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Review of protection at Mistake
Samsara indefinitely protected Mistake using pending changes for "Persistent vandalism". The page has had no edits to it since 22 March and only 10 edits in 2019. There isn't persistent vandalism, there isn't any recent disruption on the page. I asked for it to be unprotected on their talk page The answer was to have it further reviewed so I am bringing it here for further review. I do not believe it needs to be protected. ~ GB fan 23:24, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
- Digging into the history Oshawott 12 requested the protection so I will info them of this thread so they can add their thoughts as well. MarnetteD|Talk 23:33, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
- I just found that a discussion has been going on here User talk:Samsara#Mistake. My apologies for not finding it before I made the above post. MarnetteD|Talk 23:40, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
- I suggested to GB fan to post this at RfPP as is standard procedure. Samsara 02:55, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
- Well, since nothing's happened at RFPP I'll comment here. After looking through the history, I believe 23 February 2018 is the latest edit (aside from yesterday's two protection-related entries) that's neither outright detrimental nor the reversion of such. That was 14 months ago. Since then, the page has had almost sixty edits, and every one of them I believe deserved reversion or consisted of reversion. This is a disambiguation page, after all; it's not something that routinely needs to be updated. Protection may be applied when a page experiences basically nothing except vandalism, even if it's not all the time, and the fact that it's disambiguation, not content, contributes to the sense that this is an appropriate protection. Nyttend (talk) 12:51, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
- OK, ~ GB fan 13:54, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
- Does your ‘OK’ signify that we can close the discussion, or does it mean you agree with him? Anyways, it was a suitable page protection, and it was put in the right place. The only thing that was wrong was my wording usage of ‘persistent’, so I believe we’re pretty much finished here then. Oshawott 12 ==()== Talk to me! 16:17, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
- My OK, is acknowledgement of what Nyttend said. ~ GB fan 20:50, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
- Does your ‘OK’ signify that we can close the discussion, or does it mean you agree with him? Anyways, it was a suitable page protection, and it was put in the right place. The only thing that was wrong was my wording usage of ‘persistent’, so I believe we’re pretty much finished here then. Oshawott 12 ==()== Talk to me! 16:17, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
- OK, ~ GB fan 13:54, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
- Well, since nothing's happened at RFPP I'll comment here. After looking through the history, I believe 23 February 2018 is the latest edit (aside from yesterday's two protection-related entries) that's neither outright detrimental nor the reversion of such. That was 14 months ago. Since then, the page has had almost sixty edits, and every one of them I believe deserved reversion or consisted of reversion. This is a disambiguation page, after all; it's not something that routinely needs to be updated. Protection may be applied when a page experiences basically nothing except vandalism, even if it's not all the time, and the fact that it's disambiguation, not content, contributes to the sense that this is an appropriate protection. Nyttend (talk) 12:51, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
- I suggested to GB fan to post this at RfPP as is standard procedure. Samsara 02:55, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
- I just found that a discussion has been going on here User talk:Samsara#Mistake. My apologies for not finding it before I made the above post. MarnetteD|Talk 23:40, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
I obviously don't understand the protection policy. I have two admins telling me that it is within the protection policy to indefinitely protect a page that hasn't been edited in almost a month, 10 edits in the last 3.5 months and less than 100 edits in the last year. ~ GB fan 10:45, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
- Fwiw, I would not have protected...the disruption is way under any threshold for any kind of protection. In olden times we would have said: just watchlist and revert. Lectonar (talk) 10:49, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
As with most decisions of this sort, it's a tradeoff between how much effort the protection saves by preventing vandalism and how many useful edits are prevented by the protection. Yes, sixty vandalism or vandalism-related edits in 14 months is a relatively low level of disruption. But also yes, zero useful edits in 14 months is not a lot of useful editing that is prevented by the protection. I'm not seeing this as a Big Deal either way. Do you really want to pursue this? Or can it be closed? GoldenRing (talk) 09:58, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
Looking at the big picture, the page is clearly a target for persistent vandalism, it's just that instances of vandalism are sporadic and slow-going. So, it's actually a perfect candidate for long-term PC protection, and I don't see anything wrong with implementing it here. That said, Protection policy does say Indefinite PC protection should be used only in cases of severe long-term disruption.
I don't think I would call the disruption "severe", so it should probably be converted to a year. ~Swarm~ {sting} 01:39, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- We should revisit that part of the policy. If memory serves, it was considered important at the time to limit PC1 in terms of time as it was thought we might end up in a situation where progress is limited by availability of reviewers, i.e. changes on low traffic pages remaining unreviewed for longish periods of time. Our subsequent experience with PC1 has not yet borne this out, and it now seems it likely never will. Looking specifically at Mistake, it's had the described pattern of vandalism since 2007. Limiting PC1 to one year does not seem in proportion with the duration of the disruption. At the risk of lecturing the choir, in page protection, it's often useful to to ask if pages are being attacked by specific users or groups thereof, in which case, protecting for a definite period may lead to the disruption abating, or whether a page invites general attention from unrelated attackers simply because of the subject content or the name of the page. There may be grey areas between the two, but this page is a very clear case of one that will continue to attract negative attention because of its title, so protecting for a definite period is not a reasonable remedy imo, especially when the period is short relative to the observed disruption. If a compromise is needed, I would suggest setting it to five years - PC1 has the advantage that its necessity and performance can be continuously monitored, even from watchlists, saving us a lot of micromanagement, which given occasional backlogs at RfPP, should be given some thought. Samsara 15:49, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
Proposed amendment to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy regarding the Arbitration Committee's power to authorise deletions
- Note
I am requesting feedback about a proposed amendment to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy regarding the Arbitration Committee's power to authorise deletions. This discussion is not a formal petition to modify the policy.
- Background
An administrator deleted User:Dlthewave/Whitewashing of firearms articles with the rationale "Arbitration enforcement action under gun control DS". The term "gun control DS" refers to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gun control#Discretionary sanctions.
Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions#Page restrictions says:
Any uninvolved administrator may impose on any page or set of pages relating to the area of conflict page protection, revert restrictions, prohibitions on the addition or removal of certain content (except when consensus for the edit exists), or any other reasonable measure that the enforcing administrator believes is necessary and proportionate for the smooth running of the project.
The dispute is whether "any other reasonable measure that the enforcing administrator believes is necessary" includes the deletion of a page as part of the discretionary enforcement process. The Arbitration Committee at a recently closed clarification request did not decide whether pages can be deleted under "other reasonable measures" as part of the enforcement process. The Committee instead passed the motion:
All actions designated as arbitration enforcement actions, including those alleged to be out of process or against existing policy, must first be appealed following arbitration enforcement procedures to establish if such enforcement is inappropriate before the action may be reversed or formally discussed at another venue.
There is further discussion about the motion on the Arbitration Committee noticeboard here.
- Current conflict between deletion review and arbitration enforcement
Both Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2019 February 24#User:Dlthewave/Whitewashing of firearms articles and Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement reviewed User:Dlthewave/Whitewashing of firearms articles.
Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2019 February 24#User:Dlthewave/Whitewashing of firearms articles was closed as "The clear consensus is that this deletion should be overturned per the deletion policy. It now requires arbcom to sanction this." At a parallel review of the deletion at the still open WP:AE request titled "Arbitration enforcement action appeal by Dlthewave", there is currently no "clear and substantial consensus of uninvolved administrators at AE" to undelete the page.
- Why is a change needed to the Arbitration policy to prohibit deletions under discretionary sanctions
Without a change to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy:
- Administrators will be desysopped if they temporarily undelete a page deleted under discretionary sanctions for non-admins to review.
- Non-admins therefore cannot review pages deleted under discretionary sanctions.
- Wikipedia:Deletion review does not have the authority to review the page deletion. Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement, and Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment are the only avenues for appeal.
- Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions#Modifications by administrators requires "the clear and substantial consensus" of participants to overturn a discretionary sanction, whereas DRV does not have such a high requirement overturning speedy deletions. Wikipedia:Deletion review#Closing reviews says, "If a speedy deletion is appealed, the closer should treat a lack of consensus as a direction to overturn the deletion, since it indicates that the deletion was not uncontroversial (which is a requirement of almost all criteria for speedy deletion)."
- Petitions
As noted here, the community cannot directly amend Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions because it is an Arbitration Committee decision. Limiting the scope of the Arbitration Committee's discretionary sanctions requires modifying Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy.
Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy#Ratification and amendment says:
Once adopted by the Committee, this policy will undergo formal ratification through a community referendum and will enter into force once it receives majority support, with at least one hundred editors voting in favour of adopting it. Until this policy is ratified, the existing arbitration policy remains in effect.
Amendments to this policy require an identical ratification process. Proposed amendments may be submitted for ratification only after being approved by a majority vote of the Committee, or having been requested by a petition signed by at least one hundred editors in good standing.
Here are different petitions that can be submitted to modify Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy to prohibit discretionary sanctions deletions:
Proposed petitions about the Arbitration Committee's jurisdiction over authorising deletion, undeletion, and redirect of pages
This paragraph of the "Policy and precedent" section of the arbitration policy:
The arbitration process is not a vehicle for creating new policy by fiat. The Committee's decisions may interpret existing policy and guidelines, recognise and call attention to standards of user conduct, or create procedures through which policy and guidelines may be enforced. The Committee does not rule on content, but may propose means by which community resolution of a content dispute can be facilitated.
is amended to add the underlined text (each petition is a possible separate amendment):
Petition 1: The Committee's discretionary sanctions must not authorise the deletion, undeletion, or redirection of pages in any namespace.
Petition 2: The Committee does not have jurisdiction over authorising the deletion, undeletion, blanking, or redirection of pages in any namespace.
Petition 3: In its dispute resolution and user conduct role, the Committee does not have jurisdiction over authorising the deletion, undeletion, blanking, or redirection of pages in any namespace.
Petition 4: In its dispute resolution and user conduct role, the Committee does not have jurisdiction over authorising the deletion, undeletion, blanking, or redirection of pages in any namespace. In its role of handling private information, the Committee may delete pages as privacy violations or under child protection. (The "privacy violations" and "child protection" wording is from Wikipedia:Office actions.)Petition 4a: In its dispute resolution and user conduct role, the Committee does not have jurisdiction over authorising the deletion, undeletion, blanking, or redirection of pages in any namespace. The Committee may delete pages it deems unsuitable for public view based on private information it has received.
Notes on each petition:
Petition 1 is the narrowest amendment and only prohibits discretionary sanctions from authorising deletion and other related actions.
Petition 2 is the broadest amendment in that it prohibits the Arbitration Committee from authorising deletion and other related actions.
Petition 3 is a narrower amendment than Petition 2 in that it prohibits the Arbitration Committee from authorising deletion and other related actions in only its dispute resolution and conduct role. It takes no view on whether the Committee can delete pages after receiving private information that makes Committee members want to delete a page.
Petition 4 is the same as Petition 3 except it explicitly authorises the Arbitration Committee to delete pages as privacy violations or under child protection after receiving private information. The adding wording was based on feedback here about why banning the Arbitration Committee from deleting pages could be undesirable.Petition 4a removes is the same as Petition 3 except it explicitly authorises the Arbitration Committee to delete pages unsuitable for public view based on private information. The adding wording was based on feedback here about why banning the Arbitration Committee from deleting pages could be undesirable.
I am inclined to submit petition 4 to the petition process. If discussion here indicates that petition 4 is undesirable, I plan to submit petition 3 to the petition process. If discussion here indicates that petitions 3 and 4 are undesirable, I plan to submit petition 1 to the petition process.
I also welcome feedback about whether a different petition wording is preferable over the four petitions listed here.
