Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by IRDT (talk | contribs) at 08:11, 2 October 2008 (→Grsz / Grsz11: Square peg, swuare hole.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

• WP:ANI
• WP:AN/I

This page is for urgent incidents or chronic, intractable behavioral problems.

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• Refining the administrator elections process
• Blocks for promotional activity outside of mainspace

Suicide threat - cross posted from WP:AIV

Suicide announcement?

I don't know if this is serious or just a hoax: . But you never know. The IP is registered to St. John's Memorial University, St. John's, NFL, Canada. De728631 (talk) 13:09, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I think we have some framework in place to deal with these things but I can't remember what it is. Perhaps someone in the area should phone the uni, just in case. — ^.^ 13:16, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

In most cases WP:RBI. D.M.N. (talk) 13:17, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I suggest the possibly less harmful and lifesaving Misplaced Pages:Responding to threats of harm. — ^.^ 13:20, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I found that too, sent an email to the NFL Constabulary, maybe that helps. De728631 (talk) 13:30, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

That likely wraps it up. Nothing more we can do here except move on. Cheers, guys, and good work. lifebaka++ 14:31, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

We probably want the edit deleted from non admin viewable history, but we'll probably need an oversighter to do it.--Tznkai (talk) 15:51, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Sent an email to stewards AT wikimedia.org, so it'll either get taken care of or not. Cheers. lifebaka++ 16:10, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely to NOT WP:RBI this. There has been a specific threat of violence made and pursuant to WP:TOV this should be taken seriously and reported to the authorities. I am currently on a bus from Boston to New York so cannot do this. Can someone please take point on this? Bstone (talk) 16:03, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Give me a moment to set up a subpage, with two active threads this is getting to damned confusing.

FYI, action has already been taken - Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Suicide_threat_-_cross_posted_from_WP:AIV. Cirt (talk) 16:08, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I would not suggest to use RBI, instead contacting local users so effective measures can be taken. Caulde 16:09, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

This may be helfpul: Misplaced Pages:Responding to suicidal individuals --Flewis 03:46, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Suicide threat - cross posted from WP:AIV

134.153.184.17 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) has threatened to commit suicide. The Whois look up indicates the address is registered to a university in Newfoundland. I've emailed the university and the Wikimedia foundation, however I'm not based in North America, and would be grateful if someone could phone the Canadian emergency services. PhilKnight (talk) 13:48, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Per WP:TOV, if anyone finds these threats of suicide credible, please feel free to contact the relevant authorities. I have blocked the IP for the vandalism, but have not taken any additional action myself. -- Ed (Edgar181) 13:49, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I reported this one level above on this noticeboard. An email was sent to the Newfoundland Constabulary and to the Wikimedia foundation (who just replied that they're going to monitor this). De728631 (talk) 13:55, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

The AN thread resulted in the local government being emailed, so there's nothing else we can do here. Cheers. lifebaka++ 14:33, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I also followed up via email with the IT department at that university. Toddst1 (talk) 15:36, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

See dup thread: Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard#Suicide_announcement.3F. Cirt (talk) 16:09, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Unified

This is now a transcluded so both pages are up to date simulatiniously--Tznkai (talk) 16:10, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Oversight

I have been asked to oversight the revision concerned here. I have declined to do so, with the advice of some other Oversighters, on the grounds that it may be helpful for ISP/authorities to see the revision. Sam Korn 16:24, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Should we have it deleted/oversighted sometime in the future? --Tznkai (talk) 16:50, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

No point, I think. Stifle (talk) 18:27, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I cannot see why this should ever be oversighted. If blatant vandalism is not oversighted or deleted than things which the authorities may need access to should certainly not be oversighted. Bstone (talk) 22:38, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

To clarify, the Threats of harm essay above suggests deleting, not oversighting the offending edit. Usually to avoid people doing something really stupid misguided with a potentially suicidal person.--Tznkai (talk) 04:06, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Proposed change of confusing jargon

Why do we call it oversight? Oversight usually means some sort of independent review or process, often to try to keep people honest. Misplaced Pages usage of oversight really means "Removal", "Content deletion" or "Censor" (censorship doesn't need to be bad; some countries have a censorship board). Propose making Misplaced Pages more user friendly and less jargon by renaming the term "oversight" to "content removal" or "remove". So the first sentence of this section would read "I have been asked to do content removal of the revision concerned here" or "I have been asked to remove the revision concerned here". 903M (talk) 03:56, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Not meaning to seem like I'm muting discussion here or anything, but you probably should head over to WP:VPP for things like this. You'll get a much wider group of editors there. Cheers. lifebaka++ 03:59, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I forget where I read this, but IIRC, the name came from the fact that all members can hide revisions and also see those hidden revisions, thereby providing oversight of each other to ensure that no one is hiding revisions that don't need to be hidden or hiding them for ulterior motives. Or it may have been that a narrow group had that oversight role and more could hide revisions, but now the groups are congruent and inseparable.--chaser - t 05:00, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

The way I've always looked at it is since the GFDL requires attribution of all edits, exercising this tool is sort of "overlooking" that license, as we're deleting part of the history. Hersfold 19:04, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

That doesn't have anything to do with it (admins can do that with deletion and selective diff restoraton).--chaser - t 06:04, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

The GFDL also only requires us to have the major contributors. Almost universally when we oversight whatever is left has little to no contribution from the edits in question. JoshuaZ (talk) 22:10, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

User:Pigsonthewing

After the recent debates in which Pigsonthewing (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was told, in no uncertain terms, to leave Docu, and particularly his signature, alone, Pigsonthewing made two blatantly trollish edits to posts signed by Docu: and . The second, in particular, is simply harassment. Docu had signed, but not timestamped, as is his wont - - and there was absolutely no need whatsoever for Pigsonthewing to amend Docu's signature. It is impossible not to see this as deliberate trolling, and Pigsonthewing has been asked numerous times to desist, but is still doing it. Enough, I think. I have blocked Pigsonthewing for 24 hours. Guy (Help!) 14:26, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Oppose block. Having followed the Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Mcumpston thread above, which resulted in Mcumpston withdrawing, in particular this diff, I don't think User:JzG should be blocking Andy a few days later. It looks like revenge rather than the impartial wielding of the sword of justice (and Docu should pay some attention to the dozens of people who find his sig irritating). I would ask User:JzG to unblock asap and let someone else consider the matter. Occuli (talk) 14:45, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

• I warned Pigsonthewing for this exact behaviour towards this exact editor , prior to which I do not recall having any previous involvement with Pigsonthewing; if you're going to discount every admin who's commented on Andy's behaviour as being somehow involved then you are going to run out of admins very fast - his history is long and controversial and includes ArbCom sanctions for edit-warring over trivia, which is basically what he's doing here. Guy (Help!) 14:55, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

• All this is true but Docu is also to blame for today's exchanges. Has Docu been asked to 'keep away from Andy'? (Difficult as they both work, in disharmony, on Coordinates.) Occuli (talk) 15:02, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

• Not really relevant; Pigsonthewing knows full well that Docu does not want to change his sig, and has been warned for doing so once before, this is an act of deliberate provocation of an editor with whom he is in dispute. Andy has a very long history of provocation, on and off Misplaced Pages; he seems to be playing Misplaced Pages-the-MMORPG. Guy (Help!) 15:06, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

I've looked at this. There are two issues, Pigsonthewing doing what he was explicitly told not to and Guy's involvement. Pigsonthewing definitely is doing what he was told not to, so I totally support the block. In fact, I'd have made it 31 hours vice 24. Guy maybe should have asked someone else to look at this but the bottom line is the block is solid, Pigsonthewing simply needs to cease and desist doing this and leave Docu alone. No editor should me messing another's sigs and comments like this, especially not after they were emphatically told to stop. — Rlevse • Talk • 14:50, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Pigsonthewing has posted an unblock request, which I've declined on essentially the grounds you've just stated. -- ChrisO (talk) 14:52, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Endorse. Moreschi (talk) 14:53, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Endorse. Ncmvocalist (talk) 15:07, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Endorse. Jennavecia 15:09, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Another unblock request on the basis of WP:BUTIAMRIGHT. Guy (Help!) 15:08, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Declined on the basis of WP:NOYOURENOT. -- ChrisO (talk) 15:11, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

And a third, on the basis that apparently didn't specifically tell him to stop. Guy (Help!) 15:13, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, we shouldn't be getting any more - his user talk page is now protected. -- ChrisO (talk) 15:21, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Good decisions. — Rlevse • Talk • 16:22, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Admins gone Wild, Misplaced Pages Edition. You're a janitor with a mop, you're not the police. You don't make up the rules as you go. How was this block supported by community (or foundation) adopted policy? —Locke Cole • t • c 19:43, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to pitch in again after this was marked resolved, but I am a bit concerned here. Per Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Pigsonthewing 2 Andy was banned for a year, and the ban expired on August 19. That's just over a month ago, and since then he's been blocked twice for disruption. Given that the last one-year ban was also for disruption, how much longer do we go before our patience wears out? Guy (Help!) 16:49, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

There could, maybe, possibly, be a trend here. Baseball Bugs 16:54, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

This particular transgression is trivial. No-one would be paying any attention if it were not Andy (for whom I am beginning to have some sympathy). His behaviour in 2006 and 2007 was much worse than this. I would also like to see Guy withdraw from this for the time being as he does not seem sufficiently detached – there are plenty of eyes on AM. Occuli (talk) 17:11, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

When an admin tells you not to do something that's a rule violation, and you do it anyway, it's not trivial. Especially for a user who has been blocked many times, sometimes at great length, and is still defiant. It's kind of like a paroled felon who steals a pack of chewing gum. Stealing the chewing gum, by itself, might be considered trivial. But it's still a violation of the law, and given the parolee's background, it's not at all trivial, and he goes back to the slammer. Baseball Bugs 17:19, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Also, calling Guy "involved" is misleading. If Guy were involved in a content dispute with the editor in question, that would be one thing. But that does not appear to be the case here. Baseball Bugs 17:27, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Admins enforce community (or foundation) adopted policy, they do not make up the "rules". So unless you have a policy (or even a guideline) which says modifying another editors sig in a harmless way is a blockable offense, I can understand why Andy wouldn't heed such "warnings". —Locke Cole • t • c 19:43, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Your buddy has been here long enough to know that you're not supposed to mess with other people's talk page comments, even with good intentions. And when it's to prove a point of some kind, that's a rules violation. Baseball Bugs 21:11, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

• Now here's a funny thing. In the second arbitration case, one of the disruptive edits cited in evidence was this one: . Compare that with this edit: . Banned for a year, comes back and immediately makes one of the edits that got him banned? In what way is that not a violation of WP:POINT? Guy (Help!) 17:30, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

In no way at all. But for today this looks resolved to me. Jd2718 (talk) 17:49, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

The second of those diffs is broken, I guess you meant --82.7.39.174 (talk) 18:33, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

You're a little late there JzG: that matter was dealt with over a week ago IIRC. —Locke Cole • t • c 21:00, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Sure, the problem (for me) is that while I was happy to AGF and let Andy have another go, aleit sceptical given his off-wiki reputation, here we seem to have two incidents, close together, of the same type of problem - in one case the same problem - as got him banned. Can we come up with a way of forestalling what looks painfully like the inevitable here? Perhaps invent a "disengagement parole" or something? Guy (Help!) 21:25, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Or, perhaps since this incident is silly and trivial, Andy should be asked not to do what he did again and unblocked so he can continue contributing in a productive manner? Unless there's something more serious here, I don't see how a block helps things... —Locke Cole • t • c 22:46, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

At what point will he promise not to do something and really mean it? Baseball Bugs 05:27, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Or to put it a better way - before unblocking him, try to get a commitment from him. Unblocking in the hope that he'll commit is not likely to work, given his past (and recent) performance. Baseball Bugs 11:54, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't much matter now, since his block will expire in an hour - then we'll see how well he lives up to the promises Locke Cole is making for him - that is, whether he behaves himself, or whether he makes Locke Cole look like a fool for standing up for him. Baseball Bugs 13:22, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

• In view of Guy's diffs I suggest we archive this discussion now, and get prepared for the seemingly inevitable "ban or block for another year?" discussion in a few days time. LessHeard vanU (talk) 19:51, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
• I seem to recall Tony Sidaway used to modify signatures all the time, removing special formatting and so forth. I don't recall him ever being blocked, much less banned, for that behavior. What makes this so different? *** Crotalus *** 00:30, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
  • He got blocked for other things, none of them lasting anywhere close to a year. Maybe nobody thought to complain about the signature deal. (Assuming it's true. Do you have any diffs?) Baseball Bugs 03:10, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

• He was warned for amending Docu's signature, and he then did it again. It's quite unambiguous. And edit-warring over trivia is precisely the problem identified in past arbitration cases. He seems to be obsessive about some things, well beyond their actual significance. Guy (Help!) 09:20, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

• Another way of looking at this - if user:Docu, an admin, were to amend his signature, as requested repeatedly by a multplicity of editors, some of them admins, then the present incident would not have arisen. Some of the evidence for this is in user:Docu's talk page history (as Docu seems to like making things difficult, by declining to archive his talk). For instance 2 editors, 2 more editors, 2 threads, 3 more editors, one being AM, 2 more, another, another, all in 2008. And there is ANI, Sept 08, with several more expressions of disquiet. Occuli (talk) 13:32, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

• Begorrah, another "look what you made me do" game. It's Docu's fault that Pigs-whatever got himself blocked? Wrong. If there's a rule that Docu has to sign his posts properly, and if there's a penalty for not doing so, then take him to the authorities for it. If not, then leave him alone. Baseball Bugs 13:55, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

• It doesn't matter anyway, since his block will end in half an hour or so. Baseball Bugs 13:57, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

• And there is a peaceful alternative. There's a bot program which goes around and tags untagged IP address comments in talk pages. That's one bot program on here that actually does something useful. Maybe it could be programmed to look for all incomplete signatures, and complete them. Shazam! What an idea. Ya know, sometimes I'm so smart, it actually frightens me. :) Baseball Bugs 14:04, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

• An even more peaceful alternative is to ask him nicely to fix it himself. I suspect he will not do that before Andy is banned, as Andy apparently cannot resist changing it. Guy (Help!) 14:38, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

• Well, that user's departure would make things more peaceful, yes... but what I'm saying is that there are plenty of instances where users don't sign their posts "properly". Sometimes I forget to sign, and the bot program fixes it. So if the bot can do that, why can't it fix incomplete signatures? Not just Docu's, but anyone's? Is there a technical reason that can't be done? Baseball Bugs 14:55, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

• God no, there is nothing more annoying then bots updating signatures. Spartaz 06:51, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

• There are lots of things more annoying - such as individual editors singling out other editors and messing with their content just to prove a point. Baseball Bugs 07:51, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Andy Mabbett

I have never amended Docu's sig - not one character of it. I have sometimes placed a note after it, in the manner of {[unsigned}}, with links, for the benefit of other editors, worded to make clear that the addition is not Docu's. I have done this a good few times, and neither he (and he has replied below such edits several times) nor any other editor has previously complained, nor even asked me not to do so.

A while ago, on 20 September, I did so at the same time as I refactored one of Docu's comments. JzG (who signs himself "Guy") threatened me over that edit calling it "trolling". His supposed warning made no reference to placing links after Docu's sig. The compete wording was:

This is blatant trolling. Drop it, please, or you are very very likely to end up blocked. If you are not capable of discerning that you are skating on thin ice right now then you are far less astute than I give you credit for. The time to pull back from the edge is about now.

I pointed out that not only was it not trolling, but that I had been thanked by Docu for that very edit. JzG did not reply.

JzG was later advised by more than one editor that his behaviour towards me on WP:ANI was inappropriate, after labelling me a "dick" for making a valid copyvio report in precisely the manner prescribed.

On 22 September, refactored one of Docu's TfD comments, to remove risk of double-counting. He reverted and asked me not to refactor his comments again and I have never done so since. However, another editor refactored that same comment, albeit differently, and Docu did not revert, nor complain about that. Once again, Docu made no objection to me placing a note after his sig.

Only after I raised the matter of what appears to be WP:POINT editing by Docu did Docu complain about the later refactoring; not on my talk page, not on the pages concerned, not on WP:ANI or WP:WQA, but to an admin who had already made inappropriate, derogatory comments about me, and who has previously made a grossly misleading statement about my user name.

JzG blocked me, and claimed on WP:ANI that "After ... recent debates was told, in no uncertain terms, to leave Docu, and particularly his signature, alone". I dispute this: evidence, please.

On the bass of such false claims by JzG, other editors refused to unblock me.

If the purpose of blocks is "preventative not punitive", why was I blocked for edits which were five or more days old? Why did nobody discuss those edits with me first? What has been achieved, other than to stop me from carrying out useful work to develop Misplaced Pages? Why was my talk page blocked, with no warning?

Baseball Bugs refers to Locke Cole as "my buddy". What is that supposed to mean? Is he accusing Locke Cole of behaving improperly?

JzG also makes unsubstantiated references to my supposed activities off-Misplaced Pages and makes vague comments about my "off-wiki reputation". How is that relevant to the issue at hand? Why is that ad hominem personal attack allowed?

He also says that I am 'edit-warring over trivia" - where is this edit-warring? Diffs, please.

The block was listed as being for "disruptive editing" - what was "disrupted"?

Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 17:07, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

• This is one long example of a distraction fallacy. Fact: you amended posts made by another user, specifically you amended the signature portion of said posts, but also the content, after you had been warned to stop making exactly those edits to the signature section of posts by exactly that editor. That's why the uninvolved admins who reviewed your block, at your talk page and here, all agreed that what you were doing was a calculated act of disruption. You have a long history of acts of disruption, often over the most trivial things. This is just one more data point. You were clearly and unambiguously in the wrong, and that's and end to it. Guy (Help!) 14:30, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Can you show us where Andy was warned not to make those edits? He helpfully provided links to back up his statements. Thank you. --NE2 14:35, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

• I already did, once on his talk page, at least once in this thread, and someone else linked it on his talk page, and last time I looked the warning itself was still there as well. He's the only one who disputes it, as far as I can tell. Here it is again: . Do you honestly think he was in any doubt whatsoever that continuing to faff with Docu's signature would not be appreciated? It's not just me, three separate admins reviewed the block on his talk, and Black Kite posted a link to the warning. Andy's response was an absolutely classic WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT - see . He has a loooooooong history of edit-warring over trivia, he knows that his obsessive behaviour over trivia is a problem, he's been banned for it for twelve months, and he's started right back in on the same pattern of disruption and denial. I wash my hands of the guy, but am prepared to run a small sweepstake on how long it takes for him to be banninated again. Guy (Help!) 19:08, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. However, it doesn't look to me like a warning "to stop making exactly those edits to the signature section of posts by exactly that editor". I also disagree that that edit is "blatant trolling"; this appears to be a minor dispute that you are blowing out of proportion. --NE2 20:04, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

The WP:LAWYER's office is second on the left down the hall; it should not be necessary to tell people to stick beans up either the left or the right nostril, nor insert them in their ears. It was posted for review at the time and three separate admins reviewed the unblock requests. And Andy has been around for a long time, although to be fair he seems to have spent a fair bit of that time either blocked or banned, usually for lame edit wars. Like this one, in fact. Guy (Help!) 22:56, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not saying he's blameless. I am saying that you are blowing what is essentially application of {{unsigned}} out of proportion. --NE2 23:24, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

That's fine and good when done impersonally by a bot, but following another editor round doing it manually to them in a way that they and others have asked you not to is disruptive. Hence the block, and hence its endorsement by numerous other admins. Andy should leave it to someone else, especially since every single time he does this he makes it harder for Docu to do the right thing without losing face. It's a stupid bit of trolling and absolutely does not help at all - in fact, quite the opposite. Guy (Help!) 11:45, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

It also amounts to stalking or harassment. Of the endless tasks needed to be done in wikipedia, correcting someone else's signature is several miles down the list. Baseball Bugs 15:48, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Luckily, taking people to task for doing that sort of thing comes slightly higher up the list. Anyway, I thought the corrections were only being done when replying to Docu or taking part in a thread where Docu had posted? That sort of correcting as an 'aside' (in addition to replying to someone else) would seem to be OK, as opposed to making a single edit to correct Docu's signature. Personally, I try only to add "unsigned" when contributing to a thread, but sometimes it just needs to be added anyway to make the flow of a thread clearer. Carcharoth (talk) 00:22, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Guy, you said above: "I wash my hands of the guy, but am prepared to run a small sweepstake on how long it takes for him to be banninated again." That doesn't sound like you are washing your hands of anything. It sounds like you are encouraging people to watch him until such time as you can say "I told you so". How would you feel if I said the following about you? "I wash my hands of the guy, but am prepared to run a small sweepstake on how long it takes for him to get into trouble again." Does that make my point? Self-fulfilling prophecies are never a good thing. Maybe we should have WP:NO SWEEPSTAKE JOKES? Yes, I know I started Misplaced Pages:Requests for rollback/Sweepstake... :-) Carcharoth (talk) 00:31, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Amongst his other ad hominem personal attacks, GUy/JzG says "doing it manually to them in a way that they and others have asked you not to is disruptive" (my emphasis). He has yet to provide any evidence of anyone asking me not to (his oft-cited, vague and false allegation of trolling notwithstanding); much less Docu, who actually thanked me for making an edit in which I did so. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:40, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

@Carcharoth, what I mean is that I will not be the one monitoring Andy for further issues. He seems to me to have a fundamental problem accepting that he could ever be in the wrong, and this seems to me to be the root of all his problems on Misplaced Pages; the wikilawyering over the last block is a perfect example. How many people have to agree with a block before Andy accepts that the fault was his? Me, I don't really care, people who are absolutely certain that they are always in the right in every single dispute, however many people tell them otherwise, tend to end up being shown the door. Documented fact: one of the issues leading to his previous block was edit warring over an attack on his user page, which attack he restored shortly after his ban expired, and of course it was removed again. Documented fact: he was warned to stop provoking Docu by faffing with his signature, following which he faffed with Docu's signature and was blocked, and that block was endorsed by several admins independently. If this looks to you like someone who is repeating past problems and therefore likely to experience a repeat of the previous consequences, then I'd have to agree. If it doesn't, I don't care overmuch.

@Andy: here's the diff . Still can't hear me? Perhaps you have your fingers in yoru ears and are chanting "laa laa I'm not listening". I'm guessing that the fact of your having replied defiantly to said warning was taken as evidence of your having seen it by those admins who reviewed the block. And now I think I will walk away before you make me angry. Guy (Help!) 13:17, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Meanwhile, I wonder where the diff is supporting the claim that Docu "thanked" Pigs-etc. for messing with his signature? Baseball Bugs 13:21, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Up above, para 4 of this sub-section - "I pointed out that not only was it not trolling, but that I had been thanked by Docu for that very edit. JzG did not reply." Occuli (talk) 16:03, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

That seems to have to do with numbering of things in lists. I don't see anything where Docu is thanking him for messing around with his signature. Baseball Bugs 18:19, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Disruptive edits from Eleland, discussion of block length

I believe that recently user Eleland (talk · contribs) violated WP:CIV and WP:NPA by making incivil speculations and personal attacks. Best I'm aware, he claims to have been provoked into doing such a thing, but being noted by three separate editors that this activity was offensive (, , ), he appears to have continued in personally attacking other editors and suggesting he has no intention on curtailing his offensive style.

I was only lightly involved in the discussion on Eleland's talk page, but feeling that the issue affected me directly (as an editor who often reviews discussions on said article), I chimed in with what I believe to have been a constructive comment about Eleland's behavior. Instead of getting a constructive reply, or even being ignored, I was blasted back with a revert and an incivil edit summary. I was deeply insulted by his commentary, and am concerned about the fact that no action was taken so far, as this does not appear to be Eleland's first or even second time making personal attacks on Misplaced Pages.

Nishidani (talk · contribs)'s complete support of Eleland, especially regarding racist and antisemitic comments, and his extremely long commentary which buries all other discussion, does not help the matter any.

Another relevant diff and quote showing that Eleland intends to continue with this behavior:

• - Eleland - "I still think Saxophonem is a cunt. I mean it. He's a huuuuge douchebag. He can go fuck himself."

--Eternalsleeper (talk) 00:44, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Unless he suffers from Tourette's, he's got some 'splainin' to do. Baseball Bugs 03:04, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

. Toddst1 blocked and then unblocked this user. He seems to be tweeking the block currently. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 03:12, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I think we're done here folks. Nothing to see. Please move along. Toddst1 (talk) 03:19, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

There appears to be a much deeper issue here than one editors lashing out and using profane language at wits end. Eleland clearly needs to calm down and reminded that this type of language is not appropriated but its pretty clear that what provoked him isn't anywhere near appropriate either. I hope that whoever looks into this does it thoroughly.PelleSmith (talk) 03:26, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I guess that's not going to happen ... PelleSmith (talk) 03:28, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

His informal request for unblock is missing the obvious question: "Was it something I said?" Baseball Bugs 03:34, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Larry Miller (actor) did a standup act on HBO back in the 1980s in which he described a pub crawl. At one of the taverns, he said, "We decided to leave, right after they threw us out." Baseball Bugs 03:59, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

indef blocked for deliberate abuse and declarations not to abide by wikipedia policy Toddst1 (talk) 03:19, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

While the word "cunt" is offense, and does warrant a block, the provocation by Saxophonemn (talk · contribs) was far, far worse! I have changed this from resolved to unresolved as an indef block is not appropriate given that the user is aware that they stepped over the line, self-reverted their unsavoury comment, and explained that they lost their head on their talk page. John Vandenberg 08:57, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

The block was warranted, although it should have been of a definite duration. I can't see how Saxophonemn's provocation was worse, or indeed how it was a provocation. A convincing unblock request with a credible promise not to do it again should be granted, I think, but eleland currently seems to be disinclined to make it.  Sandstein  09:07, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Saxophonemn quotes Mark Twains Concerning the Jews, but adds "". Saxophonemn is in effect writing the future history books to say that the Palestinians will be extinguished. For context, the full text can be found on Wikisource at s:Concerning the Jews#Point No. 6., however that isnt a high quality page:- resembles most online editions in that it is roughly correct but isnt very accurate about the typography.

eleland is doing a sensible thing by not requesting an unblock at the moment, in order to cool off. But the indef block is unreasonable for a long standing editor who has let a vile comment get to them. John Vandenberg 09:41, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I did ask Eleland to knock it off earlier, as noted above, but it's a pity that he seems to have persisted, notwithstanding the provocation that he perceives. I also think that an indefinite block is excessive, especially considering Eleland's relatively clean block log. I've reduced it to three months - which is still a substantial period - and suggested to Eleland that he consider Sandstein's suggestion above. -- ChrisO (talk) 10:06, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I see what you mean, John, but in that text, Twain mentions peoples that were once glorious but have now passed the height of their glory. I'm not sure how adding the Palestinians to that list is tantamount to asking for their extinction. Comparing them to the ancient Greeks and Romans is even a (probably unintended) token of respect. Saxophonemn's comments seem to reflect not much more than the narrow-minded ethno-religious supremacism that is unfortunately common on talk pages related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. It's best ignored and certainly does not warrant Eleland's reaction.  Sandstein  10:20, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Eleland called that comment for what it is: supremacism, or at best it is an intentional jibe intended to infuriate the opposition. I agree that he over-reacted, but that was quite probably the intended reaction. I dont think Eleland is any harm to our community if he occasionally gets very pissed off at comments like these. John Vandenberg 10:58, 28 September 2008 (UTC) Mark Twain is rolling in his grave right now!

