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Massive number of Playboy-related AFD nominations by a single user

User:Damiens.rf has, over the last few hours, nominated more that 100 articles converning Playboy models (mostly Playmates) for deletion; the count is steadily growing. The nominations really can't be bundled together, and typically require examination of each individual's movie/TV credits. There's no way that interested editors can handle this volume of nominations, which often prove controversial. This runs afoul of the fait accompli principle set out by Arbcom in the TV episodes and characters cases; while not formally adopted as policy or guideline, I think there can be little doubt that the principle enjoys community support -- without it, consensus-building becomes a war of attrition. Make no mistake, I believe Damiens is right on principle on the notability issues involved, and disagree with him only as to exactly where to draw the lines involved. I don't doubt his good faith; while not all the AFDs on Playmates he made in the recent past were successful, I think they demonstrated significant support for the arguments he's advanced. But this is too much for the process to handle in one batch, far too much. It's inherently disruptive, despite the nominator's good faith, and it's likely to turn into a contentious mess that prevents the sort of article-by-article decision making that ought to be going on. Similar large bundles of Playmate nominations in the past have led to cookie-cutter voting and unpleasantness, and didn't contribute enough to building an encyclopedia to justify the effort and bad feelings involved. Full disclosure: I've been working in the same direction as Damiens for some time now, working gradually and using "soft" redirects to convert the large number of poorly sourced Playmate stubs into better-organized, more notability and BLP-compliant components of group articles. That process has been minimally controversial so fsr, and I believe it offers a better compromise that can enjoy a broader consensus. But even if I agreed entirely with the nominator, this is too much to handle in a single wave of AFDs. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 04:05, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Damiens has agreed to stop, so I think this is set for now.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 04:24, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Is everything set? Damiens.rf has a history of doing these large scale mass nominations for both images and articles. He's been brought here more than once for this very issue. He'll likely be brought here again. AniMate 04:58, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Geeze, and I thought I did too much when I did about 10 at once. BelloWello (talk) 05:08, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Didn't we tar and feather another editor who went on a AfD spree of articles that may or may not have had appropriate justifications? Just wondering if we intend to trot out the WikiMob on this case as well as 100 is significantly more than the ~20 articles that were nominated in the other case (with the other case also having the multiple distinct "events" of nomination frenzies). Disclosure: I've interactied with Damiens before on a discussion about a picture's Fair Usage Rationale. Hasteur (talk) 12:40, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

There's an important difference here -- Damiens did a much smaller batch of Playmate nominations a short time ago, and these nominations are reasonably consistent with the results there. The previous spree you're referring to, by a different editor, was completely off the wall, and completely indiscriminate -- and used an automated tool in evasion of his blacklisting from the use of that tool. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 18:00, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, Wuhwuzdat had it coming. HalfShadow 21:25, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

background - Some years back, folks at WP:PORN decided to include "is a playboy playmate" as one of the final evidences of notability in WP:PORNBIO. What followed was that there were articles created for every girl that has ever striped for playboy. When this piece of WP:PORNBIO was brought to an wider audience via an RFC, the community decided that being a playboy playmate is not, by itself, evidence of notability, and playmates should have articles only when otherwise notable.

These deletions were expected. I have not run across all of the playmates. And I have not nominated all I have ran across. Of course, some of them may be proven otherwise notable, but that's why we have a discussion process.

Most of the articles will surely end up being deleted or redirected to a list. After that, the playmate's enthusiast's efforts may concentrate on improving the articles on really notable playmates, as today, many of these are stubs just because there's simply not enough volunteers to keep up with an playmate sub-encyclopedia. --Damiens.rf 13:21, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

The concern, I think, is that those who are interested in this topic area have to go through a large number of AFDs at once, each debate generating its own discussion and finding its own consensus. If I were intent on Keeping each of the articles you nominated, checking and following such a large number of debates would be a full-time job for the coming week. I'm sure as hell not going to edit much else, either. Here, the scale of the nominations detracts from the (probably valid) point that the subjects just aren't notable.

If you were intent on keeping each of the articles I nominated you'd be wrong to begin with. Each case should be judged on its own merits, and an intention of blindingly keeping all playmates was the original problem we started from. --Damiens.rf 15:24, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I think it would have been far better to nominate a dozen or so to establish your test cases, and then bundle 5 or so at a time thereafter. If, as you say, these articles are sure to be deleted, the second and third sets of articles would have precedent to follow, and the debates would be much simpler. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 14:01, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

He did do a run of test cases. They're in the deletion log for April 4. [1] Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 18:07, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

@Damians. Restrict the nominations to a level that the guys at Wikipedia:WikiProject Pornography can handle. For example, 7 AfDs per week. Just make all your research in one go, write the AfDs, and save the list of AfDs in a text file. You can open it every week and mechanically nominate the first 7 items via copy/paste. You can combine this with Ultraexactzz's advice above. I know, this is nowhere near as rewarding as doing all of them in one go :-) . --Enric Naval (talk) 14:22, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

7 Afds in a week would be a good rate; you don't want Wikipedia:WikiProject Pornography to be slammed to hard, after all. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 14:32, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Pacing AFD nominations is especially important when nominating biographies whose potential sources are likely to predate the Internet era. It's pretty easy to determine notability -- or the lack thereof -- for someone active in 2002 or even in 1995. But some of these nominations are from the 1970s, and may require additional legwork (especially due to newspaper paywall policies). Serpent's Choice (talk) 14:41, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Seven articles per week is ridiculous low. Why should I restrict the pace of deletion nominations where there were no restriction of the pace of creation for such articles?

It has been a long time since the rfc that established that it was a mistake to consider all playmates notable, and I have seen not organized effort from wp:pornbio to clean up the mess.

There's no reason to worry. AFDs that do not have enough participation get relisted. And if a stub of the form "Rose Rosewood was the Jan 1961 Playmate. She was clicked by Mr. Photographer" get deleted, and we later find out that Ms. Rosewood was notable, it can easily recreated. As easily as it was first created. --Damiens.rf 15:24, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) WP:KITTENS works both ways. And there are significantly fewer people able to handle AfD nominations than there are people willing to create articles. --Alan the Roving Ambassador (talk) 15:30, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

You should restrict the pace of deletion nominations out of respect for the people who will be trying to determine consensus on each article. Seven per week is ridiculously low, but there is no reason at all why you can't limit to say, five per day. And I would say to nominate no further articles until the current backlog clears. Resolute 15:41, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I will nominate no further Playmate-articles until the current backlog clears. --Damiens.rf 15:46, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Resolute 19:46, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I think the nominator should be commended for instigating these long-overdue AfD discususions. Particularly so for going through the AfD process honestly, rather than sneaking around a discussion by creating a redirect. A subject whose only claim to fame is to being a Playboy Playmate is not notable, as consensus has determined. It is wrong to redirect this article to a list of 12 other such non-notables, whose only claim to fame has been specifically determined to be non-notable. List of Playboy Playmates of 1961 for example links to not one artice, contrary to all guidelines, and the subject of the list is in itself non-notable. If the subject is notable, she will have a standalone article at which her Playmate centerfold can be mentioned. Including her on a list of a non-notable subject is simply wrong. Kudos to User:Damiens.rf for stepping up and doing the honest work that the fans have been covering up. Dekkappai (talk) 18:15, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

• On a separate note, Dekkappai's nomination of said list he linked, AfD here, seems to be failing spectacularly. And my arguments would be the same as is stated in the AfD, essentially that Dekkappai is completely wrong about what lists are for, considering in most cases they are specifically for listing people or other information that are not notable enough to have their own article. Silverseren^C 00:29, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment - Automated tools to send material to AfD for existing articles should be banned. This reminds me of the case of a recent editor who went WP:IDONTLIKEIT on sororities and fraternities, starting with the Alphas... Carrite (talk) 04:17, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Sure. Only tools that send material to AfD for non-existing articles should be allowed. --Damiens.rf 05:31, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I speak of New Pages, of course... Carrite (talk) 02:40, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

It seems Damiens.rf is simply implementing previously established site-wide consensus, against a minority of vociferous WikiProject members. How many articles are we talking about here in total? Tijfo098 (talk) 19:20, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Except for the fact that Damiens.rf has not been previously banned from using automated tools, I honestly don't see much difference in his deletion nominations here and the ones for which Wuhwazdat was banned from starting AFDs. How can you possibly be following WP:BEFORE if you post an AFD at a rate of one a minute, and use a completely boilerplate rationale in every AFD? The proposition that being a Playboy Playmate does not guarantee notability does not in turn mean that being a Playboy Playmate means that you are not notable. The results thus far seem to be varying widely, suggesting that these were just as indiscriminate as the past sprees against British models or fraternities, targeting a subject rather than considering each article topic on its own merits (for example, that sufficient sources exist here, or that the subject is notable for other things here or here). I agree with Carrite: there needs to be some restriction on using automated tools to AFD articles, even if it's just a cap on the noms per day or per hour, because that kind of bot-like editing is completely at odds with the kind of consideration that an AFD requires, Isn't the point of automated tools to make noncontroversial edits easier? The purpose is not to make one side of a deletion debate labor-free, while imposing the unreasonable burden of researching 100+ articles a day upon those who are interested in seeing if they can be saved. Particularly where the AFD nominator obviously hasn't bothered to do that work. postdlf (talk) 19:42, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Q - "How can you possibly be following WP:BEFORE if you post an AFD at a rate of one a minute, and use a completely boilerplate rationale in every AFD?"

A - It would be only possible if the articles were almost all just one paragraph long and equally boilerplatelly written. Oh, wait a second!

The proposition that being a Playboy Playmate does not guarantee notability does not in turn mean that being a Playboy Playmate means that you are not notable.

Are you implying I used this rationale? I haven't.

"The results thus far seem to be varying widely, suggesting that these were just as indiscriminate"

No, they are not. Most of the articles are going to be deleted/redirected.

My nominations were not undiscriminated. I reviewed every article and, when needed, searched for the model's page on imdb. Of course, in some of the nominations, it could turn out that the model is notable after all. But these will be the exceptional cases.

You know, many of the articles say nothing more than "Ms. Nice Flower was <insert date> Playboy Playmate. She was shot by photographer Mr. PhotoMan". Since being a playmate is, by community consensus, a grant of notability, such articles are qualified for WP:CSD#A7. But I have sent them to AfD anyway. --Damiens.rf 19:58, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh really? Explain your review process for someone like Ms. Teen Oregon USA 1994 who has multiple acting credits? Garbage. Just like how you seem to interpret the consensus that playmates are not inherently notable to mean that reliable source coverage about their "playmatehood" are disqualified in determining notability, which is a perverted interpretation that defies WP:BASIC. The proper reading of that consensus is that playmates are not notable in and of themselves if they do not have independent coverage by reliable sources. If several newspapers cover some girl with some depth because she was named playmate or only cover her because she is a playmate, that's her notability! Morbidthoughts (talk) 06:24, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

It is also clear from your mention of WP:CSD A7 that your understanding of deletion criteria is weak. CSD A7 is for articles that don't indicate why a person is important. It "is a lower standard than notability" and to use it on Playmates just because playmates are not inherently notable would have been improper and probably would have gotten you blocked if you had done 100 in a day. Morbidthoughts (talk) 06:35, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

There's no use arguing with deletionists. They don't care about concensus. They live to delete stuff... and vice versa: If they don't get their daily ration of deletions, they could shrivel and die. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:40, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

No need to be nasty, Bugs. Many of us care about consensus and take the time to clean up around here.—Kww(talk) 07:15, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

The editor in question says he doesn't care about concensus, he's nominating for deletion anyway. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:38, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Welll, A7 isn't about notability, so that part's just a common misapprehension. As for "Since being a playmate is, by community consensus, a grant of notability, such articles are qualified for WP:CSD#A7. But I have sent them to AfD anyway.", the only way that parses at all is if you assume he mean "...by community consensus, [not] a grant of notability,...". Either way, it doesn't excuse discussing people that work at identifying the material that needs to be removed from Wikipedia with such negative tones and implications.—Kww(talk) 07:50, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

If he meant to say "NOT", then he should have said "NOT". I'm not a mind-reader, I can only go by what he said, or appeared to me to say. As far as negativity... deletionists are pretty much useless. They take away instead of adding. They aren't interested in value to the readers. They are only interested in deleting stuff. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:38, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm strongly inclusionist myself, but I think that there are definitely some deletionists who do add some quality content to the project. The problem is when some of them get in their minds that all articles on certain topic are all inherently non-notable and do spray and pray style nominations. I mean, if they just took their time and picked the low-hanging fruit they'd have more success getting junk deleted with much less drama. (Though I accept that the nominator in this case was acting in good faith) Qrsdogg (talk) 14:39, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Let's be clear here, Bugs: I don't think that I am "pretty much useless", nor do I consider my preference for removing material to be one that doesn't add "value to the readers". I take your statement as a personal insult, and think you should stop. A project where no one took out the trash would be just as useless as a project where no one added content.—Kww(talk) 15:22, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

• At Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Serria_Tawan I see the only two people trying to delete it are copying and pasting the same exact argument time and again without even reading the article, considering its merits, or looking for sources. I clicked the Google news archive button at the top of the AFD, and found she had written a book which was reviewed in the news, and she interviewed for it. WP:BEFORE exist for a reason. You can't expect people to go through a hundred different AFD at once. And the mindless boilerplating "Delete them all, I don't need to bother looking for sources or even reading the article" should be stopped as well. Dream Focus 09:23, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
  • The editor's AFDs here are at best incompetent, and at worst malicious / bad faith, and should all be immediately dismissed. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:09, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

• • Right, DreamFocus. Damien says above that he was 1) nominating on the basis of the article's current state, rather than its potential, and 2) doing no more than "review[ing] every article and, when needed, searched for the model's page on imdb". That's not compliance with WP:BEFORE, and you can't justify this by saying that most are delete-worthy, even if it's only a few that are notable. We don't expect every AFD to be correct, but it's simply not acceptable to post an AFD on the based on averages related to the subject matter rather than a careful consideration of that particular article topic.

    So we do we need a ban here from Damien.rf using automated tools to list articles at AFD, or is it enough that he's said he will stop? postdlf (talk) 14:59, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    • No, it's not enough. The AFD's need to be deleted, as being driven by incompetency and/or bad faith. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:13, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Close all of them. If people want to nominate just a few at a time, after doing things properly, such as taking a few seconds to do a Google news search first before each nomination, so be it. Dream Focus 16:06, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I think it would be fair to at least speedy close all the AFDs that just have the same copied and pasted boilerplate comments from the nom and the delete !voters, with no other substantive comments. postdlf (talk) 18:01, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't go that far. After the RfC change, these Playmate articles do need to be reviewed, and speedy closing them would force someone to start all over again with AfDs. And if a speedy-closed article were re-nominated soon, someone would object with a "this was just speedy closed a few weeks ago". I would be more in favor of (1) speedy closing only the clearly notable nominations, and (2) a promise from Damiens not to make any more nominations until this backlog is fully cleared. --JaGa^talk 18:32, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

They should be rolled back as if the nominations had never occurred. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:07, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Why nominate them at all? Why not just merge them all into some big "List of" articles? That lets the articles get broken out again if notability is established. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 07:54, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

If this is a repeat problem for Damiens.rf, ie, if he has a repeated history of causing problems, then he should be stopped. BarkingMoon (talk) 23:09, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

(non-Admin comment)I'm troubled by the very act of mass AfD nominating by anybody. I disagree with the inclusion of some content, but that doesn't entitle me to create headaches for the people who put it in & defend it with good reason (even if I disagree with them). That appears to be what's at play here. I'd also disagree Playmates aren't inherently notable. Any member of such a readily-identifiable group would seem to be, IMO. Moreover, deletion risks deleting useful information. (Yes, I am strongly inclusionist most of the time.) IMO, this kind of behaviour should be discouraged strongly. In this case, it's way over the top IMO. TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 16:38, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

This does appear to be a repeat problem. There seems to be a long history of disruptive editing here. But unfortunately all anyone here will tell you to do is go start an RfC which will fester for a month or two and accomplish nothing.--Crossmr (talk) 02:19, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I think we need to move this to a policy discussion, because I think there are a few critical issues here.

1) PORNBIO is widely seen as the lowest of the low-hanging fruit when it comes to notability. It probably needs a strong rewrite to bring it in line with general notability guidelines (most curiously how is a single limited-scope award "multiple significant reliable sources"?). It is my understanding that WP:GNG is the minimum standard and project page guidelines should not go lower than that.

2) We need a process for mass deletion that allows for consistent results across an entire field without creating a fiat accompli by volume of nominations. The current situation is utter chaos because it's all on a case-by-case basis. I realize that every article needs to be examined on its own merits but I would rather see a standard created, and then applied. We should be arguing over the standard first, then how it applies to given articles, not judging each article by a different standard.

3) Wikipedia has a serious problem with a lack of adherence to GNG, especially in areas of fandom. The end result is, in practice, that areas that have a wide fan-base willing to vocally defend them have voluminous coverage and very low standards for inclusion. Because articles are judged on a case-by-case basis whomever shows up carries the day most often. Without a method for mass deletions and soliciting wider community input the process is vulnerable to canvassing and meatpuppetry. HominidMachinae (talk) 12:15, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm all for a review of all the specific notability criteria. Local criteria are supposed to be specialized clues to help identifying when someone on a given field passes the general criteria. But since they are mostly written (and only reviewed) by local enthusiasts, it's usual for them to serve as a backdoor entrance to Wikipedia for otherwise non-notable subjects. --Damiens.rf 20:58, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Should automated tools ever be used to list articles at AFD?

Apart from the conduct of any individual editor, it seems like the use of automated tools generally to post AFDs just causes ill will and can easily be abused (whether or not in good faith) by the rapid posting of bulk nominations. Per WP:BEFORE, we expect that those listing articles for deletion individually assess each article and its potential as a topic before listing it, and we expect tailored deletion rationales rather than boilerplate votes. Automating this process obviously runs counter to those expectations, and I see no inherent benefit to enabling people to post more AFDs at a faster rate. When is it ever a good idea to post AFDs in bulk? When has it ever improved the accuracy and validity of deletion nominations and rationales? As I noted in the last AN/I posting about abuse of automated AFD postings, it not only causes a wide net to be cast that inevitably catches valid article subjects in with the crowd, however few proportionately, it also hinders deletion of the articles that should be deleted because the whole process ends up being mistrusted as indiscriminate. Listing an article at AFD shouldn't be quick and easy; it should be cautious and deliberate.

So I think we need to evaluate whether this feature should be disabled entirely in all automated tools, or at least hindered in some way to prevent rapid-fire mass nominations, such as by capping the rate (e.g., no more than one every ten minutes) or absolute number (e.g., no more than ten per day). postdlf (talk) 17:55, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

As a regular participant in AfD debates, I place great importance on WP:BEFORE and believe that AfD nominators who ignore it create a fair amount of dissension. Automated nominations pretty much assure that individual assessment of the notability of the topic and the avaiability of reliable sources has not taken place. I agree with most of what Postdlf has said. However, I think that a hard working and conscientious editor could make more than ten nominations a day, if each was researched and had its own rationale, so I would oppose such a limit. Cullen328 (talk) 19:55, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

The limit I propose is not for manual AFD listings, just automated ones. postdlf (talk) 20:12, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

The AfD templates are also set up the be pretty self-automating. I mean, once you {{subst:afd}} into an article, you get links for the the AfD page preloaded with templates, the day's list where the new AfD is reported, and the author notification template. IMO, it's not that hard to take the AfD the rest of the way manually for there.