Thank you, Alanscottwalker (talk · contribs), BU Rob13 (talk · contribs), DGG (talk · contribs), GreenMeansGo (talk · contribs), King of Hearts (talk · contribs), Levivich (talk · contribs), SmokeyJoe (talk · contribs), SportingFlyer (talk · contribs), S Marshall (talk · contribs), Timotheus Canens (talk · contribs), and Xymmax (talk · contribs) for your earlier feedback about the proposed petition to amend the Arbitration policy.
Cunard (talk) 05:56, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- @Cunard: If you do submit petition 4, please amend it to read "based on private information" rather than explicitly enumerating private cases in which ArbCom can act. There's a few reasons for this. First, what comes through our inbox is unpredictable, and using narrowly-defined cases rather than the somewhat broader (but still tailored) umbrella of "private information" risks us discovering a situation not covered by those narrow cases and being unable to act without drawing attention to a private situation. Second, the narrower the use cases, the more information we're giving by simply marking a deletion as an ArbCom action, which frustrates the point of having a body able to act on information that must be kept private.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, no part of ARBPOL should explicitly put child protection on ArbCom's plate. That is the domain of the WMF, or should be, anyway. In reality, we may have to step in on a child protection matter if it is urgent or the WMF fails to act, but we should not make that routine. I would be very uncomfortable with explicitly writing this out as a role of ArbCom in ARBPOL. In fact, I would resign immediately, as I wouldn't consider myself qualified to hold a role that deals with child protection as a matter of routine. ~ Rob13Talk 06:06, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- Also, as a side note, I'm attempting to come to a compromise on wording of the discretionary sanctions procedures that would limit the ability of admins to delete certain pages as AE actions. If you could hold a bit to see if that bears fruit, I would appreciate it. I expect the idea I'm trying to hammer out would address the concerns of most people. ~ Rob13Talk 06:12, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- BU Rob13 (talk · contribs), thank you for explaining how to improve petition 4's current wording. Would this work: "The Committee may delete pages it deems unsuitable for public view based on private information it has received." To BU Rob13 and the community: Would the "pages it deems unsuitable for public view" wording be too ambiguous or broad? Is there a better or more narrow wording than this one that would not enumerate all the private cases in which the Arbitration Committee can act?
I would prefer that pages including those like User:Dlthewave/Whitewashing of firearms articles be taken off the table for discretionary sanctions deletions since it is bad to have Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2019 February 24#User:Dlthewave/Whitewashing of firearms articles reach a clear overturn conclusion and an AE appeal for the same page likely to reach a no "clear and substantial consensus of uninvolved administrators at AE" to overturn because the two venues have different standards. I believe that the DRV standards should be applied to page deletions rather than the AE standards. I am willing to wait to see whether your work on the discretionary sanctions procedure will bear fruit. Thank you for your work on this.
Cunard (talk) 06:22, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- Cunard, the difference between DRV and AE is not merely the standard applied, it is also the question considered. DRV looks at whether the page should have been deleted, whether there is a policy-based justification, etc. AE looks at whether the action is within administrator discretion under DS. An AE deletion is endorsed even if every admin who comments says "I wouldn't have done that but I can see how it is a possible conclusion to reach and so is an allowable exercise of discretion." It is true that AE can also say "looking at the page, the deletion decision is unreasonable / goes beyond allowable discretion" but the process as now enforced does not mandate that there be a consensus in favour of the deletion for it to be upheld, it merely requires there to be no consensus that the decision was outside of discretion. Whatever Rob is trying to achieve (and I hope it is positive), the Committee's decision not to decide on AE deletions but to strengthen the protections around them nonetheless proves that we have a problem that requires change be imposed by the community. EdChem (talk) 06:35, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- BU Rob13 (talk · contribs), thank you for explaining how to improve petition 4's current wording. Would this work: "The Committee may delete pages it deems unsuitable for public view based on private information it has received." To BU Rob13 and the community: Would the "pages it deems unsuitable for public view" wording be too ambiguous or broad? Is there a better or more narrow wording than this one that would not enumerate all the private cases in which the Arbitration Committee can act?
- Also, as a side note, I'm attempting to come to a compromise on wording of the discretionary sanctions procedures that would limit the ability of admins to delete certain pages as AE actions. If you could hold a bit to see if that bears fruit, I would appreciate it. I expect the idea I'm trying to hammer out would address the concerns of most people. ~ Rob13Talk 06:12, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- The policy and precedent section should be strengthened by including a clear statement that the Committee is bound by policy, something like:
All operations of the Arbitration Committee are bound by policy adopted by the English Wikipedia community, overruled only by WMF actions and the Terms of Use. In particular, the arbitration process is not a vehicle for creating new policy. The Committee's decisions may interpret existing policy and guidelines, recognise and call attention to standards of user conduct, or create procedures through which policy and guidelines may be enforced. The Committee does not rule on content, but may propose means by which community resolution of a content dispute can be facilitated. In creating or modifying its own policies and procedures, the Committee may not act outside the bounds of English Wikipedia policy nor delegate powers beyond its own.
- The adoption of a clear change to the deletion policy to clarify that no deletion power is held beyond in the privacy-related cases of provision 4 can then be implemented. I do agree with Rob that that reserved area of authority should be drawn broadly to handle the variety of circumstances that might arise, and that we should do nothing to imply child protection is anyone but the WMF's responsibility. I also think that the power to delete in such cases should be the Committee's alone, and not delegable to AE or via DS. EdChem (talk) 06:23, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- Thank you, EdChem (talk · contribs). I would strongly support this wording change to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy#Policy and precedent in conjunction with the change to deletion policy. I support your taking the lead on proposing these changes if you are open to doing so. Cunard (talk) 06:35, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- Responding after Cunard's ping: I agree there's a problem that needs to be solved, but I disagree with all four of these proposals. I believe administrators should have the ability to delete pages as needed as part of required sanctions. The issue here was whether the page violated WP:POLEMIC, directly related to the user's sanction. Upon review one of the administrators concluded the page did not violate WP:POLEMIC, and the other administrator recommended deletion review. Procedurally, I think this played out exactly the way it needed to, but the procedure itself isn't quite there, with threats of desysops and the like. I would be in favor of: if an administrator makes a public deletion of a page under discretionary sanctions, the deleted page may be submitted to deletion review after an appeal is filed and an administrator responds. Once properly submitted to deletion review, any administrator may close the DRV/undelete page history/undelete the page without fear of sanctions. Office actions are obviously not reviewable. That policy, or something similar, would be my preference - otherwise, you run the risk of a page needing to be deleted that doesn't get deleted for a week or two while the community decides whether it needs to be deleted, and considering the majority of these will likely be MfDs, which are poorly attended anyways, I'm in favour of a firm administrative fist. SportingFlyer T·C 08:10, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- SportingFlyer, can you suggest a situation where no CSD criterion would apply but a page needs deleting urgently? EdChem (talk) 08:33, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- @EdChem: I don't think "urgently" is the correct term. I think the situation is similar to the one here, where the arbitration committee concludes deletion is an appropriate sanction, which, let's be honest, should be very rare or at the very least a unique situation. Let's hypothetically take away the ability for the arbitration committee to delete pages in this scenario: the page gets sent to MfD by the arbitrator, users who not necessarily aware of the conflict !vote on it, and the MfD outcome may be inconsistent with the arbitration sanction. If we give the arbitrators the ability to delete pages in this manner, but we also allow deletion review to check to make sure the deletion was consistent with the arbitration sanction, we effectively shift the deletion burden from the arbitrator (who must convince the MfD voters the sanction is appropriate) to the editor under sanctions (who must convince DRV the arbitrator deleted a page outside the scope of the sanction), and I'm very, very comfortable with that. SportingFlyer T·C 01:08, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
- SportingFlyer, can you suggest a situation where no CSD criterion would apply but a page needs deleting urgently? EdChem (talk) 08:33, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- A word about why BuRob13 wanted to avoid mentioning child protection--arb com for many years has worked very hard to get the WMF Trust and Safety people to take over this extremely difficult and sensitive area; about 5 years they finally agreed to, and have been dealing with it every since. I, and I believe the others of us in some way involved, are of the opinion they have met their responsibilities here quite well, and certainly better and more consistently and more professionally than we could have. You will almost never see actual cases referred to on-wiki now, but they handle it as needed, and they do keep arbcom informed to an appropriate extent. We needn't and shouldn't specify anything here about this.
- Similarly, we need not really be concerned about the need to make explicit provisions to react to emergencies and dangerous vandalism and clear privacy problems. We have checkuser and oversight blocks, and even for an ordinary admin blocking for these reasons and specifying it, no admin is going to revert (when necessary, the practice is to convert an ordinary admin block in these areas to oversight or checkuser blocks).
- The purpose of these proposals is to nto prevent admins from taking needed action, but from overreaching. No admin will fail to take really needed emergency action, but there is a certain temptation to overreach. DGG ( talk ) 08:58, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- I don't want to let ARBCOM make decisions based on private information as it's going to leave vast arguments about "why is the private information, which obviously can't be so clearly disputed, given extra authorisation to encourage deletions?" The WMF should be handling risks to health and child protection ones. So why didn't I go for petition 2? - because hard cases make bad law, and I can see situations where ARBCOM might need to delete pages. Thus, this is a firm support for proposal 1. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:16, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- Thanks for the ping. I would support any of the four petitions, but I'd rather have different language. It seems to me the important point is that all deletions are reviewable at DRV. If Arbcom wants to authorize deletions as a DS sanction, and have such deletions reviewed at AE under AE standards, that's all fine and well... but the outcome of that process, like any deletion process, gets reviewed at DRV. So, I'd be in favor of a one-sentence addition to ARBPOL and/or DELPOL (e.g., "Deletions authorized by the arbitration committee are reviewable at DRV like any other deletion."). As practically applied here, that means that even if the Firearms articles deletion is upheld at AE, that page would be undeleted because of the outcome of the DRV. My logic is that Arbcom and AE can evaluate an administrator's conduct in deleting a page, but DRV evaluates the content of the page and determines whether the page should be deleted. Thus, a proper exercise of DS discretion may result in a page that is nevertheless undeleted at DRV (if AE determines it's "within discretion", but DRV determines the page should not be deleted, which seems to be a possible result in the pending Firearms articles case), and an improper exercise of DS discretion may result in a page that stays deleted anyway (if AE determines it's not within DS discretion, but DRV determines that the page should be deleted anyway for some non-DS reason, e.g., a CSD criteria). Leviv ich 15:43, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
Arbitrary Break
- Can we leave this as no petition? The struggle ArbCom had over the past few months agreeing on wording themselves shows how complicated this is, and any amendment is likely to be extremely divisive and controversial for something that happens maybe once a year. I think starting this petition would be a net-negative for the community. TonyBallioni (talk) 11:24, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- @TonyBallioni: - while there is some merit to this argument, it is in effect an agreement to sacrifice some portion of the encylopedia for the sake of our internal coherence. That's an even more inimical argument that the one that underpins GS, which sacrifices a calmer route to protection and blocks in order to protect the articles. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:17, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- Except based on a scan of WP:AELOG, you’re trying to write a policy to fix something that has been done exactly twice over 7 years. This is not needed and I would personally consider any attempt to change the policy disruptive in the sense that the discussion itself will likely not achieve a clear result, users will likely retire, and as a whole figuring out the wording here will have significantly more cost than it has benefit, even if I was a raging ARS inclusionist (which I’m not.) TonyBallioni (talk) 13:24, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- @TonyBallioni: It's more extraordinary than once a year. To my knowledge, the AE deletion by GoldenRing was the first deletion that has been carried out under ArbCom authorization ever. ~ Rob13Talk 14:08, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- BU Rob13, yeah. I checked the AELOG after posting it, and it happened once before in 2012 (Timotheus Canens was the deleting admin.) If anything the length of times between the deletions makes it even less of an issue than if GoldenRing’s was unprecedented, because it shows it’s happened before and didn’t start a trend. Outside the divisiveness aspect, the real issue with both of these proposals and the discussion above isn’t that they threaten admins’ ability to use DS: that’s virtually never used. It’s the trend towards writing IAR out of the deletion policy that is being discussed along with it. I’m sure ArbCom receives things that need deletions discreetly on occasion, as does the oversight team, as does even the SPI team. There are very legitimate grounds to apply IAR to deletion in some cases, and moving towards getting rid of that concept based on moral outrage of someone using deletion as a DS for the second time ever isn’t helpful. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:23, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- Adding wording to bar discretionary sanctions deletions should not be divisive particularly since discretionary sanctions deletions happened twice ever. The Arbitration Committee had a motion here to add three words to instruct administrators that discretionary sanctions should not be used "to delete pages". If that motion had passed, this would not be needed.
