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Stonewalling by Beyond My Ken

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

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I am currently dealing with stonewalling (and hostility) from Beyond My Ken over an edit to Induced demand (my change) that I would have thought was rather uncontroversial.

I have attempted to reconcile disagreement on the article talk page (Talk:Induced demand#Lead paragraph), where the user refused to explain what part of the content change he disagreed with, and insisted that I find consensus. I followed his demand, and sought consensus on the talk page (Talk:Induced demand#Consensus seeking). No other editor raised objections (or support). Beyond My Ken insists that changes are not needed, but has still not explained what was wrong with the change, or why we should not explain terms introduced in the lead.

I briefly attempted to address the user at his talk page, pointing to the problems with reverting based on “no consensus” (User talk:Beyond My Ken#Attitude). I was met with the accusation that I want to “fuck up a Wikipedia article”, and subsequently had my signature vandalized on both pages ([1] and [2]).

I suspect, based on previous reverts ([3]) and talk discussion (Talk:Induced demand#Removal of my changes to Induced Demand) that I have stumbled into Beyond My Ken attempting to “defend” the page (or his version of the page, which obviously would be problematic WP:OWNERSHIP). I didn’t stop to investigate other edits for who was “right”, but Beyond My Ken does not appear interested in engaging with other editors in discussion, or elaborating on his actual disagreements to seek meaningful consensus. — HTGS (talk) 23:23, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I took a quick look and while I won't comment on the substance of your request (BMK), I should point out that beginning every response with a ping is a bit passive aggressive and not exactly conducive to a calm discussion. FYI. Also the "fucking up" comment was in response to rather ill placed humor on your part. RegentsPark (comment) 01:13, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

@Beyond My Ken if he's fuck[ing] up the article, then it's reasonable to expect that you'll explain how he proposes to do so on Talk:Induced demand. It's difficult to build consensus when senior editors don't contribute to the discussion. Mackensen (talk) 01:14, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

+1 Paul August ☎ 01:30, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

@HTGS: Wikipedia:Third opinion, Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard, and Wikipedia:Requests for comment are all possibilities for broadening participation. Mackensen (talk) 01:20, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate that. I didn’t (don’t) see the change to content as the main issue, so much as BMK’s continued refusal to engage with the substantive issue. — HTGS (talk) 03:18, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Per WP:AGF, I believe those changes to your signature were mistakes, not vandalism. Several of BMK's messages in that thread contain similar, uh, oddities. City of Silver 01:33, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

That is a fair assessment, and one I had been working with. I probably should have couched my initial comment there with less certainty; please don’t take it as a primary concern. (Assuming good faith is an exercise that gets harder as frustration grows. As readers will no doubt understand, I got here in final frustration, but I will take the lesson.) — HTGS (talk) 03:18, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Propose this be closed with no action.

There's fault on both sides, but nothing to get worked up about. BMK could have provided a single substantive objection, e.g., "The definitions are unnecessary" rather than the unsupported, if correct, assertion, that it "does not improve the article". This would have put us quite a bit higher on the hierarchy of disagreement. However, disengaging what BMK thought to be an adversarial editor is exactly what we're told to do, so it's difficult to fault that.

HTGS did come off as somewhat abrasive with the repeated pings, the title of the BMK talk page section "Attitude", and the ill-fated attempt at humor, plus some WP:BLUDGEONy behavior in the talk page. However, BMK's refusal to engage also left few avenues for good faith attempts to improve the article.

Both editors were acting in good faith, rubbed each other the wrong way, and now there's a discussion on the article talk. Nothing more to do here.EducatedRedneck (talk) 20:05, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree that this is a minor affair. That said, my concern here is that this is a pattern that we've seen with BMK before, including cases where there's no possible concern about the behavior of the other editor. Specifically, an editor proposes a change, BMK objects, the editor asks what's wrong with the change, BMK tells the editor to go get consensus for the change without really engaging on the substantive issue. It can look like bludgeoning because the other editor keeps trying to engage, and BMK has at times (including this one), set some pretty strict limits on their engagement.

Let's set out a sequence of events here:

1. User A edits article.
2. User B reverts the edit.
3. User A raises the matter on the talk page.

Leaving aside outright vandalism, I think we'd expect User B to explain their objection. This is a collaborative project. If User A and User B go in circles, it's not unheard of for User A to wander over to User B's talk page to figure out why they're talking past each other. I've certainly done that. If User B refuses to engage User A on their talk page (which is User B's right), then User A is kinda stuck unless (1) someone watching article decides to put an oar in or (2) they pursue one of the other options I listed above. It's possible for User B to make the cost of change for User A rather high without really doing anything. Maybe that's okay. Per WP:ONUS, the responsibility for achieving consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content. Emphasis added. Without a substantive objection there isn't really a dispute. WP:OWN and WP:EPTALK go into this. In my view, and I think policy backs me up on this, reverting a good-faith change creates a responsibility on the part of that person to explain the revert substantively if someone challenges it. Mackensen (talk) 20:40, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Mackensen here, it's exceptionally poor behaviour on Beyond My Ken's part. When you revert a change, it's reasonable for the reverted editor to ask why; in fact that approach is recommended in several places such as WP:EW and WP:BRD. If you respond that a change is "not an improvement", it's reasonable for the other editor to ask you to elaborate. It seems to me that HTGS did a reasonable job of explaining why they felt their changes were an improvement, and also explained their rationale and asked for BMK's input on an acceptable way forward, and BMK just basically said "no" and expected that to be the end of the discussion. It looks very much like BMK opposed for the sake of opposing and for no other reason, and then refused repeatedly to discuss, and bluntly refusing to discuss is not the fait accompli BMK seems to think it is. Later, after HTGS started an expanded discussion to which they invited BMK (BMK again opposed for no other reason than to be in opposition; a clearly tendentious argument by that point) there appears to be consensus emerging against the proposal, but those editors gave reasons that HTGS could respond to, and since there's actually a discussion things are moving forward productively. If BMK doesn't want to participate in that discussion then so be it, but their repeatedly saying "no" with no attempt to explain and no followup is very clear WP:STONEWALLING. Frankly, if BMK was not as experienced as they are, I would consider pblocking them from the page. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 22:17, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Also note BMK's comment here (since reverted), in which they cast a bunch of aspersions about HTGS' motivations, and said they would participate in a consensus-seeking discussion once HTGS started one. That comment was left here just shy of three full days after HTGS had already started a discussion, a day and a half after HTGS pinged BMK to comment in it, and roughly a day after BMK's last hand-wave opposed-for-the-sake-of-opposing comment. I would like to see an explanation for all of this, although I don't expect one to be forthcoming. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 22:53, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

@Beyond My Ken: Could you please respond to the above concerns expressed by Mackensen and Ivanvector above? Paul August ☎ 19:54, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I can't believe we are still seeing these same old complaints about BMK. This is a perennial problem going back many many years and countless people have tried getting through to him. Status quo stonewalling is an extremely maddening disruptive behavior to have to deal with and I don't know why he continues to do it. Absolutely exhausting. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 22:24, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm too new to be aware of the deeper history, but since @Ivanvector and @Mackensen have seen one, perhaps they would be willing to propose a solution, such as a short block with escalation if it continues. Since I haven't seen the pattern, I would not support such a proposal, but if they can dig up some diffs that demonstrate the pattern, I'd be amenable to casting a support !vote. EducatedRedneck (talk) 00:09, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I've had run ins with BMK as well. They are needlessly antagonistic and happy to ignore things like ONUS when they are certain they are correct. My recent example was related to disputed content added by an IP editor to the Right-wing_populism page. BMK was certain they were right thus ONUS wasn't going to apply. The problem in this case is they might be correct but since they were certain they were correct they didn't feel it was important to follow the normal dispute resolution process (discussion, get consensus etc). As an individual incident this is a blip. However, these things come up time and time again with this editor. Perhaps a 1RR limit would help? Springee (talk) 15:17, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Per BMK's response and the discussion below, I'd like to request closure with the following understandings:

1. No action for this report, given BMK's personal circumstances and laudable response in this thread.
2. Note BMK's acknowledgement that to "stonewall" without explanation is not acceptable: I should have provided the reasoning behind my objection to the changes.

If such behavior does recur, swift sanctions to prevent disruption would be reasonable. Otherwise, there seems to be a consensus that BMK's statement satisfies the desire that they see the prior issue and will undertake to not repeat it, which if successful, is an ideal outcome. EducatedRedneck (talk) 20:30, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

• Comment You are all taking this way out of proportion. Examining just this complaint, there is almost no substance in it. First, is there really stonewalling going on? OP changed some text in the lead, BMK reverted, this went on a couple of times (WP:BRD HTGS?). The discussion moved to the talk page where all I see is an "original lead is better" vs "new lead is better" arguments. Either both are stonewalling or neither is. Technically, it is HTGS's job to explain, line by line, why their version is better. The "Fuck" comment is by itself understandable. Starting every response with a ping is less than polite because it reads like "John, why do you think so"; "John, you are not right",... which is passive aggressive in the extreme. Then OP chooses to make a "joke" which is barely funny and you need to focus on the ! point at the end to figure that out. When BMK responds with "don't be a smart ass", HTGS responds with "Some people have a sense of humour, some don’t", a very obvious implication there. Add to that the rather patronizing "It’s merely advice; we’re all here to improve the encyclopaedia, after all". Given this background, BMK's response is actually quite mild "I enjoy humor, and especially when it's appropriate, but mot so much when it's an excuse for fucking up a Wikipedia article". All this delving into history etc. is not appropriate in this instance. RegentsPark (comment) 17:48, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Prior history

Per EducatedRedneck's request I've gone through the archives for prior examples of this issue. I don't like digging up old disputes like this but I think it's relevant to show a pattern:

• June 2016: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive926#Beyond My Ken's banning Wikipedians from user talk page (and incivility) (no action)
• June 2016: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive927#User:Beyond My Ken reverting maintenance edits without explanation (no action)
• June 2016: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive928#User:Beyond My Ken (no consensus for a warning)
• March 2019: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1004#Proposed image-placement topic ban for Beyond My Ken (BMK restricted from placing images in certain ways)
• April 2021: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1065#Beyond My Ken disruptively editing ("BMK, you do good work, stop giving people a reason to bring you here")
• November 2022: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1113#Stale revert war and refusal to discuss at List of warez groups (BMK reprimanded)

There are plenty more in the history. BMK is a good editor who does good work. He's also a confounding editor who digs in his heels over trivial things and makes mountains out of molehills. I don't like the idea of BMK getting blocked, but I also don't like that BMK's approach to collaborative editing guarantees that we'll be back here again. It's a waste of his time, our time, and the time of whichever novice editor accidentally crossed his path. Mackensen (talk) 01:44, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I happen to know that BMK is going through some things, and some of those things may have contributed to a shorter fuse than was called for. T he above list is--well, if half the list is from June of 2016, then maybe we should not weight those things so heavily. I propose we move on: I know BMK is trying to. If at any point his supposed stonewalling is actually disruptive enough to warrant a block (or if it amounts to edit warring, etc.), then surely one of the administrator in this thread can consider placing a block. Same for the other editor, of course. Drmies (talk) 03:39, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you Mackensen for compiling a history, and thank you Drmies for the added context. It sounds like nobody wants a block for BMK, but I would like to hear them at least acknowledge that status-quo stonewalling is unproductive and state that they'll try to avoid it in the future. Even discounting the 2016 cases, there's still a one-per-year ANI pattern, including the case this time last year for damn near the same thing, for which they were reprimanded. In that case also they never seemed to acknowledge they did anything wrong, and here we are again. Before we move on, it'd be good to see some indication of progress, and not that we'll be back here again next year. EducatedRedneck (talk) 12:12, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

@Drmies I appreciate what you're saying, but let me push back. We all have lives outside of Wikipedia. At any time, editors are dealing with difficult situations. We don't know and it's not fair to ask. This also recalls BMK's response during one of the 2016 discussions, when he went on a long personal tangent instead of addressing the matter at hand: [4] (starts with I will not be participating in this discussion again, read on). We're still responsible for our conduct, and this is a pattern of conduct. I can dredge up examples from over 10 years ago, and I can also find more recent ones. BMK has "moved on" from these incidents before. He stonewalls, people object, he evades any real accountability for a situation that he caused, and then we're back here again. Mackensen (talk) 12:18, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

EducatedRedneck, I don't think we'll hear from BMK anytime soon, and that's really all I can say without betraying confidence. Mackensen, you've been an admin for longer than me--rather than continue this thread and try to find more arguments in the past for why the user should be restricted in the future, why not use our new and very sharp tool? You see something, say something: warn the editor and then give them a partial block from the article and/or talk page. I don't think BMK has a tendency to "spread" his ... stonewalling, so a partial block seems like a helpful thing here. But no, again, I do not support sanctions. The disruption is over, at least for now, and building a case (like the old RfC/U, which I'm sure you'll remember!) for serious editing restrictions, or whatever you had in mind, that's going to take a while and I'm not convinced it will do anyone any good. Drmies (talk) 13:55, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of digging up old history, but I'm also not comfortable that an experienced user with a noted problematic history can simply ignore the discussion about yet another incident in the same pattern and thus escapes any sort of accountability for it. BMK has been editing since this thread started, and did comment here although they removed that comment, so I don't accept that they're "too busy" to respond, whatever it is that's going on in real life (and no we don't need to know what, you can take Drmies' word to the bank). None of us is perfect and we all have bad days, all we're looking for here is for BMK to acknowledge that they were having a bad day and that their behaviour in that discussion was below the level generally expected of veteran editors, or, you know, something. It's pretty much the bare minimum, and I think if we had that then we'd all just move on and go do something else. Instead, here we are talking about blocking him, and I can't say I disagree. This probably will blow over, it's already pretty far up the page and sometimes things go that way here, but next time this happens I wouldn't blame anyone for blocking first and asking questions later. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 15:47, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

This is also good to know, and does mean we could extend a little more compassion. I still am concerned that this seems to be a pattern independent of whatever's going in in their personal life and, as Ivanvector pointed out, they've continued to edit outside this thread. This was before this ANI, but they seem to have been exhibiting some stonewalling behavior in this thread as well, where they assert that sources support their insertion, that it's necessary, and forbade it from being removed. A pblock from Induced demand doesn't seem to solve the issue, and without some assurance that BMK is working to fix it on their end, I think something should be done to prevent further disruption to other editors that are attempting to improve the encyclopedia.

@Drmies, this is not an ideal situation, where the community needs reassurance but BMK is not in a position to give it due to personal life. What would you think of an indef, with the stated intent that it be lifted as soon as BMK provides the bare minimum as Ivanvector says? If BMK is dealing with things in their life, I agree that we shouldn't demand they put aside serious personal matters just to reassure us. Is it unreasonable to enforce a wikibreak until BMK is able to provide the requested assurance? EducatedRedneck (talk) 16:29, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

EducatedRedneck, I think an indef block for this is excessive. Drmies (talk) 16:32, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

That's fair. I'm just trying to find some way that we can know the disruption will stop, but which makes it easy for BMK to edit productively , as they seem to do good work. I'll keep thinking on it, and if you have an idea, I'd be interested. EducatedRedneck (talk) 16:34, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Since Drmies has made this disclosure, let me say that I'm in a position to confirm what Drmies said, and I discounted it because BMK has behaved this way for over a decade, as demonstrated above. If your personal situation is such that you can't edit in a reasonable way on Wikipedia, then that's fine, but the solution is that you don't edit Wikipedia until that's no longer the case. Mackensen (talk) 19:27, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Mackensen, last I checked BMK made a few edits but is not looking at/fighting over that Induced Demand article anymore. I am not saying that BMK has never been criticized for his edits, and I have in the past agreed with some of the criticisms. I just think that this has already blown over, and yes I think that we should move on, which is what we often do in meaningful relationships. Sorry, I'm just sympathetic toward his personal situation, and I know that doesn't excuse past indiscretions, but I do think this one is over. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 19:36, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

@Drmies if that's how you see things I won't try to change your mind. I would ask you this: what's your plan for addressing things the next time this happens? Because it will happen again, and the fact pattern will be identical. Is that just the cost of doing business? Because it really sucks for the editors who encounter BMK and his abusive behavior for the first time, who wonder if maybe they did something to encourage it. It's up to experienced editors, administrators or otherwise, to model expected behavior and set norms. I've thought for years that we do everyone a disservice--including BMK--by just shrugging our shoulders. Mackensen (talk) 19:48, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Mackensen why would we shrug our shoulders? We can block for all kinds of things, including disruptive editing, and we have partial blocks to get editors out of one particular article or page where they are not acting properly. I use that tool all the time; I rarely shrug my shoulders. A temporary partial block is a great tool. Drmies (talk) 21:04, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

EducatedRedneck said: I would like to hear them at least acknowledge that status-quo stonewalling is unproductive and state that they'll try to avoid it in the future, and Ivanvector has said this is: pretty much the bare minimum of what we should be willing to accept from BMK. Without such I don't see how we can not impose some kind of sanction. Paul August ☎ 15:58, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Paul August that some kind of restriction is necessary but that an indefinite block is too harsh. I think a WP:1RR restriction gets at the nub of a major issue--reverting without discussion--and has the benefit of being easily enforced. Something more elaborate of requiring a discussion of reverts isn't enforceable. Mackensen (talk) 19:30, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

There's the issue of what's been called "stonewalling" and there's the related edit warring/hostility over trivial matters, both of which go back many years. BMK doesn't often use edit summaries at all, and when he does they're frequently of the "not an improvement" or "better before" variety (those links are lists). There are many complaints about fighting disruptively over things that should be trivial (basic MOS stuff, etc.) going back 15 years (omitting a link to an RFCU from way back then because it's under an old name). Every single one of BMK's replies at Talk:Induced_demand#Lead_paragraph is frustrating. Repeatedly reverts with inadequate explanations, then HTGS starts a discussion and BMK responds with the nuance of an ecommerce chatbot, saying "start a discussion and get a consensus" with no substance six different ways to someone who started a discussion and is trying to get a consensus. It took multiple other users getting involved for the matter to go anywhere at all. A restriction that says, after so many years, "you have to better explain your reverts" doesn't seem like it would be functional, so maybe a revert restriction is the only way to intervene (certainly not a block). I'd probably modify the 1RR Mackensen proposed to specify it's for things that aren't obvious vandalism or flagrant POV pushing -- BMK does a lot of noncontroversial reverts, too. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 20:22, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. While I can sympathize with BMK on a human level for whatever he’s going through right now, I have never not. And most of us have never not. BMK has always been a very well-liked, sympathetic, highly respected editor, and it is uncontentious that he is overwhelmingly a net positive member of the community, to say the least. It brings me no joy to criticize him, much less say he should be sanctioned. I just can’t buy into the suggestion that this is a minor incident that has blown over and we should all just cut BMK a break and move on. That’s literally what we’ve been doing for years and years. It sucks, but I can’t even take the suggestion seriously anymore. It is just an endless cycle and begging him to self-correct over the years just hasn’t worked. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 04:13, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

• BMK has a long history of altering reference sections to go against MOS. When confronted in the past, he has said that MOS is wrong and his way is right. Recent examples from the last few months no edit summary; other, examples, and another one. (t · c) buidhe 06:13, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
• Complaints about BMK's edits at the BLP Noticeboards in the last 6 months.[5][6] The second link was more concerning wherein that they mass reinstated disputed WP:BLPRACIST categories and demanded consensus for removal despite WP:BLPUNDEL. Morbidthoughts (talk) 01:02, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Response by Beyond My Ken

As mentioned above, I've had some very serious family events going on which have distracted me since the end of June. My participation here has been minimal, and the effort I've put into my editing has been poor, which has lead up to this situation.

I've had time now to review this thread, and my actions at Induced demand, and I substantively agree that my behavior has been very poor, and not at all up to the standards of what is expected from Wikipedia editors, or, for that matter, which I expect of myself. As suggested by multiple commenters, to "stonewall" without explanation is not acceptable: I should have provided the reasoning behind my objection to the changes that User:HTGS made, and fully participated in the consensus discussion they started. My failure to do so was entirely wrong.

I apologize to the community, and specifically to HTGS, for my rude behavior, and I formally withdraw my objections to the changes they wish to make to the article.

My personal situation is ongoing, but not interminable, and it was my intention not to edit in any major way until it had passed and I was able to edit with a clearer mind and fewer distractions; in fact, I contemplated asking for a self-block for a month or so to help me in carrying that out, but ended up not doing that.

If, as a result of the discussion above, some sort of sanction is deemed necessary by the community, I stand willing to accept it, although I do hope that it won't be required.