That said, I know there are some editors who batch process. They will find 10–20 articles they have concerns about, research them, and then post all the AfDs consecutively for the ones that warrant deletion. If they choose to use an automated tool to help them post the AfDs, I don't object to that usage—so not every person who fires off a bunch of AfDs consecutively has not thought them through. However, those batch-processing editors are probably the exceptions to the rule, with the editors who do start a bunch of ill-considered, cookie-cutter AfDs being more common—and if the latter group is abusing the automated tools, then the tools need to be either throttled or disabled. —C.Fred (talk) 20:28, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Does this proposal treat individual (i.e. non-bulk) Twinkle-style AfDs as "automated"? Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 20:33, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Lots of responsible editors use automated tools for nominations. Anyhow, a general proposal like this should be at the Village Pump, not ANI. --RL0919 (talk) 20:37, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I use twinkle to place xfds. Automated tools for such purposes are convenient for avoiding mistakes, like forgetting to notify. I think there's nothing why with doing mechanical things by using machinery. Judging when to nominate for deletion is needed no matter how one is going to do it. It's true that the availability of the tools makes it easier to be thoughtless, but the lack of required thought is in the responsibility of the editor who uses them. Large batch nominations have been a problem for a long time: there are some times when individual attention is clearly not needed, but often it is. Nobody should be nominating in significant batches, either in one group nomination of in many closely spaced individual ones, without making it very plain from the start that they have searched carefully each of the individual items, and how they have done it. Proper preparation makes things go much smoother, than placing the nominations without such comment, and then having to justify oneself in response to criticism. DGG ( talk ) 05:21, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Short answer, no. Mass edits of any sort need to be approached carefully, and in particular invocations of a deliberative process like an AfD need to be done deliberatively rather than in mechanical fashion, lest Wikipedia turn into a battle between editors and bots. That's not to say there's anything wrong with helper bots and Twinkle, applied carefully, or that you can't do just as much harm by cutting and pasting. The point is that unleashing a whole bunch of processes at once swamps anyone's ability to deal with them. Seven (or five, or fifteen) per week is not ridiculously slow, as Wikipedia has no deadline. But it would still need some consensus, as it's not reasonable for a single editor to dictate process for everyone else. There's a threshold somewhere between several dozen and several hundred pages with the same issues, beyond which AfD is just not the best venue for making decisions. Anyway, best to put the brakes on things before people invest too much in it. For example, why not keep all the AfDs open as is, but announce a schedule for closing them in batches of a period of 30 days? Or maybe group all the sub-stubs with no claim to notability other than being a playmate into a single batch (all of which would be deleted within 7 days if no further sourced claims to notability are made). That would give people enough time to handle it. - Wikidemon (talk) 08:40, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

This case again points to the need for a mass deletion policy. To avoid both the issues of inconsistency and fiat accompli in these matters. Also, for the record, I disagree with any ary arbitrary throttle limit on AfD nominations of non-notable articles ESPECIALLY BLPs. HominidMachinae (talk) 11:58, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd be very wary of saying that we should absolutely never automate big batches of submissions to AfD; it might not be appropriate here and now, but it's difficult to anticipate the future environment (including who !votes, how they !vote, changes to what might need deleting, changes to other bots and other processes...). Agreed that it would be helpful to improve how we deal with bulk deletions of related articles which don't fit within CSD criteria. bobrayner (talk) 12:59, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

On the encouragement of several editors I'm going to take a stab at a mass deletion policy to put up for RfC. I have a job interview tonight maybe I'll have it up tomorrow. My goal is a policy that allows for us to look at localized criteria that might show adherence to GNG and other important policies in that specific area and apply it in a uniform fashion to a wide area, to ensure consistency and adherence to core policies and guidelines. A side goal is a process that is NOT limited to the 7-day AfD term, to avoid the creation of a fiat accompli by giving an article's defenders more time to perform proper research. HominidMachinae (talk) 21:05, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I can see using automated tools at New Pages. There's a ton of crap at the gate. But using automation against standing articles en masse, be they sororities starting with Alpha or Playboy playmates or whatever the next person decides they really, really hate, should be banned outright. Once an article clears New Pages, gets patrolled, a higher standard of research should be required before it is taken to AfD. The "machine gun 'em all and let the saps at AfD sort 'em out" approach smacks of bad faith. It is disrespectful of the work of those who created the page, and it disrespects the process at AfD. Carrite (talk) 02:48, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

For the record, it took me one full hour just to paste in the same rationale again and again and again down the list of Playboy Nominations — doing no research into any of them, stating my case for a procedural keep. How are those at AfD supposed to do adequate research into each of these nominations if it takes that long just to spool through them? It can't be done... This is why automated mass deletions like this MUST be prohibited. if WP:BEFORE is allowed to be ignored, there is no way to adequately defend against essentially disruptive mass WP:I DON'T LIKE IT attacks. Carrite (talk) 14:40, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

It took me more than a day to analyze all those articles (and some more, that I felt passed GNG), but just a couple of minutes to nominate them for deletion. --Damiens.rf 15:37, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I love that Damien denied using automated tools, [2], when he's used Twinkle for every nomination. He characterises it as tabbed browsing. Uhh okay there. Morbidthoughts (talk) 15:23, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

• I never denied that. Take your spurious accusations elsewhere. Try to understand what tabbed browsing is and stop caring about the timeframe my contributions log span. --Damiens.rf 15:37, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Nothing spurious about commenting on your attempts at misdirection. Morbidthoughts (talk) 15:48, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
    • Stop that. I did not attempt that. Stop such accusations. --Damiens.rf 16:15, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that WP:BEFORE was ignored and mass deletion nominations made. I don't care if it was Twinkle or a magic F12 key on an antique computer that makes it happen, it's a form of automation that needs to be banned. Carrite (talk) 18:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC) last revision: Carrite (talk) 18:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

If you're honestly care about it, WP:BEFORE was not ignored. It may be the case that this or that article ultimately comes out not to be deleted, but it will not be more likely to happen in my nominations than in it is in general. --Damiens.rf 19:11, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

• Non-admin comment. I'm all for discussing it at the pump, but for the record I agree with Postdlf's logic. AfD's should be limited to a more manageable number per day, although discussion on an AfD is fine. Crisco 1492 (talk) 09:54, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I've been looking in to related occurrences since one of Mhiji's incidents in January. Most of these occurrences are used as a form of mass disruption of Wikipedia and some of these have been done by technically sophisticated users. For example; Wuhwuzdat's hacking of the Twinkle blacklist and Mhiji's use of an unauthorized bot (possibly a hacked version of AWB). Many use sockpuppets to perform mass disruption such as Claritas' mass AfDs of transformer characters last year. These are often done in the guise of helping the project but are actually just a different form of vandalism that uses up our limited resources. It's clear that we need to address this mass disruption some how. I requested a few edit filters a couple weeks ago. I'm not sure if what I requested is possible though. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 18:04, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Move war over typography of en dash versus hyphen

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

---

A long-stalled requested move with no consensus was closed today as "move" by a non-admin, at Battles of the Mexican–American War. Since that time we've been having a bit of a back and forth by involved editors on both sides (myself included), as it is such an obvious travesty to claim that there was a consensus for a move in this case, and the guy who closed it somehow dismissed all the arguments about keeping it with the three-year-stable consensus as trivial. Now what happens? I thought old stalled RMs would just fade away, but if they hang around until someone jumps in and takes sides this way, where is the integrity of the process? Dicklyon (talk) 05:35, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

The hyphen–en-dash war still rages, I see. I'm assuming no one followed up on the binding RfC suggestion that came up during the last WP:AN go-round? 28bytes (talk) 05:47, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

The proposal has been batted around some more, but I haven't been told what it means, so am not so comfortable saying yes to it, and PMAnderson has pretty much said no anyway. It seemed for a while that we were discussing things rationally, but then we went back to calling me and Tony and Noetica and anyone else who disagreed with him liers and out to destroy wikipedia. He seems out to destroy the MOS; so it's a bit of a stalemate. And of course, it can be written off as trivial, as it is by many who don't care about typography, but for those who care it seems worth fighting for, as you've probably noticed. Dicklyon (talk) 05:54, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, it is trivial in the grand scheme of things (and I've no doubt another dozen people will chime in here to repeat that point), but it also needs to get resolved one way or another or else we're going to be seeing this pop up again and again on the noticeboards until the end of time. Am I correct in assuming that the hyphen-dash battle has largely been settled except for articles/categories/templates associated with the Mexican American war? 28bytes (talk) 06:00, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

It would have been better if the decision whether the page was moved had been made by an admin who was not involved in any of the many hyphen disputes. The move was actually made by User:Born2cycle, who appeared to be a neutral person (he had not made a posting either way on Talk:Battles of the Mexican–American War).

Supporters of the dash immediately attacked the move, assuming bad faith:

• Claiming that Born2cycle's assessment was "clearly prejudiced in favour of one side against the other"
• Claiming that an IP editor who made a posting should not have been counted as: "It could easily be one of the named supporters coming in anonymously."

It is of course true that there is no consensus either way. Of 14 editors who have expressed an opinion so far:

• 8 favour the hyphen: CWenger, Toddy1, Septentrionalis/PMAnderson, Ucucha, 65.93.12.101, Enric Naval, Fut.Perf, User:Born2cycle
• 6 favour the dash: kwami, McLerristarr/Mclay1, Tony, Noetica, Dicklyon, ErikHaugen

--Toddy1 (talk) 06:06, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Why are you counting the guy who closed it, User:Born2cycle? Oh, right, he did say the arguments against were all worthless. Also, the guy who did the speedy delete and the move was an admin, but not an uninvolved admin; User:Jonathunder was a supporter of Septentrionalis/PMAnderson's previous RM of Mexican–American War to the hyphen, with the brilliant analysis "per Septentrionalis". Is there anyone who has not misbehaved a bit here? Dicklyon (talk) 07:21, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Don't mean to rudely break in here, but I'd like to express my strong opposition to the dash, and extreme support for the hyphen as a supplement to to the "vote count" above. I'd also like to suggest conclusive discussion take place on who will fix the horrible inconsistency messes made thereby. A similar debacle took place about dashes, hyphens, etc. in cancer articles (several times) in recent months, during which I came completely unglued out of sheer frustration and was nearly permanently imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay over it. We have literally many hundreds of improper, "against-consensus" moves and changes made to dozens and dozens of cancer articles, which no one has cleaned up to this day. Time to triple my hypertension medications again. Grrrrr. Regards:Cliff L. Knickerbocker, MS (talk) 11:39, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I'll say what I've said before: we need to decide as a community (1) whether we want to have a Wikipedia MOS or if we should simply adopt the various MOS's of the primary sources used for our articles, (2) whether TITLE is supposed to cover style and formatting or just cover terminology, and (3) more specifically, do we want to restrict disjunctive en dashes to numeric ranges, as some style guides do, to geographic or temporal ranges, as other style guides do, to terms named after more than one person, as still other style guides do, or to use them for disjunctive relations in general, such as wars, borders, and the like. IMO it's a huge waste of time to fight this out on individual articles when one of the main points of the MOS is to avoid such repetitive problems. If we decide we don't want an MOS, then let's scrap the MOS. If we decide that the MOS does not apply to titles, but to content, then let's spell that out at MOS and at TITLE. If we decide that we want to restrict or eliminate en dashes on WP, then let's spell that out in the MOS. But until we do one of those things, as a community and for WP as a whole, then articles should follow the MOS unless there is compelling reason not to, with IDONTLIKEIT not being considered a compelling reason. — kwami (talk) 06:31, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

VERY well said, Kwami (my friend)! I'd put forth these (premature?) votes: (a) consistency is important, so titles and text should be identical; (2) we should adopt the forms most prevalent in the Universal [sic] standards (i.e. for cancer stuff - the International Classification of Diseases and Conditions, the World Health Organization tumor classification schemes, etc.). I would also respectfully request discussing "requirements" for mandating fixes of articles in areas where folks have "changed things around". Lastly, I also now support - as I think Kwami once proposed, and forgive me/correct me if this is incorrect, Kwami - putting the alternate form/forms in the lede. Best regards:Cliff L. Knickerbocker, MS (talk) 12:04, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The RM was closed by an uninvolved editor, while Dickylon, the reverter, was involved in the RM. Could someone please revert the move, warn Dickylon, and warn in the talk page that this shouldn't happen again? --Enric Naval (talk) 07:00, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I already stipulated that I was an involved editor who reverted your revert of Noetica's revert of the improper move. But a warning might be nice so I can be told what I did wrong. One thing is clear: there was no consensus for a move. Another thing is clear: those who argue in favor of the move for consistency, as they guy who closed it did, are clueless about what's going on here, when all the related articles except the one that was improperly moved use the en dash. Dicklyon (talk) 07:09, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Of course I reverted the improper closure of the move by User:Born2cycle. That editor was acting without any right. We should therefore feel free to revert the article to its original state, as equivalent to undoing vandalism: without fear of action against us. Here is relevant policy concerning closure by non-admins (my underlining):

Experienced editors in good standing are allowed to close some requested move surveys.
Non-administrators should restrict themselves to moves:

  • Which result in unanimous or nearly unanimous discussions after a full listing period (seven days);
  • Where there is no contentious debate among participants;
  • Which do not require a history merge or history swap; and
  • Which do not have large numbers of subpages ...
...

For me the four salient points are these (and I have been insisting on such points throughout and attempting to make peace, rather than joining in on the substance of the contested claims in totally inappropriate forums):

1. If there are naming issues specific to the suite of articles concerned with the Mexican~American War, the established mechanism for dealing with them is a multiple move. Any single move is only advertised to the community as that. If by subreption such an RM is successful, it cannot legitimately be parlayed into a multiple move.
2. If the matter concerns interpretation of WP:MOS or WP:TITLE, or the "jurisdiction" of WP:MOS or WP:TITLE, the discussion belongs at WT:MOS, WT:TITLE, or both. Any other way of proceeding must result in prolonged and wasteful turmoil.
3. If it were proper to close such ill-formulated RMs as the one that moved us away from MOS-compliant Mexican–American War by considering that a simple count of votes reveals consensus (perhaps along with a blinkered and unexamined view of the policy issues that I mentioned just now), then the present RM for Battles of the Mexican–American War ought to be dismissed in a consistent way. If "no consensus for change" was a good reason for failing to revert at the first article, why should it not be a good reason to dismiss an RM at the second article? But of course, that's all speculative: those local and limited forums are of course improper for deciding on matters of policy and guidelines, which have very broad consequences for the structure of the whole Project.
4. As I have maintained from the earliest stages, we ought to undo the initial erroneous and biased move, closed by an admin who despite the arguments I clearly laid out for him refused to look at the big picture, or to act in way that would prevent the turmoil that we now see. It is not too late for that to happen; but it would take more far-sighted action than we have yet seen from any admin who has ventured into the matter.

Noetica^Tea? 08:06, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

@Dickylon. Once an article is renamed, it's "child" articles and categories should be also be renamed. That's plain common sense and common practice. Nobody should be forced to endure multiple RM and move-wars just to perform these gnomish moves. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:48, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh, my goodness, not Dickylon has reverted the RM closure, but he has edited the page in purpose to prevent being reverted[3]. Nice non-admin way of having the article locked in your preferred name. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:53, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I am quite sympathetic to Dickylon's argument that this move discussion should have been closed by an uninvolved admin, but "poisoning" the redirect to lock in one's preferred title strikes me as indisputably disruptive. The back-and-forth page moves should be stopped, but this is not an appropriate way to accomplish that. 28bytes (talk) 12:49, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Are you saying that stopping the edit war at the status quo condition this way was more, or less, disruptive than having an involved admin speedy and move it to start the war, as User:Jonathunder did, after we requested a hold on the speedy? Anyway, my argument with the closer had nothing to do with him being an admin or not; it was just wrong to claim consensus when there clearly was not, and he clearly had not even begun to understand the issues being debated. Dicklyon (talk) 18:55, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

After spending much of the day trying to get you to explain what you think the issues are, it's clear you don't understand what they are yourself, as the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:MOS#Any_problem_with_using_hyphens_and_never_dashes_in_titles.3F clearly shows. --Born2cycle (talk) 05:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: I'm not interested in ranking the various disruptive activities, I'm just pointing out that making a meaningless edit to a redirect to prevent non-admins from moving a page is the wrong way to handle things. If a page needs to be move-protected, request that at WP:RFPP. Exploiting a software bug/feature as a backdoor way to enforce move protection is gaming the system, in my view. 28bytes (talk) 17:21, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Failure of binding RfC proposal

The last AN proposed a binding RfC. Unfortunately the binding RfC is being rejected (and one of the accepters won't agree to be binded by the results), and one of the rejectors has even asked for a topic ban of the proposer. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:48, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

It's just a mess at the moment. Proposing a binding RfC was one of the few positive suggestions to come out of that discussion. I'm at a loss, and really a bit dejected by how requests for help are being received at AN/I. -- Avanu (talk) 10:54, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Dickylon, Noetica, Tony1 and PMAnderson should clean their act soon and abide to a binding RfC. If they refuse, the only remaining solution will be dragging them to Arbcomm for harsh measures. --Enric Naval (talk) 13:15, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh, do include Kwamikagami, who has been equally irrational, and began the current flurry by demanding that Mexican-American War be moved back after its first RM was closed.

For my part, I would now agree to a topic ban for all five of us; I have better things to do than engage in a battleground in which tactics like this are routine. Noetica and Dicklyon are acting in evident bad faith; if, as seems to be the case, nobody but Tony and Kwami share their preferences, somebody else will be along to clean this mess up and English this article.

In the meantime, some admin should close the actual, and still outstanding, move request. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:19, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Pmanderson agrees to a binding RfC but says "I do not agree to be bound without consensus." I feel similarly, which is why I haven't agreed; I'm all for an RfC to see if consensus emerges, but a precommitment to make it binding means what? Can you show an example of a process called "binding RfC" that we can review to see what is meant? Dicklyon (talk) 18:43, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

My initial thought (and others may have better ideas) would be to first determine what questions need to be answered by the RfC. For example, "to what degree, if any, should the formatting used by reliable sources influence the title formatting used by Wikipedia?" and "should all the pages (e.g. articles, categories, etc.) related to a single topic (e.g. the Mexican American War) use the same punctuation (e.g. hyphen or dash), or can they vary on a page-by-page basis?" I think a key element to doing this right is for both sides to agree upon a clerk, probably an admin, who is both neutral in the dispute and knowledgeable about the issues (i.e. familiar with style issues and knows what the typographic differences are, why it's Franco-Prussian War but Iran–Iraq War, etc.) Are there any admins you, Pmanderson and the other interested parties consider both neutral and knowledgeable? 28bytes (talk) 19:07, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Statement from Born2cycle

• Every now and then when the backlog at WP:RM is particularly out of control, I and several other non-admins try to help out. There is nothing unprecedented about non-admins closing WP:RM discussions, including controversial ones.
• I've closed numerous WP:RM discussions in the past, many of which were controversial. I've been asked to not close discussions in areas where I have been involved. This hyphen/dash issue is one about which I was neutral, having no opinion on the matter when I first start reading the discussion in question.
• The guideline advising non-admins to not close controversial discussions does not seem to be especially adhered to or enforced, with the apparent unstated view that non-admins with WP:RM experience and a solid understanding of the underlying policies, guidelines and conventions are generally exempt, with everyone understanding that any controversial non-admin closure is vulnerable to appeal to an admin. But simply reverting the move is taking that to another level, resulting in a move war. The normal course is that, when appealed at WT:RM or here, an uninvolved admin reviews the work of the uninvolved non-admin, and either affirms or reverses the decision, which, as far as I can tell, is what still needs to happen here.
• I stand by my closing decision [4]. Other arguments have been made on my talk page and above in opposition to the move, but I went by the arguments presented in the discussion that is over a month old, and, of those, I found the support side to be grounded in policy, guidelines and conventions clearly better than the opposition. Since my closing decision has been reverted, this is what I originally wrote:

The result of the move request was: move. I'm not an admin, but at least one admin has looked at this and refused to deal with it. It has been festering for over a month, I've closed RM decisions before, I've never been involved in a dash-hyphen decision, and, so, I'm boldly going for this one. If anyone thinks this is important enough to appeal to ANI, good luck. So, here it goes... On the support side I am persuaded by these points: 1) consistent with usage in most reliable sources , 2) consistent with other articles, namely Mexican-American War, and 3) per WP:COMMONNAME. On the oppose side the argument, as I understand it, is that the hyphen does not imply the juxtaposition that is supposed to be conveyed, and an n-dash would. I find that argument to be at least mostly hokum. Even if there is some truth to it, it's not consistently reflected in serious reliable sources, so I see no reason for Wikipedia to sweat over it. As to the style guide, there appears to be no consensus to follow the ndash guidance, if that's even what it says to do here. Finding no compelling reason in opposition to the move, and three good reasons to move it, my decision is to move. Born2cycle (talk) 22:53, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

--Born2cycle (talk) 16:01, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I accept that you acted in good faith, but you're clueless on the points being debated. On the points that persuade you, (1) the common usages are not in the context of works that have an MOS similar to ours, so don't provide an input to the style issue; (2) consistent with other articles is only true for the singular; it is inconsistent with all the rest; (3) WP:COMMONNAME is not violated by calling it the Mexican–American War with good typography. You find the argument about how the en dash signifies meaning to be "mostly hokum"; so defer to those who understand en dash usage, rather than those who are out to stamp it out. It IS reflected in reliable sources that were pointed out. Finding "no compelling reason in opposition" is an affront to those who respect the MOS and decent typography, and who are trying to defend the style against the unschooled Visigoths and Huns. Dicklyon (talk) 18:49, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

(1) Our MOS should not be based on WP:OR; if the style it espouses is contrary to that commonly used in reliable sources, well, let's just say that obvious room for improvement in the MOS. (2) This article is a sub-article of a parent article - it should follow the usage in that article. I don't know what you mean by "all the rest". How are they more relevant to this issue than usage in the title of this article's parent? (3) I reject the notion of "good" typography, at least in the context of dash vs. hyphen. There is no good/correct bad/incorrect choice for this issue. There is however more likely to be found in reliable sources, and more likely to typed in the search box; on both counts the hyphen is favored, as far as I can tell. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:58, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Request of 1RR and strict WP:BRD at Mexican-American War article

