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Administrative discussions

Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive367#Close challenge for Talk:1948 Arab–Israeli War#RFC for Jewish exodus

(Initiated 34 days ago on 13 December 2024) challenge of close at AN was archived nableezy - 05:22, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard#Sander.v.Ginkel unblock request

(Initiated 32 days ago on 15 December 2024) voorts (talk/contributions) 00:55, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

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Requests for comment

Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/In the news criteria amendments

(Initiated 100 days ago on 7 October 2024) Tough one, died down, will expire tomorrow. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:58, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 459#RFC_Jerusalem_Post

(Initiated 80 days ago on 28 October 2024) Participation/discussion has mostly stopped & is unlikely to pick back up again. - Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 21:15, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

 Note: This is a contentious topic and subject to general sanctions. - Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 21:15, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Archived. P.I. Ellsworth , ed.  22:26, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

would like to see what close is. seems like it was option 1 in general, possibly 1/2 for IP area. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 05:38, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Talk:Genocide#RfC: History section, adding native American and Australian genocides as examples

(Initiated 71 days ago on 6 November 2024) RfC expired on 6 December 2024 . No new comments in over a week. Bogazicili (talk) 15:26, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Australia#RFC: Should the article state that Indigenous Australians were victims of genocide?

(Initiated 69 days ago on 8 November 2024), RFC expired weeks ago. GoodDay (talk) 21:33, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Talk:Israel#RfC

(Initiated 54 days ago on 22 November 2024) Legobot has removed the RFC notice. Can we please get an interdependent close. TarnishedPath 23:08, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

 Note: Ongoing discussion, please wait a week or two. Bogazicili (talk) 14:08, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy)#RfC: Voluntary RfA after resignation

(Initiated 32 days ago on 15 December 2024) Long, but the outcome is clear. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:58, 14 January 2025 (UTC)  Status quo maintained. (courtesy @Voorts:) --Hammersoft (talk) 18:34, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Talk:Estado Novo (Portugal)#RFC Should the Estado Novo be considered fascist?

(Initiated 8 days ago on 8 January 2025) RfC opened last month, and was re-opened last week, but hasn't received further discussion. Outcome clear and unlikely to change if it were to run the full 30 days. SmittenGalaxy | talk! 00:54, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Does this need a close? Aaron Liu (talk) 02:35, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

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Deletion discussions

Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 December 20#Category:Belarusian saints

(Initiated 27 days ago on 20 December 2024) HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 23:10, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2025 January 6#Category:Misplaced Pages oversighters

(Initiated 27 days ago on 20 December 2024) HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 05:38, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 December 31#Category:Disambig-Class Star Trek pages

(Initiated 15 days ago on 31 December 2024) HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 20:54, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2025 January 1#Category:Category-Class 20th Century Studios pages of NA-importance

(Initiated 15 days ago on 1 January 2025) HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 20:50, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2025 January 6#Redundant WPANIMATION categories

(Initiated 10 days ago on 6 January 2025) HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 05:35, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

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Other types of closing requests

Talk:Arab migrations to the Levant#Merger Proposal

(Initiated 113 days ago on 25 September 2024) Open for a while, requesting uninvolved closure. Andre🚐 22:15, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Winter fuel payment abolition backlash#Merge proposal

(Initiated 79 days ago on 29 October 2024) There are voices on both sides (ie it is not uncontroversial) so a non-involved editor is needed to evaluate consensus and close this. Thanks. PamD 09:55, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Israel–Hamas war#Survey

(Initiated 70 days ago on 7 November 2024) Looking for uninvolved close in CTOP please, only a few !votes in past month. I realise this doesn't require closing, but it is preferred in such case due to controversial nature of topic. CNC (talk) 10:44, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

•  Note: I'm happy to perform the merge if required, as have summarised other sections of this article already with consensus. I realise it's usually expected to perform splits or merges when closing discussions, but in this case it wouldn't be needed. CNC (talk) 20:28, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Talk:You Like It Darker#Proposed merge of Finn (short story) into You Like It Darker

(Initiated 19 days ago on 27 December 2024) Proposed merge discussion originally opened on 30 May 2024, closed on 27 October 2024, and reopened on 27 December 2024 following the closure being overturned at AN. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:22, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

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Pages recently put under extended-confirmed protection

WP:AN/CXT

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

There is consensus to move forward with Mathglot's proposal (see #Proposal), which will cause a mass deletion of the pages on Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review, with the option to save certain pages from deletion within a two-week window. As part of the proposal, there is also a consensus to amend WP:X2 in the manner S Marshall specifies in this edit.Opposition to this change revolved around the argument that the articles which would qualify for mass deletion should be improved instead of deleted. Elinruby proposed alternatively that we should focus on recruiting editors fluent in foreign languages, Mathglot initially proposed to mass-draftify the articles instead of deleting, and Sam Walton argued that the articles contained valid content that didn't deserve mass deletion.A majority of other editors, however, argued that many of the articles involved are poorly sourced BLPs that have the potential to harm their subjects if left unimproved. Given the large number of articles and low number of editors involved, it will likely be months before these articles are improved. Additionally, a user who is not fluent in both of the languages involved in a translation will not be able to adequately evaluate the validity of the machine-translated content; the article may appear unproblematic to such a user, but the content translation tool could have subtly altered the meaning of statements to something false.In short, the consensus is that in the long run, the encyclopedia would be better off if these articles were mass deleted. Respectfully, Mz7 (talk) 23:22, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Addendum: The process for working out how to cause the mass deletion has been established. To mark an article for retention, please strike it out. To unambiguously identify an article for deletion, include the word "kill" in the same line as the article. The articles will be deleted on or after June 6, 2017. Thank you for your patience. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:16, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi, Wikipedians. I wanted to give you an update on WP:AN/CXT. Since that discussion was closed about eight months or so ago, we've cleared out about 10% of the articles involved, which were the easiest 10%. The work is now slowing down as more careful examination is needed and as the number of editors drops off, and I'm sad to report that we're still finding BLP issues. The temporary speedy deletion criterion, X2, is of little use because it's phrased as a special case of WP:SNOW and I'm not being allowed to improve it. The "it's notable/AFD is not for cleanup" culture at AFD is making it hard for me to remove these articles as well, so I'm spending hours trying to get rid of material generated by a script in seconds. I'm sorry but I'm discouraged and I give up. Recommend the remainder are nuked to protect the encyclopaedia.—S Marshall T/C 23:15, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

For more context on this issue, please see Misplaced Pages talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#X2 revision. Cheers, Tazerdadog (talk) 23:33, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Update: This link is now located at .../Archive_61#X2 revision. Mathglot (talk) 01:10, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on this, S Marshall, and I don't fault you for your choice. - Dank (push to talk) 19:49, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

• Isn't there some way to use the sortware to delete all of these in bulk, if only as a one-time thing? Seems like a huge waste of time if it's being done manually by hand. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 00:07, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

• Easily doable as a batch-deletion. I could have it wrapped up in 15 minutes. Unfortunately community consensus did not lean towards approving that option. In fact, most CXT creations which have been reviewed needed cleanup but turned out to be acceptable articles. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 21:00, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I would support a nuke, a mass draftification, or some loosening of X2. The current situation is not really tenable due to the density of BLP violations. However, ultimately, the broader community needs to discuss what the appropriate action is under the assumption that we are not going to get much more volunteer time to manually check these articles. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:54, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

• No, the broader community doesn't need to discuss that. It's completely needless and the community has had a huge discussion already. All that needs to happen is for WT:CSD to let me make one bold edit to a CSD that was badly-worded from the get-go, and we'll all be back on track. That's it. The only problem we have is that there are so many editors who want to tell me how to do it, and so few editors willing to get off their butts and do it.—S Marshall T/C 19:34, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

• Restored from archive, as it's unhelpful for this to remain unresolved.—S Marshall T/C 17:30, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

• Support systematic nuke/ revision of X2 to enable this mess to be cleared up. It's not fair that @S Marshall: is being prevented from improving the encyclopedia like this. Amisom (talk) 15:21, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
• Support @S Marshall:'s revision or a nuke from orbit. I wasn't active when this situation was being discussed originally, but having now read over the discourse on the matter, it is clear that our current approach isn't working. No one else is stepping up to help S Marshall do this absurd amount of reviewing, leaving us stuck with thousands of machine-translated BLP violations. It's all well and good to say that AfD isn't cleanup and deletion solves nothing and we should let articles flower patiently into beautiful gardens, but if no one's pulling the weeds and watering the sprouts, the garden isn't a garden, it's a weed-riddled disaster. Give the gardener a weed whacker already. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 09:17, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• Support the bold edit required to X2; it's true, of course, that AfD is not clean up- but neither should it be a barrier to clean up. In any case, moving a backlog from one place to another is hardly helpful. — O Fortuna! 09:39, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• Question @Elinruby and Yngvadottir: As users who (from a quick glance) seem to have been active looking through these articles, do you think the quality is on average worse than a typical random encyclopedia article, and if so, bad enough that speedy deletion would be preferable to allowing them to be improved over time as with any other article? I don't mean to imply that this is necessarily the case, but I think it should be the bar for concluding whether mass speedy deletion is the correct answer. Sam Walton (talk) 11:22, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• (I wish I'd seen this earlier; thanks for the ping. I feel I have totally let down S Marshall; I just couldn't stand it any more.) On the whole ... yes. Support deletion of those remaining that have not been marked as ok/fixed. As I tried to explain in the initial discussion, the basic premise here is incorrect: as it states somewhere at Pages needing translation into English, a machine translation is worse than no article. It will almost always be either almost impossible to read, incorrect (for example, mistranslating names as ordinary nouns, or omitting negatives ...) or both. Some of these translations have been ok; many have been woefully incomplete (just the start of the lede), and they all require extremely careful checking. Yes, what lies in wait may include BLP violations. I sympathize with the article creators, and I am usually an inclusionist; I put hours of work into checking and improving some of these, and I'm not the only one. But please, enough. We'd wind up with decent articles faster if these were deleted, and the majority that are bad do a disservice to their topics. Yngvadottir (talk) 12:52, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

• You haven't let me down. You've given me a truckload of support with this.—S Marshall T/C 13:47, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

• Still oppose mass deletion -- @Sam Walton: What she said: Thank you the ping; this discussion was seeming a bit reiterative and I had mentally checked out. Like @Yngvadottir: I have put considerable effort into some of these articles. In fact, two or three of them are my own translations, which I would not have attempted without the translation tool, btw. Some are from my translations on French law, and I think 1) they cover important and previously missing topics and 2) they are high-quality technical translations. In most cases they speak for themselves. A couple are not perfect, reflecting the state of the French article, yes, and need work. But while these articles -- I am speaking here specifically of my own translations that appear on this list -- may be imperfect they are still reasonable stubs that can be built upon, and they also support more important articles by helping to prevent redlinks in some of the top-level articles on French law and also the French colonial legacy in Rwanda and the Congos etc. See Biens mal acquis for example. That was painful but I am proud of that translation. I have also encountered other people's translations on that list that made me proud of Misplaced Pages; the one on a cryptology algorithm for example comes to mind, or Essai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations. I am an inclusionist, I have to admit, and yes yes, great wrongs and all, but I do think it is important that (for example) articles on Congolese history mention that there have been civil wars (beyond "unrest", and no, I am not kidding). The worst BLP problems I am aware of are in the articles on Dilma Rousseff and I don't believe they are on this list or were created with the tool. Some of the worst PNT pages I have seen predate the translation tool, for instance Notre-Dame de la Garde, which took me years to finish, and Annees folles which is as we speak an incredible mess requiring research in addition to copy-editing and translation. Yngvadottir is correct in saying that inappropriately translated proper nouns is a frequent problem. I recall a Hubert de Garde de Vins who became "wine", and yes, this did reduce the sentence to gibberish. It's annoying enough to make me wanna regex. But. Not mass deletion. I suggest case-by-case intervention in the case of egregious problems with particular users. It's not as though more that a very few users even try to translate. Or perhaps we should revise the criteria for translation user privileges. But even there -- one of the people tagged as delete on sight has created a number of skeleton articles about Quebec. These articles should be be fleshed out not deleted; we should have articles about Quebec. Some of the authors are unquestionably notable, the equivalent in my small culture of Simone de Beauvoir or Colette or Andre Gide. It seems to me that an article that says: this author was born, drank coffee, won the Governor-General's award and wrote these books, is better than having nothing at all. The placeholder takes the topic from unknown unknown to known unknown, or little-known in this context, I guess. We do know a little more about the folk dances of Honduras because there is a very bad article, for which I have done what I could. There are many different problems with the articles on this list. Someone has created multiple articles about, apparently every madrassa in central Tunis. Who am I? Some of the articles I have rescued at PNT were about the medieval wines of Provence, which might seem equally trivial to some. Some of the important but very flawed articles I have noted maybe should not be in the article mainspace -- I am thinking of the ones about the Virgin of Guadeloupe, pretty much everything flagged Mexican historical documents, the Spanish procession of the flowers, etc)--but an interested Spanish speaker could build these out. These topics are unquestionably notable. We should have an article about the Virgin of Guadeloupe, really, people, we should. My suggestion would be recruiting. We desperately need a Portuguese speaker and additional help with Spanish. Some of the unreferenced BLPs sitting around appear to be very fine even though they are unreferenced, and may in fact veer into fluff. But they don't approach liability for libel if that's the concern. I avoid them, personally, because I have in the past deciphered Abidjan l33t about a beloved soccer player, only to be told that we don't as a matter of policy consider these leagues notable. Fine then, they should not be on the PNT to-do list. I'd love to see the translation workflow improved but we should be encouraging the people expanding our horizons is what I think. I am sorry for the very long answer but I appear to be a voice wailing in the desert on this topic and I have now said pretty much the above many times now. Nobody seems to care so oh well, it's not like I don't have other work I can do on the history of the Congo and figuring out what Dilma Rousseff had to say about her impeachment. Reliable sources say she was railroaded (NPR for one) and that is not included in the article at all right now. The articles on Congolese history airily write off genocide and slaughter as "some unrest". In a world where these things are true I really don't care whether on not we find a reference for that Eurovision winner. Someone who cares can do that and I think ethnocentrism is a bigger issue on Misplaced Pages that these translation attempts. Move the ones that don't meet a minimum standard to some draft space or something. Educate the people who are creating this articles instead of shaking your finger at them. The article creation process is daunting enough and I myself have had to explain to new page patrollers that this punk band is in fact seminal whether you have heard of them or not and whether or not they sing in a language that you can understand. But I have been here enough to do that and I assure you, most people will not. Misplaced Pages wants to know why its editors grow fewer cough cough wikipedia, lookee here. I will shortly wikilink some of the examples I mention above for easier show-and-tell, for the benefit of anyone who has read this far. Thanks. Elinruby (talk) 20:38, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

