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Pages recently put under extended confirmed protection (45 out of 8778 total) () WATCH Page Protected Expiry Type Summary Admin Thom Yorke 2024-11-01 23:49 2025-02-01 23:49 edit,move Arbitration enforcement ScottishFinnishRadish Rajput clans 2024-11-01 21:23 indefinite edit,move Community sanctions enforcement: upgrade to WP:ECP; WP:CASTE El C Gwalior 2024-11-01 20:44 2025-05-01 20:44 edit Persistent disruptive editing: Regular semi-protection ineffective, persistent block evasion and additions of poorly sourced material. Yamaguchi先生 Sarah Jama 2024-11-01 20:02 2026-11-01 20:02 edit,move Contentious topic restriction: WP:PIA, WP:ECR (related content) El C Fathi Razem 2024-11-01 19:57 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement; WP:CT/A-I Significa liberdade October 2024 Beqaa Valley airstrikes 2024-11-01 19:52 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: WP:PIA, WP:ECR El C December 2008 air strikes in the Gaza Strip 2024-11-01 19:50 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement, WP:CT/A-I Significa liberdade Iranian reactions to the Gaza War (2008–2009) 2024-11-01 19:44 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement; WP:CT/A-I Significa liberdade Ehsan Daxa 2024-11-01 19:29 indefinite edit,move WP:CT/A-I Significa liberdade Draft:Carnival Internet 2024-11-01 18:58 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated BusterD Vietnam War 2024-11-01 15:57 2024-12-01 15:57 edit Persistent sockpuppetry Sir Sputnik 2024 Tyre airstrikes 2024-11-01 02:48 indefinite edit,move WP:CT/A-I Significa liberdade Mahmoud Bakr Hijazi 2024-11-01 01:52 indefinite edit,move WP:CT/A-I Significa liberdade 0404 News 2024-11-01 01:50 indefinite edit,move WP:CT/A-I Significa liberdade Assassination of Imad Mughniyeh 2024-11-01 01:47 indefinite edit,move WP:CT/A-I Significa liberdade Rashad Abu Sakhila 2024-11-01 00:09 indefinite edit,move WP:CT/A-I Significa liberdade Israeli airstrikes on Al Qard Al Hasan 2024-10-31 23:51 indefinite edit,move WP:CT/A-I Significa liberdade List of best-selling boy bands 2024-10-31 22:12 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated: request at WP:RFPP Ymblanter Sporting CP 2024-10-31 20:23 2025-05-01 12:37 edit,move Well, that didn't take long. Black Kite October surprise 2024-10-31 18:52 2025-10-31 18:52 edit,move Contentious topics enforcement of WP:CT/AP; requested at WP:RfPP Daniel Quinlan Sadh 2024-10-31 18:22 indefinite edit,move Community sanctions enforcement: per RFPP and WP:GS/CASTE Daniel Case Kamala 2024-10-31 17:02 2024-11-14 17:02 edit,move Persistent violations of the biographies of living persons policy from (auto)confirmed accounts Bagumba Hebraization of Palestinian place names 2024-10-31 09:45 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction Johnuniq Beit Hanoun wedge 2024-10-31 09:39 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction Johnuniq Baalbek 2024-10-30 22:09 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: WP:ARBPIA Ymblanter Ada and Abere 2024-10-30 21:55 2024-11-03 21:55 edit,move Persistent disruptive editing from (auto)confirmed accounts; requested at WP:RfPP Daniel Quinlan Susanna Gibson 2024-10-30 19:58 indefinite edit,move WP:BLP issues. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Susanna Gibson (2nd nomination). Asilvering 29 October 2024 Beit Lahia airstrike 2024-10-30 19:00 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement; requested at WP:RfPP Ganesha811 Hwang Hyun-jin 2024-10-30 13:09 2024-11-06 13:09 edit Persistent violations of the biographies of living persons policy from (auto)confirmed accounts Goodnightmush Khushali Kumar 2024-10-29 21:30 indefinite edit,move Restoring some protection after creating redirect Liz Comparisons between Donald Trump and fascism 2024-10-29 20:05 2025-01-29 20:05 edit,move Contentious topic restriction: WP:CT/AP Ingenuity Orakzai 2024-10-29 19:32 indefinite edit,move Community sanctions enforcement: per RFPP and WP:GS/CASTE Daniel Case Bangash 2024-10-29 19:29 indefinite edit,move Community sanctions enforcement: per RFPP and WP:GS/CASTE Daniel Case Bengalis 2024-10-29 19:24 indefinite edit Persistent sockpuppetry: per RFPP; will also log as CTOPS action Daniel Case Zaher Jabarin 2024-10-29 19:12 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per RFPP and ARBPIA Daniel Case Killing of Shaban al-Dalou 2024-10-29 18:36 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per RFPP and ARBPIA Daniel Case Template:MusicBrainz release group 2024-10-29 18:00 indefinite edit,move High-risk template or module: 2502 transclusions (more info) MusikBot II Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, My Life for Iran 2024-10-29 17:26 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement: WP:CT/A-I; requested at WP:RfPP Elli Palestine and the United Nations 2024-10-29 17:25 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement: WP:CT/A-I; requested at WP:RfPP Elli Israel won't exist in 25 years 2024-10-29 17:25 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement: WP:CT/A-I; requested at WP:RfPP Elli Down with Israel 2024-10-29 17:25 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement: WP:CT/A-I; requested at WP:RfPP Elli Donald Trump and fascism 2024-10-29 17:20 2025-01-29 20:05 edit,move Persistent vandalism; requested at WP:RfPP Elli Tim Sheehy (businessman) 2024-10-29 17:03 2024-11-12 17:03 edit,move Violations of the biographies of living persons policy: restrict BLP violations from non-XC until after the election OwenX Mykolas Majauskas 2024-10-29 16:25 2025-04-29 13:09 edit,move Contentious topic restriction: WP:CT/BLP -- requested at WP:RFPP Favonian Tony Hinchcliffe 2024-10-29 01:19 2025-01-29 01:14 edit,move Contentious topic restriction: WP:CT/AP ToBeFree

zscaler proxies

No such user raised a legitimate concern on my talk page. I have blocked Special:Contributions/165.225.192.0/18 because this is the zscaler proxy. NSU notes this has caused a moderate amount of collateral damage including to them. NSU states, "That range belongs to Zscaler which provides security and cloud services to several major companies, including, apparently, mine. This is a closed proxy that requires authentication and should not have been blocked." I placed this block because Wikipedia generally hard-blocks proxies, and zscaler is definitely a proxy. I've been following the lead of other administrators who have applied range blocks to other zscaler ip blocks. I've seen substantial anonymous vandalism from zscaler, too, though this can be dealt with via a soft block. I additionally have the concern that if we allow editing from zscaler, we may be implicitly endorsing their security and privacy stance (though this may be out of scope for any discussion)? So, my question: Based on current Wikipedia policies and best-practices, should we hard-block zscaler proxies? Should we soft-block zscaler proxies? --Yamla (talk) 21:01, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

I'm a regular strong opponent of blocking Zscaler proxies for being proxies, and especially hardblocking them. They are used by really lots and lots of large corporations for security filtering, including plenty of 'Forbes 500' (or whatever) companies - large banks, drug companies, manufacturers. One only has to look at the contribs. I think even the FCC uses Zscaler. And the worst thing is that these are often highly educated, knowledgeable, good faith users. Zscaler is a reputable company, and this is a type of proxy I wouldn't call open. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 21:16, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Zzuuzz, I'd agree that ZScaler probably aren't open proxies. There are only about 6 of these blocks if we want to undo them.

AmandaNP doesn't have great access to the internet right now, and has asked me to relay the following:

• I am definitely for an anon only block hence the coloweb block from the range i blocked. I think anything that obfuscates regardless of services should at least not allow account creation for the potential abuse of socks. Thats the whole reason i made the colo template SQL^{Query me!} 01:26, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

• I tend to think the idea of "anything that obfuscates" is a bit of a red herring, especially in modern times. When someone hops onto their mobile IP address, is that really indicating some sort of 'true' origin? We don't block all mobile addresses. When it comes to Zscaler, it basically acts like just another ISP proxy, most of which regularly 'obfuscate'. I've no objections if some admin thinks a range needs an anonblock - like any range there will always be some vandalism - but I do object to blocking Zscaler because it's a closed proxy. We shouldn't be using the {blocked proxy} template either, since it's not really something you can turn off. And like I said above, and the block of NSU demonstrates, I think hardblocking Zscaler is usually really detrimental to Wikipedia. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 09:11, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Address or range	Blocking Admin	Block reason
104.129.196.166 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)	Yamla	{{blocked proxy}}: zscaler
104.129.192.0/20 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)	KrakatoaKatie	{{colocationwebhost}}: <!-- Zscaler -->
194.65.37.0/24 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)	Yamla	{{blocked proxy}}: zscaler
185.46.212.0/23 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)	Ivanvector	Extremely spammy {{colocationwebhost}}, relaxing settings due to collateral impact <!-- Zscaler --> {{checkuserblock-wide}}
165.225.0.0/17 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)	AmandaNP	{{colocationwebhost}}: <!-- ZScaler -->
165.225.192.0/18 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)	Yamla	{{blocked proxy}}: zscaler

SQL^{Query me!} 21:59, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

SQL, did you find that by searching the block log for zscaler? I have occasionally run in to proxy blocks that don't mention zscaler, but which clearly are when I do an IP lookup. But, I'll keep my eyes open for those as I patrol the unblock requests, once we come to a consensus. --Yamla (talk) 22:06, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Yamla, Yep. SQL^{Query me!} 22:11, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

I thought I should expand some. I suppose, my main rationale for not calling it an open proxy would be that it is generally unavoidable. It's more of an antivirus and content filtering service, and isn't intended to be used to mask one's actual ip or identity. SQL^{Query me!} 22:30, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Although this is not the primary intention, it does serve to mask one's actual IP and is used by vandals to avoid blocks. What are your thoughts on soft-blocking (preventing people from editing unless they sign in with an account)? I believe you are opposed to hard-blocking, correct? --Yamla (talk) 23:15, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Yamla, Yes, I think soft blocking is more appropriate in these instances. Unless there's abuse / etc that would warrant a hardblock. SQL^{Query me!} 15:32, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

What makes zscaler a reputable company? 331dot (talk) 22:15, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Without wanting to turn into their PR person, I'd say it's the scale, depth, and quality of their services. I'd suggest browsing their website to read about some of their partnerships. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 22:55, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

• Based only on the block log for 185.46.212.0/23 (because I don't have any other notes) I suppose I blocked that range because of one or a small number of users creating throwaway promotional SPAs in a short period of time, which would be why I would instruct ACC to disallow requests from the range, although I changed my mind four minutes later and converted to a softblock, so maybe the abuse was from unrelated anons. Was that someone running a spam operation from a legit Zscaler instance, or was one of their servers hacked and running an open proxy? I don't know, I guess it doesn't really matter. FWIW I usually do hardblock open proxies, but I only ever come across them when investigating reports of abuse, and only decide on block settings after checking for collateral and any good-faith accounts that need IPBE. On an abusive proxy I usually don't find any. If the proposal is to immediately lift all Zscaler blocks, I disagree (at least this one is not blocked just because it's a Zscaler range), but if we want to suggest that Zscaler ranges should only be softblocked and covert any current hardblocks, I'd go along with that. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 12:40, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
• Just popping in to note that I did not place the original block on the range above – I changed it to a soft block after (I think) someone emailed Arbcom. I don't think these ranges should be hard blocked, but that particular range has a lot of anon vandalism and nonsense, and at least some Zscaler ranges are definitely being used for disruption. The soft blocks need to stay. Katie^talk 13:43, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
• As the "original poster" I don't have much to add. Do we have a consensus to soft-block only those ranges? If so, someone please enact it. I'm able to post today only because I had to restart my computer and got assigned an unblocked Zscaler address - I have no control whatsoever over the matter, and presumably most other users.
  By the way, how come that https://www.whatismyip.com/ shows my "true" IP address and geolocation, while e.g. https://tools.keycdn.com/geo as well as, apparently, Wikipedia, display the Zscaler one? No such user (talk) 08:53, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Maybe this is an X-Forwarded-For situation? M Imtiaz (talk · contribs) 14:14, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