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Request withdrawn by Avanu

In an effort to encourage resolution of the dispute over whether to use a dash or hyphen, I would like to request that an Administrator institute a 1-month temporary 1RR and strict WP:BRD rule for the Article and Talk page at Mexican-American War. Please do not do this in an effort to punish any of the editors, as it appears that all are trying to act in Good Faith. As an alternative or addition to this proposal, if an Administrator would like to take an active role in assisting these editors to come to a consensus, it would be helpful. I appreciate your thoughtful attention to this matter. Thank you. -- Avanu (talk) 07:18, 3 May 2011 (UTC) This was already discussed at length fairly recently on WP:AN: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive222#Topic ban proposal concerning the lame "Mexican-American War" hyphen/en-dash dispute. Mathsci (talk) 07:48, 3 May 2011 (UTC) No, it wasn't. I'd really just prefer admin commentary on this, a simple yes or no will suffice, but I really don't want this to turn into another off-topic thread. -- Avanu (talk) 07:50, 3 May 2011 (UTC) Exactly this topic was discussed, although different proposals were made there. A separate thread here, extremely closely related to the previous thread, does not seem wise. Mathsci (talk) 08:01, 3 May 2011 (UTC) Different proposal, different reasons, different time. Could we please leave this to an admin decision rather than extend this little argument? -- Avanu (talk) 08:05, 3 May 2011 (UTC) Avanu, you haven't even given a description with diffs of what you think is going on in edits to the article at present. If you expect any administrator to intervene or even comment, please do so. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 08:09, 3 May 2011 (UTC) Its about a simple request, this is the place listed for such requests. "This page is for reporting and discussing incidents on the English Wikipedia that require the intervention of administrators." Closing and moving due to off-topic commentary. -- Avanu (talk) 08:19, 3 May 2011 (UTC) Please leave this archiving to somebody uninvolved. Mathsci (talk) 08:22, 3 May 2011 (UTC) Please, I have now asked you 4 times to leave it for an admin. I'm not sure why you keep insisting on this, but could you please just let this alone so an admin can review and stop micromanaging it? Thank you. -- Avanu (talk) 08:25, 3 May 2011 (UTC) Anybody can comment on this noticeboard. I have no idea why you referred to the link to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive222#Topic ban proposal concerning the lame "Mexican-American War" hyphen/en-dash dispute as being off-topic. Please calm down. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 08:35, 3 May 2011 (UTC) It's just another of these extremely lame, petty, pedantic debates that have nothing whatsoever to do with helping the wikipedia readers in any way, shape or form. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 09:17, 3 May 2011 (UTC) FWIW, Avanu has taken this to WQA too: Wikipedia:Wikiquette_alerts#User:Mathsci_disruptive_editing_on_AN.2FI William M. Connolley (talk) 09:27, 3 May 2011 (UTC) No, I didn't, I took the issue of Mathsci's behavior there. The substance of the AN/I request has nothing to do with that, and I *tried* to just close this. I am at a loss at this point. You guys have taken a little request and its really pointless now. -- Avanu (talk) 09:30, 3 May 2011 (UTC) I'll say here what I've said elsewhere about this topic. Ignore it. If someone wants to move it from a hyphen to an n-dash, let them do it. If they want to move it from an n-dash to a hyphen, let them do it. It doesn't matter. Either way, the readers can find it just as easily in the search window, and that's what matters. Some things are worth fighting about. This isn't. It's a total waste of everyone's time. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 09:45, 3 May 2011 (UTC) I really have no view at all on this matter. Whenever I have created an article in mathematics with a hyphenated title, User:Michael Hardy will correct it to whatever it is supposed to be. Slightly more complicated and harder to remember is how to put a minus sign in plain text (the length and the spaces) ... now I hardly dare look at the article on my home town Aix-en-Provence :) Mathsci (talk) 09:55, 3 May 2011 (UTC) In looking at this a week or two ago when the subject last came up, I became aware that the real problem is that the rules are not sufficiently defined. For example, there's usually not much trouble with when to capitalize or not, as that rule is pretty clear. But the hyphens and n-dashes rules are just too vague, too obscure; and that's why there is constant battling over them. I recall there were two different users who interpreted the rules two different ways. How do you fix that? By fixing the rules. If the rules were clear, the amount of debate would be almost zero. In fact, I would say that a significant quantity of the battles at wikipedia are centered on unclear rules and guidelines. That's what needs fixing - not any particular article's hyphens or n-dashes. Fix the rules, and the hyphens and n-dashes will "take care of themselves". Your comment about Michael Hardy, who I assume is a true expert on the matter, gives me an idea: How about having some sort of committee of experts to turn to, on matters of this nature, i.e. "syntax" questions? They could help define the rules better and uniformly, and apply uniform standards. We've got a user named Cuddlyable3 who is an English syntax expert and could probably help on this if he were willing. Not me, for sure. I don't know enough about it. But these battles over technicalities do not serve wikipedia's best interests, as I see it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:01, 3 May 2011 (UTC) I'm willing to help. A "simple" attributive compound is written with a hyphen. A dash is used differently and is not to be confused with Hyphen or Minus sign. Conclusion: Mexican(hyphen)American War is correct English. Comment: the editing summary for this change to en dashes argues for intra-article consistency which is only a circumstantial claim, see WP:OSE. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 11:27, 3 May 2011 (UTC) Comment I would have thought you guys would have been embarrassed enough to have even one AN/I thread on such a lame issue, let alone two AN/I threads and a WQA thread...sheesh.... DeCausa (talk) 10:04, 3 May 2011 (UTC) This is why I didn't want the distracting non-admin comments. My thread (which I would prefer to drop entirely now) is based on a 3 day timeline that we discussed in the Talk page of the Mex-Am War article. It has NO relation to the other thread and really just needs a yes or no from an admin. But really, just drop it, ok? Please. -- Avanu (talk) 10:08, 3 May 2011 (UTC) =WP:OWN DeCausa (talk) 10:11, 3 May 2011 (UTC) WP:OWN applies primarily to articles, this is not a Wikipedia article page, it is a page for "reporting and discussing incidents on the English Wikipedia that require the intervention of administrators". I *specifically* asked that this be left to the admins, and rather than simply honor my request in a WP:CIVIL fashion, its turned into this. -- Avanu (talk) 10:16, 3 May 2011 (UTC) You don't get to say who posts messages on an AN/I thread. So drop the ownership (and last word) syndromes. DeCausa (talk) 10:20, 3 May 2011 (UTC) {ec} Avanu, just to make it clear - anyone can comment in a thread on this board, and no-one can tell other editors not to comment. Elen of the Roads (talk) 10:22, 3 May 2011 (UTC) DeCausa, it seems like circumstances prove you more than right. I was only asking for some courtesy, it is certainly not an obligation on anyone's part to grant that. -- Avanu (talk) 10:24, 3 May 2011 (UTC) ...you've been given good advice from William M. Connelly on the WQA thread. DeCausa (talk) 10:30, 3 May 2011 (UTC) Comment I have no idea if an actual admin has commented yet, but you've managed to take a polite, simple request for a gentle, thoughtful intervention and turn it into a war on me. I realize I'm not entitled to ask for cooperation, civility, and courtesy. These things are luxuries at times. But the last thing I wanted was for this to become a messy debate of this sort. In the future, I'll take some time to independently find an admin whose record shows that they are supportive and considerate, and simply avoid this page altogether. I know a lot of my fellow editors try to help, and believe me, I appreciate that, but like it or not, this page is supposed to primarily be for asking Admins to intervene. I don't understand when people *insist* on derailing a request like what has been done here. -- Avanu (talk) 10:39, 3 May 2011 (UTC) An admin (and member of ArbCom I believe) has commented. Draw your own conclusions. DeCausa (talk) 10:41, 3 May 2011 (UTC) Hyphen vs. En-Dash Where can we go to get the ball rolling on the idea of having a committee to decide these silly battles instead of everybody-and-his-mother getting involved? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:45, 3 May 2011 (UTC) When people write articles, they are meant to provide reliable sources - especially for contentious material. Reliable sources concerning correct punctuation are available in the form of (1) good style guides (2) reputable books on how to write English (3) reference to examples of how good quality publishers do it. English language Wikipedia should be written in English, not a new variant of English invented by some editors. On matters of English grammar, it would be better if the Manual of Style were based on reliable sources, rather than the opinions of editors.--Toddy1 (talk) 12:15, 3 May 2011 (UTC) If the MOS were clear, we wouldn't be having these debates, now would we? How often do you see a debate about capitalization rules? Almost never, and certainly not here. The trouble is that the MOS rules about hyphens and dashes are clearly not good enough for the average editor to figure out. If we had some expertise in the area, maybe these battles would go away. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:25, 3 May 2011 (UTC) Yeah, the problem is that even manuals disagree on hyphens vs. dashes, so we're never going to get a definitive answer that way. It'll probably take an ArbCom ruling to get this nonsense stopped. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 12:33, 3 May 2011 (UTC) Then this will continue until or if someone decides they've had enough of it. That does not speak well for wikipedia. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:13, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Avanu has withdrawn his request for admin assistance. In the absence of an outstanding request there is no reason to re-litigate the hyphen-dash battle here. 28bytes (talk) 13:01, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

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

He doesn't own this section, and neither do you. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:14, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

If you want the admins to do something, say so. If not, let this die. This is already being discussed, more constructively, in a thread directly above. 28bytes (talk) 13:32, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

The answer, apparently, is that nothing is going to be done about this ridiculous hyphen/dash issue. So dat's dat. P.S. It was not your place to close this discussion, unless you've suddenly become an admin and didn't tell us. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:22, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, I think something will end up being done, hopefully via an RfC. And I'm pretty confident that consensus supports anyone, not just admins, closing threads that have run their course. But if an admin decides to re-open it, I obviously won't revert them. 28bytes (talk) 14:36, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

How will we find out if such an RFC is created? Will it be annnounced here? As far as closing, you weren't even in on the discussion. However, the one user implicitly closed it by expressing that there is no clear solution. I find that astonishing, but whatever. The hyphen/dash fanatics need to figure out ONE SET OF RULES and stick with them. From what I saw the last time, it may be hopeless. But we'll see. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:42, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

If an RfC is started (see above section), I promise to announce it here if no one beats me to it. 28bytes (talk) 19:09, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

RfC

Given the protracted nature of this and similar MOS-related disputes, I have started a RfC on whether Wikipedia should have its own MOS or follow that of its sources instead. I've added it to WP:CENT to get a wider consensus. It may be worthwhile to put it on watchlist notice as well, but let's get some initial feedback before we do that. Tijfo098 (talk) 20:32, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Not surprisingly, as phrased, the question mostly evoked an "of course we should have an MOS" reaction. I think it would be possible to phrase some questions that would get at people's actual issues and concerns. Things like should each project be free to specify variations from MOS for their areas (like the Wikipedia:WikiProject New York City Public Transportation people did when they decided to capitalize Subway in New York City Subway even though there not a bit of support in sources for that being a proper name). Or maybe the MOS would list a menu of options that the projects could choose from, so we could get to a chemistry MOS and a military history MOS, etc. Clearly, the military history field uses en dash a lot less than the technical fields do, so maybe they should be able to get their own MOS to reflect that, and maintain some sort of regional or project consistency. Like the birders get to capitalize their bird names. It would not bother me a bit to see the Mexican–American War go back to using the hyphen if they had a military history MOS that they could hack without threatening the core MOS that so many other areas respect and rely on for consistency and best-practice typography. Just "follow that of its sources" is a good principle when there's nothing else specified, but will lead it chaos if it is the general style principle, and will certainly lead to protracted counting arguments in any case. Where do you draw the line? Provide a default guideline to apply except when 67% of sources go the other way? And another tie-breaking process for when it's real close to 67? Xeno won't have it. Basically, without a credible alternative, proposing to do without an MOS is a non-starter; or a troll to invite some of the flames you're getting there. Actually, since we have precedents for projects overturning MOS aspects that they don't like, why are we even here? Dicklyon (talk) 06:11, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

We had to find out if people really wanted WP:MOS gone. Apparently not even User:Pmanderson truly wants that, so we can move to more topical questions. Tijfo098 (talk) 00:51, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

It's a DASH, FFS

Does this dash affect a reader's ability to comprehend the information presented in the affected article(s)? Because I think the answer is no. And anyone who continues to edit/move war over these silly dashes needs to either get a sanity check or just stop editing altogether. This WP:LAME territory. No one will die if the MOS is "wrong" or not followed in a few articles. We should be focusing on writing and developing those articles, not disputing some silly dashes. The next time I see a dispute about endashes v. hyphens, I will have to restrain myself from blocking everyone involved and deleting the main page, because it will certainly spell the demise of what is actually important on Wikipedia. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 00:37, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

A suggestion. If you feel this is 'lame', move on and explore other topics. Grammar and copy editing have an important place. Its a little uncivil to be this dismissive with a group of editors who are doing their best to improve the encyclopedia in this area. As BaseballBugs explained, the real problem is a lack of clear rules for this. Without a clear guideline, these editors end up circling one another, both armed with reliable sources that support their positions. To me, the real nonsense is that so many of you aren't working on helping these editors, but are sitting on the sidelines sniping at them. How about some positive suggestions and ideas instead? -- Avanu (talk) 11:46, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I think this may reflect the feelings of a growing number of us who have been watching this nonsense from the sidelines. At least it does for me.Heiro 00:50, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

If you're curious, I tried hard to find some descriptive accounts of how often en dashes are actually used instead of hyphens, to improve our article on dash. I wasn't able to find much, applied/field linguists seem to only care about the distinction between the en-dash/hyphen (as a group) and the noticeably longer em dash. Tijfo098 (talk) 03:27, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry to ruin your fun, Fetchcomms, but... [[5]] lifebaka++ 03:53, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Don't worry, I know how to do it (theoretically). /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 04:58, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Yup. It is a non-argument about an imaginary difference. If readers cannot tell one from the other there is no difference. Communication involves the exchange of information, not just its transmission. I propose an indefinite topic ban regarding all articles including any hyphen, en-dash, em-dash, or similar horizontal line, on anyone who thinks it actually matters. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:55, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Yup. It is a non-argument about an imaginary difference that has somehow not managed to impede the writing of the 'pedia for how many years now? The fact its caused such as fuss lately, with multiple acrimonious threads over so many notice, watch and talk pages has to be the WP:LAMEst thing I've seen here so far. I can't wait for Coco, Colbert and Stewart to notice (why they haven't yet is beyond me), we're going to look like a bunch of pedantic jerkoffs, even worse than normal. If we want to be taken seriously, we have to take ourselves seriously, ( or maybe stop taking ourselves so effin seriously, depends on which side of the emdash debate you've been on so far ). Heiro 04:17, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Certainly nobody would be unhappy, offended, or inconvenienced if those who can't see the difference would just not go around changing them, and would refrain from posting noise into the discussions among those who can. Dicklyon (talk) 04:19, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

If you think that this otherwise imperceptible difference is so important, I suggest you create your own fork of Wikipedia, and continue your meaningless battles there, so the rest of us don't have to put up with the 'noise' of your infantile squabble. Some of us are trying to do something useful... AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:30, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

As someone else who has been watching this from afar, all I can say is that this is beyond lame, it's gone off the edge into the void. Infantile squabble barely covers it. Someone needs to wade in and start handing out topic bans asap. Starting with anyone who edit wars in the name of some typographic/MOS god. RxS (talk) 04:39, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Andy, the mere fact that you can't see differences is no warrant for insisting that they are not there. That attitude is typical of religious dogmatism, not of rational discussion. The mere fact that you can't see the point of a battle is no warrant for declaring it an "infantile squabble". That attitude is similarly unworthy. Dicklyon, Tony, Kwami, myself, and many others (who are less tenacious than we are in the fight against anti-MOS chaos) are not preventing you from doing something useful. We do useful things too, according to our best understanding of the needs of a multi-million-article encyclopedia. So go: ignore us, and I for one will ignore you in return. Fair deal? (Same for you, RxS.) Noetica^Tea? 04:45, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Anti-MOS chaos...lol. My face just melted. I'm happy to ignore you. RxS (talk) 04:48, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

O, I forgot to add, RxS: a laugh is not an argument, any more than a scowl or a florid insult is. Now, can we ignore each other with somewhat fewer words? ☺ Noetica^Tea? 04:53, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not arguing, I'm laughing. RxS (talk) 05:07, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Lol indeed RxS... If you use an en-dash instead of a hyphen the sky will fall in. Use an em-dash instead and the universe will implode with indignation. The universe began with a bang, and will end with a misplaced - AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:55, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

"Do not be arrogant in one's claims or beliefs: And pursue not that of which thou hast no knowledge; ..." Now, where did I read that? Andy, you can stop any time you like. We'll go on caring about guidelines and standards for the quality of Wikipedia articles, and you can get on with working on whatever you care about. Noetica^Tea? 05:04, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

"according to our best understanding of the needs of a multi-million-article encyclopedia"—sorry, I didn't realize that one of Wikipedia's needs was a bunch of users fighting over the length of a one-byte horizontal line. The fact that people don't see how puerile and laughable this dispute is, but rather claim it is useful, simply reinforces my view that Wikipedia is nearing its demise. So arguing is useful? So not developing content is useful? So wasting countless hours on hyphens v. dashes is USEFUL??? wtf. It's a few fucking pixels. Get the hell over it. Kthxbai. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 04:58, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Fetchcomms, it is not the defenders of WP:MOS guidelines who cause the problem. Do you blame firefighters when there is a fire? A full stop is also one byte. If people insisted on omitting it, would your attitude be the same? Step back, think, read, learn – and comment when you understand. Noetica^Tea? 05:04, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

It takes two to tango. If the firefighter contributed to the fire, then, yes, he/she would be partly to blame. I don't care which side is "right" or whether you are a "defender" of the MOS. You should instead be a builder of our content instead of mindlessly arguing with the fire or the attackers or whatever you wish to call them. Step back, think, read—does omitting a full stop affect readability? Yes. Does changing an endash to a hyphen affect it? No, unless you're a nitpicky linguist or grammarian; note how many (if not most) publications use " - " over " – " and no one complains. If I were you, I'd comment when you open your eyes and realize, "Hey, it's actually not that big of a deal which horizontal line I use"". /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 05:27, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I have a hard time understanding people who take sides in an argument with a justification of "it's not that big of a deal". If it's not a big deal to you, maybe you need to stay out of it. Trying to subvert and tear down this aspect of the MOS has been a very big deal for Pmanderson, for a long time now, and some of us would rather see the MOS protected. OK, not as big a deal as some things, but not something you're going to talk us out of by saying that to you it's not a big deal. Work on things you care about, and let us do that, too. Dicklyon (talk) 05:40, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

You're misunderstanding my point. Many things are "big deals" to me, but if it's constantly causing disputes and wasting others' time (like that of admins patrolling this noticeboard), then maybe I need to think whether it's really worth spending time arguing over. Same applies here. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 16:48, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Does "proper" spelling, capitalization, or italics serve any major function? No. we could allow common mispellings, never capitolize any-thing, and not Italisize book titles, & the avverage reader would be able to reed our articles just fine. We dont do that because we're trying to appear profesional. Style and formating are importent in that reguard, which is why we have style guides to begin with. If I went around reverting the spelling bots because correct spelling is "stupid" (and I can back up that opinion with all manner of RS's, including Shakespeare), should the rest of you just yawn over my lame edit war and go on to do more important things? So much easier for everyone if poor spellers allowed the bots, or other editors, to clean up their poor spelling without making melodramatic claims of sabotage. We should decide which style guidelines we want for WP at the MOS. We should then implement the MOS without temper tantrums. If we decide as a community that we don't like the results, then we change the MOS. — kwami (talk) 05:05, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

It affects readability, which is what I and others have been saying this whole time. If multiple words in a sentence were mispelled, such as in your example, then it would distract the reader. Given that most readers don't pay attention to or even know the difference between an endash and a hyphen, much less when they should/should not be used, this would not affect readability in any manner similar to that of constant misspellings. So your comparison is quite faulty. We have style guides, not style must-follow-and-not-stop-until-I-prove-I'm-right-or-the-world-will-end laws. I agree we should implement the MOS without temper tantrums. As is quite clear, that's not happening any time soon due to a few users' militant stances on hyphens v. endashes. So the easy solution is to ignore it and write the articles. Some inconsistencies never killed anyone; we have British English and American English spellings mixed all over our articles, for heaven's sake. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 05:27, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

We were doing just fine implementing the MOS until Pmanderson came along and started attacking en dashes. Wouldn't a good fix be to ask him to stop that, and go back to the long-stable and consistent versions that conform to the MOS? Dicklyon (talk) 05:37, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

But this is English-language Wikipedia; it should therefore be written in proper grammatical English. Correct English grammar is to use a hyphen. (See for example: The complete plain words, by E Gowers, 3rd edition revised b S Greenbaum and J Whitcut, Penguin, 1987.)