I am fine with IAR deletions where the circumstances warrant it (example here). I am not fine with discretionary sanctions deletions where an admin who did a temporary undeletion for non-admins to review could be desysopped for violating WP:AC/DS#sanctions.modify and where WP:AE standards and practices apply rather than WP:DRV ones (EdChem explained why that is undesirable here).
- That it's only happened twice, and at least one of those was overturned at DRV, kind of proves that we don't need DS deletions, doesn't it? Leviv ich 15:43, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- @TonyBallioni: - while there is some merit to this argument, it is in effect an agreement to sacrifice some portion of the encylopedia for the sake of our internal coherence. That's an even more inimical argument that the one that underpins GS, which sacrifices a calmer route to protection and blocks in order to protect the articles. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:17, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
Having looked over these discussions, I can see both sides of the issue, but I also see that this is an issue that has arisen only rarely. At this stage, given the degree of controversy caused by the AE-based deletion, I expect that admins will delete pages based only on an arbitration remedy, if at all, very sparingly. As such, I'm not convinced that the issue warrants the degree of community time and attention that a series of RfCs or an ArbPol amendment proposal would necessarily generate. I suggest that the issue be put aside at this time and allow some time to pass to determine whether there is a practice issue here as opposed to a mostly theoretical one. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:11, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- I don't see this as theoretical: the practical dispute or "test case" is already here: User:Dlthewave/Whitewashing_of_firearms_articles. The deletion of that page has been overturned at DRV. If the appeal of the page's deletion at AE is declined, what will happen to the page? If it's deleted, that would be a problem that needs addressing, and the only way to address it would be a policy clarification. Leviv ich 17:12, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- Compromise reasoning - there seem lots of concerns, perhaps justifiably, that the debate itself could cause major issues. I can understand that petitions 2-4b are major alterations and could cause severe disputes. On that basis, I've firmed up my pseudo-ballot !vote above, and think that if we are going to have a petition (which I encourage, others obviously disagree) then the logical compromise is 1, above and beyond its "direct" pros for it as a choice. Nosebagbear (talk) 18:04, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
Why is this here
This seems like the worst place to have this discussion, 1) It's not where we change policy 2) These issues are about communally curbing admin claimed discretion (or reigning in abuse of discretion), so it makes no sense to have them on this board as the issue is for all Wikipedians. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:31, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- I started the discussion here since this is a highly visible board. Feel free to move this to a better venue. Cunard (talk) 15:36, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
Clarity
At the moment ArbCom have not authorised deletion. The Committee could not reach an agreement on that, so nothing has changed on that matter. What the motion that did pass say is that if there is again a deletion made under authority of ArbCom, the matter needs to come first to AE. The motion was merely clarifying where the discussion should first take place, and that the action should not be undone until the matter has been discussed. The Committee are divided on the exact power of ArbCom to delete. My personal feeling is that a deletion which is ordinarily allowable under deletion policy can and should be allowable under ArbCom protection in order to prevent an action which violates an ArbCom sanction being protected from being reversed. For example, if ArbCom have banned User:Foo from creating articles related to feces, and Foo creates an article on I Flingdung a notable gong farmer, then such an article can be deleted under G5. If such a deletion is contested by User:Foo, it could then be undeleted while DRV discusses the matter. What the new motion has done is clarify that the deletion is under the protection of ArbCom, so the matter is first discussed at AE, and if the deletion is agreed to fall under the sanction, and the deletion is within policy, then it remains in force.
While I do feel that the community should be gradually winding down ArbCom, and taking over all dispute resolution, until that formally happens I would be uncomfortable with a petition which weakened ArbCom's special status as being the only elected body which can make final and binding decisions. I feel that any action which is within policy and which is done to enforce an ArbCom sanction must be allowed. If we start to eat away at ArbCom's powers of enforcing a sanction we weaken ArbCom. Today it's deletion, tomorrow it's page protection, next week it's site banning, next month it's desysopping. Fine if we want to talk about disbanding ArbCom, but while we still have it, we need to make sure ArbCom keeps its ability to enforce sanctions.
So, I am not in favour of ArbCom being able to delete outside of policy, and I don't think there is consensus in the Committee for such a step. But I am in favour of ArbCom being able to delete within policy, and for challenges to such deletions being first handled within ArbCom's arena. So I would not be in favour of any petition or motion which explicitly bans ArbCom from deletion within policy in order to enforce a sanction. SilkTork (talk) 18:24, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- Alternatively, if we don't stop them now, today it's page deletion, tomorrow it's permabans, then site-wide General Sanctions - in this aspect, the slippery slope argument is completely legitimate...in both directions. Editors may make of that what they will. Nosebagbear (talk) 18:42, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
"if there is again a deletion made under authority of ArbCom, the matter needs to come first to AE"
is not a clarification. It is an amendment to long-standing policy and practise. This creates two different sorts of deletion. The difference between a deletion taking under normal admin discretion and a deletion "made under authority of ArbCom" is that the latter cannot be reversed under normal admin discretion, and if it is challenged, the community does not get to decide on the outcome – that decision is to be based on whether the deletion could be construed as possible, not that it is a good idea.- ArbCom has provided no reasons why creating this protected-class of deletions would improve the encyclopedia. If we had a slew of cases where an "ArbCom authorised deletion" (AAD) was overturned by individual admins, under normal admin discretion, I might be persuaded to see some point in having a protected class of deletions. The fact is that we have exactly zero cases where an individual admin has made a decision to contradict another admin and overturn their AAD. There's simply no need for ArbCom to change our normal deletion policies and procedures. --RexxS (talk) 12:39, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
- Allowing the type of deletion which prompted this case would set a very bad precedent. The issue involves an admin who decided to summarily delete a userspace page for violation of the userspace guidelines. While that is in principle a valid reason to delete pages, and therefore "within policy", the admin would normally have been required to open a deletion discussion and get a consensus. ArbCom wasn't able to agree that allowing this was a bad idea. Logically, if this was allowed, it would extend to other reasons for deleting pages which are usually settled through discussion, such as notability. Admins would be able to delete articles on topics they think are non-notable, without consulting anyone, as long as they said the magic words when doing so. This only applies to areas covered by discretionary sanctions but that's a huge scope. The BLP sanctions alone apply to almost a million pages. There is a very strong consensus that admins are not allowed to delete pages for reasons like this on their own judgement.
- Furthermore, I don't see why ArbCom is trying to legislate in this area. ArbCom is supposed to stick to rulings about conduct and leave content well alone. They wouldn't be able to order that a certain paragraph must be removed from an article, for example. It follows that they shouldn't be able to rule that the entire article should be deleted. G5 is a red herring here, G5 deletions are authorised under the community's speedy deletion policy, not an ArbCom ruling. This is an area where the community has plenty of longstanding rules and procedures, and ArbCom shouldn't be trying to get rid of them for a large chunk of the encyclopedia. Hut 8.5 18:35, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
- Here's a general challenge, henceforth to be known as Marshall's Challenge:- Please provide any example of a page that needs to be deleted, but can't wait for an XfD, shouldn't be oversighted, shouldn't be an office action, and has no applicable CSD. If you can provide any example of a page like that, then I'll agree it's appropriate for Arbcom to arrogate to itself this new power.—S Marshall T/C 19:35, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Billie Eilish's cjunt TonyBallioni (talk) 19:38, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
- Note: the deletion of the page (log entry) gives
G6: Housekeeping and routine (non-controversial) cleanup: WP:DENY
as the rationale for the deletion. --DannyS712 (talk) 20:15, 23 April 2019 (UTC) - For users who can't look at it, it was a totally unnecessary SPI request for three already-blocked accounts with synonymous usernames.I'm comfortable with calling the page speedyable vandalism, for much the same reason nobody bats an eye about deleting redirects created from reverting page-move vandalism, despite both being deliberately created in good faith by non-vandal users. —Cryptic 20:26, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
- I mean, it was a good deletion on my part, and we get crap like that all the time at SPI. I called it G6, you call it G3, but in reality, it is a page that most reasonable people would agree should have been deleted and I deleted it as an IAR G6. My point here is that OMG deletion must be totally exempt from IAR and nothing that isn't strictly within policy mantra that we're getting because of this ArbCom case isn't exactly applicable when you get into some of the more sensitive behind the scenes areas of the project such as SPI, oversight, and much of the stuff that I'm assuming goes to private arb email. I've also deleted pages where people request OS where I don't think suppression is appropriate, but keeping the page around or sending it through an XfD aren't really good ideas either (I think I may call them U5 to avoid questions, but they're also really IAR.)I don't really have an opinion on the whole AE deletion drama, but I absolutely do not like the direction this discussion is going over the moral outrage on deletions that don't fit perfectly with WP:CSD or whatever policy.The simple facts of the matter are that most administrators do not want to get involved in content issues, but in some complex cases the deletion policy doesn't fit perfectly. In those cases, we do what is in the best interest of the encyclopedia. I usually do my best to do it subtly, which AE never is, and rewriting policy based on two cases in 18 years is a horrible idea if such a rewrite could have ripple effects. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:39, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
- I don't see why that couldn't have waited for an XfD, if you'd happened to be inclined to follow the process.—S Marshall T/C 21:11, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
- Have a little think about why you're wrong and get back to us when you work it out. Nick (talk) 21:25, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
- I'm so sorry, Nick, but I've reflected on it and I seem to be too stupid to work it out. Perhaps you could give me the reasons?—S Marshall T/C 14:19, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
- Have a little think about why you're wrong and get back to us when you work it out. Nick (talk) 21:25, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
- does it serve any benefit to the project to keep it? No. Praxidicae (talk) 21:22, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
- “IAR G6” is a contradiction. I have long supported giving SPI clerks and admins authority to deleted SPI subpages at their discretion. It seems they do anyway. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:25, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
- I don't see why that couldn't have waited for an XfD, if you'd happened to be inclined to follow the process.—S Marshall T/C 21:11, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
- Look, reasonable people can disagree whether or which csd criteria are applicable to a particular page, or whether it's more harmful or not to publicize the page on MFD for a week. What has people so upset is that, ordinarily, when they do disagree, and there isn't a consensus at DRV that the deletion was correct, it gets restored and sent to MFD or AFD or wherever. That's what community-written policy and practice has evolved to say. Now we've instead got a body which, while professing not to have the power to overrule policy, authorizes individual admins to set the much higher bar of requiring a positive consensus that deletion wasn't even arguably correct. Plus, all you peons without the deletedtext right? Your input doesn't matter, because any admin who tries to temporarily undelete the material to let you have a say does so under explicit threat of desysop. Once you can look at deleted pages, it's very, very easy to forget that, to those who can't, there's no completely uncontroversial use of the delete button. —Cryptic 21:54, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
- I mean, it was a good deletion on my part, and we get crap like that all the time at SPI. I called it G6, you call it G3, but in reality, it is a page that most reasonable people would agree should have been deleted and I deleted it as an IAR G6. My point here is that OMG deletion must be totally exempt from IAR and nothing that isn't strictly within policy mantra that we're getting because of this ArbCom case isn't exactly applicable when you get into some of the more sensitive behind the scenes areas of the project such as SPI, oversight, and much of the stuff that I'm assuming goes to private arb email. I've also deleted pages where people request OS where I don't think suppression is appropriate, but keeping the page around or sending it through an XfD aren't really good ideas either (I think I may call them U5 to avoid questions, but they're also really IAR.)I don't really have an opinion on the whole AE deletion drama, but I absolutely do not like the direction this discussion is going over the moral outrage on deletions that don't fit perfectly with WP:CSD or whatever policy.The simple facts of the matter are that most administrators do not want to get involved in content issues, but in some complex cases the deletion policy doesn't fit perfectly. In those cases, we do what is in the best interest of the encyclopedia. I usually do my best to do it subtly, which AE never is, and rewriting policy based on two cases in 18 years is a horrible idea if such a rewrite could have ripple effects. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:39, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
- Note: the deletion of the page (log entry) gives
- Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Billie Eilish's cjunt TonyBallioni (talk) 19:38, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
- Here's a general challenge, henceforth to be known as Marshall's Challenge:- Please provide any example of a page that needs to be deleted, but can't wait for an XfD, shouldn't be oversighted, shouldn't be an office action, and has no applicable CSD. If you can provide any example of a page like that, then I'll agree it's appropriate for Arbcom to arrogate to itself this new power.—S Marshall T/C 19:35, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
The biggest problem in my throat are:
- (1) AE deletions by self-selected "AE admins" as the ArbCom Policy, de facto, and with these out of process deletions being unrevewable at DRV, a perfectly functional community-engaging respected forum, until AE review procedures as defined by ArbCom de facto policy are exhausted. This is stupid. DRV is a respected coonsensus based, widely engaged process; AE review is admin-only, and only frequented by drama board enthusiasts;
- (2) ArbCom get to Vote on interpretations of the scope of their own powers, and are sliding into more expansive less well defined boundaries.
