to correspond to the verifiability act, yet I was "overidden" by a mere "consensus". I thought that having verifiable sources outweighed the mere possibility of a group of people forming a consensus to edit and place unreliable sources. If I am wrong, then I will clearly adhere to this possible, yet unlogical, principle. Sincerely, InternetHero 03:04, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Apparently the ban was by RobertG (talk · contribs) due to this edit. --W.marsh 03:21, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Edit warring is never a good way resolve anything, and the block has already expired. I did offer a suggestion to InternetHero about the painting so maybe that'll take some of the heat out of its inclusion in the article. Gnangarra 04:38, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

You'll have to show me the part where "but I'm right!" is an exemption from WP:3RR. We know you think you're right, that's why you're edit warring -- problem is, everybody else thinks they're right too, and we find ourselves at a bit of an impasse if people just revert back and forth to their own personal versions of rightness. Yes, talking and negotiating is a complete pain in the ass sometimes, but it also happens to be one of the few ways to really accomplish any form of consensus. If your reasoning is really as good as you say it is, convince everybody else of the same thing with your conviction and persuasive ability, instead of edit warring and throwing up silly challenges, and then you won't have as many problems to put up with. It's not a battleground, it's a collaborative project. – Luna Santin (talk) 06:25, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Couldn't have said it better myself :) my thoughts on edit warring are basically summed up in this template, which I strongly urge InternetHero to have at least a glance at. Anthøny 19:06, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

It is obvious that none of you have read the actual discusion, otherwise, you'd know that the only reason I failed to adhere to the WP:3RR rule was because I screwed up on an edit, and had to revert and correct it. It is also obvious that because of my age you think that I "offered up silly challenges". Yes, it is true that I was 'edit-warring', yet it was the supposedly more mature editors who had no other reasoning faculties at work other than a simple, "I agree with so-and-so".

My arguements were simple enough to understand, yet they completely ignored them. When I did refute some of their arguements, and used it against them, they COMPLETELY ignored their own basis in such respects - such as the concept of Mozart looking sad in the painting done in Bologna. As a testament to such claims of singular 'rightness', the painting in Bologna was completed BEFORE the death of his mother, thereby making the Croce-Mozart more faulty since that particular painting was done AFTER his mother's death. I can never accept such analyzations as having more reasoning at hand than my arguements; so, I have contacted as much teachers and professors as I could to help me in this manner. Indeed, I am grateful to myself that I was a very good student who have gained their respect enough to actually do this for Leopold. Nevertheless, it is my teachers who have instilled such particular notions in me and who have also agreed that such edits aren't corresponding to Leopold's approval of the painting. In addition to that, we believe that the "principles" shown by the other editors have not refuted the fact that Mozart's sister and father aren't painted well in the Croce painting when comparing them with their singular portraits. I will be forming my own "consensus" soon, so I'm not too mad or worried. All I was trying to figure out was why it clearly states that the fundamental principles of Misplaced Pages includes not a consensus, but, verifiable and reliable sources under the neutral-point-of-view act. However, it is obvious to me now that it is a mere quantative formality that induces the accuracy of Misplaced Pages. All the same, we will forming our own consensus and put the portrait of Mozart as a child. Just kidding, I will put the 'Bologna Mozart'.

Anyway, thanks to you all for your time, although, I don't think that all of you have given me the proper, polite confidence I think I deserve. Have I not shown the same principle of confidence from the start of the discussion in question? Oh yeah, you guys/girls haven't read it.

P.S. It was the other editors that have made fun of my grammar, punctuation, and other things which do not at all adhere to my tests results from school that have been graded quite well. I guess thats just me being immature even though it was a personal attack adhered to by the more mature editors, and not myself. However, I guess it was actually a personal attack against them for some reason so I guess I should apologize, but I truly didn't know logic worked that way. If my English isn't as good as my teachers have scored me, then please correct the attempt above so that I may contribute to Misplaced Pages further, and let them know that their textbooks are wrong.

P.S.S. Thank you, Anthony. I have read the template you have given me, and I'm going to read the article it encompasses.

If that was the "only reason" you were revert warring, why didn't you say so, before? Why does the page history show repeated reverts, over time? If you're doing such a good job refuting and crushing everyone's points, why aren't more people noticing? How can I be prejudiced against your age, if I don't have the slightest idea or care how old you are? I certainly could invest a lot of time in sitting down to chat with you, I'd certainly love to do that for a lot of people, but unfortunately very few of us have the time, and most of us have other things to attend to, on- and off-wiki. I can spend a lot of time being polite, but only at the expense of getting across the more important message. Brevity is a must, in these situations; while I can appreciate your apparent offense that I haven't spent more time being polite, I think you're reading something into my tone that I hadn't intended. Now, did you have a specific aim in this thread, one we might be able to address? If particular users have repeatedly been causing problems, names and specifics, such as diffs or other supporting evidence, would be quite helpful. – Luna Santin (talk) 00:28, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I wasn't thinking properly there. I now understand that you can't just listen to everyones complaints. Anyway, I hope I didn't offend you. Here's my arguement: "All I was trying to figure out was why it clearly states that the fundamental principles of Misplaced Pages includes not a consensus, but, verifiable and reliable sources under the neutral-point-of-view act. However, it is obvious to me now that it is a mere quantative formality that induces the accuracy of Misplaced Pages."

I think I am a little immature still, so thanks for not banning me again.

