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TfD	0	0	5	0	5
MfD	0	0	10	0	10
FfD	0	0	2	0	2
RfD	0	0	104	0	104
AfD	0	0	0	0	0

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• 121 sockpuppet investigations
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Pages recently put under extended-confirmed protection

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Pages recently put under extended confirmed protection (30 out of 7662 total) () WATCH Page Protected Expiry Type Summary Admin Drake (musician) 2024-05-04 05:55 2024-05-11 05:55 edit,move Persistent violations of the biographies of living persons policy from (auto)confirmed accounts Moneytrees Uttar Pradesh 2024-05-04 04:45 indefinite edit,move raise to indef ECP per request at RFPP and review of protection history Daniel Case StoneToss 2024-05-04 04:12 2024-08-04 04:12 edit Violations of the biographies of living persons policy: per request at RFPP; going longer this time Daniel Case Palestinian key 2024-05-04 04:08 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per RFPP and ARBPIA Daniel Case List of national symbols of Palestine 2024-05-04 04:05 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per RFPP and ARBPIA Daniel Case Disinvestment from Israel 2024-05-04 03:59 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per RFPP and ARBPIA Daniel Case List of characters in Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai 2024-05-03 18:04 2024-05-12 05:38 edit,move raised to ECP as one disruptive user is autoconfirmed Daniel Case Shakespeare authorship question 2024-05-03 14:22 indefinite edit Article name was changed without consensus SouthernNights Watermelon (Palestinian symbol) 2024-05-03 02:51 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per RFPP and ARBPIA Daniel Case Ze'ev Jabotinsky 2024-05-02 23:28 indefinite edit,move Yamla Khwaja Naksh 2024-05-02 19:21 2024-05-09 19:21 create Repeatedly recreated Liz Colombia–Israel relations 2024-05-02 19:14 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per RFPP and ARBPIA Daniel Case Template:R animal with possibilities 2024-05-02 18:00 indefinite edit,move High-risk template or module: 2524 transclusions (more info) MusikBot II Template:Malay name 2024-05-02 18:00 indefinite edit,move High-risk template or module: 2503 transclusions (more info) MusikBot II Tiger Reth 2024-05-02 14:17 2025-05-02 14:17 create Repeatedly recreated GB fan Palestinian self-determination 2024-05-02 11:26 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement ScottishFinnishRadish Antisemitism in US higher education 2024-05-02 09:16 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement ScottishFinnishRadish Antisemitism in Columbia University 2024-05-02 09:15 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement ScottishFinnishRadish Somaliland 2024-05-02 05:29 indefinite edit Persistent disruptive editing: per RFPP; going back to ECP and will log at CTOPS Daniel Case Battle of Ocheretyne 2024-05-02 04:49 indefinite edit,move Community sanctions enforcement: per RFPP and WP:RUSUKR Daniel Case 2024 University of California, Los Angeles pro-Palestinian campus occupation 2024-05-02 04:40 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per RFPP and ARBPIA Daniel Case Draft:MC Stan (rapper) 2024-05-01 17:40 2024-11-01 17:40 edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry Ponyo Lisa Fithian 2024-05-01 16:48 2024-05-15 16:48 edit,move Dweller Brizyy (Singer) 2024-05-01 14:53 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated Randykitty 2023 in Israel 2024-05-01 14:50 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: WP:PIA Ymblanter Cliff Cash 2024-05-01 11:14 indefinite move Persistent sockpuppetry Ohnoitsjamie Effect of the Israel–Hamas war on children in the Gaza Strip 2024-05-01 06:08 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: WP:ARBPIA Johnuniq Thomas Kaplan 2024-04-30 20:37 indefinite edit Persistent sock puppetry Moneytrees Nothing 2024-04-30 18:18 indefinite edit,move Persistent vandalism: Something: upgrade to WP:ECP due to disruption from multiple confirmed accounts El C 2024 Israeli protests 2024-04-30 18:12 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per RFPP and ARBPIA Daniel Case

Unban me

I remember I was banned for creating useless redirects on 24 March 2020 (link) and was directed to use WP:AFC/R. Now, 6 months are passed since then and I realised how cheap and costly the redirects really are. Therefore, I will only create redirects when necessary. Therefore, please unban me. Thanks. --Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 18:11, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Your math is off. 6 months would be on the 24th of this month. RickinBaltimore (talk) 19:04, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

• Absolutely not, and I would strongly advise a wider ban to cover all redirects, broadly construed, so Soumya is no longer able to be disruptive at WP:RFD and WP:AFC/R. Besides the blunt "unban me", the request does not show that Soumya understands WP:CHEAP and WP:COSTLY. Looking at Soumya's contributions at RfD lately, we find: a RENOM violation for a redirect already hashed to death, asserting without evidence that WPJ is an abbreviation for WikiProject, asserting without evidence that Sprache has multiple meanings, misunderstanding of OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, a weird obsession with J947 (this is the best example of many), etc. Soumya also has several low quality AFC/R submissions, including: Shampooing, Honkong, and constantly trying redirects with "He", including: He Spaceship Company and He Origin of Species several days after being explained why the previous one was no good. I can keep going if necessary, but I'm exhausted only going back to August 20th. -- Tavix ^(talk) 19:09, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
• As long as we are here, per Tavix, continue current ban and broaden to cover all redirect matters, broadly construed, including WP:RFD and WP:AFC/R. There are millions of articles in need of improvement. Surely Soumya-8974 can find constructive edits to make that don't involve redirects. I urge them to edit constructively in non redirect areas for another six months before asking to be allowed to come back to redirects. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 22:38, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

  I mainly find spaceflight, rocketry, aircraft, and solar system-related articles interesting, and performing page moves, which form redirects, violates my current ban. So I would have to perform WP:RM/TR instead. --Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 05:38, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

• Addendum – I have recently joined at WP:WPREDIRECT to discuss about redirects, in order not to disrupt Wikipedia's redirect system. If someone topic bans me on redirect, then it will prevent me to do such discussion. Also, I am suffering in Wikipedia vaguely similar to the Pandavas in the Mahabharata. They spent 13 years in forest and 1 year in disguise. If Kauravas found them in this period, then they would spent 13 years in forest and 1 year in disguise again. In my opinion, it should be best to open WP:AFC/R at least. --Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 17:24, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

• Wait, by "disguise" are you suggesting you will WP:SOCK? I highly urge you to withdraw this before your topic ban is converted to a WP:CIR block. Rgrds. --Bison X (talk) 04:33, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

• I concur with Tavix and Deepfriedokra. Soumya-8974's participation at RfD, while occasionally helpful, has not been a net positive, and has generated a lot of busywork for others. I think that an expanded topic ban could be worded to allow for page moves and for the creation of articles at former redirects, although as Deepfriedokra suggested, an editor could easily spend the rest of their lives productively improving articles by adding content, copyediting, or fixing categorization without once touching a redirect. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:23, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

  Ok, this nomination IMO is a clear sign that we need a wider ban. I'd propose a topic ban covering all redirect matters including RFD and AFC/R, but not including redirects created inadvertently as the result of a page move or the creation of new articles at existing redirects. It probably doesn't need to be said, but just to be clear any attempt to game those exceptions to create redirects by moving pages back and forth or creating a new article and then redirecting it should be considered a violation of the ban. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:35, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

  Ah, you beat me to it. I came back to this discussion to link the Serbo-Croatia RfD as a clear failure of WP:CIR. While I'm here, I also wanted to point out a very immature comment at the RfD for European+Union. -- Tavix ^(talk) 22:48, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

• (comment from non-admin who no-one would ever consider admin-worthy) - I support this. See Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2020_September_19#Wikipedia:FAMOUS; an RFD nomination with no real rationale explaining why the proposed action was necessary. The European+Union comment linked by Tavix is another problematic one. However, I support an exception allowing them to move pages. I've seen no issues indicating that this user has page-moving problems, so I see no reason to keep them from that. Hog Farm _Bacon 23:25, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
• I think there's a fairly clear consensus here around needing a broad ban for redirect matters so we should wrap up this discussion. Tavix, Deepfriedokra, any objections to the wording I suggested about allowing an exception for page moves and article creation? _signed, Rosguill ^talk 23:36, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
  • That sounds reasonable to me. -- Tavix ^(talk) 23:40, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Okay. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 04:22, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
• I'm not convinced an extension of the ban to all types of RfD activity is a good idea. Yes, they sometimes cast !votes without giving reasons, yes, they occasionally make nominations that get quickly snowballed, and yes they should absolutely stop taunting J947 (here I would support a one-way interaction ban). But there have been plenty of constructive nominations as well: 1, 2, 3, 4. I don't think it's a good idea to ban an editor from a venue unless they've been very disruptive or a substantial majority of their nominations have failed. I'm not seeing that here. – Uanfala (talk) 16:12, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

  Uanfala, I think a further complication here is that a fair amount of their constructive nominations have been for redirect changes that wouldn't need to be brought to RfD if it weren't for their originally ban on changing redirects directly. While these changes are nominally helpful, they're being made in a way that is more costly to the project. I wonder if it would be a more productive solution to keep the original ban, but have them file requests for target changes through edit requests rather than through RfDs (at least for uncontroversial suggestions). _signed, Rosguill ^talk 15:59, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

  Rosguill, their original ban is for creating redirects [1]. This doesn't prevent them from editing existing redirects. – Uanfala (talk) 17:08, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

  Uanfala, hm, I had assumed it covered changing targets as well based on Soumya's behavior (and I feel like I remember seeing them claim the same when someone asked them why they were starting RfD discussions for trivial changes). _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:53, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

  I would agree with the addition of a 1-way IBAN against interacting with J947 due to their seeming inability to desist from taunting them. I came across yet another instance today. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 19:42, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

  And why the ban from AFC/R as well? I don't see anything remotely resembling disruption: Tavix brings up four examples: two of them (the "He" redirects) are indeed bad, but the other two are OK: "Shampooing" is a good redirect and it was accepted, "Honkong" was declined though in my opinion should have been accepted as well. – Uanfala (talk) 10:53, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

• I support the extended topic ban with the proposed by Rosguill with the 1-way IBAN regarding J947. I've seen far too many instances from them of failure to do a basic WP:BEFORE and !votes that indicate they don't understand redirects. Thryduulf (talk) 10:41, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
• I concur with Uanfala. I'm quite skeptical of "topic" bans from processes (as opposed to topics). If someone is so disruptive as to justify banning from using a process like RfD, it indicates to me that a more general measure is warranted. Here, I don't think it rises to either yet. To me, Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 September 19#Wikipedia:FAMOUS reflects a lack of sophisticated understanding of the consequences of retargeting redirects (i.e., I think "FAMOUS" is a better shortcut for...), not malice or disruption. --Bsherr (talk) 22:01, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
• Soumya is definitely acting in good faith, issue here is of training which can be addressed by WP:Mentorship for young editors. I agree with Uanfala and Bsherr, extension of ban will be unproductive and demotivating for inexperienced editors.भास्कर् Bhagawati संवाद 14:46, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
• I'm surprised to see this hasn't been resolved yet, but the disruption is still ongoing and evolving. Soumya-8974 has now attempted to close an RfD discussion, which was a WP:BADNAC that I had to revert. Tallest mountain in India was a direct creation as a disambiguation page. I have since converted it to a rather obvious redirect, but I feel like this is indirectly sidestepping the topic ban since I believe a redirect would have been created if Soumya were able to do so. Another interesting situation was when Soumya tried to "fix" an RfD nomination by closing it and then recreating it the "right" way, which effectively created two nominations of the same redirect on the same page. However, that just resulted in more clean-up (which I fixed here) since the way Soumya fixed it was messy, potentially confusing, and ultimately undesirable. -- Tavix ^(talk) 15:32, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Supervote at Move Review

Over the past month or so, the move review for the page currently at Grace O'Malley (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) has been looking for an admin to close it, and I'm happy that Vanjagenije attempted to clear that specific backlog. However, I don't think the close that he made accurately reflected the discussion. In particular, his comments about the move didn't seem to be about the discussion at all, but his own views on the move. With the way the discussion was going, I can't see any consensus to reverse the move, and his closing comment seems to be more of a comment he should've made in the discussion itself (as it was, of course, still open at that point). I'm also a little concerned that he doesn't seem to have that much experience in move discussions, and it's a rather controversial subject to dip your toes in!

However, there isn't a "move review review", so any discussion about the process falls here by default. I've attempted to bring it up at his his talk page but I'm not really satisfied with the response. Hence, I'm bringing it here to get some more input. Sceptre (talk) 21:14, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

• I agree, this clearly looks like a supervote. The very first sentence of the close ("After reading the original discussion, I came to the conclusion that the closure was wrong and in violation of Wikipedia policies.") is a big red flag; the RM discussion is irrelevant; what matters is what editors have said in the MR discussion and the MR itself was a no consensus outcome, tending towards Endorse. Number 57 21:31, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
• Sceptre wants to present this as if I didn't read the move review, or that I did not take the arguments presented in the move review into account. That is obviously false. If you read my closing comment, you'll see that I actually summarized what MR participants (those who supported overturning) already said in the MR discussion. Move review is a process of reviewing the move discussion, so no surprise I had to read carefully the move discussion itself. @Number 57:'s idea that RM discussion is irrelevant in the process of reviewing that discussion seams absurd. All the comments in the move review are based on the original discussion, so how can we judge their validity if we don't take the original discussion into account? In this particular case, a minority of MR participants correctly pointed out that the original move discussion was wrongly closed as "move" because those who opposed the move, although in minority, correctly cited Wikipedia policies, while those who supported the move had weak arguments not based in the policies. How could I decide whether that's true or not without analyzing the original discussion? Saying that the RM discussion is irrelevant is akin to saying that Wikipedia's policies are irrelevant, and that it's only relevant what participants in a discussion say about those policies. After reading the RM, I concluded that those who supported overrule are indeed correct in saying that there was no consensus for moving the article. This case is somewhat peculiar because in both the original discussion and the review discussion, those who correctly assessed the proposal were in minority. But, if you really take into account their arguments, it is not hard to see that the move was wrong. Vanjagenije (talk) 22:11, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

• "Those who correct assessed the proposal were in minority" in your opinion. "It is not hard to see the move was wrong" in your opinion. Personally, despite the sockpuppetry at the original RM, I would have closed it the same way as Sceptre. Black Kite (talk) 22:23, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

  For what it's worth, there was clearly a bit of axe-grinding on both sides in the move discussion; like a lot of Irish article naming discussions, the discussions tend to be less about following what the evidence says and more using it as an proxy argument over the/an Irish Language Act. ("British imperialism!" vs. "terrorist sympathisers!", to wit.) Sceptre (talk) 22:34, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

• @Number 57: said "the RM discussion is irrelevant" because Move Review (and Deletion Review) is about whether the process has been done correctly or not. As much as a closer of an RM has to weigh up consensus in the RM discussion, the closer of a MRV has to weight up consensus in the MRV discussion. In both circumstances, closing with their own opinion is inappropriate. Your comment would've been fine in the review itself; it's just as a closure I'm not too pleased with. Sceptre (talk) 22:34, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

  The process was incorrectly followed as the original close did not take into account of the relative weight of arguments based on actual policy-backed points. Vanjagenije could have just said 'close incorrect as original closer failed to assess consensus correctly' and left it at that. Only in death does duty end (talk) 01:31, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

  Yes, but the whole point of MRV/DRV is that it discusses and formulates a consensus whether the procedure was followed or not. You can assert whether it was in the discussion, but closing a move review unilaterally like this defeats the entire purpose of the review process. The closing instructions at MRV state that a consensus at MRV is needed to overturn a closure, which clearly does not exist in this case. Sceptre (talk) 02:23, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

• Just like you, Sceptre, I'm rather heavily biased in this case, but in the other direction. And I disagree that the consensus at MRV, which is needed to overturn your closure, "clearly does not exist in this case". I think it clearly does exist, and the MRV closing admin made the same kind of decision you made in the RM – a difficult one. I disagreed with your RM closure, and I agree with Vanjagenije's MRV closure. P.I. Ellsworth  ed. ^put'r there 06:05, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