I'm not sure that I have much more to say about this incident, so I don't plan to comment further here unless someone has specific issues they wish me to address, in which case I request a ping to make me aware of it. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:13, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Separate to, and before any discussion of administrative questions or sanctions, I want to say thank you, Beyond My Ken. I appreciate and accept your apology, and I sincerely wish you the very most kindness and grace in your personal life. I understand fully the compulsive draw that Wikipedia can have, and I trust that even if other editors can find you… troublesome at times, you wouldn’t have the record you do if you didn’t care about the encyclopedia. — HTGS (talk) 21:49, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

HTGS My deepest appreciation for your gracious response. I hope that editing Wikipedia will continue to be for you the great pleasure that it has been for me for the vast majority of my time here. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:15, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I also want to thank Beyond My Ken for their thoughtful response here, particularly given the personal circumstances, and echo HTGS' well wishes. This seems to me to be an ideal outcome; BMK has given a strong indication that there won't be future stonewalling, and given the stressful personal time, I find that remarkable and commendable. EducatedRedneck (talk) 01:20, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your response, Beyond My Ken. I also hope that your personal situation improves soon, and hope to see you back soon. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:33, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I truly appreciate Beyond My Ken's thoughtful and considerate response here. Under the circumstances I'm happy to consider the matter closed. We can revisit as appropriate. Mackensen (talk) 20:03, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

@Beyond My Ken: Thank you for your comments above. I now consider this particular matter to be resolved. However, I hope you realize that there is evidence here of an ongoing problem. An acknowledgement of that from you and a promise to try to do better would also be much appreciated. And you should understand that It will be more difficult to overlook any such behavior going forward. I've admired you and your contributions for a long time, and I hope to do so for a long time to come. Paul August ☎ 15:46, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

@Paul August: Yes, please do take my comment above as an acknowledgement of not only this particular incident, but also of past incidents as well, which present a picture of poor behavior on my part. I very much hope that moving on from here I will be successful in stopping myself from editing in that manner. Because I edit in some controversial areas (it's ironic that the article in the current case was not a particularly controversial one), meaning I come up against some difficult situations, I may be prone to slip a little at times, in which case I would appreciate a note from someone politely pointing out the error of my ways, which I hope will be sufficient to get me back on track again. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:23, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I think it's going to be hard for a single message to put folks who perceive a long-term pattern at ease. That said, this response is a masterclass in responsibly addressing these kinds of concerns. I'll agree with others that we can probably close this now. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:44, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

agreed with this ^ uninvolved Andre🚐 06:16, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I would add myself to the list of "folks who perceive a long-term pattern." I once previously specifically suggested to BMK that they stop using the edit summary "better before", which they used frequently to revert constructive changes. To their credit, they took the suggestion seriously, and I believe they reduced their use of the edit summary, but this whole affair here shows that the fundamental issue remains. BMK regularly has difficulty collaborating with other editors. Agreed that no sanction here is justified, but I strongly urge BMK to *always* take the time to explain their thinking except when dealing with the most obvious kind of vandalism. —Ganesha811 (talk) 20:54, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

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

Japanese Bias Editor Problem

Hello, I like to report my recent edits on Moro people, Liver (Food), Free China (Second Sino Japanese War) and Japanese migration to Indonesia has been recently reverted with a user I have trouble with for a while, NmWTfs85lXusaybq.

His reason for reverting is nonsense with the most common used reason, Neutral Point of View violation. He had use that reason as his justification of reverting.

However, my edits have never violate the NPOV. My edits on the liver (food) article covered all the historical parts where different people had eat human liver, so it makes no sense to say I am not neutral. I have covered religion and both side in wars eating livers

Not only that, my edits has follow the source carefully, I am just adding the information indicated by the source. Not to mention the references are reliable and active to Wikipedia standard. His accusation on those edits like failed verification and NPOV fails.

Not to mention, he usually strike at my edit whenever I edit Japanese related topic, I believe he is a Japanese nationalist who dislike my edits which include either war crimes or getting defeated. I am tired at the fact that my edits are harassed whenever I edit a Japanese related info.

I hope I can finish the problem soon.

Yaujj13 (talk) 13:09, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

If any of your edits have been reverted the first thing to do is to start a conversation on the article talk page, which you do not seem to have done, and then if you don't achieve consensus to follow the steps at WP:DR. Phil Bridger (talk) 13:23, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Let's have a look at how Yaujj13 issued the ANI notice on my talk page: I really don't like ever since you reverted the edits, looking at your talk page, you are really just an asshole. NmWTfs85lXusaybq (talk) 14:29, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I think the problem is more likely to be not enough of this editor's massive unattributed cuts-and-pastes from other articles getting reverted than too many. —Cryptic 13:28, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Let us also look at this editor's removal of a warning from their talkpage compared with the ANI notice that they delivered to the same editor (linked above). I don't think the OP is a net positive at all here. Black Kite (talk) 15:03, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Yaujj13's edits to Liver (food) are a shocking example of undue weight. Devoting such massive attention to cannibalism in an article that should be about routine culinary practices in various cultures worldwide is a disservice to our readers. Cullen328 (talk) 20:46, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

@Cullen328 I decided to merge the content into here Human_cannibalism#Livers. I think it needs to be reviewed a lot and I would like @NmWTfs85lXusaybq to look over it and adjust the POV issues. But I do appreciate the work OP put into the section even if it was in the completely wrong article. What are your thoughts on its new home? Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 21:42, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Immanuelle, that is clearly a better location. Thank you. Cullen328 (talk) 21:47, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

@Cullen328 I did just now substantially reduce the content on the Japanese soldiers and Moro Muslims. I think it's notable, but in the end it is just one guy who isn't exactly an unbiased source that said this, so that was undue weight within the section, and had some biased language like "slaughtered" Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 21:54, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm OK with your solution and will keep a close eye on their editing behavior. NmWTfs85lXusaybq (talk) 14:12, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

My cut and paste is not from other Wikipedia pages but rather from my own edits. I usually do my edit in one day, so I write my own edits privately. And then copy and paste to the wiki pages I am editing.

For the talk page, sorry about that. I will fix my mistake.

And for the cuss words, I just feel frustrated at this point. Yaujj13 (talk) 09:04, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

@Yaujj13 While I did have a bit of a scuffle with @NmWTfs85lXusaybq I can confidently say he is good faith and competent.

Now to cover your edits. I will link them Liver I am unsure whether it is relevant, it has a lot of Wikipedia:Citation overkill for example

• During slaughter of Madurese settlers in the Indonesian ruled part of Borneo island, Dayaks and Malay Indonesians consumed livers of Madurese.

Definitely relatively emotionally charged language. I wouldn't have removed the entire section but I would have tagged the article as overly detailed

Here the edit was reverted due to failed verification. Which is a good reason to revert an edit https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Moro_people&diff=1187106286&oldid=1186717380. imo a citation needed can just be left for a while in case an editor misplaced a source or remembered something from a college lecture or something like that, but a failed verification is just leaving misinformation on wikipedia.

For Japanese migration to Indonesia I think it was a bit harder to tell what was changed. You were Wikipedia:Edit warring which is against protocol here and should have brought it to the dispute resolution noticeboard or talk page

Here's the Free China part but I don't know enough about this to comment. My knowledge of this area is limited.

Overall I think you are escalating these disputes too much and should just try to talk things out with @NmWTfs85lXusaybq since he is pretty reasonable when you try to talk to him as demonstrated here Talk:Saiō Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 21:08, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Sorry for not replying too soon. I need a clear mind in writing this. I am going to present all my arguments spoken in this reply here as I didn't want to write separate arguments for each replies.

First, the failed verification claim in the Moro page is false. I have check in my edits that the links given works and match the source, you could try to read the source to verify my claim. One of the reason I believe he is just making false claim to justify his revert.

Second, he is also got in trouble with many users which just surprise me seeing in his talk page. He also hounded user Beyond My Ken in the Moro Rebellion edit back in April 2023. There is also the fact that he sent false warnings to his talk page as well. He also sent me one of those false warnings as well.

Third, I still stand my claim that NmW is pro Japan vandal. Using the evidence of his edits in Anti-Catholicism and Jambi Sultanate.

As usual, my edit in both articles are reverted under bogus claim. Here are the links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anti-Catholicism&diff=prev&oldid=1168770563

Talk:Jambi Sultanate

He accused me for pro China POV in Jambi Sultanate which the edits I made have none of this claim, not to mention the sources are written from Western universities and considered reliable.

This can be proven as my anti Catholicism edit is return by Simonm223.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anti-Catholicism&diff=prev&oldid=1171656739

This shows his NPOV claim is nothing but an excuse to revert edits that defame Japan in his view. I am mostly adding information according to the reliable citation. Yaujj13 (talk) 18:26, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Let's also have a look at their latest canvassing on LilAhok's talk page. NmWTfs85lXusaybq (talk) 05:32, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

He is actually a separate matter. I just need a third party to review my edits. I also warn him of your activities, all of this had nothing to do with the ANI we are having. Otherwise, I would have inform him about it which I didn't.

The only editor I am wary is you because it doesn't take much to know that you are harassing me whenever I made an edit over anything Japanese related. Yaujj13 (talk) 17:32, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

When on earth will you reflect on yourself? There have been several sysops here shocked by your mass copy-pasting and POV edits of WP:UNDUE. Isn't it enough? The only reason you left the canvassing message to LilAhok is that "I think you are just a PRC nationalist and putting your own POV in the Japanese war crimes page", as you stated here. NmWTfs85lXusaybq (talk) 02:17, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Ok then, why did you continue to stalk Beyond My Ken edits and harass him back at April until a sypsop, Johnuniq stop you to prevent edit warring which you claim its not.

Then why did you delete information in the Moro rebellion which appears negative for both US and Japan which relate to the first question (harassing Beyond My Ken to accept your edits)?

You also edit topic in your Chinese Wikipedia account on Taiwan, Hong Kong and any topic related to the PRC.

You also didn't explain why my edits on the Moro people considered failed verification or why my edits on Japanese migration to Indonesia is considered NPOV.

Also stop switching the subject and answer this question, why my Moro people edit failed verfication?

They think you are decent because they didn't know the history of your edit warring back in April 2023 on the Moro rebellion.

I also never engage any edit warring with other people like Qiushufang because he warn me over a genuine mistake and has no agenda over the Sangley Massacre edit. Not with you as you had been persistent in reverting my edits and definitely have an agenda.

Also stop lying that you watch my edits from now. You watched my edits since this year and hounded me whenever I started editing any topic that connects with the Japanese. People find it hard to track your contributions when you have a bot script to do minor edits to cover up your more controversial edits.

You never explained your reverts over the talk page until I forced you to in the Jambi Sultanate talk page. I don't have a bot script to hide my real edits. Yaujj13 (talk) 09:31, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

This is one long WP:NPA violation. I strongly suggest you drop the subject, Yaujj. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 20:39, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Tell me something, in the Jambi Sultanate talk page I edit months ago: Talk:Jambi Sultanate.

Is him calling me a Han chuanavist, Chinese nationalist and me using Fandom/Wikia to imply I am stupid consider a NPA?

He accused me of Chinese bias without assuming good faith (as I stated before, the edits I done there are neutral and done by Western scholars). And I already assume good faith for him months ago.

He also insulted me for my edit contribution in Wikia/Fandom. Not only that it is off topic, the argument is not valid at all. Wikipedia and Fandom policies are similar if not near identical.

User talk:Drmies/Archive 144#Wikihounding

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:NmWTfs85lXusaybq&diff=prev&oldid=1151142165 Yaujj13 (talk) 07:08, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

@Yaujj13 please just drop this. you're just harassing a user. This looks really bad on you and I think you should cut your losses here while you still can, and not get blowback for it. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 07:21, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

This topic is unrelated to me. However, regarding opinions on harassment, in August, Yaujj13 posted on en.wikipedia.org and zh.wikipedia.org, specifically Special:diff/1170949834 and zh:Special:diff/78609398. Starting from November on zh.wikipedia.org, there have been several sockpuppet accounts like Special:CentralAuth/勾揚協成, Special:CentralAuth/ICT987, Special:CentralAuth/藍靖, Special:CentralAuth/Peter25kc, and Special:CentralAuth/杜娀郎, using Sockpuppet investigations to harass me, similar to Yaujj13. I acknowledge that the listed accounts are not Yaujj13, but Yaujj13's past actions have indeed caused me prolonged distress, adding to the challenges of harassment across different wikis. Rastinition (talk) 15:02, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I am not the only person who report a sockpuppet case on you, someone else did it first and you didn't claim you were being harassed.

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:傀儡調查/案件/Rastinition/存檔 Yaujj13 (talk) 06:22, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't think you understand the issue. Your creation of a Sockpuppet investigations for editing disputes has caused me distress. If it had only happened on en.wikipedia.org, I might not consider it harassment.

However, after en.wikipedia.org closed the case due to insufficient evidence, showing no relevance, you initiated a Sockpuppet investigations on zh.wikipedia.org. I believe this is intentional and harassing, as you were aware of the insufficient evidence from the en.wikipedia.org closure report. You chose to continue the same behavior on zh.wikipedia.org despite the lack of evidence.

Before your activity on zh.wikipedia.org, such Sockpuppet investigations were not used frequently to harass me (the last IP sock activity was 14 months ago). After your activity, more than 5 sock puppet accounts have used Sockpuppet investigations to harass me in November and December. The issue has escalated to the point where the page has been placed under protection for a period of one month.(See Protection log of zh.wikipedia.org)

It's hard for me to believe there's no cause and effect here. Rastinition (talk) 10:29, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia and Fandom policies are similar if not near identical.
@Yaujj13, It is correct that fandom is not a reliable source; see WP:FANDOM. Wikipedia is also not a reliable source; see WP:CIRCULAR. CodeTalker (talk) 17:39, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

If you have evidence you were insulted, post the diffs.

That link to the warning from Johnuniq... what relevance does that have here? — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 21:50, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

You guys are not even reading at all. You just prefer your own bias, but I will entertain you.

Here is the difference:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Jambi_Sultanate&diff=prev&oldid=1149933721

Also I didn't say I use Fandom as a source (besides there is nothing to reference from and all the citations I have are not Fandom at all). I said the Wikipedia and Fandom policies for editors are the similar which is true.

When he said about the Fandom part, he just insulted and discredit me to believe his edits. He saw my user page to validate his insults. Yaujj13 (talk) 06:21, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

I should note that NmW do hound me according to the Harrasment policy:

Wikipedia:Harassment#Hounding

"Even if the individual edits themselves are not disruptive per se, "following another user around", if done to cause distress, or if accompanied by tendentiousness, personal attacks,"

NmW indirectly confirms that he is stalking me by listing the articles back in the Jambi Sultanate talk page: "Peranakans, Chinese Filipino, Tausug people, Chinese Indonesians etc.

Even if we ignored his Japanese POV or his edits reasons are 'valid', he still harass and hounding me for months over other edits and in the talk page, cause distress with his insults. Yaujj13 (talk) 08:25, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

References

Cukrakalnis' further attempts to obscure the history of Lithuanian collaboration during WWII

On October 7 of this year, I created a report ([7]) about @Cukrakalnis' improper editing and discussion style on WP:ARE. One of the main complaints was the removal or concealment of the history of Lithuanian collaboration with Nazi Germany. Mainly through manipulating of the categories. The discussion ended with a "final warning" for Cukrakalnis. It seems that after a short break, C has returned to his practices. Recently C:

• in Juozas Ambrazevičius (diff) removed Category:Lithuanian collaborators with Nazi Germany and replaced it with Category:Lithuanian resistance members. Also in the lead changed was a war criminal responsible for the murder of Jews and Lithuanian literary historian to was a Lithuanian politician, literary scholar, pedagogue and member of anti-Nazi and anti-Soviet Resistance in Lithuania during World War II. Currently article has no mention of Ambrazevičius pro-Nazi activities
• in Petras Polekauskas (diff) he removed categories Category:Nazi war criminals and Category:Nazis who committed suicide in the United States, under the pretext given in summary Not a member of the Nazi Party, even if we agree that he wasn't a "Nazi war criminal" he certainly was a war criminal, so removing him from this category tree is improper.

As I mentioned in my first submission, I believe that TBAN should be considered on topics related to ~WW2 collaboration in Lithuania.Marcelus (talk) 20:04, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Regarding Juozas Ambrazevičius, there were no sources about him being what he was accused of being on that Wiki article: war criminal responsible for the murder of Jews. The claim without any source was added on 26 November 2023 by a user with less than 40 edits. When I looked deeper, I found on the Universal Lithuanian Encyclopedia that not only was he not a war criminal, but he was actually a member of the anti-Nazi and anti-Soviet Resistance in Lithuania during World War II as he was a contributor to the underground anti-Nazi press. Clearly, the text and the categories had to be changed because they were historically inaccurate.

Regarding Petras Polekauskas, he was not an official of the Nazi party so I was right to remove those categories. Your logic is faulty, because if he can be added to the category tree of Category:Nazi war criminals despite not being a Nazi, then he might as well be added to Category:Female war criminals‎ despite not being a female. What Marcelus is saying is nonsense. By the way, that individual is still in the Category:Lithuanian mass murderers so I'm not obscuring any history.

BTW, the "final warning" did not concern the quality of my edits but about personally directed comments (User_talk:Cukrakalnis/Archives/2023/October#AE_result).

This is not the first report made by Marcelus about me or vice versa. Other users have already noticed the numerous disagreements between Marcelus and me - see User:Prodraxis' (they had a different user name when submitting it) report Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1124#Cukrakalnis and Marcelus' history of incivility/bickering towards each other from April 2023.

It's probably also relevant that Marcelus is reporting me only a few days after his successful appeal (Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive356#Marcelus 0RR appeal (now restored more times than the House of Bourbon)) of his 0RR that he got after edit-warring with me. Cukrakalnis (talk) 20:43, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

VLT also mentions that Juozas Ambrazevičius was a member of the collaborationist Lithuanian Activist Front. The very government he headed was involved in creating anti-Semitic laws and policies. But you don't mention these things, and remove the category about collaboration. If you believe that Petras Polekauskas was not a Nazi (although this is not a requirement to be in this category) then you should move him to parent Category:War criminals. And not completely remove him from this tree. Marcelus (talk) 21:43, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

The Lithuanian Activist Front is not called collaborationist by either the ULE or in the Wiki article's lede - that is your OR. Even in the one sentence in the Wiki article where LAF directly is accused of collaboration, citations are lacking. The LAF was pretty quickly banned by the occupying Nazi authorities, its original leader was stopped by Nazi occupiers from entering Lithuania and the German government was trying its best to stop it from pursuing its goal of an independent Lithuanian state. Juozas Ambrazevičius was only an acting substitute head for ProGov whose functioning was stopped by the Nazis. You have not given any evidence about the ProGov creating anti-Semitic laws and policies, but that's a content issue to be looked at elsewhere and the administrators' noticeboard is no place for something that belongs on an article's talk page.

There was a reliable source naming Ambrazevičius as part of the anti-Nazi resistance, so I went along with the sources, as we are supposed to on Wikipedia. So, I added him to a category where his presence is supported by a reliable source and removed the person from a category for which there was no source supporting that.

You could have suggested to me about moving the person to the Category:War criminals on Talk:Petras Polekauskas. I already did that in this edit [8]. It's not a matter of belief that he was not a Nazi. It's a fact that he was not.

I have limited time on my hands and already contribute less to Wikipedia than I would like to - I have already a backlog of articles I want to create. Am I to blame for not adding something to a Wikipedia article? I have absolutely no obligation to write anything on Wikipedia, this is something I do by my own desire.

BTW, this noticeboard is not the place for content disputes. Cukrakalnis (talk) 22:47, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

You are stating an untruth: many sources describe the LAF directly as a collaborationist organization, and you know these sources because you have used them. Saulius Sužiedėlis in article Lithuanian Collaboration during the Second World War: Past Realities, Present Perceptions calls it that, you used this source Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force. Your series of edits on this subject clearly indicates a one-sided, selective, use of sources to hide the history of Lithuanian collaboration in WW2. In view of this, I believe that you should not be free to edit articles on this topic. Marcelus (talk) 00:03, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree JM (talk) 09:40, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

While this noticeboard is not the place for content discussions, inasmuch as the removal of content is being mentioned as part of a conduct issue, I'd like to point out that a quick Google search for Juozas Ambrazevičius brings up results mentioning him as "Nazi leader", "puppet prime minister installed in Lithuania during the Nazi occupation", "Mr Ambrazevicius [...] has been linked to the establishment of the Kovna ghetto to imprison Kaunas’s Jews, and to the setting up of a concentration camp" (The Jewish Chronicle); "Juozas Ambrazevicius-Brazaitis, who served as prime minister of the Lithuanian provisional government, established in Kaunas shortly after the Nazi invasion, and who enthusiastically supported the Third Reich and the systematic annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry" (Simon Wiesenthal Centre); "pro-Nazi leader", "Juozas Ambrazevicius-Brazaitis’ government helped German troops send 30,000 Jews to their deaths during WWII" (Times of Israel); "there is no doubt the LPG and Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis actively took part in creating a government policy of anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jews" (Jewish Community of Lithuania); "The Provisional Government was unquestionably inspired and headed by the Lithuanian Activist Front, whose anti-Semitic and authoritarian program is well-documented. The Government’s rhetoric, actions and cooperation with German authorities, inescapably compromise its legitimacy and moral status. As acting prime minister, Juozas Ambrazevicius-Brazaitis cannot avoid responsibility for its activities. Documents of the time show that the Provisional Government led by Ambrazavicius-Brazaitis did not distance itself from the pro-Nazi policies actively supported by Kazys Skirpa’s Lithuanian Activist Front. Moreover, the Provisional Government declared its willingness to contribute to the organization of Europe on “New Foundations” as formulated by Nazi Germany" (open letter published on The Baltic Times). Not all of these sources would be acceptable for the article (one or two should be considered primary), but I think it's far from ideal for an editor to simply remove references to collaborationism and responsibility in the Holocaust from an article on an individual that is described in those terms by multiple English-language RS that are easily accessible.

No less worrying is the fact that we're witnessing the millionth round of Marcelus vs Cukrakalnis/Cukrakalnis vs Marcelus. It is evident that you cannot work together, and that your interests overlap. I had previously suggested a 2-way IBAN but I can see you guys finding a way to make each other's lives miserable even if that were to be introduced. At this rate you're both going to end up getting blocked, sooner rather than later. Ostalgia (talk) 14:01, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't understand what would be the reason for my block. From the beginning I have been trying to do what I am doing now: remove hoaxes and attempts to distort historical truth. You can trace my edits, I avoid contact with C. In fact, I only react to his edits on the topic of collaborations, because I think they are damaging. Marcelus (talk) 14:45, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I was also confused by the idea of banning both of you for this. All I've seen is this one ANI section, and from that I get that Cukrakalnis is obscuring Lithuanian Nazism and you are trying to prevent that from happening. It wouldn't be your fault that the other person keeps doing that. JM (talk) 14:49, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

@JM2023 You should see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1124#Cukrakalnis and Marcelus' history of incivility/bickering towards each other to understand more about the situation and why there should be an IBAN between Marcelus and me - something I had suggested already in September 2022 here: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1104#User:Marcelus repeatedly breaking WP:NPA and doubling-down on it.

