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Pages recently put under extended confirmed protection (22 out of 7739 total) () WATCH Page Protected Expiry Type Summary Admin Future of Honor 2024-05-23 03:55 2025-05-23 03:54 edit,move restore ECP Daniel Case Israel-related animal conspiracy theories 2024-05-23 03:51 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per RFPP and ARBPIA Daniel Case Justin Stebbing 2024-05-22 22:39 indefinite edit,move Persistent disruptive editing: Substantive COI editing - propose changes on the talk page Anachronist Proximus Group 2024-05-22 13:44 2024-08-22 13:44 edit Persistent sock puppetry, COI editing, or both NinjaRobotPirate International Criminal Court investigation in Palestine 2024-05-22 12:55 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: WP:PIA, WP:ECR El C Wokipedia 2024-05-21 23:50 2024-05-23 23:50 edit,move Shenanigan precaution. BD2412 Draft:Zard Patton Ka Bunn 2024-05-21 20:22 2024-11-21 20:22 create Repeatedly recreated: targeted by Nauman335 socks Yamla June 2024 Ukraine peace summit 2024-05-21 18:38 indefinite edit,move Community sanctions enforcement: WP:GS/RUSUKR El C Template:English manga publisher 2024-05-21 18:00 indefinite edit,move High-risk template or module: 2500 transclusions (more info) MusikBot II Draft:S S Karthikeya 2024-05-21 13:27 2025-05-21 13:27 create Repeatedly recreated Yamla Talk:Sexual and gender-based violence in the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel 2024-05-21 01:18 2024-05-28 01:18 edit,move Arbitration enforcement ScottishFinnishRadish Draft:Roopsha Dasguupta 2024-05-20 21:26 2029-05-20 21:26 create Repeatedly recreated Yamla Gaza floating pier 2024-05-20 17:36 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement ScottishFinnishRadish Science Bee 2024-05-20 15:26 2027-05-20 15:26 create Repeatedly recreated Rosguill Wikipedia:Golden Diamond Timeless Watch 2024-05-20 06:54 2024-05-23 06:54 create Repeatedly recreated Liz Screams Before Silence 2024-05-20 04:56 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per RFPP and ARBPIA Daniel Case Tyson Fury vs Oleksandr Usyk 2024-05-20 03:49 indefinite edit,move Persistent vandalism: per RFPP Daniel Case Atom Eve 2024-05-20 02:53 2024-08-20 02:53 edit Persistent sock puppetry NinjaRobotPirate Ebrahim Raisi 2024-05-19 22:02 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement: WP:ARBIRP; upgrade to WP:ECP, 2024 Varzaqan helicopter crash-related; aiming for the short term (remind me) El C 2024 Varzaqan helicopter crash 2024-05-19 21:15 2024-06-19 21:15 edit Contentious topic restriction Ymblanter Koli rebellion and piracy 2024-05-19 21:08 indefinite edit,move Persistent sock puppetry Spicy Khirbet Zanuta 2024-05-19 12:15 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: WP:A/I/PIA ToBeFree

Blatant vote stacking

After Zefr was reported for violating WP:3RR at Ginkgo biloba (which seems to be a pattern), he canvassed four other editors to join the content dispute[1][2][3][4], some of which have helped him edit war participated in similar disputes in the past.[5][6] I asked them to recuse themselves from a straw poll, but they are participating anyway and will likely determine the outcome. I don't believe that this is how Wikipedia is supposed to work, and I would like to ask that an uninvolved admin take a look at this situation and either take some corrective action or give me advice on how to handle it. Also, I fully expect that Zefr will defend his actions here by saying that he was just enforcing WP:MEDRS, which is a gross mischaracterization of the situation (and not a valid excuse for vote stacking and violating 3RR anyway). Nosferattus (talk) 22:31, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Those are fine editors to "canvass," though, each and every one of em... @Roxy the dog, Psychologist Guy, Girth Summit, and Alexbrn: suck up pings. El_C 00:48, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

But is there a clause excusing canvassing if you like the editors, unwritten or otherwise? Because if so, I think anyone can see that’s a recipe for disaster. And not a good look at the very least. petrarchan47คุก 01:16, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

No, there is no such exemption. El_C 02:02, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

There’s a big difference between “Some new editor is trying to advance a nutty proposition that Novaya Zemlya is an independent nation, and I want others in this topic area to help me oppose it” (which this is not) and “Hey, this topic is under discussion; just wanted you to know” (which this is).

Zefr is an unimpeachably conscientious WP:NPOV editor in this topic area.

Quite a lot of our Northern Hemisphere ‘’’’’volunteer’’’ editors’’ are offline for big chunks of late August and early September, given national holidays and school resumption and the like. We may not be looking at Wikipedia even if we’re spinsters-with-cats who are just focusing on home plumbing improvements and hiding our electronics in our garages. But we probably check email, and a message like Zefr’s appropriately provides a NEUTRAL alert that maybe we might like to look in on a discussion of interest, which discussion might be arguably subject to time limits that might be over before we’re home from the beach. Julietdeltalima (talk) 02:01, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

How dare you besmirch the fine nation of Novaya Zemlya. It's just a little glowy, it's still good, it's still good. El_C 02:07, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Nova Zembla patriots love you. - Julietdeltalima (talk) 16:51, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

It's still canvassing if you're sending messages only to editors who you think will agree with your position. Looking the other way because it will lead to the "right" outcome is a pretty slippery slope. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 02:08, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. A neutral notice at a relevant wikiproject should serve as notification. Pinging only like-minded users, even if one contend it being a FRINGE matter is, indeed, a slippery slope. El_C 02:16, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, it's circumventing the process and might make others feel like they would need to or are supposed do the same thing (on the opposing side) and Wikipedia could turn into something we don't want. Pyrrho the Skeptic (talk) 02:42, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

I hear all of you! I just hate, as a 50-year-old person with a new highly time-demanding job, that I end up not knowing that some article in which I was interested was up for AFD or whatever—just because sometimes I'm doing a stressful business-management thing all day Monday to Friday with about four minutes merely to go through my watchlist for presumptive schoolchild vandalism while I'm shoving a sandwich into my face, and then can't log into WP at night because the iOS app is so jacked up, and it turns out some AFD got closed as "delete" when I haven't even had time to dig in and notice it, because I'm a volunteer and my very demanding job has to come first.

Gosh, but some of us need to be able for somebody to let us know about these things! It's really difficult for me to spend the time any more to noodle about and find, e.g., AFDs about articles in which I'm interested in the course of life without somebody sending up a signal.

Do I need to figure out, somehow, whether and how to do an RFC about this? This is a volunteer project. I'd kind of like to think I'm a mature and helpful volunteer. It's very difficult these days for me to know about stuff like RFDs and RFCs unless somebody who's seen my handle in the edit history sends me a message—re: which I get an email! e.g. "El C sent you a message on Wikipedia". I don't have as much time as was once the case to loll about reading WP:RFD and the like.

And, again, if I'm miscoding this re: indents, etc., please refactor. I'm sitting in the restroom doing this on my phone. That's how I engage in my volunteer work for WP, by and large. The challenging mechanisms of the iOS app regarding WP administrative functions are more than I have time to winkle out. I am here to do what I think I'm good at doing: copyediting and proofreading especially in my greatly appreciated presumed designation by User:EEng as part of the "hyphen police", which is the second-nicest compliment I've been paid in the past 2 years, right after "I can't BELIEVE you figured out how to accessorize masks!").

I get that canvassing is a huge problem. But there's got to be a distinction between excluding figurative Nova Zembla separationists and just sending a neutral talk-page message of "hey, I know you're busy: you've been in the edit history of this article and there's an AFD that you might not see in time."

I'm just sayin'. You want Wikipedia to be inclusive? VOLUNTEERS ought to know that a thing they're interested in is up for discussion! I get that there are a lot of abuses, but there's got to be a middle ground to accommodate those of us who are extremely grateful for WP:NODEADLINE.

Thanks for hearing me out. I am here when I can be here because I think this is a joyous project. I just, you know, can't always be here. This "personal relief break" has taken about 0.4 of an hour longer than I can justify, but I thought this point needed making. Thanks for letting me share. - Julietdeltalima (talk) 16:51, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't accept that there was anything improper in my responding as I did. This is Zefr's message to me on my talk page. That was the only edit they have ever made to my talk, and I have never edited theirs: I'm not aware of them having any particular reason to think of me as anything other than an uninvolved admin. I was not aware they had messaged anybody else, and viewed their post as a simple request that an admin take a look at a content dispute which was becoming unhealthily personal on one side. Here is my response, which was met by a remarkable level of ABF on the article's talk page, and on my own talk page.

Here's my take on it: Zefr should have used a Wikiproject talk page notice instead of reaching out to individuals. Zefr has also been edit warring on the article, which they should not do even when they are correct on the content/sourcing matter. Nosferratus has also been edit warring, has been inappropriately personalising a content dispute (which I do not see Zefr doing anywhere on that talk page), and has been far to willing to assume bad faith on the part of others. Girth Summit _(blether) 06:03, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

@Girth Summit: It is trivial to prove that these statements are false. You have edited Zefr's talk page, and interacted with Zefr substantially in the past, mainly in disputes similar to this one. I've been personalizing the dispute because people keep lying and breaking the rules. As an administrator, I would think you would understand that. Nosferattus (talk) 15:25, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

• Is it the number of editors that Zefr asked that is the probem? I have certainly asked admins from whom I have received help or advice in the past to look at a dispute in which I was involved. Is that wrong? Any dispassionate examination of this dispute would, I believe, reach the same conclusion that Girth Summit has above concerning the behaviour of Nosferratus and Zefr. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:32, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
  • @Peter coxhead: No, it's not the number of editors, it's who Zefr invited. All four of the editors that were invited have interacted substantially with Zefr in the past including on his talk page and have participated in similar disputes in the past.
    • Evidence that the canvassed editors were chosen for their POV:
    • Psychologist Guy: They have had numerous discussions on each other's talk pages, often about disputes similar to this one: [7][8]. They have edited 121 of the same pages.[9]
    • Roxy the dog: Here is Zefr inviting Roxy to join a dispute at Paul Stamets: [10]. Here's Zefr and Roxy reverting the same edits at Oil pulling: [11]. They have edited 196 of the same pages.[12]
    • Girth Summit: Despite Girth's false assurances above, he has had substantial interactions with Zefr including a discussion on Zefr's talk page about a very similar situation to this (removing material related to alternative medicine due to sourcing concerns): [13]. Here is Girth and Zefr helping each other edit war reverting the same content at Cranberry juice: [14]. Here is Girth supporting Zefr's opinion at Herbal medicine: [15]. Here is Girth supporting Zefr's opinion at Traditional Chinese medicine: [16]. Here is Girth and Zefr warning the same user within seconds of each other: [17]. Here is them again warning the same user within seconds of each other: [18]. They have edited 246 of the same pages[19]
    • Alexbrn: Here's Zefr inviting Alexbrn to join a dispute at Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard: [20]. Here's Zefr inviting Alexbrn to join a dispute at Honey: [21]. Here's Zefr inviting Alexbrn to join two other disputes at the same time: [22]. Here is Alexbrn giving Zefr a barnstar for deleting dodgy medical claims: [23]. They have edited 695 of the same pages![24]
  • This canvassing behavior has been going on for years. The claims that these were just innocent invitations of 3rd party neutral editors is absurd and disingenuous. Sadly, I doubt anything will change as the enforcement of rules on Wikipedia seems to be strongly dependent on seniority and who you know rather than treating editors equally and fairly. Nosferattus (talk) 15:10, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

    Nosferattus, I encourage you to strike your comments about "helping each other edit war". You have a solid point about Zefr's canvassing, but you are diluting it with aspersions alleging tag-teaming (though not named so explicitly). Firefangledfeathers (talk) 15:20, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

    I have struck the comment. Thank you for the feedback. Nosferattus (talk) 15:27, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

    Appreciated! You have a similar comment in your original post. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 15:32, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

    Looks disingenuous to me, for example the not-so-subtle twisting of my barnstar to Zefr for deleting dodgy medical claims, into being for deleting plain "medical claims". This should be corrected. I'm on holiday at the moment so can't really look at this, but even from my distant hotel balcony, my spidey-sense is tingling something rotten about this whole complaint (though, granted, Zefr would do better simply to get more eyes by posting to noticeboards). Alexbrn (talk) 16:16, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

    @Alexbrn: I added the word "dodgy" as if that made any difference. My point is that you and Zefr know each other and support each other (usually for very admirable reasons like keeping herbal quackery off of Wikipedia). That in and of itself is fine. What isn't OK is Zefr canvassing his friends to win an edit war after violating 3RR. Does that seem reasonable to you? Nosferattus (talk) 17:01, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

    The two examples of Zefr invitking Alexbrn to join a dispute are the same link from 2016 (a neutrally-worded statement about a noticeboard discussion). XOR'easter (talk) 20:49, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

    @XOR'easter: Thanks for pointing that out. I've fixed the link and added another one as well. Nosferattus (talk) 21:53, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

    Looking at the diffs presented above, it seems that I did indeed leave two notes on Zefr's talk page in 2018. I actually checked the Editor Interaction Analyzer tool before posting the above, just to see whether we had actually communicated in the past - for whatever reason those edits didn't show up. I'll just have to ask people to believe that I'd forgotten about them.

    Cranberry juice has been on my watchlist since I made this edit in 2018; here is my first edit to Herbal medicine; here is my first to Traditional Chinese medicine. None of these edits were in any way related to anything Zefr was doing on those pages, but it means that the articles were put onto my watchlist. I do indeed occasionally revert dubious changes to articles on my watchlist, and I might occasionally comment on their talk pages. Zefr has made nearly 50,000 edits to this project, and I've made closer to 60,000: it would be remarkable if there were not some overlap. That is not evidence of collusion, or even that we are particularly aware of one another. All I can say about Zefr is that I've seen their name around a few times, I know that they are an experienced editor - and that's about it. I've no idea what they think of me.

    Now look at what Nosferratus writes: ...these statements are false..., ...Girth's false assurances..., ...people keep lying..., The claims that these were just innocent invitations of 3rd party neutral editors is absurd and disingenuous. - this is exactly the kind of ABF, hostile attitude I am talking about. People should not have to tolerate attacks on their integrity or their motivations. Girth Summit _(blether) 16:22, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

    Oh, and as for having edited 246 of the same pages - you are including in that count project pages such as this one, user talk pages, and many articles that we edited months or years apart from each other. If you restrict it to article space, where we have edited within a week of each other, the count is 34, out of the 22,529 pages currently on my watchlist. Girth Summit _(blether) 16:29, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

    So pointing out that demonstrably false statements are false is being "hostile"? That's very Orwellian. Nosferattus (talk) 17:04, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

    Nosferattus, yes, I view the phrase 'false assurances' as hostile. More importantly though, I view accusations of lying and being disingenuous as direct attacks on my integrity as an honest person who is acting in good faith. You have worded those complaints in such a way as to avoid naming those who you claim have lied - would you care to be specific? Girth Summit _(blether) 17:14, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

    You are welcome to demonstrate that you are acting in good faith by recusing yourself from the straw poll that you were canvassed to. Nosferattus (talk) 17:50, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

You are welcome to withdraw the personal attack on me. -Roxy the grumpy dog. wooF 17:55, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

I may have misinterpreted that comment you left on Zefr's talk page, so I'm going to delete it from the evidence to be on the safe side. Nosferattus (talk) 18:52, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

• • I don't need to demonstrate that which should be patently obvious to any impartial observer. I am still waiting for you to be explicit about who you are accusing of lying, and of being disingenuous. If you aren't willing to stand by that verbiage, you should strike it. Girth Summit _(blether) 20:08, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

    I'll let the admins come to their own conclusions based on the evidence. Nosferattus (talk) 22:04, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

    Nosferattus, how can anyone come to any conclusions if you refuse to be clear about the accusations and evidence? Who do you think has lied? Who do you think has been disingenuous? Be specific and provide evidence, or withdraw your accusation.

    Let me be clear about the gravity of your accusation. I have given thousands of hours of my time to this project. Reverting vandals, deleting spam, blocking LTAs who abuse our contributors,, writing content that has been reviewed by my colleagues as meeting FA standards - I try to contribute to the project to the best of my abilities, and I always act in good faith towards that end. None of that gives me any special rights to say what a particular article should say, but I think I have a pretty good understanding of our content policies as a result of it all.

    You have impugned my motives as an editor. You have accused me of editing in bad faith. You have made vague accusations about lying, which I think refer to me. I am deeply offended by your comments here, and on my talk page. I ask that you make it very clear exactly who you are accusing of what. Thank you Girth Summit _(blether) 22:25, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

    Fine. I accept that you don't remember any of your previous interactions with Zefr and that your statement that you had never posted to Zefr's talk page was just an error. This complaint is about Zefr, after all, not you. Nosferattus (talk) 23:32, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

    Nosferattus, who, then, is the liar? Who has been disingenuous? You can't throw accusations like that around as if they don't matter. Be specific, or withdraw them by striking them - they are deeply offensive Girth Summit _(blether) 23:45, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

    I struck through those comments. And for the record, the only person who has been specifically accused of being disingenuous here is me, but I doubt anyone cares about that. After all, the rules of Wikipedia are only enforced for the benefit of long-standing editors. Nosferattus (talk) 00:07, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

    Nosferattus, I haven't seen anyone accuse you of being disingenuous - I may have missed that though can you provide a diff? I would not support anyone saying that about you - for all I have said that I think you are too quick to assume bad faith, I do not think you are a liar.

    Our sourcing rules are there for the benefit of our content, not our contributors. We can disagree on content all day long, but if you impugne someone's motives you are going to a very different level Girth Summit _(blether) 00:16, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

    [25] Nosferattus (talk) 00:19, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

    Nosferattus, fair enough, I'd missed that. I'll leave it to Alexbrn to expand on that, I have no comment to make on your motives. I just hope that you now understand how offensive it is to have someone call you a liar (or make vague insinuations to that effect). Girth Summit _(blether) 00:28, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

(←) I'm seeing a WP:BOOMERANG headed Nosferattus' way for assuming bad faith. Miniapolis 22:55, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Please remember that many editors have already commented on this thread that Nosferattus is correct that Zefr should not be reaching out to individual, like-minded users, and should instead be using the proper channels. I think Nosferattus has every right to bring up past behavior to make the case to admins. How else can one bring attention to this kind of behavior, which we can all agree is not good? Pyrrho the Skeptic (talk) 00:02, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

What past behaviour are you talking about here? Be specific about what you think has been problematic. I'm not saying that I, or anyone else, is above reproach, but it is unaccepable for you and N to keep making vague statements that concern other editors' conduct. If you are talking about me, I want to know that; I'm sure that goes for everyone else named in this thread Girth Summit _(blether) 00:10, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Sorry for the confusion. I am not talking about your behavior at all. I am referring to the canvassing by Zefr and the comment just made by Miniapolis, and hoping to refocus the issue on what the complaint is. There is nothing vague about the canvassing accusations (against Zefr, not you) that were documented by Nosferratus. Pyrrho the Skeptic (talk) 00:17, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

• Seems like blatant canvassing to me without even considering past interactions at all. There doesn't appear to be some context here where the people notified were all of those involved in a previous discussion on the same topic. Instead, this seems to be the notifying specifically of the people who would support the notifiers' position. Even if the notification is a neutral template, that is still canvassing. Such notifications are meant to go on Wikiprojects, not specific editor's pages. Silverseren^C 18:43, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Let's set the record straight. WP:APPNOTE, the process followed to invite the review of a medical edit on Gingko biloba by three experienced medical editors and a neutral general admin. The four editors have their own interests and extensive editing experience which my invitation alone would not influence, i.e., not 'vote stacking'. All have had little or no activity on the gingko article, but have edited other herbal articles, having relevant background. I could have chosen from dozens of medical editors who previously coedited herbal articles with me over the past 16 years, but for such a conspicuously incorrect, extraordinary, and unsourced claim here, four reliable reviewers were sufficient. APPNOTE says "Notifications must be polite, neutrally worded with a neutral title, clear in presentation, and brief", all followed with the same message to each editor. I did not post the dispute on WT:MED because the proposed information was minor, unlikely to be of general interest, and obvious misinformation. Note that N did not start a discussion on WT:MED, where such a meritless edit would receive no favorable reception. On the gingko talk page, N initiated a straw poll which has been decisively defeated by consensus. N and supporter Pyrrho the Skeptic (P) are novice medical editors with only a few dozen medical edits combined, most of which have been reverted (many by me) due to low-quality content and absence of good sourcing. There is an air of vengeance-seeking by N in this discussion and many other recent talk page edits. On medical topics, N and P appear to be outside of their competence, WP:CIR - perhaps they would enjoy Wikipedia participation more without such frenetic arguing by staying within their knowledge base. Zefr (talk) 20:57, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to explain that. Please note that Votestacking is defined as selectively notifying editors who have or are thought to have a predetermined point of view or opinion. Medical editing experience aside, I think it can be argued convincingly that you are counting on these particular editors to weigh in on one particular side of a topic. Pyrrho the Skeptic (talk) 21:10, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

In addition to kind of admitting to canvassing, your post came across as extremely arrogant and BITEy. Next time, I think it's better if you post a neutral notification on relevant wikiproject pages instead of contacting selected editors who you know will see the disputed content as obvious misinformation. Levivich 21:41, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Didn't need to persuade anyone - review the discussion and poll at the Gingko biloba talk page or go to WT:MED to start a discussion. Better to side with experience and honesty. N and P apparently have a desire for controversy to engage in smearing and disguise the plain fact that both were in error arguing persistently for a baseless medical claim, then seeking some kind of retribution here. Own it and WP:DEADHORSE. Done. Zefr (talk) 23:01, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Zefr, just don't invite individual editors to ongoing disputes, especially like-minded ones, as that is text book canvassing. Use neutral notifications at relevant wikiprojects, okay? Because repetition of this behaviour would be a cause for sanctions. Thank you. El_C 11:25, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

N and P apparently have a desire for controversy to engage in smearing and disguise... is a clear personal attack. Levivich 15:43, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

There's a lot to be desired, in general, with your conduct thus far here, Zefr. You're kind of at the brink, I'm sorry to say. A calm perspective is needed for you to correct your approach (separate from the contested content, as counterintuitive as that may seem). The time to pivot is now. No sense in crashing and burning when a number of different remedies exist when at an impasse. El_C 17:59, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

I'd definitely agree that calmness is to be encouraged, but I'm disappointed that editors such as ElC and Levicich, for whom I have enormous respect, have no comment to make on the repeated and sustained personal attacks upon myself, here, on the article talk page, and on my own talk page. I'm not asking for sanctions - they have eventually been withdrawn, at least partially - but to paint Zefr as the only party in the wrong here is very hard for me to understand. Girth Summit _(blether) 00:26, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

@Girth Summit: No one is painting Zefr as the only party in the wrong here. Commenting on one party's conduct isn't blessing everyone else's. If we had to comment on everyone's conduct imagine how long the comments would be :-) But hasn't Nosf. stricken everything that they need to strike? I'll admit I haven't looked at any page except this thread, so if there's stuff on your talk page or the article talk page I haven't seen it. But I see multiple editors in this thread who have made either false statements or personal attacks (either way, should be struck). Nosf. is one of them, but Nosf. is the only editor who has actually struck anything. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Nosf's transgressions were already dealt with (by you, directly, here in this thread, and I agree with how you dealt with them and everything you've said about them), whereas Zefr's PA I commented on (which is not the only PA in this thread, by far) occurred after Nosf's transgressions were dealt with. As I understand it, Nosf's conduct is not ongoing (which is why I didn't comment on it), whereas Zefr's is (which is why I commented). Levivich 00:49, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

GS, I'm sorry, but you're doing Zefr (and yourself) a disservice here with such a dividing line. If you felt that the strikethroughs and retractions weren't enough, you should have said something other than fair enough, etc., because to me it looked like that part of it was resolved. Whereas Zefr seems entirely unrepentant about their canvassing, a misstep which, for all we know, they may well do again, and next time, they will definitely be sanctioned for. And if you even give them the hint that they could get away with it next time, you're inadvertently leading them off of a proverbial cliff, I'm sorry to say (truly). El_C 06:06, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

What I'm trying to say is that the process gets tainted when only like-minded editors are contacted about a dispute, even if one is right on the science/content (excepting bonkers fringe positions, obviously). In this case, editors who are likely to support views held by medical orthodoxy (hey, I count myself among them) were notified to this dispute. That's a problem because it brings the canvassed side (for convenience, orthodoxy) under a cloud in the dispute, even when the strength of their argument/sources is likely to win the day.

Now, if members of the adventurist (for convenience) side are engaging in inappropriate advocacy elsewhere or anything else problematic is happening wrt them, rather than addressing that through a passing comment, it needs to be outlined through the format of a separate report (in this case, a subsection will do), with evidence and summaries that can be easily parsed. And expressed in a detached tone.

The sense I got is that, like Zefr, Nosferattus kneecapped themselves with various aspersions about some of the canvassed editors (as mentioned in my opening, all of whom I, myself, hold in high regard). It was dumb. It brought discord for naught. It muddied the waters and made this thread much more impenetrable and unfocused. But they have apologized and retracted. Enough? Not sure. The whole thing is a bit long, so maybe I misread. But what is clear is that the canvassing issue remains, because Zefr does not acknowledge it as being so (i.e. risk of repetition). And that's where we are now. Fair assessment? El_C 08:29, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

The personal attack N made on me is still extant in this thread. I also note that the article concerned has been on my watchlist for years and I was already at the article when Z's note appeared, having edited it in the past. I'd like to thank Z for defending the project from the inexperienced editors we have seen at Ginko and elsewhere, and perhaps ask him to be a little more circumspect in his communication to fellow editors. Remember that we have some of the strangest policies on teh Internetz, and intimating, accurately, that a page is under threat from people who would degrade the project, is frowned upon FGS. -Roxy the sceptical dog. wooF 09:03, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Why are editors being referred to by capital letters in this thread? It's very odd and confusing. Also, what's FGS? El_C 10:25, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Oh, for God's sake, right. G is for God — even God isn't immune from this, it seems... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ El_C 10:27, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

El C, as always (or at least often!), you are being very wise. I am offended and pissed off by the accusations, and find it hard to be appropriately dispassionate. I should step back, but I will correct you on one point: they have nowhere apologised, or even fully retracted what they said about me. They have stricken certain words, under pressure from myself, but they have done nothing to give me the impression that they genuinely accept they were in error to make those accusations, or that they will not be so quick to assume bad faith of others again. Girth Summit _(blether) 15:10, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Shucks, GS, you're making me . Ah, I see. Duly struck, sorry for misreading. Again, that exchange is long and I found it challenging understanding a lot of it. El_C 15:19, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

@El C: "El N" and "El Z" would have been less odd and confusing? :-P Levivich 15:35, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

That's right, El_Nadir and El_Zenith — now that's a two weddings dance! El_C 15:38, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

• Y'all can we just TBAN Zefr from contacting individuals to polls and stop the petty bickering? It has been asserted that Zefr has also done this in the past, and Zefr's explanation of why he did not put a note at WT:MED rather than contact specific individuals does not seem to fly, after the fact. He has also not stated that he will no longer do this (contacting individuals to polls). Therefore a TBAN, which he can appeal in six months, should resolve the issue. NB: The TBAN and my proposal do not reflect in any way on the quality of Zefr's wiki participation or his motives in contacting specific people. Softlavender (talk) 10:56, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Can we not just do that and close the thread? It's more complicated than that. There's been canvassing, but there's also been behaviour by others, and on the content dispute I do rather think Zefr had it right. Gingko biloba isn't a therapy.—S Marshall T/C 12:33, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

S Marshall, that is exactly why Zefr should have posted a neutral note at WT:MED, and not canvassed specific people. Softlavender (talk) 01:17, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

WP:CANVASS is the classic example of what paves the road to hell. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 13:56, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

The entire canvassing issue needs to be acknowledged by Zefr (assurances), then my warning to them would suffice, I think. But merely committing to [not] contacting individuals to polls (though I missed where that was stated) wouldn't be enough. Canvassing could also apply to disputes that are absent a poll. As my comment above notes at some length, if there are problems with the opposing side, that should be outlined in a format (evidence, summaries) that can be more easily parsed than... all this. El_C 14:00, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Piotrus, that terse comment isn't helping. To me, it comes across as piggy-backing vis-à-vis your own canvassing recently. So, maybe don't. El_C 14:06, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

If terse is not good, rest assured one of my to-do projects is to write an academic article on the damage CANVASS policy has done to Wikipedia and its community. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 14:19, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Uh, I'm rested-assured, I guess...? Anyway, sounds like a worthwhile endeavor. If it involves my own actions, I hope that you'd do me the courtesy of a reply, pre-publication. El_C 14:23, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Girth Summit

Over the last couple of days, I've been giving some thought to my own involvement in this affair, and what I might have done differently with the benefit of hindsight. Kudos to El C and Levivich for challenging me in the collaborative way that they did. I was genuinely offended by the suggestions that I had been untruthful, and that I had acted as I did to support someone based on my agreeing with their POV, or because of their seniority, or because we were buddies, or whatever; it's possible that I allowed my righteous indignation to get in the way of my empathy towards less experienced users however.

I maintain that I have no connection with Zefr, other than recognising that they are an prolific, long-term contributor in good standing. I believe that other prolific, long-term contributors will recognise that there is nothing unusual about two people overlapping on the occasional article talk page discussion, and not remembering specifics. I expect that there are literally hundreds of editors with whom I have interacted more than I have with Zefr; I cannot be expected to remember all of those interactions. I genuinely did not remember posting on their talk page in 2018, and here is the interaction analyser that I checked to see whether I had. My method was to type Ctrl+F, then Zefr. User talk:Zefr does not appear in the search results - thus, I concluded that I had never posted on their talk. User talk:Girth Summit does show up, with one edit from Zefr - thus, I concluded that their post a few days ago was the only one they had ever made. As can be seen from the results of that analyser, we have edited a few pages within minutes of each other, a few more within hours, days, etc. Many of these are user talk pages, and I believe that all of them were the results of us simply overlapping when doing recent changes patrolling.

As I've already said, I believe that long-term prolific contributors will look at our interactions, and understand that there is nothing remotely suspicious in two editors overlapping in this way. However, I recognise that to a new user, who has made fewer than 1,000 contributions, this might look like evidence of collusion, or people acting as part of a cabal. I tried to explain that this was not the case, but perhaps I flew off the handle a bit too early without really considering the perspective of a new user, and should have spent longer explaining things to Nosferattus. I would therefore like to apologise to Nosferattus for this post, which was probably below the standards of what should be expected of an administrator. Since they have been willing to strike through the wording of their accusations, I am willing to accept that their suspicions about me were held in good faith, and that I should have made better efforts to explain the situation to them.

In my first comment to this thread, I said that I thought Zefr should have posted at an appropriate noticeboard rather than reaching out to individuals. When I read their post on my talk, I assumed I had been the only one they had done that to, and that they were contacting me as a neutral admin to comment on the edit warring/accusations of disruptive editing/etc. I'm prepared to accept that Zefr believed in good faith that their notifications were acceptable, as they have set out above, but it remains my view that it is better to post on a public noticeboard than to notify individuals. I think that a statement from them indicating that they take this advice on board would be a positive development.

