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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

Whatsupkarren / (Tariq afflaq) unban request (reopened)

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

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• Special:permalink/1097008915#Whatsupkarren / (Tariq afflaq) unban request reopened from archive per email request

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Whatsupkarren is requesting unblock/unban, and is sock of Tariq afflaq . Roy Smith noted in the prior unban request that user no longer has the original account password, and that he recommended requesting unban with this account. User is WP:3X banned as Tariq afflaq. This is, of course, a checkuser block.

• Whatsupkarren (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
• Tariq afflaq (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
• Prior unban request
• Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Tariq afflaq/Archive

Request to be unbanned

It’s been more than a year, I haven’t made any edit on English Wikipedia, used sockpuppets or anything like that since I was banned a year ago, I fully understand why I was blocked, and then banned, I admit my mistakes, I own up to my irresponsible reckless activities years ago, I apologize to all of Wikipedia community, and promise that will never ever engage in such activities again. the ban gave me a chance to acquaint myself with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, I think the ban is no longer necessary because I understand why I was banned: 1. Sockpuppetry, years ago I created many socks ( 18, not mentioning non registered edits ) and impersonated some users, but I now know that I should not create accounts to mislead, circumvent blocks, or avoid any kind of sanctions. 2. Edit warring and vandalism, my approach to dealing with fellow users was rather barbaric, I now know that disagreements should be resolved through discussing the issue on the associated talk page or seeking help at appropriate venues. 3.I also know that I should remain civil and should not use improper language and should avoid responding in a contentious and antagonistic manner. I also want to add that I've created more than 50 articles on Arabic and French Wikipedias in the past year. I hope this appeal addresses all of your concerns, if not, please point them out. thanks for your time.

Carried over from user talk by --Deepfriedokra (talk) 13:27, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

• Checkuser needed for starters, as this is a CU block and can only be considered after a CU has looked at it. No comment on the merits at this time. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 15:36, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

   Unlikely but it's a noisy range. @Mz7: had the most luck last time and I believe it's worth a second set of eyes here in case I missed something. To be clear, barring new evidence, my findings clear the checkuser part of the block and mean this unblock request may now be considered on the merits. --Yamla (talk) 15:46, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

• I haven't looked into this appeal too deeply yet, but it looks like at the previous unban request, I provided a decent summary of the background here and why I was opposed at the time: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive338#Whatsupkarren / Tariq afflaq unban request. I think at least this part of what I said back then probably still applies: If the community does want to extend leniency to this user, I would strongly suggest also attaching some unblock conditions, e.g. a topic ban from Syria-related topics, broadly construed. Mz7 (talk) 01:53, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
• Looking at the editting on other wikis, it appears to all be around Syria and people of Syrian decent, which appears to be part of the reason they were originally blocked. - LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 17:11, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
• I'm always up for a second chance. I do think that a TBan from Syria-related topics, to be appealed after a minimum of six months, would be necessary - on the understanding that they would need to demonstrate a capacity to edit constructively in that time, not merely wait for it to time out then appeal. There would also need to be an agreement to stick to one account. Girth Summit _(blether) 23:11, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
• Unblock per WP:LASTCHANCE, with a six month Syria related topic ban and a one account restriction. Cullen328 (talk) 17:20, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
• Accept under the conditions of a indef topic ban for Syria, and an indef one account restriction, with either restriction being appealable after 6 months of actual editing. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 10:55, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

• Decline until they show any interest in editing any other topic. When was the last time that Whatsupkarren/Tariq afflaq made any edit to a non-English Wikipedia that wouldn't have been a direct violation of their topic ban here? I mean, their most recent Wikipedia mainspace edits were a month ago on ptwiki, to pt:Moise Safra—where they were re-adding claims asserting Syrian nationality to a biography, as part of a slow-motion edit war on that article. For reference, he was trying to make essentially the same edit (since reverted) to enwiki's Moise Safra in December 2020, just hours before his original indefinite enwiki block. (And again as an IP evading his block less than a month later. And then as a sock two weeks after that. And then as another sock three months later.)
  This editor has not shown that they are capable of editing anywhere outside of their topic ban. Instead, they've spent their time outside of enwiki exporting the same 'Syrian-tagging' disputes to multiple other Wikipedia projects. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 12:18, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
• Comment Non-plussed by user's feeing that edit warring is not edit warring if they have a good reason for edit warring. An opinion shared by many of the edit warriors I have encountered. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 17:34, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

  edit for the bot to not archive before close --Deepfriedokra (talk) 01:50, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

  Answered adequately. Comment struck Deepfriedokra (talk) 02:30, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

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--Deepfriedokra (talk) 14:35, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

• Endorse Unblock per Girth Summit, Cullen328, and Dennis Brown above. Appealable-in-six-months TBan from Syria-related topics, agreement to stick to one account. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 14:48, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
• Lift ban, unblock with Syria topic ban and one account restriction as suggested by others. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:09, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
• Comment (I actually started closing, thinking it was clearcut, before realising that it's only actually slightly in favour of an unblock at the moment). @Whatsupkarren: - can you point to recent activity on another project on a topic other than Syria? What would you do here if you were unblocked but TBANNED on Syria? Nosebagbear (talk) 08:08, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

  @Whatsupkarren emailing a response isn't the best thing to do - answering on your talk page with a ping is fine. Am I fine to post the content of your email response? Nosebagbear (talk) 13:10, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

  Drat, just when it was getting good --Deepfriedokra (talk) 21:52, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

• Lift ban, unblock with a TBAN on Syria stuff. WP:STANDARDOFFER. Iamreallygoodatcheckers (talk) 04:19, 20 July 2022 (UTC)
• I don't exactly endorse unblocking, but I am not opposed either as long as the Syria topic ban is placed as a condition for unblocking. Am interested in reading the response to Nosebagbear's question above. Mz7 (talk) 03:02, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose 18 admitted sockpuppets used to deceive, threatening off-wiki hacking, impersonating an editor, and a nationalistic POV pusher to boot. They had almost a week to answer Nosebagbear's question & failed to do so. Timesink 101, can only harm WP. Rgrds. --Bison X (talk) 21:57, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  Struck because they weak opposed/supported indef topic ban below. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 14:53, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

  Reply to @Bison X: carried over by me.

  I didn't fail to answer, I emailed the admin on July 18th. Thanks for your time Whatsupkarren (talk) 12:55, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

  Deepfriedokra (talk) 19:50, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

  As was noted by admin 1 week ago Deepfriedokra (talk) 19:53, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

  Ah, thank you for that. I couldn't find it on-wiki so I didn't have much to go on. I don't see how a few dime-a-dozen vandal reverts (as noted on their talk page) counters the deception, the intimidation and the masquerading. Net negative. Rgrds. --Bison X (talk) 00:02, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

  @Whatsupkarren: Re: your response (copied from your user talk):

  They’re not really a few dime a dozens,

  per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Rollback "While there is no fixed requirement, a request is unlikely to be successful without a contribution history that demonstrates an ability to distinguish well-intentioned edits with minor issues from unconstructive vandalism. Rollback is not for very new users: it is unlikely that editors with under 200 mainspace edits will have their request granted.”

  i did more than 600 space edits, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Whatsupkarren&offset=20210222045519&limit=500&target=Whatsupkarren Whatsupkarren (talk) 03:33, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

  That really doesn't clarify anything, other than turning "a few" into "600" and a quote from the rollback page. While looking into this, there are several pages of of tangled webs that were woven, what with the SPI page, the several sock contribution pages & talk pages, the last ANI, this ANI and your current talk page. Forgive me if I have overlooked anything, but I do not see where you directly addressed some concerns that were brought up by User:Mz7, specifically:

  You were accused of pretended to be Chris O'Hare, who had just been blocked, in order to try and trick administrators into thinking Chris O'Hare was evading their block. I could not find where you were doing this, but is this true? What is your response to this?

  You also also threatened to "hack" someone else's Facebook account. in this edit. What is your response to this?

  You continually say you didn't know the rules on Wikipedia, so you didn't know socking was prohibited. But, with the Sidoc account alone, you were trying to impose a chilling effect on another user so you could win a dispute. How can you believe that would be an acceptable action to take against another volunteer editor even if it wasn't against the rules?

  Again, since there are so many different discussions, and this was never directly addressed at the last ANI, it seems reasonable (even if you addressed these elsewhere) to address these here in this discussion. Please respond to the 3 questions. Rgrds. --Bison X (talk) 20:43, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

• User answered Nosebagbear's question on their talk. I asked them to chunk it down, and in a nutshell, "reverting vandalism."Deepfriedokra (talk) 23:22, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
• Reply to BisonX carried over by DFO

1) Yes, it’s true that I impersonated a user and I admitted that in my appeal.

“ I understand why I was banned: 1. Sockpuppetry, years ago I created many socks ( 18, not mentioning non registered edits ) and impersonated some users, but I now know that I should not create accounts to mislead, circumvent blocks, or avoid any kind of sanctions.”

2) Yes, I admitted that I threatened a user to hack their account, it was all talk i don’t even use Facebook, but now I know that threatening is completely forbidden on Wikipedia per WP:HAR

3) I wanted to say that at first, when i was using Tariq Afflaq, I didn’t know that using another account after being blocked is prohibited, I did know later, and continued socking using sidoc, oxforder, whatsupkarren, OhioanRCS and the other later accounts until the ban was palced on me, and I completely own up to it,

for example:

When my main account Tariq Afflaq was blocked for 48 hours, I immediately created a sock ( George51725w5218 ), and returned to the same talk page that I was arguing in using Tariq Afflaq, this is some of that I said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/992247224

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/992248330

If I had known that was wrong, I wouldn’t have come to the same TP and continued the discussion as if nothing happened, my point is, AT THE VERY BEGINNING, what I did was out of ignorance and not out of intended abusiveness, but I'm not arguing that I'm not guilty at all, it was my fault not informing myself with the policies.

Regards Whatsupkarren (talk) 23:05, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Deepfriedokra (talk) 23:32, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

You seem sincere and open about your appeal, but to me the deception you used shouldn't have been excused by ignorance; rather it shouldn't have been done out of respect to the encyclopedia and, oh yeah, the other people editing in that area. I don't know, to me it seems like a deal breaker, but several admins above are open to a T-BAN and a one-account limitation — they are the ones who would have to deal with any further disruptions. My gut says no, but I don't have to deal with it. I guess the reviewing admin can consider me a weak oppose on an unblock, but if unblocked, support an indefinite ban from Syria-related topics, broadly construed, and a one account limitation. Rgrds. --Bison X (talk) 00:50, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

• With some dismay that this has been open for so long, I support a last-chance unban, conditional on an indefinite Syria topic ban. --Dylan620 (he/him · talk · edits) 17:19, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
• The purpose of this comment is to prevent the bot from sending this to the archive without resolution yet again. Can an admin please close this? --Dylan620 (he/him · talk · edits) 16:34, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

  or even a non admin? -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 21:51, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

  @Deepfriedokra: Since this involves blocking, how can a non admin close this? I mean how will the closer enforce their closing? Comr Melody Idoghor (talk) 23:16, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

  Oh, snap. That's a good question. Curses. Foiled again. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 23:23, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

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

Another tranche of mass-created geostubs

In random-articling I came across a group of some 500 Bangladeshi placename stubs all sourced to GEONAMES alone and created in bulk over several sessions by one editor. I understand there might be the possibility of getting these deleted en masse rather either PRODding or AfDing each one. Mangoe (talk) 03:46, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Not much use without details...? Which ones, who? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 07:29, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Depends on the circumstances. Probably there will need to be consensus to delete en masse. Malcolmxl5 (talk) 17:20, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Indeed, we need significantly more information before we can determine what is the best course of action. Unless they meet a speedy deletion criterion there will need to be a consensus to mass delete (but given Mangoe is an experienced editor I presume they would have just tagged them for CSD if they did), and that will not arise without a clear indication both exactly what the issues are and what the scale of those issues is. The first thing to do is to look at a sample of them and determine whether they are mostly correct or not (GeoNames' accuracy is best described as variable) - if they are correct then we should probably look to better source them rather than delete them, especially if there is potentially useful information in there articles. Thryduulf (talk) 19:43, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Actually, we seem to be doing these as regular bulk AfDs so I'll be going over there. Mangoe (talk) 20:09, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

@Elmidae: I have not seen an AfD at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Bangladesh about putative populated places, so we will need more information. What is the specific article you came across? Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Bangladesh should be notified as well. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 01:34, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

@LaundryPizza03: I assume that was intended as @Mangoe:? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 07:22, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia used to test behaviour of Irish judges

In Irish news today ([1] [2]) it was noted that a research project at NUI Maynooth created 75 articles about Supreme Court of Ireland cases in order to test whether Irish judges were using Wikipedia to research case law when writing judgments.

It appears that most articles in Category:Supreme Court of Ireland cases were created in this project, coordinated by User:AugusteBlanqui. Most of the involved users can be found at [3] but this is not a complete or exhaustive list.

I'm a little non-plussed about Wikipedia being used this way, but the articles seem mostly OK. Just running it by my fellow admins to see if there are any views. Stifle (talk) 09:04, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Let me know if anyone has questions. We had feedback from Wikiproject Law and NPP. I am familiar with WP:NOTLAB and these articles first and foremost are a valuable contribution to the encyclopedia. Before this project there were only about six articles on Irish Supreme Court cases. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 09:09, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

AugusteBlanqui, could you post links to the discussions you say took place at Wikiproject Law and at NPP please? Could you also describe your relationship with the project - I'm not asking you to give anything away about your private identify, but was this work done as part of your job? Girth Summit _(blether) 11:12, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Here's the Wikiproject Law outreach: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Law/Archive 23#Irish Supreme Court cases

NPP: Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers/Archive 37#Irish Supreme Court cases articles

This project was incidental to my job.

AugusteBlanqui (talk) 11:20, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

• I guess I am not understanding what the issue is here? If we have decent articles due to the actions of this group, I don't see how their motivation is relevant. NOTLAB seems to refer to things like breaching experiments or test editing. It's also not our concern if Irish judges use Wikipedia for their research- it may be a concern to the people of Ireland, but not us. 331dot (talk) 11:22, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, the media coverage is missing a bit of nuance (shocker). The issue is not that the articles are poor quality, they are not bad to some quite strong; the issue is that the judges use the articles on Wikipedia for precedent rather than other cases that perhaps are as applicable/relevant but could lead to different legal conclusions or arguments but are not on Wikipedia. Regarding being immediately brought to Admin Notice board, I do find it peculiar. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 11:29, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

  To be clear, this experiment was based on the presence/absence of information, rather than putting potentially incorrect information up to see if it was used? That is probably the main concern here. If the intention included making accurate articles, which seems to be the case based on the Wikiproject and NPP discussions linked above, that seems fine. Perhaps the control group of articles may also see the light of day when no longer needed for research. CMD (talk) 12:47, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, exactly. The research looked at the impact on citations in legal decisions of a case having a Wikipedia article. The articles we created help fill a lacuna on Wikipedia--the almost complete absence of Irish Supreme Court cases. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 12:54, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

• This is an odd posting. If you read the newspaper article properly, the issue is that Irish high court judges – and/or their clerks – are quoting/paraphrasing from Wikipedia articles on historical major Irish legal cases. If anything, the Wikipedia editors who created these articles are to be commended for the quality of their work. 78.19.224.254 (talk) 12:53, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

• I'm not seeing any problems here. I spot-checked a few of the students' user pages. They all seem to be totally up-front about disclosing the relationship (example: Chocolate2206) so no issues there. I can't find any policy that this violates. On the contrary, it seems like it was a net positive to the encyclopedia by getting some articles written about subjects we should be covering. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:09, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

  So there was "AN-scope" in the sense that if there'd been a major dearth of disclosure then we'd have to decide to waive any concerns (or not) due to the net improvement of the encyclopedia. Especially since it could be a paid breach depending on how it was done. But Roy's noting that the relationships were noted. In which case we have better articles and no worries, the ideal combo. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:01, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

• Here's the preprint on SSRN fwiw — TheresNoTime (talk • she/her) 14:20, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
• This is group academic use of Wikipedia done correctly. Ambitious undergrad college professors trying to organize miniature classroom edit-a-thons should take notes from this.--🌈WaltCip-(talk) 15:01, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

  Thank you! We strove to put the encyclopedia first. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 15:12, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

• Many things motivate users to edit Wikipedia. This is one I’ve not heard before. However, there’s been no harm to the encyclopedia, we’ve got some quality articles from it and hopefully, we'll get more. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 17:16, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
• This is great, thank you to the researchers for doing this project. I'm particularly pleased to see the team's transparency in the approach and the quality of the articles (good enough to be plagiarized!). Stifle probably should have talked to the researchers before asking for opinions at AN. Finally I'll add: how Wikipedia law articles influence Irish judges is absolutely something we should care about at Wikipedia, it's not just something of concern to the people of Ireland. For the people of Ireland, this shows their judges are relying on Wikipedia. For the people of Wikipedia, it shows the same thing: just how much influence these articles have on the real world. That's why our policies like WP:V and WP:NPOV and WP:BLP are so important. What we write here can change the world. It's paramount we get it right. (Non-administrator comment) Levivich (talk) 18:33, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

• Judges shouldn't be using Wikipedia this way, but it's outside of our realm. They should be using the existing law books, which take a little longer and is in the best interest of good law, but again, outside of our realm. As long as the articles are good articles, I don't see any problem with the creation. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 20:00, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