Juozas Ambrazevičius was by no means representative of Lithuanian Nazism but was instead a Christian Democrat. There was a Lithuanian party in 1941 that was the closest that any Lithuanian political party ever got to the Nazi Party, and that party actually tried to do a Gestapo-supported coup against the Ambrazevičius-led Provisional Goverment of Lithuania in July 1941. It is certainly a fact that Ambrazevičius contributed to underground anti-Nazi press. Clearly, he can rightfully be called a member of the anti-Nazi resistance. From my view, all I did was remove an erroneous and unsourced claim about Ambrazevičius being a war criminal when he wasn't and removing an inadequate category about him being a collaborator because of his involvement in anti-Nazi activities, meaning he was not collaborator. Regardless, content disputes about WWII do not belong here. Cukrakalnis (talk) 20:15, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Marcelus, in this case (in other cases it's you that has fallen foul of wiki policies) I am agreeing with you in that the content removal, at least in the case of Ambrazevičius, is questionable to say the least. However, I think these issues could've been resolved via talk page, but that requires an assumption of good faith - a ship that has long sailed for the both of you. When any dispute immediately escalates to the noticeboards, then that in itself becomes problematic (especially since you both work on a niche area). I am not advocating for banning either of you, nor would I want it to be the end result, but I feel at some point that's what's going to happen if no modus vivendi can be found. Ostalgia (talk) 17:15, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Well any discussion with C usually let's to nowhere if no other parties are involved. If that was a different topic I would let it slide, because it's tiresome for me to, but presenting Nazi collaborator as "resistance fighter" is a bit much. Marcelus (talk) 19:36, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

All I did was remove an unsourced claim about Juozas Ambrazevičius being a war criminal when he wasn't and removed a category contradicting something I had found in a reliable source. Removing categories about Nazis from Petras Polekauskas when he wasn't even a member of that party was also completely justified. Polekauskas is in the Category:War criminals now, so Marcelus' complaint about removing him from the category tree is moot anyways.

Whoever is reading this, this content dispute is not the core of the issue. Let these quotes speak for themselves:

You have basic deficiencies in the critical apparatus. ([9] on 19:02, 22 December 2021 ~ Marcelus writing to me)

Yes, I am going through your edits persistently because I don't trust you as an editor. ([10] on 21:30, 22 December 2021 ~ Marcelus writing to me)

This has been going on for too long already. There has been already more than two years of this with no end in sight. Just end this please with a no-fault two-way WP:IBAN that has been overdue for too long already. This is tiresome for both me and Marcelus. Cukrakalnis (talk) 20:34, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

It's interesting how you insist on two-way WP:IBAN Marcelus (talk) 22:04, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Because that's the only solution there is (which I had already realised in September 2022 and asked here). I am certain that a TBAN will not resolve us two not getting along and will only be kicking the can down the road, thus your suggestion is clearly not a solution. If you get your way and the TBAN you want to be imposed on me, considering our track record and practical experience, it's only a question of time at this point before another issue arises between us (as has been the case for more than the last two years). Cukrakalnis (talk) 22:47, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I get along with anyone just fine, including you. What troubles me is your clear inability to stay impartial when it come to history of collaboration in Lithuania, your edits are clearly attempts to hide it. With IBAN, I would not be able to report or fix edits made by you in this topic, which seems to be your goal. I am not interested in your edits in other topics, as they are outside my field of interest or I do not have the knowledge to verify their quality. Marcelus (talk) 22:56, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

There is more than enough proving otherwise. Here are some of the reports involving Marcelus and me on Wikipedia:

Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard/Archive 86#Poles in Lithuania (March 2022) [Marcelus reports Cukrakalnis]

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1103#User:Itzhak Rosenberg/User:Cukrakalnis activity (8 July 2022) [M. reports C.]

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1104#User:Marcelus repeatedly breaking WP:NPA and doubling-down on it (July 2022) [C. reports M.]

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RRArchive455#User:Cukrakalnis and User:Marcelus reported by User:Szmenderowiecki (Result: Both users pblocked for two weeks) (July 2022) [Both C. and M. reported by uninvolved user]

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1118#Disruptive editing by Marcelus (January 2023) [C. reports M.]

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RRArchive464#User:Marcelus reported by User:Cukrakalnis (Result: Both pblocked) (February 2023) [C. reports M.]

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1124#Cukrakalnis and Marcelus' history of incivility/bickering towards each other (April 2023) [Both C. and M. reported by uninvolved user]

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1139#Marcelus 1RR violation (October 2023) [M. reported by uninvolved user]

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive323#Cukrakalnis (October 2023) [M. reports C.]

This report right here in which we are currently editing (December 2023) [M. reports C.]

Marcelus has reported me to this and other noticeboards for at least four times now in less than 3 years. That does not sound to me like what he said: I get along with anyone just fine, including you.

Other links proving that the contact isn't going smoothly between Marcelus and me for a long time are the quotes from December 2021 that I mentioned above as well as these cases:

User talk:Marcelus/Archive 1#Death of Antanas Vivulskis (June 2022)

User talk:Cukrakalnis/Archives/2022/June#Jan Kazimierz Wilczyński (June 2022)

User talk:Cukrakalnis/Archives/2022/July#Rename maps (3 July 2022)

Collaboration in WW2 is not the main issue here, Marcelus has disagreed with me about everything ranging from:

• 15th-century Lithuanian princes Talk:Ivan Olshansky (March 2022)
• 19th-century Lithuanian generals Talk:Romuald Giedroyć (October 2021)
• Talk:Poles in Lithuania (March - April 2022)
• 1944 Talk:Glinciszki massacre (February 2023)
• 1990s Talk:Polish autonomy in the Vilnius Region (March 2023).
• and much more

A TBAN of me editing about Lithuania in WWII will not solve anything because it will not stop disputes between me and Marcelus. As Ostalgia has already stated: It is evident that you cannot work together, and that your interests overlap. An IBAN is the best solution here. Cukrakalnis (talk) 23:58, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

If a restriction, be it a two-way IBAN or anything else, causes information about the Nazi/collaborationist pasts of Ambrazevičius and Polekauskas to be scrubbed from their articles, said restriction would be extremely damaging to this website. Any admin considering an interaction ban between these users should give a lot of consideration to that possible outcome. City of Silver 04:04, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

If it helps in any way, I can impose a voluntary restriction on myself not to initiate discussions with or about C on all topics except Lithuanian collaboration. In fact, I have already been applying it for almost a year. I have no conviction that his edits in other areas are of adequate quality, but I believe that by virtue of the topic they are much less damaging. Marcelus (talk) 07:04, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

@City of Silver 1) Nothing from Polekauskas' article's main body was scrubbed. The only change was me removing inapplicable categories. Not all war criminals are Nazis and Polekauskas was not a member of the Nazi party. Instead of Petras Polekauskas being in Category:Nazi war criminals, he's now in Category:War criminals ([11]).

2) The only thing I removed from Juozas Ambrazevičius' article's main body was an unsourced claim about him being a war criminal [12] and added an infobox. No sources calling him a war criminal exist at all, yet he's unjustly accused of that on the current Wikipedia article no matter that. Based on a reliable source calling him a member of the anti-Nazi resistance, I changed the category from collaborator to anti-Nazi resistance member because there was reliable material supporting that.

Either way, content disputes should be addressed elsewhere than this noticeboard.

None of my edits led to information about the Nazi/collaborationist pasts of Ambrazevičius and Polekauskas to be scrubbed from their articles, that is simply not true. Cukrakalnis (talk) 14:20, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

PS: Juozas Ambrazevičius was not only not a collaborator, but among the most important leaders of the Lithuanian resistance during World War II as he headed the anti-Nazi Lithuanian Front, which succesfully sabotaged the creation of a Lithuanian Waffen-SS, among other things. Juozas Ambrazevičius was most certainly not a collaborator but in fact a leader of the anti-Nazi resistance in Lithuania during WWII. This man most certainly does not belong in the category of collaborators. Cukrakalnis (talk) 18:03, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Juozas Ambrazevičius was a member of the LAF and the Provisional Government - openly collaborative organizations. The LF is simply a continuation of the LAF formed after the Germans refused to recreate an independent Lithuania, practicing "passive resistance" against German occupation. You mention that they blocked the formation of the Lithuanian Waffen-SS, but fail to mention that they formed the Litauische Sonderverbände alongside Germany. The fact that someone undertook "passive resistance" against the Germans later does not invalidate the fact that he had previously collaborated. That's what's disturbing about your edits, that you try to leave out these dark sides.

In 2012, many prominent Lithuanian intellectuals protested his glorification. Let me quote: As acting prime minister, Juozas Ambrazevicius-Brazaitis cannot avoid responsibility for its activities. Documents of the time show that the Provisional Government led by Ambrazavicius-Brazaitis did not distance itself from the pro-Nazi policies actively supported by Kazys Skirpa’s Lithuanian Activist Front. Moreover, the Provisional Government declared its willingness to contribute to the organization of Europe on “New Foundations”as formulated by Nazi Germany. It is worth recalling that the Provisional Government identified as “enemies” even some members of Lithuania’s intelligentsia, for example, some of the faculty of Vytautas Magnus University. A government which consigned an entire class of its citizenry to discrimination and persecution, and then subsequently failed to defend it from mass killings conducted by an occupying power and those collaborating with it, cannot properly claim to be defending freedom. ([13]) Marcelus (talk) 21:21, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I have just realised that your view is that even the leaders of the Lithuanian anti-Nazi resistance, let alone its members, were all Nazi collaborators. With such a distorted view, no wonder you think that anything I write about Lithuania in WW2 is obscuring the history of Lithuanian collaboration during WWII. Cukrakalnis (talk) 14:09, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Seconding City of Silver's concern that we not allow an IBAN to be used in a way that would allow Nazi whitewashing to proceed unobstructed. It does not seem like the right response to this situation, to me. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:55, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. And given that various other related topics (especially the intersection of Poland and the Nazis) are subject to ArbCom CTOP provisions, maybe the ultimate solution here is a WP:ARCA request for a scope expansion to include Lithuania, or even include all of Eastern Europe, as they relate to the Nazis. This seems to be a situation of "We put a stop to whitewashing and related disruption about the Nazis in one country, so the PoV pushers have simply jumped ship to a neighboring country instead."  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:35, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Excellent post, @SMcCandlish. A similar trend, starting in the 2010s, could be seen in the German wiki, where it was quite cumbersome to disprove/undo such disruptions, especially since there were not enough active (and knowledgable) wiki editors/authors who could brush off the POV pushers in that particular section of (Eastern Europe's) WWII collaboration history, despite the availablity of proper German source material and publications. Some of the articles were butchered and morphed into stubs, others barely left the stub range. A lot of the arguments stem from the fact that most of the members of the LAF's Berlin branch (the LAF was formed in Berlin in 1940) consisted of Lithuanian immigrants and former Lithuanian diplomats whose political orientations had morphed from a left-leaning orientation into an anti-communist or even plain Nazi-aligned right-wing view of things, which included the wish that a strong Hitler-esque Lithuanian leader should take power, while the majority of the LAF members in Lithuanian cities kept their leftist orientation. Due to the lack of communication between those two groups, there was no ideological dialogue/discussion. The Lithuanian exile government (which fled to Germany in 1940) was informed about the German plans to invade the USSR before the invasion started. In Lithuania, underground units of the LAF collaborated with the German Abwehr, they also cooperated/coordinated with other German intelligence branches and they carried out sabotage missions for the Germans.

While it's true that the SS was rather unsuccessful in Lithuania with its attempts to find a sufficient amount of Lithuanian volunteers for their regional Waffen-SS units (only every 5th candidate agreed to go to the medical inspections) and while this is often emphasized by POV pushers, the SS still formed and deployed a number of Lithuanian paramilitary auxiliary units and police battalions, though, where some of them helped to carry out the Holocaust (being attached to the Einsatzgruppen). 12 Lithuanian police battalions (485 men) commanded by Major Antanas Impulevicius left a bloody trail in Belarus, where they burned down several dozen villages. If I am not mistaken, the "Research Center of genocide and resistance" in Vilnius agrees that his units killed more than 20,000 civilians in Belarus. The duties of the auxiliary units and police units ranged from police and security duties to actual participation in mass executions. After the Germans had pushed back the Soviets, returning (and formerly exiled) Lithuanian police officers took over key positions in the Lithuanian Sicherheitspolizei (security police), which became an integral part of the German extermination machinery in Lithuania. One should mention that there was passive and even active resistance and willingness to actively help/hide jews, as well, the Jewish Museum in Vilnius lists almost 1,000 saviors who protected and saved Jewish victims. GeeGee (talk) 16:49, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate that you have more knowledge about the topic than many here, but you do make mistakes nonetheless. I am certain that there was no Lithuanian government-in-exile, although I know there was a lot of discussion about creating that in 1940. There was no Lithuanian Waffen-SS unit, but I am aware of individual Lithuanians serving in the Latvian Waffen-SS. I'm not sure what you mean by the SS "still formed" in Lithuania, because the closest that got it was the Schutzmannschaft (auxiliary police), but I've never seen them ever be considered as SS units in any academic literature I have ever read so far. Also, there weren't twelve separate battalions led by Impulevičius, but he led only the 12th Battalion. I am also grateful that you do not deny the existence of passive resistance in Lithuania like the accuser Marcelus seemingly does. Cukrakalnis (talk) 17:49, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I wrote the post on my tablet which gives me a hard time to zoom in (to catch typos or omissions) when I enter text, so I had to deal with ultra small fonts. It should say "The 12th Lithiuanian Police Battalion", of course, since 12 Bns with 485 men (which I indicated in my reply) would just resemble skeleton units, means just 12 Bn HQs and a number of NCOs (= ~40 men) per Bn without any line units, which wasn't the case, obviously.

According to document finds in the German Federal Military Archive (BA MA : RH19/III) in the 2000s, the SS tried to form a (possibly regimental-sized) Lithuanian SS unit ("legion") in February 1944, for which 3,500 men (volunteers) had completed the medical inspections and had been rated to be fit for service (in the Waffen-SS). The documents also indicated, that those volunteers were reassigned to Wehrmacht replacment Bns (to receive infantry training and to be sent to Wehrmacht field units) instead, as the plan to raise a Lithuanian SS unit was dropped.

In turn, the Schutzmannschaften, initially formed and employed by local Wehrmachtsbefehlshaber (plural) (= WBF, commanders of the Wehrmacht's individual territorial military district administrations) as auxiliary police, were taken over, expanded and then integrated in the SS' and Ordnungspolizei's command structure by Himmler himself, making the Schutzmannschaften an integral part of the German police (OrPo) and security police (SiPo) regime in the occupied Eastern European countries. Since the Schutzmannschaften were integrated in/attached to the Ordnungspolizei/Sicherheitspolizei, they were subordinated to Himmler (via the Hauptamt of the Ordnungspolizei/General Daluege). The Hauptamt Ordnungspolizei was one of eleven SS-Hauptämter that were directly subordinated to Himmler. So, while the German Ordnungspolizei and its auxiliary units in the occupied countries weren't Waffen-SS units (and not even part of the "Allgemeine" SS = General SS) technically/officially, they were both fully controlled by the SS command structure, means by the Commander of the Ordnungspolizei General Daluege and his superior SS-Reichsführer Himmler. Himmler/the SS (via Daluege) formed and expanded a number of police Bns in Lithuania.

The Schutzmannschaften's uniform policy evolved from civilian clothing with armbands (1941) to a mix of captured Soviet and Baltic military and police uniforms and armbands with "Im Dienste der Deutschen Polizei" (=serving the German police) or "Im Dienste der Sicherheitspolizei" (=serving the security police) lettering in late 1941, to old black SS uniforms (discarded by the SS) in 1942. In April 1943, most fully established units were issued new uniforms, which were German Ordnungspolizei uniforms with localized changes (eg. different uniform collars in Ukraine and Belarus, etc.).

While there were Lithuanians who had joined the Waffen-SS ranks individually, the vast majority of Lithuanian volunteers (and draftees later on) was incorporated into the ranks of the Wehrmacht. GeeGee (talk) 19:40, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

• If Cukrakalnis had edited like this at the articles of Polish historical figures whose biographies are more or less analogous to Ambrazevičius's and Polekauskas's, they'd have been pretty quickly ushered off that topic area and possibly the whole project. (If C doesn't respond to this by yet again making the extremely disputable claim that these men weren't collaborators, it'll only because they realized that this very sentence you're reading right now is me trying to bait them into proving me right.) Accordingly, I'd support such an amendment request from User:SMcCandlish. I know this site tends not to favor preventative sanctions so I'd also support, as a second preference, a request for an amendment that simply adds Lithuania to the ArbCom decision that designated antisemitism in Poland a contentious topic.

Two things. One, the expert-level insidiousness over at German Wikipedia that User:GeeGee highlighted here is awfully foreboding. Two, we now have clear proof that the sort of editing that was stopped by making antisemitism in Poland a CTOP will be transferred by bad actors to very similar articles that aren't "in Poland," so to speak. These two things convinced me that SMcCandlish's request, even though an amendment changing the CTOP designation from "antisemitism in Poland" to "antisemitism in Eastern Europe" would be a massive scope increase, isn't particularly controversial and ought to be granted before we're back here with the same problem regarding articles about collaborators from Bulgaria, Ukraine, etc. City of Silver 22:06, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Bizzare that antisemitism itself apparently isn't a CTOP JM (talk) 22:07, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I'd support that amendment, too. City of Silver 22:55, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Indeed. Or even racism and prejudice against particular ethnicities; we also have "race and intelligence" and some other relevant areas as CTOPs. However, the size of the scope expansion would be a stumbling block, so just asking for an expansion to cover Lithuania (and then later some other country, as necessary) is probably the better strategy, until the scope has basically grown to cover most of Eastern Europe. I will say, though, that to get even that done, the evidence is going to have to be based on en.wikipedia diffs of disruptive activity, not arguments about what really happened in the 1940s or about what's going on at other wikis.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:11, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Good luck passing that, it would make a lot of editors very angry. 2603:7000:CF0:9E10:DC49:8543:2157:D09E (talk) 22:24, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Sigh. I am not convinced there is Nazi whitewashing going on here. I've been trying hard to stay out of this, but here it is again.

Marcelus simply cannot leave Cukrakalnis alone, and has an extremely strong internalized historical narrative that Poles are not antisemites/collaborators, it's those other people, the Lithuanians in this case. He will not listen any other historical narrative or look at any other than his own preferred sources. The last time I tried, he dismissed them as "French stuff", presumably because that is where I have worked, but Hoffman is an American political scientist, assuming nationality actually matters, which I question. I don't know the citizenships of the other authors I cited, because I personally don't consider that a criterion. I am not necessarily advocating the correctness of Cukrakalnis' historical narrative either, mind you; I haven't investigated it. I have tried to work on other parts of World War II where I don't have as steep a learning curve.

Cukrakalnis has really taken a lot more abuse than he should have had to, however. Is he not entitled to a civil working environment like everyone else? I don't think I know about all of it, either, because I am not specifically tracking it. I got involved in a similar post at AE and challenged Marcelus to provide even one source that said Cukrakalnis was wrong on the facts, and he did not. Is that a sign of a problem with his facts or simply his usual IDHT? You decide. He has skated a few times now, possibly once because I said I needed his help cleaning up Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, definitely twice or possibly more because he agreed to be mentored by @Piotrus:. The problem there is that Marcelus is absolutely convinced of the correctness of his facts and doesn't consult Piotrus. So that's not working.

I am I guess somewhat involved: I know all three of these editors from the article I mentioned above. I asked to be left out of this forever war because I find it distressing, but in the AE case HJ Mitchell sanctioned CukraKalnis, who is in my opinion a victim of hounding. It wasn't necessarily a *bad* decision, since Cukrakalnis lost his temper first, but every time I see this stuff on the noticeboards and look into it, the pattern is always that Cukrakalnis was minding his business in Lithuania and Marcelus came in waving Polish sources outraged about Nazi something something. And every time I try to discern the problem by attempting to restate it, he is always all you know nothing Jon Snow, because this is Poland. Which is exactly the sort of toxicity that got us the Holocaust in Poland case. Things are better in that topic area now that GizzyCatBella, who was notorious for this, has been indeffed, and I would be prepared --indeed have tried -- to let this go on behalf of someone who did indeed help make the article I was working on at least somewhat better.

But he keeps bringing wikiproceedings against an equally knowledgeable and far more collegial editor on the basis of facts that he cannot or will not explain. He just knows things, but this is wikipedia and we don't say that Trump won the last election because an editor just knows that.

Marcelus should have an i-ban against interacting with Cukrakalnis at a minimum and has absolutely no business in any article that involves Lithuania in World War II. I have hesitated to recommend a topic ban before this because it is so closely linked to Poland, but it isn't as though people haven't tried to talk to him, and the last time I tried he told me rather emphatically that he didn't want me to explain anything to him. Piotrus may have had a little more luck but sounded discouraged the last time we talked about this. I pinged him above, let's see what he says before we do anything.Elinruby (talk) 23:47, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I know this might seem like it runs afoul of the non-content-disputes-at-ANI rule but go with me on this. @Elinruby: were Petras Polekauskas and Juozas Ambrazevičius Nazis and/or Nazi collaborators? I know you said you ''haven't investigated" Cukrakalnis's stance on this but I promise, whatever your answer to this question, it'll give your message here more clarity. City of Silver 00:42, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

A little more context, not specifically about this dispute, but necessary background: Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy is one of those mentioned by Jan Grabowski, who was completely correct in what he said about the Poland section.