I am aware that some editors believe they know better than published reliable sources on English grammar. These editors should write a book on grammar espousing their new rules of English grammar, and then try to get it published. Wikipedia is not the right place for innovations in English grammar.--Toddy1 (talk) 11:27, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Dicklyon, if you want him blocked, could you just say that? Because then someone would direct you to ArbCom or RfC/U, which are the correct venues for dealing with user conduct issues. My point is simply that continued bickering over dashes is unhelpful if no one actually bothers with pursuing dispute resolution pathways. Toddy1, yes, it should be written in proper English—now I could start a whole thread about how there are more US readers of WP so we should stick to consistent American English spellings, but what's wrong if it's not consistent? What's wrong if there are hyphens instead of dashes in a few articles? Is it worth spending hours arguing over? What I see are two sides refusing to give in because they each believe they are "right". What I don't see is people realizing that writing the encyclopedia is much more useful that fixing a few minor details (dashes) that do not affect readability. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 16:48, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposal That Fontpedia be established, wherein all manner of minor typographical flourishes shall be expected to be complied with in each and every article, including true proportional spacing and justification, so that those who do a print-screen will get fully Linotype-equivalent results. And that all here who go around making such trivial changes be encouraged to go to that new project. Collect (talk) 11:00, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Respectfully strongly disagree with this - while many folks may feel the dash-hyphen etc. war is silly, some of us take it VERY seriously. For example, my friend Kwami and I - we have butted heads on this like crazy, despite both of us just wanting to do what is right. One mans trash is another mans treasure. Regards:Cliff L. Knickerbocker, MS (talk) 12:04, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, can you explain why this is so serious? I don't recall anyone dying over dashes. WP:LAME territory, again. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 16:48, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposal Topic ban all involved editors. Beyond lame. Irrelevant, pointless disruption. It just doesn't matter. DeCausa (talk) 11:37, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Again, respectfully strongly disagree with this proposal, except in cases where people do moves and changes against consensus after being warned. Regards:Cliff L. Knickerbocker, MS (talk) 12:04, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

• This has got beyond ridiculous. My suggestion would be a one-week block for the next editor who makes an edit changing a horizontal line on this article or who attempts to change the rules regarding horizontal lines of varying length on any policy or guideline without a clear consensus on the talk page first. Failing that, then I suggest community-based discretionary snactions, similar to those for abortion topics. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:02, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

If I can throw in my non-admin opinion on this, I have to agree. I've been reading the thread as it's spiraled out of control, and it's over something that I would say 90-95% of the editors and readers of the article don't even notice, or CARE about. This has gone way past lame, it's stupid at this point. Everyone (including myself) needs to put down the WP:STICK, walk away and go on to more productive things, like fixing REAL problems in article, reverting vandalism, creating new article etc. Wildthing61476 (talk) 12:06, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

If I may simply say: I told you so. I reiterate the topic ban proposal made at that link.  Sandstein  15:35, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

It's disappointing to see spurning of the micro aspects of professionally written text—not by engagement with the technical issues, but with an apparently resentful edge in which words such as "fuck" and "hell" are pressed into service. Someone above said, "most readers don't pay attention to or even know the difference between an endash and a hyphen"; but most readers (and editors) don't notice many aspects of poor flow or fluffy expression either. That doesn't mean we should denigrate those who improve it. Professional typography does convey meaning to readers who could not give you a precise definition of the role of such items as hyphens, en dashes, and ellipsis points (like me, a few years ago). Editors are not denigrated for using typography wrongly, and their work is often tweaked by good citizens on their behalf. Typography, and Mexican–American War in particular, have been used as a rallying point by someone who has been trying to run down the notion of the coordinated style guidance that every other serious publisher has; this has involved continual low-level incivility (and some not so low-level) towards editors who disagree. In this league are comments here such as "You should instead be a builder of our content instead of mindlessly arguing", made to professional writers who, like all of us, volunteer their labour. Above all, ANI is not the proper place to decide matters of style: that is what the style-guide talk pages are for, so that articles themselves can remain free of bickering and tussling. Advertise threads widely, but keep them in the right place, and remonstrate with the administrator who escalated the whole thing by prematurely intervening to create an unfortunate mess, in the process breaking the fundamental policies WP:UNINVOLVED and WP:TITLE. I would love to see involved editors all agree to stay away from the article in question: leave it be. However, Sandstein, bans and blocks without further cause would be hugely out of proportion—the kind of gung-ho action that makes good editors leave WP. That is all I have to say here. Thank you. Tony (talk) 16:33, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm all for using the right horizontal line. But when it takes hours and hours of bickering and arguments to use the right horizontal line, it's turned into simply a triviality that we don't need to be spending time on. If your car had one speck of dirt that you just couldn't get out, regardless of how many hours you scrubbed it, would you go on for ever and ever trying to get it out? Unless your life depends on having a spotless car, who would notice or care? After a while, it becomes silly. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 16:48, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Tony, I have to point out that volunteering one's time and effort to argue over dashes comes off as rather silly to me. Again, if an agreement cannot be reached, then is this really worth arguing over? Can anyone just tell me what compels him/her to try and get everything so perfect? By all means, there are thousands of non-professional-level Wikipedia articles bearing much more egregious MOS violations. Should those be ignored for the sake of more minor "violations", such as horizontal lines? /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 16:52, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I could really do without your calling me "silly". It's uncivil, although not as plain offensive as the post immediately below. I hope those comments don't rule the roost here. Tony (talk) 17:20, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

IMO, people that edit war over trivial shit like this are not good editors, so bans and blocks will not drive anyone worthwhile away. Tarc (talk) 16:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Agree with Fetchcomms. An arbitration called "dashes" a few years after "date delinking" is not something to be proud of; it would be sad if every aspect of MoS ended up with this sort of thing because people are not getting along. Ncmvocalist (talk) 17:13, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

• Support topic ban on all involved editors. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:00, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Sarek, could you point out exactly what policy or guideline I have breached, or why my posts have somehow been disruptive (if you consider me to be "involved")? Tony (talk) 17:20, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

• Tarring all editors with the same brush and banning them all is a tempting, but unhelpful, approach. That's why I think something along the lines of discretionary sanctions is called for. Essentially, that would make it much easier for administrators to block or ban editors behaving in a particularly disruptive manner around the subject of - vs – and those who wish to discuss the matter like adults, as several editors have been doing, can do so unimpeded by the noise generated by others. I'm not a fan of discretionary sanctions, and have been vocally critical of ArbCom's over-reliance on them, but they do have their uses and this seem like one such case. Do i have to bold the word proposal for people to pay attention to this? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:38, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

• What's apparent from this mess of a thread is that there are broadly two groups: on the one hand, the handful of "involved" editors who from their comments have no conception of how clearly ridiculous they are and on the other, everyone else. The involved editors comments make it clear that they believe they are the custodians of the orthographic "truth" and have no intention of giving in to the barbarians at the gates. They are therefore exactly the very last people who should be involved in such an issue, and there is no hope of any sort of resolution while that type of editor remains involved. I'm with Sandstein on this: topic ban all of them. DeCausa (talk) 21:50, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Comments like the one above (and several others in this thread) are not civil or helpful. These editors are working with reliable sources, and genuinely trying to improve Wikipedia, just as many others are. As BaseballBugs explained, the real problem is a lack of clear rules for this. Without a clear guideline, these editors end up circling one another, both armed with reliable sources that support their positions. To me, the real nonsense is that so many of you aren't working on helping these editors, but are sitting on the sidelines sniping at them. How about some positive suggestions and ideas instead? -- Avanu (talk) 21:58, 4 May 2011 (UTC) (repeated part of earlier comment)

I agree. I almost posted a similar complaint myself, actually. It's as though, as a community, we're so afraid of conflict that we're more interested in seeing who we can get blocked, banned, or topic banned, rather then engaging in the issue itself.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:02, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

"Genuinely trying to improve Wikipedia"? No, you are wrong. It doesn't improve Wikipedia, that's the point; it doesn't make a damn bit of difference. The only help these editors need is to be clued to go and do something worthwhile instead of this. DeCausa (talk) 22:07, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

genuinely trying to improve wikipedia no you are wrong it doesnt improve wikipedia thats the point it doesnt make a damn bit of difference the only help these editors need is to be clued to go and do something worthwhile instead of this (So having tried to read your comment without punctuation, do you think it makes a 'damn bit of difference?')

Genuinely, trying to improve wikipedia no? You are wrong it doesnt. Improve wikipedia thats the point, it doesn't. Make a damn bit of difference. The only help these editors need is to be. Clued to go and do something. Worthwhile, instead of this. (So, having tried to read your comment with crazy punctuation, do you think it makes a 'damn bit of difference?')

I hope you see there is a point in striving to do things right. -- Avanu (talk) 22:16, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

No, I dn't get the point. You'll need to explain it. You made a number of orthographical changes to my post to make it less comprehensible. But I didn't use a dash. This is about the length of a dash, and nothing except the length of a dash. If I had used a dash and you had repeated the post with a different length of dash, you would have at least made a point that was relevant to the issue. However, I still would not have given a shit. DeCausa (talk) 22:24, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

OK, how's this? If this topic isn't one you wish to contribute to positively, find another topic. -- Avanu (talk) 22:28, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I think it's a very positive contribution to argue for these editors to be topic banned. Now that would be "genuinely trying to improve Wiipedia".DeCausa (talk) 22:31, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

So, let me get this straight. Because you don't feel that a style issue is important, we should topic ban those who do feel that it's an important issue?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:39, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Er, no. Have you not read this thread? The vanishly small number of people who "care" are vastly outweighed by the WTF point of view. And they should be topic banned not because they think it is important, they should be topic banned because they have turned a very small issue into a whole pile of crap ...and the reason is, I suspect, because they think it is so important. And that's why I said above that they are the very last people that should be involved. DeCausa (talk) 22:46, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

It might be a good idea for you to come and take a look at WT:MOS. Some of the folks involved in this debate are a bit defensive at this point, but many (I'd say most, actually) are not. Trying to topic ban people, at this point, is "pouring gasoline on the fire". It wouldn't be helpful, and would likely cause more harm.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:08, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

So DeCausa, you're saying those people who don't care are the ones who seem to care the most about this (and have subsequently made it into a bigger mess)? -- Avanu (talk) 23:11, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Start an RfC. I've sketched out my ideas for how to get started on laying the groundwork for one elsewhere on this page; if you don't like those ideas, you're welcome to do it differently. You should know by now that starting threads on AN/I isn't going to do anything to solve the problem and is just going to bring out comments denouncing the lameness of all this. 28bytes (talk) 22:06, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

There may not (currently) be an RFC tag on WT:MOS, but what is occurring is effectively the same thing. This AN/I thread is at least drawing in some outside participation, even if it's not the most constructive participation.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:24, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposal

Per the precedent at MOS:CONSISTENCY & MOS:RETAIN*, hyphens and en-dashes should not be changed in an article. When an article has not yet evolved to that point, the variety chosen by the first major contributor should be adopted. Where an article that is not a stub shows no signs of which variety it is written in, the first person to make an edit that disambiguates the variety is equivalent to the first major contributor.

(* I reference MOS:RETAIN because it is a similar situation: RETAIN is about differing English spellings of words, while this is a simple style difference between hyphens and en-dashes. We solved the English problem with RETAIN, and I believe that will be sufficient here as well. People who fight against this would be treated as tendentious editing or disruption, same as with the English language arguments.) — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 17:14, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

• Makes sense to me. This is really one of the pettiest disputes I have ever seen in over seven years on Wikipedia. postdlf (talk) 17:21, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support This is the only thing that does make sense here!   ArcAngel   (talk) ) 17:27, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose as it makes no more sense than saying that other deviations from good grammar should be left alone. Almost all articles are written with just hyphens, since most editors are not in the habit of usage proper typography if they've come up on typewriters or simple word processors. Would you then propose to roll all the progress on typography back to the original poor versions? What's the schedule for conforming an article to the MOS before freezing it? This is not like color vs. colour where there are two equal choices; rather, it about the style guideline of using proper punctuation and typography to help indicate the intended meaning of grammatical structures. For all the people who don't give a rat's ass about dashes, there nothing here that they can't simply ignore; to inflict their lack of concern on other editors as readers by locking in poor typography would be a big step backwards. Dicklyon (talk) 17:31, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose—This is not a suitable matter for discussion at ANI, and applying ENGVAR guidelines concerns stabilising an article in an appropriate variety of English, not entrenching poor prose in a particular variety of English. Completely different. Tony (talk) 17:39, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support as the editors involved in this nonsense seem to be unable to control themselves. Tarc (talk) 17:43, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support but move to WT:MOS. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 17:46, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Good point. I'll take this to MOS, but I did want to get a feel for others' opinions here. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:12, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

And now I'm being told on WT:MOS that the only difference in formatting is that the characters are being entered as Alt codes, which is not distinguishable on Wikipedia in the edit box at all! The WP:LAME grows by the minute...

An en-dash and a hyphen do display differently in the view font the readers see—compare - – - –. However, they're indistinguishable (I think there's one pixel difference) in the default edit view—compare - – - –. – iridescent 19:16, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

This is not proper venue to reach such a decision. Without changing the MOS wording the battle will continue unless an ArbCom injunction is passed. Tijfo098 (talk) 21:18, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Of course the moratorium proposal at WT:MOS was shut down in flames by both sides of the dispute. It looks like ArbCom is the only venue left. Tijfo098 (talk) 21:24, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

And what, exactly, do you propose arbcom should rule on? Whether or not the editing community can use dashes? Do you expect arbcom to edit the MOS?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 21:33, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

ArbCom has passed editing moratoriums on this kind of issue in the past, if I recall correctly, in the date delinking case. (Let me see if I can find a link.) Tijfo098 (talk) 21:47, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

• Strongest of strong opposes. Just what we need, more conflicting editing styles so that articles can be inconsistent and edit wars over the style can occur (but we'll just block users. Thanks arbcom for your enginuity and your great compromise). How about not doing that, adopting ONE style, and enforcing it across the encyclopedia? STOP BEING LAZY! - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 22:03, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

  It seems that I don't often agree with you Floydian, but I certainly agree with this (although I don't know how helpful the stridency of your reply is, I can't really criticize it too much based on some of the other replies throughout this sprawling discussion).
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:27, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposal to tolerate good style

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

---

Even if people see no reason to respect the typographic and grammatical roles of dashes and such, they should, I propose, avoid tearing down things that they consider to be trivial and inconsequential and can't see the difference, when there are other editors who understand and care and want to see the MOS's recommended best practices continue to guide wikipedia improvements. The only reason this lame argument is going on is a recent relentless attack on en dashes, led by Pmanderson, who has clearly indicated that he doesn't understand the different grammatical roles that they fill, and who calls them a "failed experiment". For most wikipedia editors, there will never be any inconvenience involved in allowing those who care to improve the typography. The MOS has been stable and working for many years; should we let Pmanderson tear it down because he doesn't understand dashes? I say let's not. Dicklyon (talk) 17:41, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I also think that while people sholdn't be forced to know WP:MOS prior to editing, they should allow other editors to improve the style afterwards. Edit warring to "protect" personal preference is not constructive, so putting more "force" on WP:MOS would be good in my opinion. Any suggested changes could be discussed there. Zakhalesh (talk) 17:55, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Throw a coin. Head = "-", Tail= "–". Count Iblis (talk) 18:05, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

As I wrote above: if you have a problem with a particular editor, you should see WP:RfC/U and WP:ArbCom. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 18:07, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

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

Motion to close the DASH discussion here

This section appears to have served whatever limited purpose it was intended to serve. The Battles of the Mexican–American War article was only moved twice (moved once, and then back), and the move discussion has effectively been superceeded by continuing discussion on WT:MOS. It doesn't appear to me that this AN/I report can, or should, accomplish anything further at this point. Can we archive this, now?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:14, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Seconded. Somebody please close this mess. 28bytes (talk) 23:32, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

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

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Judaism

Not that it probably will do any good and I'll probably just get attacked myself in order for others to avoid their own problems, but here we go- at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Judaism#2 sources to support that Nikki Yanofsky is Jewish? I have been personally insulted and had words put in my mouth by User:AndyTheGrump. He has called me a bigot and accused me of spreading anti-semitism. I am in fact a Jew, a declaration I have made many times over many many years, one that is not in doubt and in light of User:Noleander and the years I fought to try to bring at AN/I some sort of resolution to that user's perceived anti-semitism should show how I feel about that remark by Andythegrump. Considering nothing was ever done about Noleander here at AN/I until ArbCom had to FINALLY step-in I hope that a stern warning to AndyTheGrump regarding his comment that "Jews can never be a nationality" is all I would like. Such a declaration as fact along with his other comments are over the line. His OPINION that Jews are not a nationality is his opinion, to state it as fact is insulting.Camelbinky (talk) 01:46, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Check your definitions. think you are confusing a number of terms as Nationality Ethnicity are separate categories and imposing them on a minor is WP:BLP violation under WP:BLPCAT. Nationality is not the same as the latter two. Since there is not Jewish country on earth there is not "Jewish nationality" there is an Israeli Nationality totally separate issue. Please review your terminology. The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 02:08, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

ResidentAnthropologist—you say, "think you are confusing a number of terms as Nationality Ethnicity are separate categories and imposing them on a minor is WP:BLP violation under WP:BLPCAT."

Two questions:

1. Does WP:BLPCAT say anything about minors?

2. Does WP:BLPCAT say anything about material for placement in the body of an article? Bus stop (talk) 19:10, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Firstly, nothing I said could remotely be described as accusing Camelbinky of anti-Semitism. I did however object to him/her making offensive remarks about Canadians and Moslems, as well as as repeating a highly-questionable stereotype implying that Jewish people necessarily have stronger allegience to 'Jewishness' than to their own nationality. Regardless of who claims this, it is a particularly harmful assertion, and one that has led to persistant attempts to exclude people of Jewish faith/ethnicity from positions of political power.

As for Jews being a 'nationality', this is simply false, in the sense that Camelbinky is attempting to use the terms. He/she clearly has little understanding of what 'nationality'/'nationalism' implies in regard to the nation state, and why it cannot be a term meaningfully applied to Jewish people as a whole. One can be An Israeli, or a Canadian, and if one chooses to identify as such one can call oneself an 'Israeli Jew', or a 'Canadian Jew' - one will search in vain for a Jewish embassy however. A nation-state is a social construct, but the 'state' part of the phenomenon tends to have a material existance too (usually including an army...) - note that Camelbinky explicitly states that he/she considers Jewish nationality as being "nothing to do with the State of Israel". I'm not sure I intended to imply that Jews can never have a nation-state - merely that there isn't one at the moment, so to assert that 'nationally' Nikki Yanofsky was more Jewish than Canadian is just plain wrong. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:10, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

There is no consensus here or in the world about the meaning of "Jewish". With respect to the article involved, personally, I regard meeting any of the numerous suggested criteria as sufficient. Where she does seems to depend on the interpretation of sources about a subject working in a field with which I am not familiar. I suggest that some compromise wording be found ("of Jewish background") or the like. But what we can really manage to do here is try to prevent personal conflicts or arguments over it, such as the argument above. It would not be productive to attempt to settle here whether Jewishness is or can be a nationality, or the relationship between nationality and ethnicity. DGG ( talk ) 04:05, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

If there is no consensus on what it means then why are we week in week out, arguing about labelling people with the term in lists, in articles, and in categtories? John lilburne (talk) 20:02, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

John lilburne—you say, "If there is no consensus on what it means then why are we week in week out, arguing about labelling people with the term in lists, in articles, and in categories?'

It is not the editors here at Wikipedia that have to agree fully on the significance of a term but rather the reliable sources, if there is more than one reliable source, that should be in agreement as to the applicability of a term to an individual who is the subject of a biography. Bus stop (talk) 20:41, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

This is AN/I. We aren't here to decide whether Yanofsky is Jewish or not (personally, I think she should be allowed to decide for herself, but I seem to be in a minority...). Instead we are here to decide whether me calling Camelbinky's comments 'bigoted nonsense' was justified or not. I'd like to be judged on the evidence, not on what we think of Yanofsky (who deserves none of this nonsense, one way or another - i've seen no evidence that she gives two hoots how Wikipedia labels her). AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:17, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Seeing as how I never said anything bigoted about Jews, Muslims, or Canadians I'd like to know how it is ok to continue to say I did. I said that if an article were made about my cat we could use the definition of Muslims that all animals are by default Muslims and I was doing that as an analogy to how it can be hard to label people (or animals in that case) as what the religion itself labels them because in the Jewish CULTURE all people whose mother is a Jew is considered a Jew (and this is a different label than a religious one, beit din does not care what a person personally practices when deciding if someone is a Jew, neither does the state of Israel when deciding if someone is qualified for the "right of return"). As for Canadians I asked that if it isnt notable if someone is Jewish, how is it notable that anyone is a Canadian? Because to me that would be a double standard. So how was either comment bigoted?Camelbinky (talk) 05:50, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't matter how any of you categorize "Jewish". Reliable sources use the term, sometimes in reference to people who are subjects of biographies. Reliable sources sometimes say that someone is a "Jew". Reliable sources do not necessarily categorize the term when they use it—in fact they generally do not. Can we report that in our biographies? Forget about whether we are talking about a racial grouping, a religious grouping, or what have you. Are we permitted to repeat what reliable sources say in this regard in our biographies? I think the answer is obviously Yes.