P.S. I know you guys are 'making' me add the colons to your replies cuz you dislike me, but I don't care, I have to do it. Sincerely, InternetHero 03:20, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

InternetHero, the only way you can carry your point is to convince others of your arguments in debate: so far it appears you have failed to do so. This noticeboard is the wrong forum for settling content disputes. The ongoing debate is there, and the dispute resolution process is that-a-way; I hope you are convinced that the other option you have experimented with, edit warring, is not worth pursuing.

Everyone else, thank you very much for your thoughtful, helpful contributions here. Can I suggest that we now end this discussion? I originally thought that InternetHero was disputing the block: that would require administrators to look, for which this is a reasonable place to post. --RobertG ♬ talk 10:05, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not here to carry out a point. My God, you people don't understand English. Oh well, if everyone was the same, life would be boring. Anyway, here is the point of my posting here - again: "All I was trying to figure out was why it clearly states that the fundamental principles of Misplaced Pages includes not a consensus, but, verifiable and reliable sources under the neutral-point-of-view act. However, it is obvious to me now that it is a mere quantative formality that induces the accuracy of Misplaced Pages. Is this true or not? Meaning, does the mere consensus from all walks of life override the fundamental principles of Misplaced Pages?"

P.S. It's obvious you really don't care what I have to say, and, I also understand that you're just trying to make me angry by ignoring my arguements. I know you're just going to ignore me again, but I figured it was worth a try. Keep working at trying to be an administrator though, Robert. Sincerely, InternetHero 18:05, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Quote/fundraiser mess at the top

So what are we putting in our monobook.css to block that "Misplaced Pages itself is an outstanding achievement of humanity." — Anon mess at the top now? If you click the "Hide this message", all it does it change it to the fundraising bar... -- ALLSTAR ECHO 05:11, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

One of the sections on WP:VPT has the new code. --NE2 05:55, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

The code is:

#siteNoticeBig { display: none; }

#siteNoticeSmall { display: none; }

Just put that in Special:Mypage/monobook.css. Neil ☎ 10:22, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't seem to recall IPs having a monobook.css. Why do the sysops do this? First the ugly red thing then this? ♥ Fredil 12:30, 5 November 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fredil Yupigo (talk • contribs)

Excellent. That did it. Thanks. -- ALLSTAR ECHO 14:39, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

So why does the design keeps changing every two days? is there any ongoing discussion? because the current one doesn't look particulary interesting (stick figures?) wich means it probably won't attract the attention of some potential donors. - Caribbean~H.Q. 14:56, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Fundraising redesign is where the ongoing discussion is at the moment. --ais523 14:58, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks :-) - Caribbean~H.Q. 15:05, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

But seriously Mr ALLSTAR ECHO, is there anything I can put in my monobook to hide the "mess" that is your rather irritating signature?--Doc 15:33, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Concur. --Ali'i 15:48, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, there is: a span, a span { border:none!important; background:transparent!important; color:inherit!important } —Random832 17:59, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Let's not get off track... did anyone notice that fundraising was just a touch faster last year without the annoying banners? ♥ Fredil 20:31, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

• Basic economics - fundraisers raise more funds when the economy is doing better. The current economic slowdown and risk of financial sector meltdown in the US will clearly mean that people have less money to spend/more reason to hold on to it. Who'd've thought it - economic meltdown when the Republicans are in power - just like every other time! The size of the donations is much more likely to be linked to macroeconomic conditions than it is to the size of the advertising banner soliciting them. Agree, BTW, that Allstarecho's sig needs to be toned down. ➔ REDVEЯS isn't wearing pants 21:42, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Procedure for dealing with banned vandal

What's the procedure for dealing with a banned (not just blocked) vandal who is continuing to set up multiple sockpuppet accounts each day and is using these to launch personal attacks and to violate privacy? That is, is there anything more that can be done other than blocking, reverting, and perhaps oversighting? One problem is that he is on one of the Big ISPs so he hops IP addresses. I'm not sure if we can really block account creation from a Big ISP for any significant length of time. That is to say, I think we probably can't unless the vandal is stunningly abusive. --Yamla 15:49, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

If the situation is that serious, it may be a good idea to block account creation for the ISP - we have the unblock mailing list (as you know) which easily copes with a number of large ISP blocks (my IP's blocked from account creation as I'm on Tiscali for instance). Maybe a two week range block followed by some evaluation? Ryan Postlethwaite 15:53, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Who is it? User:Daddy Kindsoul or User:Verdict? Wikidudeman 15:55, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't matter who it is really, let's not give them any credit. Ryan Postlethwaite 15:55, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Is notifying the ISP possible? Wikidudeman 15:56, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, notifying the ISP is an option, but unfortunately, they don't tend to do much - it's much more effective to sort things out in house. Ryan Postlethwaite 15:58, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestions (and I welcome any more ideas). If it does become necessary to block the ISP, I'll make sure the unblock mailing list knows ahead of time. I suppose I should probably set up one of those long-term abuse pages as well. --Yamla 16:11, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

We need more admins urgently

Since IP page creation looks like it will be re-enabled (see Link) we are probably going to need a lot more admins doing Special:Newpages. Could I ask everybody to ask at least one editor you think could make a good amin if they would be interested in a RfA? Tim Vickers 16:47, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I've asked a number of people during the week with only one person accepting. Nothing to do with this though--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 17:29, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Is this really going to happen? Oh dear. The thing about wikien-l is, they are often somewhat nostalgic for the good old days. I fear they may have failed to take into account just how important it is to get your Great New these days. The best argument against anonymous page creation as far as I can see is CAT:CSD. Guy (Help!) 18:02, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

This will be fun. –– Lid 18:07, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