I managed to get that corrected by the time of the Arbcom case but was twice reverted and much vilified as I made that happen. I believe Arbcom erred in limiting the scope of the case to Poland, because among other big howling problems with the article's balance was a massive insertion of completely unsourced, and, I found, utterly unsourceable material, into sections about other countries. I could find only one reference for a certain "collaborationist" unit, which said it only ever existed on paper, for example. The references in the Jewish collaboration section failed verification across the board.

I read articles in the "Collaborators" category looking for material about countries that had only very superficial coverage, and found that approximately a third of my sample were about service members who had been tried for collaboration and acquitted. Maybe that is enough to give the flavor of the topic area. At some point one or more editors was very invested in applying a Nazi label to anything remotely connected, and removing it from others, "because the lead of the article", like that is a good reason. I will answer any questions, but meanwhile urge admins not to be too quick to call an editor antisemitic for correcting actual mischaracterizations. Quite a bit more went on in Ukraine in World War II than Stefan Bandera, to give another example, but you would never know it from some of our articles.

(ec) @City of Silver: ask Piotrus He has been exposed to the Polish version of history also, but is an honest academic who is capable of examining his beliefs. I would have to look them up and really did not have the time to do as much writing as I have just done == I have vastly overdue RL problems biting my ankles but was afraid this would come to what I am pretty sure would be the wrong outcome before I cam back. If this is still open when I so I will give you my take. Marcelus' seems to be that if someone had any interaction with the Germans, voluntarily or not, then they are a "collaborationist". (Scare quotes because I believe that's a misuse of the word, but that's a side issue.) Elinruby (talk) 01:10, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

@Elinruby: Let me be clear that I'm umimpressed with Marcelus's behavior, both in this thread and overall regarding this matter, and I won't be surprised if when the dust from this settles they get sanctioned too. The concern I'm trying to address, and it's the one that got this thread started and has been brought up over and over in it, is the possibility that accurate information was removed from those two articles because it reflects badly on those articles' subjects. This message that Ostalgia left a few days ago convinced me that that's what happened. If I'm wrong, so be it! I'll say so and take my lumps. But if I'm right, the answer to your question, "Is he not entitled to a civil working environment like everyone else", is absolutely no, they deserve nothing of the sort. City of Silver 01:27, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I suspect that you think it's self-evident, but seriously? I really can't be sure from these articles. Discussion here seems to have proceeded with that as a given, but it really isn't demonstrated in these articles unless, perhaps, you speak Lithuanian, but to do the machine translate thing I'd need to be less tired and on an OS supported by the Google Translate interface. Lithuanian is acceptable, though English is better, just not helpful at the moment.

Let's put it this way: If Polekauskas gave his trainee unit an order to massacre civilians, then he is a war criminal. Cukrakalnis, who may have heard of him before yesterday, seems to think that he is. If he spent significant time in the German military before those events, especially doing in the SS doing deportations or the like, sure, I would support Nazi, and that would make him a collaborator also. Ambrazevičius is harder. A lot depends on whether they went in expecting to be liberated from the Soviets, and the way to determine that is whether we can cite that to a respectable source. But hat was the case in quite a few other countries also; Burma comes to mind and also Ukraine and several of the principalities of what is now Yugoslavia. The LAF possibly might also be Nazis, collaborators or war criminals regardless, depending on how much authority they had and what they did with it. It seems likely that at a minimum they were bureaucratic collaborators like the government of Belgium. At the time you were pretty much either in the resistance or a collaborator, at least in the business sense. Here is a guy who was both Joseph Joanovici. Marcelus posted a bunch of accusations below that I felt the need to respond to, or I would have expanded on this by now, but I would be happy to do that later on, at my talk page or yours.Elinruby (talk) 15:52, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Already in September 1941, Juozas Brazaitis attempted to collect signatures of eminent persons in protest of the killings of Jews. Brazaitis later became the central figure in the Catholic anti-Nazi resistance. ~ "Democracy, Culture, Catholicism: Voices from Four Continents" by Michael J. Schuck, John Crowley-Buck (2015)

Accusing an anti-Nazi resistance leader of being a collaborator seems absurd to me. But that is precisely what Marcelus is doing. In a more well-known country, people would recognize how wrong this is, but because of how niche WW2 Lithuania is, people easily believe inaccuracies. I'm able to write more elsewhere to clarify things and I'll refrain from writing another text wall here in this discussion.

Regarding Petras Polekauskas, my edits were that he should be categorized as Category:War criminals instead of Category:Nazi war criminals and remove Category:Nazis who committed suicide in the United States, because he wasn't a Nazi Party member. The question of whether he was or wasn't a collaborator wasn't raised. Either way, being a Nazi is not a necessary precondition for collaboration and not all collaborators are Nazis. Cukrakalnis (talk) 16:29, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

(one foot out the door) I am in favor of accuracy. I would prefer to comment on as few editors as possible in this thread but if wikipedia editors want to call people Nazis, then the sources should reflect that. Calling someone a collaborator when a court has found them not guilty of that is a misreading of DUE and CONTEXTMATTERS, If the thread is open when I come back I will make my best attempt at a thoughtful answer to your question. It will be at least six or seven hours and maybe a full day. Elinruby (talk) 01:55, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I hope it's ok to insert a short note/example here: @Elinruby There are a few Dutch Nazi collaborators who were trialed and convicted in the Netherlands after the war, but who then fled to West Germany and were either trialed and acquitted or even never trialed in Germany. Quite a few German Nazis and civilian collaborators (various nationalities, including Germans) were trialed and found not guilty in German courts, as there were still Nazi judges or even cliques in the German judiciary, but trialed and/or found guilty decades later. Until the late 60s (or even later), many trials in West Germany failed or produced acquittals. One of the reasons was based in the political decision (early 1950s) that many of the Nazi judges had to be kept in the workforce, in order to avoid the collapse of the German judicial system (but in some cases also because of their strong anti-communist stances). With the developing Cold War, the new gov. focused on fighting communism and handling the Cold War. During the Allied denazification (until 1949), 2.5 million Germans were classified, 54% of them were classified as sympathizers/followers, but only 1.4% of them ended up to be classified as "main offenders" or "offenders", often due to the lack of incriminating documents/witnesses, or because the governments needed their expertise (eg. in newly formed army or intelligence branches). So, an acquittal does not mean that someone wasn't an offender or collaborator, respectively, it also does not mean, that an early supporter/collaborator could not have morphed into someone who actively opposed a given regime (or the other way around). GeeGee (talk) 20:37, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't quite understand what the comment is referring to regarding the courts and their sentences for collaboration. As far as Ambrazevičius is concerned, the view that he was cleared by the U.S. court is false. His case was simply closed due to his death, without any concrete decisions having been made. Besides, relying on court rulings should not be decisive for us. These courts often issued verdicts under the influence of current politics: clearing Nazi collaborators who chose to cooperate with the regime, or accusing political opponents of the regime who had nothing to do with collaboration. The decisive for us are, of course, secondary RS. Marcelus (talk) 02:45, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

@Elinruby: Once again you are directing completely unfounded accusations in my direction, wanting to show me in the worst possible light. I've already let it go by the wayside several times, but I'm not going to tolerate it any longer, as it damages my good name and reputation. In view of this, I ask that you respond:

• Can you provide any examples that I have extremely strong internalized historical narrative that Poles are not antisemites/collaborators? Please provide specific examples of my statements, edits in this spirit, etc. I find this allegation completely unfounded
• I got involved in a similar post at AE and challenged Marcelus to provide even one source that said Cukrakalnis was wrong on the facts, and he did not; this is completely untrue. My literal response to you from the last AE: Let me quote a Lithuanian researcher Justina Smalkyté: The Local Force (Litauische Sonderverbände, Vietine ̇rinktine)̇ , set up in the spring of 1944 by the Nazis, was another collaborationist military formation with a distinctively Lithuanian character, which, unlike the auxiliary police battalions, did not participate in the mass murder of Jews. You insist on using the distinction that one researcher has proposed for Vichy, and completely ignore the nomenclature used by researchers dealing with Lithuanian collaboration. And not Polish researchers, which is what a lot of people strenuously try to impute to me, that I represent "official Polish historiography," in fact I very rarely reach for Polish researchers. (link) I hope you simply forgot about this comment of mine or missed it, and not simply want to mislead those reading this.
• the pattern is always that Cukrakalnis was minding his business in Lithuania and Marcelus came in waving Polish sources outraged about Nazi something something; please name those "Polish sources" that I waved in this or any previous instances. Each time, I reach for the widest possible range of sources, not excluding, in fact, reaching primarily for texts by Lithuanian historians, on topics concerning Lithuania.
• But he keeps bringing wikiproceedings against an equally knowledgeable and far more collegial editor on the basis of facts that he cannot or will not explain; another baseless claim, in this very discussion I explained and provided sources why I think Cukrakalnis changes were disruptive.

If you are unable to substantiate any of these above accusations with diffs I will consider it an attempt at casting aspersion on your part on me. Let me just remind you, that contrary to what you claim I know all three of these editors from the article I mentioned above. I asked to be left out of this forever war because I find it distressing in fact you have been blocked from editing that page for "Personal attacks or violations of the harassment policy: Contentious topic restriction, per ANI discussions"([14]). You also received two logged warnings before for personal attacks and casting aspersion. Something very similiar to what you are doing now towards me.Marcelus (talk) 02:36, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Nice wall of text, guy. That is not what I was talking about. City of Silver asked me if these guys were Nazis AND/or collaborators. I was writing a background with some examples when they asked thatand after the edit conflict I pointed them to the background section as I ran out the door.

I think I have addressed all of the places where you said I was misrepresenting you or didn't understand the history, but if not if not let me know. Piotrus' post reminds me -- I am not sure whether I got around to telling you that a translation with the credit properly given on the talk page is not plagiarism, but if not that is another piece of ABF you are wrong about also.Elinruby (talk) 15:52, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

translation with the credit properly given on the talk page is not plagiarism, can you qoute appropiate policy or guideline? Marcelus (talk) 17:47, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Since I was pinged, I'll reply briefly, since I am somewhat busy. First, it is true that mediation is not working as Marcelus is not asking me for advice (but arguably neither is Cukrakalnis, who IMHO needs a mentor as well, and perhaps even more, considering their block history - and IIRC didn't they had another account before?). Second, I am not familiar much with most of the current disputes between Marcelus and Cukrakalnis, but I am reasonably familiar with the general topic area (Polish-Lithuanian WWII relations and histories of both countries in WWII), and I am also familiar with the respective historigraphies. Further, I am familiar with Wikipedia history here, which in the past has seen what I'd consider significant POV pushing from both sides, and yes, with Lithuanian narrative related to minimizing the scope of collaboration with the Nazis (similar to the better known Ukrainian stance; similar issues also exist in the Polish historiography...). From my limited interactions with Cukrakalnis I got the impression that they are partial towards the nationalist Lithuanian historiography (which I think is also more or less the mainstream Lithuanian historiography, like Ukrainian but unlike Polish, where I think there is more of a debate between two sides). Anyway, I agree with those who say that an interaction ban or sanction on Marcelus could result in promoting of non-neutral version of history (which some refer to above as "Nazi whitewashing", although that term is soemwhat loaded, to say the least). However, I have not conducted a review of Cukrakalnis' editing to have an opinion right now on whether any sanction is warranted. Whether this is handled by ANI, AE or bumped to ArbCom, I do think something needs to be done, as those two editors keep locking horns. Perhaps topic banning them both from Lithuanian history would solve this for now in terms of giving us peace and quiet, but I am not sure if it would be fair to either party, as it is possible one editor here is trying to make content more neutral, and another, less. But again, I have not reviewed this in detail, and my views might be colored by my past experienced and background (disclaimer: I am Polish). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:46, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry I didn't address you first on this issue. My understanding of mentorship was that it mainly concerns the issue of reverts, avoiding edit wars. Since I explicitly rejected the possibility of making reverts in this case, and instead reporting on the appropriate noticeboard, due to the sensitivity of the subject matter, I felt that mentorship was not necessary in this. Marcelus (talk) 17:43, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

We are here because Marcelus has an issue with Cukrakalnis removing war criminal responsible for the murder of Jews as a characterizatotion from the lede of an article where the claim is not only uncited but appears nowhere in the body. (is there a way to check whether we know the IP who put the uncited text there November 28?}

• Yet you are lecturing me about RS as a result of misunderstanding something I said to someone else, while accusing me of mischaracterizing your editing. Let me spell it out: The articles just don't say almost anything of the kind. The removal was completely in line with policy and the article as it now stands. If you feel this strongly that he was a war criminal, then provide some sources that support adding that, or just add the text and source yourself.
  • By the way, that talk page hasn't been edited in eight years. I get that usually there is only Cukrakalnis, but have you considers DRN or NPOV or RSN?
• Speaking of a source, it seems that Petras Polekauskas was the commander of the 258th Lithuanian Police Battalion, the subject of the AE case I described above, brought to AE by you because you wanted the infobox to say that the unit's allegiance was to Germany.
  • I asked you to source this and you did not.
  • 258th Lithuanian Police Battalion still does not have a source for this, or any new sources either for that matter.
  • Talk:Petras Pauskas has not been edited in a couple of months
• This personification of deja vu all over again comes not even two weeks after you were warned about RECIDIVISM in the close of your November 28th appeal, WP:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive356#Marcelus_0RR_appeal_(now_restored_more_times_than_the_House_of_Bourbon)
  • I still don't understand why this is so important to you. The 258th existed for three months.
• I wasn't going to mention the above bit of irony, since I think we aren't supposed to bludgeon people with their block logs, and yours would fell an elephant. You really want to cast aspersions about mine? But since you bring up sanctions in your screed above...I can't even find the one care where you talked yourself into your first 0RR
  • I mention that sanction simply because actually, I agree that in that case that user was badgering you. I got the interaction ban (not warning) because the editor told an admin that I was stalking and harassing them, and the admin didn't bother to check ah interaction report, because of course anyone defending you must in fact really be hounding people.
  • You really should include that part if you are going to keep bringing this up. I pinged you from her page and you thanked me for saying something, sp presumably you know this, and if not, you do know it now. It's on the admin's talk page, go look. I'll get to the other stuff you were trying to deflect with below, because really, block logs are not the point here, yours or mine.
• Yet you are convinced enough of the correctness of your thinking to put up a huge blockquote of a passing mention of "auxiliary police battalions", apparently that long to also support "collaborationist". Try again. A source with at least a paragraph or two about this specific unit.
  • I don't "insist" that you are wrong to use that word. I said parenthetically that I thought you were misusing the word, and moved on. Speaking of misrepresentation. It is, as I said above, a side issue.
  • But since you've doubled down on this, no. No, it is not "used in Lithuanian sources". I mean, good job finding one that does, because I have actually done several literature searches since then specifically on this point, and I know how hard you would have had to look. I did find one other useage about China once, where it was more or less used correct in a metaphorical sense, but mmmyeah, these facts just don't match even if you cite that the unit did collaborate.
• I am unconvinced, but a source would go a long way towards convincing me that they did. I'm under the impression that they didn't exist as a unit long enough to get out of training, though. I mean, a source. It's not an unreasonable request.
  • Nobody, neither I nor Cukrakalnis, is saying that none of the police unite were involved in the killing; I said that the last time we had one of these happy lrttle chats. The 12th and 13th battalions were for sure, I gather. Assuming that this is your basis for the Nazi label you are trying to apply to its commander. Just source it. Let's see. what else?
• "forever war" was a reference to you and Cukrakalnis on noticeboards. We never did have an edit war at Talk:Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The page block you mentioned? With the baffling rationale? **Tuff to say, but that admin later indeffed herself, so who knows.
  • The original complaint was that I was talking on the talk page and asking the opinions of other editors. Isn't wikipedia fun?
  • What he told her was that I "making everything about him". It did yes, become about him when he interrupted dicussions tp object to talk on the talk page for the umpteenth time, which we'd been ignoring for months, shrug...
  • Apparently she thought I was preventing him from editing, but that editor doesn't edit. Tumbleweeds over there ever since.
  • I had previously gotten a logged warning for trying to report the same editor for the same behaviour, although I did go about that the wrong way wrong at that time, so that one makes a lot more sense. I guess there is a limited menu of block rationales on the software? And "annoying" is not an option?
• that allegation you feel is unfounded? Hey, given the above I am sympathetic. What *is* your basis for a thinking you are right about these pages?
• I have not investigated why these pages are the way the are, but *somebody* needs to fix them. Many many sources exist in English, despite the claims of the parties. I am going to add the list I compiled last night to the bibliography; nowhere near exhaustive, but maybe it will help with that.
  • Provisional Government of Lithuania is apparently the basis for calling Juozas Ambrazevičius a collaborator, although you can't tell that from our article about him. It is a sea of citation needed.
  • The sparse English-language sources don't begin to approach the standard I am used to, something to keep in mind for those who want to add Lithuanania to the Arbcom decision.
  • I support this proposal, by the way, because it would cut down on all the unsourced "whitewashing Nazis" stuff that goes on. Do Ukraine also please,because it needs it even worse, and people are gettimg killed there over this.

Actually I guess the proposal was anti-semitism. I am not against that necessarily, though I am unsure about the logistics of that. I think it should be Naziism.

• please name those "Polish sources" that I waved in this or any previous instances. Each time, I reach for the widest possible range of sources, not excluding, in fact, reaching primarily for texts by Lithuanian historians, on topics concerning Lithuania. -- Actually I was being polite. I am not seeing evidence of sources, except for for the one that isn't RS on the off-topic rant about collaborationist. You claim you provide sources, but you don't. Oh and I found another, probably primary or if not kinda sketchy and maybe not RS. That open letter did happen though I think, so all you need there is a better source

It's late, I am tired. If I missed one of the aspersions about the aspersions you think I am casting Marcelus, please ping me and I will address tomorrow. Elinruby (talk) 15:52, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't know if it's just me, but in my opinion your statement is completely incomprehensible. It looks more like something like a stream of consciousness than an answer to fairly simple questions.

From what I am able to understand, you are incapable of supporting with any examples or diffs any of the accusations made against me. What's more, you yourself undermine them, admitting that I use sources and not exclusively Polish ones. But of course suddenly "facts just don't match even if you cite that the unit did collaborate".

From what I am able to understand. You are making new allegations such as you wanted the infobox to say that the unit's allegiance was to Germany. I asked you to source this and you did not. This is patently untrue as anyone who reads the discussion page of the Talk:258th Lithuanian Police Battalion article will know. There you can find my comments in which I cite sources supporting the proposed changes.

What's more, in this discussion you deleted my comments ([15], [16]). Which in itself is a violation of Wikipedia's rules. Moreover, you did this knowing that I have 0RR, so it is legitimate to assume that you did this to incite me to break the restrictions imposed on me.

In view of all the above facts, I ask you to voluntarily stop interacting with me, engaging in discussion started by me etc. Your attitude towards me, the way you address me (even in this discussion "Nice wall of text, guy"), the number of untruths you spread towards about me I consider at this point a form of bullying and harassment.

If you do not declare such a will I will be forced to ask the administrators to impose such a restriction.

I would appreciate other participants in the discussion to take a stand. Marcelus (talk) 18:08, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

• Comment - this discussion has reached a point in which its absolute unwieldiness, incoherence and antagonistic character virtually guarantees that no administration will touch it with a 10 foot pole, and even if they do, it's likely that no decision will be taken, because nobody is going to go through the effort of reading through this mess. Whatever merit was to Marcelus's complaint (and I believe there may be some), to Cukrakalnis's attempts to present his case, and to the attempts to amend current regulations on editing in this area, it is all now obscured by a series of ramblings and counter-ramblings. Given the fact that the discussion involves a group of experienced editors, it is particularly unfortunate and disappointing that this has been the outcome. On the very slim chance that an admin does decide to go through the mud looking for the gold nuggets that may or may not be found here, may I propose everyone take a break, calm down, and stop clogging this section? Personal comments and one-on-one discussions can be continued in the talk page(s) of each user (s). Ostalgia (talk) 20:20, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

  I think the best resolution is the one suggested earlier, to expand CTOP to include Lithuania. Then any further violations can be dealt with swiftly. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 20:57, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

  For my part, you can consider that the conversation with @Elinruby is over. I don't intend to continue it here or anywhere other than my reporting them for WP:NOPA, WP:BULLY and WP:ASPERSIONS. Certain level was reached. Marcelus (talk) 21:01, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

• @HandThatFeeds: I was actually considering a Village Pump post about that, except that I think it should be Eastern Europe, and should specifically mention a boomerang for this kind of baseless complaint. Can we discuss that on your talk page maybe? I said Naziism above but that might be as hard to demonstrate as anti-semitism, come to think of it.
• @Ostalgia: you are at ANI saying there is some basis for a claim of antisemitism. I suggest you provide some evidence or withdraw that
• @Marcelus: Just provide a source and use a talk page when you want someone to make a change. I am ignoring the new raft of misrepresentations and accusations in the interest of focus, but really?