Here are 3 of the arguments presented against stating in our biographies that an individual is Jewish:

1.) Is that fact relevant to the person's notability? Perhaps not, but nor need it be, for the placement of such material in the body of an article.

2.) Has the person "self-identified" as being Jewish? Present policy does not require "self-identification" for the placement of such material in the body of an article.

3.) Do the sources specify whether the individual is religiously observant or religiously nonobservant? The reasoning is that we should not be permitted to state that someone is Jewish without the further information as to the person's level of religious observance.

By the way, every other post above is addressing this admittedly off-topic subject. Bus stop (talk) 12:18, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

"If you are in a hole, stop digging" as someone or other once said. Leaving aside your unsourced comments regarding Moslems and animals, and the fact that you wrote "How is it notable that ANYONE is Canadian?", you are still repeating untenable claims regarding Jewish identity. Do you really think that Yanofsky's 'culture' is Jewish, rather than Canadian? Or that she cannot be both, as she chooses? Evidently not, You insist that there is something both hereditary and essentialist about being 'Jewish' that can be applied to people (all people, regardless of their own beliefs) by a rabbinical court. This is not merely imposing the belief system of a particular faith/culture (or more accurately, a subsection of a faith/culture, since the issue is contested even amongst Jews) on outsiders, it is also marking out Jews as 'others', who's loyalty should be to 'Jewishness', and who can never be simply 'Canadian' or whatever. As I've already pointed out, this is a particularly harmful stereotype, often used to marginalise Jews (or worse). The fact that you yourself are Jewish does nothing to mitigate the harmfulness of this stereotyping. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:42, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—we go by what reliable sources say, by-and-large. Standard operating procedure is that if a reliable source says that a person is Jewish, we are probably justified in repeating that. It is not inconceivable that sources could be in disagreement with one another over such a point. That would create a gray area. But we are not talking about that sort of complication, are we? Bus stop (talk) 13:05, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

This is AN/I, and we are supposed to be talking about Camelbinky's complaint about my remarks, and my response. If you insist on trying to hijack this section for yet another forum-shopping exercise, I will raise a complaint about your behaviour in a new (and appropriate) section. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:23, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—if you would like to know the truth, I am trying not to address the real reason we are here: I too find your dialogue sometimes distracting and sometimes abrasive. I could engage in a good old fashioned mudslinging match with you, but I'm sure you would get in some good shots too. But I feel that I am contributing something edifying to this discussion. And most other posts including your own are going on longwindedly about the nature of Jewish identity etc. Standard Wikipedia policy is applicable here. "Jewish" is an attribute of identity. Sources use it to indicate the presence of that attribute, and in general to describe a person. No single word is expected to answer for all questions that can possibly be raised in association with a person being written about. A 500 page biography is not even going to answer all possible questions. We use the term Jewish as one of many building blocks in constructing a composite picture of a person being written about. Bus stop (talk) 13:46, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Hijacking_of_an_AN.2FI_section_by_Bus_stop_to_discuss_an_off-topic_content_dispute. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:11, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

That many Jews are identified and self-identify as such, including specifically cross-sections like "I am a Jewish writer", is a fact. And in either case this is not to be decided upon by WP:ANI. I think WP:ANI is here to address behavioral issues. I must say though, that sometimes I have found WP:ANI's reaction to antisemitism and general racism very prompt and adequate, while at other times lacking and even offensive. Debresser (talk) 13:09, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Can you clarify who it is you are suggesting is being antisemitic and/or racist? It is far from obvious from your comment. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:23, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The issue isn't self-identification as Jewish, but apparently Camelbinky's insistance that "Jewish" is a nationality, rather than a religion or ethnicity. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 17:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The issue is at hand here at ANI is that of Camel Binky's WP:BATTLEGROUND behavior in dealing with people he disagree with. CamelBinky flips out on what he thinks Andy is saying instead of actually what he said. Then CamelBinky makes some derogatory remarks about certain groups then when confronted with his inappropriate remarks decide to cast the specter of Noleander onto Andy. Andy is no Nolleander and frankly comparing him is basically Godwins law in action. I think the issue we should be looking at here is who failed to follow rationale discussion and who made a big stink over essentially nothing. The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 18:32, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

• Start an RFC/U or two, and quit sniping at each other here. Nobody involved in this discussion seems to be asking for any administrative action regardless, and I'd say that no administrator action is needed (except maybe a few troutings).
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 21:29, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I asked for admin action. I asked for admin action on several occasions regarding Noleander and this is exactly what happened. And this person's disregard for individual Jews opinions and dismissive attitude, not just towards me but to another user as well in that discussion, is in fact similar to that case and may get worse if it is not made clear NOW that it is not acceptable to disregard other's opinions regardless of nationality, ethnicity, religion, or personal viewpoint. Calling me a bigot based on what I said and refusing to show HOW it is bigoted is right along the lines of the type of talk page discussions Noleander did. If being a Jew is not notable then HOW is it notable being a Candadian is notable? That is a very relevant question and not bigoted. Show me how it is. Cats, and all non-human animals are by default Muslims in the Islamic religion. This is a fact, and in a talk discussion there is NO requirement that any fact or opinion needs to be referenced to a source, I was under the impression that it was common enough knowledge, and given that if you have Wikipedia you have access to Google/Ask.com/Yahoo! and I was under no obligation to enlighten further, you dont believe me, do research. Wikipedia is about learning, expanding one's horizons, and researching. If you're not willing to confirm what one person says and simply attack it as "wrong" and "rude" and say that it's part of being a "bigot" because you werent hit over the head with "proof", in my opinion you've come to the wrong place to work.

So, in summary, I'd like to know how I did something wrong and how I am a bigot by asking a question about how it is notable to be a Canadian but not a Jew and by mentioning an unsourced FACT about Muslims. If it cant be proven how those things are wrong and how my comments were "derogatory" as ResidentAnthropolist stated. I'd like apologies if it cant be proven, and I'd like a warning on Grump on telling others that their OPINIONS are, in his own words "not necessary here" and his attack on Jews. MANY Jews consider themselves a nation (our own prayers state that very opinion), and by disregarding what we believe as not relevant is insulting and disrespectful.Camelbinky (talk) 17:25, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The only person showing "disregard for individual Jews opinions" is yourself. That you are apparently unable to see this, is no excuse. I happen to believe that people should be entitled to decide for themselves who and what they identify with, rather than have the opinions of others, whether on a Wikipedia talk page, or in a rabbinical court, define who they are, and which stereotypes to apply. As for your comparison between Neiolander and myself, I consider that utterly contemptible, and were it not to be so self-evidently false to anyone who has followed my activities on Wikipedia, I would be asking for action to be taken against you. Maybe I could have worded my initial comments in a more polite way, but your behaviour since has only reinforced my opinion that you are more concerned with enforcing particular perspectives regarding individual affiliations than you are with creating an objective encyclopaedia. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:42, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Comment

It seems that this AN/I thread, like so many others, went off track. True, Camelbinky seems to need a better awareness of the difference between being Jewish religiously and being Jewish ethnically, *BUT* at the point AndyTheGrump called the comments "bigoted nonsense" and Camelbinky objected, everyone in the WikiProject_Judaism thread should have taken a step back. We all lose our patience at times and end up needing to check our attitudes. How hard would it have been to say, "sorry, I disagreed with you, but my namecalling was wrong. Let's get back to our discussion"?

Instead, people grew more stubborn and the debate went off track because someone was slighted and couldn't get a simple apology. It seems from my reading of events that Camelbinky is sincerely trying to work with the other editors. So, rather than attack the person, why not look at what was said and try to explain, basing your reasoning on Wikipedia guidelines. And Andy, how hard would it be to just apologize? I think you would probably much rather be working on fun things than having to defend yourself here, right? Anyway, my 2 cents on all this. -- Avanu (talk) 17:57, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Avanu, initially all I requested was an apology for his words. Andy not only refused, but continued with saying I was bigoted against Canadians and Muslims, along with being bigoted against Jews. Andy then attacked another editor in the same manner calling their comments ridiculous and belittling them. Such personal attacks and belittling is unacceptable and I will not drop this until a sincere apology is given by Andy and assurances given that a realization that it was wrong (and not that "it was worded wrong", it wasnt just the wording, it was the entire idea).Camelbinky (talk) 18:33, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Uninvolved admin(s) needed at Bernard Finnigan

There is currently a discussion at Talk:Bernard Finnigan about whether the article should include coverage of an alleged serious criminal offense he's been reported to have been charged with. The complex issue is that while the criminal charge cannot be reported in Finnigan's home state of South Australia on legal grounds it can, and has, been reported in major newspapers in other Australian states. This raises issues over whether repeating the reports in his Wikipedia article would cause him harm, and so violate WP:BLP, and whether such material would violate the relevant laws (which Wikipedia may not be subject to). Could an uninvolved admin (or admins) please review this discussion? If the decision is to not include the material, the entire talk page discussion should probably be oversighted. Note that this has also been discussed at WP:AWNB#Troublemakers at Bernard Finnigan and that discussion may also need to be zapped. Thanks, Nick-D (talk) 06:25, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Jesus Christ, is this another "superinjunction"-style case? —Jeremy v^_^v ^{Components:V S M} 06:43, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think so - the issue seems to revolve more around Wikipedia's policies than legal issues, in my view. Nick-D (talk) 07:20, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Probably should go to WP:BLP/N rather than here. There is some news coverage of the charges but not all that much on the scale of things. If I'm understanding, the guy was a .au MP and cabinet member, so the equivalent of a high-up US congressperson, i.e. a significant public figure, if that matters. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 09:58, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not really great on US political systems, but if I understand it correctly, a more accurate description would be a senator in a US state senate. However, I'm not sure where a Minister would sit in the US model - perhaps a state senator with a role in the Governor's Cabinet? It's a minor point, but a US congressperson would be a national role, whereas in this case it is a regional/state role rather than a national one. His responsibilities were important within the state government, although not as one of the most senior positions.- Bilby (talk) 14:27, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you are right, he is not a national politician per my current understanding after some talk page disussion. More like state or regional level (not sure exactly which). (edited). 69.111.194.167 (talk) 10:12, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

No uninvolved admin has yet responded to this post. Nick-D (talk) 08:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Not sure what admin action is needed at this point. Article was protected for a day, things seem calm now, some sources are being gathered and evaluated on the talk page, not yet in article. I think there's general acceptance of updating the article once there's more independent sources (right now several newspapers reporting the incident all are from the same company, that may be pushing an agenda). 69.111.194.167 (talk) 09:48, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I think someone needs to make a call on whether the discussion on the talk page (including my comments) needs to be deleted. The stories available on the internet are from different media companies BTW. Nick-D (talk) 11:49, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

November 28 birthdays

I watch the November 28 page. Over the last month IPs ( mainly 213.105.50.94 and 84.92.218.161 )have been added a large number of people with birthdays on that date. Probably averaging a couple per day. I assumed these were legit since I checked the person's page and they gave November 28th as their birthday. However I've just looked a bit more closely and it appears the anon IPs are updating the original bios first, changing the birthdate and sometimes other information and then making the November 28th entry. Examples include Tristan Lake Leabu, Adele Parks, Rachel Rath (imdb gives October 2), Richard Bean. Sorry I didn't spot this earlier - SimonLyall (talk) 11:15, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

This is an enormous tangled mess. I came across the November 28 page after blocking User:213.105.50.94 for the continued addition of unsourced DOBs to BLPs without sources. While going back through their contributions it's apparent they've been at this since October 2010. They also appear to be making similar changes under User:84.92.218.161. All of the DOBs are being changed to November 28, then added to the November 28 page. We would need to revert November 28 back a June 18, 2010 version in order to attempt to undo the potential damage. Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 15:00, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I was bold and rv'd to the 11 June 2010 revision. I'm going to request protection. —Jeremy v^_^v ^{Components:V S M} 20:15, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Good call. I would add the protection myself, but as I've blocked one of the offending parties it would probably be best to leave it to another admin. --Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 20:19, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

A good bet would be that it's the birthday of the editor. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:33, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Need third party opinion to-

Resolved

 – Back to the sock drawer he goes. — Coren ^(talk) 23:52, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

find out that I'm not the only one who thinks User:Imbonwwwww is an ass (excuse my french - but I had to deal with this antisocial behavior for close to 4 months now). Okay, first of all please check his edit history. It's like his sole purpose is to revert me and other select users. That's all he does, follow our edits and reverts them. Doesn't respond to discussion invites and makes absolutely no constructive edits whatsoever. I swear this guy has my contributions in his watchlist. Kuebie (talk) 13:12, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Seems to be doing the same thing to Historiographer (talk · contribs) too. Doesn't seem to have made a non-revert edit in a while. Had another account in the past do we think? S.G.^(GH) _ping! 13:15, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

All of the following accounts appear to be the same person:

• Efficiency54WS (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Imbonwwwww (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Gaia1CB3 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Efficientvegetarianmn2 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Efficiency J Lam 82 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Farmingpasbw7 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Efficiencyc62 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Vegetarianliux64 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Mendel 56 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Efficiency576os (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• TsDavid51 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Vegetarianmn2 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Einstein Li 37 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Gaia5074Q (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Steven Tim M. (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Efficient vegetariannnwf607 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
• Vegetarianliux64 (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki) dup of above —DoRD (talk) 15:06, 4 May 2011 (UTC) TNXMan 13:42, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I remember Gaia1CB3! That makes soooooo much sense. Thanks for looking into that. Now do I have to go through a medium to get this dude to stop harassing us or is his accounts automatically blocked? Kuebie (talk) 14:18, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Has this been taken up at WP:SPI? If the user is the sock of a blocked user, they'll be blocked pretty quickly. Wildthing61476 (talk) 14:43, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Ah I see. Thank you. Kuebie (talk) 14:57, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

According to the registration dates, Efficiency576os is the master account. Is there any reason all of these shouldn't be summarily blocked? —DoRD (talk) 15:06, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I only use one account Imbonwwwww. The above people are not me. And I asked Kuebie/Historiographer to use one account. These accounts edits are often POV and removing opposite views. Please see edit historyedit historyedit historyedit historyedit history. I hope him stop removing facts and use the wikipedia promote his personal views and mislead readers.Imbonwwwww (talk) 16:12, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, except not.  Confirmed, all those plus a couple more blocked. — Coren ^(talk) 23:52, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Hijacking of an AN/I section by Bus stop to discuss an off-topic content dispute.

User:Camelbinky has raised a complaint aboveregarding comments I made, see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Judaism. Since I have responded to this there, this is clearly not the place to discuss this further. However, User:Bus stop has chosen to use this section to make comments regarding a long-running content dispute - not the subject of Camelbinky's complaint, and as such off-topic. In spite of my request to desist, [6], Bus Stop has continued, even while admitting that he/she is "trying 'not' to address the real reason we are here". [7] Can I ask an administrator to either delete Bus Stop's off-topic comments, or at least try to get the discussion back on track - This is AN/I, and the content dispute has nothing to do with Camelbinky's complaint. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:09, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—in fact virtually every other post in the discussion is going on and on about whether Jewish refers to a "nationality" or a "race" or a "religion" or a "culture" etc. I have weighed in on that topic. If my comments are off-topic they are no more off-topic than virtually every other post found in that thread.

Yes, I admitted to not addressing the real issue which is your abrasive dialogue with your fellow editors. Am I required to address that too? Bus stop (talk) 14:16, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Jewishness is not a "nationality" or a "race". With Judaism's unique history, Jewishness can be considered a type of "ethnic group". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:31, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Rodney R. Crowley and User:Kraxler

I am having issues at Rodney R. Crowley with User:Kraxler. He is an excellent editor and researcher, adding lots of material and lots of new articles on topics for New York State, an area that I also create articles for. However, in a classic example of the pride that comes with ownership, he keeps removing the infobox at Rodney R. Crowley saying there is an error in it, but he will not fix the error or say what the error is. He asked for a third opinion at User_talk:Lifebaka which supported the infobox, now he is venue shopping until he gets the opinion he is looking for. He is also restoring dead links and removing references that I am formatting into the standard inline citation method and restoring his version of having them as external links here. He has also called me "mentally retarded" at Talk:Rodney R. Crowley and "half-illiterate" at User talk:Lifebaka and my edits "vandalism". He has a habit of reversing any edits I make to articles he has created, for instance here where I add links to place names and change the lede from the German Wikipedia style to the English style. You can get an idea here of his combative editing style as he follows me from article to article undoing my changes. Here at Talk:Arthur William Wallander, he demands I post a death certificate to be able to use the information from the Connecticut Death Index, in an article he has made no contributions to. Here he kneejerk reverts my removal of a recursive link that I put in myself and then I deleted it, he revert it back in place. Good editors can disagree over many issues and this happens all the time, so it is always best to get other people involved to resolve issues. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 15:46, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I would like somebody who knows the Wikipedia guidelines reading the recent edit history at Arthur William Wallander, Rodney R. Crowley and Benjamin S. W. Clark, including talkpages; and the discussion at User talk:Lifebaka#Complaint, and give me a third opinion on what to do. Kraxler (talk) 16:02, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

What you do is you put the infobox back, and you stop edit warring over it, because BLPs generally have infoboxes. If you delete it again, you can be blocked for edit warring. If some of the information in the infobox is wrong, then you correct the wrong bit. If you don't know how to do that, you say on the talk page what bit of info is wrong, and another editor can fix it. And you don't call anyone "mentally retarded" or I will block you myself,as that kind of attack is completely unacceptable.Elen of the Roads (talk) 16:16, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The infobox has been restored and the issue resolved to my satisfaction. So much drama for a such a minor issue. It appears that he was removing the box because there wasn't a succession to the position but it had several people serving at the same time. It took a few seconds to change the box parameter to accommodate that once made clear that was his objection. We still have the issues of calling me "mentally retarded" at Talk:Rodney R. Crowley and "half-illiterate" at User talk:Lifebaka. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:33, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I hope this is resolved, but the behavior by Kraxler here leaves much to be desired This edit in which he states that "I resent it that a mentally retarded copy-and-paste wizard hijacks my time to eliminate errors introduced in a correct article, and tramples on almost all wikipedia guidelines. I will have you blocked permanently as a vandal, there is already enough evidence to show it. Now you are already hiding sources that contradict you, and state "may have been", hahaha." is just the most egregious example. Kraxler seems to have taken ownership of this and other articles he has created and has reacted to content he believes to be at issue by making wholesale removals of everything RAN added. The more collegial action would have been for Kraxler to either fix the material he believed to be incorrect, limiting his removals to only the data he deemed to be incorrect and discussing the issue on the talk page for either the article or contacting the editor directly. The edit warring and threats of blocks are entirely unjustified. Alansohn (talk) 22:29, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

More Middleton madness

I protected the article James William Middleton after finding that editors were edit waring to replace this tabloidesque material.

I further removed this thread from the talk page. Wikipedia isn't a forum for discussing unfortunate google results with "gay" for BLP subjects. I was reverted by Colonel Warden, which I view as inappropriate.

I stand by both actions. But as I have voted to merge or delete the article, I'm being accused of content bias on my talk page. Hence, I submit my actions for review.