• Similar to WaltCip, I'm wondering how we can get all the other universities to run their own even larger versions of studies like this. I learned about this from Ori sending me a link to <https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/how-wikipedia-influences-judicial-behavior>. It looks like there's also some coverage at <https://news.mit.edu/2022/study-finds-wikipedia-influences-judicial-behavior-0727> too, for anyone interested. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:17, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

• I'm just going to plug the proposal for a new multilingual sister project (WikiLaw) since it's incidental to this thread. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 16:19, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

• There's very little written in the paper itself about conducting research via Wikipedia, the ethics involved, or about what apropos policies and guidelines we have in place about it. The authors do pay small service to saying they made sure the articles were notable and not plagiarized but this is just barely addressed and not within a dedicated section. I would have liked any person who reads that article to have a good understanding of what would be considered proper vs improper editing of Wikipedia and that this project operated within those bounds. E.g., It would have been good to have a link to m:Research:FAQ, Wikipedia:Student assignments, and any number of other policies and guidelines too. As it stands, I think it reads will encourage others to do research without much thought on the benefit or harm it might cause to Wikipedia itself, similar to situations in the past that caused large disruption. There's other issues as well. This kind of editing clearly has Wikipedia:Conflict of interest concerns and it seems to me that some of our best practices listed for WP:COIEDIT were not followed. E.g., the organizer was editing the pages themselves. Also, as far as I can tell, there's no "top-down" summary of the project on the author's page and Category:Supreme Court of Ireland cases itself seems to be the primary method to find the edits related to the project. I do see the messages that students left on some of the talk pages but this "bottom-up" approach is an unsatisfactory way for other editors to know the scope of the project. There should be a super easy on-wiki way to answer the questions like 'What pages were create/edited as part of this project?', 'When did it start/stop?', etc, and a summary of the research itself. Jason Quinn (talk) 08:48, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  What a bizarre take. We don't ask any of that of anyone else who creates articles. I'm not sure if you understand what they did: they created articles. It's something literally anyone can do. And the articles were about court cases, not even a business or anything possibly promotional. And COI??? You think the students had some financial or other relationship with the court cases? And why wouldn't the organizer edit the pages directly? Furthermore, the articles were well-done. Is "thank you for writing good articles" too much or what? Just bizarre. Levivich 14:53, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

• The real question here is: why are Irish judges and/or clerks using Wikipedia to do research? (If they are.) Is there not an Irish equivalent of Westlaw or Lexis/Nexis for them to use? Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:06, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Epiphyllumlover additions of polygamist information

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

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I am concerned with @Epiphyllumlover's topic-specific and almost single-minded goal to add information to WP having to do with marriage equality bills amounting to polygamists getting married. These additions have been rejected by community consensus, including an RfC closed two days ago on the Respect for Marriage Act article. Epiphyllumlover's additions to the RFMA article included a section about polygamy, which the community agreed was UNDUE. The editor then added back the info to the lead, which I revered. They have been reverted on The Heritage Foundation's article just today by @Hipal, who said the info had "SOAP/POV problems" (with which I strongly agree). Other additions of polygamy information added to articles within the past few days include Mike Gallagher (American politician), Tony Perkins (politician), New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, the Wisconsin Family Council, etc. The list continues. WP should not be a soapbox for editors to add fringe views to multiple articles. Especially creating the perception that the Respect for Marriage Act will legalize polygamy, something that does not exist in the article or wording of the current bill whatsoever. While a long time WP editor, I don't hang out on the admin boards much and have never proposed a topic ban (at least that I can remember), but if this is the venue for it and is an appropriate discussion to have, I absolutely would propose and support a topic ban for Epiphyllumlover on polygamy information related to politics. Any input appreciated. --Kbabej (talk) 18:37, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

(Also, a quick note: No ownership issues about the RFMA article on my end. I was notified of the RFMA RfC on a noticeboard I follow. I have made exactly two edits on the article, both from this week, one of which was a minor copy edit. --Kbabej (talk) 18:50, 28 July 2022 (UTC))

• Epiphyllumlover (talk · contribs)

I hadn't looked into behavioral problems with the content being added to The Heritage Foundation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). Epiphyllumlover's revert to emphasize polygamy seems problematic [4].

Looking to other articles, I removed to Epiphyllumlover's addition to Tony Perkins (politician) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). There appear to be many more questionable edits. I think this should be taken to WP:AE. --Hipal (talk) 19:43, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Hipal! I was thinking that might be a good place, but in reading the four bullets of topics they cover, that reads to me as if there needs to be a previous community consensus. That is where I'm having trouble - where does that consensus start? --Kbabej (talk) 20:14, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

request discretionary sanctions against previously alerted editors who engage in misconduct in a topic area subject to discretionary sanctions Epiphyllumlover has been alerted multiple time on WP:ARBAB and WP:ARBAP2. The American politics sanctions certainly apply, with the remedy being WP:ACDS. --Hipal (talk) 20:23, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

@Hipal Thank you very much, I appreciate that! If the behavior continues I will open a discussion there. --Kbabej (talk) 22:34, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Epiphyllumlover is currently notifying WikiProjects about this discussion in a way that seems to focus on content-related discussion rather than user behavior. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

I'm not sure which type of responses to this discussion here Epiphyllumlover expects from the WikiProject participants. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:13, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

@ToBeFree, I just saw the notice on a single WikiProject I follow, but didn't realize they were doing it to multiple projects. Would that be considered canvassing? The issue at hand is user behavior, so I'm also not sure why the widespread notifications are happening. --Kbabej (talk) 20:16, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

If these talk pages have been intentionally selected to favor a specific type of responses to this discussion here, I guess that would be canvassing. I wouldn't jump to that conclusion too quickly, though; what seems more likely to me is that Epiphyllumlover genuinely believes that getting more eyes on this discussion increases the probability of a fair conclusion. And as they have recently been topic-banned from abortion, they may reasonably fear that a community ban would be the next step. Having an interest in a fair decision by as many experienced editors as possible about such a severe matter isn't canvassing nor necessarily disruptive at all. I just wanted to point this out. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:23, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

They've notified a number of individual editors as well as WikiProjects. Schazjmd (talk) 20:29, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

As this has now extended to specific users' talk pages ([14]), I have asked them to stop for now. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:29, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Asking sadly didn't help. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:51, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

I closed the RFC, I haven't reviewed all of the contributions. I am neutral on the matters but there was a clear community consensus that emerged in the RFC. I think this user has been civil and thoughtful enough that simply warning them to abide by the consensus that this is fringe/undue material might be a good first step. Andrevan@ 20:27, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Hello @Andrevan. Thank you for the thoughts. I want to AGF, but I also think there's a concerted effort to push a specific agenda, especially as they're topic banned from other issues (abortion). The discussion on the RFMA was thorough, and they were notified many times about community consensus and about fringe material, but have simply ignored those notifications. --Kbabej (talk) 20:35, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

I concur with Andrevan. We're not at a ban yet. If just pushing on the same subject repeatedly in a short space of time resulted in topic bans we would have orders of magnitude more topic bans in place. Same with leaping to topic bans just because an editor has restrictions in some other topic area. PS: Polyamory is not a "fringe view". The view that the specific piece of legislation under discussion would legalize polygamy apppears to be an incorrect one, though; it is at least not well-supported in sources. That's a good reason to exclude content about it from the article in question, but not a good reason to summarily remove someone from the topic area without longer-term and more serious problems in this topic area from that party.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:41, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish. Thanks for the thoughts. It appears I may have jumped the gun if that is your assessment, since it matches @Andrevan's as well. When I say "fringe viewpoint", I meant that in relation to the Respect for Marriage Act, which I still believe. To connect the RFMA and polygamy is a fringe viewpoint in my view; only a few extreme unreliable sources discuss it. I am not saying polygamy overall is a fringe viewpoint. I think the distinctions between the two are neither here nor there, however. I have a concern with the repeated POV-pushing for a fringe viewpoint when it is connected to marriage equality; for now it seems editors will likely just need to keep cleaning up articles as edits are made. --Kbabej (talk) 20:45, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

"Incorrect" and "fringe" are not synonymous. Fringe viewpoints, in WP terms, are the subject of widespread organized PoV pushing, like the flat-earth hypothesis, or belief in healing power of inert crystals, and are by their nature anti-scientific, anti-truth, anti-fact. Being wrong about something is not the same as being inimical to the reality of it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:54, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Okay, then, "incorrect" and "wrong" information. I don't see how that's any better to have a campaign to add incorrect/wrong information across a large swath of articles. --Kbabej (talk) 21:03, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

The content added to RFMA after the RfC might not be the same as in the RfC and it might have come with new sources. This is what Epiphyllumlover says, but I have not checked, because I already given much of time to help the situation and I have no particular interest in this topic. (I was summoned by bot). If that is true, then it's not at all a disruptive edit that calls for a warn. What I have seen is that editors in this talk page seems more interested in warning people, talking of bans, etc. than actually discussing the subject. There might be things that I do not see. I don't know Epiphyllumlover and I don't know much about the topic. So, I cannot judge what's going on, but, based on what I have seen, Epiphyllumlover is not at all the one to blame. Dominic Mayers (talk) 21:14, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

@Dominic Mayers, the information is the same information. The RfC focused on the content of the topic, not the particular use of sources. The RfC question was "Should the article include a section on "Implications for polygamy legalization"?" The answer was a strong no from the community. The information was then added to the lead instead of a section. Perhaps avoiding the technical definition of a "section", but obviously against the spirit of the RfC. --Kbabej (talk) 21:20, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

I think this discussion isn't helpful. A topic ban is a behavioral remedy. This isn't the venue to discuss sources or dispute content matters of coverage. The question is whether Epiphyllumlover will agree to abide by the consensus not to keep adding this polygamy fringe theory to the article and related articles, since there is clearly a community consensus that it does not merit such weight as Epiphyllumlover is trying to give it. Beyond that, the discussion should be discussed at the article talk page. If Epiphyllumlover doesn't agree, then a community topic ban may be proposed or take it to WP:AE for further enforcement. Andrevan@ 21:35, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

(Edit conflict: I have't read the previous comment) I am not expert in RfC legislation, if that even exists, but I find it strange that a RfC is final even in the presence of new sources? This is especially strange given that much of the opinions in the RfC were based on the sources presented at the time. Dominic Mayers (talk) 21:45, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

@Dominic Mayers. The RfC is two days old, and clear consensus demonstrated the topic (including the sourcing) was UNDUE. That was brought up many times. Adding a paragraph to the lead two days after an RfC determined the information is not appropriate is not appropriate evasive of community consensus in my view. It should be taken to the talk page and discussed. It's not like any time has passed at all and things have significantly changed, either. --Kbabej (talk) 21:51, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict: I haven't read the previous comment) @Andrevan: but therefore one needs to know if Epiphyllumlover even failed to respect the RfC once. I don't think that he/she has, because most opinions in the RfC referred to sources and it seems that he/she used new sources. I cannot see how this is not relevant to this procedure that accuses Epiphyllumlover not to respect the RfC. Dominic Mayers (talk) 22:00, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

The RFC led to a consensus that the material was undue and not sourced appropriately. Epiphyllumlover could start a discussion about the new sources, but they should not just start adding the material to more places immediately after the RFC concluded. Epiphyllumlover must take to heart what the RFC result means for what they are trying to add. Andrevan@ 22:05, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Dominic Mayers three separate editors called the topic "grossly undue" weight with that exact wording. Not a single editor voted in favor of the information remaining. I think the discussion of new sources two days after a topic has been deemed undue weight by 100% of participating editors could be appropriate, if a discussion happens on the talk page. Adding information back seems intentionally evasive. --Kbabej (talk) 22:06, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict: I did not read the last comment from Kbabeh) @Kbabej: We both gave our opinion. I don't have anything to add. Dominic Mayers (talk) 22:09, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

I agree that it would have been more appropriate to discuss the content in the talk page before adding it, especially given that the RfC was not against it, but indicative of possible oppositions. But, there is no rule that requires that to my knowledge. It was simply unwise I feel, but even that, it just my feeling. Dominic Mayers (talk) 22:18, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Given the editor has a prior topic ban in another politically/religiously charged area, we should expect them to exhibit caution and follow the indication from the RFC was was indeed pointing out that this information was undue given the sourcing, new sources means a new discussion, not to disregard the RFC and community consensus especially given the other prior topic ban, Andrevan@ 22:28, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

I will not comment on that. I speak about what I know. I don't know about the previous history of Epiphyllumlover. 23:27, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

The ANI history of Epiphyllujmlover's topic ban issued this past May are archived here, here and especially here. Kire1975 (talk) 07:47, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

I removed most of Epiphyllumlover's recent contributions re polygamy/Respect for Marriage Act. Is Epiphyllumlover repeating the behavior that resulted in the abortion topic ban? --Hipal (talk) 21:16, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

I found this bit of soapboxing in a BLP particularly problematic. The edit summary used at Respect for Marriage Act [15], writing about both sides to maintain neutrality & better references to insure the addition is not undue demonstrates a level of misunderstanding of policy that is disruptive to topics under sanctions. --Hipal (talk) 17:02, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

I fully support a topic ban for Epiphyllumlover, for the reasons stated above and the fact that other methods haven't worked to get them to abide by Wikipedia's policies and !votes. Moncrief (talk) 02:11, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

I completely agree a topic ban is warranted here. All this seems incredibly WP:TE from Epiphyllumlover. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 16:13, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

I think it would be best for everyone as a whole to postpone these proceedings until after the bill is passed, or until after Congress adjourns for August.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 17:05, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

@Epiphyllumlover, I think folks were hoping for you to say that you will abide by the consensus to stop adding this material, not that you will postpone until Congress adjourns. Andrevan@ 17:13, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

@Epiphyllumlover, I'm confused why this discussion should not move forward "until after the bills is passed..." The issue I have raised is you adding UNDUE content against consensus; it has nothing whatsoever to do with if the bill passes or not. Whether the bill gets shelved or passed with unanimous support is irrelevant to this discussion. --Kbabej (talk) 17:22, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

... That isn't how it works here. That's such a nonsensical request that I am actually questioning your motives now. @Epiphyllumlover: You know that Wikipedia is not the place for us to share our opinions on pending legislation, right? Like.. whether this bill has passed or not really should have zero bearing on how we cover its contents. This really shouldn't be on your mind, and it gives the impression you are really here to stand on a soapbox. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 20:00, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

The fact that you would make such a bizarre and unwarranted statement makes me think even more that you are either being deliberately obtuse, or you still even now don't understand the purpose and the policies of Wikipedia. We should wait until the bill is passed to write an article on pending legislation? What on earth are you talking about? Moncrief (talk) 21:20, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

• For context, Epiphyllumlover was an incredibly tendentious presence on abortion-related articles. His agenda-driven bludgeoning stood out even by the standards of that controversial topic area, finally resulting in a topic ban ([16]). I would view the current concern about anti-LGBT editing not in isolation, but as an extension of their disruptive effort to push a partisan right-wing agenda on Wikipedia. A broader topic ban from American politics, including LGBT issues, would be the minimum appropriate sanction in my view, although their extensive track record would more than justify an indefinite block for disruptive and tendentious editing.
  I know that we typically focus these discussions narrowly on the "rights" of the editor facing sanctions, but I would implore you to consider the good-faith contributors who have to deal with Epiphyllumlover, and to attach some value to the immense amount of their time, effort, and goodwill that Epiphyllumlover has wasted. (For clarity, I'm commenting here as an editor, not an admin, as I've interacted with Epiphyllumlover on abortion-related pages). MastCell ^Talk 18:13, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

  Given their comments here and the comment from MastCell, I must now support the topic ban for Epiphyllumlover. Andrevan@ 20:02, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

• I am struck by the straight-up dishonesty in this discussion (on top of the initial coatracking). --JBL (talk) 22:27, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
• I am highly concerned by the earlier edit here about waiting until passage of the bill. That edit seems to indicate that Epiphyllumlover is unfortunately interested in POV pushing here, and I would support a broad topic ban on American Politics as suggested by MastCell above. VanIsaac, MPLL ^cont_WpWS 04:41, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. Moncrief (talk) 21:23, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. —Kbabej (talk) 21:15, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. Manannan67 (talk) 20:44, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

• I support a topic ban on whatever area is being suggested here. However, he already has one topic ban - see here, here and here - and is all but asking for a second one here. He is not willing to WP:LISTEN to anyone or change his own behavior. A topic ban as proposed will only be giving him what he's asking for. In order to prevent whatever agenda driven disruptive editing chaos he plans to inflict next, the only answer to the problem is a full WP:SBAN. He has been like this for years. A time limit on the sitewide ban won't be sufficient, imo. Kire1975 (talk) 05:13, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

  Please be advised that Epiphyllumlover plays the long game. His first contact with ANI here was a request about how long silence becomes consensus on wikipedia. Multiple people came forward responding to that request resulting in a TBAN. Just because he has not made any posts since three days ago does not mean that he has learned his lesson by any means. As suggested by multiple more users above, this user is a partisan troll who refuses to stop being a disruptive editor until the end. My question is: does someone need to start a separate section with a subheading with the formal request for the SBAN and/or TBAN as here or will an administrator see all the support for it in the comments above and take action? My concern is that if it's split up then the discussion gets split between multiple posts in the archive and it becomes unnecessarily more complicated should this history need to be referred to again in the future. Kire1975 (talk) 10:37, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