All of this is because you can't or won't provide a source. Calling it "bullying" to ask for a source is just as disingenous as the rest of this thread. Just. Source. Your. Assertions. Elinruby (talk) 21:36, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

@Elinruby, you don't need to "suggest" anything. Days before you joined the discussion here I had already posted this comment. In fact, this diff (correctly attributed to me) has also been cited in reply to you. I was willing to be sympathetic in spite of your hot tempered outbursts because I knew you had previous history with Marcelus, but you really, really need to step back, calm down, and especially drop the inquisitorial tone when you are the one seemingly not paying attention to the discussion. Cheers. Ostalgia (talk) 22:02, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Cheers to you. I am not even slightly upset and don't have a history with Marcelus apart from asking HJ Mitchell not to topic ban him.[17] It's true I came into the discussion late, but not all of us hang out on the drama boards, and I am here because a bunch of editors are discussing sanctions for an editor followed policy. It seems you got that far into the thread without noticing that. Now if you want to say I just have a grudge against Marcelus, where is your evidence of that? Elinruby (talk) 22:44, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

You posted a rambling, hard to follow 10k comment where half the links are red because of typos - you'll excuse me for thinking that you may need to calm down. If you actually paid attention to what I wrote in the comment that prompted you to ping me, you would also have noticed that I pointed out how this mud slinging contest also obscured Cukrakalnis's attempts to defend himself, to which he is entitled, and if you had read what I originally posted, I also a) pointed to the fact of Marcelus and Cukrakalnis being involved in a long-running dispute as being at least as worrying as the issue being reported, b) didn't advocate for sanctions for Cukrakalnis at that point, although I found his behaviour to be sub-par, and c) suggested that this was going to end up with both editors being blocked for their bickering, which I wouldn't like to see. Finally, if I wanted to say that you have a grudge against Marcelus, I would have said that you have a grudge against Marcelus. Instead, what I said is that you have history with Marcelus, because a couple of months ago I participated in a discussion at AE involving these two in which you too participated, and you had direct exchanges with Marcelus. Again, drop the inquisitorial tone, particularly if you're not even going to pay attention to what's being said. At this point your entire contribution has constituted of casting aspersions, asking needlessly aggressive questions, and bludgeoning the discussion while ignoring what is being said. Consider this my final reply to you here, as this contributing to your derailing of whatever was being discussed. You can write on my talk page if you want. Cheers. Ostalgia (talk) 23:13, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I may do that, because I'd actually like some input from you on the proposal to widen the Arbcom case to WW2 Eastern Europe in general. Since (someone correct me if I am wrong) only Cukrakalnis works on WW2 Lithuania, it would be silly to limit any expansion to that country when other countries also badly need it. Ukraine, Yugoslavia and Serbia come to mind. And while I know that you and I were generally on opposing sides in the war crimes area of the Ukraine war, I think you'll agree that sourcing requirements could only help with the huge amount of misinformation in the topic area.

I have posted a list of suggested sources on the talk pages of each article by the way, if anyone is interested in doing something constructive about these two articles.

Meanwhile you've added a whole other list of aspersions against me for me to ignore. Thanks for that. It started out as not a bad answer then degenerated into a bunch of adjectives. And no doubt any refutation will be as rambling as the aspersions. I don't think I should be quiet, actually. because the last time I did that and just took care of RL, Cukrakalnis got a final warning for expressing his exasperation. I also don't think you should be the one to manage this thread.

I do agree with you that I was quite scathing at the AE case and bitterly disappointed to discover that an editor I respected and whose help I had actually solicited was making accusations he could not or would not substantiate and that this had been going on the whole time I was writing it off as "those guys" who can't agree on the WW2 history up there". But that is not my history with Marcelus anymore than Gitz vs Volunteer Marek is your history with me. I'll note in passing that Marcelus' account of those events differs considerably from mine, and cough contains some errors. But I am over that and quite calm in my assessment that he is not able to be neutral about Lithuania, since here he is again, doubling down on the same thing.

I don't think I did say that you personally accused Cukrakalnis of antisemitism, but the accusations at the top of the thread imply it and the discussion clearly uncritically accepted it. Oh and if somebody wants to discuss my typing at ANI, then maybe they should start a separate case for that. If that's a ridiculous suggestion, then maybe it demonstrates the folly of drawing conclusions from it about my state of mind. FYI I have some ongoing hardware issues that I normally correct for; on rare occasions this fails when I am pushing my physical limitations. I spent too much time on this issue the other night, it's true, but I submit that some of the people in this thread didn't spend anywhere near enough before they came to their conclusions.

Short and sweet here it is: the text Cukrakalnis removed from the lede does not reflect any content in the body of the article.Elinruby (talk) 16:51, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Given that Elinruby decided to continue posting here and removed my talk page attempt to get him to rectify, I am forced to post here to clarify that I have not once, ever, edited in the "war crimes area of the Ukraine war", so I cannot conceivably have been on "opposite sides" to Elinruby in any discussion there, I have not edited the page on Bucha either (which he suggests I did), and I have no idea of what is meant by "Gitz vs Volunteer Marek is your history with me". Elinruby is either being blatantly dishonest or, at best, very confused. (Edit: This interaction report shows how divorced from reality Elinruby's claims are) Ostalgia (talk) 18:31, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

PS: I would appreciate it if someone gave this thread a more neutral title, since in all of these words no evidence has been provided that this was at any point what he was doing. Then this mess should in my opinion be allowed to die a natural death, if not nuked from orbit for all of its personal aspersions.

PPS: As promised I left my best attempt at a neutral assessment of the article and its content on City of Silver's talk page, if anyone is interested in that Elinruby (talk) 17:07, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Content dispute at Fuzzball (string theory)

User:Greg L has done a lot of work on this article over the past 4 months. Some of this was undoubtably necessary: the old version had no inline citations at all. Unfortunately, GregL's updated version is an extremely long and unfocused exposition, mostly consisting of detailed information on related subjects that already have their own articles; it also contains a 'notes' section full of extremely lengthy asides, and embedded images of slinkies, barbecues and CIE colour standards that have no relevance to the article whatsoever. I initially removed a pronunciation guide to "Chandrasekhar" which I felt was cluttering the article; I was immediately reverted by GregL, and when I put my changes back in and explained my reasoning on the talk page, his response was defensive and dismissive. I found this puzzling enough that I reviewed the article and its history and realised that it had become extremely bloated, was not functioning well as an encyclopaedia article and stated on the talk page that I intended to review it to remove the large amount of redundant and off-topic material.

At this point GregL's behaviour became erratic, accusing me of bad faith based on an edit from 13 years ago before blanking the talk page section, restoring it, then blanking it again, and finally rolling the fuzzball article back to its 'old' state as of the beginning of August, before his recent editing efforts. This lasted for nearly two days, when he restored his newer, lengthy version. The comments on these two edits are difficult to square with them being bulk reverts of the page to earlier versions; GregL seems to have admitted that this was a deliberate ploy to get rid of me.

I started trying to edit the long version of the article down into something more closely focused on the article's subject matter, but I gave up on that when I deleted a single irrelevant footnote that knocked off a seventh of the total page length. There just isn't enough connective tissue left around the relevant information. I rolled back to the older, short version of the article, because it's flawed but is at least mostly about fuzzballs; my plan is to edit that version of the article up to standard using appropriate material and citations from GregL's long version.

I made a start on this but GregL continued to accuse me of vandalism, and my edits were then reverted by User:MLee1957, an account which was created 2 days ago, half an hour after GregL's rollback to the older version of the article, and which has done nothing else but get immediately involved in this dispute. It is hard to believe that this is an uninterested third party. GregL, for his part, is claiming that this establishes 'consensus' that my edits are malicious vandalism and that all criticism of his article can be dismissed.

I realise that this has been a fairly rambling recap; what I'd really like is to get a neutral party involved to arbitrate this dispute, because it's clearly not going to get sorted out with a polite conversation on the talk page. Phantom Hoover (talk) 21:55, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Have you considered using WP:DRN? Mach61 (talk) 22:21, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Oh, I defaulted to ANI because GregL repeatedly threatened to report me for vandalism here. I didn't know about DRN, but it seems like it's basically opt-in for the parties involved in the dispute, and GregL's behaviour towards me has been well beyond polite disagreement. If he's willing to agree to a dispute resolution process we can take it to DRN, but at this stage he's just stonewalling me by accusing me of vandalism and using meatpuppetry to manufacture consensus in his favour; it's really a situation that needs direct moderation. Phantom Hoover (talk) 22:41, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Note: I've created a new SPI: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Greg L. Woodroar (talk) 23:35, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Woodroar; it will be nice to clear up uncertainties about sockpuppetry. I’ve never cheated on Wikipedia and detest editors who use sockpuppets, having once been swept up in loads of wikidrama because a male physiology student created a faux female-persona sockpuppet called “Sapphic” that he operated exclusively from his university computer. That all wouldn’t have been discovered except for a keen-eyed admin.

Oh… and that sockpuppet page showed a photo of the “Sapphic” and told of how she loved yoga and pilates. It was clever clever work. Between the puppet master and the sockpuppet, the physiology student had a huge group of us tied up for weeks and weeks. Cheaters create a lot of wikidrama and waste a lot of everyone’s time. Greg L (talk) 01:04, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

The SPI was closed as Unrelated, btw. My apologies to Greg L and MLee1957 for the suspicion. Woodroar (talk) 14:17, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

• This seems like a content dispute. jp×g🗯️ 11:15, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

  Well, like I said to Mach61, Greg L’s extremely hostile response to editing of the article, including weird deceptive editing patterns, baseless accusations of vandalism and apparent meatpuppeting to manufacture a ‘consensus’, seem like intractable behavioural problems from where I’m standing. But I’d be happy to reopen this issue somewhere like DRN that’s more suitable for content disputes, so long as Greg L engages in the process in good faith rather than reverting any changes that remove his content. Otherwise we’ll end up right back here after wasting everyone’s time. Phantom Hoover (talk) 12:18, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

  Well, yes and no. It began as a content dispute, true, but Talk:Fuzzball (string theory) shows several behavioral issues in the form of personal attacks and issues with ownership by Greg L. Now some of that is understandable, as he's been expanding the article for several months and it's difficult to see that work reverted. But where Phantom Hoover has brought up legitimate issues, Greg L essentially dismisses them after reverting. At Talk:Fuzzball (string theory)#Pronunciation of Chandrasekhar, Phantom Hoover cites the MOS for using IPA pronunciation while Greg L insists on using his own pronunciation system. At Talk:Fuzzball (string theory)#Vandalism and Talk:Fuzzball (string theory)#Evidence of intent of vandalism, Greg L resorts to personal attacks (calling Phantom Hoover's edits "vandalism") and stonewalling by threatening multiple times to go to ANI. Well, here we are, at ANI.

  The content dispute of this issue should probably move on to WP:3O or WP:DRN or even an WP:RFC, yes. Or perhaps Phantom Hoover and Greg L could have a substantive discussion on the merits of their versions. But that's not going to happen if Greg L runs roughshod over legitimate concerns and resorts to personal attacks and threats. Woodroar (talk) 14:32, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

  He's being bizarre above as well, talking about "cheaters" and "sockpuppets" wasting people's time. JM (talk) 16:42, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

  There's certainly a content dispute, but I think the concern here is that Greg L is not engaging at all with the content issues raised by other editors. The article he has produced is clearly well outside the norms for a Wikipedia article, containing numerous lengthy hidden comments which he calls "EDITORS NOTES" often signed with his username, instructing other editors to ignore reliable sources in preference to what he has written (1 2) and to leave their idiosyncratic style in place, sometimes in violation of the MOS (2, 1).

  The visible part of the article is, as Phantom Hoover noted, extremely verbose and essay-like, with a Notes section nearly as long as the rest of the article, and PH's edits are clearly an improvement. Greg L's responses to legitimate concerns has been to dismiss them and call other editors' changes "vandalism". Greg L has also bragged about conducting original research by directly contacting Dr. Mathur, both on the talk page and even here in this thread above. Last August when I raised the issue that the article had only two references, Greg L bizarrely responded "But given the abysmal quality of secondary sources on such an abstruse subject, I suggest that you elicit the assistance of an expert in the field to ensure you are properly interpreting what you read… or, failing that, contact Dr. Mathur yourself". (To be fair, he has improved the referencing since then but this comment shows a clear misunderstanding of policy.) He has also just in the last couple of days twice tried to shut down discussion of his nonstandard pronunciation guide, by simply removing (not archiving) the section from the talk page, calling it "unproductive" (1 2). CodeTalker (talk) 18:02, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, this is ... interesting. Greg L says that Phantom Hoover should settle down and lose interest in vandalism and violations of WP:POINT, while admitting to disrupting Wikipedia to make a point [18]. I'm trying to remember the last time I'd ever seen an editor deliberately change an article to a state they admit to thinking is worse just to win a wiki-dispute, and I can't think of one. There's definitely a conduct issue here. XOR'easter (talk) 18:15, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

• Passerby comment / suggestion. I can't assess the accuracy of Greg L's changes here, but I can say that it does seem pretty clear that it's not really in "Wikipedia style", which aims to be more of an encyclopedic summary than a popular science textbook. If the content is accurate but merely not house style, maybe Greg L's version of the page might be more appropriate for Wikibooks, and be put at Wikibooks:String_Theory/Fuzzballs or the like? Then linked to in External Links with Template:Wikibooks inline. And then Phantom Hoover's less "chatty" version used / kept for the Wikipedia article. Just a thought for a potential compromise. SnowFire (talk) 22:20, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

@SnowFire: That is a very interesting suggestion, SnowFire; thank you very much for that. I never heard of Wikibooks. Would you mind going to my talk page and educate me about it? You may use the “email this user” feature if you feel more comfortable with that. Greg L (talk) 02:56, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I guess this is resolved then. If it continues, it is likely that Greg L will be subject to a WP:PBAN from the affected article. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 18:26, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Response

The petitioner, Phantom Hoover, is not trying to improve the project; just annoy another editor (me) with whom he/she had a minor argument over and is now creating large amounts of wikidrama by deleting month’s-worth of work to exact revenge by reverting an article back to when it was an un-cited stub.

Now the petitioner is slinging as much mud at the wall as he/she can in hopes something will stick. This is a clear-cut case of someone trying to stir the pot and who is willing to ruin the project while doing so.

The kerfuffle started with this simple dispute over providing a parenthetical on pronouncing “Chandrasekhar”.

I’ve toiled for much of the year on the Fuzzball (string theory) article to give the subject matter a sound and encyclopedic treatment, even going so far as to regularly correspond with Dr. Mathur (who wrote the original scientific papers on which the article is based) as well as other Ph.D.s to ensure what is there on the article is correct.

The end result of the above mentioned effort was THIS version of the article, which has 31 carefully done citations and is salted with enjoyable and illuminating illustrations and animations.

What the petitioner did was was to roll the article back to this version from August, which was just a stub, had no citations, and rightfully had a tag flagging the fact that it needed more citations. All the petitioner did was make these minor changes to the lead to make it appear that he was ‘working’ on the article in earnest.

Note that the petitioner has a history (contributions) of only sporadically editing on Wikipedia and when the petitioner finally does edit, they are largely to remove content… not add anything. And the deletions are accompanied by edit comments like “Because it's part of the proof, you dolt.”)

Rolling an article back to when it was an un-cited stub is a clear combination of Wikipedia:Vandalism (On Wikipedia, vandalism has a very specific meaning: editing (or other behavior) deliberately intended to obstruct or defeat the project's purpose, which is to create a free encyclopedia, in a variety of languages, presenting the sum of all human knowledge) and Wikipedia:Disruptive editing.

As for the other editor who jumped in (User:MLee1957), he/she doubtlessly responded to my request for advise on Talk:Neutron star. MLee1957 chose to respond and the petitioner doesn’t like that MLee1957 had the expected take on the matter (agreeing that the petitioner is editing to be disruptive but advising that the matter doesn't need to go to ANI, here). I did not solicit help from MLee1957 directly and had no choice in who might respond to my request for comment. The fact that he/she has “Lee” in the user name and my name ends with “L” is pure coincidence; my last name is not Lee.

Update I must hand it to Phantom Hoover, he is bold even though there is an ANI open on this. He made a rapid-fire series of edits (∆ edit here), resulting in 53% of the article being deleted (from 107,909 kB to 50,900 kB). Greg L (talk) 05:30, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

(The fact that 53% of the article can be deleted without removing any information about fuzzballs is, in fact, the core problem.) Phantom Hoover (talk) 08:50, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Proposed resolution

Given tha the petitioner seldom edits on Wikipedia, and when he/she does so, the edits tend to be nothing but deletions accompanied by uncivil edit comments, and especially given that the current edits on Fuzzball (string theory) are egregious ones where the “edits” amount to merely reverting the article back to a state where it was a poor stub with zero citations and had a “lack of citations” tag a top, I think it reasonable to expect the petitioner to go find something else to do on the project.

Greg L (talk) 23:06, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Snowball (retract) my proposal. An above proposal from SnowFire, posted at 22:20, 4 December 2023 (UTC), is an interesting suggestion. Greg L (talk) 03:14, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose this resolution. It's clear that Phantom Hoover has expressed legitimate concerns—for example, at Talk:Fuzzball (string theory)#Pronunciation of Chandrasekhar—and you've brushed them off. You boldly expanded the article and Phantom Hoover reverted you, so now you're at the discuss phase of WP:BRD. The onus is on you to build consensus for including the disputed content. Woodroar (talk) 14:44, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose Editing sporadically isn't a crime. Nor is mostly removing text rather than adding it. Rolling back cited content to an uncited stub may be unusual, but it is not automatically vandalism, per the very definition quoted above. Honestly, this proposed "resolution" is giving me "rules for thee but not for me" vibes, which is a shame, because the article needed improvement and if everyone could dial down the emotional temperature a few notches they could probably make that happen. XOR'easter (talk) 18:21, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

• Boomerang back at Greg L. This proposal seems to be vindictive, rather than in the spirit of improving the encyclopedia. Greg L's own statements betray a desire to cram the article full of whatever he personally feels is relevant, despite reasonable objections from others. The attempt to complain about Phantom Hoover "only" removing content strikes me as an old Inclusionist/Deletionist argument, not suited to modern Wikipedia.

— The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:56, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

How would it be a boomerang if Greg isn't the original filer? jp×g🗯️ 19:51, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I didn’t propose a resolution, he did. Phantom Hoover (talk) 20:11, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Eh, maybe not the best use of Boomerang, but it's a subsection where Greg L is proposing this all go away. I think instead, it reflects poorly on Greg L and enhances the call for sanctions. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 20:59, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. I'm asking sincerely, @Greg L: in the 17.5 years you've been here, have you really not once encountered WP:AGF? I know it's merely a guideline but anyone who doesn't comply with it is guaranteed to be violating policy. Your message is a textbook failure to assume good faith on the part of another editor, one who is clearly here to try to do good, and it would have a newer user in immediate danger of a block. City of Silver 01:20, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

To answer your question, City of Silver, yes, I have. Many times. Greg L (talk) 02:48, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

@Greg L: So if you knew your message was really, really noncompliant with AGF, why did you write it? City of Silver 03:06, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Other proposed resolution

I'm not involved in this conflict, but after taking a good look, I can deduce 3 things: This is the first issue Greg L. has had like this, the first time they've had an issue with this user, and the first issue that's brought them here. A lot of firsts, which leads me to believe that we should apply some forgiveness here. Obviously, that's not to say Greg isn't at fault, he definitely isn't acting civil or assuming good faith, but I don't think a major-scale ban is needed.

So, here's what I'm thinking might be the best answer (especially after seeing their try at a proposal)

- 1-week 1-way interaction ban where Greg can't interact with Phantom, but not the other way around. (Reason: Phantom, for the most part, looks to have tried to reason with Greg, but Greg disregarded Phantom when the latter tried to improve the article instead of discussing with them. Because Greg hasn't done this with any other users, the issue might be interacting with Phantom in specific.)

- Stern reminder to Greg to assume good faith. (Reason: Instead of hearing Phantom out with the edits he made with good intent, Greg tried to preserve the article the way he made it, maybe because he assumed bad faith on Phantom and thought Phantom was trying to make the article worse.)