I don't know whether there is any more that Nosferattus would like from me at this point. I retract my demand that they no longer post on my talk, and I'm prepared to let this flow under the bridge, if they are. Girth Summit _(blether) 21:03, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the statement, GS. Yes, the Editor Interaction Analyzer leaves out tons of stuff. I realized this many many years ago when I input myself and the only editor I had collaborated with quite extensively, across dozens of articles, and almost nothing came up. It's very frustrating and the tool should really be reported at VPT and upgraded. Particularly because it's used regarding SPIs. Softlavender (talk) 01:27, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

I never accept it as admissible evidence. It's a novelty, that's it. It's troubling that it's seen as anything more. There's no shortcut to diff evidence. El_C 02:55, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

@Girth Summit: Thank you for posting the thoughtful note. I think we both let our emotions get the better of us. I understand how my actions made you feel unfairly treated, and I hope you can understand how I have also felt unfairly treated. I'm disappointed that Zefr has decided that I am incompetent and "vengeance-seeking". All I want is for the rules of Wikipedia to be applied fairly to everyone. I actually admire Zefr's work on medical topics and his efforts to keep fringe POVs and bogus medical claims off of Wikipedia (as I told him early in our discussions on the talk page). Despite being less experienced than many of you, I always try to cite my edits to reliable, independent, secondary sources, and if it's a medical topic, to review articles or meta-analyses. I'm also completely willing to be corrected when my edits do not adhere to Wikipedia policies and guidelines. What upsets me is someone just repeatedly reverting my edits without adequate explanation, and then breaking the rules (WP:3RR and WP:VOTESTACKING) in order to enforce it. If their opinion really is the more valid opinion, they shouldn't have any trouble fairly establishing consensus on the talk page. After all, that's how Wikipedia is supposed to work, and that's all that I'm asking for. Nosferattus (talk) 04:41, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Another way that Wikipedia is supposed to work, Nosferattus, is to "broaden participation to more fully achieve consensus". That quote comes from the the first sentence of WP:CANVASS: it is perfectly acceptable to notify other editors of ongoing discussions, provided that it be done with the intent to improve the quality of the discussion by broadening participation to more fully achieve consensus. That is what was done. This discussion may have taken a different, more constructive course had it been entitled, "Seeking consensus on Gingko biloba", which was my intent, as opposed to the inflammatory "vote stacking" accusation, which it was not. "Broadening participation to more fully achieve consensus" means that editors who were notified have their own editing experience, knowledge, interpretation of the content dispute, trust within the WP medical community, and individual decision-making about whether to even join the discussion. We assume good faith that editors asked to comment have their own ideas to contribute, uninfluenced by an invitation to assess. There was no vote stacking, no canvassing, soliciting, conspiracy, or campaigning to support my point of view, and no persuasion in any of the talk discussion. The only expectation was for independent review and collegial input to benefit the article, as is common (and expected) in scholarly collaboration. Meanwhile, at Talk:Ginkgo biloba, appropriate science- and source-based consensus prevailed. I value WT:MED, and have participated in many discussions there. I also know that not every minor dispute warrants community attention, as was this case. For a more complex content or sourcing matter, I would readily initiate and lead a WT:MED discussion, as done numerous times over the years. Zefr (talk) 14:43, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Proposal: logged warning for canvassing

• Support/propose closing this with a logged warning to Zefr about canvassing. Zefr's most recent post, just above, shows they still think they were not canvassing. Unfortunately I think a logged warning is needed to convince Zefr otherwise. Levivich 16:19, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
• Support logged warning. This was clearly canvassing. Paul August ☎ 00:21, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
• Support FINAL warning or a TBAN on canvassing individuals. Even as we speak Zefr is self-justifying and refusing to acknowledge his canvassing [26]. He even says the title of the OP's report here should have been "Seeking consensus on Gingko biloba". Good grief. Softlavender (talk) 03:57, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
• I support a logged warning; but I oppose closing this without more. It's a complex problem that isn't well-suited to simplistic outcomes. Zefr's canvassing, though wrong, was done for the right reasons. We don't have an infinite number of people willing to fight the battles he's fighting for us. I could make a good case for a barnstar as well as a warning.—S Marshall T/C 12:59, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
  • I wish we would not say things like "We don't have an infinite number of people willing to fight the battles he's fighting for us." That's WP:BATTLEGROUND mentality. It's this kind of thinking that creates WP:UNBLOCKABLES. The answer is WP:Wikipedia does not need you. There are no battles on Wikipedia that we need people to fight. Editing in a controversial topic area does not justify, excuse, or even mitigate canvassing (or otherwise editing against consensus). If anything, editing in GS/DS areas should make editors more scrupulous, not less. And anyway, the canvassing wasn't "done for the right reasons", it was done to win a content dispute; that's the typical reason, and it's the wrong reason. That we might agree with Zefr on the content dispute should not affect our thinking about the conduct dispute. Levivich 13:34, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
    • The project's ongoing problems with recruitment and retention mean that we don't have an infinite number of editors willing to stick up for MEDRS, Levivich. Wikipedia absolutely does need editors who fight for reliable sources. I agree with you that it doesn't justify or excuse canvassing; but content does matter and in my view it absolutely should affect our thinking here. Misconduct while fighting disinformation is very different from misconduct while promoting disinformation. This is not an attempt to establish Zefrs as an unblockable. I'm merely saying that this proposed remedy, without more, is too simplistic.—S Marshall T/C 13:53, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
      • What are you talking about? All editors stick up for MEDRS: that's why MEDRS has global consensus. All editors fight for reliable sources. WP:V and WP:RS also have global consensus. MEDRS and RS aren't going extinct; it's not like they're only supported by a brave few. Your comments lionize ordinary editing and ordinary editors. There are, literally, tens of thousands of people editing, and they're all fighting disinformation, or at least they think they are. Even the worst POV pushers think they're fighting disinformation. Providing reliable information is what we are all doing here. The exceptions are extremely few: the number of people we block or sanction is a tiny, tiny minority compared to the thousands and thousands of people who edit without incident. The proof of this is in the encyclopedia: 20 years on, it works, it fucking works!, and it's not because there are a few brave righteous editors who are upholding RS. Puh-leez. The whole crowd is upholding RS. It's the majority opinion, and a large, large majority at that.
        And don't you get it? Can't you see it? This whole dividing of editors into good editors (those who "stick up for MEDRS", "fight for reliable sources", and "fight[] disinformation") and bad editors (everyone else?), it's how this dispute started: it started with Nosferattus, in a content dispute, accusing Zefr of POV-pushing, because Zefr disagreed with Nosferattus on the proper application of MEDRS. That was an example of the battleground mentality. We have policies like WP:AGF and WP:NPA that are specifically meant to address that battleground mentality. Absent evidence that someone is POV pushing (or "promoting disinformation"), we assume good faith: we assume that everyone is here to fight disinformation, to uphold reliable sources. Nosferattus created a large problem by failing to do so, by accusing Zefr of POV-pushing (which led to more PAs from multiple editors, and canvassing, and this thread). And here you are, SM, doing the same damn thing: implying that Nosferattus is promoting disinformation and not upholding MEDRS. Stop the cycle. Either bring the diffs and prove POV pushing or disinformation promotion... or else AGF and treat both Zefr and Nosferattus as editors who are both upholding MEDRS and fighting disinformation (but who simply disagree on the details). Levivich 14:09, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
        • @S Marshall: For the record, the statement that Zefr canvassed to remove was cited to a Cochrane Review from its first appearance, which is considered the gold standard for WP:MEDRS compliance. Please see the straw poll in question. As I mentioned in the initial complaint here, this was not "Zefr enforcing MEDRS", this was Zefr fighting a content dispute by unilaterally reverting 3 other editors and then canvassing. Sure, MEDRS can be interpreted to support Zefr's opinion, but it can also be interpreted to support my opinion. Nothing in MEDRS prohibits adding the sentence I added to the article, and I don't think anyone would argue it is "disinformation". What people are arguing about is the strength of the evidence. This complaint, however, is not about content, it is about behavior, so I would love it if we don't bring the content dispute here. Nosferattus (talk) 14:58, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
          • Despite Levivich and Nosferattus' very outraged, passionate and spirited defence of this, I remain of the view that while Zefr's actions did amount to canvassing, there are mitigating factors. I remain of the view that a logged sanction for Zefr should form part of our response to this, but I disagree that it should be the only response.—S Marshall T/C 15:22, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
            • @S Marshall: What other response are you proposing? Personally, I think tightening up the language at WP:MEDRS would be a good response. If the community truly feels like Zefr's interpretation of MEDRS is valid (i.e. that cited sources must focus specifically on the claim cited rather than discussing it within research on a related topic), that should be written into WP:MEDRS. Nosferattus (talk) 15:40, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
              • I'm still looking at it, and I haven't finished deciding how I think we should respond. At the moment I envisage the additional required responses as advice and guidance rather than logged sanctions. I can also see good grounds for edits to guidelines. A question that has recently troubled me is how I should act where someone canvassed me to join a discussion and, having read it, I did want to participate in the discussion. I think the editors Zefr canvassed would have benefitted from that too.—S Marshall T/C 16:00, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

                @S Marshall I understand where you are coming from, but WP:MITIGATING isn't even an essay yet. In my experience, our community is much more about the letter of the law than the spirit. For the record, in principle, I agree that mitigating factors should be more often considered - you can also check out my relevant mini-essay here. And as for the barnstar, nobody needs an ANI permission to award one. If you think Zefr's deserves a barnstar, you can award him one at anytime. The odds of it being a community approved one on the level of a warning, however, are rather slim. (Out of curiosity, has AN(I) discussion ever resulted in a community-approved barnstar...?). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:46, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

                S Marshall Actually, your question raises another one: if "how should I act" includes thoughts of, "maybe I should recuse myself", or, "maybe I should just 'Comment' and not !vote", then canvassing known opposers who were scrupulous about canvassing concerns could be a method of increasing one's probability of success by, well, let's call it WP:VOTESTOMPING for lack of a better term. Or have I fallen into the Hall of Mirrors maze? I'm sure I've considered recusal a handful of times, and I don't remember how it turned out, but it made me feel queasy. Mathglot (talk) 02:40, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

            • I am not outraged and that wasn't really passionate, at least for me. Levivich 17:02, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
• Question Can someone explain to me what a "logged warning" is and what effect it has? Nosferattus (talk) 15:05, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
  • It's a warning that's logged at WP:EDR. Levivich 17:02, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
    • @Levivich and El C: So is someone going to act on this proposal? What is the next step? Nosferattus (talk) 19:39, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
      • @Nosferattus: don't know. Haven't looked at this since my Sept 11 comment. El_C 19:53, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
• Comment - per Nosferattus' question. What is "logged warning for canvassing". GoodDay (talk) 15:17, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
• Support logged warning. Blatant case of canvassing. A warning is warrented because Zefr continued to excuse his actions. It's unfortunate that experienced editors feel compelled to defend breaking of the rules when it's done 'for a good cause'. It's harmful WP:BATTLEGROUND mentality as Levivich mentioned above. Av = λv (talk) 09:28, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
• Support logged warning. scope_creep^Talk 12:05, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Request for closure

It's been about 2 weeks since the last substantive comment in this discussion. Could an administrator review it and close it? Thanks. Nosferattus (talk) 16:32, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Still waiting for an admin to review and close. Nosferattus (talk) 18:10, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

I've never seen a logged warning that wasn't also accompanied by a sanction (or as a WP:CONDUNBLOCK) anywhere but WP:AEL (or maybe also at individual WP:GSs). From what I'm seeing, nothing of the sort is currently featured at WP:RESTRICT (i.e. warnings per se.). El_C 14:15, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

@El C: see e.g. Special:Diff/856599223 ending with "This is a formal, and final, warning that will be logged at WP:EDR" (and it remains logged there). Anyways I think the content dispute in question might be covered by the DS areas WP:ARBPS and WP:ARBCAM (and probably some GS too but I'm too lazy to look). FWIW. CYA, Levivich 22:01, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

I just hate that table so much. El_C 15:10, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Fake referencing

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

---

I am usually deep down in the mines digging for information to improve articles with, so I may have missed this topic being discussed here. I frequently come across OR, or POV-pushing where the sources referred to either don't contain the information at all, or actually say the opposite of what they are claimed to say. I am getting more and more concerned by this and I wonder what kind of administrative sanctions that would be suitable for editors who are caught adding fake references or change referenced information in non-trivial ways.--Berig (talk) 08:04, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Fictitious references suggests that users found to be deliberately adding false citations should be warned suitably and blocked if the behaviour persists. I agree with that approach; the {{uw-error1}} series of warning templates seems to cover this. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 08:10, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks!--Berig (talk) 08:11, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I personally have very little patience with users who falsify content or lie about citations. Unlike obvious "lol penis lol" vandalism, this has the potential for lasting harm, and blocks should be made quickly. —Kusma (talk) 08:35, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I agree. I am tempted to just give these editors indefinite blocks.--Berig (talk) 08:37, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I see no point in warning a user that intentionally corrupting articles with false references is wrong, this is something people already know is wrong. I do see the need to determine if it was intentional though. HighInBC ^{Need help? Just ask.} 09:26, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Tend to agree. An immediate indef seems more appropriate. If some kind of "good reason" exists, this can then be used for an unblock. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:18, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes, there was recently such an incident where I could assume good faith due to the circumstances involved.--Berig (talk) 10:17, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

@Berig, can you elaborate? I believe you, I just can't myself come up with a scenario under which deliberately adding information not included in the source could be good faith. I can see misinterpreting, but that wouldn't fall under 'deliberate'. —valereee (talk) 13:14, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

@Valereee:, in this case, it was a long time editor in good standing who tried to fix a few broken references, believing they were from a particular source that was already in the bibliography, and there were other issues about it. The result was unfortunate, but it is fixed now with the intervention of other editors. I think the editor who did it is embarrassed about it, and I am certain it will not be repeated.--Berig (talk) 13:28, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

It is edits like these that make me really concerned. The last source doesn't even mention the topic.--Berig (talk) 13:42, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I see -- so certainly not deliberate falsification, just a misstep anyone could make. And, yes, it's often nationalistic POV-pushing where I see this, and it's especially difficult when the source is in another language and isn't available online in a translatable form. I've definitely had occasion where AGF seemed like it might just be credulousness. —valereee (talk) 14:06, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

WP:HOAX may be relevant and is an actual guideline. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 10:56, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I try to be fairly tough regarding warning and blocking editors who falsify references. Wikipedia is built around principles based on trust and honesty such as WP:AGF and WP:V, and people who make stuff up in the hope of tricking readers and other editors have no place here. Nick-D (talk) 11:20, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I'd be OK with an immediate indef if you were certain that the person was doing it intentionally. I was trying imagine situations where it could be done inadvertently, when a warning might be more appropriate - say someone finds a bit of information in one article with a source, and ports it over to another article, citing the same source but not actually checking it. That's bad practice, but it's not intentional deception if it later turned out that the source was a dud. Similarly, if someone read something in the Daily Mail, which referenced some bit of scientific research, I could imagine them repeating whatever the DM said about it, but citing the original source without reading it - again, bad practice, but not intentional deception. But yeah - if they've set out to deceive, they have no business editing here. Girth Summit _(blether) 18:42, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

It's also more than possible for someone to read one source in a series of citations,^{[7][8][9][10][11][12]} verify that it contains some other bit of info they're seeking for some other article, and then accidentally Ctrl-C on the wrong cite in the series. Reyk _YO! 09:28, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

This happens all the time in articles that are of interest to children. IP editors, mostly. Basically, they use citations as decorative elements to give their edits more credibility. What sometimes happens is that a reliable source says that a cartoon first aired in 2018. Our IP editor knows this is untrue because they clearly remember watching that cartoon in 2017. However, they're savvy enough to know that someone using Huggle will insta-revert them if they change the date without a citation. So, they replace the existing source with some random citation, preferably one that goes to a paywalled website. Voila! The correct information is now on Wikipedia, and it's even sourced. Outright vandalism is rarer in my experience, but it definitely happens. I tend to range block those as I find them. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 09:08, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

An example: LouisAlain

Let me give an example of a prolific editor (whom I'll notify directly) who does this (the mild version). User:LouisAlain translates biographies from German (dewiki). In the past, they also translated unsourced BLPs, which got them into trouble. They then started adding "random" sources at the end of paragraphs: sometimes about the subject of the article (but not the paragraph), sometimes not even that. I repeatedly warned them about this in January[27] and again[28], with many examples. To no avail, as a few weeks later the same happened again[29]. When I look at their creations now, I see Thorsten Pech, which had only a few refs in the original German article. LouisAlain adds some to his translation, but again uses random refs in random places, with this to source a biographical paragraph, and this Reddit discussion of a Youtube video to source a further biographical paragraph. At least in this case, both sources are about the same person, not some random namesake, but the end result remains: unacceptable "fake" referencing, to give the impression that all paragraphs are sourced when in reality they aren't. Fram (talk) 15:48, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

I regularly improve new translations by LouisAlain which show up on my watch list, and have not noticed what you call "fake referencing" recently, examples Leo Kestenberg (there was a long passage without refs, now commented out, - please look in the history if you can help sourcing it) and Josef Friedrich Doppelbauer which came with few references. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:24, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

There are also articles that are at best lazily translated without checking the sources. Roman Sadnik (from 2021-09-01): second ref, although claimed to have been accessed on the same day, does not mention the article subject. (If you accessed the page, why did you not read it?) Third ref: dead link, marked as dead on dewiki more than two years ago. LouisAlain, I am shocked to see that you have been here 10 years and have 60000 edits but still make this kind of mistakes: why would you ever cite an irretrievably dead link with no known archive, and not even tell people that you know the link is dead? —Kusma (talk) 23:31, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

The problem is that not only don't they check the sources, but they pretend to have checked them anyway. In Udo Schneberger, they claim to have "retrieved" the sources on "19 August 2021", but the first source doesn't work because they made an error when copying it, and the second source no longer exists. The original, German article had these sources in January 2015, when they were working. Claiming that you have retrieved a source when translating an article, when in reality that source is no longer available, is again fake referencing. Sung-Hee Kim-Wüst, sentence about her early career, sourced to her Shazam profile (!) which contains no biographical information at all[30]. Third source, again a paragraph of biographical information, sourced to this which has nothing of the sort. Johannes Cernota, first source should be about their studies with Luciano Ortis, but that source succeeds in not having any information on either of them[31]! And the second (and final) source for his biography is ... Napster[32], which again has no information relating to anything in the preceding paragraph. It looks as if this is a constant in nearly all their creations (or at least way too many of them). It has often been suggested that they should work through AfC / Draft space instead of creating articles directly: perhaps it's time to turn this into an actual sanction? Fram (talk) 08:20, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Sung-Hee Kim-Wüst has an interesting history: The German article was originally copied from [33]. The text was donated, see de:Diskussion:Sung-Hee Kim-Wüst. So while it is not copyvio according to that talk page post (can't check the OTRS), it relies only on a single self-published source, and the English version now does so as well. (The "Institut-fuer-bildnerisches-denken" ref is just a copy/paraphrase of that). This is nowhere close to acceptable sourcing for a new BLP. —Kusma (talk) 09:05, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Kusma, I've removed the website autobiography from that article and sent it to AfD. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:36, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm going through his last 100 creations one by one (bottom up), and nearly all of them have these issues. Typical examples are Franz-Josef Birk, sourcing a full paragraph to this and one to this. Gereon Krahforst, the first section on his training is only sourced to this. Many of their creations have already been moved to draftspace (e.g. Draft:Hans Robertson or Draft:Friedrich Schirmer, see [34]) where LouisAlain so far refuses to edit. 08:50, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

I was reviewing several of these articles over the last few days on npp. They are very very poor articles. The referencing was dire. I found many of them had damaged refs, incomplete, dead links and so on, whole bits not ref'd. Its like there is no time to slow and that is at the expense of quality. I think it is a good idea to make the articles go through afc. scope_creep^Talk 12:07, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Proposal on article-creation for LouisAlain

Proposal: LouisAlain must create all new articles in draft space, and they can only be moved to the mainspace by AfC reviewers. Fram (talk) 08:50, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support, although I don't care too much who does the moves as long as it is not LA. The responses to concerns (sometimes promises, sometimes just attacks against the editor pointing out problems) like this look like LousAlain either doesn't understand the problem or chooses to ignore it. In either case, things can't just continue like this. —Kusma (talk) 09:16, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

  I think we have two problems, one is adding references that don't reference, and another is to detect that an article written in a foreign language is a copyvio. The first can be avoided by LouisAlain not adding any references, and for the second, Fram would be a good help. All in draft would make it very difficult for me to detect the new ones, - please spare me that trouble if it can be avoided. I'd have to follow contribs, which means several articles per day. I'm just grateful he does it! Many of his creations have been rescued from draft space where nobody watches and nobody is invited to improve. I suggest we help each other. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:26, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

  LouisAlain not adding references would definitely solve the problem of fake references, but then these pages clearly won't be in a state acceptable for mainspace. Having his page creations in draft space wouldn't necessarily have to mean more work for you: I think there could be easy ways to alert you and other interested people of LouisAlain's new drafts (say, a page where announces them to a WikiProject or to all interested people). —Kusma (talk) 11:54, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

  I don't want to be alerted 5 times a day, having my own work. I notice new articles on my watch list, and then look if I will expand. I do one article per day, and can't keep up with the speed. Isn't this Wikipedia, where all can help. You see an article without refs, and decide to tag it or find one. I can't help thinking that finding one might be easier. In German articles, often making a further reading (Literatur) a ref and cite it inline does the trick. - LOOK. Two DYK articles today, and both created by LouisAlain. We'd miss a lot without him. How about more thanks on his talk. I fail to see how admins could help at all in the process of making this corner more collaborative. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:08, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

LouisAlain's response
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
-- Hey, I just discover I have the honour of a whole paragraph on the administrator's notice board. Thanks so much to all who've made it possible. Now, this will be an all out confession : I'm bad ! I'm very bad and I apologize for the chaos and mayhem I have brought to the English wikipedia. Oh the sinner ! oh the criminal ! oh the bloody beastard ! He creates articles that are not perfect when put on the main. Be he and his family damned until the 40th generation ! Hadn't I lost my autopatrol rights some three years ago (didn't know what they were, didn't ask to be granted them, they were presented to me after 50 articles which I suppose were deemed in lign with this Wiki policy), I wouldn't figure on the list of "users to follow step by step", they present a very suspicious figure in our books. Why did I lose my A.P rights ? Well, you know her name... Of course I won't answer to the informer who took at least half an hour of his life to research in the archives examples of my misdeeds. Besides, he once again shows his true colour (for those who didn't know) by evoking sanctions ! (rest assure Mr. informer, this won't fail to happen and you'll have the sadistic pleasure to have another victime on your "user to get rid of" list. My memory may fails me but User:Richard Nevell wrote some three years ago that you were harrassing me. Nothing new under the sun). What a friendly atmosphere to work in when one is surrounded by hunters whose ultimate goal is to kill their prey. I notice that two of the guiding principles of wikipedia are regularly ignored and even stomped on : Supposedly Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia, hence help and support are (at least that's my understanding) expected, not the opposite. Suppose good faith. That one takes the cake ! I'm spoken of here as if I were delibaretly and voluntarily ignoring messages and advice I receive. Duhh ! I've already answered several times to this one but of course to no avail : executionners never listen to those they want to behead. They stubornely pursue their ultimate enjoyment : destroy the other. See fr:Perversion narcissique So I repeat once again : I am bad at finding references. I suck at this exercise. So you may tell me one trillion times to better this part of my translations, you can threaten me with whatever your wild imagination may invent, even cut my wrists or my arms, it won't change my unability to find decent references. I don't know how others do but I can't, I simply can't though I'm doing the research on Google.de. I try my best and all I find are most often very poor references. For crying out loud, what part don't you understand in what I write ? Is my English so poor that I'm even uncapable to be understood ? I repeat once again : I am bad at finding references. I suck at this exercise. Since the discreet intervention of Boleyn three years ago, all my translations are supervised by reviewers (about 4,500 of them since her intervention) who every now and then add the {{refimprove|date=July 2021}} tag. What's the point of being rewieved (mostly by John B123 who I thak here for his education and good manners) when some of my fellow Wikipedian friends insist my translations need more stuff ? As for not reworking the articles sent to the deep freezer, I simply profondly object to the unceremonious handling by some people who lack the basic manners of politess. You see, I belong to the old school and stick to the old fashioned way. Scuttling an article whose completion may have taken one or two hours of work irks me a littel it to say the least. All the more when no explanations are provided. I've reworked some of them before, submitted the new version and it was rebuked. Oh well... The funny thing (kind of) is that the fate of many an article depends on the person who performs the move. Talk of consistancy here ! How amateurish ! I notice there are hundreds of hundreds thousands articles with no ref. (or possibly one or two, including dead links) but obviously nobody cares about them. I've linked to some of them on my homepage (and yes, the informer once spent some minutes to better one of them). Other than that, I can only hear the sound of cricket regarding these so-called "articles". Speaking of so-called articles, the most prolific creator (whose name of course I won't mention) with something in the range of 95,000 articles, seems to benefit a green light for all his stubs of stubs (one sentence or possibly two, one ref or two ad that's it). What is the secret of this user to keep on publishing his botched job ? (Oh, I know about the Pokemon argument which I consider the perfect pretence to not change anything at all). Since it crosses my mind right now, I thank Kusma (who I gather is German) for helping me understand I don't do enough to propagate Germanic culture on the English Wikipedia. I'm shoked here, Kusma, very shoked ! So, to put an end to a long entertaining monologue, I've decided that from today (yesterday actually) I won't translate any article from German, French, Italian, Spanish etc. if is not accompanied by sufficient online references. Here they are : Horst-Eberhard Richter Jeanne Barbillion Armin Thurnher Elfriede Hammerl Brucknerfest August Bauer Willy Spatz Max Martersteig with references found haphazardly on the net. As far as I'm concerned, only Gerda Arendt and Grimes2 actually play the game according to the rules implied by the collaborative thingie. May they find another expression of my gratitude here. Again : I suck at finding good references. I can't like I can't read Chinese. Not to mention my many shortcomings with the HTLM code. Now if you want to castigate and to threaten me even more, You know my name LouisAlain (talk) 00:50, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

LouisAlain, sorry, I have no time to read all this (but hope writing it was good for you), because today it's not only one of your articles but also a violinist who died and has a miserable article - all referenced but not doing justice to what he meant to the world - and there's RL. I like your list of articles, - how about putting just the names of those you plan to do on your talk, and Fram can make a tick if copyright free, and I can make a tick for "will expand", and others can comment as well. - Please, everybody: don't use "<br>", ever, it ruins the colours in edit mode. Alternatives: a blank line, bullets, or close it: "<br />". --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:05, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt:: the corrida goes on ! LouisAlain (talk) 08:36, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

So you are bad at finding references. OK. One of the things we've been talking about is that your new articles come with <ref> tags and external links that do not work or that (no longer) link to anything related to the article subject. Can you tell whether a link that somebody else (for example, an editor on the German Wikipedia) has suggested supports the content preceding it? —Kusma (talk) 21:01, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Kusma. I used to delete dead links on the German Wikipedia until someone over there told me not to. So, What am I supposed to do ? I thought I had answered all of your remarks but of course, as is usual, to no avail. Intellectual dishonesty runs deep among some administrators. I raise the issue of the point of my articles being submitted to rewievers. What was your answer (as well as other close friends I have on this site) ? None. Zilch. Zero. The sound of cricket. And I'm supposed to take you seriously ? Comme on. LouisAlain (talk) 08:36, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Not to be mean, but if you can't find good references, you shouldn't be writing a wikipedia article. I get that you're translating, but asking others to find the references is going beyond collaboration and into making things more difficult for the other editors. The way to write a wikipedia article is to find the good sources, read the good sources, and THEN write the wikipedia article from the sources that you find that are good. If you're translating an article, presumably those non-English articles have sources - in which case you should read THOSE sources, make sure they support the information in the article you're going to translate, and then translate the article, using those sources over here in the English wikipedia. It's immeasurably harder for other articles to take unsourced wikipedia articles and then have to find sources that support the unsourced information - because it's not the best way to make sure that the information is sources and paraphrased properly. What you seem to be expecting is that you translate the article, and then some other editor comes along, goes out and finds the sources that support the information you've added, and then they have to make sure that the way you translated things actually fits the sources they found. Do you see how that's a lot more work? Whether there are other articles that don't cite sources is immaterial - we shouldn't be ADDING to that number of articles that are going to make folks have to work harder to find sources and then shoehorn them in. Please don't expect other editors to clean up after you... that's not collaboration. Ealdgyth (talk) 01:11, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Ealdgyth. You shouldn't be writing a wikipedia article. Now we're going further in the process to eliminate me. A simple thing to do is to delete all my translations; sorry about having polluted the project with my filthy contributions. Also, I raised the issue of hundreds and hundreds thousands articles without the slightest reference and with no substance at all. What was your answer ? The sound of cricket of course! What you are suggesting is that participating to the project requires an intellectual scope well above mine. Can one be more discrimating ? LouisAlain (talk) 08:36, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm not saying you shouldn't be here, I pointed out the correct way to write a wikipedia article. And how to properly translate one. I get that you're trying to improve Wikipedia - what I'm trying to do is improve your editing so that you don't feel like folks are harassing you and following you around. So... for example - Tag des offenen Denkmals, which you just translated today. In it, it has the sentence "In 2006, the Tag des offenen Denkmals was awarded as an "Excellent Place" of the Germany – Land of Ideas campaign." with the source here. I note that you included the source because it was in the German article. All well so far. When you translated the article, you said that this source was "365 Orte 2006: Deutsche Stiftung Denkmalschutz. In: land-der-ideen.de, retrieved 6 September 2021." When you put in "retrieved 6 September 2021" you are implicitly saying that you checked that source and it supports the information you're saying it sources - that "In 2006, the Tag des offenen Denkmals was awarded as an "Excellent Place" of the Germany – Land of Ideas campaign". Unfortunately, this is not the case. The solution to this is not to quit wikipedia, but to change your workflow in translating. You should check the sources in the articles you're translating before you bring them over to the English wikipedia. If the sources in the German (or whatever article) do not support the information ... you should NOT attach them to the English translation. This is the problem. You're falsifying references ... even if you're taking the "good faith" approach and assuming good faith on the part of the editors who originally added them in the non-English article. If you'd just not do that, a large chunk of your problems would be gone. You'd still need to find sources for the information, but at least you wouldn't be misleading others that there ARE sources that support it, when they do not. Ealdgyth (talk) 12:52, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support restricting creating new articles in mainspace (but I don't agree with requiring afc; any editor should be allowed to move them to mainspace). I just can't wrap my head around someone saying they are bad at finding good sources but are still creating articles. Finding sources is Step #1 for creating an article. If you skip that step and still create the article, you're only creating a problem. Levivich 13:46, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Levivich And now I'm learning I am creating problems on the en. Wikipedia; Thanks for the recognition of all the work I have done here. With friends like you...

• Maybe they should be required to provide sources before they are even allowed to create an article.... Rgrds --Bison X (talk) 14:37, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Who's "they" ? When I started learning English some 60 years ago, the pronoun for the first person in singular was "he or him" The times, they are a'changing... No wonder I'm lost in this jungle.

Bison X. But what a good idea ! Creating second rank users who will beg for the possibility of participating to the project. And I thought even correcting a typo was worth intervening. But Bison has his own criteria mind you ! You also show you haven't even read my former answer: So I'll repeat it: I decided two or three days ago I won't translate any article from German, French, Italian, Spanish etc. if it is not accompanied by sufficient online references. Here they are :

• Horst-Eberhard Richter
• Jeanne Barbillion
• Armin Thurnher
• Elfriede Hammerl
• Brucknerfest
• August Bauer
• Willy Spatz
• Max Martersteig with references found haphazardly on the net.

My last 25 artices:

• Tag des offenen Denkmals
• Henri Boncquet
• Emil Jungblut
• Gerda Kratz
• Malkasten-Redoute
• Johannes Radke
• Eberhard Westhofen
• Hermann vom Endt
• Willi Hoselmann
• Alte Tonhalle
• Karl Friedrich Wunder
• Irmtrud Wojak
• Gerlinde Haid
• Susanne Scholl
• Hans Haid
• Waldemar Titzenthaler
• Siegmund Labisch
• Albert Zander
• Zander & Labisch
• Edgar Weil
• Doris von Schönthan
• Franz Danksagmüller
• Wolfgang Glüxam
• Elke Eckerstorfer
• Christoph Wigelbeyer

It's references that you want ? There they are. Now, I'm sure you all guys won't be deterred to attack me on other points some wicked people never fail to find. At least, have the courage and honesty to write you want me to be banned. Also I have de:Friedrich Wilhelm Graupenstein with 69 references in view. Does Bison X have the magnanimity to allow me to take my chances ? Some minds are inebriated with hubris as soon as they smell an opportunity to devour their next.

• John B123 : Please, no need to keep on rewieving my publications, some nice fellows here are showing me the way out. Fram has already showed them the way (blocked twice for peccadillos, and simply ignoring the "Suppose Good Faith" mantra). They don't read my answers, don't take them into consideration, ignore my questions and will pursue their drive to crush me until I'm given the boot. I've been here before and nothing can surprise me from people I'm no match to, intellectually speaking.

• The lengh some people with an ounce of power will go to assert their will on others is simply flabbergasting ! Homo Homini Lupus. Of course we're all equal on Wikipedia except for those who are more equal than the others.

• Plato had a perfect quote for this kind of interlocutors but it would take too much time to unearth it; Too bad, but if you insist (knowing perfectly well you won't) I'll will deliver. In the meantime I have this : Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughter house and thinks : They're only animals (Theodor W. Adorno)

• Forgive them Lord, they don't know what they're doing. LouisAlain (talk) 08:36, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

• I've just clicked on the 'random article' button only to immediately land on Archaeologia Polona. 2 references repeated twice. I'm sure the bright minds associated against me will rush to correct the situation (Actually, I don't hold my breath. Nothing will be changed : I'm their target, and nobody else). How pathetic and morally corrupt some people are. LouisAlain (talk) 09:03, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
  • I've reverted it as a copyright violation. I don't think insulting people left and right is your best way forward here. What also won't help is simply continuing with the problematic behaviour: you created Henri Boncquet (translated from dewiki), and added one source to the 1 1/2 sentence "[...]then moved to the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels for a few years. He received his first official commission in 1894: the bronze eagle in the botanical garden at the Schaarbeek Gate in Brussels"[35]. That source has no information on the preceding paragraph at all, so why add it there? (The second source in the article is equally bad, but you copied that, you didn't add it). Fram (talk) 09:14, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
  • In Gerda Kratz (very poor sourcing, but that's in the original), you claim that you retrieved the 6th source yesterday. I doubt it[36]. Claiming that you have checked a source (or at the very least its existence) when in fact you haven't again is faking references. The article should probably be moved to draft as a very poorly sourced, partially translated, unverified article. Fram (talk) 09:19, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Susanne Scholl, created by you two days ago: In this edit, you claim that the statement "Her temporary arrest by the Russian authorities while reporting from Chechnya caused a sensation." is supported by this. Not there (apart from the fact that this isn't a particularly good source). If you can't read French, you should not use French sources. —Kusma (talk) 09:59, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

  @LouisAlain, if you do not address your own behaviour, you will not get anywhere here. This is not because anyone is out to get you, it is because the quality of the sourcing you use is consistently terrible, and you regularly present wrong references that do not support what you claim they support. If you are unable to tell that, well, Wikipedia:Competence is required from all editors here, and those unable to read the references they cite should be shown the door. —Kusma (talk) 10:09, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

As I wrote before : a dialogue of the deaf. I've alredady wasted too much time on this thread which shows how biased some here are. It's blatant that my translations are under fire (probably rightly) but not the other horrors I find everyday on the main. Why am I singled out when thousands other users do far more worse than me ? I'll never know since questions aren't answered here. Does Der Process ring a bell Kusma ? What's the use of being rewieved ? Still waiting for an answer. Why did you wait nearly 6,000 articles to discover my incompetence ? (Sorry, my I.Q has only two digits). There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands articles like Archaeologia Polona that I had to bring to you attention so that Fram intervened. Fram, if you're unsatisfied with Gerda Kratz or Susanne Scholl, please delete, delete, delete. It won't take you more than one second. And since you're at it, delete also all the crap that are on the main (it will take you several month now) and at least 4,000 of my translations. Kusma, please, spare me "your competence is required from all editors here" whereas it is obviously an all-out lie. I've lost complete trust in the way Wikipedia is run by people who behave like Chief human resources officers treating users like their employees to whom orders are given. I now know for a fact that whatever the quality of the sources and references, some will always find something to object to. I'll have to find this quote from Plato which fits so perfectly with someone's behaviour here. It's an everyday psychological mindset around the world.

you claim that you retrieved the 6th source yesterday. I doubt it. I affirm I did, now of course only me make mistakes. And you once again spit on one of the founding principles of Wikipedia : Assume good faith by suggesting I'm a liar and a cheater at that. The man is frontly insulting me and nobody cares. Ô the confort of being part of a corporation where "scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" is the keywod at the expense of good faith editors.~Withour Jimmy Wale's support on my side. This whole business is so, so, so amateurish and dishonest.

I thought the point was moot since I announced that I had changed my tack (my "behaviour" in Kusma's parlance) and will translate uniquely articles with correct sourcing in the first place. Is Tag des offenen Denkmals to your taste or do you still want to pursue this silly escalade to more an more references? I wasn't born last year, been around for some decades now and when I see a profile like yours, I know who is adressing me. Have a look at fr:Perversion nacissique (with a translating machine at the handy). I'll translate the French one (yes, I can read French) even if the 36 references are all in French (probably).