All I can seen from this is CSD being constantly backlogged. *sigh* oh well. If it can be turned off once it can be turn off again when they see the folly of the "experiment". ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 18:09, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Any editor can patrol new pages, if the csd backlog does get out of hand then I think a posting asking more existing admins to help will be effective. We always need more admins, but no more than normal I think. 1 != 2 18:11, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I think "urgently" is over blown. Unless someone is planning to write a press announcement, I suspect that most anons won't even notice the change for weeks or months. In other words, whatever the ultimate effect of such changes, I suspect they will ramp up gradually over a substantial period of time. Dragons flight 18:12, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Dragons flight is probably correct. Given that this decision seems to have happened in such a way that even fairly active editors are just now becoming aware of it (I myself just found out in the last couple of hours), I don't suspect that this will result in a big flood the first day it is enabled. I can see this being a real headache in < a couple of months, but I don't see the urgency right this moment.--Isotope23 18:16, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I doubt it, all it takes is one blog post or one newspaper reporter for this story to be on the evening news. I can bet to you one of them is reading this. The Placebo Effect 18:18, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

We can deal with it - no problem. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 18:20, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

The urgency comes from the lag in getting admins through the RfA process matching the probable lag in IP's learning they can now create pages. We can't create new admins overnight, so if we need more admins in 1-2 week's time we have to start working now. If we all invite a few people, this will hopefully make a big dent in the problem. Tim Vickers 18:23, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

CSD is an exceedingly easy task using tools out there. I don't think we need a single new admin to deal with the new issue. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 18:25, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Or we just can abandon what is undoubtedly a silly idea of going back to IP newpage creation.--Isotope23 18:27, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Too late now to abandon this idea; the flood is coming. It is not too late to nominate new admins. I suspect the flood of stupid new articles will not come for a few days or so - my prediction is Wednesday, November 14. Bearian 18:30, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

The sanguine view that we will be able to cope with our present set of admins is one I hope is true. However, although this best-case scenario is certainly possible, if we are wrong and we can't cope then things could get pretty unpleasant and generate a great deal of negative publicity for the project. Consequently, I think it is most sensible to plan for the worst-case scenario. Tim Vickers 18:34, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not an admin, and would probably disqualify myself on the basis of having an occasionally hot temper. However, I do note that Misplaced Pages:Admin coaching exists for individuals who might consider becoming admins a bit of an idea what being an admin is like. Maybe we could try to get some current admins to ask prospective admins whether they would consider becoming such, or alternately, if they think they might not be particularly qualified, maybe offering to coach them until they either qualify or decide that the role isn't for them? John Carter 18:40, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

(e.c.) I agree that we need more Administrators, but that problem clearly doesn't stem from a lack of trying. Rather, we might want to look at a re-focusing of the atmosphere of RfA, in an attempt to ensure that the percentage of candidates enlisted here who are likely to pass increases. There seems to be a general trend of nominations here increasing, yet the success rate is decreasing, indicating a rise in the number of, shall we say, mistaken (often self-) nominations. Having said that, I support the re-enabling of IP article creation. This move sends out a clear signal to both our Community and the Wide World that we really do invite everybody to edit here, and that those who don't choose to create an account aren't restricted to the interests and imagination of others. Anthøny 18:42, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

And for a hearty example of the RfA atmospshere, see Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/LaraLove; the "bad mother" card was played. No one needs those kinds of low blows in life. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:40, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Meh. I'm not saying we shouldn't have more admins... I'm just saying that we have a stupid number of inactive admins sitting around. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 18:47, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind being an admin, but my two previous attempts went heavily against me, along with a block I had several months ago. It's not like I would abuse the tools, but some editors might not trust me. :( Davnel03 19:07, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe its time for Jimbo to give some users Sysop tools. He's done it in the past . SashaCall /_(Talk!) 19:26, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I was wondering when someone would quote that...-- John Reaves 19:32, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Got two up already. If you guys want I'll go into my backlog and put out 3-4 more :) Wizardman 19:30, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, you might as well. Davnel03 19:40, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I thought that one of the reasons for disabling immediate, anonymous IP page creation was due to BLP concerns...? Aside from the general 'firehose of crap' problem, are we setting ourselves up for another Seigenthaler controversy? And if not, what measures are in place now that weren't available to us before? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:31, 5 November 2007 (UTC

Do you have some magic list of trustworthy users interested in doing administrative scut work that also are unwilling or unable to pass RFA? Dragons flight 19:33, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

(e/c)There is a software change coming that will enable patrolled edits for Special:Newpages. Gmaxwell has it set up on his personal wiki (you need to get an account to patrol) if you want to test it before it gets here. To mark a page as patrolled, scroll to the bottom of the article and click the little link. Pages in the list highlighted in yellow need to be patrolled. Here, this would be used for marking good newpages or pages already tagged for deletion. I'm not sure when this is coming (soon), you'd have to go on IRC #wikimedia-tech and bug Brion. Mr.Z-man 19:37, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

If we need more administrators urgently, then we probably should stop turning down fully qualified candidates on specious grounds such as those discussed in this thread. Newyorkbrad 20:04, 5 November 2007 (UTC

I agree, We don't need more administrators, we just need more good and active administrators. We don't need people who will sit back and do nothing. Wikidudeman 20:48, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

If anybody can think of a simple way of improving the quality and activity of the admins we have at the moment, then they should go ahead and do it. However, the only thing guaranteed to increase the number of active admins is to increase the total number of admins. Encouraging other editors to apply is pretty simple, its no big deal! Tim Vickers 21:04, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I could send every administrator a message to start being more active on admin backlogs...Or else! Opinions? Wikidudeman 21:08, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm almost tempted to advise you to do that ;) Tim Vickers