Hi,
The diff of Eleland are not given in this discussion.
Is all this discussion about this that was reverted by Eleland himself 15 minutes later ? (48 hours ago...)
If so, I think undefinite is not acceptable and 3 months far too long. 24 h more than enough and just not talking about them, the wiser...
But there may be something else I missed... ???
Ceedjee (talk) 10:36, 28 September 2008 (UTC) (edit) Eleland deleted a comment later (and was uncivil in the edit summary : but it is not false he was accused to be antisemite (!) in the comment he deleted... user:Eternalsleeper was uselessly provocative. Ceedjee (talk) 10:40, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

• I think 3 months is still far too long given the provocation as mentioned above. If Eleland was to post an unblock request with a promise to cut that abuse out, I'd be tempted to grant it. The conduct of some of the other editors in the episode shouldn't be ignored, too. Black Kite 10:41, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

• I would have no objection to anyone granting an unblock request in the circumstances you describe. -- ChrisO (talk) 10:50, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

There is not a shadow of doubt that Eleland violated policy. Eleland can't stand racist cant, and varying the vowel, called the cant-ranter a 'cunt'. There is not a shadow of a doubt either that, within 15 minutes of his outburst, he reverted. The punishment now in place deals with his reactions to an admin warning to be civil. The admin, well-meaning, did not check the provocation, which was racist. In a similar situation, another well-established editor revertede a profoundly racist remark against Palestinians within 3 minutes. I don’t think much was made of this. To revert a slip is itself an acknowledgement of wrong-doing, and a form of apology to the encyclopedia.

Comment by Jaakobou: Despite my quick retraction, Nishidani was among the people making a huge fuss over my angry response to his provocation and the end result, despite my taking all but 3 minutes to recant and apologize, was a topic ban of one week. I take pride that -- despite his repeated suggestions that it's extremely moral to attack Jews if they happen to be Zionists (i.e. support Israel) -- I not once called him a "goose-stepping loon" and/or "enthusiastic Nazi" like Eleland did in response to his block. Jaakobou 11:20, 28 September 2008 (UTC) clarify 11:22, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I used the diff illustratively, Jaakobou. It is not intended to reflect on your present editorial status, but simply to underline that Eleland copped a lifetime, then a three-month ban for opposing a racist, while your unfortunate remark was met with a one-week topic ban. These sorts of disparities in judgement are what disconcert many. I would also note that Eternalsleeper mischievously, and in tone with his earlier provocations, has given as the header of this incident 'Racism' as though Eleland had engaged in racist comments. This is pure and vulgar misrepresentation. Both Eternalsleeper and Saxophonemn indulged in racist comments, and Eleland's response consisted of an objection to racism.Nishidani (talk) 11:36, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, discussions of a master race and comparisons between Jews and Nazis are considered antisemitic. Eleland should have known better really to apologize rather than insist on "his prerogative" to attack other editors. Three months seems like a fine way to note other editors that comparing Jews with Nazis and calling them "cunt" is a very poor way to request an unblock. Jaakobou 11:44, 28 September 2008 (UTC) milder 07:25, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Again, I can only insist that this speed-reading damages Misplaced Pages. What you say reflects nothing in what was said. Eleland responded to an offensive remark about Palestinians by someone who boasts of his Torah-based nationalism. His response occasioned a further attack. Mark Shabazz, one of the coolest heads in this area, called Saxophonemn's use of Twain, an example of 'national supremicism', a euphemism for what was, contextually, Saxophonemn's ethnic supremicist use of Twain. Ethnic supremicists think of themselves as 'Herrenvolk', and the undercaste here consisted of 'Palestinians'. It is useless to engage in a dispute unless one has the good-will and patience to master what Nietzsche called 'the art of slow reading', which is the only way to read. Eleland did not speak of 'Jews'. He addressed specific individuals, and called them for their contemptuous attitudes, and this habit of taking a criticism of a fellow in one's group, clan or tribe as a criticism of the group, is extremely archaic, and injurious to intelligent discussion. An American might take offense were I to call GWB what Eleland called Saxophonemn. That happens to be what I think, but it has nothing to do with Americans. Is that clear?Nishidani (talk) 11:53, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

JOKE: I can't believe you just called all Americans the "C" word. --Einsteindonut (talk) 10:39, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

An admin, without checking what Eleland was upset about apparently, made a civility caution on Eleland’s page. I, like Eleland, noted that, once more, the agent provocateur goes unexamined, and those who respond, if intemperately, are cautioned. In comes, curiously out of nowhere, for I have never crossed paths with the editor on the many I/P pages I work on, Eternalsleeper, informing both of us he tracks our editing, and considers us ‘anti-semitic’. It is one of the absurdities of Misplaced Pages, that this smearing, devoid of diffs, is never punished, while those who get pissed off about racism, and being labelled antisemites, get banned for telling the smearers to rack off. The irony is what Saxophonemn did not complain about here (I don’t complain when Einsteindonut told me to ‘get fucked’ on my page) is now the object of a complaint by Eternalsleeper, who played a key role in supporting Saxophonemn’s racist remark by chipping in to remark that (a) Eleland embraces the violently racist tripe of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, (b) I apparently mock the shofar for having called a Saxophone-player a hornblower (= someone who ‘blows their own trumpet’) (c) both of us are accused of anti-Semitism.

’many edits both make tries to portray Jewish Zionists as the crux of the world's problems. As no one makes a big hoopla of the Islamic occupiers of Eretz Israel, I find your commentaries offensive and racist.’

There are no diffs in this to document the outrageous assertion. It is patently false, since neither I nor Eleland have ever identified ‘Jewish Zionists’ as the crux of the world’s problems.. It is coded language for insinuating our editing is inspired by the conspiracy-mongering of the Protocols of Zion. Eternalsleeper calls this remark ‘chiming in’. (d) it describes the Palestinians as ‘Islamic occupiers of Eretz Israel’, and thus delivers up the chiming kibitzer as someone with a pronounced ideological and historically completely unfocused knowledge of the area.

Outcome? Sandstein’s suggestion (I hold that admin in high regard) that Saxophonemn’s use of Twain was innocuous, is patently wrong. To place the Palestinians with the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans is not to honour them by association (such subtleties are not in Saxophonemn’s style). It is to associate them with peoples whom Twain said oppressed the Jews, and were beaten by them. The tampering delivers the message: Palestinians oppress the Jews, they are ‘history’, and are ‘beaten’. That this is what Saxophonemn meant, were there a shadow of a doubt, is shown by several other remarks he made about both blacks, and his Torah-based nationalism.

The two people who provoked this flare-up get off scot-free. One of them, Saxophonemn has yet to make one useful edit, Eleland has made thousands. The other, Eternalsleeper has had the hide first to insult Eleland by calling his outrage at a racist put-down ‘antisemitic’, and Eleland a true-believer in the Jewish conspiracy, and then step in here to make a formal complaint about a violation of Wiki proprieties. Eleland deserves a ban. Perhaps I do too. But is there no such thing as cause and effect. Is calling an accomplished and valuable editor an anti-Semite okay round here? Is reacting violently to such cheap insinuations a crime, instead of a robust defence of one’s integrity as a humanist? It would be comical were it not ridiculous in its puerile bureaucratic superficiality.Nishidani (talk) 11:03, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Lost in all this is that invoking the C-word in the manner he did also expresses extreme hatred of women. Baseball Bugs 11:47, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Rubbish. Now Shakespeare and Chaucer are misogynists because they wrote of queyntes. Nishidani (talk) 11:56, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

No, it's not the word, it's the way it's used - equating female genitals to inferiority and uncleanliness. Baseball Bugs 12:17, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Rubbish, and you're giving yourself away, associating female genitals with uncleanliness. Eleland did not say S. was 'unclean' or 'inferior'. It's you who are associating the organ in the metaphor with uncleanliness and inferiority. The best you make make of this is that E called S a female, by the figure of speech called synecdoche, i.e. calling a part for a (w)hole:). In any case, this is off-topic, and disturbing one's view of F1 at Singapore.Nishidani (talk) 12:27, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

His use of language is precisely on topic. He's playing the "look what you made me do" game. Baseball Bugs 13:19, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

And contrary to your statement about "giving myself away", that word can be sweet and beautiful in the right context. This ain't it. The editor uses it in an ugly way. It's not the word, it's the thought behind it. Baseball Bugs 13:29, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I have changed the malice in the header, which is question-begging. The complaint is about Eleland's abusive language. The racism is what Saxophonemn brandished, and the plaintiff Eternalsleeper used in wantonly attributing without any diffs to prove it, racist sentiments to Eleland. I still am waiting for some administrator to check both Eternalsleeper's unprovoked smear of Eleland (forget me) as an anti-semite, and Saxophonemn's use of what Malik Shabazz called 'nationalist supremicism'. There is no more place in wiki for wildly smearing editors with insinuations about racism, than there is for abusive language.Nishidani (talk) 12:34, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

One's integrity as a humanist? Please read the article on baptismal rite. Ottre 12:31, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

And please read the O.E.D. on 'the price of fish'.Nishidani (talk) 12:47, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Nishidani seems right to me.

If we take care to read all the edits in chronological order, trying to understand the chain of causes - consequencess, I think that if it is Eleland who wrote the uncivil comments, they were not as terrible as it could seem out of their context, and that he is not really responsible of the whole mess.

Nevertheless, taking some distance (a short wikibreak) cannot be bad for him so that he cool down and he is an editor with an experience long enough to know when he can come back (and ask to be unblocked)

I suggest we let him decide when it is ok and consider the issue as resolved...

Regards, Ceedjee (talk) 13:20, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

"Not responsible"? No, he is fully responsible. He chose the words, not someone else. He's playing the old "look what you made me do" game. Baseball Bugs 13:27, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Baseball Bugs, are you saying that if he said "dick" instead of "cunt" he would have been expressing misandry? The literal referent of those words hardly plays a role in their use as swear words, and while they are unfortunate terms I find it a bit of a stretch to claim misogyny or misandry in these types of contexts.PelleSmith (talk) 13:42, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

And I do not agree. In any case, he chose his words, no one else did. Baseball Bugs 13:50, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes but you chose to interpret them in the manner that you did (as did I). Just out of curiosity, do you think "dick" displays misandry in the way that "cunt" displays misogyny?PelleSmith (talk) 14:00, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Yep. In this context, it does. Baseball Bugs 14:04, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. I guess we just disagree about this.PelleSmith (talk) 15:19, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not contesting the technically serious nature of Eleland's policy violation. I am shocked once more by the insouciance of administrators failing to look into the context before making rapid judgements, which will cost Wiki the three months disappearance of a fine editor, while several useless ***** in good part responsible for his banning stick around. If Eleland is to wear a ban, then those who provoked him to an exasperated outburst in defence of a national dignity, and his own integrity, should be called to short order, and be subjected to some attention to see if their own execrable behaviour in this smutty little hitman campaign bears scrutiny.

Especially now that Eternalsleeper persists in his assertion, as per the header he has now reverted back, after I corrected it to 'Abusive language', that Eleland's offense was one of racism, I would ask the administrators who have participated on this thread to examine his conduct for smearing and insulting language, specifically here.

Sure, and there's nothing wrong with an established editor who calls Jews "master race" or another calling them "horn-blowers" when many edits both make tries to portray Jewish Zionists as the crux of the world's problems. As no one makes a big hoopla of the Islamic occupiers of Eretz Israel, I find your commentaries offensive and racist. Eternalsleeper (talk) 20:32, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

The offense, grievous in my view, is that Eternalsleeper:

(a) asserts, without evidence, without diffs, that Eleland called a whole people, the Jews, the 'master race', when the record shows he simply called Saxophonemn for touting a master race concept, or what Malik Shabazz called Saxophonemn’s 'theories of national supremacy' which Malik asked Saxophoneymn to refactor, and in doing so, gave indirect support to Eleland's own original assertion that the remark was racist. Eternalsleeper maliciously twisted this, a challenge to Saxophonemn’s theory of Jewish ethnic supremacy, in order to make it appear as if Eleland embraced the ideas of the antisemitic smear The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This understandably outraged Eleland, who promptly elided it here and was reproved for deleting the smear In turn, Eleland remonstrated with the administrator for denying him a natural right to kept smear material off his page. The administrator was mistaken, no malice, just haste, and Eleland was fully in his rights to remove Eternalsleeper's smear from his talk page. It was the flagrantly patent injustice of being reproved for removing smear material, and for telling an ethnic supremacist to shove off from wiki, that is the germinal spur to the outburst that has now be sanctioned.

At a minimum, Eternalsleeper should be obliged to provide the diffs from Eleland's record which support his judgement. If they are not forthcoming, then Eternalsleeper will have in fact smeared a fellow editor as an antisemitic racist. It's about time behaviour characterized by frivolous baiting and denigrating of people as antisemites, when they are simply defending Wiki neutrality, gets as vigorously an administrative riposte as the reprehensible behaviour of antisemitism does.

(b)He should be asked to provide diffs for the assertion that both Eleland and I abuse Misplaced Pages by endeavouring in our editorial practice to portray Jewish Zionists as the crux of the world's problems.

(c)He designates Palestinians as ''the Islamic occupiers of Eretz Israel', ultra-Zionist cant. I don't know if nescience is sanctionable. Probably not. The comment about a fellahin indigenous community gradually converted from paganism and Christianity to Islam after the 6th.century CE being, by retroactive paradox, 'illegal occupiers’ of Eretz Israel, is so outlandish, the said editor should be warned to stay clear of articles dealing with historical events in the I/P area. We have no use for purblind ideologists here. He should clarify why the indigenous population of Palestine is both 'Islamic' and 'occupiers' of their native land, as Maoris are occupiers of New Zealand, Indians of the United States and Aboriogines of Australia, all having stolen title from the English immigrants.Nishidani (talk) 14:16, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

And while I'm at it, another of the crowd who suddenly drifted in here after the Camera contretemps, and militates on the Islamic threat and wiki's woefully anti-semitic POV, asked me to Get fucked, when I turned down his fishing expedition last night. I don't ask for punishment, since I don't complain about these outbursts. But the fact that I've been called an antisemite now, six times or so, and been told to get fucked for refusing to talk to ultra-Zionist flag-wavers who don't edit much, gives you some idea of the kind of atmosphere people like Eleland find exasperating. We've lost the invaluable Eleland on formal quibbles, and are now stuck with vapid ranters like these, as once more, formalism's etiquette provisions, which I think was intended for naive high-school geeks, trumps mature substance editors. Nishidani (talk) 14:44, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Before coming here, and aside from arguing with the other user, what dispute resolution channels have you followed in this case? Baseball Bugs 14:52, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't get into dispute resolutions. I dislike whingeing to administrators. I try to ignore idiots, and not get distracted by their drifting in to waste our time. I have no intention of taking the Onestonedonut to the knackery. I cite the instance to document what those unfamiliar with the absurd shenanigans of some I/P actors may not know. I don't even read the rule books, which I think are necessary but mainly for many who haven't had a tertiary and post-tertiary background, and that is why etiquette is everywhere, and substance struggles to get past cunctatorial finagling by the astute. What worries me about the present case is that it is an old pattern: an intruder jumps at an exchange, in which neither of the two involved give administration reason to arbitrate, and uses it to wipe out one of the two, in a stupid game of scalp-hunting that mars the creation of a liberal and informed collegial editorial spirit, tolerant of lapses.Nishidani (talk) 15:23, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

What form of dispute resolution did Eternalsleeper attempt before coming here? Let me answer: none. This board is for incidents, and fellows ... I think we have one. Baseball Bugs and Nishidani, your respective points have been made by now; please wait for others to chime in before continuing this batter banter between the two of you. John Vandenberg 15:17, 28 September 2008 (UTC) batter->banter correctionJohn Vandenberg 17:53, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

There is no "batter" going on. However, I admit I should have asked the dispute resolution question much sooner. Baseball Bugs 16:05, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

An indefinite block is an overreaction, and 3 months is still too long, if he posts a conciliatory unblock request that should be granted, otherwise the block should be reduced to 48 hours. PhilKnight (talk) 16:14, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

48 Hours? That would be letting him off way too easy. This is an editor who has already been blocked twice before for incivility and edit warring, and has declared that he is deliberately flaunting wikipedia policy in order to cause disruption. A one month block, possibly coupled with a longer topic-ban seems to be in order. NoCal100 (talk) 16:54, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Eleland's last block was over 6 months ago. Also, I don't share your interpretation of his comments. PhilKnight (talk) 17:11, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

His exact words were "not only did I knowingly violate Misplaced Pages's various "civility" and "personal attacks" and "play nice in the sandbox, kids," policies, I did it with the very deliberate intention that it cause what we euphemistically call "disruption" here". There is no need for "interpretation" here, just basic reading comprehension skills. NoCal100 (talk) 17:43, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

He was upset and these comments and his message were second degree... Ceedjee (talk) 20:30, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I get upset sometime, too, but I don't go around intentionally disrupting the project when that happens, nor do I vent my frustrations by calling other editors 'cunts' or 'huuuuge douchebag's or telling them to go fuck themselves. If Eleland can't act in mature way when he's upset, then he needs a time-out. NoCal100 (talk) 21:33, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

PhilNight's suggestion of a drastic reduction may be too lenient, but it was conditional on a conciliatory unblock request. As to your remark, NoCal100, that in the diff you cite, Eleland admitted to 'deliberately flaunting wikipedia policy in order to cause disruption', this is incorrect on two grounds. The first is, petty: you confuse 'flaunt' with 'flout'. The second is that, even so, he did not deliberately 'flout' wikipedia policy to cause disruption, pure et simple, but to a purpose. His words are:-

'Let me confess; not only did I knowingly violate Misplaced Pages's various "civility" and "personal attacks" and "play nice in the sandbox, kids," policies, I did it with the very deliberate intention that it cause what we euphemistically call "disruption" here. Quite simply, I was, and am, at wits end, and I have neither the patience nor the passive-aggressiveness to work through the normal WikiPolitical methods that EternalSleeper has so evidently mastered.

He was warned by one admin for incivility, and the judgement was correct. The admin did not warn the other two who provoked his incivility, and this was incorrect. He was insulted by the second with a vile accusation (these things if unchallenged stick in the record), and further offended when, in removing a patent and vicious smear on his own talk page, was notified that this quite perfectly just action was a matter of concern, in the same administrator's view. Since, as an experienced editor Eleland knows what cranking up the huge creaky machinery of administrative appeal means, (endless wasting of many editors' time, administrators harassed by pettifogging etc.,), he spoke his mind in a way that was, yes, deliberately disruptive, attention catching. It caught attention, all right. Instead of his original grievance being reviewed and some measures taken out on both Saxophonemn and Eternalsleeper, Eleland was further punished. The refusal by administrators to examine his original complaint roundly and neutrally, means effectively that Eleland is correct. Antisemitism is subject to immediate sanctions, rightly so. A blind eye is turned to people who flay other editors with smears insinuating they are antisemitic, when they are simply trying to cope with dogmatic intruders who barge about without significant contributions and make editing in the I/P area difficult. This intolerable inequivalence is the 'purpose' behind his outburst, a 'disruption' to protest systemic bias in the use of administrative sanctions. Both Eleland and I have a good deal of collegial esteem and respect for many colleagues who are Jewish, and play impeccably by the rules. We dislike newbies or shysters with an ideological chip on their shoulders, pro-Zionist or pro-Palestinian as the case may be, fooling around provocatively with articles that require immense patience, hardwork, and a nose for facts. Eleland's remark is a call for more speed in administrative oversight, less bureaucratic longueurs, in handling real 'disruption', which is what we wish to draw attention to. Had this simple incident been dealt with swiftly and equablyand the administrator posted an incivility remark to my page, and those of both Saxophonemn, and Eternalsleeper, we should not be here, wasting our time. It was a simple, and forgiveable oversight, but that is what caused the frustrated outburst. The Japanese even have a technical word for what Eleland did, funshi (憤死) remonstrative suicide to draw an authority's attention to an ignored grievance, in the finest samurai tradition.Nishidani (talk) 17:36, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Fine, then let's have a proper funshi - Eleland should be perma-banned, the Wiki equivalent of death , so that enough attention be drawn to this cause . Nothing less would achieve the desired result, it appears, nor be appropriate for this Samurai. NoCal100 (talk) 17:49, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I think this thread has drawn enough attention to this matter that all the involved parties here will be carefully watched from now on, including Eleland if/when he returns. Black Kite 18:17, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Attention drawn to Eleland, not to those who used racist language or smeared him. Zilch. The message is, you can call innocent people antisemites, or a living people 'history' extinct, with impunity, but can't be told you're a **** when the offended party calls you on these racist and smearing cracks. I don't se much attention paid. I see a good deal of silence standing to attention. Nishidani (talk) 19:09, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Let's please remember that we're engaged in a particular enterprise here, an encyclopedia. If Eleland has transgressed the rules, fine -- but the rules are meant to advance a particular type of goal here, and if in applying those rules we lose sight of that goal then we've lost something significant. Without disputing the claim that a temporary block on Eleland is appropriate, I'm disappointed by the apparent fact that other editors/admins apparently fail to perceive other aspects of what has happened here and are allowing a highly inflammatory action by another editor to go unnoticed. This is what I mean by drawing attention to the intellectual nature of the enterprise here. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 20:07, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

That particular talkpage is full of unnoticed, unnecessary and inflamatory statements that have little to do, if none at all, with the content of the article. -- fayssal - wiki up 20:56, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Before this is filed, as done, could some administrator look at the header, and change it, with authority to simply 'Abusive Language'. As it stands, it will remain as an indecently mischievous slur on Eleland, who used abusive language, but did so attacking racist language, which he has a zero-grade tolerance of. As it stands, the smearer, who then accused Eleland of being a racist antisemite, and made this complaint, will get away with part of his defamation, which I have shown to be untrue. Thank you, and good evening, and perhaps goodbye if the warning now on my page, for my having done what I believe was essentially a civil defense of someone who erred for a just cause, is acted on. Nishidani (talk) 21:21, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, I don't see any evidence of racism (by Eleland) here. Refactored accordingly. I've also started a discussion re the block warning with Toddst1. Black Kite 21:30, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Disagree. Calling other editors Nazis just because they have a national perspective rooted in the history of the Jewish people is racism. Jaakobou 21:48, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

That's not what he meant, and I think you know it as well. Racism would be implying that all people with a certain ethnicity were "Nazis", and he was talking about the politics of an individual editor. He was certainly abusive, but I don't see racism. As you are not uninvolved here, I'd ask you to alter that back. Black Kite 21:53, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Edit: User:Jaakobou has changed the title back, and I am disinclined to edit war over it, though I believe the header is misleading. I am more concerned about other issues that are raised here, to be honest. Black Kite 22:13, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, I have reverted back, and elided 'Racism'. This is an extremely serious thing to assert of another person. Eleland at least had some evidence of 'national supremicism'. The header reflects Eternalsleeper's original accusation against both Eleland and myself, an accusation which, when called to document it (and he spoke of a consistent mode of editing by both myself and Eleland which he considered antisemitic), Eternalsleeper slept off, i.e. refused to back up. All illationary hunches, obscure deductions, are at this point irrelevant. Either Eternalsleeper provides us with several diffs documenting our respective antisemitic racism, or the header should stick to what has been proven, i.e. 'abusive language'. This should not be a matter of revert-warring, but administrative propriety.Nishidani (talk) 10:08, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

• First: let me note that User:Jaakobou is anything but an uninvolved editor here; he was nearly censored earlier this year for pulling a stunt exactly like the one Saxophonem pulled on Eleland, that is: saying something which is extremely offensive to "insiders", and then afterwards pleading total innocence; see here. Jaakobou has also been out gunning for Eleland for ages, indeed he was earlier this year given a "final warning" for block-shopping against Eleland. After which he continues with just that; more block-shopping.

• Comment by Jaakobou:
• (A) My history with Eleland includes him suggesting I'm a war criminal, claims that I worship people he views as extremists and repeated incivilities (Recent samples: , , ). Still, my "invovlement" here is no more than almost everyone who came to his defense suggesting he should be unblocked despite his clear over-reaction to a mere warning. (See: "I still think Saxophonem is a cunt. ..." above)
• (B) Not sure I should act defensively for an offense from March which I've learned from and have not repeated. The thread you linked to was a prime example btw of the drama legitimate complaints against Eleland cause - which is a reason I usually stop discussions with Eleland once he makes comments like these.
  • Mr. "hate-speech" above me 15:22, 20 May 2008
  • I don't need to deal with this crap. let jaakobou have every isr-pal article for his playground 18:28, 20 May 2008
• With respect, Jaakobou 12:17, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

• It seems to have become a favourite sport for certain pro-Israeli editors: try to do some "subtle" mockery of Palestinians....."subtle" enough to fool an average uninvolved admin, but quite clear enough to hit home at Palestinians, or to anybody with a knowledge in the ME -field. And sometimes it succeeds wonderfully. Because the more pro-Palestinian editors swallow the bait. And the admins are clueless about ME-issues, so the "baiter" walks scott free.
• Having said this, I must say that I find it totally unacceptable to use all these four-letter words in public discourse. Both the c-word, and the d-word, and a lot of other swear-words, especially those with sexual under-tones. No matter how much one is provoked. However, I must remind people that, eg in a recent arb.com case there was an admin who had used the c-word in an edit-summary. Was he blocked for that? Certainly not. Not even for 5 minutes. That we then indef. block/or block for 3 months another editor using the same language...? Could we have some consistency here, please?
• Finally, and most important: There has the last couple of months been an influx of new editors, many/most of them with a great interest in the Jewish Internet Defense Force‎ article. They also dive straight into some of the most controversial articles in the ME-area, like Palestinian territories. I find many of them extremely aggressive, scaring away the more "regular" editors and causing great disruption. I have a suggestion: for cases like that, can we ask that editors do their, say, 500-1000 first edits outside articles that are included in WP:Palestine? In that way they could show that they are genuinely interested in participating in building an encyclopaedia, and that they are not on WP primarily to "win wars".
• (Oh, I was going to add that many of the new editors sounded exactly the same to me, but then I saw this: Misplaced Pages:Requests for checkuser/Case/Einsteindonut. I guess that explains a bit.) Regards, Huldra (talk) 10:52, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah-- because I did SO much editing with all those different accounts. (sarcasm.) Trust me, many Admins already know about me, as does ArbCom and the Ombudspeople. Last time I checked, anyone can edit on WP and can edit what they want so long as they stay within the rules. Yes, I was aggressive in the beginning for various reasons, but have calmed down. If people wish to rile me up again, that's their choice. --Einsteindonut (talk) 11:00, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Well point 4 is the subtext. Experienced editors from both sides in the I/P area, despite fundamental disagreements, mostly manage to work together on a large number of articles, particularly after the review earlier this year. The newbies worry many of us, because they tend to play at rehearsing games most of us have learnt to avoid, and the obvious desire to challenge wikipedia's neutrality by some of them, after the publicized CAMERA episode, looks shady. The present case is a good example, and Eleland got tired off it, esp. when he copped the antisemitic smear. We've lost him, a very productive wikipedian, for, apparently, three months, while a non-productive newby presumably smirks, and the agent in the complaint whose offensive smear provoked Eleland sits silently on his laurels, for the scalp taken. He still hasn't, as requested, given diffs to justify his extremist language in jabbing at Eleland. That is why I think wiser heads should review the sanction imposed, not to get Eleland off the rap, but simply to mitigate what looks like a certain technical injustice in the severity meted out to Eleland for defending himself with very strong language, and the lack of action on the violation of WP:Civil by his accuser, Eternalsleeper, whose vulgar and unwonted assertion provoked his turpiloquy. It's not as if Eleland has spent two years on this work being repeatedly disruptive. Check his contributions. They are substantial.Nishidani (talk) 11:28, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

On newbies -- I found myself wondering recently what new incarnation was going to be offered by User:Zeq. It seems long past time. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 13:20, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Removed edit. Misread someone removing an incendiary comment by several, Saxophonemn included, from the talk page, dated back to early September. My apologies.Nishidani (talk) 15:06, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

A three-month block seems reasonable, if not lenient, for Eleland's conduct, especially given his past history of incivility (of which I have been a victim on occasion.) I am amused at the identity of the admin who reduced the block to three months, and the extremely apologetic tone taken in doing so (on Eleland's talk page), but I will leave it at that. 6SJ7 (talk) 15:59, 29 September 2008 (UTC) (After reading some of the subsequent comments, I have changed my mind and now believe the three months is way too lenient, see further comments under "Duration".)