What is the community response? Some are saying, there should be no discussion, let alone response, because AE deletions are rare.
I think there is an easy response:
- * Deletion is not in scope for AE. You may block the user, blank and protect their userspace, delete anything covered by the myriad of CSD criteria. WP:POLEMIC is not a CSD criterion if it falls short of CSD#G10. You may risk rejection of your wish to delete by making your case at MfD. However, if you delete while citing AE privilege, thus invoking ArbCom's protection of you from community review and abuse of policy (WP:DEL; WP:CSD), then, unless you have an IAR-worthy reason, you should be WP:BLOCKed for WP:Gaming the system. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:06, 27 April 2019 (UTC)
Deletion review
I think petition 1 is the most likely to achieve consensus since it is narrowly tailored. Taking into account Levivich (talk · contribs)'s great suggestion ("It seems to me the important point is that all deletions are reviewable at DRV."), I would like to include language requiring allowing deletions to be reviewable at DRV in the petition.
Here is what I plan to propose.
This paragraph of the "Policy and precedent" section of the arbitration policy:
The arbitration process is not a vehicle for creating new policy by fiat. The Committee's decisions may interpret existing policy and guidelines, recognise and call attention to standards of user conduct, or create procedures through which policy and guidelines may be enforced. The Committee does not rule on content, but may propose means by which community resolution of a content dispute can be facilitated.
is amended to add the underlined text:
The Committee's discretionary sanctions must not authorise the deletion, undeletion, blanking, or redirection of pages in any namespace. The Committee must not disallow deletions from being reviewed at deletion review.
Levivich suggested adding "Deletions authorized by the arbitration committee are reviewable at DRV like any other deletion." The arbitration policy currently does not say the committee can authorize deletions, so adding a sentence like this could be interpreted as allowing the committee to authorize deletions. The sentence "The Committee must not disallow deletions from being reviewed at deletion review" achieves the same purpose but makes no statement on whether the committee is allowed to authorize deletions so is more likely to achieve consensus.
I welcome feedback from the community about this revised proposed petition.
Cunard (talk) 10:31, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
- Belated response to ping. I agree that the discussion here indicates that only the most narrowly drawn provision has any viability if offered. I'm prepared to be persuaded to the contrary if a compelling argument is presented, but my feeling is ArbCom has no authority to delete articles outside of what its individual members already possess as admins + oversighters + IAR. This is why their current compromise of requiring claimed DS deletions to go to AE is troublesome - without prior consensus, it presumes ArbCom has this jurisdiction, and proposes to limit the established community process to address deletions.With respect to the proposal, I am not certain that the clarifying language helps. If the original sentence means that ArbCom, assuming they have the authority to delete, may not delegate it as part of DS, what deletion is being limited to DRV review? Presumably there would be no DS deletions to deal with, so does this mean if ArbCom itself authorizes a deletion it would go to DRV? I think that would be a difficult proposition to pass because the community first would have to grapple with the underlying issue of what ArbCom itself can do. As an aside, if you do decide to keep this provision, "must not disallow" is unwieldy. Double negatives in general invite confusion. Xymmax So let it be written So let it be done 01:43, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
- BU Rob13 (talk · contribs) noted here that the Committee is still discussing discretionary sanctions. I will hold off for awhile on starting the petition.
Cunard (talk) 10:31, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
- @Cunard: Go ahead with whatever you wish to try. I'm convinced whatever reasonable steps we take to ensure discretionary sanctions do not target content will not satisfy you, because the dispute seems to have become a territorial one surrounding DRV rather than an actual quabble with whether ArbCom is infringing upon matters of content (which, again, did not happen in the single instance in which this has been used). I will note that specifically enshrining deletion review in ARBPOL is unwise, because if that venue were ever to change, be renamed, etc., we'd need an entire amendment process just to correct the outdated reference. ~ Rob13Talk 13:30, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
- Oh, and procedurally - note that such a petition is not an RfC, since it isn't a discussion, isn't subject to consensus, and opposition is irrelevant. I'm not sure what you would call it - probably just "petition" - but it shouldn't be labeled as an RfC, in my opinion. ~ Rob13Talk 13:33, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
- Thank you all for the feedback. Based on the feedback, I have excluded the sentence about deletion review since it likely is unnecessary. I have started a petition at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Petition to amend the arbitration policy: discretionary sanctions and deletions. Cunard (talk) 07:33, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
Exploit in the DISPLAYTITLE behavior switch involving html tags
I've discovered an exploit in {{DISPLAYTITLE}} that allows for page names to appear different than what they actually are. I made a page that shows an example of this, which, at first glance, appears to be the Bureaucrats' noticeboard (ignoring the redlink), but is actually a different page.
Now, how does this exploit work?
- Start with a page called "Man in the Pagan Temple".
- Next, add the {{DISPLAYTITLE}} switch, getting "{{DISPLAYTITLE:Man in the Pagan Temple}}".
- Then, add
<span>
tags with the CSS style set to "font-size:0;", getting "{{DISPLAYTITLE:Ma<span style="font-size:0;">n </span>in <span style="font-size:0;">the</span>Pag<span style="font-size:0;">an templ</span>e}}". - And now, the page title is displayed as "Main Page", because, in effect, characters were removed from the title by making them have 0 size.
InvalidOStalk 15:14, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
- You make delicious beans. Not that I expect this will be a big issue anywhere. --Izno (talk) 16:13, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
- I thought that was the point of the DISPLAYTITLE template? Natureium (talk) 16:36, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
- I'd say so. Feature not bug (or exploit). Or rather, unnecessary artistry - just change the input for the template to "Main page" for the same effect :[] --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:54, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
- It's a "feature" however one that likely shouldn't be enabled when displaytitle restrictions are purposefully enabled. I've opened phab:T221887. — xaosflux Talk 19:50, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
- No issues with BEANS? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.26.146.133 (talk) 07:24, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
- WP:POINT InvalidOS (talk) 10:40, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
- Discovering an exploit, documenting it carefully, and then posting it to AN is hardly disruptive behaviour. Triptothecottage (talk) 10:45, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
- Exploiting it on one page which isn't a BLP and reverting it soon after (you can still see the effect in views of the relevant revisions of thew page) may be reasonable; exploiting it on 2 BLPs and 3 other articles, and leaving them vandalized, is definitely not. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:21, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
- Discovering an exploit, documenting it carefully, and then posting it to AN is hardly disruptive behaviour. Triptothecottage (talk) 10:45, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
- WP:POINT InvalidOS (talk) 10:40, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
- No issues with BEANS? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.26.146.133 (talk) 07:24, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
- It's a "feature" however one that likely shouldn't be enabled when displaytitle restrictions are purposefully enabled. I've opened phab:T221887. — xaosflux Talk 19:50, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
- Just want to point out that the exploit is being used - Special:Permalink/894627822. Maybe the discussion should be moved? --DannyS712 (talk) 00:39, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
- I'd say so. Feature not bug (or exploit). Or rather, unnecessary artistry - just change the input for the template to "Main page" for the same effect :[] --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:54, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
- Note for any technical solution: {{Hidden title}} and the unused {{Icon namespace}} use DISPLAYTITLE...font-size:0 legitimately. Certes (talk) 01:16, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
- As it's actually been exploited, this looks like a job for an edit filter. Certes (talk) 11:27, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
- Edit filter requested at Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested#Non-confirmed editors changing the display title of a page --DannyS712 (talk) 23:46, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
I've just reverted similar exploitation by 37.26.146.172 and 37.26.146.192. An admin may wish to consider further action. I don't believe any other pages are currently affected, except a few innocent uses in user namespace. Certes (talk) 23:31, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
Legitimate uses
Vandalism aside, is this approach something we could consider for pages affected by Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)? Consider WP:Mersh, for example; it's at Project Mersh because the proper Project: title puts it in Wikipedia space. Or maybe we could use this for DK Jungle Climber, whose proper title, if linked, goes to the Danish Wikipedia. Nyttend (talk) 22:13, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
- Nyttend, with the exception of spaces and underscores, DISPLAYTITLE won't let you add/modify characters. Basically all you can/should do is modify the formatting of the text - adding italics, converting the first character to lowercase, etc. It's why we have {{correct title}} and {{technical reasons}}. Primefac (talk) 01:34, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
- Oh, now I see: it's merely hiding certain characters, e.g. Sami Shalom Chetrit becomes "Shit" because "ami S" and "alom Chetr" are hidden. I thought it was letting you add characters, but in the middle of explaining why you were wrong, I discovered that I entirely misunderstood the situation. Thank you for correcting me. Nyttend (talk) 01:54, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
Should Twinkle warn after CSD deletion? And default behavior
Right now, when using Twinkle to place a csd tag, it can leave a notification for the creator, but it cannot leave one upon deletion. That is, if a sysop deletes a page that has not been tagged, the creator has not been notified of either the tag or the deletion. Instead, sysops have the "Open user talk page on submit" option, the idea being that we can thus add a custom message, in either case. From a cursory look, only a few sysops have customized the list of criteria for which this occurs, mostly to reduce or disable the feature entirely.