• Support removal of these attempted articles (especially to avoid BLP problems laying around). Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:00, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• Support I'd say "do a disservice to their topics" is a mild way of putting it. --NeilN 14:08, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose blanket deletion. Having just checked a bunch of the remaining articles I found plenty of perfectly reasonable, non-BLP articles here, and any bad articles I did find were certainly not in greater number than you would find by hitting Random Article, nor were they particularly awful; the worst offenses I found were poor but understandable English. There's a lot of valid content here, especially on non-English topics which we need to do a better job of writing about. FWIW I'll happily put some time into going through this list. Sam Walton (talk) 14:12, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Please take a look at the 20 articles I just reviewed here; none had any issues greater than needing a quick copyedit. Sam Walton (talk) 14:38, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
    • @Samwalton9: Thanks. It's been a long, hard slog. I appreciate it if any of these can be saved. However, did you check for accuracy? It's possible for a machine translation to be misleadingly wrong. And the miserable translation tool the WMF provides usually doesn't even attempt filmographies: look at that specific section of Asier Etxeandia. This is not acceptable in a BLP. Somebody who reads the original language (Spanish? Catalan?) needs to go through that article sentence by sentence and film by film. Unfortunately it's not a matter of notability (that's almost always attested to by the original article), it's a matter of whether we have time to save this article. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:27, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
      • That names of works likely don't get automatically translated properly is a good point that I hadn't considered, thanks for pointing that out. If that's one of the primary issues then I'd favour a semi-automated removal of "filmography" or similar sections, if possible. It just seems that there's a lot of perfectly good content in here. Sam Walton (talk) 15:47, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
        • I looked at the first one you listed, it is a mass of non-BLP compliant (non-neutral, no-inline source) material. Letting stuff like that hang around is not just bad for that BLP but as an example for other BLPs to be created and remain non-compliant. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:08, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
          • Sam Walton, you didn't answer Yngvadottir's question. Can you speak the source languages? Remember that because of the defective way that software feature was implemented, you cannot assume that the translator speaks English and in many cases they obviously couldn't. (In practice the source language matters a lot because the software accuracy varies by the language pair. Indo-European languages are often but not always okay, and Spanish-English translations have particularly high accuracy, approaching 80%. Japanese-English, for example, has much, much lower accuracy.) So the correctness of the translation must be, and can only be, checked by someone with dual fluency in the source language and English.

            In the real world you can establish some rules-of-thumb. For example, you can quite safely assume that everything translated by Rosiestep is appropriate and can be retained. The editorial skills of the different translators varied very widely.

            All in all the best solution is for a human who's fluent in the source language and English to look at each of these articles and form an intelligent judgment. The thing that's preventing this solution is that, having looked at the content and formed the judgment, I can't then remove a defective article, because the defective wording in WP:CSD#X2 encourage sysops to decline the deletion unless it's a WP:SNOW case... so I've got to start a full AfD. Every. Single. Time. The effort for me to clean up is out of all proportion to the effort editors put into creating the damn things with a script.

            If you don't want the articles nuked (and that's a reasonable position), then please support the X2 revision I have proposed.—S Marshall T/C 17:37, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

When you say "the first one you listed" are you talking about Tomokazu Matsuyama? Yes, if so. it is indeed an unreferenced BLP but... I suspect five minutes of quality time with Google would take it out of that category, and it's essentially a resume, something like the placeholder articles I mentioned above. I think that perhaps we are better off knowing that this Japanese contemporary artist exists. Why not do a wikiproject to improve these like the one we just had on Africa top-level articles? It does seem to me that you could use a break from this wikitask and a little gamification might well get er done. I share your sentiment that in some ways we have our fingers in the dyke here, but the dyke does serve a purpose I think...In short I respectfully disagree with the current approach to these articles. Elinruby (talk) 21:05, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Break

@Alanscottwalker: I found a reference for his influences in less time than it took to add the ref code....Elinruby (talk) 19:43, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Elinruby: Did you mean to ping me back here, many days after I commented, to tell me you found a pretty crappy commercial source? When I looked at it awhile ago, the article was filled with non-npov/non-referenced/BLP violating text. It is, thus, no comfort that since I commented, awhile ago, someone has according to their edit 'removed the worst of the puffery', and you added that crappy commercial source - its still not policy compliant (even if it is marginally better, since I flagged it) Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:03, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker: I brought you back here to tell you that while it may be have been unsourced, fixing this is extremely trivial. I don't give a hoot about this particular article, but his gallery is not a "crappy commercial source" imho and if you want people to fix then article then you should enunciate your problem with it. Sorry if that doesn't fit your preconceptions Elinruby (talk) 00:51, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Adding a non-independent crappy commercial source is not fixing. It is selling. We are not in the business of selling. What you call "trivial" sourcing does nothing to fix just makes it worse - "trivial" should have tipped you off. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 08:25, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@AlanscottWalker: Um no.... I was using the term in its software development meaning. I apologize for picking the wrong dialect to make my point. I thought, since you were critiquing the software tool, you might know something about software even though you don't seem to be familiar with the features of this instance of it, or for that matter with a representative sample of its users. Commericial, hmm. The same could be said of my article about the thousand-year-old Papal vintages, you know. That vineyard is selling wine today. Is that article also commercial crap? Since it is a direct translation from French Misplaced Pages, are you saying that French Misplaced Pages is commercial crap? You really don't want to make me argue this point, seriously. Incidentally what is with the arbitrary insertion of a break in the discussion? Consider, for just a moment, that I might actually have a point. Entertain the notion for a minute. Why are you belittling my statement? Elinruby (talk) 21:57, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Critiquing software tool? No, I was clearly critiquing an article in English on the English Misplaced Pages. And I was referring to the crappy commercial source - you pinged me, remember, so that I would know you added it to the article. That was not done in French, it was done in English. As for break, that is your doing, why should I have any idea why you added the crappy source, and then wanted to tell me about it in this break. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:54, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker: Let me use small words. CTX is software. Bad translation can happen with or without software. Lack of sources can happen without software. In software development "trivial" means "easy". Do you see now? Be careful who you patronize next time. 01:07, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

@S Marshall:I'd consider supporting your proposal, perhaps, once I have read it, but could you provide a link for we mere mortals who don't normally follow these proposals? I also disagree that all of these articles require a bilingual editor; some just need a few references and/or a copy edit. But you know I disagree at this point. And if you do, god help us, nuke all of these articles as opposed to one of the other courses of action I have (again) suggested above, please move mine to my draft space if you find them that objectionable. Some sort of clue as to what your issue is would also be nice. Elinruby (talk) 19:43, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

• The revision I want to make is this one. The intended effect is so that a human editor, who has reviewed the script-generated content and given it due consideration and exercise of judgment, can recommend the content for deletion and receive assistance rather than bureaucracy from our admin corps.

  The basic problem with these articles is that they are script generated and the scripts are unreliable. Exactly how unreliable they are varies according to the language pair, so for example Spanish-English translations are relatively good, while for example Japanese-English translations are relatively poor; and whether the articles contain specific grammatical constructions that the scripts have trouble with.

  You can test its accuracy, and I recommend you do. The script it used, during the problem period, was Google translate. I've just picked some sample text and run it through Google translate in various language pairs, first into a different language and then the translated text back into English, to see how it did. These were the results:-

I encourage you to try these and other examples with different language pairs. Can you see why you need to speak the original language in order to copyedit accurately?—S Marshall T/C 22:00, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

But that is not a fair test since it magnifies any word choice errors. There *will* be errors, yes. We clean them up at WP:PNT --- ALL THE TIME. And no, it is not necessary to speak the language always, though it certainly help. I really suggest that maybe you just need a wikibreak from this task. Bad english can mostly be fixed. There are the occasional mysteries, yes. There are colloquialisms, yes. This does not justify wholesale destruction of good content. I was just here to get the link as I mentioned your proposal to one of my PNT colleagues; I need to go but I'll look at your proposal the next time I log in Elinruby (talk) 00:46, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

The liquor was strong but the meat was rotten.

Translation wonks will recognize the (apocryphal) story behind the sentence above, concerning literal mistranslations exacerbated from there-and-back translation. (The story perhaps originated after the NY World's Fair of 1964, which had a computer translation exhibit in the Russian Pavilion.) In any case, I'm just getting up to speed on this topic and will comment in more detail later.

Briefly: yes, you definitely have to speak the language to copyedit accurately. I'm actually in favor of a modification to WP:MACHINETRANSLATION to make it stronger. I fully agree with the worse than nothing statement in the policy now, but I'd go one step further: the only thing worse than a machine translation in an encyclopedia, is a machine translation that has been copyedited by a capable and talented monolingual (even worse: by someone who knows a bit of the language and doesn't know what s/he doesn't know) so that the result is beautiful, grammatical, smooth, stylish, wonderful English prose. As a translator, puh-LEEZ leave the crappy, horrible, machine-gobbledygook so that a translator can spot it easily, and fix it accurately. Copyediting it into proper English makes our job much harder.

If it's too painful to leave it exposed in main space, perhaps moving to Draft space could be an alternative. In fact, rather than a mass-delete, why not a mass-Draft-ify? (Apologies if someone has already said this, I'm still reading the thread.) More later. Mathglot (talk) 01:31, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

mass-Draftify would work for me. And yeah I disagree with you too a little, but I knew that. My point is, we all agree that an issue exists so what do we do? I also have some more reading to do before I comment on what S Marshall (talk · contribs) is proposing. I have a story about the policy but I want to make sure it pertains to this discussion. Elinruby (talk) 22:03, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

• Elinruby is certainly correct to say this "wasn't a fair test", because going through the algorithm twice doubles the error rate. But a lot of people reading this discussion will speak only English so this is the only way I can show them what the problem is ---- without that context, they may well find this, and the original discussion at WP:AN/CXT, rather impenetrable because they won't understand the gravity of the concerns.

  It was even more unfair because it was me who selected the examples and I don't like machine translations. In order to illustrate my point I went with non-European languages and convoluted sentence structures. If you tried the same exercise with a verse from "Green Eggs and Ham" then you'd get perfect translations 99% of the time. (It tripped me up with the Sermon on the Mount because quite clearly, the algorithm recognised that it was dealing with a Bible verse, which I found fascinating.)

  The script is particularly likely to do badly with double-negatives, not-unless constructions, adverbs of time ("since", "during", "for a hundred years"), and the present progressive tense, in some language pairs.

  It would certainly be possible to construct a fairer text using more random samples of language.—S Marshall T/C 10:27, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@S Marshall: alright, I grant you that there aren't many bilinguals here. This *is* the problem in my view. I'll also specify that I don't claim expertise outside the Romance languages, and very little for some of those. But allow me please, since I know you speak or at least read French, to propose a better example. There are common translation errors that can occur, depending on which tool exactly was used. The improperly-translated name (nom propre) problem was real but is now mostly fixed. The fact that a writer whose novels were written in French gave them titles in French should come as a shock to nobody. The correct format for a bibliography in such cases *is* title in the actual language of the words in the book, webpage or whatever. Translated title, if the title is not in English, goes in the optional trans-title (or is it trans_title?) field of the cite template. Language switch to be set if at all possible. If it is not, let me know, and I can reduce the number of foreign words that English wikipedia needs to look at. So. In all languages, pretty much, words like fire and sky and take tend to be both native to the original people and likely to carry additional meanings, as in take an oath, take a bus, take a break etc. On the other hand what the software tool does do extremely well is know the correct translation for arcane or specialized terms, often loanwords, like caravel or apse or stronghold. These words are in my recognition vocabulary not my working vocabulary and using the tool in certain instances saves many lookups. When there is a strong degree of ambiguity or divergence in meaning (like the example on my user page) then THEN yes a fluent or very advanced user is needed. There are known divergences that a bilingual would spot that an English speaker would not. Sure. "Je l'aime beaucoup, mon mari" is a good example. But the fact that this is true does not prove that every line of every one of these articles still needs to be checked before they can be permitted to continue to sully Misplaced Pages, or that each of these lines needs to be checked by you personally. If you feel overwhelmed, take a break. Elinruby (talk) 21:57, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

• I speak English, French, German, Gibberish and Filth.  :) Joking aside -- I'm not concerned about noms propres. I'm concerned when the script perverts or even inverts the meaning of the source text. It's quite hard to give you an example because the examples I've discovered have all been deleted, and there's only the one non-English language we share, but perhaps an administrator will confirm for you the sorry history of Daphné Bürki. It was created as a machine translation of fr:Daphné Bürki and the en.wiki version said she was married to Sylvain Quimène, citing this source. Check it out; the source doesn't say that. In fact she was married to Travis Bürki, at least at one time (can't say whether she's still married to him). We had a biographical article where the subject was married to the wrong bloke. It's not okay to keep these around.