I've started translating de:Lorenz Cantador with 27 references. Please all you folks, tell me it's useless, the English version has already it's place in the paper shredder. I don't know about your "competence" Kusma (I wouldn't have had the crass audacity of using that term à propos you. A matter of education perhaps) but I admit you're a virtual Olympic champion at discouraging others. Rest assure you're not the only one. LouisAlain (talk) 12:34, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

@LouisAlain, are you deliberately trolling? According to Tag des offenen Denkmals, you accessed this page today, which is a 404. You should be blocked from editing the next time you lie about sources like that. In fact, you should be blocked already, but I'll hide behind WP:INVOLVED instead of doing so as you have started insulting me. —Kusma (talk) 12:58, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Kusma, dear fragile carebear. Don't bother to banish me. I've left volontarily. I'm not up to your intellectual level. LouisAlain (talk) 13:32, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Time to indef block them, I think. Apart from source I highlighted above, and the one from Kusma (where LouisAlain claims in both cases that they were working just a few days ago, quite a coincidence), see e.g. also Hans Haid, where both the 1st[37] and 6th source[38] are not available, even though LouisAlain had no trouble accessing them 2 days ago. Combined with the more and more outrageous personal attacks and ramblings, I see no reason to let them retire now with the possibility of an unretirement whenever they feel like it. Fram (talk) 13:51, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

I agree. We have to be hard on fake referencing, especially if the person has been warned before. I can take care of the indefinite block.--Berig (talk) 13:57, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

No, please. LouisAlain translated all Bach cantatas to French, DYK. And was banned there. Now he created thousands of translations into English. And you come with this proposal?? I thank LouisAlain, and would miss him. Just look for his name in Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/DYK 2021 and its archives. If an estimated 5% of his translations cause problems, why not fix them, but thank him for the 95% others? Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:05, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

If it were just 5%. Even now, with the articles he created during this ANI discussion, we get these issues on many of his creations (e.g. with the sources he "retrieved" during translation, but which are mysteriously unavailable days later, or with sources he added which don't support the preceding text). Perhaps the question should be why he was also banned at frwiki instead? Fram (talk) 14:11, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Agree with an indef. He responded to the concerns raised here by making personal attacks and continuing to add false access-dates to references. Not to mention creating an article without checking the references. It's not acceptable. It's not helpful, it's unhelpful. He needs to stop making articles, and clearly he won't on his own. A block is the only way to prevent disruption such as giving false information to the reader and wasting other editors time. Sorry but not everyone who volunteers their time here is actually helping. We just don't need someone to translate articles without checking references; that must stop one way of another. Levivich 14:16, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

If you have any influence on LouisAlain that can prevent him from deliberately trying to get himself blocked, please use it. Unfortunately I can't agree with your estimate of "5% cause problems"; there seem to be far more, and the deliberate lies about access date don't engender any trust. I didn't go out of my way to search problems, I opened just a few of the pages LouisAlain himself linked to and found that the sources did not work. Reading his French talk page, LouisAlain seems to have a way of being his own worst enemy (and of painting himself as a victim of an abusive system). The ban on mainspace creation proposed above looked to me as if it could provide a way out where LouisAlain does not need to change his way of referencing, with others helping. Sad to see this not working out. —Kusma (talk) 14:29, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

@LouisAlain: Why am I singled out when thousands other users do far more worse than me ? We do have thousands of terrible articles, yes. Hundreds of thousands, actually. But you are not being singled out, you are standing out by yourself: If you would add to the number of terrible articles slowly, you would probably pass unnoticed. However, you have created 1400 pages in the last year. Please name any of the thousands other people who create four pages per day that require substantial cleanup regarding sources and prose. —Kusma (talk) 10:14, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose ban I protest a ban of LouisAlain strongly. He is good in translating, with a little weakness in referencing. Maybe there is a solution. I can do the referencing part (timeconsuming, please not so many articles). He can create an article in his sandboxes, I do the referencing. After that, the article can be released to mainspace. Grimes2 (talk) 14:48, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
  • It looks to me as if he is strongly opposed to any such solution, all similar suggestions have been dismissed. If you can get them to agree to such a condition, then that may be a possible way out. Fram (talk) 15:07, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
  • If he doesn't agree, a partial block from mainspace is another option, short of a sitewide block. Levivich 16:29, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

LouisAlain agrees. Important for him is, that he has the ability to release to the mainspace. Grimes2 (talk) 11:06, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Grimes2 Maybe there is a solution. I can do the referencing part this is exactly what can be done if they're creating articles in draftspace. Other users can improve references before it goes into article space, which would be better than having undersourced/incorrectly sourced articles in mainspace. Joseph2302 (talk) 11:15, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

My experience is, that an article is forgotten in Draftspace, and after 6 month it is deleted. What's wrong with an article that is well referenced. The article is only released to mainspace, if referencing is done. Grimes2 (talk) 11:25, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

@Grimes2, thank you for your work on this. It does not look as if LouisAlain has stopped creating poorly sourced articles in mainspace. Could you and @LouisAlain clarify what the agreement is here? @Fram just had to move Nicolas Mahler to Draft:Nicolas Mahler today, where LA had added an obvious non-source to his translation of the dewiki article. (Great Austrian comic artist by the way, I love his work and am slightly ashamed on behalf of the English Wikipedia that we don't have a decent article yet, but I don't see LA's first draft helping much). In the absence of a concrete agreement, the proposed mainspace creation ban still looks like the weakest sanction we can consider here, and we can't just continue to ignore this. —Kusma (talk) 16:56, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Nicolas Mahler was my fault. This has been fixed. Please take a look at the article now. It can be released to mainspace now. Grimes2 (talk) 17:16, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support ban on creating directly into article space. Forcing them to create articles in draftspace means that if they are undersourced, other editors can help fix them before they go "live" in article space. Or if they don't get fixed, they don't get published. Joseph2302 (talk) 17:15, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
• Comment An editor hasn't just had problems providing sourcing--they've been providing false sourcing, lying about it, and are deflecting when caught and insulting the editors who are raising concerns about this. How are we even talking about partial blocks, or accepting people arguing that LouisAlain is a productive editor with "some" sourcing issues? This is a major behavioral fail, which is causing, has caused, and will cause significant amounts of work and rework for other editors to clean up the "productivity". They should already be blocked. Grandpallama (talk) 15:34, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
• AFC is not a solution. AFC reviewers won't be checking citations to see if they confirm the text. What is needed is an Apprenticeship with an extremely diligent fact-checker who will take it upon themselves to check every single citation in anything LouisAlain produces. And since he is apparently largely unable to produce even an accurately cited draft, he should do all these mock-ups in his userspace (subpages and sandboxes), and await the fact-checker who is mentoring him to do anything further. Lastly, If he sucks at citing, he should not be writing articles. It's just that simple. WP:V is the cornerstone of Wikipedia and indeed any encyclopedia. Softlavender (talk) 08:10, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

  It's not just sourcing issues, the quality of the translations is also poor. The recently created Dietrich Meinardus, Ludwig von Milewski, Moritz Geisenheimer will all take more time to clean up than rewriting from scratch would, and it's less fun to do for most people. There's a recent warning by @Shirt58 about this on the talk page. LouisAlain creates far too many such articles; we'd need to clone Grimes2 and Gerda a few times to fix them all. —Kusma (talk) 10:01, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

• I agree that AFC is not a solution. AFC is not at all suited to handle the issues raised here. AFC generally does not involve looking closely at source material, and there are not sufficient multilingual reviewers in any event. Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:17, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose editing restrictions.

  (written yesterday, trying to not participate in the "judgement" but adding information:) Today's pictured DYK was created by LouisAlain, DYK? He began working in a sandbox. I enjoy the work with him. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:19, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

  Today's DYK has Leo Kestenberg, created by LouisAlain, and its that type of article I'd miss much if he left. I believe that articles don't have to be perfect when created, - actually I believe that no article will ever be perfect. But together, we can do our best to make them good. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:52, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

My mistake. Fram (talk) 08:05, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
No improvement Yesterday, they created Joseph Euler. The second source is "retrieved 9 September 2021". It doesn't work though[39]. @LouisAlain: do you claim that this link worked yesterday? Fram (talk) 07:28, 10 September 2021 (UTC) I DO. Mister Fram, you're so eager to fulfill your dream of killing me after 5 five years of stalking me that you make a fool of yourself in the eyes of everybody. The link still works, just scroll down a little bit and you'll find the content of the site. Now, what's next? Will you reproach me to not have indicated it was necessary to scroll down a bit? Or to not have modified said site so that the content pops up on top of their page ? A 9,719 ko.s article in one shot, and all you come out with is another wrong accusation. How other supposed intelligent administrators followed you to this point baffles me. Today, I've just finished Ludwig von Milewski (one shot). Search, search, you may find a wrong placed coma or whatever. But rest assure, sooner or latter you'll succed in your drive to ban me. LouisAlain (talk) 08:02, 10 September 2021 (UTC) You're right, it does, my apologies. Fram (talk) 08:05, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

• Comment I previously spent more time translating but have since moved on to other activities, in part because of the difficulties posed by translating articles that are not well-referenced (including inadvertently translating copy-pasted content and introducing translation copyright violations, which are fairly difficult to detect and remedy later). Is there any way that LouisAlain could concentrate his efforts on featured articles or similar, to minimize these issues occurring? I think that translation of poorly referenced or unreferenced articles is often unhelpful because of the higher standards at en.wiki, and presumably there are enough well-referenced articles that could be translated to keep LouisAlain busy for some time. Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:17, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Calliopejen1, I previously decided not to take part any longer to this thread but your recent comment (one of the smartest of them all if you allow me) that I just discover, calls for an exception. This advice should have been given to me years before. Anyway, I took the decision some 8 days ago to do exactly that: Pick up articles with a minimum of five verified references in the original German or French (or other European languages) articles. My latest Carl Ernst Bernhard Jutz had 8 references including one dead link. That one has 14. To no avail ayway, some here will be too happy to find one single typo to crucify me. LouisAlain (talk) 23:03, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

LouisAlain, this seems like a constructive way forward! good luck! i disagree with others below who are expecting you to personally check references (especially those that may not be available to you) -- as long as some editor has vouched for the content of the reference, i don't personally think it's the translator's job to do so again. but i may be in the minority here... also, it seems like people care deeply about the access date listed, so be careful with that. Calliopejen1 (talk) 23:09, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

• I was invited to participate in this discussion, and here are my thoughts:

LouisAlain, you should always double-check and read your sources of information. Writing a new article is a fairly significant amount of work, which requires reading and understanding your source material completely and comprehensively. Indeed, you get the message "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable'. Any work submitted to Wikipedia can be edited, used, and redistributed—by anyone—subject to certain terms and conditions" every time you make an edit. This, incidentally is why you can see offers to write articles on my talk page that I politely decline because I don't feel sufficiently qualified on the subject matter. I don't think getting excessively snarky with people who are pointing out mistakes is at all helpful, and will just make other people think you're not a net positive to the project and should be blocked. Sure, I can think of some examples where somebody points out mistakes in my writing in a not-amazingly-polite manner, but usually I remind myself that it's not personal and manage it accordingly.

I'm pleased to see that Grimes2 has offered to help look at some of these articles and improve the verification and sources on it.

I'm writing this message in good faith in the hope you're recognise there's a problem, and that I'm not saying any of this to be mean, but just trying to make sure the encyclopaedia is factually correct.

And finally, Fram, we get that there are problems with LouisAlain's editing, and I think your comments are now bringing more heat than light into the discussion, and it would be helpful if other people chipped into the debate. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:46, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you @Ritchie333. It would be great if some others could help with checking LouisAlain's referencing (and his translations, which commonly require a {{RoughTranslation}} tag; cleaning up such translations is a major effort comparable to writing the article from scratch), which often looks OK if you don't go and click the links and actually really read the reference given and compare it with what it references. It was a surprise to me to see how many of them are broken or incorrect. It could also perhaps show LA that this is not a personal vendetta by @Fram and myself, but a genuine community concern with his prolific creation of articles looking nice from a distance, but requiring serious cleanup work. —Kusma (talk) 15:33, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

• Update: Today's new article Johannes Busmann. "Busmann passed his Abitur at today's Carl-Fuhlrott-Gymnasium [de] in Wuppertal, then studied art, music and philosophy at the University of Wuppertal and obtained his Staatsexamen in 1988 and the degree in 1989" claims this reference, which does not contain any of this information. Those who do not read the references they claim to use should not create new articles. This apparently includes LouisAlain. —Kusma (talk) 14:37, 11 September 2021 (UTC)
  • See also from the same day Eugen Busmann, where both this 404 error and this "cannot resolve hostname" are claimed to have been retrieved on 11 September. So we have references claimed to be checked but which don't work, references which work but don't support the text to which they are attached, machine translations (often only half finished, see the "work" section on Anton Josef Reiss), and abandoned "in use" wrecks (Guido de Werd, tagged as "in use" even though LouisAlain has since created 4 other articles, I have moved it to draft instead). Perhaps time that someone closes this section with appropriate measures. Fram (talk) 12:20, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
• Support topic ban at the very least - concerning editing history here. Nice to see others finally recognise that editors repeatedly adding unsourced information to articles is actionable... GiantSnowman 14:55, 11 September 2021 (UTC)
• support topic ban Comment - if repeatedly adding fake references is not actionable, what is? I hope everyone here agrees that we are dealing with a very serious type of editing that compromises Wikipedia's reputation.--Berig (talk) 05:31, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
• If no action is taken here, why should others take WP:HOAX and WP:verifiability seriously?--Berig (talk) 09:28, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
• Question/comment I see a lot of comments about "fake referencing" and "hoax" being thrown around but it seems more likely to me that AlainLouis is translating articles in good faith but it turns out the references in the non-english article he translated don't actually verify the text of the article. (And also that he is using the current date as a default for access-date but he should be copying over the access-date in the original reference.) Is this all there is, or am I missing something? Also, for people who think translators should be personally verifying all content against the listed reference, do you also think people who splice or merge articles should do so? And if not, why not? I view translation as akin to a splice and would not require the translator to verify the content of a reference that the original adding author has already vouched for by adding it. Calliopejen1 (talk) 23:12, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

  There is a big difference between translating and just executing a merge/split. In a merge/split situation, others can easily check the page history of the original pages. In a translation situation, it is impossible to do without some knowledge of the source language. If you just translate without checking any references, you're not just assuming that the people adding the references checked that it supports the text, but you are also assuming that nobody ever added text to the article that is not supported by the given references. That's a pretty big assumption. Translations done that way should be marked as unreliable, as their source is a wiki, not necessarily the claimed references. (I have translated like that, but that was in the Dark Ages of Wikipedia, before we had a general agreement of using reliable references. It was back when quantity, rather than quality, was our main driver of editing).

  If you want to translate properly, you often need to consult the sources at least to check which meaning of an ambiguous word is intended. Otherwise, your translation is likely to be not just unreliable, but even wrong. So yes, translators should vouch for every word they add, just like any article creator. If people don't want to do a proper translation, they can just add {{ill}} links and let readers take the risk of a poor automatic translation; I find that preferable to a translation that looks nice from far away but hasn't actually been verified by a human. (I've essentially stopped translating and just write new articles from the same sources nowadays, which is much slower but produces better articles that only contain verifiable content). —Kusma (talk) 16:58, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

  When you split an article, you are likewise "assuming that nobody ever added text to the article that is not supported by the given references". Splitting an article referenced to foreign-language materials is really no different from translating an article sourced to foreign-language materials. In both cases, it is somewhat harder for a reader to verify the content of the article because the sources are not in English and may be difficult to obtain. I don't think as a practical matter that people go through article histories to compare the text of the article when the reference was added to the text of the article at present. If this happens, I assume that it is vanishingly rare. Calliopejen1 (talk) 16:28, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

• Comment - If Louis is knowingly "adding" fake references which is what has been described here then I agree that is not a good thing, probably actionable. However, I agree with @Calliopejen1 that the translator, this being Louis, can not be totally responsible for the sources of articles they translate. Ideally, a translator would be fluent in the language of the wiki they are copying from but that is not always the case and realistically can't always be the case. Louis is doing something very few care to engage in for these reasons. I think it's a little disingenuous to call what they are doing "adding" fake references when those references came from the original article on another wiki. If that is not the case then I stand corrected. I am going based on what I see in the conversation here. What I would caution Louis to do is to make sure that they are using the sources from the original article, they are using the access date of said sources unless they have checked the source themselves and can confirm the source is related to the information in the article or where it makes sense to update upon confirmation. I would also caution Louis to remember that not every wiki has the same exact restrictions and what is within the rules for one may not always be within the rules for another. That's true whether there are three, four, five or ten sources for an article. The rules are sometimes bent on even this Wikipedia to include something that may or may not be on the fringe of just over the edge in regards to our policies. Typically that is the case when consensus agrees so we should always follow consensus, even if consensus turns out to be wrong. Bottom line is that Louis can do better but so can we all. Louis can do some things to help alleviate some of the pressure on the community to clean up translated articles by just taking a few extra precautions. The community could do better about not assuming bad faith on the part of an editor that is trying to do a good thing for the encyclopedia in an area that very few actually try to edit. We often confuse civility with personal attacks. Louis has not been attacked though I know they feel that way. However, some of the the comments, the tone, the words used are uncivil and unkind. Louis would do well to understand that the frustration that others feel about these translations are justified. Likewise, the community would do well to understand that the constant piling on of uncivil remarks and unkind references are causing an enormous stress on an editor that is just trying to improve the encyclopedia. In cases like this we need to come together rather than rip each other apart. It's the civil thing to do. It's the kind thing to do and it's the best example of community collaboration we could ever hope for. --ARoseWolf 13:48, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
  • @ARoseWolf:: LouisAlain used to add fake references (not present in the original article), to avoid getting the articles draftified or deleted. He has for now stopped doing this it seems, but he continues with all the other issues, see e.g. one of his most recent creations, Adolf Schill
    • References "retrieved" by LouisAlain, which don't work or don't support the referenced text (this one doesn't work as presented but another page on the same site has the wanted info; this one has nothing to do with the wanted information, and nothing on that site seems to be of any interest; this one simply doesn't work, and neither does this one)
    • Very poor formatting, resulting in a "big red" cite error
    • Machine translations, resulting in things like "Born in Stuttgart, Schill attended the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart from 1864 to 1870, where he was introduced by the eclectic Christian Friedrich von Leins was taught architecture and Adolf Gnauth in stylistics." (first sentence of life section, including the link to the stylistics article which has nothing to do with the contents here, as far as they are decipherable).
  • All this coupled with a very confrontational attitude towards people who don't simply clean up his mess but try to get him to follow some basic principles and rules (see the above texts or the personal attacks he routinely offers on his user page and talk page). It's not as if this ANI section comes out of the blue; there have been countless discussions on his talk page, from many people, to get him to change his approach. Perhaps this one finally has brought some changes, although the intention to create pages in his sandbox and let someone like Grimes2 approve them first lasted for all of, what, 2 days? Fram (talk) 14:04, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

I wasn't here from the beginning but I honestly believe that if anyone looks this situation, like most, objectively and tries to understand the position of everyone involved one could see how they would feel confronted and therefore respond in a confrontational way. Louis feels "attacked". Even if that is just their perception it's still valid. The frustration that some in the community feel is valid as well. I don't believe Louis acted maliciously, again, I haven't been here from the beginning but during my brief interaction with them they have been thoughtful and civil. I know it's a pain to go behind someone and clean up mistakes. I still have some of my earliest, I haven't been here that long, created articles and edits watchlisted and people are still fixing errors on them. On a few of my very first I actually used sources that were less than stellar. I went back and fixed them later where I could. On some it was done before I realized. I felt terrible that someone had to go behind me. I still do. I said that to say this, we are all human beings and while I do believe there are limits to what the community should tolerate as far as what we consider disruption, we can always improve how we respond to make sure we are doing so in the kindest way possible. That's all I am advocating for. --ARoseWolf 18:40, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

As for "[r]eferences 'retrieved' by LouisAlain" I assume that you are just referring to him using the incorrect retrieved date when he is recreating the translation from the non-English Wikipedia? I view this as basically the most minor issue imaginable. In general, the retrieved date is only used for archive.org purposes, and it is easy enough to find old versions of the website at archive.org even if the retrieved date is incorrect. He should be given a reminder about this so that he ensures that he copies over the retrieval date from the source article as appropriate. This is not a reason to ban someone from article creation. Re: "'big red' cite error" are you seriously proposing a ban because he forgot to put a single </ref> tag, out of 35 references? Because that's what happened at that article.[40] On the machine translation, I agree that sentence sucks. I have no idea whether this is a pervasive issue, however. It may be that he forgot to clean up one sentence while revising a machine translation (which is, by the way, a perfectly fine way to translate if you in fact revise it afterwards). If there is evidence that he is often doing this, I agree it would be a problem. Calliopejen1 (talk) 16:28, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

@Calliopejen1, LouisAlain has created about 1400 articles in the last year. A large number of these (I would guess between a quarter and a half) have been edited substantially and improved up to standard by Gerda Arendt, Grimes2 and a few other people, while a large number of these articles has not been improved (Richard Gutzschbach, Moritz Geisenheimer are just some examples, see for yourself at [41]). There are many machine translations (or other poor translations). Often, the German article being translated is also not particularly good to start with. Many issues are just small errors, easily forgivable for a newbie. After 6000 articles, I think we can expect a little better. —Kusma (talk) 16:57, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

User:Kusma, I don't see either of those articles as net negatives (unless there are some significant inaccuracies in the text that you can identify for me? I don't speak German). I note that both Gerda Arendt and Grimes2 (those presumably most familiar with his strengths and weaknesses) both oppose the proposed editing restrictions. Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:08, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

@Calliopejen1: Well, Richard Gutzschbach is a pretty good example: the actual source for the German text is what LA puts in the "Further reading" section. The reference 1 is untranslated, so you still need to know German to understand that you have to look up a different work at an unknown page to retrieve this. Reference 2 does not support the content. Reference 3 does not work. The link to Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber is kind of correct, but to put it in the text like this is misleading, as that name was not used until 1959, so "Dresden Conservatory" is the right name to use. Reference number 4 actually supports the content in the text (it could even be used to reference the entire article). It also shows that the "1840" birth year is speculative, and we don't learn whether the reference 1 has better reasons to assume it is definite. The external link is contained in the AC template and redundant. None of this is visible if you don't actually go and check the references (and that is the reason for this being under "fake referencing"). (Some of the non-working /non-referencing ones were actually added by LA, and are not present in the original de:Richard Gutzschbach). —Kusma (talk) 18:09, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

@Calliopejen1: I agree with you on refs 2 and 3, that is bad. It's not obvious from the German article that the article was based on the Eisenberg work, so I don't blame him for using it as "further reading" (which I think "literatur" is closer to (?)) instead of putting it as a reference. It's not great that reference 1 is untranslated, but I'm more of a "meh" on things that can be fixed by later editors, which this definitely can be. It's not harming anyone to have an untranslated sentence hanging out that in fact leads readers to a reference (even if not ideal). Other issues I consider minor and fixable by the ordinary editing process. If things like 2 and 3 are a regular practice, I would be concerned. There is so far not enough evidence on this thread that this is a regular practice IMO. Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:24, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

@Calliopejen1, see #An_example:_LouisAlain above. From recent articles: Hermann Carl Hempel, reference 5 does not work. Carl Murdfield, reference 2 links to a page on how to book tickets for services in Cologne Cathedral. Looks like a regular practice to me. —Kusma (talk) 19:11, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Kusma, those are just old references that he has transferred over that existed in the source article. For both, it was trivial for me to retrieve good versions of the link at archive.org: [42], [43]. Minor imperfections like these are not a reason to put a ban on article creation. Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:21, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

@Calliopejen1, that's the thing: LouisAlain needs a cleanup crowd several people strong just to keep up with this kind of "minor imperfections" in his new articles. I don't mind him creating a few articles requiring such cleanup, but I do mind thousands of them, with new ones created faster than Gerda and Grimes2 can fix them. If the issues are "trivial", well, then perhaps LouisAlain could just fix them? —Kusma (talk) 19:41, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

@Kusma I agree that it would be better if he could do this. I see three options: 1) we try to work with him more to get him to fix these imperfections himself, 2) we ban him and lose his imperfect articles entirely, 3) we accept that he is what he is and we get the imperfect articles. Given the bad blood between LouisAlain and the community at this point, I doubt we can redirect his efforts to other tasks (which might otherwise be a #4). Re #1, I'm not sure this is possible as a practical matter. It might be. The conversations I've seen linked here have been accusatory and hostile and not the sort of friendly, constructive outreach that might actually lead to behavior changes, and starting this AN thread certainly hasn't been helpful. Though for whatever reason there are always some editors who simply refuse to make simple changes, no matter how nicely they're asked, for reasons that remain a mystery to me. (User:FloridaArmy comes to mind... another frustrating editor who I still believe is a net positive.) So if he falls in this category maybe #1 is impossible. Of course, option #1 is theoretically the best, if possible. Of #2 and #3, I think #3 is the better option. I don't think that his body of work is a net negative, even if it has obvious problems. And when it comes down to bans like this, I think net positive/negative is the correct test to apply. Anyways, my two cents. Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:49, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

The idea in this thread was to prohibit article creation in mainspace and to only allow articles to be moved there after the referencing has been checked/redone. That would be a minimal change to LA's workflow (he would need to use draft space or userspace instead of main, but could continue to paste slightly copyedited machine translations), give others time to check his work, and prevent further buildup of a mainspace cleanup problem. —Kusma (talk) 21:45, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

I think that is the worst option, to the extent we're relying on AFC (which is what was originally proposed). AFC is completely inequipped to do reference checking etc. The workflow at AFC is basically: does it contain copyvio? is it a legitimate topic? is it an ad? if the answers are satisfactory, it gets approved. AFC generally doesn't check whether sources verify text, and there are not enough multilingual AFC reviewers to deal with this sort of thing. Calliopejen1 (talk) 21:55, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Kusma, also, in case it wasn't clear, the reason I say that 2 and 3 are bad is that he has introduced references that don't verify the content, as opposed to just reproducing references already present in de.wiki that don't verify the content. Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:23, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, don't see the difference. —Kusma (talk) 19:42, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

• Also, I'm going to register my view as formally oppose ban.I'm changing back to officially neutral (possibly even weak support? not sure) in light of various issues that have arisen below as well as LouisAlain's refusal to engage in good faith discussions about the real issues that others have raised. Calliopejen1 (talk) 21:36, 24 September 2021 (UTC) I think we should try to work constructively with LouisAlain. He has already committed to only translating well-referenced articles, and I believe that he will easily fix the issues with access-dates that others are complaining about. If there are issues with the quality of his translations generally, I think that should be revisited in a separate thread that is not confused with these other issues that hopefully can be easily addressed and resolved. Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:17, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

  He is translating articles that look well-referenced, which is quite different from well-referenced articles, which is something that is impossible to tell without looking at the sources. What he needs to do is very simple: just check whether at least the easily accessible online sources (in languages that he speaks) actually are related to the content they are supposed to support, and not add additional references without checking whether they actually support the content being referenced. If he did that, maybe we'd get two reliable articles instead of four unreliable ones per day, and I'd happily shut up about this. —Kusma (talk) 18:20, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

  Kusma, I disagree that the burden is on translators to go back to all of the sources used in articles to check that they verify what they purport to verify. We don't ask people who copy-edit articles to do this. We don't ask people who reorganize articles to do this. We don't ask people who merge or splice articles to do this. Is it that we think so little of German Wikipedians that we believe their footnotes are significantly more likely to be bad than en.wiki footnotes? Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:28, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

  @Calliopejen1, I am not even asking for translators to go back to all of the sources used in articles to check that they verify what they purport to verify. I am asking them to verify the one-click accessible online sources in languages that they speak. There's no good reason to exempt translations from WP:V (Remember that we don't accept wikis as sources!) The German Wikipedia has a very different approach to sourcing and footnotes from ours. They traditionally used to have "Sources" or "Literature" sections that list all the works used while writing the article (and usually also several works not used while writing the article) and often have no inline citations, so you don't know what comes from where. For a typical example (I just clicked "random article" a couple of times): de:Thomaskirche (Mannheim), where three books are given and no inline citations. The German Wikipedia still asks people to name their sources in the edit summary: de:Hilfe:Zusammenfassung und Quellen, so if you translate an article without importing its history, you can lose some references. This doesn't mean we think so little of German Wikipedians, it just means that we need to understand what the information we translate means, and we as translators need to answer the question why we think the text we write is true. If we don't do that, we might as well go for machine translation instead. —Kusma (talk) 18:53, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

  Kusma, I understand that the referencing culture of de.wiki is different, though one would think their footnotes reference the text to which they are appended... no? Assuming that is the case, I still don't understand how this is different from someone who splices an en.wiki article sourced to online foreign-language sources. That is no more "relying on a wiki" than the translation of footnoted text is. Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:00, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Calliopejen1. Please explain what you mean by "I disagree that the burden is on translators to go back to all of the sources used in articles to check that they verify what they purport to verify". Are you actually saying that WP:RS and WP:HOAX are irrelevant if it is translated from a Wikipedia article? How can translating a WP article with fake sources be acceptable?--Berig (talk) 19:06, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Berig, If someone takes the article History of Ghana and sees it is too long and breaks it into Colonial history of Ghana and Post-independence history of Ghana, we don't expect them to go back and verify all the sources at the time they create those new articles. If Colonial history of Ghana now contains a bad reference because there was a bad reference in History of Ghana, we don't blame the editor who spliced the article and say they created a hoax. We blame only the person who introduced the bad content/reference. Another way of looking at this is that we rely on the vouching of the person who originally added the sourced content (i.e. their vouching that the content reflects what the source says). I don't see how taking content across languages (as opposed to between articles in the same language) is any different. One Wikipedia author has looked at the source and vouched for the text of the article as consistent with that source. Once that has happened, subsequent editors can rely on the original vouching. Of course, it is good practice to periodically check back on sources to ensure that no detritus has accumulated that's inconsistent with the source. But this has nothing to do with an article being translated/spliced/etc. The accumulation of this detritus can happen anywhere. Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:13, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

I consider myself and everybody else responsible for the information and the references written into an article. I don't even borrow references from reliable professors with tenures because I know they can make mistakes and consciously or unconsciously misrepresent information. I have learnt this the hard way by verifying sources as I write.--Berig (talk) 19:22, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Berig, so you think no one should splice an article unless they personally look at every source in what they're splicing and verify it? i think that would be a slim minority view, and one that would hinder rather than help development of the encyclopedia. Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:24, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Calliopejen1, you don't have to translate everything from a Wikipedia article. Translate what actually is verifiable, per WP:RS.--Berig (talk) 19:28, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

That's an interesting analogy. But I would regard someone copying content as incurring more personal responsibility for the validity of that content than if they were moving content. For example, I would not copy-paste a sentence from Ashanti Empire to History of Ghana without reading it over carefully, checking references, and making sure it generally passed the smell test. Whereas if I were doing a simple split, I would be fine with more or less doing a blind ctrl+x, ctrl+v. By copying "bad" content (whether from a different article, a different wikipedia, or a different wikiproject), you're increasing its reach; you're increasing the net "badness" of the project. The same is not true when moving bad content around within the project. (Also, I would say copying from a different wiki requires even more care than copying within the wiki, since different wikis may have different content policies.) Colin M (talk) 21:08, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material. This is Wikipeda policy, and it means that an editor is personally responsible for the text they translate from another Wikipedia. Why does it appear to be more acceptable when LouisAlain adds hoaxes and effectively unreferenced material? Or is this a case of an editor having enough friends to do it?--Berig (talk) 15:45, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Berig There is no prior consensus that this is the appropriate way to interpret that sentence. If you think it should be a policy/guideline that you have to personally verify the references of content that is already in Wikipedia in another language before translating it and bringing it to this edition of Wikipedia, please start a discussion to establish that consensus. Your proposal would mean that it is forbidden to translate the impeccably referenced fr:Ancien tramway de Rouen unless you personally have the obscure French books and periodicals on which it is based in your possession. Is that seriously what you are proposing? Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:37, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

The problem is that if we borrow references we vouch for them being correct, don't we? Maybe we should not use obscure French references if we cannot verify them to begin with. I would never translate articles from Swedish Wikipedia without painstakingly studying every reference simply because I know that Swedish Wikipedia is not reliable.--Berig (talk) 18:51, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Middle ground? There's got to be some interpretation of the existing guidelines, or some way in which they should be amended, to prevent this scenario: A prankster wants to create fake articles. So the prankster identifies the Wikipedia for another language where patrolling is really lax, or else the guidelines are, and a friend who's fluent in that language. The friend adds the articles, with fake references, in the other language to the other Wikipedia. Then the prankster "translates" them to English Wikipedia, where the prevailing presumption is that if it came from another Wikipedia, it must be fine already, with little or no need for scrutiny. Largoplazo (talk) 18:57, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Largoplazo, the thing is, that is not the scenario we're faced with here. What LouisAlain is doing is simply translating articles from de.wiki that sometimes have footnotes that are either deadlinks or (as it turns out) don't actually support the text. I don't think we should ban him from doing translations because of this, or (even worse) require that his translations go through AFC where reviewers are completely unequipped to evaluate articles for this issue. Of course, people can create hoaxes through translation just like they can create hoaxes through mis-citing difficult-to-access sources. But there is no "hoaxing" here, only the translation of imperfect articles. Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:02, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

@Calliopejen1: Suppose I find a CC0 licensed English blog post on the Ancien tramway de Rouen. It's written in an encyclopedic tone, and includes footnotes to cited works which appear to be reliable sources, but there's no evidence the author of the blog is a recognized subject-matter expert. Is it okay to copy this content into an en-wiki article (with appropriate attribution and formatting adaptations), including the footnotes, without verifying any of the citations? If not, why? And why does the same reasoning not apply to copying material from fr-wiki? Colin M (talk) 19:10, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Colin M, I'd say no because I draw the line between non-Wikipedia and Wikipedia. That's because trust in Wikipedia editors' vouching for sources cited is inherent in this project. You can also follow up on the person who originally added the content and see what their contribution history is, unlike with a blog post. On a semi-related point, forbidding translations except if you personally verify the sources (i.e. making translations significantly more difficult) will only contribute to the systemic bias that's already a problem here. Translations are a way of amplifying the work that other Wikipedians around the world are doing and getting content here that covers the entire world, not just the Anglosphere. [Side note re: your point about increasing the "reach" of bad content, above-- every time you add a link to an article you're increasing the reach of that content, but you're not going to be blamed if you link to an article that contains incorrect content...] Calliopejen1 (talk) 22:10, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

I'd draw the line at the project. If someone translates or otherwise transfers a page from another project onto this one, they need to check that it meets this project's global consensus, which may be different from another project's. That means making sure links work, content is verified, no BLP issues, not copyvio, etc. It should be just like creating any other mainspace page. When copying within this project, like splitting a page, one can rely on the page history, but not when taking material from outside the project. (Or even from outside mainspace, I'd say.) Levivich 04:42, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

• I think I'd support a ban in principle, but am indifferent about whether it needs to be a formal logged restriction. Grimes2 volunteered above to do review and referencing, which is fine IMO, so long as that agreement is adhered to. Bottom line is, there are several articles with content cited to sources that don't verify the information and probably never did (e.g. Spotify links can't verify extended prose). If Louis isn't going to check the references then they should not be in mainspace until someone checks them. The featured articles suggestion above probably makes life easier on the reviewer, but is not a solution to the underlying problem (as featured articles, after being reviewed, sometimes have unverifiable content added into them). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:47, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

That agreement lasted all of two days, I believe. Nothing is checked before LouisAlain puts in the in the mainspace, and few things are checked afterwards. In general, not even the most friedly advice gets results. @Calliopejen1: nicely asked them to stop using the "retrieved 23 September 2021" addition to sources (as it would be slightly less problematic to simply add links that don't work, instead of pretending that they checked the link and it worked and confirmed the text at the time of translation), but to no avail.