There have been a number of requests for an option in Twinkle to leave a notice for the creator upon CSD deleting a page, and I'd like to enable this. My plan is to basically mimic the behavior of the notification upon CSD tagging: send a notification if criterion is in preferences and box is checked. Assuming this is desirable, this would be a noticeable change to sysop CSD behavior, so I'd like to get some input on a few specific questions:
- If there is no deletion tag on the page, should the box be checked by default, as is the case for tagging notifications? (I lean yes)
- What should the default criteria be on which to provide a deletion notification? This would be customizable. Right now, the default set of criteria for tagging notifications is:
custom, g1, g2, g3, g4, g6, g10, g11, g12, g13, g14, a1, a2, a3, a5, a7, a9, a10, a11, f1, f2, f3, f7, f9, f10, u3, u5, t2, t3, p1, p2
- while the default for the current "open user talk page" option is:
custom, g1, g2, g3, g4, g5, g10, g11, g12, a1, a3, a7, a9, a10, a11, f3, f7, f9, u3, u5, t2, p1
- (I lean toward something like the latter but with G13 and G14 added and G6 instead of G5)
- Should the "Open user talk page on submit" option remain (I say no)
Answers on these should enable the code and template work to go forward. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:34, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
- Since I don't have the sysop toolset, apologies in advance for what could be a really stupid thought since I don't understand the mechanics. Is there anyway Twinkle could check to see if a notice about the CSD was already present? If yes then it would leave one kind of message post deletion and if not it would leave a different (longer) message? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:40, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
- 1: yes. 2: I'd prefer the second set plus g13, g14, a2, a5, f1, f2, f4, f6, f7. 3: no. But your best bet may be to just do it and take feedback afterwards. GoldenRing (talk) 10:33, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- I wonder if this shouldn't use the Notifications software in MediaWiki by default. "Your page has been deleted; see here." (where here is some interesting help-like link). --Izno (talk) 20:34, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
- @Izno: The only way to guarantee such notifications (I believe) is through a talk page notice. They next best thing would be to ping the user in the deletion summary, but I'm not sure that it would be wise to do that. If Twinkle were an extension, it could invoke echo notifications all it wanted, but because its just a gadget the options are more limited --DannyS712 (talk) 20:52, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
- No, I'm imagining a setting in the actual Notifications preference page that allows someone to say, "yes, I would(n't) like to receive a notice about a page that I created which was deleted". --Izno (talk) 21:50, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
- Not that they're going anywhere, but that'd be phab:T56532 (see also phab:T123866). It's offtopic, but talkpages notices such as provided by Twinkle are useful to other editors as well. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 10:27, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
- No, I'm imagining a setting in the actual Notifications preference page that allows someone to say, "yes, I would(n't) like to receive a notice about a page that I created which was deleted". --Izno (talk) 21:50, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
- @Izno: The only way to guarantee such notifications (I believe) is through a talk page notice. They next best thing would be to ping the user in the deletion summary, but I'm not sure that it would be wise to do that. If Twinkle were an extension, it could invoke echo notifications all it wanted, but because its just a gadget the options are more limited --DannyS712 (talk) 20:52, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
Venezuela topics
Could we have more admin eyes on Venezuela topics per this reddit thread, posted to my talk? It seems to be having a recruiting effect: for example, a Move discussion at 2019 Venezuela uprising has received a lot of non-policy-based input.[1] Still waiting for my government paycheck. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:12, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
- @SandyGeorgia: - me too! Not to mention being notified of our mass secret agenda. Maybe I need to enable 2-factor authorisation before they'll tell me? In any case, the reddit thread discussions, that there are several of atm on AN, don't seem especially co-ordinated at recruiting...they have a habit to wander off into attacking us and our Kafkaesque ways. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:19, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
- The biggest threat to neutrality on those articles is the "deprecation" of news sources, which has rapidly progressed from Daily Mail to TeleSUR,[2] and I suspect any other media outlet favoring the Venezuelan government's perspective would also be at risk. Our article about TeleSUR is not flattering and I doubt it is untrue, exactly, but in this day and age who would have more confidence in the BBC or any news outlet owned by some wealthy billionaire (and what other kind is there?)? Unless editors resist the calls to exclude these perspectives when there is no reason to doubt their veracity -- and administrators resist calls to censure editors who do so resist -- the resulting articles will end up reading like propaganda from whichever side has voted all the others off the island. Wnt (talk) 10:16, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
Live event, have wp:event coordinator, unable to make accounts?
I am in a live event and I have WP:Event coordinator events but am unable to make accounts for people. If anyone can share insight into proper procedure, then I will document the recommendation for the next person. Thanks. I recognize that this general forum is not the best place for this sort of request but I am hoping for a faster response. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:00, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- Just as a note, @Bluerasberry: I moved your post from ANI to here, as it's more appropriate at AN than ANI (though there may be a better place as well). Also, I removed the post at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Event coordinator as that page is for requests only, not general help (for others, here's the post in question). SkyWarrior 17:18, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
I am at an event with 70 librarians at the United States Library of Congress. I am already an event coordinator.
I am getting a message which says the IP is blocked - 140.147.236.152. Of course this is a busy public library but we need access to make accounts.
Wikipedia:WikiProject University of Virginia/Program for Cooperative Cataloging May 2019
"Account creation from this IP address (140.147.236.152) has been temporarily restricted. This is probably due to persistent vandalism from the IP address you are editing from, which may be shared by many people if you are connected to the Internet via a proxy server (used by most schools and corporations and some Internet service providers) or dial-up access.
To request that an account be created for you, please follow the instructions at Wikipedia:Request an account to request a username. We recommend that you first search in the list of all users to ensure that your desired username is not taken. For all other inquiries, fill out the form provided by the Unblock Ticket Request System using the information provided below. We apologise for any inconvenience caused to any innocent users.
Information about the block: account creation from this IP address (140.147.236.152) was blocked by DeltaQuad, who gave the reason {{checkuserblock-wide}}."
I expected that as an event coordinator I would be able to get around this block. Can anyone advise?
Fortunately, 60 people made accounts in advance. This is not super urgent, but it is urgent and I want the event to go well for anyone who showed up without registering.
@DeltaQuad:? Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:54, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- "The request an account process is severely backlogged. If you submit a request today, you can expect a response in approximately 3 months." - Wikipedia:Request an account. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:58, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- Quick ping for @DeltaQuad:. -- zzuuzz (talk) 17:29, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- DQ looks to be offline. I've pinged another CU to take a look here, and @Zzuzzz: is a CU too. Not sure if they'd be willing to act before DQ gets back online. Unilaterally undoing a CU block, even temporarily, is a big no-no for mere admins, so you'll need CU help. --Floquenbeam (talk) 17:36, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- Sigh. repinging @Zzuuzz:. --Floquenbeam (talk) 17:37, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- I have to say, knowing the details that others might not, I'm very wary. I'd really like to hear from DQ. -- zzuuzz (talk) 17:41, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- I've already unblocked temporarily in order to allow Lane to proceed with the Wikipedia event. @Bluerasberry:, do you know approximately how long the event will be? I can restore the block as soon as it's over. If Amanda (or another CU) believes this was a Very Bad Idea then go ahead and undo my unblock. -- Jezebel's Ponyobons mots 17:47, 3 May 2019 (UTC).
- Wait. So blocking account creation from an IP will prevent event coordinators from creating accounts? Interesting. This seems unintended, and I wonder if this issue has been caught before. If not, perhaps it needs a Phab ticket. Another question: if EVCs are granted IPBE in this situation, would that resolve the issue? Also FWIW I think Ponyo made a good call by decisively unblocking so that the event was not ruined, rather than dithering about nervously. ~Swarm~ {sting} 20:27, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- @Swarm: The only rights that event coordinators have are:
noratelimit
([3]) and the ability to addconfirmed
([4]). Thus, the restriction imposed byaccount creation blocked
applies to them as well. I'm not sure IPBE would fix that - the issue isn't a lack of access, but a lack of account creation. I see 2 potential changes: not block account creation from existing accounts, or add a new right to override the account creation block. --DannyS712 (talk) 20:40, 3 May 2019 (UTC)- This was most recently raised and answered at WT:IPBE. IPBE is not a solution. A bug report has been lodged (a year ago). -- zzuuzz (talk) 20:43, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- Briefly: from what I've been told, not even stewards can override account creation blocks, so there would be no permission to devolve. We also usually do intend to block account creation from individual IPs. For ranges, it is worth considering the impact, but many times the specific intent of the block is to block account creations while allowing logged-in editors to edit. The solution if there is an issue here such as this is to contact the blocking administrator/CU, or if they're not available, someone else who can help assessing the damage and possibly lower the block. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:50, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- Swarm - The "block account creation" option on an IP block applies to everyone. All user accounts (including administrators and stewards), regardless of their confirmed status or any local or global user rights they have - cannot create accounts. Any attempt to create an account while behind a blocked IP or range with this option set will be restricted by the MediaWiki software. I found this out after running into this and performing some testing with this block option. No account creation from an IP block really does mean no account creation. I remember creating a phab ticket about this, but it was met with replies from developers asking what the problem was and stating that nothing is broken. Obviously I disagree with this, but official policy does not explicitly define exactly which users would be overridden in this situation. You'd think that IP exempt accounts, admins, account creators, event coordinators, or Stewards would still be able to... but nope. :-/ ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 22:11, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- Weird. So if I'm editing from a library or school or something that's subject to a routine vandalism block, I would be completely and utterly exempt from the block, except for account creation activities. I am forbidden from ACC, because that particular aspect of the block is inviolable, without exception. It's kind of humorous, because I am fully authorized to just unblock account creation, but my account can't just ignore it. How can a dev say that's not broken? It makes absolutely no logical sense, and it becomes a lot harder to say "what's the problem?" after you see this real life situation, in which an outreach event could have been completely ruined. ~Swarm~ {sting} 00:42, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- That is quite weird and I share your thoughts on it, Swarm. Should another phab ticket be opened requesting some sort of a change given this recent event? It would make sense at the very least for admins and stewards to be able to override it, if not also event coordinators. What do you think Oshwah? --TheSandDoctor Talk 07:06, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- TheSandDoctor - I think it's a great idea, but after we've come up with a plan. What user groups should be exempted will be subject to some debate, but getting the conversation started is a move in the right direction once we know what should be different. To me, blocking a user would obviously give us the option to disable account creation as normal. But when blocking an IP or range, this is where it gets a bit tricky. At first thought, I want to say that existing accounts should be able to create accounts and edit as normal, and hard IP blocks preventing logged-in users from editing would also apply to account creation - unless you're IP-block exempt. But, its more complicated than this. Existing accounts being able to create accounts and edit behind a blocked IP (lets use a school for example) could just result in someone creating accounts to give out to others to use maliciously. Now we have sock and meat puppetry issues to deal with on top of it. Disabling all account creation eliminates this possibility, and I'm sure this is why things are where we are today. It would be nice if we could set different levels of account creation restrictions for blocked IPs (such as "allow all", "allow only existing users", "allow no account creation", etc) and where IP-block exempt users (hence, admins, etc) would be exempt from such restrictions. This may or may not be a perfect idea, but it's what makes sense to me as I sit here and think about how we'd resolve this, and make sure we have the ability to fully adjust restrictions to cover the different situations with IP blocks. ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 08:07, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- I don't think opening another bug report will help much, other than to poke the devs. The problem is that there is no way to assign rights - as it stands the new account needs to have the ability to create itself before it's created. Assigning rights to uncreated accounts doesn't work, and assigning more rights to the other creator is not going to get around this. -- zzuuzz (talk) 08:18, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- Sorry, Zzuuzz - I edit conflicted with you while I was expanding and stating my complete thought in my previous response. We shouldn't run to a ticket right away; that won't accomplish anything but have he devs tell us what they said last time. We'd need to come up with a full plan and idea of how we'd change this and get the community's support before we go to the devs with a phab ticket... ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 08:33, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- T189362 remains open and needing triage. Until that's dealt with I don't see how a community opinion will matter much. However don't let me stand in your way. -- zzuuzz (talk) 08:39, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- Zzuuzz - Hey you found it! :-) I remember working with SQL on this and figuring out the restriction with our tests. I agree; it unfortunately feels too large of a giant that we can't defeat. A ticket did nothing, and community opinion won't matter... where do you even start? Surely, we have to figure this out and come up with something... ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 08:45, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- T189362 remains open and needing triage. Until that's dealt with I don't see how a community opinion will matter much. However don't let me stand in your way. -- zzuuzz (talk) 08:39, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- Sorry, Zzuuzz - I edit conflicted with you while I was expanding and stating my complete thought in my previous response. We shouldn't run to a ticket right away; that won't accomplish anything but have he devs tell us what they said last time. We'd need to come up with a full plan and idea of how we'd change this and get the community's support before we go to the devs with a phab ticket... ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 08:33, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- I don't think opening another bug report will help much, other than to poke the devs. The problem is that there is no way to assign rights - as it stands the new account needs to have the ability to create itself before it's created. Assigning rights to uncreated accounts doesn't work, and assigning more rights to the other creator is not going to get around this. -- zzuuzz (talk) 08:18, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- TheSandDoctor, The old ticket is still open - see T189362 SQLQuery me! 14:12, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- TheSandDoctor - I think it's a great idea, but after we've come up with a plan. What user groups should be exempted will be subject to some debate, but getting the conversation started is a move in the right direction once we know what should be different. To me, blocking a user would obviously give us the option to disable account creation as normal. But when blocking an IP or range, this is where it gets a bit tricky. At first thought, I want to say that existing accounts should be able to create accounts and edit as normal, and hard IP blocks preventing logged-in users from editing would also apply to account creation - unless you're IP-block exempt. But, its more complicated than this. Existing accounts being able to create accounts and edit behind a blocked IP (lets use a school for example) could just result in someone creating accounts to give out to others to use maliciously. Now we have sock and meat puppetry issues to deal with on top of it. Disabling all account creation eliminates this possibility, and I'm sure this is why things are where we are today. It would be nice if we could set different levels of account creation restrictions for blocked IPs (such as "allow all", "allow only existing users", "allow no account creation", etc) and where IP-block exempt users (hence, admins, etc) would be exempt from such restrictions. This may or may not be a perfect idea, but it's what makes sense to me as I sit here and think about how we'd resolve this, and make sure we have the ability to fully adjust restrictions to cover the different situations with IP blocks. ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 08:07, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- That is quite weird and I share your thoughts on it, Swarm. Should another phab ticket be opened requesting some sort of a change given this recent event? It would make sense at the very least for admins and stewards to be able to override it, if not also event coordinators. What do you think Oshwah? --TheSandDoctor Talk 07:06, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- Weird. So if I'm editing from a library or school or something that's subject to a routine vandalism block, I would be completely and utterly exempt from the block, except for account creation activities. I am forbidden from ACC, because that particular aspect of the block is inviolable, without exception. It's kind of humorous, because I am fully authorized to just unblock account creation, but my account can't just ignore it. How can a dev say that's not broken? It makes absolutely no logical sense, and it becomes a lot harder to say "what's the problem?" after you see this real life situation, in which an outreach event could have been completely ruined. ~Swarm~ {sting} 00:42, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- @Swarm: The only rights that event coordinators have are:
- @Ponyo and Zzuuzz: Go ahead and leave it unblocked for now. I can't see all the data from when I ran the check (as some seems to have expired), but it doesn't seem to be much of an issue for now, and we can reblock if needed down the road. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 20:46, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- Noted. Thanks, Amanda.-- Jezebel's Ponyobons mots 20:49, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- @DeltaQuad, Ponyo, Zzuuzz, Oshwah, TheSandDoctor, Swarm, TonyBallioni, and DannyS712: The event was great. Thanks to everyone who attempted to help. I was anxious and overly dramatic here. 65 people edited as reported in the dashboard.
- I have been active in documenting how the EventCoordinator userright works. My follow up to this will be to make notes there on best practices and limits of the tool. I might want little changes somewhere, but overall I am willing to work within the bounds of our security standards and really respect our userright permissions process. I am so thankful for everyone who stepped in.
- I had relief on a few fronts - this was a savvy crowd and 10 of 70 present could connect to virtual networks back at their universities. That got more IP addresses in the room. Of course people had phones - I feel silly about that. Of course people can register on their phones.
- Practically everyone stayed for 3 hours. Everyone had fun, great event. Thanks and I will catch some of you on meetup / outreach coordination documentation pages. I will respond more to some of your messages next week. I sincerely appreciate all the attention but in hindsight I was squealing too loudly and should have chilled out a bit. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:26, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- Bluerasberry - Awesome! I'm glad the event went well and that you enjoyed it! :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 11:34, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- I am glad that the event went well, Bluerasberry! Thank you for bringing this issue to our collective attention as I don't think a lot of us were aware of this problem . --TheSandDoctor Talk 14:43, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- Bluerasberry - Awesome! I'm glad the event went well and that you enjoyed it! :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 11:34, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- Noted. Thanks, Amanda.-- Jezebel's Ponyobons mots 20:49, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- Wait. So blocking account creation from an IP will prevent event coordinators from creating accounts? Interesting. This seems unintended, and I wonder if this issue has been caught before. If not, perhaps it needs a Phab ticket. Another question: if EVCs are granted IPBE in this situation, would that resolve the issue? Also FWIW I think Ponyo made a good call by decisively unblocking so that the event was not ruined, rather than dithering about nervously. ~Swarm~ {sting} 20:27, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- I've already unblocked temporarily in order to allow Lane to proceed with the Wikipedia event. @Bluerasberry:, do you know approximately how long the event will be? I can restore the block as soon as it's over. If Amanda (or another CU) believes this was a Very Bad Idea then go ahead and undo my unblock. -- Jezebel's Ponyobons mots 17:47, 3 May 2019 (UTC).
- I have to say, knowing the details that others might not, I'm very wary. I'd really like to hear from DQ. -- zzuuzz (talk) 17:41, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- Sigh. repinging @Zzuuzz:. --Floquenbeam (talk) 17:37, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- DQ looks to be offline. I've pinged another CU to take a look here, and @Zzuzzz: is a CU too. Not sure if they'd be willing to act before DQ gets back online. Unilaterally undoing a CU block, even temporarily, is a big no-no for mere admins, so you'll need CU help. --Floquenbeam (talk) 17:36, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
- Quick ping for @DeltaQuad:. -- zzuuzz (talk) 17:29, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Is it safe to write down the password on Haveibeenpwned.?
I know I am using a unique and long password for Wikipedia. I also checked the suggested website earlier when it came to the news. I was afraid to enter my unique password there. Now, as it is suggested in the circular, my question is is it safe if I check my password in the site? Many thanks, --Titodutta (talk) 00:23, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- Have I Been Pwned? is a well known site by established security researcher Troy Hunt, so entering your password there is about as safe as entering it anywhere online can possibly be. That said, I'd never do so myself: I know my Wikipedia password is a long random string generated by my password manager, so there's nothing that website could tell me that I don't already know. Use long random passwords, unique for each site (at least for each high-value site - email, banking, and so on), and you won't need to worry about whether your password was breached. ST47 (talk) 01:46, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- See User:Johnuniq/Security. Johnuniq (talk) 02:09, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- Safer than Facebook certainly. --qedk (t 桜 c) 14:47, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
- The question may be relevant to the following page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:10,000_most_common_passwords It could be updated to address these questions. QuackGuru (talk) 02:38, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- Yes. HIBP uses the k-anonymity algorithm to check your password. Only pieces of it are transmitted, not the whole thing. Additionally, the password by itself is not immediately useful without the username. Jehochman Talk 04:10, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – May 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2019).
Interface administrator changes
|
|
- A request for comment concluded that creating pages in the portal namespace should be restricted to autoconfirmed users.
- Following a request for comment, the subject-specific notability guideline for pornographic actors and models (WP:PORNBIO) was removed; in its place, editors should consult WP:ENT and WP:GNG.
- XTools Admin Stats, a tool to list admins by administrative actions, has been revamped to support more types of log entries such as AbuseFilter changes. Two additional tools have been integrated into it as well: Steward Stats and Patroller Stats.
- In response to the continuing compromise of administrator accounts, the Arbitration Committee passed a motion amending the procedures for return of permissions (diff). In such cases,
the committee will review all available information to determine whether the administrator followed "appropriate personal security practices" before restoring permissions
; administrators found failing to have adequately done sowill not be resysopped automatically
. All current administrators have been notified of this change. - Following a formal ratification process, the arbitration policy has been amended (diff). Specifically, the two-thirds majority required to remove or suspend an arbitrator now excludes (1) the arbitrator facing suspension or removal, and (2) any inactive arbitrator who does not respond within 30 days to attempts to solicit their feedback on the resolution through all known methods of communication.
- In response to the continuing compromise of administrator accounts, the Arbitration Committee passed a motion amending the procedures for return of permissions (diff). In such cases,
- A request for comment is currently open to amend the community sanctions procedure to exclude non XfD or CSD deletions.
- A proposal to remove pre-2009 indefinite IP blocks is currently open for discussion.
I created a petition at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Petition to amend the arbitration policy: discretionary sanctions and deletions that proposes amending Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy to say that the Arbitration Committee's discretionary sanctions must not authorise the deletion, undeletion, moving, blanking, or redirection of pages in any namespace. The petition part of the arbitration policy amendment process requires a petition signed by at least one hundred editors in good standing. The ratification process then begins and requires majority support with at least one hundred editors voting in support.
There is a parallel RfC at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: community general sanctions and deletions that should not be confused with this one about the Arbitration Committee's discretionary sanctions. Cunard (talk) 07:39, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
Why can we not close "Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#HuffPost article on WP COI editing"
I have listed this discussion at WP:ANRFC, WP:3 and WP:DRN, but all of these requests have been reverted. I do not see what type of harm that closing this long standing discussion will have, so I am posting this here, to generate discussion about whether or not this thread should be listed at WP:ANRFC for closure. Two users, one being an administrator, believe that my request at WP:ANFRC was legitimate, therefore, I believe that my request should stay there until someone decides to close the thread. --Jax 0677 (talk) 13:04, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
Admin bot trial for unblocking pre-2009 IP addresses
Hello, to implement this RfC an adminbot task has been requested at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AnomieBOT III 6. A proof of concept trial has been approved. If you have any questions or feedback on the bot task, please feel free to comment at the BRFA. Thank you, — xaosflux Talk 15:28, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
Consensual outing
Is it appropriate and not a violation of our harassment policy to out another editor with the consent of the outed editor? Although I didn't see anything about this in WP:OUTING, WP:COI#Avoid outing has the following language (bolding for emphasis): When investigating COI editing, the policy against harassment takes precedence. It requires that Wikipedians not reveal the identity of editors against their wishes.
In this particular case, I've accused another editor of having a COI and violating WP:PAID, based primarily on off-wiki evidence of the editor's identity. The accused editor has demanded that I present the evidence. The specific question is, may I post the evidence of their identity if the accused editor gives me express permission to do so?
