User talk:Carcharoth/Archive 32

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Help needed

Hello. Can you please, as member of arbitration comity, read Talk:Kosovo#Kosovo article split and post your opinion? Threat is based on WP:ARBMAC, and we are trying the last step in normal dispute resolution, before requesting full arbitration. Please, read the post, at least to the line, and post your opinion. As this is lasting for years now, we need your help to end it nicely, and without sanctions and arbitration's. Once again, Please, we need your help. --WhiteWriter speaks 11:24, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

It would be better to seek mediation and/or get others to help. Arbitration should only be a last resort. Carcharoth (talk) 22:48, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
Well, it is. I am asking for your proposal, as you are user who can give advice, and all of us can trust you per your "title" :) Please, read the post, at least up to the line, and post your advice. This is lasting for very long, and i think that we can agree, but only if we have advices from people like you. Once more, please, read the post, and write your advice. --WhiteWriter speaks 15:10, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
I suggest asking at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Geopolitical ethnic and religious conflicts. Carcharoth (talk) 00:47, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Question

Hi, Carcharoth. If I wrote a paper for school that does indeed have a bias, is there any way to have it vetted and then published to one of wikipedia's sister projects? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.86.109.242 (talk) 21:13, 2 December 2010 (UTC) Sorry, I wasn't logged in when I posted this. This section has, insofar, been written by Wikigold96.

Could you ask at WP:HELPDESK? People there are more likely to be able to help you. Carcharoth (talk) 00:45, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Ok, will do, thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikigold96 (talk • contribs) 05:12, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry

Your proposed change to the ACE2010 template, while an excellent idea, will probably have to wait until next year. It seems that entrenched interests do not want the limelight moved from the guides to the candidates. This apparent selfishness makes me feel low, but don't let me spread unhappiness. :-) I hope you have a nice weekend! Jehochman Talk 05:07, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

UK Community Notice - IRC meeting

Dear Wikipedian,


This is the first of what will hopefully be a regular notice to help bring together the UK community so that you can be involved in some amazing things. To kick things off, there will be a UK community IRC meeting at 1800 UTC, December 7, 2010 to discuss the future growth and developement of Wikimedia UK. Without huge community support and involvement, the chapter cannot be successful and to get the most out of it, get involved.

For information on the community IRC meeting please go here


More to come about:

  • Wikipedia 10th Anniversary Events
  • 1st Annual UK Wiki-conference
  • Trustee interest meeting - an event for those community members with even just a fleeting interest in becoming trustees of Wikimedia UK.


Many Thanks

Joseph Seddon
User:Seddon

Delivered by WMUKBot (talk) on 05:31, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Election question

I have responded (also added a bit, in case you have already read) --Elen of the Roads (talk) 11:55, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Have answered the rest on the questions talkpage --Elen of the Roads (talk) 13:54, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

You've got mail

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Maile66 (talk) 19:24, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I replied a few days ago. Carcharoth (talk) 01:10, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

UK IRC community meeting

Just a quick reminder about the IRC meeting at 1800 UTC tonight to bring together the Wikimedia community in the UK to help the growth and success of the UK chapter and community activities. For information see wmuk:Community_IRC_meetings

Many Thanks
Joseph Seddon
User:Seddon

Delivered by WMUKBot (talk) on 17:26, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue LVII, November 2010

To stop receiving this newsletter, please list yourself in the appropriate section here. To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. BrownBot (talk) 22:06, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Tis the season

ϢereSpielChequers is wishing you Seasons Greetings! Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's Solstice or Xmas, Eid, Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus or even the Saturnalia, this is a special time of year for almost everyone!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding {{subst:User:WereSpielChequers/Dec10/Balloon}} to your friends' talk pages.

Audio theatre an article to audio dramas

Please if you have time and you know anything to it (I have seen that you have made edits on the article very important article, I thing The Lord of the Rings (1955 radio series) so I suppose this could be interesting) , please look on the article Audio theatre, somebody placed a erase discussion on it. after we have had a merge discussion. It would be interesting what you would say to the merge and the delete discussion. And possibly it could help to contact other people that they should help also. )-: Merry Xmas --Soenke Rahn (talk) 14:36, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Interesting, but I probably won't comment. The fact that I've edited an article about a radio series is not really a reason to tell me about this debate, so this might be borderline canvassing (but only borderline, so I'm not taking that bit of this any further), so I'm staying out of this. Carcharoth (talk) 03:43, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, in the moment I will be a little bit careful, because somebody means like you that my doing asking native English speakers on their talk page is on the edge of canvassing. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Soenke_Rahn (I am very sorry for it.) But I think it is a special case and it should be not an action to inform people in erase discussions in general. The discussion begun as a discussion between two Germans and I suppose that it is realy important that English natives will give answers, what happened now. (-: (I looked on the articles round about the topic, and I was amazed that there were not much people active on it still today. I suppose that 95% of the Users which made bigger contributions in this area are not active today, so a statement on such pages will not realy help a lot.) I am sorry that I have disturbed you, because I have appricated it false.