• I agree that the move review was wrongly closed and should be reopened. The closer did not even attempt to assess consensus in the review discussion but merely expressed their own view about the merits of the original move proposal. The place to do that would have been in the original move discussion, not in the move review and much less in closing it. Vanjagenije should not close any more discussions until they are confident that they understand the procedures we use to establish consensus. Sandstein 07:03, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

• Yeah, this was clearly a supervote. Reyk _YO! 07:10, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

• Vanjagenije makes a valid point about the impossibility to judge the comments' validity without taking the original discussion into account. How else are they meant to assign due weight to the arguments? While their closing statement could be construed as a supervote, the same could be said about Sceptre's, which would make this a case of a supervote (presumably based on policy) overruling another supervote (presumably based on the closer's opinion about what name is appropriate). Going back to the drawing board (reopening the original move request) might not be a bad idea. M.Bitton (talk) 18:16, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

• I don't know if this is the right place to say this; however, since I did not participate in the RM I would like to point out that I've read a lot about Grace O'Malley and have even seen documentaries that included her. An actor who portrayed a warrior princess in a TV series was asked to host one of those documentaries about real-life, historical warrior princesses that included Grace O'Malley. She wasn't called "Gráinne Ní Mháille", nor "Ofgjdfjgdfjg", nor "Mr. Mxyzptlk", her name was spelled and pronounced "Grace O'Malley". That is her common name and the name to be searched the most by readers. End of story (or should be). The present title should stand... tall! P.I. Ellsworth  ed. ^put'r there 20:46, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
• I agree that this was a supervote, but also agree with M.Bitton that the better resolution would be to go back to square one and have a new move request, in which proponents of both views can square off with their best arguments and evidence. I would wait for at least a few weeks from the end of this discussion before initiating such a thing, though. BD2412 T 20:57, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
• Bah. I think the original close was brave. The strength of numbers went one way, the guidelines pretty strongly in the other. no consensus to move would have been the better close IMO. The question is, was the close of the original move discussion within discretion? I'd say no--the folks wanting the move just didn't make a strong policy-based set of arguments. You'd need a stronger numeric consensus to overcome the strength of arguments--even accounting for IPs etc. But then the move review didn't find consensus that the close should be overturned. I think we default back to the policy-compliant version and the previous status quo. So move back to Grace O'Malley and suggest folks debate the policy changes needed to do make Gráinne Ní Mháille the right name per polices. I think some good arguments were made in the original discussion that indicate our policy needs updating. Hobit (talk) 02:33, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
• Yes this was a supervote and it should be overturned. Assessing WP:CONSENSUS is our policy which should never be disregarded. Lightburst (talk) 15:25, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
• Yet another irregular verb, "to close a discussion":

  First person: I assess discussions based on policy, not on a votecount.

  Second person: You see a consensus when there actually was none.

  Third person: They supervote.

--Floquenbeam (talk) 15:47, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

@Floquenbeam:, Bernard Woolley would be proud of your Emotive conjugation. Nthep (talk) 17:28, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Floquenbeam, fair - but also standard for all Wikipedia discussions. Especially those that centre on stylistic preferences.

My view on this kind of thing is that in cases of doubt, we should probably go back to (or maintain) the status quo ante, effectively sending it back for further discussion if people still feel so motivated. What's your feeling? Guy (help! - typo?) 16:05, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

@JzG: I can give you my opinion, since you asked, but I really don't think it's 100% clear where it "should" be in the general situation we have here, so it's only an opinion. I think it was a very difficult, evenly-divided evenly-argued discussion. I think User:Sceptre was a little aggressive in closing it the way they did, rather than no consensus to move, but not unreasonably so. I think the move review discussion was a very difficult, evenly-divided discussion. I think User:Vanjagenije was a little aggressive in closing it the way they did, rather than no consensus to overturn, but not unreasonably so. But I think this "move review review" here does have a consensus that the move review was in error, albeit with too many people using the pointless "supervote" snark for Sceptre's decision and/or for Vanjagenije's decision. So it seems like maybe the best thing to do is respect the only clear consensus there is, and reopen the move review. I don't see a need to go thru the anger-causing step of moving the article yet again until the move review is concluded. Which has the benefit of also meeting your suggested "status quo" argument. However, that would mean if the reopened move review resulted in "no consensus to overturn Sceptre's close", it should be moved. Good luck, by the way, finding a masochist willing to close it now... --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:04, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I did get a small chuckle out of your Appeal to Fowlds. :p Sceptre (talk) 01:05, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

I find this discussion quite ironic considering the original highly contentious and debatable close of the original move request. Had the original close been done right and in line with Wikipedia policy and not simply supervoting the whole thing based on personal views then there would have been no problems.

Thus overturning Sceptre's supervote was the right action to restore some sense of credibility and respect to the core principles of Wikipedia. Proper procedure and policy must be adhered too. Not the will of a slight majority, in this case cultural nationalists and cultural feminists, whose arguments are based entirely on personal opinion over sources and policy.

The suggestion to reopen the move review due to a supervote is a non starter and only a slap in the face to those that called for the original discussion to be reopened for similar reasons. Why should the highly flawed and problematic move not be overturned and done right? At least the closer of the review took the evidence and policy into account!

What should be done as I have said from the start is that a proper discussion with all possible options provided and a thorough discussion on each to see where a compromise or a happy middle can be found. That is the most common sense thing to do. A neutral closer would help too. Mabuska ^(talk) 18:27, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

MR close

I closed the move review for Parasite at Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2020 September. Since this is my first use of the move review close process as documented, I'd be grateful if someone could look and make sure I did things correctly. Thanks. Guy (help! - typo?) 07:34, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

I've fixed your title as you closed a move review, not a requested move. This closure however is a clear vote count that goes against the 2019 RFC that explicitly allows for PDABS in certain circumstances. As I said in the move review, most of the Opposers in the RM were re-litigating that RFC instead of arguing why the standard hadn't been met in this case, and thus the RM closer was correct to give them little to no weight. Iffy★Chat -- 08:56, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

(Moved my earlier comment at JzG's talk): Not that the underlying matter is gravely important (really, who gives a fuck whether a disambiguator contains a year?), but I think that it's ironical to close a complex, divided, 20-participants Move Review discussion with a supervote of your own. FWIW, the headcount in that MR was 12:9 for overturning by my count, making it dangerously close to "no consensus". I don't think that anyone in that MR was re-litigating the RM, on the contrary, it was all about merits of policy vs. practice, and principles of NOTAVOTE. I'm not really requesting that you reverse that close, but I find it... lacking. No such user (talk) 11:20, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

No such user, so you want me to expand on my reasoning. Happy to do that. Guy (help! - typo?) 11:46, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

@JzG: you used an uppercase for Result meaning the template didn't work [2], I've fixed it for you [3]. You may want to check either a preview or the final save to ensure it produces the desired result to reduce the risk of such errors. BTW, are move reviewers supposed to modify the close in any way when overturning and not relisting? The text of Wikipedia:Move review#Closing reviews doesn't seem to mention anything. But the table does say "close RM" for cases when the page wasn't originally moved (which doesn't apply here) although in such cases the RM was already closed albeit incorrectly. It doesn't say that for cases like this where the page was originally moved but it's also seems a bit ambigious since it's partly referring to cases when you relist. I had a look and found this no consensus overturned to moved where the closer only noted the result in the template (and carried out the necessary moves) and this move overturned to not moved where the closer did amend the close to note the change. Which is sort of the opposite of the table. The second one was highly contentious so that could be one reason. The MR does provide the rationale so maybe it's not considered necessary to amend the move? But at a minimum, I think it may be helpful to note what overturn means in the template i.e. overturn to not moved/moved. P.S. I haven't notified either of the other MR closers since this isn't about them and I'm not suggesting they did anything wrong. If people do start to discuss such things please notify them. Nil Einne (talk) 14:58, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Nil Einne, Thanks - I did wonder why it didn't change visually. I honestly don't know about the original close - the instructions only mention adding a parameter, not amending the close. The instructions also don't mention courtesy-notifying the original closer of the MR close, which I did anyway. I feel bad for Sceptre as this was a valiant effort. Guy (help! - typo?) 16:05, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

• So discussion are just votes now? -- Calidum 17:23, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

• Suppose I'd better put my two-penneth in: I don't begrudge Guy for making the close at all; as long as you're taking the mission seriously, I've always found him to be one of fairest admins on the encyclopedia (sure, he's abrasive at times, but don't confuse not suffering bullshit with bad behaviour). I think that his closure of the move review is fine, and whilst I still maintain my closure was correct, I also accept that, at least, there wasn't a consensus to endorse; it's not like the other controversial MR close of a move I made, because I can tell Guy has the humility to admit he's new to the process. That said, I hope he won't mind me slightly refactoring the close template so the longer rationale is above the hide button, as we normally do for contentious MRs. Sceptre (talk) 06:00, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

  Sceptre, please feel free. And no disrespect at all to you, this is certainly not an indefensible close. I feel bad about it, and I hope you are not offended. Guy (help! - typo?) 07:46, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

The MR was closed too soon. While MRs with a clear consensus can be closed after one week, most remain open much longer. The August ones, for example, were all open 3-5 weeks each. This one in particular was still very active and evolving when it was abruptly closed after the bare technical minimum of a week. One editor weighed in just nine minutes before it was abruptly closed. Knowing how long MRs stay open I usually only check MR once or twice a month, so I, for one, didn’t even get a chance to participate in this one at all. I suggest the community would be best served by reverting the premature close of this MR and letting nature take its course. —-В²C ☎ 13:53, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Born2cycle, it was closed after a week. Per the guidance. I would remind you that the status quo ante is not the move but the previous title. Guy (help! - typo?) 14:19, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

The written guideline is one thing, which, btw, says at least seven days, reflecting the fact that MRs often are open much longer, especially when consensus is not clear after only seven days. I’m pointing out the unwritten conventions to usually allow much more than the minimum seven days before closing, conventions that have been followed for years at MR. I can’t recall a close/active MR ever being closed so abruptly, so it’s likely to rarely be an issue, hence no need to clarify actual convention in the guideline any further. Until now, apparently. But it really shouldn’t be necessary since you can revert your premature close. Thanks. —-В²C ☎ 14:46, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Born2cycle, at least a week, and a close against overwhelming numbers. Reverting to status quo ante seems reasonable to me. As to what next, see below. Guy (help! - typo?) 16:17, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Whether that particular close “against overwhelming numbers” needed to be reverted to status quo ante was of course the topic of the discussion (and not for you to decide in a super vote close of the MR) which you closed abruptly and prematurely, before consensus could develop on that question either way. Please revert your close and let it progress where it’s supposed to continue, at MR, not in some obscure subsection of this AN. —В²C ☎ 16:38, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

I see both the RM and the MR as a local-consensus-v-global-consensus issue. In the RM, local consensus to not have pdabs cannot override the global consensus that pdabs are OK. Thus, Sceptre's discounting of !votes that did not apply global consensus was proper. Similarly in the MR, many people said it was a supervote based on the numbers, but global consensus is that we don't count heads. The close of the MR should have discounted overturn votes based on numbers. Also, I think involved/uninvolved !votes should have been taken into account. Given that the consensus at the time of close wasn't overwhelmingly clear and it had been open a week, probably the easiest/best solution is to reopen the MR and let more people !vote in it; give it 2-4 weeks total or until participation dries up. Lev!vich 06:16, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

On the underlying issue...

The original RM is unfinished business. Experience indicates that move requests rarely go away, and IMO Sceptre may well have been right on the merits. I'd like to suggest we reset the RM to "closing" and invite Sceptre to lead a panel close, to remove any appearance of supervoting. Does that seem equitable? Guy (help! - typo?) 10:48, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

@JzG: Good idea. Overturning this close does not mean that the Sceptre's result when applied to the RM itself was wrong. The arguments in favour of moving do appear stronger, and opposition is mainly from those who don't believe in partial disambiguation under any circumstances, despite the fact that the community has repeatedly said it's OK on occasion.  — Amakuru (talk) 10:52, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Amakuru, Yes. I focus here also on a specific comment from the MR: "The conflicting guidelines and intrinsic subjectivity of what constitutes WP:PRIMARYTOPIC". I think that is correct, and the lack of any single objective standard clouds the issue here. Guy (help! - typo?) 11:27, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Amakuru, the policy page at WP:PRECISION shows examples of Wikipedia projects setting naming conventions to follow. Leeds North West and M-185 are primary topics yet have parenthetical disambiguation per the related naming conventions. Since these exist through an endorsement of policy, the general guideline of WP:DAB cannot be applied to strip these of their parenthetical disambiguation. In the same vein, WP:INCDAB is part of WP:DAB and cannot be applied to override naming conventions for films. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 12:40, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

@Erik: - thanks for your reply, but I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. WikiProjects and their regular contributors do not have a privileged status when it comes to determining article titles, and furthermore a particular naming convention guideline is only useful as long as it is supported by arguments made in RMs and Wikipedia's overarching policies. And the community decided through a sitewide RFC that primary topic has higher priority than INCDAB, in this RFC (albeit that the bar for determining such a PTOPIC is higher than it usually would be). There is no special carve-out for films, which means we are allowed to use the name Thriller (album) but not allowed to use the name Parasite (film). The Leeds North West example isn't really the same as this one, because it wouldn't be obvious to a casual observer what "Leeds North West" referred to - it might just be an area of the city. Whereas "Parasite (film)" would overwhelmingly refer to just one topic as primary. CHeers  — Amakuru (talk) 13:00, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

I agree that they are not the same thing, but they are similar. Policy at WP:PRECISION is indisputable that there can be "exceptions... by Wikipedia projects". If these are exceptions for UK Parliament constituencies and highways as examples, then such exceptions are not limited to these instances. The casual-observer argument cannot apply because these are not particularly special sets of topics than other ones on Wikipedia. At this time, we are not an encyclopedia that disambiguates every title to make sure even casual observers understand. Furthermore, even the "Leeds North West" example arguably has an overly detailed parenthetical disambiguation term where it could easily be Leeds North West (constituency). If policy has tolerance for this kind of lengthy detail for this specific subject matter, then disambiguating by release year is relatively minimalist. Furthermore, release years are key grounding details throughout film resources, databases, and articles. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 13:24, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

That is conflating WP:PRECISION with the following subsection, WP:ATDAB. PRECISION allows for exceptions to the general naming conventions, such as for settlements in the U.S., for parliamentary constituencies or for highways. But Bothell, Leeds North West and M-185 are all WP:PRIMARYREDIRECTs; the parenthetical is not for dab purposes. WP:ATDAB (which references WP:D, which includes WP:INCDAB) governs disambiguation and cannot be overruled by incompatible narrower guidelines. Station1 (talk) 05:36, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

If we're rolling things back, the RM should be opened for a time for further comments. The interpretation of the new guidance in INCDAB is an area where consensus is still evolving, and its clear that the issues on which the move will be decided did not get an airing in the move discussion.--Trystan (talk) 14:11, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

I’ve been asking Guy to revert or reverse the MR, but I don’t think reopening the RM is appropriate or would be useful at this point. No one in the MR even suggested that, which I think is telling. It’s the MR that was closed abruptly and prematurely, not the RM. —В²C ☎ 20:44, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Born2cycle, no, not the MR, the RM. We don't default to whichever process gave the preferred outcome of the minority of participants. I have no objection to reopening the RM or re-running the close with Sceptre leading a panel, to protect her from accusations of supervoting. Either is fine. Guy (help! - typo?) 11:29, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

The only issue is at your premature and abrupt close of the MR which prevented me and countless others from participating. If you won’t reopen the MR to let more of the community weigh in, we can take this to ANI, if that’s your preference. Up to you. —В²C ☎ 14:42, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Regarding not defaulting “to whichever process gave the preferred outcome of the minority”, that’s completely irrelevant because majority/minority is irrelevant since we don’t count !votes when evaluating consensus. That’s a key policy issue you ignored when you closed the MR and continue to do so here. So, JzG, I’m done with your obstinacy. AN/I? —В²C ☎ 21:19, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Born2cycle, I weigh the opinion of generalists higher than those of obsessive page-movers. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:30, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Wonderful. When all else fails, go argumentum ad hominem (“a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself”). LOL. —В²C ☎ 23:45, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Born2cycle, you misspelled "track record". --Calton | Talk 03:52, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