Apologies if this is the wrong forum for this. I can post this at WP:COIN, WT:COIN, WT:COI, or wherever if that would be more appropriate. R2 (bleep) 18:54, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
- Mail it to any sysop. Yunshui and TonyBallioni are two names, that spring to my mind. ∯WBGconverse 19:19, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) If they are giving you permission to "out" them, why don't they just out themselves so there's no question about whether it's proper? Natureium (talk)
- Joe Roe and Natureium, it is not yet clear whether they are giving explicit permission. I think R2 is, correctly, treading carefully: if someone says "show me the evidence", it is not certain that this means "publicly post information linking my account and real world identity". --JBL (talk) 01:01, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
- Besides the paid-en-wp email, seems to me that the best course is to post the evidence minus necessary details, i.e. explain exactly what you have without giving any personal information. "Hello, User:Soandso, I found someone called "Soandso" at such-and-such.com, and that account was explicitly linked to someone with such-and-such a name who lived at a certain address and had such-and-such email address. That person has written several paragraphs about this same topic on that website, and your writing here sounds identical in style and vocabulary to what Soandso wrote on the other website." As long as you don't say what website you're talking about, literally all you're saying is that the username exists somewhere else, and the user here can always reject a connection. Either the user will tell you to post the details, in which case you definitely have permission, or the user will be satisfied without saying to post them, so you won't need to do it. Nyttend (talk) 02:53, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
- Joe Roe and Natureium, it is not yet clear whether they are giving explicit permission. I think R2 is, correctly, treading carefully: if someone says "show me the evidence", it is not certain that this means "publicly post information linking my account and real world identity". --JBL (talk) 01:01, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
- I remember a vaguely similar situation with John D. Haynes House. Someone claiming to be the owner repeatedly removed location information saying "Don't post the address of my home", even though the local government's GIS website provided the owner's address and said that it was something like 700 miles away. So we had someone claiming that his personal information had been posted (but not because it was his personal information, but because the location was relevant to the house article, and he was the only one claiming that it was his information), and the only way to disprove him was to provide the owner's actual personal information. In the end, we basically ignored his complaints, since the address was sourced to reliable government documentation, and any building's location is obviously significant enough to include in an article about that building. Nyttend (talk) 03:14, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
- Honest words, outing anyone for anything is not worth the trouble. Genuinely. Even if the editor has a COI, it is an area that is so muddled that you'll never know what you're ending up with. Share private information via private channels only, there is no value in arguing a consensual disclosure, at the end of it, you might have to face the schtick for it. --qedk (t 桜 c) 06:54, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
- Just confirm with the person that they really consented when they said "present the evidence". Ask them something like: "do you really mean post my currently offline research, that contains what I believe is your real name, affiliation, etc."? If they say no then don't post it. Since it's private info, send it to a checkuser, not a regular admin. If suspected COI editor asks you to send the info to them privately, refuse to do so-- there's no use helping them cover their tracks; and anyway, if the info is wrong it could compromise the named person's privacy. Once the CU's have the info, leave further disclosure up to them. Also don't post identifying info (even if the editor consents) unless you're pretty sure that it's correct. 67.164.113.165 (talk) 07:51, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
An arbitration case regarding Enigmaman has now closed and the final decision is viewable at the link above. The following remedy has been enacted:
Enigmaman (talk · contribs) is desysopped for repeated misuse of administrative tools and the administrative logs, inadequate communication, and generally failing to meet community expectations and responsibilities of administrators as outlined in WP:ADMINACCT. He may regain the administrative tools at any time via a successful request for adminship.
For the Arbitration Committee, – bradv🍁 13:19, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
- Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Enigmaman closed
Strange pattern of vandalism on David Benioff and D. B. Weiss
Hi all. The articles David Benioff and D. B. Weiss have been attracting vandalism from numerous IPs/accounts. The strange thing is that all of the vandalism is similar (e.g. 1, 2), and there are even established accounts participating. Could someone familiar with this sort of abuse please review? Thanks, FASTILY 04:30, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
- I have warned Coherbia (talk · contribs) for disruptive editing; they can be blocked if they continue. In the meantime, lets see if your semi-protection suffices for now. I suspect it may need to be extended for another 2-3 weeks and perhaps even upgraded to ECP, but lets cross that bridge when we get there. Abecedare (talk) 04:58, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
- This is regarding widespread fan criticism of the showrunners (Benihoff and Weiss) of the Game of Thrones television series after the last couple of episodes. The meme is spreading elsewhere, but is inappropriate here and should be handled like any BLP. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 09:58, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
It'll probably die down in the coming weeks as people vent their frustrations. I vandalized the pages once and am content. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Coherbia (talk • contribs)
- So vandalism is okay on Wikipedia if it's about a popular TV show and people are venting frustrations. Noted. What a place we've arrived at.--WaltCip (talk) 13:08, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
- Let me state unequivocally that Wikipedia is not some back-room internet forum where disenfranchised trolls can attack creative professionals for daring to create content that doesn't suit your opinion of how the show should go, or whatever other utter nonsense you subscribe to. Anyone trying it should be blocked per WP:NOTHERE. @Coherbia: Abecedare's warning is the only one you will get. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 13:15, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
- I was trying to tell if Coherbia was messing with us - I mean, why come onto AN and state your vandalism? Weird.
- Hence my comment. Wikipedia doesn't tolerate "just a bit of vandalism", for any reason. Vandalism = blocked. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:16, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
I mean, vandalism is never really ok. Wikipedia is a great project that I wholeheartedly believe in. If I thought that vandalizing a page would permanently alter it's content, or be harder than a few clicks to revert I wouldn't do it. I posted to confirm that I think it'll be a few weeks before people stop trying to vandalize their pages, or related pages. But now that Ivan and Walt's decided to inflate their own importance and get holier than thou, I've gotta anger them just a little more. I believe in the mission, and I know doing this is wrong. I chose to anyway. I'm not attacking anyone's work, it seemed just fine and informative. You guys need to differentiate between me affirming that this is going to continue for a bit as a source from the fandom, from me vandalizing the page because I hate a vast repository of free information. That's obviously false. I've tried doing some stuff here on Wikipedia before, I've donated for the past two years. I just did it for the lulz, and now I'm posting this because Ivan and Walt are insufferable, but primarily Ivan. Anyway, go ahead and ban me or whatever.
As a side note: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Local_Embassy If Local Embassy is going to continue to be a complete useless page, then delete it or actually make some effort to help multilingual editors/writers to translate works between languages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Coherbia (talk • contribs)
- vandalizing, attacking others, "I just did it for the lulz," and "go ahead and ban me or whatever" sounds like someone who doesn't need to be here. So, Done. Blocked per their disruption and their repeated request to do exactly this. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:18, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
User:Bhimavarapu007 slow-mo edit warring and adding WP:ELNEVER links despite warnings
Bhimavarapu007 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) The user keeps adding links to a website that hosts and displays pirated and copyrighted material which WP:ELNEVER makes clear shouldn't be done as a form of contributory copyright infringement. They seem to be doing so in order to direct people to copyrighted material based on this edit summary [5]. They have also been re-adding this content for weeks ([6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20]) despite multiple users reverting the changes. This led to the page getting PC protected. When I saw an edit in the PC queue, I reverted and gave them a level-4 warning for edit warring [21] because while they had been warned in edit summaries they had never been warned for edit warring. The edit warring warning was the third warning (first, second) this user received regarding their conduct at this article. Some higher protection and/or a block may be in order as pending changes is no longer effective as the user has recently been autoconfirmed and their changes are auto-accepted. Wugapodes [thɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 19:13, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
- This user appears to be adding links to 123Movies to the 123Movies article. That is standard practice per The Pirate Bay, Sci-Hub, Wikileaks, YouTube, etc. Now I don't have a legal degree (do I need one here?), but to my way of thinking, telling someone that there is a 123Movies or a Sci-Hub is far more useful in helping him to find it than anything that follows, while the distinction we draw in policy is between having a link where clicking it inexorably brings the user directly to downloading (including "viewing" or "streaming") pirated text, versus giving him information that might help him research out pirated text by, for example, knowing where a site that hosts it can be found. Note that judging whether a site 'purely' hosts pirated content, or hosts a lot of pirated stuff, or hosts too much pirated stuff, or hosts pirated stuff with poor oversight, or whatever boundary you would draw, is not our job. This is why the ELNEVER policy says "...This is particularly relevant when linking to sites such as Scribd, WikiLeaks, or YouTube, where due care should be taken to avoid linking to material that violates copyright." Clearly the policy does not conceive of blocking all links to those sites, just the ones directly to unlicensed copyrighted material on them. Wnt (talk) 22:15, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
- The problem is that these links aren't in line with other parts of the ELs standards. We have lots of other links being added, e.g. [22] adds https://123movies.dj, https://123movies.to, https://123movies.is, https://123movie.cc, and https://123movies.st, and none of them are put in the appropriate section for ELs. (The original site appears no longer to exist: the intro says it was shut down a year ago.) Clones are not generally appropriate, especially in situations like this where more than one is provided, and the express goal. Adding an official link is acceptable for such a website, but Bhimavarapu007 is not merely adding individual links. One of the diffs demonstrates that the user's goal is not to provide background information for the encyclopedia reader — its generating only 1000 visitors per day, why cant you keep the link, atleast those 1000 visitor are able to watch Movies. I'm about to block this user for spamming. Nyttend (talk) 01:16, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
- @Nyttend: The other articles I cited put the links in the same position: the "url" field of {{infobox website}}. If that is the wrong place for external links, you should take it up with the maintainer of that template. Your argument about clones may carry more weight, since in that case they would not 'really' be the site mentioned, and you could make a copyright argument over the front material. We have cases like that (Encyclopedia Dramatica, which was put back up online after the original maintainer destroyed it), and there we have a URL but it is not given as a hyperlink presumably to avoid the risk of literal contributory infringement. In this case I haven't researched if the site is genuinely "cloned" (by unrelated persons) or is simply evading DNS censorship. Certainly the proliferation of links is common where individual users are encountering URL censorship or where the domain names are unstable, and is common with many of the sites I described before. Last but not least: a user cannot be guilty of spamming who only adds links to a site to one article. It's a logical contradiction. Please don't make a bad block like that. Wnt (talk) 10:42, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
- When a site is shut down by government authorities, at most you put up a single replacement link, not five at once while removing others. As noted by someone else, "URL field in and infobox is for one official website, anything more is considered promotional". See WP:ELMIN; we should almost never provide more than one official link, and then only if there's something particularly significant about the secondary link. Five links, expressly done to allow 1000 visitors to watch movies, is promotional, regardless of the copyright status of the movies in question. And finally, it's quite common to block people for spamming if they persistently advocate something on one article; if you want to see someone immune from sanctions who only advertises on a single page, I suggest that you go to WP:VP/Pr and propose that such a thing be permitted. Nyttend (talk) 11:59, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
- If the sites are clones, then there may not be more than one link to any given site. In any case, the intent of the links is clearly not to make a "directory" as described in ELMIN, a policy that does allow for loopholes. If there is consensus on the article talk page that ELMIN applies and this editor is defying it then you could consider a block, but certainly I see no such consensus on that page. Templating an editor is not a discussion and does not create a consensus! True, I see that might makes right here and you've blocked anyway and that is the end of that discussion (and that attempt of Wikipedians to link to something "subversive"). We are all just pretenders here; the omnipotent corporations rule over all everywhere. Wnt (talk) 02:23, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
- The problem is that these links aren't in line with other parts of the ELs standards. We have lots of other links being added, e.g. [22] adds https://123movies.dj, https://123movies.to, https://123movies.is, https://123movie.cc, and https://123movies.st, and none of them are put in the appropriate section for ELs. (The original site appears no longer to exist: the intro says it was shut down a year ago.) Clones are not generally appropriate, especially in situations like this where more than one is provided, and the express goal. Adding an official link is acceptable for such a website, but Bhimavarapu007 is not merely adding individual links. One of the diffs demonstrates that the user's goal is not to provide background information for the encyclopedia reader — its generating only 1000 visitors per day, why cant you keep the link, atleast those 1000 visitor are able to watch Movies. I'm about to block this user for spamming. Nyttend (talk) 01:16, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
Unban request from User:009o9
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
This user was community banned in 2016, and has requested an unblock. I am copying their statement below for consideration by the community. The original discussion leading to their site ban is here. Yunshui 雲水 09:21, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
The reason for my block was WP:NOTHERE, as a volunteer and paid editor in good standing, I was regularly accused of "General pattern of disruptive behavior" for virtually anything I contested, whether I had a topic COI or not. My major crime was participating in a policy (Help page) discussion regarding maintenance templates. Removing a stale maintenance template would sometime become contentious and there is/was no good way to locate the owner, or determine what the article's problem is/was (sometimes years ago) when they did not leave a summary on the talk page. For my effort, I became a test case to determine if paid editors are allowed to participate in policy discussions.COIN-archive
The editor who brought the COIN against me was the now blocked Jytdog, as I recall, he was incensed that I did a BRD to a Help page,Diff an area where I have no distinguishable COI, all the while, he was making BRDs in areas of long held consensus to simply support his position. (change made to Template:Advert/doc)
Things got pretty heated, and with my contributions now being stalked and pruned for submission to AfD (note that a paid editor cannot edit in the article space) and the same pruners stalking my volunteer edits (editor cannot have separate profiles for paid and volunteer works), I had nothing to lose, but to see if I could get a ruling at ANI.[23] I believe that the compliant was canvassedDiff and closed in less than seven hours in the middle of the night, whereas, the Jytdog ANI was discussed from Nov 27 to Dec 4.