  Thank you for bringing this up, @Kire1975. I had the same question, as I have not opened a discussion proposing a TBAN before. --Kbabej (talk) 15:03, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

  An SBAN is probably excessive, as User:Epiphyllumlover is able to edit constructively in other areas, such as with pages on Wisconsin. Still, a broad TBAN from American politics will help to stop the disruption. Most likely they have genuine feelings about the topic they are trying to impose on the articles, and are not just trying to troll us. 2601:647:5800:1A1F:B15A:4ECC:3C0E:728A (talk) 19:34, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

  Which other topics is Epiphyllumlover able to edit constructively in? Kire1975 (talk) 10:27, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  Update: Given that Epiphyllumlover is now filing many disruptive WP:SPI reports targeted at the people who object to their behavior, I would consider that behavior sufficient for an SBAN to be applied. At the same time, everybody in this discussion needs to cool off a bit so that we can return to some kind of productive editing. Playing the blame game is not going to get us anywhere. 2601:647:5800:1A1F:74AC:AAF4:27FA:628B (talk) 19:30, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

• Question: There seems to be a consensus for a TBAN covering American politics. How can this be implemented and this discussion wrapped up? --Kbabej (talk) 15:02, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

  A valid question. An uninvolved admin can enact the community tban if they judge there to be consensus here. Or you could try WP:AE as well. Andrevan@ 15:27, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

  I'm reviewing the AE page and it seems (at least to my reading) there must be a current TBAN existing the editor has violated. I'm not sure where to get the actual TBAN enacted, though. Proposing a TBAN is new area for me! --Kbabej (talk) 20:06, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

  Ah yeah, well, this is the administrator's noticeboard, so maybe one of the watchers of this page would deign to enact the community TBAN as discussed above. I suppose you could also email the Arbcom directly. Or, perhaps someone endowed with the power to do so would wish to deny the request without prejudice to a filing of a new case. Andrevan@ 20:13, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

  @Andrevan:, before the topic ban sets in, a few thoughts. When I asked to delay the discussion, I thought August recess started with the month of August. Later I looked it up and learned when August recess really starts. Yes, that would actually be too late to be a reasonable request for a delay. As for staying off of Wikipedia, I felt betrayed because I thought I had assurances, which I should not have relied on. At the time I last posted, I had not read the discussion above (until now) because I did not feel too good about it. I assumed that this would be a case of mobbing, and thought that if I posted, I would be an enabler, but looking at it now, I see that SMcCandlish and Dominic Mayers (and also, at first, you) were supportive. I hope you can respect that not everyone is hardened to the furious pace of social media, and that it wasn't wrong for me not to respond at first.

Had this not been taken here, I would have been willing to submit to either a second RfC or a second discussion about the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article, the full, non-paywalled text which you can read here. I thought that a Representative talking directly would be enough to pass WP:UNDUE; also the pundit host who Rep. Gallagher made comments to is legally married to Adam Wise. He is not the sort of pundit who would make (or leave unchallenged), a fringe social-conservative proposition.

Some may wonder about my sudden interest in polygamy legalization; for me it was a new topic and I had never paid much attention to it. So it was a new topic for me and I got to learn. I also discovered that Wikipedia's existing articles were out-of-date, and could be improved. I continued researching it some after getting off Wikipedia; it interested me. Yet by now the excitement of a new topic is gone, and I am tired of it; there doesn't seem like much else to learn.

I still think that not being topic banned is a lost cause, but hope at least that you can all agree that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Guy Benson's show, and Mike Gallagher (American politician) are not fringe sources, and people using this website should not have to be afraid about adding their material to an article or discussing it on a talk page.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 19:37, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

The RfC clearly decided the information was UNDUE. Given your past history of topic bans and extremely combative editing, you should have opened a discussion on the talk page about the contentious material. The fact you chose to not do this and thought by adding it to the lead instead of a section was not going against consensus makes me wonder if you should be editing at all, much less on contentious American politics. Whenever the recess happens doesn't matter; the topic at hand is your behavior in adding material that has been deemed by community consensus to be inappropriate. We do not need an RfC the day after the first closed, especially with you not even opening a talk page discussion.

What does this mean: "As for staying off of Wikipedia, I felt betrayed because I thought I had assurances, which I should not have relied on."? It seems to me you are implying an editor/admin/etc said if you stayed off WP for a few days you'd circumvent another TBAN? That seems... unlikely at best.

Your comment has only made me realize the TBAN for American politics is absolutely needed; it has removed any lingering doubt I have, as you seem to still be advocating your position instead of moving on to other areas. --Kbabej (talk) 20:11, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

The RfC clearly decided on content that was not about Gallagher, nor his position. Rep. Gallagher said something different than the social conservative groups. The social conservative groups were against same-sex marriage per-se, whereas Gallagher said, "All I'm asking is for the Senate to make a simple three-word fix, make the bill internally consistent" ... "Should that happen, I would vote for it if it came back to the House, and I think others in the Senate and the House would as well." Also, he rejected the slippery slope argument that the social conservative groups used. My assumption was that the new, different information could be added due to WP:BRD. That is why I used the talk page after you reverted it; I was on step "D".

I meant assurances, both implicit and explicit, from people writing at Talk:Respect for Marriage Act. The general, implicit social contract is broken by resolving content disputes with topic bans. Yet this is a form of social media; it seems that social contracts are broken more often online than in real life interpersonal interactions. My comments on this noticeboard are for this discussion, not for changing the article. As I said before, my interest in this topic has waned.

This proceeding and others like it are damaging to Wikipedia, in the same way that Congress would be damaged if the House decided that Gallagher should be censured for making the comments on Guy Benson's show. If Gallagher was punished somehow for it, that would make it hard for the legislators to talk through possibilities for bills in the future; even unrelated bills.

Generally, people trust green colored sources; and trust that by using them, they won't be accused of being WP:Fringe. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is very much like USA Today, since they have the same corporate parent, with the same print and web layout and many of the same articles. The Perennial Sources page states, "There is consensus that USA Today is generally reliable. Editors note the publication's robust editorial process and its centrist alignment." The Journal Sentinel is similarly centrist. By affirming that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Guy Benson's show, and Mike Gallagher (American politician) are not fringe sources, you and others who are in the process of banning me can help reduce the risk of damaging people's confidence in Wikipedia's system of identifying and classifying reliable sources.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 22:11, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

@Epiphyllumlover, the information you added back was wholly polygamist in nature. While you're trying to obfuscate you circumventing the RfC, the information from Gallagher was a coatrack on which to make your polygamist points. You wrote: "Gallagher stated that the text of the legislation would require federal recognition for marriages between more than two individuals, should someday a state change legalize marriages for three or more people, which he thought could possibly happen someday."

So no one offered you assurances. Your "implicit and explicit" comment shows you do not understand how WP works. The community already discussed the topic and came to a consensus. If there was a contract that was broken, it was by your behavior by adding the information back a day later into another section. This discussion is not a content dispute. That was already settled. This discussion is about your behavior. --Kbabej (talk) 22:24, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Gallagher's concerns about polygamy were different than those of social conservatives, such as Vought and Carroll from the RfC. Gallagher's concerns did not involve a slippery slope, and did not tie polygamy to same-sex marriage. The social conservatives used a slippery slope argument, and have ipso-facto tied polygamy legalization to same-sex marriage equality for years.

Another difference from with the RfC is between Gallagher and Somin. Somin interpreted the polygamy issue as something social conservatives were concerned about due to the slippery slope, whereas Gallagher stated that polygamy legalization was a realistic future possibility, even though he rejected the slippery slope. Gallagher's approach was a practical one, rather than the hands-off, theoretical approach used by Somin. Also, Gallagher dealt with Act & polygamy as the major topic in his appearance on the show, whereas Somin dealt with it in an article mainly concerned about constitutional issues. Earlier, concern over the article giving "more weight to the claim than Somin does" had been a major concern for IP editor 2603...

As of right now, I understand enough about how things de facto work to know that I will be topic banned, because turning content disputes into a behavior-issue accusation is an effective way of achieving a desired outcome. Yet because of the explicitly supportive comments made by Dominic Mayers and Andrevan, along with SMcCandlish's earlier affirmation that "Polyamory is not a fringe view", I didn't think my actions were harmful to the social dynamic, and felt betrayed when accused. The RfC was about adding the section which was linked to in the RfC itself, and about having a section devoted to the Act's implications for polygamy. The RfC did not address the question whether the article could mention polygamy at all. I hope you can understand that it took me a while to process it, and that is why I stayed off.

Your statement, "adding the information back a day later" is not correct. I added different information a day later. I would not have added the same sort of information back a day later out of respect to the RfC and its outcome. Can you affirm that Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Guy Benson's show, and Mike Gallagher (American politician) are not fringe, even though they talked about polygamy and the Respect for Marriage Act?--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 23:11, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

I will not engage in a red herring argument about polygamist info you claim to have "wan[ing] interest" in. If you still consider this a "content dispute" instead of a discussion of your behavior, I think that proves the point of the TBAN consensus obtained above. I'm going to leave this conversation with you at that, except for following up to request closure and application of the TBAN. --Kbabej (talk) 23:26, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

@Epiphyllumlover, please don't interpret my comments of giving you a chance and trying to be kind and understanding, as support for your activities. This is a lot hand-wringing about what is or isn't fringe, what is or isn't "part of the RFC" but the point was that you had an RFC, the RFC clearly said "no, stop adding this," and then you added a bunch of similar stuff. Can you promise to stop doing that? If so, there's no need for a topic ban. None of the stuff you want to add about same sex marriage possibly leading to polygamy should be added anywhere, unless you have a discussion on the talk page that editors support adding it. It's too similar to the RFC outcome for comfort, and what I didn't know when I was being kind and indulgent is that you have another similar topic ban. So, here's a chance to fix things. Can you promise to stop adding these political polygamy views altogether? If not, I do think the topic ban is merited. Andrevan@ 01:37, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Even with your support, I expect to be topic-banned anyway. Yes, I will not add present-day related political polygamy material to the English Wikipedia articlespace, and will not advocate for the inclusion of the previously contested sources. Time frame for this would be six months or a year, whichever you prefer. Epiphyllumlover (talk) 20:15, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Then the TBAN shouldn't matter when it's applied, as you wouldn't be adding the info anyway. Even with these assurances, it's clear from the above discussion the editor cannot - or will not - abide by community consensus. The circumvention of the RfC showed that, the combative editing showed that, and the other topic bans show that. The TBAN should still be applied, and despite these assurances from them, consensus remains above. --Kbabej (talk) 20:25, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Letting everyone here know that I submitted an SPI investigation at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Kbabej concerning the Respect for Marriage Act discussions mentions here. I still expect to be topic banned, though.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 00:28, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Oof, Epi, this is not a great look. I thought we were de-escalating, and now you're opening an SPI? I think maybe a siteban might be what the doctor ordered at this point. Andre🚐 00:35, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

• Note: In a clear and obvious case of abusive retribution and retaliation, Epiphyllumlover has filed an SPI investigation against me here. I am not surprised given the extremely volatile way in which they engage in editing and circumventing community consensus. I will try and look for the information, but if anyone is aware of any past retribution from Epiphyllumlover to editors who have started or engaged in TBAN discussions having to do with them, that would be much appreciated. Any help at all, actually, would be much appreciated. This is my first ever TBAN nomination. --Kbabej (talk) 00:38, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  Thanks to @Kire1975's post of the last TBAN conversation on abortion, I was pretty easily able to find Epiphyllumlover had also accused that nominating editor of that TBAN of multiple accounts and opened an SPI against them. Unfortunately, this seems to be a common pattern. If Epiphyllumlover cannot discuss their behavior without accusing nominators of multiple accounts and retaliates by opening SPIs, I'm afraid I agree with @Andrevan that a siteban may be in order. Admittedly, some editors may think I am too close to the situation as the TBAN nominator, although to be fair I had never interacted with Epiphyllumlover before these events. If a sitewide ban is not enacted, the American politics TBAN still has consensus. --Kbabej (talk) 01:11, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  Instead of engaging with the merits of the vast number of complaints made against him, he is attempting to wear down his most vocal critics with alarming nonsense and threats of administrative with no basis in reality like this. Just another reason for an SBAN and not just a second TBAN. Kire1975 (talk) 03:24, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  @Kbabej: please calm down. You cannot accuse someone for being stern with their "legal options" when he's facing a siteban. Nxavar (talk) 10:37, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Proposed action

I can see that there is general agreement that a topic ban for American politics has some consensus here, but since then Epiphyllumlover has submitted an SPI (Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Kbabej) against Kbabej, which the patrolling clerk has called a meritless, retaliatory report and closed it. This also happened during the discussion that led to Epiphyllumlover's topic ban from abortion, when they posted this SPI, which was closed "with prejudice" by SPI clerk and admin User:Tamzin. Given this, it is unsurprising that there are now calls for a siteban instead, because this is not acceptable. This will need to run as a specific siteban discussion. Please comment below with Siteban/Topicban/other.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Pinging all editors who have commented above. Black Kite (talk) 07:44, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

• siteban Andre🚐 07:46, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
• topicban I believe the problem here is partisanship, not general inability to be an acceptable Wikipedia editor.Nxavar (talk) 09:00, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
• siteban: On the grounds of WP:RECIDIVISM. Nxavar (talk) 11:44, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  Clarification: I don't believe that the failed SPI attemps are actionable. Being just as aggressive in editing despite a recent TBAN and numerous protests by fellow editors about it: certainly. Nxavar (talk) 12:44, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

• siteban: Epiphyllumlover has already been topic banned once - see here, here and especially here. If he's topic banned a second time, he will only find a new partisan pretext outside of American politics and abortion to be a disruptive editor. Fool us once, shame on him. Fool us twice, shame on us. Kire1975 (talk) 10:36, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  Please see WP:WARNVAND. Athought this discussion is not about vandalism, it shows that we must take the tempered route unless absolutely necessary. Banning from American politics in general is already somewhat heavy-handed, but appropriate given that the recent topic ban is also on a topic of American politics. Nxavar (talk) 10:45, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  Epiphyllumlover is not a vandal. He a Civil POV pushing sealion troll. Judgment was given the first time he was TBANNED. The suggested remedies on WP:WARNVAND only discuss warning templates on user talk namespaces. He has been warned that way at least six times here, here, here, here, here and here.

  His attempts to jam up his critics with two unfounded SPI investigations without evidence were heavy-handed. Topic banning him a second time is inappropriately light. Kire1975 (talk) 11:06, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  FYI: Just a few hours after I wrote the above comment and for the first time since starting his account in 2007, Epi has archived his user talk space rendering the above links to the warning templates inoperable. All seven warning templates can now be found in the archive space here. Kire1975 (talk) 22:41, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

• Siteban. Clear evidence above of civil POV pushing and battleground conduct. It's unwise to pile on additional TBANs when a user demonstrates a pattern of seeking out additional controversial topic areas and then pushing their POV. That said, I'd prefer a TBAN, as a distant second choice, if inaction is the alternative. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:01, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
• siteban. Not here to work collaboratively; POV pushing/tendentious editing; malicious retaliatory conduct; previous TBANs. --Kbabej (talk) 15:25, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
• Siteban. Very clearly WP:NOTHERE per the above actions taken in this thread and at SPI now. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 16:23, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
• "The IP address geolocates to a non-English speaking country, yet the writer is good at English. This indicates IP masking."^[17] Whatever. If there's consensus for a ban, please make it a sitewide one; I don't believe placing a second topic ban is helpful. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 17:42, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
• Epiphylumlover seems to engage in civil POV pushing in a range of topics. I do note that they seem to have improved a a lot of Wisconsin-related articles apart from politics. I can't help but wonder: if the initial topic ban were from American politics, broadly construed, would we be here talking about a siteban? Seems like we just did a partial-ampol ban, and are now talking about implementing the rest. No boldtext !vote here, just wondering. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:08, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Is a history of "POV pushing in a range of topics" an argument against a site ban? Nxavar (talk) 18:27, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

@Nxavar, I don't see that anyone is advocating for a siteban simply for POV pushing. The POV pushing is the snowball that rolled downhill and became a hazard. The POV pushing, the battleground mentality, the previous TBAN, the refusal to acknowledge consensus, the retaliatory SPI tickets to redirect attention during AN discussions, and the hours put into cleaning up their edits - those are the reasons for a siteban when taken as a whole. To categorize their continued behavior as "POV pushing in a range of topics" seems very misleading to me. --Kbabej (talk) 19:09, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