The block is reasonable. Eleland's tone towards me (as an uninvolved admin making a commment on sourcing) on the Talk:Battle of Jenin page was aggressive and irrational, so it seems that his aggressions aren't necessarily inclined to stay solely related to any provocations. Good block, lets carry on, etc. ⇒SWATJester 16:35, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

With all due respect, you are not quite an uninvolved administrator, at least on I/P articles, in regard to a classic error of incorrect use of discretionary powers in which you were privately contacted by Jaakobou to get his 3RR violation cancelled (it wasn't thereafter even registered as having occurred), and in your explanation to Penwhale as to why you overturned an administrative sanction, you simply repeated what Jaakobou told you on the phone about me (a complete misrepresentation you apparently never checked against the record), who had not been sanctioned. And then you went after me, in a decision that appalled many, and was rapidly overturned (See Nishidani, Archives Dec 2007. I can't make the appropriate diffs, but the evidence for my contention is there, and you never replied to my documentation). I add this only because 6SJ7 expresses his amusement at the identity of ChrisO for reducing to three months a permaban. Nishidani (talk) 17:29, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure how what I said has anything to do with the previous comment, but whatever... 6SJ7 (talk) 20:19, 29 September 2008 (UTC) (Added comment: If you are saying that the only reason for your attack on Swatjester is the very mild comment I made about another admin (without even mentioning his name), I don't appreciate my comments being used as an excuse to make comments about someone else on a separate issue.)

Comment - it looks as if User:Eleland is a victim of his own attempt to AGF despite all the evidence. He rejected and ignored the evidence of really serious racism/supremacism amongst some quite prolific "editors" until it suddenly got to him over a somewhat obscure historical reference equating the Palestinians to the Greeks and the Romans (this in the context of the latter having vanished 1000s of years ago). I think it likely that, as stated above, Saxophonemn has yet to make a single useful edit, whereas Eleland has made thousands.

How have we got to this ridiculous situation? Why, by making CIVIL the only significant policy operating in the I-P conflict area and tolerating reckless breaches of RS, V, UNDUE etc with very disruptive editing. Scholarly editors are driven from the project - Eleland is most certainly not the first, and I doubt if he'll be the last. PR 20:49, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Horrifying and inappropriate as Eleland's remarks were, they almost (almost) pale in comparison to the warm, giggly tone used by some of his enablers on his talk page. Eleland basically reiterates his "cunt" comment here, saying that the still thinks the user in question is a cunt, I guess. Leaving aside the icky antisemitic comparison of Jews to Nazis, the fact that this user has demonstrated no desire to reform makes the block reduction more than puzzling. IronDuke 23:45, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely right. What was the big rush to reduce the length of the block? 6SJ7 (talk) 00:16, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I was interested to see this discussion, from which it appears that refering to Israelis as "Nazis" is commonplace - amongst Israelis themselves. Reading more of this page should remind people that serious scholars are constantly having their time-wasted by people who regularly demonstrate what great difficulties they have with the written word. PR 09:40, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I would hardly call that "commonplace" amongst Israelis themselves. "Counterpunch" is a seriously biased source of information. While I'm sure some Jews irresponsibly have flung the term around in a joking way (ie. "Soup Nazi) or in extremely heated areas of conflict, I can tell you with 100% certainly that its usage is not "commonplace." Nice try though. --Einsteindonut (talk) 12:20, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I wonder if we're talking about the same place. A "senior writer" in the National Catholic Reporter says "Among many of the settlers, “Nazi” is a casual term of abuse."

So it's a two-way street, as other readers will be interested to discover for themselves - that particular Holocaust Survivor, IDF veteran and ex-MK even speaks of: ""pogroms" in the classical sense of the term: riots by an armed mob intoxicated with hatred against helpless people, while the police and the army look on". I wonder how we'd treat a "pro-Palestinian" editor who engaged in this kind of badly informed denial. PR 17:33, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your two sources, known for magnifying tiny issues to make them appear bigger than they actually are. There's quite a bit which is noticeably absent from those sources. I'll let objective people decide if they wish the majority of Jews and Israelis throw around the term "Nazi" lightly. It's rare, though certain sources and individuals do not wish to believe it (so that they can rationalize their own use of the term and criticize those who criticize others who use it.)--Einsteindonut (talk) 22:51, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

We've had yet another attempt to smear editors in the project as anti-semitic, this time for saying "mirror-image of a Nazi antisemite". It turns out that this association is perfectly acceptable even in Israel, where both "sides" use it to describe each other. Either you need to make the case that the settlers, Holocaust Survivors, IDF veterans and ex-MKs are indeed anti-semitic, or we need administrative action against those who smear other editors. PR 16:51, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

No, contrary to your 2 biased sources claims, this association is not perfectly acceptable in Israel. --Einsteindonut (talk) 21:29, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Nor would it matter if it were. Black people may use the N-word to each other; a white editor who used it on a black editor here would be permabanned before he'd had a chance to make another edit. Minority groups get to use these terms without being accused of hating their own ethnicities. People outside those groups may not. This is a mind-meltingly simple point, I can't believe there are people here who aren't getting it. IronDuke 21:43, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I get it just fine. Just because some Jews might irresponsibly fling around the word "Nazi" and some biased sources wish to focus on it, that is not a proper rationalization for its use by non-Jews to define Jews under any means. An no, Zionism does not equal Nazism and the IDF are not Nazis either. And there is no "Holocaust" in Gaza. These common comparisons and associations are highly inaccurate, insensitive, offensive and border upon anti-semitic, depending upon intent.--Einsteindonut (talk) 21:56, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Right. I wasn't trying to imply you didn't get it, I was speaking of others. Sorry if there was confusion. IronDuke 21:59, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Duration

It appears that 3 months is manifestly excessive and possibly punitive, whilst some feel 48 hours is insufficient. Could I propose that we shorten the block to either 72 hours or a week? Orderinchaos 23:55, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

To the contrary, three months is not enough. IronDuke makes a very good point about the lack of real remorse and a commitment to reform on Eleland's part. I suggest the block be extended to six months. If that does not happen, the length of the block certainly should not be reduced further. 6SJ7 (talk) 00:14, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Please don't chip away at this block any further. I would agree with 6SJ7 about a block extension at this point if and only if Eleland refuses to make a full and frank retraction/apology/promise never to do it again. I very much hope he won't refuse. IronDuke 01:19, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I spent a couple hours looking through all this, since it's in the WP:ARBPIA topic area. I'll freely admit that I find Eleland's writing style entertaining at times, when he can stay away from the profanity. But the bottom line is that when it comes to blatant personal attacks, he still hasn't said, "Sorry, won't do it again." If he does, I'd support reducing the block. If not, I say leave it in place until he cools down. --Elonka 01:43, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

A week is more than sufficient unless someone can produce diffs to show that Eleland engages in this type of behaviour often. A discretionary sanction could be crafted to ensure that Eleland knows he must ignore any future baiting in this topical area. John Vandenberg 03:30, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think a "sanction" that effectively pats him on the back will be likely to change his behavior. Even the suggestion of it is, in fact, profoundly unhelpful. Though, since you mention it, perhaps a 6 month topic ban would be in order once the 3 month block expires. See if he can play nicely in areas that are less emotional for him. IronDuke 03:36, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Quick question - what would a 3 month block *prevent* from occurring? I'm in broad agreement with John here. Orderinchaos 03:40, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Also a quick question. How about reducing it to 24 hours? Might be some folks around I'd really loove to call "Nazi cunts" and tell them to shove it, etc...but don't want a three month ban for the privilege. 24 hours would really be tempting, however. Or better yet, no block at all...I have put this on my watchlist. I do so want to know how this turns out. This could be really FUN! Tundrabuggy (talk) 04:02, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

For anyone who is keeping score here, I think you need to make sure that your Sarcasmometer is switched on and set to Auto-detect mode when reading Tundrabuggy's post. 6SJ7 (talk) 05:50, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Orderinchaos: One thing that comes to mind is that it might help prevent someone who is about to unleash a gratuitous stream of really nasty words at another editor from thinking it is ok to do so, because the worst that will happen is they will get just a few days off from Misplaced Pages. 6SJ7 (talk) 05:54, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

It's editors like this which seriously damage the WP project. There's far too many of them who, while don't speak directly like this, certainly empathize with his point of view. I'm still relatively new here and I'm surprised to see so many people in support of him, despite his repugnant edits and commentary. I support an indef. ban from WP and I seriously question these people who are trying to minimize what he has written and the light "sentence" he received for writing it. He does not seem to be much of a true asset to this project nor do those who support him or the shortening of the punishment. --Einsteindonut (talk) 04:01, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

It would be a lot easier to stomach that suggestion if you didn't basically say that everyone who doesn't share your POV on I-P related entries are a detriment to the project. Eleland clearly deserves a block of some length for crossing the line and then some, but make no mistake the less obvious baiting that triggered his reaction is no better for this encyclopedia. The fact that it continues to slip under the admin radar despite vociferous commentary by another editor may make it worse for the project, in the end, than blatantly uncivil behavior like Eleland's which is easily dealt with.PelleSmith (talk) 04:48, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I did not say that regarding people who do not share my POV. It's one thing to have a different POV and quite another to have an irresponsible one which is then used to turn WP into a propaganda-pushing machine. Having had the opposite POV on the I-P conflict, it is clear to me what many editors/activists try to do. It is evident through their choice of sources and focus on one perspective at the expense of the other. So hopefully you will be able to stomach my suggestion a bit better. --Einsteindonut (talk) 05:41, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Three months looks very much like punishment (and Einsteindonut calls it punishment) and when did we start doing punishment? I join with the others here who are calling for a reduced duration - a week should be more than enough. Clearly if he continued to use such language after a week we can take further action. I also disagree with the idea of a topic ban. And the baiting needs to stop as well. Doug Weller (talk) 05:37, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

C'mon enough mixing words. You make a mistake on WP, and you get warned a lot about all your mistakes and if you continue to screw up, you get punished. The "punishment" comes in the form of blocks and bans with the hopes that the editor's behavior will change. You said it yourself, "if he continues" (making mistakes) "we can take further action" (ie. "punishment") Sorry, I'm not hip to all the Wiki lingo, so I just stick with my own. What is the Misplaced Pages word for these actions intended to make people think about their behavior here? --Einsteindonut (talk) 05:47, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I think perhaps you need to go take another look at WP:NPOV. Your conversation on your talk page here leaves me a bit concerned about your intentions on Misplaced Pages and the viability of your continued editing of I-P related articles. Misplaced Pages is not a "encyclopedia game" and I believe most of us who are serious about contributing to make this encyclopedia better, take exception to such a view.--JavierMC 07:09, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

You are certainly within your rights to take exception to my view of it. How this has any bearing on my editing of I-P related articles is beyond me. I suppose people with only a particular POV on the conflict should be welcome to edit them? I make and have made my bias known and still strive for accuracy and fairness in Misplaced Pages despite the fact that I (and many others) view the whole thing as a game and do not treat it as seriously as others. Here's a prime example of what I'm talking about. --Einsteindonut (talk) 08:32, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I've reduced the block to a week based on the comments here. PhilKnight (talk) 07:00, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm in agreement with this. A week by most scales is actually quite serious, and certainly would be interpreted as such by a future blocking admin, so it is more than sufficient deterrent. I tend to believe some element of proportionality should apply, as we have trolls and vandals we don't even block for that long, and yet at the start of this conversation this generally useful user (and by useful, I mean able and willing to improve content, independently of any particular behaviour) was indefinitely blocked for basically swearing at and abusing someone in a single incident. I would also be concerned that some editors might see the perfectly reasonable ability to block a user to prevent damage to the encyclopaedia as a handy way to dispense of ideologically incompatible editors - we've certainly seen a fair bit of that on a range of controversial topics and it should never be encouraged, especially on Arbcom-sanctioned topics where the end of the line has already been reached. Orderinchaos 07:40, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

A week sounds fine to me. Now, what about the other editors involved in this, against whom Eleland was apparently reacting? Is there evidence that they've violated Misplaced Pages's standards of conduct? Leave aside the objectionable political claims they are making - have they been incivil, edited disruptively or whatever? -- ChrisO (talk) 08:19, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I think it inadvisable to take this further. It is quite true that Eleland was maliciously defamed, and punished for his intemperate language in defending himself from a slur. This fact, I think now recognized, and on record, has led to a reduction in the original sanction. We don't live in a perfect world. One should turn the other cheek at times. Not to do so here would be to feed a potential atmosphere of recrimination, bore admins even more than they have been (particularly by myself) here, and lead to suspicions of a witch-hunt, even if, technically the two people here who provoked Eleland's outburst get off scot free. Their behaviour is known. That is surely enough. People have good memories here. Of course, this is my private view, and Eleland, on the expiry of the sanction, would be perfectly within his rights to pursue the matter, as a matter of securing his name and equitable justice, through the proper channels.Nishidani (talk) 08:45, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

On a related issue, maybe WP should impose sanctions on editors who make false accusations of antisemitism?; false accusations can be as bad as the uncivil words that Eleland has been blocked for. Imad marie (talk) 08:49, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

"Islamic occupiers of Eretz Israel"? (quoted directly from the diff presented immediately above) That is *really* testing the boundaries of a number of policies and guidelines, WP:NOT#SOAP comes to mind - we all have political beliefs and opinions but Misplaced Pages talk pages are not really the place to declare them. I can't see any valid argument that use of loaded hyperbole like this fosters a collaborative atmosphere. Orderinchaos 11:16, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I have suggested that, esp. in I/P articles, this kind of provocative suspicion-seeding, abusing the extremely serious charge of anti-semitism, for partisan ends, should be addressed eventually by some regulation that warns anyone reporting abuses, that their own records will be examined, in assessing the complaint. Such a rule doesn't exist, it appears, but it would save a lot of gaming and whingeing, and make those who resort to this kind of denunciation rather more wary. The effect would be to relieve administrators of many futile cases that involve puerile bickering. But it is not for this board, but rather for an eventual refinement on the rules now in place in I/P articles, that the appropriate arbitration authorities would do well to consider. Nishidani (talk) 09:10, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I fail to see how the diff that Imad Marie provided is an accusation of anti-semitism? General comment: Sadly certain views have become so infused in many cultures, that people oftentimes can make anti-semitic comments and may not even be aware of it. Having been the victim of antisemitism both in real life and on Misplaced Pages in both overt and more subtle forms, I can tell you it can be a tricky issue. I believe it would help if people chose to focus on more of the positive aspects of Israel and Jews. Unfortunately it seems many wish to obsess over the perceived negatives. If that shifted, I'm sure suspicions would as well. --Einsteindonut (talk) 10:13, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Donut, what's up with the youtube-video? You wouldn't be using it to insinuate anything like Jewish/Israeli superiority or supremacy, now, would you? I'll WP:AGF since you seem to be somewhat new here, but please do read WP:SOAP and re-consider what you've just posted.

Cheers, pedrito - talk - 30.09.2008 11:35

Are you kidding me? I've seen many editors here who are using sources which promote the boycott of Israel. As I stated, I posted it as an example of something which focuses on the positive aspects of Israel and the Jewish people (versus the many negative aspects I have seen editors obsess over here on WP.) In a place where people focus on so much negativity toward a country and a people, I hardly see how posting a little positivity would lead anyone to believe that I am insinuating Jewish/Israeli superiority. It was posted to get people to think twice about things differently, but I should have known that people hate the positive things too. Next time I'll be sure to post something which highlights Arab suffering and I'm sure my motives will not be questioned. --Einsteindonut (talk) 12:13, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

No, I'm not kidding you. I'm guessing your misunderstanding of the problem lies in a lack of perspective. If I were to show you the same video with "Jewish" or "Israeli" replaced with "the white man's", then you -- and many others -- would probably accuse me of racism. What may sound like "a little positivity" to you may be grossly offending to others. This lack of perspective -- on your behalf -- is a subtler version of what pushed User:Eleland over the edge.

I assume, you will learn from this and mend your ways, i.e. apologizing to User:Eleland and removing the youtube-link above.

Cheers, pedrito - talk - 30.09.2008 12:42

Wow, that's twisted. Who is calling for the boycott of the white man? Guess you missed the point 100% about the video. That is hardly racist video. It's a video which makes a mockery of people calling for the boycott of Israel. Not quite sure why you think I need to apologize to Eleland, but I've been talking about general issues here and haven't brought him up at all. --Einsteindonut (talk) 13:15, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

No, Donut, you seem to be missing the point. To you it's a "mockery", to others it's a video extoling the relative virtues of Israel and the Jews over other peoples, and hence racist. Your failure to see how others might interpret your words and actions is what started this in the first place (and don't give me that hock about you not having anything to do with this).

Cheers, pedrito - talk - 30.09.2008 13:53

Actually I think you're confused, I did not "start this in the first place." Perhaps you can explain to me just how you think I do and how I started this. I think you have me confused with someone else. --Einsteindonut (talk) 13:57, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

No, Donut/Sax, I'm not.

Cheers, pedrito - talk - 30.09.2008 14:48

Uh, yes, you are. In the Misplaced Pages sense, I am not Sax and Sax is not me. That's why ArbCom removed his indef ban after I was in much correspondence with them, Fayysall and the Ombudspeople. Sax and I are two separate people. Two separate accounts. Rarely (if ever) do we communicate or have we communicated. So yes, actually, you're confused. Bring it up with ArbCom if you are alleging more sockpuppetry. It was worked out after they realized their mistake. The "checkuser" page on me is not 100% accurate. I take an interest in anti-semitism on Misplaced Pages, so that is why I'm following what is happening here. Again, I do not appreciate you not AGF (three times now?) First, you accused me of being a racist, secondly, you blamed this entire episode on me (despite the fact that I have nothing to do with it.) Lastly, you are accusing me of sockpuppetry, apparently not fully comprehending the case as per ArbCom's private decisions. So, again, you are confused. Please do your homework before you make any more false allegations and if you could apologize, I'd appreciate it. --Einsteindonut (talk) 22:26, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

A good admin will, in fact, look at the bigger picture. There have been numerous cases where the complaining editor ended up with an indef-block for having been judged to be the real culprit. "Never sue; they might prove it!" And the target of the complaint is free to state his side of the case and provide diff's. However, the "look what you made me do" game, which the target of the complaint used here, doesn't cut it. A week off is a good start to letting the editor cool off and come back with a calmer demeanor. And then he's free to file a complaint of his own, OR to use some appropriate method of dispute resolution, rather than getting into wars of vulgar words, which accomplishes nothing except ill will. Baseball Bugs 09:27, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

What really concerns me is the summary of the edit: "Antisemitism ain't cool"; this editor came out of nowhere accusing Eleland of antisemitism. And even if Eleland complained about this remark, I doubt he would have accomplished anything since there is no WP policy or guideline to discourage antisemitism accusations. Imad marie (talk) 11:33, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad there isn't that policy. I had enough trouble making a complaint about the Flag of Jihad and Swastikas posted on my profile and calling THAT "antisemitism" - so if WP actually had a policy in place discouraging that, it would just be more telling about the problems. Antisemitism is incivility. If it's a false accusation, so be it. It will get sorted out by admins. People make false accusations on WP left and right. So much of it seems to be all about pointing fingers and telling on each other. If someone posts a swastika on my profile though, I'm going to make a lot of noise about it. It someone is antisemitic at all toward me, I'm going to make a huge deal about it. If it is questionable, then that can be determined by ArbCom or whomever decides these things. --Einsteindonut (talk) 12:13, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Eleland has in fact provided a few diffs of problematic behavior on his own talk page. Lets not forget that he is unable to edit this page. Also, if an admin is capable of seeing problematic behavior they should act on it, no matter if an official complaint has been made. If Baseball Bugs is suggesting that the behavior of the other editors isn't visible and asks Eleland to clarify it, then I understand, but if the point is simply to force people to file a complaint before admins do their job that's ridiculous. From the perspective of protecting this encyclopedia from problematic behavior we ought also not harp on Eleland's vulgar language. What on earth does that have to do with admins recognizing and dealing with problems in others? Eleland could have reacted in an even more extreme fashion, to an extent that got him permanently banned from this place, but that doesn't change what others may have done to provoke him. Likewise he could have reacted calmly, but again it changes nothing about what others may have done.PelleSmith (talk) 11:53, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? One really needs to consider the entire context. I didn't follow their whole exchange, so I'm not sure who provoked whom first. --Einsteindonut (talk) 12:13, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Horrible logic. The point isn't who provoked who first. The point is that bad behavior is bad behavior. I have not suggested to ease up on Eleland because he was provoked but suggested that the provoking party also be reprimanded. I do think the original block excessive but my real issue is with the nonsense that went unacknowledged.PelleSmith (talk) 05:01, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

My logic is horrible? You say "bad behavior is bad behavior" in one instance, and just above it you say we "ought not harp on Eleland's language?" --Einsteindonut (talk) 11:53, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Mincing words and quoting out of context. Lovely. We ought not harp on Eleland's language when we're talking about the possible problems caused by others. We judge Eleland by what he did ... we don't look away from those who baited him simply because of the extent to which he reacted. That's the point, and I'm sure you understood it. Please refrain from these types of misstatements regarding what I write.PelleSmith (talk) 20:40, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

It is a normal courtesy to others here to read the whole thread before making judgements. By all means skip mine, which are unconscionably verbose. You will find, checking diffs supplied, that the person who started the provocation, and the ally popping out once from the corridor (two older hands, this is a familiar gambit) to kibitz, and who translated it into a diffamation, edited prior to the comment for which Eleland has been duly sanctioned. The metaphorical egg he had to wear came from a game of chicken, which also means 'cowardly', and the result was a lamed duck, who'd tired of ducking. Can't we archive this now?Nishidani (talk) 12:56, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

If Eleland was having problems with other editors, what was stopping him from coming here and raising the issue? Baseball Bugs 13:02, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

• Seven days sounds about right. The block message should be "See you next Tuesday." Jehochman 13:30, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Seven days is ridiculously short for this. The block message should be "Please feel free to spew all the foul invective that you want, because all you'll get is a slap on the wrist, and you won't even have to promise not to do it again." 6SJ7 (talk) 16:03, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I think seven days might be enough time for the editor to regain their senses and do better when they return. If not, the next block can escalate. Also, a one week block produces a block message especially appropriate for the infraction. Jehochman 18:42, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Horrible unblock

Cross-posted from Eleland's talk page

Phil, if you want to send the message that you support Eleland's comments, why not just give him a barnstar? I quote from you in the AN/I thread linked above "if he posts a conciliatory unblock request that should be granted". Where is that statement? In fact, he reiterates that he continues to think the person he called a cunt is a cunt, and that the person he called a Nazi has a Nazi style. He wrote, right above that charming cartoon above, "IronDuke knows, full well, that I have snarkily, rhetorically, and indirectly likened the comments of one single Jewish editor to Nazi-style rhetoric - an analogy which was, given the circumstances, not a great stretch." You aren't even pretending to get a commitment to change of behavior, Phil. It's profundly depressing. IronDuke 12:39, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree that I was surprised to see the block decreased in length, considering that Eleland never acknowledged that he was going to change his behavior. Instead, I see a new long rant by Eleland on his talkpage, followed by PhilKnight decreasing the length of the block "per rough consensus at ANI". Sorry, but I'm not seeing that consensus. --Elonka 13:15, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Reading down the above, I note that such a rough consensus does exist amongst the editors who are uninvolved in this particular editing area (even though that's not many...) Black Kite 13:37, 30 September 2008 (UTC

I've been reviewing things as well and it does seem that the block was quickly decreased in length based upon practically nothing except the "rough consensus" of people who don't seem entirely uninvolved. --Einsteindonut (talk) 13:47, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

For assistance in reviewing this, which editors are being regarded as "involved" and which are uninvolved? --Elonka 15:03, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

As obviously uninvolved, apart from the blocking and unblocking admins I can see myself, User:Orderinchaos, User:Jayvdb ... any more? Black Kite 17:45, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, let's make a list. Correct it if I am mistaken. The following 5 uninvolved administrators thought the original sanctions excessive, and thought a week sufficient.

User:Orderinchaos

User:Jehochman

User:Jayvdb

User:Dougweller

User:Black Kite

One definitely uninvolved administrator confirmed 3 months.

User:Sandstein confirmed Toddst's sanction

User:Swatjester idem. I have argued he is involved, and predictable on these matters.

User:fayssal did not express an opinion

User:Jayron32 remarked neutrally on Toddst's tweaking

ChrisO is involved

Of 12 admins, one imposed 3 months, the other, after discussion, reduced it to a week. Of the remaining 10, 5 uninvolved admins agreed a week was sufficient. 1 uninvolved admin supported the 3 months. 2 involved admins in I/P area split, Swatjester supporting 3 months ChrisO in favour of a week. Two observed and reserved their comments. On my reading, this means that PhilKnight's 'rough consensus' tallies with the facts, 5 uninvolved in favour of a week versus one uninvolved in support of three months.

Nishidani (talk) 19:08, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm uninvolved, for one. I'd have to dig around to check histories on the others. Perhaps a better question would be, "Which editors are clearly involved?" --Elonka 18:37, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Going on the basis that involved means "regularly involved with I/P articles", then pretty much everyone else is involved, I think. There's a few editors I don't really know, though. Black Kite 19:55, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

If I've slipped up, please correct me. In the list of five, I noted down people here whom I, as a fairly frequently I/P editor, don't recognize on sight. Perhaps this just reflects my relatively limited knowledge of wiki.Nishidani (talk) 20:44, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I think my only edit on anything Middle Eastern was rewriting an article and uploading a photo of a touristy ghost town in Turkey I once visited (ref: Kayaköy). In a religious sense, I mediated a conflict for a while involving editors at the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University article, as it'd gotten nasty at one of the ArbCom discussion boards (editors of opposite ideological positions trying to get each other blocked basically) and, despite knowing absolutely nothing about the topic, I figured I could help informally to try and stop it blowing over. I think in general in ideological or polarised conflicts on Misplaced Pages, emphasising the difference or polarity rather than working towards content and ignoring difference is what gets things unstuck. This should be a place where we put the real world away from us, and maybe even learn about the other side - I've actually learned a lot in my time on Wiki (about 2½ years) about all sorts of things. Orderinchaos 21:51, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah, for clarity on the context of my question, "uninvolved" means "editors who are neutral on the matter", as opposed to editors who might be leaning one way or the other in terms of article content. For the term as we use it in regards to administrators, see WP:UNINVOLVED, and Misplaced Pages:Administrator#Misuse of tools (which doesn't mean that tools were misused here, I'm just pointing at the definition). In any case, it's probably fairly moot at this point. I'll go on record as saying that though I disagreed with the block reduction (absent a conciliatory note from Eleland), now that it's done, I don't have a strong enough opinion on it to want to see it changed again. If Eleland takes advantage of his reprieve and keeps his tongue on a leash (there's a visual metaphor, eh?) then it's not a problem. If he does lose his temper again, then he'll just be blocked again. --Elonka 21:05, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

PhilKnight gave a one-week topic ban to Jaakobou for saying (retracted) that the 'Islamic-inspired cultural structure of the Arab world' was the main cause for what he then called the Arab-Palestinian 91 year racist terror campaign against the Jewish-Palestinians'. Eleland, who unlike Jaakobou was provoked, like him retracted, and then got upset at the failure to look at the behaviour of the person who defamed him, copped a perma-ban. I think PhilKnight's judgement therefore has been very consistent. In both instances, he's listened round, and given out the same level of sanction. I say that as someone who has been warned by PhilKnight in the past, and his way of doing that earned, at least, my respect. He's as impartial as they come, as far as my knowledge of his record around 1/P articles goes.Nishidani (talk) 13:26, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Nishidani, can you please stop reiterating my reaction to your provocative "Israeli occupation/violent racist settlers" soapboxing? I take pride that instead of insisting that my point was correct (couple samples: Blaming the Jews, The forgotten refugees) and calling you names, I immediately retracted adding an apology. Still, you pushed for a ban, quickly implemented by PhilKnight who insisted that my comment disrupts him even when retracted - has Eleland retracted any of his abusive comments? Jaakobou 13:36, 30 September 2008 (UTC) clarify 13:41, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Eleland's posting of this cartoon on his talk page does not suggest that he has learned anything useful from this discussion. Baseball Bugs 13:41, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Jaak, as earlier, my point in using that quote was to put some comparative focus on this, nothing personal. I know how hard you've worked in the intervening period. I've said that on your page. This new thread, which expresses disgruntlement with the reduction of the suspension, is now shifting the goalposts. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Eleland's putting that cartoon on his page, if copyright is okay. It is satire that reflects a viewpoint widely held in Israel, see Zeev Sternhell and Gershom Gorenberg and several other senior staff writers on Haaretz over the past few days, and has nothing to do with being offensive to 'Jews', 'Israelis'. To the contrary the vignette accurately reflects how some here interpret the accusations made by Elelandìs accusers. By all means press on with a review of the review, but one should stick exactly to the claims made by Eternalsleeper, the sequence that lead to Eleland's outburst, and, in reviewing sanctions, a regard for the comparative record. Secondly, there is some suggestion of administrative bias, that is the only reason why I made the analogy, since it suggests otherwise. Thirdly, Jaak, if you can give me a diff showing that after Phil Knight administered the week's suspension, I came back complaining, and called for more, or protested his administrative judgement, I will apologize. I know almost nothing of wiki rules, I confess, but, just as Cassius Clay mostly held his punches if his antagonist was falling down, or exhausted on the ropes, gentlemen do not put the boot in when people (perhaps justly) are on the ground. To do so is to betray a punitive and vindictive attitude.Nishidani (talk) 15:49, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

If I may be permitted a small comment, El. In his retraction edit summary Eleland admitted yeah, yeah... i guess i can't say that... i have to put up with this guy, even though he's obviously unfit to edit here.... The outburst for which he was sanctioned was subsequent to an ugly piece of defamation, which failed to trouble the administrative process. We’re watching a very odd process, where the original plaintiff describes as 'constructive’ his own description of Eleland as an anti-semite of the most vicious kind (i.e., a believer in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion trash). Eleland is asked to undertake not to repeat his offense, while of the person who defamed him, nothing has been asked. Get Eternalsleeper to retract this defamation with an apology (it has been shown to seriously misread Eleland's remarks), and perhaps there would be point in asking Eleland to undertake not to repeat his outburst. Without the one, as far as I understand questions of honour, a request to Eleland that fails to address the defamer who provoked him simultaneously, would simply confirm his original disgruntlement with the lack of balanced administrative oversight, and justly so.Nishidani (talk) 13:42, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I shall repeat myself from my talk page here - I think Misplaced Pages would be far better off if everyone didn't treat this like a replay of the real war. I have seen some fantastic examples on this place where people one would normally expect to be implacably opposed for outside geopolitical reasons can work together soundly on articles about the very topic on which they are divided right here - perhaps even come to an understanding of rival points of view, seeing where they come from even while maybe still entirely disagreeing with them or thinking them misguided. Sadly, they are in the minority, and hence why I-P, Azerbaijan-Armenia, Northern Ireland and India-Pakistan are perceived as "no go" zones on Misplaced Pages by many well meaning editors who just don't need the stress. Thinking of Misplaced Pages as an academic endeavour (I speak as someone with one degree and well on the way to my second, and being well aware that others here are similarly or more qualified), it is not entirely unreasonable to suggest people with entirely opposed personal views can in fact collaborate and produce a common work of which they can both be proud.