His most recent article, Hugo Helbing, again has links like [44] (currently ref 7) and [45] (ref 12), their previous article Moritz Leiffmann has [46] (ref 8). Both are very poor machine translations, with a section title like "After Helbing's Tod" or sentences like "The gallery owner was forced into this demolition because of Helbing's and Flechtheim's Jewish origins, and the works Degenerate Art were confiscated." or (from the second article) "His children, including Martha Leiffmann, born in 1874, who married doctor Peter Janssen in 1904. married and gave birth to the later painter Peter Janssen in 1906, he was baptised Protestant." (contrary to what one might think after deciphering this sentence / these sentences, the original German article doesn't indicate that Peter Janssen II was baptised Protestant, but that the children of Moritz Leiffman got a Protestant baptism).

Too often his poor translations introduce such factual errors: in the second article, "[...] was acquired by the gallerists Alfred Flechtheim, Hugo Helbing and Georg Paffrath by public auction": no, the auctioneeers Flechtheim, Helbingand Paffrath sold the items, they didn't acquire them for their galleries. Whether this is carelessness by rushing through too many article creations, or is caused by LouisAlain simply not understanding German, is not clear. Fram (talk) 07:59, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

This reminds me of Wikipedia:Unblockables. Some editors are simply "allowed" to keep acting in a problematic way.--Berig (talk) 08:22, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

@LouisAlain: Can you please explain why all the online references in the article you created today, Hugo Helbing, say "Retrieved 22 September 2021"? Did you access each of these links on 22 Sep (yesterday)? Levivich 17:12, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

@Levivich: As pertains Hugo Helbing, I wrote "Retrieved 22 September 2021" because I check all the references the day I translate (very badly I concede) articles from German. I've just finished Raquel Camarinha from French and you'll also find the "Retrieved X/X/X" line because today is the day when I retrieved and checked the references (and added 3 or 5 since there were many dead links on the French original. Maybe "retrieved" isn't the right, proper and appropriate word, in which case the drama can be solved by telling me what I should write. This thread has been unfolding for nearly three weeks now which makes me think some people have time on their hands. I feel like Josep K. in Kafka's the Trial, wondering what do all these nice people calling for my banning are accusing me of. In 2021, there still exist people ready to send their next to the gallows (or under the guillotine); humankind will never evolve.

I recently translated Surroundings of Cologne Cathedral (with 48 references) expecting the issue of wrong, dead etc. references would at least be over. To no avail apparently.

Out of good faith, I've been working here for 5 and a half year, 4,500 of my translations have been checked by at least 40 rewievers, without any of them raising the issue of the quality of my translations or the references question. Am I invited to think all these people did a botched job with my output and should better have abstain from engaging in a job they weren't up to ?

In the process that led to my banning from the French Wikipedia, a sharp mind suggested all my nearly 8,000 articles should be rewritten (I don't speak French) while another genius accused me of racism, no more no less. I nearly escaped the anti-Semitic accusation. The mind boggles. In a Christic move I forgive you all for reasons that are mine only. Ban, ban, ban. LouisAlain (talk) 18:35, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

In the article Hugo Helbing, Ref #7 ""Provenienzrecherche - Franz Stuck von". Bundesamt für zentrale Dienste und offene Vermögensfragen. Retrieved 22 September 2021." the link [47] is dead, it goes to a 404 page. I'm assuming it did yesterday as well. So why are you writing "Retrieved 22 September 2021" when, obviously, you did not retrieve this source yesterday. I mean what does "check the references" mean if a 404 page is passing your check? And if this was once or twice I wouldn't even say anything, but this is what we've been talking about for weeks here and there are still multiple errors like this, just today, and every day it seems, not just for weeks but for years, and maybe across multiple projects? How are you still repeating this mistake? I just don't understand, how are you making this error over and over again? Don't you see it's a 404 page? How do we fix this so that you are never marking a 404 page as "Retrieved [today's date]". This particular little issue which really isn't that big of a deal except you seem to be doing it hundreds if not thousands of times, has me flummoxed, and yet it is just one of the issues raised here. I wish there was a way to resolve these issues without banning you from making articles. But there is an active discussion about banning you from making articles in mainspace and you're still repeating the same mistakes with new articles while the discussion is going on. This tells me you just don't care, that you're not trying to do better because you don't think these complaints are important. Please tell me I'm wrong. Tell me you can go like a week without making articles with dead links, etc. Levivich 19:00, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

"4,500 of my translations have been checked by at least 40 rewievers, without any of them raising the issue of the quality of my translations or the references question. " Your talk page history is one long list of people moving articles to draftspace or proposing them for deletion because of (mainly) referencing issues, but also people having serious issues with the quality of your translations, e.g. User:Smeat75 here from 2019: "These machine translated articles that Louis produces in vast quantities in extreme haste contain some terrible mistakes". Or User:Voceditenore, February 2019[48]: "there have also been quite a few problems—namely extremely poor or non-existent referencing and the use of machine translation which can sometimes result in very confusing or even outright false information being added to Wikipedia.". There may have been others, there are no talk page archives and hundreds of talk page posts so searching is very tedious. Two years later, nothing has changed and here we are, but still you pretend that no one had issues with these until now? Fram (talk) 10:06, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm confused about this reference to machine translations. LA says "my translations". Is LA translating or are these Google translates? Levivich 13:21, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Most (if not all) are very similar to the Google translates. Surroundings of Cologne Cathedral certainly is derived from Google's translation of de:Domumgebung (Köln), as you can easily check if you browse using Chrome. As I understand it, the use of Google translate was part of the conflict leading to LouisAlain's ban from the French Wikipedia: [49]. —Kusma (talk) 14:29, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

LA is translating articles from a language he doesn't speak??? Levivich 14:45, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

I looked and jogged my memory with Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1001#User Fram and User LouisAlain... I thought the outcome of that thread was that everyone agreed that using machine translations to copy articles from another language wiki to enwiki was not OK? I was under the impression this stopped after Fram's block of LA two years ago? Levivich 15:18, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Let me just state here clearly that machine translations are harmful. They usually look nice from far away, but often contain wrong statements. Cleaning them up is a lot of work that requires specialist human translators do to properly (the relevant section at WP:PNT has a five-year backlog, but only lists a fraction of machine translated articles that need checking). We should speedily delete all machine translations to encourage faster creation of proper articles (translation browser addons and {{ill}} mean static machine translation is at best useless). —Kusma (talk) 15:38, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

As one of the regulars over at PNT: I fully agree with the statement above. Lectonar (talk) 17:59, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

WP:MACHINETRANSLATION, which I think has been around for 10+ years and has the heading, "Avoid machine translations", states: Wikipedia consensus is that an unedited machine translation, left as a Wikipedia article, is worse than nothing., bold in the original. If any editor is posting to mainspace machine translations from another language wiki, when they do not have fluency in the other language and aren't checking the accuracy of the translation themselves, that's a serious problem. Frankly any editor who continues to do this after being asked to stop should be pblocked from mainspace forthwith because the cleanup is going to be a lot of work and we don't want that pile of work getting bigger. Levivich 17:37, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Did I say 10+ years? It's at least 18 years. Wikipedia:Translations in 2003: Never use machine translation to create an article! Also (all emphasis in the originals):

• WP:COFAQ#MTRANS: Machine translation is useful for obtaining the general idea of a text in an unfamiliar language, but it produces poor translations and should not be used on its own. If you want to use machine translation as a translation aid and intend to edit the result, please go ahead if you think it would be helpful. However, please do not paste a machine translation directly into an article.
• Wikipedia:Content translation tool#Why machine translation is disabled in content translation: Raw or lightly edited machine translations have long been considered by the English Wikipedia community to be worse than nothing.
• Wikipedia:Spanish Translation of the Week: More guidelines, such as the prohibition against pure machine translation, can be found at Wikipedia:Translation into English.
• Particularly on-point is Wikipedia:Translating German Wikipedia, intended to assist editors in Translating German Wikipedia articles for English Wikipedia., which has a section on Auto-translation help:

  • Word order: Google Translate and Bing Translator can cross-reword paragraphs into another language, but "proper word order often it doesn't". All automatically translated text must be checked before use, as comparing phrases to the original language.
  • Verbs/phrases omitted: Google Translate sometimes drops verbs, or whole phrases (even in 2016) in long sentences, or where a verb could have multiple meanings. So a verb gets dropped, rather than risk showing a wrong equivalent verb.
  • Town names: Google Translate and Bing Translator might translate proper nouns in some town names, but not other instances, even in the same paragraphs.
  • Wikitext form: Google Translate may garble wiki-text markup coding; for example by showing illegal spaces after the slash in closing wp:reftags (as in illegal "</ ref>").
  • Short sentences: By hand-splitting long German sentences into shorter parts, some computer-translation programs might generate better wording than others, but all automatically translated text must be revised before use.
  • Copy as in other pages: Once the first page on a theme is translated, similar pages could copy parts of it, so the translation of idioms can become easier in related articles.
  • Verification rules: Many articles on English Wikipedia have some awkward, broken English, but German Wikipedia is heavily patrolled by editors to alleviate rough or awkward wording.

It seems extremely clear that consensus prohibits a non-speaker from using machine translation to translate articles. Levivich 17:53, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

It certainly should be prohibited; sadly, it is not. As far as the Wikipedia:Translating German Wikipedia essay is concerned, imho it should be deleted. Having it around makes monolinguals who have access to DeepL or GG translate plus a two-page outline on German translation think that they now know everything there is to know about German to English translation. Mathglot (talk) 02:03, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

@LouisAlain: I think if you tried to read this section in a less defensive way you'd see people have clearly raised their concerns. About duration: for a new editor this probably would've lasted less than three weeks and already ended with sanctions, so in that sense I'd say this is favourable treatment. I feel like people would be more reassured if you actually tried to listen to what concerns people have, and maybe even set out a plan for how you'll try to resolve them. You silently removed the reference Levivich was concerned about, so I'm presuming you do actually understand the concerns here. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:35, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

My goodness! We have an editor who habitually translates articles with google translate and doesn't care about the referencing. Why isn't he banned yet, like on French Wikipedia?--Berig (talk) 17:40, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure the problems with his translations are based on Google Translate (could he be using a different tool? i guess it's possible). I looked at a few wacky translation errors in his articles and none was caused by Google Translate. So I'm not sure if it's just bad work that he's doing himself?.... Calliopejen1 (talk) 21:39, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support too many issues, which have continued since the section began, and next to zero recognition of the issues or any kind of plan to do better (despite generous lifeline offers from other editors, which it appears LA does not wish to take up). I'm happy to reconsider this vote if one of those things changes. Will also note that the persistent commentary by LA including far-fetched insinuations of an 'unfair trial' is also very unimpressive, and this section has been a massive sink of other contributors' time so far, in their attempts to verbosely explain the issues. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:43, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

  Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/DYK 2021, to date 61 articles translated by LouisAlain made it to the Main page this year, and we'd be poorer without them. I agree that this thread is a waste of time. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:54, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

  So quantity over quality? Accuracy doesn't matter--being fluent in the language of your source material doesn't matter, unsourced material doesn't matter, even in a WP:BLP like the one he created today and marked as "translated by LouisAlain" (Talk:Stefan Koldehoff) although it seems to be almost entirely a pasted Google translation of the dewiki article --none of it matters and discussing it is a waste of time as long as he makes a lot of DYKs? This is not a video game, high score doesn't count here. Levivich 22:16, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support. I encountered LouisAlain four years ago at Template:Did you know nominations/François Bott. I suppose I didn't think too much of it at the time, but you can see the same pattern: missing references, references that didn't support the text, poor-quality translations, lots of other editors pitching in to address the various issues caused by LouisAlain's editing. Now, to some extent, that's just how Wikipedia works. We're always improving the work of others. There's an inherent expectation that as a result of this process all editors will improve over time, and respond in constructive ways when editors critique their work. Editors that cannot or will not improve tend to be shown the door. I have no personal beef with LouisAlain, but if he's unwilling or unable to improve his approach I don't see any alternative. Mackensen (talk) 22:38, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
• Comment LouisAlain, would you kindly self-evaluate your ability in each language you translate from, in particular French and German, plus any others you habitually translate? Preferably by adding Template:Babel badges to your User page, but you could, if you wish, just list the languages below, using the Babel levels of 0 (no knowledge) to 5 (professional quality, virtually equal to a native speaker), to N (native speaker)? For example, {{Babel|it-1|de-2|fr-3|en-N}} would mean you have basic Italian, intermediate German, advanced French, and are a native speaker of English. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 03:37, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
•  Done

I am once again summoned before a tribunal presided over by the spiritual heirs of Fouquier Tinville, Roland Freisler and Andrei Vychinski. Yes, this is how one is treated on Wikipedia when one is the weakest link.

I have replied I don't know how many times to the friendly accusations made to me concerning -among others- the question of references. For at least the last 15 days, I have only translated articles whose originals have solid and verifiable references. Did anyone check ?

I have never ever received a single answer to the questions I have asked about the somehow 40 rewievers for example who never raised an eyebrow regarding the topic at hand or any other issue. What is the point of asking regular users to rewiew new articles if their opinion is considered of no value nor interest ?

• Lorenz Cantador
• Düsseldorf Castle
• Alte Kunsthalle
• Sophie Hasenclever
• Kölnisches Stadtmuseum
• Surroundings of Cologne Cathedral
• Linneper Hof
• Zander & Labisch
• Clemens Julius Mangner
• Johann Josef Scotti

and last year was this one wich now may have dead links which were not when translated.

are among my latest translations. Accusing me of putting unreferenced articles on the main is a deliberate blatant lie and an insult. I have changed my habit following the nice remarks and insults that have been hurled at me since this thread began.

My very first translation here was Marguerite Aucouturier, 5 and a half years ago. See what it was then and what it has become since. That's what I call playing the game of a collaborative encycopedia. Were it for the vast majority of sysops, this article would have been deleted within hours. For whose gain or benefit ?

For the sake of answering guess games, I am a native French speaker and never use Google translate. Never. This answer is written without the help of any translating machine (and I guess it shows). So much for those who suggest I shouldn't use Google translate : I don't, period. As is usual, nobody will believe me since the "Assume good faith" motto is a joke which everyone betrays when it fits their need and prejudice.

There is a drive (and I know where it comes from) to ban me fom this site where apparently most believe I act out of volontary ill-will, stubornness and ontological meanness despite all the "kind" advice that have been given to me by magnaniminous and humanist administrators playing the "good cop/bad cop" game. I wasn't born last year mind you and I'm old enough to be the father and even grandfather of most of you (which of course doesn't grant me any privilege) but I have lived long enough to not fall twice in the same trap ("Fool me once etc.", you know the line). I have gathered a bit of personal experience regarding human nature and the death instinct vis-à-vis one's next.

After I changed my tack as pertains references, I thought the issue was over. What an imbecile I was ! The new accusation now concerns dead links. Well, as opposed to all administrators (whose name are circulating in the Vatican fo a possible beatification and even canonization), I happen to make mistakes, yes I do. This user must be the only one from whom most here expect and even demand immediate, complete and absolute perfection at first shot. We're all equal on Wikipedia except for those who are more equal than the others. Please, don't mistake me for a dork...

I never hid my flaws regarding my weak skills in English (again, see the footnot at Marguerite Aucouturier) and innumerable corrections have been made to my output by Gerda Arendt first and then by Grimes2 plus many other users. Also, being slightly mentally unbalanced isn't a plus in social interactions. Unbalanced yes but not completely imbecile though...

Like in the Moscow trials, the accused stood absolutely no chance, whatever their good faith or innocence and I don't hold my breath as regards my eventual fate here. The dice was cast the day a female informer from N.Y (discreetly, I agree) had my A.P rights removed, hence drawing attention to me for all to see and draw their conclusion : He is a filthy troll ! The load of work of 40 something rewievers was made heavier, to no avail of course. They wasted their time. Now, if there is some consistancy in your accusations, please, please pray and delete all my crappy translations which are a stain on the English Wikipedia (bet you won't though). Like my salvation depended on the whims and self-esteem of an army of ants. It is not because 1, 2 or even 7 billion people assert the earth is flat that said earth is.

Now, you've made me lose 2 hours that I wanted to spend on the translation of de:Luftangriff auf Magdeburg am 16. Januar 1945 with 59 references (still to be checked one after the other).

Oh, one last question: Do you allow me to keep on translating whatever article I want from French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and other European languages for my personnal private collection or must I ask you first your permission ? What a sinister farce and a riot ! LouisAlain (talk) 07:50, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

I have indefinitely blocked LouisAlain for his lies about the use of machine translation. Many of his articles are lightly copyedited machine translations (and some look so much like what Google translate does) that this is simply not believable. Sorry, Gerda, I don't see a way forward without Louis actually engaging with the issues instead of attacking the messengers. —Kusma (talk) 08:22, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

As an administrator, I support that block.--Berig (talk) 08:24, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

LouisAlain apparently uses DeepL, not Google translate, see User_talk:Gerda_Arendt#Block_of_LouisAlain. I don't think this makes a huge difference, but it should be mentioned for the record. (It does produce very similar results to Google, even with identical sentences in many cases). —Kusma (talk) 12:17, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support block/ban. There's either a dishonesty going on or it's a WP:CIR issue. If I may quote a cartoon character: Megatron to Starscream - "You are either lying, or you're stupid!". GoodDay (talk) 18:06, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
• I endorse the indefinite block by Kusma. As LouisAlain is not interested in discussing the issues, the block is absolutely necessary to protect the integrity of the encyclopaedia. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:05, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
• I was reminded, reading and commenting in this thread, of comments made on AN, of all places, in 2012, by Geometry guy, and I placed a line from them in my editnotice at the time, keeping it until 2018 (that line bolded by me):

  "In my view, a thread like this should be viewed as an opportunity to reach mutual understanding: not agreement, perhaps, but at least an understanding of what the disagreements are actually about. This thread will have no consequences beyond that anyway: it will be archived automatically in a few days, recalled by those who read it, and possibly diffed for a few choice comments. With that proviso, I have a few remarks.

  • This page is not ANI, so no immediate administrator intervention is being requested; however, the topic is of interest to administrators, not least because there is a block in place that at some point in the future may require reconsideration. There are plenty of other reasons for discussing this case, including wider ramifications.
  • There are many reasonable editors here, with reasonable positions. Reasonable opposing positions are not addressed by referring to extreme aspects of opposing positions (for example, no reasonable position involves "vitriol": such concerns should be taken to the user talk page of the editor in question).
  • ... (this comment related only to the 2012 case)
  • Every editor is a human being, and we need to consider regularly whether our view/approach to an issue brings out the best of humanity or not.
  • All editors should be encouraged to follow best practice (e.g. with regard to close paraphrasing), not merely typical practice.
  • The idea to study typical practice with regard to paraphrasing is flawed, assuming an objectivity that such a study would almost certainly be unable to achieve. I have made related comments on Moonriddengirl's talk page.

  That's all. I thank all editors in advance for reading and thinking about the many issues this discussion raises. Geometry guy 22:32, 28 February 2012 (UTC)"

  I believe that an indef block for "lying by omission" is out of proportion. I also believe that we should rethink our stance on machine translation. Deepl is often better than I am. Dismissing it wholesale seems no service to content on the English Wikipedia. I enjoy articles such as Max Creutz which reminds us of a forgotten person with rich achievements. (The editor in question back in 2012 was unblocked 2 months after the comments.)

  I support an unblock but would understand if LouisAlain wasn't even interested in serving here further. The "perennial gang of three" is broken, and I miss a friend. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:12, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

  As I just wrote on my own talk, the history of Max Creutz provides great examples that show why we should never employ thoughtless mechanical machine translation. We shouldn't translate poorly written sentences, and we must check whether our translation introduces ambiguities that can't be resolved without dual fluency. DeepL can't do that for us. As for an unblock, we would need to have something in place to prevent mass creation of articles that haven't been checked for accuracy of either translation or referencing. —Kusma (talk) 16:29, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

  The block - as I understand it - was not for machine-translated articles, but for "lying by omission", which again wasn't in it's reasoning but explained below. (Needless to say: I found Martin's questions valid, and share them.) I believe that a minimum in respecting that an editor you block is a human being is to precisely say why you do it. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:39, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

  I think the reason why restrictions are needed (and rather widely supported) is clear if you read the entire thread. The last straw that caused me to block at that particular time was the highly misleading statement right above my block notice. —Kusma (talk) 17:05, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

  I think anybody so far uninvolved looking at this block should not have to go over the whole thread, but should be sufficiently informed by a concise and unambiguous reason given for the block, with all aspects. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:52, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

  As I said, I have indefinitely blocked LouisAlain for his lies about the use of machine translation. (After he previously lied about having checked his references). —Kusma (talk) 18:31, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Post-block discussion

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

---

Just want to say here that my indefinite block of LouisAlain doesn't necessarily have to be the end of this discussion. However, the potentially more useful ways forward (a page creation ban in mainspace or a requirement to go through AFC, which were both opposed by some people) would require LouisAlain's cooperation, or permanent policing. Given that he lies about his methods and seems unwilling to check his work, I'm not sure whether anything requiring his cooperation could result in something sustainable. A pblock from mainspace would mean LA can't even introduce links, and that part of his editing is usually not problematic, but we could still try it. So I'm open to creative suggestions on how to go forward, but I am opposed to just unblocking and pretending the issues don't exist. —Kusma (talk) 10:04, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

I still support an article creation TBAN (which could be an unblock condition). I agree that's better than a pblock because it allows him to keep contributing to mainspace in other ways. Levivich 14:37, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

@Kusma: Can you please unblock him, please. This seems a bit unfair and its a bad block, on a mostly productive and creative individual, who is plus to Wikipedia, where other remedies could be put in tried first. scope_creep^Talk 18:22, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Do you have evidence of the creativity and the plus? I have only seen thousands of machine translations with sourcing issues, combined with four years of evasive responses to requests to improve his work. I am aware that hundreds of his articles have become DYKs, but that's not LouisAlain's work, it is Gerda's. Anyway, as I said, I am happy to unblock with a clear restriction in place, but not without. Guess that makes me a wannabe dictator and, in LouisAlain's words, a modern day Roland Freisler. (See Roland Freisler if you don't know how offensive that is). —Kusma (talk) 18:54, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

I agree that this is the right way to handle this. Following the discussion, I have seen too many issues with WP:RS, WP:CIR, WP:NPA and just plain honesty. If an editor doesn't listen and change unacceptable behaviour, we have no other choice but to block. His comparing you to Roland Freisler is beyond the pale and only confirms that an indefinite block is the right decision.--Berig (talk) 09:18, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

A related discussion is on my talk. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:09, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Can we see any diffs for the claim that he "lies about his methods"? (but this sounds like some kind of general summary of his activity, not a single instance or small number of instances). Presumably LA was asked to stop doing something and refused? Again some explicit diffs would be useful. Was this indef block imposed by a wholly uninvolved Admin? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:18, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

2nd. I'd like to see evidence for the "lies," preferably by not reading this mega thread cover to cover. El_C 18:10, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

OK, let me dig out the highlights from this thread for you.

• Claiming to have retrieved a reference that Fram pointed out does not exist.
• "I check all references the day I translate". Some of the links in the article discussed were dead.
• In response to the people trying to find out whether he uses machine translation, "I never use Google translate". That may be technically true in the present, but it is a lie by omission, as he himself admits to using DeepL machine translation instead. (This is the diff that made me block, as it was obvious that LouisAlain used machine translation).
• Same diff as the Google translate one, another lie by omission: "40 rewievers for example who never raised an eyebrow regarding the topic at hand or any other issue", implying that nobody ever raised any serious issues.
• These are the smaller problems. The bigger issue in my view are lies in mainspace about pretending to have accessed sources that do not exist, as in the subsection #An_example:_LouisAlain above.
• As to WP:INVOLVED: The first time I found a very recent lie, I thought I should block but didn't want to, partly because I didn't want to upset LA's friends, partly because I wasn't sure whether I'd appear involved after recent insults against me by LA. The statement "I never use Google translate" in response to a question about manual or machine translation, from a user who was banned from the French Wikipedia for insulting others after some discussion involving his self-admitted four years of using Google translate, was too much for me to let pass, though. If you think this turns it into a bad block, feel free to reverse it, but please note that several users above including admins @Berig and @Ritchie333 have endorsed the block. —Kusma (talk) 21:26, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm having a bit of a struggle here with your concept of "lie by omission". I would have thought if you asked a certain question, you'd expect a straight answer to that question? I might agree that "comparing you to Roland Freisler" might be seen as a little extreme, even "beyond the pale". But you wouldn't actually indef block someone for that, yourself, would you? Martinevans123 (talk) 21:42, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

The question was "Do you use Google translate or are these your own errors?" and the answer we got was "I do not use Google translate", which seemingly implies that he does his own translations, which just isn't true. Even if you don't accept that "Google translate" is essentially a synonym for "machine translation" just as "babelfish" used to be in the past, he is not engaging with the intent of the question. (The incomprehensible thing for me here is that LouisAlain actually has pretty decent language skills in several languages and should be able to translate manually if he wanted to). That he did actually use Google translate at least before he was banned from frwiki is something I only discovered while researching for the reply above; it did not factor into the block.

That dozens of people mentioned issues to LA also isn't communicated at all by his 40 reviewers sentence, which seems to me to indicate the opposite. I find that dishonest, even if a lawyer might say that there is a way to interpret what he said as technically true.

And no, I do not block long-term contributors merely for insulting me. —Kusma (talk) 22:56, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

When someone says For the sake of answering guess games, I am a native French speaker and never use Google translate. Never. This answer is written without the help of any translating machine (and I guess it shows). So much for those who suggest I shouldn't use Google translate : I don't, period. As is usual, nobody will believe me since the "Assume good faith" motto is a joke which everyone betrays when it fits their need and prejudice. but they're actually using a different machine translation other than Google, that's a lie. That's deliberately misleading. "I am a native speaker of French," but not German, and that's why it matters if he was using machine translation. He was marking these article "translated by Louis Alain" but actually copying and pasting from machine translation. That's lying. And they had errors (of course), which makes the lying harmful. And he's made 6,000 articles, which makes this a minor scandal. The fact that we allowed ourselves to be the second language project where this happened is an embarrassment, I'm sorry to say. Do we want a repeat of the Scots Wikipedia scandal? Nobody should be relying on machine translation to translate articles, but if they do, and if they're not up front about it--if they're passing off machine translation as their own translation--that's lying. Levivich 08:12, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I think it's a grey area. If he had said "I never use any machine translation tools", yes that would have been a bold lie. I'm not skilled enough to know if some machine translation tools are better than others. I'm also not sure how one would determine the exact tools he's used, without asking him. I would have expected someone who knows other languages to perhaps use a machine translation as the basis for a translation and then check it over for accuracy. Are we saying that all 6,000 articles have been wholly machine translated and none of them checked by him for errors? Have a sufficient sample been checked? I somehow doubt that, as some machine translations may be sufficiently accurate in some cases. Kusma's argument was starting to look a bit like "He's been banned from French Wikipedia, so we'd better ban him here". The other problem area seems to have been the use of sources that are dead in the original non-English article. If a source has been marked as dead in the original article from a given date, then it's easy to see he's not checked properly. If not, I'm not so sure. Of course everyone should check that all the sources work, in the proposed English version, before it's published in main space. Continued inability to do this suggests that a restriction to draft space, for article creation, might be appropriate. An indef block seems a bit too blunt. Some of the articles he's created, that I've looked at, seem to be generally correct and well sourced, whatever tools he's used to produce them. But then I've not had the time or inclination to follow him round on a daily basis, correcting his errors and/or building a meticulous admin case against him. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:13, 28 September 2021 (UTC) p.s. I don't think you should block any contributors merely for insulting you. You should raise it as a vase of WP:CIVIL and ask another, wholly uninvolved, Admin to consider appropriate action?

The block-worthy insult (direct Freisler comparison) came after my block (and was on a different Wikipedia). It did not factor into this block. —Kusma (talk) 09:44, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. Louis Allain obviously felt a bit hard done by. I'm still not sure that a post-block insult, which might be viewed as merely overly dramatic or flippant, can be used as retrospective justification for a block. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:49, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Dismissing their remarks as "merely overly dramatic or flippant" ignores not only the severe nature of that singular remark, but also their continuous stream of attacks (generalized or directed at one or two persons). Note that they also have declared, in the discussion where they made the above remark, that they have been IP socking to avoid their block at the French Wikipedia, and intend to do the same here. This includes e.g. "accusations made by sick minds, pervs and other sadistic minds. Not to mention vile informers."[50], "How pathetic and morally corrupt some people are."[51], " when I see a profile like yours, I know who is adressing me. Have a look at fr:Perversion nacissique"[52], this[53], or another Freisler (and more) attack: "the spiritual heirs of Fouquier Tinville, Roland Freisler and Andrei Vychinski."[54]. Fram (talk) 10:51, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I was unaware of the "continuous stream of attacks", so it's not possible for me to dismiss them by addressing a single post-block comment in that manner. If this is part of the rationale for the block, this should be made clear by the blocking Admin. I'm assuming he was asked to apologise for those remarks? It looks like he felt there was some kind of witch hunt against him. It seems unfortunate that an editor who has spent years trying to improve the encyclopaedia has now turned into an enemy. I now see that Louis Allain has said "I've left volontarily". So I guess there is no more to be done. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:17, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Nobody has been turned into an enemy. Let's recap here... Above Grimes2 offered: Maybe there is a solution. I can do the referencing part (timeconsuming, please not so many articles). He can create an article in his sandboxes, I do the referencing. After that, the article can be released to mainspace. LA did not respond, and created articles since then which indicates he doesn't agree to this idea.

The fact of the matter here is there is a problem. That can be remedied either by LA on his own, or with the assistance of another editor who reviews and does the referencing. If this weren't an established editor who spent years trying to improve the encyclopaedia, it's very unlikely anyone would've offered their own time to do that. LA had multiple olive branches extended to him in this discussion, but clearly does not accept there is a problem and thus is not willing to make any changes to his approach. There is no "witch hunt", and there's only one person responsible for this very preventable block. I mean heck, there are 20,000 words of discussion here, much of which is very specific and exampled feedback, and the only thing LA said in response was soliloquies about unjust persecutions in medieval and early modern Europe. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:50, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Well, I said "has turned", not "has been turned." I guess it might be hard to separate. Just like any other articles, I guess those 6,000 can be checked. That's normal mundane Wikipedia day-to-day process. I still don't really have an idea of what proportion of those 6,000 is inaccurate or unreferenced. Perhaps Fram's examples were all pulled out purely at random. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:32, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Martin it's pretty obvious you haven't read this thread. Levivich 12:44, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I'd better read it all again then. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:53, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Well, sorry to say it but your questions and comments are about things we just spent three weeks talking about. Is machine translation sometimes ok? I posted a long collection of policy/guideline/whatever quotes about that, and that was before he said "I never use Google translate". Have all 6,000 articles been checked, are the examples typical? Well, the examples were created while this thread was ongoing. It's hard to tell if LA was using machine translation without asking him... yes, this thread where we've been asking him has been going for three weeks now. His response was the "I never use Google translate" denial, combined with the personal attacks, etc. Then he was blocked. This wasn't out of the blue (it's not even his first, or second, block for this), and many people have tried (for three weeks this most recent round, but for literally years before this) to negotiate some kind of resolution. We've been met with personal attacks instead, and he continued to make articles with machine translation with errors while telling us he was insulted that we would think he would use Google translate (but he was using DeepL instead). Levivich 13:20, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

It's a good block, and I find bizarre the continued attempts to defend an editor who has years of disruptive edits, in eluding previous blocks for COPYVIO; who has lied about his editing; and who has engaged in personal attacks. GiantSnowman 13:26, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Sorry if you find my continued questions "bizarre continued attempts to defend an editor". Like I said above, I have read a few arties by LA, and as far as I could see they were well-sourced and had been created without any "lies about editing" or "personal attacks". I'm still unsure about how many of the 6,000 articles have broken the rules. Perhaps I've missed that in the discussion here. Or is it a case of "he's told lies, so we must assume all 6,000 of his articles have been produced with machine translation"? Martinevans123 (talk) 13:39, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps it's not clear, in terms of Wikipedia policy, that machine translation of any type is completely forbidden. Even it it was clear, I'm not sure how you prove someone's used it without them admitting to it. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:27, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I posted a collection of 18 years' worth of policy quotes up above about machine translation, you can find it by scrolling up, look for my comment It seems extremely clear that consensus prohibits a non-speaker from using machine translation to translate articles. How you prove someone's used machine translation without them admitting to it? By comparing the machine translation of the German Wikipedia article with the English Wikipedia article and seeing it's a match (it was). Levivich 13:40, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. I guess there must be a policy page that summarises all of that? To run that check across 6,000+ articles must have been quite an effort. Are they now all to be deleted? Martinevans123 (talk) 13:46, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

WP:MACHINETRANSLATION. GiantSnowman 13:59, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I personally checked three articles LA created in the day or two before he was blocked (they're linked above) and they were all machine translations all marked as "translated by Louis Alain". I bet you can't find three articles he marked as "translated by Louis Alain" that were not machine translations. And since you asked, yes, I think all 6000+ should be deleted, except any that have been substantially edited by other editors. These articles were created in violation of a ban against machine translation (it's against our rules, LA was blocked for this two years ago here, plus banned from frwiki for this) and thus should be WP:G5'd. Levivich 14:05, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Ah, I see. So that's only 5,997 left to go. But glad you were not "lying by omission." Many thanks, Giant Snowmnan. I will read WP:MACHINETRANSLATION carefully. But, just for the benefit of this discussion, have I got this right... if I use machine translation to create an article and then I use my own language skills to check and improve it, making changes where necessary, I still deserve to be indef blocked? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:13, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I've only challenged you to find three that aren't machine translations. But, just for the benefit of this discussion, to make sure you have got this right... if you use machine translation to create an article and then you don't use your own language skills to check and improve it, making changes where necessary, because you don't have sufficient language skills, and if you were blocked on two projects for this, and you kept doing it anyway for years across thousands of articles, and when people asked you about it you vehemently denied using Google translate while not disclosing that you used another machine translator, while simultaneously hurling personal attacks, then yes, you deserve to be blocked again. Levivich 14:17, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

That's clearer. So I'll have to assume I've got it wrong above. Thanks for the challenge; but having not ever run DeepL machine translation, and in view of the likely negative benefits for the project if I had to learn how to do it, I may be tempted not to accept it. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:27, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I probably should simply ignore the above trolling by Martinevans123 (or how else should one call such utterly ridiculous requirements from someone who apparently hasn't bothered researching the facts of the case for themselves, but insinuates that if not all 6000+ articles are checked and demonstrably machine-translated, somehow this would influence the block for some reason), but just for the sake of it; I scrolled down through the creations, to a page from 2018[55] and looked at a somewhat larger article: Célimène Daudet. And the French version from the same moment in time. The enwiki article has the strange bit "impregnated with two cultures" (French "imprégnée de deux cultures"); which Google translate reasonably translates as "affected by both cultures"[56], but which DeepL gives as "impregnated with two cultures"[57], the same poor translation (certainly in context) as given by LouisAlain. Of course, not all such sentences will still give the same result as they did in 2018 or thereabouts, as these tools also get improved (one hopes); but enough such instances can be found to make it quite clear for anyone willing to look instead of putting unrealistic burdens on others, that LouisAlain has been machine translating articles (from French first, from German later on) for years. And as I noted above, he was warned about this multiple times, by different people, years ago already. Fram (talk) 14:42, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