  Draftification is exactly the same as deleting them. Nobody is going to fix these up in draft space. The number of editors who're competent to fix them is small, and the amount of other translation work those editors have on their hands is very large, and it includes a lot of mainspace work that's more urgent than fixing raw machine translations in draft space, and it always will; we can get back to fixing draft space articles about individual artworks when every Leibniz-prizewinning scientist and every European politician with a seat on their national parliament has a biography. (We're on target never to achieve that. The democratic process means new politicians get elected and replaced faster than their biographies get translated from foreign-language wikipedias.)

  I don't object to draftifying these articles if that's the face-saving solution that lets us pretend we're being all inclusionist about it, but it would be more honest to nuke them all from orbit.—S Marshall T/C 00:51, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

• I am just coming back to this. I agree about the relatively few translators and the large amount of work, and yet, we so fundamentally disagree. Some of the designated articles do are, in my opinion, within the top percentiles in article quality. Others have in fact been fixed up. You and I consulted about one once. Others, yes, need work, and I at least do get to articles that I say I will get to. Slowly, at times, sure. I have no problem with articles that don't meet a certain standard not going to mainspace, but I don't see why you singly out the translation tool as your criterion. I mention noms propres because I have mentioned one above from Notre-Dame de la Garde where Commander de Vins came across as wine, and this did make the sentence gibberish. But that article did not come out of the CTX tool. Ihave no idea what the Leibniz prize is, but I am not sure it's more notable, in the abstract, than Marcel Proust, but fine. Work on that all you like, sure. But don't tell me it's more important that some mention in Congolese history that there have been civil wars, or I will just laugh at you. The sort of error you mention above with Daphné Büki -- I'll look at it myself shortly, if it's from French I don't need an admin -- can be made by anyone who knows less than they think they do. Automated translation not needed. Now, I propose that since we are talking about this we work out some sort of saner translation process. For instance, if African football leagues are by policy not notable, as someone once told me, fine then, the article should not be in the translation queue. Put something in there about a minimum number of references, require the use of trans-title in the references, whatever is agreed upon is ok with me. Your proposed change would preserve most of by not all of the articles that have been worked on, which is a slight improvement I guess, except you'll also nuke the 3-4 articles that needed nothing and a whole lot of biography that I've avoid because people tend to write me snooty messages to inform me that the person isn't notable, and why waste work when articles like History of Nicaragua are so lacking? Elinruby (talk) 01:01, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Proposal

Okay, I've gone through this and thought about it, and I'm conditionally a Yes on change to X2 and nuking the list, with an option to save certain files.

S Marshall, I take your point about draftification being pointless, as they'll just sit there with most of them never being edited ever.

I believe you've also persuaded me that the nuke is appropriate, given some conditions below. In order to keep Elinruby and Sam Walton (and me, and others) happy about not deleting certain files we are working on or wish to work on, I had an idea: what if we agree to allow a delay of two weeks to allow interested parties to go through and mark files in the list we want to keep so when the nuke-a-bot comes through, it can pass over the files thus marked. (I don't know if we can gin this up for two weeks from yesterday, but that would be auspicious.)

More specifically, to Elinruby's (22:03, 1 April) "So what do we do?" question, I think here's what we do:

• Those of us who want to retain files, mark them with {{bots|deny=X2-nukebot}} to vaccinate them against nuking.
• Change X2 accordingly
• Somebody develops the nuke script
• Nuke script should nuke "without prejudice" so that if someone changes their mind later and wants to recreate a file, it shouldn't be "salted" or require admin action to "undelete"; you just recreate it in the normal way you create any new file.
• If needed, we run a pre-nuke test against sandbox files, or can we just trust the vaccination will be respected?
• Start the script up and let 'er rip

Elinruby, if this proposal were accepted, would you change your no to X2 modif to a yes? Sam Walton, would you?

Naturally for this to have any value, we'd have to agree to not vaccinate the whole list, but just the ones we reasonably expect to work on, or judge worthy of keeping. If desired, I can envisage a way to greatly speed up the first step (vaccination) for all of us. Personally, I won't mark any file translated from a language I don't know well enough to evaluate the translation. But, going through all 3500 files is a burden, since there's no point my even clicking on the ones in languages I don't know. If I knew in advance which ones are from Spanish, French, etc., that would be a huge help. If you look at 1300-1350, you'll see that I've marked them with a language code (and a byte count; but that was for something else). I could commit to marking another 200 or 300 with the lang code, maybe more. If we could break up the work that way and everybody just mark the files for lang code, then once that's done, we could all go through the whole list much more quickly, to see which ones we wanted to evaluate for vaccination.

I really think this could be wrapped up in a couple of weeks, if we get agreement. Mathglot (talk) 18:17, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

• Entirely happy with this idea.—S Marshall T/C 19:33, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
• Agree. Amisom (talk) 11:31, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
• This is fine with me. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:03, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Are there any objections to moving forward with this? Tazerdadog (talk) 01:48, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Almost two weeks of SILENCE sounds like "go for it". Primefac (talk) 02:28, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm still good with this as proposer, of course, but just to reiterate: we'd still need a two-week moratorium *after acceptance* of the proposal before nuking, to allow interested parties to vaccinate such articles as they chose to. I assumed that was clear, but that "go for it" got me a little scared, so thought I'd better raise it again.

On Tazerdadog's point, what is the procedure for deciding when to go forward with a proposal? Are we there now? Whatever the procedure is, and whenever we deem "acceptance" to happen, can someone close it at that point and box it up like I see on Rfcs, so we can then start the two-week, innoculation period timer ticking without having more opinions straggle in after it's already been decided? Or what's the right way to do this? Mathglot (talk) 07:00, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

• Request formal close, per Mathglot. Do I need to post on ANRFC?—S Marshall T/C 18:40, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

X2-nuke interim period

Wow, cool! Glad we made some progress, and just trying to nail down the next steps to keep things moving smoothly. To recap my understanding:

• we are now in the "inoculation period" with a fortnight-timer which expires 23:22, 6 May 2017 (UTC) an interim period where we figure out how to implement this.
• during this period, anyone may tag articles in the list at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review with the proper tag to prevent nuking two weeks hence

A couple of questions:

• do we have to recruit someone to write a script to do the actual nuking?
• what form should the actual "vaccination" tag have? In the proposal above, I just kind of threw out that expression: {{bots|deny=X2-nukebot}} but I have no idea how we really need to tag the articles, and maybe that's a question for the script writer?
• will the bot also observe strikeout type as an indicator not to nuke? A possible issue is inconsistent usage among editors: for example, some editors have not used strikeout for articles they have reviewed and clearly wish to save (e.g. see #1601-1622)

As for me, I will continue to tag a couple hundred more articles with language-tags as I did previously in the 1301-1600 range, to make it easier for everyone to find articles translated from languages they are comfortable working with, and that they therefore might wish to tag. Mathglot (talk) 02:28, 23 April 2017 (UTC) Updated by Mathglot (talk) 09:02, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

• Let's make two lists, one of articles to delete and the other of articles to retain for the moment. I don't think that it will be necessary to formally request a bot. We have quite a few sysops who could clean them all out with or without scripted assistance.—S Marshall T/C 15:55, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

  I would implement it as a giant sortable wikitable - Something that looks like this:

Tazerdadog (talk) 17:17, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Isn't the current list easier to deal with than creating a new table, or two new ones? Can we just go based on strikeout type, or add some unambiguous token like, nuke=yes in the content of the items in the enumerated list that need to be deleted? I'm just trying to think what would be the least work to set up, and easiest to mark for those interested in vaccinating articles.

If we decide to go with a table, I might be able to use a fancy regex to create a table from the current bullet list. Although I definitely see why a table is easier to view and interpret once it's set up, I'm not (yet) persuaded that there's an advantage to setting one up in the first place. For one thing, it's harder to edit a table than a bullet list, because of the risk of screwing up cells or rows. Mathglot (talk) 18:59, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

The real advantage of the table is the ability to sort by language. This way, if we have a volunteer who speaks (for example) only English and Spanish, they can just sort the table by language, and all of the Spanish articles will be shown together. It's harder to edit, but in my opinion, the ease of viewing and extracting the information far outweighs this.

I have created a list that removes all struck items at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review/Tazerdadog cleanup list. I'm currently working on getting rid of the redlinks as well. Once that is done, we can move to a vaccination model on the articles that have not been cleaned up in the articles thus far. The vaccination can take virtually any form as long as everyone agrees on what it is - I'd recommend that we vaccinate at the central list/table rather than on the article however. Once the two weeks expire, it's trivial to extract the unvaccinated articles and poke a sysop for deletion. Tazerdadog (talk) 00:07, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: This was posted over at Misplaced Pages talk:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review as well but wanted to mention it here. Timotheus Canens has created a language-sortable table in their sandbox at User:Timotheus Canens/sandbox that I think is similar to what you were thinking. Mz7 (talk) 04:06, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

And we may have to recreate the table, as I didn't notice it and have been continuing to mark language codes on the main list (and shall continue to do so, unless someone yells "Stop!"). Also, not sure how trivial it is: given a full set of instructions what to do, then, yes, it's trivial, but this is not formatted data (yet) and there are all sorts of questions a sysop might have, such as, what to do with ones marked "moved", or "redirected", and other situations I've come across while going through the list that don't spring to mind. We don't want to burden the sysop with an illy-defined task, so all of those situations should be spelled out before we ask them to take their time to do it, as if there are too many questions, they'll either give up, or they'll do whatever they feel like. Mathglot (talk) 06:20, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@Timotheus Canens: Tazerdadog (talk) 05:55, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

And am still doing so on the main page, and so have at least six others since the message just above this one was written. Mathglot (talk) 11:53, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

X2 countdown and vaccinate indicators

Floating a proposal to get the clock started on the two weeks. Any user can write "Vaccinated" (or anything equivalent , as long as the meaning is understood) on the list on the same line as the Strike out any article they want to vaccinate. I can then go through and use regex to remove the vaccinated articles line-by-line from the delete list. I will then separate out the articles with no substantive commentary attached (anything beyond a language or a byte count is substantive) for an admin to delete or draftify. Any article which has been individually substantively discussed will be evaluated independently. If this is OK, we can start the clock. Tazerdadog (talk) 22:23, 6 May 2017 (UTC) Updated Tazerdadog (talk) 06:07, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

People are already using strikeout type as the "vaccinate" flag so no additional method is needed though I see nothing wrong with using both, if someone has already started with the the other method. Mathglot (talk) 22:51, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Also, I have been placing substantive commentary on plenty of articles, with the intention of facilitating the work of the group as a whole, in order to aid people in deciding whether that article is worth their time to look at and evaluate. In my case at least, substantive commentary does not indicate a desire to save, and if you intend to use it that way in the general case, then you need to suggest another indication I can use as a "poison pill" indicator to ensure it is nuked despite the substantive commentary. Mathglot (talk) 23:31, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Strikeout works even better than my idea, as it is easier to write the regex for. I was figuring that substantive commentary at least deserved to be read before we nuked them, although unless a comment was actively positive on the article I would have sorted it as a delete. If you want every article you commented on to be deleted, I can use your signature as the poison pill. Otherwise, use what you want, just make sure it is clear what it is. Ideally, place it at the start of a line, so I don't have to think when writing the regex. Tazerdadog (talk) 06:07, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: If you need a tester, feel free to shoot me a pattern; I'm a bit of a regex wonk myself, plus I have a nice test app for it. Can't use my sig as poison pill, cuz often my commentary is unsigned cuz I did them 20 or 50 at a time, with the edit summary carefully explaining what was done, but no sig on the individual line items. Beyond that, quite a few have commentary by multiple people, so even if I did comment (and even sign) others may have, too. The only clear way to do this, afaics, is to have an unequivocal keep (or nuke) indicator (or more than one is okay, if you want to OR them) but anything judg-y like "substantive commentary" seems risky to me. In the latter case, we should just get everyone to review all their edits they forgot to strike, and strike them now, or forever hold their peace. In my own case, no matter how positive my comment, or how long, if there's no strike on the article title, it's a "nuke". It occurs to me we should poll everyone and get positive buy-in from all concerned that they understand the indicator system, to make sure everyone knows "strike" equals "keep" and anything else is nuke (or whatever we decide). It won't do to have 2,000 articles nuked, and then the day after, "Oh, but I thought..." Know what I mean?Mathglot (talk) 06:50, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: I think the solution is to draftify until everyone agrees that no mistakes have been made, then delete. I'm happy to do the grunt work of the manual checking of longer entries, and I don't think it is particularly risky to do so. However, the vast majority are short, and can and should be handed with a little regex script. We do need to make sure that the expectation of strikeout = delete instead of strikeout = resolved was clear to all parties. As for a deleteword, literally anything will do if it is unique and impossible to misinterpret. I would recommend "kill" as this deleteword, as it is clear what the meaning is, possible to write the regex for, and currently has only a couple of false hits in the page that can be worked around easily. Does this work for you?