Maybe you could ask a bot to go round and send a message to every single admin telling them to get more active? Just an idea. Davnel03 21:18, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it was a fully serious proposal. Alerting admins on this noticeboard is satisfactory. Afterall, they're volunteers in the first place just like everyone else, they can't be forced to be more active. Leebo /C 21:20, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I have a feeling that such a move would be met with hostility. Wikidudeman 21:22, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

IM(extremely uninformed)O article creation numbers will continue to go up even if we don't have this experiment - we'd just be delaying the inevitable. Resurgent insurgent 21:38, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

It's always possible that this will simply result in a slowdown of the pace at which the registered user pool is growing, since one of the key attractions of registering will be removed. Leebo /C 21:47, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

If that's the case, that would also probably serve to decrease the number of new potential admins, possibly make the situation that much worse. John Carter 21:49, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, that would hold true if the typical new page creator became a legitimate candidate for adminship, which is not the case. Users who are inclined to take the steps toward adminship would likely create an account for one of the many other purposes. Users who would avoid creating an account just to get their quick article up probably wouldn't become admin material. Leebo /C 21:53, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I have my doubts that we could get a lot more admins who mainly desire to use the tools in NP Patrol (mainly thanks to the RFA process from what I have seen in the past). And there is a snowball's chance in heck of starting to give people just the deletion part. FunPika 21:59, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

We don't necessarily need to increase the sysopping rate, as has been pointed out above - we need more admins doing new-page patrol. Therein lies the problem; I have encountered few or no tasks on Misplaced Pages more unrewarding and downright unpleasant than new-page patrol. It's no big deal to deal with clear bad-faith spammers, or to educate newcomers on the notability criteria, though it is a bit time-consuming. The problem with new-page patrol is that you get pushback from established users as well. For me the turning point (i.e. when I stopped bothering with new page patrol) was when an admin and sitting Arbitrator aggressively questioned my competence because I speedied a clearly A7 article. Who wants to volunteer their time for that sort of thing? We need to make new-page patrol a little more appealing, and support the folks who do it - otherwise, no matter how many new admins we create, they'll burn out as well under the inevitable barrage of second-guessing. Just my 2 cents. MastCell 22:05, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Not just New page patrol, I do tons of new page patrol daily. I tag articles for CSD and wait for an admin to come along and delete them. When tagged they go into a category (CAT:SPEEDY) where administrators review them and delete them. What would be needed is new administrators both patrolling the new page log AND working on the build up of the CSD backlog. Wikidudeman 22:11, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

What about actually going and do some work? I usually sneak in some deletions from C:CSD, and many, many more with image categories. When November 9th rolls, around I'll try; however, I've been informed recently about an approaching backlog in an image category, and I'll probably be forced to divert my attention there. So my advice is basically, you shouldn't moan about having to do 20 speedy deletions; I've been keeping the image categories relatively neat without many complaints in relation to the amount of deletions, and I do way more work. Oh, and I did I mention that I have some time left to get an article fixed (I've requested some help, but I do work on it as well) for a FAC? Maxim_{(talk) (contributions)} 22:13, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

And the admins shouldn't moan when they are never thanked for their work but instead yelled at by established users when they think the admin messed up (and sometimes did not)? FunPika 22:17, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I should be clearer. I'm not soliciting pity. I'm saying that the atmosphere surrounding new page patrol results in burnout and deters recruitment of new admins, so if we're concerned about the number of new page patrollers then we might want to address that. I do plenty of admin work, particularly given that I'm a relatively new admin, but that's not the point. MastCell 22:25, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Doing newpage patrol is quite easy if you have the proper tools to do it with. Check out User:Wikidudeman/Hodgepodge and User:Martinp23/NPWatcher. Wikidudeman 14:22, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, maybe if these tools were made available to everyone then more people would do it. I've never understood the practice of requiring "checkpages" - if people are misusing these programs they can be blocked. People aren't required to get prior approval before using TW. It's just gratuitous bureaucracy to require it just because the program is written in VB or C# rather than javascript. —Random832 18:17, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm staying up 24 hours straight just to delete ;). Maybe I could break the deleting record for a day in the process :). Unless there is a big sign that says ANONS CAN EDIT, or excessive news exposure which both doesn't seem to be the case, most of the anons won't even notice until weeks after it been implanted. This is a Secret 18:22, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

But who says they notice now? I would have thought that the first time an anon realises they have to register to create pages is when they try to create one, and get the big block of explanatory text. If that's true, then as soon as anonymous creation is reenabled the floodgates are open. Confusing Manifestation 23:02, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

skimming the page where this is being discussed, this is being enabled because a developer thinks it would be a neat experiment - that's it. Surely something like this should be discussed by the community? this is the tail wagging the dog! madness! --Fredrick day 23:15, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I can only predict a negative outcome of this, but I guess we'll have to wait a little longer and see... нмŵוτнτ 23:25, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Misc

For the archivebot, east.718 at 22:40, 11/5/2007 22:40, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposal closure

You may recall that last month I posted a note calling for admins to consider closing Misplaced Pages:Today's_featured_list/First_proposal. I was reminded that to change the main page overwhelming support must be achieved. User:Jeffrey O. Gustafson has revised the proposal at WP:LOTDP. I have asked him to have it closed and he has told me I could do so myself. Could an admin come to a decision on the proposal in the next couple of days because I would like to make one last attempt to get something passed by the beginning of the new year if the current proposal does not pass.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 23:05, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

help!