All of my contributions here have been made in perfectly good faith and I think your accusation of "ridiculous trolling" is extremely unfair. I have now read the entire thread through twice. The fact that the other editors here have kindly taken the trouble to reply politely and apparently to my queries suggest they don't agree with you. I seem to recall that Louis Allain was involved when were you were stripped of your Admin role a while back. Perhaps that's a factor in his seeming indignation. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:58, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

How was he involved? The block of LouisAlain was endorsed at the ANI discussion and no concerns about it were raised at the ArbCom case (it was mentioned for the connection to your block, but not as problematic in itself, and that's it) and LouisAlain was as far as I'm aware not involved in my desysop. Fram (talk) 15:35, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps that was an unfortunate coincidence. But the present situation for LouisAlain here now looked like it was "unforced business" for you. Except that it now looks like it is finally finished. And yes, your indef block of my account for attempting to restore an article LA had created was quickly overturned, I recall. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:45, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

That's then twice in two posts that you recall incorrectly. While the length (1 month, not indef) was deemed too much, the block itself (for knowingly reposting a lengthy copyright violation) was endorsed. Fram (talk) 15:53, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Ah yes, a mere month. Thanks for reminding me. The unblocking Admin said there were "close paraphrasing/direct translation problems" not "knowingly reposting a lengthy copyright violation"? Your indef block of my account, also overturned, after 2 days, was the year before that one. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:04, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, it looks a lot like trolling.--Berig (talk) 14:52, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't see why asking for clarity on why an editor has been indef blocked should described as "trolling". I wasn't alone in wanting some further details. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:01, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

You have several times argued about important points that have been discussed thoroughly in this thread. Enough reasons have been given, and please read through this thread thoroughly before you ask other editors to serve you the reasons on a plate (I will not). Also, can you please explain to me why you bring up the recalling of Fram as an admin?--Berig (talk) 15:11, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I've never knowingly asked for "reasons on a plate". I think the circumstances surrounding Fram's recall might explain why Loisu might now think he's been "witch-hunted". Martinevans123 (talk) 15:20, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Sometimes, when editors are under criticism from several editors at the same time, and they can't understand, or will not accept, the reasons for the criticism, they will argue, or rather insinuate, that they are ganged up on.--Berig (talk) 15:25, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

In general terms yes, you are certainly right. But this was a very particular and visible recall. Indeed a very controversial one that few will ever forget. I saw that Kusma wrote on Gerda's Talk page, two days ago: "With a suitable agreement / creation ban / namespace restriction in place, I'm happy to unblock immediately." I'm wondering if they have now changed their view. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:29, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I think the possible conditions are named in the thread.--Berig (talk) 16:03, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

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

Help wanted

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

---

Opéra de Montréal is mentioned on the Main page with Jean-Paul Jeannotte, and - as I see only now, sorry - is a sad stub. Normally, I'd tell LouisAlain, and he'd provide help: translating the much more that there is in French. With this discussion going on, I don't dare to, because that French article is not well sourced. So, please, everybody, get one bit from the French, and translate it with a reference. - Generally - but I think I said that above a few times: we can't expect a translation to be better than its original, different Wikipedias have different sourcing style, and the adjustment to "our" style here could be done in Main space by us all, while in some draft space, who will even see it's there? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:09, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

I have tried have had a look, as I speak and write French on an academic level, but I must say that sources appear to be very hard to find.--Berig (talk) 08:27, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Gerda Arendt, I have added a paragraph on the history of the opera, but I am sorry to say that I not well-versed in the special terminology of operas, so it needs your eyes.--Berig (talk) 10:28, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. I miss LouisAlain, collaborator and friend for almost a decade, but would not advise him to appeal in the present mood. He's a true (honorary) member of the cabal of the outcast. It's not without bitter irony, "perennial gang of three". See also In Freundschaft, in friendship. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:38, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

I will add a source and a bit from it. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:16, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

No, don't. If that French article is not well sourced then why the hell would we translate the French article? Can't you see that is the problem?? Don't translate the poorly sourced French article. Do find sources and write a well referenced article in English. If all the sources are in French, then don't do work on the article at all unless you are fluent in French. If you are fluent in French, then by all means, please write an article using French sources, but don't waste your time translating a poorly sourced article from the French wiki: all you'll get is a poorly sourced article in English, which is far worse than a well sourced stub. Quality, not quantity: please don't recruit other people to make the same mistakes LA did. No one who isn't fluent in a language should be translating, and no one should be translating unsourced material. Levivich 15:03, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Well, I am fluent in French and I found the sources on my own, and if you are thinking of the reference to the opera's homepage, we know where it comes from. Never mind, I have other things to work on where it would be interesting to see anyone question the reliability of my sources.--Berig (talk) 16:07, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Levivich, there are days when I am afraid my English is not sufficient. I wrote "get one bit from the French, and translate it with a reference", - wasn't that clear: to only translate bits that can be referenced?? There's now a fine ref from the Canadian Encyclopedia, feel free to use that more. I need a distance for today. I will get back to it when preparing for DYK. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:53, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Adding after a sad day: When I posted I didn't know that LouisAlain was blocked. The article looked like this. I thank all who helped, and will work on it further. - I remember having been too proud to appeal, and am afraid LouisAlain is of the same kind. I gave in two years later. We'll see. Why should he want to work with us, tell me? - A sad day for content on this project, and I miss a friend. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:47, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Honestly, Gerda Arendt, I am sorry and I feel bad for you that it had to come to this with LA. Anyway, if you need help with translating from French, you can always ping me or leave a message on my talkpage.--Berig (talk) 19:51, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:54, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

I can also help with translations from French. Meters (talk) 20:06, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Levivich, are you seriously asking other editors not to improve an article on a notable topic? Does it occur to you that we might do so by adding WP:RS (of which, since it actually is a notable topic, there are plenty) and writing encyclopaedic content based on what they say? Gerda Arendt, I dislike translating and much prefer to write new content based on the sources available, but I read French without difficulty and – like Berig and Meters – would be happy to help if at any time that's needed. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:50, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the offers, Justlettersandnumbers and Meters. What you - and all willing to help - could do is: watch Deaths in 2021 and check for French-speaking persons. Some are just fine, some need references, some have no article yet. Do what you can. - In the past, we took care of Claude Mercier-Ythier and Francis Rapp, for example. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:07, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Help wanted 2

Checking in after busy days RL, and just finishing the 4th (!) article of people who recently died, - 2 are on the Main page now. The next one in that line is writer de:Eberhard Panitz. Nothing in English yet, so I'd normally suggested to LouisAlain to translate. Anybody listening and helping, perhaps? Other wishes, all red links in articles linked from the Main page (now or soon): de:Kirchliche Hochschule Berlin-Ost, de:Evangelisches Stift Tübingen, de:Schloss Jaroměřice, de:Questenberg (Adelsgeschlecht), de:Berliner Architekturwelt, de:Carl Rehorst, de:Max Wallraf, de:Peter Bruckmann, de:Kaufhaus Tietz (Elberfeld), - no end of missed content in sight. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:41, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Most of these are minimally referenced and therefore not good candidates for translation. Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:54, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Do you believe that an interlanguage link is better than a rough translation with minimal referencing? In cases where the rough translation is moved to draft, our readers are not even helped to interlanguage exchange, but all that remains is a red link. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:20, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

For example: Max Wallraff has more than 50 links already. This is a historic personality, I believe that it's quite likely that - referenced or not - the information in German is correct, and would help readers of the English Wikipedia more if translated, with working links in English, than interlanguage when not only the target article, but also everything linked there is in German. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:26, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

The Wallraf article on dewiki is fairly terrible, essentially just a list of positions plus some almost trivia about the fraternity he was in and the mountain path named after him. The many incoming links are from navboxes mostly, but they do point to some of his notable positions (mayor of Cologne, president of the Reichstag among others). I can write an article about him in a few days, but the current German article won't be a big help and I would start from scratch instead of translating it. (Half a sentence about his presidency of the Reichstag, one sentence about him as interior minister, but an entire paragraph about an artwork/fundraising project whose dewiki article doesn't even mention him). It looks like there is a nontrivial amount of sources in English as well. —Kusma (talk) 22:29, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. - Do you believe that a red link is better than a rough translation? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:05, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt: absolutely, especially if we aren't sure about the referencing (this may have been different 10 years ago, when we emphasised growth over quality). Personally, I love red links and enjoy filling them much more than I enjoy fixing poor articles. I've started a stub at Max Wallraf, will try to expand it later. —Kusma (talk) 10:15, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the article! The "absolutely", however, sounds more like a writer's perspective than a reader's view who was in darkness what kind of person that Wallraf was until you now changed it. - I also enjoy filling red links. My first article was filling a red link, and my second filling a red link in the first, and no end. After two years of lone red link filling (Bach's cantatas, and all translated to French by LouisAlain), however, I turned to helping others also. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:37, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

The second one, "Evangelisches Stift Tübingen", has had an enwiki article since 2004 already: Tübinger Stift. Fram (talk) 07:56, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. - Do you believe that a red link is better than a rough translation?

What strikes me as unfair is that I see many articles on the English Wikipedia suffering from under-referencing. Carlisle Floyd, highly decorated composer who died at age 95, looked like this. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:05, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

A red link is better than a rough translation if the translator doesn't even know whether the original page is in any way correct, balanced, trustworthy, and doesn't know whether the rough, automated translation correctly gives the original meaning or instead something completely different. A red link isn't the end of the world, in many cases the understanding of the article doesn't suffer because it contains some redlinks. And yes, we have too many shitty, underreferenced or poorly translated articles. We try to reduce the influx of new such articles though, and certainly from experienced editors. But I would rather have an article with only one source, written by someone who actually understands and checks what they are writing, than an article with 50 references where the editor hasn't read any of the references and doesn't really understand what he was written or translated either. Fram (talk) 08:25, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Gerda Arendt, if that rough translation is also unsourced or nearly so, then yes, a red link or {{ill}} is definitely preferable (and yes, what Fram says). If it has a good number of verified solid WP:RS and no unsourced content, then no; but at that point why translate? – much better (and quicker) to write a few sentences based on the sources. It is the failure or refusal to understand this that made LouisAlain's edits such a problem for so many people. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:17, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

(I changed the indent, because I don't think you were talking to Fram, telling him about failure or refusal to understand.) I simply don't understand. I agree that an article written from scratch on RS is best and to go for. I don't agree that an article about a museum or an institution of higher education is contentious, so in need of several references. Let's look at de:Theologisches Konvikt Berlin (not from an article translated by LouisAlain, but from Eberhard Jüngel, wrong link there until I just fixed it, no link in Jüngel's German article until I just fixed it). A red link leaves us with no idea what kind of institution that is/was (when he studied). An interlanguage link would help at least those who read German. A stub would help more readers. A translation - even if not perfect and missing references - would help to links from it. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:11, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

The link to the Konvikt was correct until a week ago, when User:Grimes2 changed it from a correct link to a wrong interlanguage link[58]. Much better than either an interlanguage link or a redlink would be a very short parenthesis here, something like ("Religious High school of Berlin-Ost") (translating the old text) or (Theological Seminary of East Berlin) for the new link text. Oh wait, that parenthesis was already there, so your "A red link leaves us with no idea what kind of institution that is/was (when he studied)" is just not true. And no other articles link to it. An article on it would be welcome, just like millions of other articles, but not having that article doesn't really make anything we have on enwiki at the moment any harder to understand. Fram (talk) 10:48, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with a parenthetical explanation if it was correct. I understand that it is not a seminary but a place where students of different denominations and different seminaries live together. I term in brackets that gives you a wrong idea is not better than a link to an article. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:09, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Then you understand wrong. Yes, at first I also thought it was a dormitory, but it is a place where he studied, not just a place to sleep and eat and meet people. "Zwei Jahre später wechselte er an das Sprachenkonvikt, die Kirchliche Hochschule in Ost-Berlin. " (text from the German article, "Sprachenkonvikt" is the old name of the Theologisches Konvikt"). Or is the German article wrong? Oh, then we'ld better not translate it of course. The source for this gives "im Jahr 1962 seine Ordination sowie seine Habilitation in Systematischer Theologie an der Kirchlichen Hochschule Berlin/Ost". I can't seem to find any sources equating the Konvikt with the Hochschule though, so perhaps the Konvikt indeed is just a dormitory? Which would make the article incorrect. It would help if we had someone translating the article who understood both German and English and checked what they wrote, instead of someone somply using machine translations perhaps, to avoid this kind of issue. Fram (talk) 14:44, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

We talk now about Eberhard Jüngel, an article created in 2010, and the bit about the Konvikt added in 2015 by someone who corrected bits. None of it (creation and correction) has anything to do with LouisAlain, nor machine translation in general. Just to clarify. - The complex things Kusma untangled below are much better in an article than in brackets where it would be over-simplification or undue weight. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:42, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

This is a bit difficult to untangle. As I understand it, there were three places in Berlin where one could study Protestant theology between 1950 and 1990: one in the West (Zehlendorf), the official faculty of theology at Humboldt University, and the Sprachenkonvikt, which actually was an independent seminary (located in that dormitory) but closely connected to the West Berlin one until the Wall was built, and may have been called "Kirchliche Hochschule Berlin-Ost". Jüngel's habilitation was from HU Berlin, though, as the Sprachenkonvikt did not have the habilitation right. This article (cited with proper bibliographic info from the dewiki article) explains that the Sprachenkonvikt in some sense was the Kirchliche Hochschule in Berlin-Ost, but could not officially use that name. —Kusma (talk) 15:20, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

WP:V is a core content policy. Everything needs a source. A red link is far better than an unsourced article. It's better to tell our readers nothing than to risk telling them something that's not true. Levivich 14:36, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

The typical article in German is not unsourced, it just has a different sourcing concept, providing most book sources under Literature. They should better be translated as Cited sources than the usual Further reading. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:09, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Very often, these sections also contain lots of material that hasn't been used to write the article, but could be used to expand it. Without connections of individual sentences / paragraphs to the sources, it becomes hard to tell. —Kusma (talk) 15:23, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

I agree, but I see more chances to find someone to analyse if in Mainspace and visible to many, than blaming a mere translator for not being able to do that job also. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:28, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't think it is fair to give the "mere translator" page creation credit for doing only a small part of the job. Referencing isn't a nice little extra that can be ignored, it is part of the responsibility of every article creator. WP:V is a core policy, and it says unambiguously The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and it is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution. We still have hundreds of thousands or even millions of legacy articles that are not fully compliant with this, but that's not an excuse to add any more. —Kusma (talk) 16:11, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Translation topics still open

This topic primarily about user behavior will get archived soon, but it touched on some core issues of translation and responsibility for verification in which there is lively disagreement above, and I just wanted to note for the record that these are important issues that have lain open and mostly dormant for years, and at some point will need a proper forum (probably more like VPP than here) to deal with it.

Some of the issues that come to mind (some of which were touched on above, others dredged up from my cauldron): The role of Draft space and Afc; who can do translations; who should do translations (is it ever okay to translate from a language you don't know? what about those myriad, one- or two-sentence bio-stubs that smack of database-to-stub automata, such as the one about the bronze-medal fencing winner from the Grand Duchy of Fenwick in the 1956 Sydney Olympics); possible editing restrictions on translation-creations; knock-on effects, such as how to evaluate Rfc not-votes on a translation issue when the majority of comments will be from monolinguals (and who should close); how to deal with poorly sourced originals, who bears responsibility for poorly sourced material translated into en-wiki from a poorly sourced original (addressed several times above with no consensus); how important are English skills vs source-lang skills in translation (e.g., what is the acceptability of a factually accurate translation by someone who is en-3 and makes some grammar mistakes and the occasional awkward phrasing in English that needs copyediting for grammar, syntax, and style afterward, vs an en-N (native speaker) whose German is decent but occasionally misunderstands the original, turning it into perfect English which misses the point 5% of the time).

One of my pet peeves is monolinguals doing translations. This should be forbidden in most cases. The results passed through automatic translation sometimes look okay, sometimes not so okay, but the monolingual user (or later, well-meaning editors) can take a pass through the article, making the English look perfect, but without necessarily representing what the original article states (whether properly sourced or not). I've seen cases where the translations were wildly off (even stating the opposite of the original), but once the English looks perfect, who's gonna know or do anything about it? Hey, it's sourced, right? Who among us takes the time to scan random articles, checking for proper verifiability in citations in articles not containing {{failed verification}} tags? I tried to highlight this problem years ago, see Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English/Articles by user; and to take the most egregious example of it check out this accounting of >300 article creations translated from 20 languages by a monolinugal. Nothing came of this. I created template {{Hidden translation}} as one attempt to at least flag this probem, but it never caught on.

And one of the tougher ones: what is our attitude, really, about WP:MACHINETRANSLATION? The field of machine translation and the technology of statistical machine translation has been and continues to grow steadily, and for some language pairs is getting pretty good for certain registers or knowledge domains (for others, less so). One of these days (prediction: 2032) it's going to pass the Turing test. However, this intersects with the previously mentioned "who bears responsibility" issue, so is not simple.

The thread raised an interesting discussion about the meaning of "retrieval date" in citations (by which I assume we are talking about parameter |access-date= in some of the citation templates) and whether and how to update it in the process of doing a translation. I haven't run across this aspect of the translation issue before, and find it interesting and worth further discussion. It occurs to me that we could make recommendations in the citation template doc of how to handle this, including perhaps, for example, "leave the original access-date in place if you have not been able to retrieve the source and verify it for whatever reason, whether it's not available to you, or you cannot read the language that the source is in; replace the original access-date with today's date if you have checked the source and it probably verifies your translated content". Alternatively, because we would never be sure what an "old retrieval date" (i.e., an access-date prior to the save-date of the translation) meant, maybe an entirely new param to positively indicate translation-verification, such as |verified-date= (which, now that I think about it, could be useful beyond just for translations). Mathglot (talk) 19:19, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

I think we should always be honest about the source we use, and make it clear what we have seen and what we just copy. So for a reference that you translate without checking, you should say so:

 Some text.<ref>The German Wikipedia cites the following reference for this text: {{cite web|...}}</ref>

In German, this is called the de:Autopsieprinzip. It helps against the spread of misinformation like fake citations and can help prevent citogenesis-like effects. —Kusma (talk) 19:18, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

I like the accountability aspect, but in practice, I don't think anybody is going to do this; it's too clunky and wordy. Or at least, not until we add something very clear to a policy-level document that states it unequivocally, and even then it will take some time to osmose through the translator userosphere. Even so, I think some will just never get it, or just ignore it until repeatedly warned about it. That said, I'm not sure I have a better alternative. Afaic, my default assumption about all content is that it isn't sourced or verifiable unless I see a citation following it (and even then, I don't *really* know, do I?); maybe an analogous assumption in citations found in translated documents could be, "translated content near this citation has not been verified in en-wiki, unless you see a |verified-date= in the citation (or, state-your-method-here)". This whole issue of accountability of and responsibility for translated citations is imho one of the most important or *the* most important translation-related issue to have come out of this AN discussion thread, and I was saving it for last, so thanks for raising it now. It richly deserves an entire discussion at the proper forum. Also, thanks for the link to de:Autopsieprinzip, which I was not previously familiar with. Mathglot (talk) 19:38, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

de:Wikipedia:Belege (their WP:V) is explicit about translations and states "Translations from other language versions of Wikipedia are only suitable if external references conforming to our local sourcing requirements are available. References from other language versions should be checked before being used in the German version (see Autopsieprinzip)." —Kusma (talk) 19:44, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

We ought to have a discussion about that here. But even having it spelled out in de:Wikipedia:Belege or added one day to WP:V is one thing, but actually carrying it out is another. And who is actually going to do the scutwork of checking somebody else's work on this? Maybe the threat of ending up here and having it brought to light as a clear violation of this future principle will be enough; I hope so.

Meanwhile, I found English sources on the Autopsy principle difficult to find, with only passing mentions so far, such as Huistra (2013), but not much in depth. Maybe it needs a punchier name, like the (doubting) Thomas principle, on analogy with Merton's Matthew effect. Mathglot (talk) 20:11, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

If we're going to suggest a formal principle, I think we should assume the same principle as at DYK. Online sources should be checked to ensure they actually correspond with the article content, and offline sources that can't be readily accessed should be AGFed until proof of contrary [or, if the online sources don't match, that would be reason enough to doubt the offline sources too]. Since this is actually for a very concrete article writing purpose, it would also be possible to go look at WP:RX. Of course, article creators, whether they're translating or starting from scratch, have the responsibility to check for sources, so if someone consistently fails to do this then that is a larger issue. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:03, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

I like this DYK principle. I think it strikes an adequate balance between 1) taking advantage of work done by non-en.wiki Wikipedians that may be difficult to replicate and 2) ensuring that articles are supported by reliable sources and are not copyright violations. Perhaps there could also be exceptions for FAs in languages where we trust the FA review process. (Though perhaps this is adding needless complexity). Calliopejen1 (talk) 13:33, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

At DYK, reviewers are explicit about whether they have checked the content or not and either give the "reference checked" tick or the "assuming good faith" tick. I'd like translators to be equally explicit if possible, perhaps with a template that says (in a less wordy fashion, and perhaps not fully visible outside edit mode) "unreviewed reference taken from French Wikipedia" with an easy way for people to indicate when they have checked the reference and vouch for its content. As the translator speaks the language of the original content author, they could also ask on the other wiki about the references used and to do some inter-language WP:RX. —Kusma (talk) 10:25, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

I agree. Monolinguals shouldn't be allowed to do translations, and especially not with machine translations. This is a clear case of WP:CIR, and I think it should be a blockable offence as it creates a lot of articles with poor content, which damages the reputation of this project..--Berig (talk) 19:33, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

• I'm really glad to see this topic still open. Mathglot touched on a lot of points that are relevant to my own editing practices (maybe favorably, maybe not.) See, I'm really only fluent in English. Pathetic, yes, but it's never stopped me from engaging with the greater non-Anglophone world. I've trusted GTranslate(and others) with so many things in my life- things that literally shaped who I am, things that I'm so grateful and proud to have been able to do thanks to machine translation. As far as WP goes, I've always read it for the topics that would be obscure to me otherwise, sometimes due to technicality, but more often due to language barrier. That, in turn, also directs the topics that I'm interested enough to edit. However, I'm not naïve enough to trust M.T. in all respects, since language is only one aspect of difference between countries and cultures (WP:V, eh?). Most of what I do on EN.WP is low-level muck work: sourcing the unsourced, destubbing the stubs; my lone attempt at climbing the glorious quality ladder of GA was an utter failure, so 'here we are'. And there is a distinct issue in this article wasteland: they suffer for lack of language. I do my best: if I add content from non-English sources, I generally note in the edit summary that I read the source using Gtranslate, or I simply add a source to the page so it's there to satisfy general notability. But en masse, without a fluent reader to confirm sourcing, it's still a risk, especially in stubs and obscure topics. Should I stop? Hope someone else will come along after 10 years to do what I couldn't? Lists of Wikipedian translators are out of date, Wikiproject talks get very few eyes- TLDR; technology is a bridge for the information gap, but if there's a a rule for it's use, it's a blurry one. Cheers, Estheim (talk) 19:13, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Even a good translation is of little or no value without sources. What should be done with something like this, an apparently fully competent translation (I haven't checked word by word) of a de.wp page that is almost entirely unsourced? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:55, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Translations from German

Forgive me for coming again, but I am still not at peace with this topic. Today, we enjoy pictured DYK Karl-Heinz Petzinka, translated from German by LouisAlain, improved by Grimes2 and myself. I believe that it was a decent, mostly sourced article from the beginning, because it was like that in German. Blaming a translator for lack of references seems a bit like shooting the messenger for the content of a message he only delivers. Repeating: the German Wikipedia has a different way to list sources, often just as book sources under header Literature, which in translation, given as Further reading, shows no trace of being principal sources. What do you think of making Template:Translation, comparable to Template:Stub, resulting in a hat banner on translated unfinished articles:

This article was translated from the German Wikipedia. You can help Wikipedia by checking the translation and bringing it in line with English referencing style.

Just an idea. This would apply to many more articles than LouisAlain translations. I saw Dieter Trautwein today, for example. The best reference is under the external links, and the only one in English the same. No sentence about his death. No inline citations. As said before: I don't think we do these translated articles a favour by hiding them in draft space where nobody notices them, so nobody feels invited to improve them. Thoughts? (I'll improve Trautwein one of these days, promised.) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:28, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't think it's a matter of blaming anybody, as much as conforming to en-wiki principles, which require WP:INLINECITE sourcing via linkage to specific sources. It doesn't matter whether it's translated by an editor, or added newly by an editor, either way it requires footnotes for any material challenged or likely to be challenged. Given WP:ONUS, the editor (or editor-translator) accepts responsibility for the edit, which in a sense, makes that editor or translator the prime destination of any notifications on the Talk page by some other user who wishes to discuss, challenge, or remove the material, as well as the automatic target of notifications created automatically by the mediawiki software when another editor clicks the 'Undo' link in the page history.

The de-wiki way of listing sources is the de-wiki way, and tbh we don't really know if they are "sources" or "further reading" in the en-wiki sense, but imho they don't really WP:VERIFY anything, because they aren't linked to any particular content in the article. In that sense, they are analogous neither to footnotes in the en-wiki "References" section (which links specific article content to specific reference content) nor to the en-wiki "Further reading" sections which generally does not, but they are analogous to the en-wiki "General references" section, which vaguely implies content–source linkage without promising it and without enabling a reader to independently verify anything without reading both in their entirety and trying to guess what pages in the reference verify what assertions in the article, and god help you if the reference is 400 pages long. To my mind, "General references" in en-wiki is a dumping ground for those who don't wish to do the hard work required to find and create actual citations that verify specific content material, and when translating from German, I generally move all the general references from de-wiki into an English "Further reading" section, with the intended meaning to en-wiki readers, "You might enjoy reading these, but no promises about them being related to any specific content in the article." Mathglot (talk) 00:32, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

To me, the thread reads as if it would be enough to block one editor to solve the problem of different referencing style. My take: A translation marked as such, in Main space where others will see it, is better than in draft space, and better than no article. Others disagree. I see a Wikipedia article as a work in progress, and even Featured articles as still something that can be improved, but others disagree.

I improved Sylvano Bussotti recently. I speak no Italian, but Deepl helped enough to identify and use references for some facts, - no way I could do it all for a complete biography. - I like Wikipedia as a place anybody can edit, and others helping where something is missing. I thank all who help me with my limited English and ignorance of topics, and see that spirit in danger. - DYK that of the eight most recent DYK related to Germany, five were translations by LouisAlain? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:01, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

ps: I just noticed Mordechai Geldman, created in 2005 by Gidonb, and now died: anybody to add the holy inline citations? ... because otherwise, he can't appear on the Main page. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:06, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that is what has happened here. We had one editor who kept adding translated but effectively unsourced material from de.wiki (i.e. that does not live up to en.wiki's sourcing expectations regardless of what the practice at de.wiki is), among other issues (bad translations, inability to learn from feedback). Issues with that editor have been addressed. If others are doing the same (repeatedly translating unsourced material and not learning from feedback saying it's not okay), then that should be addressed as well. I'm sure others at WP:AN/WP:ANI would welcome any reports about unhelpful, intransigent editors. If you disagree and think people should be able to translate material that is backed only by "Literatur", I think the right place to take that discussion up is at WT:Translation/WP:VPM/WP:VPP, not here/WP:AN/WP:ANI (which is a place to deal with particular user problems but not policy). Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:23, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, I disagree. Most translations from de - regardless by whom - will look "unsourced" because the typical German article has its sources under Literature (sometimes not even that) and not inline. Examples (random from my German watch list): de:Roderich Kreile, de:Hans Koller, de:Der Chinese des Schmerzes, de:Marienkirche (Torgau), no end. Missing references are not a translator's fault, and it's a very specific art to find them. You can't expect any translator to perform that, really. The topics are notable, so some translation is desirable. For the first 2, it was done, but will not please those who want an article perfect. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:41, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

in vain?

As my friend Wehwalt once said : you have to start somewhere.

Did you know ...

... that Anton Josef Reiss
created a marble Pietà sculpture
for Cologne's St. Gereon?

... that Karl-Heinz Petzinka,
the rector of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf,
designed the Stadttor in Düsseldorf?

In Freundschaft

From my talk today. The two DYK articles were created by LouisAlain, and I welcome creations that broaden our view on cultures around the world, even if initially a machine translation with a shortage of references. Both articles have plenty of red interlanguange links for you all to fill, many churches - rather uncontentious subject matter but probably covered in books that even I can't access. I go to church now and wish you all well. Hilf, Herr meines Lebens ... that I am not on earth in vain. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:08, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

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

Suggestion / formal proposal

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

---

I probably just rephrase what previous editors have already written (this thread is becoming epic and unwieldy), but considering how missed he is by editors who wrote articles with him, perhaps, he could be allowed to edit in draft space. He could add his machine translations there, and he and other editors could use the translations to find reliable sources. When everything is reliably referenced and proof-read to agree with WP:RS, it could be moved into mainspace.--Berig (talk) 20:33, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Pinging users involved in the previous discussion
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
@Fram, Gerda Arendt, Justlettersandnumbers, Scope creep, Ealdgyth, Levivich, Bison X, Grimes2, and Joseph2302: (more to come, I hope I didn't overlook anyone). —Kusma (talk) 12:28, 11 October 2021 (UTC) Second round of pings: @Grandpallama, Softlavender, Calliopejen1, Ritchie333, Berig, ARoseWolf, Largoplazo, Colin M, and ProcrastinatingReader:. —Kusma (talk) 12:29, 11 October 2021 (UTC) Third round of pings: @Mathglot, Lectonar, Mackensen, GoodDay, Martinevans123, GiantSnowman, RandomCanadian, and Estheim:. —Kusma (talk) 12:29, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

• A concrete proposal would be the following:

  User:LouisAlain is unblocked (time served) but will be subject to logged Wikipedia:Editing restrictions. He may not create any pages in mainspace or move pages into mainspace.

Please support or oppose below, clarifying whether draft space is OK or whether creations should be in user space only. —Kusma (talk) 12:30, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support, no namespace restrictions other than "no new/moved articles in mainspace". —Kusma (talk) 12:31, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
• Support "no new/moved articles in mainspace": "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" Grimes2 (talk) 12:51, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Do you really support this? Because this suggests otherwise. Fram (talk) 07:38, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
• Comment: I believe that the only person to say yes or no to that proposal is LouisAlain. Please post it on his user page, and copy to here if an answer comes. I could live with the proposal. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:57, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

  I deliberately worded the proposal to not require any formal agreement from LouisAlain. But anyway, he responded (with an IP) on his talk page: User_talk:LouisAlain#Your_talk_page_access. I apologise for wasting people's time by trying to help. —Kusma (talk) 16:00, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support. Gerda, I hope he agrees, because that way he can keep working with you.--Berig (talk) 13:06, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
• Undecided, really. If my spare time allows it, I spend a lot of it on WP:PNT. We have unfinished/unproofread/machinetranslated articles dating back to 2016 now, so I can see what machinetranslation can do (and what it can not do). On the other hand, this is an encyclopedia, and we shouldn't say no to new content. This is what makes Wikipedia great, and we shouldn't be in a state of trying to consolidate our 6M+ articles when so much content is still out there. That said, and as mentioned above, LouisAlain would be the one who has to accept the proposal. If he does, I would be fine with it. Lectonar (talk) 13:13, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
• Support an unblock accompanied by strict restrictions preventing him from creating, or moving articles into, mainspace - everything must be in draft and reviewed/approved by other editors. GiantSnowman 13:37, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose any form of unblock following comments by Jules* below regarding his fr.wiki behaviour and block, which is eerily similar here. I now have no confidence that this will be any different. GiantSnowman 15:48, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose Any of you aware that Louis was indeffed and (what appears to be the local equivalent of) CBANned of the French Wiki? And you know what for? Machine translations... This user has had plenty of time to learn (at least 5 years!); and the same problems have remained. I'm sorry, Gerda, but the WP:ROPE has run out, and Louis has only shown that they can transfer their problematic behaviour from one WP version to another, which isn't a good reason to unblock. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 13:43, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

  In the interest of accuracy, in my understanding LA's ban from frwiki was for socking after being blocked for making a racist-looking comment about a fellow Wikipedian. That comment was in the context of a discussion about his machine translations. (This happened after years of moving from one topic/portal to the next (at least at the time, on frwiki portals were pretty much identical with wikiprojects) after being told by more than one portal that machine translations are not welcome). —Kusma (talk) 14:15, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

  Louis was blocked for both persistent personal attacks/uncivility AND for refusing to heed concerns about his machine translations. An example diff of both is this, which, when faced with criticism over their (his?) translations, Louis instead decides to respond ironically, criticise some petty grammatical mistakes in a talk page comment, and most importantly, refusing any advice ("« que vous tiendrez compte de mes remarques. ». Je ne crois pas, non mais je me demande bien de quelle position magistrale vous vous autorisez pour vous adressez à moi sur ce ton?" [transl. (quoted from other editor's comment) "[I hope] that you will take heed of my comments" (end quote) - I don't think so, but I do wonder from which kind of position you allow yourself to talk to me with such a tone]). Their block log shows previous such incidents ([59]). They've since shown that they're not willing to fix this exact same problem on another wiki either. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 15:11, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

  [notice to the admins on French wiki] @Jules* and Starus: Bonjour, je ne sais pas si vous parlez anglais, et bon, peut-être que c'est un peu loin, mais si jamais vous pouvez fournir plus de contexte (je comprends tout a fait le francais, mais bon, il se peut qu'il y ait des détails que je n'ai point trouvé en cherchant rapidement), sentez-vous libre d'en ajouter. Merci, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 15:11, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

  After spending some time reading through various discussions and talks over in FR-Wikipedia: I think it kind of built up over time, machine translation played a role, LouisAlain keeping a low profile and being rather unresponsive played a role, and the last straw was indeed the socking and uncivility. Lectonar (talk) 15:19, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

  Hi @RandomCanadian and all. I'm fr-wp sysop. Please excuse my English. I'm not aware of the case there on en-wp, and I have no idea how LouisAlain behaved here, so (after some reseach, because the case is old) I can only summarize what led him to be banned as a person (and not just his account blocked) on fr-wp: he had been blocked several times for personal attacks (including disregard for young, or supposed so, editors), after his translations have been criticized (I didn't look into that matter, but several editors complained about it). See there for his last block, for three months. Then, his ban has been decided after the use of a sock, but mostly because this user showed that he was not willing to respect whatever rules or decision made by the sysops (see his last edit with his account, after the announcment of the three months block). Best, — Jules* ^Talk 15:39, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

  Well, it looks like LouisAlain has not changed one iota in the last five years because his message to the blocking admins at fr.wiki is essentially identical to his tone/approach here.... Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:57, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

  @Jules*, in case you're unaware, LouisAlain has stated that he has returned to frwiki, editing under IP addresses. fr:Spécial:Contributions/2A01:E34:ECA4:1F0:2DC0:1518:74EC:C4EE, fr:Spécial:Contributions/2A01:E0A:98E:9040:A127:739F:5C89:84D0 are both LouisAlain. —Kusma (talk) 16:10, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks for this info, @Kusma. I'm going to block IP and delete articles; can you just tell me where he stated he was editing on fr-wp? Best, — Jules* ^Talk 10:30, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support Draft is ideal. Lots of eyes and regularised and controlled review process. scope_creep^Talk 14:09, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
• Note that LouisAlain is still socking at frwiki, is using Gerda Arendt as his proxy to include his articles here anyway, has been offered the above solution repeatedly and has no interest in them, has made no effort at all to retract any of his blatant personal attacks, and has made no indication at all that he is interested in this unblock. Other than that, support. Fram (talk) 14:37, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

  Here's some of the continued socking on frwiki, in case anyone else is curious: [60] [61]. No idea if this is a one-off or a long term thing, but not looking good. —Kusma (talk) 21:08, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support in principle. Let LouisAlain decide. If he has no interest, so be it. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:45, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
• Support limiting to Draft - It wouldn't be a bad idea, if the lad were to have a mentor, aswell. GoodDay (talk) 15:42, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
• Strong oppose the unblocking of an editor who was caught falsifying sources. That's not a problem with machine translations, not a problem with other editors engaging in an unfair witch hunt against them, or anything else. There are no circumstances under which this editor should be allowed back into the community, but especially not on the grounds of "we miss him". Grandpallama (talk) 15:50, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose until/unless Louis asks for it himself, at which point I'd evaluate the request anew. He made too many personal attacks to be allowed back to the community in any form without addressing the personal attacks first. Ironically the worst PAs this round were against Kusma IIRC, but I'm opposed to pretending like that didn't happen and unblocking him because his friends miss him. His friends, if they were his friends, should tell him to apologize for the personal attacks and make an unblock request, at which point the proposed restriction would be a reasonable restriction. But without LA acknowledging the problem, no way. Frankly he's a global lock candidate at this point. There is no way this will work out without his cooperation: meaning he has to be the one to tell us he will agree to edit in compliance with our policies, including CIVIL. Levivich 16:03, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Further to this - great point made. Get LA to make an unblock request and give us assurance things have and will change - otherwise, no dice. GiantSnowman 16:06, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. I agree with everything Levivich has said. I respect my fellow editors who want to give him another chance but I can't follow them. Mackensen (talk) 16:11, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose per Levivich and others (though I'm not joining in the complaint about "falsifying sources" which I don't think there was adequate evidence of). With LouisAlain showing no interest in coming back, no regret re: his personal attacks, plus more victim-midset at de.wiki that shows his complete lack of insight, plus him saying at Gerda's de.wiki talk page that he's socking around his fr.wiki block, I just don't see him being a constructive member of this community. Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:34, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
• Yes, and No: because I think they are sufficiently different, I'm separating my responses to Berig's original proposal, and Kusma's formalization of it.