I didn't oppose a siteban, but I do like to err on the side of exploring other options when it may make sense. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 19:20, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites, what happens when another editor doesn't agree with Epiphyllumlover's view? They have already shown they either cannot or will not abide by consensus, and will create a battleground mentality over not getting to add their POV positions. How much of other editors' time are we willing to waste on someone who refuses to acknowledge community consensus? First abortion, then polygamy - I'm sure this will continue, considering Epiphyllumlover is the topic on AN yet again. The hours put into discussing and trying to educate them have not worked; why just kick the can down the road? --Kbabej (talk) 19:06, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Have they shown that outside of US politics? (real question -- I don't know). My point is, we're just finishing the job of the initial ban by broadening it to politics. Part of the justification seems to be that this is two topic bans, but the end result is a standard single topic ban. YMMV. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 19:20, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Outside of the US? On April 6, Epiphyllumlover nominated the acquittal of a Finnish politician accused of hate speech as a candidate for WP:INTHENEWS. I haven't been able to find the full archive yet, but the nomination appears to have been universally opposed at the consensus stage. Abortion, polygamy, hate speech. Civil POV pushing inside and outside the US. I found that after about three minutes going back in his history. Kire1975 (talk) 19:45, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: Have you read WP:RECIDIVISM? The fact that he maintained the disruptive editing pattern after the TBAN on abortion is enough justification for a site ban. The restricted scope of the existing TBAN was a second chance that he blew up. Nxavar (talk) 20:09, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Nxavar, have you looked at the history of many policies or guidelines here on Wikipedia? @Rhododendrites has edited and even helped write some of them. I would assume good faith that they have read them and proceed as if they are doing as they stated above and just weighing all options. --ARoseWolf 20:19, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

• Thanks for the ping. If they are not site-banned, then obviously an AmPol topic ban is necessary. The absurd, retaliatory SPI reports are definitely troubling. --JBL (talk) 18:24, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
• Siteban. I was reluctant to reach this decision, because Epiphyllumlover had years of apparently productive useful edits. I couldn't find any indications of conduct issues until about 18 months ago. But the more recent conduct resulting in the abortion TBan and now the polygamy issues is wasting editors' time. Quibbling over consensus (the RFC was about a section, Epi didn't add a section) is disruptive, retaliatory SPIs is WP:BATTLEGROUND, and framing complaints about their conduct as a tactic (turning content disputes into a behavior-issue accusation is an effective way of achieving a desired outcome) is simply WP:IDHT. I don't think just an AMPOL ban will prevent these conduct issues from continuing; Epi recently decided Adolf Hitler isn't negative enough and wanted to start an WP:IAR RFC just to add more negative content about Hitler (Masem talked Epi down from that one), so no telling which content area might become a new battlefield for them. Schazjmd (talk) 19:38, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
• Siteban. I think it would be best for everyone as a whole to postpone these proceedings until after the bill is passed, or until after Congress adjourns for August (farther up in the topic ban discussion), combined with the retaliatory SPIs, have ruined my good faith in this user. --Dylan620 (he/him · talk · edits) 20:53, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
• Even though you don't accept that Kbabej as being involved in the IP editing, there was some funny business involved between two IP editors from different cities leaving nearly the same message on two separate talk pages. I see that you are going to site ban me, and so goodbye everyone, and I don't wish you ill for it.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 21:18, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
•  Clerk note: I opted to G6 the report instead of archiving, but it is still available for administrators.  Administrator note I have left Epiphyllumlover a warning on their talk page about filing baseless SPI reports. The process is backlogged enough and doesn't need retaliatory reports and other junk. It is also an example of disruptive editing and violations of WP:NPA and WP:AGF. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 00:50, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

  Pardon my ignorance. What does G6 mean? Which report? Thanks. Kire1975 (talk) 00:59, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

  The report was deleted per WP:CSD. However admins can still review the deleted page. Andre🚐 01:01, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

  The SPI report? I was wondering why I didn't see it my user contributions history. Thanks. Kire1975 (talk) 01:53, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

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

My apologies for adding on here to endorse this conclusion after having missed this discussion (COVID, not keeping up), seeing it only now that the community ban has been enacted. If there is ever any questioning of this conclusion, please do ping me for an indepth view in Catholic topics of just how extremely disruptive, lacking in clue, POV-pushing, tendentious, NOTHERE and retaliatory this editor was, and how they consumed excessive amounts of time from other editors with a bad case of IDHT for years-- here mainly to push an extreme sect of Lutheranism. I'm surprised it took this long. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:22, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Likely new Fox News RfC

Two users, Andrevan and Awesome Aasim are intent on creating a new RfC for Fox News. If either attempt gets off the ground, it is likely to get hundreds of responses, be very contentious and to need another panel close like the last RfC in 2020. Discussions are being held at Wikipedia_talk:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Second_Fox_News_RfC in order to workshop the format in order to minimise disruption. Thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:51, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

I have a draft here where I have tried to address all objections and this user reverted the addition[18] while no specific objection has been substantiated to it. I started a thread on WP:DRN but I self-withdrew after this reasonable request from another involved user[19]. I do not understand why this thread now has been posted or this one [20]. I guess it's not really WP:CANVASSing but the user is currently ignoring my question as to what was wrong with the draft I posted. Andrevan@ 18:56, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

I just opened the RFC. Thank you all for the help and feedback and collaboration on improving it. I think the work made it much better. Andrevan@ 17:46, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

It's already created, and as bloated as the Goodyear blimp. It's pretty obvious that it's the 2nd verse of this song, including the same chorus lines; i.e., my politics are better than your politics, my sources are more reliable than your sources, yada yada.^[stretch] In the dog world we call it kennel blindness. I'm sure it has nothing to do with political bias, or the upcoming midterms in November in the US, or any kind of intentional plan to keep pounding away at FOX until the hegemony of the asshole consensus finally prevails, (a brilliantly expressed perspective by one of our own and well worth reading.) And there's so much more that I will spare our trusted admins by simply ending with my very best wishes, & happy editing! There's important work to do. ~ Atsme 💬 📧 18:28, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

I know you didn't mean the asshole consensus comment as a personal attack, so I am AGF, but note that some might interpret that less charitably. FWIW, there are serious concerns about Fox News' promotion of misinformation and failed fact checks. If you have concerns about other outlets with evidence that shows them failing fact checks, doctoring photos, pushing mis/disinfo, etc, please do inform us, so we can downgrade them appropriately. Andrevan@ 20:12, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

What you're asking for was already provided at RSN, multiple times, and it's ignored – do a keyword search in the archives and you'll find it throughout RSN. As for the hegemony...that phrase was absolutely not intended to be personal or accusatory of anyone or any particular side of the argument. It's just what happens. If you haven't read the article yet, I highly recommend it, if for no other reason than context and perspective. Following is an excerpt with the terminology: Minor quibbles about grammar is one thing, but these techniques are frequently used by political ideologues, ethnic nationalists, and conspiracy theorists. Professor Bryce Peake called this the “hegemony of the asshole consensus.” Happy editing! Atsme 💬 📧 20:20, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

"If everywhere you go smells like shit, maybe it's time to check your own shoes." Viriditas (talk) 21:37, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

• For the record, it is currently at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#RFC: Fox News (news): politics & science, though it might've been more appropriate as its own individual subpage given how long it is going to get. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 16:09, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Continued out-of-process DRV closures by King of Hearts

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

---

In 2021, at WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive331#Review of DRV closures by King of Hearts, I asked this board to review two WP:DRV closures by King of Hearts, an administrator. I argued that King of Hearts closed the discussions in accord with their personal preferences rather than according to consensus. The closer noted that "editors generally agree that King of Hearts should take more care in closing discussions".

They have not done so, as the following example shows. In Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2022 July 15 with respect to Chronovisor, King of Hearts closed a DRV regarding a deleted article with the result "Redirect and restore history". They did so even though there was evidently no consensus in the DRV for restoring the history: Two people including the DRV nominator were in favor of doing so (Thryduulf and Uanfala), one person was against it (Hut 8.5), and another person (5Q5) appeared to be at least critical of restoring the history, noting that better sources were readily available to write a better article about the topic.

When asked about this by me and Flatscan on their talk page (permalink), King of Hearts did not answer queries about the lack of consensus to overturn the deletion and undelete the history. Instead, they made arguments on the merits about why they believed that the history should be restored in such circumstances. This indicates that they meant to use DRV as a means to cast a supervote to enact the AfD outcome they preferred, rather than to assess whether there was consensus to overturn the closure.

Disregard for consensus is of particular concern in administrators, who are trusted with recognizing and acting on community consensus. Our deletion process only works if we follow our agreed-upon rules: at AfD, articles are only deleted if there is consensus for it, and at DRV, AfD closures are only overturned if there is consensus for it. I therefore ask the community to review Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2022 July 15 with respect to Chronovisor, and to discuss whether King of Hearts should continue to close DRV discussions. Sandstein 06:56, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

• I took part in the discussion, so I'm biased, but that closing statement does make it clear the closer picked a side in the discussion rather than determining consensus. And as for the claim that there's no reason to delete the history, a reason was given by myself in the DRV and other people in the AfD - the content is very poor quality and not suitable in any article. Hut 8.5 07:51, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

  @Hut 8.5: Is the content so problematic as to fall into WP:REVDEL territory? If, instead of bringing it to AfD, someone had simply redirected the article unilaterally and then you subsequently brought it to AfD/RfD (I'm not sure what the right venue is) asking for the history to be deleted, do you honestly think you would have achieved a consensus for that? The problem with interpreting any AfD consensus is that usually the discussion is centered around whether the topic deserves a standalone article rather than whether its history needs to be erased, so you cannot conclude that a "delete" result at AfD necessarily supports the latter. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 08:27, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

  It would be reasonable for you to leave that as a comment at the DRV, but it's not reasonable grounds for closing the DRV. I don't agree that the edit history needs to be preserved unless it qualifies for revdel, and there isn't AFAIK any policy which says so. I still haven't seen anyone claim the edit history is actually useful in any way. AfD participants/closers have discretion on these things and I think it's reasonable to delete the content if we know it's not something we want in the encyclopedia. Hut 8.5 12:03, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

  I find the edit history useful (that was implied in my DRV nomination, why would I have bothered with it otherwise?) That's for the same set of reasons that article histories are useful, but in particular I also disagree with your earlier comment that the text in the history was rubbish. Sure, it could do with some copyediting, and some bits could be dropped, but there's a good core there. If the text says, for example, that the photo of the crucifixion the priest allegedly took during his time travels is the same as the photo of a particular modern-day statue of Jesus, then surely, even for the benefit of the most gullible readers, there's no need for it to lay any more stress on the blatantly obvious? Uanfala (talk) 12:23, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

  Regarding the WP:Revision deletion criteria: repurposing them for AfD delete and redirect was proposed and rejected at WT:Deletion policy/Archive 45#Alternative proposal (December 2015–January 2016). (I posted a similar comment below while this section was closed, and KoH replied there.) Flatscan (talk) 04:48, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

I maintain that the status of the article history is not something sacrosanct, as Sandstein posits. Consider the following:

• It has long been accepted that articles can be userfied or draftified upon request by any admin, as long as the admin considers the rationale justified, without the need for consensus.
• There are no restrictions on what can be done with drafts. They can be edited (including turning them into redirects), or moved back into the main namespace. Of course, the catch is that if moved too soon into the main namespace, the draft would be subject to speedy deletion under WP:G4.
• However, a redirect is not "substantially identical to the deleted version", and thus is ineligible for G4. Therefore, there is no difference between restoring the history underneath a redirect vs. the more convoluted route of userfying it, redirecting it, and moving it into the main namespace, which is allowed under current practice.

If the community wants to tighten up the policy around restoring article history (e.g. during userfication/draftification), then I'm happy to support an RfC around it. But as it stands, it doesn't make sense to discriminate between different types of history restoration, because they are all fungible through normal editing. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 08:09, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

You again fail to see that this isn't about whether the history of this article could or should be restored in the abstract if somebody wants to work with it for whatever purpose. That would be a separate discussion that could be had (even if, as noted above, the content is of very dubious usefulness). It is about you closing a DRV with a statement to the effect that there is consensus, which there is not, to overturn the AfD's decision to delete the article and its history. By doing so, you are misusing your authority as a DRV closer - and, by undeleting the history without a basis in the community consensus required by the DRV process, you are misusing your administrator tools. Sandstein 08:30, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

I have been careful to not use the word "overturn" in my close, but it looks like I wasn't clear enough. I've revised my statement to be more explicit: There is a consensus to redirect, and I am exercising my discretion as an admin (based on the points I listed above) to restore the history. If you believe that admins should not have the discretion to restore the history underneath a redirect, then please explain which step in my logic is flawed, or, if you believe that admins should not have the discretion to userfy/draftify a deleted article, then please point to the policy/guideline that says that or propose a change in an RfC. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 08:46, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

It's kind of like the Irish Sea border trilemma actually: Philosophically, you may want to allow userfication while disallowing the restoration of history underneath redirects, just like the UK wants a hard border somewhere with the Republic of Ireland. But I am telling you that this position is simply untenable with our current set of policies, because these two situations can be easily transformed into each other and there is no good place to draw the border. (I'm just playing devil's advocate here, since that is not even my position anyways, even in the absence of practicality requirements.) -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 09:04, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) @King of Hearts, I wasn't involved in either the AfD or the drv but spotted the discussion on your talk page. I think there is a point being missed, in that you expressing administrator discretion to overturn Sandstein's reasonable afd judgement, in the absence of clear consensus, may create somewhat of a concerning precedent. Personally, I didn't observe a view in the afd that the content was salvageable or of sufficient quality that retention of the history would be beneficial. A redirect as it stands is not itself problematic and it could be argued that an afd judgement of redirect (default history being kept) would also not be a poor outcome if considering WP:ATD, but the general consensus in the afd was that the article should be deleted first and foremost. The drv discussion did not have compelling consensus that this was a bad closure, in my view.

Sandstein's observation seems a fair one to me: It is about you closing a DRV with a statement to the effect that there is consensus, which there is not, to overturn the AfD's decision to delete the article and its history. Bungle ^{(talk • contribs)} 09:10, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Again, this is not about overturning his AfD judgment. I am simply accepting a reasonable request to restore the history underneath a redirect, because there is no reason to hide random revisions underneath a live page (whether an article or a redirect) unless WP:CRD is met; just because the article was previously deleted (for reasons that are primarily not about content) doesn't change that. It isn't necessary "that retention of the history would be beneficial"; rather, history should only be deleted if retention of it is harmful, because the natural state of things is to preserve all revisions unless they fall under CRD. Regarding your last statement, please take a look at my revised close and see if it is more amenable.

Remember that this isn't about DRV. Currently, someone can simply make a polite request on an admin's talk page to restore some article's history, and as long as the target is allowed to remain up (e.g. userspace/draft or more rarely redirect, but not a substantially similar mainspace article which would fall under G4), the admin can choose to grant the request. Maybe this is due for an overhaul, as this is not well-documented in formal policy even though it is widely practiced; WP:USERFY is only an essay and doesn't go into too much detail about the specific requirements. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 09:38, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Uh, this is purely about DRV. To restore the history of pages deleted at AfD (except "soft deletion"), by policy people have to go to DRV. That's the actual undeletion policy as described at WP:UDP, and is also explained the same at WP:RESTORE and at WP:RFU. Admins are not allowed to restore the history of a page deleted at AfD if a user requests it (they can userfy/draftify it, but not restore it in article space). Fram (talk) 09:46, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

You're still missing the point. The result of the AfD was (clearly) delete, and you have overturned this at the DRV by restoring the history in articlespace, despite the fact that there was no consensus to do so. This is surely not a difficult concept? Black Kite (talk) 09:50, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

@Fram and Black Kite: Please take a look at my thought experiment above. If I userfy/draftify it, then which of the next two steps is prohibited? Turning it to a redirect? Moving the redirect to article space? Note that there is nothing that actually prohibits moving a userspace draft to article space a priori; rather, it runs the risk of G4 after the fact, if not substantially improved. But obviously G4 does not apply if an article has been turned into a redirect. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 09:52, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

But you didn't userfy it. I'm unsure how many times multiple people have to point this out, but you restored it in article space, despite the fact that there was no consensus to do so at the DRV. The fact that the history in question was a mishmash of mostly unsourced unencyclopedic speculation which benefits no-one at all is actually irrelevant here, though it does beg the question of what purpose that restoration actually achieved anyway. Black Kite (talk) 09:58, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

That's just WP:BURO: I could have moved it to Draft:Chronovisor, changed it to a redirect, and moved it back to Chronovisor. Which of these steps is problematic? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 10:03, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Really? "Which of these steps os problematic?" It would probably lead to a desysop, if you insisted that it was perfectly allowable to misuse your tools in this way. It would be a use of the admin tools to get your preferred outcome (redirect with history) over the AfD consensus (delete, then redirect), with a wikilawyering route to avoid the in-your-face policy violation and replace it with a sneaky one. Fram (talk) 10:10, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Calm down, this is just a thought experiment. Let's replace the last two steps with two other people, i.e. Person B changes it to a redirect, and Person C moves it back to Chronovisor. What policy is violated here? What I'm trying to say here is, article history has always been porous partly as a result of this userfication/draftification "loophole" if you will, leading to significant differences in policy interpretation as Uanfala mentions below. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 10:24, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Don't patronize. "This is just a thought experiment", yes, and in that scenario you would be asking for a desysop. Hence my repeated use of "would". If you can't accept that someone explains what would happen if you actually executed that thought experiment, then what's the point? Fram (talk) 10:32, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

You haven't answered my question. If these steps are carried out independently by multiple actors, is there a problem anymore? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 10:42, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

If I noticed a user requesting undeletion + draftification/userfication of articles deleted at AfD and unilaterally moving those pages back into article space – under redirects or otherwise – I would ask them to stop and escalate to AN/I if necessary. I would hold the undeleting admin(s) blameless unless there was evidence of collusion. Flatscan (talk) 04:48, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