Is there anyway to block someone from viewing your Misplaced Pages userpage, because my parent's saw that a few of my contributions got deleted, and they think Misplaced Pages is gay, and that I've been an ass hole for helping the cause, please help me block them from viewing my profile, they said that if I help out Misplaced Pages any more, I will get grounded for a year. SO SHIT HELP ME PLEASE!!! BLOCK THEM FROM MY PAGE!!! I LOVE WIKI!!!!!!!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xgmx (talk • contribs) 23:43, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't believe that is possible. FunPika 23:50, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Create a new account and don't tell your parents what the new username is. Tim Vickers 00:00, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is gay. Ground your parents. --Tony Sidaway 00:03, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Did your parents really say Misplaced Pages is "gay"? -- John Reaves 00:28, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

You on the drugs, boy? JuJube 01:01, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

And if so, can you give us some?? -- Kendrick7 01:02, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

It likes other Wikipedias? shoy ( _words) 01:04, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Invoke m:right to vanish. Change your username, delete and salt user and user talk pages. hbdragon88 01:49, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I hear you can get parental control devices to stop your parents snooping in your browser history. This could help. --Tony Sidaway 02:06, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

If you can buy a good book on the subject, you could always figure out how to set up another partition on your computer, install Linux on it (try Ubuntu (Linux distribution) as a beginner), set the bootloader to automatically boot into Windows unless manually overridden, and you would have yourself a nice, parallel operating system that a Windows user on the same PC would never become aware of. That worked for me for years. (Not responsible for any adverse consequences of following this advice whatsoever.) --Dynaflow babble 02:19, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

If you are serious do the name change as suggested. One thing you can always do is log out, clear your browser (cache) when you are away from your computer. Rationale for that is they can see your username at the top of any page when you are logged in. If someone else gets control of your account that way it's a compromised account and blockable. --Sandahl 02:23, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Email block

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a very serious concern regarding email block. Allow me to explain.

Administrators, as you all know, have the ability to block users. Always have, always will. And they are expected to use this feature responsibly. Recently, there was something introduced several months ago called "Block Email user," which, as the name suggests, is a technical block preventing users from emailing other users. It was introduced to prevent users from sending trolling comments via email.

However, my concern is that certain administrators are using email-user block far too loosely. By that I mean, they are using it to block the emails of certain users, protecting their talk pages, and basically shutting down communication fully to any user who they do this to. While there is certainly some good reasoning behind it, it is a technical feature that shouldn't just be used anytime there is a block initiated. What if the user has reasoning for what they did or need to say something important or something?

I was wondering if we, as a community, could discuss this? Pink Floyd 00:17, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know whether you are raising this out of general concern or with reference to a specific blocked account, but the general point being made here is well-taken. The recently implemented "block this user from sending e-mail" feature was intended for cases in which a user has misused the e-mail capability in the past or there is reason to be seriously concerned he or she might do so in the future. An administrator should have a specific reason in mind when selecting this setting, and it should certainly not be a box that is routinely checked on most blocks. Newyorkbrad 00:22, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

To answer your question, it's a general concern. I'd provide citations but I can't think of any specific ones at the moment. Pink Floyd 00:34, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

This seems permitted per Misplaced Pages:Appealing a block#Abuse of the unblocking process. -- Kendrick7 00:41, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but certain admins do it even without unblock abuse. Pink Floyd 00:45, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree completely, the "block e-mail" function should rarely be used in the first block (except in case of, say, sockpuppets known to abuse it). I should almost always be a secondary thing. -- John Reaves 01:01, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any policy regarding it, but just out of common sense, I would only use it in the most egregious cases of harassment. east.718 at 02:26, 11/6/2007

Exactly. See, I think we should use it for trolls abusing unblock, socks of blocked/banned users who've abused it before, or just trolling via email. Pink Floyd 01:06, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

On a related note, if an admin routinely disables email as a default when blocking, when no abuse of the email function has occurred, and continues to do so after multiple requests for it to stop, what is the next step? This is a very specific case related to one admin's apparent refusal to acknowledge that blocking email as a default is against policy and shouldn't be done. - auburnpilot talk 01:44, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

WP:RFC? Pink Floyd 02:00, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Who is it? It may make more sense to bring up the issue here. -- John Reaves 04:36, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

That would be Can't sleep, clown will eat me (talk · contribs). I've pointed this out to him twice, (05:27, 9 September 2007 | 02:46, 31 October 2007) and twice he has only stopped briefly before resuming the next day/a few days later. - auburnpilot talk 15:56, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

The idea of using email-block by default is a very bad idea - it should be reserved for trolls. Any administrator who doesn't want to get annoying emails from trolls can merely disable email being sent to them through their preferences, which any user can do. I'm concerned with the idea that CSCWEM uses this feature regularly, but looking at the top of his log, I see only two instances of this title, both with the word "troll" in the summary. Nihiltres 18:08, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

CSCWEM seems to have a different opinion of a troll than Misplaced Pages, as the two accounts listed at the top of the logs are in fact nothing more than vandal accounts. If you look, the one account only made one edit before being block as a "troll" with email disabled, and that one edit was a full hour before the block. CSCWEM has made over 30,000 blocks, so you have to go beyond the first 50. - auburnpilot talk 18:34, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

As examples, the follow accounts were blocked over the last two weeks with email disabled, and no evidence of abuse: Daedalus1337, Krakn, Anglus8823, Dbeaglefan, Brendan.sucks, Jiggapedia, Mister Boofoo, Tumbling Falls, Ms. Stinkipuzzi, Elly.mae21, Marvin the Man-Kissing Mangler, Mc752, Thattook, Tigerclan21, Zackisfag, Elnod, Bradley.knight, Hawkesie, Whyhaveaname, Yiggypoo, Soccer2037, Mobius323, and Aflemingo92. Also note that not a single one of these accounts received a block notice, and some were blocked without warning. - auburnpilot talk 18:43, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Article bullying

(Moved to WP:ANI.)