That’s just another ad hominem argument. One’s “track record” has nothing to do with the veracity of their independently-verifiable argument, and name-calling them as “obsessive page-mover” or referring to their “track record” while not even acknowledging the argument, much less addressing it, is just a cheap disruptive dodge. I know you two can do better. —-В²C ☎ 05:47, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Is "ad hominem" the only counter-phrase you know? Your history as a long long long long-time edit warrior regarding page naming is the OPPOSITE of "ad hominem" -- being, you know, evidence of the accuracy of JzG's description as "obsessive" -- your attempt to rationalize your (sadly common) behavior notwithstanding. --Calton | Talk 14:14, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

You don’t seem to understand the meaning of ad hominem. It has nothing to do with whether the accusation about the person making an argument is accurate or false. It’s about the fact that accusations about the person are irrelevant to the strength of their arguments. My history - for better or worse - is irrelevant to the validity (or lack thereof) of my argument, which is that JzG closed an active and contentious MR prematurely, not allowing consensus to develop one way or another, and therefore they should reopen it. That has nothing to do with my behavior or history. I, like countless others, didn’t even get a chance to weigh in at the MR. Bringing up my history or behavior as a rebuttal to this argument is the epitome of an ad hominem fallacy, by definition. —-В²C ☎ 16:16, 1 October 2020 (UTC) I should add that there may very well be valid counters to my argument, and I’m open and welcoming to that possibility, but attacking me, my history or my behavior are not that, and when only such ad hominem attacks are presented in rebuttal, it suggests there are no valid counters. —В²C ☎ 16:37, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Okay, so what is to be done here? Want to thank Guy for coming here to question what happened. Guess I'm also an "obsessive page-mover" because I agree with В²C that the MR was closed way too early for its own good. I have removed the headers, but that can be easily reverted to reopen the MR, which I believe should be the ultimate outcome at the present time. Can we please have a decision, preferably a closure withdrawal by Guy so that the MR can be revisited in order to give other reviewers a chance to participate? P.I. Ellsworth  ed. ^put'r there 04:26, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Kiev/Kyiv

Mass edits by user: AndriiDr

I was just gnoming about and noticed a few edits pop up from the user, who was altering the English spelling of "Kiev" (the city in Ukraine) to the Cyrillic-phonetic of 'Kyiv.' Upon further investigation, these 200+ edits look like bot edits, as indicated by the user's contributions on 22 September alone. Apparently Discospinster tried to address this on the user's page(1), and the user acknowledged (2), but has failed to undo themselves.
I don't know how to undo mass bot edits, except one by one; I am presuming there is a better tool to accomplish this? Thoughts? - Jack Sebastian (talk) 05:41, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

(notification provided to AndriiDr here)

It was decided that it is possible to use Kyiv in modern context, and the article was renamed.(1) But Jack Sebastian revert my change, which is correct, in my opinion. (2) Сan you explain me what's wrong with this cite wich you cancelled; to gov.ua, where it written Kyiv, not Kiev, please? You can switch the language of the website in the upper right corner. I make all my changes by hands, not by a software. Sorry for my google translate. --AndriiDr (talk) 06:47, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

I am not going to re-address the nearly 300 edits made every few minutes over the course of 9 hours; that's for someone more familiar with these sorts fo things to sport out. Kyiv is the Cyrillic spelling for the far more common "Kiev". I think that this sort of wholesale editing (be it bot or user initiated) seems inappropriate. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 07:35, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Both spellings are romanizations of Cyrillic. The spelling Kiev is Russian. The spelling Kyiv is Ukrainian. The city is in Eastern Europe, and any dispute over the spelling is subject to ARBEE. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:07, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

I don't think the matter is settled. In this [4] edit most of the changes in the lead were quite inappropriate as the replaced names fit the ones the cities had in the 1930s.--Jetstreamer ^Talk 12:20, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

That article is about a modern airline. The edit is appropriate. There’s a proposal at talk:Kyiv about the naming and style in historical articles, but no one is proposing changing the spelling from sentence to sentence or phrase to phrase. —Michael Z. 14:01, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

This is questionable as well and likely will be reverted after the current discussion have been completed.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:13, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Why is it questionable? Sikorsky is a modern company. This is not a “historical article.” —Michael Z. 14:03, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

The edit however refers not to the modern usage but to the place Sikorski was born, which is a pre-1900 usage. There is for the time being no consensus to make such edits, and the discussion is ongoing.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:54, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

No, the proposal under discussion regards naming and spelling in pre-1991 historical articles. This is not one. You are implying using mixed spelling within all articles, or prioritizing the dated spelling in all articles, or something else not under discussion. —Michael Z. 15:34, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

The Kiev/Kyiv issue is a matter of spelling, not a name change like Burma/Myanmar or St. Petersburg/Leningrad/St. Petersburg. The difference is that the name change has historical significance. A spelling change... not so much. In other words if Ivan Doe was born in Kiev in 2010 or 1910 I don’t think it’s a problem to say he was born in Kyiv. It’s the same name of the same city, just spelled differently. —В²C ☎ 00:11, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

It does matter. It is a spelling difference that has to do with two countries with two related East Slavic languages that are at war. And in Kyiv, the accepted romanization is Kyiv. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:10, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

There is a discussion currently about it at Talk:Kyiv#Related articles--Ymblanter (talk) 05:50, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Let me add that AndriiDr (talk · contribs) keeps making these changes, blatantly ignoring this thread.--Jetstreamer ^Talk 12:09, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

As well as administrator Mzajac and probably a few more users. Their defense line is that since the article has been moved all instances of the name of the city and the derivatives everywhere in Wikipedia must be replaced as a result of RM.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:28, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Had the RM taken into consideration all the questions that were raised here and at Talk:Kyiv#Related articles?--Jetstreamer ^Talk 00:56, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

In my opinion, no, it had not, it was only discussing the current name of the city and has not even mentioned historical context (other than the fact that Kiev was earlier userd more often than Kyiv). However, there is a fraction of users who read the RM as a blanket permission to move all instances, in titles and bodies of the articles, where the city is mentioned.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:32, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

• I have asked the user to demonstrate where consensus was formed to make these changes en masse, and to stop making the changes until this thread is resolved (Special:Diff/980071406). If they continue, they may be blocked from editing the article namespace (see MOS:VAR/MOS:ENGVAR). –xeno^talk 12:38, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
  • While edits like this, which change the reader-facing text of the article, are probably appropriate, edits like this, which only change which title is used for a transcluded template, are clearly not. 46.116.4.50 (talk) 11:20, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

    There’s nothing wrong with either edit. I have moved that template, for consistency with others, and it already had a redirect. —Michael Z. 14:06, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Is it too heavy-handed to undo the body of edits making this change and urging the user to discuss some of these edits before undertaking them? They have claimed they have made all of these edits without automation, and while I am not keen on undoing that level of personal dedication, I am concerned about the lack of discussion regarding the changes. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 05:17, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

I was just curious if any action is going to be taken on this. I would undertake the mass undo process, but if there is an automated tool to undo the (what appear to be nationalist, bot) edits, that would make it a lot easier.- Jack Sebastian (talk) 18:36, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

I think action should be considered. A new Wikipedia has been investing significant work into improving Wikipedia, and he has been criticized for his first language, labelled a “bot” and a “nationalist” (is the use of this undeserved stereotyping an example of anti-Kyiv bias or anti-Ukrainian?), and having his work discounted because someone doesn’t like the current spelling of the city’s name.

I have not reviewed all his edits, but if the “evidence” presented here against his “misdeeds” is representative, I wish we had more like him. Some experienced editors need to think before they wp:BITE. —Michael Z. 14:16, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Note: It bears pointing out that a) "Michael" is admin Mzajac and b) Mzajac has been strongly advocating the name change in most of their contributions in the Wik-en since their very second edit in 2004.

In other words, the admin has a deeply vested interest in the outcome of this discussion - almost as deeply as they were invested in the initial 'Kiev to Kyiv' discussion that prompted our recent Ukranian 'invasion' of new contributors making Ukraine-related edits. Of course Mzajac/Michael is going to approve of the mass, bot-driven changes to Kiev-related articles; from an outsider's perspective, this would appear to have been the user admin's goal for over 16 years. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 18:25, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Jack Sebastian, why don’t you muster up the stones to ping my user name when you slander me, here and elsewhere? And do better research, because your accusation is inaccurate. —Michael Z. 00:24, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

@Mzajac: I didn't ping you because you were deeply involved in this conversation, and were likely seeing comments in real time. Additionally, I wasn't necessarily addressing my comments to you; I was pointing out your deep involvement in the subject material. 'Kiev' was your 2nd (and 3rd) edit to the Wiki-en, back in '08, right? That - and a number of edits thereafter reinforce your interest in the subject (not to mention your multiple posts here and in the Kiev article). Might you point out to me the slander that you feel has occurred on my part? All I did was point out that - based on the available evidence - you are deeply invested in this topic, and not quite a neutral party in evaluating behaviors regarding the subject. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 01:05, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

This is not a newbie. This is an agenda editor who came here from the Ukrainian Wikipedia. They do not speak English and have no interest beyond replacing Kiev with Kyiv.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:54, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Newcomer here, sixth edit in this wiki ten days ago. On your talk page you clearly stated you want to force him off. You are taking advantage of other administrators being unfamiliar with what is and is not being discussed at talk:Kyiv to criticize his perfectly good edits. You assume bad faith and your blatant disrespect is uncivil and disruptive. —Michael Z. 15:46, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Look, this really becomes annoying. There is Kiev/Kyiv disruption going all over the place. And this user is an active participant of this disruption, because his almost entire contribution is to replace Kiev with Kyiv, in many cases in an inappropriate situations. And the rest of his contribution is to vote for Kyiv at talk pages. And he is not capable in contributing in any other way, because he does not speak English and uses Google translate. Not biting newcomers is not about agenda editors, this is about new users who genuinely want to help but have some difficulties understanding policies. What the move has attracted to the English Wikipedia are a bunch of users who are only interested in disruption, not in creating encyclopedia. This is an enormous time sink, and I still have to see positive contribution of these "newcomers" in the articles, for example improving the Ukrainian topics which are in a pitiful state because only a handful of editors here - accidentally, including me - care about these topics.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:02, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I am in agreement with Ymblanter on this; this is not the simple case of us getting snarky with a neophyte. AndriiDr is new to our wiki, but is an established user of our Ukrainian project. It is not a simple matter of an over-excited editor making a bunch of edits to a bunch of articles because they do not know better.

Assuming Good Faith is not a suicide pact; we are being gaslighted here. As indicated by a similar discussion about Ukraine-related edits (see below), there appears to be a lot of Ukrainian 'reframing'-type edits occurring. As well, the user that prompted this discussion has continued to make these same sorts of edits, despite being warned by no less than three other editors to stop and discuss.

I hate going there, but I think some blocks and RfPP for Kiev-related articles is in order - they are not going to stop unbalancing articles unless we make them stop. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 17:53, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Which article was balanced and is now unbalanced? —Michael Z. 03:14, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

• If an evidence-free anecdote is worth anything, I confirm that we are obviously being played for suckers by virtual single-purpose accounts whose only interest is promoting their point of view. The careless bot-like Kiev/Kyev editing has hit my watchlist and some error tracking categories I monitor. My conclusion was that editors involved are here only to achieve a fait accompli after ultimate victory in their move campaign. Johnuniq (talk) 00:09, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Muahahahaha! Come comrades and celebrate! Our victory is nearly at hand! Soon, we will have accomplished our mission to change the spelling of Kyiv on Wikipedia, and then, we can take over the world! Muahahahah! Lev!vich 00:34, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Clearly, these Ukrainians didn't get the memo regarding WP:CABAL. @Levivich:, I think that every single one of us here can recall at least two instances of nationalist editing in Wikipedia. My pops dealt with the utter clownage that followed the release of 300, and I myself have witnessed the anti-Islamist sentiments pervading certain articles. Every time is occurs, it is corrosive and whittles away at our ability to stay above the fray.

This is why it seems pertinent to address this a bit more seriously. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 06:29, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

@Jack Sebastian: We're spelling it WP:KYBAL now But what is the "this" that needs to be addressed more seriously? When India changed Bombay to Mumbai it was called "shedding colonialism"; why is it when Ukraine changes Kiev to Kyiv, it's "nationalism"? When we get a group of people together to edit articles about the place where they live, we call it an "edit-a-thon"; why is it when Ukrainians write about Ukraine, it's called "POV pushing"? Obviously Ukrainians will edit Ukrainian topics as Indians edit Indian topics, but that doesn't mean it's only Ukrainians, or that we should assume that everyone editing the topic is Ukrainian (just as it's not only Indians editing Indian topics). Obviously after moving Kiev to Kyiv, we will have thousands of places where we will need to change, or consider changing, "Kiev" to "Kyiv" (there are thousands of inbound wikilinks to Kyiv, just for starters), but that doesn't mean that doing so is agenda-driven POV pushing. It's crowdsourced editing. We already have DS to deal with the problematic examples, and we already have a good number of editors blocked. What else do you want to do? What else can we possibly do? We can't stop people from changing the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, that changes three times a second; that would be counterproductive. So back to this thread, 300 edits isn't a lot of edits when you consider we're going to have to change "Kiev" to "Kyiv" probably more than 10,000 times. It's hundreds of articles, we can't protect them all, that would be counterproductive, it would stunt the natural growth of the topic area. Though it's anecdotal, so far I've seen more bad reversions of good edits than I've seen bad edits when it comes to changing Kiev to Kyiv, and those changes that have been challenged, when put to consensus (RMs), seem to be supported... just look at how much has already been moved at Talk:Kyiv/cleanup, and look how the currently-open RMs are trending. Bottom line: I don't see a solution proposed here to any demonstrated problem. It's like complaining about rain: it's inevitable, it's necessary, and even if it does suck, what do you want us to do about it? Also, may I note the irony of complaints about Ukrainians changing the spelling of a Ukraininan city on Wikipedia, when the other giant Wikipedia scandal going on right now is Scots Wiki having too few Scots speakers? We need more diversity in our editor base, not less, and complaining that editors from Ukrainian Wikipedia are editing Ukrainian topics here at enwiki is not going to help us develop a more diverse editor base. Lev!vich 06:57, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

@Levivich:, hmm, that's all quite fascinating, and I appreciate the parable about how a concerted action by Ukrainian to alter every mention of Kiev to 'Kyiv' whether its appropriate or not is as inevitable as rainfall.

Clearly, I disagree, and I think I have made my reasons for doing so pretty clear. Maybe I failed to mention a few, like how the Kiev to Kyiv newly-found "rough" consensus might not endure even a short test of time. I get that some folks have been working this angle since 2008, but it took 12 years to even get to a rough consensus. It might not last. Undoing the thousands of edits made after the orgasmic afterglow of getting what you want isn't going to be at all fun - most will just evaporate, leaving others to undo their surge of edits. That sucks more.

Clearly, you have wanted this, and have thought through all the angles. I am just an ordinary wiki editor, looking at a massive number of edits made by someone in love with the idea of changing the nature of a thing to that which they feel is important - its clearly a nationalism thing. Yet....I don't recall a similar crush of edits to change indiscriminately change any mention of Bombay to Mumbai. Then again, I am not editing Indian articles.

As well, I think its weird that while the rough consensus seems to agree that Kiev started pushing to be re-spelled in '95. Yet, the edits alter any mention of Kiev, no matter what date the name was used.

For me, the idea that "interfering" with these massive edits is stifling "diversity" is the reddest of herrings. Quite bluntly, Wikipedia is open to all, so long as you follow the basic rules and work collaboratively; the collaboration is rightly interpreted as editors working to find common ground from disparate viewpoints. The editors changing all the articles are working from a common interest and a common goal, without discussing their edits and hoping the simple crush of them all will stifle complaint.