The reasoning for checking longer entries is to try to catch entries like this:

|Battle_of_Urica -seems fine, at least not a translation issueElinruby (talk) 19:14, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Tazerdadog (talk) 08:02, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: If by "draftify" you mean quarantine, i.e., staging/moving all the to-be-deleted files someplace prior to the hard delete, I totally agree. (Whether that should actually be the current Draft namespace is debatable, but might be the right solution.) As far as regexes, I count 738 <s> tags, 732 </s> tags, 587 keepers, and 2785 nukers as of May 7 ver. 779254187. Mathglot (talk) 22:40, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Ok, sounds good. By draftify, i meant "Move out of mainspace to a different namespace where the content is accessible for translators, but unlikely to be stumbled upon accidentally by someone who thins they are reading an actual encyclopedia article." it also should be noted that when any of these pages are deleted, it should be a WP:SOFTDELETE, i.e. if someone asks for a small number to be restored after they have been deleted so that they can work on them they can just ask any admin to do so. I think that's all that needs to be resolved for now, so I'm going to go ahead and start the two week countdown until someone yells at me to stop. Pinging some participants: @S Marshall:@Elinruby:@Yngvadottir: Tazerdadog (talk) 23:12, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

For clarity, the process is: At the deadline, June 6, 2017 all struck articles listed at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review will be retained, and all unstruck articles will be deleted. Articles with significant commentary attached will have the commentary read before the deletion, but the default is the struck/unstruck status unless the commentary indicates clearly the opposite result is better. The work "kill" may be added to unambiguously mark an article for deletion. On or after June 6th, the regex nerds will compile a list of articles to delete and retain. The delete list will be moved to draft space (or subpages of Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review), where it will be audited briefly just to make sure nobody made a systematic error, then deleted. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:12, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Per #deadline it's June 6. Your clarifications on "draftify" and the process all sound good, otherwise.
P.S. Note that one article matches /kill/i but none matches /\bkill\b/i. Mathglot (talk) 23:28, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Fixed, I was unaware of that discussion, thank you. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:34, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot and Tazerdog: so for purposes of making life easier I will strike what I think should be struck. At one point people were checking my work so I was rather tentative initially. I am following the regex discussion but haven't used it in a while so save me the trouble of looking this up -- did you conclude that "kill" would be useful, or not? Elinruby (talk) 00:58, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

@Elinruby: If the title is strikeout type, it will be kept; if it isn't, it won't. Placing "Kill" on an article has no effect at nuke time, but it does have a beneficial effect now:, i.e., it saves time for others. It lets others know that you have looked at this one and found it wanting, so they should save their breath and not even bother looking at it. For example: You marked #18 Stevia_cultivation_in_Paraguay "really, really bad". That was enough for me not to bother looking at it, so you saved me time, there. If you want to place "kill" on the non-deserving items you pass by, that will help everybody else. I may do the same. But in the end, on Nuke day, the "kill" markings won't have any effect. Make sense? Mathglot (talk) 01:20, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: yeah it does, thanks. And indeed I seem to be the most inclusionist in the discussion so if I think it's more work than it's worth I doubt that anyone else in the discussion would disagree. Elinruby (talk) 01:31, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Re-pinging@Tazerdadog: on Elinruby's behalf for confirmation. Due to the ping typo above, he may not have seen this, and it's really his call, not mine. Mathglot (talk) 01:35, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Mathglot's interpretation above is basically correct. Please do not duplicate work you've already done just to add the kill flag, but please strike entities that could be ambiguous (I will manually evaluate your intention based on comments that you left, but the default is the struck/unstruck status unless you are clear in your comments otherwise). Please do use these flags from now on, or on any where your intention is unclear. Tazerdadog (talk) 02:15, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Tazerdadog I'm looking at formation of the strikeout tags enclosing the linked titles, and found 43 anomalies that might trip up the nuke pattern. I'll probably starting fixing these tomorrow. Mathglot (talk) 09:44, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

assumption for User space items

@Tazerdadog: I notice that various contributors are strikeout-tagging Userspace items: see #14, 15, 691, and 695 for example. I have not been tagging any of them, my assumption being that all User space items will be kept automatically regardless of presence/absence of strikeout title (and ignoring any "kill"), and since it's trivial to skip over them with the regex it's not necessary to tag them. If you agree, please make a note at WT:CXT/PTR, or let me know and I will, so everyone can save their breath marking these. Mathglot (talk) 01:25, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

That was my assumption as well, all entries outside of mainspace should be fine. Tazerdadog (talk) 01:39, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

rescuing clobbers by CXT

@Tazerdadog: I just rescued #2611 Garbacz. This was a good stub created in 2008, then clobbered in 2016 by ContentTranslation tool, leaving a rubbish translation deserving of deletion. I just rescued it by reverting it back to the last good version before the clobber, and struck it as a keeper.

I'm concerned that there may be an unknown number of formerly good articles of long standing in the list that we don't want to delete, simply because they got clobbered by CXT at some point and thus ended up in the list, and time ran out before anybody got a chance to look at them. If I can get a list of potential clobbers in the next week, I will check them all out. (Am betting it's less than a couple hundred, total; but maybe S Marshall would help out, if it turns out to be more than that.) Shouldn't be too hard to create such a list:

# Print out names of Titles in CXT/PTR that may be clobbers of good, older articles. 
# (Doesn't handle the case where oldest version is CXT, followed by user edits to make it good,
#    followed by 2nd cxt later which clobbers the good version; but that's probably rare.)
#
For each item in WP:CXT/PTR list do:
  $line = text from next <ol> item in list
  If the bracketed article title near the beginning of $line is within s-tags, next loop
  Extract $title from the $line
  If $title is not in article space, next loop
  Read Rev History of $title into array @RevHist
  Get $oldest_es = edit summary string of oldest version (last index in @RevHist)
  If 'ContentTranslation' is a substring of $oldest_es, next loop
  Pop @RevHist: drop oldest summary from @RevHist so it now contains all versions except the oldest one
  If 'ContentTranslation' is a substring of @RevHist viewed as a single string, do:
    Print "$title possibly clobbered by CXT"
End For

Are you able to create a list like this, or do you know someone who could? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:56, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

• Why not just ask the deleting administrators to check the translation is the first revision before they push the button?—S Marshall T/C 23:32, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

That would be a shitton of work for the deleting admin. Tazerdadog (talk) 00:57, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

3.6 metric shit tonnes, to be exact. ;-) And thanks for the ping, Taz. Mathglot (talk) 01:56, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: I think I've maybe got your query: I see from Samtar's query that you use MySQL. If that's the case, then to do this, I think you can take Samtar's query 11275 exactly as it is, with one more WHERE clause, to exclude the oldest revision:

AND WHERE rev.date > @MIN_REV_DATE

where @MIN_REV_DATE is either separately selected and assigned to a variable Edited by Mathglot (talk) 18:50, 19 May 2017 (UTC), or probably more efficiently, a subquery getting the oldest rev date for that page using standard "minimum value of a column" techniques. So the result will be a subset of Samtar's original query, limited to cases where ct_tag was equal to 'ContentTranslation' somewhere other than in the oldest revision for that page. (By the way, I don't have access to your file structure, so I have no idea if 'rev.date' really exists, but what I mean by that, is the TIMESTAMP of that particular revision, whatever the field is really called. Also, again depending on the file structure, you might need to use techqniques for groupwise minimum of a column to get the min rev date for each page.) Mathglot (talk) 03:09, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Unfortunately, I've never used MySQL before. I was hoping I could muddle through with some luck and googling, but I had no such luck. Tazerdadog (talk) 03:53, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: And I could totally do it if I had the file structure but I don't; but my strong hunch is that this is very easy, and needs one additional "WHERE" plus another query (probably the groupwise MIN thing) to grab the min value to exclude in the new WHERE. OTOH, if you have access to Quarry, shoot me your query by email if you want, and I'll fix it up, and you can take that and try again, and with several back-and-forths I bet we can get it. Or if you've got zip, I can try a few establishing queries for you to try, and then we can try to build the real one depending on the results you get from those. (Or, we can just wait for someone else to do it, if they will; it really should only take minutes.) Mathglot (talk) 05:11, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog and S Marshall: I don't think this is getting enough attention, and your previous request appears to have stalled at V Pump. This is not good. We need to get this list. Is there someone you can lean on, or request help from, to kick-start this? Alternatively, if someone will give me access to Quarry, a MySQL account permitting SELECT and CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE (or even better, MEMORY table) and a pointer to the file structure descriptions, I can do this myself and create a list to protect these articles. Mathglot (talk) 06:32, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

*Bump* Mathglot (talk) 18:19, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Cryptic for db report 19060. We now have the list of clobbers, and can attend to it. Please see WP:CXT/PTR/Clobbers. Mathglot (talk) 05:18, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

X2 Nuke time

The time agreed on by consensus has passed over a month ago. In the interest of getting things rolling again, here are the lists of articles to be draftified, and the list of articles we were able to retain.

In the interest of making my work easy to check, here are the steps and regex I used to identify what should be draftified or retained:

Pinging @MusikAnimal:, who has a bot designed to move pages to draftspace en masse. Also pinging @Mathglot:, @SMarshall:, @DGG:, and @Cryptic:. Please ping anyone whom I have forgotten.

Cheers, Tazerdadog (talk) 23:52, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Fixing ping @S Marshall: Tazerdadog (talk) 23:54, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

If there are no objections, can we get started on this @MusikAnimal:? Tazerdadog (talk) 01:43, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: I'll also wait just a tad bit to make sure there is no opposition. Correct me if I'm wrong, we want to do the same thing as last time – move to draft space without leaving a redirect, then deactivate the categories? Also, I need something to link to in the move summary. The page should clearly describe why we're doing this and that there was a relevant discussion, etc. Not sure if this discussion will suffice, but anyway lots of people were confused last time so the more clear we can be the better — MusikAnimal 02:18, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Heh, scrolling up it looks like this is the right discussion to link to (via PermaLink). Please confirm :) — MusikAnimal 02:20, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Should be the exact same as last time - move to draft space, and then deactivate the categories. The above discussion is the appropriate one to link to. Tazerdadog (talk) 02:37, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Despite a big review effort in May-June coordinated by Mathglot and Elinruby, which has saved about a third of the articles in question, we still stand to lose many babies in this bathwater. The intent still seems to be that mass-draftification will be quickly followed by mass-deletion. Now the original discussion on X2 was closed urging a degree of caution ... Administrators must apply judgment and speedily delete only CXT articles that would obviously require more effort to fix than to start from scratch. However, this present talk of "nuking" suggests that little further review will be carried out before wielding X2.

If this is the case we will be deleting articles such as Jessica Vall, which has been extensively edited and expanded, leaving virtually nothing of what originally emerged from CXT. Other cases include Juana de la Concepción, Isabel Hubard Escalera, Pedro Pablo Oliva. They are now articles in clear English, well referenced and probably to certainly notable. Elinruby, you did a lot of work to improve Berta Cabral, are you content to see it go down the pan? Domingo Pais is now a valid redirect; Aphelion (disambiguation) is a valid disambig page. Are we to condemn all these because of the circumstances of their birth?

Yes, the articles listed should be moved to draft space, which should allay any BLP concerns. Then, they should remain there until individually reviewed. Those still in garbled English (referring to people as "it" and so on), unreferenced or adverts, can then be tagged X2 without more ado. Those that competent editors have worked on and made into decent articles should be moved back to mainspace: Noyster (talk), 10:53, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

@Noyster: I am perfectly happy to leave the articles in draftspace indefinitely instead of deleting them. However, it is time to get them out of mainspace. Tazerdadog (talk) 21:05, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Poking people on this, any objections before we move forward? Tazerdadog (talk) 07:34, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: The "to be draftified" list above contains a lot of red links and redirects. I assume this is stale data? Should the redirects be moved along with the target, and the deleted pages simply skipped? — MusikAnimal 01:10, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal:, the list I used was the master list located at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review, and the list was taken from the wikitext at approximately the time I posted the list. No effort was made to remove the red-linked pages in that list. Redlinks should definitely just be skipped. I think redirects should also be skipped, as they can't realistically be faulty translations. Tazerdadog (talk) 07:23, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

I am preoccupied with non-Misplaced Pages things at the moment and will be for several days more. Personally I think X2 is a huge mistake but I've been through the list thoroughly and though I am sure I have missed some good articles, since I found more every time I looked, I can't realistically commit right now to more than I have already committed to. So. My question is, how would I find these articles once they are in draft? Berta Carbral was, as I recall, an Endo999 special on kind of an important topic -- given the egregious errors I have found in some of his other work though, I can't really trust it without putting it under a microscope. Despite the previous work. I have enough going on with his articles on military fortifications, which I have said I would rescue. (And I really have to say that banning him would have made much mor sense than this ham-handed wholesale deletion. But I digress.) I can't really take the BLP claim seriously since the two articles out of the 3500 on the list that DID have BLP issues have been left to languish on the list. But ok. This was decided, albeit on the the basis of wildly exaggerated fears, and I guess we're doing it whether it's a good idea or not. Elinruby (talk) 06:36, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Correcting myself -- Berta Cabral was not created by Endo999, and as Noyster remarked, it's really not that bad, so I have pre-emptively moved it to my draft space, as it fits a category of article I have tried to fish out of this mess. I am fairly sure there are others that should not be deleted either, but just tell me how to find them and I guess we'll go from there. I do stand by my comments on Endo999 tho ;) Elinruby (talk) 06:54, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

When this mass move to draft space finally takes place, what I think should happen is that a list of articles moved will be retained and its location made known at least here and at WT:PNT, with editors encouraged to continue reviewing them one by one. Editors having reviewed an article may then move it back to mainspace or tag X2, but no mass delete: Noyster (talk), 07:31, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

We will certainly widely publicize the location of the drafts once the move is made. Are there any objections to proceeding with the move itself? Tazerdadog (talk) 05:01, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal:, do you have any concerns, or can we proceed with this? Tazerdadog (talk) 06:28, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: The BAG member who approved the last task has requested we create another BRFA for record keeping. After a day or two of no opposition it should be speedily approved. Sorry I did not do this sooner! — MusikAnimal 18:11, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot and Tazerdadog: I'm quite late to the party, but was wondering how it was decided which articles should be kept and which should be draftified. Randomly spot checking the "draftify" articles, it seems that a lot of them are fine and would easily survive AfD (like Louise Grinberg, Dorsaf Hamdani, Léone Bertimon). In fact it even says that Léone Bertimon is an "OK article" at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review. If we're going to be removing potentially hundreds of good articles from Misplaced Pages, it seems like there should be a much bigger discussion about it than just 10 editors at Administrators' noticeboard. Kaldari (talk) 22:48, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

@Kaldari: This all started just about a year ago, with an extensive discussion when a special speedy deletion criterion X2 was established. All the pages within the purview of X2 were listed, and in a widespread review process many were indicated to be "saved" by striking out the titles on that list. However, by no means all the pages got reviewed: many still remain on the "nuke" list although they have been substantially improved since the original machine translation. Many others, however, have barely been touched and are undeniably terrible and arguably worse than absence of article.