Timestamp for bot: Resurgent insurgent 01:31, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Canterberry (talk · contribs)

Can someone uninvolved take a look at the spaghetti-like discussion at User talk:Canterberry regarding blocking/unblocking? (See this discussion for the original background to the indefblock.) Basically, Canterberry 'fessed up to abusive sockpuppetry and was indefblocked; I offered to unblock a couple of weeks later on strict civility parole (basically, if anyone had any valid complaint of any kind against him he'd be reblocked), which has been turned down. I think this would be workable, given that it was only a limited number of editors he's been in conflict with & he works solely in a specialist field of articles (railway lines of south-east England) & it would be fairly obvious should he return to sockpuppetry, and it does seem a shame to indefblock him when the virtually identical case of Misplaced Pages:Suspected sock puppets/Lucy-marie resulted only in a three-day block. Anyone not previously involved in this able to take a look? — iridescent 01:23, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

As the original blocking admin, I've been on record since the original block as not objecting to someone adjusting the block. In my RfA I said I would have limited activity in blocking, and in 10+ months as an admin I've issued only 46 other blocks, so I always wanted review by those with more experience of our typical block durations. GRBerry 02:20, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

How to deal with a repost of a deleted article that's been hidden in another article?

I was looking at the huge list at Unseen character which looked familiar. I checked, and it was deleted in April at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of unseen characters. 74.32.96.183 re-added that entire list to Unseen character on 17 July 2007 here in an obvious attempt to bypass the AFD decision. Is there a standard way of dealing with this? Masaruemoto 03:54, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

That article is way too long, and the content isn't encyclopedic, IMO. I'd say propose on talk to remove the content, and see if there is support. Or you could be bold and remove the content first, citing the AfD as previous consensus and wait to see if that gets reverted. I don't believe there is a specific protocol for this situation, but I could be wrong.-Andrew c  04:05, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I blanked it, per Andrew's suggestion, and left an explanation on the talk page. Let's see whether this was too bold. --Orange Mike 04:25, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

The entire article's just been speedily deleted by Sandahl. It was only the list that was deleted at AFD, the rest of the content was there before 74.32.96.183 added it to Unseen character, as shown in the edit revision I provided. Masaruemoto 04:42, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

OK, it's been restored. Masaruemoto 04:44, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Simulposted to the article talk page

I have deleted the page, per criteria G4 (ref: Special:Undelete/List of unseen characters, Misplaced Pages:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_unseen_characters). The article was substantially a copy of the previously deleted article. Take it to deletion review if you'd like. Keegan 05:22, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

And like Sandahl, I have reverted myself. This is complicated, and I think that a new AfD would be the only resolution. Working through the revision histories, it looks like the list that was nominated for deletion was a fork of the original article, though they are substantially the same. So I'm not sure if there's any precedent on what to do with an article that's failed an AfD that's a copy of another article. I would think that they would both qualify for G4 deletion, but deletion review would be the only viable venue I can think of. Keegan 05:30, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I reverted it when I realized it was rather more complicated than a repost. Agree, they both would probably qualify for G4 deletion but WP:DRV might the best solution.--Sandahl 07:43, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Blankings? New AfDs? Deletion reviews? This doesn't seem that complicated to me, I just removed the list part (and the extraneous examples) leaving just the original descriptive text. --bainer (talk) 07:39, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, bainer. I have a tendency to complicate things. Hell, it took me a year of reading this site to figure out what the "edit" tab did :) Keegan 07:44, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the simplest solution was to simply remove the long list. This reminds me of Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Burger King menu items where a list was spun out of the original article, then that list was deleted by AfD, and then the list was eventually restored to the original article. In that case, we had at least one user who was fighting to keep the content, so it went up for AfD again (and was kept). Hopefully things won't get that complex for the unseen characters, and removing the long list will be sufficient to resolve the situation.-Andrew c  14:46, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Imaginationland

There is a situation over at South Park's Imaginationland episode page. There is a huge debate whether to merge the three episode pages into one page, or to keep them as separate articles. The debate took place here. A wide majority of people say to keep the episodes separate, but the people who support the merge argue to the fact that the discussion was taken as a poll, and not a step towards making a consensus toward reaching a decision. This has indeed been the case. Since, an edit war has gone off between keeping the pages separate and having all three pages redirect to the main Imaginationland page. I think it is appropriate for admin intervention in this situation. As for me, I have decided to keep out of the situation (after inserting my opinion). The Chronic 07:32, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Protected the whole trilogy and the season 11 template at the wrong version. Please contact me for unprotection once the dispute is settled. east.718 at 08:06, 11/6/2007

User:CSDWarnBot malfunctioning

This bot has warned me five times about the same redirect, Grant Street (Pittsburgh). If this is an isolated issue, deleting the redirect should fix it. --NE2 08:34, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Speedy deleted as a redirect to a redlink. DrKiernan 08:39, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. --NE2 09:08, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Images from bollywoodblog

There is something wrong about all these images. The license summary claims that OTRS has received permission from the blog owners releasing these pics on CC-3. But the blog itself tells a different story. This image for example, is taken from here. Now, if we scroll all the way to the bottom of that page, the blog tells us -

which forbids commercial use. Also note that many of the pics are cropped derivatives of the original. Can somebody here explain whats going on? Or should all these pics be deleted? Sarvagnya 09:13, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