I believe we have a pretty clear consensus in this thread that zscaler proxies should be soft-blocked but should not be hard-blocked. That is, the blocks should not affect editors in good standing. On that basis, I'm going to modify the blocks identified in this thread so they are soft-blocks, and will search for other blocks on zscaler. @No such user: if you are hit by zscaler blocks again, please ping me and I'll take care of it, or refer back to this thread when posting your unblock request. Sorry this has caused you problems! I strongly believe this discussion can now be closed. Thanks, everyone. --Yamla (talk) 21:58, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Addition of plot summaries

I was conditionally unblocked with the agreement, "No addition of any plot summaries anywhere in Wikipedia". Can this be amended to restricting me from adding plot summaries from existing sources, and not those that I write on my own? Galobtter, I was told September would be a good time to appeal. --Kailash29792 (talk) 12:48, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Kailash29792,You promise to never copy from sources, yes? Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk🌴Help out at CCI!} 14:04, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

• @Kailash29792:, I'm inclined to support this. But I have some concerns about Kailash's ability on handling near-paraphrasing, which is why I want to ask: are you talking about "you reading/watching the original book/film, and constructing a plot purely yourself" or "reading sources/reviews and then writing without drawing any of it from the soures"? Nosebagbear (talk) 17:46, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

  Moneytrees, yes I promise. Now the very thought of copying from the web (very often even books) makes me uneasy. Nosebagbear, I developed the plot of Guru Sishyan after watching it, and re-watched scenes to ensure I made no factual error. That is the approach I seek to follow. Kailash29792 (talk) 18:30, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

  That sounds reasonable. I could only do a comparatively sparse sense check due to the sheer number of recent edits, but I couldn't spot anything problematic. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary, I'm happy to partially undo the requested part of the restriction. Nosebagbear (talk) 18:38, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

  Is there perhaps someone familiar with the types of works that Kailash seems to want to add plot summaries to act as a short term mentor/checker to make sure the summary seems correct and not close paraphrase? Unfortunately these appear to be foreign films so not something like myself can check. --Masem (t) 18:48, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

  I feel that proper (short-term) mentoring here would be particularly onerous - since Kailash would be sourcing purely from the subject matter, rather than review sources, the reviewer would have to actually have watched the films to check it was being done properly - without that it's somewhat trying to prove a negative, which a mentor can't do any better than a standard copyright check. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:57, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

• Support t-ban appeal As someone who is familiar with the situation and the primary copyright problem. Kailash is a competent editor who has been careful since their unblock and assisted in removing some commented out violations; I'm pretty sure they can be trusted. I don't think a mentor type deal is necessary (although I'd be able and am willing to fill that role), there's no significant deception going on here so Kailash can be taken by their word. Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk🌴Help out at CCI!} 20:33, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Kailash29792, so you want to engage in WP:OR? Guy (help! - typo?) 23:18, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Adding plots using the source material isn't considered original research. From WP:FILMPLOT: [s]ince films are primary sources in their articles, basic descriptions of their plots are acceptable without reference to an outside source. Regards, TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 23:32, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

JzG, it wouldn't be OR if I'm adding the plot of a film which is available for viewing. Lost films need sources though, as WP:FILMPLOT says, "Provided the film is publicly available, citing the film explicitly in the plot summary's section is not necessary, since the film is the primary source and the infobox provides details about the film. Secondary sources must be used for all other cases, such as upcoming films (including those that had sneak previews and only played at film festivals) and lost films, as these would not be considered generally available or verifiable." Kailash29792 (talk) 17:22, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Kailash29792, yes it is. For some reason the film fans have chosen to interpret "no original research" as meaning "no original research apart from writing novel interpretations of things we like", but that's not what th epolicy actually is. Guy (help! - typo?) 21:15, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

JzG, the plot section doesn't contain "original interpretation"; it only describes the story of the film. The "interpretations" of the film go to "Themes" or a similar section and is subject to the the same sourcing requirements. WP:FILMPLOT is a guideline, not just some essay. Regards, TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 00:51, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

TryKid, it contains an individual user's personal observations, based on their own view of what is significant and their own interpretation of the narrative. Guy (help! - typo?) 06:55, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

JzG, this view isn't supported by the wider community; guidelines explicitly state that adding plots isn't original research. If you disagree with WP:FILMPLOT guidelines, you can gain consensus to change it at the MOS talk page; Kailash's request at the noticeboard isn't the right place to bring up content disputes. Regards, TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 07:53, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

TryKid, yes, the WP:LOCALCONSENSUS exists. It's still nonsense. Guy (help! - typo?) 16:37, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

JzG, I won't add personal interpretations or opinions to the plot. Just look at my edits at X-Men: The Last Stand (here) and Us (here). Kailash29792 (talk) 08:48, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Kailash29792, then source to third party plot summaries. Simples. Guy (help! - typo?) 16:37, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

• Support: Kailash seems to understand not to copy/paste plot summaries. Darkknight2149 00:53, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
• Support: Kailash is a well respected contributer and has improved many articles to GA/FA. He understands what mistakes he made and has said he won't repeat them. That's enough to lift the topic ban. Regards, TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 07:53, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Removal of permission

Borgatya (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

I would like to inform you about the fact that this user is banned by WMF from editing. I guess the extra flag is not needed anymore. Regards, Bencemac (talk) 15:45, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

We generally don't remove perms from indeffed users. Primefac (talk) 15:50, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

On huwiki they're blocked as a sockpuppet of Peadar. If Google Translate isn't failing me, hu:Wikipédia:Szerkesztők_véleményezése/Peadar_(másodszor) indicates both paid editing and copyright concerns. What should be done with Borgatya's autopatrolled article creations on enwiki? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:51, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

As Primefac noted, this is not something we do. There's no sense in it. El_C 04:55, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your answers, then I think there is nothing else to do. Regards, Bencemac (talk) 12:03, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Deleting a user page

I've blocked Rancidhairyacssunt for a username violation. Are there any grounds for deleting their user page or removing the image there? Mjroots (talk) 05:37, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, there are grounds. I've removed the image. You probably don't want to look. power~enwiki (π, ν) 05:38, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, I'd already seen it. No need for that sort of image except in encyclopedic useage, which that wasn't. Mjroots (talk) 05:47, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Mjroots, I'll take it under advisement and not look but couldn't you just G3 it? Glen (talk) 06:41, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

@Glen: I wasn't sure what it came under. None of the U categories seemed to fit. Which is why I asked here. The image has gone now, so there's nothing to see any more. Mjroots (talk) 06:44, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Mjroots, just for future reference, the general categories (e.g. G3) can be used anywhere (subject to some specific exclusions), including user pages - that would have been a pretty uncontroversial vandalism G3 IMHO. GirthSummit _(blether) 11:28, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

When you see something like that, I'd say that best practice is to delete everything and ask a CU to look for sleepers. It's usually an LTA vandal. Misogynistic usernames, especially ones that reference women's reproductive system as disgusting or unclean, are usually Architect 134. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 18:14, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Noted. That'll teach him to thank me for an edit to a hidden template made for my own benefit. Not the sort of thing one would expect (or need) to be thanked for. Mjroots (talk) 06:37, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Request for permission to use files

I was blocked on April 2020 during six days from editing of non-free content policy violations. I was unblocked on 26 April 2020 with the condition of not using the files until I ask permission here. all about my blocking and unblocking is here. I ask for permission to be able to use the files on wikipedia again. Best regards. --Fayçal.09 (talk) 17:56, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Faycal.09, please convince us that the restriction is not longer necessary. Sandstein 18:19, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

The mistake I made in summary, is that I was going into an edit war with an admin bot. It is true that I warned the administrator but a little late. I understood my mistake and that's the reason why I was unblocked on the sixth day on April 2020 with conditions. Since April I have respected this condition. I contribute since 2009 and I have always tried to be exemplary on Wikipedia, I also uploaded a lot of files without problems. I wish to continue like this. Best regards. --Fayçal.09 (talk) 19:40, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

An admin bot? You warned them? CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 06:12, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

• I would decline this request. You were not blocked for an "edit war with an admin bot", but for non-free content policy violations. Because you do not address this in your request, and do not convince me that you now understand the non-free content policy, I don't think that we can lift these restrictions at this time. Sandstein 08:46, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Sandstein, CaptainEek, No I warned an admin, not the bot. I just gave a summary to explain the problem to you. I gave the detailed link there before, in my request here, so that you understand the problem. And of caurse the probleme was because the non-free content policy violations. --Fayçal.09 (talk) 11:12, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

I warned the admin here. And I explained about my mistakes, what I do and what I will not do here. Sorry for my english who is not very good. --Fayçal.09 (talk) 11:24, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

We don't just lift topic bans because people ask. You will need to show that the ban is no longer necessary because you understand what the problem was, and won't do it again. While not 100% relevant, you might wish to read the guide to appealing blocks for a good idea of how we want unblock/unban requests to be made. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 19:40, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Oh, also all the discussions in April are stale so I suggest you write a new reasoning here if you'd like an unban. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 19:42, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your explanations, what about my mistake, I violated Wikipedia rules, I made a mistake by adding file fixed by a bot in draft pages and reverting this file too, I did not contact admin on first.

Uploading or using files to wikipedia is not an easy thing, laws of Wikipedia:Non-free content must be respected. We must favorising the free content post and good use of non-free content, respecting criteria of fair use. We must respect the ten criterias used in Policy chapter. We must be informed of files that should be kept or deleted as it's explained in Enforcement chapter. All tiis of caurse is mentionned in Guideline examples chapter.

On April, it was the first time when I was blocked, my wish is to be the last one. My apologies for all that. --Fayçal.09 (talk) 20:57, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Deletion backlog

There is a pretty severe backlog at WP:AFD. Discussions dating all the way back to the 23rd are still open and awaiting closure. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Medal "100th anniversary of the Azerbaijani police" looks like a keep, but the rest from the 23rd and 24th appear to be no consensus.