As you can see above on the present page, earlier this year a proposal was made for mass deletion after a deadline for review, which slipped back several times. The intention then morphed into mass-draftify to be quickly followed by mass-deletion, and now seems to be a mass move into draft space where they shall remain indefinitely. The latest development, though, is a proposal at WT:Drafts to extend another speedy criterion, G13, to all drafts so they get automatically deleted after six months of inactivity. There seems no alternative but to continue to call for review of everything on this list, to select out those worth keeping before they get caught up in either X2 or G13: Noyster (talk), 19:40, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

@Noyster: So if I want to remove any articles from the Nuke list, what's the best way to do that? Just to delete them from the list above? It's too bad there wasn't a broader effort to invite editors to review the articles. I would have certainly been willing to help if I had known about it. Kaldari (talk) 19:02, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

@Kaldari: You'd have to ask MusikAnimal whether the draftifying bot will be working on the list as we see it above, or on a copy stored somewhere else. A lot of effort actually went into the review in May/June, as you can see from the size of this subpage. Notifications went to many editors who were listed as translators, and over a third of articles were removed from the "nuke" list: Noyster (talk), 22:52, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

I can go off of that list but if you plan on working on those articles it might benefit us all to have a dedicated page somewhere, where you can remove them as needed. Or you can just move them back from draft to mainspace, up to you! I've no problem putting the bot task on hold — MusikAnimal 01:37, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal and Kaldari: I have moved the list of articles to be draftified over to this page. Suggest we use that page as our working list, removing any entries we don't want moved to draft: Noyster (talk), 09:24, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Actually I think the move to draft space should proceed. After a year of intensive discussions and reviews it would scarcely be acceptable for the whole affair to peter out with no action taken; and a good many of the pages are better removed from mainspace. Those that are now OK can be moved back as you say, and others can be tagged X2 after a final review: Noyster (talk), 14:37, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal and Noyster: I removed a few articles worth saving from Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Draftification list July 2017, including Madonna with Machine Gun! Kaldari (talk) 15:32, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

@Kaldari: Do you speak the source languages for the articles you removed from the list? A lot of these articles have prose that looks fine, and makes them appear to be notable, but contain serious translation errors (ommitted negatives are common, one had somebody married to the wrong person, etc.) I'm sure that you can see why a missing negative can quickly ruin an entire article, so I urge cautious checking of the translation/sources. I'd further ask that you restore to the list any articles where you could not or did not check the translation/foreign language sourcing (and heartily apologise if you did check all of the translations).

@Noyster:, please be careful that we do not end up forking the pages to review page. It doesn't take me particularly long to generate an updated list, but working on multiple lists at once could quickly become a nightmare. Tazerdadog (talk) 01:14, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: After you placed the lists on this main AN page on 9 July with the words "Here are the lists of articles to be draftified", wasn't this intended to become the working list? However, I see that WP:CXT/PTR has attracted a couple of edits since that date, so I suggest that WP:CXT/PTR now be marked as historical, with a notice directing editors for now to the "draftification list", and after draftification has been implemented, to whatever list of draftified pages is produced: Noyster (talk), 12:37, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

@Noyster: I expected this process to take days, not weeks :/. I honestly don't care which list is used, as long as everyone agrees on it. I'd go ahead and mark one of the pages as historical.Tazerdadog (talk) 15:34, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

 Done WP:CXT/PTR: Noyster (talk), 15:22, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Having rescued perhaps a hundred articles, translated from a variety of languages, I can't resist the impression that we've tackled this the wrong way round. Concerns of mis-translation are mostly a red herring – for a good part, the tool was used properly by the editors, many of whom seem bilingual, and for another part many articles contained simple statements of fact that would be hard to mis-translate even by a tool. Quality-wise, this is a mixed bag, but average quality of those articles resembles the average that you would get by perusing the "random article" feature. Mis-translation was the least of most articles' problems – undersourcing is the most common one, on par with the average; even if we verify that the translation was correct, it is hard to check if the original content faithfully resembles the sources. This cross-checking was tedious and understaffed, and as the final result we are supposed to prune nearly two thousand articles, many of them about important figures from less-attended countries, just because nobody got to review them properly, reinforcing the systemic bias. Don't know, take Amina Belouizdad as an example – an important figure in human rights from Algeria, and created by sockpuppet User:Duckduckstop to boot. Rather than assuming good faith that the authors and translators have done the due diligence, as for any other article, we passed the onus of keeping the CXT articles to a small group of volunteers. Let's face it, the draftified articles are going to sit there for eternity, as it's unlikely that they will find rescuers any time soon. I'm not going to stop you in that process, but I feel appropriate to express my frustration at this moment. No such user (talk) 11:42, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Paid editing sockfarms proliferating

Over at WP:COIN, there have been an unusually large number of paid editing sockfarms lately. These are all in the last three weeks:

• Misplaced Pages:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard#Another_sockfarm -
• Misplaced Pages:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard#Undisclosed_paid_editing_sockfarm
• Misplaced Pages:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard#Four_new_sock_farms
• Misplaced Pages:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard#Another_day.2C_another_sockfarm
• Misplaced Pages:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard#Two_dozen_new_socks_in_OfficialPankajPatidar_sockfarm.

These are being cleaned up routinely, with sockpuppet investigations and speedy deletions. It's getting wearing, though, due to sheer volume. We're talking about hundreds of accounts and articles. There seems to be a new strategy for evading Misplaced Pages's usual defenses. It works like this.

• Ad appears on Upwork for paid editing.
• A group of new Misplaced Pages accounts is created.
• For each new account, a few trivial edits are made to get autoconfirmed.
• The accounts are used to create paid articles. Multiple accounts sometimes cross-edit multiple articles.
• The accounts are abandoned.

Because the accounts are thrown away, Misplaced Pages's usual procedures for dealing with editor behavior are ineffective. These accounts almost never write on talk pages, and don't become involved in dispute resolution. They just come in, do their paid job, and leave. Blocks are useless. In some cases, the accounts are seen being used from a variety of IP addresses across considerable distances, which makes the usual sockpuppet checks ineffective. The consistent pattern is a little closed world of accounts and articles with edits staying within that world. Looking at one editor or one article doesn't reveal this. We may need some new editing graph tool to pick up that pattern. Admin Smartse (talk · contribs) has been finding many of these, but some have to be slipping through.

It's a bulk business. We can tell from the ads on Upwork how little this is paying. It's about quantity, not quality. It's wearing down the volunteer editors. Any ideas? John Nagle (talk) 19:40, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

The WMF should get involved to develop a machine learning solution. Machine learning can examine links across accounts and articles that editors would never even think to look for (word pattern, etc). If we could convince the powers that be to allow CheckUser data to be an input for a machine learning algorithm, I suspect the accuracy would be rather high. ~ Rob₁₃ 21:20, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

I agree—machine learning would be a great tool for this kind of thing. RileyBugz_投稿記録 22:06, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

An automated system would be nice, but that may take a while. Any ideas on how to slow down the flood? Is there some way all these SPAs can be forced to go through Articles for Creation instead of creating their own articles? Maybe require extended autoconfirm before allowing article creation? I know, it's yet another step back from "the encyclopedia anyone can edit". But we're faced with a new form of spamming which works. John Nagle (talk) 05:10, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Well, let's try requiring just autoconfirmed for article creation first. ACTRIAL is happening soon, as soon as the WMF is ready for it. They recently hired for a contract position to manage it and do assessment, I think. ~ Rob₁₃ 10:38, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

That will help, once it's in place. Thanks. John Nagle (talk) 18:01, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

As far as I know, any new article created direct is set to "noindex" until a new page patroller reviews it, or (I think) a month elapses - maybe seriously extend that time, so the articles can be there but just not indexed until properly reviewed? Ronhjones  18:24, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

But, John, ACTRIAL won't affect this sockfarm at all. See that third item about "a few trivial edits are made to get autoconfirmed"? That line, in practice, means "This sockfarm will bypass all the restrictions that will be placed during ACTRIAL and still be able to create spam exactly like they're doing right now, but good-faith volunteers at an edit-a-thon, or someone who's excited about his hobby, won't be able to". If this sockfarm is typical, then ACTRIAL will give us lots of PAID spam and stop everything else.

I'd be very interested in hearing any theories about why these sockfarms are bothering to achieve autoconfirmed status. Are they maybe uploading images locally? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:13, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Why do they bother to make a few edits before creating promotional articles? Good question. Perhaps because Cluebot NG's automated system is sensitive to the number of edits by a user? See User:ClueBot_NG#Vandalism_Detection_Algorithm. Incidentally, paying to get past new page review is now a thing. Upwork ad: "Hi, I am looking for an experienced Misplaced Pages editor who has new page curation rights. I only need you to review existing pages, I'll page $35 per reviewed page. You don't need to publish/edit anything, only review (1-2 min of work). If you can do the job, I can provide tons of pages for you (they all look decent with good sources, no spammy pages). You can review 1-2 of my pages per day, so among all other pages it will look natural.". There's also someone who wants to hire their own admin to control their page. "I'm ready to pay high price", it says. Sigh. John Nagle (talk) 05:08, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Speaking of the "paid reviewing", aren't NPPers supposed to review new articles in the order in which they were created? If a NPPer suddenly skipped and went straight to random article(s), isn't that a giveaway that they have gone rogue, and shouldn't their NPP rights be revoked? Should there be a way to automatically track this? (Also, @Ronhjones: The time of noindex is now 90 days rather than 30 days.) Softlavender (talk) 08:04, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

No such rule. Also, it wouldn't make any sense, because editors should be free to focus on subjects that they care about (e.g., reviewing all the music-related articles), and the button appears at the bottom of all unreviewed pages no matter what, so there's no way to track which one they "should" review. Or even to know which ones they've looked at.

I'm curious why that guy's willing to pay $35 for reviews. Keeping a page marked as 'unpatrolled' has exactly two effects: (1) it lists it in the page review queue, which acts as a sort of group watchlist; and (2) it marks the page as noindex for 90 days. Past the 90-day mark, having the page unreviewed is irrelevant to anyone who isn't personally using Special:NewPagesFeed. Is the $35 just to get the page indexed by major web search engines sooner than it would be anyway? It feels like a lot of money for something that he'll get for free with a little patience. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:23, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

"Is the $35 just to get the page indexed by major web search engines sooner than it would be anyway?" I'd guess that's it. Since Google is heavily biased toward Misplaced Pages, spending just $12/month gets them lots of Google juice. Quite a bargain actually. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:48, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

A bargain indeed, if we can believe what they are saying themselves (email me if you want the link), one good WP link placement can earn $200 a month in AdSense revenue. We really are at risk of discovering an insider who has been seduced by these cash flows. ☆ Bri (talk) 06:03, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Related? sleeper accounts

I did a random check of the last 100 accounts created in the month of June. Only 25 of them have ever edited. Makes me wonder how many account creations are explicit sleeper creations for these sockfarms. I'm having a hard time thinking of why a person would create a WP account and never do anything with it. ☆ Bri (talk) 05:55, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Bri, the answer is "many". At one point we rangeblocked the entirety of T-Mobile in the USA due to excessive vandalism, and the account creation rate dropped by some stupid percentage for those two weeks (never mind the vandalism was severely halted as well). I almost want to say that if an account goes unused for more than a year after creation, it should be blocked out of precaution, but that would never fly. Primefac (talk) 13:42, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Standard offer unblock appeal from User:Ayazf

From the user's talkpage:

"I have been blocked for about 2 years now and during this periods I have avoided to create a new account as I now perfectly well understand the policies and rules of Misplaced Pages. As I am very much interested to contribute in a meaningful manner and become a valued member of the Misplaced Pages community. I am thus requesting for the block to me removed. I promise not to violate the Misplaced Pages policies in future."

Checkuser shows some activity on the user's IP address in May; the subject matter edited did not fit with the user's usual editing topics and the useragent data was different. The last confirmed socking on articles was in November 2015, although this user did use their User:Shane Warner account to post an unblock request on July 31st. Bringing this here for the community to make a decision. Yunshui _水 11:52, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
Note This comment on Ayazf's talkpage would seem to indicate that he was originally working in conjunction with or was being paid by User:Lonsafko, which does not appear to have been disclosed at any point. Yunshui _水 14:24, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Is there a blocking discussion that can be posted? Beyond My Ken (talk) 13:40, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

@Beyond My Ken: Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet investigations/Ayazf/Archive appears to be the only example. Hasteur (talk) 13:42, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

• Cautious Support: Because of previous socking problem user needs to be on a very tight leash with respect to editing with one account only. Also noting promotional/paid editing issues in user's talkpage needs to be clearly laid out. Return to previously problematic behavior should result in resumption of Indef Block. Hasteur (talk) 13:46, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
• Comment I am concerned about the allegations of paid editing. One of their socks created Lon Safko, which indeed looks pretty promotional and under-referenced. It survived an AfD as "no consensus" on the basis of a single comment other than the nominator's, which is hardly a rousing seal of approval. What does Ayazf have to say about paid editing, and what were their reasons for socking? What has changed in the intervening years that would assure the community that Ayazf's approach to editing has changed? I think we need more than the perfunctory statement above. Beyond My Ken (talk) 14:02, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
• Comment I'd like to know exactly what "contribute in a meaningful manner" means. If this were a standard unblock request, I'd decline with the 'does not address reason for block' template. I'm not swaying either way right now but I want some more detail here. Katie 17:12, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support - Since they haven't socked for 2 years, I think that we can give them some WP:ROPE. If they do commit anything that got them blocked in the past though, then the indef block should immediately result in a return to the indef block. RileyBugz_投稿記録 17:52, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

• Point of clarification: Yunshui can correct me if I'm wrong, but checkuser data is not routinely held on to long enough to determine that there's been no socking for two years. What a checkuser can tell is if there's been socking for the length of time that data is held, whatever that is. And, technically, there has been socking, since an alternate account was used to ask for an unblock, according to Yunshui's statement above. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:35, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