That isn't working collaboratively; that's working towards a fait accompli. If you are perhaps unaware of ArbCom's view on the subject, you can check it out here. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 07:44, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Yet....I don't recall a similar crush of edits to change indiscriminately change any mention of Bombay to Mumbai - Talk:Kolkata/Archive 1 reads very similar to the discussions around Kyiv. In fact, Kyiv is mentioned in the Calcutta discussion. Both cities (Mumbai and Kyiv) BTW changed their names/spelling officially in 1995. Bombay was moved to Mumbai on Wikipedia in 2005. It's taken another 15 years for us to catch up with Kyiv. But the reason I know about this isn't because I've been doing this for a long time (I've only gotten involved in Kyiv in the last month or so), but because I am helping to track these changes at Talk:Kyiv/cleanup. There are 20,000 instances of "Kiev" in mainspace right now; hence, thousands, possible 10k or more, changes that will be required. As I said, there are thousands of inbound links to Kiev, and under our existing policies, those should be changed to Kyiv. So someone changing 300 of them is not a surprise to me. I would expect many editors will have to make hundreds of changes each in order to get it all done. What I see, though, is that you are coming from a place where you disagree with the change, and you seem to think it's even possible that it will be changed back and we'll have to revert the subsidiary changes. This will not happen, I can assure you. 0% chance of us ever going back to calling the city "Kiev", just as there is a 0% chance we will move Mumbai back to Bombay. Lev!vich 16:50, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

(ec) The problem is not Ukrainians editing articles on Ukrainian topics. This (and also non-Ukrainians editing articles on Ukrainian topics) must be welcome. It is just not happening or happening very little. What we are discussing here are Ukrainians or non-Ukrainians or whoever whose only interest in the topic area is replacing Kiev with Kyiv, most often without looking at the context (which is not surprising, since some of them do not speak English). I do not see how this editing is net positive for Wikipedia.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:51, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

• Johnuniq, I proposed a guideline at talk:Kyiv that seems to have decent support, so have moved it to RfC. Guy (help! - typo?) 11:31, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

"Kiev" vs. "Kyiv" disputes

There are persistent moves and rename of title Kiev to Kyiv. In the article "Kiev Day and Night", there is editors warring around the renaming customs whether it should be "Kyiv" Day and Night despite the enlisted sources/citations verify the article name should be Kiev Day and Night. This situation encountered recently with Ukrainian-related topics. As such, they were coronary to sources, not their customs, as because of the title of the series implies "Kiev Day and Night" in several ways in accordance with existing sources. The Supermind (talk) 15:21, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

The only editor I see repeatedly moving that title is The Supermind. All the sources in the article Kiev Day and Night are Ukrainian or Russian language. So what reliable English source calls this 2018 TV show "Kiev Day and Night" instead of "Kyiv Day and Night"? The answer should probably be posted on the article talk page instead of here. This is a content dispute and it's already being adequately coordinated at Talk:Kyiv and Talk:Kyiv/cleanup, where bold moves and RMs are being tracked. Lev!vich 16:03, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

This might be a fairly recent trend that has emerged. On this same noticeboard, there is another discussion ongoing about this very topic. I am not seeing this as an isolated incident, and I am starting to believe that undoing these edits is going to meet with substantial pushback from our Ukrainian visitors. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 17:44, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

This is not a new trend, it's a natural consequence of the recent rename from Kiev to Kyiv. Some of the workings-out are quite straightforward, others are more complex or controversial. As long as everyone follows the bold, revert, discuss method of establishing consensus we'll get through it eventually. – bradv🍁 20:34, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I searched for the name before I edited the article, and the Kyiv version seemed to appear in more results that resembled real sources, news sites, CVs of professionals linked to the show, etc. But very few overall. The official site seems to have no English at all; defaults to Ukrainian and includes Russian. Since this is not a “historical article,” our own uncontroversial translation would be “Kyiv Day and Night,” following the main article and current English standards.

P.S., it seems that editors who know Ukrainian topics have to defend their every contribution on Ukrainian topics because they know Ukrainian topics. This feels like a hostile environment. —Michael Z. 01:11, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

I would disagree with that assessment. There is a concern that nationalist flexing is taking place to change a commonly recognized word to one less so. Perhaps your immersion in this topic since 2008 has influenced your perception of the issue. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 18:09, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Mass Kyiv disruption

There was a Kiev/Kyiv discussion a few days ago on WP:ANI that might be relevant to this thread. It got archived recently so I am providing a link to it for convenience: WP:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive1047#Mass_Kyiv_disruption.--67.175.201.50 (talk) 01:27, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

RfC: Community general sanctions for Kiev/Kyiv

Should we put general sanctions on articles relating to Kiev/Kyiv? 20:16, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

It appears that the Kiev/Kyiv naming dispute will not settle down anytime soon, so I propose this general sanction to be applied to all articles related to Kiev/Kyiv:

Any article about Kyiv/Kiev or otherwise containing its name in the title shall have all proposed moves to them discussed through the requested moves process before being moved, broadly constricted. Any moves to the articles subjected to this sanction done without discussion, including reverting successful requested moves, may be reverted without being subject to the normal restrictions on edit warring.

Goose^(Talk!) 20:16, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Comment. We already have ArbCom aithorised discretionary sanctions in this editing area.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:29, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Is User:Ymblanter implying that Ukraine is in Eastern Europe as normally defined? If so, is there any advantage to be gained by adding community general sanctions to a more expansive area of ArbCom sanctions? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:56, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

My apologies, I must have been specific that I was talking about discretionary sanctions in the topic area of Eastern Europe. This includes Ukraine.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:50, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, Probably - my contact with this indicated a single person spending more than nine hours editing over 300 articles to change 'Kiev' to 'Kyiv' suggest that either they are using a bot and lying about it, or are supremely dedicated to making these changes; both options are disturbing. Perhaps more disturbing is the fact that these edits are continuing despite requests to pause until an agreement can be found, which is destabilizing and messes with the idea of collaborative editing. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 06:35, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

• While I imagine many have been dealt with already, a renaming of this scale would become inordinately slow were RM to be required throughout. I also feel that DS would seem to cover it already. As a distinct second choice, make it so that after the BR steps, the discussion must be in the form of RM with no additional move permitted. Nosebagbear (talk) 08:27, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
• Meh. This shouldn't be necessary. I proposed a simple rough guide to naming on talk:Kyiv; if that is adopted and works out then the problem would go away. Guy (help! - typo?) 11:07, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose. Topic is covered by the ArbCom E-E DS. Hence, any individual administrator is already empowered to enact the sanction described, if they believe it is necessary for the smooth running of the topic area. I already noted some weeks ago that technically, if desired, an edit filter could be created to log/warn unilateral page moves of Kyiv/Kiev. Though, I think this is just part of the normal editing process, nothing so egregious here that it cannot be solved in the usual manner. General sanctions should only really be enacted for chronic, diverse conduct/behavioural issues I think, this doesn't seem to be that. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:12, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose as redundant, per ProcrastingReader. Also, movewarring over a name isn't really a sufficient issue to give rise to unique general or discretionary sanctions anyway. If it comes to it, the page can be move-protected. If there really is ongoing, repetitive dispute about this, one could do a WP:RM (again) and this time list it at WP:VPPOL and even WP:CENT to attract sufficient editors to get a firmer consensus (perhaps also for a moratorium on bringing up the issue again for a year or whatever).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:38, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

• Comment Wow, this just started out as me asking how to undo a large number of bot-type edits; its now a multi-page discussion and the subject of at least one (very long) ANI complaint. Maybe the smart thing here is to realize that the very rough consensus that emerged from the Kiev/Kyiv name change discussion isn't enough of a consensus to warrant the sheer number of ripple changes now occurring - and disrupting - the Wiki-en.

As at least one editor has pointed out that a similar wholesale change appears to have happened when 'Bombay' articles were changed to 'Mumbai'. I think this consensus probably needs to be revisited and that the arrangement of edits need to be undone and redone under the aegis of a taskforce or something. I am deeply concerned about unintentional possibility of canvassing and meatpuppetry occurring, as a lot of these changes are occurring as a seemingly coordinated effort by visiting Wiki-Ukraine contributors unfamiliar with our guidelines and protocols.

I'm just spit-balling here. I literally have no horse in this race, and am only involved because it appears the edits are happening indiscriminately (like a hit-and-run) and without individual article discussion. That's pretty disruptive and that's what triggered my involvement. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 02:48, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

• Comment (Summoned by bot) It sounds like a good idea, but I suggest that the person initiating this conversation flesh out his request a bit. Coretheapple (talk) 13:49, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose – Just enforce the existing WP:ARBEE sanctions. Don't add on another layer of bureaucracy. RGloucester — ☎ 13:53, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Are those sanctions being considered in this matter by an admin capable of imposing sanctions based upon them? - Jack Sebastian (talk) 18:04, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Rollbacker, Vandal template, etc

I was wondering...recently I noticed that there is no vandalism or rollback features on my editing choices. Yet, I still seem to be a Rollbacker. Were some editing abilities altered wiki-wide since 2019, or were these rights that were removed from me in 2019, and not yet reinstated? - Jack Sebastian (talk) 17:09, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Jack Sebastian, you appear to still be a rollbacker. The vandalism templates are usually a Twinkle thing, and Twinkle appeared to be working for you two weeks ago - has something changed with your Twinkle setup? GeneralNotability (talk) 17:18, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Tbh, I am not sure. I don't use the tools a lot; I have the tools in case I need them. I was just noticing that, when undoing an edit, there is typically a vandalism undo text in red, which automates a lot of that, and it was missing. Was there a change in how that editing is done? - Jack Sebastian (talk) 18:09, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

@Jack Sebastian: in your preferences make sure the "Twinkle" box is checked. You might have to clear your browser's cache if you haven't already. – Frood (talk) 18:54, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your advice; its was very helpful and I meant to stop by to say thanks earlier. Better late than never, I suppose. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 01:12, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Curious categories by User:IslamMyLoveMyLife

This user's curious predilection for non-sequitur categories has been discussed before, somewhere, but I haven't been able to locate it. In any case, this single-purpose account is again single-mindedly adding any and all Biblical/Koranic/Islamic characters to idiosyncratic categories created for the purpose, apparently with a misguided but well-intentioned attempt at balancing the Judaeo-Christian slant in the encyclopaedia's treatment of named figures in Abrahamic religion. Unfortunately, strange results have obtained, like Adam and Eve being put into "Islamic preachers" categories. Later we had things like "Muslim Saints in the New Testament". Now we have a category "Islamic Jews", which though potentially a bona fide description of a limited demographic of notable persons, definitely should not include everyone with a passing mention in ancient near eastern scripture(s). Something needs to be done, both about the user's odd behaviour and about the sorting of "Biblical" "people" into categories suitable for their position in Islamic tradition and/or scripture. GPinkerton (talk) 10:35, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Can you people please, suggest me a forum where i can know more about Wikipedia Rules and guidelines and What is wrong with the Category:Islamic Jews it's name is fair? IslamMyLoveMyLife (talk) 10:43, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

That's an odd phrasing of a category. Several of the mythical individuals aren't even Jewish: Noah, Enoch (ancestor of Noah), Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel. Balaam is complex to define.--Astral Leap (talk) 11:08, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

The earlier discussion was here [5]. Yes, now IslamMyLoveMyLife is going through all people or characters from the Hebrew Bible or New Testament with any connection to the Quran or Islamic traditions and categorising them as "Islamic Jews". What sense does it make to call Adam and Eve "Islamic Jews" [6]? Or Balaam a figure from the Hebrew Bible, as the article says he is a dvinier...Every ancient reference to Balaam considers him a non-Israelite...he is reviled as a "wicked man" in both the Torah and the New Testament... no clear reference is made to Balaam in the Qur'an. However, the commentators argue that he is the one to whom the following text is referring:....His similitude is that of a dog: if you attack him, he lolls out his tongue, or if you leave him alone, he (still) lolls out his tongue. IslamMyLoveMyLife has put this villainous non Jewish character into catergories "Muslim Saints from the Old Testament" [7] "Early Islamic Preachers" [8] and others and now into his category "Islamic Jews" [9]. Utterly absurd and I have to wonder if he even looks at what the articles about these figures say. He tried to put Goliath and Og, villainous giants, into categories including "Early Islamic preachers" [10] and "Muslim saints" [11]. He has been advised on his talk page several times by sympathetic editors to discuss changes first but after coming off a block he immediately resumes the same behaviour. I propose a topic ban from categories and from dealing in any way with people or characters from the Hebrew Bible and New Testament as he is laughably ignorant on those subjects.Smeat75 (talk) 11:21, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

You explain the category "Islamic Jews" as "This category refers to the various Jews whose worships and traditions were in line with Islamic beliefs, even before the establishment of Islam."

• Does the term "Islamic Jews" generally exist or did you coin it?
• Does it have this meaning or is this a categorization of your own conception?
• Are there reliable sources that classify these figures in this manner, or are you judging them to meet your stated criterion?
• Why did you add non-Jews to this category?
• Is it significant that at least two people that you added to the category, Noah and Isaac, were drinkers of alcohol and therefore not living in line with Islamic beliefs?

Largoplazo (talk) 11:29, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

I think this categorization counts as original research, and suggest reverting on sight unless the editor can provide evidence otherwise. I've also speedy-deleted the category, as it is (a) empty, and (b) unlikely ever to have any valid entries until a case can be made that this is no longer WP:OR. -- The Anome (talk) 11:40, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes they are all being reverted on sight but we have had to do this over and over and over and it is severely disruptive. It shows no sign of stopping and the editor shows no sign of listening. Johnuniq can you look at this and take some action please?.Smeat75 (talk) 11:50, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

It's not just the categorisations which is an issue here (although I think that categorising Jesus as an Islamic Jew is a bit of an odd thing to do). IslamMyLoveMyLife was blocked on 23 September for disruptive editing and adding unsourced content to Seth. Today when their block expired, they went straight back to Seth and started adding more dubious content - these edits make a statement of fact in Wikipedia's voice which go beyond what the source added can reasonably be said to support. Combined with their categorisation shenanigans, I'm not confident that their continued contributions would be a net positive to the project. GirthSummit _(blether) 12:00, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

I've given them a final warning on their talk page. I suggest a lengthy block (a month or more) if they ignore it. They've now been warned enough times. If they continue after that, we may want to consider whether they are WP:NOTHERE to improve the encyclopedia. -- The Anome (talk) 12:02, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Just to note that as well as being WP:OR these cats also violate WP:CATVER as there is no sourced infoi in the articles to support them. MarnetteD|Talk 12:28, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Apparently the 72 hour block for creating categories like Category talk:Islamic prophets from the Hebrew Bible wasn't enough. Blocked indefinitely. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 12:43, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Great. The issue now remains of how to categorize: 1.) Old Testament people that are

a.) venerated in Islamic tradition, and/or

b.) appear in the Koran or other early Islamic scripture; and

2.) New Testament people that are

a.) venerated in Islamic tradition, and/or

b.) appear in the Koran or other early Islamic scripture.

Adam and Eve, Noah, the sons of Noah and their wives, Abraham, Isaac, David, Solomon, Jonah, John the Baptist, Jesus, and an unspecified selection of the (more than-)twelve apostles are all Muslims according to righteous tradition, as well as Jews and/or Christians according to those religions. (Yes, ever since Eusebius (at latest) the Garden of Eden has been considered by Christians to be populated by Christians who were rescued – along with all the "Christian" (i.e. Jewish) patriarchs, from hell on Easter morning – viz. 1 Peter, the Gospel of Nicodemus, etc.) The Cave of the Patriarchs has been a predictably furious point of contention for a good many centuries. Some kind of neutral system of categories is needful, but it is also true that the pages themselves ought to discuss the persons' relevance in each of these religious traditions. GPinkerton (talk) 14:15, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Per WP:NPOV, I suggest the creation of Category:Figures venerated in Islamic tradition to resolve this. This deliberately avoids the issue of whether people were "Islamic" prior to Mohammed or creation of the Quran, which, since devout Muslims who believe that Islam is the one true religion that has existed from the beginning of time clearly believe this, and everyone else clearly does not, risks an eternal edit war on the issue. The use of the term "figures" also side-steps the issue of whether these were actual historic people, or mythical figures. However, since Islamic tradition is not monolithic, even this might be controversial: to avoid conflict, we might need to break this down further into sectarian subsets, for example Category:Figures venerated in Sunni Islam, Category:Figures venerated in Shia Islam etc. We could perhaps also have a category Category:Figures mentioned in the Quran, since I think the text of the Quran is (I believe) not controversial between sects.