1. Oppose Berig's proposal: "[LA] could add his machine translations [to Draft space]" where anyone could use it "to find reliable sources".

   Absolutely not. If one were tempted to approve this, then one could counter with, "use the toolforge tool to find all articles in foreign Wikipedias not currently in English, and translate all of them into Draft space using a bot that invokes automatic translation." Why rely on (fallible, possibly not 100% trustworthy, possibly recalcitrant humans) to do a task that can be done much faster and with complete confidence by a bot? We'd fairly quickly increase en-wiki to 10M articles or more. An alternate proposal might be: use a bot to automatically translate the lead sentence only, and slurp all the references found in inline citations, general references, further reading, etc. in the foreign article into a bullet list under the lead sentence labeled "Further reading". (Worried my irony wasn't obvious: I'm dead-set against use of MT, regardless of how it gets into an article.)

2. Support Kusma's formalization: "[LA] may not create... or move pages into mainspace." (with a question).

   There has been all kinds of troubling behavior on LA's part, but it's also clear he's capable of generating lots of good content. As this editing restriction would prevent further damage I see no reason to oppose it, if the upside is bringing good content into en-wiki via the Draft door, and leaving the responsibility for proper sourcing to others. In a way, the proposal seems like an appeal to division of labor: those that translate, translate; those that reference, reference. Many (perhaps most) editors self-specialize in this way already, doing what they're best at (or at least, enjoy); this would be an enforcement of specialization, by keeping LA off the referencing assembly line.

   My question to Kusma is, unless I'm reading it wrong your restatement doesn't specifically address the issue of modifications/additions (major or minor) to articles in mainspace using MT. I'm guessing you would want to proscribe expansion by LA of a one-line, two-reference stub in mainspace into a 45-kb article via MT, but I don't want to put words in your mouth. On the one hand, I don't know how we could word this; there is already mention restricting the use of MT in mainspace (albeit only in a Help page, though it claims 'Wikipedia consensus), so I'm not sure how adding that as an editing restriction works, maybe by emphasisizing it and specifying the expectations if the restrictions are violated?

Disclosure: After LA mentioned an incomplete translation above (in section #Arbitrary break: diff; long diff: search-on-page for 'Magdeburg'), I responded at his UTP about maybe taking it over. Because he thought his UTP access was blocked, the discussion bounced around to de-wiki and Simple:, where I explained if & how I might approach that, based on WP:PROXYING policy. Mathglot (talk) 22:00, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

My proposal was supposed to be as simple as possible. I don't think LA should add machine translations to existing articles, but as he doesn't usually do that much, I don't currently see the need for such a restriction. Should it become necessary, I'd just suggest a partial block from mainspace. —Kusma (talk) 22:17, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

I actually don't consider my proposal to be a separate one from Kusma's. I am satisfied with the way he rephrased it.--Berig (talk) 04:38, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. Mathglot (talk) 07:59, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

• Undecided. I was pinged by Kusma above because I had participated in the discussion far above. I was going to vote "no new or moved pages in mainspace" but then someone brought up falsifying sources, which in my mind is the greatest crime that can be committed on Wikipedia. Frankly, I am saddened by this whole overarching scenario, because at points in the past I had enjoyed seeing certain articles or new wikilinks by LA because they were of needed articles on people or items already mentioned in Wikipedia. Softlavender (talk) 23:17, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

  I feel like the machine translation concerns and focus are a distraction from this much more serious issue, one for which there can be no potential misunderstanding about what is acceptable, and where our response should be unforgiving. Grandpallama (talk) 14:49, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

To all, including Jules. After I posted over 200 translations on the French Wiki while being banned, I gave the list of said pages to the ad. board over there (probably in March or April 2016). Guess what ? Not one single page was deleted and they're still available. So which is which ? Bad or crap ? Same here : Why don't you delete all my contributions (although reviewed by numerous readers) if they are so unacceptable for your high standards. You know what ? I bet nobody will and if so, my salvation doesn't depend upon my moniker being present on any Wikipedia. In a nutshell, I don't care about the fate of my ugly leftovers here. All in all, I've posted over 14.000 articles on both Wikis. Please, pray : delete, delete, delete. My fun is to translate and I will keep on posting while others will keep on deleting. How intelligent a catch 22 situation ! . But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game and I'll lay your soul to waste (for those with a modicum of musical education).

My very first article on the en. Wiki was Marguerite Aucouturier. See what it was then and what it is now thanks to people who played the collaborative encyclopedia game. Fram, please be a good boy and delete that one (and all the others) which shouldn't have appeared in the first place. You've been stalking me for five years now, blocked me twice ad salivating at the prospect of banning me. It's a nice thing to live in a world where the likes of you exist.

As in all respected Moscow trials, I know for a fact that this issue won't be answered. So all you good folks, please keep on entertaining me with the time and energy you devote at slinging mud at me when you haven't got a clue on what's being the scene. That would be lovely to have you members of a jury all too willing to send their next to the gallow. Thank Odin, I've been here before and perfectly know the dynamic of pack hunting (written without translating machine as you can notice). 2A01:E0A:98E:9040:189E:1399:3187:8ACE (talk) 16:41, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

The above message is clearly written with the same intent, tone and even lack of maturity as the message five years ago on french wiki. @Louis : a big part of things on Wikipedia, like in real life, is not what you do, but how you do them, including your behaviour (respect and politeness are not just some old-fashioned concept) and you taking the time to listen to your colleagues, being willing to accept criticism and ultimately not behaving like a classroom bully. But I assume you already know that, and me telling it only appears condescending. Sorry. People seem to agree that your actions were not ok. Attacking other users and insisting how you're being treated unfairly is not going to get you anyone's sympathy. But then I assume you already know that, and are really just interested in confirming your idea that "they" are out there to "hunt" you. In that case a break from Wikipedia might be good not just because of the issues with your editing, but also for your own wellbeing. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:22, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose as written. I initially thought that this could work – though I'm concerned that some AfC reviewers might not be too happy at the extra (and demanding) workload – but regrettably the absolute intransigence shown by LouisAlain, here and in the past, has convinced me otherwise. He should be unblocked only if he also agrees to conditions covering both ordinary civility and collaborative editing with respect for the opinions and concerns of other editors. I haven't yet decided whether to support the CBAN proposal below. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:26, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose LA should remained blocked for violations of WP:CIVIL and refusing to get the point. Block evading to throw a tantrum when the community is considering unblocking you? There's no reason to welcome this editor back at this time. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:00, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose – for this proposal to work, LA would need to be willing to collaborate; throwing a temper tantrum while evading their block proves otherwise. –FlyingAce^✈hello 00:24, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

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

Proposal: CBAN

• LouisAlain (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is community banned; for uncivility, for ignoring the community's concerns with their editing, for block evasion, for doubling down on these very issues, and, finally due to evidence that the whole of the previous is a long-term, cross-wiki issue.
• Support as proposer. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:25, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
• Support - I've got to face it. The lad's gotta go away, as he's becoming a bore. GoodDay (talk) 21:31, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose False accusation. Grimes2 (talk) 21:41, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

  @Grimes: What is false in all of this? Louis' last post (via IP, above) includes A) a blatant personal attack against Fram and vaguely against the community in general; B) shows they obviously don't care about the issue that led to their block; C) includes a clear indication they will keep evading their block ("I will keep on posting while others will keep on deleting"); and D) is ultimately doubling down since all of these issues were already pointed out and Louis is refusing to acknowledge any of it, or even contemplate they might be wrong. And of course all of A, B, C and D were an issue on French wiki years ago; an issue which has now transferred over here. I understand you might not like it, but then it might be more a case of "the truth hurts" than anything, as bad as it is. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:47, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

  I think, LouisAlains recent articles are well sourced and the English language is acceptable. He reacted on criticism. He is not the born diplomat. In fact, he cannot kowtow. Grimes2 (talk) 22:02, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

  His reaction is far more than "not kowtowing"; it's contempt if not blatant disdain, for other editors and for the most basic norms of respect and collaboration. There's a big difference being simply refusing to make a gesture of contrition and what Louis is doing: "not kowtowing" would be a euphemism of majestic proportions. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:11, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support As someone who was initially inclined to take his side in the discussion here, I have come to believe that he is a net negative and utterly lacks the maturity/insight needed to be a constructive contributor to this project. Calliopejen1 (talk) 03:13, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
• Support per my previous comments, reinforced by the block evasion just to rail against other editors. Grandpallama (talk) 14:41, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
• Support - block evading to have a rant? nah. GiantSnowman 18:16, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
• Support I do not believe this editor should be unblocked without a community discussion. We won't even be the first project to ban them for this exact kind of behavior. I recommend reading his ban discussion on frWiki from 5 years ago. His behavior was considered a long standing problem there in 2016. frWiki sysop Jules stated that they didn't believe Louis could contribute in a way that respected the community or its rules ("Je ne crois pas que ce contributeur puisse contribuer en respectant les autres et les règles que la communauté se fixe."). Then, like now, Louis asked that all his contributions be deleted, and in justifying their support for the ban frWiki sysop SammyDay said that Louis' request to delete all his contributions shows that Louis has lost site of the purpose of Wikipedia focusing instead on his own personal feelings ("voir sa demande ci-dessous de suppression de l'ensemble des articles qu'il a créé, qui montre qu'il a complètement perdu de vue le but du projet pour ne se concentrer que sur un ressenti extrêmement personnel... et inadéquat"). What has changed since our French colleagues said these things five years ago? He was blocked multiple times on frWiki for personal attacks. He evaded his block including evasion to post a rant on the Bulletin des administrateurs and then got banned. Fast forward five years, an editor raises concerns about his editing and he comes to AN to, among other things, equate this situation with a Nazi concentration camp, insult Kusma (repeatedly), and that's just from 6 September! He gets blocked nominally for lying about sourcing but more likely for this immature behavior. Now he evades his block to post another rant at AN declaring that he plans to continue evading his block regardless of what we do. This is behavior that is chronic and simply incompatible with our project, and frWiki recognized that 5 years ago. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:39, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
• Support Agree with Wugapodes summary. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:42, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
• Support per Wugapodes and RandomCanadian. dudhhr_Contribs 15:47, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
• Support per Wugapodes excellent summary. Also, seeing as they also were banned for the same actions on fr.wiki, could this be a candidate for a global block? RickinBaltimore (talk) 16:35, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
• Support Long-term, crosswiki problem. Socking to rant that he has no intention of stopping. This should take a community decision to unblock. Meters (talk) 18:30, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
• Sup. Don't care about the IP rant, don't care about the incivility, do care first & foremost about relentless deceptive referencing, do care about not listening to major concerns about it. Rgdrs. --Bison X (talk) 19:54, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

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

Community review: WP:GS/IPAK sanctions

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

---

Following a recent request at ARCA, ArbCom has issued a new, standardised procedure for what was previously called the '500/30 rule', and is now called the 'extended confirmed restriction' (ECR). Given that ArbCom has conducted this housekeeping, I believe it would be worthwhile to review the function of the sole example of a community-imposed 500/30 rule, WP:GS/IPAK. Originally, I filed a request at ARCA to see if ArbCom would consider incorporating this community sanction into the existing ArbCom-imposed WP:ARBIP sanctions regime under the new standardised rules, to reduce red tape and avoid bureaucratic confusion, but it quickly became apparent that this community-imposed sanction may either 1) not be working as was originally intended or 2) does not actually have true community consensus in the present. Therefore, I am proposing that the community review the function and necessity of this regime, with a few potential courses of action in mind.

I would like to lay out a few problems that have been identified with the GS/IPAK regime:

Firstly, as was pointed out by the honourable ProcrastinatingReader at the relevant ARCA request, only 25 pages are presently extended-confirmed protected under this regime. Clearly, this does not represent the intended scope of the restriction, which was said to cover 'any conflict between India and Pakistan'. We cannot truly say that only extended-confirmed editors are currently being allowed to edit all articles related to any conflict between India and Pakistan, given the present state of enforcement. Instead, it looks as if administrators are applying ECP at their discretion, on pages that have been points of conflict. If this is this case, however, there is no need for the community sanctions regime: under the ArbCom discretionary sanctions in effect in the same topic area per WP:ARBIP, any administrator could apply ECP as he saw fit to the relevant pages anyway (under the following clause of WP:AC/DS: '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).

Secondly, if it is deemed that the community does want to retain this restriction, and actually have it enforced as it was intended, there remains a bureaucratic issue to be solved. Following ArbCom's recent adoption of a new set of standardised rules for what is now called the 'extended confirmed restriction', the GS/IPAK regime has become procedurally isolated and outdated. While all other examples of this type of sanction follow the same rules, GS/IPAK has been left with its own unique set. I would argue that this is a procedural nightmare, and likely to introduce conflict. Therefore, to remedy this situation, there are two possible solutions: 1) the community could amend the WP:GS/IPAK restriction to mirror the new standardised rules at WP:ECR, so as to avoid any procedural confusion, or 2) the community could appeal to ArbCom to have this regime be incorporated into the existing WP:ARBIP sanctions regime as a standard WP:ECR regime, simplifying enforcement and reducing red tape.

Considering the above, I would like if editors could consider the following potential outcomes:

Abolish WP:GS/IPAK and continue ECP enforcement as needed under the WP:ARBIP DS.

Adopt the new standardised WP:ECR rules as an amendment to WP:GS/IPAK and enforce it as was originally intended.

Appeal to ArbCom via WP:ARCA to incorporate GS/IPAK into ARBIP as a standard WP:ECR sanction.

No action

I am looking forward to hearing your opinions. Thank you for your time and consideration. RGloucester — ☎ 15:30, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Discussion

In my opinion, the fact that this has been a largely unenforced remedy but the topic area is still mostly intact shows it was never really necessary to prevent disruption in the first place (noting that some degree of disruption occurs in all contentious topic areas & most don't have topic-wide ECP restrictions). Continuing harsh sanctions in the face of evidence suggesting they are not required is very perverse, so I'd oppose ArbCom taking it over (as that will likely lead to proper enforcement). I'd say vacate it formally, but IME evidence (via GS logs) is not usually persuasive so I doubt there will be consensus for that. Doing nothing, thus, seems like the best option, as it is practically equivalent to vacating it. A clerical change to adopt ECR won't really change anything, perhaps it might make it even less enforced since WP:ECR is rather verbose, so I'd support that too. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:35, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

• Abolish – As ProcrastinatingReader says above, there is no obvious evidence that a topic-wide ECR is needed, and at present, such a restriction is not actually being enforced. Given that the existing WP:ARBIP DS allow for the continued extended-confirmed protection of those pages where it is deemed necessary (such as those presently logged under WP:GS/IPAK), I see absolutely no reason to retain the separate community sanctions regime. Abolish GS/IPAK, and maintain enforcement under ARBIP. If other editors see a need for the proper enforcement of this restriction, I would argue that having ArbCom take it over seems like the most reasonable course of action, as it will make enforcement easier and reduce bureaucratic confusion. RGloucester — ☎ 16:58, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
• Abolish - I supported the creation of this GS in 2019, but now that we have a standard ECP DS sanction, everything would be so much easier to just have one regime under which we ECP pages, and that should be the DS/ECP. I don't see a reason to maintain what is essentially a duplicate page (GS/IPAK). Levivich 17:05, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
• Abolish - I was one of those who argued against ARBCOM subceding this by a motion, but certainly this ruleset doesn't seem to be being used (or, in dire need of being such beyond the current pairing). Due to that, I lean abolish rather than a pure request to ARBCOM to assume it. It may lead to the DS regime being extended to a few more articles, but I don't see a need to merge. Nosebagbear (talk) 21:43, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
• Abolish — simpler is better. Bishonen | tålk 22:52, 23 September 2021 (UTC).
• Abolish — per editors above. ~Gwennie🐈｟💬 📋｠ 00:18, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
• I concur with the abolition. Stifle (talk) 10:48, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
• I'm stupid — magic touch? Maybe I am a wizard... El_C 12:14, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

• But less seriously, RE: It may lead to the DS regime being extended to a few more articles — actually, I can't conceive of a single page covered by IPAK that isn't already covered by ARBIPA. Certainly, any protection logged at IPAK could have been logged as ARBIPA just the same. BTW, there's two IPAK log entries for 2021, both are my own (both by way of RfPP). The problem, I think, is that the consensus reached in the 2019 discussion (of which I was not involved or even aware) that ratified this GS just isn't being enforced as intended.

Yes, some key India-Pakistan conflict articles got ECP'd, as they may well have been under ARBIPA, but the crux of IPAK is that it actually prohibits users below EC to edit any articles relating to the Indo-Pakistani conflict, which isn't being enforced like it is for non-EC users who edit WP:ARBPIA pages. IPs and confirmed accounts edit these pages all the time, sometime productively, sometime disruptively, and everything in between — and no one does jack about it (in so far as a those accounts falling short of the WP:500-30 tenure, that is). El_C 12:52, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

That's why I say abolish this here, and relog those pages that are ECPed under WP:GS/IPAK as ARBIP enforcement actions at WP:AEL. In the event that some change of situation warrants the actual implementation of what is now called the 'extended confirmed restriction', I'm sure that ArbCom would happily consider imposing it via a request at ARCA. RGloucester — ☎ 13:29, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

For sure. WP:GS regimes, in general, see less enforcement than WP:ACDS ones, so I'm all for streamlining whenever feasible. But ArbCom's go ahead may be required for any AEL mergers — so that, in itself, may need to be ARCA'd (which may well end up being a mere formality there). El_C 13:43, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Given the old ARCA is still open, I'll go ask Committee now, for avoidance of doubt. RGloucester — ☎ 13:46, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Not necessarily? Any single admin can just go through the list of 25 and log them in their own capacity, which would probably be less bureaucratic than having ArbCom pass a motion at ARCA, and probably more ideal too actually since then there's an "enforcing admin" to request unprotection from, whereas if ARCA did it then presumably the ECP on these 25 pages could only be lifted with another ARCA (or AE?). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:47, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Honestly, myself, I'd prefer a subsection at AEL/IPA that notes former IPAK log entries, just for best record keeping practice. El_C 13:52, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Good idea, RGloucester. Thanks! El_C 13:53, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Speaking only for myself, and no other member of the committee, I would endorse @ProcrastinatingReader's solution rather than making us to do it by motion. Keeps things clear about who the levying admin is. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:04, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

I concur with Barkeep49. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 15:42, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

• Abolish These pages can be EC protected as a normal admin action and in the unusual event that that isn't suitable, under discretionary sanctions. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 12:56, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

• All IP editors, accounts with fewer than 500 edits, and accounts with less than 30 days tenure are prohibited from editing articles related to any conflict between India and Pakistan — procedurally, this is what's being overturned. Yes, this prohibition can only be enforced by ECP (unlike ARBPIA, which offers other remedies, like blocks), which is weird, but maybe worth bludgeoning random participants with (who could not care less = extra fun). El_C 13:17, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

• Stop the double voting! Timeline: 1. On Sept 22, RfPP request invokes IPAK, idiot protects, logs. 2. On Sept 23, this request to dissolve IPAK sees unanimous support. 3. On Sept 24, idiot bludgeons, inadvertently brings to the discussion the most feared heralds of doom: arbitrators. 4. Sept 24 — Present, thread dies. El_C 11:43, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Request for Closure

Given that this discussion has petered out, I'd like to request some upright administrator close this discussion as appropriate. It really must be an administrator too, as whoever it is will need to change the ECPs as mentioned above. RGloucester — ☎ 14:05, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Idiot volunteers. Give me a sec. El_C 14:10, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I did the thing. Please review my work at WP:GS/IPAK and WP:AEL. El_C 14:33, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@El C: I'm quite certain you need to go through the list at GS/IPAK, see which ECPs are still active, reprotect them as an AE action and then log them. That's the only way the 'chain of custody' will be clear. The subheading the AEL log seems unnecessary. RGloucester — ☎ 12:49, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

RGloucester, I'm not sure that retroactive bureaucratic hurdle is necessary, at least for me to do single-handedly. But maybe that's the prevailing view and I missed it...? The AEL note seemed fitting to me, as well, certainly, for now. Anyway, I brought this to the Committee's attention at ARCA (direct link), as well, so I'm inclined to wait for their guidance before acting further, since ARBIPA is ultimately their domain. To be clear, this is a tentative close and I invite other admins to adjust my work as they see fit. If there's a need to do something (different), I'm sure it won't be long before a plan of action is formed and executed. El_C 13:00, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

• Would someone please close this thread before it gets archived? RGloucester — ☎ 12:55, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

• RGloucester, why would it get archived any time soon? What is your rush? Personally, I'd rather wait for the ARCA to be closed first. Also, not to be harsh, but I'm getting the sense that you're approaching this like it's a legal or bureaucratic affair, but WP:NOTBURO. ArbCom, for example, is not a court — Bradv might be honourable (I'd vouch for that), but they are not the honourable, etc. Anyway, there's no great urgency here as nothing imminent is at risk. El_C 14:24, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

There is no urgency, and indeed, we are not a bureaucracy, but I have been through many similar 'processes', where an inadequate 'procedural approach' results in substantial problems down the line. In fact, such 'problems' were evident in the original ARCA that resulted in this review. I have nothing against your participation thus far, but a formal closure is desirable, and this is all I was asking for. The thread was just about to be archived before I posted! As for 'honourable', that is an affectation. Pay it no mind. RGloucester — ☎ 17:34, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Sure, RGloucester, no worries. I agree that a formal closure is called for here. But I think that the ARCA should be closed first. Again, I'm open to adjustments to the manner with which this GS regime finally ends up being dissolved. As noted, my actions on that end are tentative (expressly so), and were mostly undertaken just to get things rolling. I'd have manually restored this thread had it been archived prematurely for whatever reason. We're not beholden to the whims of archiving, so there's no need to fret about it jeopardizing anything (it won't), nor is there by extension a need to expedite for that (technically-narrow) purpose. Regards, El_C 17:48, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

• Update: ARCA close imminent. [62] El_C 11:55, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

ARCA closed: finalizing

The ARCA has now been closed (permalink), without the arbs having commented on my tentative close thus far. There was only one comment after my update at ARCA, which was Newyorkbrad's I gather that this matter is now resolved. Does anyone disagree? (after which the ARCA was duly closed). So either the arbs are no longer speaking to me (understandable!) or they just... didn't want, leaving the final details of the dissolution process at the hands of the community.

At this point, then, I'll open the floor (well, the pool was never closed) to proposals about finalizing the dissolution process. Is there something that should be done or done better? Or maybe just leave it pretty much as is — close this AN thread and update the perm links at AEL and in the IPAK obsolesce notice accordingly, and just be done with it. Personally, I'm good with whatever, though my lazy impulses naturally lean me toward as is. Thanks again, everyone!

Mass ping: @RGloucester, ProcrastinatingReader, Levivich, Nosebagbear, Bishonen, Gwennie-nyan, Stifle, Barkeep49, L235, and Callanecc: El_C 13:35, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't think I personally would've done it your way and it's not quite what I was getting at when I proposed it above. But it's a fairly technical detail and, while the community has spoken about the GS on a high level, it doesn't seem like anyone has strong preferences about the implementation details. So imo, just go with whatever approach you feel is best and be done with it. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:50, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm simple. I tagged the GS as obsolete and made a note of it at AEL with perm links to here and there. Which I think suffices. Not sure there's much more to it, but I'll keep an open mind. El_C 19:13, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

• Tomorrow will be one week since the ARCA close. So unless there's anything else, I'll be closing this thread and will update whatever links for the trifecta: here, AEL, and the abolished GS. El_C 14:22, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

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

Unblock request from BashurMan

BashurMan (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

User has requested to be unblocked via UTRS appeal #48468. They were check user blocked by Materialscientist on February 20, 2019, who then unblocked. Was checkuser blocked again by DoRD February 22, 2018. Yamla found no checkuser evidence of block evasion. Courtesy ping for my colleague Yamla, who wishes to take part.

There request is carried over below:

I understand why I have been blocked from editing. I created multiple accounts for the use of sockpuppetry. I vandalized a small number of articles with those created accounts. The reason why I committed these actions is that I wanted to put a bad impression on my friend. I realize that this was a bad idea, and I should not have done that. I was immature and did not know better. One of my edits was me threatening to murder someone. That was part of me attempting to make my friend look bad. I now recognize that it was extremely bad to edit an article to say that. I regret editing that message and I want to apologize for any harm to any user that had to read that. If I were to be unblocked following this unblock request, I would help contribute towards various genres of articles to keep them up-to-date. These genres include U.S. sports, U.S. infrastructure, and statistic genres. I would fact-check these genre-type articles to, like previously said, keep them up-to-date with the present, and help make sure other editors do not vandalize the articles, causing the articles to be confusing for others. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 21:21, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

• I'm sorry – with all respect to a "people change over time" and especially "people grow up over time" approach –, but I've stopped considering an unblock in the moment I read "One of my edits was me threatening to murder someone." There may be others who have a more understanding approach, of course. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:43, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

@ToBeFree: I think that they are referring to this edit, where they used a sock account to threaten themselves??? 192.76.8.74 (talk) 22:42, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I recognize that there is a difference between "threatening to murder someone [else]" and "sending fake death threats to oneself". Still, I'm out of here. I won't go through every edit of the user to ensure that this is what they referred to, and I don't trust them enough to accept this explanation without going through every edit. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 09:47, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks to Yamla for actually checking all the edits. This partially resolves my concern. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 11:39, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Could you clarify which edit they made which was threatening to murder someone? That could help provide important context. If it is just the edit the IP linked, it seems to me like an isolated petty feud on a user talk page, and I'd be inclined to support the appeal, but if it was a different edit, I would reconsider.Jackattack1597 (talk) 23:52, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Technical notes:

• CU data are kept only for a short time, so the fact that Yamla did not find evidence of socking on 22 September 2021 has little meaning.
• DoRD reblocked on 23 February 2019, not 2018.
• I wonder how do we know this is not a continuation of the same game, kind of "let us see how easy is it to get unblocked"? Materialscientist (talk) 08:56, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose unblocking. I went through all the edits of this account and the socks and am very sure the murder threat was indeed this edit. Threatening to kill one's self is, well, WP:EMERGENCY but in this context, not the same as threatening to kill another editor. However, it does show a profound lack of maturity. Deliberate trolling that causes problems for us. Frankly, when combined with the vandalism, that's enough for me to oppose unblocking here. If others think enough time has passed and this user has demonstrated more maturity, fine. I don't see it. --Yamla (talk) 10:22, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose unblocking. The misconduct was severe, and I find the explanation The reason why I committed these actions is that I wanted to put a bad impression on my friend to be bizarre. I see no evidence that this person has the maturity to be a useful contributor. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 18:47, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
• Support unblock. The past misconduct shows immaturity, but the willingness to acknowledge it now, 2+1⁄2 years later, shows just the opposite—as does the decision to request an unblock rather than try to evade, which, let's be honest, is what most reformed small-time vandals would do in this situation. If this very request is trolling, we'll find out soon enough, and won't fall for it the next time. If we won't unblock for something like this after two years, when will we? -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 21:16, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
• Strong oppose This threat precludes returning, it invalidates the standard offer. I don't care if it was to himself. It was a public message and gave the appearance of a dangerous environment. This form of trolling makes Wikipedia a scary place and drives off good users. HighInBC ^{Need help? Just ask.} 23:14, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
• Support unblock, because the bizarre episode appears to be an isolated, and it has been more than six months since the most recent socking, so I am willing to support a standard offer unblock with a one account restriction.Jackattack1597 (talk) 21:40, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose, and recommend that this thread be removed and suppressed per the overt threats of violence. I know people can change and mature and I'm usually one of the first to advocate for second chances, but we need to weigh that against the possibility that they'll use Wikipedia to threaten to murder someone else, and no it doesn't matter one tiny little bit that it was a joke or a game (it makes it worse, in fact). Is that possibility slim, or is it not worth taking the chance? I think the latter. Some people are never going to be fit to edit Wikipedia, and the sort of person who makes murder threats even once strikes that chord for me. Ivanvector's squirrel (^trees/_nuts) 13:28, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
• Support unblock on the basis that they seem to demonstrate understanding of and genuine regret for their previous actions, and WP:AGF and all that. As noted above the supposed murder threat was a fake death threat against themselves; I don't see any compelling need to worry that they might start threatening other people. Obviously, as with anyone returning from a block, any further misdemeanour could see the block return with very little chance of a future unblock, and I think they know that. WaggersTALK 12:48, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
• Support because "I wanna kill you" is a common thing that people say in casual conversation to each other all the time. It's one of the archetypical examples of hyperbole, right up there with "I wanna kill myself." It's rarely intended or understood literally. This distinction is more difficult to discern over text, but still, I don't see this as a genuine death threat but rather as ordinary trolling/vandalism/fuckwittery, the kind of thing kids are known for. The fact that some kid wrote "I wanna kill you so fucking bad" once on this website is not worth a lifetime ban. There is no reason to think if we unblock them they're going to go about making death threats. Two years is long enough to mature, and they can always be blocked again if need be. Levivich 16:43, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose, I am as so often overwhelmed by the understanding, tolerance and forgiveness that is shown to problem editors, and in this case it is an editor who comes with threats of killing someone, or committing suicide, if I understand it correctly.--Berig (talk) 16:49, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
• Weak Support unblock. Not going to lie, I only didn't comment sooner because I thought I might be the only one who thinks this way, but now that there are few more support comments I don't feel as silly supporting. The apology seems genuine, and I think the user should be given a WP:LASTCHANCE to demonstrate that they will never do something that bad again. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 17:34, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose per HighinBC and Ivanvector: created the appearance of a dangerous environment and not worth the risk. — Wug·a·po·des​ 21:35, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
• Support - With all genuine respect for my fellow editors that disagree, every human being is worth the risk and especially when they come to us and profess an understanding of the conduct which go them blocked and how they are expected to act going forward. It doesn't matter how old we are or where we are in life, someone has taken a risk on us at some point in our journey. In my opinion it is a relatively small risk as this editor will, no doubt, be followed somewhat and the areas they wish to edit appear to be well watched. I can see the reasons for hesitancy to unblock and I share in them, however, no accomplishment, great or small, was ever brought about without a measure of risk. Lot's of people took chances on me and still do. --ARoseWolf 20:41, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
• Bumping thread for 7 days. Vanjagenije (talk) 00:52, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
• Honestly, support unblock, mostly per Levivich's comment above. I also disagree w/ I find the explanation ... to be bizarre. I see no evidence that this person has the maturity to be a useful contributor. -- the editor is explaining their thought process at the time, which obviously was silly and they seem to acknowledge that, but it doesn't speak to their thought process now. And there's nothing bizarre about the explanation; kids do silly things. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:57, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
• Opp. The name of the sock account they used to make the death comment was User:Iwanttodiexdnoobxdnoob. I want to die x noob x noob. They also got into an argument with themselves on their talkpage with another sock User:TheBestSniperWhoIsAMaster. The Best Sniper Who Is A Msater. I cannot support due to blaming it on "mak[ing] my friend look bad" & to "put a bad impression on my friend". And then go to the Teahouse to seek advice about it? I don't buy it. Rgrds. --Bison X (talk) 19:38, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

E-960 TBAN — Request for the lifting of sanctions

I'd like to submit a formal request to the administrators and the community for the lifting of sanctions imposed on me relating to a TBAN on subject matter concerning "Secular Politics in Europe" and "Christianity". The TBAN took effect on 14 August 2020.