Also, while unrelated, Hypnotic Illusions has been sitting in CSD limbo for over 24 hours and should be nuked per A9. This one puzzles me more as there currently isn't a speedy backlog. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 03:56, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Regarding redirect request on Combining Diacritical Marks Supplement

There is a redirect request in AfC, on Combining Diacritical Marks Supplement. But the Unicode blocks are create protected and restricted to admins: [1]. Requesting admin review on whether they are allowed to be created or not.
--Gpkp [u • t • c] 05:58, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Titleblacklist restricts creation of titles containing them but MediaWiki:Titlewhitelist allows them as single characters. In the request some of these are combined with a circle ◌ but I don't know if that is intended; it is not in the existing redirect mentioned there, or in the first requested redirect. Peter James (talk) 15:03, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Unban me

I remember I was banned for creating useless redirects on 24 March 2020 (link) and was directed to use WP:AFC/R. Now, 6 months are passed since then and I realised how cheap and costly the redirects really are. Therefore, I will only create redirects when necessary. Therefore, please unban me. Thanks. --Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 18:11, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Your math is off. 6 months would be on the 24th of this month. RickinBaltimore (talk) 19:04, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

• Absolutely not, and I would strongly advise a wider ban to cover all redirects, broadly construed, so Soumya is no longer able to be disruptive at WP:RFD and WP:AFC/R. Besides the blunt "unban me", the request does not show that Soumya understands WP:CHEAP and WP:COSTLY. Looking at Soumya's contributions at RfD lately, we find: a RENOM violation for a redirect already hashed to death, asserting without evidence that WPJ is an abbreviation for WikiProject, asserting without evidence that Sprache has multiple meanings, misunderstanding of OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, a weird obsession with J947 (this is the best example of many), etc. Soumya also has several low quality AFC/R submissions, including: Shampooing, Honkong, and constantly trying redirects with "He", including: He Spaceship Company and He Origin of Species several days after being explained why the previous one was no good. I can keep going if necessary, but I'm exhausted only going back to August 20th. -- Tavix ^(talk) 19:09, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
• As long as we are here, per Tavix, continue current ban and broaden to cover all redirect matters, broadly construed, including WP:RFD and WP:AFC/R. There are millions of articles in need of improvement. Surely Soumya-8974 can find constructive edits to make that don't involve redirects. I urge them to edit constructively in non redirect areas for another six months before asking to be allowed to come back to redirects. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 22:38, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

  I mainly find spaceflight, rocketry, aircraft, and solar system-related articles interesting, and performing page moves, which form redirects, violates my current ban. So I would have to perform WP:RM/TR instead. --Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 05:38, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

• Addendum – I have recently joined at WP:WPREDIRECT to discuss about redirects, in order not to disrupt Wikipedia's redirect system. If someone topic bans me on redirect, then it will prevent me to do such discussion. Also, I am suffering in Wikipedia vaguely similar to the Pandavas in the Mahabharata. They spent 13 years in forest and 1 year in disguise. If Kauravas found them in this period, then they would spent 13 years in forest and 1 year in disguise again. In my opinion, it should be best to open WP:AFC/R at least. --Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 17:24, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

• Wait, by "disguise" are you suggesting you will WP:SOCK? I highly urge you to withdraw this before your topic ban is converted to a WP:CIR block. Rgrds. --Bison X (talk) 04:33, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

• I concur with Tavix and Deepfriedokra. Soumya-8974's participation at RfD, while occasionally helpful, has not been a net positive, and has generated a lot of busywork for others. I think that an expanded topic ban could be worded to allow for page moves and for the creation of articles at former redirects, although as Deepfriedokra suggested, an editor could easily spend the rest of their lives productively improving articles by adding content, copyediting, or fixing categorization without once touching a redirect. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:23, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

2020 CheckUser and Oversight appointments: announcement

The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint additional editors to the Checkuser and Oversight teams. The arbitrators overseeing this will be Bradv, KrakatoaKatie, and Xeno.

The usernames of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, and they will assist in the vetting process.

This year's timeline is as follows:

• 7 September to 19 September: Candidates may self-nominate by contacting the Arbitration Committee at arbcom-en-cwikimedia.org.
• 20 September to 23 September: The Arbitration Committee and Functionaries will vet the candidates.
• 24 September to 26 September: The committee will notify candidates going forward for community consultation and create the candidate subpages containing the submitted nomination statements.
• 27 September to 7 October: Nomination statements will be published and the candidates are invited to answer questions publicly. The community is invited and encouraged to participate.
• By 14 October: Appointments will be announced.

For the Arbitration Committee, Katie^talk 22:58, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#2020 CheckUser and Oversight appointments: announcement

Александр Мотин

Александр Мотин (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) has twice pushed a primary study reported in the Lancet into Gam-COVID-Vac[2][3] into the Gam-COVID-Vac article. The second insertion being a restoration of material added by ManishSahu53. The primary source has been removed by both Alexbrn and me.

The page is under Wikipedia:General sanctions/Coronavirus disease 2019 and has a specific page-restriction: "Editors are prohibited from adding biomedical content without WP:MEDRS-compliant sources in this article." stated on the talk page and repeated in the edit notice. Александр Мотин was [4] made aware of the general sanctions on 21 August 2020 by Salvio giuliano.

The Lancet is indeed a prestigious journal, but the report it published of the preliminary study is still a primary source. Our guidance at WP:MEDRS is quite clear:

"all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources ... Primary sources should generally not be used for medical content".

Александр Мотин received an indefinite topic ban from the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 article in June for disruptive editing, and is now displaying similar behaviour at Gam-COVID-Vac he has a strong pro-Russian stance and tends to accuse those who disagree with him of editing in a biased manner. This clear breach of the general sanction on the article, coupled with his combative stance leads me to conclude that he should be editing articles related to Gam-COVID-Vac, and probably not any articles related to Russia. I am therefore seeking consensus from concerned admins for at least an indefinite topic ban from Gam-COVID-Vac, and I am seeking opinions on whether it should extend to all Russia-related articles, or even from editing at all. --RexxS (talk) 02:05, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Agree with a topic ban from at least any topic related to Russia - while I have no clue what went on with Malaysia Airlines flight 17, it's clear to me from this user's actions on the GAM vaccine link and others that the user is only here to push Russian propagandist point of view, not to build an encyclopedia. Whether this is because they are themselves only being given certain information, or because they are intentionally trying to be biased, I don't know - but regardless, it's detrimental to the encyclopedia. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 02:21, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Note the user is still, even after being informed of this thread, attempting to take the word "candidate" out of the article without consensus based on single non MEDRS sources. The user is clearly only here to push a point of view, even if they try to hide it by sometimes including some "criticism". I’ll note also that they have attempted to argue against the term "guinea pig" even after being explained it is a common term in the English language to refer to a "first tester" - showing they are not listening to others - while the term was ultimately removed it was for a different reason and it wasn’t “outrageous”. They also claim again that the lancet primary source is MEDRS, which it isn’t. A topic ban is necessary since they refuse to listen. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 17:13, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Now this - misrepresenting the source to say that they had confidence, when the source actually says that only 32% had "high confidence" where 34% only had "some confidence" - that is an important distinction. This also wasn't a survey of this specific vaccine - it was a survey regarding any vaccine produced by the countries given - it is synth to apply it to this specific vaccine. This is another example of why this user cannot be trusted to edit appropriately in any topic area where Russia is involved - they are misrepresenting the sources to make Russia look better. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 19:53, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Not sure a topic ban from Russia is the right move. Aleksandr Motin's edits to Russian railroad-related articles are quite productive, but I can definitely see how edits loosely pertaining to Russian politics can be problematic. A narrower topic ban might be more beneficial to the project. --WMSR (talk) 03:17, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

• It's a ridiculous ADMINSHOPPING with distorted facts. Yesterday they already asked another admin to block me. But I suppose I was supported in that dispute. Just check this thread. Obviously they want to block the user with a neutral point of view. Also check the article's talk page, especially "Guinea pig" section where these editors were trying to prove that calling the president a "guinea pig" is quite normal for WP articles. It is no less outrageous that they want to forbid writing about The Lancet's peer-review while The Lancet is a very strong RS/MEDRS and they know it. --Александр Мотин (talk) 08:38, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
• We had this less than a month ago. We are having this right now (note how the discussion escalated as soon as Александр Мотин joined it). The problem with Александр Мотин's editing is that whereas their understanding of the policies is limited he is absolute sure that he knows everything. He is just unable to admit that he might be wrong and anybody else could be right. If people are unhappy with his edits, this is not because he is doing something wrong but because others either do not understand the policies or are biased against him. This is how they got an indef block (an analog of a site ban) on the Russian Wikipedia. This is how he got partially blocked from MH17 here. And every time the community spends an enormous amount of time to sort this behavior out. I would advocate a site ban just to save our time, but at the very list we need a topic ban on Russian politics broadly construed, or even on Russia broadly construed.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:19, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Just another portion of distorted facts by this Russian administrator who is biased (question #10) against voluntary association Wikimedia Russia and its members which is a Russian office of Wikimedia Foundation Inc. Ymblanter is very tactfully silent (in bad sense) about the fact that I started a discussion here and it was he who escalated this issue to a Wikiproject "Trains" talk page. And now he is accusing me of what he did. And yeah, check the vaccine's talk page. Just look, at first they said that we need strong RS/MEDRS, and then when these sources (without Russophobic rebukes) appeared (The Lancet), these sources immediately turned into unacceptable ones. P.S. Ymblanter is also silent about the fact that the case of indef block in RU WP is still being investigated for almost a year because the admin, who indef blocked me, was previously sanctioned by the Arbitration Committee for another faulty indef block and his adminship may be revoked. But Ymblanter wasn't even going to mention it. And I think it's clear why. --Александр Мотин (talk) 10:02, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
• I agree with Ymblanter. Александр is clearly escalating disputes, causing good people to lose patience, and, per the above, assuming bad faith on the part of those who voice obviously legitimate criticism. Guy (help! - typo?) 10:12, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

• You think I'm against legitimate criticism? I started the article with criticism. Then I added more criticism. But this does not mean that, for instance, I must call the President of the country a Guinea pig in order to please someone here.--Александр Мотин (talk) 10:19, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

• You may not like me, but I do nothing to undermine Wikipedia and I'm not going to.--Александр Мотин (talk) 10:42, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
• Support topic ban on all Russia- (read former Soviet Union)-related topics. Have recently come across this editor at WT:TWP. Seems to have major problems working collaboratively with other editors. Mjroots (talk) 15:15, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
• Support site ban. Editor is a total time-sink. Alexbrn (talk) 17:56, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
• Oh dear, I'm seeing a very aggressive and tendentious approach here, no effort to listen to and understand what other people are saying, and a habit of responding to disagreement with personal attacks. I support an indefinite topic ban from Covid-19, and an indefinite topic ban on Russia-related topics, both broadly construed. I don't know if that might constitute an effective site ban, or whether that would be a better alternative, but I wouldn't oppose it. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 20:43, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose the "site-range" ban, overkill measure, one would resort to generating a new account, maybe by chainging ISP/mobile operator. ALSO: Motin only failed to grasp the concept of WP:MEDRS, which requires to avoid single researches, and rely only on meta-analyses. ALSO: the article in question, Gam-COVID-Vac is mainly about the Summer 2020 scandal around it, not the vaccine candidate itself.

  However, I do support removing Motin from any Russia-related and medical topics, since Мотин even fails to reply to me in Russian; and brandished "basic English" plaque on his page. Uchyotka (talk) 20:54, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

As for the commentary from The Lancet, rather than the raw data; the added more criticism claim was valid; but a glimpse of valuable commentary happened... haphazardly.

However, his recent "This is not a stand-up comedy" reply to me was confusing. Indeed, I was expecting to be reminded "Motin" surname can be derived from a certain Russian word; but I wasn't reminded so.