Relevant texts: WP:NPOV, WP:GAME, WP:NOT#SOAP, WP:AGF, WP:MASTODON and perhaps WP:SPIDER. Orderinchaos 13:47, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with IronDuke, "horrible" about sums it up. This is a very bad decision

Well, there must be several admins who have followed the evidence and argument among the names above. If an argumentum ex silentio (they have not contested PK's decision) is not enough, the proper thing would be to post a note on the respective pages of all admins listed in the thread, and ask them to note if they agree to, or oppose, PK's decision. Nishidani (talk) 16:43, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Let's see now. I got a 3-month ban in I/P for using the word "reported" in an article. But if I use the word "cunt" and "nazi" and "douchebag" when talking about other people, after a warning and without remorse, I can expect a mere week off? All this talk about provocation, but my understanding of wiki policy is that we are not supposed to react to provocation with further provocation, and an editor who has been here as long as Eleland should know that better than some others. Since he is familiar with wiki policy, why did he not bring the issue up in a dispute resolution? Then the issue of the 'provocation' could be properly explored and perhaps decided. The question of "calling someone antisemitic is racist" would be something that could be brought up and properly discussed at IP collaboration group, along with the question of what actually counts as "antisemitism" or what counts as "anti-Palestinianism" for that matter. But again, provocation is no excuse for obscene attacks on other people. Supposedly there are other ways of handling such things. Eleland deserves a nice vacation to cool off in, imho. Tundrabuggy (talk) 20:56, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Welcome to wiki "justice." They still haven't officially cleared names of people they falsely accused of being my sock or fixed checkuser pages, only adding to the confusion of many editors apparently. Many pro-Israel editors merely throw in the towel on Misplaced Pages after being so heavily outnumbered and after dealing with so many false allegations of racism, provocation, POV pushing, etc. Sadly, it's quite an obvious blight on the project unfortunately. --Einsteindonut (talk) 22:36, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

As the original blocker, and the target of unfavorable comments by this editor, I stand in strong opposition of the radical reduction of this block to 1 week with the rationale of "he was provoked". That is the worst argument for disruption I have heard in my time on wikipedia. I expect much better of my fellow admins. Toddst1 (talk) 23:41, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

It's called the "Look What He Made Me Do" game, and letting someone get away with it sets a very bad precedent. A good parent won't fall for that line. Apparently a poor admin will. Baseball Bugs 23:49, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

The way to deal with it is to thoroughly look into the situation and to deal with both sides of this mess. This does not require that both sides whine about it emphatically, but simply that you admit what is obvious. If you keep on rejecting the notion that this isn't simply about Eleland then its no surprise other admins will react in terms of his block. I'm still stupefied by the attitude that unless one whines to AN/I admins are supposed to turn a blind eye to problematic behavior.PelleSmith (talk) 05:06, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Bringing issues to WP:ANI isn't "whining", it's following the appropriate procedure. Getting into wars of words is not the appropriate procedure. And since this is not "big brother", admins don't necessarily go looking for trouble; it needs to be raised here. The blocking of this one editor is certainly appropriate, but by no means precludes the blocking of others with whom he is having the war of words. Baseball Bugs 06:16, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Unjustifiable or unsupported actions taken at one time neither justify nor oblige unjustifiable or unsupported actions in the future. It's a sad reality that overreactions or underreactions are common in a community environment - we're not a court of law, we are a bunch of volunteers from around the world trying to make this thing work. As an aside, one of the major factors is the level of sheer drama and hostility in venues such as this. I only occasionally have time to dip in here and see what's going on, and after a few previous incidents I'm always wary of acting (it's a great way to rapidly increase the size of one's own talk page, though.) Many admins whom I hold in great respect and who are extremely fair people never come here because they see it as a haven of drama. Orderinchaos 23:40, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Aye, on that much, I am in complete agreement with Orderinchaos. --Elonka 14:37, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Found: Some evidence from the recent past

I've been trying to research more on this Eleland situation and found this which was interesting. Seems to me that there is a pattern of abuse in which he was already warned? I'm not sure if perhaps a block on I-P related articles should be in order? I'm not sure what happened as a result of this. Seems like just a warning?

The "background notes" from Jaakobou were as follows:

Editor was already noted multiple times about civility issues and even once, a long time ago, apologized (in a fashion which looked more like a mockery) for his user directed commentaries. Part of my personal unpleasant interactions with him included repeated insinuations that I might be a war criminal rewriting history on a battle/massacre I supposedly participated in, and despite numerous requests - sample - the issue persists.

The following diffs are from early 2008:

1. "a number of editors... allowing their own ethnic identity and national affiliation" -
2. ("apology/rephrase":) "political leaders of a faction you identify with" -
3. "I realize it's a ] around here, but could you avoid punctuating... with obnoxious straw-man arguments... It makes you look rather desperate." -
4. "your personal crackpot interpretation of the RSes" -
5. "the writer still adheres to "there are no Palestinians" viewpoint" -
6. "rm unsourced propaganda; please do not regurgitate content" -
7. "stop with the puffery and WP:FRINGE theory pushing" -
8. "cleanup a really ugly piece of historical fabrication" -
9. "You can't recast... because you don't like them." -
10. "trim uncited conspiracism" -
11. "rv WP:FRINGE theory pushing" -
12. "An IP editor is campaigning... an Internet kook." -
13. "The guy is still a fringe pov-pusher" -
14. "looks a lot like just shouting "antisemite!" because something personally troubles you." -
15. "umm, yeah, "resifix" = "i made this up for wikipedia"" -
16. "I'm not sure why Leifern is so determined to portray this as vandalism or censorship." -
17. "One of the chief POV-pushers" -
18. "You're exhausting everyone's patience with this constant theory-pushing." -
19. "Bible Land is the name of the website you're spamming, not anything that exists in the real world" -
20. "When are you going to acknowledge the distinction between "which I personally like" and... You just keep making the same assertions." -
21. "your aggressive hounding of Huldra" -
22. "rv; ... stick to scholarly understanding... rather than imaginative" -
23. "sneak in the "prefers hype to facts" quote that you're so very, very fond of." -
24. "Anything else is... achieved via serial POV-pushing" -
25. "you seem to have gone back to... mass POV editing across multiple articles, accompanied by manipulation of the talk page discussion" -

Thanks. --Einsteindonut (talk) 03:01, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

What's the point here? All of a sudden identifying POV pushers is a sin? No thanks.PelleSmith (talk) 05:11, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I just thought it would help add more context to the situation. I don't think he was just identifying POV pushers. His remarks are sharp and are personal attacks. --Einsteindonut (talk) 05:41, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Everyone bar 1, a jab at Jayjg, was found by all reviewing admins to be unproblematical. I have independently re-examined them all. 95% of those remarks are calls to a variety of editors to stick to Wiki policies on reliable sources, no original research, and avoiding fringe theories. All those 25 diffs are evidence for, in the original and as recycled, is that two editors scrap the barrel to try and get Eleland sanctioned on what, objectively, is pretextual material than strains all credibility. I thought we had learned the lesson not to trouble administration with bickering pettifoggery.Nishidani (talk) 10:47, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not bickering. I thought it could help the situation. I don't even know Eleland so I don't care if he gets sanctioned or not. I just felt from indef. to 3 months, to 1 week wasn't right, especially when it appears that he is not remorseful and hasn't changed his ways much. It just looks like a pattern of abuse to me, but then again, I am somewhat new here. I figured no harm in providing context. If what he did at one point warranted an indef. ban and then a 3 month ban, then I thought contextual info. would be helpful in fairly assessing the situation, which seems to have only intensified over time, due to Eleland's own actions. --Einsteindonut (talk) 10:54, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Several people, who clash with Eleland in the I/P area on grounds that reveal a clash in political perspectives, found an administrative consensus 'horrible'. Accept it. One can often question one administrator's judgement (I've always said, that errors made are often the understandable result of looking too quickly at diffs on formal grounds, and not context for substantial grounds. They don't have the time to do this, the sheer weight of material they are called to glance over militates against this). One should not question a majority judgement by them. These guys have a level of informed experience neither you nor I have. I'd say that even if the case went the other way (at most, I'd murmur to myself in private perhaps, but I've never had grounds to). Nishidani (talk) 11:03, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Was a majority judgment by the admins really made? Looked like one made an indef. block, another lessoned it to three months, and then another to a week. They each appeared to be individual decisions, not collective. --Einsteindonut (talk) 11:14, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Each of the two revisions was done after some level of disquiet at the initial reaction. Neither was individual, although it required some courage to implement the change given the noise level on here. As I keep saying (but it's straight from WP:BLOCK anyway) blocks are intended to be preventative, not punitive. Noone has actually made a case for any ongoing damage actually being done by this user, who does seem to be productive if a bit hot-headed, and he has been, in my view, shown, even if he does not entirely accept, that his actions on this occasion fell short of community expectations - so he is in no doubt. On the other hand, I am not seeing a great deal of useful content contribution coming from you (approx 20% of your 930 edits to date, and many of them are reverts or minor edits), but a hell of a lot of drama - and that has been the case since not long after you signed up an account here. If you want to be front and centre in a campaign against an editor, I would suggest ensuring first that your own Wikihouse is in order. Orderinchaos 14:31, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

One can kibitz endlessly, esp. if one does not trouble oneself to read the thread comprehensively. You evidently haven't. See the statistical analysis above.Nishidani (talk) 11:19, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually I have.--Einsteindonut (talk) 11:53, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

From Eleland's talk page

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

This is an ideological debate, not a request for admin action, and is clogging our noticeboard and wasting our time. Please read the top of this noticeboard for what should and should not be here, and take this elsewhere. Orderinchaos 03:20, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

William Connelly deleted an ongoing discussion from Eleland's talk page, and was backed up by PhilKnight (who perhaps did not realize he was excising criticism of his admin actions when he did so). I'm not going to edit war over it, as I'm surprised Eleland allowed it on his page as long as he did. But I do feel the discussion was productive (I was actually edit-conflicted in the midst of a reply to Nishidani with another blanking of the section), so per William Connelly's suggestion, I'm pasting it here. IronDuke 20:16, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I've reduced the block to a week based on the AN/I discussion. PhilKnight (talk) 06:56, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Phil, if you want to send the message that you support Eleland's comments, why not just give him a barnstar? I quote from you in the AN/I thread linked above "if he posts a conciliatory unblock request that should be granted". Where is that statement? In fact, he reiterates that he continues to think the person he called a cunt is a cunt, and that the person he called a Nazi has a Nazi style. He wrote, right above that charming cartoon above, "IronDuke knows, full well, that I have snarkily, rhetorically, and indirectly likened the comments of one single Jewish editor to Nazi-style rhetoric - an analogy which was, given the circumstances, not a great stretch." You aren't even pretending to get a commitment to change of behavior, Phil. It's profundly depressing. IronDuke 12:39, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with the cartoon. It reflects, indeed, a considerable amount of serious academic interpretations of West Bank behaviour. It more or less translates into a vignette the substance of what Idith Zertal wrote, the relevant passage about which can be found on my talk page. Satire, by its very nature, upsets some political constituency, Khomeini once day, settlers another, Putin a third, Berlusconi another. It's when people start to apply political correctness on these issues that one is, really and truly, in more s... than Biggles. Nishidani (talk) 13:05, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

See my comment above for a short explanation on why there is something wrong with posting this cartoon when trying to illustrate a point. You can be sure that other members here have a "great" sense of satire as well, but I doubt you'd appreciate such satire when Mark Twain is used to illustrate it - if you know what I'm saying. Jaakobou 09:00, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

To tell you the truth, I'm a great admirer of all of Twain's work, and my objection was also to a hackhanded attempt to manipulate it for purposes Twain would have found repulsive. He was a great civil libertarian, that is why he found the cause of 'blacks' and the 'Jewish people' a century ago very much a common cause. Were he here today to cast his eye on civil liberties, it is not improbable that he would have added a third people to the list. Nishidani (talk) 10:55, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Black Sudanese Christians?--Einsteindonut (talk) 11:06, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Satire can use material of other people even if that person has a differnt perspective. I'm sure you're aware that the best satire takes a known situation and transforms it - Like Chaplin's "Hinkel" speeches, which I'm sure the original speech giver would not have approved of. The satirical comment made using Twain's writing offended you yes? I can't understand where you insist that what offends others is "not offensive" in your world while you, Eleland, Tiamut, PalestineRememebred, and the likes are the only people on wikipedia who are allowed to be offended. The cartoon should be retracted. Period. Jaakobou 11:01, 1 October 2008 (UTC) clarify 11:04, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree, Jaakobou. Last I checked, we're not supposed to be using our user pages as soap boxes. I got reprimanded for it when I was blocked, and then I was blocked from editing my own pages. Apparently this is OK though. --Einsteindonut (talk) 11:10, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Not a soapbox at all. It's a vignette that perfectly captures what happened to Eleland, who was accused of anti-semitism for challenging a racist remark by a Torah-based nationalist who appears to sympathize with the kind of settler depicted. As for putting Saxophonemn's 'satire' on a par with Chaplin's, this was indeed a masterstroke of what one might called comical hyperbole of misplaced analogy. It made my day! esp. since so far I've had to waste time cleaning communal road-grates over sewers in a neighbourhood where the rest are too busy preening themselves on their rise in the world to lower themselves to 'albanian' labour.Nishidani (talk) 11:16, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

You make for an inspirational work environment. Please don't cry out "injustice" next time someone accuses you of antisemitism and/or bigotry towards Jews. Jaakobou 11:24, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Advice taken. I'll take it from here on in as a compliment to myself for being on the right track re sensitive facts political interests wish to censure, and a self-referential remark reflecting on the mind and nature of whoever dares make it.Nishidani (talk) 11:34, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

It seems as though you choose to ascribe political interests to anyone who asks you to tone it down a notch. Satire can go either way and I'm sure you would not appreciate anyone saying "There is nothing wrong with the cartoon"(Nishidani above) regarding usage of Cox & Forkum or possibly real stories from Jihad Watch. Eleland's use of controversial propagandist Carlos Latuff to make the false claim that he's been accused of antisemitism (he was accused of making offensive racist/bigoted comments, not of being antisemitic) is a very much improper way to show he plans on working with fellow Wikipedians. Jaakobou 12:42, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I suggest you calm down. You're posting everywhere on this, and you have forgotten the essential detail. In saying Eleland makes 'the false claim that he's been accused of antisemitism' you are forgetting Eternalsleeper's one remark here (note how these kibitzers strike and then disappear, exactly as a complete outsider, Karl Meyer or someone of that handle from Denmark, denounced PR at ANI with a few weird diffs, and then disappeared, as everybody jumped in to get at PR). That remark ran:-

Sure, and there's nothing wrong with an established editor who calls Jews "master race" or

I'll construe this if you don't get it. 'There is nothing wrong with Eleland calling Jews 'the master race' and thereby underwriting the doctrine put forth in the classical antisemitic tract 'The Protocols of Zion'.'

This means unequivocably that Eternal Sleeper (I made a 'slip' here and wrote Eternalshlepper, FYI) thought Eleland's remonstrance of one person for a racist edit was tantamount to accusing all Jews of being a master race as that idea is paraded in antisemitic literature. If you understand the concept of entailment, this entails the conclusion that Eleland is antisemitic.

99% of this useless commentary stems from the fact people can't read, can't remember, can't construe words, can't reason on sentences to capture their logical and implicit meanings, and invest their time in elaborating on blatant misprisions of an editor they just disagree with politically or 'ideologically'. I suggest this stop here, and we return to editing wiki.Nishidani (talk) 13:19, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I've read that thread but what eludes you is that Eleland (and you as well) were being offensive by using antisemitic rhetoric towards a Jewish person who's mortal sin was of using the same type of sarcasm by Eleland you are justifying here. Jaakobou 15:51, 1 October 2008 (UTC) fix 15:54, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

The problem really, is that editors here are degrading the work environment to sarcastic usage of Carlos Latuff (Eleland) and Mark Twain (another editor). What I can't seem to understand is why you justify one form of provocative conduct while denouncing the other. It makes for an impossible working environment wherever Eleland, Tiamut, PalestineRememebered and you get involved. Jaakobou 15:58, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Eleland knew exactly what he was doing when he made the remarks. Perhaps "antisemitic" is not as good a term here as "Jew-baiting." He meant for his remarks to be insulting, and has not apologized or agreed not to do it again in a clear, meaningful way. I'll also add, to the apologists who rushed here to provide comfort to him, admins and otherwise, that you are now on record as backing Eleland's disgraceful remarks. IronDuke 16:17, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

In Western civilisation argument is based on logic and law. Nothing you both say has any relation to either. It is accusation by misprision and innuendo. And like some children, won't wash.Nishidani (talk) 16:23, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Okay, you guys, enough's enough. I have just noted another administrator badgered to warn Eleland about 'Jew-baiting'. No diff or evidence of Jew-baiting or antisemitism has been provided, all we have is a thick record of suspicion, misprisions, and misreadings. Notwithstanding this, several people are trawling about spreading the slur, defaming the defamed, and pressuring admin. Unless this whispering campaign stops immediately, my advice to Eleland would be to go through what happened and identify every editor who has accused him of antisemitism or Jew-baiting, make diffs, and keep it in reserve for a formal report to administration of defamation, and a request that the several editors who have repeated this innuendo be suspended. Nishidani (talk) 16:41, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Hm, your first point was... odd. Not sure what you meant, and not sure I want to know. Your second bit of "advice" for Eleland is not going to be very useful, unless you secretly are hoping for a stronger remedy against him. You know what the diffs are, but I'll repeat them: Eleland makes a sneering, mocking reference to a Jewish editor as being a member of the "master race" here, and refers to him as a "Nazi" and "goose-steeping loon" here. If you don't understand why this is antisemitic, please, please stop editing in I/P areas until you do. IronDuke 16:54, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

None of those diffs support an accusation of Jew-baiting or anti-semitism. All you document is your unfamiliarity with the literature on both. If one sees a racist comment (in the context of a series of edits aimed to eliminate Palestinians from the cognitive map) maliciously asserting they are an extinct people, and immediately calls the person a **** or a goose-stepping loon, one violates wiki rules on civility, for which Eleland was duly punished, while ignoring he said what any civil libertarian would say in the face of a racist, be he American, Japanese, ET, a Yeti, Jewish or Arab or whoever. If anything, Eleland's outburst is proof of a visceral inability to hold his tongue when racist remarks or innuendoes are dropped. I happen to share that instinctive intemperant outlook. That you are, severally, endeavouring to recast a civil libertarian's contempt for racial put-downs as an exhibition of antisemitism is a worn strategy, highly popular in low brow rags that stir hysteria. This is serious defamation. You are all assuming no non-Jewish person can pull any Jewish person to heel if the latter makes a racist crack, which means your premise is that a state of exemption exists for anything anyone in the latter ethnic group may say, because of the Holocaust. For the record, see my page and the lengthy citation from Idith Zertal, an Israeli historian of rank.Nishidani (talk) 17:08, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

You don't get this at all, do you? Let me see if an analogy will help. I see a group of hooligans. I say, "Those white kids are acting like a pack of monkeys." No big deal. But if I say, "Those black kids are acting like a pack of monkeys," it suddenly becomes a big deal. Why? Is that fair? Well, I don't know if it's fair, but it's reality. And thus, if someone said of a white editor, "You're acting like a total monkey on this talk page," that might well violate CIV, but wouldn't otherwise be a big deal. If it were a black editor you were referring to, you'd likely get a block, without warning. Referring to Jews as Nazis, or comparing them to Nazis, is a classic modern antisemtic motif (if you'll pardon the oxymoron). Eleland actually repeats this several times, even calling Saxophonemn "an absolute mirror-image of a Nazi antisemite" (emphasis in original). I'm sorry if it offends your sense of justice that Jews may not be equated with Nazis without the person doing the equating running the risk of being tagged as an antisemite, but that's the way things are. That you aren't grasping this doesn't really matter. What matters is that Eleland grasps it quite well. He knew that the statements he was making (is still making) are widely construed as antisemitic, but makes them anyway. That is regrettable, but less so than the editors who, either not understanding the histor of AS or not caring about it, leap to his defense. (And no, the fact that a Jew might refer to another as a Nazi doesn't make it okay for you to do it, any more than black people using the N-word makes it okay for you to do it.) Addendum: if you're really still wondering how it is that such statements are considered antisemitic, have a look at what the Anti-Defamation League, surely an authority on such matters, has to say. IronDuke 17:49, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Well said. Jaakobou 18:03, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Well said².--Goodmorningworld (talk) 19:01, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

'Referring to Jews as Nazis, or comparing them to Nazis, is a classic modern antisemtic motif

This means, given what Idith Zertal's analysis of settler language suggests, as quoted on my page, that many Jewish settlers are anti-semitic, since it has been thoroughly documented for twenty years by numerous Israeli scholars that they constantly charge Israelis, even members of the IDF, who attempt to restrain them, or apply the law, with being 'Nazis'. Your remark may well be 'well said'. In football, , it is called a 'self-goal', and shows a lamentable ignorance of the scholarship, something of which Eleland is fully au courant. Have the last word, by all means, but since no one seems to listen to the other, further haggling is pointless.Nishidani (talk) 19:26, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

(ec)I already addressed your point about Zertal above... I am less interested in having the last word than in hearing your response. IronDuke 20:16, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

response hereNishidani (talk) 20:59, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

That's not a response. IronDuke 21:32, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I think I get it. Because some Jews have referred to themselves as "Nazis" and the point has been emphasized by some biased sources who wish to make a point of it, it is then OK for anti-semites to use that as rationalization for labeling any Jews with whom they disagree, "Nazis". Hmm. Idith Zertel is hardly an unbiased source on this issue, despite being Jewish and Israeli. Her POV is that "Israel has used the memory of the Holocaust to legitimize its politics." Her views are on the fringe left. --Einsteindonut (talk) 01:50, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Pioneer Courthouse Square

This is an edit war that has been taking place since 2006. A user who has operated multiple sockpuppets has been attempting to repeatedly re-insert content via WP:SPA accounts that read "There are lots of people that go to Pioneer Courthouse Square. Some are businessmen stopping for a bite to eat. Others are families out to see Portland. And some say that the square has many homeless persons who congregate there although most are harmless."

Multiple established editors have reverted this content over the last two years, only to have it restored periodically by the involved SPA accounts. In the process, at least 15 sockpuppets have been banned. Now, User:Beenturns21 appears to be the latest sockpuppet incarnation.

I was going to wait until the current semi-protection expired and if it continued to then request indefinite semi-protection if the vandalism continued; but a new (incorrectly placed) mediation request has been created at Pioneer courthouse square where the user appears to be taking the issue to while waiting out the current semi-protection that expires on Oct 2nd; so I believed this needed to be escalated to WP:ANI.

The user involved has demonstrated a complete disregard for Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines ... some of the onces involved are WP:NPOV, WP:WEASEL, WP:OR, WP:SOCK and WP:3RR. Because of this, I would request that the latest user be banned, and due to the tenacity of the user involved that the article placed in indefinite semi-protection. Is a mediation case required for this - or can such action be taken here given the evidence below?

Here's a summary of the accounts that have attempted to inserting the content ... due to the large size of the evidence involved, I've listed it within a toggling collapse box.