This is my first proposal like this, so it might not be the best for this situation. I just feel like this might work the best. Thoughts ? 𝘾𝙤𝙤𝙡𝙢𝙖𝙣2917 (talkpage) 13:39, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Third proposed resolution

Close the incident and move on, Greg L's retraction of his proposed resolution and his engagement with SnowFire's WikiBooks proposal indicate that he realises there's a consensus against him, and he's stopped edit warring on the fuzzball article. The content dispute is de facto resolved at this point and I think the immediate conduct issues are also likely put to rest. Phantom Hoover (talk) 15:51, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I did kind of feel like the issue was a little too much for any bans, but Greg's comments/actions just came off as too extreme for a first offense like this, to me. Though if you want to close it (as you are the same person who opened it), I could strike the proposal. 𝘾𝙤𝙤𝙡𝙢𝙖𝙣2917 (talkpage) 18:52, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I think the interaction ban is unnecessary but I can see the point of a formal censure, rather than brushing potential patterns of bad behaviour under the rug. Phantom Hoover (talk) 19:32, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Swalors

Swalors (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) @Swalors has disruptive and edit-warred in articles Gayur-khan and Simsim despite my requests to stop. He has removed WP:COMMONNAME supported by number of WP:RS (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 - here he also added AI image that he presented as the image of Gayur-khan, 6, 7) renamed the article without discussing (1). I recommended the user to use talk page to explain his concerns there but he instead continued on edit warring despite his edits being reverted by me and another user (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). PS: This is my 3rd time making a report, the last 2 times my reports were archived because there wasn't any replies. Admin attention would be greatly appreciated. -- WikiEditor1234567123 (talk) 17:50, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Whether or not Swalors is doing good isn't the point. Their changes have come under question and Swalors has not responded to any concerns. They're aware of these concerns because they've reacted twice to ANI notifications, once by responding "Ha?" and once by just removing the note with no explanation. An indefinite partial block from articlespace is in order, one that should be reversed as soon as this user begins substantially explaining these contentious changes. (Although per this and edit summaries like "Made it much better", it's possible a sidewide indef per WP:CIR is in order.) @Schazjmd and Materialscientist: you've both reverted large edits from this user so this matter could very much benefit from your input. City of Silver 01:04, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

The user replied to the 2nd report of mine with an Chechen/Ingush sentence which translates as "don't cry" instead of addressing my points. WikiEditor1234567123 (talk) 06:36, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Since creating their account in April, Swalors has had a significant number of their edits directly reverted,[19] and has never engaged on any article or user talk page. I think the combination of contentious edits, long-term edit-warring, and failure to communicate might best be addressed with an article-space block to compel them to engage on article talk pages and get consensus on the article changes that they think are needed. Schazjmd (talk) 14:32, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

What are you talking about why are you lying? Swalors (talk) 03:10, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Since I doubt Schazjmd is about to confess to lying and proclaim that this editor has been right and good all along, I think we've seen enough. It took a lot of work on the part of User:WikiEditor1234567123 to get to this point and the best way to acknowledge those good efforts is an indefinite block of Swalors. City of Silver 23:03, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Strangely enough, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Maida of Aukh may be relevant here. The reported editor appears to be adding material related to the non-notable even as folklore "Sado-Orsoy clan". Folly Mox (talk) 01:26, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Unarchiving this report for the 4th time. WikiEditor1234567123 (talk) 09:56, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Per CityofSilver and Schazjmd, a block seems warranted here. Given that this appears to be a willful lack of engagement rather than not understanding how to find/use a talk page (taking into account Swalors reply here, and to discussion notices on their talk page), and that this affects a CTOPS area WP:ARBEE, I'm going to go ahead and make impose a sitewide indefinite block, which can be appealed with a successful unblock request demonstrating a clear commitment to engaging in consensus-building discussion. I would also be more amenable to a conditional unblock request that accepts a topic-ban from ethnic minorities in Russia and the former USSR. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 15:27, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Disruptive edits restored

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I'll refrain from edit warring with an administrator, UtherSRG. Edits by Shanna1998 have struck me as likely written by AI--[20]; [21]; [22]; [23]; [24]; [25]; [26]; [27]. The net effect of the prose is to add verbiage, often promotional in tone, and which sometimes alters the meaning of the previous version. Sometimes the revisions read as pretty credible, in part because they seem to improve prose that's already poorly written or promotional. The user has not responded to messages. After I reverted some of their most recent edits, UtherSRG restored several [28]; [29] and removed my warnings to the user [30]. Even if I'm wrong about the use of AI here, the edit history is largely non-constructive. UtherSRG then undid my most recent reversions of edits by BillyB1511, [31]; [32]--the second one is a coin flip, though restoring the first makes no sense. My warning was again reverted [33]. Mostly, I'd appreciate more eyes. A separate report focused on the AI issue is inevitable, as I've been running into it by new users of late. 2601:19E:4180:6D50:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 23:37, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Just looking at Denny Januar Ali, the version that UtherSRG reverted to (Special:Diff/1188437835) is inferior on two grounds. First, it removes a reference. Second, it adds words without improving meaning. I don't get the revert, and I'd like to hear from UtherSRG on their overall approach here. Mackensen (talk) 23:48, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

IP - I acted hastily. I had just reverted another IP's vandalism when I saw your edit on TimeShard and mistook it for more vandalism and started reverting your recent edits. I should have been more careful. You have my sincerest apologies. How may I make this up to you? - UtherSRG (talk) 23:51, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

UtherSRG, other than reconsidering the edits, there's no need for atonement. Your explanation is deeply appreciated. Very best, 2601:19E:4180:6D50:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 23:56, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

So...shall I do the reversions? 2601:19E:4180:6D50:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 17:15, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I've got them now as best as I think is possible. Had to massage one while another was no longer needed as the underlying word choice was changed entirely. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:41, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. They weren't all obvious regressions, but constituted part of the larger patterns of disruptive/test edits. 2601:19E:4180:6D50:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 03:39, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

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

Plagiarism and copyright violations by User:Sedvabs

While performing copypatrol, I encounterd a version of Iznik pottery was flagged as a potential copyright violation. At the time, the page had been this version of Iznik pottery. After investigating a bit, I noticed that some of the paragraphs had been copied verbatim from "The blue-white ceramics of China and İznik", an article in Hürriyet Daily News; "Stories Ottoman Objects Tell", a 2018 class project from Boston College; and The Iznik Pottery Industry: C15th-C18th, a chapter in a web course on Islamic Ceramics from the Ashmolean Museum. All three of these sources appear to be non-free. After looking at the page history, I found that the content had been inserted by a student, Sedvabs, who is a participant in a WikiEdu Course run by the University of Delaware. The WikiEdu staff listed on the course website are Brianda (Wiki Ed) and Helaine (Wiki Ed).

The initial additions of plagiarized material to the page by Sedvabs are as follows:

• One edit by the student inserted a paragraph beginning with Alongside the Chinese porcelain. This paragraph can be directly found in the Hürriyet article.
• The next edit by the student inserted a paragraph beginning with Blue-white may be divided into four types. Again, this parahraph is taken verbatim from the Hürriyet article.
• The following edit by the student inserted two paragraphs. The first of the two appears to be in the student's own words, but the second of (the paragraph beginning with İznik ceramics on display including wares) was lifted verbatim in the Hürriyet article.
• A few edits later, the student added another paragraph (beginning The1520s is thus a period) that is almost taken word-for-word from The Iznik Pottery Industry: C15th-C18th.
• After making several other edits, the student inserted another paragraph (beginning with Iznik pottery both drew inspiration from). This paragraph was copied verbatim from the Boston College student project.

After noticing this, I began to remove the material that had been copied word-for-word from the sources and I left the student a note on their user talk page. In the message I left the student, I noted the following in bold print:

Aside from limited quotation, you must put all information in your own words and structure, in proper paraphrase. Following the source's words too closely can create copyright problems, so it is not permitted here; see Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing. Even when using your own words, you are still, however, asked to cite your sources to verify the information and to demonstrate that the content is not original research.

One minute after I left them the notice, the student re-inserted the paragraph beginning with Blue-white may be divided into four types into the Iznik pottery article, despite it being a copy-paste from Hürriyet.

After seeing all of this, I left the professor (ProfTern) a note on their talk page about the incident. The professor responded, saying that they had been in touch with this student to alert them to the helpful and clear reminder about close paraphrasing that had been placed on the student's talk page. The professor also noted that the student had completed a WikiEdu training module about plagiarism, and noted that plagiarism is a violation of community guidelines at the University of Delaware (for more information on this, see page 48-50 of Delaware's Student Guide to University Policies, where the institution's understanding of plagiarism and academic honesty is defined, as well as question 3 of the Academic Integrity Quiz available on the University's website).

Less than one hour after the professor left a note on her talk page, however, the student proceded to continue to plagiarize and insert copyright violations:

• In two consecutive edits, the student re-inserted paragraphs that had been largely copied verbatim from the three sources mentioned above.
• Two hours later, the student made slight modifications to one of the plagiarized paragraphs in another edit. It is unclear to me what the reasoning of this was, but it was entirely insufficient to remove extant close paraphrasing concerns.

As such, I have re-removed the material that had been copied and/or closely paraphrased from copyrighted sources. A REVDEL has yet to be performed.

Because this editor has repeatedly inserted copyright violations and plagiarism into the same article, even after a talk page warning and a talking to by their professor, I am requesting that Sedvabs be blocked from the article namespace until the student shows that they understand our copyright policy and plagiarism guidelines and will adhere to them going forward.

— Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 21:35, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

• Indef block WEF/ WikiEd probably ought to encourage U of Delaware to fail the student with prejudice. Chris Troutman (talk) 22:19, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for bringing this to our attention. User: Brianda (Wiki Ed) is reaching out to the student as well, and I'll message User:ProfTern to follow up about this, but it sounds like they've already been pretty responsive. I think this is a case where the student is just simply not listening. We'll continue to reach out to them to help them understand the consequences of readding plagiarized content including the real prospect of being blocked. Thanks. Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:43, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Only want to point out that "email this user" is not enabled, which means it's possible this student never provided an email and hasn't seen the talk page messages. ProfTern may want to email them instead. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:51, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, @Rhododendrites. I emailed this student immediately when @Red-tailed hawk informed me of the issue. The student seemed to understand the problem but was unable to meet with me to discuss as they had a final exam for another class. It is clear that they did not in fact understand the consequences of re-adding plagiarized content, as pointed out by @Helaine (Wiki Ed). I have emailed them again asking them to immediately stop making edits until we can get this sorted. Thanks to everyone for their patience with the student editors. ProfTern (talk) 00:12, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

@ProfTern and Brianda (Wiki Ed): Thank you for communicating the serious nature of this to the student and for being responsive throughout this unfortunate incident. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 03:01, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

• Article page ban immediately, to prevent damage to the encyclopedia. This may be a good-faith issue compounded with WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU, and emailing may not prevent the damage. The solution is to block access to that article, which in the absence of an ability to contact them otherwise, will get them to contact us. Mathglot (talk) 02:34, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
• Perhaps an area where being harsh with student editors is very appropriate, given the consequences plagiarism can have academically. Noting that there was also some copyrighted text in the user space, which has already been tagged for revdel by Red-tailed hawk. CMD (talk) 07:14, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

• I p-blocked them from mainspace, draft, and user to make sure that this is addressed before editing resumes. Any admin can lift this block at their fancy --Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 21:29, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  Or expand its scope, hopefully; what areas of the project are we encouraging them to edit. ——Serial 21:34, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Antares600

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Antares600 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Antares600 has been here as a registered editor for just under a year. They started off with mild incivility as their first edit and eventually escalated to this. Not a harbinger of good things to come (although, in fairness, the personal attacks did cease).

They've made their mark through general disruption and edit warring. Whether it's edit warring against the MOS (with more snarky commentary) or edit warring to restore refspam, they've done it against a number of other editors, and seem to think that everyone else is the problem. This little gem, where in the midst of edit warring to make a mess of the page layout they told another editor to stop using Wikipedia on a desktop, is simply asinine.

They've repeatedly deleted sourced information claiming it's "redundant," but would never say what it was redundant to.

There was recently a consensus to remove automotive model codes from the "Name" field in infoboxes and give that information its own line for clarity. Antares600 decided they were above that consensus and tried removing it all, followed by this unpleasantry on the talk page of the editor who implemented the change, calling it "pointless" and a "waste of time."

Image vandalism has been the largest area of disruption. They admit to editing against a long-standing consensus that images are selected based on their quality and not on recentism. And to think that this or this (to name only a couple recent egregious examples) are improvements is either a lack of editing competence or intentional disruption.

And, finally, the "I don't need to cite sources because I know everything" edits have started. I've found that editors with this attitude rarely become productive. --Sable232 (talk) 23:51, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Carmaker1, is that you? — Preceding unsigned comment added by ‎2600:1011:b326:48d4:f9e6:9ce3:c1ca:85af (talk • contribs)

I'm surprised it took this long for Antares600 to end up at ANI. I'm still waiting for the permanent ban they promised to give me. - MrOllie (talk) 01:04, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

They're certainly not the worst user, but not very useful either. Blocking them won't make a difference; there will simply be one more IP swapping and adding pictures over and over and over again. Please require registering before editing.  Mr.choppers | ✎  02:02, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

MrOllie, I had a feeling it would eventually come to this, but I was in no rush to do it since I don't relish making reports here.

IP, almost certainly not. Editing style doesn't match, and if the IP talk page to which Antares600's first edit was made is/was their IP, it's in a different part of the US from Carmaker1. --Sable232 (talk) 03:33, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Already beaten you to the punch. I wash my hands of making any contributions to this site. I've had enough of the BS from you and every power hungry admin who have clashed with me. Y'all have done nothing but wear me down mentally. You lot are the worst people I've dealt with in the past decade. I'm done.

Now then, I'm abandoning my account, and expect for it to be deleted. Do note that this is not a request. I will hear no arguments nor any other comments. Antares600 (talk) 08:07, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Accounts cannot be deleted, so... bye. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:06, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

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User:Xxxcatfishxxx

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User:Xxxcatfishxxx is a relatively new user who has persistently added pet-keeping guide info to Peters's banded skink. This info has been reverted by four different editors and partially reverted by a fifth over the last six weeks. Despite being welcomed, notified, and progressively warned on their talk page there have been zero replies or changes to their editing behaviour. They have been advised to slow down and read some of the pertinent editing policies before editing, but have already run afoul of image copyvio rules, made threatening noises in an edit summary (here), and inserted odd text that appears to be AI generated (here) - note "the Joined Realm of Extraordinary England and Northern Ireland" and multiple fabricated species names "Peter's Grouped Skink"/"Peter's United Skinks"/"Peter's Joined Skinks") before paraphrasing it to read better in the following edit. Loopy30 (talk) 03:55, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

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

User:111.92.80.194

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Pertaining to the page South India, there is a persistent disruptive editing by user with IP address User:111.92.80.194 who is hell bent on adding a particular city to the list or removing others ([34], [35], [[36]). There were two reverts done and on my part have left a message now in the talk page. As the user has started engaging in personal attacks ([37]) which is evident in the comment left for the last edit, bringing it to the notice as it involves using bad language in the public history which might warrant an IP block if it continues. Magentic Manifestations (talk) 05:29, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

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

User:Lionel Messi Lover

Lionel Messi Lover (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

User:Lionel Messi Lover has been continuously making unconstructive edits on Bangladesh genocide for almost three weeks now despite attempts to engage him in discussion and warnings on his talk page. In particular, the pattern has been to change the infobox and wordings in the lead to match his POV. When asked to cite a reliable source, he either adds a Wikipedia article as a citation [38], or misrepresents the source [39], or simply adds a non-existing page as a source [40]; some of those edits may even fall under vandalism. This has continued even after conveying the concerns about his edits [41], [42].

It appears the user has a lack of basic understanding on fundamental guidelines like WP:V and WP:OR; the user is also not willing to listen to other editors, suggesting a likely case of WP:CIR.

Going through his talk page, it looks like he has a history of this sort of disruptive edits on different other articles. It should be mentioned that all these articles he has been disrupting fall within WP:ARBIPA. Nomian (talk) 05:38, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

International Crimes Tribunal said the auxiliary forces acted and collaborated to pursue a policy and plan not of their own but of a ‘State or group policy’ and consciously knew and actively associated themselves with that common ‘policy and plan of annihilating the pro-liberation Bengali civilians’.

That's why edit it from Bengali Hindus to Bengalis.

Also 1,111 Bengali Intellectuals were too killed in by Pakistani army but you reverted it saying it unconstructive.

The Bangladeshi Genocide article's neutrality is disputed. Therefore, I'm just helping to improve the page and make it neutral

There is nothing sort of vandalism there. Lionel Messi Lover (talk) 06:58, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

No one is willing to take an anonymous wiki editor's word for statements this important, that's why statements have to be verifiable according to the reliable sources in the article. If you are changing statements to say something the sources do not say, that is original research, which is not allowed here. You also cannot cite Wikipedia itself, it is not considered a reliable source for many reasons, including the fact that it would be circular. Remsense留 07:00, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

• And the disruptive edits by Linonel Messi Lover continues on the article [43] with misleading edit summaries. He's even unwilling to discuss which makes it harder to fix his conduct. I also agree that this is a WP:CIR issue since Lionel Messi Lover is exhibiting a bit of difficulties in interpreting the English language sources as well as understanding the Wikipedia policies. A.Musketeer (talk) 19:32, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

  A.Musketeer and Nomian (talk) has been consistently removing and manipulating articles throughout the Bangladesh History Pages. Remsense留 What do you think regarding their actions on this? They have been manipulating, disrupting edits throughout multiple pages, and pushing POVs throughout ALL the pages related to Bangladesh's history. Their contribution page shows that they both have a history of pushing right-wing Indian POVs, even though they both aren't Bangladeshis. Arfaz (chat) | 10:56, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Disruptive editing and forum shopping by Mikola22

We have an editor who probably meets the definitions of WP:IDONTHEARYOU.

At Talk:Christopher Columbus, they've opened three RFCs, all of which have ended up being closed indicating they were inappropriate (the last one by me). Specifically:

• First RFC, 27 Oct
• 2nd RFC, 31 October
• 3rd RFC, 4 December
• 4th round, not an RFC this time

They've been warned by both other editors and by administrator User:BusterD (who closed the 2nd RFC) to drop the stick. See BusterD's comment on WP:AN about being on the verge of starting an ANI case (see AN). See also the discussion about forum shopping on Mikola22's talk page.

Forum shopping, see WP:ORN, two sections, and WP:FTN, all on the same subject with the same arguments.

Out of morbid curiosity, I looked up their logs. Five previous blocks, an arbcom-ordered topic ban (then violating the topic ban being one of the blocks), and their talk page access was revoked at one point. Perhaps this editor just doesn't get it. Can we get Mikola22 shut down for a while? Tarl N. (discuss) 07:43, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

• On October 31, 2023, I started the RFC with the question whether Columbus was an Italian or Genoese explorer. RFC must be in accordance with the rules and sources. And so it was, because behind the Italian/Genoes there are RS. The information found in the article in the Italian footnote, has no source for confirmation and is very likely OR information. I thought that editors in the RFC would decide on Italian or Genoese information ie according to the sources. However, considering that editors started to give their opinion in the context of "Retain as is", this would mean that information which at that moment exists in the Italian footnote can be legitimized with my RFC. Seeing that and not wanting my RFC to legitimize possible OR information I started a discussion about this issue within RFC[[44]], however none of the editors wanted to discuss this information. After RFC ended I opened a new RFC[[45]] regarding this information. However, no one wanted to discuss that either. After that I put this information on NORN[[46]] and FTN[[47]] for discussion and there none of these editors took part in discussion, it's the same case in the Columbus talk page[[48]]. I started discussion in the article Dante Alighieri where the same information existed in Italian footnote.[[49]] And information was deleted from article as a probable OR, and the NORN discussion on the matter goes in the same direction that is, the conclusion is that it is OR.

As for editor Tarl N, although I opened a question in within RFC about possible disputed information he didn't want to participate in discussion, but at that moment he knows that information which exists is WP:PRIMARY, and that the article itself does not contain source so this information could be not WP:VERIFY. For the same information("the Latin equivalent of the term Italian had been in use for natives of the region since antiquity") he says that it was added: "in response to the oft-repeated claim that the term "Italian" only existed after Garibaldi".[[50]] So he, as an editor, supports this information without checking the same to see if it is a possible OR, etc., also he keeps it in the article and does not allow to be questioned or discussed. In that context given that he is familiar with this information and with context when it is edited to the article, he as an editor participate in disruptive editing because he is unwilling to satisfy Wikipedia:Verifiability, fails to cite source, cite unencyclopedic source, misrepresents reliable source, manufactures original research, disregard other editors' questions or requests for explanations concerning edits.

Considering that editor Tarl N even though he knew he had to comply with Wikipedia rules and this is clearly indicated to him on the talk page: "The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. Content must be written from a neutral point of view (It is also one of Wikipedia's three core content policies; the other two are "Verifiability" and "No original research".), Include citations", he does not follow these rules at any moment. In this context I refer to WP:BOOMERANG and I am asking for an appropriate sanction for such behavior, considering that even though he knows that there has been a violation of OR, he still does not want to participate in any discussion, but is exclusively directed at me. Mikola22 (talk) 09:27, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

• Topic bans haven't haven't worked in the past. A 3 month block to reflect might be a good step. If that doesn't work then it's probably time to pull the plug. Nemov (talk) 15:12, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
• It's probably not surprising there's a new formal discussion here; User:Mikola22 is running out of forums in which to reasonably discuss this. Responding as an uninvolved administrator to Mikola22's WP:Closure request earlier this week, I closed the second of three RfCs commenced by this user. Within seconds, it was clear my closure was not acceptable; they started a newer RfC which I did not shut down but did disparage as disruptive. I have done nothing to sanction Mikola22. I haven't applied any admin action other than the good faith closure, which I believe is fully inline with my reasonable reading of the policy and the discussions. Content is up to the editors on the pagespace, not an uninvolved admin (unless I choose to involve myself, which I did not). Given the forum shopping Mikola22 has exhibited, it's clear they want this to end in getting their way, and no other outcome. I would support an editing restriction of some kind. Past blocks have not helped this editor understand what we're attempting to do on Wikipedia. It's always a tragedy when an intelligent, well-read wikipedian can't get past social norms. BusterD (talk) 16:23, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  I just have to point out the fact that you closed the RFC, and information which is OR remained in the Italian footnote. Also most editors in RFC wanted to keep state as it is with the Italian footnote information. In that way the Italian/Genoese thing is not RFC resolved because the OR information cannot be entered into the article by consensus or RFC. As for the statement "it's clear they want this to end in getting their way", I don't know what exactly you mean, detecting OR information or Italian/Genoves regarding Columbus? I can only say that in the area of wikipedia where I am Topic-banned, information about some historical figures must be presented in a historical time context, this I learned first as far as editing is concerned, and why the same is not on this part of wikipedia I really don't know(given that in this case Columbus is labeled as Italian). In addition, it is not clear to me how some OR information can be in an article for about 2 years without so many editors seeing a problem. In any case, thank you. Mikola22 (talk) 17:32, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  This isn't the place to discuss content, we are here to discuss your behaviour. I quote from WP:IDONTHEARYOU, Sometimes, even when editors act in good faith, their contributions may be disruptive and time-wasting [...]. I bring this here because I believe you have fallen into that category, and direct requests and warnings have failed to stop the behaviour. Tarl N. (discuss) 17:52, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  I would echo User:Tarl N.'s statement; this thread is about behavior and not content. BusterD (talk) 18:11, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  Exactly so. The only reason I've not simply blocked this user for disruptive editing is that the editor is surely acting in good faith, has good intent, and is in no way a vandal; however, the lack of understanding (or, perhaps, the lack of acceptance) of Wikipedia's WP:CONSENSUS policy and processes is resulting in entirely disruptive behavior, and (here's the explicit threat) should it continue will result in an indefinite block. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 18:16, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

• Indefinite p-block from Columbus and the Talk. Mikola, do not take this as allowance to disrupt elsewhere or your block will be wider. Star Mississippi 19:05, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Two Comments and a Question

First, good partial block. Some admin action was needed, and this action was minimal. Second, the Original Poster mentioned that the subject editor had been forum shopping at FTN and at NORN as well as starting RFCs that were closed. There was also a proposal at Village Pump , which was not listed.There was also a case at DRN, which was not listed, because the subject editor was not the filing party, because the DRN thread was filed by an editor who disagreed with the subject editor. The subject editor has now been blocked from Christopher Columbus, and should take that as a caution not to edit tendentiously the articles about any other persons born in the Italian region between 476 CE and 1860 CE.