If people are unhappy with his edits, this is not because he is doing something wrong but because others either do not understand the policies or are biased against him. comment was a neat one. Uchyotka (talk) 14:06, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

• Note: Please see this exchange where the user in question here attempted to justify at best WP:SYNTH and at worst intentional misrepresentation of a source. At this point, it is obviously either WP:IDHT when they are explained they're wrong, or intentional misrepresentation of sources when they edit - either way the only possible remedy at this point is a topic ban. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 20:16, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
• Support (at the least) an indefinite topic ban on COVID-19 articles. The user is aggressively disruptive on talk pages and in articles, and is promoting Russian disinformation sources. Zefr (talk) 14:35, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
• In the meanwhile, since the opening of this topic, Gam-COVID-Vac and its talk page continue to be a battlefield, pretty much Александр Мотин against everybody else.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:22, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
• Comment. Motin created more than 2,000 pages related to buildings in Russia, and these pages are fine, he had no problems related to them. So, if any topic ban to be enacted, this might be only ban on Russian politics or COVID. A blanket ban to all Russia-related subjects would not be appropriate in my opinion. Probably the best worded topic ban (if any) would be on subjects related to "Russian government" or "Russian politics" because they would cover both Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and Gam-COVID-Vac. My very best wishes (talk) 17:01, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Hijiri88 unblock request

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

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A discussion is taking place at User talk:Hijiri88#Unblock discussion as to whether to unblock Hijiri88. Further community response is requested there. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 06:34, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

• @Deepfriedokra: wants all the primary discussion in one place, which is fine, but this is a meta-query. Is this getting community agreement in the sense that a CBAN would need it, or is it more like a "extra eyes wanted"? Are the two one and the same in unblock discussions? If the editor is not currently CBANNED, would a turned down unblock request now implement one, as would normally be the case? Nosebagbear (talk) 10:34, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Discussion was moved to talk page

Oppose I have been at ANI three times with this editor and my worst experiences on the project have been with Hijiri88. I even have an informal IBAN that Floquenbeam initiated because of the friction between us (Hijiri88 violated it almost straight away and then caught a 7 day block which lasted less than a day after an apology) Here is is promise to stay away from any reference to me which he later violated by using a string of terrible PAs to reference me. Reyk is always first to defend Hijiri88, and even levels his own PAs in defense. I could link to the many times the editor followed me, or typed harsh words about me, but this unblock request is about Hijiri88 wanting to turn over a new leaf. I think the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior and so I will attempt to go through previous attempts by administrators and community to get Hijiri88 to work collegially on the project. Hijiri88 claims to have reflected and turned over a new leaf, but a big question we need to ask is why none of his previous sanctions caused him to do that. Apart from the 12 blocks on his block log, he's also needed six IBANs with other users (Tristan Noir, Catflap08, TH1980, John Carter, Darkknight2149, and Dream Focus), and an entire Arbcom case centering around his behavior that resulted in a topic ban and 1RR restriction.[5] You'd be hard-pressed to find another Wikipedia user who has needed as many IBANs as Hijiri88, but he hardly takes responsibility for them. These were all two-way IBANs imposed due to poor behavior on both sides, but he still falsely insists that they "were put in place at my request to protect me from one-way hounding" or "were imposed under very questionable circumstances". One of the reasons he is indefinitely blocked right now is for violating an IBAN on his talk page while already indefinitely blocked for personal attacks, and yet in his unblock request he doesn't even mention his IBAN violation or apologize for it or explain in any way why he won't violate his IBANs again. His last IBAN violation was extremely blatant, and yet he had already denied even being aware that it was a violation.[6] Robert McClenon asked the question in 2019 about whether Hijiri88 "got off easy" at Arbcom, and I think there's evidence that he did. Hijiri88 got off his Arbcom-imposed topic ban because he said "I deeply regret my actions, including edit-warring and threats", but then denied having made the very same threat he had apologized for.[7] He has repeatedly gone back on his earlier repentance, later stating that Arbcom case occurred because another user "managed to convince nine members of ArbCom that I should be TBANned for having let him get under my skin" or that "ArbCom really dropped the ball". There is good evidence to suggest that Hijiri88 has been insincere in his unblock requests where he claims to have reflected on his poor behavior. For example, when Hijiri88 was blocked in 2018 he claimed that he was blocked due to a simple miscommunication, but Boing! said Zebedee pointed out that that was a false statement.[8] Hijiri88 withdrew that claim in a subsequent unblock request, so Boing! said Zebedee unblocked him, but less than a week later, he was again claiming that he was blocked only due to a miscommunication (plus again denying the validity of his previous blocks and IBANs).[9] Is Hijiri88 being sincere this time about having reflected on his conduct? I have my doubts. On his talk page, he still calls me a "filthy, repulsive degenerate" along with dozens of other users, despite having had ample time to delete that personal attack.[10] (diff) As Floquenbeam noted, "Hijiri gets involved in conflict All. The. Time. It's his primary activity here." Why didn't he take Cullen328's warning to him in 2018: "You seem to thrive on such little drama fests... Do not get into a single solitary editing dispute for nine years. Just walk away. The alternative is an indefinite block."? Hijiri88 says that he's going to stay away from contentious AfD discussion and the article on Mottainai from now on. If he is unblocked, those restrictions should be made formal. We also should consider whether a person who has been repeatedly been given chance after chance can ever work collaboratively on the project. Lightburst (talk) 14:06, 7 September 2020 (UTC) @Lightburst: You'll probably want to move this comment to User talk:Hijiri88#Unblock discussion, where the discussion is happening. – Joe (talk) 14:24, 7 September 2020 (UTC) I think Deepfriedokra was correct that this should be a community discussion and not a discussion on a talk page. Just in case I posted there also, so thank you. Lightburst (talk) 14:48, 7 September 2020 (UTC) I think it's a community discussion that is well underway on Hijiri's talk page. There was some concern that posting here might be contra productive; there was some concern that it should be here. Splitting hairs, babies, and camel. Notice here; discussion there. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 14:51, 7 September 2020 (UTC) Deepfriedokra thank you for the message. That makes sense. Lightburst (talk) 14:56, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

• Comment - At least he's asking the community for reinstatement. He could've easily gone the sock-puppet route, but didn't. So give the lad praise for that. GoodDay (talk) 14:59, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

What about the meat puppet route instead? Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 15:11, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Who are the meat-puppets? GoodDay (talk) 15:14, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

WP:MEAT. In a nutshell. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 15:20, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

GoodDay didn't ask "What is a meat puppet?", but "Who are the meat-puppets?". If you're making an accusation, then make it already. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:59, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Indeed. GoodDay (talk) 23:10, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm a bit too tired to decipher cryptic insinuations today. Can you be a bit more clear about what you actually mean? Besides, meatpuppets probably describes Hijiri's pursuers more accurately than Hijiri. Reyk _YO! 15:46, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Refering to Lugnuts statement above....Part of the reason why Hijiri88 had his talk page access removed until recently was because he asked another user to make edits for him while he was still blocked.[11] And it was also noted in a 2018 Arbcom clarification request that he frequently has asked other users to make edits for him that violate his own editing restrictions.[12] I have no idea whether he would sockpuppet, though it's worth noting that the IP accounts that he often edits with were still active during his current block.[13] Lightburst (talk) 16:13, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Guerillero: Can you confirm whether Hijiri had TP access removed due to "ask[ing] another user to make edits for him while he was still blocked"? Thought it was for alleged IBAN violations. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:59, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

@Curly Turkey: It was for an IBAN violation --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 02:54, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

For those unfamiliar with Japanese internet stuff, which I guess is most people, that's a Wi2 IP. Wi2 is a company that offers short-term rental hotspots and a public wifi app, so one would expect different users to use an IP as the provider recycles it. I hope it isn't true that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, but in any event we should be careful about sock/meat speculation. Indignant Flamingo (talk) 21:35, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

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

RFC closure review

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

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Moved from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents § RFC closure review

 – ―Mandruss ☎ 13:51, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

The closure of RFC by MrX at MEK talk page is questioned by the participants. I think the closure note is not fairly evaluating the comments based on the guidelines. More significantly, MrX says my "detailed argument was adroitly rebutted by Barca's". This is while, in response to my comment, BarcrMac said that "Mhhossein is arguing that these are "major points", but they are just unverified allegations by MEK members, and we don't include allegations by MEK members (or ex-members) in this article". Though BarcrMac never replied to my further comments, I am asking it here: Do we only include 'proved points' or we should go by the reliable sources? Furthermore, MrX fails to address this comment by Ali Ahwazi which focuses on the POV issue of the proposed sentence. Thank you. --Mhhossein ^talk 13:30, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Community close reviews usually go at WP:AN not ANI, as this isn't a "urgent, chronic, intractable behavioural problem". ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:39, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

• Overturn. This is a major divergence from the status quo. The closing summary is wholly insufficient. It lacks key substance. It also, as a result, comes across as a WP:SUPERVOTE. As the uninvolved admin who has the most experience with this article, I take a dim view of this closure. El_C 16:27, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

@El C: I don't know what "major divergence from the status quo" means in the context of the RfC, or even how it would be a factor in overturning a RfC closing. Perhaps you could elaborate. Also, what is your basis for saying that my close comes across as a supervote? Implicit in that is the notion that I am involved, or have a stake in the outcome? - MrX 🖋 11:53, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

You mentioned that you have the most experience with this article, but I don't see that you have ever closed an RfC or adjudicated any other content dispute on the subject.[14] As far as I can tell, you have protected the article seven times and suppressed copyright violations.[15] - MrX 🖋 12:17, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

• Comment: RfCs have become the only means for editors to advance the editing process in that contentious page. Even then, these RfCs take months to be reviewed, and when they are, they often close in "no consensus" based on the difficulties surrounding them. Every once in a while an uninvolved and experienced editor steps up and gracefully offers to break the stalemate that are these Talk page discussions, as Mr.X has done for us here. Complaining every time one of these RfCs doesn't go our way (as Mhhossein has been doing) seems to defeat the only means available for a consensus-building process in that page. Stefka Bulgaria (talk) 07:37, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

All the closures can be reviewed. You should not be concerned if you think the closure is appropriate since the admins will look after it. Moreover, RFCs should not be mis-used to reshape the article according to one's desired version by tag-teaming or like. --Mhhossein ^talk 11:57, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

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

• Purely procedural point, but doesn't this discussion need to go on, and require a community consensus to keep the overturn? Non-admin editors close contentious RfCs all the time. I believe WP:BADNAC only allows uninvolved admins to undo deletion closes by a non-admin, not RfC closes. I think it sets dangerous precedent to allow any NAC to be unilaterally overturned because the dispute closed was contentious. I note that this area is covered by community DS, but I see no entry in the log to indicate this was a DS action. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:00, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

  I see now the matter is before ArbCom at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#JzG. If indeed uninvolved admins may revert RfC NACs, can we add some wording to that effect in WP:BACNAC? The wording is in contradiction to other policy pages, eg BADNAC says NACs across the board are inappropriate where the issue is controversial, in direct contradiction to Wikipedia:Requested_moves/Closing_instructions#Non-admin_closure which says non-admins may close move discussions, even high-profile and contentious ones, and that such an action isn't itself grounds for overturning. In any case, I think some guideline pages/supplements should get a wording update for clarity. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:19, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

The overturn was not solely because the closure was carried out by a non-admin user, rather the closure was though to be improper. --Mhhossein ^talk 13:52, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

• At this point I am not seeing a consensus or policy reason that their close should not stand. I note at the article talk about the close it was mixed as well as here. So until a consensus is reached or a clear policy based reason is presented it should be reinstated. PackMecEng (talk) 03:40, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
• Totally should be reinstated. This re-opening was done outside of policy and without any discussion with MrX. Stefka Bulgaria (talk) 14:52, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Agree with PackMecEng. Just before this RfC, User:Kraose (a user with just over 1K edits) closed a highly-contentious RfC on the same page (Kraose had also previously endorsed the RFC's OP to be topic-banned) and nobody seemed to mind about that. Now User:MrX closes this RfC, and suddenly he shouldn't have for some unknown reason. Mhhossein was also quick to revert the results of that RfC. MrX's close should stand until a proper discussion of why this was an "inappropriate close" is established by the community. Alex-h (talk) 15:49, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

I think may be technically within the scope of discretionary sanctions to undo an RfC close, due to the broadness of DS in these matters (only deletions are explicitly prohibited, afaik). In which case this is merely a procedural matter of logging the action, and would solve the larger procedural question. JzG may wish to log this as such, if indeed a DS action. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:57, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Proposed motion for amendment to arbitration procedures: prohibition of multiple roles

The Arbitration Committee is considering a motion to amend its procedures to prohibit sitting arbitrators from serving as members of the Ombuds Commission or the WMF Case Review Committee in accordance with a community RfC. Comments on the motion are welcome at the motion page. For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 18:19, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard § Proposed motion for amendment to arbitration procedures: prohibition of multiple roles

How do we handle content that describes a movie's revenue and success? Is it an issue per NPOV?