Thanks for taking a look. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 18:40, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I have moved it to Misplaced Pages:Requests for mediation/Pioneer Courthouse Square. hbdragon88 (talk) 18:53, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Is your comment to indicate that this does need to go through mediation despite the provided evidence of past sockpuppetry/trolling, or is it just informative that the "mediation" request has been moved to the proper location? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 19:05, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I would support indefinite semi-protection of Pioneer Courthouse Square. When there has been the amount of past abuse documented at Misplaced Pages:Suspected sock puppets/Pioneercourthouse I'm not sure why mediation should still be considered appropriate. New SSP reports should be filed as necessary to deal with probable socks such as User:Yourew21 and User:Beenturns21. See also Category:Suspected Misplaced Pages sockpuppets of Pioneercourthouse. If it is possible that all this abuse may trace back to a single editor, a Request for Checkuser might be considered. EdJohnston (talk) 19:07, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Just to indicate that it is in the proper location. I detest when things are not in the right place. hbdragon88 (talk) 21:58, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

• This is a job for... RBIman!. Guy (Help!) 22:12, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Shucks, Iridescent beat me to it. I was going to block for "WP:SOCK and general lameness", vandalism is so much more prosaic. Seriously, guys, this is someone trolling us, keep the sockpuppet page to hand and there should be no great drama about playing whack-a-mole with any more that come along. Guy (Help!) 22:15, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, we are being trolled, and it's a waste of time for everyone. For all you assume good faith junkies out there, I suggested alternate wording for the disputed passage on the article's talk page. But I'd suggest that nobody waste more time than I just did writing that on trying to reason with or otherwise figure this out. "Revert, Block, Ignore" (RBI) is the best advice I've seen so far. If a checkuser and subsequent blocks/sitebans can end this nonsense once and for all, please hasten to make it happen, dear admin types! Katr67 (talk) 19:40, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

For the record, I am not related to these so-called "sock puppets" that you speak of and I certainly do not appreciate your accusation. I am simply an interested user who has been observing this conflict from a distance - until now. It appears to me that the person who has been inserting this text about homelessness may have an argument that you have not considered. Rather than rudely reverting and banning him/her, you should try to engage in a conversation or mediation with him/her. The text he/she is trying to put in is not THAT ridiculous. In fact, maybe there's a way to get his point across in a way that is encyclopedic and will please everyone. I have seen much worse things that trolls have said. Instead, It looks like a case of a new user who has been harassed and abused by Misplaced Pages "elitist know-it-alls" who have automatically assumed that this is a troll. Why not see if a compromise can be reached. It does not appear that a good faith effort to compromise has even been attempted. This is why I nominated this article for mediation and I would be pleased to be a mediator if this user does in fact return It appears that this is what's needed. But I fear that these editors/admins are so stuck in their ways and convinced that this is a troll. I am 70 percent sure that he is not a troll in the traditional sense but merely a confused and harassed editor. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Beenturns21 (talk • contribs) 22:26, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Blocked the above as a sock, but I'm thinking that there may be a better way to solve this. It seems the user would like to try this a different way, though the end goal is the same. I'd support an unblock on the condition that conversation about the inclusion happen instead of adding it back into the article. It may also be necessary for the mediation. So, unblock if need be. Cheers. lifebaka++ 23:43, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I am friends with the original author of this controversy, pioneercourthouse. He informs me that he is willing to discuss this dispute. In fact he is very eager to discuss it and hopefully come to a compromise. I urge you to unblock him immediately so mediation can take place. He tells me that it is very important (in his view) to have information in the article about homelessness but he is willing to compromise if others will rationally discuss this. Mediman43 (talk) 00:49, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

How many SOCKS is this editor going to use to push their POV? I sincerely doubt someone is going to call a "friend" and have them create an account on wikipedia to belabor an obvious removal of POV information in an article. Two years of debating the addition of this material and still no reliable source for the information? That in itself should point to the unreliability of the information or if not completely unreliable, the undue weight it carries for inclusion. If it were noteworthy, why no reliable coverage by media in all this time. I'm frankly astonished at the tenacity of this editor.--JavierMC 02:28, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Please note that I did not say pioneercourthouse "called me." Indeed, he did not call me but e-mailed me. We are good friends and have been so for quite a long to. I beseech you to please use common sense and attempt to listen to the points of myself, merely a common editor who wishes for you to listen to reason. And by extension, you should listen to pioneercourthouse. I have a feeling that he is terribly sorry for the trouble he's caused and merely wants to explain himself and discuss how to put information about homelessness in the pioneer courthouse square article. I happen to be from Portland and I do know for a fact taht there are many homeless people there. Perhaps he was trying to force the issue, but you should try to have a civilized discussion with him instead of just banning him. That is rather rude. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mediman43 (talk • contribs) 03:34, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Even if we assume good faith that you are not a sockpuppet; you would still be a meatpuppet, which per established arbitration rulings would still be treated as a single entity sockpuppet for purposes of Misplaced Pages policy and guidelines.

As to being rude; from what I can find in the article history, Pioneercourthouse is the one who brought the actions onto himself by engaging in sockpuppetry to force an issue, and lied about doing so (first confirmed via a Checkuser on Dec 26, 2006 performed by Jayjg and later further explored during a review of suspected Sockpuppets).

On the content of the article, any new sources should be discussed on the article talk page - the only current source mentioned fails as a reliable source. This is important because the threshold for inclusion in Misplaced Pages is verifiability, not truth. First hand experience is original research, and not a basis for statements in an article. A third party reliable source is needed for the content. Also, any source provided should establish why it's notable to mention it in relation to the article - from the suggested text addition, I fail to see where it's any more notable than any other location. Homelessness exists in all major cities throughout the world; it is hardly unique to Pioneer Courthouse Square‎. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 03:58, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

• This has to go in WP:LAME. Guy (Help!) 12:06, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Wow the admins and other editors seem so wrong on this one. Geeze, at least have a conversation with the guy about his edits. Perhaps he has soem rational reason for what he's been doing. Just reverting and banning the guy for no reason seems counterproductive and likely to cause more problems. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fairedit99 (talk • contribs) 16:32, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

And we have additional likely sockpuppet/meatpuppets:

• Fairedit99 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · blacklist hits · AbuseLog · what links to user page · count · COIBot · Spamcheck · user page logs · x-wiki · status · Edit filter search · Google · StopForumSpam)
• Beenturns22 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · blacklist hits · AbuseLog · what links to user page · count · COIBot · Spamcheck · user page logs · x-wiki · status · Edit filter search · Google · StopForumSpam)

Their user pages have been tagged as likely socks - is something further required? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:12, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

And now we have Beenturns23 (talk · contribs)

Note: in addition to the above Beenturns accounts, a quick scan of user account logs show that the following user accounts were all created within a few minutes of each other on Sept 27th: Beenturns23, Beenturns24, Beenturns25, Beenturns26. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 19:07, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Blocked all the User:Beenturn## accounts created so far (not bothering to note this on user or talk pages, if anyone wants to, knock yourself out). I suggest someone file a Checkuser to find the underlying IP creating the socks; I don't have time to do it myself, sorry. --barneca (talk) 19:12, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Block on User:Gene Poole

VirtualSteve (talk · contribs) has blocked Gene Poole (talk · contribs) for harrassment and personal attacks against Bidgee (talk · contribs). I personally concur with the block but consider a wider view may be necessary as the threats and harrassment has moved off-wiki and intensified (see User talk:VirtualSteve#Threats receive from Gene Poole on my email account). It may be best if a totally uninvolved administrator—who can't be dismissed as part of a "little cheersquad of proxies" takes a look at the entire issue including the conduct of the AfDs, the harassment, the block and the threats. -- Mattinbgn\ 08:01, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Any review should look at the talk page history for User:Gene Poole as he has been removing comments and warnings --Matilda 08:07, 29 September 2008 (UTC) (one of the cheersquad of proxies)

Reprinting emails is very bad form, regardless of their content. Poisoning the well, no way to verify them, etc. I'm removing all the instances of this I can find, call it a biographical decision if you'd like. If you're considering reverting this removal, please think very carefully about what you're trying to achieve, as I will be willing to block for disruption depending upon the cirumstances. That is to say, please discuss first before reverting.
brenneman 08:19, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

• Thank you for your comment Aaron. I will not be wheel warring or reverting either of your two redactions and I note that you have covered both public copies by that work. However I also note that upon emailing an editor the wikipedia system now shows the following notation in a box:

A (non-public) log of this action will be kept for abuse prevention purposes via the Checkuser function. The log entry for an email does not identify the recipient, title, or contents of the email. In cases of serious abuse, Wikimedia server administrators ("developers") can verify the recipient account, which CheckUsers can only see in hashed form.

I also note for the record (without reference to the content) that I have since received another inappropriate email from Gene Poole and of course I can provide copies (by private email) as necessary which will detail the time and date of the sender etc. Of course I understand your point but I too am concerned that too allow for protection of this type of email is to allow cowardice through the email process to prosper.

Best wishes.--VS 08:33, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Disagree with the removal but will not revert. Personal threats made off-wiki are in no way worthy of being considered protected and I for one reserve the right to post in my userspace any and all off-wiki communication of that nature. -- Mattinbgn\ 08:26, 29 September 2008 (UTC) On further consideration blanket statements like mine above are not useful. -- Mattinbgn\ 08:37, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

(ec) "Respected longterm member"? A longterm obnoxious member I'd dare say. I'd have blocked for longer actually but the block has been placed, and I'm letting it stand. I've witnessed (and experienced, a long time back now though) nothing but outright chest-beating rudeness from this self-proclaimed "Emperor" . -- Longhair\ 08:23, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

All this vicious stuff over Fish Information and Services??? Crikey! I think I'll start an article on Tiddly winks, and then fight to the death anyone who tries to delete it. Baseball Bugs 08:41, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Wow, this is seriously lame. The user's conduct after the block is absolutely deplorable, so I fully endorse the current lengthened block. The first block seems to me to be much harder to justify, due to the general lameness of the dispute. Really, people, you should try practicing a healthy level of not giving a fuck, in regards to both articles and other editors (so that we don't take comments personally, ya' know?). Cheers. lifebaka++ 13:33, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I am concerned with the following aspects of this series of events:

• Longtime user blocked for obnoxious but not threatening on-wiki behavior without talk page or in conversation warnings to stop.
• Blocking administrator was involved in the argument on-wiki.
• First email (the one posted on-wiki and reverted) contains clear venting but at best vague threats and no threat of harm or off-wiki contact or stalking - it does not seem to justify extending a block. Venting on-wiki or in non-threatening emails to blocking admins are semi-protected activities, to avoid single blocks from escalating into a destructive circle due to complaints / venting by blockee. Clear threats or real-world contact are exceptions to that, obviously.
• I have no idea what's in email #2.

I was taken to Arbcom for blocking Giano in a situation comparable to issue #1 here a few weeks ago. This particular block is far more problematic than that.

Gene is clearly not behaving well in this manner, and I am working up a comment on his talk page, but to say that this block was in poor form and problematic is a grave understatement. This is exactly how not to do things and pretty much guaranteed further drama, rather than de-escalating the situation and calming it down. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 04:24, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Have you checked Gene Poole's talk page history? You will find that Gene Poole had indeed received warnings but had removed them. You therefore need to look at history rather than the talk page to see those warnings and the exchanges, noting the edit summaries - for example and - note the attack on me was to accuse me (Matilda) of being a Single Purpose Account (withdrawn) and to state that I had nominated an article for AfD on spurious grounds - not withdrawn and in fact escalated. The blocking admin (Virtual Steve) was not involved in the argument up to that point - but was an active observor in my view. I would state that VS was making a call on behaviour he had seen on three related AfDs. The subsequent escalation has made Virtual Steve involved since. I do not think the block was in poor form or problematic - Gene Poole had breached WP:NPA to three editors - myself, Bidgee and Michelle Crisp and repeatedly over several days. I am concerned that that civility is not more emphatically supported. I am grateful that Virtual Steve was prepared to intervene in a situation that Gene Poole chose to escalate. --Matilda 04:58, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

As a genuine outsider to this situation with past good dealings with Gene, and after having examined the background at about 5 locations, I concur with this assessment. Orderinchaos 15:28, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

As the involved user I never requested for a block (Nor did I want to see anyone blocked) on Gene but I did warn him on the AfD (Since I'm not welcome on his Talk Page) as he was twisting my words and assued me of deliberately adding misleading comments in order to attempt to influence the outcome of an AfD. Now he has called me a "known problem editor", out of the editors I've interacted with I've only had issues with 5 editors. Gene has for some reason has got a vendetta against me which I have no idea why. He also removes editors (who he seems to have issues with) comments with the edit summary of "delete trolling" plus this comment by Gene was also assuming bad faith. Bidgee (talk) 06:47, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Just to add to the above Gene has now said "the real issue here is VirtualSteve's abuse of admin priviledges to slap a block on my account in order to endorse the uncivil, disruptive abuse perpetrated against me by a known problem editor (Bidgee), while simultaneously attempting to alter the outcome of a disruptive AfD process in which he has an explicit conflict of interest." Bidgee (talk) 06:50, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

For the record none of the editors of the AfD (including but not limited to myself, Bidgee, Michelle Crisp or Virtual Steve)have a CoI with fis.com (now that the sockpuppets have been indefinitely blocked). --Matilda 06:57, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I'll echo the concerns of Georgewilliamherbert. Blocking for alleged harassment can be a reasonable response; it can also very easily arouse anger, and emailing the blocking admin with a hot response isn't beyond the pale. Taking that email and posting it was utterly inappropriate for an administrator. If one is concerned about threats, law enforcement would be appropriate; if Misplaced Pages issues are raised, forwarding it to a member of ArbComm could be done. I do not consider the block of a long-time experienced editor to be an emergency, when it has anything like a reasonable basis, as it apparently did. "Reasonable basis" does not mean that the block was proper, it merely means that it could appear so, and blocking for harassment is, on the face, protective. (I was blocked in August for alleged harassment, and I did not and do not consider that resolving that is an emergency, it is being disentangled one small step at a time.) Gene Poole would be encouraged to reflect on WP:DGAF as well as some others involved here. That he should not have been "punished" for an angry response in email to an administrator doesn't mean that it was wise. He might ask himself what result he was seeking by that mail, and, then ... was it effective? --Abd (talk) 14:15, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Gene has sent me the second email, which was never posted on-wiki. It also does not appear to contain anything that appears to me to be a threat. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 19:03, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

This is just to note that I have declined a request on my talk page by Georgewilliamherbert to lift my extended block, for these reasons: "By his latest comments and with his previous wikilawyering, Gene Poole has made it clear that not only does he not see anything wrong with his conduct, but that in his opinion, everyone else but he is to blame for what has happened to him. While it may be that "we try to give recently blocked accounts some slack on venting about the block" (although I'm not aware of any guideline to that effect), if an editor is blocked specifically for harrassment and attacks, I expect him not to continue with any behavior that may be reasonably interpreted as such. The e-mail he sent is just beyond the pale in terms of aggressiveness, rudeness and implicit threats, and in view of clearly-enunciated policies such as WP:CIVIL, I don't see why we should tolerate such conduct from anyone. I ask you to please not undo or reduce the block absent a clear consensus for this on WP:ANI."  Sandstein  20:40, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm still reading up on this so I don't have an opinion on the blocks yet, but I just want to comment on the posting of emails. It's long been established that it's not acceptable to post emails on-site without the author's consent. There's been various AN/ANI discussions and ArbCom cases that have reinforced this, probably most notably with the Durova arbitration which found that "In the absence of permission from the author (including of any included prior correspondence) or their lapse into public domain, the contents of private correspondence, including e-mails, should not be posted on-wiki." and "Any uninvolved administrator may remove private correspondence that has been posted without the consent of any of the creators." So I don't agree with posting the emails on-site and support their removal (if they need to be shown to another administrator for review reasons or to ArbCom they can be forwarded privately). Sarah 03:25, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• Noted Sarah - as you know I trust you explicitly and appreciate your comment. I did not know this was the case not having read anything related to this situation before. Will not happen again by me - but will send them on privately to you or other trusted admins in the future.--VS 04:04, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• Can someone clarify the status of Misplaced Pages:Harassment#Private_correspondence? Is it still true that "there is no community consensus regarding the posting of private off-wiki correspondence", or should this be changed? Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 07:45, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Per Durova's comment - we cannot post private off-wiki correspondence without the consent of the sender: When you receive an email message, remember that you do not own the copyright; that is owned by the sender, or the sender's employer. - no change should be made to Misplaced Pages:Harassment#Private_correspondence. --Matilda 01:58, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

This conversation sounds familiar. I don't recall who was involved now, but a few months back someone sent a canvassing e-mail to several users, or some such topic, and its contents were posted here. Someone kept trying to remove it on the grounds of "copyright violation", and then claimed there was no evidence of wrongdoing. In the post-9/11 era, anyone who sends anything in e-mails, anywhere, can be held accountable for it, and that's the reality of things. The "copyright" argument is bogus. Baseball Bugs 02:08, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Being held accountable for the comments is not the same as posting copyrighted material into a GFDL environment. The copyright argument is not in my view bogus. --Matilda 02:18, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

What makes it bogus is that it's a red herring. Someone makes threatening comments off-wiki and then tries to hide behind "copyright" when he's revealed for what he is. Baseball Bugs 02:30, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

It was not the author who took up the issue of copyright - it was User:Aaron Brenneman. Otherwise - yes it is a red herring as to the validity of the blocks. However, User:Viriditas questioned whether Misplaced Pages:Harassment#Private_correspondence should be modified ... --Matilda 02:40, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

It has to be a judgment call in a given case. If a user claims innocence, and e-mails reveal otherwise, they need to be made available to someone. Whether that's just one or more wise admins, or on here, is a judgment call. I would argue that e-mails in general should not be posted here, not because of "copyright" issues, but because of violation of confidentiality. However, if someone writes a "poison pen" letter, they have forfeited the right to confidentiality. That doesn't mean it should necessarily be displayed here, but it doesn't rule it out, either. Baseball Bugs 02:52, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

<reset indent> Durova didn't say it, the Arbitrators did. It was findings in the arbitration case about Durova's block of User!! where Giano posted an email Durova had written without her permission. And it's got nothing to do with whatever Griffith University have to say about copyright law, it's an internal ArbCom ruling. I don't know who posted that media file, what it is, why it was posted, or who it's directed at. I don't listen to media files here so if it was directed at me whoever posted it might want to use written words instead. Baseball Bugs, no one should email anyone on Misplaced Pages with some assumed right to confidentiality because emails around this place leak at an unbelievable rate. Anyway, getting back to the original subject, I read the various discussions and I don't think there's a problem with this block. There's a not unreasonable argument that Steve should have asked another administrator to make the first block because he was involved with the AFD, but he wasn't the subject of the attacks so I don't think it's that much of a problem. The second block by Sandstein for continuing attacks after being blocked seems pretty solid to me. Gene is a very disruptive, rude and abusive user with a COI and it's about time we stop tolerating his abuse of other editors. I think the block should stand and if he continues his abusive and aggressive behaviour when he returns, the community should consider long term NPA sanctions. Sarah 05:30, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism and Misplaced Pages

I have serious doubt on the claim that vandalism in wikipedia lasts only a few seconds after reviewing these two edits I would have reverted these edits myself, but I want to bring this matter to admin attention because I believe it is a serious issue. I have seen several edits like this which are not reverted for some mysterious reasons for months. Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 13:38, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Old, but you may be interested in this. And there's been worse - several months worse, in fact. x42bn6 Talk Mess 13:42, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Also, there is nothing admins can do about that. Vandalism lasts until it is reverted by an user and if noone notices it, it might last. Admins can protect an article if it becomes overhelming, but someone needs to see the vandalism for that as well. So I wonder what you expect from the admins here? They just fight when they notice it, either when editing themselves or when reported. But they cannot notice everything everywhere. SoWhy 13:47, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

There's about 1,000 admins and about 5,000,000 articles. Not feasible to watchlist more than a handful of article per admin. RCPatrol cannot see every edit. The only solution is for all users to watchlist articles in which they have an interest and to revert vandalism as it occurs. One need not be an admin to revert vandalism. If a particular article is heavily vandalized, protection can be requested. If an editor persists in vandalism past appropriate warnings, then they can be blocked. Otherwise, admin attention is not required. Cheers, Dlohcierekim 13:59, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism is certainly not usually reverted within seconds - one study found the median time to revert to be 14 minutes. You may be interested in Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Vandalism studies. Haukur (talk) 14:38, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to guess the mean time to revert vandalism is significantly less now than in 2006. Protonk (talk) 15:02, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

This more or less means half of all vandalism in the sample was reverted within about 15 minutes and following the numbers given in the sample, 3/4s of the vandalism had been reverted after about 7 hours, keeping in mind the straggling pages are likely to be very low traffic anyway. Gwen Gale (talk) 15:11, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Having a lot of bots running around likely helps. I'm not sure about anyone else, but I rarely see vandalism on my watchlist that lasts more than a few seconds, but vandalism that does usually lasts an hour or two (or however long it took me to see it). Generally User:ClueBot or one of his friends get the stuff all quick-like. We've certainly got better tools to handle finding and reverting vandalism now, with the use of rollback and automated editors. I can feel myself starting to ramble even in this little text, so cheers, everybody. lifebaka++ 15:19, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I suspect that the distribution of revert delays may indeed be multimodal, or at least "staircase" shaped. Bots catch some vandalism in seconds or a few minutes at most, human RC patrollers follow slightly behind on average, and watchlisters tend to catch most of the rest within a few hours or days at most. But whatever gets past all these filters can linger for months or even years before some random reader spots it. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:02, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Do you have any idea how many edits go through here in just a five minute period sometimes? HalfShadow 15:58, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes? And? What's your point, Otolemur? Corvus cornix_talk 18:23, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I've done a survey of 40 vandalism edits from Special:Recentchanges. Since some of the edits haven't been reverted yet I can't give you an average but 25 of the 40 were reverted in under 3 minutes. Hut 8.5 19:24, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

it would be useful to keep a list of the vandalisms that don't get caught in a reasonable time-frame. that might help to recode the bots, or to focus patrollers on neglected areas. can someone make a page for that so that we have a centralized list? --Ludwigs2 20:45, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

m:Flagged Revisions -- when will we get these??? (/me sighs) howcheng {chat} 21:43, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

We don't need flagged revisions to be better equipped to spot edits like these. Some wikis have a feature where you can mark an edit as "patrolled". This doesn't affect whether or not the edit is displayed, but it does signal to RC patrollers that the edit might still be vandalism in a way similar to new pages. Hut 8.5 19:34, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

You know, having looked over the edits given above, I'm not sure they really qualify as 'vandalism' per se. they are highly opinionated, unsourced, and dyspeptic, but that being said they are basically on topic. certainly there's no way a bot could be expected to recognize the difference between edits like this and appropriate content edits (unless these edits are being spammed into various articles, and the bot could pick up on the repetition...). what we are really talking about here is not vandalism, but rather extremely unencyclopedic content, and I don't know any way to get rid of that except through the attention of living human editors. well, I suppose we could write a bot that looks for obvious partisan or conspiracy theory keywords or phrases,and have the bot flag other editors on the page to check it out, but that would be a hell of a bot... --Ludwigs2 00:29, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I believe very few people will say this edit is not vandalism. So what we are really talking about here is vandalism. Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 08:59, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, I have a low threshold for semi-protecting, generally one edit/day or more on large articles, GAs or FAs, as trawling through a 60kb article for mischief can be quite frustrating. I consider GA and FA points as a fairly handy substitute for flagged revisions. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:06, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism patrol (RCP) is not an efficient use of administrator time, because the bulk of the work doesn't involve tools. RCP'ers can request page protection easily, I'm using Twinkle, and usually I see the requests granted (or sometimes, alternatively, the admin blocks the IP. It's been said above that RCP can't catch all vandalism. "All" is a big word, but if it were actually organization, and possibly with a few enhancements to our tools, we could catch and fix, quickly, nearly all IP vandalism. The problem is that we duplicate labor, massively, yet we miss a lot. WP:Flagged revisions could fix this, if we granted permission to set a reviewed-for-vandalism flag to a class of users. Right now, I patrol IP edits, and most of the vandalism I pick up has been reverted, either by a bot or by another editor, usually using Huggle, which is faster than Twinkle. But once I've looked at the most recent edit, I often look down the list and look at articles that strike my fancy in some way, and check them. Many of them have vandalism almost as blatant, or as blatant, as what is caught quickly. But, of course, it wasn't in the edit summary, and it wasn't a large-chunk removal for bots to catch. What if I could see just a list of unreviewed edits? My guess is that we could catch nearly all the vandalism, because I, for one, wouldn't be wasting my time looking at vandalism that has already been caught by someone else. Something that isn't caught quickly, will be caught later. Later being, possibly, within a few minutes, or possibly within a day (due to editing cycles).

(short of using flagged revisions, an alternate method of logging vandalism reviews could be set up. But there is a lot of data involved, flags would be the most efficient way of dealing with it.) --Abd (talk) 14:43, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I have one data point that suggests the problem Otolemur crassicaudatus is concerned about is due more to lack of editor attention than traffic. Yesterday I fixed this typo that had remained uncorrected for almost three years, despite that 8 different people modified this article & at least one of them knows "Pnitifical" is not a word. (I'm not attempting to shame anyone here, especially since I was the one who made the original mistake. Just pointing out that editors tend to read only a small part of an article before they edit it.) And I believe this is not the oldest typo that I have fixed. -- llywrch (talk) 22:30, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Arjun MBT page Admin problems

The Admins are acting partial when it comes to the edition of Arjun MBT page. Admin don't value each edit based on their criteria but always revert my edit. Not only that when asked them to take a totally impartial stance by having the first version that existed before the edit issue (that version was a verified version and got B-class article status) they don't agree and stick with a non-agreeable incorrect version based on a wrong PIB report. Atleast I want them to stick to rules when editing Wiki. The other things like high handedness, blocking, partiality etc can be tolerated.Chanakyathegreat (talk) 02:43, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Chanakya, you were blocked twice for reverting to an edit was rejected by consensus, despite advanced warnings. Moreover, you were blocked once for personal attacks on your fellow editors and admins. So don't cry wolf here.By78 (talk) 00:08, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Just a note, but this user is currently blocked in relation to this dispute. Cheers. lifebaka++ 03:48, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

No, his block for that just expired. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 04:41, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Woops, my bad. It seems I can't do simple math in my head in the wee hours of the morning. To that effect, I believe I shall turn in. Cheers. lifebaka++ 04:46, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I would say, stop reverting back to an older version. Move on. The article has added new content. The older version was also in violation of some policy changes (like the use of flags), so I don't see a problem with User:Jauerback's reverts. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:13, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

The use of flags can be removed, that are minor issue. The present version is with a inaccurate information based on the PIB report. Hence an impartial stance is to restore the original B-class version which you can see met all the criteria of a B-class version article. Thank you.Chanakyathegreat (talk) 07:52, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

An impartial stance is not to revert to this version from July repeatedly and complain when no one else agrees. The fact that that was the version that was rated is an absurd argument for sticking with that exact same version (especially when it violates multiple MOS changes we have had since then). -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:17, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

A revert was made to List of main battle tanks by country in which Arjun MBT edit was made by By78 "" and I had asked him not to do it since amount to speculation. The reason for it is that the DRDO wants 500 more Arjun's to be produced. Whereas the DGMF don't want more than 124. What will be the end result. No one knows. Why speculate. The Government may agree with the DGMF, Indian Army or agree with the DRDO based on which Arjun's will be produced. How can one say that only 124 will be produced. There is even a chance of DGMF changing his mind and stick with the Arjun. No speculation please. Admins please take note that there are two versions. Which option is selected will be known afterwards. Until then have patience.Chanakyathegreat (talk) 04:20, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

The army orders the tanks, not the tank's developer (DRDO). By your logic, Boeing would make decisions on how many F-18s US navy should purchase. Besides, mine was not speculation at all. I provided a source to back up my claim. If you prefer, I will add additional sources. By78 (talk) 00:08, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

The article says they are ordering 124. Why is saying that they are ordering 124 then unreasonable to you? It is not speculative to say what exactly they are doing right now. You keep on wanting a version from months and months ago and adamantly refuse to budge. I'll leave it to the talk page, but anyone wants to compare can decide between the version from July or the newer one with more current information. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:43, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

You are again mistaken. The order for 124 has already been placed. Some already delivered to the Army and further ones is ready to be handed over. The total will be around 90. It's not unreaonable for me to mention 124, that's what I want it to be. But the guys try to add comments like "no more than 124" etc. This is about predictiion. It may be 500 as well or even more who knows. I ask them not to speculate but put it as 124. No personal opinions, predictions etc. Regarding the version, I am not allowed to edit the page (gets reverted by the Admins) for months and months. And all others are allowed to add anything without any source. I am complaining about such actions for months and even tried reverting the articles by giving links. Not only that the article again got reverted but I got blocked as well. This story continues. The newer one did not have any new info but pure personal opinion and edits (more like a blog like). The present version even don't have what was there in the old one. Many with credible links were removed with edits without providing sources. When I intervened, got the article reverted and me blocked. The last one had all the correct info except the latest trials.Chanakyathegreat (talk) 14:26, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

You insisted on 424 units of Arjun in service but changed it to 90 when I provided a source to debunk your original number. However, 90 isn't correct either because 124 Arjuns are expected.

Even a version with all viewpoints existed with credible links that can be seen in the talk page under compromise section. That never was admitted by the Admin because By78 said "I don't agree" Chanakyathegreat (talk) 14:30, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Just because you say your compromise version accounts for all viewpoints does not make it so. Your edits are rejected because they were POV pushing.By78 (talk) 00:08, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Having all versions is not POV pushing, it's called neutrality. And if you accuse me of POV pushing can you prove that?Chanakyathegreat (talk) 04:15, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Having one version that is sourced and another that is just speculation is POV pushing. Either way, I've completely redone the article into chronological so I think it's moot. Chanakya, you need to provide a source for your view. Musing that the other sources are just inadequate and should be removed without any evidence are not improving the article. I suggest closing this section, for the arguments to repeat themselves for the most part at Talk:Arjun MBT. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:16, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

user:sponsorations

I'm having a problem with this user, who is edit-warring to insert into the axon article a reference to a non-notable Hungarian musician named Robert Lalkovits ("Axone"). I've tried to explain why this is not acceptable, but it doesn't seem to be taking. (His English is not very good.) Since this is not exactly vandalism, I don't think I can just keep reverting, so an admin-assist would be appreciated. Looie496 (talk) 20:57, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the note; article watchlisted. I agree that this seems to be a misunderstanding, and communication looks to be a major problem (as does the notability of the musician in question). A Hungarian-speaking editor might be useful here... EyeSerene 14:54, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

"dubious reference ..."?