Since then, I have refrained form editing articles covering this subject matter. Also, in order to maintain an open and objective account of the past year; there were a couple of stumbles along the way, relating to issues regarding what the TBAN specifically covered, which were raised by a couple of other editors, and on two occasions when editing history articles, I have inadvertently hit on subject matter that was connected to Christianity. In all those cases, these were not topics directly related to Christianity itself, but rather historical events between the 16th and 20th centuries in which the Church played some role in (as often was the case in European politics during the Middle-ages, Renaissance, etc.). Nevertheless, there was a connection to the TBAN, and I served out the two week block without objection. Also, I would like to emphasise that these unfortunate instances were just slip-ups on my part, for which I took responsibility, and they were never intended as a way to flaunt the TBAN, prove a point, or fight the power.

Also, I would like to emphasise that I take responsibility for what I did which resulted in the TBAN, which was to say that another editor's approach was "bolshevik" when discussing text changes in the Religion in the European Union article, and the ugly discussion on the Administrators' noticeboard, which ensued. Again, I would like to ask the administrators and the community to lift the imposed TBAN sanctions. Also, I can answer any questions regarding the original situation which resulted in the TABN, and also my current approach to editing. --E-960 (talk) 15:54, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

• I would support that - Will elaborate later. - GizzyCatBella🍁 17:15, 2 October 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. Blocked three months ago for breaking ban, and understates their disruption above. See ANI link imposing the ban. They should also be blocked for breaching the ban in their very recent edits, which include [63][64] (and others) to Battle of Grunwald and [65] to Grunwald Monument. This was battle between the Kingdom of Poland and the Teutonic Order, otherwise known as the Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem which is a Catholic religious order and falls squarely in the middle of the Christianity and European secular politics ban. As they keep on breaking the ban, it should be widened to a more definitive scope.--Hippeus (talk) 20:34, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Hippeus, have you interacted with E-960 before? Just wondering. Volunteer Marek 00:33, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes - Hippeus soon after their appearance filed a complaint [66] that lead to this topic ban. GizzyCatBella🍁 06:33, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Off-topic — Wug·a·po·des​
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Ah, right. Up until August 2020 Hippeus just ran up their edit count via automated vandal patrol to get past the 500/30 requirement which is in place for both Israel-Palestine topics and for Poland. Then they out of nowhere, having never interacted with E-960 (in a obvious manner) filed a report on them. Then back to running up that edit count. Then, also out of nowhere, Hippeus starts showing up to AE reports related to Israel-Palestine commenting with great insight on editors they've also never interacted with (in a obvious manner) and then files an AE on an editor active in Israel-Palestine area [67] that they've also never interacted with. It is actually kind of mind blowing how naive admins on Wikipedia are. Volunteer Marek 20:24, 4 October 2021 (UTC) @Volunteer Marek - Thank you for the evaluation concerning the fresh Hippeus account. I don't desire to discuss anything else than the topic of this appeal hence small text size, but since you possibly encountered WP:NPA in this thread, I'll add that... Levivich, who is accusing you of tag-teaming, was just highly supportive of the very Hippeus here [68]. You may interpret this however you want, I'm just recording it for everyone to see. Quote - Damn, the hypocrisy. You tag team while--with your tag team partners--accuse editors who !vote a different way of tag teaming. Shameless. -->[69] - GizzyCatBella🍁 21:29, 4 October 2021 (UTC) Levivich, who is accusing you of tag-teaming, was just highly supportive of the very Hippeus here - Lol, I didn't even see that. But yeah, Levivich jumps around noticeboards supporting (i.e. "tag teaming") a WP:DUCK account in its BATTLEGROUND reports then shows up here and has the nerve to accuse other editors of tag teaming. ... .... ... smack head again desk. Volunteer Marek 22:30, 4 October 2021 (UTC) (And Battle of Grunwald and Grunwald Monument are most definitely NOT breaches of the topic ban - this is some really bad faith stretchin' of the scope of the ban. The battle had nothing to do with religion. Volunteer Marek 00:34, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Topic bans are meant to be "broadly construed", not tested to their limits. This, although not a substantial edit, is more clear-cut: adding a header called "The enlightenment and political turmoil" to an article about a European state is clearly about "European secular politics"... Given that they were blocked in June for a violation of this (their excuse back then was that they missed a reference to politics in a larger section: that at least seems credible. Outright adding "politics" in a header is less of an accident...); they should have figured by now that caution is more appropriate, i.e. a topic ban is "if you're not sure, it probably is under the topic ban, and if you're really really not sure, ask for clarification before violating the topic ban". RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 01:42, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Thats ridiculous. By this interpretation any edit to, say, medieval history in Europe would fall under the topic ban. Because, you know, people were very religious back then. Volunteer Marek 17:33, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose, block for breaking the ban, and expand ban to Christianity and European politics broadly construed. E-960 said way more than just the Bolshevik comment, his commentary included: [70][71][72][73]. E-960 had issues with the ban to begin with, which led to warnings and a block. Most of his recent edits are in violation of the ban. Any edits to topics pertaining to European Monastic states, and specifically a battle between the Monastic State of the Teutonic Order and a secular kingdom in the Battle of Grunwald pertain both to Christianity and to European secular politics. The edit RandomCanadian brought up above is also within the ban, the Enlightenment section contains “The latter's conversion from Lutheranism to Catholicism awed the conservative magnates and Pope Innocent XII, who in turn voiced their endorsement.” As the ban is repeatedly flouted it should be widened to remove the possible ambiguity around “secular politics”. @Wugapodes: who implemented the ban.--Astral Leap (talk) 08:00, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

• Astral Leap, RandomCanadian and Hippeus, if you don't mind I'd like to respond to your comments regarding the TBAN, and quote another user who commented previously during one of the debates about me regarding this issue: Elemimele said: ...the phrase "broadly construed" only strengthens clearly-defined bans. It weakens any TBAN that contains a hint of ambiguity, because it invites the response "but construed broadly", that encompasses absolutely everything, which is clearly unfair! That, I think, is why this debate has come up so many times. the full comment can be viewed here [74]. Also, other users such as Dawid2009 wrote to me separately voicing their reservations about the TBAN, to which I simply replied that I'll try to appeal after one year. Just as well, you can argue that since Poland was a Christian kingdom, so I broke the TBAN there, or when I edited the page on Helmut Kohl, because he is a European politician, enlightenment, well that's science and art, so I'll be breaking the TBAN if I edit the articles on Isaac Newton or Michelangelo. Also, I would like to highlight a couple of important facts for your consideration, that the TBAN was imposed for a VERY specific incident regarding a text I added which covered the marginalisation of Christians in the EU on the Religion in the European Union page. Never before that, was there an issue with me and topics related to Christianity or Secular Politics of Europe. If I was a serial offender, constantly getting in disruptive arguments regarding the topic of Christianity or Secular Politics of Europe, I could understand your arguments of a very broadly construed TBAN based on several incidents. However, because this was a very localised flare-up, I simply do not understand why you would want to expand the understanding of the TBAN to such a wide scope. Please remember that the TBAN is not a punishment of some kind, it's a tool to prevent disruptive editing and it serve as a cooling off period. So, why would you want to expand the TBAN to areas which were not an issue before? Also, I did not edit text about the Teutonic Knights specifically, in the Battle of Grunwald article, just about Silesians and Vlachs who fought on the Polish side, so again you are stretching the understanding of the TBAN to about as wide as it possibly can gets. --E-960 (talk) 12:22, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm not an admin, so I shouldn't really be commenting. But since I stuck my nose in last time, and have been mentioned again: my concern was (1) that the TBAN, as worded, unfortunately meant the exact opposite of what was intended. I believe it was a ban on "European secular politics, broadly construed". Pedantically, this would allow E-960 to edit on religious (as opposed to secular) politics, and anything non-political. I believe the ban was intended to cover something much narrower: "The politics of secularisation in Europe", which is actually religious politics. This wouldn't matter, except that people have been using the phrase "broadly construed" to stretch secular politics to encompass more or less everything. And that's problem (2): if you are going to ban someone whose primary interest is European history from writing about anything that could possibly be construed as European politics, you may as well admit it's a site-ban. Overall (3) I was unhappy that E-960 should be penalised for failing to keep to the terms of a ban whose extent seemed unclear even to the other admins. It seemed to me best to write off the whole rather sorry saga, start again, look at E-960's current editing (is it good, is it disruptive?) and if, based on this, it's felt that a ban is appropriate, create a new one, worded with less ambiguity. Elemimele (talk) 19:48, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Off-topic — Wug·a·po·des​
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
@Astral Leap Given your weeks of inactivity and status of a relative newcomer, can you tell us how did you find out about this discussion? And why are you interested in this? Did you and the user who requested this ban to be lifted interact before? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 10:35, 4 October 2021 (UTC) Damn, the hypocrisy. You tag team while--with your tag team partners--accuse editors who !vote a different way of tag teaming. Shameless. Levivich 13:56, 4 October 2021 (UTC) Since this is AN(I), and you should know better, I ask reviewing admins to consider the above in light of WP:NPA/Wikipedia:ASPERSIONS. TIA Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 14:35, 4 October 2021 (UTC) @Levivich:, it is almost as if these three accounts are a single account for past three months. At Honchy Brid massacre these three, [75] [76] [77], attempted to remove all trace of the crime.--Erin Vaxx (talk) 14:57, 4 October 2021 (UTC) Welcome back to Wikipedia - you took a month-long break, I see. What are the odds of running into you here, huh. Perfectly innocent coincidence, right, Levivich? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 18:09, 4 October 2021 (UTC) (edit conflict)The evidence is in this thread: the posts by you, VM, and GCB. I've previously provided evidence of the tag teaming I'm talking about at ANI in August and on my talk page. On my talk page, I offered to provide more specific examples of you, VM and/or GCB tag-teaming, and I asked you to tell me how many examples would be enough examples to overcome any defense that it's all just a coincidence. You have not yet given me a number, but the offer stands. This thread is just the latest example of you, GCB, and VM tag-teaming. GCB casts the first support. When an editor opposes, VM shows up to question the editor, along with GCB. When another editor opposes, you show up to question the editor (and support). This is exactly the kind of tag-teaming that people have been complaining about for a long time... at least since the days of WP:EEML (to which you and VM were a party), if not earlier. And, you were TBANed for canvassing last year. And it came up again in that ANI thread in August. This is not an aspersion, it's a sustained complaint. (And BTW: I have no opinion on the merits of this appeal: when I brought the TBAN violation ANI thread a few months ago, I walked away thoroughly confused about the scope of the TBAN, so I express no opinion about it or whether it was followed or not.) Levivich 15:07, 4 October 2021 (UTC) @Levivich - consider the possibility that you may be mistaken. I follow the same pages as those editors since I'm interested in the same topic area. Occasionally, I also reflect on edits of editors interested in my topic area. Is this clear for you? So quit accusing me of the rule violation and BACK OFF. I'm not going to take it lightly if you continue. PS - This thread is about something else, so please stick to the topic. - GizzyCatBella🍁 16:26, 4 October 2021 (UTC) I've already stopped taking your tag-teaming lightly. When this appeal was posted I wasn't gonna comment. When you supported, I wasn't gonna comment. When VM questioned an opposer, I recognized it as yet another example of the tag-teaming, but I wasn't going to comment. When Piotrus questioned a second opposer, that's what crossed the line for me, and now I'm commenting, again. There are many examples of the three of you doing this, and if you'd like me to provide more, just say how many. The next time I see you three tag-team, I will comment again: this is what I told Piotrus on my talk page last time: I will be speaking up about this; I'm not gonna waste time bringing it to a noticeboard, but I will speak up. Levivich 17:10, 4 October 2021 (UTC) Oh please. You’re acting faux-outraged that editors who are involved in the topic area and who have commented on this user/sanction in the past several times are commenting again and trying your darnedest to pretend like it’s some great conspiracy and yet... at the same time you got exactly ZERO to say about all the sketchy accounts popping out of nowhere here and hijacking the discussion yet again (nevermind the first responder who spent their time on Wikipedia running up their edit count with mindless vandal patrol to get past the 500/30 hurdle so they could file reports against editors in both Israel-Palestine and Eastern Europe topic areas). Right right. As long as these editors fit your POV you’re quite willing to turn a blind eye to their shenanigans yet you think it okay to invent WP:ASPERSIONS and make wild accusations against long established editors. Got it. Your double standards are clear as day. Par for the course Levivich. Par for the course. Volunteer Marek 19:51, 4 October 2021 (UTC) In which case, this being AN, I repeat my request to the adminstrators regarding whether the above personal attacks, which Levivch refuses to withdraw, can be dealt with here, or if this should be taken to a higher instance. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 17:34, 4 October 2021 (UTC) @VM and Piotrus: to be clear, the thing I am accusing you of is improper coordination, i.e. tag-teaming. An example is that you will "tag-team" to badger participants in a discussion who disagree with you, usually with sea lioning questions insinuating they're a sockpuppet or meatpuppet or that they are hounding or that they are, ironically, tag-teaming. We see this on display here: first, GCB !votes support. The first oppose !vote, VM shows up to badger. The second oppose !vote, Piotrus shows up to badger. This is by far not the first time I've raised this complaint, nor am I the only one who has. I don't take it to a noticeboard because this happens at noticeboards like AN, like right here, and also because you've all been sanctioned before. So, the admin know about this. They see what I see. They can choose to do something, or not, it's totally up to them. I see no point in starting a new thread about it on any page. If anyone wants me to provide more examples of this behavior, they only need to tell me how many. Because I evidence my accusations, they are not aspersions, nor are they personal attacks. I can't block or ban any of you or do anything about this, other than use my voice to call it out when I see it: that's all I can do, so that's what I do. It's the same approach I have to incivility: call it out when I see it. Levivich 20:02, 4 October 2021 (UTC) VM already elaborated better than I could, and as for admins, they should be able to see who is being civil - or not - here, as well as who is supported by WP:DUCK low-edit count accounts that were inactive for weeks and then suddenly found themselves at AN. I wasn't going to comment here until I realized this thread is being abused by suspicious acounts whose names I recalled from Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Icewhiz. You can entertain us with irrelevant ancient history of how I and VM "tag teamed" ~13 years ago, years before E-960 or GCB were active; but the recent (~2019) Icewhiz incident and his ongoing socking is a current and relevant problem that reviewing admins should certainly be aware of. This has been pointed out to you clearly yet you have nothing to say about those new accounts that suddenly activated here. Let me end by quoting your post just above: "Damn, the hypocrisy". Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 20:30, 4 October 2021 (UTC) Levivich, if you think an admin is just gonna step in and sanction any major EE participant, of either camp, you haven't been following along. A full ARBEE2 case, or it didn't happen. No admin is gonna do anything without Hurricane winds in their sails (something happening of an especially egregious nature), because why would they? If either side wants to establish an incremental buildup of problems that are felt to have gotten too much for whatever reason, ArbCom is that-a-way. The other option is for both sides to keep waiting for Godot, who is generally busy. El_C 15:55, 5 October 2021 (UTC) I'm not sure what part of what I wrote leads you to believe I want or expect admins to do anything (especially since I wrote the exact opposite). At the risk of sounding like a broken record: what I'm doing is calling it out when I see it; everyone else can do whatever they want. Levivich 17:03, 5 October 2021 (UTC) Ah, howling to the wind then, got it. In opposite land, you writing "the exact opposite" was understood by all. El_C 17:39, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support. Seems like the lesson has been learned. No need for further punishment, but the ban remains part of the record, and if any problematic editing resurfaces, next one will presumably be much longer, so please be careful. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:38, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose Close without prejudice until the allegations of tag-teaming can be reviewed by ArbCom. I don't think E-960 is party to it and I'm sorry it has to be on their backs, but we can't have one group of editors and their controversial POV dominate the TA. I will support bringing E-960's appeal without prejudice once everything else is settled. François Robere (talk) 19:43, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Off-topic — Wug·a·po·des​
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Let me get this straight. First you show up here to tag team with Levivich and brand new accounts that just scream WP:DUCK (like Erin Vaxx) and you do this to ... accuse others of tag teaming. At same time you say, quote, “I don’t think E-960 has is party to it” yet... you have absolutely no problem trying to punish them on the basis of (false) allegations YOU make against OTHER editors??? How the funky does that work??? You’re basically saying “I’m going to oppose this appeal because there are people here who supported it that I don’t like”. Seriously? That’s your justification? That is why another editor should be punished? Because you and Levivich hold a grudge against me and blame me for getting your wiki buddy Icewhiz banned??? (Guess what, he actually got himself banned by making violent threats against other editors) This is a low even for ANI on Wikipedia. Volunteer Marek 19:56, 4 October 2021 (UTC) And oh yeah, your comment here is pretty much a violation of your interaction ban with GizzyCatBella [78] (which makes this a repeated infraction since you were just blocked for violating it in July [79]). If you had shown up here and opposed E-960's appeal on merits and focused on E-960 then you would've been fine. But then you just couldn't help yourself and you just had to cast some ASPERSIONS about "group of editors and their controversial POV", which is a very obvious reference to GizzyCatBella. Stop stalking their edits. Volunteer Marek 20:18, 4 October 2021 (UTC) (Similar applies to Astral Leap who showed up here right after GCB and who they are also I-banned with, but at least AL stuck to the topic rather than going off script). Volunteer Marek 20:47, 4 October 2021 (UTC) Mud slinging aside, tag-teaming is a serious issue, and one that's been been raised repeatedly over the last three years. If you and Piotrus are faultless, taking it to ArbCom is probably a better idea than blindly attacking anyone who makes it. François Robere (talk) 21:41, 4 October 2021 (UTC) Mud slinging? Mud. Slinging? Seriously? You show up here, make a lot of false and completely irrelevant accusations against a bunch of users, you plainly state that you are going to Oppose this user's appeal for NO OTHER REASON than that you don't like some of the users who support it (and I didn't even support it!)and on top of that you violate your interaction ban and THEN you have the nerve to accuse OTHER editors of "mudslinging"??? Holy cups of tea. Like... how ... why... how ... can anyone do this and keep a straight face? Volunteer Marek 22:26, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose I do not believe this user has properly addressed the reason for their topic ban, and I don't actually see a need to remove it.--Jorm (talk) 19:59, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

If it's not lifted, then it should at least be clarified because right now no one knows what the hey it's suppose to cover. Volunteer Marek 20:18, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

• Agree with User:Elemimele above (who I think is like the only "outside" editor here, and User:Elemimele you can certainly comment and !vote if you're not an admin) - if the ban is not lifted it needs to be reworded because currently it's just impossible to understand what it actually covers. My understanding is that it was suppose to cover explicitly "religious stuff" or disputes related to religion (including religion vs non-religion) but now people are pretending that any thing medieval is covered. Volunteer Marek 22:36, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

François Robere, I would ask that you re-consider and strike down your OPPOSE statement. I believe that it is very unfair to me that you are opposing my request based on an unrelated dispute with other editors. At this point, that whole tag-team dispute has taken over my request. The irony is that it appears that on both sides here there are editors who follow the same topics or issues. Users Piotrus and Volunteer Marek often get involved in the same topics, as do you FR follow the same topics as Levivich or Icewhiz before he got banned for doing some funny stuff. I'm not implying that there is some nefarious connection here. Seriously, we all primarily edits Wikipedia articles related to history and current events, so I would not expect some Polish editor or whoever — someone who primarily edits pages related to astronomy or botany — to jump into this discussion, because we would have never interacted before. Most of the user here will be folks we interacted with in the past. --E-960 (talk) 04:57, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

I agree it's unfair to dismiss your request because of the involvement of third parties, but that's exactly what was done four months ago with this complaint, and with many other complaints before it. Both "tag teaming" (which is suspected here) and "socking" (which was suspected there) are types of WP:GAMING, and the community should be able to sift them out and consider only the merits; but in practice it doesn't, and when either is suspected the entire case is usually thrown away. Again, I do not think it fair and I'd rather your appeal proceeded all the same, but under the circumstances it might be better to close it without prejudice so it can be re-filed and re-considered later, and this time only on its merits. François Robere (talk) 07:27, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

FR, this is a DEEPLY problematic statement here from you. Just like the last one. First you say you will oppose the request by E-960 because of how OTHER editors !voted. Then when this is pointed out to you you invoke... some completely irrelevant discussion from like 5 months ago, where you didn't get what you want (neither Piotrus nor anyone else commenting here participated in that discussion - so much for "tag teaming") in which E-960 didn't participate. In fact it had nothing to do with them! What in the flying chelubinsk does this have to do with this request? Let's review:

1. You first choose to "oppose" this appeal request because of how other editors !vote. This is nothing but spite and the crazy thing is that you admit to it freely.

2. You then amend that to effectively opposing it with the rationale that... there was some other discussion five months ago which had nothing to do with this one where you didn't get what you want to so you want to screw over someone else now. This is even worse! And the crazy thing is you admit to it freely.

If there is a more picture perfect, quintessential, archetypal, representative, characteristic, emblematic and demonstrative example of what "WP:BATTLEGROUND" means then I haven't seen it in my 11 years on Wikipedia. This right here? THIS is why this topic area is a total mess. Because of attitudes like this one. Someone who expresses opinions such as these and approaches editing in a topic area in such a way needs to be removed from it ASAP. This here is grounds for a topic ban FR. Volunteer Marek 17:52, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Comment: I'd like to follow up on the recent comments regarding my request for the lifting of the TBAN, and would like to re-state my arguments for the lifting of sanctions. Again, I think that it is important to keep in mind the ultimate purpose of a TBAN as an administrative tool, and that it's purpose is to stop non-productive/disruptive behaviour, or in cases of heated exchanges to provide a prolonged cooling-off period. In my case it was the latter, where a discussion over a disputed text got out of hand. However, it is important to highlight the fact that this was a very specific incident regarding a text on the Religion in the European Union page. Before that there were no issues related to my editing of topics concerning Christianity or Secularist Politics in Europe. This is an important fact to consider because of the repeated calls by some editors to expand on the TBAN, or opposition by others to lift the sanctions. As user Elemimele stated in their previous comment "why you'd want to inflict sanctions" and "what message would you want sanctions against E-960 to convey". At this point, in response to my request for the lifting of sanctions some editors are arguing for expansion of the TBAN because I made a couple of minor edits on the Battle of Grunwald article, where I added two small shield icons next to the links for Silesians and Wallachians, and I changed the description in an image caption from "Actor playing King Władysław II Jagiełło" to "A re-enactor dressed as King Władysław II Jagiełło". How are those edits, directly connected with the issue for which the TBAN was imposed — which was the topic regarding the marginalisation of Christians in the EU? In summary, I think that after over a year under sanctions, the lesson has been learned on my part, and the continued application of the TBAN only creates more unnecessary disruptions and confusion. To highlight the point, I would like to quote user Levivich who noted earlier "I have no opinion on the merits of this appeal: when I brought the TBAN violation ANI thread a few months ago, I walked away thoroughly confused about the scope of the TBAN, so I express no opinion about it or whether it was followed or not." So, in the end, I would argue for the lifting of the TBAN, and starting anew, also keeping in mind that another temporary TBAN or even a permanent TBAN can always be re-imposed if required. However, for now, I think that it would be of benefit to everyone if this TBAN is allowed to end. --E-960 (talk) 06:52, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose I said this when they were blocked [80] and this appeal has re-affirmed my concerns. Talking about burying the lead "Since then, I have refrained form editing articles covering this subject matter" only to then mention whoops that time I didn't and so got blocked. "I served out the two week block without objection." yeah you accepted you were wrong, still found the time to complain [81] about "bit of a quick draw on the block" and "As before, it seems that Astral Leap is more interested in getting me blocked then to ensure that things stay orderly on Wikipedia". And then unsuccessfully appeal [82] [83]. As Hippeus and RandomCanadian have mentioned the editor is still testing the limits of a topic ban. This isn't an editor we should trust to be allowed back into the subject area, instead we should be considering if it needs to be expanded. BTW since people keep asking I've obviously interacted with E-960 per my first diff but AFAIK that is the extent of our interactions. (I could have forgotten something, I recalled the block but forgot the advice I offered until I found it when researching the history.) Since I think no one linked to it before now, the discussion which lead to the block was Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1070#E-960 community imposed TBAN. The clarifications and discussions in 1052 and 1071 were already linked by Wugapodes below and the original topic ban discussion as a permalink above but I noticed these two Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1044#Religion in the European Union — Status quo stonewalling Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1044#Offensive and disparaging comments discussions around the same time which may have added to the concerns leading to the topic-ban. I think that's the extent of topic-ban stuff in relation to E-960 on the boards. Nil Einne (talk) 12:38, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

  P.S. If anyone wants to nitpick over articles vs parts of articles I'd just say 3 things. One is that you're missing the point. Two well since I like to nitpick too, these are articles covering the subject matter otherwise the edits wouldn't have been a problem. I don't expect E-960 to stay away from the entire Belarus or even Holocaust articles but technically if you wanted to stay away from articles covering the subject matter you would need to. The alternative is to take proper care that no edits cover the subject matter when editing articles which do in part. Either way, when appealing don't make it sound like you've been perfectly behaved only to then go and explain you weren't. Actually the main reason I replied even though it already seems this appeal won't succeed was because I read the appeal and had a WTF moment when I saw E-960 saying the bit about how "since then" as I did recall the violation/block. Which leads to my third comment, repeating my first again, you're missing the point with such nitpicks. Nil Einne (talk) 14:38, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

• Nil Einne, I don't agree with your comment, I feel that you keep assuming bad-faith in my case, and I would ask that you withdraw your objection based on the fact that you in the past were Wikipedia:Casting aspersions. Statements like this one for example: "yeah you accepted you were wrong, still found the time to complain" — is this such an egregious violation that I complained some? Over the years the one thing I noticed on Wikipedia is people complaining (I mean just look at the earlier comments in this discussion). Here is another example, this one you left on my talk page back in June[84] saying: "Instead I suspect at least in part, you feel you were unfairly targeted because of your views and/or religious beliefs. This makes it hard for you to edit in the area without causing more problems. Perhaps this will have changed in 6 months, but I doubt it. Although you have to stay out of this area I find it likely that your feelings on the matter will still have filtered through to your edits enough even without any violations" so right there you already made up your mind how this will play out — this is a blatant example of Wikipedia:Casting aspersions you basically said my religious views (or related thoughts - not sure what you mean specifically) will disqualify me for editing, as they will continue to get in the way. I think you should consider what user Elemimele noted perviously: "the phrase 'broadly construed' only strengthens clearly-defined bans. It weakens any TBAN that contains a hint of ambiguity, because it invites the response 'but construed broadly', that encompasses absolutely everything, which is clearly unfair! That, I think, is why this debate has come up so many times" and "E-960 should not be penalised for failing to keep to the terms of a ban whose extent seemed unclear even to the other admins". Finally, to emphasise this point I would like to draw your attention to user Levivich who noted earlier in this discussion: "I have no opinion on the merits of this appeal: when I brought the TBAN violation ANI thread a few months ago, I walked away thoroughly confused about the scope of the TBAN, so I express no opinion about it or whether it was followed or not." --E-960 (talk) 15:30, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Also, I want to emphasis this point because it is a crucial one, that I don't think you actually know my religious views, as in those 5 years of editing on Wikipedia I stayed out of editing pages specifically related to Christianity or Secularist Politics in EU, concentrating on history topics instead. So, you are casting the net very wide on this TBAN, based only on ONE and I want to emphasise ONE flare-up related to the issue of Christianity and Secularist Politics in EU. --E-960 (talk) 16:30, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I don’t agree with Nil Einne either. They are almost entirely wrong. - GizzyCatBella🍁 16:56, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Wug· and Girth Summit, I'd like to comment on my overall thoughts regarding some of the solutions proposed during this discussion, as what I find very unreasonable (and impractical) is the desire by some users to not only keep the TBAN, but extend it some more, despite the fact that already other editors voiced concerns about its scope and definition. Also, I want to ask, what is the logic of keeping me under a TBAN indefinitely (note that I've been under sanctions for over a year)? Being a bit facetious here, but even in prison you get parole. If the TBAN is lifted, and I learned my lesson, this saves everyone a lot of time on AN discussions like this one next time around. But, if I breach conduct rules on these "issue" topics, I can get a site ban or something, for being a repeat offender — problem solved permanently. So, again what's the point of keeping me under the TBAN as a precaution, just in case I might do something in the future? If I'm still clueless then let me trip up again and flip out on the exact same (or related) topic, so I'll get a site ban (if I totally come off the rails or something next time around). Instead of raising issue cause I changed an image caption to note that the person dressed as King Władysław II Jagiełło is an re-enactor and not an actor. --E-960 (talk) 19:10, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

E-960, I haven't read the discussion above - it's a long one, and I'm on mobile while making dinner, so I'm not in a position to read through it now. I remember being involved in a previous discussion about the scope of your TBan, but I can't bring the exact details to mind now. I will try to find time in the days ahead to look at this again, but cannot promise anything. I will say this though - as individual admins, neither Wug nor I have authority to override a community decision. Admins can block/unblock people, but community bans appealed at AN are handled by the community, with consensus weighed by the discussion closer. So, even if I were to agree with your observations (no comment either way at present), all I would be able to do would be to offer my own view - if the consensus was against me (I haven't attempted to weigh that), I would have no authority to overrule it. Sorry if you were hoping for more than that. Girth Summit _(blether) 19:26, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@E-960: this isn't a game where you get off on a technicality. We're not a court, we don't write laws, and our goal is not write unambiguously. Is your topic ban perfect? Probably not, but do you think the community is going to volunteer tons of time to indulge wikilawyering over stuff you should probably just be avoiding in the first place? Unlikely. If you want a good chance of being unbanned, go do something else. There's a whole wide world outside of Europe. You know what has nothing to do with Europe, Christianity, or secular politics? Biographies of Canadian hockey players, geographic features in Africa, women scientists from Asia. The ban is hard because you keep dancing around the edges of it. Frankly, if you want to play around in the grey area, the onus is on you to make sure that you are behaving perfectly. If that's too hard don't do it. This isn't the first time that it's been explained to you and it's not even the first time that I have explained it to you. I said almost the exact thing to you on my talk page in July. Independently, Nil gave you similar advice in June. So sure, we can reduce the grey area in your TBAN, but don't be upset when it's not in the direction you want.

Remember that you were so disruptive in a topic area that the community got together and decided to ban you; it's not going to disappear just because you find it difficult. Quite the opposite, you find it difficult because you keep trying to find the edges of it instead of leaving the whole thing alone. Excluding comments from the regular factions and looking simply at uninvolved administrators, both Jorm and Nil point out that you haven't given any legitimate reason to lift the ban. The argument you make in this most recent comment is that we should just let you loose and site ban you if you mess up again. Why on earth would we want to do that? Firstly, we don't need to lift the TBAN to site ban you. If you insist on being disruptive, we can just do that. Secondly, how is that helpful to anyone except you? The question is whether you can be trusted to not disrupt the topic area, so why are you even entertaining the idea that you could continue to be disruptive? You're essentially asking the community to give you one last chance but haven't shown why we should. — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:07, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Wug· and Girth Summit, thanks for the swift response and input. To follow up on the comments I would like to say that I'm not trying to game the system. However, I would like to provide some constructive and practical input, not to be disruptive, but (perhaps) to improve how the TBANs are instituted, in order to make them more fair, clear and effective administrative tools (including for myself). I'd like show that the TBAN recommendations were poorly articulated (and not because of any administrator summary at the end). The original AN case was filed by user Hippeus, and their original recommendation was I propose E-960 be topic banned from religious persecution, intolerance, and conflict. This was actually, a clear cut proposition, which addressed the exact topic which caused the incident (this way if a violation occurred in the future, it could be judged using the backdrop of the original topic which resulted in the TBAN). However, this is where things get a bit iffy, as shortly there after, user Snowded makes a comment and in bold letters writes Strong support for a topic ban for Christianity and European politics, broadly construed and three months off all editing. So, user Snowded "supports" the the ban request set up by Hippeus, yet actually writes something completely different. This created the issue we are in, because as user Elemimele noted perviously: the phrase 'broadly construed' only strengthens clearly-defined bans. It weakens any TBAN that contains a hint of ambiguity, because it invites the response 'but construed broadly', that encompasses absolutely everything, which is clearly unfair! That, I think, is why this debate has come up so many times" and "E-960 should not be penalised for failing to keep to the terms of a ban whose extent seemed unclear even to the other admins". I would also like to highlight the fact that there were 10 SUPPORT and 10/9 SUPPORT FOR THE WIDER BAN (as proposed by Snowded). Also, there were 5 OPPOSE and 1 reversal from SUPPORT FOR THE WIDER BAN to SUPPORT SELF IMPOSED TBAN. So, there was by no mean an overwhelming consensus to apply the wider/broadly construed and vaguely defined TBAN as proposed by user Snowded. This is why, I believe that this TBAN if not lifted, needs to be re-assessed and at least restored to what was originally proposed. Again, to emphasise the point there was no overwhelming support to institute a wider TBAN, in fact if my arithmetic is correct in the end there were more votes to impose the original TBAN recommendation. Fast forward to the current discussion, and some of the users who voted for the wider ban are here now arguing for an even more expansive TBAN — these users should pause for a moment and ask themselves what I can suggest to better define this TBAN, clear things up and make it fair, instead of blindly arguing to widen the TBAN. And, as far as I can tell their views were not the outright majority or constituted an overwhelming consensus even in the original AN. --E-960 (talk) 08:18, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

In the end, I would again like to quote user Elemimele who said: At the moment, to an outsider reading ANI, the whole thing risks sending a message that WP... can't write an unambiguous ban, but think it doesn't matter because one can always reach a consensus on what it was supposed to mean, later, and inflict justice retrospectively. That just doesn't look fair. This is the case here, the initial TBAN scope was clearly defined, and instead a broad and ambitious TBAN definition was embraced by some users, who now insist that it's being violated. --E-960 (talk) 11:56, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Support Per Piotrus: No need for further punishment, but the ban remains part of the record, and if any problematic editing resurfaces, next one will presumably be much longer, so please be careful. but I also agree with E-960 TBAN is not a punishment of some kind, it's a tool to prevent disruptive editing and it serves as a cooling-off period. This was one year ago, after apologies for misunderstandings, and promising to use more reliable sources, I do not see why can not E-960 edit pages related to that matter, especially substantially edit pages related to Christianity which generally is not the same as "secular politics in European Union"? I think we can give them (last?) chance per WP:AGF. Dawid2009 (talk) 16:53, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support Let's give this editor a last chance to show that they can be a constructive contributor in their area of interest. Certainly, they realize that their work will be scrutinized. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 21:19, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Agree, and, as I declared before, I also support lifting the sanctions. I trust this user. I believe that the lesson has been learned. However, (this is to you E-960) I would like you to be extremely careful while editing subjects concerning Christianity or religion in general. If you find yourself in a situation of potential disagreement with other editors, stop making edits and walk away. Assume that you may be mistaken. Simple like that. - GizzyCatBella🍁 22:42, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Conduct warning

I was pinged here having closed the original TBAN discussion and want to note my participation in two related discussions as well: a Nov 2020 clarification discussion and a July 2021 report. These discussions follow a pattern where the same editors show up to carry on interpersonal disputes unrelated to the topic at hand. This is disruptive and discourages outside input. As I said three months ago when this last came to AN, "I'm not convinced the TBAN as it stands is preventing disruption so much as spreading it to new people and venues. That needs to be fixed in whatever way we think appropriate." To stick to this thread, however, the bulk of discussion has been Volunteer Marek and Piotrus making accusations and having discussions unrelated to the topic at hand.