Hi everyone! I hope that you're all having a great labor day! I'm on call with my job, so I'm unfortunately tied to my desk at home through the entire week when I'm not at work.  :-) I have a question and a possible concern about something that I've noticed on and on, numerous times, over the years that I've patrolled recent changes. On many articles where the subject is a movie or film, they often include content in a section or even the summary paragraph talking about the film's success. They often comprise of sentences such as "this film achieved significant critical and commercial success", "was praised by critics and fans", etc - as well as the opposite when a film or movie doesn't become a "box office success" (as it's often called), or doesn't make more money than it cost to create. I'm slightly concerned that these statements might be an issue in regards to Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy. Statements like these come off to me as opinionated, that we're saying that this film was a success or failure, and that we're taking sources and summarizing them with an opinionated statement. I'm not sure how we should consider these statements, and whether or not they're appropriate in regards to NPOV. Is there a discussion or consensus somewhere stating that these kinds of statements are appropriate? A portal project that states such? What are your thoughts when you see statements like these in film-related articles? I'm sure you've all seen them on articles like this, and I'm pretty sure you understand what I'm talking about. I need some guidance, and I don't know how to handle these edits when I see them get added. Can you offer me assistance? ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 21:36, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

No, definitely not neutral. I remove this when I find it. Even worse, what many editors do is compare a film's budget to how much it grossed. If the gross is higher than the budget, they call it a "box office success". This is not how it works. Studios have to share revenue with the cinemas, so you can't just compare the two numbers and decide, "it's a success!" The same is true of failures. Studios have various ways of writing off costs. A film that underperforms may eventually turn a profit once the accountants are done with their magic, and a film that grosses twice as much as its budget may still end up losing money. We can't know. The issues with reviews are more straightforward, but we already have two review aggregators to tell us what critics thought: Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. We don't need Wikipedians to give us their synthy interpretations on top that. The reason why is because everyone thinks their favorite film was critically acclaimed, but the films they disliked were a critical failure. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 00:47, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Oh, by the way, MOS:FILM is where most film-related guidelines end up. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 01:29, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

This is not the correct noticeboard, but I will answer anyway. How well a film did critically and commercially is a matter of interpretation and should be reliably sourced to an article that says that. We should say that Citizen Cane, Casablanca, etc. are highly regarded, just as we would say the same about Shakespeare's plays or Dickens' novels. Whether or not they were good movies is a matter of opinion, but whether critics assess them highly is a matter of fact.

Commercial success is not subjective. Any business enterprise can be evaluated based on profit. Because there is insufficient information for writers of reliable sources to calculate profit, they usually look at North American box office receipts = production costs as break even.

TFD (talk) 02:05, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

If you are looking for relevant NPOV policy, it looks like you want WP:AESTHETIC. Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:46, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Agree with TFD. RS will describe the commercial performance of any notable commercial film (e.g., Hollywood films), and for any notable film, RS will describe how it was received by critics and the general public. So box office success and this film achieved significant critical and commercial success are OK if that's how the RSes describe it (and they commonly describe films using those phrases),but they're not the best phraseology. More "showing" than "telling" would be better, e.g., was one of the top 10 highest-grossing films of the year is better than "box office success" and was nominated for an Academy Award is better than "achieved significant critical success". But at bottom, it's not promotional to describe how a film fared commercially or how it was received by critics; those are important aspects of a film; a film's impact on the world is as important as, say, who directed it. Lev!vich 05:09, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Also agree with TFD. I'll add that WP:WEIGHT and WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV are important when writing about how a film is regarded.   // Timothy :: talk  06:33, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

To add to the above by TFD and Levivich, I'll just add that the LEAD should be written in summary style so there needs to be reliable sourcing to back-up the statements. If there is no body, there needs to be that reliable sourcing built right into the lead. And if we're in the body there's nothing wrong with saying "X was generally well received" as an introduction to 10 favorable reviews to follow. NPOV doesn't mean we fail to acknowledge that things were liked by critics/awards or that it lost a lot of money, it means we give it in proportion to RS. So if it was generally well received we should reflect that, but we should also, in proper proportion, include less flattering or negative receptions of the material. With movies there will be RS that we can use to decide whether to say if something was a bomb - a term so notable in the industry it has its own article and we can reflect that without running into issues with our core content policies. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:57, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

"Statements like these come off to me as opinionated, that we're saying that this film was a success or failure, and that we're taking sources and summarizing them with an opinionated statement." Wikipedia prevents its editors from expressing their opinions in article space. It does not prevent the editors from summarizing the opinions or facts found in available sources, and opinionated sources are specifically allowed: "reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective." Wikipedia:Neutral point of view itself states that we should represent "all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic". To ignore praises and criticisms in order to keep the article devoid of opinionated statements, would both be against Wikipedia policy and mean that the article is practically devoid of information. Dimadick (talk) 10:42, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Request for unblock backlog - 80+ to review

There are current 81 requests for unblock at Category:Requests_for_unblock. Many of them have been ones that most of the usual unblock request reviewers have already weighed in on, so fresh eyes are needed since we can't review the same user. Please consider lending a hand. only (talk) 21:28, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Sure, I can take a look. I'll do that today. ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 21:37, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm under false accusation of vandalism

Certain unregistered user is constantly vandalizing an article about Melissa Hutchison (by claiming her to have a voice role that is already confirmed to be someone else's and probably with different IP addresses. But when I undid his/her edits, he/she wrote to Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism under IP address 49.144.196.63 and claim I would have stolen "his/her" username. Ad Orientem has already declined that IP user's request, but that IP now demands a revision from logs and sockpuppet investigations. If that IP user doesn't know my email address, then I could easily prove that I am the real CAJH. But if the IP user would find out my email, what other ways there would be for me to prove my innocence? CAJH (talk) 04:36, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

IP notified of the discussion. -Ad Orientem (talk) 04:42, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

• In the absence of evidence that an account has been compromised the presumption is that it has not. In this situation, the burden of proof lies with the IP. When I declined the AIV report I did so because they did not make any claim of specific actionable conduct, much less offer evidence. And there were no warnings on your talk page. So I don't really know what is going on here. At the moment I am inclined to call this a nothing burger, but if the IP wants to chime in and offer some kind of explanation we can go from there. Otherwise, I'd just move on and come back if the situation pops up again down the road. -Ad Orientem (talk) 04:54, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
• Comment as long as you're the only editor that can log in to User:CAJH there's no real likelihood of confusing you with an IP editor or doppleganger account (or fake sockpuppet). The WP:AIV reports appear to be (correctly) ignored. (the possibility of you being a sock of TCCJH (talk · contribs) which last edited in 2010 can be safely ignored even if you were the same person) ((templates are hard, let's go shopping)) power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:56, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

I originally created CAJH when I registered as a user in Finnish version of Wikiquotes. TCCJH was created for Wikipedia before I realized that CAJH can be used in all Wikimedia sites. Ever since I realized that, I stopped using TCCJH. CAJH (talk) 05:08, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

• I blocked CAJH2020 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) as an impersonator. It's pretty clearly attempting a Joe Job. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 06:17, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
• @CAJH:, you can redirect the old user page and user talk page to the new. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 06:20, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

How can I redirect them? Aren't they a little bit different case than an article page? CAJH (talk) 06:26, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

CAJH, I've done it for you. Feel free to revert if you don't want it. GirthSummit _(blether) 13:43, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

It's only redirected in English Wikipedia. CAJH (talk) 13:46, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Ah - apologies, don't know how to help you do that globally. Maybe try the Help Desk? GirthSummit _(blether) 18:42, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, you ain't the only one. I guess you need to do it for each page, unless it will work just doing it on Meta. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 18:54, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

I think stewards have some tools for this task, one needs to ask them.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:02, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Evelynkwapong539 / Kof4490

I have a feeling these users, User:Evelynkwapong539 ,User:Kof4490, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/95.149.110.122, might be the same person editing articles relating to Looney Tunes Cartoons. They have been blocked multiple times as Evelynkwapong539, but I have a feeling that they are creating another account and not logging in to get around that. A page they created, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Looney_Tunes_Cartoons_characters, has been brought up for discussion to be deleted, but since they disagree with this without explaining their reasoning: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:List_of_Looney_Tunes_Cartoons_characters&oldid=977473710 , they deleted the https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Looney_Tunes_Cartoons_characters&oldid=977522088 template of deletion policy without explanation.

Proof of similar edits:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Looney_Tunes_Cartoons&oldid=976583210 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Looney_Tunes_Cartoons_characters&oldid=959423907 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Looney_Tunes_Cartoons&oldid=977521861

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Looney_Tunes_Cartoons&oldid=976377605 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Looney_Tunes_Cartoons&oldid=970247049

I have been patient with this person for a while, but I don't see them ever truly understanding how disruptive their edit warring can be.

Noelephant(talk) 14:53, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

WP:SPI is really the correct venue for this. That being said, I've indeffed Kof4490 as a  Confirmed sock and blocked Evelynkwapong539 for two weeks. If this was an attempt at a clean start, it failed completely.-- Jezebel's Ponyo^{bons mots} 19:34, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Arbitration motion regarding an amendment to arbitration procedures: prohibition of multiple roles

The Arbitration Committee has resolved by motion that:

Based on the outcome of the community discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RFC: Multiple roles for active arbitrators, the Arbitration Committee procedures are amended by adding a new Section 1.6, providing:

To avoid any potential conflicts of interest, current arbitrators may not serve as members of either the Ombuds Commission or the WMF Case Review Committee while serving as arbitrators.

For the Arbitration Committee, Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 16:55, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard § Arbitration motion regarding an amendment to arbitration procedures: prohibition of multiple roles

Supervote at Move Review

Over the past month or so, the move review for the page currently at Grace O'Malley (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) has been looking for an admin to close it, and I'm happy that Vanjagenije attempted to clear that specific backlog. However, I don't think the close that he made accurately reflected the discussion. In particular, his comments about the move didn't seem to be about the discussion at all, but his own views on the move. With the way the discussion was going, I can't see any consensus to reverse the move, and his closing comment seems to be more of a comment he should've made in the discussion itself (as it was, of course, still open at that point). I'm also a little concerned that he doesn't seem to have that much experience in move discussions, and it's a rather controversial subject to dip your toes in!