Yes, I am an advocate for paid editing, the labyrinth of rules and ever changing policies / guidelines require outside consultation. My current advice to clients is to avoid the Wikipedia at all costs, the times where stub articles were tolerated are gone forever, the Wikipedia article is a nightmare assignment for in-house personnel. As one who participated in the Foundation's paid editing discussion five years ago, I feel I have a valuable point of view to contribute -- I am a tough negotiator, but I am also a lone voice. Regards 009o9Disclosure(Talk) 10:56, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose: "Unban me because I did nothing wrong" is a pretty easy oppose. Also, WP:NOTTHEM applies.--Atlan (talk) 09:31, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose - disingenuous at best; nothing prevents him bending the Foundation's ear to his heart's content. Jtdog provided a valuable service to the community and his burnout and subsequent implosion is a community failure. Pointing to Jt's block should be enough to say no. His statement regarding his current advice to clients is also enough....is it going to be his plan to fight the improvements we've made in curbing PR use of Wikipedia? On a positive note, it's good to hear we are, on some scale, succeeding. Many of you know how strongly I feel on the subject of paid editing....I'm happy to oppose this.John from Idegon (talk) 10:20, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose - tying 009o9's ban to Jytdog & using Jytdog's retirement/block/implosion to justify a request is both missing the point of the ban and inappropriate, opportunistic WP:GRAVEDANCING. Cabayi (talk) 10:36, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose. In the original discussion leading to the ban, I think BrownHairedGirl (not pinging lest I get accused of canvassing) said it best with "However, the more I study 009o9's conduct, the more I am persuaded that they are engaged in a prolonged, systematic effort to stack the deck in favour of COI editing, and to undermine the work of those volunteer editors who give their time to trying to counter the people who seek to warp Wikipedia for personal gain (with minor copy edit)." We have a paid editor who has disclosed as required, which is good, but who is not content with just accepting paid editing policy but engaged in activism to make paid editing easier - putting their paid editing ahead of our only priority of building an encyclopedia. I see no recognition of the community's decision that that approach is improper, or any indication that it will change. Instead, all I see is an attempt to evade responsibility by 009o9 and instead pin it on Jytdog. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:52, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
- I'll just add re: "the labyrinth of rules and ever changing policies / guidelines require outside consultation." That's not for paid editors to decide, it's for the Wikipedia Community and the Wikimedia Foundation to decide. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:54, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose - a poor unblock request, showing nothing at all has changed. GiantSnowman 11:15, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose The appeal reads 'not there', also, the appeal itself suggests an insurmountable listening issue, when the appeal is so off-topic. Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:23, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose Jytdog gone doesn't mean 009o9 back in. Still not here to listen and act accordingly. Lectonar (talk) 11:40, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
- Jytdog is gone? :( The things you miss when you're away. El_C 11:45, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose pending radical limitations - unlike much of the community I actually do normally listen to "I didn't actually do it" arguments in non-immediate unblock requests. That is less the case for community blocks but I had a look at it anyway. I felt the SNOW was a little quick, but more critically there are a bunch of issues bought up there that weren't discussed in this unblock request. Failure to at least show appreciation/awareness for these, coupled with the fairly aggressive style of this, I'm reticent to accept this. I'd only accept this if a prohibition on paid editing (PBAN) and a TBAN on discussing COI (outside his own contributions) were enacted for the first six months. He's said he did volunteer editing - let's see whether he can do that first. Nosebagbear (talk) 12:32, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose Apart from the wrongness of trying to tie a return to Jytdog's fate, the absolute misrepresentation of why the ban occurred in the first place (categorically not because
I became a test case to determine if paid editors are allowed to participate in policy discussions
) tells us exactly what we'd be getting by rescinding the ban. Grandpallama (talk) 12:33, 9 May 2019 (UTC) - I see nothing in this request to indicate an unblock.
However, there is a technicality; this user is now community banned due to the third bullet at WP:CBAN and such discussions "must be kept open for at least 24 hours" (emphasis in original); this discussion was only open for six or seven hours. I'm not sure what is the best way forward at this point.GoldenRing (talk) 12:39, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
- That it stays open until c. 1100 hours on 10 May 2019 and then snow closed seems the simplest route. ——SerialNumber54129 12:44, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
- GoldenRing is talking about the original discussion that lead to the indefinite block, not about this discussion, which has only been open for 3 hours. The 24 hour rule was made mandatory via RFC in 2018. I doubt it was meant to retroactively apply to all previous ban discussions.--Atlan (talk) 13:16, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
- Sorry! I calculated the difference between the two dates without grokking that the actual dates were in 2016. Oppose unblock. GoldenRing (talk) 13:38, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose -- Unless he's willing to promise to no longer perform any paid editing, avoid all discussion of paid editing, and avoid all appearances of paid editing or supporting paid editing. But even then, he doesn't seem to understand why he was banned in the first place. That Jytdog was blocked is irrelevant, and a form of Other Stuff Exists. That he was blocked doesn't invalidate his ban. Rockstonetalk to me! 17:56, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
Comments from 009o9
(Copied from User talk:009o9#Response to WP:AN discussion. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 06:28, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
- I was not trying to make it easier to do paid editing -- I was trying to prevent it from becoming even more difficult, and in turn making it more valuable.
- The Wikipedia has a stranglehold on access to the Knowledge base, ever since Google integrated (and closed) Freebase with WikiData. The search engines use the (WikiData) Official url to disambiguate the many similarly named topics with the topic that has taken the extra steps to achieve search relevance. Knowledge Graph Cards are still manually created by the search engines, but it is difficult to become discovered without the WikiData domain authority. This stranglehold, has very likely diminished innovation over the past decade.
- If you know anything at all about SEO, it makes no sense to "spam" the Wikipedia, all urls are marked nofollow on the Wikipedia. (Humor the CEO and PR rep with a place to publish and the problem is solved.)
- In the business world, there is a preference for the familiar Wiki style sectioned article when evaluating a company or product.
- One instance where notable organizations tend to not meet WP:N is publishers of magazines, journals and newspapers. Nobody writes about their competition and specialty journals may not have any competition, yet they would be completely acceptable for WP:RS. Innovative products don't have a chance on the Wikipedia, because of all of the drama and notability inflation.
"An alternative paid contribution policy will only supersede these requirements if it is approved by the relevant Project community and listed in the alternative disclosure policy page."Foundation TOU There has been no sustained RfC [24] for the paid editing policy and what is disguised as policy does not conform to Foundation's TOU alternative disclosure policy page I adhered to consensus about not editing in the article space, but then it became the draft space, then the user space, then being censured in discussing the policy space after so many years and concessions had been ceded -- to a policy that, to this day, still does not officially exist. Under the Foundation's rules in effect, disclosed editing in the article space is just fine. I am not interested in contributing until Wikipedia becomes a friendlier and less obsessed place, it seems a sister wiki might be a step in the right direction. Thought I should share this idea. Later, 009o9Disclosure(Talk) 01:46, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
- You're saying you have no interest in contributing at the moment, so your comments presumably won't make any difference to the unban discussion, but I'll offer a few thoughts of my own in response to your numbered points...
- Regarding the "stranglehold" Wikipedia/Wikidata might have on knowledge searches, I think there's a good possibility that that has come about partly because of our strict "no marketing, no advertising" model. The world is awash with claims that Wikipedia is not reliable, yet people know that it is a resource that is (relatively) free from the corrupting influence of advertisers and marketers. To me that is clearly one of our strengths, not a weakness. When you talk of diminished innovation, do you mean that that Wikipedia is not open to marketing and advertising innovation? That you can't leverage our assets (isn't that one of the things you marketers say?) to boost your own profits? That is by design, and a very good thing.
- I do know a bit about SEO, and "nofollow" or not, Wikipedia usually comes up top on searches for companies (I know that because my job has me searching for company information almost every day), and having a Wikipedia article is a very desirable thing for a company from a marketing perspective. So suggesting that the "nofollow" thing renders Wikipedia useless for spammers, marketers and advertisers seems naive at best.
- Wikipedia is not a company or product evaluation platform. People in the business world are free to use whatever format they like in their own publications.
- I don't know anything about publishers of magazines, journals and newspapers, but Wikipedia is open to policy changes regarding specific notability criteria - we just require that such moves are driven by the needs of the encyclopedia, not the marketing ambitions of companies and their paid editors.
- I see no "glaring reasons" there at all for why "this needs to be fixed" other than because it would make Wikipedia a better place for marketers and advertisers. All of what you are saying reads like it is coming from the perspective of someone who wants Wikipedia to become friendlier as a marketing platform, and if you think that is likely to happen any time soon then you are very much out of touch with the Wikipedia community. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 07:24, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
- 009o9's comments are entirely irrelevant to an unban request. Time for a WP:SNOW close anyone? Cabayi (talk) 08:10, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
Brian Sims
I don't know the format for this or if this is the correct page for third-party "fresh eyes" examination, but several users (first IPs unambiguously bashing the BLP subject, but now long-term users) have been, in my eyes, pushing the limits of several policies at Brian Sims. They are adding undue weight, using non-NPOV language, using sources identified as deprecated (even reinstating them after they were removed pointing to that reason), creating and re-creating "controversy" sections, favoring a recent news item to a hugely disproportionate share of the article, using weasel words or otherwise "gamey" tricks of the language to make the BLP subject of the article sound condemned in Wikipedia's voice, etc etc. It needs a neutral tone to discuss the event objectively and neutral eyes to oversee it. Note that the article is protected due to the spate of IP edits and that that protection ends in about ten hours. Thanks for any thoughts or input! JesseRafe (talk) 18:51, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard is likely a better venue for discussing BLP-specific article concerns that aren't outright vandalism.-- Jezebel's Ponyobons mots 18:54, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
@JesseRafe: It's one of those lame ass alt right brigading attempts, saw it discussed on twitter.💵Money💵emoji💵💸 00:58, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
Huldra
Huldra (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
I have blocked Huldra for advocating violence against civilians (diff, diff). I am further proposing a site ban, at least until this editor can convince us they don't support violence against civilians. Although this topic is under discretionary sanctions, neither an indefinite block nor a site ban are available sanctions under DS and so I am bringing it here. GoldenRing (talk) 12:45, 10 May 2019 (UTC)