User:Mikkalai wrote in the article Graph isomorphism:

"dubious reference and deletion of my changes. Please provide a reputable ref.", about:

"Regular graphs are very difficult for such testing and many of them are very important for chemistry (for example, Cyclohexane, Benzene, Cuneane, Dodecahedrane etc.), but their part among chemical compounds is small, and decreases with increasing of number of vertices<--ref>M.I.Trofimov, E.A.Smolenskii, Russian Chemical Bulletin, 2005, Vol. 54, 9, 2235. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11172-006-0105-6)<--/ref>."

Is Russian Chemical Bulletin reprinted by Springer-Verlag is not "a reputable ref."? Is it "dubious reference"? Is User:Mikkalai is expert for such statements?

See, also in Talk:Graph isomorphism: "Who the heck is this Trofimov? What's his international scientific recognition? Why his stuff deserves place in encyclopedia? `'Míkka>t 19:00, 30 September 2008 (UTC)"--Tim32 (talk) 21:16, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

First, the sentence is so badly written that it is almost impossible to understand. Second, Misplaced Pages prefers secondary sources (review articles) over primary sources (journal articles), so the source actually is not very good for Misplaced Pages, even though it is reputable. (See wp:source.) Looie496 (talk) 21:36, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

"Academic and peer-reviewed publications are highly valued and usually the most reliable sources in areas where they are available"(See wp:source.) Russian Chemical Bulletin is Academic and reviewed journal, in chemistry area, i.e. Rusian Academy of Sci., Moscow. Please, explain more if possible.--Tim32 (talk) 21:45, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I was referring to this. Looie496 (talk) 22:39, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

But I referring to WP:SOURCES Am I right? ;)--Tim32 (talk) 22:49, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

This appears to be a content dispute, not requiring administrator intervention at this time—both Tim32 and Mikkalai need to stop the edit warring and get to the talk page, however. Setting aside my admin hat, from a content perspective I find the sentence in question to be less comprehensible that normal for content in our graph theory articles. Digging a bit deeper, I wonder if the information is important enough for discussion in graph isomorphism, even if accurate. (Per Looie496, minutiae supported by a single reference in a low-impact journal is less likely to be encyclopedic than information drawn from peer-reviewed review articles.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:50, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Dear TenOfAllTrades!

Sincerely thanks for you attempt to stop this edit war, but, sorry, I did not understand you exactly. So, please, answer my questions (Yes or No):

1) Is Russian Chemical Bulletin reprinted by Springer-Verlag is not "a reputable ref."?

2) Is it "dubious reference"?

3) Is User:Mikkalai is expert for such statements?

4) Is it personal attack (Ad hominem) to me?

Thanks again--Tim32 (talk) 23:07, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

PS. Please, note this is Revision of 14:14, 24 January 2008 and User:Mikkalai saw it! Today he disliked my comment in discussion page, and just the moment he deleted this Revision of 14:14, 24 January 2008! --Tim32 (talk) 23:20, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

• I need to add this: the complainant raised both a WQA complaint and this within a short time, that appears as Forum-shopping. I responded to and closed his WQA around 0700 Eastern time before noting this entry. BMW(drive) 13:22, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Greg Horne

Would an admin mind looking into Greghorne.wiki (talk · contribs)? He is apparently an artist named Greg Horne who does nothing but insert his own bio onto the already existing Greg Horne page, which is about a football player. Rather than create another page, he hijacks the existing page. This has been done numerous times . He previous did the same edit as an IP .

I have tried to discuss this with him numerous times on his talk page to explain WP:COI, WP:N, and a whole slew of other wikipedia principles that would prevent the situation, but he refuses to listen. Would an admin mind taking a look, please? Thanks in advance. Dayewalker (talk) 22:14, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, I've left an offer of assistance on his talk page with some more general advice. If he won't play ball, I'll take the ball away. WP:AGF is not without its limits. --Rodhullandemu 22:27, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Or rig the ball with explosives, if he doesn't stop. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 22:33, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

AGK has blocked for five hours. A little short for my taste but hopefully the guy will stop when he comes back. Oren0 (talk) 22:35, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure you didn't make a typo? AGK is a trusted admin... am I missing something? Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 22:38, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

• Yes, I have blocked Greg for 5 hours, as a preventative measure against further disruption from him. To address Oren's concerns: I do not view my block as being overly lenient. Indeed, I am hoping that this will spur Greg into changing his ways; I would view an extension of the 5 hour block as being a purely penal measure. If this editor continues to disrupt after the block expires, a longer block will be warranted at that juncture; that, of course, is a hurdle we'll cross when we reach it. Anthøny ✉ 22:42, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

• Addendum: And, of course, should he indeed disrupt immediately after the block expires, a block of a sizeable length would be justified; I am simply leaning towards the AGF side here, and hoping this user will respond with a little bit of maturity. Anthøny ✉ 22:43, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

God, do I need reading glasses! I thought it said, AGK has been blocked. Oops. Good block. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 22:54, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

The two interpretations are slightly different. :-) Fear not; I misread all the time. I just need to double-check if something doesn't add up! Anthøny ✉ 23:00, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

UPDATE: It seems as if Non-Notable Greg has returned as an IP again. IP 24.18.251.179 (talk · contribs) just showed up to make the same edits. Dayewalker (talk) 06:54, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• I checked his blog, linked in the edits, and it's pretty plain that he's engaged in an amateurish SEO campaign. I blocked the account with no expiry date, he can be unblocked if he can persuade any passing admin that his vanity spamming campaign is over. Guy (Help!) 08:26, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Non-admin protecting pages?

Take a look at the protection log for User:Phuntsok2000. They aren't an admin according to Special:Listusers. They committed pagemove vandalism (moving SpongeBob SquarePants (character) to Whobob Whatpants (character)), according to the log, PROTECTED the moved page. It doesn't say what level or anything, just "protected" - though clicking edit brings up the "Only registered users can edit" message. What is going on here? Xenon54 22:47, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

The protection log doesn't say the level of protection. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 22:52, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

What? I'm not an established user? Since when? I think a good whack over the head with the ol' banhammer is in order for the user, but the technical aspect definitely needs to be looked into. I can't protect pages... Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 22:50, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Weird. I'm guessing that the page was protected by User:Bill and for some reason, the way the page moves took place the logs are attributing it to User:Phuntsok2000 - I don't think they actually did any protecting. Either way, a bug of some sort that should be checked out. Shereth 22:52, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I've let the devs know - it's probably a one time mistake with the software but I'm sure they'll look into it. Ryan Postlethwaite 22:55, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Apparently it's a known issue with the naming of some log entries - he didn't actually protect anything, the name of the logs was wrong that's all. Ryan Postlethwaite 22:55, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Moving a semi-protected page automatically semiprotects the new page, and any autoconfirmed editor can move semiprotected pages. Nothing to see here. – iridescent 22:56, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Iridescent is right. My sock just "protected" a page here: . --barneca (talk) 23:02, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Hopefully this doesn't come up on RFA. "Not enough page protections, needs more experience." :) bibliomaniac15 02:18, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Please help clear names/User labeling me a racist and not AGF

Hello. I'm hoping that admins can help fix my checkuser case. It was worked out directly with ArbCom as I wrote them and User:FayssalF many times explaining that I am NOT Saxaphonenm. We are two separate people who share similar interests. However, because it still indicates that we are the same person, it seems many people are confused and are not AGF. I have been following a recent incident regarding Sax and it seems because of some misinformation on that checkuser page, some people are still confusing the two of us.

It started when Huldra claimed:

"*(Oh, I was going to add that many of the new editors sounded exactly the same to me, but then I saw this: Misplaced Pages:Requests for checkuser/Case/Einsteindonut. I guess that explains a bit.) Regards, Huldra (talk) 10:52, 29 September 2008 (UTC)"

It then continued with Perdito wrongly claiming that a recent "incident" has something to do with me and that I am the whole reason for it

Perdito then claimed that I am a racist because I posted a video he didn't like as I was trying to make a larger context point saying that many "antisemitism" cases could be prevented if more people tried to focus on positive things about Jews and Israel (as opposed to the negative which oftentimes seems to plague many sources and WP.) I was just trying to make a general point, not claim racial or religious superiority. Perhaps the point was lost on him and perhaps posting that video was not the right thing to do, but it was merely trying to highlight Jewish/Israeli contributions (vs. the obsession we see all over the place of alleged war crimes and oppression, etc.)

Perdito verified that he thinks I am Sax and thus I am to blame for the entire incident (which had nothing to do with me.)

I'd just let the record show that while I did have multiple accounts (in which I established when I first started out and didn't even realize it was "against the rules,") I don't think I ever used them abusively except for one time in order to avoid the 3RR. Since that time, I was blocked for one week and had stopped using the multiple accounts for a long time prior and made an agreement with myself that I was not going to use them anymore as soon that I understood that it was wrong.

Sax had an indef. ban which was reversed because of the mistake. There were other mistakes with the checkuser as well. I'm just posting this to show how one "checkuser" mistake has now led two editors to have the wrong impression of me and to not AGF, so if there's anything you can do to help, I'd appreciate it.

It might also interesting to note that all of this happened as a result of me originally bringing up a case of someone posting a flag of Jihad and swastikas on my profile and on an article in which I was working on. Seems that people who are dealing with these problems might be facing some unfair consequences merely for our pro-Israel views. It also seems that many pro-Israel editors are "throwing in the towel" on WP because of these issues. It is my hope that WP can be more fair in the future toward myself and others. --Einsteindonut (talk) 23:11, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

We would need verification by ArbCom or Faysaal himself before we can do anything, as we cannot act on hearsay, no offense. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 23:21, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I understand. I have notified Fayssal of the issue. Well, what do you think about Perdito not AGF here and labeling me a racist for the video I posted? --Einsteindonut (talk) 23:27, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I think it's worthy of a warning for personal attacks, but not any further admin action. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 00:21, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Einsteindonut: firstly: could you please change the weasel word you use about me? You say "Huldra claimed".. Now, "claimed" is listed as a weasel word. If you changed it to "Huldra wrote", then it would be perfectly neutral. Thank you.

Secondly, you write that this "has now led two editors to have the wrong impression of me and to not AGF". But Einsteindonut: WP:AGF does certainly not demand us to disbelieve a checkuser report! I do follow AGF, and I believe checkuser,..until, (possibly) the checkuser is changed. Regards, Huldra (talk) 00:01, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't believe it is necessary. You were, in fact, claiming that some new editors sound exactly the same to you. This is not a WP article, so I'm not sure of I have to make an incident report "neutral." You did make a claim, so I wrote it as such. I don't believe the issue is with you, though you were the first to use the inaccurate checkuser report to back your claim. My issue is more with the checkuser report, for the simple fact that it is causing people to assume bad faith and make false claims. In other words, I'm blaming the checkuser report, not you. --Einsteindonut (talk) 01:00, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Huldra, WP:WEASEL and WP:NPOV are both article policies and have no bearing at all on ANI. ED, you might want to request another RFCU to prove your innocence if it cannot be proved with whatever communication ArbCom of Faysaal himself has. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 01:05, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, Erik. I did send an email correspondence with ArbCom and the Ombudspeople (again.) I also notified Fayssal. I'm not sure how to request another RFCU? I've never done it in the first place, but if an admin w/ checkuser power (if there is such a thing) can could help, I'd appreciate it. Thanks again. --Einsteindonut (talk) 01:21, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Go to the WP:RFCU page and follow the instructions there. However, it is best to wait for a response from The Powers That Be first, before you get into the RFCU drama. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 03:08, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Dignity to all

(cross-posted at Misplaced Pages talk:IPCOLL)

The CU result found out Saxophonemn and Einsteindonut editing from different locations but using the same user agent. Saxophonemn identified himself later on. I then unblocked him with a "I trust user's e-mails to prove innocence" rationale.

I hope that would stop the never-ending mutual accusations and provocations. I amazed by all those cartoons and incivility (Eleland), Mark Twain's irrelevant quote (Saxophonemn) video (Einsteindonut) and Jaakobou (comments directed at Tiamut a few weeks earlier), etc... Do we still block for wp:POINT, unnecessary and inflammatory acts?

Admins, please sort out the mess with objectivity and profesionalism and please stop arguing about WP:UNINVOLVED. This message is directed mainly to ChrisO and Elonka. I urge both of these admins to stop it or let others deal with the sitaution(s).

Partisans, please don't flood threads with repetitive wikilawyering.

To everyone, there's one important thing to all of us... Dignity. To understand racism we must first understand dignity. Let's start with this... Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them. (Aristotle)

P.S. By the way Erik, CU on oneself to prove innocence "are rarely accepted, please do not ask." And the issue of Saxophonemn/Einsteindonut has already been clarified. As I said above, accusations of sockpuppetry should stop. Any further accusation would be faced by a block. And any further provocative comments from any side would be faced with harsh blocks. -- fayssal - wiki up 03:24, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

"The CU result found out Saxophonemn and Einsteindonut editing from different locations but using the same user agent." - TRANSLATION: The two users were editing from two completely different locations, but are both mac people who (like most mac people) update their software regularly. From the very beginning, I tried explaining this and Sax disputed it as well. Lesson learned? Two mac people should not have similar POV's and work on the same articles or else you risk unfair blocks and false allegations of sockpuppetry. Again, while it might have been out of place to share the video, I explained the context of why I was doing it. It was not to inflame nor provoke. Regarding honors and dignity, I prefer this Twain quote:

"It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them." -Mark Twain

Thanks. --Einsteindonut (talk) 03:57, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Hey Donut,

Just as a courtesy, you should inform users personally that you're taking things up with them on this board. You didn't. Live and learn.

As for your accusation of me accusing you of racism and not WP:AGF... Well... I'll WP:AGF and assume you have some kind of massive reading-comprehension disability. I presented you with an example of how your words could be misinterpreted as racist, formulated as a suggestion for a new and inexperienced editor. Where you get me accusing you of racism and bad faith, I can't imagine.

Cheers, pedrito - talk - 01.10.2008 07:01

No "massive reading-comprehension disability" here, just the ability to read between the lines. I'll admit posting the video here was out-of-line. However, you seem to have missed the point as to why I posted it and then suggested that I might have been using it to insinuate Jewish/Israeli superiority or supremacy, when you said,""You wouldn't be using it to insinuate anything like Jewish/Israeli superiority or supremacy, now, would you?"The fact that you said a beat later that you will AGF does not necessarily make it so, as you used the same technique above to AGF to "assume you have some kind of massive reading-comprehension disability." Your usage of an "AGF disclaimer" doesn't necessarily shield one from NOT assuming good faith and from NOT making personal attacks (as you have now done how many times?) In other words, (despite my alleged "reading comprehension disability") it's very clear to me that you are not AGF and you are also personally attacking me. If you were offended by the video, I'm sorry. I didn't make it, I posted it, again, to give others like yourself some perspective. --Einsteindonut (talk) 07:29, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Aha, so you're saying the racism happened in your head (i.e. "read between the lines")? So everybody should take your commentary at face value with a dose of good faith while you're free to read racism between the lines everywhere else? Not very convincing and not really WP:AGFing on your behalf...

This discussion is more than over. pedrito - talk - 01.10.2008 14:45

P.S. Erik, if you can show me where I don't WP:AGF and accuse Donut of racism, I will gladly take any warning to heart. I just really don't see where that happened... Cheers and thanks, pedrito - talk - 01.10.2008 07:01

I wasn't saying you had, I just meant (maybe I came across wrong) that if you had, then it would be warranting of a block. Let's all calm down and get back to what we're supposed to be doing here: writing an encyclopedia. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 23:16, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Are you still debating here instead of collaborating in writing an encyclopedia? Do you both need some bit of dignity or prefer some blocks? -- fayssal - wiki up 17:48, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if that was directed at me, but I believe I have the right to clarify and discuss my POV with regard to the incident in which I am bringing up. Efforts of collaboration are stifled because of these issues, so I believe working out these issues are, in fact, aiding in the collaborative effort of the encyclopedia. If that was a threat of blocking me (yet again) then I really do not appreciate it. This issue is not quite "resolved," and I do not see you nor ArbCom doing much to help clear my name or Sax's name despite the fact that the checkuser was inaccurate.--Einsteindonut (talk) 23:56, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't see how making your user page into a pseudo attack page here helps your cause. Get out a piece of paper and a pencil and take notes, or open an editor on your own computer and copy and paste to it. Copying pieces of conversations on another users talk page and placing them on your user page, AND then making a listing of administrators, attributing them as supporters of the content of the dispute because of their support in reduction of a block, appears as a smear campaign. Perhaps you should take a step back from the Eleland dispute and assess your motives. I notice a distinct lack of participation in it by Sax, or are you lobbying on his behalf? AGF is well and good, but stretching it to its limits will eventually render it invalid.--JavierMC 02:49, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice and no I'm not lobbying on behalf of Sax.

Einsteindonut, this is not the place to "clarify and discuss POV". Your doing so at length on this forum has become quite disruptive and is starting to test the community's patience. It would perhaps be forgivable if there was evidence from your content contributions that you are here to improve the encyclopaedia by an examination of your <200 edits to mainspace in the time which you have been active since early August. Why are you here? I mean this in all seriousness, as a significant content contributor myself. Are you here to participate or simply to argue and do battle? If the latter, I suggest you go find, or start, a blog. If you wish to participate, then do so and spend your time more productively than coming here and making loaded accusations against a wide range of people. Orderinchaos 03:31, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm here because I have every right to be here. I wasn't aware of any editing quotas which had to be filled. Some people have jobs. I'm not asking for your forgiveness because I don't believe I've done anything wrong. I'm bringing an issue up to the admins and ArbCom hoping they can help. Thank you for your advice. --Einsteindonut (talk) 04:46, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Can we close this? Jd2718 (talk) 03:45, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not really satisfied that no official action has been taken on the checkuser page. I have put my own disclaimer there but it would be more meaningful coming from ArbCom or an admin who can do it. I think the fact that a checkuser is at least 50% wrong is troublesome. --Einsteindonut (talk) 04:46, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Something Awful has a contest for vandalism

An anonymous IP vandalized my page with a pretty familiar catchphrase, so I checked the forum it came from and discovered they've organized a contest to subtlety vandalize Misplaced Pages. Here is the thread with all the information. I don't know how these situations are typically approached, or even if it's worth looking into, but I thought it could be useful to somebody here. Thanks, Cumulus Clouds (talk) 03:23, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

There is really not much that we can do here, I recommend that if you really want something done about it you contact the site admin of the external site. Tiptoety 04:02, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• Yea right. In the mean time I hope everyone keeps a sharp eye out. Cumulus Clouds (talk) 04:10, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Yawn, WP:RBI when it's noticed, but thanks for the heads up. No need to give them anymore reason to act like they've pwned Misplaced Pages. Wildthing61476 (talk) 04:14, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• Well I'm not so sure that this form of vandalism will be very easy to detect, so I'm hoping people will review the link and head over to recent changes and be sure that any statistics, population figures or noncontroversial information changes are sourced reliably and anything that isn't is reverted back. Cumulus Clouds (talk) 21:36, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

So no one else has to, I've gone through all the contributions of 75.62.177.116 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log), the one on SA who announced the "contest", and verified that none of his garbage remains. (They'd already been completely undone by others; good work.) Antandrus (talk) 21:47, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

The IP should probably be blocked if they are a persistent vandal. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 23:18, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

The last time we had an external forum having a vandalism game, I managed to straighten it out with them. However, as SA requires paid registration, I can't do it here. Someone else might want to try taking it to that forum and explain our case. -Jéské 23:21, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

You obviously don't understand goons very well. Jtrainor (talk) 00:32, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Erik, the IP only vandalized for a 24-hour run a year and a half ago. There's no evidence it is static, or a recurring problem; look at the contributions. I see no point in blocking an anonymous IP a year and a half after the fact. It would be different if it were a logged-in user. Antandrus (talk) 00:36, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I was just saying that if the IP did start committing a massive vandalism spree, it should be blocked. Kind of stating the obvious, but... Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 00:42, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Repeated personal attacks, abuse and wikistalking by Mathsci

• Mathsci (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Summary I’m reporting Mathsci for his repeated attacks at me. During the past days he has wiki-stalked me and in different edits called me a troll, called me unintelligent, ridiculed my ability to think, mocked my English skills and called me a drama-queen. I’ve tried to resolve the issue at his talk page three times now, but instead of engaging in any discussion he just continues to direct personal abuse at me. This has been going on for several days and he has been warned both by myself and by other users, but as he keeps ignoring all calls for him to improve his behaviour, I’ve taken the issue here.

The whole thing started with a comment I made about an article I perceived to be in bad shape . Let me stress that this is not a good comment and I can understand other editors correcting me, as one did in a civil manner and we have both since enjoyed a long and constructive discussion about how to improve the page. Mathsci, however, took this as a pretext for starting many days of abuse and wiki-stalking of me. His first response was to call me a troll . As I have close to 4.000 edits on Misplaced Pages and not a single block, why would I start trolling now? He continued by calling me unintelligent . Since that, he has followed my edits and edited Marseille, Aix-en-Provence and Puyricard immediately after me, which seems to prove that he’s watching my edits. He has been so eager to attack me that he did not even bother to check which articles I were editing, and had to revert himself in the article , and remove the accusation he had left at my user page , . Most people with a sense of decency would at least have apologised then. Instead, Mathsci went back and searched for another error and have now decided that Aix wasn't the capital of Provence - despite him claiming yesterday that such was the case . This is fine, factual disagreements are a part of Misplaced Pages, but apart from targeting my changes Mathsci always use highly offensive and aggressive language. Instead of just changing my edit, he felt the need to explicitly point this out to me on my talk page, to tell me that my English is bad and that I’m unable to think . This is the behaviour of a bully, not someone interested in improving Misplaced Pages.

After Mathschi’s first attacks, I wrote to him twice on his talk page to resolve the issue, but his only response was to delete my comments , . He has been showing bad faith from the beginning, not only in the troll comment but later on when he mistakenly accused me for editing Marseille in bad faith on my talk page . When he thought I had claimed Marseille to be the old capital of Marseille, Mathsci claimed that that capital was Aix . When he discovered that that was exactly what I had said already the first time, he immediately changed his mind about Aix being the capital of Provence so that he could continue to attack me. Not only that, but he attacks my language skills and my ability to think . (Ironically, he claim that since I called Aix the "ancient capital" of Aix, my English skills are bad , yet Mathsci wrote exactly the same thing .) At this point I took it to his talk page a final time to ask him to stop this disruptive behaviour, but he just answered with still more abuse . At that point an administrator stepped in to warn Mathsci over his personal attacks directed at me and point out that he has been warned for this kind of behaviour before , but his only response was to delete that comment, as he had done with all the other comments about his behaviour. As I’m fed up with having a user calling me all kind of names, questioning both my English skills and my intelligence and following me around from page to page, I’m filing this report. I believe users like Mathsci do more damage than good to Misplaced Pages.JdeJ (talk) 10:06, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

On a side note, this is nothing new. Mathsci has been blocked for harassing other users before. JdeJ (talk) 10:24, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• On reading your diffs I can see why you are upset. Mathsci's latest comment to Elonka that more than edit summaries are required for blocking is incorrect and I agree that a block should occur if the editor offends in this way again. That said it appears that Elonka's warning has provided an at least 8 or 9 hour respite and we can only hope that the editor take that warning to heart. I suggest that this thread is left open for a short time and you come back should you be again targeted. Others may feel that Mathsci is blocked now - I do not as yet - but I would not argue against any other admin that does.--VS 11:07, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• I'm not sure about the respite, after Elonka's warning, one of the last things Mathsci made before going off-line was this comment . It's not as serious as the previous ones, but he agains takes the time to call my good-faith edit to Aix "silly and unhelpful" and "Surely, Elonka, you cannot be serious?". I also object to his repeated accusations that I "blanked one third of a page". I removed a table from a page and I have pointed out in detail why I did so, having found several errors in the page. He is as free to disagree with me as any other user, but it's neither constructive nor intended to stop the fight that he keeps repeating this accusation against me of blanking (=vandalism) even after I've gone to great lengths to outline the errors I perceived to be quite severe in the table I removed. JdeJ (talk) 11:56, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• This discussion should be happening at wikiquette alerts. If a user is having difficult communications, it is best to approach them in a less heated manner than to threaten blocks. Editors who have a history of conflict with Mathsci should back away from the situation. The goal is not to antagonize Mathsci until they crack and provide a reason to be blocked. If we are trying to actually help Mathsci and JdeJ to get along and edit collaboratively, uninvolved editors who have no history with these users should help. I oppose blocking good faith contributors, except as a last resort. Several uninvolved editors should watch the situation and counsel Mathsci in an effort to avoid a block. I also do not see evidence of stalking. If Mathsci has followed JdeJ to completely unrelated articles, please post diffs, otherwise, avoid making unfounded accusations of a serious nature. Jehochman 12:59, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
  • If I recall correctly, this was brought to WQA at one point.... Ncmvocalist (talk) 13:08, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
    • I did find it after some digging (Misplaced Pages:Wikiquette_alerts/archive49#User:Mathsci), but I'll leave it to others who've looked at this incident to comment on its relevance (if any). Ncmvocalist (talk) 13:13, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
      • The relevancy is questionable, at best. The editor who filed that complaint ended up indefinitely blocked for serious policy violations. I filed Misplaced Pages:Requests for checkuser/Case/Perusnarpk which lead to the block. Jehochman 13:23, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
        • I don't dispute Jehochman's version for a second, my impression of him is that he is an honest and helpful administrator. But Jehochman, when you talk about uninvolved administrators without a history with any of us, isn't it so that you have a history of standing up for Mathsci? I don't claim for a moment that that would make you any less suited in this situation, but surely the same would go for administrators who have previously been involved with him or me in both good and bad ways? JdeJ (talk) 13:43, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
          • Everyone is free to comment here, no matter what their level of involvement. Since I became aware that Mathsci has had some difficulties, I have been trying to help them, as I do for many editors. As it happens, in at least one instance Mathsci was being persecuted by a pack of disruptive accounts. Other administrators agreed, and those accounts were blocked. Jehochman 14:17, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
• About the accusation of stalking, it is of course impossible to ever prove for sure. I do however find it strange that immediately after Mathsci first called me a troll and unintelligent, he followed me to Marseille , to Aix-en-Provence and to Puyricard . The last of these, Puyricard is an article that Mathsci had never edited before, it begs belief that he just happened to go to it for the first time ever by pure chance immediately after I went there. So yes, I think that the accusation of stalking is at least not unfounded, since it's rather obvious that Mathsci is wathcing my contributions. Nor do I see him as a good-faith contributor, he has repeatedly been showing bad faith and continued to do so even after I've tried to explain the reasons behind my edits. I wish to add that I took matters here as a last resort after having tried to discuss the matters directly with Mathsci three times, only to be met with new abuses each time. JdeJ (talk) 13:37, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Okay, that is evidence of troublesome behavior. Can we wait for Mathsci to respond now, and see if they are willing to comply with my request? Jehochman 14:17, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

JdeJ's assessment of the situation with Jehochman is correct, in that Jehochman does often run interference for Mathsci and try to protect him from sanctions. So I would recommend that Jehochman try not to post too much in this thread, and instead allow other more uninvolved admins to participate. As for my own opinion, I have been observing Mathsci's behavior with concern for a few months now, since it was brought to my attention that he was engaged in a dispute with Michellecrisp (talk · contribs). Mathsci appears to have a tendency to stalk users with whom he is in a conflict, and he tends to make the same comments as he has towards JdeJ, accusing them of trolling and low intelligence. It's easy enough to spot, as he frequently puts his insults right into edit summaries. Mathsci does do good work on articles, and multiple admins have tried communicating with him both on- and off-wiki to try and get him to work in a more collaborative manner. He has received multiple on-wiki cautions, on his talkpage, other admins' talkpages, and at the Math WikiProject. Unfortunately, Mathsci has not taken these cautions to heart, as the behavior has continued unabated, even though he was already blocked once for harassment. Bottom line, I would support a block, whether it be now, or if he has another inappropriate outburst in the future. Though he's a good writer, this does not outweigh all the good writers who we may lose, because they are driven away by his antagonistic attitude. --Elonka 16:05, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Since Jehochman's note, Mathsci has refactored two of the offending comments (, ). That's encouraging. Let's do what we can to promote de-escalation rather than assuming that another outburst, and a block, are "inevitable". Let's extend Mathsci a fraction of the forbearance routinely lavished upon editors with less constructive material to their credit. Some of his commentary and edit summaries were out of line; JdeJ was certainly correct to raise the concern. Given some of the history, I think Mathsci is more likely to respond positively to commentary from admins other than Elonka. I will be happy to add my voice to Jehochman's asking Mathsci to disengage and interact more civilly. If that fails, we can revisit the issue. MastCell  16:52, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

While I understand why this complaint has been brought, I also have considerably more background. User:Paul August and I have been working to put in place some effective mediation within the Mathematics WikiProject. Both editors involved are experts, and we can ill afford to lose either of them. Without going into details, I have very good reason to believe that the root causes of the dispute (rather than the behavioural symptoms) are something that can be treated. Therefore I request a measured approach. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:55, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Support deferring to Charles and Paul. I see much merit in allowing experienced, involved (in content, not in conflict) editors take a crack at this. Thank you, Charles. Jd2718 (talk) 17:03, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• Indeed, I think allowing Charles and Paul's mediation measures time to get up-and-running (and to have an impact on the productivity and volumes of behavioural problems at the Mathematics WikiProject) would be the best course of action for the time being. In 2-3 months' time (time scale adjustable, with Charles' input: how long do you anticipate the new strategy should take to work), should their measures not be as successful as one would hope, we can re-assess the matter, with a view to how to tackle the matter. I suggest the specific complaint brought against Mathsci be closed in lieu of the ongoing progress at WQA, and any action that would otherwise be taken waived in favour of the mediation strategy being implemented. Let's go softly-softly, here; the blockhammer is probably not the most helpful option. Anthøny ✉ 17:13, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

On time-scale, there are matters relating to policy and its application to discuss, which should be a relatively short business. Defusing the animus that has got mixed up in this affair might take longer, but an agreement between the editors to keep away from each other on the site might also be put in place without too much ado, while we work on it. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:54, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree that Mathsci may be more responsive to commentary from admins other than Elonka. Both Jehochman and Mathsci endorsed her adminship recall proposal that was initiated by the former editor. Her comment here may be seen as retaliation for those endorsements by some. Others may see it as a pointed disregard of Mathsci's earlier and politely worded request that she not involve herself in this matter and is thereby intended to be provocative. While I assume that her comments are well-intentioned, I think it best to avoid any possible appearance to the contrary unless the circumstances are compelling. I am troubled, too, by the "inevitable" wording that contrasts with the exemplary tolerance that she has extended to editors who are far less constructive than Mathsci. Toning down that sentence was helpful. I think a measured approach is indicated in this matter. Walter Siegmund (talk) 17:20, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I have replied to MastCell on my talk page, where all is revealed. Many thanks for the measured and helpful comments here. Mathsci (talk) 19:44, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I would like to add that this matter is resolved, as far as I am concerned. It was unfortunate that Mathsci and I got off to a bad start but the situation has calmed down and I'm sure we'll be able to co-operate in a constructive way in the future. I most certainly do not want to see Mathsci blocked, he has made many constructive edits and is valuable to Misplaced Pages. He has offered his apologies and I've offered mine for our heated exchange and I believe that no more needs to be said about it. I wish to thank the other users and administrators involved in this discussions for constructive and meaningful comments that helped to diffuse the situation. JdeJ (talk) 20:19, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Disruptive edits and other abuse by Rhodescholar2, Fumblingfoe and 69.143.57.71

Several issues, which is why I posted here rather on a specific board, dealing with two accounts and one IP, sock-puppetry issue reported here.