  IMO, requesting an unblock from a known sock, without denying that it is a sock, shouldn't count as socking. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 03:03, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

BMK is correct - to clarify, I ran CU checks on both the original account and on User:Shane Warner, since both had edited recently enough to be checkable. All of the other accounts are stale. I found some additional IP edits that didn't match the user's usual activities or the useragent data of either active account. There have been no additions to the SPI since November 2015. Yunshui _水 10:15, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support time served. D4iNa4 (talk) 19:34, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

• I strongly disagree. "Time served" might be sufficient for having been blocked for, say, edit warring, but, in my opinion, it is never sufficient for having been blocked for sockpuppetry. Experience indicates that those who have socked before are prone to do so again, and since uncovering socking is so much more difficult than determining edit warring or vandalism or other obvious behavioral problems, we really do need to have some assurance of a change in attitude before unblocking. Simply having waited it out is not enough. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:31, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

• Concur with above disagreement. Sockpuppetry is bad enough, but the combination of sockpuppetry and paid editing is really rather unforgivable. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:38, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose The editor started the draft on a contentious subject (based on revision history) in March 2015. After the draft was rejected several times, the editor then created a second account in May, asked the same editor that the editor previously consulted for advice with the second account, while pretending to be a different person. The draft was then re-created, and edited with both accounts simultaneously from May to August before the editor decided to blank the draft again. The third account then emerged in November 2015, and the editor bypassed the AfC process this time around and created the article directly in mainspace. This is very troubling behaviour and serious lack of competence at the same time. Without addressing the concerns specifically, the request should be declined in my opinion. Alex Shih 01:30, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - The combination of paid editing and sockpuppetry just is the sort of thing that makes the assumption of newly found good faith too much of a stretch, even two years later. I just don't believe that leopards change their spots, or that paid editors who sock become constructive editors. Don't give them the rope; they already hanged themselves. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:34, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose I am the editor whose comment seemingly led to the no consensus AfD result at Lon Safko. Despite that, the pattern of misbehavior that Ayazf showed previously, plus the weaknesses in the unblock request, concern me greatly. I am not convinced that this is a good idea. Cullen Let's discuss it 05:41, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - Given the concerns expressed here, and the lack of additional statements from Ayazf, I have no other choice. Beyond My Ken (talk) 13:08, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose largely per BMK. Blackmane (talk) 02:44, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support per WP:ROPE, with topic ban from Lon Safko and speech recognition. Two years free of socking (excepting two good faith mistakes) is plenty long enough to demonstrate willingness to abide by the rules, so let's see if they can do so in other topics. I don't see any indication of undisclosed paid editing. Ivanvector (/_Edits) 20:29, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

• Correction: 1 year and 9 months without socking (back to November 2015, per Yunshi above). And what about their still undisclosed paid editing? Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:55, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Why do these accounts exist?

• Thequeenjenni
• Thequeenjenni1
• ThequeenJenni15
• Thequeenjenni16

I'm sure I see the logic in (presumably one editor) creating multiple accounts like this. Chris Troutman (talk) 17:12, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

• What do you want an administrator to do? Reyk _YO! 17:41, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

• @Reyk: I found these userpages through WP:NPP. If I take this to WP:SPI, I've made an accusation and I imagine these accounts are too stale to be useful. By bringing the issue here I'm letting the community know I've found something that seems problematic. I'd prefer to see each of these accounts blocked as I see no good coming from this, but it's not up to me. Chris Troutman (talk) 02:25, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

• They may exist because there was nothing stopping them, and the policy on doing that (as much as it can be construed) wasn't pointed out to them. Actually they were notified of the policy a month ago, and there don't seem to be any examples of accounts created since they were notified. So, why didn't they create further accounts? because they were asked not to. -- zzuuzz 17:48, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
  • We block stale socks of active sockpuppeteers because there's a high chance that they will become active at some point otherwise; there is no need to block these unless we see any significant activity from at least 2 of them - and I dount this will happen. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:13, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Creating multiple accounts isn't in itself a violation of the multiple accounts policy, noting that each one of these accounts has exactly one edit (creating their user page) and each occurred inside a timespan of a few minutes. It's clearly one user, but until they do something actually problematic, assume good faith. Ivanvector (/_Edits) 20:01, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Willfull and persistent disruption of Draft space by TakuyaMurata

• TakuyaMurata (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Algebra over a monad
• Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Cotensor product
• Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Nakano's vanishing theorem
• Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Tensor product of representations
• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive/2016/Mar#Abstract_Geometry_creations_languishing_in_Draft_namespace
• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#Stale_Abstract_mathematic_Draft_pages.2C_again
• "Vandalism" reverts
• Where I dis-invite Takuya from my user talk
• "warning" me for "vandalism"
• Misplaced Pages:Deletion_review/Log/2017_August_15#Draft: Tensor product of representations
• Draft:Toric degeneration
• Draft:Specialization (algebraic geometry)

I've tried very patiently to work with this editor trying to convince them to clean up their old, unedited, esoteric, and frankly non-viable drafts. The contents read as copy paste definitions from Mathematics textbooks (though I cannot find the text in CopyVio search) that have sat for far too long not doing anything. I (in misguided wisdom) elected to exercise the WP:ATD option of Redirecting, and Taku has proceduraly objected on the grounds of "That's not exactly what this is". Previous discussions have suggested moving the pages to Taku's Userspace so that they can work on them, Redirecting the pages to sections of a larger article so that effort can be focused in one location to potentially get a WP:SPINOUT article, or numerous other alternatives to deletion. It takes a full on MFD to compel Taku let go of the page so I suspect some form of WP:OWN or Creation credit is the goal. Furthermore on July 27th, I formally dis-invited Taku from my talk page setting in place the remedies for WP:HARASS.

Now that Taku has elected to throw the "You're vandalising Misplaced Pages" by my redirecting Draft space "content" to the closest approximations and reverting citing vandalism I ask for the following:

1. That Taku be prohibited from reverting any redirection of Draft space content to a main space topic without first securing an affirmative consensus on an appropriate talk page.
2. That Taku be chastised for improperly using vandalism in the above reverts
3. That Taku should apologize to me for droping that warning on my page in line with the improper usage of "vandalism"
4. That Taku should be prohibited (i.e. ban) from creating any new Draft space pages until there are no draft page creations of theirs that are more than 6 months unedited and that are not redirects
5. That Taku be subject to these issues indefinitely with the option of appealing after 6 months (on 6 month re-appeal) when they show that they have remedied all pages under the above mentioned ban.
6. That Taku be blocked for coming back to my talk page after I had banned them.

Hasteur (talk) 12:33, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

• What I gather from your description of the situation is that you have chosen to boldly unilaterally redirect drafts, which TakuyaMurata created, to articles. They then restore the content by reverting your redirection. That seems acceptable, see Misplaced Pages:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle; you are free to raise the matter on the talk page of the drafts. You want them to gain consensus to revert your changes, when you have not established consensus for them yourself. That is a double standard. That aside, their description of your changes as vandalism is incorrect. We can correct that notion here; a block is not necessary for that, as they seem to have believed your edits were vandalism, which made posting to your talk page appropriate per WP:NOBAN. Though redirecting drafts is an accepted practice, I am not sure it is documented anywhere, the matter is arcane nonetheless. I believe this just concerns drafts TakuyaMurata created, if so, I would not oppose userfying them to their userspace. I oppose all six of your requests as undue based on what has been presented thus far, except #2 to a point, we should "inform" them rather than admonish them. — Godsy_CONT) 08:59, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
  • @Godsy: Taku has explicitly rejected on multiple occasions moving these pages into draftspace userspace. So that option is out. Taku makes procedural objections of "It's not really that" or other tendentious arguments. In short, If Taku wanted to actually do something about these drafts (or merge their contents to mainspace, then he could in the copious amount of time that he's spending. Heck, I'd even give him a 3 month moratorium on sweeping up the drafts if he promised that at the end of that moratorium any drafts that he created that haven't been edited in 9 months are fair game for any editor to come in and apply an appropriate disposition (Moving to mainspace, Redirecting, Merge-Redirecting, CSD-Author) to get them off the Stale Non-AFC Drafts report. If the report is clean it removes some of the arguments for expanding CSD:G13 to include all Draftspace creations. If the page is redirected to a relatively close mainspace article, attention gets focused to mainspace (which is google searchable and provides benefit to wikipedia) and potentially we get a new article when there's enough content to viably have a WP:SPINOUT Hasteur (talk) 12:17, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
    • @Hasteur: Sure you can apply what you believe is an "appropriate disposition", but that does not mean your choice is the most appropriate action. Drafts currently do not have an expiration date. Stale Non-AFC Drafts is not something that needs to be cleared. I largely concur with Michael Hardy below. This is all I have to say. Best Regards, — Godsy_CONT) 20:18, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
• I can't speak to the specific merits, but I've seen any number of Taku's drafts turn up at DRV after a well-meaning editor tagged what looked like (per Hasteur) an unviable abandoned draft and Taku strongly objected. It's not a healthy dynamic. Mackensen (talk) 11:00, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
• I don't know what usages and concerns exist in the Draft namespace. Possibly that is why I don't know why the existence of these drafts would cause any problems. Could someone explain why it's a problem? Barring that, I don't see that these complaints against this user amount to anything. If there's really some reason to regard the existence of these drafts as a problem, might moving them to the User namespace solve it? Michael Hardy (talk) 17:53, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
• I've come across this issue mainly via DRV listings. It seems TakuyaMurata has created a swathe of tiny pages in draftspace about obscure mathematical and allied concepts, containing little more than an external link, a restatement of the title, or a few words. He has then resisted all attempts whatsoever to improve the situation, objecting as vociferously to any deletions as to any suggestion that he might, you know, want to expand the drafts he has rather than spewing out yet more of them.
  There is no benefit to the encyclopedia from having tiny non-searchable substubs in draft space. None. Taku needs to accept this and redirect the copious time he seems to have to argue about old substubs towards more constructive activities like researching and expanding some of them. Otherwise, they should be deleted. Stifle (talk) 12:43, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

@User:Michael Hardy I've offered to move the stubs to his userspace (specifically to a userpage he already has listing about 50 of the about 200) but he refused that. These pages are a Draft space management hassle representing a growing percentage of the 200 of the remaining 5500 abandoned non-AfC Draft pages. Frankly I can't figure out why he guards them so carefully, given he could just expand them or move the info onto one page or redirect or whatever. Legacypac (talk) 16:05, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

@Legacypac: To respond, I for one don't get the need to delete the legitimate drafts just because they are old. The figure 200 is misleading since most of them are redirects. I agree the draftspace has a lot of problematic pages. I'm not objecting to delete them. Am I correct to think your argument is it would be easier if there are no legtimate drafts in the draftspace so we can delete old pages indiscriminately? That logic does make at least some sense (although i think there is a better way.) -- Taku (talk) 23:35, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Only redirects after the community consensus compelled to give up your walled garden plots. Our argument is that you've created so many sub-stub pages in draft space that it's causing more problems both for patrollers who are looking for problematic pages and for those of us who like trying to get effort focused to namespace. Your reams of words to dilute and obstruct any meaningful progress on the topics (you'll argue to the end of the universe your right to keep the pages) instead of actually working on them to get them to mainspace gives little doubt as to your purpose here. Hasteur (talk) 03:36, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

For me, Draft:Faithfully flat descent doesn't strike to me as a sub-stub. How is that page a problem for "those of us who like trying to get effort focused to namespace". What is the real or hypothetical mechanism having draft pages prevents the editors from working on the mainspace? Hence, I think "patrollers who are looking for problematic pages" seems to be the heart of the matter; having non-problematic pages makes the patrolling harder. Obviously the answer is not to delete/redirect the non-problematic pages? Are you seriously seriously proposing we ease the search for problematic pages by removing non-problematic pages? -- Taku (talk) 14:07, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

To respond "gives little doubt as to your purpose here.", actually I have fairly solid reputation in editing math-related topics in the mainspace. I agree if a user edits only the draftspace and no of his/her drafts have promoted to the mainspace, then we may suspect on the user's motivation. I'm not that case here. -- Taku (talk) 08:43, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

• Comment How many total math-related drafts created by Taku are there? How many of his drafts are now mainspace articles? If this is a specific issue about Taku's use of draft space, analysis of editing history should give clear evidence as to whether he has an unreasonable number of drafts. Power~enwiki (talk) 19:35, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
  • To be clear, I expect Hasteur or Legacypac to have some data here; I'm not expecting TakuyaMurata to produce data to defend himself. Power~enwiki (talk) 19:44, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
    • @Power~enwiki: According to XTools, TakuyaMurata created 113 drafts. Of these, 42 have been deleted, so we have 71 current drafts. This does not include redirects (which would include those moved to mainspace or redirected based on consensus at an MfD). There are a good 106 of those, with 42 deleted (many via G7). . I think 71 drafts being retained in draftspace, many unedited for years, is clearly excessive. ~ Rob₁₃ 19:49, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
      • Thanks! I agree something needs to be done here, but don't know exactly what yet. I think User:BU Rob13's proposal below is a good start, but it may not be sufficient to resolve this issue. Power~enwiki (talk) 19:56, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
        • I'm not opposed to further restrictions; I just think my idea is a good start to at least prevent the problem from getting worse. ~ Rob₁₃ 20:08, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

From a brief glance, my guess is that there are 20 or so drafts that can be turned into mainspace articles, and 50 or so that need to be deleted or redirected to a more general topic. Draft:Graded Hopf algebra and Draft:Nakano's vanishing theorem are two obvious examples that should be combined into a more general article. Diffs by Taku like are extremely concerning; Taku does not own the articles he creates in draft-space, and he should not expect them to stay there indefinitely (). Power~enwiki (talk) 20:35, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Proposal: Limited restriction on use of draftspace