(ec)Someone replacing a deleted + redirected article into an undeleted + redirected article in this way would normally be reverted and warned about disrupting Wikipedia. If consensus was for deletion, then that should be either respected or overturned at DRV (by consensus, not by an admin who doesn't seem to know policy and when this is pointed out reverts to "thought experiments" instead of acknowledging that they were wrong in their claim. Fram (talk) 09:59, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

KoH, there was a discussion among you, Jayron32, and Black Kite at the 2021 AN. You cited WT:Deletion review/Archives/2013/May#History-only undeletion, but they made it clear that your interpretation was disputed. Did you remember this? Flatscan (talk) 04:48, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

I started the DRV, so I'm likely biased, but just a few quick notes. First, apart from me, only two participants commented directly on the AfD close, one arguing for overturning, the other casting some doubt on the need to. Second, I think it's clear to everyone now that redirecting is the best outcome for the page, and the argument is solely about whether the history should be deleted or not. I'm not aware of any policy that would allow the deletion of article histories for alleged poor quality (if I'd just redirected the article and then asked for a deletion of its history, no admin in their right mind would have obliged). Third, there appears to be a split in the community with regard to the views of such situations: the distribution between the two "camps", as well as their relative numbers, can be gleaned from some better-attended recent DRVs, like this one from May. Uanfala (talk) 10:04, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

"I'm not aware of any policy that would allow the deletion of article histories for alleged poor quality". Er, the article was deleted with clear consensus at the AfD, and there was no consensus at the DRV to overturn it. Yes, one could create a new redirect, and there would be no issue with that. It appears that KoH has made his own policy up before on this subject [21] and it is probably time that they stopped doing it. Black Kite (talk) 10:13, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

The AfD closed as "delete", but I thought we'd all agreed this closure was wrong? Uanfala (talk) 10:16, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

There isn't any consensus at the DRV that it was wrong, and there's definitely no consensus that the history should have been restored, that was a decision purely taken by the closer. As you can see from the link above, they have previous views on this. Black Kite (talk) 10:21, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm obviously in one of the camps, but I'm happy to go along with the other camp if either: 1) admins are restricted from restoring history for any reason, including userification/draftification, without consensus; or 2) reasonable, enforceable restrictions are placed on the what actions can be taken with respect to drafts, along with a clear set of requirements for moving them back to the main namespace. Otherwise, a la Irish border (see above) it is simply not feasible to prohibit restoring article history underneath a redirect while allowing userfication/draftification at will. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 10:24, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

I don't think you should place conditions on the reversal of your supervote to restore the history against policy. Loopholes or not are not an excuse to keep your wrong action in place. Fram (talk) 10:32, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

A significant amount of people disagree with you, as seen at the last AN (which ended up preserving both my closes). Instead of having this issue boil up every few months, don't you agree that it is better for the community to come together to create a clearer policy around article history? Insisting that your interpretation is the only correct one and that anyone else is acting against policy gets us nowhere. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 10:42, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Or alternatively - here's a wild idea - you could just close DRVs in line with the consensus in the discussion instead of supervoting, in which case there would be no issue at all. I note the same issue with the closure of numerous AfDs has been previously brought up. Black Kite (talk) 10:56, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

(ec, Black Kite said it shorter and better) In that previous AN, in the first instance there had been a merge, which is a completely different discussion. The second one was for someone to work at it with new sources, and the conclusion was "While it was made at the wrong venue, and KoH did not adequately articulate the rationale for undeletion, the procedural errors are not sufficient to overturn what would otherwise be an normal REFUND request." Again this is different from the current situation. Furthermore, you weem to have only retained that they weren't overturned, not that they weren't overturned despite correct procedural objections. To continue with procedurally wrong closes because previous ones were (for different reasons) not overturned is very poor practice. "Instead of having this issue boil up every few months, don't you agree that it is better" for you to stop making such closes? If you believe the policy to be wrong, WP:VPP is thataway. Fram (talk) 11:00, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

• Endorse. As King of Hearts noted:

  I have been careful to not use the word "overturn" in my close, but it looks like I wasn't clear enough. I've revised my statement to be more explicit: There is a consensus to redirect, and I am exercising my discretion as an admin (based on the points I listed above) to restore the history. If you believe that admins should not have the discretion to restore the history underneath a redirect, then please explain which step in my logic is flawed, or, if you believe that admins should not have the discretion to userfy/draftify a deleted article, then please point to the policy/guideline that says that or propose a change in an RfC.

  The DRV close was reasonable. King of Hearts did not close the DRV as "overturn". He exercised his administrative discretion to restore the page history under the redirect, an action that all admins have the discretion to do. The DRV nominator Uanfala made a good faith request for the page history to be restored as they found it useful. If Uanfala had made the userfication or draftification request at Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion, it would have been granted because the page did not contain copyright violations or BLP violations or anything else that should be publicly inaccessible in the history. Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion notes:

  This page is also intended to serve as a central location to request that deleted content be userfied, restored as a draft or emailed to you so the content can be improved upon prior to re-insertion into the mainspace, or used elsewhere (you may also make a request directly to one of the administrators listed here). This means that content deleted after discussion—at articles for deletion, categories for discussion, or miscellany for deletion among other deletion processes—may in some cases be provided to you, but such controversial page deletions will not be overturned through this process but through deletion review instead. Copyright violations and attack pages will not be provided at all.

  This sequence of events could have happened after a WP:REFUND request:
  1. An admin restores Chronovisor's page history to Draft:Chronovisor.
  2. A redirect is made from Draft:Chronovisor to Time travel claims and urban legends#The Chronovisor.
  3. A second redirect is made from Chronovisor to Time travel claims and urban legends#The Chronovisor with an edit summary noting that the deleted article's page history now is in draftspace at Draft:Chronovisor.
  There are no policy violations in this series of actions. There is no functional difference for readers between having the page history live in mainspace at a redirected Chronovisor or in draftspace at a redirected Draft:Chronovisor. Having the page history in mainspace is preferable for editors so that editors do not have a level of indirection to get to the content. As the closer of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive331#Review of DRV closures by King of Hearts wrote:

  On the other side, editors also criticize the time spent on minor complaints about procedure. Editors are reminded to consider the encyclopedic outcomes when challenging actions, and to avoid process for the sake of process when benefits to readers are negligible.

  Restoring the page history benefits a good faith editor (Uanfala) who finds the content useful and does not negatively impact readers. King of Hearts' actions are sound, policy-compliant, and well within administrative discretion.

  Why I support preserving an article's history when possible: When there is an alternative to deletion, I always support keeping the article's history accessible to non-admins if there are no BLP violations or copyright violations or anything else that should be publicly inaccessible in the history. The article may contain useful content for a merge or useful sources. The article may have unreliable sources that cannot be cited. But the unreliable sources may have information that helps editors find reliable sources that can be used. Without having to ask an admin to restore to draft, a non-admin who is interested in recreating the article with better sourcing and content can immediately view the prior state of the article to see if anything can be reused.

  Cunard (talk) 11:07, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

That sequence would be even worse. Draft space is not intended for indefinite storage, and keeping an article in draft to have the page history kept is a wrong use of what the draft space is for. Making edits to redirects to point editors to drafts should not be done. Fram (talk) 12:31, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

• This was a mistake. I see no consensus to change the close at DRV and a clear consensus to delete it at AFD. I can see sometimes userying or draftifying articles if there is a snowball's chance, but the DRV close seems somewhat like a supervote rather than a read of consensus. Not the worse offense of that crime, but still. The discussion seemed to go off a bit in a tangent, but it doesn't matter. At the end of the day DRV is about finding out if consensus was ignored, or if there was some fatal flaw due to the closer (wp:involved, etc) that warrants relisting or overturning. Without clear consensus, it defaults to the existing close at AFD, which wasn't followed. The AFD was pretty clean and the close seemed appropriate, so the DRV close is out of process. If we are trying to demonstrate a problem with the closer (KoH), we need more examples to establish a pattern. In short, vacate the close, let someone else close it, KoH needs to recognize the mistake so they don't repeat it. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 11:28, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

• I did not participate in the AfDs or DRVs. I would repeat what I said in the last AN discussion about this, but with more emphasis, and ask that King of Hearts should consider desisting from closing DRVs for the time being. There is no shortage of other things they can do with their admin tools.—S Marshall T/C 12:29, 2 August 2022 (UTC)
• Well, I don't think that Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2022 July 15 counts as a consensus to restore the page history - the concerns raised against are not frivolous. Or really, any consensus. Just because we require consensus for deletion does not automatically imply that lack of consensus on a deletion review requires undeletion - WP:DELREVD implies it only for contested speedy deletions, not for every kind of deletion. I think that "did the AfD have a consensus to remove the page and its history altogether, or just to remove the article but leave the history intact" is a legitimate DRV question, though. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 18:07, 2 August 2022 (UTC)
• I participated in the DRV so I'm not neutral here, but I don't see anything wrong with that closure at all given that it reflects the policy-based arguments made in it. Thryduulf (talk) 15:19, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

• The "policy-based" arguments from a discussion where no one, from either side, linked to or referenced any policies or guidelines, and where it since has become clear that the closer didn't know the applicable policy at all and just based their close on a misunderstanding of WP:REFUND? Fram (talk) 15:47, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

• The redirect and restored history is an overturn of the AfD result, regardless of KoH avoiding that wording. I do not see a consensus to overturn at the DRV. (This is a restatement of my comment at KoH's talk page.) Flatscan (talk) 04:48, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Why the heck are we here?

First, in my experience, both Sandstein and King of Hearts are long time trust-worthy closers. I'm really sad to see the above.

So I looked at the AfD, it's pretty clear delete/redirect - which is pretty much what the closer said. The DRV doesn't find anything to overturn in the close and then redirects at an admin's discretion.

Why the heck are we here? A poorly worded close? - jc37 12:35, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

The redirect is not the problem. We are here because King of Hearts undeleted the article's history, thereby overturning the AfD's "delete" result, even though there was no consensus to do so in the DRV. By doing so as part of the DRV closure, which is supposed to reflect consensus, they also falsely asserted that there was in fact such a consensus.

Their recent amendment to the closure (itself problematic because it alters an administrative decision under review without making this clear with a strikethrough) does not alter that. Worse, it asserts an admin's "discretion" to restore deleted article content merely because they believe it should not stay deleted. In fact, no such discretion exists. Admins are bound to community consensus as expressed in the AfD and DRV processes.

King of Hearts' assertion makes a mockery of our deletion process, according to which admins may not normally decide on their own to delete (and undelete) pages. They must obtain the community's consensus for such actions, except in certain situations such as WP:CSD. King of Hearts' disregard for these constraints is extremely concerning. Sandstein 12:55, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Ok. so for you it's solely about restoring the deleted history.

I'm torn. I totally get your point. And I get the point about WP:REFUND too.

I don't think the spirit of the rules were broken though. Especially since your close was pretty much delete, but could be turned into a redirect. Whether the article history stayed deleted or was "refunded" is kind of immaterial, especially since you said ""...if somebody writes it up there (with sources)", which sounds like a merge, and so kinda presupposes the article history will be restored so that the editor(s) would have the raw materials to build such.

I also think that that DRV was a local consensus at best, and didn't show much of a consensus to overturn anything. But if it is treated as a request to redirect (per your close) then honestly, no harm no foul.

The problem then, is that's not what the DRV close said - it may be what he did in implementation - but not what it said. And I'll agree - if you're going to undelete something (refund or otherwise), be ready to explain it.

I think we've all had poorly worded closes at times (my fingers don't always share everything my brain is thinking lol). So for that, sure, I could see you asking for a clarifiaction on the close and him re-doing it.

Now in all of this I'm doing a LOT of agf here. other stuff could be going on here, with you, with him. but in the end I'm hoping that he just wrote a shortcut of a result in saying redirect, instead of saying a result of no consensus to overturn, but redirecting upon request at admin's discretion. And I think we could all move on.

At least I hope. - jc37 13:18, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Especially in the light of this, which I mentioned above. I'm sure that most o KoH's DRV closures are fine, but you cannot simply twist policy round to suit your own opinions. Black Kite (talk) 13:05, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

• This is making mountains out of molehills, and I see nothing here that requires any meaningful sanctions for anyone, other than process-for-process-sake Wikilawyering. --Jayron32 13:11, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

We are here because we're dealing with an unsettled area of policy: when deleting (or restoring) and article history is called for at AfD or thereafter. I find Sandstein's and KoH's perspectives to be entirely valid interpretations of the way things are set up. Many !vote delete based on notability -- it's not about the content of the article; it's about the subject. When I !vote delete based on notability, by default I'm just saying "we shouldn't have an article on this, and it doesn't look like there's a good merge target". I don't intend it to be a lock on the history if there's consensus to add it elsewhere, and if someone finds an uncontroversial redirect target then great. As long as we don't have an article on the subject, I don't care much about the history because, you know, nobody's realistically going to see it (part of why I can't help but sympathize with Jayron's take, too, although I know process is important). Of course, there are times when I'll go out of my way to say that the history shouldn't be retained because it's especially problematic, and in those cases I'd hope it wouldn't be restored without another round of discussion. Was that the case here, or were the delete !votes assumed to mean the content is so egregious that the history needs to be deleted? At the same time, how important is restoring the history, really, if we're not talking about a copyvio? These are unsettled questions, and reasonable people can disagree with the strength of those arguments -- to the point of having contrary opinions on whether something is "consensus on the strength of arguments" or a "supervote". — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:57, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

I dunno. If it's "unsettled" (and I'm not sure I'd say it that way, but ok), it's because these things tend to be handled on a case-by-case basis - for the reasons you note, and more. We're not going to come up with every instance of x or y. I hesitate to continue down this line of thought though, because I think it strays a bit from the concerns of both closers and I think it starts to enter into WP:IAR territory.

That said, I think your points are well-taken. - jc37 14:04, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Except this isn't really about any kind of policy shortcomings. Read the statements made by the two primary parties here. This reads a lot like "I made a decision, and then you undid it." It comes off as personal and singular, and I fail to see any real policy implications here; just hurt feelings over what one person did to negate the prior decision another person made. Let's face it; neither the initial AFD nor the resulting DRV had wide participation or overwhelming consensus for any one particular action, indeed the initial AFD was largely made not because there was an overwhelming consensus, but because there were a a relatively small number of nuanced, ambiguous, and somewhat contradictory comments. A few people wanted to keep, a few more wanted to delete, and some wanted a redirect (some explicitly alongside delete, and some ambiguously). The community (if we treat it as having one voice here) was largely ambivalent through the initial discussion, and the initial AFD closer made a reasonable call based on what they saw as the best, policy based points, but it was NOT a slam-dunk. In the DRV review, THAT closer essentially did the same thing; if we take the time element out of it here, neither admin did anything different: They were each faced with making a decision on how to proceed based on an ambivalent community. If we throw out first-mover advantage, neither made a "wrong" decision. They interpreted community input and policy in different ways, and different is not a synonym of wrong, especially not here. That's why this is making mountains out of molehills; neither admin did an unambiguously bad thing, but the person who happened to act first is indignant only because they enacted their decision first. It's not a thing worth fighting over; and either result as minimal impact on the community. I'm more bothered spending this much energy discussing it, than any mistake either admin may have made. And I don't think either made a mistake. Conflicts can happen even if neither party is in the wrong. When we recognize that is what is happening, it's best to drop it and move on. --Jayron32 15:41, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

This reads a lot like "I made a decision, and then you undid it." There may be some of that there, but to be fair to Sandstein, he's one of our most prolific AfD closers, and I'm sure he's used to people challenging closes and occasionally seeing them undone at DRV. I don't associate Sandstein with being particularly dramatic about those things, so there's certainly something about this particular [quasi-]overturning that struck a nerve. More to your (and Jc37's) point, I wouldn't say it's about policy shortcomings -- it's about something for which we have no prescription, and several arguments here seem to indicate it was crystal clear procedurally (one way or the other) when it wasn't. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:43, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

I think the reason why policy is not explicitly clear about history restoration is because it is generally not a big deal and people don't make a fuss about it either way, so different admins have done things differently forever and there's never been an impetus to consolidate. But since this is the second time I've butted heads with Sandstein on this issue on AN, perhaps it is worth it to resolve it via RfC one way or another so that we can follow one correct policy interpretation going forward whatever it may be, if only so that we avoid wasting more time as a community on stuff like this in the future. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:24, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

What I think is particularly out of order is not that you unilaterally restored the history - to be sure, I do think that this is inadmissible and contrary to the AfD's "delete" outcome - but that you did it while closing the DRV. Any administrator closing discussions is expected to assess and act on consensus, not their own preferences. This is what I thinks makes this an abuse of administrator tools, and frankly worthy of a request for arbitration. Sandstein 17:32, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Sandstein will of course do as he sees fit but I hope he doesn't proceed to arbitration at this point. The difficulty I see here is making the case that the previous AN thread was mis-closed. I think it probably was mis-closed, but I didn't challenge it at the time and I don't think anyone else did, and the then closer is now a sitting arbitrator. I wouldn't want to be the one making that case.—S Marshall T/C 17:47, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

I don't necessarily think that the previous AN thread was a wrong assessment of consensus at that time, but now we can more clearly see a pattern of misconduct and come to a different conclusion. Sandstein 18:22, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