Vandalism:

• Numerous acocunts, resulting in warnings: final warning to User:Fumblingfoe and final warning to 69.143.57.71.

Threat of legal action

• this edit by User:Rhodesscholar2.

Personal attacks

• This edit and this edit by 69.143.57.71.

Babakathy (talk) 10:38, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I will block Rhodesscholar2 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), who has no useful contributions, indef for legal threats and as someone's sock. I haven't time to address the IP issue, sorry.  Sandstein  10:50, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Whatever's left appears to be more of a content dispute and does not appear to need immediate admin intervention.  Sandstein  20:06, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

More abuse by User:ㄏㄨㄤㄉㄧ

This has gone way too far. This user has persisted in added erroneous information to a large number of articles. In particular, I was horrified that this user has made a highly racist edit and got away with it. It seems that the user is attempting to push forward fringe views. Note that I have reported this user aleady a few days ago for personal attacks and possible sockpuppetry.

In fact this user has been accused of sockpuppetry by an administrator on this same page (you can also see my other report about the user in question on the link provided as well) . Also, the edit histories of the sockpuppet user pages and talk pages contain extremely racist content about Turks, Mongols, Altaic peoples, etc.

To add insult to injury, the user is still allowed to edit. I urge the administrators to take action against this user now. I really have a bad feeling that this case will drag on and eventually end up in ArbCom. I am sick and tired of seeing this user's racist rants and spurious edits. 122.105.147.101 (talk) 13:00, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

You might try WP:AIV, on the grounds of vandalism and also an inappropriate user ID. Baseball Bugs 13:15, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I remember reading someone mention that with the new unified IDs, we should be expecting non-english character IDs on the english wikipedia (this was made I believe in the case of one being all arabic).--Crossmr (talk) 22:03, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

The user has not been warned at all, so AIV would be inappropriate right now. I suggest warning the user and taking it from there. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 00:49, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

The complainant at least owes the Chinese editor a warning, for sure. Baseball Bugs 02:02, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Brilliant, his username "ㄏㄨㄤ=huang ,ㄉㄧ=di" literally means Emperor in the Chinese language and I expect that he wants to be treated like one on Wikipedian. Here's the new, Emperors are a thing of the past and consider him to be on my radar from this moment on. Whatever inflammatory or racially charged statement he makes here will earn him the wiki-gressional medal of blocking. --Dave1185 (talk) 01:23, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

And it looks like he won't be able to get away with being uncivil in Chinese. Baseball Bugs 02:02, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Just to point out Um....it doesn't seem like Chinese Huang Di to me. Huang Di in chinese is: 皇帝. NOT ㄏㄨㄤㄉ. Unless of course, wikipedia uses something that's a Internation version which I wouldn't know (only know basic chinese). Google actually gives me this weird translation: Ⓒ ㄤ 's construction of hot (http://translate.google.com/translate_t#zh-CN%7Cen%7C%E3%84%8F%E3%84%A8%E3%84%A4%E3%84%89%E3%84%A7%0A ) Lots of words characters sound the same in Chinese, they don't mean the same thing.ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 03:40, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

In any case, this edit is cause for concern. Why else would the user name in question be used? 122.109.121.250 (talk) 05:40, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

It's Huangdi in Zhuyin. But that's besides the fact. Someone should give Huangdi a strong and final warning that if his behavior continues, he will find himself unable to edit the English Misplaced Pages.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 07:16, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I've given Huangdi a stern warning. I've found other editing abuses by him as well as his massive user page.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 07:52, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

There's already a User:Huangdi - the same name, but in the Latin alphabet instead of Zhuyin. The similarity might be a problem. --Amble (talk) 08:10, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism and personal attacks and racist commentary

I am posting here to report persistent vandalism and personal attacks by the User:Nick Finnsbury. The case goes a long way back, to a template he created called {{Infobox Arab villages depopulated}}, a duplicate of an existing infobox. Following a deletion discussion, where clear consensus was reached to delete the template, I have started restoring the old infobox by User:Al Ameer son to the relevant articles in order to orphan Nick's template for deletion. Nick apparently took personal offense to this, even though when the TfD was opened, he was told that it wasn't personal. In any case, this isn't important at the moment, as many of my edits have been reverted so the template is again not orphaned and impossible to delete. I left messages on Nick's talk page asking not to restore the deleted template, but apparently he chose not to listen.

After a short time, I got this message from Nick, saying, among other things: I know all those tricks and I know your peoples tricks., and: But to start delting my template, without any consensus have been reached is so outrageous, that you sjhould really worry, if you can stay here on Misplaced Pages, editing freely, the way you do. I would be VERY worried if I were you.

The first is clearly racist, while the second seems to be a personal threat. However, the above is less important than orphaning the template, and to that end I also left a message on the closing admin's talk page asking to oversee the process, and only came here to WP:ANI after the personal attacks. Please help me orphan this template so that it can be properly deleted. Thanks, Ynhockey 13:30, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

My rule is: I block IPs on sight for racist, sexist, and homophobic vandalism. Bearian (talk) 14:29, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I endorse Ynhockey's point. I am not sure if Nick's suggestions about varying the template are completely wrong, but he has personalised his disagreements with Ynhockey, and herestabbed at identifying his place of residence, and used language that is racist. He needs an immediate suspension for the racism. Since he is a newbie, the sanction should have a sharp, brief monitory function, to make him cut the conspiracy chat, and ethnic sniping. As a first time offender, perhaps a few days.Nishidani (talk) 15:37, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I've removed all links to the template and deleted it. I think a block is more than warranted even if he hasn't been warned - the comments (particularly those Nishidani linked to) are beyond the limit of acceptability. A read of his talkpage (comments like "I make them regret, that they are born into this world at the same time as I") suggest that he has no concept of NPOV. пﮟოьεԻ 57 16:01, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

There are lots of worries with this user's contribs. I would not have blocked for the racist but not utterly hateful remarks about "pale Russians" but rather, would've left a very stern warning. However, taken altogether, the contributions are disruptive and I have blocked for 48 hours, given the user has not been blocked before. Gwen Gale (talk) 16:26, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Not sure how to deal with this query about links to 'private servers' in a game's article

I've had the following request for help:

Hi, just wondering if you could deal with a vandalizing user: User_talk:67.79.54.130, who recently added an illegal private server to the Rose Online article. Thanks! --Resplendent (talk) 03:48, 1 October 2008 (UTC).

These servers are being discussed on the talk page here: -- this is an area where I have to plead ignorance -- can we have links to/discussions about private servers for games such as this? Thanks. Doug Weller (talk) 13:40, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• Why on earth would we want to link to any servers? It's not as if they are sources for encyclopaedic content, and Misplaced Pages is not a link farm. I think a more productive discussion for the talk page would be: why does this article have not one single reliable independent source? Guy (Help!) 14:17, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• As I said on the talk page, links to such servers can be removed because they are being added without any third party sources. If you (or others) find third party sources that discuss a certain private server or private servers in general, there is nothing illegal about linking to one. I agree w/ guy that it is hard to envision a reason one would link directly to a web page for a private server unless that specific server has been discussed in a RS before. But they aren't "illegal" in the united states (I don't know about Korea). Protonk (talk) 14:55, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
• Private servers are nothing new and don't warrant mentioning any more than a game being copied, unless something in particular is covered in reliable sources, but even then it may be a 'general' look rather than pointing to a particular server. Even if that's the case, the server itself doesn't require a link. Someoneanother 17:29, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Bad faith edits from user

Andrew Nutter (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) The user has a long history of making uncited POV changes, despite many warnings about it (note how often his talk page has been blanked). I posted this on the Admin Intervention page, and they recommended I post here.--Rsl12 (talk) 14:38, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Is he trying to use us as a webhost? I'm not sure what is 'Drewpedia', which he seems to view as his personal version if Misplaced Pages, is meant to be User:Andrew Nutter/Drewpedia but I'm pretty dubious about it. Doug Weller (talk) 14:54, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I do not see anything requiring administrator intervention here. See my reply on my talk page. Equendil Talk 14:57, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

He's only made 3 mainspace edits in the last week...and 2 were essentially the same edit...and one is still there. Seems good faith...maybe a wee misguided in his understanding of POV, but he does not seem to repost the material if it is reverted. --Smashville 17:25, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough--I saw all the template exclamation marks in the user talk, many of which were repeats, and I probably should have looked a little closer as to the content of those. I'll assume 'a little misguided' for now.--Rsl12 (talk) 18:26, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Edit war issue with List of all-female bands

I had requested Mod assistance here:User:Duffbeerforme_reported_by_Soundvisions1 however the result was "No violation" and a suggestion to start a thread here.

The main revisions/revert as I posted yesterday follow

Diffs are listed from oldest to newest, dates are in UTC

1. 09:26, 24 September 2008 (edit summary: "remove some non notable")
2. 09:41, 24 September 2008 (edit summary: "B")
3. 11:19, 25 September 2008 (edit summary: "remove nn, fix links")
4. 08:56, 29 September 2008 (edit summary: "Undid revision 241217003 by Soundvisions1 (talk)")
5. 09:46, 30 September 2008 (edit summary: "remove readded")

• Diff of warning: http://en.wikipedia.org/User_talk:Duffbeerforme#Please_discuss_before_delete.

Despite the above warning to "discuss before delete" I awoke to find the list had been reverted again and discussion consisted of, in my opinion, Duffbeerforme essentially saying Misplaced Pages guidelines have no importance unless they suit his or her needs.

Comparison of yesterdays (30 September 2008) revision to "original state" and todays edits (1 October 2008), which Duffbeerforme has called "minor": (Difference between revisions)

I redirected Duffbeerforme to a larger discussion on the "Misplaced Pages:Notability/RFC:compromise" to which Duffbeerforme responded "The discussion at the RFC has no bearing on the contents of this list." When citing the main articles GNG and the spin off list as it relates to current Misplaced Pages guidelines (Such as where a list without reliable third-party sources can inherit notability from another notable article as long as their are specific notability guidelines set forth) the response was: "Your statement about this list being a spin off article from the All-female band article addresses the notability of the list itself, not all of it's contents". I have cited that the spin-off list in question does have an SNG (Misplaced Pages guidelines say that Lists should begin with a lead section that presents unambiguous statements of membership criteria) that states how an act might be included on the list. Duffbeerforme replies to this: "The lists lead section you quoted is not a notability guideline".

Duffbeerforme is making his repeated deletions based on what seems to be his personal opinion of any artist not having a Misplaced Pages page is not notable. I have raised this issue before, including on this lists talk page, because there is no mention of it at Misplaced Pages:Notability, List Guidelines or Notability (music). It is also an accepted Misplaced Pages policy that "I never heard of them" is not a valid reason for deletion on it's own. In looking at another spin off list, List of guitarists, as an example it follows the main articles GNG but adds the SNG of "This list of guitarists includes guitarists for whom there is an article in Misplaced Pages. Only add names here if the person has their own article on Misplaced Pages, please. Anything else will be removed." The list that Duffbeerforme is, at this point, vandalizing, does not have that requirement. The requirements for List of all-female bands are that, to be included on this list, a band must consist of all females and play their own instruments and can not be a solo artist. Furthermore to be included on the list a band must be "notable" examples of an all female band or a "canonical example" of an all female band. The debatable issue currently is the word "or" because by definition it means 1 or 2, not both, however could include both. Based on the parent article and the spin off list "notable" could mean a few things, including, but not limited to, the simple fact the band is all female. But "canonical" as it relates to the parent article and the spin off list means: "conforming to a general rule or acceptable procedure" which in this case is being an all female band.

The other issue that Duffbeerforme uses to defend their repeated deletions is that none of the deleted source have citations attached to them. (The verifiability policy states that if material is challenged or likely to be challenged, it is the responsibility of the editor who adds or restores the material to an article to cite sources for that material) In looking over other lists that are also spin off lists I do not see citations included. This would make sense as these are spin off articles/lists where the citations come from the main article. As an example take a look at List of Academy Award-winning films. According to Duffbeerforme's current personal opinion many of the films on the lists would not be "notable" enough to be included because they have no Misplaced Pages page. He or she would delete them with no discussion and if someone were to restore them the argument would be they are non notable films.

Duffbeerforme makes reference to "Two other editors" who have made edits that I have restored. What he or she does not care to acknowledge is that one of them (I am not aware of the other) took an active part in the discussion and has not made daily deletions or started an Edit War. Per the warning given to Duffbeerforme of Please do not repeatedly revert edits, but use the talk page to work towards wording and content that gains a consensus among editors that has not been followed I look to find a resolution. I think looking at the users log might lead to a thought that there is a possibility that Duffbeerforme is a Deletionist, while this is not a reason for action on it's own the methods they are using are. Please note that I am not undoing Duffbeerforme's current edits but would ask another person, preferably a mod, do it along with issuing another warning provided you feel what I am saying is valid. Soundvisions1 (talk) 15:21, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:Lists_(stand-alone_lists)#Lead_and_selection_criteria, which states: "Each entry on a list should have its own non-redirect article in English Misplaced Pages, but this is not required if the entry is verifiably a member of the listed group, and it is reasonable to expect an article could be forthcoming in the future." - MrOllie (talk) 15:29, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Aside from what I mention above then this would also be another reason for Duffbeerforme to not delete the entries correct? Unless I am misreading it. EDIT: But is a "stand alone list" the same as a "Spin off article/list"? Soundvisions1 (talk) 15:36, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

If they did not have articles, unless it is obvious that they ought to, the practice has long been that they do not get included on a list of this sort--this is exactly the kind of list which is intended by the criteria quoted. Many of us, including myself, watchlist a few lists from which we consistently remove content like this. The solution if you think the bands notable, is to try to make sustainable articles. DGG (talk) 15:52, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Just to be anal for a moment - I did spend some time laying out the issues involved but perhaps I was not clear. The name of the parent article is All-female band. There are some spin off lists including List of all-female bands. In order to be on that list an act has to be, first and foremost, all female. The bands being deleted over and over again are all-female and, even if they do not have a Misplaced Pages article at the moment, are verifiably a member of the listed group. Beyond that some of the acts being deleted contain members who have Misplaced Pages articles or are members of other acts who are contained on the list. Add that to the fact that I did state, pre Duffbeerforme involvement, that when I had the time I would gladly make articles for some of these acts. So how are the facts in the bigger picture not valid? As an example I gave the List of Academy Award-winning films. Based on only one guideline I could go in there and remove any listed film because they do not have a Misplaced Pages page, even if they have won an Academy Award? That does not make logical sense - ok, it does make "sense" if you only base it on "Each entry on a list should have its own non-redirect article in English Misplaced Pages..." but in the larger picture it does not. I need to anal here because I try to be NPOV and part of my quest is to gather information that relates to each individual topic as well as the overall guidelines and policies. Soundvisions1 (talk) 16:26, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Academy Award-winning films are guaranteed to be notable. All female bands aren't, although they may be so. That should be reasonably obvious. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 18:51, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I think DGG's suggested solution ought to work well: First create the article(s) on the band(s) in question, ensuring that they satisfy Misplaced Pages:Notability and Misplaced Pages:Verifiability, and then you will be able to add them to the list without difficulty. SHEFFIELDSTEEL 18:35, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

So thus far the consensus is that, irregardless of a main articles subject matter or a spin-off lists SNG, the only consideration for being included on any list on Misplaced Pages is that the subject has a non-redirect article in English Misplaced Pages. If a subject on a list does not have a non-redirect article it is considered non-notable and should not appear on the list. Soundvisions1 (talk) 02:14, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism and COI on Lurgan

I'm afraid I've potentially stepped over 3RR in reverting vandalism on the Lurgan article (I'll leave it up to someone to slap my wrists if you decide it's not obvious vandalism). User:Kilwilkie, who appears to be a sock puppet of User:Dell1300, has been removing notable people from the article and changing the description of one person from "Died when he threw himself on a box of primed grenades prior to the Battle of the Somme." to "Died when he dropped a live grenade into a box of primed grenades prior to the Battle of the Somme." with no proof or citations. I'm at the stage now where more reverts worry me immensely and would like someone else to take a look. Thanks. --Blowdart | 15:48, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Seems like the user's been doing some vandalism at other pages too, so blocked for 12 hours. The vandalism isn't terribly obvious, but it's still vandalism, so I wouldn't worry about the 3RR violation too much. Cheers. lifebaka++ 17:22, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for blocking this user Lifebaka. Based on the spurious accusation that Kilwilkie made against the longtime and reliable editor User:Epbr123 here I think that this user may warrent a longer block. At the very least this editor will need close scrutiny when the current block expires. MarnetteD | Talk 18:23, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

This page

...reliably crashes Firefox 3.0.2 and shuts down my Linux session. Never had that before with a wikipedia page. Is there some funny javascript on it or something? 130.88.24.189 (talk) 16:28, 1 October 2008 (UTC) Added using Konqueror, since you ask 130.88.24.189 (talk) 16:30, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• Confirm: this page currently reliably crashes Firefox 3.0.2 and X server on Linux; does not crash Firefox 2 under Windows, nor Konqueror under Linux... 131.111.17.247 (talk) 16:53, 1 October 2008 (UTC) PS. probably not JavaScript: switching JavaScript off in Firefox 3.0.2 does not solve the problem, still crashes the same. 131.111.17.247 (talk) 17:03, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

No idea. You might thy heading over to WP:VPT, where more technical-minded people hang out. Cheers. lifebaka++ 17:14, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

The ADHD article and Scuro and Jmh649

scuro (talk has removed the same line of text more then three times on the ADHD article. The line of text was refering to the controversy about ADHD in the lead. This user has also removed previous well formated and peer reviewed sources muiltple times from the lead. Have warrmed him about his edits with no effect. He went to the village pump were this issue was discussed and the conclusion was that the references were less good then what they were repaced with. He still reverted them back. Would appreciate if someone could look into this. ADHD is a page on an important topic. This editor makes it very difficult to make improvement as he just reverts anything that doesn't match his POV back to were it was before.

Many thanks in these matters. --Doc James (talk) 16:42, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I'll note that I'm suffering extremely similar problems with Scuro on the ADHD controversies article, however I believe I am slowly making progress without admin help so don't worry about it if you're busy. 92.4.125.88 (talk) 16:51, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd point out that the "Disorder" section has no sources whatsoever, so removing it isn't controversial. If you could source it, that would be a different matter. Black Kite 17:03, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

This is the line of text that has been removed by scuro greater then three time. This however is just one of the many disruptive and uncooperative edits made by Scuro. If you read thru the talk pages they become apparent. As the user above states he is also doing the same thing on the Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder controversies. Scuro denies the exsistance of any contraversy arround ADHD except when it comes to medicating toddlers:

• ADHD is one of the most controversial psychiatric disorders.

This is perhaps less straightforward than Doc James has said. In fact Doc James has made many changes to the article quite successfully - sometimes 30 a day. There are only a few points of disagreement but DJ has been very upset about these and seems to have had trouble working collaboratively to iron these out. --Vannin (talk) 17:19, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I think a large chunk of the problem with Scuro is essentially one content dispute: that Scuro rejects the existence of any controvery around ADHD. I suspect he honestly believes he's in the right, but his view is so far detached from reality that it is completely incompatible with happy editing. Possibly a RFC over the existence of ADHD controversy would be a more effective way of aiding understanding than trying to get him topic banned. Although admittedly a topic ban would solve the problem by default. 92.4.125.88 (talk) 17:36, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Check talk, I've asked repeatedly that other contributors focus on content and seek consensus on editing. Repeatedly, I have been on the receiving end of personal attacks. Repeatedly, my requests to seek consensus have been ignored. Instead we see a "might is right" approach to editing, where editors make sure something sticks on the page by escalating to edit warring to a point where I will not go. It is only when I have sought outside opinion, which backs up what I have been saying all along, do they relent and allow my edits to sick on the page. http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive_55#WRT_ADHD_Can_one_cite_web_based_information_from_the_Mayo_Clinic.3F

When I have removed something from the page I have clearly stated why in talk. The reasoning has been rock solid and I don't believe DJ has ever made an honest attempt to seek consensus on any specific issue when I raise them on talk. On the ADHD page I don't believe I have had more then several words stick on the page since DJ appeared on the scene. Take a look at the edit summary history. DJ has made hundreds of edits. The few edits of mine that have been allowed to stick are the ones that reinsert material that was already on the page. Even as they file complaints they are doing multiple edits.

In fact, the specific sentence that DJ is complaining about was not removed but inserted lower into the article. If he had read the edit summary he would know this. It was removed from the lead because the sentence, up until today when new sources were offered, was minority opinion of three people who would not be considered experts in the field. I saw no reason to include minority opinion in the lead.

92 has made personal attacks in this hearing, it's just one of many I have endured from both editors. If this case is to be taken seriously, I would want both editors to be considered for censure as part of this process.--scuro (talk) 20:19, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Heh, well that's the last time I stick up for you. 92.4.125.88 (talk) 20:23, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

User:Xasha

This user is causing serious disruption and harm to the project. I believe meaningful action should be taken against him.

First, a bit of background on Xasha. He's from Moldova, and his raison d'être here seems to be to prove that Moldovans are different from Romanians, that the Moldovan language is different from the Romanian language, etc. It's a position I and others firmly disagree with, but one he is entitled to hold. He is, however, not entitled to use the encyclopedia to advance this hypothesis, something he has relentlessly been doing for months on end. He's never written an article, and hardly contributed content; he's the prototypical Eastern European nationalist POV-pusher who trawls about articles in his field, "correcting" "biases" that only he perceives there.

• Xasha has also been blocked seven times in the last four months.
• He is under a topic ban regarding "all edits touching on the historical and ethnic relation between Moldova and Romania".

After his latest block (3 days for revert-warring), Xasha has returned with a vengeance, targeting four articles (Dialect continuum, Vasile Stati, and, in particular, History of the Moldovan language and Moldovan language). He's being incivil (, , ). He's revert-warring (, , and especially ). He's tenaciously editing against consensus by established users Plinul cel tanar, AdiJapan (an admin on ro.wiki), myself, and administrators Gutza and Bogdangiusca (example here). He's pushing to use 17th and 18th century chronicles to advance his POV (without the filer of modern scholarship) - indeed he's doing it.