Let's propose something concrete that can at least control the issue going forward. I propose that TakuyaMurata is restricted from creating new pages in the draft namespace when five or more pages remain in the draft namespace which were created by TakuyaMurata, excluding any redirects. This seems perfectly sensible; no reasonable editor has more than five work-in-progress drafts at one time. Complete something before you start something new. ~ Rob₁₃ 17:50, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support as proposer. ~ Rob₁₃ 17:51, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support some kind of warning regarding ownership behavior on draft articles is also necessary, IMO. Power~enwiki (talk) 20:35, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support, however this doesn't fix the problem of his existing pages. I'm not 100% certain, but I think they haven't created any new pages so this is effectively a wash as it doesn't do anything about the already festering piles in Draft space. Hasteur (talk) 20:37, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
  • @Hasteur: He made one as recently as late July. ~ Rob₁₃ 01:07, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
• Comment re: "no reasonable editor has more than five work-in-progress drafts at one time" - I have something along the lines of 1,740 open drafts at this time. They are generally attached to specific projects, and I consider this entirely reasonable. However, in the case of this specific editor, having created intransigent drafts, I would support the proposed limitation. bd2412 T 20:46, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose  Seems to be an attempt to discourage a valuable contributor over a non-problem.  Unscintillating (talk) 21:21, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. The assumption that you can have more than five works-in-progress at any time is absurd. And the idea that there should be some specific time limit to how long something can be a work-in-progress directly contradicts WP:DEADLINE. This whole idea of forced cleanup of drafts seems like a solution in search of a problem. Also, User:TakuyaMurata has been an extremely prolific and valuable editor, writing a large number of articles in a highly technical field over many years. I'll admit that his use of draft space is somewhat unorthodox, and he does seem to digging his heels in about userspace vs. draftspace. But, on balance, we need more people like him. Let us not lose sight of our main purpose here, and that's to produce good content in mainspace. Hewing to somebody's ideals of how draftspace should be organized, pales in comparison. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:36, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
  • How does refusing to incorporate a draft that's been inactive since 2014 into mainspace contribute to good content in mainspace? ~ Rob₁₃ 01:07, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
    • Just to clarify, I'm refusing to work on draft pages in the specified time frame. Misplaced Pages is not my full-time job and for instance, I'm currently attending a workshop and it is very inconvenient for me to edit Misplaced Pages. Why do I need to be asked to finish them today? Why can I finish it in 2020 or 2030? Most of my drafts do get promoted to the mainspace; so there is no such pill of never-completed-drafts. Yes, I agree some drafts turned out to be not-so-great ideas and I can agree to delete those. (I admit I might have not be reasonable in some cases and I promise that will change.) The accusation that I don't allow any deletion is false. -- Taku (talk) 09:41, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose the suggested restriction. Any restriction on the use of draft space should apply to everyone, not just Taku. The examples given above of alleged disruption are remarkably unpersuasive to me. Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Algebra over a monad is the first substantive case put forward. If anything, the disruption is being caused by editors improperly taking ownership of draft space by trying to enforce restrictions that are not supported by policies or guidelines. Thincat (talk) 07:10, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose - The draftspace is an appropriate place to draft content and there is not and should not be a limit on the amount of drafts an editor can create there unless they are creating a truly unreasonable amount of poor quality drafts (i.e. hundreds). I completely disagree that "no reasonable editor has more than five work-in-progress drafts at one time" and oppose any sanction on individual because of largely unnecessary cleanup. Either everyone should be limited to five drafts, or no one should bar especially egregious behavior (which I do not believe has been demonstrated here), and I'm certain such a proposal for all wouldn't pass. I concur with Unscintillating. — Godsy_CONT) 07:22, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose I'm not convinced that anything should be in draft space as we managed fine before it existed. But, in so far as draft space has a point, it's that it's a scratchpad that we should be relaxed about because it's not mainspace. Introducing petty, ad hoc rules is therefore not appropriate and would be contrary to WP:CREEP. Andrew D. (talk) 08:20, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support per Rob. Stifle (talk) 08:42, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
• Comment not a bad idea, but maybe restricts him from useful editing, which I commend him for. Leads me to an alternative proposal below. Legacypac (talk) 10:57, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Proposal: Limited restrictions/topic ban

Taku be restricted to voting once and making one followup comment on any MfD concerning a Draft he started. He is topic banned from starting a WP:DRV or requesting a WP:REFUND to restore any deleted or redirected Draft he started. He is also prohibited from starting any more RFC or similar process or discussion on how Draft space is managed.

• Support as proposer. These very narrow restrictions will cut out the drama but let Taku continue productively editing. The old sub stub drafts will eventually either get improved or deleted in due course. Legacypac (talk) 10:57, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

In WP:Deletion review/Log/2017 August 15#Draft:Tensor product of representations, which Taku started, overturn is being rather well supported, despite your multiple comments. Is this the sort of discussion you are seeking to ban? Thincat (talk) 11:55, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

That is cherrypicking ONE discussion. See the many examples at the top of this thread. This narrow restriction should solve the disruption. Legacypac (talk) 12:01, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

It was the only DRV "cherry" listed up there. For the four MFDs listed (1) one Taku comment agreeing delete (this was an incredibly poor example of "disruption"); (2) multiple Taku comments which were not persuasive; (3) two Taku comments (and two from you) resulting in keep (!); (4) multiple Taku comments followed by redirect rather than delete and now subject of the DRV. Thincat (talk) 12:31, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support as Wikipedia_talk:Drafts#RfC:_on_the_proper_use_of_the_draftspace, Wikipedia_talk:Drafts#RfC:_the_clarification_on_the_purpose_of_the_draftspace, Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive/2017/Jul#Stale_Abstract_mathematic_Draft_pages.2C_again, Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive/2016/Mar#Abstract_Geometry_creations_languishing_in_Draft_namespace, and numerous MFDs and DRVs Taku's repeated comments ammount to filibustering and nitpicking in what I precieve as an attempt to dillute any consensus to effectively nothing that can be overturned with the whim of a cat. If the community has to respong 50 times on a MFD we're going to be spending 100 times as many bytes arguing about the content than was ever spent building the content. Taku appears to have the intellectual exercise of debating content rather than fixing things that have been brought to their attention as lacking. Hasteur (talk) 12:43, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - I have not seen any behavior I deem inappropriate (i.e. contrary to policies or guidelines) by TakuyaMuratad, and I cannot support any sanction against them until I do. — Godsy_CONT) 01:30, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
• Comment: If I'm allowed to point out (which this proposal will prohibit), it is ironic that my behavior is considered disruptive while an attempt for the rogue so-called clean-up of the draftspace isn't. There is no consensus that my draftpages (perhaps all) need to be gone. See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#Draft:Faithfully_flat_descent.E2.80.8E for example for the position of the wikiproject math: they don't see my draft pages to be causing a problem. Thus I'm not working against the "consensus". I pretty much prefer to just edit things I know the best, rather than engaging in this type of the battle. I know this type of the battle is wearing to many content-focused editors and many of them stop contributing. Obviously that's the tactics employed here. That is the true disruption that is very damaging to Misplaced Pages the whole. -- Taku (talk) 03:48, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
• Counter-proposal: I can agree to deal with some of sub-stubs (expand or delete them); it helps if you can present me a list of "problematic" draftpages started by me. They usually take me 5 min say to create and I had no idea it would cause this much controversy. While I don't see a need for us to spend some min to delete/redirect them (leaving them is less time-consuming), hopefully this is a good compromise. -- Taku (talk) 04:01, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Vandalism after block (more than one day)

If someone is constantly vandalizing several days after their block has ended, what do you do? Would I have to start warning them four more times again? The account I'm referring to is basically a vandalism only account, however they sprinkle in good edits to avoid being banned, so I'm almost positive reporting for that would be denied. TBMNY (talk) 03:10, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

1. If the user's edits are, in fact, vandalism, then you can make a report at AIV which includes links to the specific diffs which represent vandalism; the existence of good edits won't prevent the block, although they may make it not be indef (although the amount of effect this has will be reduced each block).
2. Warnings are not bureaucracy - if you can show the user knows that what (s)he's doing is wrong, (s)he can be blocked for it even without a fresh set of warnings. With an account, you can assume that they saw the previous set of warnings, although a new level 4 warning may still be helpful.
3. Please keep in mind that several other types of edits are often misclassified as vandalism - please see WP:VANDNOT. Without knowing which account you're referring to, we can't judge it.

עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:35, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Whether dealing with a new-ish account or with an IP address, if I see vandalism coming soon after a block's expiration, I'll start with a level-3 warning. Level 1 is for when you're assuming good faith, and 2 for when you're not sure; when someone resumes the stuff that got him blocked, you can assume bad faith, since you're being given obvious evidence for not assuming good faith. Nyttend (talk) 02:37, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Possible vandalism at the page IAAF World Championships in Athletics

See this edit and this. See also he coorect comment of User:Hyperion1982 that complains «I don't understand why the list of most successful athletes was been erased from this page. The list of athletes who won more medals is also indicative but the main task in Athletics is to win gold rather than just a medal» --Kasper2006 (talk) 17:42, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Kasper2006, your links are identical. Did you mean to supply a different URL (perhaps ) for one of them? Nyttend (talk) 02:35, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

That's right. Unjustifiable cancellation of All-time placing table and Unjustifiable cancellation of Multiple winners ;) --Kasper2006 (talk) 04:09, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Requested move may need administrator overview

The requested move of Australian survey, 2017 (Marriage) to a different title has been discussed at Talk:Australian survey, 2017 (Marriage)#Requested move 10 August 2017, and having been discussed for seven days, as another user has summarised, there appears consensus to move to a different title, but there is perhaps some conjecture about which title to move it to. Among the issues are whether the year needs to be included or not, and whether the official legal title should be used or some variation of a title used in media. Some admins might be best placed to help determine the more appropriate approach to a title. -- Whats new? 23:43, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

"You messed up" notifications

Please see the Administrator "you messed up" notifications section of WP:BOTR, where I've proposed that we get a bot to pester an admin who leaves a block notice without blocking the user, and please offer your opinions on whether it's a good idea or not. I've requested this because in the last ten days I've twice done this, and being bot-pestered would have been helpful. Nyttend (talk) 01:34, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Seems to me that only admins would know if this is a useful thing or not, so as a non-admin, I won't be commenting -- but, in my opinion, if you guys want it, you should have it. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:50, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

I think it should also work in reverse, blocking without a notice. - FlightTime (open channel) 02:59, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

There are rare occasions where a user is blocked without being tagged, mainly in cases of some long term vandals on the basis of WP:DENY. RickinBaltimore (talk) 03:04, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

It would be particularly problematic at User talk:ProcseeBot; it's a WP:SPA that never does anything except making 2.4 million blocks — it got promoted to admin without ever making a single edit, before or since :-) It's a bot that simply blocks open proxies and doesn't leave a block message, so you can imagine how much of a mess its talk page would be if we had a bot that notified you when you don't leave a notice. Nyttend (talk) 05:13, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

That awkward moment when a bot will have to use {{nobots}}. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 05:30, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Isn't the conversation here on unblocked users with block notices from admins? RileyBugz_投稿記録 15:19, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Not just unblocked but not-blocked. It's fine if the block expires or gets removed; the problem is when someone leaves a block message but forgets to block the user. As you can see from my BOTR request, I've done this twice just recently, and it would have been quite helpful if there had been a bot to pester me. Nyttend (talk) 21:26, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

@Nyttend: - block first, message later. Mjroots (talk) 20:24, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

But as noted at BOTR, problems arise if you block and forget to leave a message (or you get impeded while writing), and aside from no-message-needed situations, e.g. obvious disruptive sockpuppets, I don't want to block anyone without giving a message. Nyttend (talk) 21:02, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Request site ban for Orchomen

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

Orchomen (talk · contribs) has been nothing but sockpuppetry since they opened their account. Their MO consists of reverting certain users on random pages, creating fake SPI pages (Mine and Amaury's), harassing users and creating sockpuppets. This has been going on since October of 2016. Their socking has gotten so bad that Amaury has dedicated a page for all of their accounts and IPs, which can be seen here. Also, take a look at Orchomen's SPI page and notice the numerous times we've had to request blocks. At this point, I don't think they are here to contribute and WP:NOTHERE. We are always at SPI or requesting blocks the instance we notice a new IP or user and end up edit warring (WP:3RRNO #3). I request that Orchomen be site banned indefinitely. Pinging involved users: @Amaury:, @IJBall:, @Sro23: and @MPFitz1968:. Callmemirela 🍁 04:04, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support as nom. Callmemirela 🍁 04:04, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support Amaury (talk | contribs) 08:36, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support Definitely no reason for them to be a part of the project. RickinBaltimore (talk) 11:21, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support per nom; we may have allowed hours of editors' time to be soaked up on this character, but it stops now. — fortunavelut luna 13:50, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support as one of the "involved users" identified above who has had to put up with their antics. Following their block on October 16, 2016, they just continuously evaded their block by using various IPs(v4) having all sorts of initial numbers (31, 37, 94, 176, etc.), as well as creating all those various accounts. They reverted plenty of my edits for at least a few weeks after the October 16 block, presumably by looking thru my recent contributions list. Amaury and Callmemirela were among those even more targeted by this user. They were pretty conspicuous about their presence, when they made edits like and , among many others. MPFitz1968 (talk) 15:08, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support - Wow! An incredible number of accounts. Beyond My Ken (talk) 16:41, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support Clearly WP:NOTHERE not build the 'pedia. MarnetteD|Talk 18:35, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
• Meh. --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:40, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

• Really? So if I happen to identify a bunch of edits obviously by this person, and I remove them en masse, and some (theoretical) hyper-persnickety admin blocks me because only the edits of a banned editor can be automatically removed, not the edits of a blocked editor, I can count on you to overturn my block, since the editor wasn't banned because "most community ban discussions are dumb"?Obviously, a highly artificial hypothesis, but there really is an advantage to a community ban over a simple block. For one thing, blocks can be overturned by the action of a single admin, but I think it's pretty well settled that a community ban can only be overturned by community discussion (or ArbCom). That makes the removal of the disruptive editor that much more permanent, which is the additional security that the community is looking for in banning an editor. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:46, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

The fact that it is a "highly artificial hypothesis" makes it not particularly useful to your argument, and it's fairly annoying that you think you've somehow addressed my comment by making it. My whole point is that no admin is going to block you for reverting Orchomen socks' edits if there is no ban (in fact, the policy already says "banned or indefinitely blocked", I believe), and no admin is going to unblock Orchomen unilaterally. They are already de facto banned, and there is zero practical benefit to this ban. Although I may be underestimating the benefit of the warm fuzzy feelings of communal hate of those who routinely vote on these things, and the joy it is probably bringing to Orchomen. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:09, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

*WP:CSD#G5: "This applies to pages created by banned or blocked users in violation of their ban or block".