And oh, btw.. some of them have watermarks on them. Atleast those can be speedied I guess. Sarvagnya 09:22, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I know this issue was brought up before. I thought the user was Hindu Boar but I can't find that name. I will continue searching as I swear this was resolved. spryde | talk 12:05, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

and I was right... spryde | talk 12:17, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

• If some have watermarks then they should be deleted. In my view, if any are provably not the copyright of the blog (i.e. simple crops of a non-PD image) then all should be removed as not having a trustworthy free license. Guy (Help!) 12:05, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

This has been questioned many times -yes I can confirm that I contacted the director of caledonian publishing and received permission . He actually said "They would be delighted to help wikipedia" and if you check the system verification you'll see we are permitted to use these images under 3.0. PLease confirm with User:Videmus Omnia or User:Riana who overlooked it. And yes we are trying to avoid watermarked images where possible. Under this license we are indeed permitted to crop images and use commercially. Why am I not surprised Sarvagnya is the editor concerned here? ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ 12:26, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Ahh yes it was Spyde who saw this last time. This is turning into a joke . ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ 12:36, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

That is your opinion Guy but if you spoke to the director of Caledonian publishing who owns that site you would think differently. ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ 12:42, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

• You might care to read it a b it more carefully. What I said was, watermarked images should go (existing policy), and if we find any that are provably not the copyright of the blog then we'd have to delete them all because the claim of copyright ownership would lose credibility. Nobody's disputing that the blog owners have sent the release, the question is whether the rights are, in every case, theirs to release, and if not, what to do about it. Guy (Help!) 18:28, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Please check the OTRS system here which will indeed confirm this 3.0 agreement is legal ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ 12:43, 6 November 2007 (UTC) Actually on the Bollywood site there is clear confirmation that wikipedia is permitted to use the images under a 3.0 license and in doing so realises it is allowing them to be used commercially on other sites or whatever for all. Admin made certain this was correct before finalising it. Now would you like the email address of the director to confirm this yourself? ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ 12:47, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

NNDB voting

I believe that users with a conflict of interest (and possibly multiple sockpuppets) are stacking the votes in the following tfd: Misplaced Pages:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2007_October_29#Template:Nndb_name. I would appreciate wider input as we should not be linking to this website which is uncorrectable, unverifiable and with extremely dubious origins/purposes, let alone be having a template for it. Gustav von Humpelschmumpel 12:01, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

The conflict of interest on this tfd is likely continuing so I would appreciate further input. Gustav von Humpelschmumpel 17:55, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with the Nndb issue, but at a quick glance, I see no evidence of canvassing or socking. Can you please provide some additional detail here? --After Midnight 18:28, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

There's certainly someone canvassing here, but it's Gustav: . Xihr 21:14, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't see why there would be evidence of canvassing or socking as people can organize it all away from this website. I have asked other people to comment because I believe this is exactly what they are doing. Gustav von Humpelschmumpel 21:50, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

What? I cannot divine any sense out of that reply. The two links above demonstrate without a doubt that you have canvassed for replies. That is all. Xihr 22:06, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Do you have any evidence to suggest sockpuppetry/meatpuppetry here? I have no opinion whatsoever on this template as I'd never heard of it or NNDB prior to reading this post & the TFD, but all the votes there seem to be from established legitimate editors. There also seem to be some COI allegations flying around on that TFD with no foundation whatsoever (which seem to boil down to "You've previously edited a page on a topic related to this"). — iridescent 22:16, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Not biting n00bs to become actual necessity

m:Edit Misplaced Pages Week is happening.

A perennial press story is "I was bitten as a n00b on Misplaced Pages" - every random interaction with a random en:wp editor is taken as representative and officially sanctioned.

So we need people to be on extra special good behaviour.

(For those about to point out to Mr Pot that he is of similar blackness to Messrs Kettle, Jimbo emailed me directly asking me to please be much nicer on wikien-l in particular. And I can't say it wasn't deserved. *cough*)

Main sticking point I can see is notoriously prickly individuals who are also notoriously good encyclopedia writers. I won't go so far as to name any of those who spring to my mind, but I'm sure you have your own list. If they can be convinced this is a good idea then they should provide a suitably shocking example of niceness.

Also, have to hit the village pump, the admin boards etc. Those who do lots of janitorial work cleaning out the sewers of en:wp (vandal-chasing, newpages patrolling, RC patrolling, etc) and basically see the bad side of people all the time need to be brought on board as well. This is somewhere n00bs can really be bitten.

Ideas please? Not doing this is not likely to be an option. n00bs will be actively recruited, and it's absolutely vital everyone understands why it's bad to react in the obvious way to the blithering depths of human stupidity. - David Gerard 15:02, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Or we could write bots to do the biting for us! Luigi30 (Taλk) 15:24, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