Should there be a guideline that persons for in the Italian region between 476 CE and 1860 CE may be referred to as Italian if reliable sources make that description? Where would be the right forum for discussion about such a guideline? Robert McClenon (talk) 04:59, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

POV IP user repeatedly making troll edits

Every single one of User:170.10.40.20's 10 edits have been reverted. They're all just deliberately disruptive posting of knowingly false information. The latest edit is not even a WP:PRONOUNS issue. It's a deliberate blanking of sourced material about the subject's gender and replacing it with the IP user's preference. WP:PRONOUNSAGF does not apply. Editor has received four warnings before the level 3 warning given today. Requesting IP ban. Kire1975 (talk) 18:15, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

One edit in the past few weeks from an IP isn't usually grounds for a block. Mach61 (talk) 02:19, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Duly noted. Please close the complaint. Thanks. Kire1975 (talk) 02:07, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Dpiwd

• Dpiwd (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Four recent warnings: [51] [52] [53] [54]

This spam-only account should be blocked and the domain husfarm.com blacklisted. The four recent warnings and two other warnings this year are sufficient; this user is obvously not here to build an encyclopedia since their only edits have been to add spam, and they are slow-moving enough that they are unlikely to accumulate four warnings and one additional spam edit within one month. GA-RT-22 (talk) 18:35, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I have indefinitely blocked Dpiwd as a spam only account. Cullen328 (talk) 00:04, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Non EC user disruption at an AfD

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

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See User page. User has been notified of CT restrictions and asked to desist but persists in editing (and canvassing) at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Free Palestine (phrase) notwithstanding. Assistance please.Selfstudier (talk) 19:45, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Free Palestine (phrase), where User:Raconcilio has just asked a contributor whether they want to "cause murder" by supporting deletion of an article. [55]. This follows repeated attempts to canvass for the AfD. [56][57]. I removed the later canvassing myself, while another couple of editors have removed other edits to the AfD by Raconcilio on the basis that they are excluded from editing per non-EC restrictions on the topic. Since I'm unclear myself about the exact policy on this, I'll not offer an opinion on the merits of the removals, but instead suggest that at minimum, the blatant canvassing and the "murder" comment alone are quite ample grounds to exclude this individual from further participation in the AfD, if not grounds for broader sanctions. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:46, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I've ECP'ed the discussion and someone else has struck the contributions. Probably a bigger issue to be dealt with but I'm about to step away from the computer for the day so will leave to others. Daniel (talk) 19:54, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't know about non-EC restrictions on AfDs. But there is a restriction on A-I topics for non-ECs. O3000, Ret. (talk) 19:56, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

The ARBECR restrictions are clear, if couched a little bit technically:

When such a restriction is in effect in a topic area, only extended-confirmed editors may make edits related to the topic area, subject to the following provisions: The restriction applies to all edits and pages related to the topic area, broadly construed, with the following exceptions: Non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace only to make edit requests related to articles within the topic area, provided they are not disruptive. Selfstudier (talk) 20:01, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Not listening Selfstudier (talk) 20:12, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Indefinitely blocked an AE logged. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 20:19, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

It appears that canvassing by e-mail is now occurring. [58] AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:14, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Use of the word "killing" suggests the same editor. O3000, Ret. (talk) 20:18, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

BD2412, can you confirm? _signed, Rosguill ^talk 20:21, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, see my comment in the AfD. User:MaterialWorks noted the same experience there. BD2412 T 20:29, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

@BD2412: What is the username of the editor who sent it to you? -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 21:31, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

User:Raconcilio. BD2412 T 21:53, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

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

User:FlightTime showed bad editing etiquette & abused their admin powers to threaten to wrongfully block me

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

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Here is what happened. I made an edit to the John De Lancie page (Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_de_Lancie&diff=prev&oldid=1188681811 ). This was a simple edit where I moved a piece of information from one spot to another. No information was added or deleted, it was just rearranged for reasons I clearly gave in my edit summary. As a user I am clearly allowed to make these types of inoffensive edits to a page. This page ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ten_simple_rules_for_editing_Wikipedia ) clearly endorses editors making minor edits on their own without approval first (“Therefore, Wikipedia urges all its users to be bold: if you spot an error, correct it. If you can improve an article, please do so.”). So since my edit was very minor (just rearranging the placement of one sentence of information) & and I explained my reasoning for the edit clearly, I was entirely in the right to make this edit.

Then User:FlightTime decided to revert my edit, without giving any reason at all. They reverted it a mere 3 minutes after I made made the edit, giving no edit summary at all. According to Wikipedia guidelines they were in the wrong to do this. Here are a few quotes from these two pages ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Revert_only_when_necessary & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reverting ) clearly showing that, while admittedly not against policy per se, reverting my edit without giving any explanation was clearly not approved Wikipedia etiquette:

“Do not revert unnecessary edits (i.e., edits that neither improve nor harm the article). For a reversion to be appropriate, the reverted edit must actually make the article worse. Wikipedia does not have a bias toward the status quo (except in some cases of fully developed disputes, while they are being resolved). In fact, Wikipedia has a bias toward change, as a means of maximizing quality by maximizing participation.”

“Even if you find an article was slightly better before an edit, in an area where opinions could differ, you should not revert that edit, especially if you are the author of the prior text. The reason for this is that authors and others with past involvement in an article have a natural prejudice in favor of the status quo, so your finding that the article was better before might just be a result of that. Also, Wikipedia likes to encourage editing.”

“What's important is to let people know why you reverted. This helps the reverted person because they can remake their edit while fixing whatever problem it is that you've identified. Obviously it is best to fix the problem and not revert at all.”

“Edit summaries, always a good practice, are particularly important when reverting. Provide a valid and informative explanation including, if possible, a link to the Wikipedia principle you believe justifies the reversion. Try to remain available for dialogue, especially in the half-day or so after reverting. A reversion is a complete rejection of the work of another editor and if the reversion is not adequately supported then the reverted editor may find it difficult to assume good faith. This is one of the most common causes of an edit war. A substantive explanation also promotes consensus by alerting the reverted editor to the problem with the original edit. The reverted editor may then be able to revise the edit to correct the perceived problem. The result will be an improved article, a more knowledgeable editor, and greater harmony.”

Since my edit objectively barely changed the article and was made in good faith, the best thing that FlightTime should have done according to Wikipedia etiquette was to start a discussion in the talk page about the edit. And if they felt so strongly that my edit was bad, then they could have reverted my edit with a clear explanation for doing so and then reached out to discuss it and find a consensus.

Since FlightTime had gone against Wikipedia etiquette in doing this revert, and I had actually explained my edit while they did not, I decided that it was justified for me to revert the page back to my edit. I gave the edit summary “I made my change in good faith and explained my reasoning. If you disagree with the change, then make a topic in the discussion page so we can discuss it, don't edit war.”. I thought this revert was completely justified on my part, I had only reverted said page once (I wouldn’t have been actually violating rules unless I reverted more than 3 times in a 24 hour period) and it was in response to a revert done minutes after my good-faith minor edit for no stated reason.

Unfortunately, FilghtTime decided to revert my edit once again. They once again gave no reasons at all and just said in the edit summary “You're right, but that's your opinion, we don't do opinions. Please discuss your concerns on the talk page first”. They are incorrect about this. Those articles I quoted make clear that people are allowed to make minor constructive edits without asking first, that they only be reverted if actual reasons are given against it, and that disagreements should be resolved via talk pages without edit warring. FlightTime went against all of these guidelines here. They did not violate any rules to be fair and this isn’t on its own the main reason I am filing this report, but they definitely didn’t follow the best etiquette. So since it would only be my 2nd reversion, FlightTime had given no reasons for their reversions while I did for mine, I reverted again. Again, FlightTime was welcome to either explain their reasons in their own reversions or start a discussion on the talk page, which they clearly should have done according to the recommended etiquette.

Then, FlightTime decided to cross a line and actually abuse their admin powers. They put a warning on my admin page ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:67.60.186.104#December_2023 ) saying that I had been disrupting Wikipedia, and that I may be blocked if I kept it up. There is by no standards in which I was disrupting Wikipedia or came anywhere close to violating Wikipedia policies, and my etiquette was definitely better here than that of FlightTime’s. I had only made two reversions in a 24 hour period before they sent this warning, Wikipedia policy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Edit_warring#The_three-revert_rule ) states that reverting isn’t strictly blocked in non-vandal reverting cases as long as it was 3 or less in the 24-hour period. And since I had explained and justified my original minor edit, and FlightTime reverted it twice (which was the same amount of reverts I had made) without giving any reasons, I was clearly in my right to revert it myself otwice as well. If my reversions with clear reasoning were “disrupting Wikipedia”, then FlightTime’s reversions without any reasoning was clearly even more disruptive.

In conclusion, I am filing this report to let people know that FlightTime went against proper etiquette in handling my minor edits, and they abused their powers by sending me a warning even though I never came close to violating any rules. And if my two reverts somehow were violating rules, then FlightTime's two reverts were clearly also violating rules. I am disappointed by FlightTime’s behavior here. 67.60.186.104 (talk) 00:09, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

...FlightTime isn't an admin, so they certainly didn't "abuse admin powers"... Sergecross73 msg me 00:15, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Then how were they able to send me this warning?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:67.60.186.104#December_2023 67.60.186.104 (talk) 00:17, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Anyone can post warnings on use pages. Meters (talk) 00:18, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Anyone can issue warnings. Sergecross73 msg me 00:19, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Your'e being disagreed with. Work it out on the talkpage, and stop treating FlightTime as an opponent to be defeated. Acroterion (talk) 00:21, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

This is an edit dispute, and needs to be discussed on the talk page. Please take it there and discuss it with FlightTime. RickinBaltimore (talk) 00:22, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

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

Deletion of Markt (Bruges)

I just deleted Markt (Bruges) per WP:G12 with the following evidence:

• The article was created by Darkwraith (talk · contribs) on 20:47, 18 June 2008
• At 20:48, 18 June 2008, CorenSearchBot (talk · contribs) tagged the article as a copyright violation of http://www.trabel.com/brugge/bruges-market.htm
• At 21:07, 18 June 2008, Darkwraith removed the copyvio tag for no reason
• The article has largely been unchanged since then
• The website tagged as copyvio is now dead and brings up a stock "domain for sale" page, so Earwig reports a 0% likelihood of a violation, erroneously.

Can another admin or two check I've done the right thing, as I always get slightly uncomfortable unilaterally deleting articles that have hung around for over 15 years, even when I think I'm doing the right thing and following policy. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:27, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Looking at the last archive prior to that, May 26th 2008, I don't see it being similar enough personally. The article is mostly photos and those are all fine. The paraphrasing on the rest is okay as far as I can see. Now that's based on the final state of the article. Some things are close, but I don't honestly think close enough to warrant a delete and some are considerably different. Canterbury Tail talk 12:33, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

This should have gone to WP:CP. Quite likely it only called for revdeletion; while the first revision is clearly infringing, the current one just as clearly isn't, and even others from 2008 are unclear. WP:G12 does not read "there was a bot claim of infringement at some point which the deleting admin doesn't need to verify", and it's not the only tool in your toolbox. —Cryptic 12:57, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

The edit made after the CorenSearchbot tagging is actually a complete rewrite of the text. That version is okay. I suggest retoring the article and applying revdel from creation to the CorenSearchbot edit. -- Whpq (talk) 12:58, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I have restored the article from 25 June 2008. I'm also improving the article, copyediting it and adding sources which will make any claims of copyvio moot. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:13, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Your restoration makes it appear that Kevin is the author, but Darkwraith is the author of the article. Our licensing requires attribution which is missing because of the partial restoration. The revision immediately after the CorenSearchbot tagging is the one that should be restored if you don't want to include any of the copyvio material in the article history. -- Whpq (talk) 13:32, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Apologies, I'm feeling dense today. Do you mean the revision from 21:03, 18 June 2008, and all earlier revisions restored but revision deleted? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:48, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

The revision time-stamped 20:03, 18 June 2008 is clear of any copyright violations. It was a complete rewrite by Darkwraith. That is the version that should be the restoration point if you want to restore with proper attribution, and omit the versions with copyrighted material. -- Whpq (talk) 14:16, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Okay, got it. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:22, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

User:זור987

Since last year, I keep an eye on the Israeli deletion queue (and much longer on the Dutch queue). Yesterday I noted that User:זור987 has submitted already his third AfD with an invalid deletion rationale. זור987 is a permanently banned user on his native Hewiki. He takes interest in anything related to light, which is nice, but does not seem to recognize the limits of his own understanding of this field, creating a long history of unhelpful edits in the article space as well. I appreciate if someone can take a look and, if warranted, take action. gidonb (talk) 12:57, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't understand the he block reason but that wouldn't affect us here. Could you give a bit more information? They have a lot of edits. Secretlondon (talk) 13:25, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

The block at Hewiki is a consequence of repetative inseration of WP:OR and WP:FRINGE, and removal of information based on the same, which are pain points also at Enwiki. The warnings at his talk page summarize some of that. For example, here. His three AfDs speak for themselves. I used זור987's self-assigned gender at Hewiki. Hebrew is a more gendered language than English. gidonb (talk) 13:57, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

We could stand to see some diffs on this wiki supporting your vague contention of objectionable behavior; what he was up to on other wikis isn't our issue. On your only tangible complaint, only one of those AfDs is remotely current; the prior two are from July and 2021 respectively, not what you could call a barnburning problem needing immediate action. Ravenswing 20:56, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Is it normal for an administrator to threaten to block a user over a content dispute?

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

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This is regarding the Dave the Diver article. On the talk page there was a dispute over whether particular information was reliable due to multiple reliable sources posting it (whether the game was "indie" or not). When a user tried to claim the information was wrong they were explicitly accused of lying and threatened with a block. The incident has been resolved however I am concerned about the way it was handled; particularly the treatment by the admin towards the user; and a lack of mediation between parties. 🅶🅰🅼🅾🆆🅴🅱🅱🅴🅳 (talk) 14:18, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

As per the notice at the top of this page, please leave a note on User:NinjaRobotPirate's talk page informing them of this discussion. WaggersTALK 14:21, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

This discussion is two months old, and didn't directly involve you. Is there any particular reason you want to revisit this now? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:26, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

(ec)Gamowebbed, the quote you provided has NinjaRobotPirate say, "If you remove this again, I will ask an uninvolved administrator to block you." The title of this section has you claiming that NRP threatened to block the user, but that is definitely not the case. --Yamla (talk) 14:27, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

The accusation of lying is what concerned me the most. How would an uninvolved administrator block the user? A edit warring/disruptive editing block? 🅶🅰🅼🅾🆆🅴🅱🅱🅴🅳 (talk) 14:34, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm an uninvolved administrator, and had this been presented to me as disruption (or admin abuse) on 2 October, I'd have probably done something like this but nothing else. I certainly wouldn't have found any grounds to block anyone. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:40, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

(ec) The first thing to observe is that there is a difference between threatening to block, and threatening to ask an uninvolved administrator to block. The latter is what happened here. I'd say that was badly worded and the "threat" should have been to ask for an uninvolved administrator to impartially review the situation and decide on an appropriate course of action - which might or might not involve a block. The accusation of lying - a failure to assume good faith - is a bigger problem with that post in my opinion.

It's worth reading the rest of the discussion; Waysiders took the right approach and noted that everyone has a bad day from time to time. On that basis I'd say there's no cause for action provided this is a one-off incident, but if this becomes a regular behavioural pattern then ArbCom will need to review NRP's conduct as an admin. WaggersTALK 14:29, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

A "bad day" which was provided in good faith by the user doesn't exactly justify strongly accusatory behaviour from an admin towards a user who was trying to correct misleading information. 🅶🅰🅼🅾🆆🅴🅱🅱🅴🅳 (talk) 14:37, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I furthermore note that NinjaRobotPirate is the principal contributor to the article Dave the Diver, and consequently has spent time making sure it's well written and factually accurate. It's just a fact of life that when you've spent hours, days , weeks or even years fixing up an article, it's kind of human nature to snap at someone who seems to be making it worse. I've done it, and I'd like to see a longstanding editor who's written lots of content who hasn't. So my conclusion is, yes it's a bit gruff, but the net harm to the encyclopaedia is about zero, so - no foul, play on. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:37, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

My feelings are pretty much in line with Richie333. Although one might add "obviously" to that statement. I was subjected to "strongly accusatory behavior" first when I added sourced content to the article – I even found a source that stated everything in black-and-white and included a direct quotation from the source inside the citation itself. And it was still removed, and I was accused of adding unsourced content. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 14:42, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Hey, at least you didn't get accused of WP:OWNing the article! :-P Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:45, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

It's ok to say an editor is lying if that's what the editor is doing. For example, "the source doesn't say indie developer" was a lie. This section heading is also a lie. Same with "trolling." OP is trolling, I am trolling, we are all trolling. And that's no lie. Levivich (talk) 15:22, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

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

Persistent refactoring of cited, quoted content

Among other disruptions by Dribl (talk · contribs), continuing after multiple notices and a reassurance that there would be no further problems. Also problems with tense, other MOS issues: [59]; [60]; [61]; [62]; [63]; [64]; [65]; [66]; [67]; [68]; [69]; [70]; [71]; [72]; [73]. When I see a new account working this quickly and carelessly, it raises a red flag suggesting this isn't their first time. 2601:19E:4180:6D50:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 15:19, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Is this just another of the problems with newcomer task: copyedit? I can see that a new editor wouldn't necessarily always remember to check for titles and quotations, and the MoS on tense catches even experienced editors (me for one) out all the time. Espresso Addict (talk) 04:29, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I imagine so, but it's a problem when they rephrased quotations a half dozen or more times, acknowledge the warning, vow not to do it again, and then do. Once or twice, perhaps it's understandable, but this is a characteristic of the user's copy editing. There are, as linked above, a number of other small errors. When reversions are necessary at 20 or 25% of a new account's edits, it's a problem for the community. 2601:19E:4180:6D50:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 05:00, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

These are far from the worst examples of newcomer copy editing I've seen. Espresso Addict (talk) 05:10, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not pretending otherwise. That doesn't negate the issue. 2601:19E:4180:6D50:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 05:35, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I haven't mentioned the numerous Oxford comma edits, like the latest [74]. This is a lot of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.' 2601:19E:4180:6D50:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 05:40, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

User:Sporadicmonk03

Sporadicmonk03 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) seems to have a long history of unexplained, undiscussed changes, some of which they enter edit wars over, including unexplained removal of content and other changes other editors consider unnecessary (e.g. capitalizing section names in navigational templates, changing between national varieties of English, navbox decoration) or disruptive. They seem to have completely disregarded concerns and objections over their behaviour on their talk page (see history log), just like elsewhere on Wikipedia, by simply reverting them. –Vipz (talk) 15:39, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

31.125.85.48 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is this editor's IP address (doing the same things). –Vipz (talk) 00:46, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Their reply to this was thus and they then deleted the entire section. They've also just deleted a Talkpage note complaining about the IP address so I've blocked the IP address, and left them a note to (a) edit from one account, and (b) not to remove other's comments. If anyone else feels a block is necessary, feel free. Black Kite (talk) 10:34, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Legal Threat by User:Patidar Itihas

User:Patidar Itihas has made a legal threat on the Leuva Patel talk page: [75]. Chariotrider555 (talk) 16:25, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Blocked indefinitely until the legal threat is retracted and they make an undertaking not to do that again. Cheers, Daniel (talk) 02:31, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Threat from IP 188.236.172.210

[76] "correct it or u will face consequences" Longhornsg (talk) 18:36, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Gasp! Not....consequences! In all seriousness the IP was told, twice in fact, that what they are requesting will not be done on the talk page. I don't see any admin action needed at the moment. RickinBaltimore (talk) 18:39, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I do - this is in a contentious topic with an ECP provision, and the threatening behaviour is disruptive in itself regardless of the merits of the requests. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{Source assessment notes} 18:58, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

This was my thinking. Longhornsg (talk) 19:20, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

(non-admin comment) you didn't notice/alert the IP that this ANI discussion is being held. Babysharkboss2 was here!! (Talk to me!) (Goo Goo dolls) 19:51, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I have now done so. Just do it yourself if the OP does not . Phil Bridger (talk) 20:37, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