I was inactive at the time, but I felt that the close downplayed the numerous concerns when I read through the discussion later. I think that this isn't ripe for arbitration yet, but I would submit a statement if someone else files a request. Flatscan (talk) 04:48, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

• I think everyone should hug and slap each other silly with large trout. Then move on with your lives. Sometimes people close things wrong or read it wrong or do something they think is a good idea. We'll all be more careful in the future. Right folks? I was hauled before AN plenty of times and sometimes I was right, and sometimes I was wrong, or very wrong, but in this case, I don't see what harm was done or whose lives were made worse? Andrevan@ 16:24, 2 August 2022 (UTC)
• Whereas I do think history restoration is a big deal, and I do see harms. Restoring the history is undeletion --- it's reversing an admin action. And doing that without a consensus to say it should be done is wheel warring. I feel that attempts to frame this as a minor difference of interpretation are rather wide of the mark.—S Marshall T/C 17:37, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

  Not saying that I agree (or not) with your assertion, but I'll merely note that you may wish to re-read WP:WHEEL. - jc37 17:55, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

  I don't think it categorizes as wheel warring. Wheel warring would be if Admin A did something, Admin B did something that had the effect of reversing Admin A (in this case, closing a DRV), and then if Admin A reverted Admin B. In this case, it might be a mis-close, or a supervote as some have said - an affirmative read of a DRV that seems out of sync and effectively an overturn of the original AFD, but not a simple reversal of the AFD absent process. On the other hand, there is reasonable discretion and the policy doesn't specifically say that restoring history at DRV shouldn't be or isn't done. Correct me if I'm wrong. Andrevan@ 17:59, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

  It's not wheel-warring, but you should absolutely not be reversing another admin's actions unless they have clearly done something wrong or there is community suport for it. There was neither here. Black Kite (talk) 17:41, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

  Well, there looks to be a DRV where some editors did express support to overturn to redirect, and some editors didn't, and KoH judged there was a reasonable argument - so it's not like KoH just decided randomly to cowboy restore this history. Andrevan@ 17:48, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Close (DRV, King of Hearts)

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

---

As Sandstein noted in his opening statement, I seconded his concerns at King of Hearts's talk page. I am disappointed that I have been denied the opportunity to participate here by Floquenbeam's close. As an example of my potential contributions beyond my opinion, I have a rebuttal to KoH's reference to the WP:Revision deletion criteria: repurposing them for AfD delete and redirect was proposed and rejected at WT:Deletion policy/Archive 45#Alternative proposal (December 2015–January 2016). Flatscan (talk) 04:19, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Agreed, I would have liked to participate in this discussion as well. At least 4 people brought up 3 separate KoH DRV closes on his talk page in the last two days; so this isn't just about the Chronovisor close. I also disagree that there was any "consensus" here that the complaints are unmerited/trivial/NOTBURO/whatever -- I see 8 editors agreeing the DRV close was problematic, with just 3 appearing to endorse it and 3~4 basically saying they don't see what the big deal is. Much like the last time this exact issue was raised, a significant majority of editors have advanced reasoned, policy-based concerns about these closes; why not allow others a chance to weigh in? JoelleJay (talk) 04:58, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I stand corrected on that point; however, that was merely my explanation for why having the history restored would be a good thing in general, rather than my main justification for why my actions were supported by policy and common practice. In any case, it's clear that there are two opposing interpretations of policy which come to different conclusions regarding my actions. I think towards the end of last night we were going around in circles saying the same thing over and over again so I don't think continuing to argue about this specific case will be productive at this point. Anyways, the WP:SHED closure made me realize I really just do not care what happens in this specific case anymore. I will not consider it wheel-warring for any admin to unilaterally re-delete the history, so long as they genuinely believe that hiding the revisions benefits the encyclopedia over having them publicly visible, and are not just doing so to make a WP:POINT or to express an opinion about my actions. I myself will continue to believe that having them publicly visible is slightly better having them hidden, just as blue is a slightly better color than green for the shed. But if someone cares about this more than me then go right ahead.

What I care about is avoiding situations like this in the future. And I think clearer policy guidance will be beneficial (see Rhododendrites's point), so I invite any help to draft an RfC. But that is a discussion for WT:DP, not here. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:16, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

• I did wonder how long Floquenbeam's "close" would stand. How is it OK for a sysop to post pure snide or snark on the AN? Were this place's rules written by adults?—S Marshall T/C 07:09, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

  (ec) I also strongly disagree with Floquenbeam's facetious "closure" of the above thread, which I believe illustrates the same sense of irresponsibility as the DRV closure at issue here does. I am disappointed that Floquenbeam chose not to heed the advice by Barkeep49. I believe that the discussion above indicates quites clearly that many, if not most, of the people commenting here recognize that King of Hearts's DRV supervote to overturn an AfD outcome they did not like was a misuse of administrator tools and of the trust placed in administrators to act according to community consensus. If this is not properly resolved here, such as by either King of Hearts undoing or the community overturning the DRV closure, it will need to be resolved at WP:RFAR. Sandstein 07:18, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

  As someone uninvolved, the mis-close is an example of a mistake at worst, with no negative impact to anyone that I can discern, but not a 'misuse of the tools' which implies either a bad outcome or some bad intention in my view. KoH has indicated above he is OK with someone overturning his action, which suggests reasonable remorse and introspection. I think maybe Sandstein could also drop the WP:STICK and I endorse Floq's close. You are both long-time, experienced, good faith users. Andrevan@ 07:31, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

  I don't think Floqs close is at all facetious. I think he's quite serious in his belief that the thread was a waste of time and I do think there's a point there worth considering, even if I think he missed the underlying point of the thread. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 12:15, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

  There are ways to convey that view without being rude.—S Marshall T/C 12:33, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

The close is obviously premature and I've reverted it. Floq's view that this is all a waste of time is legitimate but not widely held. Mackensen (talk) 12:24, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

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

Continued discussion

This isn't, IMO, a waste of time. I think the underlying problem is that we do a very inconsistent job with article histories. I think we all agree that:

• If an article is deleted, it's history is too.
• If an article is redirected and the redirect is reasonable, it, and the article history, will survive at RfD.

Now some of you may see no inconsistency here, but I most certainly do. Barring significant issues with that history (copyright etc.), we should generally keep the history of anything that results in a redirect--even if that redirect happens later. It can help with the recreation of the article if things change (new sources, new guidelines etc.). I'd prefer we just normalize restoring history when a reasonable redirect replaces an article.

IMO the problem is that redirects are rarely proposed in AfDs. Part of the problem is that AfDs are for the discussion of deletion and the nom will often get yelled at for proposing a redirect. So those always start at delete and the nom, who generally knows something about the area (otherwise how did they find the article) feels like they can't propose a redirect. But they want to avoid the drama of a "redirect war" and want a community discussion instead.

Net effect, KoH was outside of normal process with what they did, but I think it draws attention to a real inconsistency in how we do AfDs. Maybe part of the ARBCOM requested RfC could address the issues mentioned above (being okay with AfD noms allowing suggestions of a redirect or merge, discussing if a redirect done after an AfD should allow the history to be restored). So I'd prefer a small fish be sent to KoH and suggest they take a role in any RfC on the topic rather than going around normal process in the future. Hobit (talk) 17:29, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

• Perhaps we could have closed this a lot earlier if KoH had said "OK, I can see the problem here, I won't do that again". However, from what they've said above, they still believe they were correct to undelete the history and supervote on the DRV. It was a mistake, and KoH could have admitted it and undone their close in five seconds. But ... no. So here we all are, wasting even more electrons. Black Kite (talk) 17:49, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

  It used to be the case that reasonable admin discretion in closing a deletion discussion, meant reading through it, and weighing and discarding arguments, not simply plugging numbers into a formula. If 2 editors said 1 thing and 1 editor said something else and you had reason to discount or underweight the third comment based on logic or policy, that was fair, but sometimes there were oversteps or mistakes in doing this. You aren't expected to be right 100% of the time. I think about 80% is the best anyone should reasonably shoot for. It's only with 20/20 hindsight and a bunch of backseat drivers on a noticeboard that it might be clearer now that this one was flawed. So to your point, KoH should probably endorse the position, whether he agrees or not, that this was a 20% case, especially because the actual impact seems pretty small, and we can all move on. Andrevan@ 17:57, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

  Andrevan, you keep talking as if we're reviewing one or two recent contested decisions. Is that what you think?—S Marshall T/C 18:39, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

  Er, I didn't say that, I think my main concern is that we should be focused on outcomes, not whether the letter of the policy was followed, or whether some admins feel that it is a reversal of them. That just feels territorial. Andrevan@ 18:56, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

  @Black Kite: FWIW, I intend to follow Hobit's advice above about a clarification RfC, and in the meantime I won't be doing any more history-only undeletions that rely on risky interpretations of policy. I won't undo my action because I do not believe doing so will improve the encyclopedia, not that it matters too much one way or another. If you or anyone else thinks that hiding those revisions puts the encyclopedia in a better state, feel free to do it yourself, as I've stated above. Otherwise it just becomes process for process' sake, an action taken even though no one actually has any idea why it should be done. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:19, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

  Would it help if we told you why it should be done? I do think Flatscan explained it well but maybe if we said it again in different words?—S Marshall T/C 18:39, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

  It would help me. You've given process-based reasons that I understand (and even agree with). But as much as I value process, I don't think the encyclopedia, itself, would benefit from deleting the history. And, as I argued above, it might even hurt. Is there something outside of process issues that you have in mind? Hobit (talk) 19:22, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

  You see, that is the problem. You are providing an emotional response to a logical matter. While it's fine to have emotions, obviously, closing discussions requires one puts them aside, and putting your own opinion to the side, and following consensus. And if you can't do that, then you don't close it and let someone else. That's ok, there are many topics I won't close because I have too many opinions on it, but if I were to and let my emotions rule the day AND insist on closing a discussion, I would expect to be right here where KoH is. I find King of Hearts's explanation above lacking for the same reason. Admin are required to be objective and unemotional when determining consensus from a discussion, or don't do it at all. KoH still isn't getting it, even after all this discussion. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 19:31, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

  I have said it before, and I will say it again: I am more or less apathetic to the outcome of this page, and in the future I won't do these kinds of undeletions while policy is unsettled. Anyone is free to re-delete the revisions as long as they believe they are acting in the best interests of the encyclopedia, however they choose to interpret that. The initial topic for this case was whether there was a consensus to delete the page revisions. If that really is the case, then surely it wouldn't be hard to find a single admin willing to defend that outcome on its own merits.

  Ultimately, process exists to provide efficiency at a macro level. Without process, it would either be the wild west or we would spend hours discussing every little detail. I am fine accepting that process will sometimes give results that don't make a lot of sense; that is the price to be paid for efficiency. But I'm not going to implement an outcome myself when I haven't seen anyone caring to see it happen. If somebody goes ahead and does it, then that is all the evidence I need and we can move on. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:40, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

  I can't agree that Hobit's intervention here is "emotional". I think he's asking a question that we've already addressed in related discussions, but it's a question that seems reasonable framed in mild and unobjectionable terms, and I think Hobit's giving voice to feelings a lot of editors already have. Why would we delete the history behind a redirect? Or, which is the same thing, why would we restore the history behind a redirect in the first place?

  In some cases we restore history because it's the simplest way to preserve attribution after a merge. Flatscan's done a lot of useful thinking about that particular use case. Where the history isn't necessary to preserve attribution, the only other reasons to restore it are (1) to enable non-admin editors to view the history, (2) to turn the redirect back into an article with one click, or (3) to enable copy/pasting from the now-deleted text.

  The operation we miscall "deletion" prevents the disputed text from reappearing in the encyclopaedia by removing its history. That's the only effect that "deletion" has. So any of those last three justifications for restoring the history amount to an end-run around any previous delete consensus.

  Getting stuff deleted from Wikipedia is hard. It's a lot of work. We can use CSDs for clear-cut cases but those are narrowly construed. We can use PROD, but there are a large staff of self-appointed PROD patrollers who will deprod on the slightest pretext, and besides, anyone can contest a PROD after the event and get the disputed content undeleted. So you have to go to AfD and make the case, in an environment where editors are very happy to upbraid you and find fault if you haven't met some quite exacting standards of diligence, and then get a supermajority of !votes and substantial time investment by the nominator. The experience is bruising and exhausting and it takes an utterly disproportionate amount of volunteer time. Any reasonable definition of the word "editor" outside Wikipedia would mean someone who improves written content by cutting text, but here on Wikipedia even judicious pruning is very difficult.

  But then someone drives by and restores the history because meh, why not, don't see the harm. We'll just do an end-run around your little delete consensus here because I feel like it. And actually, now you've called me out on it, I don't feel like un-doing it and I don't have to.

  Put simply, this amounts to waving your middle finger at community consensus.—S Marshall T/C 21:54, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

  The initial topic for this case was whether there was a consensus to delete the page revisions. There was, it was the AfD, which you overrode with a supervote. That is the issue, not the revision history, which I think by now no-one could care less about. S Marshall's last sentence just above is relevant here. I'm out of this disucssion now, as it's cearly not going to achieve anything. Black Kite (talk) 22:00, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

  If AfD consensus is a consensus to delete page revisions, then the DRV is not only to review whether the decision was correct, but also to assess whether the reason still applies after changed circumstances such as creation of a redirect, or a proposal to merge to another page. "If a merge is not an option then there is no reason to retain the edit history" is incorrect: other sites, including other language versions of Wikipedia, use Wikipedia content under a licence requiring attribution, and the "permanent link" in the sidebar should if possible link to a revision from which attribution can be accessed. 82.132.185.128 (talk) 22:59, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

  • I think Dennis's comment about emotional was directed to KoH, not me, though I can't tell for certain. In any case, I do think the issue of what happens to the history of a redirect is worth discussing, though far from critical. What happens with this one isn't, IMO, hugely relevant. But we should have a larger discussion as I think we are at a silly and what I see as an inconsistent place (deletion at AfD followed by a redirect resulting in history being deleted while a straight redirect leaves the history. And we rarely (never?) make people perform edits they believe are wrong. So someone should free free to delete the underlying history, or not. But expecting KoH to do so when they've made it plain they disagree with that, isn't productive. Hobit (talk) 23:48, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

(EC) I think S Marshall's comment nicely encapsulates the opposition people have to restoring history of deleted pages. When we !vote for deletion at an AfD, we are !voting to remove a whole article from mainspace. If we wanted to retain the ability to restore the article in any of its prior forms we would advocate for draft/userfication or redirection-with-history, and participants in the discussion would be aware "undeletion" of any version by a non-admin was a possibility. It should not be used as an undiscussed "compromise" between deletion and keeping or a way to sneakily circumvent deletion.

In the original AfD, one person early on suggested a redirect (to time viewer), one person raised merging as a secondary option (but with the caution that both the target and the article (if retained) would merit TNTing, indicating the content in the article and its history was likely unusable), and one person !voted to "delete and redirect". Then there were 4 straight deletes and 2 keeps. Redirect-with-history was most certainly not a possible outcome here and shouldn't have even been suggested in the DRV, since no new info was actually uncovered here (the existence of a "better" redirect target wouldn't have made a difference, as none of the AfD participants cited the unsuitability of the redirect target as a reason for deletion). That DRV editors decided to relitigate the AfD instead of dispassionately analyzing its closure doesn't change the fact that there was clearly no consensus to undelete the history. JoelleJay (talk) 23:53, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

JoelleJay if the redirect is kept, the range of outcomes is what has changed. Delete because of a notability guideline does not mean keep the history hidden if there is a redirect (or somewhere to merge to), or break attribution where content has been re-used externally - "a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution" requires the page at that URL to exist. Take these delete !votes out and consensus to hide the history never existed. 82.132.186.189 (talk) 16:41, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

? "Delete" means "delete everything, including history". It doesn't change meaning when there is a possible redirect target. And it especially doesn't change meaning when redirection is suggested and rejected/ignored. JoelleJay (talk) 22:20, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

If I support deletion of an article, based on notability guidelines, then the article is redirected, that does not mean I prefer a redirect with history hidden to a redirect with history kept intact (and usually I don't; exceptions are privacy requests or reasons for which revision deletion can be used). 82.132.184.201 (talk) 14:04, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

@Hobit: Thanks for your calm words. But I think the actual reason for my reluctance to re-delete the history myself was not due to any personal beliefs, but rather that I saw it pointless to do something that nobody actually wanted to see done. @S Marshall: I disagree with most of what you've written, including your characterization of the purpose of deletion as well as the last part, which misses the point of what I was trying to say. However, I can sense your earnest belief in how much you value the removal of revisions from public view, a valid position to hold even if I find it unreasonable, enough so that I can no longer say that "nobody cares". Enough to convince me that we're not living in some Kafkaesque nightmare where a meaningless exercise is carried out to the benefit of no one just because "that's the way it's supposed to be". Congratulations on your new red bikeshed. If anyone wants a copy of the history, please email me. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:50, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

@King of Hearts, thank you for reverting the undeletion and for reverting the DRV closure in the relevant part. This resolves the immediate issue with this DRV insofar as I am concerned.