Xasha has had many months and many blocks to reform his conduct. Instead, he's steadily worsening, spreading his particular POV over a wide array of articles, paying no heed to consensus or 3RR, probably violating his topic ban with impunity, and being incivil in the process. It is clear he is not here to build an encyclopedia but rather to advance an agenda. I for one have had my patience exhausted - what about the rest of the community? Biruitorul 17:39, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I've only recently come head to head with Xasha, but I soon learned he's adamant about his position even in the face of evidence (i.e. sources), and has no problem pretending not to understand the source properly -- and thus simply reverting/removing properly sourced data. Right now he's trying to replicate a fringe theory by Vasile Stati, unrecognized by the scientific community; since Stati is infamously unreliable, Xasha can't cite him, so he's simply pushing for that theory in his own name. Irrespective of all sources, logic and historical truth, that alone is a flagrant breach of all policies related to verifiability and original research -- yet Xasha chooses to see no problem with that. These things have been discussed to death in Talk:History of the Moldovan language, and Xasha has received virtually no support at all; again, not a problem, he storms in, pretends not to understand what's being said and reverts anyone who still has the nerves to touch the article. If left to his own devices, Xasha will most certainly exhaust everybody's patience and will default to a consensus with himself -- that can't be the right outcome. --Gutza 17:53, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

This is nothing but a content dispute. Is not surprising that all the editors enumerated above are self-declared Romanians, thus educated in a country whose govenment denies the right of Moldovans the right to self-identification and refuses to recognize the Moldovan language. The only outside editor who tried to intervene was rapidly sent away by the above Romanian admins. (Sorry for ruining the surprise you prepared for me, guys).Xasha (talk) 18:21, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Since having been given amply opportunity to adjust your editing behavior to adhere to Misplaced Pages policy and guidelines, you continue to exhibit the same pattern of disruptive editing, then you obviously did not take the time the block allowed to familiarize yourself with how to participate on this project. I would support an extensive block or an outright ban. Repeated ignoring of procedures in light of such overwhelming attempts by the community to educate you otherwise, is not a sign of not understanding, it's a sign of not wanting to understand.--JavierMC 18:32, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I adhered to all Misplaced Pages policies, and when I broke 3RR I was the only one blocker, even if another admin broke it too. So please look at the talk page Gutza point to, to see that this group of Romanians want to impose their POV, even if one of them (Gutza) has admited that they have no source to support it, nor have they sources to disprove my view. Consensus is not acquired by canvassing co-nationals to support your original opinion, unsupported by secondary sources, so I have no consensus to adhere to. As for the other articles pointed out by Biruitorul, please note that in Dialect continuum I was just enforcing WP:Verifiability by preventing the use of a source that didn't support the text of the article, as for Vasile Stati that's a sterile request. Of course someone who finished the Institute of Linguistics and then worked for one can be considered a linguist. But again, this is just a content dispute, so I don't see the need of admin intervention (i.e. with his admin tools, cause an outside view is needed in the articles). As for me being "the prototypical Eastern European nationalist POV-pusher ", I consider that a grave personal attack.Xasha (talk) 19:41, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Here's what I have "admitted" to exactly, maybe other people understand it a bit differently: "you're replicating (not even citing) Vasile Stati's fringe theories on Misplaced Pages, and your argumentation is based on the lack of sources to contradict it -- that is, your fringe theory stands until proven wrong". Oh, and I only said that within the context of an abundance of sources, all of which you rejected based on various dubious technicalities. --Gutza 19:44, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

You were more explicite: "I'm not sure there are any reliable sources discussing the matter explicitly -- scientific works everywhere simply use the chronicles to discuss Romanian, without any mention of the original wording"Xasha (talk) 20:12, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I questioned no clear source (and 1 dubious source is nothing close to "an abundance of sources", so please moderate your language), I just questioned whether a dubious passage existed where you claim it is. And I wasn't proved wrong until now! Moreover, it's strange how you suddenly care about primary sources, beacause just days ago you rejected several of them that didn't support your POV.Xasha (talk) 20:21, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure wiki-lawyering will do you any good, but if you really enjoy quoting from me I can only feel flattered. Here's how I clarified that one in the same conversation: "I linked this to Vasile Stati because he was the only one to come up with this original theory which brings controversy around this matter -- without his theory there's no controversy, so you need to find a reliable source who cares enough to go into the issue; given Stati's reputation and his theory's scientific merit, I doubt any serious scientist has wasted time disproving it." It has always been about Stati's fringe theory, and about you not acknowledging serious sources because they don't lower themselves to addressing the issue point blank (i.e. "Stati's theory is BS") -- and anything short of that can be "misunderstood" as not qualifying. --Gutza 20:27, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

That theory is not invented by Stati, and it existed for more than 50 years. Just that nobody but Romanians decided to contest it. Anyway, considering the primary source we have for the matter, it is pretty hard for a neutral scholar to try to deny the evidence without compromising himself.Xasha (talk) 20:39, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not going to get any more deeper into this exchange -- I'm tired arguing with you, nobody reading this benefits from "you too!" statements, and they can make up their own minds reading the talk page (long as it may be, this conversation will end up just as long if nobody stops -- so I will). --Gutza 20:30, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I also invite everyone to read that talk page and see this is nothing but a content dispute some editors want to win by silencing the opposition.Xasha (talk) 20:35, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• Xasha blocked for 1 week for violating topic ban. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:07, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

User:MBoarSidwell

Tried to block for this user's contributions of moving pages to nonsense destinations, see contribs: MBoarSidwell (talk · contribs) but someone already blocked him. Would have been my first. Guess I should have been quicker. User:The Fat Man Who Never Came Back's page has been protected from non-admin moving for 48 hours. --Moni3 (talk) 18:04, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Disruption

Could someone have a look at KingsOfHearts (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and see if any administrator attention is needed? He was blocked about a month ago for disruptive edit summaries. After his return, he used a summary to declare the use of the BCE/CE era style at History of antisemitism to be "very very very very very gay". He's been edit-warring since to keep his preferred style in the article in spite of my explicit explanation to him about why he's wrong to do so. I've been trying to turn up even one productive edit from him, but have been unsuccessful so far. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 18:18, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

(Username corrected). I think the "explanation" link you meant to post was not WP:SEASON but WP:ERA, which suggests that we choose either the BC/AD or the BCE/CE system, but not both in the same article — implying that this is a content dispute to be resolved through the normal means. SHEFFIELDSTEEL 18:58, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I've warned him about the edit summary and made it clear that's his only warning, he knows that is unacceptable, and to do that after being blocked for similar edit summaries suggests he doesn't care. Doug Weller (talk) 19:03, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

You're right, Sheffield, WP:ERA would have been a better shortcut. I think it's new and didn't know about it. However you're wrong about the clearly erroneous nature of his changes per this quote from that section of the MOS: "It is inappropriate for a Misplaced Pages editor to change from one style to another unless there is a substantive reason", unless, of course, "very very very very very gay" sounds like it might be a substantive reason to you. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 19:30, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

User-page copyvios

Hmngr06 (talk · contribs) has been copy/pasting swathes of material from other Web sites onto his user page, in violation of copyright. I've removed the stuff a couple of times, even though I feel very uncomfortable about messing with other users' pages, but the user just keeps readding it. What is the best way to handle this? Perhaps a warning from an admin would attract his attention. Deor (talk) 19:45, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

This user's contributions consist only of adding quasi-nonsensical Atlantis-related and/or copyvio content, even after a warning. A block of 24 h, which I have now issued, may get his attention.  Sandstein  20:02, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

User:GabrielVelasquez's conduct at Talk:Gliese 581 c and other articles.

User:GabrielVelasquez is persistently attacking other editors at Talk:Gliese 581 c who disagree with his viewpoint that there is no possible way the planet can be anything other than a runaway greenhouse Venus-analogue. He has accused editors (principally myself=Icalanise, Cyclopia and J. Langton) of sockpuppetry , or of being "damage control" for various teams of scientists (who he seems to believe want to fool the public into thinking this planet is habitable for their own nefarious purposes) . Furthermore when users attempt to confront him about this he proceeds to accuse them of harassment . His belligerent/paranoid attitude towards scientifically-literate editors is making the editing process on the article in question, and other articles about planets located close to the habitable zone (e.g. ) needlessly unpleasant. Icalanise (talk) 21:00, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I can confirm the GabrielVelazquez behaviour has been difficult and often bordering with plain harassment. He in particular accused me of being a sockpuppet of J. Langton . He also has a pattern of deleting/ignoring discussions that question his behaviour on his talk page -something which he is probably entitled to do but surely not collaborative . He went as far as considering my requests for apologies of accusing me of being a sockpuppet as personal attacks... but adding violently personal attacks himself . As for his behaviour on the Talk:Gliese 581 c page and others, I think other editors are more entitled than me to describe it -however the talk page itself is a bit of a smoking gun. --Cyclopia (talk) 22:07, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Questionable Username

Please be very careful to respect the request I made on my talk page.--IReceivedDeathThreats (talk) 22:35, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I originally posted about this at WP:UAA and after a bit of discussion, we all thought it best to bring it here. The user in question is IReceivedDeathThreats (talk · contribs). While s/he makes it clear on their user page why they chose such a name, I'm not sure if it's the best thing to have around, and thus brought it here for discussion. Of particular concern is the last sentence on the user page, which reads to look up Gator1 (talk · contribs). This statement seems like a suggestion that Gator1, an admin, is the threatener, pointing a finger that may not be appropriate. Anyways, just thought I would bring it up to hear some opinions. Grsz 21:08, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I would say that it should be suggested to the editor they change it. If anything, it distracts from the project and may even solicit inquiry from others in an attempt to find out who did what, where, when and how. As to the last point of "look up...", it is very suggestive and in this context could be viewed as a WP:PA. Better to stop this now, than have to redress it at some point in the future.--JavierMC 21:57, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I did not and did not intend to suggest "Gator1, an admin, is the threatener". I'm happy to clarify that on my user page. Well, except I see you've gone and edited my user page for me, simply deleting the reference. Happy now? Fine by me. I note you did so without giving me time to respond to this ANI. I do not feel comfortable elaborating on why I feel I need to retain the name IReceivedDeathThreats. IIRC, the reference to Gator1 was that the former user Gator1 was a threatenee (so to speak; not real words). Looks like the reference ("Look up ex-user Gator1.") no longer makes sense, even when I look through the visible history, probably due to some article or page history deletion, and a possibly completely different person now using the username Gator1. --IReceivedDeathThreats (talk) 22:35, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm thinking I might change my user ID to "IReceivedTelemarketingCallsAtSuppertime". Oh, the humanity! Baseball Bugs 23:58, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I would suggest you take that back or strike it through, as it is uncivil.--IReceivedDeathThreats (talk) 01:41, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

He can call himself by that provocative name, and I can make gentle fun of it. :) Baseball Bugs 01:58, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

You can't do that and be civil. Especially when someone had just put in a formal request for me to be banned immediately. --IReceivedDeathThreats (talk) 02:15, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

You chose your user name, no one else. So don't complain if you get slings and arrows about it. Or merely pies, in this case. :) Baseball Bugs 02:28, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I find it uncivil, rude, and offensive. Perhaps you've never received a serious death threat. It's not fucking funny. I am complaining. You be happy self-control, C and AGF limit it to that. I'm tired of this. --IReceivedDeathThreats (talk) 02:48, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

If you don't want people to comment on your username, then it shouldn't be your username! Grsz 02:52, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Misplaced Pages:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=next&oldid=242411413 nice. You closed the discussion, then you insult me again. Nice.

Troll.--IReceivedDeathThreats (talk) 00:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I would suggest you take that back or strike it through, as it is uncivil.— Dædαlus /_Improve 01:39, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

WOW! You say that and then you go and call me a troll! I would suggest you take back your own uncivil statement you made on your talk page (in an edit summary): "removed trollish comment". I'd say more but if I did, I fear you'd say I was being uncivil. WHERE'S MY FUCKING GOLD MEDAL BARNSTAR FOR HOLDING MY TONGUE?  :) --IReceivedDeathThreats (talk) 03:01, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Note: See http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User_talk:Grsz11&diff=next&oldid=242382749 - Grsz11 claims he never asked for me to be blocked. And yet Grsz11 did exactly that!

Also, Grsz11 removed questions/comments I put on Grsz11:Talk without replying or providing any sort of explanation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by IReceivedDeathThreats (talk • contribs) 01:36, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

You accused him, and stated it as a fact, that he reported you because of political reasons. There is no evidence of this, and you appear to just be throwing accusations around.

To others, I have a feeling this user is trying to make a point.— Dædαlus /_Improve 01:52, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Posting on UAA is a request for the user to be blocked. I don't see how this could be construed as a vio of the username policy. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 01:41, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Properly read, posting at UAA is not a request for a block in the way that posting at AIV more or less is. Sometimes a mere {{uw-username}} on the talk page is enough. Many times the user with the questionable name never edits again, or never edits at all ... the concern note has made them rethink what they were thinking of doing. Or they request a change or open a new account. Daniel Case (talk) 04:13, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I'll admit that UAA was wrong, I missed the blatant part, but either way irrelevant. They told me to bring it here, and here it is. No harm done at UAA. Here is the full bit at UAA. Grsz 01:47, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I can't agree with your 'no harm done' claim! I still have a vandalism accusation from you on my page. And an outstanding AFD on TronixCountry (and you didn't even follow step 3 at http://en.wikipedia.org/Template:AfD_footer Step 4. Please consider notifying the author(s) by placing {{subst:adw|TronixCountry}} ~~~~ on their talk page(s). You were nasty. I'd say an apology is in order; I don't see the word sorry in even one place.--IReceivedDeathThreats (talk) 02:18, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

bump!--IReceivedDeathThreats (talk) 05:42, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

No further good can come out of this. The user doesn't have to change the name because it is in no way disruptive or in violation of the username policy. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 01:50, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Praise FSM!--IReceivedDeathThreats (talk) 02:18, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Erik: Oh, I don't know, I think the name is inherently disruptive, whether intended to be or not. Personally, I think it's creepy. Ed Fitzgerald 02:24, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

The name looks like a problem to me, whatever its genesis. But isn't there a proper place for reviewing names? Wikidemon (talk) 02:22, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree, based on the point that the user filling this request made at UAA, the fact that it could be disruptive by instilling a thought in another user, such as, oh, he/she received death threats, . That wasn't exactly the wording, but it's as best as I can remember right now.— Dædαlus /_Improve 02:33, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Names such as "DeathThreatsAreBad", "IWouldNeverSendADeathThreat", "OnlyEvilPeopleUseDeathThreats" or "HowISpentMySummerVacationWithoutReceivingAnyDeathThreats" would be just as disruptive. There's no real reason why, with all the possibilities available, the phrase "death threats" needs to be allowed in a user name. I would like to request to IRDT, who is certainly monitoring this discussion, that they change their name to something which is not disruptive to the community. Ed Fitzgerald 03:47, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

It could. I think that the user should change their name but shouldn't be indef blocked for it (which is what a request at UAA is advocating for). Change the username to something less disturbing, but don't block for a username vio. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 03:07, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Lame spillover

Can someone take a look at this? IRDT is now using his Twinkle to revert edits I made on my talk page. Grsz 01:13, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

This is inane. I reverted my own edit, with a full edit summary explanation, immediately: http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User_talk:Grsz11&diff=next&oldid=242385887. But Grsz decides to complain anyway, 15 minutes later!?! Not to mention that he removed --IReceivedDeathThreats (talk) 01:33, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Struck the above. It was hard to tell what was going on it all those edits. Grsz 01:51, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

This isn't even worth it anymore. IRDT has turned this into a personal war on the world and discussion of his disruptive username has been thrown aside. Grsz 03:05, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Its mch better than if it were 'I give death threats', isn't it?:) Sticky Parkin 03:09, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Or IWasTheVictimOfIndecentExposure. Grsz 03:24, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Taken to RFC/N

Yes, there is a place to decide this: WP:RFC/N, which is where I feel debates about a username should go when the user himself sees no harm and hasn't done anything otherwise blockable. Maybe we should take this there? Daniel Case (talk) 04:10, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Grsz 04:12, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I have opened the RFC there, where this discussion should be continued. Daniel Case (talk) 04:24, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I asked for some time off from this arguing and explained why and what I thought was up on my talk page, saved the edit, and then moved it to Daniel's talk page. It's disappeared from both. —Preceding unsigned comment added by IReceivedDeathThreats (talk • contribs) 05:25, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Here and here. Now please stop disrupting this page. Grsz 05:28, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what makes you think those are the edits I'm talking about. --IReceivedDeathThreats (talk) 05:41, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Could you then refer us to the edits you are talking about? Then we can refocus at RFC/N and mark this AN/I thread as resolved. Franamax (talk) 05:56, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Blocked

After reading through this entire thread, and the following thread on WP:RFCN, I have blocked IReceivedDeathThreats for violation of the username policy. While the patience of the community and its admins is great, it is not infinite, and the degree to which we have been subjected to trolling and irrelevance in this case is already too great. In addition to this thread, a number of IRDT's other edits have been problematic, including his user page, and his explanations for them constructed in a way that does not contribute to the project. However, it's just a username softblock, and if he wants to come back with a new account and be a good editor, that's OK, at least with me. --MCB (talk) 06:28, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

User:Aignacio09 e-mail spam

Aignacio09 (talk · contribs) has been blocked for leaving spam messages on user talk pages. They are up to it again via Misplaced Pages e-mail, so that probably needs to be blocked as well. Cheers. -- Ned Scott 21:20, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

 Done. —kurykh 21:24, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Administative abuse of process of FAR

There was an excuse of an FAR review held here: Misplaced Pages:Featured_article_review/Macedonia_(terminology)/archive1

FARs are supposed to run for 2-3 weeks; this one was closed in just a few hours, and for completely invalid reasons.

Not only was there only 3 votes (and they were not disinterested 3rd parties), but the review was closed in hours due to a spurious claim that the article followed the FAR standard when the purpose of the review was to establish that (it self-evidently fails both the letter and spirit of WP:Misplaced Pages is not a dictionary policy).

Articles have to meet all policies to reach and stay at FA.

That he was closing it on invalid grounds was independently pointed out by another user in the review but User:Marskell closed it anyway.

3 votes is simply not enough to establish snowball.

Apparently, admins get to decide that for us.

I contacted Marskell on his talk page, but there has been no correction of the situation.

This is simply an abuse of administrative powers. Is Marskell allowed to be judge, jury and executioner on all the FAR reviews to decide when to close all and any reviews early???

What am I supposed to do about this crock?- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 21:45, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Is Marskell allowed to be judge, jury and executioner on all the FAR reviews to decide when to close all and any reviews early??? This is not "admin action"; Marskell is Raul's delegate at FAR. To challenge Wiki policy, you can take the article to AFD; it is not a WP:WIAFA matter. FAR is not dispute resolution and is not where Wiki policy is decided. You can find a history of the Featured article process at Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages Signpost/2008-07-21/Dispatches. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:07, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Which is it? That was not the reason given for closing the review either. This is purely about me not considering that this article is suitable for FA status and facing multiple administrative abuses of process while trying to get it reviewed. You do not get to invent arbitrary rules on the spur of the moment about which articles can be FARd when and when the process can be cut short unreasonably early.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 22:17, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

FAR is not an administrative function, Raul654 (talk · contribs) has been selected by the community to oversee the process. He has delegated the FAR aspect of the process to Marskell. I suggest you take this complaint up with Marskell and Raul because this is not something an administrator can act on. MBisanz 22:31, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree that this is the wrong forum to discuss this. However to address briefly Wolfkeeper's issue, the article was already determined by the FA community to meet the relevant standards. Wolfkeeper is not alleging that the article has deteriorated, only that it never met the standards to begin with. Since that was addressed in the original FAC, it is not a valid objection. No one agreed with the objection so a quick closure was the appropriate action. But the project talk page or the user pages of the concerned editors are the places to discuss this. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 23:29, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

There is no rule that says that the criteria for FA review is only changes in policy since the article was originally passed, nor would such a rule be sensible; the rules simply say it can't be rereviewed within 6 months, but this was reviewed 2 years ago. This article was not tested against this policy in the original review. The review had only had 3 comments, and it did not snowball in any sense. The article was closed irregularly and for self-evidently fallacious reasons that were independently contested prior to closure by another person. In short, I'm sorry but none of your comments are in keeping with the rules that govern this process, nor would they be useful for the wikipedia to adopt. This is self evidently an abuse of powers contrary to the spirit of the wikipedia.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 23:53, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Not that it matters, but on a technical note, no, it wasn't independently contested by another person prior to closure; that person added the comment after closure, but before the bot processed the closed tag. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:22, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Harassment, personal attacks, lack of good faith and civility

User Wikidea (talk · contribs) constantly refers to me as a troll, moron, idiot, pest... , , , , , , He regularly accompanies those personal attacks with wishes for me to "go away" or "get lost". , , Apparently he wants to drive me away for Misplaced Pages by constant harassment. His actions also included tagging my user page. Two months ago I reported this issue on Wikiquette alerts but attacks didn't stop after that. Until now he was warned about his behavior by three admins , , , , and several users , , , . Also, in a recent FAR that I started he also accused SandyGeorgia of being a "spoil-sport" and he generally showed a lack of good faith. -- Vision Thing -- 21:51, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• I've told wikidea twice (and sort of a third time), to stop making personal attacks (, , and ). I make no comments on the behavior of Vison Thing, good bad or indifferent. Protonk (talk) 22:12, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• Good grief, he even lays into SandyGeorgia! Any good reason we should not wield the banhammer here? That is one bad-tempered dude, with not a lot going on to offset the anger and aggression. Guy (Help!) 22:30, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikidea blocked 48 hours. --Gutza 22:35, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Guy - with due respect, Wikidea is a prolific editor with thousands of content and value-added edits to law related articles. If you think he's acting out of line you're entitled to call it as you see it but to say there's "not alot going on" to imply he's not a productively contributing editor crosses the line into personal attacks. Please don't fight incivility with more incivility. Non Curat Lex (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 04:55, 2 October 2008 (UTC).

Aaron Sorkin

Someone may want to take a look at what's going on over there, where an editor who appears to be an SPA (188 mainspace edits, 184 of them to this article) appears to be deliberately editing a BLP article with a political agenda. Ed Fitzgerald 22:21, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I started a thread at BLP and a few others have now looked in and are keeping an eye on it. I wish I had more time to help out, but that was the best I could do for now. Misplaced Pages:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard#Help needed with Aaron Sorkin. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:26, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Likely either the subject or someone connected. Be nice, eh? Guy (Help!) 22:27, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I would think Aaron Sorkin would use bigger words... --Smashville 01:00, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Would a full protect for a few days be in line? --Smashville 01:05, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

NM, I reverted it to the FA-status article again...and sent him a 3RR warning. He has two full page reverts and a revert of one tag in the last 24 hours... --Smashville 01:16, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

He's just reverted back. Is there consensus for a 3RR block? -MBK₀₀₄ 01:29, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I warned him before he did it...so he's definitely aware of the rule...and he's shown that he does read his talk page...I have a feeling a solid 5th revert will come while we discuss...since I reverted him, it would be out of line for me to do it...and I'm not about to link all 200 or so of his edits to the 3RR noticeboard... --Smashville 01:32, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Block Review

I have just blocked Homely Features (talk · contribs) for 24 hours for the stated reason of edit warring and 3RR violation, but also to protect the wiki from damage and abuse. I welcome a review of this block especially since I am certain the user will appeal through an unblock request. -MBK₀₀₄ 01:34, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Generally users are blocked for blockable offenses, especially when they have been warned not to do so. Good block. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 01:37, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Endorse obviously from me...5RR after the warning is a pretty straightforward block. Seems like he's likely a sock of someone else, too...of course, the question is which user... --Smashville 01:40, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Just as I thought, the blocked user has posted an unblock request. -MBK₀₀₄ 01:40, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Decline it. He violated 3RR by multiple reverts and so should be blocked. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 01:43, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Although I do enjoy after all that MBK being reverted for vandalism...snicker --Smashville 01:51, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I need another admin to take a look at this guy's talk page. He's constantly under the impression that he's correct. I believe that he intends to get right back to what he was doing when the block expires. I'm not able to talk sense into him and think that a longer block may be in order to prevent damage to a FA. -MBK₀₀₄ 02:22, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Clearly, this person has found THE TRUTH about Sorkin, CapsLock and all. Experience has shown that people such as this very often have trouble restraining themselves. Ed Fitzgerald 03:38, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I've left another note, trying to explain the situation and give him an idea of what to do to move forward productively. We'll see how that goes. Tony Fox (arf!) 04:59, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

• Reverting to the FA version and blocking the problem WP:SPA looks to me like the right result for the encyclopaedia. Guy (Help!) 07:58, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
  • It should be noted that while I agree with the block, as it might encourage the editor to curb his/her incivility, I spent a long time yesterday stepping through the diffs. Of concern is the editor's lack of civility, both in edit summaries and at the FAR page. The "hacking and slashing" at the article noted by others, and the speed at which this is being undertaken, also hampered efforts to determine whether the edits are truly constructive. Despite all this, I didn't see too many edits that I would consider harmful to the article, and those that could be construed as such in isolation did ultimately seem to be part of a wider plan of improvement. I wouldn't endorse every diff I've seen, but I think we've a chance for a net gain here. In short, I was content to leave the article be for a short time to see what Homely Features managed to do with it. I think it would be a mistake right now to continue barring the editor from making his/her edits to the page when the article could end up in much better shape than before the FAR began. If the editor gives assurances that he/she will use appropriate edit summaries that properly outline the rationale behind every edit, and will stop issuing borderline insults at the FAR page and everywhere else to the article's previous contributors, we should tread a little more softly on this one. The editor can be a valuable contributor here. All the best, Steve 08:09, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

IP doesn't get it

Would someone please take a look at IP 211.30.133.70 (talk · contribs)? The only recent contributions have been to remove a properly sourced section about an incident on the Newington College page (and refuse to discuss it on the talk page). Also, the IP appears to continually try and delete the page for James E. McPherson, both edit warring to keep the CDS notice on there, then repeatedly adding the AfD notice without actually creating a page for deletion. It seems this IP is here to disrupt. Thanks in advance. Dayewalker (talk) 01:21, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

It wont let me create the afd page. can somebody do it for me —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.30.133.70 (talk) 01:40, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

They tell me to go to the talk page which i do then they delete what i say! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.30.133.70 (talk) 01:46, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Revert, warn, if he exceeds final warning, block. No admin intervention needed at the moment, in the future AIV might be more appropriate. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 01:31, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

This appears to be a new editor trying to argue that the disputed sentence in Newington College gives undue weight to an issue, but unable to navigate a talk page to present their opinion. I've helped them with the talk page posting, and we'll see if there's a consensus on the inclusion of the material. Hopefully this then resolves this into a content dispute and not anything requiring admin intervention. Euryalus (talk) 02:01, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

IP Vandalism at Talk:Hydrogen

A small range of IPs keeps deleting the contents of Talk:Hydrogen, as can be seen in the revision history. All but the most recent IP has been warned about the unconstructive edits - rst20xx (talk) 01:47, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Rangeblock and semiprotect if necessary. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 01:51, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Very lucky for that range to be small. It looks like contribs within 87.36.14.75/28 are all vandalism, probably by the same guy. You might want to verify this, if you have the range tool. ~ Troy (talk) 02:36, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Oral sex, chihuahuas, and hoaxes

We are being used to propagate a hoax. Beverly Hills Chihuahua is being vandalized frequently from multiple sources to list its director as being Gerard Damiano, the director of Deep Throat. People don't recognize the problem, edit on top of it, and it sticks for too long. Long enough that now hundreds of sites are listing Gerard Damiano as the source. This is probably 4chan, SomethingAwful, or some similar crap. This doesn't fit the normal criteria for protection, but I feel like we should at least semi-protect and maybe full-protect the article for a while. Since it isn't a standard reason, I'm bringing it here for discussion instead of WP:RFPP. I think that Ami Llort (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) needs an indef for this one (reported at AIV), and it has also been edited in by other editors: and , among others.—Kww(talk) 03:41, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

The account's got an indef by MoP as a vandalism-only account. I put an in-text note next to the director, so people should notice when it changes now. I'd prefer to avoid semiprotecting it, if there are other ways to address the problem. Cheers. lifebaka++ 04:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Please have exact change

Carlossuarez46 is almost certainly acting in good faith, but he seems to be creating articles for every named spot on the globe (other than those for which there are already articles). —SlamDiego_←T 07:13, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Looks like they're all in Azerbaijan. I wouldn't have thought we needed a stub article on every named place in Azerbaijan, but wasn't there a ruling not too long ago? Something about villages in France, and all existing places having inherent notability? Ed Fitzgerald 07:46, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Ed. I really wish the ANI archives search wasn't so out of date. It's really annoying for finding discussions at times like this. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:50, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Just to note User:Carlossuarez46 is an admin, and from discussion on his talk page, I believe work is bring done by this bot, or, perhaps, CS46 is manually supplementing the work of the bot. In any event, the whole thing seems to be a Project with many Admins & Familiar Names involved, so I think it can be assumed that it's on the up-and-up. Ed Fitzgerald 07:59, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Grsz / Grsz11

Grsz11's behaviour toward me in the a recent series of incidents (see Questionable Username, on this page ( as well as the history of User talk:IReceivedDeathThreats, TronixCountry and ,User talk:Grsz11 at least 'till it's archived) was uncivil. --IRDT (talk) 07:03, 2 October 2008 (UTC) FKA IReceivedDeathThreats. (New acct w/MCB's permission.)

1. Mayes R, Bagwell C, Erkulwater J (2008). "ADHD and the rise in stimulant use among children". Harv Rev Psychiatry. 16 (3): 151–66. doi:10.1080/10673220802167782. PMID 18569037.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
2. Foreman DM (2006). "Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: legal and ethical aspects". Arch. Dis. Child. 91 (2): 192–4. doi:10.1136/adc.2004.064576. PMID 16428370. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

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