If there is something important to the topic, please answer me on my talk page, because I do not have you on my watchlist in the moment. I wish you a happy New Year. --Soenke Rahn (talk) 10:05, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Pmanderson discussion

Thanks for your intervention. Not to put too fine a point on it, is there really a "case to answer", as it were? I see the rules say:

  • If an editor has proven to be repeatedly disruptive in one or more areas of Wikipedia, the community may engage in a discussion to site ban, topic ban, or place an interaction ban or editing restriction via a consensus of editors who are not involved in the underlying dispute.[1] When determining consensus, the closing administrator will assess the strength and quality of the arguments.

As far as I can see, though there is clearly a consensus in favour of the proposal, most of the contributors to the discussion are indeed involved in the underlying dispute, and in my eyes it has quickly turned into a kangaroo court. If I'd kept out of it, I could have closed the dispute myself, but I chose to speak out and as a result I'm being accused of "rudeness", "hostility" and "aggression". Deb (talk) 10:32, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with your comment to User:Born2cycle that he and User:Pmanderson need arbitration and need it quick. I made an informal attempt at this, as you probably saw. PMA was broadly willing to go along with my suggestions; Born2cycle wasn't. As an ex-arbitrator, how would you suggest this be taken forward? Deb (talk) 12:35, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Sorry for the delay in replying. I suggested mediation, not arbitration. Arbitration tends to end badly, and for some disputes it is best to try mediation first before the last resort of arbitration. Or at least try mediation, as both parties have to agree to it. There are options for both informal and formal mediation. Informal mediation is probably best here. Carcharoth (talk) 08:07, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikidrips

WikiDrip thinks that WikiDrip's account password was Compromised and is requesting WikiDrip's account be unlocked so WikiDrip can log in and change the password. WikiDrip then can if required open another Wikipedia account with a new username. WikiDrip would like to have the benefit of the doubt here. The New WikiDrip account would of course link to the original WikiDrip account.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Wikidrips —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.225.95.146 (talk) 22:12, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Note community ban discussion. -- Brangifer (talk) 22:16, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

WikiCup 2011

Hello. You are being contacted because you have previously shown interest in the WikiCup but have not yet signed up for the 2011 WikiCup, which starts at midnight. It is not too late to sign up! The competition will remain open until at least January 31, and so it is not too late to enter. If you are interested, simply follow the instructions to add your username to the signup page, and a judge will contact you as soon as possible with an explanation of how to participate. The WikiCup is a friendly competition open to all Wikipedians, old and new, experienced and inexperienced, providing a fun and rewarding way to contribute quality content to Wikipedia. If you do not want to receive any further messages about the WikiCup, or you want to start receiving messages about the WikiCup, you may add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. If you have any questions, feel free to ask on the WikiCup talk page or contact the judges directly. J Milburn and The ed17 06:46, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2011 WikiCup!

Hello, happy new year and welcome to the 2011 WikiCup! Your submissions' page can be found here and instructions of how to update the page can be found here and on the submissions' page itself. From the submissions' page, a bot will update the main scoresheet. Our rules have been very slightly updated from last year; the full rules can be found here. Please remember that you can only receive points for content on which you have done significant work in 2011; nominations of work from last year and "drive-by" nominations will not be awarded points. Signups are going to remain open through January, so if you know of anyone who would like to take part, please direct them to Wikipedia:WikiCup/2011 signups. The judges can be contacted on the WikiCup talk page, on their respective talk pages, or by email. Other than that, we will be in contact at the end of every month with the newsletter. If you want to stop or start receiving newsletters, please remove your name from or add your name to this list. Good luck! J Milburn and The ed17 12:56, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