WT:CAT and WT:ISLAM seem to be the best places to discuss this. -- The Anome (talk) 19:32, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

What about Category:New Testament figures venerated in Islam? I'd suggest the same for the "Old Testament", but I recall someone (Debresser?) argued using the term "Old Testament" to describe the Hebrew Bible has a Christian bias. Maybe M Imtiaz has ideas. AFAIK, there is no difference between Sunnis and Shias when it comes to venerating OT and NT figures.VR _talk 00:05, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. That could very well have been me. The term "Old Testament" is indeed a Christian term, which is why Category:Old Testament is a subcategory of Category:Christian Bible, which is a subcategory of Category:Bible alongside Category:Hebrew Bible . I am not sure how it can be avoided, though. Debresser (talk) 19:03, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Community general sanctions for beauty pageant articles

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

---

Related discussions:

• Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#The latest chapter in beauty pageant socking
• Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard/Archive 151#Can you help with COI sockfarm investigation?
• Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Sasha Boudville
• Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/RadyoUkay819
• Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/DevilBlack69

For a long time now our articles on beauty pageants and pageant contestants have been under attack from a number of sockfarms which are very likely paid promotional campaigns, and there is probably coordination between them. The three above are currently active and have been confirmed by checkuser to be different individuals (each is located in a different country), and the oldest of these has been active since early 2016. User Bri has listed even more at the top COIN thread in that list above, with cases dating back over a decade. Each one also engages in logged-out socking when their accounts are blocked. Using temporary page protection on their current targets is very ineffective because there are so many articles, they just move on to different ones, and we end up chasing them all around the project.

I'm proposing a general sanction for this topic area, drafted below.

Any article on a beauty pageant, or biography of a person known as a beauty pageant contestant, which has been edited by a sockpuppet account or logged-out sockpuppet, may be semiprotected indefinitely by any administrator, citing this general sanction in the protection log.

• Support as proposer. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:12, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
• Query are these not reasonably within the scope of the BLP discretionary sanctions? any edit in any article with biographical content relating to living or recently deceased people or any edit relating to the subject (living or recently deceased) of such biographical articles on any page in any namespace. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:30, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

  Yes, there are a number of existing sanction schemes which might apply, which can be said about many of the areas under discretionary/general sanctions. We can already protect articles, socking is already not allowed, etcetera. I'm more looking for a specific community endorsement of indefinitely semiprotecting articles in these topics specifically, in response to this specific problem. It is skipping a few steps in the usual escalating protection process (which has been shown to be ineffective here) after all. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:46, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

  Articles about the pageants themselves may not fall under BLPDS. It's also a different problem - the intention behind BLPDS is to stop badly sourced negative information being added, whereas this is about spamming. MER-C 16:25, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

• Support. As the proposer mentioned, I've been trying all the usual channels to limit the damage in this area, which after all is covered by worthy initiatives like greater representation of women, LGBTQ issues and events, and related sociology. Reports to SPI, COIN, ANI and WPOP are individually acted on, and a WikiProject-level effort to improve sourcing has gained a little bit of traction, but the cumulative effect of this much incoming crud needs a more coordinated and more effective response. A general sanction could help. As for the question of whether existing BLP protocols are sufficient, I think not; they do not cover the central pageant articles like Miss Earth, annual spin-offs like Miss Earth 2020 and national-level articles like Miss Earth Malaysia and their annual spin-offs; I'd estimate we have several hundred of these being actively targeted presently. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:44, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
• Support, with up to two modifications: (1) the protection level should be ECP, not semi and (2) please also consider an ECP article creation restriction. MER-C 16:25, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

  I think we should only pass the minimum restriction necessary to alleviate the problem. One can always come back to AN and seek a bump up to ECP / article creation restrictions if semi is unable to resolve the issues, or bring them sufficiently under control. We must remember all restrictions will have an unintended side effect on legitimate, good faith contributions - that side effect must be minimised. The cure can never be worse than the problem itself.

  I think existing powers are probably sufficient to deal with disruption here, and certainly nobody would complain about these very reasonable semis compared to all the actual problematic protections we've got going around the wiki, but this is a very reasonable and limited proposal, and I suppose it provides extra support/encouragement to admins in the area, so I'm happy to support. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:39, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

If there is a perception that existing methods can deal with the problem, I'm not sure it's backed by evidence. Look at the response (by the proposer of this GS) at RFPP to my request last week for semi protection on a specifically targeted pageant article for example. Perplexingly the answer was it was too badly targeted to remedy with protection: This socking is so widespread that protecting one page is unlikely to have much effect. That's exactly why we need either a collective change in perception about what is/is not effective and how to apply the existing tools, or a change in authority to effectively employ the tools. - Bri.public (talk) 16:54, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Bri paraphrases my intent there pretty accurately, and I was thinking about this since working on those two cases a few days ago. I did a mass-revert on one of the sockfarms' IPs after dropping a few range blocks I thought would help, and then closed my work laptop for the weekend. When I opened it again this morning and refreshed my contribs, all of those reverts had been restored by a different IP, which I also mass-reverted. That was something like 60 articles. Current policy would support me going through and semiprotecting all of them temporarily, with escalating protection if (when) disruption resumes, but why bother doing all that work for a temporary fix? They'll just be back when protection expires. IMO indefinite semiprotection of affected articles is a justified response, but it's somewhat beyond the protection policy, so I would like to hear that the community agrees. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:56, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

• Very strong support I have been digging in that issue years ago, only to get a rap on my fingers as being annoying. But Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mrdhimas and Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/AnnLivinova/Archive might be connected too. The Banner talk 17:12, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

The Banner thanks for your ongoing efforts in this area. One of those two sockfarms you listed is indexed in "the latest chapter", link at the top of this section. The other is not; feel free to add it. - Bri.public (talk) 17:19, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, after that rap I used some non-priest-approved language and promised myself not to edit in that field again, knowing that the community would regret that in the long run. So, no. Here ends my involvement. The Banner talk 17:57, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

One last breach of my promise: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Sky Groove The Banner talk 19:00, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

• Support I'm not sure what area needed this more, this one or pro wrestling (which got its own sanctions). This is going to hopefully help exhausted editors like The Banner here keep their sanity. RickinBaltimore (talk) 18:00, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
• Support, a long-term problematic area.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:52, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
• I am pleased to report that this is now the second time I've suggested a GS and someone actually proposed it shortly after. I'm not bitter, you're bitter!. Support, I would also support stronger sanctions. GeneralNotability (talk) 00:33, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
• Support I’m persuaded. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 16:04, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
• Support, convincing report. Bishonen | tålk 16:29, 29 September 2020 (UTC).
• Support, per Ivanvector's reasoning. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 07:33, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
• Support It needs doing. Xxanthippe (talk) 09:11, 30 September 2020 (UTC).
• Oppose Any page protection should be temporary, even if it is for a long time. Benjamin (talk) 10:24, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Indefinite is not infinite. Any administrator will be able to remove the semi-protection if they believe it will no longer be necessary, non-administrators can request this at WP:RFP. Thryduulf (talk) 12:05, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

    Thryduulf, if this is enacted any administrator could not reverse the restriction. It would take AN or the original administrator to reverse the protection. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:38, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

• Support - Personally I would prefer ECP too however as noted above we can always revisit this if Semi doesn't work. –Davey2010^Talk 11:07, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support, though I'd rather start with Semi and we can move to ECP if that proves ineffective. ECP is strong stuff for a reason, and in my opinion should only be used in pretty extreme circumstances - we don't want to drive new editors with a legitimate reason to be here away because they can't edit their desired subject area. That being said, the nomination is convincing and I'm all for semi-protection to prevent paid editing sockpuppets in an area where that's a bad problem. Red Phoenix ^talk 11:46, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support. Based on the nomination and linked pages I'm convinced that this is, unfortunately, a necessary and proportionate step. Thryduulf (talk)
• Support with gusto. This is probably the worst cesspit on Wikipedia. Pageants, FFS. What century is this? Delete the lot, I say. Guy (help! - typo?) 13:25, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
• Comment Is it possible to protect Miss Earth 2020 now? The IP block evasion is a daily occurrence. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:08, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

  @Bri: I've put a 1-week semi-protection on it, just as a normal admin action. That should hopefully hold back the disruption until this discussion is closed and sanctions applied. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:24, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

• Strong support I have a number of these on my watchlist and it's a constant source of frustration (so much so that I am ashamed to admit I've almost given up). This would be of great benefit. Glen (talk) 11:14, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support per JzG/Guy. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 12:39, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

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

Project Veritas Wiki Page.

re Project Veritas

Legal threat against editors and admins collapsed

It's opening paragraph has been edited and is full of outright false and misleading information. They do not deceptively edit anything, they are not right wing, they work against wrong doing no matter where it lays, and they are not tied to the Trump campaign in anyway. Getting a donation from someone is not tied to a campaign. The rest of the bio is misleading in the way that it describes lawsuits against Project Veritas but does not go on to detail how Project Veritas won all of them. It is very clear that a lot of this was lifted from left leaning news articles that have since been retracted for libel. This wiki is full of libel and I have reported it with screen shots to Project Veritas's legal team, along with the 2 usernames who edited it today. It is also concerning that it is a locked from edit to all but a select few, and those select few are filling it with libel. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CSTLewis (talk • contribs) 18:53, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

The above editor has been locked due to the clear legal threat issued here. RickinBaltimore (talk) 18:55, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) CSTLewis blocked indefinitely for the comment above, which is an obvious legal threat. —C.Fred (talk) 18:57, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

And he went on to say, on his talk page, that what he said here wasn't a legal threat - then went on to make a VERY explicit legal threat, for which he lost TPA. Crocodile Dundee's famous "That's not a knife" scene comes to mind. WaltCip-(talk) 11:29, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, his complaint that the lede is plagiarised seems to be without merit. Thus far, none of the sources I've examined via Earwig's copyvio checker have hit on anything in the lede, and the "most likely to be a violation" source seems to be a blog post that uses a Wikipedia article almost wholesale. —A little blue Bori v^_^v ^{Hasteur Hasteur Ha-- oh....} 23:52, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Jéské Couriano, they have tried this exact same trick before. It's basically an attempt to remove the accusations made against PV by news sources. Guy (help! - typo?) 11:37, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

@Jéské Couriano: Thanks! I was wondering about that. Couldn't be bothered looking into it after the silly legal threats and other statements. Especially finding out that they warned [12] an editor (and so I guess probably "reported" them) even though this editor had done nothing (for all time [13]) other than fix a missing word that didn't change what was being said [14], and therefore couldn't reasonably be held responsible for any of this alleged slander even if there was some. Nil Einne (talk) 13:05, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Theresa Greenfield

• Draft:Theresa Greenfield
• Theresa Greenfield
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Theresa Greenfield - redirected to 2020 United States Senate election in Iowa
• Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2020 June 4#Theresa Greenfield - endorsed
• Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2020 June 15#Theresa Greenfield - no consensus to overturn
• Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2020 July 11#Theresa Greenfield - no consensus to overturn

This article has had a rough history. It was nominated for deletion and redirected back in May this year, citing notability concerns. The deletion result was challenged at deletion review three times, as noted above. Meanwhile the article was recreated in place (in good faith) by several editors before the redirect was protected by Muboshgu in June. It was then created as a draft in July, which was submitted to AfC and has been declined three times by two reviewers (Robert McClenon and Bkissin). The draft was significantly reworked since the last decline in August and a third reviewer (UnitedStatesian) decided to accept the draft and made a request at RFPP to unprotect the redirect, which is how I came across the situation.

I declined to unprotect yesterday, suggesting that the draft should pass review first and not realizing that UnitedStatesian's request was an attempt to do so, and because they had already asked Muboshgu and they declined, so I said it should be reviewed one more time. In the midst of that one of the draft's editors pinged Robert McClenon, who again said that he would not accept. While discussing that on the draft's talk page and still not realizing that UnitedStatesian was an AfC reviewer trying to accept, I suggested someone else should review (since Robert McClenon had reviewed twice, or three times if you count the comment today, and was clearly becoming frustrated). Two things happened then more or less simultaneously: UnitedStatesian made a new unprotection request at RFPP explicitly stating they were accepting the draft, and Bkissin chimed in on the talk page that they also would not accept. It's currently marked as "under review".

So basically I've dug this hole as deep as I'd like it to go, and would like someone who hasn't already been involved in this to go get a ladder. Everyone's actions here have been in good faith, but we're clearly stuck. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:29, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I am uninvolved, and I do not see any issue. If the article is significantly different from the deleted version (which I have not checked yet) it must be restored (unprotected and moved from the draft); if there are users who doubt notability they can nominate it for AfD. This is how consensus is supposed to work.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:44, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Ymblanter, it's in the AFC process, and has been declined a few times. It's under review again now. If it's approved, then you are indeed correct. But what if the draft is declined? Should we move it to mainspace regardless of the AFC review? – Muboshgu (talk) 20:42, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I am the reviewer, and I have made the third WP:RPP request, at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection#Theresa Greenfield, precisely so I can accept the draft. UnitedStatesian (talk) 20:44, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

UnitedStatesian, is this a good idea? You've been quite vocal about wanting this to be published. I would hope the AFC review was done by someone uninvolved in this process. – Muboshgu (talk) 20:58, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

My only involvement has been in the review: only edit to the draft was adding {{draft article}} to it, no participation in the AfD or DRVs. Of course, the review has required discussion on lots of different pages, as is occasionally the case, so I guess that makes me vocal. That said, as in all cases, if my review is stopped by community consensus that continued page protection is warranted, there are plenty of other drafts that need reviewing and I will of course move on to them. UnitedStatesian (talk)

I know that in a situation like this, some editors will say that the answer is clear. I think I see at least two questions where policies and guidelines are not clear, and where perhaps they should be clarified.

The first question is the role of Deletion Review. The redirect has been salted to enforce a Deletion-like decision. The question is: Should it simply be unsalted in response to a request at Requests for Page Unprotection, or should there be a (fourth) appeal to Deletion Review. The instructions for Deletion Review say that it considers situations where the circumstances have changed since the deletion; but some of the DRV regulars get annoyed at such requests and say just to go through AFC without going to DRV.

The second question has to do with the interaction between political notability and general notability. It is usually the rule, including at AFD, that political candidates who do not meet political notability are also not considered to meet general notability solely on the basis of their campaign. This is such a case. Greenfield was not generally notable before she began running for the US Senate. So is this an exceptional case where she is generally notable based solely on her campaign? Questions of general notability are decided at AFD. Since this draft is currently in AFC, the instructions for the AFC reviewers are that a draft should be accepted if it is thought that there is a better than 50% chance of surviving AFD.

A third question, which is not one of unclear policies and guidelines, is whether the reviewer is neutral.