However, there isn't a "move review review", so any discussion about the process falls here by default. I've attempted to bring it up at his his talk page but I'm not really satisfied with the response. Hence, I'm bringing it here to get some more input. Sceptre (talk) 21:14, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

• I agree, this clearly looks like a supervote. The very first sentence of the close ("After reading the original discussion, I came to the conclusion that the closure was wrong and in violation of Wikipedia policies.") is a big red flag; the RM discussion is irrelevant; what matters is what editors have said in the MR discussion and the MR itself was a no consensus outcome, tending towards Endorse. Number 57 21:31, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
• Sceptre wants to present this as if I didn't read the move review, or that I did not take the arguments presented in the move review into account. That is obviously false. If you read my closing comment, you'll see that I actually summarized what MR participants (those who supported overturning) already said in the MR discussion. Move review is a process of reviewing the move discussion, so no surprise I had to read carefully the move discussion itself. @Number 57:'s idea that RM discussion is irrelevant in the process of reviewing that discussion seams absurd. All the comments in the move review are based on the original discussion, so how can we judge their validity if we don't take the original discussion into account? In this particular case, a minority of MR participants correctly pointed out that the original move discussion was wrongly closed as "move" because those who opposed the move, although in minority, correctly cited Wikipedia policies, while those who supported the move had weak arguments not based in the policies. How could I decide whether that's true or not without analyzing the original discussion? Saying that the RM discussion is irrelevant is akin to saying that Wikipedia's policies are irrelevant, and that it's only relevant what participants in a discussion say about those policies. After reading the RM, I concluded that those who supported overrule are indeed correct in saying that there was no consensus for moving the article. This case is somewhat peculiar because in both the original discussion and the review discussion, those who correctly assessed the proposal were in minority. But, if you really take into account their arguments, it is not hard to see that the move was wrong. Vanjagenije (talk) 22:11, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

• "Those who correct assessed the proposal were in minority" in your opinion. "It is not hard to see the move was wrong" in your opinion. Personally, despite the sockpuppetry at the original RM, I would have closed it the same way as Sceptre. Black Kite (talk) 22:23, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

  For what it's worth, there was clearly a bit of axe-grinding on both sides in the move discussion; like a lot of Irish article naming discussions, the discussions tend to be less about following what the evidence says and more using it as an proxy argument over the/an Irish Language Act. ("British imperialism!" vs. "terrorist sympathisers!", to wit.) Sceptre (talk) 22:34, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

• @Number 57: said "the RM discussion is irrelevant" because Move Review (and Deletion Review) is about whether the process has been done correctly or not. As much as a closer of an RM has to weigh up consensus in the RM discussion, the closer of a MRV has to weight up consensus in the MRV discussion. In both circumstances, closing with their own opinion is inappropriate. Your comment would've been fine in the review itself; it's just as a closure I'm not too pleased with. Sceptre (talk) 22:34, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

  The process was incorrectly followed as the original close did not take into account of the relative weight of arguments based on actual policy-backed points. Vanjagenije could have just said 'close incorrect as original closer failed to assess consensus correctly' and left it at that. Only in death does duty end (talk) 01:31, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

  Yes, but the whole point of MRV/DRV is that it discusses and formulates a consensus whether the procedure was followed or not. You can assert whether it was in the discussion, but closing a move review unilaterally like this defeats the entire purpose of the review process. The closing instructions at MRV state that a consensus at MRV is needed to overturn a closure, which clearly does not exist in this case. Sceptre (talk) 02:23, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

• Just like you, Sceptre, I'm rather heavily biased in this case, but in the other direction. And I disagree that the consensus at MRV, which is needed to overturn your closure, "clearly does not exist in this case". I think it clearly does exist, and the MRV closing admin made the same kind of decision you made in the RM – a difficult one. I disagreed with your RM closure, and I agree with Vanjagenije's MRV closure. P.I. Ellsworth  ed. ^put'r there 06:05, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

• I agree that the move review was wrongly closed and should be reopened. The closer did not even attempt to assess consensus in the review discussion but merely expressed their own view about the merits of the original move proposal. The place to do that would have been in the original move discussion, not in the move review and much less in closing it. Vanjagenije should not close any more discussions until they are confident that they understand the procedures we use to establish consensus. Sandstein 07:03, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

• Yeah, this was clearly a supervote. Reyk _YO! 07:10, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

• Vanjagenije makes a valid point about the impossibility to judge the comments' validity without taking the original discussion into account. How else are they meant to assign due weight to the arguments? While their closing statement could be construed as a supervote, the same could be said about Sceptre's, which would make this a case of a supervote (presumably based on policy) overruling another supervote (presumably based on the closer's opinion about what name is appropriate). Going back to the drawing board (reopening the original move request) might not be a bad idea. M.Bitton (talk) 18:16, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

• I don't know if this is the right place to say this; however, since I did not participate in the RM I would like to point out that I've read a lot about Grace O'Malley and have even seen documentaries that included her. An actor who portrayed a warrior princess in a TV series was asked to host one of those documentaries about real-life, historical warrior princesses that included Grace O'Malley. She wasn't called "Gráinne Ní Mháille", nor "Ofgjdfjgdfjg", nor "Mr. Mxyzptlk", her name was spelled and pronounced "Grace O'Malley". That is her common name and the name to be searched the most by readers. End of story (or should be). The present title should stand... tall! P.I. Ellsworth  ed. ^put'r there 20:46, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
• I agree that this was a supervote, but also agree with M.Bitton that the better resolution would be to go back to square one and have a new move request, in which proponents of both views can square off with their best arguments and evidence. I would wait for at least a few weeks from the end of this discussion before initiating such a thing, though. BD2412 T 20:57, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
• Bah. I think the original close was brave. The strength of numbers went one way, the guidelines pretty strongly in the other. no consensus to move would have been the better close IMO. The question is, was the close of the original move discussion within discretion? I'd say no--the folks wanting the move just didn't make a strong policy-based set of arguments. You'd need a stronger numeric consensus to overcome the strength of arguments--even accounting for IPs etc. But then the move review didn't find consensus that the close should be overturned. I think we default back to the policy-compliant version and the previous status quo. So move back to Grace O'Malley and suggest folks debate the policy changes needed to do make Gráinne Ní Mháille the right name per polices. I think some good arguments were made in the original discussion that indicate our policy needs updating. Hobit (talk) 02:33, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Double-redirect fixing bots: a cautionary tale

In 2010, an IP redirected the page Javier Solana to Antichrist with this edit. About 45 minutes later, the vandalism was reverted. There was enough time for a bot to "fix" the double redirect, sending redirects to Solana's page to Antichrist. See [16]. This was not fixed until about two months ago [17]. So, for 10 years, a double-redirect fixing bot perpetuated WP:BLP-violating page move vandalism. I can only get pageviews stats for about half of that range, but the misplaced redirect specifically mentioned above got 59 pageviews in that time. Other redirects got fixed quicker, but there were still others that kept trucking on for 10 years. Don Ezequiel Solana de Ramirez got 178 pageviews at the wrong target. Javier Madariaga got 118 Francisco Javier Solana Madariaga had 167. A number of other redirects retargeted by the bot were fixed in the 2010-2013 range, which seems better until you realize that's still 3 years a BLP violation stuck around. It's a little questionable, ain't it, that these bots can perpetuate serious BLP vandalism for over a decade ... Hog Farm _Bacon 14:58, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Well, not much the bot can do about that. They can have a longer delay, but on some pages this kind of vandalism can go unspotted for longer, and a longer delay has its own issues. Probably a difficult issue to solve, really, as the redirects to link would update so you wouldn't be able to manually restore that way. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:15, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Hm, seems like a problem well worth discussing. Does the bot keep a log? If it did, someone undoing redirect vandalism could check the bot's log to see if there were any double redirects "fixed" as a result of the vandalism, and then the vandalism patroller would at least have a list of bot edits to revert, which might help (if we can get patrollers to remember to check the log... even better if tools like Huggle could prompt the patroller to do that somehow). Lev!vich 17:24, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Pretty sure we have several double redirect bots, including some global bots (under the Meta global bot policy), so even if a couple had a log they’d all be using different logs. Which complicates the issue somewhat. I think this issue should be popped onto the bot noticeboard btw, as it’ll require attention from that group of editors to ‘resolve’. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:28, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Good point. In theory they could all be coded to maintain one central log. (Although it begs the question: why do we have multiple double-redirect-fixing bots?) Lev!vich 17:31, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

That'd be hard to do. Not even sure how many double redirect bots we've got locally (as the general list stopped being maintained in 2012), but on top of those we've got the global bots, whose operators won't be active on enwiki. Many bot ops are also currently inactive/busy, some only show up once every now and then to restart their bot if it goes down or something, so getting a change to even one bot is difficult. Double redirects are a pretty big issue, so we do need redundancies in the form of multiple bots. One approach may be to have a new bot could be made which listens to the "Redirect target changed" tag and makes a log, I guess, and flag up any changed redirects after the original page is changed, but not sure if that's the best approach. I think it's best to refer this to WP:BOTN or something to have a botop/BAG experienced in double redirects take a look. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:32, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Killing of Daniel Prude

Eyes at Killing of Daniel Prude please. Already made reports at the other venues, but situation is ongoing. Zindor (talk) 18:11, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Visit WP:AN/I HeartGlow ^(talk) 18:25, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

• Blocked ThrowPrude21 for edit warring. Check my work please. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 18:27, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

As long as we are here, WP:NOTBUREAU. Looks to me like ThrowPrude21 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) was edit warring and refusing to discuss with several editors opposed to their changes. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 18:30, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Requesting context from @Coffeeandcrumbs, Serols, AussieWikiDan, and Nomoskedasticity: --Deepfriedokra (talk) 18:36, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

The way the user came in like a train, citing primary sources on imgur.com and no communications. I think we can assume NOTHERE. It was difficult to engage with the user. This is a sensitive page. Even if Daniel Prude is dead, the article is governed by BLP. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 18:43, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

I reverted some pov additions by an I.P, who then stopped editing, this new account immediately turned up and started making edits of the same POV. I reverted them also. I initally filed a request at WP:RPP while the I.P was active, i posted a warning on IPs talk page. After the ThrowPrude21s additions started i filed a report at WP:AIV regarding them and the I.P. I went and had my dinner and came back and saw it was still going on and posted here at WP:AN. I tried to share the reverts with other editors, but i'm fairly certain i broke WP:3RR. Later i posted on the article talk page asking ThrowPrude21 to discuss the additions, in a further attempt to descalate. Zindor (talk) 18:45, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

User had 31 edits since 2020-09-10 @ 17:12:14, all to Killing of Daniel Prude. No attempt to communicate, even via edit summaries. No response to warnings on talk. Has now responded to my block, and I have made it partial on the article. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 18:57, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Hi there, thanks for blocking. I was patrolling recent changes and noticed this user was removing and replacing content. Addition of details regarding an autopsy without citation (later with unreliable source) made me believe this was against BLP policy and needed to be removed repeatedly. He ignored warnings given. AussieWikiDan (talk) 19:00, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

• Thanks y'all. (Article now semi-protected.) User now partially blocked and attempting to make case for inclusion on talk page. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 19:10, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Edit Request Assistance Requested

Hi all,

Our requested edit backlog is becoming extremely lengthy (97 atm), including some that have been there more than 7 weeks.

Almost all on the list are either non-protected or semi-protected, so can be handled by any experienced editor.

Some requests are rapid, either easily declined or accepted. However, much of the backlog is due to individuals making a large number of partially supported requests at once, and so individual review can be somewhat tedious.

However, if we can get 50 of us to do 2 each, we'll be done.