NFCI discussion

Dear Carcharoth,
Since the ANI discussion demonstrated that no consensus existed about closure of the RfC regarding NFCI, I think I can re-open the discussion about NFCI #9, although the main thesis needs in some modifications (because some counter-arguments that have been put forward during this discussion seem to be reasonable). In connection to that, since you mentioned you had some thoughts on that, can you please share these ideas with me, because I would like to know what is wrong with my proposal?
Thank you in advance,
--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:40, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Would you have links to the old discussions? That would help. I've asked the editor (delta) who closed the RfC, but if you have links to the old discussions, that would help. I will look myself, but I may miss some of the discussions. Carcharoth (talk) 08:06, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
There were several discussions about this issue, and I can provide the links to all of them, however, they are long and confusing, moreover, sometimes the same arguments are being repeated there again and again. Therefore, to save your time, let me briefly summarise the issue, because what I need (for the beginning) is to know your opinion about all of that.
The problem is that, according to some users, the only legitimate use of non-free historical photos is "as a subject of commentaries on the image itself". As a result, the non-free photos that illustrate historically significant events are being constantly removed from WP articles, or moved to separate low importance articles (User:Angusmclellan coined the term "ghettoized" to describe this process), under a pretext that the images that illustrate historically significant events serve just for decoration. In my opinion, such a point of view is not supported by the policy, which says nothing on that account. The policy just states that the image must be irreplaceable and contextually significant, and, in my opinion, the criteria of contextual significance cannot be so primitive and one-dimensional as just "a subject of commentaries on the image itself". I believe that the decision about contextual significance can be made only based on the analysis of the article's context, not just by brief search for presence/absence of commentaries on the image. In connection to that, I believe that the use of historical photographs "as subject of critical commentary about the illustrated event within the article" should be listed among the examples of acceptable use, and, accordingly, WP:NFC#UUI ("An image whose subject happens to be a war, to illustrate an article on the war. Use may be appropriate if the image itself is a proper subject for commentary in the article: for example, an iconic image that has received attention in its own right, if the image is discussed in the article.") should be modified accordingly.
The total amount of historical photos is negligible as compared with other non-free images in Wikipedia, and attempts to apply to them the same criteria that are applied to endless cartoon characters or album covers will not change appreciably the amount of non-free media in WP, however, it will lead (and already has lead) to significant deterioration of some important historical articles.
I would be grateful if you tell me your opinion on that account.
Regards, --Paul Siebert (talk) 03:59, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the links. I haven't had time to follow this up yet, but I do have examples of past debates on historic images that may be useful. I'll try and post those within the next week or so. I think I saw a reference somewhere to the "unknown copyright status" category of images. Many of those were historic ones, but that is more a provenance issue. I presume you are talking here about historic images that help identify a topic to a reader, giving them some idea of what the topic is about. One example I remember is the image used in the Anschluss article. It has since been deleted (it as orphaned, I think because other images were available), but for the record the debate was here. You might also be interested in an old discussion page I started at Wikipedia:NFCC Criterion 8 debate. Carcharoth (talk) 07:37, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Barnstar

The Original Barnstar
For your dedicated and diligent service as an arbitrator over the past two years, which added greatly to the quality of the committee's deliberations. You will be as missed on the Arbitration Committee as you will be appreciated in whatever areas of Wikipedia to which you now rededicate yourself. Please also see my comments here. Newyorkbrad (talk) 08:07, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks! :-) I saw those comments, but it didn't feel right to comment there. Carcharoth (talk) 04:17, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

University of Leeds

What can I help you with? Cavie78 (talk) 01:16, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Would you be able to look at User:Carcharoth/Article incubator/Selig Brodetsky Memorial Lecture and see whether it would be possible to fill in the missing years and names and lecture titles? I did try writing to the University of Leeds Philosophy Department, but got no answer. I suspect that no official list of the lecturers has been published, but there should be a record somewhere of each lecture, and the University of Leeds seemed the logical place to start. Carcharoth (talk) 01:21, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
No probs, will have a look tomorrow at work and get back to you. Cavie78 (talk) 01:39, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Have found the following:

Looks like there were no lectures from 1990-2001 inclusive:

From Leeds University Reporter (Internal newsletter)

"Issue 481, 7 May 2002 Brodetsky lectures

A new series of Brodetsky Memorial Lectures is to be inaugurated focusing on science and Jewish history and culture. Selig Brodetsky held the chair of applied mathematics from 1924-48, and following his death in 1954, a lecture series was instituted to reflect his broad scientific and Jewish interests. Discontinued in 1989, the lectures are now being revived by the centre for Jewish studies, the schools of mathematics and philosophy and CentreCATH.