WP:EVADE: "Anyone is free to revert any edits made in violation of a block, without giving any further reason and without regard to the three-revert rule". --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:14, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Well, we disagree. I think a community ban provides an extra layer of security, and you don't think that it serves a purpose. It's nice to say that someone is de facto banned, but one admin's opinion that an editor is "de facto" banned may not be shared by other admins, in which case we're nowhere, because we haven't actually banned them. Bottom line (to me), is that there's absolutely no harm in community site banning an editor whose behavior is bad enough to warrant it, no downside to it at all, and (at least) a small upside. I'm not sure why you feel it's necessary to proselytize against it, when you could have simply skipped commenting in this discussion entirely, considering that a "Meh" !vote shouldn't really carry much weight. If we're going to talk about being annoyed, I find your stance, and the need to promulgate it, kind of annoying as well, almost as much as Fastily's "Why not?" RfA !votes. I don't say that lightly, because I think you're quite a good and sensible admin, and I'd love to agree with whatever you do, but this little quirk of yours just irks me. Sorry about that. (I have little doubt that stuff I do -- or maybe everything I do? -- irks you as well.) Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:41, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

BTW, thanks for the two links above, which are useful. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:43, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Your being irked is noted. The way this place works, I have no doubt that eventually there will be a vote here to prevent me from commenting on ban discussions because I'm not agreeing with everyone else. Ruining the unanimity ruins much of the joy, I imagine. "Disruption" if I ever saw it. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:59, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Floquenbeam, I have never seen you being disruptive, and I never expect to see it. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:58, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support as this user has been socking for a long time. —MRD2014  00:31, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose as a statement on these types of discussions generally. They're a waste of time. He's already indefinitely blocked, and no-one is going to unblock him anytime soon. He's effectively banned. Why are we spending time discussing this when there is no gain to banning him over the current situation? (Note that I've done a lot of the cleanup work on Orchomen stuff; I appreciate how annoying he is.) ~ Rob₁₃ 00:47, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

• Just repeating what I said above: one obvious gain is that right now to be unblocked, the editor simply has to convince a single admin that he's reformed, and he can be unblocked. If he's banned by the community, that cannot happen, a community discussion is required for an unblock, or an ArbCom decision. That is a real distinction. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:31, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support per BYK GoldenRing (talk) 07:58, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support per nom, and BYK. SophisticatedSwampert 15:22, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

• @Beyond My Ken: If a single admin unblocks and refuses to reblock (won't happen), we could just ban him at that time. That's a real time save 99% of the time. ~ Rob₁₃ 05:58, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

• Also a real hassle. If a ban is justified then, it's justified now. Beyond My Ken (talk) 15:39, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet investigations/Inactive user 20171

Would an uninvolved admin be prepared to have a look at this case. The sockpuppet master appears now to be on a bit of a spree ,. WCM_email 12:00, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Appeal my topic ban

About 15 months ago, following my successful appeal here against a ban and block, I had three restrictions applied as conditions of the unban and unblock granted. I was told that I could appeal each of those restrictions independently after one year. Two months ago I successfully appealed against my 1RR restriction and since then I continued my trouble-free record of editing. So today please, I would like to appeal the second of my three restrictions - my topic ban.

I was indefinitely topic banned from metrication and units of measure, broadly construed, for all countries and all pages on Misplaced Pages including, but not at all limited to, talk and user talk pages - with the exception that I may add measurements to articles I created so long as they were in compliance with the WP:MOS.

I have, to the best of my knowledge, complied 100% with this restriction over the last 15 months - so am now asking for this topic ban to be lifted too please. I understand the principles of the MOS and I do not plan to re-open any of the old arguments or controversies, but would very much appreciate not having to navigate so very carefully to keep clear of any articles or article content within the scope of the topic ban. The main reason for my appeal is to continue along the path back to full good standing within the community. I very much want to return to playing a full part in this enterprise and am committed to doing my best to help to improve Misplaced Pages. Please give this appeal your full and careful consideration. -- de Facto (talk). 20:32, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Following Dennis Brown's wise words in the discussion below, I would like to change my appeal from asking for a complete lifting of the topic ban, to asking to have the topic ban replaced with a 1RR restriction on the same metrication and units of measure scope. Thanks. -- de Facto (talk). 16:24, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Discussion

Note that Dennis Brown stated, on 13 June 2017, "I would be less inclined to lift the others today, but I think this is the best one to start with and we can revisit another in 6 months". 6 months from 13 June 2017 is 13 December 2017. I say this entirely without prejudice. I have no opinion at this time whether your topic ban should be lifted and do not know whether Dennis Brown still holds this opinion. --Yamla (talk) 22:00, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

• While I am inclined toward support based on the previous AN/I discussion, I think there is still a sentiment that the topic ban should not be lifted just yet. If this appeal was rejected, and the original poster can manage to continue to contribute in a positive manner, the next appeal (possibly in December as noted above) would probably have much higher chance of success. Alex Shih 04:47, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
• Neutral. I wish you would have waited longer, but it is certainly within your right to request a lifting of the sanction. I will add this, I think that if you instead asked for a modification of the sanction along the lines of "The topic ban of metrification (etc) is here modified to allow editing under a 1RR restriction" you would have better luck. Then wait a year for the 1RR lift request. 1RR is not a huge deal to live with. We are a bit gun shy, to be honest. In your defense, you've complied with all expectations as far as I can see, but I think you understand why the community is hesitant. I will just say that lifting it but inserting a 1RR restriction would have my Support. Otherwise, I would stay neutral in the matter. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:46, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

• Thanks Dennis Brown for your constructive suggestion and wise words. I will happily go with your idea of a 1RR restriction in place of the topic ban on the metrication and units of measure scope - I wish I had the wisdom to have thought of that for myself! Hopefully it will also help to reassure others that my only intention is to be constructive and add value to Misplaced Pages. -- de Facto (talk). 16:19, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Would you also accept a continued ban from the MOS in general, from MOSNUM in particular, and from their talk pages? This would still mean that you would not have to "navigate so very carefully to keep clear of any articles or article content within the scope of the topic ban." 92.19.24.150 (talk) 21:56, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

I'll accept whatever the consensus here believes is necessary. -- de Facto (talk). 08:05, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose Given how much trouble was caused by de Facto on metrification, I don't think it would be productive to allow them to return to editing anything to do with units. Number 57 09:22, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

@Number 57: may I ask, what it would take to convince you that this topic ban is not required to prevent disruptive editing? -- de Facto (talk). 20:51, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

It would involve a time machine and you not causing all those problems in the past. My experience is that editors who were as troublesome as you were are not able to change; given that you can edit everything on Misplaced Pages except this, I don't see any benefit from lifting the topic ban. Number 57 21:05, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

• For all I remember what happened before, our rules hold that everyone can come back if we understand that they are unlikely to be disruptive. On the basis of a 1RR, and an understanding that a repeat of the behaviour we saw before the ban will most certainly result in a reimposition of sanctions (and I'm pretty sure that's already understood), I will support lifting this ban at this time. Kahastok talk 21:26, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Article move

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

Hello, the article Ñuble Province needs to be moved to Ñuble Region because the province has been transformed in region today ref But there already exist a redirection page, and can't be moved. Please someone help with this issue -- Janitoalevic (talk) 04:47, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

 Done For future reference you can use requested moves for move requests. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:15, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Actually, PMC that reference translates as "At 18:30 the President will formalize in Chillán the decree that creates the new territorial division, which will enter into regime from September 2018. With signature of Bachelet today is born Region of Ñuble" - so perhaps that should not have been moved yet? I'm not sure. A matter for the article talk page, I suppose. -- Begoon 07:41, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Hmm. I took the formalization as the important part, but I see your point. I will self-revert and I'll make a note on the talk page. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 07:53, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Prime Number Distribution Series

I request an administrator’s attention at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Prime Number Distribution Series. The !voting is running unanimously in favor of deletion, but the author, User:Nuclearstrategy8, is engaging in ad hominem attacks against the !voters. It might be appropriate to check the weather in Buenos Aires or Auckland and see whether snow is falling. Robert McClenon (talk) 06:04, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Not likely and also not likely, respectively. You need to go farther south :-) Nyttend (talk) 11:59, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

 Done. Closed by BU Rob13. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 13:32, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Blue Whale

User:Ayesha parvin has been making some disturbing comments on Talk: Blue Whale (game). I'm wondering if there's any need to do a geolocate and notify law enforcement, or if we should just assume it's trolling and ignore it. FiredanceThroughTheNight (talk) 04:49, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Are you sure you've got the right user? I can't see why anyone would want to notify law enforcement over this. Hut 8.5 06:35, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

It took me a while to see, too. You need to read the article, or at least some of it. Email to emergency@wikimedia.org would probably be the right response - I don't have access to my email today so can't do it. GoldenRing (talk) 07:34, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Urgent: Serious Vandalism of Article Mukesh Hariawala (Needs Speedy Deletion)

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

Dear Admins,

Regarding: https://en.wikipedia.org/Mukesh_Hariawala

I am creator and the primary author of the above article. This article had gone for a deletion discussion on August 3rd 2017 and no constructive edits were offered. Recently, some of the editor managed to delete 90% of the article without proper research or going through the citation making it filled with misinformation and half facts that now which constitute a nomination for SPEEDY DELETION.

I have nominated the article for speedy deletion twice CSD G7 and both the times and the same editors who have deleted the original article are reversing it. Further, the copyright owner of the picture displayed has denied permission for it's display.

I request you to kindly delete the page promptly, this is extremely damaging for the moral of future contributors and the mission of Misplaced Pages. Thanks. --Saipawar4 (talk) 07:53, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

• Investigating. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:56, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

I have moved this from WT:AN. Because there are other editors who have made significant edits to the article, it is not eligible for speedy deletion under WP:G7, though it looks pretty clear which way the associated AfD is going. However I have some significant concerns about this editor. They registered an account less than a month ago, during which time they have made nearly seven hundred edits to Mukesh Hariawala, accounting for the vast majority of their edits. The walls of text at AfD are also not encouraging. However I'm having a hard time telling if this is someone with a very entrenched COI or a very, very keen new editor who needs to slow down - a lot - and learn how things work. Informed opinions are sought. GoldenRing (talk) 10:59, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

@Kudpung: My apologies that you got to this before my explanation arrived - see above. GoldenRing (talk) 11:00, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

GoldenRing, over to you then. I'm not particularly interested in disentangling this one. I just happen to react very quickly when something comes upon my wl with 'urgent' on it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:17, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

• Saipawar4 emailed Oversight this weekend complaining about the 'serious vandalism' done to the article by this pruning. I left a comment about it at the AFD, and since then I've been spammed on my talk page by various 'colleagues' who can attest to what an 'iconic' and 'renowned' surgeon he is. I don't care if he has an article or not, but there's something fishy going on here. Katie 15:22, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

• OTRS is reviewing the image, AFD is reviewing the article. I don't see anything that requires admin jump in with the tools. For the record, I just went and commented to Delete at the AFD. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 15:50, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Ban of sockpuppet User:Vote (X) for Change

I am not contesting the ban, but it seems that, despite the ban having been issued all the way back in 2011, in the last few weeks the effect of the ban seems to have been to block out the entire British Library. Since I do most of my research there, that is a pain. Is it possible to get the British Library unblocked? Serendious 13:12, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

• First, it helps if you have some idea of the IP range you are talking about. Next, it shouldn't block you from editing if you are logged in, unless the setting are extra harsh. Do you know who did the block for that range? We generally like to get the admin responsible in the loop, for they may have reasons that we aren't aware of. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 15:46, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Another option might be to contact the administration at the British Library, ask them if they can determine which of their users was using the IPs in question when they were last blocked, and then ask them to ban that person from their site, since they are probably violating their terms of service by using their machines for gaining illicit access here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:53, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

• Hm I remember being autoblocked at the British Library. After which someone told me the British Library rangeblock was switched from hardblock to softblock (i.e. logged in editors can edit). This was in 2015/16, has someone changed the block for it since? Joseph2302 (talk) 17:10, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
• (An) IP range for British Library is 127.0.0.1 . Joseph2302 (talk) 17:12, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Uh, that's a localhost IP, EVERYONE has a 127.0.0.1 IP (after all there's no place like 127.0.0.1) RickinBaltimore (talk) 17:13, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Woops. RickinBaltimore 194.66.226.95 was the British Library IP I was autoblocked at. Joseph2302 (talk) 18:23, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

• Pinging @Future Perfect at Sunrise: who converted this to a hardblock on 5 August 2017. Log – Train2104 (t • c) 19:04, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Ah, that IP. Okay, I've reset it to a soft block. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:23, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Kostas20142 appointed trainee clerk

The arbitration clerks are pleased to welcome Kostas20142 (talk · contribs) to the clerk team as a trainee!

The arbitration clerk team is often in need of new members, and any editor who would like to join the clerk team is welcome to apply by e-mail to clerks-llists.wikimedia.org.

For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 23:15, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Misplaced Pages talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Kostas20142 appointed trainee clerk

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