Huge thanks in advance, Nosebagbear (talk) 18:51, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Rubbish

I think we could manage without Special:Contributions/Faktasy. --Palosirkka (talk) 12:15, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Well that was a thing. Page deleted and the user blocked for both NOTHERE and a very likely sock of User:SausagerollRevolution. RickinBaltimore (talk) 12:20, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Full protection on Susie Boniface

Bringing this here for community review as suggested at RFPP. David Gerard (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) full protected Susie Boniface (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) back in June 2020 for this diff by Shakehandsman (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), which was (as far as I can see) a poor interpretation of a primary source. In the given source, the subject was asked in a joking fashion by the interviewer if she'd "really cleaned her toilet with her electric toothbrush" to which she replied "yes, I'm sorry, I'm very sorry, it was a really good idea at the time". The editor worded this statement as "Boniface admitted to abuse of her husband such as using his toothbrush to clean the toilet". BLP violation and bad original research, yes, but evidence to suspect chronic disruption by multiple editors rising to indef full protection? David Gerard claims the subject rang him up, after which he removed the content, indef protected the page, and created a BLPN discussion. This was discussed at BLPN at the time, where Shakehandsman said they don't intend to readd the material. When requested to lift protection, Gerard said he'd wait a few days and see, but discussion was archived as stale, with no explicit support from any editor to uphold the protection. Talk page requests by Arcturus were ignored contrary to WP:ADMINACCT, and their RFPP request was closed procedurally in July, with advice to go to AN/AE. This article isn't in the BLP AELOG, thus not DS action & AE inappropriate, so I bring this to AN.

David Gerard continues to believe the single violation from a single editor is grounds for indefinite full protection, and suggests permanently requiring all changes to go through as edit requests. He does not believe EC protection, DS, pblocks, or other measures should be considered. Whilst WP:BLPADMINS exists, I don't think it's intended as a blank cheque to indef full any BLP for any reason, especially not without trying other measures, and I would note that this is the only indef full protected BLP across this entire wiki of 1 million BLPs (and 1 of only 3 indef fully protected articles in general). Further, I've seen BLP violations far worse than this get off with a revert, revdel, EC protection at best – this wasn't even eligible for revdel apparently. I see not even a credible indication to believe that disruption would continue at EC, or that it can't be dealt with. This is evidently an abnormal protection based on numbers alone, and imv contrary to founding principles and the protection policy. I feel it should be reduced to EC. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:48, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

• We should never indef full protect articles. This one should at least be reduced to extended confirmed (and possibly for a finite duration); if there is a extended confirmed user knowingly introducing BLP violations they should be dealt with. Protection is not an instrument against such violations.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:52, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

  I must add however that at the talk page of the article two administrators supported keeping the protection and zero administrators opposed keeping it.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:57, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

  I'd note both are involved administrators in the protection, which is to be expected since they're watching the talk. One is the protecting admin, the other was involved here. Full protection is a poor substitute for potential action against a single editor imo (not expressing an opinion on whether there should've been or not). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:00, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

• Good grief. We have a page no one can edit at the behest of the subject? Indefinitely? This seems very wrong. And why are involved admins making these decisions? --Deepfriedokra (talk) 16:04, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Per Ymblanter. reduce to ECP (for 3 months) and see. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 16:06, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

I will happily watch the page, revert /revdel any BLP violations, and block the person adding them. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 16:09, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

• (edit conflict)I have to say, I don't think there is any reason to indefinitely fully protect a page. I would reduce the protection, none of the arguments at the talk are particularly convincing. PackMecEng (talk) 16:09, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Just noting the original discussion at BLPN is here. PackMecEng (talk) 16:51, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
• I'd like to hear David Gerard's take on this, perhaps there's more to this story than has been presented above. I don't think it's fair to categorise David's view as believing that a single case of vandalism justifies this protection - he talks on the article talk page about a coordinated off-wiki campaign, but I don't know what evidence there is for that. On the face of it, if the assertion that David received a call from the subject about the article is true, I assume they're personally known to him, and I'm kind of feeling that he probably shouldn't have been the one to protect the article - it's not a case of INVOLVEMENT, more a potential COI which might have had better optics via a request at RfPP for someone else to review. Anyway, I don't see any reason to drag David over the coals for what amounts to no more than a potentially overzealous protection of a BLP, we can simply review the protection here - unless there's more stuff about an ongoing campaign that he's able to expand on here, I'd agree that ECP for a few months would probably be adequate. GirthSummit _(blether) 16:20, 11 September 2020 (UTC)Comment ammended GirthSummit _(blether) 18:10, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

  I'd appreciate the WP:ADMINACCT concerns being addressed. Ignoring an editor requesting unprotection over the course of a month isn't really OK. I've asked for elaboration of this 'campaign' and received no response, either. If there is such credible evidence, it shouldn't take an AN to have an admin respond to editors' legitimate concerns. No need for coals here, but an explanation and a change in interacting with non-admin editors' concerns would be appropriate. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:27, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

• Everyone will agree based on the article history that full protection isn't merited. The real question is why it should take this much effort to get to this point. The ADMINACCT and COI/INVOLVED issues raised above should be addressed by David Gerard before this thread is closed. Lev!vich 16:35, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

  It is outrageous that this page is fully protected on a permanent basis. It strikes right at the heart of Wikipedia and all that it stands for. As noted above, I tried to discuss this matter with the protecting admin, to no avail. My attempt to engage in meaningful discussions at BLPN were dismissed by another admin. To reiterate what I said there; it seems that Boniface has managed to shut down the article by finding an admin willing to do her bidding. This page should be unprotected forthwith. I'm sure any material contravening BLP policy will be quickly reverted. Please note that I have no wish to edit the page myself, but I find this sort of unnecessary protection, here and elsewhere, quite infuriating; which is why I challenged it in the first place. Arcturus (talk) 16:43, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

The protection request at WP:RFPP was rejected by another admin, on the basis that Arcturus had completely failed to specify what edits he wanted to make. ProcrastinatingReader similarly failed to do so.

ADMINACCT was answered at Talk:Susie Boniface. Though ProcrastinatingReader thought starting his discussion with claims of malfeasance would be a good way to go, and asking questions repeatedly when he didn't like the previous answers from multiple admins.

The claims of COI/INVOLVED are unfounded nonsense. I suggest rereading WP:BLP.

As I said at Talk:Susie Boniface: Should WP:RFPP or WP:BLPN or some other suitable board concur otherwise, that'd be fine with me, but I'm not comfortable with removing it unilaterally. If the consensus of admins here is that extended confirmed protection would do the job fine, then I am absolutely OK with that. I would suggest admins add it to their watchlists, though - David Gerard (talk) 16:54, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

I find this response somewhat unfortunate. I’ve collated every onwiki discussion on the matter in my summary, so people can come up with their own opinions, but I feel your statement dodges all the big questions and is inaccurate on the few points it does make. Again, and I thought per Girth you would have already, are you able to substantiate your concerns: “Can I ask why you think personal targeting hasn't stopped (insofar as it extends to Wikipedia), or why you think EC would be ineffective?” If not, haven’t you been misleading editors for 3mo with wishy-washy nonsense? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:09, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

I don't believe I've misled anyone in any way, nor that you've shown it. You're throwing around completely unsubstantiated claims of malfeasance again. If you believe you can actually (a) state a specific claim (b) substantiate it, then that's something you've yet to do.

I note also that your response there doesn't address protection on the article in any manner. Wasn't that the issue you actually wanted to discuss? I do think I've answered that issue in full, and now it's up to consensus to decide - David Gerard (talk) 17:35, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

@DG, frankly that response makes me want to open an arbcom case, because it makes me think you don't know how to use the protection tools and are ignoring ADMINACCT. You haven't explained why you full protected it in the first place (as opposed to a lower level of protection), why you chose indefinite as the duration (as opposed to a limited duration), why you didn't later lift it on your own accord even though you said in June you only thought it should be protected "for a little while", why you ignored messages from editors inquiring about this, and why you haven't lifted the protection in response to repeated requests. Asserting that you're not comfortable lifting protection unilaterally is insufficient. (Heck, you imposed it unilaterally.) Also, where in WP:BLP does it say an admin can indef full protect a BLP at the request of the subject? Telling us to reread the policy does not fulfill your obligations to explain your admin actions under ADMINACCT. I am less concerned about what you're comfortable with and more concerned about whether you are using admin tools in line with community consensus. You need to explain your actions, not just share your feelings or draw lines in the sand. Please address these issues in good faith. (That means, in a way in which I and others will understand your thinking behind these actions.) Lev!vich 17:24, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

You haven't explained why you full protected it in the first place I fully protected it because the content - which other editors at Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard/Archive309#Susie_Boniface, not me, characterised as the editor adding them "was not "misled" by the off-wiki attacks (as suggested above by David Gerard). He was writing them" - was being added by an editor who would have passed ECP. I brought my concerns in full to BLPN, as detailed at that link.

why you haven't lifted the protection in response to repeated requests I have answered this also; claiming I haven't suggests you haven't read the links here.

and why you haven't lifted the protection in response to repeated requests As already detailed at the links given.

Also, where in WP:BLP does it say an admin can indef full protect a BLP at the request of the subject? The subject can, in fact, alert an admin to a problem, and the admin can decide there's a BLP-level problem there. If you don't understand this, you don't understand WP:BLP. I then brought my concerns to BLPN, as detailed at the link already given. It's a drastic protection level, which is why I promptly brought my concerns to BLPN - where nobody saw fit to remove it.

explain your admin actions under ADMINACCT As already done.

Please address these issues in good faith. Ideally, you'd first need to sound more like you were raising them in good faith. You're asking questions that are already answered. Please read through the BLPN, RFPP and talk page discussions.

- David Gerard (talk) 17:35, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

None of those discussions address why you think the full protection needs to be indefinite. You have not addressed why it needs to be protected today; that is, why it still needs to be full protected. This isn't something that multiple editors should have to ask you multiple times before you give a succinct and to-the-point answer. Why the indefinite duration? Why does it still need to be protected today? If the disruption was being added by an editor who would have passed ECP why didn't/don't you just block this editor instead of blocking all non-admin editors from editing the page?

We have over 6 million articles. Only two are indefinitely full protected: Susie Boniface and Kiwi Farms. While we're on the subject, pinging Primefac to ask if Kiwi Farms still needs to be indef full protected and if so why. Lev!vich 17:57, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

If consensus agrees, then it doesn't, as I've said repeatedly - David Gerard (talk) 17:58, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

ADMINACCT requires you to justify the duration of the protection; i.e., to justify it being indefinite as opposed to 24 hrs, 1 month, or 1 year. Your response, "If consenus agrees, then it doesn't" is drawing a line in the sand; it's not explaining the decision to make the protection indefinite in the first place. The BLPN and article talk page do not contain any justification for the indefinite duration. To the contrary, you said in the BLPN thread, I'd suggest leaving it a bit for now, and "a bit" doesn't mean "indefinite". So I'll ask you again to explain why you chose "indefinite" as the duration. Lev!vich 18:12, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Indefinite does not necessarily means infinite, and choosing to protect until the disruption is over is a valid choice, even though it does not seem to be the best one in this case. The arbitration case here is a non-starter.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:25, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Why is indefinite a valid choice--why not one month or one year or some other duration? And why full protection as opposed to semi or ECP? Why do we think we need to block all extended-confirmed editors from editing this article for an indefinite duration? This has not been answered. An arbitration case is a non-starter because it seems to be a one-time occurrence, but it shouldn't require multiple editors asking multiple times to get an admin to explain why they chose a particular level or duration of protection. ADMINACCT requires explanations, not instructions for how to appeal. Lev!vich 18:34, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Kiwi is fully protected because ECP wasn't cutting it - there were still editors adding in OSable BLP violations. Primefac (talk) 18:38, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Primefac, thanks for the quick response. But why not block those editors instead of indef full protection? How many extended-confirmed editors are out there adding BLP violations? They need to be blocked if that's what they're doing, no? Lev!vich 18:40, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