As this comes on the back of salacious tabloid crap being added to Pippa Middleton yesterday, I sugest more uninvolved watchlists would be good.--Scott Mac 17:23, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

• I understand Scott Mac's concern - I wasn't keen on that gay/Google stuff myself. But he seems to be too heavy-handed in both locking down the article and trying to control discussion on the talk page too. We have to be able to discuss topics in order to arrive at consensus. It seems improper for Scott Mac to be prejudging the issue when he is involved in discussions about the article himself. He seems to want to control the article by personal fiat. Colonel Warden (talk) 17:31, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
  • • Given I've never even edit the article that seems a wide description. Stuff about googling someone with the word "gay" has nothing to do with writing an encyclopedia article.--Scott Mac 17:37, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
      • There was content about this aspect of the topic with multiple sources in the article. The talk page discussion therefore related to article content. Colonel Warden (talk) 17:53, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
  • I have sourced more articles than tabloid newspapers discussing the info but now i cannot add them in. In the deleted thread all was perfectly relevant to technical issues viewing the content.Nirame (talk) 17:35, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
    • I am not sure we need any additional administrative action here, the article is locked for a few days to protect it from the addition of tabloid titillation type additions and you can use that time to make WP:Edit requests and seek consensus on the talkpage. Off2riorob (talk) 17:45, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
      • I dont feel that is possible, it has already been shown that discussion threats get deleted there and blocking threats are issued if they are returned .Nirame (talk) 17:53, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Well - perhaps have a read of WP:Policies and Guidelines especially WP:BLP - and return to the talkpage refreshed. All that titillating sexual speculation is more correct in a celebrity magazine than a wikipedia BLP. Off2riorob (talk) 17:57, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

• • (ec) No I don't think Scott Mac wants to control an article that he hasn't edited; rather, he seems to want to uphold and protect BLP policy in spirit and letter (which is admirable). Rather than reverting, you should have come here if you wanted more eyes on the actions being taken. Don't see a reason for further action. Ncmvocalist (talk) 17:48, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
    • Scott Mac wants to delete the article per his previous comment at the related AFD. This makes him involved. Colonel Warden (talk) 17:56, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Protecting is not deleting. Off2riorob (talk) 18:01, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

his actions work to achive the same. how can users work on the article to adress issues raised in the deletion discussion if they cannot edit. requesting changes on the talk page would be pointless as the user removes i progress discussions from there. Nirame (talk) 18:06, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The oly thing I have removed is your replacement of this shit. This has nothing to do with building a quality article.--Scott Mac 18:10, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Please don't swear at me. That shows you are removing what you personally regard as that rather than letting people reach consensus. I returned one thread one yet i have been threatened with blocking and sworn at. You are showing abuse and bias. Nirame (talk) 18:25, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

If you submit material which is fully compliant with BLP policy, you will have nothing to worry about; when editors submit material which fails to meet that standard, it does not just frustrate a couple of administrators - it frustrates the Community at large. If you don't want to be blocked, heed the warning. Ncmvocalist (talk) 18:29, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Just be happy that you weren't blocked for this policy violation. Hans Adler 18:43, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

What did i violate by returning that discussion once and where does is say i can be blocked for one reversion?Nirame (talk) 18:53, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

WP:BLP, which states "Users who constantly or egregiously violate this policy may be blocked from editing." It also states "Editors must take particular care when adding information about living persons to any Wikipedia page" and "Biographies of living persons (BLPs) must be written conservatively and with regard for the subject's privacy." All right up in the lede. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:39, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

the other user is saying that singular action could have done it which seems ridiculous. not a number of actions as your quote is refering to.

@CW: If you really insist on going on about Scott MacDonald being involved, I'll unprotect and reprotect the page myself for the exact same duration. Stop focusing on any supposed involvedness and actually address his and others' concerns. NW (Talk) 18:14, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Seconded (or is that thirded?) --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:17, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Colonel, BLP falls under the exceptional circumstances clause further below in the policy (and the fact that Scott opened this review and requested more uninvolved eyes on these pages alleviates any involvement concerns). The responsibility is firmly on the editor to demonstrate that any BLP material they submit on any page on Wikipedia is fully compliant with BLP policy, both in spirit and letter; that onus does not shift to the admin who removes material which fails to meet that standard. Ncmvocalist (talk) 18:29, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

We have long-standing consensus that this type of material is only included in blp articles under exceptional circumstances, and even then normally only in a very restrained way. Although WP:BLP has some passages that are marginally relevant, this is not really discussed there. Perhaps it should be, so that we have a specific section to which we can point those who are familiar with the Sun or the Mirror and have never looked into Britannica, so don't know the difference between a tabloid and an encyclopedia. Pseudo-news from pseudo-newspapers is simply unacceptable as sources, and any reporting about the excesses of the tabloid press that makes it into reliable sources needs to be treated in such a way that we don't become yet another instrument in victimising the subjects. Hans Adler 18:11, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Had I known that the inexcusable tabloid nonsense I saw on recent changes patrol yesterday that spurred me to AFD this article would get so ridiculously extreme, I would have come here first and asked that the article be speedily deleted and salted per WP:HARM and WP:IAR. This poor guy, who has never done anything to be remotely notable enough to pass WP:GNG, is getting shat upon by the tabloid press, and editors are claiming notability specifically so they can throw sharp rocks at him. If I were him I'd be enraged. This is a living person; we should have more sense than to allow an article to exist simply because tabloids are spreading juicy gossip about the subject. --NellieBly (talk) 21:42, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Both Middleton articles (Pippa & James) should be deleted. There existence smacks of recentism, as nobody cared about who these 2 people were, until their sister married Billy Mountbatten of the House of Windsor (aka Prince William, Duke of Cambridge). GoodDay (talk) 23:25, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

People need to realise: Wikipedia exists primarily to validate the readership of Hello magazine in their belief that encyclopaedic knowledge of the relatives of the rich and famous-for-being-famous somehow confers nobility on themselves. Guy (Help!) 00:35, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

On a related note, this is the most recent edit to Pippa Middleton. Are the sources being used here reliable or British tabloids? --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 01:17, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Those 2 articles are becoming an embarrasment to the project. GoodDay (talk) 02:12, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Evolutionary Psychology

The article Evolutionary Psychology is having problems. Memills (talk · contribs) is an evolutionary psychology professor who is very enthusiastic about his field, however this enthusiasm results in him editwarring to keep a large embedded table[8][9] about general phenomena of Evolutionary theory that are not specific to Evolutionary psychology in the article, and for accusing the group of editors arguing that this is off topic and is not a good way to approach article writing for being "anti-EP'ers" and motivated by wanting to put his discipline in a negative light. This is clearly issues of OWNership, of lack of good faith, of battleground mentality and it is in addition disruptive. I would like some disinterested admins to take a look at Memills conduct and help him understand how articles are written how writing a collaborative encyclopedia is different from writing textbooks. ·Maunus·ƛ· 19:52, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I welcome the review. I would note that Maunus has described the field of evolutionary psychology as "the EP cult" (see Talk:Evolutionary_psychology#Article_improvement) and he has repeatedly shown strong antipathy toward the discipline as evidenced by his edits and comments on the Talk page. He has repeatedly "collaborated" (or tag-teamed) with others with similar sentiments to delete sourced, notable and relevant information from the article. In addition, he has repeatedly attempted to block in the inclusion of such information, while contributing only material that is critical of the discipline. A search of his username, and mine, on the Talk page, and in the archived Talk pages, will document this. I will be happy to provide specific links if requested. Memills (talk) 22:02, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

It appears that there may be issues of WP:COI/WP:SELFPUB with respect to Memills editing of this article. Memills is a professor of psychology. Note that one point of the current conflict relates to a table [10] originally introduced by memills, which he credited to himself [11]: "Table from Mills, M.E. (2004). Evolution and motivation. Symposium paper presented at the Western Psychological Association Conference, Phoenix, AZ. April, 2004." aprock (talk) 22:12, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The table in question is not my personal research -- this has been discussed previously on the Talk page. These references were added at the request of other editors. The "Overview of theoretical foundations" table is a summary of theories based on content from multiple evolutionary psychology textbook sources (as noted by editor Leadwind on the Talk page). The organization of the table by systems level was noted in the Mills (2004) reference, as well as in the following reference listed for the table (see Bernard, et al., 2005, Figure 2). Again, the content of the table is not my research (darn -- as if I could lay claim to theories by Darwin, Hamilton, Trivers, Dawkins, etc.), although I might claim a tad bit of the systems level organization of the table, but even that is based on Systems theory for which I cannot take credit. Memills (talk) 23:45, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

A style guideline that's been around a long time and is quite influential in our Good Article nominations process is WP:Embedded lists, which talks about some of the problems of using a list format in what is otherwise a prose context (and the same objections are made to tables). Tables are great at showing box scores of games, and other black/white, incontrovertible data that would be tedious as prose, but they have a habit of interfering with Wikipedia's collaborative process, in part because they exude an aura of "truthiness". If someone wants to make a tweak that doesn't exactly fit with the defined rows and columns of the table, it's harder to do so than if the information were presented as prose.

Also, I have a question ... basically, the most common question we ask about any edit: do you have authoritative secondary sources that say that that breakdown is a better way to summmarize evolutionary psychology than other ways? - Dank (push to talk) 00:57, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

HBES is the largest and most prestigious organization of academic evolutionary psychologists. An earlier version of the table was included at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES) "Introduction to the Field" webapge for many years (see the archived version here). The current version of the HBES.com website does not include the table because the website was redesigned to include only professional business items, rather than material to help to educate laypeople about the field (WP would be a more appropriate place for that). I was a member of the HBES committee involved with the website, and I was privy to these decisions. There were no objections made by anyone regarding the table, and HBES certainly would not have retained the table for many years had evolutionary psychologists found it inaccurate. Memills (talk) 01:07, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

HBES is not in the business of writing encyclopedias. This is an encyclopedia article not a textbook or an affiliate website of EP's promotional organization.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:57, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Who was the author of the table on that HBES web page? aprock (talk) 02:22, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Obviously, someone who was very, very knowledgeable. Memills (talk) 03:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't see any need for admin action here, but the involved editors do need to WP:AGF and talk to each other more about how to collaborate better. Memills exemplifies the problem of an expert working too closely with an article that involves his own work. He can hardly accuse anyone of WP:OUTING him if he used his own name as username and cited a bunch of work by himself to cement the obvious. His table is WP:SYN even if the items it contains are not WP:OR, unless he provides a good source for this way of organizing the material. When he gets over these problems he will be in a better position to collaborate, and then if there are still problems with the other editors pushing a POV, he'll be in a better position to seek help on that. He should ideally not add material sourced to his own work without at least discussing it on the talk page first to see if there are objections or better way to keep it neutral, to prevent edit warring that might look like WP:COI. It seems likely that all points of view can be fairly represented in this article without anyone getting too tweaked about it. If problems persist, give him a warning referencing this advice, and if that doesn't clear it up, then ask for admin action. I see he was blocked for edit warring already last month, so one warning should be enough for him to get the point. Dicklyon (talk) 01:20, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Re WP:OUTING I did not provide my full name, nor reference to my place of employment, or my professional webpage. In fact, as noted above, I removed this information after a personal threat was made.

I did not reference a bunch of my own articles -- I have referenced two.

As noted above, WP:SYN, the synthesis represented by the table was published at the professional website of evolutionary psychologists. If they accepted it, I see that as a "good source for this way of organizing the material."

Finally, I believe the core issue here has been brushed aside a bit. Take some time to read though the Talk page. We have a few editors who have engaged in WP:GAMING, WP:CENSOR, and WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT, and who have consistently worked to prevent sourced notable material from being presented, who have repeatedly deleted such material, who have plainly admitted a bias, have not contributed prose except that which negatively portrays the discipline, and have resisted requests to be more civil and truly collaborate. I really believe that they are not editing in good faith - to make the article an accurate representation of the discipline.

Are these editors' actions being examined as well here? This would take a bit of time reviewing archived Talk pages, and I imagine there is not too much time here for that. To have these issues examined, do I need to file a separate complaint? Memills (talk) 01:40, 5 May 2011 (UTC)Memills (talk) 01:40, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

You have done nothing to show that you have any interest in collaborating, you consistently demonize those of your cooeditors who disagree with you, you polarize every debate into pro-/AntiEP camps even in discussions about completely editorial decisions such as wehter to present information in table form or prose, or whether a section is giving unnecessary details about circumstantial information. As for WP:OUT you can't have your cake and eat it: you consistently pull the professor card in debates, refer to your own expertise etc, but when we mention it it is outing?·Maunus·ƛ· 14:08, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

You volunteered quite a while ago. The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 01:50, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Correct, and, as I noted above, I deleted that material after a personal threat was made against me. Memills (talk) 01:56, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Volunteered it man, its reality. There is a reason I dont post my vita here The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 01:58, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

So much for the Delete button on Wikipedia... Memills (talk) 02:08, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Maunus and Aprock are both known for advancing an anti bio-whatever explanations to many things. On some issues I agree with them, but they seem to be pushing fringe ideas themselves on this one. Maunus also has a potential, but less evident WP:COI here, being a professional in a competing discipline. Tijfo098 (talk) 02:25, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

So anthropologists have an COI in relation to EP but Ep'ers don't? Interesting suggestion.·Maunus·ƛ· 14:09, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Right of course! Anthropologists have COI when commenting on Evolutionary Psychology! So Logical! The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 02:33, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Academic turf wars are unheard of [12]. Tijfo098 (talk) 03:17, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

As this is the first time I've seen this brought up by you (and honestly the first time I recall you ever addressing me), I'll ask that if you feel that there is a problem with any of the edits I make to please provide diffs, pursue the usual dispute resolution, and/or bring the issue to the appropriate noticeboard. In the absence of any of the above, I will ask you to strike the above personal attack. aprock (talk) 02:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

And, Aprock, I would ask you to strike the links to my personal/professional websites that you included your post above. Memills (talk) 02:59, 5 May 2011 (UTC)2

done. aprock (talk) 03:05, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks, I feel safe now. Memills (talk) 03:25, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Now this is an interesting premiss - that being a 'professional in a competing discipline' creates a COI. Presumably working within the discipline creates a COI too (actually, a much more obvious one), so nobody with any academic credentials should be allowed to contribute to articles? The mind boggles! (though whether it does so because this was advantageous to my hunter-gatherer ancestors, I'll not hazard a guess) AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:01, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh, go ahead, guess. Here are the rules. Actually, it is a competing theoretical paradigm, thus the rancor. Memills (talk) 03:25, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

"Most anthropologists are unenthusiastic about evolutionary psychology" from What is Anthropology?, ISBN 0745323197, p. 138; on the next page, 139, you can read about the "academic turf wars". Tijfo098 (talk) 03:48, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I am well aware that evolutionary psychology is a 'competing theoretical paradigm' to anthropology. So what? Homepathy is a 'competing theoretical paradigm' to orthodox medicine. Does that make the criticisms of practitioners of orthodox medicine less valid? AndyTheGrump (talk) 11:03, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

As someone who has opposed both Memills and his many detractors, I occupy something of a middle ground on the page. When I started editing the page, Memills resisted adding appropriate coverage of EP criticisms, but I successfully got the criticisms added to the page (esp. the lead). He wasn't easy to work with, but he conceded when confronted with WP policy. Meanwhile, the various anti-EP editors have waged a strange campaign to distance EP from evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory gets a lot of credit, so the anti-EP crowd doesn't want to emphasize the roots that EP has in evolutionary theory. They say that EP isn't the only way to apply evolutionary theory to psychology, so we shouldn't let the article give the impression that evolutionary thinking leads to EP. (It turns out that the "other" way to apply evolutionary theory to psychology is also called "evolutionary psychology," so it's all very confusing.) Anyway, a bunch of people who oppose EP are piling on Memills because he's the number-one proponent of EP on the page, and it isn't pretty. Everyone should settle down and just stick to WP policy and to what our best sources say. We have some recent EP textbooks to use as sources, so we shouldn't have any problem agreeing what to put on the page. It looked for while that people were cooling off, but you can see that the lull was temporary. Nobody who disagrees with Memills treats EP as a legitimate field of study. If editors think that EP is illegitimate, of course they'll want to gang up on an EP professor. It's impossible to think that all this hostility derives from a difference of opinion about the use of tables. We should just get back to reporting on what our best sources say about EP instead of fighting all the time. Leadwind (talk) 03:56, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

(ec) From a quick read-through of recent talk page sections in the article in question, it appears that Maunus and others seem to be trying to use their own opinion on what modern EP means in order to change the information covered in the articles. Coupling this with liberal usage of strawman arguments and other fallacies in order to prove that they are correct, they appear to be, essentially, shouting down Memills and the sources he is presenting. If there is any owning going on here, then it is by Maunus and others who are attempting to drive Memills off the page and are offhandedly disregarding the sources that Memills is presenting (when it has already been proven through revelation of Memills identity that he would know far more about the topic than them and has given sources to prove as such). Silverseren^C 03:59, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Leadwind's comment is a good summary above. Silverseren^C 03:59, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Leadwind's claim to occupy the 'middle ground' on the article talk page is somewhat disengenuous. He/she has instead used the talk page to promote a bizarre view of what the 'standard social sciences model' (a fictitious construct invented by EP) is in order to demonstrate the 'superiority' of evolutionary psychology - see Talk:Evolutionary psychology/Archive 4#Standard social sciences model. Ignoring the fact that Leadwind seems to have learned about the so-called SSSM from a biology professor, it rapidly becomes apparent that he/she considers the whole thing to be some sort of Marxist-dominated plot to deny human nature. Nonsense like this is supposed to be the 'middle ground'? I think not... AndyTheGrump (talk) 11:19, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Andy is half right. Please note that I claimed to occupy "something" of a middle ground, not "the" middle ground. I'm closer to Memills than to Andy, but then so is Encyclopedia Britannica. I know the SSSM quite well, having majored in psychology and sociology before EP was established. I'll allow his caricature of my opinions pass without comment. Unlike Andy, I have added both criticisms of EP to the page and positive elements, opposing Memills on one hand and the EP detractors on the other. That qualifies as something of a middle ground. Check the page's history since January, and you'll see for yourself the quality of my additions and of my sources. Anyway, Andy's "grumpy" charges against me are unfortunately a fine example of what we've come to expect on the EP talk page. People can be so mean. Leadwind (talk) 13:23, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I see you are back to your old schtick of pretending the Encyclopedia Britannica has a positive view on EP when in fact it has only two sentences about it one of which is mildly positve the other of which is critical.·Maunus·ƛ· 14:12, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I like Encyclopedia Britannica, as should every supporter of majority viewpoints. Curious editors are directed to the social behavior article, where we learn that EP's findings have been "impressive" and that they don't represent a "real danger" to liberal ideals. (I also count more than two sentences.) EBO also ventures certain criticisms of EP, which I dutifully cited on the EP page, because I believe in including both sides of the issue. I've gotten resistance from both sides when I have tried to cite EBO, so that suggests that the coverage in EBO must represent some sort of middle ground. If only we could just stick to what our best sources say, maybe there'd be less fighting. Leadwind (talk) 15:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes you have been met with resistance because EBO does not have an article about EP but only mentions it in passing - in the article about social behavior in animals written by an ethologist who is not a specialist in EP or in anthropology. Great source, great middle ground. You also didn't cite EBO but claimed it said a lot fo things that it didn't claim and I had to bring the cites to the talk page so other editors could see that there was indeed no independent coverage of Ep in the EBO.·Maunus·ƛ· 16:28, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Nobody 'knows the SSSM quite well', for the simple reason that it only exists in the mind of evolutionary psychologists. And that you claimed that 'the SSSM' was dominated by Marxism is easily verified: "The connection between Marxist intellectuals and the SSSM isn't really in dispute, is it?" [13]. I note also that you seem to think that Socialist Worker is somehow a reliable source for assertions about the politics of Stephen Jay Gould (not that he was a social scientist in any case, but whatever...). Such half-baked conspiracy theories have no place in any scholarly context. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:52, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Andy, as fun as it would be to talk about Gould's Marxist motivations for opposing evolutionary explanations of human behavior, we're off-topic, and I'll let you have the last word. Leadwind (talk) 13:58, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

This dispute might be a good time for a knowledgeable, patient admin to explain whether the tables are WP:SYNTH. Memills' detractors say they are, but they don't explain what novel conclusion Memills is promoting through this supposed synthesis. Leadwind (talk) 13:35, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Regardless of whether the tables are a synthesis or not, Maunus's original objection stands: that they are not about evolutionary psychology, but are instead an 'Overview of theoretical foundations' of evolutionary science in general - they are also inappropriate from a WP:MOS perspective, as they are presenting evidence better covered as conventional text. The difficulty seems to be that Memills is trying to write a textbook, rather than an encyclopaedia entry, and thus feels obliged to include 'everything' needed to understand the subject, whereas it would be better to direct questions about more general evolutionary science elsewhere. The snag with that of course is that he will not have the same control over the content that he hopes to achieve in this article. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:05, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

There is an agenda here. Leadwind caught it pretty well: "...the various anti-EP editors have waged a strange campaign to distance EP from evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory gets a lot of credit, so the anti-EP crowd doesn't want to emphasize the roots that EP has in evolutionary theory." The key here is what evolutionary psychologists believe are the essential theories to understand, not what you think is or is not essential. And, to determine what they think is essential, we can look to the evolutionary psychology textbooks -- and there the answer is clear: Darwin, Hamilton, Trivers, etc. EP cannot be understood without it. Memills (talk) 17:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump has stated that he believes that evolutionary psychology is "bollocks", Maunus refers to it as "the EP cult". Their arguments here are just an extension of what goes on constantly on the EP Talk page.

An reviewer uninvolved in the dispute, Tijfo098, above notes that "Maunus and Aprock are both known for advancing an anti bio-whatever explanations to many things." Another uninvolved reviewer above notes that "it appears that Maunus and others seem to be trying to use their own opinion on what modern EP means in order to change the information covered in the articles." There is an agenda here by these editors. I have lost faith that their agenda is to improve the EP page so that it accurately represents the discipline. Instead, by deleting material and blocking new material, they are attempting to hamstring the article.