Those, in my opinion, are three questions that are applicable. I am finished reviewing, but I am not finished expressing an opinion. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:07, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

The notability question can be decided only by community discussion, and the only applicable mechanism we currently have is AfD. The article has failed AfD and DRs, and therefore should not be reinstated - unless there are significant changes which can make it notable, or unless it has been significantly changes with new sources added so that notability can be reasonably considered on basis of these sources, which have not been presented to AfD. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, the only relevant question is whether significant enough sources have been added as compared with the AfD. If yes, the article should be accepted, and a new AfD can be opened. If not, AfD should not be accepted (with the understanding that if she makes it to the Senate in a month, the draft immediately gets moved to the main space - but this is irrelevant for the current discussion).--Ymblanter (talk) 21:16, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Since the old version was redirected, not deleted, the history is visible, and any editor, not just an administrator, can see the version at the time the AfD closed: it is here, with 5 references. UnitedStatesian (talk) 21:47, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Ymblanter, I see what you're saying, but I find it kind of ridiculously bureaucratic to accept the article just to nominate it for deletion again. At the same time I imagine the best we'd get from another deletion review is relisting the original AfD, which isn't much better neither in terms of bureaucracy nor in terms of moving forward. For what it's worth, this is the article prior to the deletion discussion, versus the current draft (diff, probably not terribly useful). You can see that the draft is expanded substantially from the deleted/redirected article, but does any of the added info address the notability concern? There was a strong sense in the AfD that US Senate candidates are not inherently notable, but do the 62 sources in the draft suggest she is an exception to that general rule? If the only way we can answer that is through a second AfD then I guess that's where we go from here. Can we simply create a new deletion discussion or relist the original and refer to the draft, rather than doing all the work of moving it around? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 21:52, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, indeed, my point is that some community discussion should happen somewhere at some point. It should not be happening here, here at AN at best we can have consensus of random admins whether it is time for that discussion to happen, but we can not seriously be discussing whether Theresa Greenfield is notable. We can only discuss whether enough sources have been added for the article to reasonably stand a chance at AfD. It superficially looks to me that we are ready for this community discussion, though at this point I do not see consensus. But it should not depend on a decision of one person who decides to remove or not to remove protection of a redirect. Administrators do not have any particular say in the content area, and the further process should not depend on whether a user accepting AfC is administrator or not. Concerning the process itself, a new AfD seems to me much better than MfD (for the reasons explained below) and reopening the May AfD (well, if the article is essentially the same, one AfD is enough, and if it is different the old arguments are not relevant anymore), but I am open to better solutions.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:27, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

For consistency, perhaps we should treat this the same as Draft:Rishi Kumar, another "local" candidate for a Federal office whose article name redirects to a similar place as Theresa Greenfield. The deletion discussion, as well as AFC comments, determined that the article should reside in draft space until after the election. The same should be applied here. ~Anachronist (talk) 22:57, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

The current draft for Greenfield's article lists significantly more coverage in both regional and national newspapers than Kumar's draft. To support analysis (because the current draft lists a somewhat daunting number of sources, some of which are fairly minor), I pulled out a list of ten example sources that contribute to notability at Draft talk:Theresa Greenfield#Greenfield draft status, and I added a couple more here: Draft talk:Theresa Greenfield#Two additional sources. To me, this kind of discussion supports Ymblanter and Ivanvector's points that we need to figure the right way to get to an AfD -- I believe that a better venue for a robust and organized discussion about notability thresholds would be AfD. I believe that even though it'd be a bit bureaucratic to create the article just for somebody to nominate it for AfD, it'd at least be a logical process. Dreamyshade (talk) 23:22, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

There's always Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion, which is where Draft:Rishi Kumar was discussed. I have doubts that this candidate was notable before becoming this candidate, and I am concerned that the existing coverage is nothing more than routine for any federal-office candidate. ~Anachronist (talk) 23:41, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I don't see the relevance of MFD. I don't think anyone is suggesting that the draft should be deleted. Draftifying the article until after the election is a possible outcome of an AFD. I don't see the relevance of MFD. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:05, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, if I saw this Draft article in mainspace I would AfD it. Lots and lots of sources, but zero coverage of her outside of her political candidacy. Obviously, should she win the election... Black Kite (talk) 23:43, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I just took a brief foray into the draft and right off the bat removed some citations that seemed to have no point other than to make the reflist look impressive. Such articles, if they appear in mainspace, tend to get moved immediately to draft space. There it should stay until the reflist is cleaned up. ~Anachronist (talk) 00:09, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

I am involved in the sense that my wife and I have donated to Greenfield's Senate campaign (and about a dozen similar campaigns) recently. But I do not support accepting this draft before the election. We have quite a few years of precedent that we do not accept biographies of otherwise non-notable unelected political candidates, but instead cover these people in neutral articles about the election campaign. In this case, the redirect to 2020 United States Senate election in Iowa is correct. I think that the description of Greenfield in that article could be expanded in the interim. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 23:55, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I'll add, as an administrator, that I am not comfortable unprotecting the main space title so the draft can be moved there. I am not getting the sense that the other three admins in this discussion (User:Ivanvector, User:Muboshgu, and User:Cullen) are comfortable with that either. ~Anachronist (talk) 01:55, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

What about User:Ymblanter? UnitedStatesian (talk) 02:26, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

collapse tangential thread

@Cullen328: I think you'll find, as I have, that the precedent you cite is beginning to change: certainly Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marquita Bradshaw and Cori Bush (both of whom, editors asserted, essentially, were "notable because they weren't previously notable," which doesn't make a lot of sense if you think about it) are signs of that. Both show that, instead, Wikipedia is going more consistently wherever reliable sources' significant coverage takes us. Which is a good thing. UnitedStatesian (talk) 02:08, 30 September 2020 (UTC) Marquita Bradshaw was a mistake to not delete, but thank you for reminding me that the closing admin recommended we discuss a merge. I'll get on that shortly. That article has the same reference puffery as Anachronist was finding here. Winning the primary election in Cori Bush's district is tantamount to election. WP:OTHERSTUFF existing doesn't mean that Theresa Greenfield should exist. – Muboshgu (talk) 02:32, 30 September 2020 (UTC) Just make sure if Marquita Bradshaw is merged, this time you ask a different admin. to protect the resulting redirect. Because you know, WP:INVOLVED. UnitedStatesian (talk) 04:20, 30 September 2020 (UTC) My take on Marquita Blackshaw was that the claim of being the first black woman to win a major party primary in the state of Tennessee was enough to convince enough editors to express keeping the article. Thus, the argument was framed in a way that may pass WP:NPOL as expressed in WP:POLOUTCOMES. --Enos733 (talk) 05:15, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

• This is not nearly as complicated as you are making it out to be. You come across an unprotection request, you check whether you would WP:G4 the draft if it were in mainspace. If you would, you decline to unprotect. If you would not, you unprotect. If you don't know, leave the request alone. If everyone leaves it alone, the filer will start a discussion somewhere to achieve a consensus that admins will be comfortable acting on. It is irrelevant how many admins would AFD it or !vote delete. There is no set>=n, where n is the number of admins that can dictate without a need for community consensus whether or not a topic deserves an article. Best, Usedtobecool ☎️ 03:40, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

• Let me emphasise: if you would not G4 the draft as soon as it got to mainspace but would require an AFD, you have no authority to stop an editor who has the ability to accept drafts from doing so. G4 is more or less an objective measure. You just have to read the AFD and compare the two articles. Everything else is irrelevant. Usedtobecool ☎️ 03:45, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

This is related to a concern I've expressed earlier in this process: WP:PROTECT describes protection as being appropriate when there is "a specifically identified likelihood of damage resulting if editing is left open". I haven't seen any threat of edit warring or other damage here -- everyone involved in this discussion has been acting in good faith, being civil, and making efforts to interpret WP:GNG and WP:NPOL in constructive ways for an encyclopedia. The draft article can definitely be improved further, but we don't have a requirement for articles to be excellent before they get created. I don't see a policy basis for using full protection in this way. Dreamyshade (talk) 04:02, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

The redirect was repeatedly expanded into full article contra AFD consensus between the AFD and the full protection. So, that's the threat. WP:SALT, which is policy, says in its first sentence, that admins can prevent creation of pages. That is what this full protection does. It keeps the redirect (which doesn't have consensus to delete, and also doesn't need to be edited anyway) and stops the full article from being created. Usedtobecool ☎️ 04:47, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

• I don't see how one AfC reviewer gets to overrule the numerous prior discussions on this. The consensus in the AfD was that the subject isn't independently notable as an unelected candidate for office and should be covered in the article about the election. This is a very common outcome. The issue was taken to DRV three times, each time by someone who had found more news sources which cover her in the context of the election, and each time the discussion declined to reinstate the article. The draft which we now have still doesn't attempt to address this fundamental problem. Yes, there are plenty of news articles, but that's because competitive senate elections always generate news coverage. Essentially all the sources cited still cover her in the context of the election. I suggest we wait until the election, which is just over a month away. If she wins then she will be unambiguously notable, if she loses then I suspect the fuss will die down. Hut 8.5 07:25, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

  This is probably the best outcome we can now come up with.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:02, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

  I don't see "competitive senate elections always generate news coverage" as a counter-argument by itself for WP:GNG - a campaign like this generates significant news coverage because it's "worthy of notice" to a lot of people, because it's important and of interest to a lot of people. I believe a person primarily covered in the context of an election can still meet the notability standards, especially if there's a lot of national reporting and in-depth reporting over a couple years or more. The question to me is whether the current draft Greenfield is there, and AN still doesn't seem to be the right venue for that -- there are a lot of comments here that are essentially AfD-style comments, without being at AfD (including mine). Dreamyshade (talk) 22:53, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

• One key point I feel that I should note is that AfC reviewers don't (and aren't supposed to) act off a "guaranteed to be notable" standard. Instead, if something is likely to pass, we should accept it, and then let the Community review it. Likewise, unprotection requests should work off that basis. Now whether people think it should wait until after the election, I discourage that, but it's viable as a second choice. Nosebagbear (talk) 08:40, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

• I will restate a few policy and procedure issues that I think are touched on by this case:

Here are three issues that are involved in the question about Theresa Greenfield:

• Should candidates for politically notable offices be considered to meet general notability on the basis of significant coverage of the campaign, if the candidate was not previously considered notable? It has in general been the practice of Wikipedia that candidates are not considered to satisfy general notability on the basis of election coverage, and therefore do not qualify for articles before the election if they did not have them before the campaign. This question arises frequently, and it would be a good idea either to address it on a general basis or to decide that it is always addressed on a case-by-case basis.

• When should a single AFC reviewer be allowed to accept a draft if the same title was previously deleted by AFD? When should Deletion Review be required? The instructions for DRV say that DRV can review deletions when the circumstances have changed, such as new sources or new activities. However, the DRV regulars normally tell applicants not to go to DRV but simply to submit the new draft for review.

• When should a single AFC reviewer be allowed to request that a title be unsalted if the same title was previously create-protected? This question is related to the above, but is not the same.

Robert McClenon (talk) 23:31, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

• *Gets up on soapbox* I think Wikipedia is grossly irresponsible in our election coverage for the role we play in promoting incumbents over challengers. We should have some level of information about candidates for people seeking information about an election. This doesn't need to be done through a full article but could happen through reasonable coverage in an election article. The incumbent will still get a full article as opposed to say a paragraph (or two, maybe three) but our readers deserve to know more about Greenfield than Theresa Greenfield, businesswoman, candidate for Iowa's 3rd congressional district in 2018 which is what we're saying now.*Gets off soapbox*
  Why do we create protect articles (SALT)? Because repeated discussions are a drain on the community's time and attention. DRV has said three times that this isn't ready for mainspace. Robert is right that DRV also frequently says "don't bother us go to AfC or just recreate it" but that's after substantially new information or reasonable time has passed. Neither is true in this case. I am all for consensus changing but repeating the same discussion regularly is a form of disruption. This salting should hold. I am thankful that I got the chance to levy one of my biggest systemic criticism of our content in a public forum but other than that don't think repeated discussions are helpful. Waiting until after the election is not so cop-out or thwarting of our process. It is being respectful of the time, energy, thought, and collaboration that has already occurred about this topic. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:44, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
• The rule should be that challengers who receive significant national or international coverage (that is, non-local coverage, or coverage outside of the area where they are running) are notable enough for a page. Greenfield would meet that test (most general election US Senate candidates would), but not every candidate for every office would. Lev!vich 01:57, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
• I have some thoughts about this. If we were looking at an open seat, with both candidates not previously having held elected office, we would not advantage any incumbent. Furthermore, the idea that we are giving an advantage to the incumbent because they have an article disregards to an extent the possibility that their article itself may prove less-than-flattering (as people with opposing views often try to insert as much negativity as they can, while those with supporting views try to keep that sort of thing out). We have articles for all U.S. Senators because that is a reasonable barometer of notability, given the power and influence they wield. This includes articles for senators who or elected for a single term and did not run for re-election, so incumbency over an opponent was never an issue at all. We can't treat articles on U.S. senators any differently based on their possibly being challenged by somebody who does not fall into any other bucket for notability. That said, I do think there is inherent notability in a major party nominee for a U.S. Senate seat garnering national attention due to their perceived possibility of winning that seat (or, sometimes, due to other behaviour in the course of the campaign). This, of course, raises a question that has not yet been addressed, which is whether we should then create articles generally on historical losing major-party U.S. Senate candidates who garnered such attention during their candidacy. This is a discussion perhaps best left until the current silly season passes. If we do enact such a standard in the future, than Theresa Greenfield will merit an article at that point even if she has lost her Senate bid. BD2412 T 03:23, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

A problem with this suggestion is the phrase "major party candidate," which inserts a bit of political favoritism into which candidates may receive articles, and does not account for the fact that the relative strength of a party (or its nominee) varies from state to State. Even if we defer to the political jurisdictions themselves of who is a major party nominee, the Legal Marijuana Now Party is a major party in the State of Minnesota and I don't think that its nominee is notable. --Enos733 (talk) 04:23, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Major party candidate here is basically shorthand for someone coming from a political party that is able to provide the resources to make a U.S. Senate race competitive, which is what leads to the national press coverage of the subject. BD2412 T 15:57, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

• Let me throw these two things into the existing discussion. A 2019 Centralized Discussion on candidate notability was closed with No Consensus, so this is an issue that we have been contending with for years now. Additionally, a candidate not having an article is not shutting out that candidate. In the United States context, we have articles for each state's congressional and state elections. Information about the candidate can easily be added there without creating a separate article. In Parliamentary contexts (Canada more specifically), we have created list articles with basic information about a party's candidates. How many of these losing candidates pass the ten year test in terms of their long-term relevance? Bkissin (talk) 17:48, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
• This is trivial. Does the topic meet the GNG? Yes? Have article. We don't expect coverage of baseball players outside of baseball, why does anyone expect coverage of a politician outside of politics? Hobit (talk) 01:11, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
  • What he said. The existing policy to routinely reject articles on as-yet unelected politicians seems absurd to me. If a person gets coverage, I don't care who they friggin' are, or what the context is, if they get stuff like national coverage, then my God shouldn't we have an article on them? Why do politicians get assigned a different standard than other people? You pass GNG, you get an article. End of discussion. You don't pass GNG but you do pass a subject-specific guideline, boom, you get an article. That's how it works for everything else on Wikipedia. That is exactly how it should work for politicians. Anything else is following a rule because it's a rule. WP:IAR is a POLICY! A loose necktie (talk) 02:45, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
    • Just to respond to the above comment from an WP:AFC perspective (and not as a response to this particular draft), we tend to view such things like "running for a political office" as akin to WP:BLP1E; i.e. if the only coverage of a person is because they ran/are running for office, then they could have dozens of references but it's all about the same event (and is somewhat reflected in WP:NPOL). A notable example I can think of is from earlier this year, where there was a trans politician who (if they won) would have been the first trans politician from somewhere like Maine (or the USA, can't honestly remember); they didn't even make it past the primaries, so despite the relatively large body of coverage the article was deleted ("they ran for office that one time" isn't something that makes notability). You might think we hold this ridiculous standard for aspiring politicians, but we have tons of special exemptions (going in both directions) to either raise up "hidden" groups like educators or keep the veritable flood of bit-playing actors or potential-politicians who never get elected from having one-paragraph permastubs. Primefac (talk) 09:55, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
    • I would agree in the case of a candidate who runs once, but after the first time there is a point when they become a perennial candidate, maybe hoping to eventually reach Lyndon LaRouche-level. 2020 is this candidate's second campaign (as is referenced in the draft via significant coverage in reliable sources). Separately, the reference above to the WP:10Y test above is interesting, since there was a Senate election in this same state exactly 10 years ago, and guess what, we have an article on the losing candidate. UnitedStatesian (talk) 16:51, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
      • • UnitedStatesian, the two cases are not comparable. Roxanne Conlin was a U.S. Attorney confirmed by the Senate, and was also the first woman president of the American Trial Lawyers Association. She is notable for those reasons. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 18:39, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
          • Of those two reasons, neither has an inline cite to an independent source. UnitedStatesian (talk) 18:45, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
      • And how many articles do we have on football players, who all qualify for standalone permastub articles based on subject specific guidelines and whose articles will never, ever be expanded in 10 or even 100 years but also never, ever be deleted, while wringing our hands over allowing people to create articles on as-yet unelected political candidates with ample national coverage and lots of published information, whom we disqualify from having articles because "we just don't do that"? If we cared about permastubs, we'd address it in other contexts. We don't. And we could all stop caring about the politicians if we just followed our own policies regarding what makes a subject notable, and stop applying different rulers to different topics as a means to delete or remove articles on those subjects— I'm all for using them to include, since that is how they were meant to be used. Think of the headaches that wouldn't have to happen! Of the discussions we wouldn't have to waste time on! Like this one! Yay! A loose necktie (talk) 17:34, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
        • And how many articles do we have on football players Usually best not to compare the sphere of interest here to one of the known problem children of the notability guidelines. --Izno (talk) 18:11, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Notified: Draft talk:Theresa Greenfield. I dream of horses (Contribs) Please notify me after replying off my talk page. Thank you. 18:53, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