I remain, however, very concerned about the prospect of future DRV closures by you. Your statements above continue to express an unwillingness to be bound by the community-instituted deletion process and community consensus as expressed in AfD and DRV discussions. And you continue to highlight the importance of your own editorial judgment (to the effect of "what's best for Wikipedia") in these matters, whereas in fact administrators closing deletion discussions are required to follow the community's judgment about what should be deleted rather than their own judgment (except where the deletion process assigns discretion to them). I therefore strongly recommend that you refrain from closing any more DRV discussions to prevent the recurrence of threads such as this one. Sandstein 09:29, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

As I've insisted throughout this discussion, this is a history undeletion issue, not a DRV issue. At the time, I would have done the same if someone simply created a redirect and asked me nicely to restore the history underneath. I have committed to not restore history of articles deleted at AfD into the main namespace without an explicit consensus to overturn, which was the main issue with the DRV here and the two DRVs from 2021. I know perfectly well how to assess consensus, as evidenced by my thousands of successful XfD/DRV closures over the years. It is simply this one point where I interpreted policy as allowing discretion on; I now realize my interpretation is in the minority, and therefore won't be taking admin actions based on it. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 15:01, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

I think the concerns here are that you've insisted throughout this discussion that this is a history undeletion issue, when it's not and never was. Levivich 15:12, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

I close discussions based on local consensus (what is explicitly said in the discussion) and global consensus (policies, guidelines, and established procedures). I had simply misjudged the existence of global consensus for one policy issue. If you think it is a general issue with my DRV closures, then please present an example of where you think I was off the mark, which does not involve "history undeletion" as described above. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 15:21, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

To help assuage Sandstein's concerns about my statements above in this subsection: When process dictates a result that I don't see the benefit of, I can simply choose to do nothing. It is purely a one-off that in this case it meant not re-deleting the history. In general, however, it just means I won't close any discussions or take any admin actions where I think it would harm the encyclopedia to do so; instead, I may participate in the discussion to sway the consensus towards my view. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 15:45, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

To add: We've both been admins for over 15 years. We've each closed a very large number of consensus-based discussions over the years without incident. Through no fault of either of ours, you happened to come across an unrepresentative sample of my closures. If you look at it objectively, for both of us, very few of our closures have been overturned or caused major controversy relative to the number of years and number of discussions we've closed. I have perhaps said some things in this thread that could interpreted in a way I didn't intend, but if there was really a general issue with my ability to evaluate consensus it would have shown up in my track record long ago. So let's have some faith in each other and be good colleagues from now on? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:30, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Well, I broadly agree with this latest comment by you. I also hope that we can work together well and collegially as administrators in other contexts, and will do my best to make it so. I am also not aware of specific issues with your AfD/DRV closures except for the ones identified here and in the previous AN thread. But what you describe as a matter of policy (mis)interpretation is, to me, a fairly fundamental matter of administrator responsibility and trust. I expect administrators to understand that they are bound by community consensus and process. That they are not at liberty to restore content deleted by AfD consensus merely because they disagree with the deletion, and much less so when closing a DRV, where their task is solely to determine consensus in the DRV discussion before them, not to impose their own view of what is best for Wikipedia. Because we seem to continue to disagree about our understanding of what the problem is, I am honestly sorry to say that I, personally, do not trust you to close DRV discussions responsibly. I'll have to leave it at that. Best regards nonetheless, Sandstein 08:07, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

• Closes of deletion discussions only escalate to DRV if something has already gone very wrong, so it's extra important that the closes there are unobjectionable. If you find yourself in the position that folks are repeatedly raising reasonable objections to your closes, then you should give some serious thought as to whether your actions - however well-intentioned - are really doing more good than harm. —Cryptic 15:09, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

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

SunView-Desktop.png resized by bot to be unusably small

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SunView-Desktop.png was originally 1,152 × 900, but a bot resized it in 2017 to an unusable 357 × 278 blur because the bot thought it was a "non-free image." However that might just be a categorization issue: the original uploader (in 2005) stated that they made the images and "all rights are released. Do with this as you wish." That original version has also been redacted from the history. Could an Admin restore the original version of the image? Thanks! - GretLomborg (talk) 21:38, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

SunOS appears to have a proprietary licence so is non-free, so a non-free classification of the image would be correct.Nigel Ish (talk) 21:45, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Ok, but the image has been resized to be far too small to be useful for illustrating the software, so still thing the original needs to be unhidden. If that needs to be reduced in size again, it should be done by a human who can judge if the result is acceptable. GretLomborg (talk) 14:24, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

I've resized it manually (to the same size the bot did) so it's at least recognizeable, but. The actually-copyrightable portions of the image were already smaller than that. Does anyone who can view the original version have an objection to just restoring that and tagging it {{non-free no reduce}}? —Cryptic 14:54, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

That bot's resolution is set way too low. That image is unreadable at 357x278, and 1152x900 is still under 1 megapixel. It doesn't need to be reduced at all. Levivich 15:05, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

It isn't reduced for usability's sake, it is used to allow Fair Use of someone else's property. The rules are pretty much handed down by legal when it comes to things that have legal consequences, such as claiming Fair Use of an image that isn't free. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 22:02, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Request for enforcement of topic ban

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

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Some days ago, I alerted Johnpacklambert to a possible violation of his topic ban on religion and religious figures broadly construed. I assumed that an administrator would see the discussion on Mr Lambert's talk page and take action, but nothing happened, so I "pinged" Ritchie333, the admin who placed the ban. Ritchie333 did not edit for some days. When I saw that they were editing today, I left a note on their talk page. They replied that they preferred that another admin deal with it. Soon after, Cullen328 stated that Mr Lambert should not have edited the page, but did not impose any sanction. When questioned, they said in part

It seems like you are lobbying for a block. Please be aware that blocks are to prevent disruption and are not meant to be punitive. According to blocking policy, blocks should not be imposed if there is no current conduct issue of concern. The edit in question was made eleven days ago, and the behavior has not continued. The precise wording of the topic ban has been clarified, and the editor has apologized. In addition, the editor has received significant sanctions in another matter in recent days, and frankly, I did not want to pile on.

Mr Lambert's topic ban on religious topics has been in place since September 2021. The terms of the ban were clearly stated at ANI and repeated on his talk page. It is his responsibility to know what the terms are and to follow them. He has been blocked once already for violating it. The edit in question took place before the topic ban newly imposed by the Arbitration Committee. The two topic bans are completely independent. The violation of the religion topic ban does not seem to be in doubt.

Wikipedia:Banning policy#Evasion and enforcement lists some of the reasons for imposing blocks beyond "to prevent disruption". It is my understanding that topic bans are typically enforced by a series of escalating blocks. I do not understand why this case should be any different. Polycarpa aurata (talk) 23:32, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

• The topic ban in its imposition also admits that the exact limits can be hard to determine, and clearly says there is an option to revert inadvertent edits. I have on multiple occasions apologized for this actions and stated that I would revert it if I could. I want to sincerely apologize for this. I was not trying to evade the ban, but incorrectly remembered it as stating "religious leaders". I apologize for this incorrect mention and will try to avoid any edit to any article that can be considered a "religious figure". There are some other things about this article that makes it fuzzy on the edges, but I accept this is an acceptable application of the ban and would offer to reverse this edit, except it was done back just after it happened. I am very sorry about this. I was not trying in any way to go against the topic ban and am very sorry about this.John Pack Lambert (talk) 23:39, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

  I stand by the warning I left on Johnpacklambert's talk page and my reasoning there. For what it's worth, Polycarpa aurata has been indefinitely blocked as a sockpuppet. Cullen328 (talk) 00:08, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Has JPL reverted this breach? GoodDay (talk) 00:13, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

No, because it was reverted almost immediately after it happened. I have on multiple occasions said I would revert it if I could, but since it was reverted (because of a bad formating placing an inadvertent line break in where none was intended, not because of an issue with the substance) I cannot actually revert it. I would if I could, but it was reverted by another editor for totally different reasons, and so I cannot actually revert it. The two other editors who first saw the notice on my talk page on 25 July 2022 both argued it was a minor edit and not worth the huge fuss about. As I have said, I am very sorry, and would revert this, but it was reverted before I could. It was reverted about an hour after it occured, and over an hour before notice was placed on my talk page.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:21, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

I recommend we take no action, as this wasn't an earth shattering incident. Human beings aren't perfect & can sometimes slip up. GoodDay (talk) 00:25, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Update - The reporting editor, has been blocked as a sock. GoodDay (talk) 00:53, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

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

Im sorry if Im missing something obvious here, but what is the basis for the block of the reporting editor? Where is there evidence that Polycarpa aurata is World's Lamest Critic? Or is any user reporting John Pack Lambert to AN(/I) automatically a sock? Id think that after multiple DYKs there might be more than being summarily blocked and having talk page access revoked without even a single unblock request. nableezy - 20:57, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

An administrative action review request was filed in response to what I believe is a premature closure of this AN report. You are encouraged to comment there. I have no questions about the blocking of OP (which I also marked within the request's scope), as the blocking admin has IMHO sufficiently explained themselves. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 11:39, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

A case of lusophobia by user "TompaDompa"

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

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It is something that has been going on for years. The user user:TompaDompa when makes an edition about Portugal, only has the objective of denigrating the country history, inclduing its achievements and its feats. Various examples can be found on the Portugal and Portuguese empire wikipedia pages where TompaDompa even replaced maps of the Portuguese empire with others with less territories. Other examples are denigrating the achievements of Portuguese explorers, including the voyages of David Melgueiro, even claiming that such person did not exist with few to no sources. Its commitment to diminish Portuguese history and feats is more evident on the "List of the largest empires" page. As can be seen in the archives, since 2018 TompaDompa against everything and everyone with only 1 outdated source, does not let any other user have a vote on the matter, insisting that his source is the only one that is correct. And of course the source he supports so much indicates that the Portuguese empire contained only a small part of Brazil at its peak. This is obviously not true, there are several sources that have already been provided by many many other users that clearly demonstrate that Portugal did indeed contain a very extensive territory in South America and had a bigger size than what is indicated in that TompaDompa source. TompaDompa due to its hatred for Portugal is constantly alert and ready to reduce any historic feat of Portugal among several Wikipedia pages. Even in Wiki pages that say little about Portugal such as African countries that contain information about the Portuguese empire, the same user appears out of nowhere always making some kind of edit to diminish any portuguese feat. I’m sure there is a lot more exemples in other wikipedia pages about Portugal and it’s history that TompaDompa has been trying his best to obscure. I even found out that in other Wikipedia languages such as German, the user also has the same goal in mind. In my opinion TompaDompa should be carefully watched and if he continues to do this, he should be banned from editing anything that contains information about Portuguese history. I could sent the links about some of the exemples I said above, but they are so many that it would take hours for me to sent them all. However, if an administrator takes a quick look on what the user is doing about anything about the Portuguese history, will very quickly find out his intentions. There's no single example of TompaDompa adding something positive to the country history. The easiest way to find this incredible commitment is of course in the “list of largest empires” page, and please don’t forget to check the archives. Thank you. Roqui15 (talk) 23:44, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

WP:DIFFs please? CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 23:46, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

• TompaDompa's last edit to Portugal was on July 1, which was a good edit of reverting a sockpuppet. His last edit on Portuguese empire was today, with a detailed summary, just one edit, and his previous edit was back in June. Not seeing a pattern of heavy editing or edit warring. Noone has approached the subject on the talk page of either article. I also don't see you approaching him on User talk:TompaDompa before coming here. Sounds like a content dispute, which is not something admin get involved in. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 23:54, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

• Unless I am mistaken, Roqui15 is topic banned from "list of largest empires" are they not? Does this include the mentioning of said "list of largest empires"? @Deepfriedokra: --Kansas Bear (talk) 23:57, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

  That is my recollection w/o going back to look😭 -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 00:08, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  sidebar I'm old. I'm tired. I have trouble seeing. That paragraph is ~450 words. tl;dr. This is not the first time that TompaDompa and Roqui have been at odds. That led to Roqui's TBAN. Maybe we can close this before someone looks up my unblock terms and a boomerang flies? -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 00:18, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

His editions about Portugal and it's history are not daily but when he does it, the only goal and objective he has is to diminish portuguese feats, not even trying to add something postive to the country history. The best examples of this can be found in the "List of largest empires page" (and yes I'm topic banned but not be allowed to spell the wiki's name page sounds a little bit too much), however if you really look at it, you'll find out that the user has several other editions in others wikipedia pages with the objective of obscuring portuguese history and feats.Roqui15 (talk) 00:13, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

watching Battlebots. that lloks lot a lot of WP:ABF. done for the day. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 00:19, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

I would love to see a single example of TompaDompa adding anything postive about Portugal anywhere in Wikipedia. I would forget about this and move on. But oh well, that won't happen. I'm just trying to help make Wikipedia a better place, there's no place here for personal tastes and personal problems against something.Roqui15 (talk) 00:25, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

• There was an interaction ban imposed on Roqui15 here: [22], which was closed as per Deepfriedokra's suggestion. Is this ban still in place? If so, this report is pretty much a reason for an indef block, given how many sock are in this drawer, plus the block log and other issues. If it is in place, it will be one hell of a boomerang. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:33, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  Looks like you are right about the IBAN, Looks like I was wrong about the exoanded TBAN. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 00:38, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Since when I was banned from interacting with TompaDompa?Roqui15 (talk) 00:35, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

This is what it was said to me: "The discussion has concluded with an acceptance of your appeal subject to the conditions set above Special:Permalink/1051763803#Proposed unblock conditions/unblock discussion. While there wasn't consensus for a one-way interaction ban with TompaDompa you should be aware that any interaction may be carefully scrutinised for any sign of harassment. Happy editing". Roqui15 (talk) 00:40, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

• The original conditions were laid out here: [23] and in the ANI discussion I linked at [24], DFO (Deepfriedokra) clearly said "Adding WP:IBAN with TompaDompa per TompaDompa's comment below. ". The discussion was closed by Cabayi with the statement "Consensus to unblock subject to the restrictions outlined by DFO.". The restrictions were outlined on your talk page and in that ANI. One of those restrictions was an interaction ban, due to your actions here, and influenced by the fact that you were blocked on another language wiki for harassing TompaDompa. This looks like a pattern, and I'm trying to figure out why I haven't indef blocked you yet. This report is completely hollow and looks like harassment to me. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:42, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
  • I may just let Mr. Okra do the honors. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:43, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  Me too! Seriously, without looking at the unblock log, I don't remember. Looks like we do need that IBAN. And the broader TBAN. Back to BATTLEBOTS! -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 00:45, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  Oh, mat the honor be yours, unless we need discussion for consensus? -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 00:46, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  I mean we can just trout OP, clarify IBAN, and watch BATTLEBITSS! -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 00:47, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

I don't see where is the harassement here, I would not loose my time if this post purpose was to harass TompaDompa. Honestly, the real purpose of this post is to help this place (Wikipedia) grow, it still has too many flaws. But Jesus, this is incredible, I never expected this.. I'm out of words honestly.Roqui15 (talk) 00:49, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

• I'm not willing to just trout. A block is required, and this baseless ANI report demonstrates he is harassing him here, just as he did on the other wiki. I'm curious if there is some CIR at play as well. I'm happy to handle it, and he can appeal it if he wants. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:51, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

• Indef blocked for harassing and iban violation. The list of blocks and socks is just too much to not indef him at this point. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:58, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  OP gives me the appearance of some sort of COI or agenda, with TD in the way(?) -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 01:11, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  Welp, I have to agree with Dennis. Endorse indef block. Whether this merits a CBAN or not, I don't know. There just so many trips one can make to the well. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 01:20, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  Apart from some edits about dinosaurs all of Roqui's contributions have broken or danced on the edge of the TBAN. The consistent hounding of TompaDompa... yup, this is a good block. Cabayi (talk) 07:19, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  Next time I bring an unblock request here, please revert it and slap my fingers with a ruler. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 10:18, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  Endorse indef block. Why in the world they were unblocked to begin with is beyond me. RickinBaltimore (talk) 11:38, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  Next time I bring an unblock request here, please revert it and slap my fingers with a ruler. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 13:15, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  No good deed goes unpunished. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 13:24, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  Don't lose heart, DFO. We need dreamers. There's more than enough cold-hearted bastards like me and Dennis. Here, you can borrow my 🐮 service dog. 🐮 El_C 20:08, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  That's ruff, man -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 21:22, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  FWIW, I'm not all that wise, smart, or humorous -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 14:26, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

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

Closure revert assistance needed

I erroneously closed a mass FFD nomination at Wikipedia:Files for discussion/2022 July 23, so I decided to self-revert the closure. I need help restoring the nomination templates to every nominated file page and removing the close notice on their talk pages; I assume admins have tools to restore the notices quicker than manually. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 18:24, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

 Done, I think; you might need to restore one or two that I missed. Primefac (talk) 18:38, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

RfC issues at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Sky_News_Australia

An RfC on Sky News Australia had been launched by FlantasyFlan on RSN regarding the reliability of Sky News Australia. Several editors (including me and Springee) noted that the original RfC had substantial issues with WP:RFCNEUTRAL. Following discussion, Blueboar moved part the non-neutral portion of the RfC to the "discussion" section and deleted part of the nominator's statement without moving it anywhere. I had not objected to the nominator moving the non-neutral portion of the RfC, though Springee did object and individual who launched the RfC FlantasyFlan did not appear to affirmatively consent to their comments being altered. Given the objection by Springee and the absence of consent from the nominator, I believe that this action was not in line with WP:TPO.