As a non-admin (and determined to stay that way) I'd like to support what David Gerard has written. We see a lot of newbies on the refdesks (it's an encyclopaedia - people come here to find stuff out!)- but not enough admins popping by and leaving welcome messages for them. We also see too much biting, and the occasional "mind how you go" from admins to some of the more prickly members (and I know I can be prickly at times - but I do try only to bite experienced editors!) might be helpful. The refdesks, help pages, village pumps are all places where new editors are likely to end up. They are also great places to rediscover what it is that brought you to Wikipaedia in the first place. DuncanHill 15:34, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I think that any new user or anon should be "welcomed" with one of the many standard messages. Even if they didn't do anything wrong, surprising an unsuspecting user with a nice welcome sign always brightens their day, and are more forthcoming for discussions and it helps them learn quickly what Misplaced Pages is and what it's not. We shouldn't wait for them to make a mistake to start discussion and interaction. The only exception are banned users or sockpuppets posing as noobs, or new users with a specific agenda in mind without any regard for the community. Those may require special care (;-). - Mtmelendez 16:22, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I often welcome people I come across while vandal fighting, but perhaps people should also consider starting vandalism warnings at the first level, which includes a welcome and a very heavy dose of AGF. Same with article creation messages. Natalie 19:25, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I've been welcoming every anon on 2007 Writers Guild of America strike in the off chance they could be someone who knows how to write and might have some time on their hands in the coming months.... -- Kendrick7 19:36, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

You might all want to install WP:FRIENDLY, which automates the adding of welcome templates, as well as adding standard "newbie mistake" templates ({{wikify}}, {{unreferenced}} etc). Whichever bright spark thought of having "Edit Misplaced Pages Week" at the same time as anon page creation's enabled deserves a WP:TROUT for it, too. There is a reason admins are too busy to spend much time welcoming! — iridescent 22:21, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

It started with this and ended up being this. That's my story for the week. Yes, it was fine! El_C 22:51, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I think it is a good idea. I am pretty nasty to anons quite often, but if we can bend over backwards, maybe some of them will stay and become productive. I know when I was starting it was quite intimidating and I had no idea what I was doing. I was terrified of screwing up and it seemed impossible to find instructions or navigate through these pages at first. What an intimidating mess ! --Filll 23:51, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

pending requests at AWB

thr are more than 24 hrold requests at Requests_for_registration. thx ~atif 17:02, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Range blocks on schools

Would it be appropriate to range block a school district for a long period of time? The range in question is 167.135.0.0/16. I have not been able to find any non-vandal edits so far by this range (using WikiScanner). --- RockMFR 17:58, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Go ahead if they are not productive This is a Secret 18:19, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

You may find putting the {{schoolblock}} template in the block reason field helpful. Natalie 19:27, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Dorftrottel (talk · contribs)

I'm sure that everyone is aware that Dorftrottel (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was blocked for 24 hours a couple of days ago for incivility. This was increased soon after due to block evasion using an IP to post at the block review on AN/I. At the point that Dorftrottel was incivil, he was drunk. I suspect that Dorftrottel is now sober and probably is upset at his actions. Scars can be left from drunk actions, in this case he has that in his block log. I believe that the block is no longer protective and merely serves as a punitive measure due to Dorftrottel no longer being under the influence, and given that the original block would now have expired, I would like to suggest that he is unblocked. Ryan Postlethwaite 18:47, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd support, with the understanding that Dorf will hit the sack instead of committing an EUI the next time he's got a surplus of sheets to the wind. Dppowell 18:58, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I support the unblock. EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:03, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Hehe, a funny occurence. Support the unblock--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 19:04, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I support the unblocking. Everyone deserves a second chance. Qst 19:09, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Support unblock. Not the first editor to have been busted for EUI - Alison 19:17, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I unblocked him. If I've overstepped, I'm sure someone will let me know. :) Dppowell 19:43, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I think it was the right move, I was hoping to wait for comments from Picaroon and kwsn as they were responsible for the blocks, but I guess it doesn't really matter and we can re-evaluate if they are against the unblock. Ryan Postlethwaite 19:48, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

As I stated on IRC, no problems on my end. Kwsn (Ni!) 20:58, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

IRC? I-R-C!(?) Did we not ban the word? The insolence of that medium. Anyway, hopefully this will inspire more assumptions of good faith on his part. He was excessively playing the persecution complex card —which upsets me because that's my bit. El_C 22:56, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Donation Banner

Does it say "0 have donated" for anyone else or is it just me? The Placebo Effect 19:11, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I get 15,643 - have you purged your cache? Ryan Postlethwaite 19:13, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Just you (or rather, potentially everyone except me and Ryan). EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:14, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I, too, get 0. JFTR. Arkon 19:15, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I get 15,691 at the moment--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 19:28, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Zero here, too. No cache purge. Dppowell 19:29, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Ditto zero and ditto purge not helping. If we can't fix this soon, someone should redesign the banner.--Pharos 19:32, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

http://donate.wikimedia.org/, the donation tracking server, is offline. I have no idea why or how long it will take to fix. Dragons flight 19:34, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I get "Over 15,000" now. Did someone change it? The Placebo Effect 19:35, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, everyone is getting that static message now. Dragons flight 19:40, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I have conflicting numbers. When the entire message appears, it reads 15,706. But when I hide it, it says 15,691. Does anyone else have these inconsistencies? - Mtmelendez 21:27, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

User 70.106.191.94 > Racial Slur_Racial_Slur-Current_issues-2007-11-06T19:53:00.000Z">

70.106.191.94 (talk · contribs) makes a racial slur here. ~ WikiDon 19:53, 6 November 2007 (UTC)_Racial_Slur"> _Racial_Slur">

This looks like a typical piece (although of extremely poor taste) of vandalism, I've given the user an only warning. Ryan Postlethwaite 19:55, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

We see this sort of thing every day, it's just people who are bored, I wouldn't worry about it. Qst 21:33, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

We-e-e-e-ell, I worry about it in a society point of view manner (although the spelling is the self referential model rather than the white supremacist term) but as far as WP... slap a warning on the talkpage and take it to AIV if it happens again. LessHeard vanU 22:05, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

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