Instead, it would be helpful if additional, uninvolved reviewers can take some time to review the Talk pages (the current one, as well as several recently archived ones) and help out by providing independent evaluations of the situation. Memills (talk) 16:16, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

And you have referred to Anthropologists as cultural determinists and Leadwind has referred to them as Marxists - so where does that leave us. Tijfo098 is not a neutral observer, nor is silver seren - both have had personal disputes with both of them over other issues in the past. You are clearly the one trying to OWN wp's coverage of wikipedia, you had had disputes with Viriditas for the same reasons the long before I even realized that the page on EP was more of an advertisement than an ecncyclopedia article. This is not your personal venue for promoting your discipline - you can do that at the HBES webpage or wherever else people will allo you to do EP lobby work. This is not the place.·Maunus·ƛ· 16:36, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The above reinforces my point about the need for neutral reviewers.

Many anthropologists self-identify as "cultural determinists" and the Cultural determinism page notes that it is "...is the belief that the culture in which we are raised determines who we are at emotional and behavioral level ... instead of biologically inherited traits" which I believe accurately characterizes your perspective. Leadwind has not referred to anthropologists as Marxists to my knowledge -- you added material to the EP page about claims of Marxism. My goal is not to "promote" my discipline, it is to insure that the article is an accurate overview of the discipline. Your goal apparently is to prevent that from happening since, after all, you believe it is a "cult." Memills (talk) 17:19, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

No, no anthropologists have identified as cultural determinists for the past 50 years. You have been told so by several anthropologists already. I am getting sick and tired about you telling me what my goals and opinions are, especially since you contradict my own statements about them. That is a violation of WP:TALK and WP:CIVIL. I encourage you to stop it and if you don't I do expect some of the administrators to take action against you. I do regret having referred to EP as a cult, I should know better. You are however exhibiting the extreme incapacity to see things from another viewpoint that is characteristic usually associated with the pejorative use of the word "cult", and that was what my statement implied. I said that out of frustration with your continued personal attacks and speculations about and characterizations of my motives, goals and opinions that you know nothing about. I apologize for having referred to you as behaving as if "brainwashed by the EP cult", that was uncivil and out of line. ·Maunus·ƛ· 17:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Leadwind and I have suggested several times that the way to go forward is to rely on evolutionary psychology textbooks to resolve any disagreements about what should / should not be included on the page. You have consistently ignored that suggestion. Instead you have your own ideas about the field, which you believe trump what is actually presented in the textbooks. Your own ideas and perspectives don't trump the textbooks. Memills (talk) 17:56, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Administrator encouraging WP:BATTLEGROUND WP:COI behavior?

Admin User:JzG has blocked User:James Cantor (who identifies himself as James Cantor) for repeatedly editing the biographies of some professionals that disagree with him in real life on professional issues (disagreements recorded in print academic publications). The block has now expired. Admin User:DGG however seems to think that the block was unjustified and that Cantor tagging with {{notability}} the biographies of people with whom he has had real-life disagreements is not a problem but a way to improve Wikipedia. I have asked DGG to reconsider his position on his talk page, but he asked that the discussion not be continued there. Since DGG is an admin, I thought this would be the proper venue to continue the discussion. Tijfo098 (talk) 21:08, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

how the heck is DGG encouraging battleground tactics, or have a conflict of interest, here? he said that he didn't think the article tagging was justified, but that tagging the articles was not disruptive. How does that indicate that he's encouraging battleground tactics or that he himself has some sort of conflict of interest?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 21:21, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Where did I say DGG has a conflict of interest? Tijfo098 (talk) 21:43, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

It's not terribly clear, to me, exactly what you're asking for, or who has done what. Are you seeking some sort of action against User:DGG, or against User:James Cantor? How did you come to the conclusiong that DGG "seems to think that the block was unjustified", and why is that relevant? This report is confusing.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 21:48, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Frankly, I thought the block was also unjustified. It looks to me that James Cantor was blocked for having a COI, and not any actual disruption. Does James Cantor have a topic ban that I'm unaware of? I've already commented at Cantor's talk page to explain further. -- Atama頭 22:37, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

It's perfectly correct to say that I thought the block unjustified, because I said so is just those terms on the user talk page. I prefer not to block or unblock in a situation that involves things I've worked on, or I would have unblocked. I have frequently said here before that admins should avoid anything at all that might possibly be interpreted as over-involvement, true or false,& I try to follow my own advice. I gather the block is still in effect for a few hours, and I very strongly urge somebody to life it. I would certainly unblock in a similar situation where I had no prior contact with the people. As for battleground behavior, it's pretty clear who I think is currently engaged in it. DGG ( talk ) 23:25, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The block ended about 5 hours ago. I tried to unblock when James made his most recent unblock request and couldn't because a block was no longer in effect. -- Atama頭 23:29, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I believe that MuZemike and Atama tried unblocking me at about the same time and "unblock-conflicted".

My remaining concern, for which I would appreciate input, is whether I am supposed to follow JzG's restrictions on threat of more blocking (which amounts to a topic ban) despite that the other admins who have so far commented said that I have been acting within the relevant guidelines. My original (and unanswered) response to JzG is on my userpage here, and the subsequent block discussion is here.

— James Cantor (talk) 00:04, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

James Cantor was autoblocked when he shouldn't have been (which I don't know why the autoblock was still up). –MuZemike 04:07, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The way I see it, this is green light for the following involvement of experts in Wikipedia. Expert 1 writes a paper, proposal, whatever, in some academic publishing venue. Expert 2 publishes a rebuttal or a paper disagreeing with expert 1, again in an academic venue. Expert 1, who is also a Wikipedia editor, tags the WP:BLP Wikipedia biography of expert 2 with {{notablity}}, meaning non-notability of course. Tijfo098 (talk) 23:35, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

And what if Expert 2 has a valid reason for the tag? I don't see a problem here. -- Atama頭 00:16, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Just for the record: The first thing I did was to state the issue on the talk page here, and the other editor in the discussion suggested the tag here, which I then enacted here.

If there is anything else I could have done to make the issue more explicit for other interested editors, I don't know what it is.

— James Cantor (talk) 00:47, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Expert 2 doesn't edit Wikipedia to begin with. Do we want experts tagging each others' biographies here when they have a real-life conflict? Is that the new purpose of Wikipedia? Tijfo098 (talk) 00:24, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Linking WP:BATTLEGROUND is a senseless non sequitur. If you want to know what the Wikipedia guidelines are for a situation like this, read WP:COI. If you have a problem with our guidelines, start a discussion on the talk page there. There is also WP:COIN (where I tend to hang out). But basically what you're describing isn't explicitly disallowed on Wikipedia. -- Atama頭 00:30, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I might also add that there is a very relevant line in BATTLEGROUND you should consider, "Assume good faith that every editor and group is here to improve Wikipedia—especially if they hold a point of view with which you disagree." -- Atama頭 00:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

On a side note, Guy was never informed that someone had started a discussion here that included him, I've now informed him. -- Atama頭 00:21, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

• I would like to be entirely clear here: I have no objection to Cantor editing in his field of expertise, I do object to to his editing of articles on living individuals with whom he has off-wiki disputes. His reaction to a warning on this was to repudiate the basis of the warning: [14] - this is, I think pretty uncontroversial. An individual with real-world conflicts editing the biographies of those with whom he is in conflict and asserting that there is no reaosn why he should not, that warnings are invalid? That is an unequivocal rejection of WP:COI and not acceptable. Hence the shot across the bows. Guy (Help!) 00:31, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

• So his rejection of the COI guideline that makes suggestions about how an editor can edit Wikipedia without causing problems is a justification for blocking? COI is not a policy, and isn't enforceable without a community ban. When did admins get the unilateral right to block someone for having a COI? The diff you provided looked like you were single-handedly placing a topic ban on an editor, which admins don't have the ability to do. I had hoped there was some blatant disruption on James Cantor's part that I had missed but it looks like I was incorrect. So again, tell me, what discretionary sanction were you operating under? -- Atama頭 00:37, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Funny, DGG had threatened to block another editor over COI/DE for simply commenting on a talk page. What changed in the policies since then? Tijfo098 (talk) 01:24, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

It was a borderline legal threat. Did Cantor do something similar? As I've said repeatedly, there needs to be disruption along with the COI before a block can be levied. Even WP:COI states as much, to prevent the kind of block that happened against James Cantor. Guy attempted to place a topic ban on James Cantor, which is completely in conflict with the banning policy. "Except as noted above, individual editors, including administrators, may not directly impose bans." The exception is when discretionary sanctions apply, which is why I asked about it before. Frankly, Guy's directive to James Cantor was unenforceable. If you wish for there to be a topic ban against James Cantor, however, this board we're posting on is the perfect place to initiate it. Just make your argument as to why the ban is necessary and ask for community input. You can't, however, ask an admin to ban someone for you, we can't do that. -- Atama頭 02:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

How was it a legal threat? The editor threatened with a block there by DGG seems to have simply written that he had been sued already, which created the COI. Tijfo098 (talk) 02:53, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

And if you and DGG are concerned about expert retention, you may want to pay some attention to the thread just above this one, where an expert is being accused of the utmost impropriety of wanting to include an overview table of the field previously written by him but which has apparently been published by the foremost professional organization in the field on their web site. James Cantor has also added a number of external links to his personal website to various articles, which has created a ruckus in itself—there's a thread in the EL/N archives— but I am not complaining about stuff like that, I'm only concerned about his editing of his opponents' biographies to disparage them, and the encouragement he now receives from some administrators in that direction. Tijfo098 (talk) 03:11, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Tijfo's comment is rather a half truth. Missing from his (?) opinion are this COI guideline:

Using material you yourself have written or published is allowed within reason, but only if it is relevant and conforms to the content policies.

Remember: an editor with a self-evident interest in the matter turning up on the talk page is an indication that they are playing it straight.

and my many, many, many talkpage entries doing exactly that: [15], [16], [17], [18], etc., etc., ...

Well okay, I guess that makes Tijfo's comment somewhat less than a half, but I think the point is clear. I have every desire and every conceivable demonstration of following WP:COI, including even its optional recommendations. The only, and I mean only dissatisfied editors are those with whom I have had one or another content dispute, typically because the scientific POV I added to a page disagrees with their own POVs.

— James Cantor (talk) 04:17, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I think James Cantor's behavior on wikipedia has been way over the top since the beginning, with various bits of WP:COI driving most of it; and his putting a notability tag on the bio of a person that he has an off-wiki dispute with is certainly unacceptable. Maybe a warning would have been better than a block, though, as he does tend to toe the line when it's pointed out to him. Dicklyon (talk) 01:28, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I think we need to accept that there are situations when people can put notability tags on the biographies of someone they have an off-wiki dispute with - eg, in cases where the person may not be notable and tagging for notability is objectively justified. To argue otherwise is simply to suppose that people can't behave responsibly or like grown-ups on Wikipedia. Assuming that won't encourage responsible behavior or editing; just the opposite. 203.118.184.13 (talk) 03:18, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

"won't encourage responsible behavior or editing; just the opposite" like not signing in to your account before commenting at ANI? Tijfo098 (talk) 03:31, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

More like assuming bad faith and making an accusation like the above. 203.118.184.13 (talk) 03:35, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

So not letting him tag articles of his opponents is an assumption of bad faith? How about you nominate WP:COI for deletion then? Because it's all an assumption of bad faith in the same vein. Tijfo098 (talk) 04:13, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia operates by consensus, and it's really not up to individual editors to "let" other editors do or not do particular things. More to the point, it is indeed assuming bad faith to suppose that someone cannot possibly be permitted to edit an article about an opponent, if his edits seem unproblematic in themselves and other editors might have made them in good faith. 203.118.185.58 (talk) 04:38, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually, 203.118.185.58, I think the consensus is that the notability tag on the rival's BLP was _not_ objectively justified. As I recall, not even DGG supported it. BitterGrey (talk) 05:11, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

(←) Let me put it in simple terms. Administrators can't place bans on editors without having a discretionary sanction first. That's pretty much the end of the discussion. Nobody has refuted this, or can refute it. If you don't like it, start an RFC. If you want a ban on a particular person, propose one and see what the community thinks. Otherwise this is all just noise. -- Atama頭 06:09, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

User:JzG didn't ban James Cantor, he blocked him for disruptive editing. An he'll probably block him again next time Cantor does something like that. If you disagree, you can unblock Cantor, because you're an admin too, I gather. Tijfo098 (talk) 06:40, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Telling someone they cannot edit an article is a ban. Ignore that all you want, but that's a fact. I'm assuming it was done in error, but if I see it again, I'll have to start an RFC. Administrators cannot ban editors unilaterally, and an attempt to do so is a claim of authority an administrator doesn't have. -- Atama頭 06:58, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Lots of edits to read. I do not see grounds for asserting that James Cantor rather more likely, however, that consensus would be reached for a ban on WP:BLP articles in the field, given his numerous documented real-world disputes. from any material I read, and, in fact, that COI is a straw man argument here. Nor did I see his edits as "disruptive" to the point where a block would be preventative. They certainly did not reach any stage where they made untrue claims about any person, and WP:BLP still applies to any contentious edits in them. If he violated WP:BLP and consensus were reached on a block, that would be an entirely different issue. BTW, the COI argument would imply that no expert could ever edit in their own field, as every expert has presumably had interactions with others in the field. I do not think such an extention of COI is wise. Collect (talk) 11:30, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Death of Osama bin Laden merchandising

moved to another forum; apparently redundant here; see WP:AN#Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden_merchandising
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I wanted to discuss merchandising at Talk:Death of Osama bin Laden, but this user Rklawton (talk) immediately deleted my addition thus accusing me of adding spam. He now accues me of simply amusing myself at his and other editor's expense. I would like this topic reinstated as it seems to be perfectly valid and has not been suggested by any other contrubutor. Another editor, User talk:N5iln, who mistakenly gave me a warning, has apologised for being over-hasty and has made some useful sugestions. Thank you. 86.172.225.184 (talk) 22:34, 4 May 2011 (UTC) You've cross posted this at WP:AN... please have a read of WP:FORUMSHOPPING for an explanation of why this is discouraged & frowned on --Errant (chat!) 22:38, 4 May 2011 (UTC) You did add spam. I can't help but be amused by this. This is like saying, "I'm not trying to advertise for Coca-Cola, I just want to start a discussion about the refreshing beverage that is sure to quench your thirst, which has been enjoyed by many generations all over the world and can now be purchased at a reduced price at Wal-Mart and other leading retailers, for a limited time." Even if that wasn't your intent, the way you phrased it (putting links to sales web sites and saying that there was lots of fun merchandise) really made it look like you were doing so. Please keep in mind our guideline at WP:ELNO. -- Atama頭 22:44, 4 May 2011 (UTC) Or the old TV ad about calling person-to-person-collect and asking for someone named "Wehadababyitsaboy."←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:36, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

banned user

Resolved

 – IP blocked by an admin

92.28.84.18 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) wants blocking; appears to be banned user Light Current. —Steve Summit (talk) 23:31, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

(Non-admin comment) Blocked by Gfoley4. WikiPuppies! (bark) 00:33, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

(ec)An admin has now blocked it for 7 days. There is a lengthy analysis now, on the ref desk talk page, essentially confirming that these subnets, including 92.28, are from the banned user "Light current". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:34, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Request for IP block

A user has investigated the various IP's used by Light Current, and they all "trace-route" back to a single IP: 62.24.255.78 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Is it possible to issue a block to that IP, and if so, would that choke off the troll? I'm talking maybe a week, just to see if it helps. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:24, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm told that such a block won't have any effect. Is that true, and if so, is there anything else that can be done, beyond some broad range-blocks? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:48, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes and no, respectively. Individual IP blocks longer than about a day are also pretty pointless. You'd need an ACB or hard block on every range being used. I'd think that's quite unlikely given Tiscali's scope. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 10:01, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually it's Opal now. And his old IP range was blocked for a month last year with nary an effect, so it's very likely blocking his current IP ranges would be similarly lacking in collateral damage. But at worst, we can just keep swatting that mosquito whenever he turns up. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:11, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Those ISPs all kind of merge into one, and hold some monster ranges. A quick look tells me he's using 89.243/16, 92.28/16, 92.25/16, 92.29/16, 78.148/16, and 78.150/16. That's simply not blockable unless you can narrow it down a lot. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 10:27, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

How about trying it for a few days and see if anyone yelps. It worked before. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:51, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

You're talking about nearly half a million (identified) IP address from a very popular UK ISP. There's no way I'm going to condone that kind of block. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 11:06, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

OK, then it will have to be shoot-the-fish-in-the-barrel for the foreseeable future. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:20, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Has anyone attempted to file an abuse report? How is Opal about responding to abuse reports? - Burpelson AFB ✈ 17:02, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Could someone email me details on this user's editing patterns? I might be able to create an abuse filter. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:43, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Otto Middleton

I believe the creator of this article is disrupting wikipedia to mock people and prove a point. Within the article he is repeating behaviour on purpose that he has just been chastising people for doing so. see here also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Otto_Middleton RafikiSykes (talk) 01:23, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

• Sorry, I don't see what the problem is here. Can you explain? Drmies (talk) 01:52, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Mocking? Not sure who I'd be mocking. Disruption? Hardly, I created an article which may not be notable, but it is accurate and verifiable. There's some humour involved perhaps. I'm not clear what your objection is, can you spell it out? Would you not have been best to come to my talk page and discuss this, rather than come here? What admin intervention do you want?--Scott Mac 01:54, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

TBH, the sudden creation of Middleton family related articles, has gotten out of hand. GoodDay (talk) 02:09, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Let's keep WP:RECENTISM in mind. Notability is not temporary. (I mean seriously, Checkers doesn't even has his own article.) Guoguo12--Talk--  02:18, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree that it should be speedied, but let's cut the creator a little slack. He's been mopping up a lot of vomit today. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 02:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Incivilities by Pmanderson

Pmanderson (talk · contribs · logs · block log), who has (again) what appears to be a philosophical difference of opinion with me, launched a surprising and unprovoked attack against me that I would consider racist. Not only did he reinstate it after I had removed it, he justified it saying he was paraphrasing me. Upon my removal of it for a second time, citing WP:RPA, he complained about its removal but actually refrained from reinstating the aforementioned offending text. Now Pmanderson have crossed paths many times before, but never has the conflict descended to this low level. What upsets me is that just I had thought things had quietened down between us for some time. I tried to offer my opinion whilst keeping things impersonal. He is an intelligent and educated individual, and yet he chose to launch his latest attack with such serious racist undertones that I am wondering whether the recent string of blocks has begun having an adverse effect on his psyche. As he is no stranger to Personal attacks or harassment, and has upped my request for him to consider formally withdrawing his attack with semantics. A clear message should be sent to him that such behaviour is unacceptable. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:58, 5 May 2011 (UTC) notification.

That doesn't seem racist to me. Am I missing something?Heiro 05:10, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

It isn't. The alleged instance of racism is that I have used the word "anglophone", which means (to quote the OED), "An English-speaking person." Two editors have explained this to him, in response to his original complaint, here and here.

If Ohconfucius simply had no idea what the word meant, this should have dealt with it; so I must ask if this is another spurious accusation intended to win a discussion by getting another person blocked.

Please deal with Ohconfucius appropriately. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:20, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Gotcha, was wondering if there was another meaning of anglophone I was heretofore unaware of. Heiro 05:24, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

What sort of administrative action would you suggest? Have you read WP:TPO? "The basic rule is, that you should not edit or delete the comments of other editors without their permission." Refactoring once is fine, if you think it could be a personal attack, but rather than escalating the issue you should have at least made an attempt to communicate to the user on his/her talkpage commenting that you find his comments incivil, rather than merely reverting back and forth. :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 05:29, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

He did calmly address the offender on his talk page here and subsequently. Dicklyon (talk) 05:42, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

How about a 30-day block? That was the duration of his block of misrepresenting another editor which was shortened after 3 weeks because he saw "the error of his ways". It would appear that he does not, by once again misrepresenting (or "paraphrasing" to use his own words). --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:33, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

As stated above, I don't find the word "anglophone" to be much of a personal attack, but YMMV. :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 05:29, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Can I give my interpretation? Pmanderson frequently uses personal attacks, like when he called me a liar, and mocked me by crediting me with inventing the rules of dash usage, and impugns the motives of people he disagrees with, often by mocking them, as in his mocking "quote" of Ohconfucious's opinion as "Don't do what reliable sources do; do what OhConfucius wants. Who cares if anglophones understand us?" in which he seems to contrast "anglophones" with the orient-related username of the editor; this is I believe why the personal attack was perceived as rascist. I hope OhConfucius will say if I understood him correctly. Dicklyon (talk) 05:38, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Perhaps Anderson thought "Ohconfucius" was Chinese because of his name and therefore could not be a speaker of English. That's presumably what Ohconfucius thought, and I agree that would be racist. (Your grandparents came from China, therefore your opinion is worthless.) But Anderson routinely claims that people who disagree with him don't speak English, even if it's their native language, and that phrasings he disagrees with are not in English, even if they have been demonstrated to be. The idea that only his POV is "English" is a frequent argument of his, so it may well be that this is just an example of Anderson's reflexive incivility rather than racism. — kwami (talk) 05:46, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

• I would characterise Pmanderson as sly, intelligent, snide; his mastery of the language allows him to tread the fine subjective line between the perceived insult and the actual insult. We have had to live with one another enough for him to know that I am oriental. The quote I removed was a bad faith attempt to "paraphrase" me with a "me no speakee Engrish" type jibe was clearly calculated to wind me up. I pointed out to him that I took offense, and he launches into his habitual semantic contortions. His attempting to turn the tables and ask me for an apology in turn for the offence he allegedly suffered is feigned and a piss-take. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:22, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

(ec) Ah. The dash enthusiasts from the #Move war over typography of en dash versus hyphen, closed and lame as it is. (Remarkable of them to show up so fast.)