500/30 gaming for ARBPIA editing

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

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Pretty clear ECP gaming by User:WarrenWilliam via intensive recent gnoming to reach 500/30 for the purposes of ARBPIA editing. Iskandar323 (talk) 20:22, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I doubt anyone will take such a trivial request, but could the WP:REDLINKS violations be rolled back? Mach61 (talk) 21:00, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree this is obvious gaming. If I am reading their contribution log correctly (and taking into account their deleted edits), their 501st edit was to make this change to the article on the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. This edit was immediately preceded by about 250 minor edits of varying quality. Some edits, IMO, made articles worse (for example, this edit turned a sentence into a fragment). They apparently were copying and pasting a stock edit summary; in this edit they forgot to change the edit summary. Aoi (青い) (talk) 01:01, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I've removed ECP permission and have advised that before they can request extended-confirmed permission to be returned, they must have made at least 250 substantive edits and at least three months have passed. Return will be contingent on evidence that they will comply with CT restrictions, subject to consensus at AN or individual administrator discretion. Acroterion (talk) 01:12, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

If anyone feels like taking on a gnomish rescue effort, there are a ton of edits in the gaming run that need review. Edits like this one change away from the consistent full-sentence style used at the year articles. I reverted that one but there are hundreds. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 01:18, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

It would be even better if WarrenWilliam could do the cleanup. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 01:18, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

To clarify my position: the cleanup would do a lot to rehabilitate WW's standing in the community, but I still think Acroterion's 250 edits + 3 months criteria should stand as the path back to EC status. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 01:46, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Is this not a pretty clear example of WP:NOTHERE? I propose a topic ban for Palestine/Israel. It's going to be hard enough to maintain balance and neutrality on those pages without keyboard warriors turning up and trashing pages in order to get up to the minimum edit count. Boynamedsue (talk) 07:34, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I'll also point out that his very first edit in the topic area was to add a quote from someone that was obviously framed in a way that raises BLP concerns (ie. it was a quote that, placed in this context, could obviously harm their reputation), cited solely to a primary source for the quote itself - the Galloway quote in that edit is the particular point of concern, although the entire edit has more minor issues. They later expanded the same source to include more people, with the same problem. The fact that they rushed through ECP to add something like that is particularly concerning. --Aquillion (talk) 08:36, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

• Fairly clearly WP:NOTHERE and blocked indef. If they wish to actually contribute, they can do so via an unblock request. Black Kite (talk) 18:16, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

  Think you just left a block notice, but didnt actually block? nableezy - 18:19, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

  I have carried out Black Kite's clear intention and blocked the editor. Cullen328 (talk) 19:42, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

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

Persistent unhelpful and unsourced edits by IP

@121.6.221.174 consistently adds unsourced information and refuses to engage in discussions or use edit summaries, despite having been warned multiple times on talk page. Examples: [77], [78], [79], among others. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dawkin Verbier (talk • contribs) 10:29, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Persistent problems with the User User:Bgsu98

Since several weeks User User:Bgsu98 act like a tyran in all Figure skating related pages :

- It appears CLEARLY that this user deletes absolutely all edits made by users other than them ; - The user shows themselves threatening as soon as someone else revert their edits ; - Do no accept to be that someone else edit all Figure skating related pages, constantly reverting the edits made that other editors ; - Extensively modifies all pages related to Figure skating and do not accept that someone else make an edit.

They should receive a warning and if their behaviour continue to be sanctioned or even forbidden to make another edits of these pages and banned from Wikipedia. 2A01:CB14:1190:F700:35C6:B260:FF82:187F (talk) 12:17, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

@Hyperion82

@Sportsfan 1234

@Bayreuth0115

2A01:CB14:1190:F700:35C6:B260:FF82:187F (talk) 12:44, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Per the notice at the top of this page, you are required to notify involved editors, and pings are not sufficient. I have notified them for you this time. EducatedRedneck (talk) 13:42, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I love how one of the users this string of numbers has pinged as a "witness" is someone who's currently blocked for disruptive editing and persistent sockpuppetry. 😂😂😂 Bgsu98 (Talk) 13:54, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

• I've blocked the /64 range of the OP for one month (they've been blocked before recently).--Bbb23 (talk) 14:12, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
• For the record, I was the person who semiprotected 2023 European Figure Skating Championships page because of this IP's disruption. User:Bgsu98 is a responsible adult, has been wrongly reviled for much good work in the past, and can handle the abuse. I thank that editor for their persistence and good humor about it. BusterD (talk) 14:34, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

  I appreciate your kind words. If anyone has any genuine questions or concerns regarding edits I've made to any figure skating articles, they know where my talk page is located. Bgsu98 (Talk) 14:44, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

  @Bgsu98: - A lot of those figure skating articles you frequently edit use a list-defined reference citation style. When you remove content that is supported by a list-defined reference, you then need to go to the references section and either comment that ref out, or remove it. See these cite errors you created here, here, here and here, and honestly, that is just a handful, you frequently don't check for these specific cite errors. If you need further assistance, please see the help page. Thanks. Isaidnoway (talk) 21:45, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

  Thank you for the suggestion; I will be more mindful in the future! Bgsu98 (Talk) 21:52, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

CIR issue on shortdescs

• Mzwakhe Vilane (talk · contribs · logs)

User either doesn't understand or disagrees with WP:SDNONE (some article titles are sufficiently detailed that an additional short description would not be helpful) and is changing the deliberately absent short descriptions on self-descriptive articles like Economy of Japan and History of Austria to the phrases "Japanese economy" or just the single word "Austria".

They've ignored multiple talk page messages pointing out that such edits are unhelpful. They are making no other edits. Belbury (talk) 14:28, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

They're editing from the android app, so this is a possible case of WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU. I've blocked them for 31 hours for disruptive editing, but if they still do not respond on their talk page and continue with the same edits they should then be indeffed. DatGuy^Talk_Contribs 14:33, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

User: AB BLEL

User:AB BLEL continuously inserts the same edits into Telegram (software), while WP:SQS all of my attempts at discussion. As they provide no edit summaries and do not explain their reasoning on the Talk page, which I have requested multiple times per WP:DISCFAIL, I am evoking the last step of DISCFAIL and requesting administrator action. To be clear, their edits are not vandalous in nature, but the complete lack of communication and reverts makes them rather disruptive.

Here is a brief list of diffs from this incident:[80] is the first in this particular event; followed by them regularly reinstating their changes without any response to my attempts at discussion: [81], [82], [83], [84], [85], [86]. Culminating in today's return after multiple warnings, silently adding the same edits: [87] — Preceding unsigned comment added by ASpacemanFalls (talk • contribs) 16:01, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I note that nearly all of this user's edits are to this article. I think there's enough that we should ask for an explanation of this apparent WP:COI. At least if the editor does not respond to concerns he (the editors name is "William" so I assume that he's a "he") should be blocked from that article. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:00, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Persistent Vandalism on Konstantine Anthony Page by an IP User

Hello,

I'm reporting ongoing vandalism on the Konstantine Anthony Wikipedia pagehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantine_Anthony by an anonymous user, specifically IP address 72.132.44.146. This user has made multiple disruptive edits, removing significant information regarding the public spanking incident involving Konstantine Anthony, which was widely covered in the news globally including major outlets such as Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS and the AP.

The edits in question are: - [Edit at 15:50, 26 November 2023, removing 344 bytes] - [Edit at 15:49, 26 November 2023, removing 633 bytes]

These edits have been reverted, but the persistent nature of such vandalism suggests a need for temporary semi-protection of the page to prevent further disruptive edits.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sleeplessmason (talk) 19:55, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I can't say I am a fan of the content you have reverted to restore (diff). Firstly, for such a sensitive claim in a BLP, I expect the sourcing to be better. Secondly, how is this a "controversy" - he got abused by "anti-LGBT" people according to the source, that isn't him being controversial? What is "significant backlash and attention, sparking online debates"? Was it significant? The source doesn't suggest so. Do we need to cover this in a separate subsection of the article? Is it currently being given undue weight given the relative size of the article? For me, yes. Daniel (talk) 20:16, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

CambialYellowing and Scientology related articles

User:Cambial Yellowing seems to be violating the neutrality of Wikipedia with Scientology related articles. For example, in the article for Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, they repeatedly list “pseudoscience” in the genre section in the info box, even though that is not a genre. Sources about critics deeming it pseudoscientific were mentioned in the article but CambialYellowing seems to revert it despite the reliable sources being provided. 2600:100C:A103:309B:8572:E2E4:8CC1:4024 (talk) 22:32, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

You forgot to notify me, per the instructions at the top of this page. Cambial — foliar❧ 22:41, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I do think it's unnecessary to stuff articles on historical and contemporary hokum to the gills with what amount to redundant disclaimers. I don't think Wikipedia needs to stretch the confines of concepts such as "literary genre" in order to express the adequate skepticism of Scientology. Remsense留 06:43, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

I am deeply concerned

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

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I write out of deep concern about the Marla Maples and Lara Trump pages. Both pages were very recently hit with very egregious and offensive vandalism. The subjects of both pages are BLPs and are connected to Donald Trump who is no doubt controversial. Both pages are indefinitely PC protected, but that clearly didn't work in this case. Admittedly, I'm not as familiar with the contentious topics policy on here, but it seems to be more should be done. Can someone help? Maybe make the protection longer or something? Jordan Crandell (talk) 01:36, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

This discussion on my talk page is relevant, though I'm not sure why the user felt the need to create this account and then create their user and talk page so they wouldn't be red before asking me about this. - Aoidh (talk) 01:39, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

See WP:Long-term abuse/CalebHughes. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 01:51, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Noted, thanks. - Aoidh (talk) 02:10, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

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

Another dumb AfD scam

Whatever the heck this is:

I received an email from someone who claims to be a Wikipedia "admin". The email ends with "[email protected]". It stated that a page that features my work is flagged for deletion by another admin, and unless I pay editing fees, it will be deleted and banned permanently.

The email says, "Our backhand system is running out of space due to receiving 10,000 entries per day, so we all administrator’s started conducting a AFD (Article for Deletion) section survey, reaching out to those whose Wikipedia page is nominated for deletion by the Wiki moderators, and if the page owner is willing to improve the page we assist accordingly and if not Interested we move forward and submit the final repost to moderators and they delete the page and clear our records." The poor English in the email already tells me that this guy might not be an actual Wikipedia admin. There is a discussion around the deletion of the page. The deletion was by suggested by a user called "Vinnyb1322". This guy's account is brand new! I can see from his user log that after he created the account, he immediately flagged the article for deletion within a few minutes. He has never contributed to Wikipedia before, and only created the account to flag the page for deletion. The guy who sent me the email is not Vinnyb1322. When I asked him about a proof that he is an actual Wiki admin, he sent me a link to "his Wikipedia profile", which shows that he has been an admin for 17 years. The last activity of this admin was from August 2023. So, he hasn't been active for a while. He suggested connecting me to an editor (yet another admin), who can edit the article and ensure that it "adheres to Wikipedia's guidelines". The suggested editor has 21 years of experience in editing and creating Wikipedia pages. His last activity was from December 6th, 2023. Out of curiosity, I asked about the rate they charge for editing articles and keeping them active. He emailed me saying the editing services cost "$2999, however, after applying additional discounts it will cost you $1999."

Just to be clear, I didn't create this Wikipedia page and I don't care if it got deleted. I would rather let my work speak for itself. However, I'm interested in delving deeper into this type of scam so I can alert everyone else about it.

The AfD in question is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hashem Al-Ghaili, whose nomination is the first and only contribution of Vinnyb1322 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log).

What Is to Be Done? I think someone with a rebbit account should go message this guy and get him to tell us which admin the scammer was claiming to be, so we can go tell them that some asshole is signing their name to stupid letters. jp×g🗯️ 03:21, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

• @User:Vinnyb1322 replied on the Reddit post, claiming they had nothing to do with the email (which matches what was said in the post itself) and that they made the AfD in good faith. So maybe the scammer just used a recent AfD as an excuse? ChaotıċEnby(t · c) 03:54, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
• OP says they were given the URL of https://blandingsolutions.com and https://www.bizapedia.com/tx/blanding-solutions-llc.html for the scammers, for what it's worth. Malarkey? jp×g🗯️ 04:57, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
• Pinging relevant users here: @HashemAlghaili (target of the scam), @Brendanconway and @William Avery (both impersonated by the scammer). ChaotıċEnby(t · c) 06:21, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
• I have seen this type of scam mentioned before. It's a paid editing scam. It's a simple variation on what is described at Project:Articles for creation/Scam warning and is nothing new. Uncle G (talk) 15:06, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Obsession with Jason Momoa

• 2A02:810D:9F00:1428:0:0:0:0/64 (block range · block log (global) · WHOIS (partial))

Someone using IPs from Germany has been writing obsessive stuff about Jason Momoa. The /64 range was blocked briefly two months ago, but they popped back up today.[88] Let's get another rangeblock going for Special:Contributions/2A02:810D:9F00:1428:0:0:0:0/64. Thanks in advance. Binksternet (talk) 03:56, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

They've been doing this since September despite one previous block, so I've blocked them from the Momoa article for six months. Maybe it will wear off by them. I've watchlisted the article and will block them from the talkpage if needed. Besides that, I think some or all of the edits need revdel for the sake of the obsessed fan. Acroterion (talk)

Number of warnings

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What is the maximum number of warnings a user can receive before facing a ban or block? A particular user (HistoricPilled) has accumulated more than six warnings within a week but continues to engage in edit wars and vandalize articles by adding unsourced information. Additionally, the user has removed these warnings from their talk page. Imperial^[AFCND] 04:52, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

• Comment. There is a thread currently active about this on WP:AN. —C.Fred (talk) 05:35, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

  See the user's talk page. I have a complaint for calling me a "clown". It is similiar to a personal harrassment I have faced some weeks ago in the talk section of Maratha raid on Delhi where the user got blocked for harrassment. The blocked user challenged that he will create another account. However, I felt this as a personal harrassment for which I got as a prize for reporting an issue. As I requested earlier, if an expert on military history helps, it would be better. Imperial^[AFCND] 05:53, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

  My bad, I was the one who told them to bring it to ANI as it appeared to be the more appropriate channel for what they needed. ChaotıċEnby(t · c) 05:58, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

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

Disruptive editing

@Pootika fresh This user blanked my user page and talk page for undoing his edits that appeared to be disruptive.[89], [90] The user also removed contents (files, references) from articles without proper explanation like these [91], [92], [93], [94], [95] Jayashankar8022 (talk) 06:48, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't know how to point out each one of the edits by User:Jayashankar8022 started everything by keeping undoing my edits.....i just made the edit or removals that lacks reliable sources...why he is keeping following me and undoing my edits...why he is taking advantage of a privileged editor by suppressing young and new editors like us Pootika fresh (talk) 09:46, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

The reporter does not seem to be "going after" new editors. Frankly, when one sees a new editor make certain errors, it is often reasonable to briefly look through their contribution history to see if there are common patterns of beginner editing behavior that can be pointed out or corrected.

Your response comes off like you are deliberately reverting their edits as comeuppance for their reverts, which is totally unacceptable even if what the reporter had done was unacceptable. If you don't assume good faith from more experienced editors, you're going to continue to have these issues, and you likely will not last long before being blocked. Remsense留 10:08, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

@Pootika fresh I've got no plans to follow or attack fairly new editors or to take advantage of a "privileged editor." Since you are a new user and have less knowledge about the various guidelines and policies of Wikipedia, the chances of making mistakes are common. Please don't get offended just because some of your edits were reverted. Instead, take time to understand why such edits were reverted. You instead removed contents from my user page and talk page, which isn't a fair way to respond. Also, you have used foul language on my talk page in Malayalam-language.[96] Jayashankar8022 (talk) 11:24, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Rampant addition of Tamil scripts into Malaysia-related articles by Visnu92

Bringing the uncooperative attitude of Visnu92 to attention. That editor has been rampantly and restoring adding Tamil scripts into a host of Malaysia-related articles, for example [97], [98], [99] and [100], and has refused to engage in this discussion that I had added in User talk:Visnu92#Additional language in infoboxes. I opened a related discussion on this issue in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Malaysia#Rampant addition of transliterations apart from Malay in various topics and it was clear that there had been no consensus on the addition of transliterations other than Malay (Malaysia's official language) for articles on local government and transport infrastructure. Besides potentially going against MOS:PLACE, MOS:CONSISTENT and WP:NOINDICSCRIPT, such additions are impairing readability, turning the affected articles into a jumble of languages.

Seeking mod intervention on that editor's reluctance to seek consensus and edit behaviour that is affecting the readability of the articles in question. hundenvonPG (talk) 12:06, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Organized vandalism by far-rights from India on Bangladesh Genocide and Rape during the Bangladesh Liberation War

Page 1: Bangladesh genocide (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Page 2: Rape during the Bangladesh Liberation War (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

There has been consistent vandalism attempts in changing the history on the page to show one minority as the sole victim of a war. This is a comparison on all the edits made after June 2024 by Nomian and A.Musketeer which has repeatedly added claims and sources that puts the "Bengali Minority Hindu" as the focal point of this article. Persecution of the Bengali population happened irrespective of their race, creed, religion, but the users are constantly trying to insert articles and resources that aren't reliable while removing important sources, citations, articles.

Added this as part of Bengali Hindu Genocide Series Removed that this is part of the history of Bangladesh Added the targets by the perpetrators as only Bengali Hindus Removed the targets by the perpetrators as Bengali Intellectuals and Bengali Civilians Added 'Bengali Hindu Women' to the rape allegations instead of 'Bengali Women' + more

There have been 4 different discussions by different users over this issue where the majority agreed that this was an attempt of vandalism. I myself have consulted these users over and over again. But they are claiming that I am removing resources by reverting back to changes that have been made. The users have also vandalized several other pages related to the history of Bangladesh as a whole (including vandalizing the page Rape During The Bangladesh Liberation War). Please look into the discussions for more details.

Constant Reverts by user Nomian:

1. 08:09, 10 December 2023 (UTC) (reach a consensus before removing longstanding contents)
2. 07:48, 10 December 2023 (UTC) (maintain the status quo, you are literally destroying the article and editing against the sources)
3. 07:33, 10 December 2023 (UTC) (Undid revision 1188990598 by Wiki.arfazhxss (talk) let's keep the status quo and have a consensus before removing large chunks of sourced contents)
4. 06:16, 09 December 2023 (UTC) (Restored revision 1188709483 by Nomian (talk): Restore sourced contents)
5. 20:31, 08 December 2023 (UTC) (Restored revision 1188709483 by Nomian (talk): Restore sourced contents)
6. 05:01, 07 December 2023 (UTC) (as requested in the talk page, supported by sources)
7. 04:59, 07 December 2023 (UTC) (Reverted 3 edits by Lionel Messi Lover (talk): WP:DE)
8. 08:05, 06 December 2023 (UTC) (Reverted 3 edits by Lionel Messi Lover (talk): Further disruptive edits)
9. 19:34, 05 December 2023 (UTC) (reverting other unconstructive edits by Lionel Messi Lover)
10. 05:51, 03 December 2023 (UTC) (Undid revision 1187946370 by Lionel Messi Lover (talk) Wikipedia articles are not reliable sources)
11. 03:57, 02 December 2023 (UTC) (Reverted 3 edits by Lionel Messi Lover (talk): Edits doesn't the match what the sources say, use the talkpage to discuss)
12. 04:54, 21 November 2023 (UTC) (Restored revision 1184728745 by FrescoBot (talk): Revert POV)

A full report of constant reverts can be found here: Reverts on Bangladesh Genocide

Constant Vandalism Attempts by user A.Musketeer on the Page Bangladesh Genocide: A full report of vandalism can be found here with the complete change of meaning and contents in the article here.

Attempts to make a consensus and talk to prevent organized vandalism throughout the article:

1. Organized Vandalism by far-rights from India
2. Primarily Bengali Hindus as target?
3. Disruptive Edits
4. Consensus on reverting all vandalized changes after June 04, 2023

A reminder that these users have a history of reporting users who go out of their way, revert edits constantly that doesn't fit their POV. Here's a couple of example from two different pages.

1. Constant Vandalism Attempts by user A.Musketeer on the Page Rape during the Bangladesh Liberation War: A full report of vandalism can be found here with the complete change of meaning and contents in the article here.
2. Recently Reported User for editing and threatening: here
3. Here's another example of another user attempting to report me.
4. I am reported by a user who's referencing Nomian's comments and reverts, on their behalf.

I am not the last person who's being reported for this. This is an organized attempt at vandalism that have been going on in Bangladesh's History pages. All I have been doing is reverting their edits after putting out a discussion on the talk page. Please read through the talk pages in order to understand the extent of the vandalism attempts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wiki.arfazhxss (talk • contribs) 12:57, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

96.30.183.2

96.30.183.2 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) – clearly not here to improve Wikipedia, though this is too ambiguous to be reported to AN/V. I think they got enough warnings. Janhrach (talk) 13:25, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

100 percent vandalism: User:Abstracc

• Abstracc (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)

For three years we have collectively tolerated Abstracc even though none of the contributions have been constructive. From the first[101] to the most recent,[102] this person has vandalized Wikipedia with every edit. Especially worrisome is today's BLP violation against Eminem.[103] Can we put a stop to this harm? Binksternet (talk) 15:02, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

• I wouldn't say tolerated. I'd say not know about. This one, given the nature of the vandalism content and the earlier talk page responses, goes straight to an indefinite revocation of editing privileges with no talk page access. The edit summaries such as Special:Diff/1065804205 are deceptive and this is indeed a 100% vandalism only account that is wasting editor time. Uncle G (talk) 15:22, 10 December 2023 (UTC)