• This is a good discussion, and I have to get up on my own soapbox here and echo Barkeep49's grand concern above that we're generally irresponsible in our election coverage, but for me it's in the opposite direction of Barkeep's argument. We cover elections in far too much detail. We're supposed to be an encyclopedia, not a newspaper: we're supposed to write basically academic summaries of things that already exist or have already happened, after all the discussion is had (so we're not the ones having it; WP:OR, WP:NOTESSAY) and when things aren't constantly changing, based on reliable sources that review those subjects in retrospect, not as they happen. We're incredibly poor at providing balanced coverage of anything that is ongoing because we're not set up to be objective to current events. We should not write about elections at all until the ballots are counted, in my ideal world, and certainly not while the propaganda machines are in full swing. Maybe this gripe is neither here nor there with respect to this discussion, but since it was brought up now you all get to enjoy my opinion. (/soapbox) There are a lot of quality arguments here on what our guidelines should be, and those are good discussions to have, but there's pretty clearly not a consensus here to restore the article or to do anything with the protection. I think Cullen328's advice to expand her content in the Senate election article is the way forward. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:02, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

  I agree we cover many ongoing events in more coverage than an encyclopedia strictly would. In an abstract sense the idea of saying "we're not going to cover something until X months/years after it happens" makes sense to me given NOTNEWS/the first pillar. However, that's only in the abstract sense; I can't imagine if we had only begun covering COVID or if we couldn't reference someone's death because not enough time had elapsed. If we're going to start drawing lines about where we need to be careful about covering ongoing events the idea that we're covering elections too much seems like a strange place to start drawing that line. Our articles on elections are poor and serve our readers poorly - they become lists of endorsements and other things that fit nicely in tables rather than prose. But the fact that we do a poor job of it now isn't to say we're over covering it; it's to say we should do a better job of covering them with-in our encyclopedic mission. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:31, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Closure of the merger proposal

Earlier this year, six-year-old ATK (football club) (competing in the Indian super league) owner Sanjiv Goenka announced that he bought an 80% stake of 131 years old Mohun Bagan A.C. which is competing in the I-League; a new entity will be formed by the merger of both clubs, and the new entity will compete in the Indian super league starting from the 2020-2021 season. He announced the name of the new entity as ATK Mohun Bagan. The new entity has retained the players and the head coach of ATK and adopted the same jersey and logo of Mohun Bagan with a small modification. A few weeks ago, it was decided that ATK Mohun Bagan would merge into Mohun Bagan A. C. I do not think that decision to be an accurate reflection of the discussion that was held in that regard; I think it was affected by the votes of multiple new editors and IPs. While checking these accounts (M Kariyappa, Rajarshi Mondal, Aarul Chandekar, SoumyaEAST, Figoitjodfj), I found the account creation time and edit history of most of the editors who supported the merger to be similar in nature; thus, my suppositions that these accounts are SPAs working as meatpuppets/sockpuppets of an experienced editor. There are lots of tweets and FB posts that can be seen as canvassing attempts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. After the closure of the merger, there were many attempts to rename the current article as well 1, 2, 3. Pinging the closer and other established users who participated in the RFC related to this subject on the article's talk page for their comments (@GenQuest:, @ArsenalFan700:, @ArnabSaha:, @GiantSnowman:, @Drat8sub: @Ludost Mlačani:, @Paine Ellsworth:, @Coderdaddy1369:) and inviting others' opinions about the closure of the merger proposal.-- Akhiljaxxn (talk) 19:50, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

References

• Agree. The discussion was closed abruptly without clear consensus. Also, someone says in one of the tweets, "As a Wikipedia admin". off-wiki canvassing by the admin? Who is this admin? ❯❯❯   S A H A 20:01, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

• What are you asking for here? For uninvolved administrators to assess whether the closer interpreted the consensus correctly? --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 01:16, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
• My interpretation is they are asking for assessment on whether the discussion was unfairly disrupted by SPAs, canvassing, socking etc, and whether that would warrant a different close. Nosebagbear (talk) 08:42, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
• So I am going to put forward my thoughts-

As we all know that ATK Mohun Bagan is a new club which came into existence after the merger of ATK FC and Mohun Bagan's football team on June. (Atleast that is what the officials & owners said), so we should have a new page for the new team. But interestingly all the official social media pages and websites have done a common change. They have just put ATKMB in place of ATK, & all the records which belonged to ATK now belongs to ATKMB. For eg: https://www.indiansuperleague.com/standings Moreover the owners are more or less the same. So as far my views the ATK page should be moved to ATK Mohun Bagan, (as all the official websites and social media pages have done the same) and the official address of the team is same as of ATK, so I don't think there is any much doubt here. The page will have 2 foundation dates i.e. 1) 2014 as Atletico de Kolkata and 2) 2020 as ATK Mohun Bagan. Will appreciate your views! — Preceding unsigned comment added by ‎ Coderdaddy1369 (talk • contribs) 10:18, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

We are not going to have a replay of the merge discussion here, we are only going to consider the close, if that is what is being asked. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 11:48, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

All I will say as an editor of long-standing is that it is well established that when two existing football clubs merge, a new article is created for the new entity - e.g. Dagenham F.C. + Redbridge Forest F.C. = Dagenham & Redbridge F.C.. I believe that the merge discussion (and subsequent other discussions) was hijacked by fans with new accounts with an agenda, hence why that long established consvention was ignored. GiantSnowman 11:56, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Generally, the first step in disputing a close is to take it up with the closer. I had a quick look and didn't see where this has happened although it's been a while since the close so maybe I missed it. If no discussion has been attempted with the closer, most of this seems premature. Nil Einne (talk) 12:46, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Nil Einne, a discussion with the closer was started, but nothing happened User talk:GenQuest#ATK Mohun Bagan ❯❯❯   S A H A 08:04, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

• I already said, either create a new article or rename and move ATK (football club) to ATK Mohun Bagan Ludost Mlačani (talk) 15:42, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Hi! As the user who pretty much started these discussions, I think I should say something here. First, I did go and ask the closer about this decision and said that this should have been left as “no consensus” and thus both pages remain not merged for now. That did not happen though.

Right now there is just a lot of confusion mainly due to a few factors. 1) The club has been very tightlipped and quiet over what they actually are. Whether this is because they don’t want to alienate Mohun Bagan fans is up for debate but they haven’t been the most clear. The clearest thing we have from the club is from its facebook page, where they say “this is a new, merged club that was formed as part of the merger between the football section of multi-sport club Mohun Bagan AC and former ISL side ATK”. Keep in mind, no one brought this description up until a week ago when I did. Also 2) What didn't help was the brigading and canvassing from new users that most likely came from social media fan pages. Each discussion, whether it was about merging articles or renaming, had a bunch of new users all of a sudden show up and skew the discussion. As noted above, a lot of these users still have not edited other pages that have nothing to do with the subject or haven’t been used at all since. There was also one anon user who would message a bunch of users and abuse and harass users. Thankfully that anon was dealt with and blocked.

However, I also want to bring up a 3rd factor which is lack of reliable sourcing and reasoning. One thing I didn’t like about these discussions when closed were the reasons. None of the closers ever really provided a reason for why the pages were merged or names were unchanged and it left me feeling as if we just wanted the discussion closed for the sake of it. For example, I thought closing the above linked discussion because the team wished the club congrats on their birthday was premature. I re-read these discussions to make sure but I felt like I always tried to provide a least some sources for assertions, both primary and independent, while others kept using emotion reasoning such as “we have never done this before” or “this would ruin the history of the club” which are not good reasons to bring up in a wikipedia discussion. What I would like to see moving forward is a proper discussion done, using sources, to see what should be done. I personally believe now that we should have a separate page for ATK Mohun Bagan FC and have outlined my reason and sources here. This would essentially follow what GiantSnowman (talk · contribs) outlined above. If we can move forward, that would be great. Cheers. --ArsenalFan700 (talk) 17:19, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

I would like an uninvolved administrator’s assessment on whether or not the closer interpreted the consensus correctly or if it was hijacked by SPAs, canvassing, socking, etc. and that would warrant a different close.-- Akhiljaxxn (talk) 19:00, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Please don't use your mop for editorial advantage (ATK-MB footy rivalry)

This tweet (As a wikipedia admin i hv been fighting the last few days to have a separate ATK-MB Page deleted or merged with the original MB Page) was noted in a recent SPI report. I'm not trying to out anybody, but on the hopes that whatever admin owns that twitter account reads it, I'm posting here. Please folks, if you're an admin, you need to keep your editorial and your administrative lives separate. If you're using your admin status to push your personal point of view about a topic, you really need to go read WP:INVOLVED. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:20, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

That user participated in the discussion linked above (also linked here). As you said, we don't want to out anyone but he is not an admin on wikipedia. --ArsenalFan700 (talk) 17:24, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Yeah I really doubt they are an admin. Its like paid editors claiming they're an admin to get business, they're just doing it to try to sway people's opinion. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 21:17, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

CaptainEek, Sigh. OK, what am I supposed to do now? Should I be pissed that people are impersonating admins, or just ashamed that I'm so naïve I got suckered by it? -- RoySmith (talk) 23:49, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Those options aren't mutually exclusive . I think we've all been there or someplace very close. You've helped educate our editing and administrative team, and so just move on with that knowledge. 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 17:55, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, that was tweeted in JUly. Perhaps any off-wiki evidence connecting them here should go to ArbCom. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 19:52, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

m:Requests for comment/Global ban for Slowking4

Naleksuh (talk) 01:50, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Crosswiki vandalism

Can someone please indef semi-protect my user talk page both here and on Wikidata? The latter is getting hit really hard with vandalism from a User:Jack Gaines sock. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 03:29, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2020).

Administrator changes

Ajpolino • LuK3

Jackmcbarn

Ad Orientem • Harej • Lid • Lomn • Mentoz86 • Oliver Pereira • XJaM

There'sNoTime → TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment found consensus that incubation as an alternative to deletion should generally only be recommended when draftification is appropriate, namely 1) if the result of a deletion discussion is to draftify; or 2) if the article is newly created.

Technical news

• The filter log now provides links to view diffs of deleted revisions (phab:T261630).

Arbitration

• The 2020 CheckUser and Oversight appointment process has begun. The community consultation period will take place from September 27th to October 7th.
• Following a request for comment, sitting Committee members may not serve on either the Ombuds Commission or the WMF Case Review Committee. The Arbitration Committee passed a motion implementing those results into their procedures.

Miscellaneous

• The Universal Code of Conduct draft is open for community review and comment until October 6th, 2020.
• Office actions may now be appealed to the Interim Trust & Safety Case Review Committee.

---

• Discuss this newsletter
• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:44, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Block review

I have partial hardblocked 62.202.7.117 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) from MDPI (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) for three years. This IP address has been stable since 2017, only editing to promote MDPI, a constant target of promotional editing. Anyone is free to undo or change the block, there are articles on MDPI journals this IP has edited. Guy (help! - typo?) 13:23, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Good block from my view. RickinBaltimore (talk) 16:37, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Good block. From Special:Diff/916766840, it looks like that IP address has been used by an "MDPI employee" and the IP editor is speaking on behalf of MDPI with the word "we". — Newslinger talk 04:54, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Broad area issue - Armenia/Azerbaijan

Hello,

If we could get a few (more) admins specifically taking a look at some of the related pages to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict.

I've just spent a fair while cleaning out Ilham Aliyev's article (and my thanks to the 4 accounts and 5 IP editors who made no fewer than 25 reversions in the last 2 days), including a significant number requiring rev-delling. I'm confident this is not the only page that would be affected, and it wasn't on protection until 25 minutes ago. Some extra glances through RFPP to prioritise ultra-rapid vandalism would also be useful. Nosebagbear (talk) 23:03, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Had a bit of the same at Presidency of Ilham Aliyev as well, and had to semi-protect it. I'll try and keep my eye out a bit more tonight. Red Phoenix ^talk 23:23, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

My vandalism-fighting account has a bunch of reverts on related articles. If it can be of any use, and there might have to be some sorting, the uname is User:AcebulfALT. Ping me and I'll even do the sorting if it's a good idea. Acebulf (talk) 00:36, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Here are a few:

• Azerbaijani Armed Forces probably needs RPP.
• Nikol Pashinyan many reverts
• Leyla Aliyeva many reverts
• Mehriban Aliyeva, many reverts, already RPP.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Acebulf (talk • contribs) 00:41, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

I've added discretionary sanctions notices to the talk pages of all of the articles mentioned above. I've also semi-protected Azerbaijani Armed Forces, and all of the articles here are currently semi-protected. — Newslinger talk 04:27, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, after I protected Shusha yesterday and logged it in, I noticed that in the 2020 log for Armenia - Azerbaijan conflict at that moment we only had three articles, all protected by me, and no users. DSs can be and probably should be applied more broadly, especially since we have extensive sock activity in the topic area.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:48, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Jeez, I can't even begin to imagine how azwiki and hywiki are dealing with this right now... –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 05:51, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Both are ultranationalist projects, so you can imagine what they write (and what they have written five years ago) about Nagorno-Karabakh.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:58, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict article has been heavily disrupted by sockpuppetry, as you can see in Talk:2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict § Article under attack by MASSIVE sock puppeting since the last hour! and the rest of the discussions on the page. — Newslinger talk 07:30, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, and I earlier semi-protected it as arbitration enforcement; it was later extended-confirmed protected since the socks were growing to confirmed.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:41, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

POTUS and FLOTUS test positive for COVID19

I'm requesting extra eyes on COVID19 and Trump-related pages. My current concern is the unsupported suggestions that Hope Hicks is the source of the infection, despite RS only saying that she tested positive and prompted the Trumps to get tested and quarentine because they traveled and worked together. The Trumps' tests then came back positive. Super duper BLP concerns there. EvergreenFir (talk) 06:04, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Yep...this will go sideways soon. I recommend a temporary page protection.--MONGO (talk) 06:09, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

@MONGO: already did go sideways it seems! I semi protected for 4 days and revdelled an ip edit. EvergreenFir (talk) 06:14, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

This is the situation we have COVID GS and AP2 and BLP DS sanctions for (plus source restrictions like MEDRS), and thanks in advance to all the admin helping to keep the relevant articles as stable and policy-compliant as possible. Lev!vich 06:52, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

MONGO, will? Soon? Dude, whatever you're smoking, I'll have some! ;-) Guy (help! - typo?) 22:36, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