I regret that they join Ohconfucius in misrepresenting what I have said: I have not, I believe, called Dicklyon a liar; I have said - and will prove, if an uninvolved party cares - that he repeats false statements, like calling an 8-2 RM. closed as consensus, non-consensus.

I use "English" to mean - and always have - what the overwhelming majority of English sources use. Dicklyon and Kwamikagami are opposed to following such overwhelming majorities - and have engaged in revert-wars and wheel-wars to make sure Wikipedia doesn't either. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:57, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The last time you said you didn't call me a liar, someone posted the diff; you actually used the verb "lied" since we're being precise. And don't mischaracterize my position. I have never argued against following overwhelming majorities of English sources; I just argue that we can follow them and still use the styling specified in our MOS. So, you misrepresent, and you mock, and you sound racist to some; can you offer to do something about it? Dicklyon (talk) 06:31, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

It's worth noticing that I support Pmandersons point of view in the dash-hyphen war, and hence can not be called a "dash"-enthusiast, and still think that he shouldn't be allowed to insult others. This is not, despite Pmanderson attempts to characterize it as such, a content dispute, but a discussion on Pmandersons insult of Ohconfusius. Pmanderson does *not* have the right to insult someone just because they disagree. It matters not that Ohconfusius and Dicklyon are incorrect, that is not an excuse. --OpenFuture (talk) 08:40, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

From his comments, I had the distinct impression that his xenophobia was not English based, but more American based. He even mocked the guide to American style and usage (whatever the exact title was) because it was published by Oxford. Dicklyon (talk) 05:50, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

To be more accurate than this falsehood, I described it as Oxford English - a dialect of doubtful relevance to an article about the United States. But some people see mockery whenever someone presumes to disagree with them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 06:00, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The book was about American English. Where is my falsehood now? Dicklyon (talk) 06:35, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

None of this merits administrative action and therefore I recommend closing the discussion thread. TFD (talk) 06:09, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

How much repeated violation of WP:NPA and WP:CIVILITY and WP:AGF does warrant admin action? Would you recommend an RFC/U, or what? Dicklyon (talk) 06:33, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Agree that none of this merits administrative action. I don't know whether User:Pmanderson has been uncivil. He clearly has not been racist - the word "Anglophone" refers to the language spoken, not to ethnicity, nationality or location. I often find what User:Pmanderson writes unclear; I guess that other people do too. Please can we just put this down as a misunderstanding.--Toddy1 (talk) 07:24, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Nobody has suggested that the word "anglophone" is racist or is the problem; indeed, all have said otherwise. The insult was in implying that Ohconfusious is not one, via a mocking "quote". Dicklyon (talk) 07:37, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The personal attack was not racist. However, he is implying that OhConfucius doesn't know English, which is an insult, and one that Pmanderson like to use often. Note that he already has been blocked for personal attacks twice. See also Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Pmanderson --OpenFuture (talk) 06:56, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Anyone reading the link you provided will see that User:Pmanderson was accused of calling User:Marknutley a sockpuppet. User:Marknutley has since been blocked and is listed as a suspected sockpuppet/sockpuppeteer. As for some User:Marknutley's edits that User:Pmanderson called lies - calling them lies would seem to have been fair comment.--Toddy1 (talk) 07:45, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and Cuba is a democracy having free elections [19]. Tijfo098 (talk) 07:47, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I did not know that, but:

1. That was only *one* of the insults of Pmanderson mentioned in that RFC.
2. In fact he accused Marknutley of being a sockpuppet of *me*, some 18 months before the actual sockpuppets of Marknutley was created.
3. How does Marknutleys sockpuppets give Pmanderson the right to insult OhConfusius? Right, it doesn't. This happens everytime Pmanderson is being discussed. Someone pops up and starts talking about someone else in an effort to derail the discussion. --OpenFuture (talk) 08:34, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

OpenFuture - You brought up the RFC as further "evidence" against Pmanderson - that was why I commented on it.--Toddy1 (talk) 11:07, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Watch the shifting sands of Manderson trying to dodge the central issue of my complaint by throwing up chaff. I don't think I was being accused of being a sockpuppet, and just because Manderson was correct on one count proves now't in this current debate. It certainly doesn't prove he's always right or has monopoly of The Truth™©. The issue here is whether you people agree he insulted or attacked me. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:31, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Ohconfucius - you said that Pmanderson made a racist attack on you - he did not. Even Dicklyon and OpenFuture agree on that.

Please can we just drop it. You are assuming bad faith by people you disagree with. Please stop it.--Toddy1 (talk) 11:07, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

No administrative action required. It's distasteful to see old enemies of PManderson take the opportunity to air various ancient grudges which have no relevance to Ohconfucius' complaint. Please ponder the instructions at the top of the page: "Please do not clutter this page with accusations or side-discussions within a discussion". @Ohconfucious: even if you're offended, you are by no means required to "characterise" PManderson, as you do above ("I would characterise Pmanderson as sly, intelligent, snide"). ANI is not a free forum for personal attacks and character assassination. Time to close this thread. Bishonen | talk 11:14, 5 May 2011 (UTC).

Old RFC's on the topic are relevant, indeed that is the whole purpose of the RFC as I understand it. I do agree that Toddy1 bringing up Marknutleys sockpuppets is completely irrelevant, but I don't think you can characterize Toddy1 as an "old enemy of PManderson". Noting that PManderson has a history of insults is hardly irrelevant, not an old grudge. This is just once again an attempt to move focus from PManderson actions to the actions of others. That said you are of course entitled to your opinion that no administrative action is required. --OpenFuture (talk) 11:23, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

OpenFuture - you are misrepresenting the situation. You brought up to old RFC as "evidence"; I commented on the RFC.--Toddy1 (talk) 12:10, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I never claimed anything else, so I don't know how I misrepresented anything, sorry. I'm with Bishonen on this: "Please do not clutter this page with accusations or side-discussions within a discussion". --OpenFuture (talk) 12:37, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

(od) No administrative action is required here. I see no personal attack in [this whatsoever. May I also suggest that bringing up old RfCs when a particular charge is not getting the traction that you think it deserves is both unfair as well as unwarranted. --rgpk (comment) 13:49, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean with "Not getting the traction", that seems to assume and imply loads of things that is incorrect.

Anyway, I've seen admins bring up RFC/U's, and been told that one of the purposes with them is to act as a permanent record of the discussion and outcome, precisely to do exactly that so as to act as guidance in the future. If you mean that old behavior shouldn't be brought up, I don't see how that is any more unfair or unwarranted than having a link to the users block log. And previous behavior *do* influence decisions of admins and this is in general the consensus of how it should be. So I guess this is yet another case of where different admins have different viewpoints and practices, and yet another space to get lost in dispute resolution quagmires of wikilwyering. :) But OK, I won't do it again then. No big deal. --OpenFuture (talk) 15:38, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Bot problem

A bot [20] is removing an important superfamily from an insect genus. I undid the edits and asked on the bot's discussion page why this was going on. The bot includes a link that lists the changes, but does not say why it is removing this superfamily; it's an important grouping in agriculture, and the articles are almost all written from that perspective; and the superfamily is not elsewhere in the article. The bot may be doing it according to a recent dissertation, but that would be original research, not appropriate for an encyclopedia. The bot continues to operate although I posted a bug report. --184.99.179.238 (talk) 08:13, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

You should take a look at WP:TX. According to this policy, these ranks should not be included. I made those articles and I certainly did not make them for their "agricultural" importance, so I dont know where you got that from, but I agree they are agriculturally important. Anyway, I was not aware of the policy that these ranks should be excluded at the time I made the articles. Now that I am, I dont really care that they are removed. Finding these minor ranks is not difficult: just click on the family rank and you will see to which superfamily the species belongs.Ruigeroeland (talk) 08:28, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Minor rank means different things for different taxa. If no minor ranks should be included, they shouldn't be coded. There is a reason for including this particular subfamily, it's well-known. The bot didn't move the information from the taxobox to the article, it removed the information completely. By the way, did you copy the mining descriptions from the database or vice versa? --184.99.179.238 (talk) 08:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The database does not have a description of the mines for 90% of the species. I got the descriptions from other pages and research articles mostly. The database cited mainly has info on the distribution and host plants. Anyway: it seems you have an interest in leaf mining species, why dont you help out making articles, I could always use a bit of help! :) About the removal of these ranks: I will leave this discussion to the people who suggested removing the ranks in the first place. Ruigeroeland (talk) 09:12, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

"Taxoboxes should include all major ranks above the taxon described in the article, plus minor ranks that are important to understanding the classification of the taxon described in the article, or which are discussed in the article. Other minor ranks should be omitted." This superfamily is important to understanding the classification of the genera. Not all species and genera have relevant superfamily; these particular genera have a relevan superfamily that is frequently included in discussions of the taxon, and this where the bot is removing the superfamily. --184.99.179.238 (talk) 08:55, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The edit summary provided by the bot includes a link to its approval. It seems to have been briefly discussed at the relevant wikiproject, and I have added a comment there pointing to this report (see WT:WikiProject Lepidoptera#Discussion). Johnuniq (talk) 08:31, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

That is not a discussion. It is a list, without explanations, about removing superfamilies from articles that already have genera, and so on. This superfamily should be included in its genera articles. See my arguments above. --184.99.179.238 (talk) 08:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Ruigeroeland is entirely right that this minor rank ought to be removed, as was agreed, and as was approved for the bot. Contrary to the IPs assertions, it is not important to understanding the species involved. Indeed, the superfamily Gracillarioidea is a much less well known taxon than the family Gracillariidae, and our article on the superfamiy is tiny compared to the article on the family. There are indeed cases where taxa at minor ranks are important for a taxobox; this isn't one of them. The bot is right to make the changes it is making. --Stemonitis (talk) 09:53, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

There's no discussion about the importance of the family versus the superfamily until you said this right here. This decision should have been made before the bot removed the superfamily. The family is very well known, but the superfamily is also very well known and studied as the superfamily. If the superfamily were also in the article, removing it for these genera would not matter, but the superfamily is being removed from the articles. The phylogenetics of the superfamily is a current hot topic, an encyclopedia provides basic information like this: connecting this superfamily to members. This is one of the times where the minor rank is important. The bot operator is wrong to program the bot to make this change. --70.57.230.148 (talk) 14:15, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

And, was it agreed to remove all superfamily for all genera of Lepidoptera? Are all superfamilies as little known as Gracillarioidea versus its family? There is no discussion about this. You've come and said the bot was right to remove this one superfamily. I disagree. Now, is it correct in removing all superfamilies? Where is that discussion? That is what the discussion should have been before the bot started removing all the superfamilies. --70.57.230.148 (talk) 14:24, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

One more point in response: the size of Wikipedia articles is not proof of anything at all. --70.57.230.148 (talk) 14:31, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I defence of the bot I must say that it was discussed at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Lepidoptera#RfC, the talk page for the wikiproject covering all moths and butterflies. I notice you are well-known with the subject of Lepidoptera, but seeing you use an IP instead of a username, I think you are not very active on wikipedia. Might I suggest you make a username and start watching the talk page mentioned earlier? If something like this happens in the future, you can jump in and share your opinion. I do use wikipedia often and have seen the discussion but was neutral on the subject of removing these ranks, hence I made no comment. Ruigeroeland (talk) 14:48, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The basic position that minor ranks should not be included in taxoboxes (the core part of this bot task) is of very long standing at WP:TX, and (as far as I know) enjoys universal agreement. I have seen no evidence that the one superfamily in question is substantively different from the many others that are routinely excluded from species-level and genus-level taxoboxes. To answer your question, then, yes, there was agreement to remove all distant, minor ranks from taxoboxes for taxa at low rank; this was both in the form of the long-held guidelines on taxobox usage, and the specific discussions surrounding the bot task. That task only covers Lepidoptera, but only because that's where the bulk of the problem lies, and for no other reason. The link between a taxon and its members still remains, but we cannot include all taxa in the taxobox, which is intended to be a summary, so we exclude minor ranks except ones very close to the subject taxon. This is all explained at WP:TX. If the membership of Gracillarioidea is under debate, then that debate will take the form of which families (its direct children) to include (and possibly individual aberrant genera), but will hardly list them species by species. Thus, we see that the superfamily is not of direct relevance to the species – not in the same way that the family is – and the species are not relevant to the superfamily. One last note: I did not claim that article size is "proof" of anything, but I do think it rather suggestive that a taxon which you claim to be of central importance to these species has such a weak article. In general, better known taxa have longer articles; having such a short article at Gracillarioidea (one which does not mention any of the reasons for its being a "hot topic") does nothing to convince me of its importance. --Stemonitis (talk) 15:43, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

In response to 184.99.179.238, the bot does not stop after a bug report is filed. The bot performs multiple tasks and a unrelated bug report may stop a scheduled task from performing. It will stop after a block or when the appropriate shutdown page is activated. This was linked in the bots edit summary. This task was approved after 2 RfC's which ended with consensus for the changes. The BRfA was approved by the BAG. The more information link led you to the BRfA where the list of changes is available. Also on the page are links to the two RfCs and the filed bot request which probably provide the information you are looking for. Noom _talk ^stalk 15:07, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Additionally, shut the bot down pending comments from the opposing users. Noom _talk ^stalk 15:14, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the speedy shutdown on that, Noom. I'm surprised an active contributor didn't see the RfC for this at WT:LEPID or the note about it at WT:TOL. Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:23, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Moratorium on hyphen page moves

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.

Discussion continues at WT:MOS, and now at arbcom

---

I watch the Push-pull configuration, which, as far I can tell, has been at that title since its creation in 2004. Today, User:Tony1 moved the article to Push–pull configuration. He made some similar moves to several other articles in the same time period. I've reverted his move as tenditious and undiscussed. Is it too much to ask that the parties to this dispute stop moving hyphenated-title articles until the dispute is settled? Thanks. - BilCat (talk) 11:24, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

It is totally over the top to create an ANI thread without even waiting for a reply. The complainant's s edit-summary talks of paranoia and something else quite irrelevant to the page move: whose paranoia? Some articles in the category had dashes, some had hyphens; it is not unreasonable to harmonise them according to the style guidelines. I won't move any page for the time being, given this user's sudden spin-out. My intention was not to upset anyone. Thank you. Tony (talk) 11:40, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

There have been several ANIs on this topic here alone. It's not unreasonable to expect you to not make moves while discussions are underway on what to do about the issue. That's why I came here first, as I consider this an extension of the previous conversations above. You should know better. - BilCat (talk) 11:44, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

BilCat's subsequent edit-summary to me, "... LOLOL - lughing AT you ...", makes it hard to treat this as a good-faith exchange, and I note that his talk page says his editing is affected by illness. It may be that he is acting aggressively through health-stress. Either way, as I said, I will make no further page moves, and wish him well. Thank you, I've better things to do. Tony (talk) 12:12, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I was laughing at your ridiculous claims of my disruptive editing by adding a warning to your talk page. Nothing more. - BilCat (talk) 12:26, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I have filed an ArbCom request for a motion. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Hyphens and dashes. Tijfo098 (talk) 12:20, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Since ArbCom deals primarily with behavioral issues, the issue of Tony continuing to move affected articles while the issue of hyphens in titles in under discussion can now be dealt with there. From the previous ANI discussions, this is not isolated behavior on his part. - BilCat (talk) 12:26, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

ANY user who moves a page for the sole purpose of screwing around with the hyphen or dash should be immediately blocked for disruption, until a final decision can be made. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:36, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I had no idea there was any kind of moratorium on editing for compliance with any part of the style guides. I was not "screwing around" with punctuation. Why would you block someone who has just stated twice that he won't move any pages (unless the motive were pure vindictiveness)? Tony (talk) 12:39, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

If you've stopped, then good for you. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:23, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Tony, we are all responsible for our behavior, and I've NEVER excused any of my own behavior because I was sick. You've no right to insinuate otherwise, or assume you know my state of mind. I was not angry until you did that. - BilCat (talk) 13:11, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I had actually moved on from the issue, and had dropped it (that's what my removing a post.warning means, as I've stated in my notes), until you posted a second time on my talk page. At that point, the insinuations about my health and mental state were something I could not walk away from. This is my final post here on this issue until an admin or arbcom contacts me for further involvement. - BilCat (talk) 13:19, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

BilCat, your initial post was pretty aggressive, as were your edit-summaries. As I have said, I meant no offence. Perhaps we should both simply move on from the matter? Tony (talk) 13:24, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Anyone who calls himself a "reformer" on style issues has already taken an aggressive stance, and to me, a tenditious one. I felt I had no other choice but to go directly to ANI with the matter, as you've already made your stance on style issues quite clear. - BilCat (talk) 13:40, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Anyway, I apologize for my own reactions in this case, and I now accept your apology that you were commenting on my health in good faith. My apologies for my own actions appearing agressive to you - I understand how you would think so, as you didn't have access to my reasonings any more that I had acces to yours, before we gave them. - BilCat (talk) 13:51, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Agree with BaseballBugs. In light of the content of recent AN/I threads etc any page moves in the Dash Wars should reult in an immediate block - it's clearly provocative and disruptive and beyond disingenuous to say that he didn't know there was a moratorium on "editing for compliance with any part of the style guides". Also, the comment on the health - and the implication was mental health - of BilCat was disgraceful. DeCausa (talk) 13:22, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

There is not yet consensus on a moratorium (many dash fans oppose one); but perhaps there ought to be. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

A moratorium on an issue under discussion should be self-evident as necessary by experienced users, and since it is not, I came here seeking one. After so many discussions on the issue already, the fact that some want to continue making contentious moves while discussions are underway is in my opinion tenditious. Hopefully Arbcom can address that. In my defense,I felt I was upholding the status quo by reverting Tony's move, but if Arbcom disagrees with me, it's there right, and so be it. - BilCat (talk) 13:47, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

BilCat, you have called me "ridiculous" here as well, and I have repeated that I meant no offence. But I'm willing to let it all pass. DeCausa, as Mr Anderson says, there is no moratorium. If you want one, please take it to the appropriate place (there is right now an appropriate place). Blocks are explicitly for protecting the site, and not punitive. In the light of my public statement above (Baseball bug says "If you've stopped, then good for you."), I don't see an issue. Please assume good faith WRT my actions. They were certainly not intended to provoke or disrupt. I believe the matter is best left now. Thank you. Tony (talk) 14:05, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

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

Xiatica and www.artabase.net

Could someone take a look at Special:Contributions/Xiatica edits please ? They appear to be a single purpose account adding links to www.artabase.net which describes itself as "an online marketing channel for the fine art market". On the one hand it looks like external link spamming, on the other I'm biased so I don't have the heart to remove the links. Sean.hoyland - talk 12:15, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Xiatica has very kindly stopped adding links for the time being pending clarification here. Sean.hoyland - talk 12:51, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Newcomer AnnNorwood interfering with deletion processes

Removed CSD tags from Rosetta Walker here and here, removed AFD tag here and blanked AFD discussion page here. Probable sock of RosettaWalker, who also removed CSD tag here, SPI investigation pending here. — TRANSPORTERMAN (TALK) 15:34, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

CSD and AFD tags removed again here. — TRANSPORTERMAN (TALK) 16:09, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't see a single warning having been issued - I'll issue one now -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:13, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Warning issued, and as the early AfD responses made it clear it was an unfairly contested A7, I have deleted the article -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:20, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

URGENT Template:Hansard-contribs

Resolved

 – Blocked, locked, etc. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 16:43, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

High traffic template is being vandalised with, potentially, disturbing images. Please see Template:Hansard-contribs. P. S. Burton (talk) 15:48, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Are you sure that's the right one? That looks to have been fully protected since January 2010 and not edited since -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:57, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

It appears to be the transcluded template Template:StripWhitespace which has been vandalised (twice) by EvMurre10. Locking and blocking needed. Voceditenore (talk) 16:02, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Yes. I am absolutely certain. It is strange indeed, when I looked at it some minutes ago, their were several photos of a naked woman defecating. Maybe the picture was transcluded somehow. P. S. Burton (talk) 16:05, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Template protected by Zzuuzz, returning troll and their underlying IP blocked. TNXMan 16:08, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

User:Maheshkumaryadav

Maheshkumaryadav (talk · contribs) Maheshkumaryadav is making a slew of articles, all with the same purpose (anti-Pakistan). From this version of his talk page you can see he's been repeatedly told of inappropriate pages he's created, and warned not to make more. --Rob (talk) 17:40, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

• user notified. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 17:54, 5 May 2011 (UTC)