In the first event of the new series, Professor Menachem Fisch of the University of Tel Aviv will lecture on Reading God's two books: science and the Talmud's debate on religion. The lecture takes place at 5.30pm on Thursday 30 May in the Yorkshire Bank Lecture Theatre."

The 2007 lecture, Chance, Fairness, Jews, and Judaism, was given by Judith Grabiner and was advertised as:

"Topics like probability, fair division, and logic are often thought of as parts of mathematics, but they have been seriously considered in many Jewish sources throughout history for Jewish religious and cultural reasons. It is not surprising that many Jews steeped in the Jewish tradition, like Selig Brodetsky, have excelled in mathematics. We'll illustrate these generalizations with historical examples, suggest explanations, and tell some good stories."

The 2005 lecture was titled Reflections on the Importance of Maimonides for Contemporary Jewish Thought: In Memoriam of the 800th Anniversary of His Death and was given by Norbert M. Samuelson. It was advertised as:

"This year’s Selig Brodetsky lecture will be delivered by Professor Norbert Samuelson, the Grossman Professor of Jewish Studies at Arizona State University, who will speak on 'Reflections on the Importance of Maimonides for Contemporary Jewish Thought: In Memoriam of the 800th Anniversary of His Death'. The lecture will be delivered at 5.30pm on Thursday 19 May in Lecture Theatre 18 in the Roger Stevens Building at the University of Leeds. It will be followed by a reception."

Hope that helps, will try and find more info on the earlier lectures for you if I can. Cavie78 (talk) 11:46, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Many thanks for that! I will update the list now and will hope that you can find something else. There does seem to have been a booklet of all the lectures to that date published in 1987 or something. See here. But that might just be a publication of the first lecture. Anyway, it looks like the other lectures were not published, but it should still be possible to find out who gave the lectures. Carcharoth (talk) 06:33, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
Looks like there may have been two lectures in 1961 or 1962 according to this search of the Leeds library catalogue. Cavie78 (talk) 11:17, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

More detail on the above

Easier to do this here than by email, I think, as I've received two different slightly overlapping lists (with one discrepancy (lecture 15) between them). Here's what my former colleagues have discovered. Note that some of these (asterisked) have a different year from the ones in your list, but I think that it's highly likely that these are correct, so your list needs amending. I'm just listing lecture number, lecturers' names (you already have most/all of these) and the dates of the actual lectures - you already have the titles.

  • 1. Elath, 11 Feb 1959*
  • 2. Ginsburg, 23 May 1960*
  • 3. not published
  • 4. Samuel, 7 May 1962
  • 5. Rosenhead, 13 May 1963
  • 6. Parkes, 11 May 1964
  • 7. Lighthill, 17 May 1965*
  • 8. Levenberg, 18 May 1966*
  • 9. Berenblum. 22 May 1967*
  • 10. not published
  • 11. Lanczos, 4 November 1969*
  • 12-13. not published
  • 14. Goldstein, 15 February 1972
  • 15. Calder, either 14 or 17(!) May 1973
  • 16. not published
  • 17. Fisher, 17 May 1976
  • 18. Cowling, 16 May 1977
  • 19. not published
  • 20. Wheeler, 8 May 1979
  • 21. Moonman, 19 May 1980
  • 22. Argov, 18 May 1981
  • 23. Mestel, ? May 1982
  • 24. Prittie, 16 May 1983
  • 25. Price, 14 May 1984
  • 26. Janner, 21 May 1985

... and there the paper-trail stops. I'll email the raw data to you. Hope this helps. --GuillaumeTell 17:43, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Sanctioning for POV Pushing

This is a sufficiently important point that I felt I should ask it here instead of at ANI where it might be missed: how do you propose that administrators sanction users for POV pushing without being accused of blocking people who they disagree with? NW (Talk) 08:06, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