After this occurred, Blueboar created a new "survey" sub-section on top of and separately from the already existing discussion section, where several individual placed their !vote of Bad RfC. Following the creation of that section, Andrevan !voted in the survey section, Peter Gulutzan !voted as Bad RfC in the discussion section, and David Gerard !voted in the survey section.

As a result of this, the RfC comments and structure has become somewhat incoherent and the meaning of several earlier comments appears to have been distorted, albeit through good-faith efforts but out-of-process to try to fix the neutrality of the RfC. As such, I would request that an administrator procedurally close the RfC, just as we procedurally closed the previous two good-faith but bungled attempts at starting a Fox News-related RfC. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 19:45, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

• My attempt at “fixing” the RFC was made in good faith. If I bungled it, my apologies. Do whatever you think is best. Blueboar (talk) 19:54, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
• Comment - Does Sky News Australia ever cover American politics? GoodDay (talk) 19:56, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

  @GoodDay: Yes, it does. Here are two recent examples. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 19:58, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

  They also document intra-Republican squabbles, such as this article. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 20:00, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

  I'm just concerned that we are deciding on which news sites are reliable & which aren't. GoodDay (talk) 20:07, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

  We should downgrade to "generally unreliable" any site that publishes mis- or dis-information, from any side of the political spectrum or any publisher. For example, we already consider unreliable Occupy Democrats and Raw Story, sites I read regularly but are not suitable for Wikipedia. Andre🚐 20:17, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

• I !voted in the RFC and I think it's OK. I oppose attempts to gatekeep opening of RFCs. Blueboar's attempt to fix it seems legitimate and I don't believe it unfairly prejudiced the RFC. I am sure that David Gerard and I would have left the same comment even if the opening message of the RFC was extremely biased in favor of Sky News. Andre🚐 19:59, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

  My opinion on Sky News Australia was nothing to do with the original opening statement, which had already been moved to the comments by the time I saw it. Same with Andrevan's, which was also added after the original opening statement had been moved - David Gerard (talk) 20:17, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

  I am somewhat concerned that going beyond simply moving the RfC nom's non-neutral comments changed the meaning of the RfC; certainly there are articles published on-line that are little more than captioned videos of TV segments produced by Sky News Australia's broadcast team, but that's somewhat different than the nom's phrasing of this RfC attempts to address the online section of the channel, not its broadcasts. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 20:04, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

  That seems like a technical issue that you should discuss in the RFC. Not on AN. Andre🚐 20:05, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

  Good-faith edits that are nonetheless WP:TPO issues are perfectly fine to discuss at WP:AN. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 20:07, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

  Fixing format, layout, sections, etc. are exceptions to that. Others can opine, but personally, refactoring the RFC framing and moving it is a reasonable example of constructive talk page refactoring, not changing the meaning of people's messages. I don't think it would be going out on a limb that FlantasyFlan would rather have an open RFC with his comments moved down, than a closed RFC, but I apologize if I turn out to be wrong. Andre🚐 20:11, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

• This is a trifle and there isn't a problem to action here. Even if we remove the present RFC and start a new one, I assure you I'll say the same thing - David Gerard (talk) 20:17, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
• I will only add one more comment… if the best thing is to close the current RFC and open a new one… no problem. But please do so SOON… before too many people have !voted. Blueboar (talk) 20:28, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Blueboar: Why not self-revert this and this, leaving it up to the OP to strike the non-neutral sentence or leave it? Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:04, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

• • I will do that next time. But now?… People have already started to !vote, so too late. Either let it run, or close it. Blueboar (talk) 17:32, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
• WP:NOTBURO, it has started and none of the early opinions, are affected. So far, it looks like all experienced editors that have opined, so any technical faults have minimum effect. Let the community have its 30 days to kick it around Slywriter (talk) 18:04, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Special Circumstances Blocks

In 2010, the Arbitration Committee released a statement about checkuser blocks and the ways that they may be contested and appealed. In that statement, the committee also addressed the rare practice of blocks that are designated as appealable only to the Arbitration Committee. Much has changed since that time, including the introduction of Oversight Blocks and the assumption of responsibility by the Wikimedia Foundation over some kinds of child protection matters. Accordingly, we would like to update our prior guidance.

• Off-wiki evidence of sockpuppetry, undeclared paid editing, or other spam concerns: The Arbitration Committee has previously established special VRTS email queues accessible to all checkusers where private information relating to such concerns should be sent. Checkusers may issue blocks or take other measures based on information received in these queues. Concerns should be sent to:
  • paid-en-wpwikipedia.org – for undisclosed paid editing and spam concerns. Any resulting blocks will be labeled as paid editing or spam blocks and give the VRTS ticket number.
  • checkuser-en-wpwikipedia.org – for other checkuser-related concerns. If checkuser data is used as part of a block's justification, the block may be labeled as a checkuser block. Otherwise, any resulting blocks should give the appropriate block rationale and give the VRTS ticket number.
• Editors who should be oversight blocked: Evidence should be passed to the oversight team, who will decide whether any block is necessary under policy.
• Highly sensitive and private information: If a potential block is based on highly sensitive information (e.g. a block of an account believed to be, but not actually confirmed as, a public figure), the information can be sent directly to the Arbitration Committee (arbcom-enwikimedia.org) for consideration. This is true even if it falls into one of the categories above. The Committee may evaluate the submission and resolve the report itself or decide that it is actually appropriate for consideration by another group or on-wiki.

Administrators should contact the appropriate group rather than issue a block covered above. In unusual and/or extraordinary circumstances, an administrator may decide to ignore all rules and place a block appealable only to the Arbitration Committee without first consulting one of the groups mentioned above. In this case, it remains the responsibility of the administrator to immediately contact the Arbitration Committee with the appropriate evidence and reasoning for the block (see also the 2012 reminder on this topic).

For the Arbitration Committee, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:44, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard § Special Circumstances Blocks

POV pushing, edit warring and possiblesockpuppetry on War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

these particular users (User:007Леони́д and User:Mrboondocks) continue to re-add disputed material without consensus, even after being told so to stop and multiple discussions in the talk page (which haven't achieved consensus for these additions yet), both are quite suspicious, as one has not been active since 2020, and came back with a single objective in mind (edit these articles, this may qualify as a single-purpose account if im not wrong), and the second really looks suspicious, either a troll or a sockpuppet kremlin bot (or a combination of the three), the account is VERY new and has only these edits in the contributions page, the summaries are also very vague ("couldn't be more relevant" or repeating previous edit summaries), i also noticed a strange edit pattern between all of those, they re-add basically the same thing as others do with 1 or two differences, not only on articles but also on talk pages (probably to flood the section with "agree" to get "consensus" to add these contents), as well as similar behaviour (as stated above).

due to them being possible socks, trolls or single-purpose accounts, investigation is needed, as well as, if possible, temporary page protection to prevent further disruption (an IP block would also be an good idea to prevent them from creating more accounts and further disrupting the article). 187.39.133.201 (talk) 00:33, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

I've blocked the IP for six months for block evasion.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:41, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Bbb23, I'm a bit surprised by this block. IP has made many useful contributions since March 2022 (more than 400), and behaviour doesn't seem to correspond to the blocked account. AdrianHObradors (talk) 09:45, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

oh wow, adding a report of Amnesty international clearly making a case of Ukraine forces endangering civilians makes me a "kremlin sockpuppet Mrboondocks (talk) 00:44, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

that user dint gave me any warning this exact notice that user left on my talk page is this

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.187.39.133.201 (talk) 00:34, 9 August 2022

He is making a false allegation on me that i was warned several times Mrboondocks (talk) 00:54, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm surprised @Bbb23 because IP187 had made many good quality contributions to the writing of "War crimes in Ukraine"; they were not a POV-pusher. I don't know anything about SP investigations, but I see that MarquinhosWikipediano didn't have "the necessary proficiency in written English for contributing constructively" [25]; IP187, however, was quite articulate, as you can see also from this report. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 07:40, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

There is an overzealous editor who wont communicate.

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

---

I made changes to the DeathDrome page at DeathDrome

I was following rules and guidelines. I made changes and references and basically replaced old bad info with new good info. Then while I was editing some guy came along and messed it all up. He sent me a message saying i could talk to him if i thought he made a mistake. So i tried to talk to him. He only said two things that have nothing to do with what we were talking about. I tried to ask him to explain and he just vacated the scene. At which point i communicated that i was ashamed of his actions. I am now here to communicate this issue with you guys.

The editors name is Mr.weedle. He is refusing to communicate. His changes to DeathDrome wiki need to be undone, as there was no reason to make them.

No one cares about that page, except for me: the creator of the latest DeathDrome Installer, hosted on proboards, our small community at proboards, and the devs of the original game who i am in talks with on facebook. those are literally the only people in the world who care about the content of that page.

so please. look at the edits i made to the page, and how they follow the guidelines and rules and how it does contain a reference.

i tried to ask this guy what he was talking about and he basically ignored me for an hour. and now im writing this to you. he said here ill just paste it here so you can read it.

Hello, I'm Mr.weedle. I noticed that you made a change to an article, DeathDrome, but you didn't provide a source. I’ve removed it for now, but if you’d like to include a citation to a reliable source and re-add it, please do so! If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thanks.  Mr.weedle (talk) 05:10, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

yes i think you are making a mistake 1. no one cares about this page except me and the people who are reviving this game 2. im still working on it and you just messed everything up. 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:16, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

also i should say im trying my best to follow the wiki templates and stuff. maybe instead of deleting it you could fix it? also, i dont really think there was anything wrong with the way it was, why did you change it? and what is it you want me to do exactly? 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:17, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

the changes i made did have a source. you removed the source from the references....... 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:18, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

hello? 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:19, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

hello are you there? 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:22, 9 August 2022 (UTC) I am here - as you create content you are expected to ensure you are correctly citing the content. Many of us patrol the wiki and when there is un-cited information, it can be removed any time. There's a few great articles here on how to do so. Wikipedia:Citing sources Help:Referencing for beginners". You can use the version history on the page in question to get you content back at any time, but please make sure you add citations. Simply saying that no one cares about this page" is not a reason to provide uncited content. Remember, it's an encyclopedia for everyone. Mr.weedle (talk) 05:37, 9 August 2022 (UTC) im not simply saying no one cares. im just making a point that you can let me do it and you dont have to mess with it. because worse case scenario, literally no one cares 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:38, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

i cannot get the content back as i do not have and will not have an account with wikipdeia, and it is my understanding that you have to have an account to do that 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:39, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

also the content was cited as i pointed out. i dont understand why you are saying it wasnt? would you please clarify. and also i just sat down at the computer again and have not had a chance to see if you reverted what you have done, so if you have not done that, please change it back to the way it was before you messed with it. 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:40, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

and hypothetically even if it wasnt cited, i was still editing the page. do you see the timestamps? do you expect literally every edit to be perfect? if so then nothing would ever get done. you have to be a little lenient. look at the time stamps dude. youre changing it in the middle of being edited.... 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:42, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

i referenced deathdrome.proboards.com which had all the info that was being discussed. 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:43, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

and i was editing the reviews that were listed because those are shitty reviews. i picked some better ones and was editing them into the page, adding references and citation when you came along 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:47, 9 August 2022 (UTC) https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=DeathDrome&oldid=1103304300 will take you back there if you want to pick up your old content. Remember that your own synthesis of content is not appropriate here. Have a quick read over Wikipedia:Manual of Style too for some good guidelines. Mr.weedle (talk) 05:49, 9 August 2022 (UTC) "your own synthesis of content is not appropriate here" what are you saying? 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:49, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

what are you trying to say? i dont understand 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:50, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

youre not allowed to do what now? 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:50, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

ok i browsed manual of style. pretty basic. dont see why youre suggesting it. 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:52, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

and what are you trying to say with this "your own synthesis of content is not appropriate here"? what are you saying? 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:53, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

i didnt write anything that wasnt objective information available via the links i provided. i even quoted them word for word..... and the info on the revival was just basic objective information..... did you read it? 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:55, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

youre basically just impeding my hard work, which correctly followed the rules, if you have noticed, for no good reason... do you see that? 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:56, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

and youre not really being responsible cause youre not talking to me in a timely manner. this is pretty b.s. and im ashamed of your actions 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:57, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

so i mean if youre not going to explain why you are saying i didnt cite when i did, what else can be done, but to update the wiki at another time, and hope you can find some other thing to do with your time. right? i mean im following the rules and guidelines arent i? 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:58, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

been sitting here for half an hour trying to talk to you. you are playing hall monitor and you need to undo what you did if you want to do the right thing. youre not helping anyone by removing my quality work. and if you think it wasnt then just explain like ive asked what does "your own synthesis of content is not appropriate here" are you trying to say i cant post references to a website i own? or what are you saying are you saying i made stuff up? everything i said is objective easily observable information 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 06:00, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

just remember when you go to bed tonight that you are a freaking nuisance and you irresponsibly avoid conversation so in all likelihood youre tainted with evil. and you made those decisions. no one else 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 06:02, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

ill just fix it later. ridiculous. moderator mentality. you are a hall monitor, but you are not responsible enough to do it. you failed to see i was currently editing it. and when i came to talk to you about it, you vacated the scene. shameful 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 06:04, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

and i did cite. and there was no synthesis. when there are literally synthesis left on the page now, after you changed it back to the way it was before i edited it today. the way you have just made it now again has synthesis as i understand you to mean it. (remember you never responded when i asked what you meant) 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 06:06, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

im just fkkn ashamed of you dude. im sorry but what in the hell. lol. 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 06:06, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

how is it possible you have not responded yet? 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 06:07, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

bro i dont have time for this crap im sorry. i tried. and you were totally wrong. i followed the rules. youre just not ready to do this yet. cant even back up the things you do in conversation. you literally said 2 things that had nothing to do with anything, and that was it. shameful. shame on you for doing such a poor job. 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 06:08, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

im opening an administrator notice on you since you are refusing to communicate or undo what you did. i will send you an official link on your page when its done 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 06:17, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

hold on what? 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 05:49, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

that is it. i hope you guys fix this situation!!! god bless you 2601:601:8500:2430:194E:4E39:C612:4CA (talk) 06:21, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

WP:TLDR & poorly done up. GoodDay (talk) 06:25, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Woah... for the record, and only the record. I provided this user with links on how to correctly cite content, the how-to step by step guide, a link to the historical edit (so they could easily get their content back, and a link to the manual of style. Mr.weedle (talk) 06:31, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

For starters, don't reference deathdrome.proboards.com. I don't even have to look at the site to be certain the chance it is a reliable source is close to zero. Nil Einne (talk) 09:48, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

And to continue, don't change an actual review by Gamestop to a forum user review (and leave it on the template as a GameStop review). Clear no-no. Also the quote from NexGen was cut in a bit of a manipulative way. AdrianHObradors (talk) 10:07, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

OP's /64 blocked for 48 hours by PhilKnight for WP:NPA issues. I don't think there's anything else to discuss here. --Kinu ^t/_c 21:18, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

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

Raid of Mar-a-Lago RM and AfD

There is both an AfD and a requested move discussion happening at the same time. Alternate names are already being discussed at the AfD, so I think the RM discussion should be shut down to avoid confusion. I've already commented on the AfD, so asking an uninvolved admin to consider this. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:53, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Make sure, along with the closing of the RM, that all votes there are present at the AFD - any which aren't need to be copied over in such a way that the closing admin will know how to interpret these votes. 93.172.250.2 (talk) 16:22, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

I've closed the AfD early as follows: "This is an early closure per WP:SNOW. It is evident that there is going to be no consensus for deleting the article. The dispute is between keeping the article and merging it elsewhere. Whether and where to merge the article to is a discussion better suited to the article talk page, where it can be pursued without the distraction of people commenting on a possible deletion." This means that the RM discussion can continue in parallel to a possible merger discussion. Sandstein 16:33, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

I suggest that an uninvolved administrator close and implement the requested move per SNOW. Cullen328 (talk) 16:58, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

An editor had BOLDLY done the move while I was in the middle of typing a close suggesting there was enough consensus to do the move, but also that there was no reason to not allow the discussion to proceed for longer (and perhaps the full 7 days). Barkeep49 (talk) 19:29, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Pretty strong to say there was "no reason". WP:RAPID comes to mind, which is part of our Notability guideline. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 23:41, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

User rights and renamed user

I have re-named myself from "NotReallyMoniak" to "NotReallySoroka". I would like to ask an administrator to update the AWB WP:CHECKPAGE and WP:RAL. Thank you. NotReallySoroka (talk) 17:12, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

 Done RickinBaltimore (talk) 19:45, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Strange non existant speedy deletion nomination of User_talk:EnergyAnalyst1

Hi all

I'm doing some work with the International Energy Agency as part of my job at Wikimedia Sverige. Recently the person at IEAs user page got a message that it was nominated for speedy deletion, despite being one line of text describing themselves. It seems to have been done by a new account but I can't see their user contributions for some reason. I'm assuming this is some kind of troll account or sockpuppet account. I just want to check what is happening and if it has been nominated and I need to help, or if its just someone messing around.

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 09:50, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

@John Cummings The page was nominated and deleted April, the current page was created a few days later and is not nominated for deletion. The reason the user who left the message back in April appears the way they do now is because they've been vanished. PhantomTech[talk] 09:59, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks very much PhantomTech, very helpful. John Cummings (talk) 10:06, 11 August 2022 (UTC)