The last five violations were by five different users. I'm not going to block everyone violating BLP on this. I do suppose that it's not necessary to indefinitely fully protect. I'll leave it another week or so and then drop back down to ECP. Primefac (talk) 18:43, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Why not? Better to partially block five users from that article than block all editors, no? I mean, aren't we concerned that those five editors are also adding BLP violations elsewhere? I can see the revdel's, but those editors' talk pages don't appear to have anything about Kiwi Farms. If an (otherwise in good standing, extended-confirmed) editor is adding a BLP violation, shouldn't we address that with the editor, instead of blocking everyone else from editing the article? If the concern is that new accounts will game EC (and I don't see evidence of that with respect to the editors whose edits were revdel'd), wouldn't an edit filter be a better choice? Lev!vich 18:48, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

It occurs to me that you may be wondering how someone knew to phone me in particular. The answer is that I'm a listed volunteer media contact for Wikipedia/Wikimedia - and in the 2000s, I was the main UK press guy. So my personal phone number is still in a metric arseload of media contact lists in the UK, even as I haven't done the job very heavily in ages. I still get several calls a year, and the call from Susie Boniface (a journalist) was one of them. That I happen to be an admin, and one who wrote large chunks of WP:BLP way back when we were launching that policy, is a coincidence that meant I could act quickly - but BLP issues coming as calls is also a thing that occasionally happens. Sometimes other Wikimedia/Wikipedia contacts get BLP issues and ping me about them, as an admin who knows the BLP area - David Gerard (talk) 17:56, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

David Gerard, thanks for explaining that - I wondered if there was more to it than met the eye above. I withdraw the suggestion that there is a COI concern, and will strike it above for the record. Would you be willing to expand on the reason why you believe there is an on-going off-wiki campaign against the subject of the sort that would require indefinite full protection (as opposed to, say, a few months of ECP of semi-)? Feel free to point to somewhere else if you've already been through that of course. GirthSummit _(blether) 18:09, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

I can definitely state that I'd never had any contact with Ms Boniface before she called me, and in fact I'd never heard of her that I recall.

Per the BLPN thing, it appears there was a targeted attack on the subject being mounted across various "men's rights" forums and blog spaces, and the Wikipedia material was part of that. Given this was going on, I felt full protection was the right move (and promptly brought it to BLPN, as you do.) And that if someone had edits they wanted to make, they could suggest them - and another admin concurred. Given it was clearly a personally targeted attack on the subject, and in attacks like that, the attackers tend to wait patiently until they can act again, I figured keeping the lock was safer on BLP grounds - particularly given nobody had proposed particular edits.

There are conflicting needs here: openness versus a known-targeted BLP. I'm not a fan of excessive protection, and concur that everything Wikipedia got, it got by being as open as possible - but BLP is a big exception. (Hence: if you take a drastic action, you take it straight to BLPN.)

If editors, particularly admins, are aware of this style of misogynist online campaign, and know to watch for that stuff - and reimpose stronger protection as necessary - then ECP would probably suffice, sure - David Gerard (talk) 18:23, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

David Gerard, what about applying Gamer Gate discretionary sanctions in addition to ECP - would that fly, would ti make it easier to deal with any disruption from established accounts? GirthSummit _(blether) 18:55, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Do note we have the BLP discretionary sanctions (WP:BLPDS). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:02, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Not sure this is GG linked, GG is the Godwin example of online misogyny, and I made a point of having nothing to do with the Wikipedia issues over GG and am not familiar with the practical application of those particular sanctions :-) But WP:BLPDS might apply? Certainly if it happens again - David Gerard (talk) 19:11, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

I believe the matter was referred to ArbCom, according to the BLPN discussion, assuming the admin followed through with the advice given to them, given the serious assertion they made. Though, ArbCom has yet to take any action, assuming they received an email at all (can we ask for ArbCom's confirmation of receipt?), neither has any uninvolved admin taken action for the onwiki content. No such smear campaign has been evidenced, nor here or at BLPN. The "evidence" at BLPN was solely of one editor, Shakehandsman's, contributions across some other articles. Obviously, said editor's involvement in an offwiki campaign cannot be implied without evidence as was, and cannot be evidenced onwiki due to OUTing. What can and should be evidenced is allegations that there is a general smear campaign going on. Further, it should be evidenced that Wikipedia has multiple EC editors willing to participate in that smear campaign. Neither has been shown.

The facts of the matter are very simple: an editor decided to call cleaning a toilet with a toothbrush as "abuse", that article was indef protected, it remains the only BLP indef protected on wiki. BLP allows for more cautious steps to be taken to prevent defamation, but not wishy-washy statements to lead to indef protection. If none of these assertions can be shown to be credible, with evidence, there is absolutely no reason protection should not be lowered. Even if this was a real smear campaign (and I'm not convinced it is, as it extends to Wikipedia), it wouldn't be close to the first or anywhere near most severe, yet this would be the only one with indef protection. That alone should be evidence that this is not in line with precedent or policy. I've asked this numerous times, but what evidence can be shown here? If, as you say, the stuff at BLPN is all you have, this shouldn't even be a discussion. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:47, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

notified said admin. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:57, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Oh, come on. So I'm pretty sure I've found what you two are talking about, and if this is indeed that, then I feel this is an awful reason to indef full an article. We get this stuff all the time and we barely semi-protect for it. Maybe, at a real push, just because BLP, it does give rise to justification to ECP/indef it for a few weeks, but the source article has been deleted for months now and never gained traction in the first place. No evidence it was going to lead to wider disruption. Similar posts from this place about other female BLPs did not lead to disruption on those articles, which (looking at log) we never even protected at all. This is routine disruption, which has anyway been deleted and moved onto the next person. I hope Slp1 sent this to ArbCom if this is the same stuff they found, but in any case further protection is not appropriate and should be lifted. (for clarity, I solely refer to the content here, making no comment about who posted it) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:56, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

• Conceding that Full protection is better than this matter discussed on my talkpage. We need to do better as an encyclopedia. But we can't fully protect all the BLP's(?) --Deepfriedokra (talk) 18:59, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
• Can we just unprotect it and move on? No need for ECP or SP. Any BLP violations can be quickly reversed. I'll watch the article myself. Arcturus (talk) 19:03, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
• I see no reason not to reduce the article to ECP immediately. power~enwiki (π, ν) 19:07, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
  • It has been fully protected for three months, I don't think we have to worry that it would be too soon to reduce the protection to ECP. PackMecEng (talk) 19:51, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

@Arcturus: Can you tell us wht edit you'd like to make and the sourcing? That would be simpler/quicker/easier. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 19:15, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

As mentioned above, I do not want to edit the article. My concern is with unnecessary protection, of which this article is a classic example. Arcturus (talk) 19:18, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Well, alrighty then. Given the reason for the FP and the lack of edit requests, I doubt consensus will agree to lower protection. I am an advocate for preventing defamation on Wikipedia, so not terribly enthusiastic. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 19:25, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Hagia Sophia

Prompted by the above discussion, I fully protected the Hagia Sophia article due to an edit war. The full protection was intended in part to stimulate discussion at the talk page over the issue. So far, no meaningful discussion has taken place. Now, I don't like preventing constructive editing for any longer than necessary. So, what options do we have here? Do I unprotect the article and hope that the edit war doesn't break out again? My feeling is that the opponents will resume battle. Do I issue a partial ban on thoses involved and open the article up to normal editing? Or leave the article fully protected until some discussion takes place? Open to other suggestions. Mjroots (talk) 16:38, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

• Option 2: unprotect the article and if editors are still disruptive, partial block those editors from the article (but not the talk page). Now that we have partial blocks, I can see very little advantage to full protecting any article. Lev!vich 16:51, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Ah, the old rope trick eh? Well. I've unprotected and issued a warning on the talk page. I've got the article watchlisted in any case. Mjroots (talk) 17:12, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

    Thanks Mjroots. Yes, sort of the old rope trick, but not so much out a "rope" concern, but out of concern for all the other editors who may want to edit a page. My view on the "block/protection algorithm" is that protection should only be used when blocking is not feasible, e.g. semi protect if it's disruption from multiple IPs; ECP if it's disruption by multiple newly-registered accounts. The duration should be the minimum reasonably necessary to prevent disruption, and a "rule of thumb" is that it should be roughly equivalent to the duration of the disruption. So if the article has been disrupted over a number of days, protection should last days or a week. If it's been continuously disrupted for months, the protection might need to be months. The most extreme cases, e.g. vandalism honeypots like Faggot and Nigger, might required indefinite protection (which both those articles have been under for 10+ years, with obvious good reason). Full protection should be used extremely sparingly. I totally understand and agree with the "mercy full protection", which is used to spare having to block numerous editors in good standing, e.g. to avoid messing up editors' clean block logs. In such cases, the full protection should be of very short duration, e.g. 24-72 hrs, maybe one week tops, just enough to "throw a bucket of cold water" on the dispute. After that expires, if any of the same editors return to disruption, then they should be partially blocked (from the article only, not the talk page), as they no longer deserve mercy. (I guess that's the rope part.) The first partial block should be for a few days or a week; long enough to require engaging at the talk page. If a second partial block is required, it should be indefinite, lifted only by a proper unblock request showing that the block is no longer necessary to prevent disruption. If an editor is disruptive on a talk page (e.g. bludgeoning, incivility), then they should be partially blocked from the talk page as well. A full block should only be used when an editor's disruption extends to multiple pages. Per this "algorithm", indefinite full protection should never be used. I'm mulling over proposing a policy change to WP:PP to bar indefinite full protection, but I want to see how the above thread resolves first. Lev!vich 18:24, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

    • @Levivich: obviously I didn't intend for the article to stay locked for more than a month. Had there been some discussion then it could have been unlocked pretty quickly. Mjroots (talk) 20:39, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
• Exactly, I would say let the protection expire and if the same editors restur to disruption block (possibly partially) without any future warning.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:21, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

  I see, you have already done it. A good decision.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:22, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

removal of permissions

Hi can somebody remove my pending chamges reviewer and rollbacker permissions, as I'm on retirement for the time being. I will re-request at PERM when necessary. Thanks ◊PRAHLAD^balaji (M•T•A•C) This message was left at 18:02, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

 Done. Primefac (talk) 18:40, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Is Wikipedia English xenophobic?

If understand well the story, XIIIfromTOKYO has been accusing another user of anti-Semitism and homophobia and, as a consequence, has been "cautioned against comments addressing the motive or character of other conversants" by Wikipedia English administrators : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive966#Repetitive_accusations_of_antisemitism_and_homophobia.2C_and_threats_and_personal_attacks_by_XIIIfromTokyo . He had only one edit in 2020 on Wikipedia English but is now telling me that administrators on Wikipedia English have a "xenophobic behaviour" because he received remarks from them about his level of English (but he wrote in the same edit "I openned"): https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Launebee&diff=977698440&oldid=977610336

Context: there is a Sockpuppet investigation created by a one-purpose account on me (because I did not remove sources in an article, I would be the same user that put these relevant sources and that has been banned for sockpuppets use). I am not sure why, but XIIIfromTOKYO is using the comment section to give me links about a user on Wikipedia French with whom he had a content dispute and talking about his thousands of edits on Wikipedia French.

Why is he telling me these things? What can I answer?

It is possible that this user is MePhisto, who seems to use sockpuppets: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Sciences_Po&diff=974863772&oldid=974795773 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Sciences_Po&diff=976844467&oldid=974863796

--Delfield (talk) 22:39, 11 September 2020 (UTC)