That's why you need the teflon-spandex dress - spandex to show of your mighty gutmuscles, and teflon so that the accusations don't stick to you. But seriously, to recognise POV pushing you need to understand the topic area, and sanctioning for POV pushing is extremely rare, and usually only possible in connection with other violations (civility and edit warring). That's the whole point of WP:PUSH. Even ArbCom usually assumes the position that "X is a content issue", and then looks for behavioural excused to justify their sanctions - which often sets troubling precedences. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:19, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
So what is wrong with an admin saying "I don't know enough about the topic area to tell whether this user is pushing a POV - can the editors active and with a good track record in this area (yeah, I know, difficult in some areas) please explain to me why this is POV pushing, and if enough uninvolved editors agree, I will take action?" It could be horribly gamed, but eventually anyone gaming this would be caught out. Carcharoth (talk) 08:24, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
(excuse me for butting in late here): In most cases, this wouldn't work because life is too short. Explaining such matters to a truly uninvolved admin, and allowing for the necessary discussion/defense, requires the volume of an Arbcom case. What makes you think your hypothetical uninvolved administrator would require any less information to form a proper judgment than you guys do at WP:RFAR? Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:38, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
(ec) You've identified one of the problems, which is that it is relatively easy to identify and sanction incivility, but much harder to identify and sanction POV pushing. My view is that if someone thinks someone is POV pushing, the alleged POV pusher should be called out on it, and a discussion should ensue. If it can be clearly shown by discussion among editors active in the topic area that an editor is pushing a POV, then uninvolved admins should feel free to block and/or topic ban. The point being that admins can make 'easy' decisions over things like incivility, but 'harder' decisions over distortion of content need editorial input, including input from content experts (though sometimes the POV pusher is or claims to be a content expert). i.e. the input of editors active in a topic area help, as they can point to sources and attest that an editor is misrepresenting sources, and putting undue weight on something, and so on. To demonstrate incivility, you often only need a diff or two. To demonstrate that someone is POV pushing takes much more. Some people 'know' that someone is POV pushing, but ask them to explain it and they often shy away from the work needed to write up an explanation, and/or provide such a poor explanation that no action gets taken (even if they are right). In some ways, keeping a record of problematic diffs helps here, even though that is often discouraged. But to show a pattern of POV pushing, you sometimes need to build up a record of diffs over time and then present it for consideration. The other problem is that if an article is skewed from NPOV, someone trying to return it to NPOV can be accused of POV pushing (this has been called NPOV-pushing). It is much easier to identify POV pushing when it is clear where NPOV lies, and much harder when it is not clear what constitutes NPOV. To answer your initial question, my view is that administrators sanctioning for POV pushing should do so with the backing of a community discussion to point at. Then, the administrators would simply be enforcing the will of the community. Carcharoth (talk) 08:22, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
I fear you are being optimistic, but I'll leave it at that for now and will write more on this tomorrow. Please ping me if I forget. NW (Talk) 08:26, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
The problem, NW, is that we rarely see admins block someone they agree with for POV pushing. Involved admins tend to use the tools in support of what others see as their "side." That's why it's an issue. If we could be sure admins would block and protect equally across the board (that is, if we could find some non-human admins), we wouldn't need to invoke the idea of "involved" to restrict ourselves. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 08:49, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
I tend to agree, SlimVirgin. But I think there is also another important factor. Take this scenario: You have four editors editing a medical topic, say HIV/AIDS. 99.999% of physicians and biomedical scientists are in agreement that HIV eventually causes AIDS. The general public is less so, but is still very convinced of that fact. An administrator with no real connection to WP:MED wanders over to the article and sees that all four editors are being very polite. He looks further though and sees that while the two physician-editors are trying to use articles from the Cochrane Library and other high-quality journals to describe the biomedical part of the article and The New Yorker and other such high-quality magazines' full length articles for the social part of the article. The two denialist editors, as they freely admit they are, do not focus all of their time on this topic; nevertheless, it is a big portion of their editing. They wish to make self-published webpages and books from lone dissenting academics a much higher proportion of the article than it is currently, having the section on denialism total maybe 10-30% of a 40k word article. The administrator decides to block the two denialist editors for POV pushing. On appeal to ANI, the block is upheld, tenuously.

Two months later, the same scenario occurs again, this time with a different administrator and a different topic, say the abortion and breast cancer. Again, the denialist editors are blocked. This time, they do not appeal their block.

Finally, a few months later, the same scenario happens again with vaccines and autism. This time, the first administrator is involved again, and again he chooses to block the minority POV because they are the ones trying to promote Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy as sources that are just as valid as the CDC or NIH. This time, the editors have done some research into the topic area. They appeal their block to ANI once more, but they argue that administrators linked to WP:MED have consistently patrolled controversial articles seeking to crush a minority POV. That argument would carry a lot of weight with a good deal of the community, even though every time, the block was probably deserved. How would you propose those situations be handled differently? NW (Talk) 18:57, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