• Marek accuses an editor of gaming the EC permission
• Marek accuses editors of tag teaming arguing that critics of him are holding grudges about an SPI from two years ago.
• Marek calls for another editor to be topic banned and accuses them of battle ground conduct because he disagrees with the editor's rationale
• Piotrus questions Astral Leap's motives claiming AL is a "relative newcomer" and asking how and why they are interested in this discussion, despite both AL and Piotrus having commented in the November 2020 discussion on E-960's ban scope.
• Piotrus accuses another editor of sock puppetry after they provide evidence of tag teaming
• Piotrus claims that discussion about his conduct is a personal attack

Of course, a battleground usually requires more than one faction, and other parties have contributed to the disruption of this discussion. Levivich has accused them of hypocrisy (again) which rekindled old disputes, and François Robere (under an IBAN with GCB) has gone back and forth arguing with Volunteer Marek. This is a general warning: further disruption of this discussion will be met with blocks for the duration of the appeal. You're all claiming to be experienced editors: act like it. Take your concerns to WP:SPI, WP:ANI, WP:AE or any of the other acronyms, but do not disrupt this discussion with off topic bickering. It is unfair to E-960 that their appeal does not get due consideration because your flame wars scare off uninvolved editors. For that reason I have collapsed off-topic discussion above. — Wug·a·po·des​ 21:32, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Just for the record, this statement and analysis is mind numbingly wrong. You and I apparently did not read the same discussion. Volunteer Marek 21:54, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Unblock request by Amir Ghandi/Amirhosein Izadi

Amir Ghandi (requesting through that account due to lost account details) has requested an unblock. They were CBanned in January 2020. Their unblock request is given below, which I copy without tendering my own opinion. We do need a CU review, if one is willing.

My previous account (Amirhosein Izadi) was blocked because of hoaxing, vandalism and making fake articles, which was all true. two years after that i created this account partly because i was not aware of Wikipedia:Appealing blocks and even if i was, i had already lost my password to the previous account. my edits on this account could prove that i did not continue destructive edits as i have two GA articles and surely will maintain this path if i get unblocked.

zzuuzz has done the needful on the CU-side' Nosebagbear (talk) 21:09, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support unblock pending check user review. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 23:22, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
• Bumping thread for 14 days. Vanjagenije (talk) 00:48, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Two RFCs that are ill-stated complaints

The IP editor who currently appears to be User:2A02:A210:BA9:9080:B953:3521:CEB7:BBD8 has published two RFCs which do not ask a question and do not even formulate a coherent request for input, at:

• Talk:Bodhidharma#RFC Wall-gazing section
• Talk:Zen#RFC Dhyana section

Neither of the RFCs is coherent. I am requesting that an admin take a look at them and determine whether early closure is in order, because, first, otherwise Yapperbot will invite editors to participate, and this will waste the time of the editors, and, second, when they expire and are due for closure, they will waste the time of the closer, who will have to close them as having accomplished nothing. The unregistered editor who has started these RFCs posts walls of text to talk pages complaining about bias. They have also posted to DRN, where they said they did not know what relief they were asking. The editor shows signs of being not here to contribute, but the immediate issue is the RFCs. Robert McClenon (talk) 08:05, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm asking for a neutral point of view on the matter, I like to make an edit but don't see it sticking when a biased editor gets more weight than people without an account. The complaint is both about the article and the user and I only included the user complaint because it has affected how the article is being presented.

I'm not sure what's not clear here.

The walls of texts are there exaclty to clear things, because as I have stated, it's not an easy topic and there is a lot going on. The bodhidharma page is not that big and on the zen page I included a tldr in the RFC to avoid all the trivial stuff.

This honestly feels like an attempt to silence rather than to engage, and my suspicion of that is further raised by the fact that I asked for a neutral point of view while you have already proven to be invested on one side of the discussion on the DRN, here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#Zen, so I'm not sure why you're engaging again.

the bias comlaint is according to wikipedia a founded one and deserves attention, eventhough I rather not have the discussion be about users, but rather just the content itself, which is not happening now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tendentious_editing#What_is_tendentious_editing?

Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikilawyering which is especially evident on the bodhidharma talk page

Another argument for the wall of texts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law, obviously it's not exactly gish galloping, but it's not far from it.

2A02:A210:BA9:9080:B953:3521:CEB7:BBD8 (talk) 08:37, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

• IP, you positively cannot have read the instructions for opening an RfC. I have hatted the illconceived RfCs and blocked 2A02:A210:BA9:9080::/64 for 48 hours for abuse of our processes. Bishonen | tålk 09:43, 9 October 2021 (UTC).
  • The range block has expired and the unregistered editor has replied on the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard talk page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard&type=revision&diff=1049351655&oldid=1047213922&diffmode=source The reply includes an attack on User:Joshua Jonathan, accusing him of religious fanaticism. I don't think that I need to request another block, but I will request semi-protection of WT:DRN for a period somewhat longer than the next block. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:04, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

• • • This also needs removal on COPYVIO grounds (simply too many long and extended quotes from other sources....) RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:10, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
      • And Talk:Zen, which was also the location of one of the two would-be RFCs, should be semi-protected. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:51, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
        • The /64 has been blocked for 1 month which seems the best choice. I don't see how forbidding other IPs from discussing improvements to Zen is better if a block would do, effectively punishing and harming others for the actions of one editor. When we could just deal with the actual problem editor in a way which does not harm others and frankly achieves the same result even for the targeted editor. (Yes this is one of my pet peeves as one admin well knows.) It's not like that /64 has ever done anything productive elsewhere and we could always use partial blocks if that were the case. No comment on DRN talk page, as it's somewhat internal to the project the inability of IPs to edit is perhaps not such a big deal. If the IP starts evading and it becomes impossible to just block then sure. Nil Einne (talk) 09:18, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
          • That answers that. I have been hesitant to request request range blocks when there is only one editor who is causing the problem, but maybe with IPv6 the blocks may be more precise. I will just collapse the diatribe on the DRN talk page. When the month is over, maybe the troll will find a different bridge to hide under. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:45, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Possible Backlog Building

New Safe Backlog Building™. Leaving backlogs to future generations since 1986. --Suffusion of Yellow (talk)

It appears a Backlog is gradually building at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations, could a sysop be so nice as to check it out? In the spirit of full transparency i should note that I filed a case so I believe I’m somewhat biased. Celestina007 (talk) 20:27, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

• Do we need a whole Building? Rgrds. --Bison X (talk) 22:18, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

  More importantly, what color will we paint the building? ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:24, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

  I think we can probably get away with just a bikeshed... — xaosflux ^Talk 16:59, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

  Should the bikeshed be the same color as the socks? Should we then ban bicyclists whose socks are mismatched? Robert McClenon (talk) 17:55, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Agreed that it's a problem, but I'm not sure what the resolution is. SPI is not enjoyable work and the number of active admins in this area has been dwindling for some time. A few months ago, we had 100+ open cases for weeks on end. -FASTILY 09:21, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

The soon-to-be new CUs will definitely be appreciated! 😁 ~TNT (she/her • talk) 10:02, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@ScottishFinnishRadish, Bison X, Suffusion of Yellow & TheresNoTime, I can see you all have a healthy sense of humor 😂. @Fastily it is indeed becoming a problem, one that needs fixing ASAP. Celestina007 (talk) 23:57, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

• Speaking of backlogs, RFPP could use some attention as well –FlyingAce^✈hello 15:06, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
• I am optimistic that the imminent addition of new CUs who have SPI experience (WP:CUOS2021) will be very helpful at reducing the backlog. In the meantime, back in May, I wrote a post on AN that offered some brief tips for helping out, if any admin is interested: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive333#Admin help needed at SPI. Mz7 (talk) 01:36, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Nothing constructive, please block this user

Not much to say, take a look at their contributions which haven't been constructive at all and go ahead and block Simko Sikak. --Semsûrî (talk) 21:18, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

• What is the issue? Please provide diffs of this user's conduct that you believe merit any sort of sanctions. --WaltCip-(talk) 12:47, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
• Also, every one of the edits is tagged "mobile", so this may well be a WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU issue. I see two users have tried communicating with Simko Sikak, but that may be of no use at all. (This issue has to be fixed soon, surely.) Happy days ~ Lindsay^Hello 15:10, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

I can see that the user has been blocked now by an admin. Every edit fell under NOTHERE so just check any. --Semsûrî (talk) 19:20, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Asking About An Article

Hello 👋 i just got a private email to create a draft for a user title= "HARSH VARDHAN SHARMA "TARA"/ is there any problem involving this article? i want to know details, like if any user got banned or sockpuppetery? thank you —— 🌸 Sakura emad 💖 (talk) 15:30, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

@Sakura emad: The article Harsh Vardhan Sharma was deleted on the 19th May 2016 as it was an "Article about a real person, which does not credibly indicate the importance or significance of the subject". I would suggest that any private request to create an article should be treated with extreme suspicion. The appropriate place for someone to request an article is Wikipedia:Requested articles. DuncanHill (talk) 15:39, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Sakura emad, I would advise against creating that article. Editors like ToBeFree are more familiar with that case than I, but I've had the dubious honour of getting an email too. Sdrqaz (talk) 16:46, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Y thank you both, @Sdrqaz  Done i refused to create the mentioned article Thank you —— 🌸 Sakura emad 💖 (talk) 16:56, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you very much for asking, Sakura emad, and Sdrqaz for the ping; I've received an email too. I thought they had specifically messaged me as their latest blocking administrator, so I muted them instead of revoking email access. As I've now learned that multiple people are affected, I'll prevent that from happening again when I block their future socks. Blablubbs has taken care of the latest one. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 17:22, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the service. —— 🌸 Sakura emad 💖 (talk) 17:30, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

They have come to WP:REFUND to restore this article along with the sockpuppets' attempts to do so. Pretty persistent about it. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:11, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Request to unblock account

Hello, for an unspecified reason my account was blocked from editing in Wikipedia. I have not done vandalism of any kind to any Wikipedia page, and the last edits I made were on my own personal sandbox, so I cannot understand why my account was blocked.

I sincerely request administrators to look into this issue, to check if this was an error, and if not, then give an explanation behind said action. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SomePacifisticGuy (talk • contribs) 17:52, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

@SomePacifisticGuy: Your block log is clear, there's no block message on your talk page, and you were able to post this here, so you are not blocked. I suspect you were either unintentionally or intentionally logged out, and saw a notice that a shared IP was blocked. Or your IP was hard blocked and now isn't anymore. Or just a software hiccup. But you aren't blocked and can go about your business. --Floquenbeam (talk) 17:58, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

@Floquenbeam: Thank you for the response, I checked again and now I'm able to edit again. It probably was a hiccup, but thank you very much for the quick response. SomePacifisticGuy (talk) 18:06, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

XLinkBot RevertList appears to be unattended

There are a couple of unanswered requests at User talk:XLinkBot/RevertList – the older one is from over a month ago. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:46, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Request removal of Extended Confirmed right.

Hi. I was editing a short time ago and was made aware in my watchlist that I have been given a right I didn't request and after reviewing what it was, I decide that I don't need that right since I'm never likely to use it. Could a passing administrator please remove it from my user rights? Thank you! --Dane|Geld 22:05, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

@DaneGeld: It's slightly different than many user rights. When you made your 10th edit and were here more than 4 days, you automatically got the "autoconfirmed" right. Now that it's been 500 edits and 30 days, you got the "extended confirmed" right. It just means you've been around long enough that you're unlikely to be a troublemaker on contentious pages. Now, I could remove the right, but are you sure you want that? In spite of any wording I can come up with, people who actively have their extended confirmed right removed are almost always troublemakers who tried to get it early. It might look bad. Plus, it does you no harm, and comes with no extra responsibility. Still, if you really want it removed, I can do that, just note it here. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:11, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

@Floquenbeam: If you would be so kind as to remove it, that would be ok. I'm no troublemaker, I simply don't want extra rights that I've not asked for. Thank you! Dane|Geld 22:30, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

 Done, see Special:UserRights/DaneGeld. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:33, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, I appreciate your help. Dane|Geld 22:36, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Tommi1986 - Corrupt user who is unaware of WP:OVERLINK

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I've said everything in that subject. Special mention goes to the war we got into on Miller Brewing Company. I want to remove an America link, and he wants to add it back. --87.97.21.203 (talk) 12:46, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

I see you reverted by three different users, and no discussion on the talk page. This appears to be a content dispute that you're edit warring with multiple users over. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 12:52, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Just don't edit-war, even if you are right. And what do you base the description "corrupt" on? A user being unaware of WP:OVERLINK (which Tommi1986 may or may not be) is far from evidence of corruption, just as the fact that you seem to be unaware of the requirement to tell an editor that you are complaining here about them, even though it is perfectly clear in the instructions, is not. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:11, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

This is purely a retaliatory report filed just after my reporting IP for edit warring. IP has been reverted by three editors and has made no attempt to discuss on talk page. Tommi1986 ^{let's talk!} 17:21, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

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using "draft" as an article by streamer

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this YouTuber and streamer use's this draft as an article

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Amir_EyZed

And he put this draft in his Twitter bio

https://twitter.com/AmirEyZed_

He is not famous enough to have an article on Wikipedia and he made the article to promote himself

Kasra092 (talk) 17:43, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

I've tagged the draft for G11. dudhhr_Contribs 17:52, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

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User with 67k+ edits blocked for copyvio

I've blocked User:Enthusiast01, who has over 67,000+ edits and 66,000+ edits to mainspace for copyright violations; they were warned 25 times since 2007 before I blocked them today; more background can be seen at User talk:Enthusiast01#Blocked. I've opened an investigation into their edits at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Enthusiast01, which hasn't been filled out with their edits yet- when it is, I would appreciate it if others could help sort through the mountain of edits. Given my previous posting here on the matter of dealing with copyright violations, and the extent of them in this case, I am posting this here so the communities eyes are on it. Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk/CCI guide} 04:06, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

One piece of good news in this, roughly 38,000 of their article edits are confined to their top thousand most edited articles. BD2412 T 05:18, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Cleavage

Toplessness

Naked male, clothed female

Doggy style

Ugh. Looking at those top-edited articles, it looks like they had a lot of the same interests Neelix did. I, for one, have no interest in sorting through 122 edits to [[ Clothed male, naked female]], 349 to toplessness, 107 to Doggy style, or 174 to Cleavage (breasts). Hog Farm _Talk 05:32, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Well, there goes my browser history again. Why do we even have an article about Clothed male, naked female, is that topic even notable -- Asartea ^{Talk | Contribs} 07:13, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

That article does seem to me to be tacking very close to the wind with respect to original research … firefly ( t · c ) 07:30, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

We have a separate one for clothed female, naked male, too. I'd tag them for merging but...I don't want to do the research required for a gender-neutral non-OR name for the idea :| ♠PMC♠ (talk) 07:48, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Hmm, nothing is coming up on google searches....so AfD time I think Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 09:41, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Those are porn categories, so you want to be putting them into pornhub or xhamster (or google with safesearch off) as their acronym. CFNM particularly. But you are almost certainly not going to get any sources *about* the topic. You will just get results confirming it exists and is a thing you can look at. Although the UK Metro did a piece on it. Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:58, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

well, yeah, apart from porn categories which I saw......and I don't recall Topfreedom being a notable term...? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:03, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

It is sort of, its been knocking around for years. Its a feminist movement term. There is certainly news coverage of it/when a protest hits. It makes a handy hashtag. RE CFNM, I was also replying in part to PMC. You couldnt move it to a gender-neutral title as its specifically a fetish involving gender dynamics. Its not OR (I am 100% certain that Enthusiast01 isnt responsible for it) as its named exactly for what you get. Ultimately it either needs to be nuked as not encyclopedic, moved to a 'list of sexual fetishes' or punted to wiktionary as its really just a definition. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:12, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@Hog Farm: The recent ones are mostly of world history and biography types, so if you don't want to look through the fetish-type stuff, I think this person did edit in other places. Oh well, I can add it to the alcohol and drugs CCI for the list of ones I can't open in class. Sennecaster (Chat) 18:16, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

For info, both pages are now at AfD: CMNF and CFNM. Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 11:56, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Hardly any user talk edits either. I've seen this happen far too many times before. MER-C 08:25, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Cleanup needed on sock farm

Delpansepapan (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has been identified and blocked as a sock of Dedy Tisna Amijaya (see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Dedy Tisna Amijaya). They have been involved extensively in moving unready (and often gibberish) drafts created by the sockmaster to main space. Administrator attention is needed to clean up the mess. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 21:13, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

That's a fair few 😢 ~TNT (she/her • talk) 21:22, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments: candidates appointed

The Arbitration Committee is pleased to welcome the following editors to the functionary team:

• Dreamy Jazz (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is appointed as a CheckUser and Oversighter.
• Ferret (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is appointed as a CheckUser.
• GeneralNotability (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is appointed as a CheckUser.
• Girth Summit (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is appointed as a CheckUser.
• LuK3 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is appointed as an Oversighter.
• RoySmith (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is appointed as a CheckUser.

The committee thanks all members of the community who participated and helped bring this process to a successful conclusion.

Katie^talk 04:44, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments: candidates appointed

Some unknown ip is giving threats to me

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I did a report of a guy and he is blocked by wikipedia admin now he is again threatening me on my wikipedia userpage, he is also deleting my edits which i have done on several pages he is messing up me. I request to an admin to solve this issue as soon as possible. He is a kid and psycho. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vikassharmasafidon (talk • contribs) 09:33, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

It looks like this is resolved? All of the IPs that I can see that have interacted with the OP have been blocked. Vikassharmasafidon, if that's not the case, a few diffs or links to the places where this is happening would be helpful. Primefac (talk) 11:00, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

If possible than protect my user talk page from newly member or ip address and hide my edit history from newly added member or ip address. It will be more beneficial for me. So I can be feel relex and calm — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vikassharmasafidon (talk • contribs) 11:03, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@Vikassharmasafidon: I've semi-protected your talk page for 1 week ~TNT (she/her • talk) 11:11, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

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Request to review my block of Murky Falls

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

Yesterday, I blocked Murky Falls for an indefinite duration. The story was that I was patrolling copyright violations, and found out that the user copied the text from external source with some insufficient paraphrasing (only visible to administrators here). After having processed the case, I went to their talk page, where they keep the following text: "DON'T LEAVE ANY MESSAGES ON MY TALK PAGE. I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY, I'M JUST NOT INTERESTED / NO EXCEPTIONS". Despite this, I felt that compliance with copyright legislation is not optional in our project and left this message at their homepage. Their response was (at my talk page) this. I interpreted this as a refusal to comply with the copyright policy, and blocked them indef. Now, after waking up, I think that since the personal attack was directed at me, possibly my interpretation was a stretch, and since this is their first block, it is good to have the block reviewed. Thanks.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:50, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

I would have thought that message in their talk page was posted after too many templated warnings, or something similar, but no – the only message posted before they put up that warning was an ordinary welcome message. Doesn't strike me as someone willing to edit collaboratively. –FlyingAce^✈hello 06:07, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

They don't care about copyright, hurl abuse at passersby and say they have no interest in working with others. Sounds like they're not especially suited to Wikipedia editing. Thank you for helping them to find another hobby. -- Euryalus (talk) 09:55, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

WP:5P4 & WP:NOTHERE, it's a good block in my eyes. Cabayi (talk) 12:39, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

The only thing I'm confused about is why you had any doubts. Given their knowledge of banning, I also suspect they're a sock, but we don't even have to go there to justify the block. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:46, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ymblanter: I was in the midst of blocking Murky Falls yesterday, but you were faster with the buttons. The outcome would have been the same regardless of which admin wielded the mop in this case.-- Jezebel's Ponyo^{bons mots} 16:27, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

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User refusing to change signature that has no correlation to username

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Hi there, as the subject says, not sure how to proceed. WP:CUSTOMSIG/P says it's a policy that "A customised signature should make it easy to identify your username". Will refrain from naming the user directly at this moment, pending other's opinions on what happens in this scenario. Thanks. Cable10291 (talk) 06:36, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Please see the notice at the top of this page: When you start a discussion about an editor, you must leave a notice on the editor's talk page. This "not naming names" stuff doesn't work on Wikipedia, where anyone can look at your contributions and figure out who you're talking about in a matter of seconds. Please do the user you're talking about the courtesy of telling them that they're being talking about. – Joe (talk) 06:54, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

My apologies, Joe. Cable10291 (talk) 07:10, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Tut-tut and think poorly of them, otherwise let them be. —Kusma (talk) 07:11, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

People who have had accounts for 1 month should not take it upon themselves to enforce the cultural norms of a community of this size, age, and scope. Go improve an encyclopedia article. --JBL (talk) 12:02, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

@Cable10291: I guess you're talking about Mrschimpf, given you raised this on their talkpage right before coming here. You're certainly not the first person to raise this query: indeed there was an RfC on it a few months ago, which can be found here. After some lengthy discussion there was no consensus for requiring signatures to resemble the username they referred to. On that basis there's no policy violation in Mrschimpf having a sig saying "Nate." I can't personally see the point of customised sigs but to each their own I guess, provided it doesn't flash bright colours, impersonate people or otherwise seriously disrupt the editing environment. In passing the first dotpoint of WP:CUSTOMSIG/P perhaps relates more to signatures that are unintelligible characters or emojis; it's the third-last dotpoint that relates to sigs that use normal characters but don't match user accounts. -- Euryalus (talk) 07:19, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Given the result of the RfC Euryalus mentions, the first bulletpoint is pretty meaningless indeed. I had added a note to the end of "It is common practice for a signature to resemble to some degree the username it represents" but didn't remove the first one. Things like using totally different names in the signature, using bright colors or text highlighting, emojis, etc. are things that come up over and over again, annoy lots of people, and can confuse newbies (and not so newbies), but at the end of the day there's never quite consensus to enforce anything beyond the most egregious examples. So you can ask people, of course, and communicate why you think it's an issue, but there's no obligation, so don't be surprised if you hear back some wiki equivalent of "it's a free country". — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 10:48, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

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Off-wiki nonsense and a series of unfortunate coincidences...

The article Matthew Tye (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) has been deleted three times, and is currently protected. The last AFD was 3 years ago, back in 2018. The AFD was closed by Sandstein who deleted the article. Last year, the South China Morning Post posted a story about expats in China which arguably gives Tye some coverage. Not a lot, but some.

• Fast forward a year. Admin WhisperToMe (who has commented on the talk page of Tye's broadcast partner Winston Sterzel) arrives on the talk page of editor Shritwod to advocate for the article's restoration on September 15. Though there are clear instructions about contacting the admin who deleted the article (ie. Sandstein), Whisper began a discussion with the nominator (from that AFD back in 2018) citing that article as a reason for restoration (from back in 2020).
• Four days later (on September 19), editor Infograbber19 happens to make the same mistake, independent of Whisper, and arrives at the nominator's talk page to advocate for restoration.
• Five days later (on September 24), editor Demetrios1993 happens to make the same mistake, independent of Whisper and Infograbber, and arrives at the nominator's talk page to advocate for restoration.
• Turns out that on September 16, the day after Whisper's post in the wrong place, the subject of the article posted to Reddit asking his fans and supporters to help him have his article restored. He provided (slightly incorrect) step-by-step instructions as to how this should be done, along with a list of sources (many of which don't appear to be WP:RS).

Having failed to convince Shritwod (which is not a requirement for restoration anyway), the article (and it's 3 year old AFD) were brought to DRV by Infograbber. Infograbber, whose very first edit was to request the article's restoration, is a new account that has made very few edits outside of this subject. The account has otherwise followed the article subject's instructions precisely, with the exception of showing up on Shritwod's talk page.

Demetrios has since provided an explanation for his involvement, but in doing do pointed out that my original interpretation of the chronology (at DRV) was incorrect. Whisper's randomly-timed advocacy for restoration came a day before the article's subject went to Reddit to request exactly that sort of advocacy for restoration. Whisper then provided an explanation at DRV saying that they read the Reddit thread and thought contacting the nominator was the correct process. And in doing so, they strangely pinged their own account. That's right, an admin responding to accusations of sock-puppetry accidentally addressed a comment to their own account. They then rectified the ping, then changed their story about the Reddit thread, and then changed their story about contacting the nominator. At a minimum, accepting those rectifying edits at face value, we have an admin confirming undeclared off-wiki canvassing and concerted meat-puppetry in support of efforts by an article's subject to secure coverage here. St★lwart¹¹¹ 03:11, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

@Stalwart111: The post complaining about it was written by someone else (in other words, someone not "an article's subject"), I recall, not Tye. (It was a comment on some other thread merely complaining about it. I did not contact that person) I didn't see that as off-wiki canvassing: merely as something that jogged my memory to revisit the Tye case. I mean if it's interpreted as such, I apologize for that and won't use external comments as a basis for opening discussions. Anyhow I regularly edit like this, and the explanation for the editing style is that I'm trying to remember something that happened over a month ago. It's me retracing my steps and making changes as I write. WhisperToMe (talk) 03:14, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Updated I found the relevant thread. It was the top level comment on this thread that inspired me. In that comment CMilk/Tye was merely grousing about his article being deleted, but not yet advocating for it to be restored. I had decided to contact the nominating admin before CMilk started canvassing. It seems the news about the Wikipedia editors being blocked in China was what inspired him. WhisperToMe (talk) 03:43, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

You acknowledge you saw a different thread (and above) advocating the same thing, with the same instructions, supported by the article's subject, a few days earlier. Then you went straight to the nominator's page the next day to seek its restoration. A new account posted in that thread and then came to your talk page asking for advice as to how they might get the article restored. You knew there was an off-wiki effort to achieve just that. You knew because you were involved in that effort already. Rather than counsel that new account about the inappropriateness of WP:ADVOCACY you continued your own advocacy, and made no mention of Reddit until you were facing accusations of sock-puppetry at DRV. That is wildly inappropriate behaviour for an experienced editor, let alone an admin. Worst-case-scenario, you and Infograbber are the same person and the advocacy, timing, location and editing mistakes all make perfect sense. Best-case-scenario, you're an admin who has intentionally involved themselves in some pretty underhanded conduct. St★lwart¹¹¹ 04:08, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

@Stalwart111: I am not User:Infograbber and a checkuser should make that clear. Now, yes I did read laowhy86's top-level comment where he complained, that did inspire me to contact the nominator. I did not contact laowhy86 or promise him anything: the step to contact the nominator was done by myself without prompting from him. I did not interpret that as "canvassing" because laowhy86 was not yet outright advocating for action on his Wikipedia page: he was merely complaining about it, and I felt it was unnecessary to tell the nominator that I got the idea from a Reddit post. Anyhow this is my mistake and I promise not to do this again. As for Infograbber I didn't look into the account at all: I didn't know his background but I assumed it was an infrequent user. At some point later I recall reading the post posted by laowhy where he did advocate for that, but I didn't put two and two together. WhisperToMe (talk) 04:19, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

If you aren't Infograbber, you certainly knew why that single-purpose account suddenly appeared out of the blue (3 years after that AFD) to support your advocacy; it wasn't coincidence or luck. They had seen the same Reddit thread you had (or the one you saw later). They were there for the same reason you were. And it wasn't to build an encyclopedia. St★lwart¹¹¹ 04:32, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

@Stalwart111: I didn't read their editing history. I personally felt that that they were not making a good case and were spamming too many low quality sources, but I didn't look into their contributions. Since I didn't read their contributions I didn't see that they were an SPI. WhisperToMe (talk) 04:36, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

And I opened Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/WhisperToMe on myself so a checkuser can confirm that I am not Infograbber. WhisperToMe (talk) 04:40, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

And? You were still fully aware of your own motivations for advocating restoration (which, to be clear, are a problem on their own). You knew the AFD was three years old and the best source you could come up with was a year old. It didn't strike you as strange that someone might have had an unrelated miraculous revelation that just happened to neatly align with your own 4-day-old, off-wiki revelation? It didn't occur to you, given your own off-wiki motivations for suddenly advocating restoration, to query if their advocacy might have been prompted by the same Reddit thread as yours? C'mon, mate, we weren't born yesterday. St★lwart¹¹¹ 05:00, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

@Stalwart111:

• 1. "You knew the AFD was three years old and the best source you could come up with was a year old." - That's exactly the point: when new information comes up, it can justify re-examining the previous decision. Cmilk's change to being an anti-CCP activist was a relatively recent development and that was covered by the SCMP, which is listed as generally reliable here Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources#Sources. An article requires a minimum of two sources.
• 2. "It didn't occur to you, given your own off-wiki motivations for suddenly advocating restoration" - I didn't believe Cmilk's argument (which is perhaps why I didn't repeat the post to the original AFD nominator), but my motivation is that I wrote bios on other foreign celebrities in China, like Amy Lyons, Afu Thomas, Lee and Oli Barrett, etc. and since I knew Laowhy/Cmilk was also one and his had been deleted before, I figured I wanted to write one myself. But that meant talking about the deletion with people previously involved.
• 3. "It didn't occur to you, given your own off-wiki motivations for suddenly advocating restoration, to query if their advocacy might have been prompted by the same Reddit thread as yours?" - That would have required actively checking their post history, which I did not do. Because the user had content on his user page, the link did not appear red, so without clicking the account name and checking the contribs I can't see that it's a new account.

WhisperToMe (talk) 05:10, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

• 1. A year-old source is not "new"; we're talking about two users with the same sudden interest 4 days apart (one of them brand new), and then 3 users 8 days apart. All at the WP:WRONGVENUE. It was clearly prompted by Reddit, not that source or "coincidence".
• 2. So you didn't believe him, but his post "inspired" you to advocate for his article to be restored?
• 3. No, it would simply have required you to remember what had prompted your sudden interest in the same 3-year-old AFD just 4 days earlier.

Your entire explanation is so ridiculously incredible it borders on trolling. St★lwart¹¹¹ 05:31, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

1. It is in the context that the source did not exist in the last AFD.

2. Yes, in that I remembered that he didn't have an article and thought maybe I could look into establishing one.

3. Well... frankly the whole situation is ridiculous and stupid and I regret being in this. I feel really stupid right now.

WhisperToMe (talk) 05:38, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

@WhisperToMe and Stalwart111: Let's just chill out and let the new SPI sort itself out, alright friends? Did you know that the Killer Whale is actually a type of dolphin? Isn't that a neat fact? –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 05:58, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Seriously though, you both have had your say. Other people will weigh in now; you know the drill. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 06:05, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

@MJL: That's WP:DYN quality right there! ––FormalDude talk 07:08, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

I agree. There appears to be material for an interesting DYK!--Berig (talk) 07:15, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm a little surprised you don't know about WP:CHECKME, MJL. I've closed the SPI with no action taken. That being said, I do agree that they've both had their say, and it's time for others to weigh in on the matter. Primefac (talk) 07:37, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

@Primefac: I do, but I didn't feel it was my place to say anything about that (considering I'm neither a SPI clerk nor admin). Either way, the SPI would probably be a better forum to discuss the behavioral evidence than here imo. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 23:44, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

I would like to begin by correcting again something. Above it was stated that the "Matthew Tye" article has been deleted three times already. While an article by the name "Matthew Tye" has indeed been deleted three times, the first one seems to be about a totally different individual. So, in reality, an article about Matthew Tye – the YouTuber – has only been deleted two times. Second, although User:Stalwart111 did mention that i already provided an explanation for my involvement, he didn't elaborate, and i believe it is proper for me to provide the aforementioned explanation one more time here, for the rest of the users that are reading this thread.

• To answer your question, i ended up participating in the discussion, right after Uzer:Infograbber19 posted in the talk page of Tye's business partner, Winston Sterzel (diff). I have Sterzel's article in my watchlist, and after i saw his post, i simply reviewed his contributions and joined the discussion (diff). You can easily see this from the fact that both diffs are from the 24th of September and approximately three hours apart, yet the discussion had began from the 15th of September. Also, this is the first time i see this Reddit thread, and besides, i was interested in the creation of a new article from August, as i wrote in the aforementioned discussion. Furthermore, the Reddit thread didn't begin "a few days before the above nonsense started" (15th of September), but one day later (16th of September). – relevant discussion

Third, about the statement "[t]hough there are clear instructions about contacting the admin who deleted the article" by User:Stalwart111, at the very least, neither User:Infograbber19, nor myself, can be considered to have any experience with article restoration, or knowledge of its guidelines, prior of now. User:Infograbber19, doesn't have more than 50 edits (as of this post), while myself 2,290 edits in the English Wikipedia (and 3,494 in all Wikis), and i have never requested for article restoration. In short, there are indications that neither User:Infograbber19, nor myself, were even aware of a guideline that we have to contact the admin who deleted the article in the last respective nomination. You can even reason that based on what i wrote in my very first comment in User_talk:Shritwod#Matthew_Tye; namely that i was planning to create an article about the individual, and didn't mention anything about beginning a discussion with anyone. As far as i knew then, i could just recreate an article, and if any concerns would arise in the future, it could always be nominated again for deletion. I created my account back in 2019, but i have been active for only 1 year, and everyday i keep learning something new. Last, even though i learned User:WhisperToMe is an admin, i don't know his exact experience/knowledge with article restoration guidelines; however, i wouldn't be so harsh and decisive on him. Even if he knew the guideline, he might have misunderstood it, or could have even confused the closer/admin of the third AfD, as another administrator (User:Amakuru) who replied yesterday (diff) said that he/she did. Demetrios1993 (talk) 20:16, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

I knew that the nominator was the nominator and not the closer, but I would not have filed a DRV if I wouldnt have gotten progress with the collective editors who participated in the prior discussions, and the DRV was filed by somebody else. I didn't review the DRV guidelines because I didnt feel I was ready to do so (if I had I would have read the part about needing to talk to the closer and not the nominator), and I never filed a DRV anyway. WhisperToMe (talk) 20:32, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Article Les Clark

An crosswiki LTA vandalizes the article Les Clark, please protect the page WikiBayer (talk) 11:08, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected for a period of one week, after which the page will be automatically unprotected. WikiBayer, please use WP:RFPP/I for protection requests. This noticeboard isn't for that. Thanks. El_C 11:32, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

English spelling of a book

According to this screenshot, the correct English spelling of Ekti Khuner Shwapno is Ekti Khuner Svapna, so the article Ekti Khuner Shwapno should be redirected to Ekti Khuner Svapna. ম সাদেক (talk) 12:36, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

That link is to a 404 error page. In any case, this issue should be raised on Talk:Ekti Khuner Shwapno. Please see Wikipedia:Article titles for our policy on naming articles, and Wikipedia:Requested moves for more information on how to request a move, if appropriate. - Donald Albury 14:49, 17 October 2021 (UTC)