No clue what you mean at all.--MONGO (talk) 05:40, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

It's a light-hearted way to say that covid in the White House is bound to be a magnet for trolls and other misguided contributors, and the topic will immediately go sideways. Johnuniq (talk) 07:20, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

I have to admit, when I read "Yep...this will go sideways soon" I immediately thought "everything about this went sideways a long time ago; this is just more of the same". I hear^{[Citation Needed]} that the international league of dumpster fires is demanding an apology for being compared to US politics. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:04, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

For those admins watching for disruption in this area, here are some areas to watch: Misinformation spikes as Trump confirms COVID-19 diagnosis --Guy Macon (talk) 11:22, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

What to do with an editor who has the key principle "I don't discuss "history" with Persians and Turks" - & another calling an editor a fascist - all in the same dispute

This is a new editor, User:Key Mîrza, see User talk:Key Mîrza#October 2020 where I told him it was unacceptable to say that to User:HistoryofIran at Talk:Medes#Kurds and Medes referring to another new user, User:Armanqur who yet another new user, User:Resource sharing, has been busy calling a vandal although this is clearly a heated content dispute. Ah, while writing this I had a notification from User:Austronesier that Resource Sharing has called Armanqur a fascist.[15] I think at least two topic bans might be in order. Doug Weller talk 08:09, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

• The earlier parts make me inclined to think TBAN, coupled with the facist reference, I'm not sure TBANs stop you stating other editors are facists Nosebagbear (talk) 08:27, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
• I support topic bans for both editors. Personal attacks can be prevented with blocks on top of the topic bans, and comments like Special:Diff/981378594 are not promising. — Newslinger talk 08:42, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Comment Topic ban is not enough for them. Another new user Special:Contributions/Dirokakurdi has joined them with similar nationalistic rants.[16][17][18] All of them use the talk page like a forum plus ignoring WP rules. Also look at this. It's a WP:BATTLEGROUND case in my opinion. --Wario-Man (talk) 08:50, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Dirokakurdi is  Technically indistinguishable from Armanqur. For the moment, I have blocked Armanqur for a week for sock puppetry. However, I am tempted to indef the lot of them for violating WP:BATTLE. Key Mirza, certainly, needs be to indeffed. Salvio 09:07, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Wait... Armanqur created Dirokakurdi? Why? They hold opposite POVs. Who creates a sockpuppet to argue with? Mr rnddude (talk) 09:10, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Mr rnddude, it surprised me as well, as I was expecting the sock to belong to someone else, but they cannot be distinguished technically. Salvio 09:47, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Some sockmasters and LTA cases use WP:GHBH and friend and foe tactics; debating, arguing, and edit warring with their own sockpuppets. --Wario-Man (talk) 14:57, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

• I do not see any benefit for us of continued possibility for Key Mirza to edit Wikipedia.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:18, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Agreed. I'm not sure about Resource Sharing either, among other things they seem pretty clueless, and their claim here "you do not have the right to delete a resource previously accepted by admins and staff." is dubious and they haven't explained it to me. They also made a bad report of User:TU-nor to AIV[19] that was declined[20] by User:EdJohnston. Also note there the comment by User:OhNoitsJamie about them possibly creating an account to get around sp at Medes. In fact the whole section on block evasion. That must refer to the edits made by user:178.241.138.115 as Resource sharing implicitly admits it on User:Oshwah's talk page.[21]
  • While writing this Key Mirza has posted to my talk page saying "Who do you think you are? My father? Stop acting me like a child. I do NOT talk history issues with Persians and Turks. Rather you or Wikipedia like it, or not. What's your problem? Are you okay? Key Mîrza (talk) 11:48 am, Today (UTC+1)" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Doug Weller (talk • contribs) 10:54, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
    • I have indeffed Key Mirza for treating Wikipedia as a vehicle for sharing their aggressive nationalism and general bad attitude. Bishonen | tålk 11:00, 2 October 2020 (UTC).
• Resource Sharing continues to call other editors "vandals"[22]. The pattern of personal attacks already started even before they had registered an account, cf. this edit summary[23] by an IP which obviously links to Resource Sharing. Resource Sharing admitted previous editing in their very first registered edit[24]. –Austronesier (talk) 13:06, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

  Looking closer at their edits, I would say that in addition to personal attacks and edit warring, there is a fair amount of WP:CIR problems. --T*U (talk) 13:23, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

  After reviewing his edits, I have just indeffed Resource Sharing for tendentious editing. Salvio 14:17, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

user:Havsjö

he keeps vandalising wikipedia and has alot of warnings on his talkpage, which he keeps ignoring, he just blanked and vandalised Greater Germanic Reich without giving an explanation (which i righfully reverted and warned him), and whats worse that admin user:DrKay told me to "discuss" his blatant blanking on the talkpage Gooduserdude (talk) 08:25, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

To clarify for passers-by, Havsjö did not blank the article, he removed the infobox added by Gooduserdude. Moreover, Gooduserdude, your adding and removing of the IB is confusing:

After adding an IB to the article, you removed it here with the summary: removing the country infobox i inserted, am sorry but i realised it did not meet the WP:OR and WP:RS policy requirements.

Then re-added it the next day with the summary: am really sorry for all the reverting back and forth, but the real reason i deleted was NOT because of WP:OR and WP:RS, as i have provided realible sources, the infobox and the other parts are based what is already is on wikipedia, also i LIED when i said "that little infobox i inserted broke tons of other wp policy" the reality is if your read wp policy the infobox is actually recommended as it is in fact very helpfull (sic [a lot of sic]).

Que? Mr rnddude (talk) 09:02, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

meybe you should included all my edit summaries before adding that "Que?" comment,

edit summary the very same day: ok the real reason i deleted was because i thought the greater germanic reich was just post ww2 propaganda, as it was a secret and NOT mentioned in mein kampf, but it is real, i should stop reading conspiracy theories on the internet again am very sorry, you see in fact hitler never mentions "germanic state" is such a way, in mein kampf "germanic state of the german nation" is not in the eastern europe expansion chapter and there is no evidence he is refering to any greater germanic reich, he secretly introduced the idea in 1921 and kept it a secret from the public, alternative ww2 axis victory books such as fatherland or the man in the high castle never mention any greater germanic reich, more than "nazi germany" or "greater GERMAN reich" nevertheless the greater germanic reich is real althought it was a secret from the public under whole hitler's life (1889-1945)

also the latest edit summary (before this with user:Havsjö) is the correct desription, i was at first confused myself(see above) but if you still dont belive me please read the mentioned wikipolicy and all other wikipolicies, i apologize for this whole misunderstanding, i will try to be more clear in the future user:Havsjö and user:DrKay, thank you and good day Gooduserdude (talk) 11:18, 2 October 2020 (UTC) Gooduserdude (talk) 11:39, 2 October 2020 (UTC)(corrections)

IP disruption at my talk page

I start getting strange messages at my user talk page. Already for some time, I have IPs correcting typos in my responses like this, I do not like it but they make no harm so I just let it go. But yesterday they started to ask really strange questions ([25]: the correct answer is that it is written on my user page, and otherwise the correct answer would be that this is not their fucking business; this: they can check it as well as I can), and they get unhappy if I do not reply [26] or suggest they are evading the block [27]. Does anybody understand what the hell is going on? May be a known LTA? I can of course semi-protect my talk page, but I would really prefer not to, because sometimes I get real requests from IPs and new users.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:44, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Come on, Ymblanter, please admit they were trying to help and they asked what they asked because they were interested. They didn't intend on any offences at all. They don't have any connection with a known LTA on the English Wikipedia. If any offences, sorry about this. --94.73.36.20 (talk) 09:11, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

IP, your behavior is clearly harassment. Knock it off, now. One more unsolicited post to Ymblanter's page and you'll be blocked. Consider yourself interaction-banned. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:41, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:21, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

ECP for draft space admin-create articles

Just as a followup to this thread, now archived, I've been given a list of sysop create-protected articles that have a corresponding draft. If there is no opposition, I am going to p-batch these down to ECP from full protection so that if/when the drafts are accepted at WP:AFC the reviewers can actually move them without waiting for an admin's approval. Primefac (talk) 09:37, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Primefac, makes sense. Glen (talk) 11:18, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

I disagree. I use full salting because I want to be asked when someone wants to move a draft into mainspace for WP:BEANS reasons. MER-C 11:47, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

MER-C, I can see both sides of this, but my gut feeling is we can trust the AfC reviewers to exercise good judgement. Can you provide some specific examples of pages on this list where ECP would be inadequate, so I can understand the issue better?

More generally, WP:ECPP2 (overwhelmingly) allowed use of ECP for salting, noting that administrators should choose the appropriate one at their discretion. I suspect most admins just instinctively go for full protection because that's what they're used to, but the general principle is that the least intrusive level of protection required to prevent disruption is what we should be using. So, ECP should be the default for salting unless there's specific reason to believe it won't be (or hasn't been) effective. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:36, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

The issue is not with individual pages. I am more concerned about UPE spammers, such as Mar11, ImSonyR9, Isingness, Lihaas, Ceethekreator, Meeanaya, Siddiqsazzad001, Mgbo120, Mredidiongekong and TheImaCow reviewing pages for undisclosed payments. Getting EC is a prerequisite for getting an admin to hand over patrolling rights. MER-C 16:38, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

MER-C, OK, thanks for the deeper explanation. I'm going to go with being opposed to this. In practice, this isn't that big a deal. I still suspect that many (of not most) of the admin-only protects could be reduced to ECP with no harm, but doing them all en-masse without review is sub-optimal and the effort to review them all would outweigh the benefits.

I'd encourage all admins going forward to be more selective about which level of protection they use (and maybe we could socialize concept more widely), but for the ones that currently exist, we can live with a day's delay to unprotect after an AfC reviewer makes a request. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:48, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

• Strong support. Most of that list are bad protections. Some likely won't make it through AfC, yes, e.g. Draft:ConnectPay, but that's a bad reason to sysop create-prot ConnectPay. Per protection policy: Administrators should choose the appropriate level of create protection—autoconfirmed, extended-confirmed,[2] or full. Spam/promo articles created by new editors is almost never a good reason to sysop create protect. Protection policy should be amended to make this even more explicit. If an ECP editor is intentionally creating spam, we can deal with that through various venues. No reason "permission" should be required for them to create, though. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:55, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

I suspect a significant fraction of those have been salted before ECP was introduced, so I would not call them bad, but indeed in most cases ECP does the job. Accidentally, the above example of Theresa Greenfield shows that the situation is more complicated and probably should be treated on case-by-case basis.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:14, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

250 were after ECP was introduced and supported for create protection. At a spotcheck of 15, all were for notability/promo reasons, created by non-ECP editors, some with AfDs, some not. No evidence of LTA abuse or anything, not that it would matter as much when the bar to creation is ECP. I suspect the reason is just unfamiliarity / conservative views towards protection. I recall a few articles where editors have created articles with improper titles (e.g. dashes, or slightly awkward names) to get around the salting (in these cases, articles later kept). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:30, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

• I'm also uneasy about this. Of course we can trust AfC reviewers in normal circumstances, but if someone decided to salt them with full protection rather than ECP, there was probably a good reason. E.g. the title is associated with a long-term abuse account that a regular editor might not necessarily spot. It could be that many of them are from before ECP was introduced, but that seems an unsteady assumption for a mass-downgrade of the protection level. Wouldn't it be better to check through them manually first? There aren't so many. – Joe (talk) 15:24, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
• I second or third the caution against mass-downgrading. Looking through the list, I see a number that were self-promotional or otherwise repeatedly deleted for complete lack of notability, (e.g., Aayush Sharma, Adam Dahlberg, BiglyBT and those just three that I'm familiar with from the first page of listings). These should remain sysop-salted to prevent further disruption. The mass-downgrading of these to any level of protection that is achievable through gaming will just encourage bad-faith editors who have already proven their persistence. Downgrading without examining these individually is asking for future disruption. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 18:56, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Sushant Singh Rajput again

Just a heads up but the Indian CBI is due to announce tomorrow (Saturday) whether or not they are treating the death as a murder case. Doubtless there will be a flood of edit requests that we change the article forthwith. Nthep (talk) 14:43, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking. Fair enough, and hopefully if they do NOT declare it a murder case, this can be done with once and for all. RickinBaltimore (talk) 14:46, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Think I'm gonna go back to sniffing glue if they do. Btw, due to the semiprotection, probably won't be too many edit requests that get through. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:48, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

To quote Dr Phlox: "OPTIMISM, CAPTAIN!" (I'd link a YT-clip, but the last time I did that I got a COPYVIO-template on my talkpage). Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:13, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't think this is calming down anytime soon [28] Nil Einne (talk) 15:05, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Understandably some people are going to want to look into how on earth conspiracy peddling was promoted for months. But that shouldn't necessarily cause continued page disruption on Wikipedia; I think it should calm down, after this report just released, or after the police report that should shortly follow. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:13, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

EllenCT global ban discussion

Due to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Nrcprm2026 and m:Meta:Requests for CheckUser information#James Salsman, I have to make a correction to my previous notice. Nrcprm2026 would be better recognised here as EllenCT who still has an ongoing active global ban discussion. Apologies for the inconvience. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 02:48, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Wow, EllenCT was a sockpuppet? She/He had 1600 edits to Jimbo's talk page. I am out of the loop these days. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:38, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

_{Also shocked. Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 04:05, 3 October 2020 (UTC)}

You see, it all began to end after a redditor made a post about Scots Wikipedia.. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 05:05, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

They are clearly a contender in the nomination "an individual which created the most harm to Wikipedia ever". Not the only one though.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:03, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Somewhat surprised by this as well. I found some of EllenCT's comments etc a bit odd and did I think at the back of my mind wonder once or twice if they were a returning editor. Didn't expect it to be a prolific sockmaster though, although I don't particularly recognise any of their accounts other than EllenCT. Nil Einne (talk) 15:01, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't find it at all surprising. Anyone who makes 1600 edits to Jimbo's talk page is clearly not here to build an encyclopedia. I suppose we have to start a new competition to find Wikipedia's wokest editor now. Phil Bridger (talk) 15:10, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Well, it’s a dead Cirt that’s gotta be someone.... Qwirkle (talk) 15:13, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/User:FerrousTigrus/ub/non-bias_hitler

I am aware of the need to set out points neutrally here, so if my words are a bit stilted, forgive me.

This is an oddly heated MFD, so I think it might benefit from a few extra admin eyes on the closure. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.6% of all FPs} 04:45, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

I've taken the liberty of fixing the link in the header so it will work properly when the discussion is off the main MFD page (by changing a "#" to a "/"). I am not getting involved in this discussion any further. Graham87 05:52, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

I have closed it. I looked at all the arguments, but in the end there isn't really any doubt about where consensus lies in this discussion. Black Kite (talk) 11:44, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Review closure of ITN nomination on Trump's COVID-19 infection

Kindly review the closure of this "In the News" nomination. The thread was closed after only an hour and a half of discussion, so several editors requested it be reopened in the related talk thread. I requested a reopening with the closer, but have not heard back. Qono (talk) 06:34, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

• It's already been closed by two different admins. If the linked talk page discussion develops a consensus to re-open it, it would make sense to, but edit warring over the close would not. Certainly at the time, the close was obvious, though as the situation progresses, it might change. WilyD 06:49, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

• • Slightly misleading. The second admin who closed it was "neutral" on closure and on re-opening. I was asked to build a consensus to re-open. I believe that there is a consensus.--WaltCip-(talk) 15:09, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Backlog at WP:RM

There are a few dozen pages that have been in the "backlog" section for two weeks (so, open for 3 weeks without relisting). While you don't have to be an admin to close RM discussions, it doesn't hurt. Can admins take a look? power~enwiki (π, ν) 07:39, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

I've tackled a few of these, which I feel are obvious moves (or not). I've tagged them all with the NAC status. If anyone thinks I've made a mess of any of them, please drop me a note. There were several others I was going to close too, but noted I'd voted in them, so I've left those. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 16:55, 3 October 2020 (UTC)