A situation like that is not one an admin needs to handle. An article RfC will attract fresh eyes, and if it doesn't it should keep on being posted until it does. The problem with allowing involved admins to use the tools is that they can't self-regulate, because they may, with the best will in the world, believe their POV is not a POV.
Here's your scenario again, but with a different subject matter. At Jesus myth theory (sorry if you've seen this example before; I use it a lot), mainstream biblical scholars, who are the only experts in the historicity of Jesus, overwhelmingly say he did exist, and several say it's akin to Holocaust denial to say otherwise. Of course they are almost all Christian. Other reliable academic sources cast doubt on Jesus's existence, but they are not the real specialists.
Should a Christian admin who is familiar with the biblical scholarly sources be allowed to block me for insisting that the Jesus myth theory be written up seriously—not as a fringe POV that is ridiculed, as used to be the case—and that a link to it be included in other Jesus articles? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 20:54, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

@Carcharoth: Any thoughts on what SlimVirgin and I put up? NW (Talk) 03:05, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I've read what you both said, but don't have anything immediate to add. I'm afraid this talk page is not that active. You might get more responses somewhere else, though I don't mind if discussion continues here. Carcharoth (talk) 07:23, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
I have copied the discussion to AN, if you care to take a look or comment. NW (Talk) 07:31, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
  • Coming to this discussion quite late, but I'd rather comment here than at WP:AN. I think there is an urgent need for streamlined processes to deal with obvious POV-pushing. A few years ago, I dealt with an editor who basically did everything except wave a neon sign saying: "I'm a single-purpose agenda account, and I'm here solely to use Wikipedia as a platform to push my agenda by any means necessary!" It took about 6 months - everything from noticeboard reports, third opinions, content RfCs, a user-conduct RfC, and finally a full-on ArbCom case - to deal with it. The process was extraordinarily draining, particularly the ArbCom case (during which a few editors who had bones to pick with me took the opportunity to try to kick me while I was down).

    If I had to do it again, I wouldn't bother - and I probably had an easier time than the average editor, since I've been around awhile and I'm an admin. The situation should have been handled by an admin stepping up and simply blocking the account in question once the problem was clearly documented to be refractory (about a week or two in). And this was an extreme example - there are dozens of lower-level single-purpose POV-pushing accounts skulking around (for instance, see Talk:Zidovudine - the talk page and archives for this interesting and vital pharmaceutical is essentially entirely occupied with AIDS-denialist talking points), but since they don't rise above the level of occasional annoyance, no one bothers to go through the motions to deal with them.

    The problem with empowering admins to block for violations of NPOV is that the admin corps, in general, lacks the required skill set. At WP:RfA, we don't demand any evidence of talent (or even basic adequacy) at dispute resolution or handling controversial content. The admin corps has not been selected with this skill set in mind, so if we empower admins to do this, then we'll get results that are all over the board. Some admins will be good at it, and some will be horrifically bad at it. The climate-change probation enforcement was sort of a taste. MastCell Talk 22:58, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Slower G10 deletions?

I think it was you who suggested I should try to involve more people in BLPs with issues. In the spirit of doing what I do more efficiently and more collegiately, I've made a suggestion here. Your thoughts would be appreciated.--Scott Mac 15:01, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue LVIII, December 2010



To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here. BrownBot (talk) 20:27, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

WikiCup 2011 January newsletter

We are half way through round one of the WikiCup. Signups are now closed, and we have 129 listed competitors, 64 of whom will make it to round two. Congratulations to The Bushranger (submissions), who, at the time of writing, has a comfortable lead with 228 points, followed by Zanzibar Hurricanehink (submissions), with 144 points. Four others have over 100 points. Congratulations also go to Greece Yellow Evan (submissions), who scored the first points in the competition, claiming for Talk:Hurricane King/GA1, Principality of Sealand Miyagawa (submissions), who scored the first non-review points in the competition, claiming for Dognapping, and United Kingdom Jarry1250 (submissions) who was the first in the competition to use our new "multiplier" mechanic (explanation), claiming for Grigory Potemkin, a subject covered on numerous Wikipedias. Thanks must also go to Jarry1250 for dealing with all bot work- without you, the competition wouldn't be happening!

A running total of claims can be seen here. However, numerous competitors are yet to score at all- please remember to submit content soon after it is promoted, so that the judges are able to review entries. The number of points that will be needed to reach round two is not clear- everyone needs to get their entries in now to guarantee their places! If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, and you hope to get it promoted before the end of the round, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. However, please remember to continue to offer reviews at GAC, FAC and all the other pages that require them to prevent any backlogs which could otherwise be caused by the Cup. As ever, questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup and the judges are reachable on their talk pages, or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start receiving or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn and The ed17 22:28, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

  1. ^ The community sanction noticeboard which was created for such a purpose is now inactive
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